Gwen's Petty, Judgmental, Evil Thoughts

2010-01-21T13:12:00.004-06:00

Etiquette for Friends and Relatives of Authors that I'm Making up off the Top of my Head Right Now

1. It's okay if you can't attend your friend or relative's book launch party. You don't have to write the author a long email explaining your excuse for not attending. "Hey, I can't go to your thing because I have to clean the gutters on my house that day. But good luck with the whole writing business!" See, if you're close enough to an author to receive free copies of all her books, and she sends you an invitation to her reading, it's not because she actually expects you to go there and buy more books and act like she's some kind of celebrity. It's because she's hoping you'll pass the invitation to 50 of your own friends in an email that says, "Hey, this is my cousin I was telling you about - the author who writes super awesome books. You should totally go to this event and buy 20 copies of her book and tell all your friends to do the same." Because, that way, she makes more money and springs for the better tequila at family get-togethers. Get it?

2. It's okay if you can't attend your author friend's reading or don't want to help publicize her books or don't even like her work. But it would be nice if, after all that, you refrain from telling your author friend how much you love the Twilight books and how you've bought two copies of each one and how you're telling 50 of your friends to buy them, too.

You know what I mean? It's okay to like Twilight and not your friend's work, but try to be sensitive about it, is all I'm saying.

For example: If you were an insurance salesman, your author friend wouldn't email you and say "OMG, I just met the AWESOMEST insurance agent and I bought 6 policies from him and then I told my friends and now we're gonna have a little insurance party where we all meet up with this guy and buy his policies! I thought you'd like to know that, since you do something involved with insurance, don't you? Hey, maybe you could meet this guy and learn how to sell policies like he does! Then you could have a corner office downtown and drive a BMW convertible like he does!"

At least, I hope your author friend wouldn't do that to you. I know it's not exactly the same thing, since you can own books by more than one author but you generally only have one insurance guy. But I'm just saying: sensitivity, people. Your author friend has feelings that can be hurt by book-related comments, so be careful.

3. You know what? Don't worry about it. Go ahead and do everything in the two items above. Your author friend is just a crybaby who needs to toughen up if she wants to make it. But, if you are going to do the stuff described above, please don't follow it up by referring the aspiring writers you meet to your author friend for free advice, free editing, and free co-authoring... not unless you plan to start giving your author friend free insurance policies.

Thanks, guys.

Right now I'm doing 3 things.

1. Publicity for my new novel, Lone Star Legend, in stores any second so buy your copy now (or next weekend, probably). I'm happy to report that it's getting enthusiastic reviews from professionals and real people, alike, so you'll probably enjoy it. Download it on your book reader. Show up at one of my upcoming readings and get a real copy.

2. Working like a crazy person on my next novel. What? No, I didn't say "sitting here avoiding working on my next novel because I'm terrified about the way it's coming out and that it won't come out well and that all the success I've ever had has been a complete fluke." Why would you think I'd said that? Jeez, guys.

3. Being happy that I'm meeting a lot of awesome people in Houston, now that I have a tiny bit of time to do so. Because Houston has so many freaking awesome people, as some of y'all might be starting to suspect now that we've got our gay mayor and a special Web site boycotting our whole city and all. The combo of going part-time at my day job and my kids being old enough to completely ignore me means that I'm attending a lot more local events lately, and I love that shit. But I probably need to buy more dresses. But that's okay... don't think about that right now.

Important Job Tools

I bought a giant paper calendar for my home office. It happens to be the same as the giant paper calendar they ordered me at my day job office, except that I drove to Office Max myself for this one so it cost half as much as the one Office Max shipped to my job.

I have my Outlook calendar at work, my iCalendar at home, my calendar app on my phone, and my brain. But none of those work as well as paper calendars on a wall. Don't know why that is.

All right. Back to work, peeps. Talk to y'all later.

2009-12-10T06:09:00.003-06:00

Authoring Update

Everything is good, which means everything is boring. I mean, too boring for me to describe to y�all here, or to my cousins or my hairdresser when they ask me how everything�s going. Who wants to hear "Hey, another awesome thing happened in my career," or "Yeah, I�m working on another few projects" all the time? No one. I don�t even want to hear myself say it, you know? So I don�t say anything. I just go home and do work. Or do emails about work. Thankgodfully, I have a lot of projects going on now. I�m working like a mad man and am, in fact, about to go part-time at my day job in order to get more work done. If y�all know me in real life or have read this blog for a long time, you can probably imagine what a big deal that is to me and how happy I secretly am.

All that said... Let's talk about the next project you'll see. I have a new, real live novel, Lone Star Legend, coming out in January. Launch party is here in Houston, on January 28 at Brazos Bookstore. With wine -� they said I could bring some wine, and I definitely will.

I�ll also do a signing in Austin (at BookPeople) on February 5, I think the date is. And one in San Antonio, don�t know when yet. And I want to try to go to Dallas and then Los Angeles later in the year. But that�s about it, I think. As you�ve probably read by now, publishers have figured out that book tours don�t make as much money as they cost, and that�s why I never do them. So don�t hold out for signed copies, anybody. Instead, buy my book in January. Then, email me and tell me you bought it. Then, I will email you back, making the email say the words I would have written in your book if I�d flown to your town and met you at a bookstore table. And then you can print that email and Scotch-tape it to the inside cover of your book! Or, you know� you could always order a signed copy from Brazos Bookstore, and they�ll ship it to you. They're nice like that.)

(It kills me to write all that, all presumptuous about the possibility of people screaming for signed copies. But I kind of obsess over signed copies, myself, so I�m typing all that for my fellow OCD�ers.)

What is the book about? you might ask, because I�ve never yet told you. Is it about lone star legends? A little, yes, but that�s not the only thing.

It�s about a woman named Sandy Saavedra who lives in Austin and is super happy and proud of herself because she�s putting her journalism degree to work for a site called LatinoNow. And she�s scored a handsome grad-school-poet boyfriend. And even though her mom doesn�t understand anything Sandy writes, or even what she does for a living, it�s okay because they still have a pretty decent relationship, considering, relatively, since her mom drove Sandy�s dad away.

And then� bom bom BOM� a gossip-blog conglomerate buys LatinoNow. And they ask Sandy to stay on, but as a gossip blogger of the �bitch, pleeeeease� sort and not a Real Journalist.

All that�s in, like, Chapter One. So what do you think Sandy does, at that moment and for the rest of the book? Oh, and also, what do you think would happen if Sandy had a blog on the side, all along, into which she spilled all her uncharitable, secret, anonymous thoughts? And also, what do you think professional bloggers think of their fans and the people who comment on their sites? And how does it feel to make fun of people online for money? You know that I know, because I used to do that years and years ago, back when people were first learning how. And what happens when people don�t want to expose themselves on the Internet, but suddenly find themselves there, exposed? And what�s up with people who don�t even have Internet connections, or even want them � how do they live? How is that fathomable? That part I had to imagine, since I�ve been on the Internet since cavemen first drew cybersex hieroglyphics on Usenet walls, and now I only eat e-food and drink virtual gin with virtual diet cranberry juice.

That�s what my next novel is about, and Publishers Weekly says Sandy is a smart, funny heroine that y�all will root for. So I hope y�all will consider picking it up in January, maybe with the gift certificates y�all will receive this month from people who love you.

Grackles

Did y�all see how Heidi Klum took my grackle costume idea, before I could even get the chance to implement? My costume was going to be better than that, and I wasn�t going to paint my face black.

I said this on Twitter a while back, so I�m recycling it here, but it�s important and bears repeating. Y�all will be relieved to know that, whenever I get the time, I continue my grackle research on patios throughout Houston. And recent studies at La Madeleine on West Gray have yielded important results:

1. Female grackles will eat butter, not just bread. They dip their beaks into it and it stays on them for a while afterwards.

2. Even if you put the bread near the butter, though, they will not dip the bread into the butter. They do not instinctively know that it tastes best that way, like I do.

3. Some female grackles like La Madeleine�s red jam, and some don�t.

Future research will focus on grackles� (of both sexes) reactions to La Madeleine purple jam and orange jam. I suspect that they might like the purple, since it contains seeds.

In Lieu of a Christmas Newsletter

My family is doing well, despite my semi-regular bitching at them. Dat is steadily composing music and has about an EP�s worth of synth pop completed now.

Rory is studying multiple musical instruments and has been collaborating with his stepdad (aka �Pep-Pep,� for you fans of Tim and Erik). Rory has also remained on the Almost Honor Roll all year.

Dallas, who still lives with his dad, made First Chair in his instrument, which is pretty good considering that his high school�s band is super hardcore and competitive. They subsequently demoted him to Second Chair as punishment for losing his sheet music, but I�m content to ignore that completely. Dallas is also on Almost Honor Roll, in all advanced-level academic classes, which is pretty freaking good, considering that he spent half of junior high in �alternative� classes because of �distractions� caused by his Asperger�s.

Josh is about to get his first car, y�all. First car! And a nicer one than I�ve ever owned (but not new), due to a rare collaboration of his dad�s campaigning and my fiscal cooperation. Josh is very good and quiet and tall in general, although he did rebel against me mightily this year by shaving his head. I was upset and took to my bed, yes. But, in the end, I came back into the living room with newfound respect for my child. Josh is not on Almost Honor Roll and never really has been, but he passed Physics last year, when he was a junior, and I never even took it, so I�m satisfied with his academic achievements. Send him good vibes for his SATs next month, y�all. He wants to go to the University of Houston or University of Texas.

Toby has moved into his own little apartment. You might think it's just a bunch of moving-box lids that we brought home from my work, thrown on the floor in my office, but rest assured that it's his apartment, with different rooms (lids) for different purposes. He has his Resting Room, his Brooding Room, his Watching Room and his Room of Violence. You can tell the difference by the way he's marked up the corrugated cardboard in each.

Starbuck rapes our Christmas tree and steals its water.

See? Life is good. In the words of the immortal Joe Walsh: �I can�t complain but sometimes I still do.�

I hope y�all have the best December holidays you�ve ever had, peeps. I hope y�all are happy and warm.

2009-10-22T20:59:00.004-05:00

Win free books!

In celebration of ~~HIspanic Heritage Month~~ Dia de los Muertos, I'm hosting a book giveaway contest.

Look at these sexy titles:

Zumba by Beto Perez , Maggie Greenwood-Robinson
Evenings at the Argentine Club by Julia Amante
Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz by Belinda Acosta
Tell Me Something True by Leila Cobo
Amigoland by Oscar Casares

I haven't read any of them yet, but I've heard good things about all of them, and they share my publisher, who hires good editors, and I'm doing a reading with Oscar Casares in May, so I'd love to send them to y'all and hear what you think.

Here are the contest rules:

1. You must have a non-P.O.-box mailing address in the US or Canada that you're willing to send me if/when you win.

2. You must post, in the comments on this post, the name of your favorite Latino author.

You must post your email address as well so I have some way of getting your address from you. If you don't want to comment, you can also email me your response at gwendolyn.zepeda@gmail.com.

3. If you have a preference as to which of the books listed you'd like to win, go ahead and type that, too.

4. I will put y'all's names in a Franco Sarto shoe box and have my cats draw the winners. Then I will give your addresses to Hachette (my publisher) and they will send y'all the books.

Deadline for entry is October 31.

Ready?

Go!

2009-10-19T18:32:00.001-05:00

Lately

I�ve been working like crazy, trying to write decent stuff and not hacky stuff. Like every other fall and every other time I�m under deadline to write a book, I have a lot of good ideas for other projects but NO TIME to do them.

Here�s my deal right now� let�s get it straight real quick, because it gets so confusing that not even my husband knows what�s going on:

1. You have seen, so far, in print in real life, my first short-story collection, my first novel, and two children�s books.

2. You will see, in January, my second novel. Also, pretty soon you�ll see my third children�s book. Both of these books, I wrote almost a year ago.

3. Right now I�m working on my third novel and my fourth and fifth children�s books. You will see those a little over a year from now.

See how it goes? Everything takes a year (at least) to get from me to you. So it�s like I�m working in a time machine, here. Kind of. People ask what I�m working on and I say �My next novel� and they say, �The one coming out in January?� and I say, �Um... what year is it right now?�

And I�m not high or drunk, either.

So it�s come to pass that, also, that next month, on November 20, you can see me on PBS in an interview I did a year ago. I can�t wait to see it, myself, because I remember enjoying the interview at the time, and it�ll be interesting to see what parts the editors and producers thought y�all might like.

Stuff keeps coming up like that: Time-machine stuff I do now that pays off later, or stuff I did a long time ago that�s showing results right about now. And all that is good. It�s like planting seeds.

Right now, between bouts of writing the books that you�ll see a year and a half from now, I�m trying to think up what I want to create for the year after that. Assuming, of course, that anyone wants to pay me to do anything by then. Because that�s always an assumption or a hope, but not a guarantee. I�m super glad, so far, that people are still paying me to do stuff for the future.

Do you like art? Do you like artists?

If you do... If you live in Houston and want to:

See local artists and listen to them detail their artist processes in a laid-back setting
Network with artists and arts community peeps in a decidedly non-network-y atmosphere
Eat pizza and drink beer,

then you should come to the Spacetaker Speakeasy on Wednesday, October 21st, at around 6:30 PM.

Telling y�all this because Spacetaker is a local arts org that�s near/dear to my heart for the reasons described in the bulleted list above. I�m telling y�all this quietly, though, because the Speakeasy events are still kind of secret and cozy, and I�d hate for them to get too big too fast. So only show up if you really like art and artists, and only invite people you consider special and awesome, okay?

Admission is free and I don�t get paid to shill for Spacetaker. (I am a member of the Artist Advisory Board, though, so I want to see it achieve its mission, because that�s how I roll. There -- full disclosure made.)

Work Days

I�m supposed to be the �Events Coordinator� for our department at work, which means, basically, that I�m in charge of thinking up reasons for people to bring cake to the office.

So we�re having a floor-wide, multi-department �trick-or-treat potluck� on October 30. No, it is not related to Halloween and therefore it cannot be deemed insensitive to hardcore Christians. It�s treating ourselves in celebration of coping with all the tricks we�ve been dealt during the last quarter. Get it? Trick, treat? See?

Anyway, so I made the invitation for this event, along with a sign-up sheet that contains a lot of cheesy industry-related puns. (�It�s a mutual food platform!� HA!!)

After I sent the invitation, this guy Tom from one of our neighboring departments told me, "Thanks for doing that. It's been so dreary here lately." And that made me happy, that I could help lift dreariness a little, for one person at least.

And it�s kind of pathetic, maybe... kind of Office Space... that something like that could make me momentarily happy. But it did. I make fun of Corporate America a lot, y'all know, but I�d rather work for Corporate America than, say, Privately Owned Firm America, or Retail America, or Food Service America, or Construction Work America...

So, life is good. That�s what I�m trying to tell y�all. Hey, maybe I can just repost pertinent bits of this entry on Thanksgiving Day�

Later, taters. Talk to y�all again soon.

