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I'll be reading Growing Up with Tamales for story time at Blue Willow Bookshop, in Houston, on Thursday morning, May 15. Tell everyone you know with kids in the Houston area. How do you find and support local indie book stores like Blue Willow? By going to Booksense.

On Saturday, May 17, I'll be in Dallas, reading and signing at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, for the 13th Dallas Children’s Book Fair & Literary Festival.

On June 22, here in Houston, I'm going to do a poetry workshop. It's free and open to the public, y'all, and they're having one every Sunday in June, taught by local poets I love and respect. So come on down.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007
afterwards

I went to Flickr, was disappointed that no one's posted many xmas photos, then reminded myself that I haven't posted any, either.

Our Christmas went really well. Hope yours did, too. We baked. A while back, my youngest son Rory, now 10, had found some retro recipe for cookies shaped like mice. He became obsessed with the idea of baking them for Christmas, no matter how many times we told him that a) they'd be a pain in the butt to make, and b) mice have nothing to do with Christmas. But he wouldn't relent, so we did. We took him on a special last-minute drugstore trip to purchase strawberry flavored licorice for mouse tails. We puzzled out how to get the tails into the cookies -- Tad thought of putting toothpicks into the mouse bodies to keep a hole in place while they baked. But we had no toothpicks, so I thought of rolling up tiny bits of foil. The mice had chocolate-chip eyes and peanut ears. While baking, they each doubled or tripled in weight. We decided they were mice preparing for hibernation. Or else, simply very fat mice. The aluminum tails popped out and the licorice tails popped in (with minimal inappropriate innuendo, heh), and the end result was awesome. Rory's cookies got their own display plate, and he enjoyed showing them to everyone who showed up at our party. And I hope I haven't created a baking monster now. Just kidding. We also made other cookies, and mini rum cakes, and white chocolate popcorn as gifts. And if I had known before how easy it was to work with white chocolate bark coating, everything in my house would have been dipped in it by now...

We didn't do a lot of gifts this year because, like a lot of people who drive cars in America, I'm pretty freaking broke right now, and there aren't any Black Friday sales worth the credit card interest, as far as I'm concerned. So we traded very small, inexpensive things, or else things that we'd made for each other. And, honestly, I think it came out just as well. The kids said it did. Maybe they were just being gracious, though. They're so gracious. My dad came over and gave them all Best Buy gift certificates. Rory asked him the amount they contained. My dad said, in the dry tone I know as his joking voice, "I'm pretty broke this year, so they're $8 each." All three kids thanked him. Then, my dad said, "Either 8 or [way bigger amount], I forget." And I understood that they were of course for the bigger amount. The kids thanked him again.

Then, the next day, Rory told me, "Grandpa gave us $8 each for Best Buy, so that's $24. Maybe we can get a game with that." And he seemed so excited. His brother Dallas somberly agreed that they should pool their $8 cards. I said, "No, babies. He gave y'all [much bigger amount] each. Not $8." And they go, "Oh-h-h-h..." Fifteen-year-old Josh rolled his eyes and laughed. He'd gotten the joke.

Okay, enough bragging about my kids. They're going to their dad's today, for his part of the holiday. It's kind of unfair, because our school district rearranged their calendar again, so I'm getting the kids for almost no time at all. But at least I got them for Christmas. Next year I won't, and that'll be sad. We'll have to bake for Thanksgiving, instead. Because I think we finally started the tradition of it.

I was glad that my boyfriend Tad liked both the inexpensive gifts I got him. Y'all know how mens can be hard to shop for. So it was a relief, to see him look sincerely pleased. He got me three very inexpensive gifts, one of which was the wrong size. ("Oh. I didn't see the sizes on them. I just picked the color.") But that's okay, because I already know what I'm getting for my birthday, which is tomorrow. I found out by accident. I'm excited. (But I hope it's the right size.) More on that later, after I come back a year older and hopefully wiser, too.

sad media agenda

This morning, on our local news, the newscasters were at the malls telling us that all the stores had extra, special, super, duper, slashed-prices after-xmas sales today. Because -- surprise! -- no one sold very much before xmas.

