Check out this interview I did with Eric Ladau of Houston's NPR station, KUHF. (Warning: It has either bad words or bleeped-out bad words in it.)
I'll be reading Growing Up with Tamales for story time at Blue Willow Bookshop, in Houston, on Thursday morning, May 15. Tell everyone you know with kids in the Houston area. How do you find and support local indie book stores like Blue Willow? By going to Booksense.
On Saturday, May 17, I'll be in Dallas, reading and signing at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, for the 13th Dallas Children’s Book Fair & Literary Festival.
On June 22, here in Houston, I'm going to do a poetry workshop. It's free and open to the public, y'all, and they're having one every Sunday in June, taught by local poets I love and respect. So come on down.
Friday, October 27, 2006
The Pattern of Crappy FeelingsSo my endocrinologist is making me take my temperature every day this month, and I'm learning ever so much. One, my temperature never goes up enough to indicate that eggs are in my uterus. Two, I feel especially sickly on days when my temperature dips low.
Like today. Today I was at 96.9 degrees (Is that normal? Am I dead?) and, once again, I have the between-bimonthly-periods feeling of nausea, dizziness, exhaustion. I even managed to fit in a panic attack between breakfast and lunch.
What does it mean? I try to visualize my own insides. It means... My uterus reaches out lovingly to grasp the egg it knows should be there. (Cramp.) There's no egg. My uterus feels a chill sweep through its bones. (Low temp.) Where is the egg? My uterus is sick at the thought of having no egg to nurture. (Sick.) My uterus sheds bitter tears. (Another period.)
That's what I think of. Sorry to be so gross. Really, though, there's nothing gross about it. If you can watch those plastic surgery shows on TLC (which I can't watch), then you can read about my uterus' bloody bimonthly episodes. (Or you can skip reading them, too, like I skip the shows on TLC.)
My endocrinologist says that hormones control everything. On the one hand, I believe that he believes that because it makes for his good livelihood. (Cynicism.) On the other hand, I find myself measuring everything in my life along with my temperature. Am I nicer to my boyfriend when I reach 98 degrees? Do I wear more makeup at 79.3? It'll take another month of record-keeping to know for sure, I think. (Mild sarcasm.) And what hormone dosage will make me perfect? We'll wait and see what the doctor tells me. If he knows anything at all. (Carefully controlled optimism, disguised as pessimism.)
Depressing books depress me (and yet, I read).
So I'm reading The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro. And I'd like to say that I don't know why people spend money on drugs, when it's just as easy to borrow weird books from the library when you're in the mood to alter your consciousness.
I'm also like to say, "Darn you, Kazuo Ishiguro, for making me rush to figure out what the hell's going on in your book." Although I know a lot of people who are always like, "Oh, I figured out The Sixth Sense in the first five minutes of the movie," and "Oh, I figured out The Village five minutes before the movie started," and "Oh, I figured out all of Agatha Christie's mysteries five years before she was born"... I am not one of those people. All you have to do is hold up a sign that says, "This is a mystery," and I will willfully suspend my disbelief and powers of deduction for weeks on end, until the mystery unfolds.
So don't tell me what happens at the end of The Unconsoled unless you want me to hate you. But know that I'm reading it so very, very quickly, it's making my head spin. It's turning me crazy. I predict several daylight hours in bed, with book in hand, and a wet washcloth across my forehead. Oh my word, what is going to happen? No way to know until I read, read, read.
And then I turn the book over, to examine the blurb for clues, and two times it tells me the story is witty. What? No, it's very dark and gloomy, you guys. It's making me sad, but I have to read through.
More Measurements: Marking Time
I realized today that I mark my time with weekends, and that's not a pleasant way to live when you work five days a week. I live weekend-to-weekend, and I wish it didn't have to be that way.
A good way to live, I think, is project-to-project. I imagine Mick Jagger and Keith Richards live that way. (Although maybe, for them, it's overlayed by high-to-high or drink-to-drink?) My weekend marking is overlaid by project marking, fortunately, so I really can't complain.
Some rich people, I think, live purchase-to-purchase.