2009-10-14T19:01:00.002-05:00

Here's a YouTube for y'all YouTubers.

I've been super AWOL, busy at the day job and the night job, but guess what I have for y'all three people still checking this site:

An interview, of me, by author Alisa Valdes, on YouTube.

Enjoy! If you're into that sort of thing!

I want to come back soon and tell y'all little stories about strangers I see at my workplace every weekday of my life. Let's make an appointment to do that later...

xoxoxoxoxox,
Gwen

2009-09-10T06:39:00.002-05:00

Where I Be

Hola, peeps. Have y�all missed me? If so, you should check out my Houston Chronicle blog, because I post a little more often over there.

Alternately, if you�ve been wondering how sexy, nasal, gravelly, or flat-aspect-y my speaking voice is in real life, how I waste my time on the weekends when I�m supposed to be writing, what the secret is to my goat whispering, or exactly how fast my husband cuts up tuna for spicy tuna sushi roll filling� you can check out the home movies I�ve been posting to Qik.

In other self-promoting news: I�ll be reading at the Houston Public Library, downtown, on Saturday morning, September 26, at 11 AM., for Banned Books Week. I�m gonna read from my fave banned book of all time and then ask attendees to tell me their secrets in exchange, so come on down for that, if you live in town.

Right after that, I�m going to do a Scype interview for my very good peep Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez�s new site, Las BMW. If you�re interested, you might want to run over there and register right now, while it�s free.

Beatle Non-Mania

We bought the Beatles edition of Rock Band last night and played all the songs I liked, which didn�t take long, and then that was it. I was kind of annoyed by the fact that you can�t work your way through Story Mode without playing each and every song, as opposed to 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 5, like you do on the older editions. Basically, I didn�t appreciate Harmonix forcing me to sing yet another 1963 Beatles song with the same chords as �I Wanna Hold Your Hand� and that other one.

Not trying to be mean. I�m just saying. I mean, I really love �Dear Prudence� and �Get Back� and some of the other stuff. But don�t force me to sing everything else in order to unlock additional songs, is all I�m saying. We gave up Story Mode after two venues and switched to Quickplay. Oh, but the new vocal harmony functionality was cool. I did appreciate that.

I would dearly love a Rolling Stones edition or a Led Zeppelin one. I�d also like a few Heart and Van Halen songs. Do you hear me, Harmonix? I know they have a suggestion box on their site now. I need to get on that. That�s on my to-do list.

My Pop Culture Recommendations for This Quarter

I saw District 9 twice and loved it even better the second time and can�t wait for the sequel.

We also saw Extract over the weekend. It had its moments, but I�m not gonna see it twice.

I�ve been listening to this one album a lot lately: �In Ghost Colors� by the Australian band known as Cut Copy. My favorite songs on it are numbers 6 and 14.

Oh, and we�re totally obsessed with True Blood, that vampire soap opera on HBO. I�m calling it �a redneck-y, vampire-y Nip/Tuck.�

I�m not getting paid or gifted to say any of this, I swear.

Haven�t been reading anything lately. I read a lot of sad but beautiful books over the winter and spring, and now I�m supposed to be writing toward a deadline, so I won�t let myself read. Even though I just found and purchased an interesting-looking short-story collection and it�s sitting on my nightstand atop the mound of magazines. Even though my son really wants me to read The Lightning Thief and I�ve already read the first chapter of it and will probably download the rest this week. But serioiusly � no more reading until I�m done writing this next book. I mean it!

I just typed and deleted, twice, the list of books I read and enjoyed over the past year.

Sometimes I feel weird saying what books I read in a public forum because� I don�t know why. Like I worry that certain people will get upset that I�m not reading �enough� stuff in the genres that I write in, or enough stuff by authors who share certain demographics with me. Or that I suck for not reading and promoting all the books by people I know in real life. And I also worry that listing books now will tempt others to pressure me to mention certain books in the future.

Like a lot of you, I have a really long list of books I want to read � just not necessarily enough time to get to them all. And I don�t even feel like a list of what I read recently would be representative of what I value most as a reader. You know? Because sometimes I read something just because it catches my eye, or just because it was in the doctor�s office, or just because I accidentally downloaded a sample chapter of it on Kindle.

So I�m not gonna make any lists of books. Instead, y�all tell me what you�re reading and loving. At least two of the books I loved last year came from y�all�s suggestions, in the first place. And for that, I thank y�all kindly. Thanks, peeps.

Will write again when I can.

2009-08-25T19:02:00.001-05:00

now entering Hyper Lockdown Mode

I�m about to go into Super Hyper Overdrive Lockdown in order to meet my writing deadlines. What does that mean? It means that if I don�t answer your call, respond to your Facebook quiz, or agree to participate in your latest entrepreneurial venture, it�s not (necessarily) because I don�t love you.

My next novel is due on May 1. Before that, I have one kids� book draft due on November 1 and another kids� book draft due on� March 1, I think? So it�s time to buckle down. Wonder Write Powers, activate! Form of: getting pages down!
Even the knitting�s on hold now.

In other writing news� I think it�s okay to tell y�all now that I�m going to do Inprint�s Margaret Root Brown reading, here in Houston, in May, along with author Oscar Casares. Exciting, is it not?

Before that there�s another thing, but I�m not supposed to talk about it yet. But let�s just say that I�ll be visiting Austin around Halloween. I don�t yet know if I�m going to wear a costume. If so, I might be Minnie Mouse. So much is still up in the air�.

domestic front

My sister-in-law gave birth to two awesome twin girls. Which is fabulous! But then, of course, it makes people ask Dat and me if we�re going to have a baby, too. My other sister-in-law had a baby girl a few months back. Her sister is pregnant right now. Two sets of our friends are announcing their plans to try to have additional babies.

I see babies. I think of babies. I dream I�m having babies. The other day I made the mistake of taking a nap and, in my nightmare, I had given birth to twins. They were dangling out of me, still attached to their cords, and I was juggling them as we made our way to the hospital, where they didn�t want to give me a wheelchair and they asked me to have the placentas removed in a slummy housing project so as to score the hospital some kind of grant.

In this dream, my twins were boys. I don�t think I�d even know how to have a girl in my uterus, at this point.

Which is not to say that we�re thinking about having a baby. Because we�re not. I�m just telling you that the babies are all around us.

My real kids started school this week. Aside from some special State of Texas Vaccination Drama, everything ran smoothly. The kids have plenty of nice new skull- and electric-guitar-emblazoned t-shirts to wear, you�ll be happy to know.

My oldest is a senior this year. That brings up, to me, a lot of questions that are way more pertinent than the �Are y�all going to have a baby, maybe?� one. There are questions about college, after-school jobs, driver�s licensing and insurance, freaking prom, freaking class rings and yearbooks, girlfriends, curfews, Facebooks, the future�

You know. You know where I�m at with this, right?

That�s literally all I have time to say right now.

Isn�t that sad, kinda? More when I can.

2009-08-12T18:37:00.000-05:00

I don�t know what Buddhist monks do, but maybe this is similar. (Or maybe it�s only Level 1 in their lifelong video game.)

Lately I�m starting to believe that all anger and all violence is rooted in hurt feelings and fear. And I�m on a continual quest to control my temper. (My temper is roughly 400% better than it used to be, but there�s still room for improvement.) So this means my latest and greatest technique for temper-tempering is stopping to examine why I�m angry, and if the reason is another, underlying emotion (like fear or hurt feelings), then I force myself to admit that and express it in a reasonable way.

That�s not easy. And you know what�s even less easy? Seeing someone else act like an angry jerk and then trying to figure out if they�re hurt or scared and then forcing myself to have compassion for that person and to find a way to deal with him/her without resorting to reciprocal anger. That�s so difficult that I hardly ever get it right. But I keep trying.

It�s like a detective show. It�s like a puzzle. Only some things in this world make me feel angry. So which ones are they, and why? No, honestly. What is the real reason why? And how can I use that to relate to others and to quit being such a bitch all the time?

I�m working on that. That�s my hobby now. That, and the knitting.

different kinds of crafty

I recently went to all the libraries near me and checked out every knitting book they had. In one of the Stitch �n Bitch books, author Debbie Stoller lays out the four types of knitters, with equal fun-poking and discussion of the pros and cons of each. The first type was knitters who are really into the technical aspect of knitting and choose to make things that are challenging and show off their skillz. Okay, got it.

The second type was dubbed �She�s Gotta Have It� knitters, and they�re the ones who see something they want to wear/own and then figure out how to knit it. And that, for the most part, is me. Even though I�m a noob, I know I�m that kind of knitter because I�m that kind of seamstress, crocheter and beader, too. Debbie went on to say that those types rarely learn skills outside of their comfort zone, which made me bristle for about three seconds before I realized that I didn�t mind that being true, as long as I knew enough knitting to knit what I like.

Then there were two other kinds of knitters that I can�t remember. Sorry. But it�s there in her book, if you want to go read it for yourself.

Anyhow. This categorization of crafters made the wheels in my mind turn. Yes, the number-one consideration for me is how the finished piece looks, and whether I want to wear it or see it being worn by someone else. Of course it is. But could there really be other kinds of knitters on Earth? And, if so, would I be able to identify them in the future?

So then, the other day, I was skimming through the forums on Ravelry.com and saw peeps talking about Vogue Knitting magazine. That interested me because Vogue Knitting is a big part of why I learned to knit. Every season of my adult life, I�ve browsed through that mag at the racks and wished that I could knit. So it was with extreme rapture that, after taking the knitting lessons last month, I was finally able to justify my very own subscription to Vogue Knitting, whose Fall �09 issue was so beautiful, it made me sick. Every orange sweater in it, I wanted. And now I can have them. NOW I CAN KNIT THEM!!!!!1!!!1!!!! I HAVE THE POWER!! JUST LIKE HE-MAN DID, WHEN HE HAD THAT SWORD FROM CASTLE GREYSKULL!! EXCEPT THAT I DON�T THINK HE DID CRAFTS � HE JUST KILLED PEOPLE OR WHATEVER!!

So I�m on Ravelry, and they�re talking about the Vogue, and some of them are hating on it. They�re like �Oh, the sweaters are weird� and �The models are posed so weirdly� and �They�re all skinny and I�m not! Eff Vogue!�

And I became confused. Because, one, how could people not see that Vogue Knitting is the perfect blend of crafty magazine and fashion magazine?? Of course the models are going to be skinny and bent at weird angles. But the sweaters aren�t weird, they�re beautiful. They�re fashionable.

Second: Are we not knitters? We are Devo! (In this sentence, Devo means crafty.) Hence, we can take the Vogue sweater patterns and make them whatever size we want. Can�t we? Hope so, because I�m wearing at least one orange Vogue sweater this winter, y�all, even if I have to do quantum physics on the pattern, first.

Then, after all that thoughtage, I realized that people who dislike Vogue might be those other kind of knitters � the first kind Deb Stoller talked about. The kind who really, really like the process of knitting and don�t see it as a means to an end.

And, for those people, there is Interweave knitting magazine.

Right? Am I right? I mean, I like Interweave, too, but I can see that it�s a little hardcore for me. But, at the same time, I love and respect the people who like that magazine better, and all the other kinds of knitters. Because we�re all sisters here, aren�t we? (Yes. Guys, too.) We�re all fellow witches in the coven of craft.

And right now I�m having a flashback to the mid-�90s, when I used to read the sewing newsgroups on Usenet and be amazed at the vicious arguments that broke out there, among crafters, on a forum that was meant to unite us. Good times, good times, as they say.

the sister-witch site in the coven of me

I finally got my Official Author Site, gwendolynzepeda.com, redesigned. If you look at it right after I�ve posted this entry, you�ll see that it needs a content update, too. But still, it�s kind of new and kind of fresh, and I feel like we should celebrate. So, pretty soon, I�m gonna have some sort of contest and give away an ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of my novel that�s coming out in January. To one of y�all, for free, with free shipping. Signed, too, maybe.

I just have to think up a tortuous, narcissistic contest quiz, first. (One that will probably be easily winnable using Google, though.) That�ll be next entry. Also next entry, I�ll tell y�all my favorite easy summer recipes, most of which involve liquor and/or Mexican chili powder.

Take care until then.

Love,
Gwen

2009-08-01T23:06:00.006-05:00

writing stuff

Right now I'm working on my third novel, which doesn't have a title yet. It's Saturday night and I'm writing the seventh or eight chapter, out of order, because I haven't written Chapters 2 through 6 yet. But I have a good feeling about this one, already. I'm excited, and I think y'all are gonna like it.

In January, y'all will be able to buy my second novel, Lone Star Legend. Actually, I have ARCs (Advance Reading Copies, for reviewers) right now, so email me if you're any sort of book reviewer and would like a copy to review sometime in December or January. Just know that the ARCs have some wonky formatting issues that affect my OCD, but will be fixed in the real books, in January. :)

Aside from the very temporary wonky formatting issues, I think y'all are gonna like that one, too. Especially y'all who are familiar with the Internets and the things that go on there.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for someone to re-design my author site so I can update with the events I'll be doing later this year.

And, um... Also, I have another kids' book coming out, called I Kick the Ball, but I'm not sure when, exactly. They said 2011 but I think it's actually going to be 2010. I'm super-excited about that one, because it has a little boy for a protagonist, and as y'all can imagine, I have an affinity for little boys, seeing as how I gave birth to three of them. Also, they hired a really awesome illustrator for it, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes out.

There are also a zillion other things going on, all good, that I'm not supposed to talk about yet. So I feel like I can't ever really update y'all in a real way.

But... there is a moral to the story. The moral = hard work pays off. Hard work snowballs and makes you glad you started it.

knitting stuff

I've taken a few knitting classes over the past three or four weeks, so now I know how to knit, and I'm super-glad because I've wanted to knit all my adult life but never managed to teach myself....

and now I know how, and I'm making a scarf out of cheap acrylic, and next I'm going to make a more complex scarf out of expensive acrylic, and after that we'll see what happens, but I have dreams, y'all.

I'm on this knitting social networky thing called Ravelry.com, and my name there is Gwentown, in case you want to friend me so I can look through your projects and steal your ideas.

other stuff

Other stuff is going really well, all considered. I have no complaints, y'all.

I started to type a big old status report on my three kids, but then I felt weird and deleted it. I always feel weird telling details of their lives, but especially so now that they're teenagers. I mean, I have the mom blog on the Houston Chronicle, now, too... So I'll angst about the privacy issues there, and tell y'all here that my kids are doing really well. :)

I keep saying "my husband this" and "my husband that," and people think I'm trying to remind everyone that I'm a newlywed, but really it's just that I'm used to saying "my boyfriend" and I'm trying to train myself out of it.

My husband is out at a concert with his friend right now. I'm at home working. Well, I'm supposed to be working, but instead I'm typing this blog entry. Shhhh....

this little girl

Today I was knitting in public (which I've heard people say is tacky, but I don't understand how it's tackier than, say, shopping for clothes in public, but I think it's mostly British people who say it's tacky, and I'm in America, so whatever). I was knitting in public -- at the hair salon, actually, while my husband got his hair trimmed -- and there was this little girl.