And I'm thinking, if people couldn't afford to buy gifts before xmas, why do the malls think they'll suddenly have money afterwards? And why is the news pushing the idea? Is media conglomeration that bad now? Does Time Warner own Wal-Mart now? I mean, I know you can no longer read magazines without fully expecting them to push the books/movies/music umbrella'ed by their parent companies, but dude. What's up with the newspeople encouraging me to shop today? Give me a freaking break.

It reminded me of the days after 9/11, when George W. Bush told us the best thing we could do for our country would be to shop our brains out for xmas.

Honestly? I like shopping as much as anyone. I'm a straight-up consumerist and it gives me the DTs not to shop on any given weekend, and the signs that say 70% Off call to me like sirens with long, well conditioned hair. But still. Even I have my limits. Don't ask me to shop when every not-rich person in America is broke. Tell Halliburton to shop. Tell Texaco to shop. Tell George W. Bush to shop. I'm not listening.

consumerism!

However.

I do have a couple of gift certificates to spend, so I will do that. First stop: Barnes and Noble. Also, I would like to have my nails done in the trendy style -- short ovals with nearly-black polish. We'll see. I have to count my pennies first.

Last night we caught the tail end of Bad Santa, and I watched Billy Bob ask his fellow criminals why they needed all the crap they were stealing from the department store. Why, indeed? They were stealing tacky trash. I would've stolen way better.

The other day, as I told y'all, my boyfriend Tad and I went to Neiman Marcus, which is an expensive department store, as some of y'all might know. I don't go there often, because their target market seems a little older than me. When I do go, it's to purchase the occasional Bobbi Brown product, and their cosmetics sales peeps are always very cordial.

But we went there the other day to look at the clothing, as I told y'all, and ever since then I keep dreaming about it. I dreamed we were suddenly rich and my boyfriend went to the office of the CEO to speak to him about merchandise. Meanwhile, I waited in the wood-panelled waiting room, and South American women struck up conversations with me in rapid Spanish. I thought, "They think I speak Spanish, and they think I'm rich." Then, I thought, "Oh, but I do, and I am." And then we talked about how much we liked shopping at Neiman Marcus. It was funny.

Tad's brother and s-i-l are rich, and they shop there often. So Neiman Marcus sends them beautiful Vogue-mag-sized catalogs, which they flip through and discard. Tad asks if he can have the catalogs. Then he takes them to my house, where he and my youngest son and I peruse each page and laugh or sigh at the insanely expensive stuff. Tad wants a mink dinner jacket. Rory wants a diamond skull-faced watch. I want a python bag, but I feel sorry for the pythons, that they spend their lives growing so thick, only to end up a bag for some lady. So I'll take a diamond Hello Kitty watch, instead. The one with the white ceramic band. Even though it has Kimora Lee Simmons' name on it, and she's not my type.

Wanna hear a dirty secret? Even though I'm not a teenager anymore, I do still cherish a fantasy that I was meant to be rich. That I'm destined for it, sheerly by virtue of my impeccable taste.

The longer I live, though, the more I suspect that I'm not meant to be rich, because it wouldn't be as much fun. If I were rich, I wouldn't have a reason to shop the most run-down thrift stores anymore. I'd have to do "vintage boutiques," instead. If I were rich, I'd miss the obscene joy of rescuing someone else's Neiman Marcus catalogs from the dumpster.

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12:00 PM #
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Thoughts on Fictional Aspergers

There are two fictional characters I suspect of having Asperger's Syndrome, whether or not the actors were consciously portraying them that way:

1. Napoleon Dynamite.

2. Bill Haverchuck of Freaks and Geeks.

Or maybe I'm just projecting that onto them because I like those characters, and one of my sons has Aspergers, and I want to imagine my son living a life with a happy ending. Every week.