So many unrich people live paycheck-to-paycheck, or assistance-to-assistance, or abuse-to-abuse, or high-to-high, overlaid with crime-to-crime-in-order-to-pay-for-the-highs.
How do you live? And do you feel lucky? 1:28 PM # (9) comments
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
My nerves are shot.Normally I'm a person who thrives on deadlines and slight amount of pressure. But...
Over the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time explaining to people that I have this big writing deadline, and therefore I can't hang out as much. Even though I really, really love the people I'm explaining it to, and I do very much wish that I could hang out with them. And I don't know if anyone believes me, because the writing thing is so ephemeral. Does anyone ever see me write? No - no one except my kids, and they could easily be trained to lie about it. And yet, I have several books written, don't I? Therefore, writing books must be something that takes care of itself, or that I can easily put off until next weekend, or until Monday, or Tuesday at midnight, surely. Sometimes even I believe that.
Meanwhile, I have this jacked-up period thing going on. (Warning: talking about my period.) As y'all know, blah blah jacked-up periods blah, and this last one lasted twelve days, and (update) it doesn't look like I'm ovulating, after all, if my temperature-taking skills are any kind of trusty barometer, and so I guess when I go back to the endocrinologist on Halloween Day, he'll tell me that, yes, it is early menopause. And I don't even know what the treatment is for that, because the techniques are constantly being improved (I think, hope) and I haven't wanted to research it yet without knowing for sure. And, yet, maybe I should go ahead and do that, if only to keep the word hysterectomy from randomly floating through my mind.
Another thing I don't yet want to think about is the fact that, if it's menopause, then, logically, I can no longer produce children.
Because, what a cliched thing to think about, right? And, as several people have pointed out to me recently, I already have three kids. And I say, "Well, it's not that I wanted another one. It's more about the abstract loss of choice, you know."
But, you know what? I'll confide in you, now, and say that, hey, maybe I did want another kid. Whether everyone else in the world thought I needed one, or not. Maybe I had some half-formed idea to make a certain amount of money, and get to a certain point in my career, and then hurry up and cough up one last kid before I got too old. You know? Maybe I wanted to have a million kids, dammit. And, as long as no one else's tax money is supporting them, I figure that's my freaking business.
(I wasn't even going to say any of that on this blog, but now I've gained the courage to say it because of Laura Bennett. Thank you, Laura, for getting pregnant with your sixth kid and being unapologetic about it, and for showing on national TV that you like having kids.)
(Yes, I know I could always adopt. But now that Madonna's copied Angelina Jolie, I'm sorry but it's just not cool anymore.)
But, you know, like I said, there's no use freaking out about any of that yet, because I don't yet know for sure what's up with my eggs. So pretend I didn't say any of that.
So, anyway... then, speaking of having too many kids, I temporarily lost my youngest one last night. He and two neighbor kids were supposed to be launching mini careers in landscaping, offering their pinecone-gathering service for money door-to-door. I'd been worried enough about that, but decided to go ahead and let him do that, lest I be branded the meanest mommy on the block. But when I drove around to find the little brats, it turned out that they'd walked their earnings to the local burger place. Which is on a busy street. And by the time I got there, they'd walked back home. When I finally caught up with him, I lectured the hell out of my child, telling him I didn't want him going to the burger place without adults, much less without telling anyone where he'd gone. His eyes said, "Whatever, meanest mommy on the block."
So then we ran to the grocery store and the gas station. And, upsettingly, when we got home, I saw that my lawn had failed to magically edge itself, despite all my fervent wishing. (My oldest son can mow the lawn, but he can't yet edge it.) As we carried the groceries into the house, I saw my neighbors pointing through drawn blinds. "Messy-edged-lawn-having bitch," they said.
But I couldn't worry about that. I had work to do. I put a chicken carcass on the counter and commanded the children to pick it clean. I sat down at my computer and worked until bed time. "Can we watch South Park: The Passion of the Jew?" one of the children begged. "No," I said on autopilot. "Mommy has to work. Go read classic British children's literature before I spank you with a stick."