Not to be judgmental, but then again why not, so this little girl and her brother were getting simultaneously bitched at and ignored by their parents, if you can imagine that. You know how I mean? Their dad was feverishly typing on his phone, but keeping up a steady stream of "Chloe*, be good. Steven*, be quiet. Chloe, shut up. Steven, I'm gonna spank you if you don't behave." (*Not their real names.) He wasn't even making eye contact with them -- just telling them to shut up and behave. Then he'd haul them outside and buy them ice cream, then haul them back in and bitch at them, without looking at them, for eating the ice cream like children instead of like adults. All while reading his phone.

So I was thinking, "Wow, this dude really doesn't enjoy having kids." But I kept my eyes on my knitting.

At one point, the discontent dad hauled little Steven outside to spank him or buy him a candy, and little Chloe started circling me like a hawk, staring at my knitting. It cracked me up on the inside, the way she literally circled me to see the process from all angles, then walked up really, really close. She was maybe seven or eight years old.

"You ever seen anyone knit before?" I asked her, finally, when I could feel her breath on my hands.

She shook her head.

"That's what I'm doing. Knitting," I told her.

She ran around to my other side and sat next to me on the salon's sofa. She said, "Are you sewing a blanket?"

I told her I was knitting a scarf. I unrolled the scarf for her to see, and showed her the knitting needles.

Her dad came back in and bitched at her to sit on the other side of the room.

Later, little Steven won his dad's attention by emptying the water cooler onto the floor, and Chloe took the opportunity to squeeze onto the sofa between her dad and me.

"Knitting a scarf," she said slowly, to no one.

I smiled in her direction.

She sidled over and asked, "Does the yarn break?"

"Chloe," her dad said warningly. But I ignored him and answered her question. Tried to. It took a while to figure out that she thought the width of the scarf was due to me secretly cutting the yarn. So I showed her how the yarn folded into rows. While I did this, her dad took Steven and left again, apparently deciding I couldn't kidnap a kid with knitting needles in my hands.

Chloe asked more questions and I tried to answer. I wished, then, that I had one of those little knitting kits for children, because she was so fascinated and so clever, I felt like she'd be a natural at it. You know? But I didn't have one, and I stopped short of telling her to ask her father for one.

Then my husband's hair was done and we got up to go. I turned to say goodbye to Chloe, but she was busy getting nagged at by her dad.

Maybe it'll occur to him to buy her a knitting kit on his own. She can knit, then, while he plays with his phone.

Or maybe she'll take a knitting class when she grows up.

fish in hot bean sauce

When I first met my husband, I didn't think that people ate fish fins.

Now I know that it's the best part of the fish to eat.

We went looking for this restaurant that my coworker Jennifer Y recommended. It didn't have an English name, she'd told me. The Mandarin name was, phonetically in my mind, "Lao Di Fun." She wrote down the characters for me and I put the piece of paper in my purse.

But today, after the haircut, I realized that I was carrying a different purse and had neglected to transfer the Mandarin-inscribed paper to it.

We decided to look for the restaurant, anyway. We went to the shopping center where we knew it to be. It was full of restaurants with Chinese characters all over the windows and glass doors. We found parking near the most likely looking one and went in. My husband, who is Chinese but doesn't speak Mandarin, made me do the talking. (I'm not Chinese, and I don't speak Mandarin, either, but I was the one who'd gotten the name first-hand from Jennifer Y.)

"What's the name of y'all's restaurant?" I asked the hostesses.

"Spicy Szechwuan," they said, in heavily accented English.

"Um... What's the real name, though? Does it have a Mandarin name?" I asked.

They told me. It wasn't Lao Di Fun. A waiter joined them. He asked what I was looking for. I said, "Lao Di Fun?"

They said, "What?"

I said, more carefully, "Lao... Di... Fun."

They couldn't understand me. Then, after like fifteen minutes, one of them goes, "Wait -- do you mean Lao Di Fun?"

I said yes. They said, "Oh, it's next door."

Next door, the same basic thing happened.
What's the name of this place?
Classic Kitchen.
The real name?
[Something in Chinese.]
Do you know where Lao Di Fun is?
What? What'd you call my mama?
Lao... Di... Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun! It's over there.

Next restaurant over, same thing happened.
Hello. Bamboo Dumpling House.
Lao Di Fun?
What in God's name did you just say, Caucasian Woman?
Lao... Di... Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun is over there.

And again, and again, and by now y'all are realizing that Jennifer Y must have given this place a very strong recommendation, and that we must trust her opinion. Well, yes. That, plus my husband believed that a place without an American name on the door must be very authentic and therefore worth trying.

We went in a big circle, with the last waitress pointing back across the parking lot to the first restaurant we'd entered, before giving up and deciding to eat at Alias Spicy Szechwuan.

(I suspect that Alias Classic Kitchen was the real Lao Di Fun, but that they literally could not recognize their own restaurant's name coming from my mouth.)

We got menus with several pages, but my husband suggested we focus on the House Specialties section. In that way, we ordered "Fish in hot bean sauce," (but one-star mild, please), plus fried string beans with ground pork. The waitress directed us to the "appetizer bar," where we selected marinated cucumber, marinated seaweed, and pan-fried pork rind for our three-appetizer plate.

While we waited, I ate all the seaweed and most of the cucumber. We each tried a piece of pork rind but didn't try more than that. I looked around at the restaurant's decor. It was nicer than the average hole-in-the-wall in that neighborhood, with a semi-typical red and black color scheme. They also had the requisite aquarium full of fish, all of them flat and pinkish and happy-looking. A group of Chinese women came in with one white guy, who talked very loudly about the girl among them who was his girlfriend and the fact that she spoke Chinese and Vietnamese and therefore "spied" for him at Vietnamese restaurants, and then said loud Cantonese words to the waitress, who smiled very politely as she walked away. Behind us, a baby ate rice from a yellow baby bowl her parents had presumably brought from home. When she was done, she proudly flung the bowl on the floor.

Then, finally, they brought our fish to us. Whole, on a giant plate, in a pool of spicy, oily red sauce. Damn, y'all, it looked good.

"Look at his little head," I said. "It's so round." His face was all covered with sauce, and they'd been good enough to remove his eye, so I didn't feel as bad as I otherwise might have.

My husband, who is very gentlemanly, filled my rice bowl with rice and put a piece of fish on top. I tasted it. "This is really freaking good," I said.

"Yeah. It's fresh," my husband said.

"Yeah, it tastes fresh," I said. "It's all like, soft and stuff. Like it was never frozen."

"It's one of the ones from that tank, baby," he told me.

I looked over at the tank full of pinkish fish. "Aw."

I felt bad for, like, three seconds. Then I remembered that all those fish were going to die, anyway, so they could at least die making people happy. Right?

First we ate the flesh that didn't have bones. Then we ate the flesh that did have bones, putting it in our mouths whole, eating around the bones and removing them with chopsticks. Then, we sucked the fins. Then, we spooned the fish-speckled sauce onto rice and ate that.

This is gonna sound crass, maybe, but one of the things I like about eating at Asian places is that I can relax my table manners a little and no one minds.

At one point, I was sucking on my fish fin and staring into space, experiencing the chili flakes and oil and vinegar and something mysteriously sweet, and the waitress walked by and caught my eye. "Good?" she asked.

I nodded. "It's very good."

We'll find Lao Di Fun next time, maybe. I was glad we found this place this time, though, whatever its real name is.

2009-07-22T20:28:00.002-05:00

Guess what I'm doing. I'm updating my blog from my phone, y'all. That's what it's come to. That's the kind of dbag I am right now.

Well... Not really, I don't think, but that's how busy I've been lately. Plus, this new phone spells y'all for me, so I finally feel like I can update via SMS. Properly. (is that the right term? SMS?)

Real quick updates:

1. My cat makes a really forceful noise when she jumps on my bed, just like a female tennis player.

2. I've been doing the mommy blogging over at the Houston Chronicle's site, and it's kind of like the Wild West over there with the lack of comment moderation. So it kind of takes me back -fills me with that late '90s flame war nostalgia. But I've been so freaking busy lately, I don't even have time to flame people properly. :(

3. A random person at my work made me laugh so hard today that I narrowly missed snotting on my monitor. So now I kind of want to bake that person an anonymous loaf cake. But I can't! I'm too busy!

Oh, I know... I can give that person the drink coupons starbucks gave me last time I complained about the Worst Starbucks in Houston, which happens to be in my neighborhood. Hurray, happy ending to the story.

Okay, now I'm scared to type anymore in case I'm unable to upload. But if this works, I'll write again soon from the handicap stall in the bathroom at my work, okay?

Love, Gwen

(my new phone capitalizes my name.!!1!!)

2009-06-29T18:08:00.000-05:00

Partners in ~~Crime~~ Adventure

Lest you think my honeymoon was nothing but the drama surrounding the Epic SCUBA Fail described below, I will assure you now that Hawaii is every bit as awesome as everyone says. I kind of already figured, in fact, before we even set off, that it would be futile to try to describe such a well known travel destination, or even to photograph what�s been photographed so many, many times by professionals.

What was unique about our trip to Oahu, then, was something Dat-and-Gwen-centric: the additional evidence that we make a good team.

WARNING: FRUITY, SMURFY, SACCHARINE WORDS AHEAD.

Part of the reason my ~~boyfriend~~ ~~fiance~~ husband and I get along is our shared ideas about adventure: 1) We like to have �adventures.� 2) We find adventure in little things.

Late one night, a couple of years back, the Houston freeway known as 290 was closed for repairs. That�s our normal route home. Our alternative was a long, parallel, four-lane road called Hempstead.

Hempstead is one of those industrial roads that�s mainly frequented by 18-wheelers. So it�s not only lined with giant metal buildings full of giant hunks of metal, but also the occasional pancake house and strip club.

When you drive down Hempstead in the wee hours of the night, you�ll see that a few of the buildings are lit up and full of moving machinery, and so presumably full of men who eat pancake specials and give parts of their paychecks to strippers. If you like, you can peer into the buildings, analyze the vehicles in their parking lots, and imagine all sorts of stories.

From the middle of Houston to the edge, it�s a long ride down Hempstead. We rode slow and silent for quite a few minutes before Dat pointed out, �We�re on an adventure.�

�I was just about to tell you that!� I said. Because I really was. Because we�re always on adventures, me and Dat.

So imagine us as those two people, but riding down a freeway under mimosas the size of mainland oaks and trees that dangle mangoes, in our rental car that was upgraded to a convertible for cheap. Imagine us walking down beaches full of tourists from all over the world, as well as locals of every flavor. Every other person there has a story � some that they told us and some that we had to construct on our own. And everyone has cameras, and you get to see what they think is important to capture with them. And then you trade cameras with strangers and hope for the best. Even when they can�t frame a shot for crap, it�s a memory preserved for you.

Memories preserved in me, all jumbled on a page:

Oahu = very beautiful plants, mountains and shoreline surrounding thousands of structures from the �70s and older, all peppered with tiny slivers of new-new expensive stores and rentals.

Every single person there is mixed or in a mixed couple, and it�s the only place I�ve ever been where absolutely no one gave us a second glance for being a Caucasian chick with an Asian guy. We were even mistaken for locals, once by an irate tourist seeking King�s Hawaiian bread and once by a snooty salesman in the Ala Moana shopping mall. I felt like I was in the idealized future of my fantasies, where everyone is mixed and no one can hate people based on ethnicity. And it really seemed that no one in Oahu did. But it was more than just that � all the locals were well versed in multiple cultures. And they were all obviously proud of their fellow peeps. It was beautiful.

Everyone asks how the sushi was, and we never even tried it. We didn�t get the chance. Mostly we ate in Chinatown, where the merchants were having a contest to see who could offer the cheapest dim sum. Everyone there spoke Cantonese (even the Vietnamese people) but told us they were learning Mandarin. They have �bubble tea� there, but it�s mostly bubble slushies. Our cha siu = their char siu. Our dried plums = their li hing. Chow fun = look fun. Red bean = �black sugar� or azuki bean. Yellow bean = non-existent. But everything was good and fresh � especially the plates including ginger. A lot of the restaurants used noodles from the one noodle factory that still made them by hand. And they were so, so good. I never appreciated chow fun until I ate it in Honolulu, y�all.

The way all signs in Houston are in both English and Spanish? Is the way all signs in Honolulu are in English and Japanese. All the employees at the mall spoke Japanese. All the Japanese people carried LeSportsac bags, and you could get the knock-offs of them in Chinatown.

Locals in Oahu seemed to come in two sizes: manapua-eating size, and surfing-all-day size. Guess which size I�d be if I lived there? Yeah. :) Hawaiian food is sweet and rich. I normally love sweet/rich food, but the Hawaiians had me beat with their sweet fried chicken and their two-starch plate lunches and the buttery, buttery fried sandwich bread. No, we didn�t try poi, because we didn�t go to any luaus. The McDonalds in Hawaii Kai advertised fried taro pie, but no, I didn�t try one. I was too stuffed with coconut manapuas (kinda like round kolaches or baked bao) and the hole-less Portuguese donuts called malasadas. No, we didn�t try the shrimp trucks. I feel like we disappointed everyone back home with the fact that we skipped the tour-book stuff and mostly ate Chinese food. But it was good, so I don�t care.

The groceries and gasoline weren�t much more expensive than in Houston. Only a few random things, like orange juice, were expensive. They sold hard liquor in the grocery stores. They sold Japanese candy at every drugstore. The Wal-Mart was a little more expensive and had less selection than Texas Wal-Marts. (Yes, we went to the Wal-Mart just to see if it was different from our Wal-Mart.) The Old Navy, however, was exactly the same. Stores with only Japanese stuff were 3,000 times more expensive than the other stores. The sales tax was, like, 0.0001%.

That�s all. I�ll stop here because it sounds like I�m obsessed with food and ethnicity and money, I know. But I don�t know how else to describe what we did there. I mean, we spent most of the time driving around the edges of the island in our rented convertible, saying �Oooooh!� and �What if we lived there? Or what if we lived there?� and �OMG, can you imagine if that was your elementary school?� and clicking zillions of pics of everything that�s been photographed a million times before.

And being on the beaches, beaches, beaches that, no matter how much better or worse they are in relation to each other, were all five gazillion times better than our Gulf of Mexico�s. Hours and hours just staring at the clarity of the water and wanting to cry over it. Marveling over the rocks and the vicious undertow. Holding up handfuls of sand to each other and picking out our favorite individual grains.

And, you know. Having adventures together. Incidentally being in love. I can�t describe it better than that. I can only say that I can�t wait until we do it again.

Because we will, some day.

2009-06-19T18:40:00.003-05:00

Fear cleanses.

Dat (my husband) said there was no way I was reading the TripAdvisor description correctly. There was no way that a scuba diving excursion would be designed for �first-timers.� I had said scuba, but must have meant snorkeling.

