January 28, Houston: The book launch party for Lone Star Legend is at Brazos Bookstore, at 7 PM. Y'all are all invited!
February 4, Houston: I'll be reading/signing at the downtown Houston Public Library, at 6 PM.
February 5, Austin: I'll be reading/signing at BookPeople and will undoubtedly stop by the FlipHappy crepe trailer some time after that.
February 5, San Antonio: I'll be reading/signing at the San Pedro Barnes and Noble and will probably buy some coconut candy at Mi Tierra, too.
My other blog: Go read my the Houston Chronicle parenting blog (or my ChronMomBlog, as I like to call it) and find out what I've said to piss off the more conservative commenters this week.
Buy my new novel, Lone Star Legend.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Etiquette for Friends and Relatives of Authors that I'm Making up off the Top of my Head Right Now1. 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. 1:12 PM # (9) comments
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Authoring UpdateEverything 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. 6:09 AM # (11) comments
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Win free books!In celebration of
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!
Monday, October 19, 2009
LatelyI’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.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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 7:01 PM # (2) comments
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Where I BeHola, 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.
Labels: pop culture, writing
6:39 AM # (6) commentsTuesday, August 25, 2009
now entering Hyper Lockdown ModeI’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. 7:02 PM # (1) comments
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
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
Labels: knitting, psychobabble, writing
6:37 PM # (13) commentsSaturday, August 01, 2009
writing stuffRight 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.
Labels: culture, gluttony, Houston, i believe that children are our future, married life, writing
11:06 PM # (5) commentsWednesday, July 22, 2009
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!!)
Labels: Work cats
8:28 PM # (0) commentsMonday, June 29, 2009
Partners inLest 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
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.
Labels: culture, gluttony, Hawaii, married life
6:08 PM # (10) commentsFriday, June 19, 2009
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.... 6:40 PM # (12) comments