And now that I'm searching for links, I see that I'm not the first person to have expressed those thoughts:
So, once again, know that you can count on Gwenworld.com for all your years-after-the-fact pop culture commentary! Here's some more:
I saw Shallow Hal last night, and it wasn't as bad as I'd assumed it would be, way back when it first came out in 2001. I guess I was just looking for an excuse to dislike Gwyneth Paltrow. That was before she wore that too-big-in-the-bust pink dress to the Oscars, and I began to feel bad for her, instead.

yays

I was in the dentist's office for about four minutes this morning, and now I'm good to go. (Tiny bump on my new temp bridge was throwing off my bite, wreaking havoc. Now it's gone.) Thank gosh. It wasn't until it was over that I realized how much I'd been dreading that visit. Oh, also, dreading things makes me grind my teeth. Which makes them hurt more. Duh. Vicious cycle ahoy!

I'm going to start a museum

in which I archive lame attempts at flirting by self-important Corporate American men.

Not because they flirt with me, but because I've been in a position to overhear the flirting, over and over and over again. Because they do it right in front of me, because I'm not pretty enough to be visible to them. Plenty of women can say the same thing, I'm sure -- that they overhear crass come-ons on a regular basis, that they feel disrespected by the men who do such things in professional settings... But would other women obsessively analyze and catalog the phenomemon, like I unwillingly find myself doing every week day? Probably not. Upon hearing any random failed come-on, I immediately, telepathically comprehend the would-be pick-up artist's secret fears, skeevy desires, and pathetic fetishes. I don't want to know, but I can't help it.

And that's why hearing that crap tortures me. No, not because I'm an old, fat, jealous shrew. Not because I'm a jealous lesbian. But because it's pretty depressing, hearing the silently screamed longings of men I can't admire.

Five Pound Allowance

Speaking of being a fat, jealous, lesbian shrew... I can't wait until Christmas Eve. Why? Because I'm going to eat baked goods on that day. Baked goods of my own making.

I've decided to allow myself to gain as much as five pounds, between Christmas and New Year's. Because isn't that, like, the legally ordained amount of weight that we gain that week in America? So I'm ready.

And then, by May, I plan to lose 20 pounds net. And then I will be done. Wish me luck.

And merry December 24th to y'all, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, and whether you eat baked goods or not. Have fun.

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11:57 PM #
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Monday, December 03, 2007

A Plainclotheshorse

Sometimes I want to tell y'all what I find at the thrift stores, and maybe post pictures of my finds, but then I don't, because I've realized that I like pretty boring clothes.

Today, for instance, I am wearing black pants, a white shirt, and a fuchsia silk cardigan ($1.91 with orange tag markdown). And black loafers. And no jewelry, because I forgot it. And that's pretty much about as exciting as my wardrobe gets, unless I bust out a dress or the knee-high boots or something.

The other day I found a brand new pair of brown, unembellished, Unlisted loafers at my second-favorite thrift store, for $6.97. I found one of them on the floor, and I searched the store until I found its mate. And I was so ecstatically happy. "I should take a picture of these and put them on my Flickr page!" I said to myself. Then I realized how underwhelming a picture of brown loafers would be.

Oh, well. I'm still happy about them.

But, if you'd like to see something semi-exciting, go on over to my Flickr page and see that paintings I did to go above my fireplace.

The YouTubes and the CSSes and the BloggerWriters and the InterWebs

I feel kind of sad about the fact that I haven't posted anything on YouTube yet. I feel un-Web-pioneer-y. I even have stuff to post -- two or three readings and lectures I did that people were kind enough to videotape for me and then make DVDs for my use, to post on YouTube as I'd promised I would. And I haven't yet done it. I even have the video editing software on my computer. I just haven't had time to get it done.

Other information highway merge lanes I haven't had time to drive on:

How do y'all web mavens have time to do all this stuff? Is it because you do it as a career? Is it because you don't have 28 kids, like I do? Are you doing it at your day jobs? Are you tricking high school students into being your web content interns? Help me, ObiWanKenobis. Tell me your secrets.