�No,� I told him. �it says they can show you how to scuba dive. First-timers. No experience necessary.�

Granted, it wasn�t the scuba diving excursion outfit itself that claimed this; it was a few TripAdvisor readers. But that was all we needed to sign up for the trip. Dat really, really wanted to do some sort of underwater fishy thing. I was really, really secretly scared to try it, but the positive reviews convinced me to give it a shot.

Our hosts, our co-divers, the boat and the ocean were all very nice. Captain Joe played classic rock on his radio, turning the best songs up loud as we sped away from the marina. The sun and breeze made love to my skin as I shoehorned myself into a wet suit. On our way out to the unseasonably choppy midseas, Eric and Jeff showed us how to work the masks and the respirators. �When you start going down the line�� they�d say, over and over in explanation. I didn�t know what line they meant, but decided I�d figure it all out eventually.

I was a little bit nervous. The wet plastic of the mask pressed unevenly against my nostrils, and the respirator didn�t seem to like my inhalations. �Clamp down with your teeth,� Dat said. �Make a tight seal with your lips,� Jeff said. That, plus refraining from snorting the water, plus trying to look like I wasn�t afraid. It was a lot to multi-task.

They said not to get nervous and I said I wasn�t nervous and they said they knew I wasn�t nervous and that was good because the worst thing you could do was get nervous. The best thing you could do was not be nervous. I wasn�t, I said. Because I was forcing myself to breathe nice and slow, like non-nervous people do. I was not clenching anything, except for my teeth when I needed to suck some more air through the freaking respirator because I needed oxygen to live. See? Everything was fine. A. O. K. Under rigid control.

We were the only first-timers on board. The other people were very nice. Two of them were from France. They didn�t speak much English. I told them one of the two French sentences I remember: �Je ne parle pas de francais.� They seemed to know what I meant. (My other French sentence is �Ou est le w.c.?� but I decided to save that one for later.)

The non-first-timers jumped off the boat all haphazard. They came back awed and agog. The French diver said a lot of French words to her mother about the things she�d seen under the sea. It seemed really exciting. For her. I imagined being her and being excited, in a wetsuit I�d purchased myself that fit my bikini�d form like a glove. Being the kind of woman who wore bikinis with no makeup and bought serious sports equipment and traveled across oceans to partake in the oceans themselves. Bringing my mom along to photograph my exploits and enjoy the sun. I admired her.

I admired the dolphins. They seemed happy, just like most dogs do, but they were also tricksters. They knew how our boat and our cameras worked, and they made sure to do flips and spins only when our boat and cameras were facing the wrong way. �Mahalo, bitches!� they�d call as they flipped and spun. �Awww�! O-o-o-oh!� we sighed.

It was first-timer time, then. They asked who wanted to go first, me or Dat.

�Dat�s going first,� I said. They laughed, I can�t remember why. They said something about �guinea pig.� But I just remember thinking that if I watched him do it, I could do it right after him. And not be nervous. Because I was not nervous.

Dat jumped directly into the water, his head going right under, then bobbing up again, then steadily sinking down as he went along the line, which turned out to be a blue rope and not the white rope that I�d spent the last half hour watching.

As soon as he went under the water all the way, my heart started banging against the inside of my wet suit. Then Eric came to get me.

I spit out my respirator. I pulled off my mask. �I can�t go,� I said. Whispered, actually, because no one heard me and I had to say it louder.

Eric sat and tried to figure out what was wrong. Nothing was wrong, as long as I didn�t go into the water like Dat had just done. Everything was fine, as long as I stayed sitting right here.

�Are you sure?� Eric asked. He was a nice man with a very nice face, but it flashed through my mind like a savage bloody vision that I wasn�t going to let him put me into the water. His hands were at his sides. It was okay. �I�m sure,� I said.

Jeff came up � having left Dat below the surface � to pick me up. Eric had to tell him I wasn�t going. I made a joke about it, saying that I�d planned it that way all along.

Jeff went back under and Eric went up front with the others and I was left there alone with my abashedness and the people who mostly spoke French.

The woman I admired smiled sympathetically at me and said, very slowly and carefully, �The first time� my first time� I was� terrified.� It sounds beautiful when French people say words with Rs in them, but I understood that she really meant it. I also understood that she�d overcome her terror that first time, and now felt that it�d been worth it.

Dat came back early. He�d gotten some water in his respirator and asked to be pulled up. Was he okay? Yes, he was okay. �What happened to you?� he asked me. �I got too scared,� I said. �Yeah,� he told me. �When I got down there, I was thinking, �There�s no way Gwen could do this.�� The boat started up and pulled away. The dolphins had gone out of sight.

I felt more and more embarrassed � more like a bailing sissy failure. Jeff sat by me again and I asked him questions. �How many people end up bailing altogether, like I did?� I asked. He said maybe one of ten. He reiterated his and Eric�s belief that, if those people would just try it, they�d probably overcome the fear and enjoy it.

Because I hate the way failure tastes, I thought hard and fast and realized that the part that was actually scaring me was the suddenness of the being underwater. What if, I asked Jeff, there was a way that I could go in gradually?

Jeff�s face brightened. It was the easiest thing in the world. I didn�t have to jump in at all. I could slide in. Of course I could! They really wanted me to try it and like it and be glad that I�d done so.

�Hold up! Gwen�s going to try it!� They knew all our names, and they said my name all over the boat. Gwen�s gonna try! Gwen�s gonna do it! Gwen is brave! Gwen is not a failure!

Lickety-split, I got suited back up. Mask, respirator, flippers, vest, weights, tank. Blasting Blondie�s �Heart of Glass,� the boat skidded to a halt on the choppy/happy friendly glinting waves.

Jeff jumped in to wait as Eric led me to the plank like� no, not like a pirate leading a prisoner to the gangplank. It was like� something fun. Something good. Something peaceful. Something calm. Something not nervous. I am not nervous. I am breathing slowly because I am calm. In. Out. In, dammit, with my teeth. Slowly. Out, slowly, again.

I sat on the edge of the plank. This is good, I thought. I can do this, I said in my mind. I took a moment to clear my mind. Then I slid into the water. I sank under the water.

And something went wrong.

You know what went wrong? I was under the water, and I had plastic pressing against my nose, and a big hunk of plastic clogging my mouth, and weights all over my body, and crap strapped to my feet. And that was all wrong. And so I had to get out of that situation.

You know how, in those old movies, they�d show a stable burning down and somebody having to go and save the horses? And the horses are always completely freaking out, and they don�t want to do what the person�s trying to get them to do? The person�s trying to get the rope around them and lead them out to safety, and they�re all neighing and jumping up and kicking at the person and completely having horsey mental breakdowns? And you�re thinking, �Why doesn�t that dumb-ass horse just follow the guy out?� But it can�t, because it's too scared and rife with animal instinct.

That was me, there in the water. And poor Jeff was the guy trying to save me. And Eric was calling from the boat at both of us. �Gwen, let go of the line!� they told me. And I held the line in a death grip, because I didn�t want to sink down again. �Gwen, stop kicking your legs!� they said. And I kicked like there was no tomorrow, because I wanted to propel myself out of the water. �Gwen, keep breathing in the respirator!� I spit that respirator out of my mouth and then fought to keep my mouth above the choppy-ass waves that were higher than they�d looked from the boat, now that I was down in them, grasping and kicking and gulping salty air. Poor Jeff treaded water around me, trying to do I-don�t-know-what. I understood later that he was trying to inflate my vest so I�d float, trying to remove my flippers so I could climb the ladder. But at that moment, I only knew with my horse-brain that I had to breathe and I had to get free and I would have to rear up and kick if anyone tried to stop me. �Grab the last rung of the ladder!� they kept saying. But that rung was under the water and they obviously couldn�t see that I was dying and so I could only rely on myself and I had to save myself and I kicked and struggled and gulped and kicked and fought and grabbed�.

Eventually Jeff herded me to a position where he could yank off one of my flippers and Eric could reach over the edge of the boat and rip off my stupid mask, now useless without the respirator. That did the trick, turned me human again. �Thank you!� I sobbed, finally able to breathe right. I stopped kicking and Jeff took off the other flipper, and then it was perfectly easy to climb up to safety.

I was alive.

Back at our seats, Dat comforted me by putting his arms around me and sighing, �I knew you shouldn�t have gone in. But you were brave to try. I�m proud of you, baby.�

He told me then what�d actually happened to him under the water. He�d gotten some water in his respirator, yes, I already knew that part. But then, he�d panicked. His number one instinct was to spit out the respirator and take a big breath of air. Of course there was no air outside the respirator and if he did that, he�d die.

I cringed in vicarious fear as he explained how he�d fought to overcome the urge. He�d signaled Jeff and, slowly to keep the pressure steady, made his way back up the line, breathing long and full around the water that he felt gathering near his mouth. Silently, he�d fought like hell to stay calm.

I felt like crying, imagining Dat having to go through that. I thanked God he�d had the presence of mind not to spit out his respirator. Then I felt so horrible when he said that, all the way up, he was worried about me - worried that I was coming down and that I might get scared and not be able to stay calm.

We sat with our arms around each other and smiled at the water rushing by. We were happy to be alive, proud to have survived what we now knew were survivable ordeals. Dat had learned something about himself that day: He was strong and wouldn�t crack under pressure in life-or-death situations. And I�d learned something about myself, too. It was that� um� No one would get close enough to steal my wallet if I were drowning. Yeah!

Everyone else on the boat � the hosts, the captain, four other passengers - was quiet. They were all downcast. Or maybe something other than downcast � it was hard to tell because they all avoided my gaze. Maybe they were angry and hated me for ruining the boat trip.

Jesus, I felt so horrible then. I had ruined the whole freaking boat trip. The beautiful scenery, the dolphins, everyone else�s awesome dives � they were all overshadowed now by the humiliating spectacle of my EPIC SCUBA FAIL.

Seriously, no one would even look at me. How could they? I asked myself. They�d just witnessed me acting like a wild animal or tantrum-y child. Then, as for Eric and Jeff� when I caught their eyes, they looked almost sad. I knew they were annoyed with me and maybe even stressing over the possibility of me being the kind of litigious a-hole who would sue them.

The only thing that�d stayed happy was the music. I listened to it and laughed aloud, despite everything. Because, hey -- I was alive. I turned to the French maman, who regarded me with distant maternal concern. With short words and an elaborate pantomime, I told her that I was regretful and wished everyone would be happy again. She pantomimed that everyone was fine and I shouldn�t worry about it. It was no biggie.

The next time Eric and Jeff walked by, I flagged them down and apologized profusely, and thanked them for saving me from the horrible fate that everyone else on the boat had been able to handle. They said no apology or thanks were necessary. Everything was okay.

The French woman and the couple from Bulgaria by way of Boston stayed busy with their gear, so I left them alone. I stood at the rail and listened to the music that Capt. Joe had turned loud again. I thought about approaching his section of the boat and asking how often he saw people fail so spectacularly at diving. Or maybe I�d compliment his taste in music. But Capt. Joe seemed married to the sea, by the way he kept scanning the water and ignoring the rest of us, so I left him alone, too.

I looked out at the water and sang along quietly with The Who and Steve Miller. I was alive. I giggled quietly to myself. Dat came up and put his arm around me and we absorbed the awesomeness of our surroundings.

After a few songs, I saw that we were actually waiting for one of the other divers to return. He�d been gone for a long time. Capt. Joe was scanning the water for this guy, revving the engine for this guy to hear. Selfishly relieved that we were all focused on someone else now, I scanned the water like hungry seagull. When Casey finally came up (wetsuit-less, his gear over nothing but swim trunks and chest hair), he was sheepish about having kept us waiting so long. He�d had some kind of issue with something or other, but now he was okay. Eric and Jeff helped him put away his tank, and then Capt. Joe drove us away.

�Check this out.� Casey sat by me and showed me the video he�d taken of manta rays and giant fish at the bottom of the sea. It was totally awesome. Afterwards I told him, �Hey, you missed it� I tried to dive and totally failed. I had a major panic attack in the water and everyone was freaking out. It was hilarious.�

�Really? Aw, man.� He frowned. So did I. Casey had moved to Oahu from Colorado two years before and took this diving trip as often as he could. He and I had bonded, earlier, over our shared affinity for classic rock. He was a cool guy, and I�d been willing to sacrifice my dignity to get a laugh out of him and cheer everyone up. But instead, he looked disappointed.

�It�s okay!� I told him. �I�m alive. It�s all good now. I just feel shitty because Eric and Jeff are sad.�

�Naw, they�re fine,� he said. �They just wanted you to have a good time. Did you have a good time, at least, before that happened?�

�Yeah! I�m still having a good time now!� I couldn�t explain it, but I was having a very good time. Maybe it was my newfound pride in my survival instincts, or maybe it purely the post-panic adrenaline rush, but I was so happy at that moment. Who wouldn�t be happy, out on a boat at beautiful sea, with dolphins and music all around?

The next day, Eric emailed us the underwater pictures they�d taken of Dat, of fish, of a sunken ship or car or something, and thankfully none of me flailing like a rabid walrus. Eric said in his email that he hoped we wouldn�t give up on diving, and that the next time we came to Oahu, he would take us out again for free.

I would gladly pay to take his trip again � even the exact same trip, with the dolphins and the French and the Bulgarians by way of Boston, my new friend Casey and taciturn Capt. Joe � with everything except me trying to dive. The trip was worth the money with no diving at all.

And it finally came to me, then, why Eric had looked so sad.

I thought back on his face. It�d reminded me of another trauma � the faces of my old Physical Education teachers. Particularly, the faces they made every time I struck out or got hit in the face with a volleyball or collapsed on the track in sweaty near-tears. At the time, I�d thought that my gym teachers hated me for being such an eff-up. They hated my weakness, and they made me try again and again because they wanted to torture me.

And then I went to college and saw the people my age who went in for their P.E. teacher certifications. Saw that they really liked this physical stuff and wanted to do it for a living.

And now I see that they wanted more than that. They wanted to show little kids the joy of sports and running and doing stuff outside. And I would not see the joy in it. And they couldn�t understand that. And it hurt.

The look on Eric�s face was the same look I get on my face when I meet someone who doesn�t like to read, and I say, �Well, you just haven�t found the right book yet,� and I find what I think is the right book for them, and they try to read it, and it just doesn�t work. And I�m upset. And they think it�s because I hate them for not being like me. But it�s not. I�m just sad that they can�t feel what I feel when I do something that makes me so happy.

I don�t see myself diving again any time in the near future. But I will always be grateful to Eric for taking the time to try to show me how awesome it is. I did see the awesomeness of it in everyone else�s faces. And I was happy just watching them be happy.

It's good to fail sometimes. It's good to feel fear and then overcome it, one way or another.

Maybe next year we will go back and I�ll try snorkeling....

2009-06-18T22:00:00.002-05:00

I'm going to write some new posts real soon.

Because I do have a lot to tell y'all - stories of adventure and danger, plus a bit of exciting new news.