This morning I got an early start and fantasized about treating myself to a lovely breakfast before work. Then I bent down to put on my shoes and realized my top was showing too much cleavage again. So I pulled another camisole out of my closet and saw something so shockingly disgusting...
It was a tiny albino lizard running on my camisole!
No, wait... It was tiny, bleached troglobite!
No, wait... GROSS. It was huge freaking silverfish!!!
After screaming and killing it and gingerly putting on the camisole and the rest of my clothes and getting in my car and starting my 1.25 hour commute, I noticed that I had completely lost my appetite.
In the past, the old Gwen, with her external locus of of control, would have freaked out and seen the silverfish as some kind of bad omen indicating futility in all endeavors. Instead, in the present, I made a mental note to call the exterminator.
So then, finally, as if all that crap wasn't enough, I got to work and went to ladies' room and looked in the full-length mirror, and realized that, in my hurry to escape the silverfish, I had accidentally dressed myself like Molly Ringwald in the '80s.
Embarrassing!
I'm going to write a book called The Silverfish Diet Plan. (It'll be about using silverfish as appetite suppressants, not about eating them.) I'll get started on that as soon as I finish what I'm currently working on. Which will be... one week and one announcement of discontinued fertility from now.
Okay. Back to work. 8:51 AM # (10) comments
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Don't Look at MeLook at my Flickr page.
Labels: photos
4:09 PM # (5) commentsSunday, October 15, 2006
BangsI want to cut my hair so that it has bangs, ending at my eyebrows.
I don't need my boyfriend's permission to do this, and I don't want his approval, but I do value his opinion. I asked his honest opinion: Did he think bangs would look good on me, with my hair its current length?
I can't get a straight answer out of him. Like most men in America, he's been conditioned to answer nothing negative to that sort of thing. He doesn't know. He'd have to think about it. He's not sure what kind of bangs I mean. We were at the costume shop. I tried on a wig. "Bangs like this. Just like this. What do you think? Should I do it?" He doesn't know.
So, of course, I'm worried. Is it that he thinks the bangs would be a horrible mistake, but he's scared he'll piss me off by telling me?
Is it that, even though they'd look okay, he wouldn't like them, personally, himself?
Is it that he doesn't care?
Maybe he really doesn't know.
Why do I care? Because I value his opinion, like I value my best friend's.
Why is it so hard for a man to give his opinion?
I'm going to survey all my girlfriends, instead. I value my boyfriend's opinion, but it isn't available in this case. So... onward.
There. That's too much time spent worrying about my hair. Onward.
(Thank you, Nyarlathotep, for taking the picture of me in the wig. :) )
Labels: my sex life, vanity
9:22 PM # (11) commentsTuesday, October 10, 2006
Real QuickWent on the radio tonight to promote the upcoming Houston Poetry Fest workshop I'm doing, and it was fun. I met a local poet whose I now christen, psuedonymously, Deann Bon Jovi. Hi, Deann! (Bon Jovi.)
Oh, PS, that reminds me... If you know me in real life, and you choose to go to the workshop next week, please don't say anything about knowing me in real life. I mean, don't stand up at question time and say, "Hi! I'm Gwen's cousin, and I'm a writer, too, and I just wanted to say that! Gwen, my question is: How come you don't write a book about me, girl??? Ha, ha!!!"
Or, like, don't stand up and say, "Hi, I'm Gwen's coworker from her day job, and I've never bought Gwen's books, but I hope that won't keep her from letting me read my 24-page poem about how much I love kittens and my dead grandmother. Ready? Here it goes..."
Okay? Because I love you guys very much.
Real Slow
It makes me sad when I'm on MySpace, friending my favoritest DJs, and I see that all their top friends happen to be illustrated with pictures of women showing their boobs.
I like music and I like to buy CDs. I hope that's okay. I hope it's enough for me to consider myself a fan, I mean. I'm not saying that Ferry Corsten should put me in his Top 4. I'm just saying. You know? What is with the proliferation of women who both like trance and like to show their boobs on MySpace?
Or women who like to show their boobs for any man online, I mean. What is with that? Is that the best way y'all can think of to show admiration?