In the meantime, feel free to check out our pics from Oahu on my Flickr page.

2009-05-26T05:29:00.001-05:00

[I got married on Saturday. This post is about my wedding.]

the flowers

I couldn�t find fake or real flowers for my hair, and I was running out of time to do so. I asked my oldest son to go with me to pick up lemons and limes and goi, five hours before the wedding. As we rode from the grocery store to the restaurant making the goi, I thought aloud. I said, �You know what would work? Oleanders. But those peach-colored ones. If only I could find some of those. But I probably won�t� they�re usually fuschia or white�.�

And then we were passing Home Depot on the right, and their parking lot was bordered by ubitiquous oleander hedges. But not the fuschia ones or the white ones � the peach ones!

I pulled over. I parked in the corner past the wheelbarrows. I left the engine running and my son watching from the shotgun seat as I disembarked and snagged several sprigs of oleander flowers.

An hour after that, I walked into the salon with a small bouquet tucked into the outside pocket of my purse.

�Ooh, what beautiful flowers!� the receptionist cooed.

�I got them from the Home Depot parking lot,� I said.

I don�t know if they believed me, but what does it matter?

the rice

The rice came out bad. Or wrong. Or something. It tasted okay to me, but as my new father-in-law painstakingly explained, �It tastes good now, but in one, two hours, it�ll be bad.�

So we threw it all away. Dumped it all into a trash bag. The early guests gasped.

My new brother-in-law sped to the restaurant where we�d gotten the goi, to pick up replacement fried rice.

Everyone looked at me, as if it had been my decision. I looked at my in-laws. My mother-in-law was upset. Disappointed. Embarrassed? My father-in-law, though, had the impassive face of a man who cold-bloodedly performs sacrifices for the greater good.

He will serve no rice before its time. Not after its time, either.

cakes

We had two cakes. The main cake (�wife�s cake,� as Dat explained it to his parents) was supposed to be Italian cream with raspberry filling, but I think it was just yellow cake, and the raspberry was combined with cream cheese. It had simple off-white buttercream frosting and edible candy pearls that surprised everyone who encountered them.

I�d wanted pineapple filling, but changed the order at the last minute out of deference to my mother-in-law, who was getting us an Asian cake (groom�s cake, �man�s cake�) so that the elder Asian palates in attendance wouldn�t go into sugar shock. I was told that the classic Asian wedding cake was pineapple flavored.

I was relieved, because I�d been afraid they�d order taro root cake. I don�t care for taro cake, but I was ready for anything.

We cut the bride�s cake first, then the groom�s. We fed each other bride�s cake. Then my sister-in-law Van very graciously took the cake server from me so that I wouldn�t be stuck serving cake for the rest of the night. Someone else manned the groom�s cake, and everyone was served sweets tout de suite.

�Oh my God, the cake is so good!� said a friend of the Caucasian persuasian, later.

�You think?� I said. �I�m kind of annoyed because I told her Italian cream, but I think she used yellow, instead.�

�What do you mean? I thought it was mocha or something.�

She meant the Asian cake. I went and tasted it. It was very moist yellow cake with whipped cream icing and mocha filling. It was very, very good. Immediately, I cut a slab of it for my dad, who�d eaten the first slice of bride cake. �Eat this one � you�ll like it,� I told him. (All dads love mocha, don�t they?)

Later, one of my Asian friends said, �Your cake was so good.�

�Wasn�t it? It was mocha.�

�What? I thought it was raspberry filling.�

She�d eaten the bride�s cake. Someone else told her, �You should have tried the Asian cake.� She said, �I never eat Asian cake. I don�t like pineapple and taro.� But we made her try it and she was happily proven wrong.

Everyone liked the cake, whichever one they tried. I was glad.

Dat and I didn�t shove cake into each other�s faces. We�ve always said that we don�t believe in that sort of thing. If you look at the pictures that got posted on Facebook, though, it does sort of look like we�re shoving. But we�re not. We were just hungry by then, I think.

2009-05-19T05:26:00.000-05:00

something weird I just thought about

If someone were to torture you mildly a little � say, for information, or because he/she was a crazed stalker � would it make the torture more tolerable to have one of your favorite mellow songs playing in the background?

Probably not, I guess. Or could it depend on how much you liked the song, and how mild the torture was?

Then, afterwards, could you ever like that song again? Or would it just be bittersweet?

I would tell y�all what song made me think about this, but I don�t want to give potential crazed stalkers any ammunition.

something less weird (but related)

Since iPods have been invented, are y�all hearing your old favorite songs in a new way? For instance, do your earbuds, shoved all the way up in your earwax, suddenly help you to hear lyrics that you couldn�t hear before?

Or do you hear the instruments and harmonies more distinctly?

Maybe I just need to get my hearing checked, in general. But I have to say that I never noticed until the other day how awesome the background singers are on Todd Rundgren�s �Hello It�s Me.�

something weirder than the first part, suddenly

I went to Wikipedia to see if they�d tell me the names of the women who sang back-up on �Hello It�s Me.� Instead, they told me that �[o]n the day he shot and killed John Lennon, Mark David Chapman left an eight-track tape of Rundgren's album The Ballad of Todd Rundgren, along with other artifacts, in his New York hotel room in an orderly semicircle on the hotel dresser.�

But more fascinating and curiosity-whetting than that: �Stephen Colbert, on his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, invited former Cars vocalist Ric Ocasek to add anyone of his choice to the �On Notice� board. Ocasek chose Todd Rundgren.�

This requires further investigation. I see that Rundgren briefly took Ocasek�s place in a reformation of the Cars called The New Cars. How come no one told me this? Plus, how come nobody told me Ric Ocasek was going to be on the Colbert Show? Is it because I never watch the Colbert Show? Come on. I need people to help me out, here.

Wouldn�t it be cool if

you could have an intern (or even a paid assistant) who would spend all day finding things that would interest you? For instance, I loved the Cars and Ric Ocasek, but not so much his solo work. I loved him with Paulina P, but don�t love him enough to keep up with a fan site or anything. I�d read his Twitter, maybe, but not his blog. Meanwhile, I love the song �Hello It�s Me� but never felt compelled to buy a Todd Rundgren album.

A skilled Interest Mining ~~Assistant~~ Professional could take all those parameters and deduce that, while I don�t want to see The New Cars in concert, I do want to be informed if and when public cattiness occurs between Misters Ocasek and Rundgren.

I mean � hello. It�s all right there for someone to figure out and act on, isn�t it?

As soon as I get rich, I�m putting an ad on Craigslist....

2009-05-08T05:28:00.000-05:00

You can tell I�m a Capricorn because�

I have rigid ideas about what�s right and proper and just and polite. Like I said earlier, the role of daughter-in-law is coming back to me now like riding a bike, and I�m intent on doing it the right/proper/just/polite way. That�s just how I roll.

I�ve been dating Dat for 6 years now and it�s funny to see how marriage changes the roles, in my mind. There are ideas and roles that I never bothered to analyze until now. Like this one:
It�s okay for a bachelor son to tag along on someone else�s Mother�s Day plans.
However, once that son marries, the couple formed must take responsibility for themselves by planning their own Mother�s Day observance.

Do you agree? You know what I mean? I�m wondering now if that�s kind of sexist, if it means that once a son marries a woman, the woman has to be responsible for that stuff.

But no� I�m imagining that bachelorette daughters are also allowed to tag along on coupled siblings plans, aren�t they? And if a son married another man, I think that couple would also have to step up their game, gender notwithstanding.

Really, there�s what�s polite, and then there�s individual family tradition. I think that politeness dictates respecting the traditions of individual families. When in Rome (i.e., your partner�s family), do as the Romans do (i.e., eat or pretend to eat Aunt Lucy�s Jell-O cake and don�t bitch about it).

I like the idea of working within the other family�s traditions and adding positive contributions that reflect your own personality. (Eat the Jell-O cake, plus bring your sage flatbread for everyone to try). I�m always struck by the attitudes of the people who post complaints to Yahoo Answers and such, who say stuff like, �Help me deal with my horribly rude mother-in-law! She is forcing everyone to do a White Elephant gift exchange! My family always does Secret Santa and I told her this and I told her I would not participate in the White Elephant and now she has the nerve not to answer the phone when I call her because I need babysitting!!!� I don�t know how people can live like that. Isn�t it difficult? Isn't there a simple rule you can follow to get out of those situations... It has a catchy name... Gold... Golden Something? The "Don't Treat People in Ways That Would Piss You Off" Gold Plated Rule? Google it -- it's a good tool.

(I�m not trying to brag on my own awesomeness here� I�m trying to brag on that of my family, who raised me to be tolerant and appreciative of difference, and to be brave about trying new things. That attitude has helped me in more ways than one.)

So, anyway. I think I�m telling y�all this so you can know what�s up with Capricorn women. Did I ever tell you that every woman in my immediate family sphere, when I was growing up, was a Capricorn? (Capricorn with Taurus moon, to be exact.) You�ll either think that�s fabulous or frightening, or else you�ll disregard it entirely because you don�t believe in astrology.

I don�t know if I really believe it or not, but �Capricorn� is good shorthand for �headstrong, slightly obsessive control freak who likes shit to run right.� And I come by those qualities honestly, through nature and nurture, and I like what they�ve done for me in life.

gross story for you

I woke up last Saturday to find that Toby had thrown up on my bedroom floor. No biggie � he has a sensitive stomach but its results are generally pretty solid and easy to clean.

Armed with a wad of toilet paper, I picked up the catfood-colored mass in one fell swoop. Under it, there were feathers.

�Oh, Toby,� I thought. He�s eaten a cat toy, or part of a pillow. He often eats things he shouldn�t. I felt a little guilty for buying toys that resembled mice with bird tails. Apparently, they were irrestible.

I used the edges of the toilet paper to pick up the bits of feather, which were all brown and wet. They held fast to the carpet, but I was persistent and plucked them out one by one.

The last piece poked my finger through the tissue. Poked it hard. Hurt.

�What the hell kind of feather is this, that stabs your fingers? This isn�t safe for inclusion in cat toys!�

That�s what I thought. Then I bent farther and looked harder to see the feather closer.

It wasn�t a feather.

What do you guess it actually was?

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Did you guess �piece of plastic or metal�?
Wrong.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Did you guess �piece of bone, like maybe from a bird�?
No, but closer.
.
.
.
.
.
It
was
an
em-
effing
ROACH LEG.
A giant, nasty, effed-up roach�s leg. Legs and smashed roach wings, sticking in the carpet. Wet from Toby�s mouth and spit on the floor.

Although I was completely disgusted, I was also glad (feeling glad while shuddering and pouring alcohol over my poked finger) that I can count on Toby to dispose of giant roaches that try to attack me in my sleep.

(Long-time readers know my experiences and fictional nightmares about roaches, and will therefore have even more insight into the role that Toby�s character plays in the story that is this blog. :))

2009-05-04T05:28:00.000-05:00

things to do

When people say �How are the wedding plans coming along?� I say �Umm� fine,� because they are coming along fine, I think, but then the plans themselves start swirling in my head and I fall into a daze. The wedding is now less than three weeks away, and there are a lot of little things to do. Lots of little things to remember.

How do you pin down a plan daze? By making a list.

Here�s my list, for people who sincerely want to know how the plans are coming along:

1. Get rings. Even though we don�t actually intend to wear wedding rings for the rest of our lives, we should have them for the ceremony, I think. So we need to buy a couple. We were supposed to go to Harwin for them last weekend, but that didn�t end up happening. Worst case scenario: we get them at Wal-Mart the night before, or make them from aluminum foil.

2. Get marriage license. We have to do that more than three days before, but less than 30 days before. Or something like that. Something with a timeline, which I�m not good at keeping in my mind. So I put it on my Outlook calendar and it�ll pop up when it�s time. Outlook calendar is the external hard drive of my brain.

3. Get more Xmas lights. Remember I told y�all about the fairyland thing? My cousin�s getting flowers and special �gazebo lights,� but we�re supplementing with white xmas lights and other secret ingredients I can�t tell you about yet.

4. Situate the cake. The cake lady was pretty breezy, last time I talked to her. I said, �Do you need me to give you a deposit or fill out a formal order form?� She said, �Your cake is small, so you can just pay me cash the day of. We�ll talk closer to the wedding and work out the details.� That made me a little bit nervous, so I put it on my Outlook calendar. (�Think about cake� with two-week reminder.) Now I�m a little more nervous because� because�

because I�d told her pina colada cake with pineapple filling, okay? First of all. Because that�s what my son suggested, and I didn�t really have a strong opinion about it.

Then� ( I wasn�t going to tell y�all this story online, or at least not in this entry, but here it goes. Apologies if you already heard it in real life, especially if I told it to you while drinking.) Dat, my beloved fiance, told me a couple of weeks ago that he�d spoken to his dad, and that his dad had asked about a few things regarding the wedding. And� Okay, I�m just gonna say it here. I�m just gonna reveal my own personal last bastion of sexism, which is that men don�t know how to plan weddings or negotiate family issues. Ever. At all. Not as well as women do, I mean. Not for their own weddings, at least. I know most of y�all married women reading this know what I�m talking about. If you don�t, go ahead and think I�m a jerk, but be glad you don�t know. So� here�s our conversation. I�m just gonna paraphrase it here and let y�all see what went down. Keep in mind, for purposes of the story, that English is Dat�s parent�s fifth or sixth language, so I can�t necessarily just call them and hash these things out on my own.

Dat: My dad said my mom said she could get us a cake, if we didn�t already have one.

Me: Oh, really? [Thinking �Wow, they�re really getting into it.�]

Dat: Yeah, he said my mom�s friend knows this really good bakery, and she could get a really nice cake. She said it might be nice to have an Asian cake, since, you know, the old Asian people might not be able to eat American cake, since it�s too sweet. So my mom was all excited and wanted to buy us a cake.

Me: That�s cool. That�s so nice�

Dat: So I told my dad to tell her no, since you already ordered a cake.

Me: What?

Dat: I said to tell her no thanks.

Me: What??? Dat! Call your parents right now and tell them we would love to have the cake and we�re very happy they offered! Jesus. Call them right now! Hurry!

Dat: But you already ordered the cake. Are you gonna cancel the order?

Me: No. Tell them� tell them we ordered the American cake, but that we still need to get a groom�s cake and were still looking for a good one, but that the Asian cake will be perfect for that.

Dat: But they don�t even know what a groom�s cake is.

Me: Then EXPLAIN IT to them. Tell them it�s an honor to provide it, and tell them it�s supposed to be representative of the groom�s personality, and that his mother is therefore the perfect person to pick it out, and that we�re so, so happy that she wants to do that for us.

Dat: [Sighing, looking bewildered.] Okay.

Me: Call them now!

Dat: I will. Oh, another thing� This is funny. My dad asked me what religion you are.

Me: What?

Dat: He said my mom�s best friend Mai [not her real name] wants to know what religion you are, because she wants to give you some gift or something, but she needs to make sure you�re the same religion as her. Or something. Funny, huh?

Me: What religion is she? She�s Buddhist, right?

Dat: No, she�s Catholic.

Me: Oh. Well, so you told your dad I�m Catholic, too, right?

Dat: No. [Smiling proudly now.] I told him you were no religion, just like me.

Me: What the� What the eff?? Dat! Why did you tell him that? Why didn�t you just say I was Catholic??

Dat: Because� uh� I wanted him to know that part of the reason we love each other is that we�re not religious, and we respect each other for not giving in to societal pressure and�

Me: Dat!! Jesus Christ!!! Call your dad right now and tell him I�m Catholic! God! Now they�re gonna think I�m Baptist or something! Jesus!

Dat: But what does it matter? You�re not�

Me: Baby, they don�t care if I go to church. They�re trying to find out more about me. Catholic means something way different from the other Christianities. Come on. You should know that! Jesus. Now they probably think I�m Baptist*� Oh, my God� Who knows what they think? I need to start watching you to make sure�.

Dat: Well, I told my dad you were raised Catholic, but that now you�re like me.

Me: Oh! What�d he say?

Dat: He said okay. I think he just told my mom you were Catholic, even though I told him not to.

Me: Okay. Thank God.

Dat: [Long pause, then bravely speaking up.] I don�t get why it�s such a big deal.

Me: No, I know. You don�t. Listen � from now on, you ask me before you tell them anything. Go call your dad right now and tell him about the cake. I�m gonna sit next to you and make sure you don�t mess it up.

* Nothing against Baptists or other Protestants � y�all know I love you just as much as every other religion� but y�all also know how it rolls with old people and religion, especially at wedding time. You don�t want to misrepresent, and Baptist and Catholic are, in my mind, probably less alike than Catholic and Buddhist. It�s all in the idols and the incense, you understand.

So you either read that and felt my frustration, or you didn�t. I told that story to our friends June and Vivek (who are cross-ethnic wedding veterans) over the weekend. Vivek said, �It�s kind of like PR, isn�t it?� I said, �Exactly. I need Dat to represent my brand.� June said, �I don�t get it. I would have said exactly what Dat said.� And I was like, �Look, y�all can rebel against your parents on your own time. But right now, I need faithful representation of my brand!�

Back to the cake thing� So, when Dat�s mom said she�d get an Asian cake, I kind of assumed it�d be taro flavored. But then June heard my story and said, �She�s gonna get a pineapple cake, then, I guess.�

And now I�m thinking I need to call my cake lady and switch my cake from pineapple to� I don�t know. That�s what I have to decide. Italian cream and raspberry? That�s what I need to figure out.

5. Order goi. I think that�s how it�s spelled. Dat�s parents and my cousin Helen are going to make all the food except the goi. We have to have goi (not least because I love it) so I have to remember to order some.

6. �Hair appt.� I�m putting it in quotes because that�s a whole other ball of wax � another thing that shouldn�t have been a big deal but that�s becoming a big deal the farther we get into this. I didn�t want to get my hair done, but then I decided I�d go ahead� partially because my salon peeps are so very excited about the fact that we�re getting married, and they really want to do my hair. You�ll remember, long-time readers, that the woman who cuts Dat�s hair, Linh, believes that she�s the reason Dat and I are getting married. So we told them about the wedding, and they got excited, and Linh said Lan should do my hair, and I said okay� but then Lan said she wanted to do my makeup, too.

And I said okay. But then we drove home and Dat said, �I�m scared they�re gonna do your makeup all hardcore Asian wedding style.� Which, I think, means frosty eyeshadow. So I want to get my hair done and maybe my makeup too, but first I have to find a good picture of the exact look I�m going for, so Lan knows not to veer into iridescent territory.

And then� I don�t know. It�s a long drive over to their salon, and I don�t even know what I�m going to be doing on the morning of my wedding day yet. At first I thought I�d just do nothing � clean up the house a little and then throw on my dress and then get married real fast and then eat cake. But then my friend Ashley said something about this being the day that I get married for the rest of my life. And then I kind of started thinking that I needed to do something. Something girly or womanly or just female, I mean. Something ritualistic. We�re not having a bachelorette party � I put my foot down on that one. But maybe I need to go to a salon and have them smear mud and hot rocks on me. Maybe I need to go to a caf� with a couple of friends and do slam books or something. You know? Dat says he�s going to spend the morning making sushi, which makes me feel guilty. But, then again, if Dat weren�t already used to cooking stuff while I�m freaking out over superstitious beliefs, then he wouldn�t be asking me to marry him now, would he?

So, my list says �hair appt,� but that�s shorthand for �figure out a meaningful yet not-stressful ritual to mark this momentous occurrence in my womanly life.�

7. Buy liquor. That�s the part I�m looking forward to, actually.

8. Flowers. My cousin Helen is being awesome enough to buy us flowers, but I need to get with her and make decisions on that. We need real flowers and fake flowers. My dress has peach flowers. We have a gazebo thing. Those are the parameters.

9. Paint front door. Our front door needs painting. It�s currently �90s Hunter Green. We need to paint it for the wedding, anyway, so we figure why not just go ahead and paint it red and make Dat�s parents feel lucky? (Red door = luck. I swear Dat�s parents aren�t hardcore religious/superstitious, though. I think it�s the Catholic in me� I think �A little extra superstition can�t hurt.�)

10. Finish remodeling the effing bathroom.

11. Shoes, jewelry. Earlier in the process, I felt confident that, on the morning of the wedding, I�d open my closet and find at least one pair of shoes among the zillions in there that coordinate with my dress. Now I�m thinking I need to open my closet a few days ahead of time and make certain. Same with the jewelry. Either I have something, or I need to go to Harwin and snag some faux pearls.

12. Teeth cleaning. My future brother-in-law is a dentist.

13. Rory and Dallas outfits. Josh has an outfit because I found him a nice shirt on clearance at Macy�s last month. Rory and Dallas need outfits. Nice shirts, I mean. They grow so fast that I have to buy them new outfits for every special occasion that comes along. Come to think of it, I�d better check Josh�s new shirt and make sure he hasn�t grown out of it already.

14. Cash for judge. We don�t need it until the big day, but I don�t want to forget. Maybe I should put it in Outlook�.

15. Make playlists. We need three playlists, I think. One for the ceremony, one full of mellow music for the early part of the evening, and one full of faster music for when everybody�s drinking. Ironically, that�s the part I�m most worried about. I�m worried that Dat and I will disagree and have a traditional pre-wedding blow-out over how many Delerium songs are too many. (I�m saying now that one is plenty. But I�ll freely admit that Dat might make the same argument about Pavement.)

16. Figure out the tea ceremony. We�re having a tea ceremony, all of a sudden. Which is good � his parents want us to do the traditional Asian thing, which means they consider this a real wedding and not a rebelious whim (heh). But so far I only have Dat�s explanation of the tea ceremony, which means I know nothing at all and need to figure it all out asap.

17. Appetizers. My dad says he can�t eat Vietnamese food because it reminds him of being in the Vietnam war. Most of our food will actually be more Chinese, and we�re going to have brisket and American cake, but I think I need to throw in some appetizers, too, just in case. I need something classy that I don�t have to mess with too much. I�m hoping Specs has something nice that doesn�t cost too much. Otherwise, I guess I�ll have the kids make pigs in blankets.

18. Situate the coolers. Party people know what I�m talking about. One for drinks, one for clean ice. Find the coolers. Clean them. Put them in the right places. Dat already thought ahead and got us a classy new ice scoop. He�s a good man. He�s gonna make a good husband.

19. Update my blog with wedding status so people who are interested can go read about it. At least I can cross off one thing, now.

20. Think up some way to thank everyone who's contributing. I could thank them here, but that's not enough. I will thank them here, though. I love y'all -- everyone who's helping or offering to help or even just sending good vibes and wishes. We feel it all, and we appreciate it.

And that�s about it. That�s my list � Dat has his own, I think. It says something like �buy a small snake to clear out that plumbing in the attic,� whatever that means, and fifteen or twenty other things.

I think it�s all under control. I think it�s gonna be good. I�m excited. I can�t wait.

2009-05-03T19:50:00.003-05:00

like the ladies from Fleetwood Mac

We went to the Fleetwood Mac concert here in Houston last night. It was good -- they're very good musicians. We were sad that Christine McVie didn't tour with them. But it was still good.

While sitting there watching Lindsey Buckingham tear it the hell up on his guitar, I remembered that I'd mentioned Ms. McVie and Stevie Nicks in my first book. I was talking about being a child and imagining myself a successful grown-up, and that picture, in my mind, involved looking like Stevie and/or Christine.

See, when I was a kid in the '70s, there were those two, and then there were Ann and Nancy Wilson, of the band Heart*.

That was it, for me. Those were the four women who were allowed to be in rock bands, because they were so bad-ass that they apparently got to bend the men-only rule. And they were*, therefore, my role models. I could say my goddesses or my muses or whatever, but really, only Ann Wilson reached those proportions in my mind. Ann Wilson was, to me, awesomeness personified. I was singing "Magic Man" in the back seat of my parent's car, back when I was three or four I guess because I remember my mom still being there and encouraging me -- she liked that song a lot, too.

I remember staring at the cover of my dad's Dreamboat Annie album whenever he let me, reflecting on the perfection of the Misses Wilson on it, believing that they were exactly how women were supposed to look.

I remember pulling out the inner album sleeve and staring at the beautiful, beautiful guitarist in the band with them (Roger? Steve? can't remember who I thought was so handsome) and imagining that he must be in love with either Ann or Nancy, or both. And thinking that they probably kissed him sometimes. Both of them.

(Way later, I read that I'd guessed right.)

I remember, also, playing my dad's Tusk and Rumors cassette tapes. Listening to Lindsey Buckingham sing "won't you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff" and inferring that he was probably singing either to Stevie or to Christine, and that "do my stuff" undoubtedly meant kissing.

I remember wondering if I'd ever sing and play the guitar, like my mom used to, and if a handsome guitar player would ever want to kiss me. :)

So... I sat in the Toyota Center with hundreds of other people -- all chilled out and seated, mercifully, because we're all getting too old to jump around -- and I thought about this stuff. And I knew that the people behind me were more likely remembering actual kissing that they themselves performed to those cassette tapes, since they were a little older. Same with the people in front of us. Lindsey sang that song, and three women near by jumped up and screamed and danced like they must have danced as teenagers, and I knew that those words about the tall grass had had a striking effect on them, too. In a way I felt embarrassed that when the band announced a song name, I usually didn't know which song they meant until they started playing, because I was so young back then and I just listened to the tapes all the way through, without picking favorites or even looking at their titles, like you do when it's an album you've always known and loved. But then I relaxed and realized it was okay not to know the song names.

I sat there looking all around at the hundreds of people, knowing that they all had special memories that went with these songs. Lindsey and Stevie stood on stage and told us their own memories, too. And it was -- you know -- magical and stuff.

* When I say Heart, I mean, of course, Heart in the '70s. Not in the '80s. I pretend that '80s Heart didn't exist, or was a different band with the same name. Actually, same goes for Fleetwood Mac, too. Don't tell my Gen Y fiance that I said that, though.

My favorite song by Fleetwood Mac, as played by a young man on YouTube with a really nice voice.

The kissing-in-the-grass song, with Lindsey B's remembrance intro.

Stevie on the same tour, week before we saw her, wearing the same gold shawl for "Gold Dust Woman," which made our friend June suggest that I find one for my wedding. (I look better in silver.)

2009-05-01T17:49:00.001-05:00

real quick - Adriana H

Adriana H: I do remember you, because I always remember that day we were on the parking-garage shuttle bus together. You pointed out the window at a woman walking down the sidewalk and said something like "I like that woman's bag."

She immediately stumbled over nothing and almost fell.

You gasped and said, "Oh, no! I always give people the ojo!"

I thought that was so funny and sad at the same time, because it was obvious that you had given her the ojo.

But, at the same time, I knew you were a nice person and therefore would never use your power for evil, if you could help it.

:)

I'm glad you commented, so I could tell you that.

real quick - Robert S

Robert S: I didn't get to talk to you long after the lunch thing on Thursday. But I wanted to tell you that I listened to your story and thought you were very brave to tell it - braver than I ever get.

2009-04-23T05:34:00.000-05:00

I want to be Amish.

You know? I want to live in a house that I built and cook food that I gathered or raised myself. I want to sew my own clothes and knit my own blankets. I want to take care of myself and my family, and only occasionally have to weave baskets to trade for the things I don't know how to make. That's just a different way to live... a way that isn't based on spending 8 to 5, every week day, dealing with other people's egos. I don't like working with or around other people's egos. Not so often, you know?

The problem with being Amish is that you have to conform to their ideas about good taste, and you can't use electricity. Maybe I want to be a Mennonite.

Or maybe I just want to be a farmer. In the movies, when times get tough, farmers always say "Well, we're fine here -- we have enough to feed ourselves for the rest of our lives. It's the other people [their neighbors or love interests] I'm worried about."

I want to be like that -- where I rely on myself, and I'm completely reliable.

Really, I think all of that just means that I want to start my own business. Because I don't really know how to slaughter anything, and I'm too finicky to sew whole wardrobes out of calico.

Or else I'd be happy working in a room by myself, maybe. Making widgets according to written specifications. It's not the working that bothers me -- it's everything else.

It's not even about people being jerks. I could be in a building where every single person is competent and nice, and it'd still exhaust me mentally. I'm an introvert, okay? (People who know me in real life, stop telling me I'm not. I am! I want to live on a farm or work in a room alone!)

spring time

Every spring I feel restless. I want to get up and run out the door.

Last night, though, me and Dat and the kids put together one of those patio structures that Target calls a gazebo, but which is actually more like a canopy with mosquito netting on the sides. Dat and the boys put it together, actually, while I trimmed the pear tree above them. We got a new lopper (is that what it's called?) a while back and this was my first time to really use it, and it lops off the branches very beautifully. I did the pear tree so it'd be out of the canopy's way, then started on the oak tree on the other side of the back yard.

Tonight I want to finish those and then do every tree and bush in the front yard. I'd been planning to do that anyway, but now that I've felt the power of the new ... loppers... I'm excited. I love trimming the trees -- giving them little haircuts and making them feel lighter.

We have a bunny living in our front yard, randomly. When he was smaller, he fit through a gap in the garage door and so spent his nights there. Now he's bigger and we're guessing he just lives in the nandinas. We get home from work and he's there in the flower patch, eating weeds. He just watches us. We watch him. We say "He's growing." Then we go inside.

It's okay with me that this entry might be boring.

Sometimes it has to go down that way.

Life's just plugging along. Like the bunny, our wedding is growing. It's still an informal wedding in our house, but now Dat's parents are getting even more into it, and so they're inviting extra people. Which is fine -- I want them to be comfortable and stay the whole evening, and having their peeps next to them will make that possible. I'm starting to think the wedding might spill over into the front yard, though. We still have physics in which we have to work, you know.