Maybe it is. Hmm.
If you like my writing, show me your boobs, then.
Just kidding. Don't show me anything. Just be happy, okay? That's how I like to imagine y'all, late at night in bed alone: looking happy.
Labels: pop culture, writing
10:48 PM # (10) commentsSunday, October 08, 2006
An Intuitive Fortune CookieSo this weekend was supposed to be two things. One: a weekend apart from my boyfriend, because we spend every single weekend together, usually, to the point that I neglect my other friends and my chores. Two: I was supposed to get three important chores done.
So I ended up spending a lot of fun time with my friends, spending half the weekend with my boyfriend, anyway (we missed each other), goofing off a little alone, and not getting my chores done.
Then, tonight, we went to eat pho, and they gave us fortune cookies at the end. And mine said, "You will get more done later if you take time for yourself now."
And I said, "Thank you, fortune cookie. That's exactly what I suspected."
And my boyfriend's fortune cookie said something lame like, "A job well begun is half done." And I realized then that he always gets the crappy advice fortunes, and I always get awesome affirmative fortunes. So... fortune cookies dislike him. Poor guy.
In bed.
Karaoke!
The other night we went to a local place and I sang a karaoke song I hadn't sang in a while, and it came out well, and I was happy. It's cathartic, singing a loud song well. (G&R, Sweet Child O' Mine.) And this guy came up afterwards and said he just had two words for me. I was kind of scared, but I said okay, what are they. And he said "Fucking bueno." Which was nice.
Before me, some guy sang Queen's "Killer Queen," and he was so good. It was incredibly awesome to know that there's someone in the world who's practiced singing "Killer Queen" to that extent. And that there's a room full of drunken people in the Montrose who know that song. 9:48 PM # (2) comments
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Thwarted and InformedThe plumber and I can't seem to get synchronized. His people called the wrong number. He came here, but without the right tools. He came back, but I was at Target and forgot to leave the key in the lockbox. I came back, but now he's getting something to eat.
I'm trapped here, now, for the rest of the plumber's day. I guess God didn't want me to go into Target and see all the nice things there that cost money. So I'm home, continuing my not-day-job work, instead. And waiting for the plumber.
I'm not even going to tell you what the plumber's fixing, or how outrageously costly it's going to be. (Yes, I got multiple quotes.)
I'll just tell you instead that, next time I buy a house, I'm not even going to look at it. No, instead I'm going to send a questionnaire out to everyone selling a house on HAR.com. I'm going to ask them what's important to them - what their priorities in life are.
Here is what I've learned was important to the people who sold me this house:
1. Proudly displaying evidence of their religion.
2. Matching fabrics.
3. Avoiding mold.
Here is what I've found is important to me, when it comes to home ownership:
1. Avoiding mold.
2. Maintaining an appealing landscape.
3. Maintaining the ability to take comfortable showers and baths.
4. Refraining from being ripped off by contractors.
Do you see which ones we don't have in common? They don't care for my number 2, as evidenced by the fact that their boxwoods have eaten their nandinas, and their crepe myrtles have never been pruned. I can tell they don't care for my number 3, because their beautiful jacuzzi bath is broken, and the shower heads I inherited were all small and crusted.
They obviously don't care about not getting ripped off by contractors, because everything they had done was done expensively and wrong. You can't tell, looking up at the vent that leads from the water heater, that it doesn't actually exit the house via the roof, or that the drain piping doesn't leave the house, either. But it looks like they do. Apparently the people who sold me this house paid someone to do things craftily ineptly. (Or else they did it that way themselves. But I hate to accuse people of malice without evidence.)
Now I know more about water heaters than I ever, ever wanted to know. Because I have to, because this is my house and I'm paying someone to work on it the right way.
So here I am, Target-purchase-less, off work and waiting for the plumber to finish his meal.
Oh, also - I believe that screws and nails should go into wall studs. The previous homeowners felt that hollow sheetrock was enough.
That will be one of the questions on the questionnaire I send, next time I buy a house: "Do you know what a wall stud is? Do you care if your sheetrock has inch-wide holes?"