We're gonna... transform the back yard into a fairyland or something. You know how people do that for weddings, sometimes. It involves Christmas lights, mostly. It's not difficult, I don't think. I feel confident in my fairyland transforming abilities.

At first I didn't think we were going to buy flowers, but then my cousin said she wanted to buy them for us, and now I'm thinking of many ways in which flowers will be called into service. See? It's a tumor. Weddings grow faster than rabbits.

That's all. Back to work! Happy spring.

Oh, one last thing, just to annoy my kids....

My kids didn't know that Ozzy Osborne was the lead singer of Black Sabbath. Really, now that I think about it, how would they have known?

They found out the other day because they wanted me to look for MP3s of Black Sabbath songs, and I searched for Ozzy's name. And the kids were like "No, Mom...." and then I told them, and then they were like "What? Oh. But.... I thought he was just a guy on TV." And I was like "That's why that World of Warcraft commercial shows him as the Prince of Darkness. Right? Get it?" and they were like "Oh-h-h-h...." and I saw their minds reconfigure around the world.

They're also learning which musicians are dead from ODs and which are dead from suicide, and which were ever called "the best [guitarist or drummer] in the world" and which dabbled in black magic or were rumored to have done so. That's important history, I think. Kids should know these things. Don't you agree?

2009-04-13T22:34:00.004-05:00

Stuck Inside a Starbucks with the Colored Pencil Blues

If a copyeditor was copyediting this blog entry, she'd probably read that title and then attach a little Post-It that said, "Did you mean 'blue colored pencil'? Please clarify." You know why? Because I'm old, and therefore all my references are ~~outdated~~ secret codewords for other old people.

It's a Bob Dylan reference, people.
It's a Douglas Adams reference, people.
It's a Road Warrior reference, people.
It's an Eddie Murphy 1980s stand-up routine reference, people.

What if I say it's a Rock Band reference? From the video game? That one song you have to download for $1.99, that no one downloads or else no one plays because it goes on and on and on and it's hard to stick the vocal notes and the guitar is too, too repetitive?

Don't mind me. I'm just old. Someone else who's old is shaking his head, saying, "But those aren't even reference-worthy pop culture relics, Gwen."

Well, whatever.

That was going to be a story about going through a lot of trouble to arrange some time alone to go over my latest manuscript's copy edits... going through trouble to find a suitable coffee shop in which to do that in before settling on a Starbucks that wasn't even mine... stopping on the way for Special Writer Supplies (Tax Deductible)... trying the Vanilla Rooibos Tea Latte despite trepidation; finding it rather good; worrying then about its calorie count... and then, after all that, opening my copyedited ms and finding out that I was only supposed to write on it with colored pencil, not with Uniball gel pens or Pilot gel pens or any of the other gel pens I've been buying and intending to write off on my taxes.

So. Yeah.

the wedding

Yes, I'm going to post a few pictures. If they come out flattering enough. If I don't have cake crumbs all over my dress. For those who asked. Thanks for caring, you guys. :)

The plans are coming together as well as I could've hoped. Now Dat's parents are making all the food, themselves. They called Dat last week and said, "You know we're coming to the wedding, right? We told you that, right?"

Dat said, "Oh, sure. Good."

Dat's dad did that thing that he does... that thing when he cares, but doesn't want to be the cheesy, spoiling parent who shows that he cares. He asked if we were catering, and Dat said we were of course catering Asian food. Dat's dad goes, "Are you getting rice from Lucky Restaurant*?"

We weren't, but before Dat could say that, his dad gets all faux-upset and goes, "Don't get rice from them! Their rice isn't good! Even I could make better rice than them! Don't waste your money! You always waste too much money! Let me just make the rice for you!"

Dat said, "Okay, Dad."

Then his dad was like, "What else are you ordering from Lucky Restaurant*? Don't order egg rolls. Their egg rolls aren't good. Stop wasting money. Your mother's going to have to make the egg rolls for you. No, don't argue with me, son. You've got to stop this habit of wasting money on bad egg rolls, and we're going to teach you that lesson by making the egg rolls and the rice, and whatever else you were planning on getting from Lucky Restaurant* for your wedding. Also, I should probably make my special lobster noodles, because you're such a bad, spoiled, money-wasting son."

Dat said, "Thank you, Dad. Gwen loves your special lobster noodles."

Dat's dad went, "Hrmph. Well. I'm just trying to save you from wasting money, eating bad food, and throwing your life away."

His dad's routine would have had more striking effect if Dat's mom hadn't been in the background all along, calling excitedly, "Tell him I'm gonna make my coconut cake! Tell him! Have you told him yet?"

I know y'all realize that this is good news to me. But do you realize why? Because Dat's parents are retired restaurant owners (of course), and they can cook like no tomorrow.

* I'm using a pseudonym for the restaurant because their food isn't bad. It's good, and the owners are super nice. But you understand that Dat's dad had to pretend their food was bad in order to offer his gift without looking like he was fishing for gratitude.

still talking about the wedding

I found my dress, finally. It was at Talbot's, waiting for me all spring.

I would link y'all to a picture of it, but I don't want to because the catalog picture on their web site looks absolutely nothing like the dress does in real life. See, it's one of those MadMen-inspired fit-and-flare numbers, but they put it on a typically slender model, so the skirt is all sadly pleated around her hips, instead of flowing outward like it's supposed to be. Also, that dress was made for a big ol' chest, and the model doesn't suffer from one. So you can't see the dress's potential, so there's no use linking.

But I will tell y'all that it's white with peach flowers and green leaves. You have to imagine the peach flowers, obviously.

I will also tell y'all that, while I was there, I tried on a similar dress with blue roses, and it was super, duper cute, but not garden-party enough for my idea of the wedding dress. So I put it back on the rack. Then I went to the web site and saw that Talbots hadn't done that dress photographic justice, either. Then, later, I saw a picture of Michelle Obama wearing that dress. And I'm a little annoyed with her, because I saw it first. But that's okay. It looked nice on her, too. Not as nice as it looked on me, but.... No, just kidding. Just kidding, Mrs. Obama.

you would think I'd never had a wedding before or something

We found a cake lady right near my neighborhood, and she made us sample cupcakes and they tasted nice.

We found a beautiful yet suitably informal design for our invitation, and my brother-in-law-to-be is printing them up for us. (Not my dentist b-i-l... the printer one.)

And....

It's past eleven p.m.!

It's time for me to go to sleep so I can wake up and go back to work tomorrow.

No sighing. No whining. No asking for extra glasses of water, Gwen. Just go to bed.

More later, then. Always more later. Good night.

2009-03-24T06:07:00.001-05:00

~~Houston is the fattest city in the United States because~~ Don�t look a gift horse in the mouth if you�re not paying for the oats it eats.

Since my fiance and I started carpooling to work, I pushed my 8-hour work day back an hour, so that it now coincides with the busiest part of the morning commute, and also with our HOV lane�s 3 Rider Rule. For a certain portion of the morning, you have to have 3 people in the vehicle in order to get into the High Occupancy Vehicle lane. Therefore, even though we�re carpooling, we still have to pick up a stranger from the Slug Line each morning in order to make it to work in less than 90 minutes.

The Slug Line forms at the park �n� ride bus stop. The bus at that stop goes into downtown on Smith Street. It goes all the way down Smith, then turns around and comes back to the park �n� ride. The Slug Line is formed by people who don�t want to ride the bus � who stand in line and wait for drivers who need extra riders to meet the HOV requirements. See how it works? See the mutually beneficial symbiotic parasite relationship that�s sprung up?

We don�t work downtown. We work near downtown. So we pick up a stranger, haul them downtown, then turn around and hurry back out west, to our workplace in Houston�s beautiful Montrose.

If we drop off our passenger on Smith Street, we can easily make it to our workplace in time to enjoy breakfast at its cafeteria. If, however, we drop off our passenger anywhere past Smith, we fall into a time warp whereby each red light adds an exponential amount of minutes to our drive, and then we get to work late and can�t eat breakfast, and then we�re hungry, cranky, and sad. You see? Every minute counts on this morning commute, for us.

Some slug line drivers will take riders wherever they want to go downtown. I used to do that, before I started carpooling with my fiance. But some drivers don�t. Some drivers say �Bus route only.� Smith Street only, they mean. So we decided to start doing that, too. Before a rider gets into our car, we roll down the window and say, �We�re only going down Smith.�

Before I say anything else, let me say that this is America, and I was born here, and I believe that we all have the unalienable right to pursue happiness. If it makes you happy to wait in line at the bus stop for a free ride that�s going to take you directly to your place of work, like a hired chaffeur, that�s totally cool with me. I support your right to do that. Rock on.

You should, in turn, support my right to offer strangers rides to Smith Street only. Or to Milam only. Or to the Sam Houston Tollway, or to the moon, or to whatever point I choose. If you don�t want to accept a free ride from me, that�s fine. But don�t argue with me about it. When I say, �We�re going down Smith only,� don�t stand there and say, �I�m just going a few blocks away, to Fannin and Dallas. Why can�t you go to Fannin? It�s only going to take you a few minutes longer. Where are you trying to go?�

It�s none of your business where I�m �trying to go,� or why I might need the few minutes that dropping you off on Smith would save me. Step away from my car so that the next person in line can get into it. Wait for the next driver to come along, and see if she wants to play chaffeur.

When I very politely tell you, before you get into my car, �We�re doing the bus route only,� don�t stand there in the way and tell me, �What? Why? I don�t see what difference it makes.�

Yes, that�s right. You don�t see what difference it makes. And I don�t have to explain it to you. Just like I don�t see what difference it makes if I drop you off on Smith and you have to walk a block or two, the way you�d be obligated to do if you were riding the bus. I don�t think walking a block or two is going to kill you. And I wonder, if you can�t walk a block or two, why you don�t drive yourself to work, instead of putting yourself at the mercy of strangers on a daily basis. But I wouldn�t block traffic to tell you that, and I wouldn�t ask you to explain it to me. Especially when there�s a whole line of people behind you who understand the social contract of the slug line and who exhibit manners and common decency.

Most people in the slug line are perfectly polite. But some of them are so bizarrely entitled and rude. It would be funny to me, if it weren�t so early in the morning.

I don�t want to go on and on about bad behavior on the carpool. (Well, I do, but I won�t.) I�ll just say that, if you get into my car and I turn the air conditioning too high, it�s probably in a vain attempt to blow your cologne cloud out of my face.

Also: If you�re a blonde woman who lost a pair of glasses two months ago, or if you�re someone else who lost a pink mitten three months ago, email me. You might have left them in our car.

Weddings are like tumors.

Because they grow, you see. No matter how small you think you can keep it, it grows. But this one�s a benign tumor, so far, and I believe we�re strong enough to keep it that way.

We realized that Harris County doesn�t do real courthouse weddings. You pay for the judge�s or JP�s time, and it costs the same whether y�all meet at the courthouse or he drives to the location of your choosing. So we�re having Judge Yeoman come out to the house in the evening, right before our ~~cake and champage~~ wedding dinner.

The cake-and-champagne has become a dinner. Dat looked it up in his list of Cultural Heritage Statutes and realized that he�d been contractually obligated, at birth, to serve catered fried rice at any wedding in which he might eventually become entangled. So we�re doing that. (I love Asian parties because, along with the fried rice and egg rolls, they always have goi, which is vinegar-y salad with shrimp and peanuts. So we�re having that, too, of course.)

I�m relieved, because I felt a little uncomfortable about having a party and not serving a meal (Chicano Cultural Statute, Clause 57.03), and I was already planning to sneak in a brisket (Clause 57.92) next to the wedding cake� and now I can put the brisket on a nice plate, right next to the fried rice, and it�ll be beautiful.

You can�t have a dinner without extra seating, and you can�t have extra seating without building a gazebo in the back yard, and you can�t build back yard structures with remodeling the bathroom, first, and you can�t go through the trouble of remodeling if you aren�t going to wear a nicer dress than you�d initially planned. So you may as well have a photographer or three, and printed invitations.

And you can�t have relatives without opinions, and they can�t show up empty handed. So someone�s bringing flowers, and someone�s bringing lights to string through the trees, and someone�s bringing special crunk champagne flutes with our initials engraved in emeralds or something. And (more than one) someone has volunteered to do our family planning for us and tell us when we should have babies, and how many babies we should have, and what they should look like, and what we should name them. But that comes later� we told them to wait to the day after the wedding for that, if possible.

And� let me say right here, right now that I�m sorry that we can�t invite everyone we know. We wish we could, but we can�t. This was supposed to be a quick courthouse wedding because we couldn�t justify the expense of a lavish 300-guest fantasy wedding. But weddings are like tumors, so it�s gone from a practical elopement to a tiny version � a 1/10 scale model � of a real wedding. But our house is pretty small, as is our budget� so please understand that, and don�t be upset if you haven�t been invited. It wasn�t because we didn�t wish we could see you there. We wanted to invite you, but we had to invite our immediate family, first. We wanted to invite everyone we know, but there was literally no room.

art, life

Now, between books (assuming I write another book soon), I�m going through a mid-life assessment. Trying to assess where I am and decide where I want to go.

Every time I�m between books, I think up a lot of crazy ideas. But now that I�m in my mid-40s (i.e., 37), the crazy ideas seem not only more plausible, but almost obligatory. Like: �Do I want to spend the rest of my life [x thing]? No.� Like, �If I have to spend the rest of my life [x thing], shouldn�t I at least [y and z things]? Yes.�

I�m sure y�all know what I mean. Don�t you go through the same phases? Aren�t we all getting older, but also smarter and more efficient and better at making ourselves happy?

Hope so.

2009-03-18T17:58:00.000-05:00

Guess what? 25 Random Facts About Me!

because I have been inspired.

Now, all I have to do is think of 25 new things to tell y'all, apart from the stuff divulged in the 100 things meme I did back in 2005, and apart from all the other stuff I've told y'all over the past 12 years.

Easy!

1. I'm going to do a reading/event tonight in which I'm supposed to talk about my creative process(es). For that, I've decided to give a 5-minute history of my writing career. It's my first time doing anything like that, so I'm kind of nervous. But I'm always kind of nervous about all the events I do, no matter how new or old the material. Unless they're readings for little kids, that is.

2. I feel that the best Easter candy is Russel Stover's creme eggs, in coconut-in-dark-chocolate flavor.

3. I like to go to the grocery store with my fiance. That's, like, a serious date night activity for us. Sometimes I think it's because we both experienced hard times in our youth. But usually I don't try to analyze it.

4. I'm getting married on May 23rd. (THIS NEXT PART IS SECRET - SHH:) At first I was a little bit sad because my future in-laws didn't think I was the right person to marry their son. Not sad enough to let it stop us, or to dwell on it on a daily basis, but kind of disappointed. But, recently, my fiance talked to them about it, and they voiced their concerns... and now they're coming to the wedding. And I'm happier/more relieved about that than I would have expected.

5. I'm actually a really good daughter-in-law. No one here knows that, because last time I served in that capacity, it was in a tiny town that no one cared to visit. And then I left my husband, effectively removing the possibility of further communication with my parents-in-law. But I know that they loved me, because they told me so, more than once. And I loved them. And I spent jillions of hours with them, and I did what I could to make their lives easier. And I enjoyed doing so, because that's just the kind of crazy I am. And, I have to say here that my ex-mother-in-law was way, way, WAY more opposed to that marriage (and more vocal about it) than my current future in-laws have been. So, in general, I'm optimistic about the new in-law relationships I'm starting. I can rebuild them. I have the technology. I am... the $6 Million Daughter-in-Law. I've just been waiting for the paperwork to go through so I can begin.

6. I didn't realize, until recently, how much I missed being a daughter-in-law.

7. If it were up to me, and no one's judgment had any effect on my life, I'd cut my hair short and never wear makeup. It is up to me, I know, but I live in this world. In this world, prettiness can be a kind of armor. So I put on eyeliner every morning, just like a knight of old.

8. I turned 37 in December. A while back, something made me think that I was "almost in my forties." So, since then, I keep thinking that. "I'm almost in my forties -- I don't have to deal with that." "I'm practically 40 -- I should know better." "I'm in my forties now -- shouldn't I be doing [x] by now?" So now, in my mind, I'm in my mid-40s. I completely, mentally bypassed the last three years of my 30s. Weirdest part: I don't mind. I like being in my 40s. It's giving me an excuse to break old habits and try new things.

9. My favorite thing I've ever written is what I believe the fewest people have read: the very last story in my very first book. Every time I think about that, I imagine musicians I admire whose own favorite songs probably don't match up with my favorites. And I have no sympathy for them, because I wouldn't change my favorite Pavement songs, even if Stephen Malkmus hated those ones the most. And then, in turn, I have no sympathy for myself. So what if I like the ant story best? That doesn't mean it's the best one or the one that resonates with anyone else.

10. Sometimes I worry about Norm MacDonald. I was watching SNL, live, the night he accidentally said fuck and then immediately realized he'd get fired for it. He was fired. Then, after that, his career did a long, slow slide. I saw him on the Comedy Central Bob Saget roast, and he still looked sad, but you could also tell that his colleagues loved him. They joked about his gambling addiction. That made me worry about him more than before. I don't know why I worry about him, in particular. But that happens to a lot of people, right? You feel some weird connection/intuition for a certain celebrity or stranger, and you carry them around in your mind, right? Like a lot of people worry about Jennifer Anniston, or like Ben Folds worried about Muhammad Ali. I worry about Norm MacDonald. I hope that he's okay.

11. I fantasize about speaking every language.

12. I fantasize about having the psychic power to answer any question truthfully, and charging people (anyone) $500 a pop to answer their questions. Scientists' questions would be answered during weekly press conferences, though.

13. I fantasize... not about having the power to heal people, but about having the power to prescribe the perfect diets for them. I mean the diets that would make them healthy and happy.

14. I fantasize about having the power to perform telekinetic, painless, instant platic surgery on people. Because, you know how you'll see someone, and they're obviously self-conscious about some aspect of their appearance? Like a mole or their teeth or something? Well, I fantasize about having the power to fix that for people, without them even knowing it's being done.

15. All those fantasies mean that I'm a narcissist. Every time I take the personality disorder profile quiz thing, it says I'm mostly a narcissist. Which kind of annoys me, because I don't believe that I am. But then, people I admire score high on narcissism, too, so at least I'm in good company. Second-highest scoring for me is OCD. So what? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Unless you're a clean-freak OCD'er, like our friend Cathy, because then it's just too much stress. (I like to converse with Cathy about various compulsions, but then I feel bad for her when she stresses about the cleanliness and germs.)

16. The score I don't get, and the personality disorder for which I have the lowest tolerance? Is histrionic-ness.
That means "attention whores." I especially hate being around attention whores who are boring -- that's the absolute worst. Second worst is catty attention whores who, for some reason, believe that I have something they want. Then they start trying to compete, and I never want to engage in that. I just want to get away. Actually... I've had histrionic friends, but they have to be interesting, and they have to have different taste in men, so that there's no competitiveness. In that case, I'm okay with them.

17. Really, this isn't 25 Random Things About Me. It's 25 Things That Have Been on My Mind a LOT Lately, Because I'm Slightly OCD and Think About the Same Topics Over and Over Until I'm Sick of Them. Thank you for reading, if you're still reading along.

18. I used to think that I'd hold my old grudges forever -- you know, like "She'll be sorry when I'm published and then I see her in public and she has to feel stupid about that time she said my writing was trite!" -- but it turns out that I don't. I work as hard as I can, and I forget about the old petty stuff because I feel like I've grown so far away from it. You know?

19. I worry about my kids way more than I let on. Sometimes I lie in bed at night having long, long strings of worries about them. But I choke it down because I don't want to be like Nemo's dad on that movie Finding Nemo. When I saw that movie, I cried super hard whenever his dad was on the screen. Because I totally empathized with that (fish) man, and I've never even had kids who were eaten by sharks. But, yeah, I don't want to bum out my kids like that. So I keep that stuff to myself, as much as possible.

20. I'm proud of the way my kids have turned out, but don't like to say that to people too often because it seems like a compliment to myself. But it's (mostly) not -- my kids are good kids. They were born good and worked to get better, independently of me or my parenting skillz.

21. Sometimes I want to post more pictures of my family online, but then I worry. Worry, worry, irrational worry....

22. I'm simultaneously excited and anxious about writing my next book.

23. I'm waiting to see if the last kids' book I submitted will get published. Trying not to be anxious about that. The kids' books get rejected way more often than you might imagine. Which doesn't feel too fabulous, but it toughens me up. It's all a business, you know. This writing stuff, I mean.

24. I feel bad/guilty/annoyed when I write an entry here and people feel compelled to reassure me about whatever I complained about. I always feel like I'm just venting/ranting/babbling, but then, if it comes off like whining or needing comfort, that bugs the crap out of me and I feel like I somehow betrayed myself. (But if it doesn't sound like whining, but people just want to offer comfort/reassurance, anyway, then that's okay.)

25. I don't like to need anyone. I like to be independent.

Whew. I did it!

The end.

2009-03-12T06:27:00.002-05:00

getting married

Part of the reason I�m marrying my boyfriend Dat is that we share many of the same values and beliefs. Like �Art is a priority� and �You should never do something just because everyone else does it.� We�re no Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre, but I do enjoy the home life we�ve created for ourselves, in which the dining area can become the crafting area and music practice isn�t considered noise and fake birds can populate any space for no other reason than their cuteness.

Some of our values might make the act of getting married seem like an oxymoron. But, as so many of y�all know, there are jillions of reasons to get married other than �because I want a big day that�s all about me just like everyone else gets to have on TV.� So we�re doing it for those other reasons. Of course, we want the wedding to reflect our values. Meaning, mainly, that we don�t want to spend thousands of dollars on a ceremony that has no personal meaning for either of us.

I went through the old dilemmas that braver women than me have lived through before I was even born. Like: Are we getting married for ourselves, or for others? and then: Even if we�re getting married for ourselves, what do we owe our families and the people who care about us and feel invested in our relationship?

Even though other couples have answered these questions admirably and come up with workable solutions, it�s really a case-by-case kind of thing, isn�t it? No two couple and no two families are alike, so you have to work with what you have and not stick your star-shaped block into the octagon-shaped hole.

Here�s the solution we came up with. Here is what our �wedding� will be:

1. On a Saturday morning this May, we will get married at the courthouse downtown. This was going to be just us and the kids, but one of my cousins really, really wants to be there, so we�re opening it to anyone who wants to show up.

2. Right after that, we�ll have dim sum. Because dim sum has great cultural significance in Dat�s family�s culture, of course. No, just kidding. It�s only because we like dim sum a lot and use any excuse � Thanksgiving, Christmas, Ash Wednesday � to eat it. Again, we planned it to be Dat, me, and the kids, but we�re imagining that some of my family might want to attend. So we�ll invite Dat�s family, too. Anyone else who wants to attend is free, as we live in America, to show up. But we�re only paying for ourselves and the kids and our parents. :)

3. That night, we�ll have a party at our house. At that party, we�ll have wedding cake and champagne. Maybe appetizers, too. Or brisket, if someone wants to bring a brisket. Maybe some potato salad. Or maybe sushi. The food part hasn�t been worked out yet. But we�ll have a cake and champagne, for sure, and a few more people we know will be invited.

4. In June, we�re going to Hawaii. (Not the kids � just me and Dat.) That�s our honeymoon. In Hawaii, we will eat dim sum again, if they have it. If not, we�ll just eat everything else.

And that�s it. That�s what it�s gonna be. Now that that�s settled, we�re actually looking forward to it. You know? I mean, we were always looking forward to our marriage, but now we�re actually excited about the wedding, too. (I don�t want to be a person who looks forward to her wedding and not her marriage. That�s a commonly used recipe for unhappiness, in my opinion.)

Do I sound defensive? Right now, there�s a message in my Inbox from a certain person. I can�t see it until I get home tonight, but I kind of don�t want to look at it, anyway, because it�s undoubtedly in response to my recent Facebook announcement that I�m planning our wedding. Earlier in our engagement, this person was trying to plan our wedding for us. I love her, but she�s one of the people who comes over to our house and says stuff like, �Why the hell do y�all have fake birds on your bookshelf? I don�t get it.� So I don�t really want to get into a discussion about the wedding with her. If I were rich and wanted a big wedding, I�d hire a planner. But first I�d show that planner a bunch of photographs of random things that we think are cool, and I�d watch his/her face. If s/he made a wtf face, I�d know s/he wasn�t right for us. You know?

something else that�s related to the stuff above, but which I�ll discuss in third person

In case anyone�s curious, here�s a list of possible reasons that a married couple might decide to have separate bedrooms:

1. You both want your own space, not just for sleeping but for other things � fashion, hobbies, decorations � that might occur in your bedrooms.

2. You have completely different sleeping preferences. Maybe one of you needs the door open and the other needs it closed. One of you can tolerate the light on the cable box and the other can�t. Both of you like to sleep with your arm under your head, but you face each other and therefore your elbows are at odds. One of you needs cats posted at the foot of the bed throughout the night, and one of you can�t sleep with cat hair in your lungs. And so on, and so forth.

3. You can�t afford separate houses. :)

4. You see that, often, elderly couples sleep in separate bedrooms, and it�s not only because they�re more comfortable that way, but also because they�re so old that they no longer care what anyone thinks of them. And you think, �Why do I have to wait until I�m older, to stop caring what people think?� And you don�t care what people think, and you want to be comfortable.

5. You realize that sleeping in the same bed is neither proof of romantic love nor a guarantee of a satisfying sex life.

6. You enjoy attention, and therefore you enjoy having people come to your house and say, �Oh my god, WHY do you have separate BEDROOMS? What�s WRONG? Are you guys breaking up? Are you guys secretly gay? I thought you guys liked each other. I don�t understand. What do you mean, you like it better this way? What�s WRONG with you two? That�s not what married people DO. What do you mean, you like your cats to sleep on the bed? That�s DISGUSTING.�

Just kidding on that last one. That one goes on the cons list. But, hey, it�s one of a very few things on the cons list, apart from �can�t yet afford a house with separate bedrooms.�

I�m not telling you guys this because I believe you�re the kind of judgmental that needs an explanation. I�m telling you guys this because maybe some of you want to sleep in separate bedrooms and are going over the rationale, compiling lists of pros and cons. In that case, you�re welcome to my reasons.

Love is�

� feeling like you�ve created your own space in the world -- you and your partner -- that doesn�t need anyone else�s approval. Or maybe that�s what codependence is? I get those two confused...

Just kidding. Ha. Love is... worth sharing, right? I feel protective of the people and things I really, really care about, which is why you don�t see me posting a lot about my relationships with Dat and my kids. But I know some of y�all have been following this journal for a long, long time, and that some of you identify with the main character in it (heh) in certain ways. So, for the sake of the story and its readers, I�m sharing with y�all that, after careful consideration, I�ve found love worth making into a legal entity, and a relationship that I believe will create long-term, overriding happiness for me, for him, and for our family.

And, in sharing this with y�all, I�m sending out good vibes and hopes that y�all have found or will find the same.

2009-03-11T06:19:00.000-05:00

the students of Rockdale, Texas

Last weekend I visited Rockdale Elementary School and, as I�ve told y�all before, visiting students is one of the highlights of my writing career. Not to mimic the d-bags of the �50s and �60s by comparing myself to Holden Caulfield, but I have to say that I understood what he meant when he said that little kids knocked him out.

Those little kids knocked me out. They were so smart, and they had such good manners, and they said such funny things. And, as I�ve said before, little kids make a good audience because they usually don�t yet know how to mask their reactions, so you can see their minds working and opening up as you talk with them, just as if their foreheads were made of Saran Wrap. �OMG,� you can see them thinking for the very first time, �Writing is a viable potential career option for me� although maybe not the most profitable one, if this lady�s outfit is anything to go by�.�

I always want to tell y�all little anecdotes about the various kids, but then I stop myself, because it kind of feels like violating their privacy. You know? It�s not like when I meet other writers or artists, and they obviously have work to promote. Little kids are private citizens in every sense of the phrase, aren�t they?

So I�ll just say, with all names changed to protect the innocent, that we talked about possible careers, including writing, illustrating, translating and publishing. Because my kids� book is written in English and Spanish, and was therefore translated, and these kids were a little young to know the definition of translate. So we defined the jobs and then talked about what skills you�d have to have to do each of them. And it was obvious to me that some of the bilingual kids in the class hadn�t yet realized what an asset it was to be bilingual. And just seeing the realization dawn on their faces was a beautiful thing. In one class, one of the girls called out, �Johnny speaks Spanish, I think. So Johnny could be a translator right now!� And the other kids were like, �Oh, yeah. That�s true!� And they turned and looked at Johnny, and he said nothing in response and modestly pretending to be deep in thought. But he sat up straighter. That was all � he sat up straighter. Seeing him do that cracked me up, and made my eyes mist up a little, too.

One little girl noted, before the reading even started, that the book was bilingual. She told me she wanted to learn Spanish and other languages, too, if possible. Her eyes lit up at the definition of translate, and I totally saw her future flash before my eyes. She was wearing a set of headphones and a classic navy suit that complimented her freckles, and she was translating for the United Nations. I could see it clear as day.

I have little mini-lessons that I go through as we read the book � phrase repetition, counting by twos, cause and effect � and sometimes it takes the kids a while to catch on. But sometimes the kids will say the lesson before we even start reading (�Can I see the book we�re gonna read? Oh, her sister�s two years older than her. So she gets older on every page, but her sister�s always older and gets to do better stuff,�) and that always cracks me up. I�m like, �Man, y�all are some smart whippersnappers.� Then I say, �Get off my lawn!�

No, just kidding. I never say that, because we�re always in the library.

But, yeah. It�s fun. It�s good, reading to the children.