I know more about the people who sold me this house than I ever, ever wanted know. 1:43 PM # (4) comments
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
To Whom It May ConcernI just want to say that, if you're one of my MySpace friends or you've recently sent me a message on MySpace, and it seems like I'm totally ignoring you, I'm not. I'm just too old and slow to figure out how to work MySpace, usually. That's all.
My Space. 8:45 AM # (3) comments
Monday, October 02, 2006
The Ren TestWe went to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday, like dummies, in the hot sun. I thought, at one point, that I might die of low blood sugar and dehydration. And yet we all had fun, I think. As our friend Richard explained it, "All these women are hot. And they're medieval."
Sunday Laundry List
Then, on Sunday, my loud, dirty cousins came over. Tad made fried rice. We all played DDR and drank wine. Then we ate birthday cake to celebrate the twelth-birthday-en-ing of my middle child. Also, we looked at my sexy, sexy bead collection and made plans to attend Houston's October bead show with wholesale license in hand. Woo hoo - domestic bliss.
Female Trouble News Update
I forgot to say that the week before I saw the endocrinologist, I got off the effing Pill.
I'm the kind of person, my friend Rose observes, who lives in the moment when it comes to relationships. I'm a creature of experience. If I'm with a person and they do something weird, I just roll with it. I like to go with the flow. Sometimes someone will annoy me, and I'll say, "Don't do that. That's annoying." But it's never a big drama. I don't like confrontation or ultimatums to ruin a good time.
Then, a year or so later, I'll be sitting at home alone, and it will suddenly occur to me that I don't like a certain person anymore. Suddenly, every annoying thing they've done will parade through my mind, and I'll decide that that person is no longer my friend.
"Just like that?" asks Rose.
Yes. Just like that. Because, by then, I've already lived through several instances of telling a certain person, "Please don't do that. That's annoying. Please don't be mean to my kids," or "Please don't tell me how to conduct my romantic life," or "Please don't spy on me while I'm in the shower."
And the person keeps doing it. They know I don't like it, but they don't stop.
At that point, in my mind, there's no reason to continue hanging out with that person. At the same time, there's definitely no reason to have a big dramatic conversation with the person, in which I issue ultimatums. "I want you to apologize for poking me in the eye with your chopstick three times, and promise you'll never do it again, or I'm not going to be your friend anymore."
What's the point? I don't have time to teach people how to behave decently. That's not my job - I can only do that for my kids. So I quit calling the person. And it's over.
So, two weeks ago, I did the same thing with the Pill.
They put me on the Pill a year ago to make the double periods stop. They did stop, but, at the same time, I felt tired. And, as I explained to Rose, they affected my mind. Instead of fantasizing about pretty men with black hair, I found myself fantasizing about lemon-filled donuts. All the time. Nothing meant anything to me. I felt like a fat rabbit in a warm hutch, lying down waiting for my next meal all the time.
And then, the double periods came back. And then, I went back to the gynecologist, and she told me, paraphrased, "A year ago I put you on the Pill to stop the double periods, and now your double periods have returned. And, since then, you've gained 15 pounds. I know... Maybe losing weight will stop the double periods. Try losing 15 pounds."
It took me a while to figure it out, and to connect all the annoyances in my mind, but then I did and I decided to get the hell off the Pill.
Go to hell, Pill. I'm not calling you anymore. You were never my friend, and I'm not going to bother asking you to change.
I feel better already. As PJ Harvey would say, I'm happy and bleeding. (And nauseated.) But that's better than bleeding and lethargic, isn't it?
Book Corner
Recently I read Oryx and Crake (by Margaret Atwood), and less recently I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, finally. I enjoyed them both very much. If you haven't read those yet, you should check them out. Unless you don't like science fictiony or magicky things, I mean.
Now I'm reading (maybe rereading?) The Beggar Maid, by Alice Munro. She reminds me of Atwood, even though I probably shouldn't lump them together just because they're both Canadian and write about children bullying each other near bridges.
Also, as far as not-books are concerned, I've been reading Project Rungay. Go there now, because that shit is super hilarious. 8:46 AM # (11) comments