It just takes time, I guess. Maybe I can do something on the web, next time I feel like painting a bunch of birds and hanging them up above my fireplace.

Weekend Adventure: Farmers' Market

One of my kid's friends spent the weekend with us, which was all the excuse we needed to conduct weekend adventures. We dragged that little boy to the Asian grocery store to see the live frogs and purchase cha siu for the fried-rice feast my boyfriend later cooked. We dragged him to a park that we'd never seen before, and that park ended up having bison and pigs and emus, oh my! We sought out a new (to us) carniceria, next door to our second favorite panaderia and ate a fabulously traditional Mexican Sunday breakfast of tacos, pastry, and insanely spicy hot sauce.

After we dropped the boy off at his home, my boyfriend dropped me off at my favorite thrift store for a few hours, which is always a very exciting adventure, for me at least. (Three skirts in gray and taupe! A light blue button-down!) Then we reconvened at Empire, which is the best coffee house in Houston.

(Please don't write and tell me that Brazil or Dietrich's are the best. They aren't. Empire is. Sorry.) (Just kidding. Feel free to tell me which is your fave, and why. I always want to know y'all's fave restaurants in Houston, okay?)

Best of all, though: We went to the farmers' market on Airline, which neither Tad nor I had been to since we were children. The Airline farmers' market is, as my youngest son put it, a "fleamarket of food." Their restrooms are nastier than those of the nightclub #s. But still -- they have beautiful fruits, vegetables, spices, and herbs for dirt cheap. We're going back again very soon. Every single week for the rest of our lives, maybe.

I've been meaning to tell y'all this for weeks now...

I no longer like Billy Joel's music.

You know why? Because, the other day, I heard a song of his I hadn't heard since I was a kid with snot running down my nose and no sense of what was happening in the world. That song was "Big Shot."

Here is the chorus and two verses of the song:
Because you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to open up your mouth
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
You know what everything's about
You and to have a white hot spotlight
You had to be a big shot last night

They were all impressed with your Halston dress
And the people you knew at Elaine's
And the story of your latest success
Kept 'em so entertained
But now you just can't remember
All the things you said
And you're not sure you want to know
I'll give you one hint, honey
You sure did put on a show

Well, it's no big sin to stick your two cents in
If you know when to leave it alone
But you went over the line
You couldn't see it was time to go home

What the hell is this guy's deal? The narrator of this song is mad at some chick because... why? Because she talked a lot? Because her friends were "knocked out" and "entertained" by her stories? Because she wore an expensive dress?

Maybe I'm just reading way too much into it (as I will sometimes do with lyrics when I'm in my van, listening to the radio during my 1.25 hour commute), but it sounds like the narrator just can't hang with women getting attention. Maybe attention that he feels is rightfully his?

Read those lyrics, then consider the lyrics to "Uptown Girl," which Mr. Joel presumably wrote later:
Uptown girl
She's been living in her uptown world
I bet she's never had a backstreet guy
I bet her momma never told her why

Uptown girl
You know I can't afford to buy her pearls
But maybe someday when my ship comes in
She'll understand what kind of guy I've been
And then I'll win

Watch out, uptown girl! Don't do it! Don't marry this backstreet guy, because every time you want to have a little fun with your friends or dress up a little or tell anyone about your accomplishments, he'll ridicule you and your white-bread world. Then, years later, after he's erroded your self esteem, the two of you will divorce and then he'll replace you with a younger woman too meek to hold her own on a cooking contest show!

Just kidding. Heh. I'm sure Billy Joel is a very nice person, and his song narrators are no reflection of his own views on women. I just like to listen to music and make up funny little stories for myself when I'm alone in my van.

When I was a child, I memorized lyrics without thinking about them. I also liked Billy Joel and hated Bob Seeger.

But now that I'm older, I can't help but think about lyrics. Do I want to listen to songs that say "Ha, ha, you rich bitch, I did donuts on your lawn with my motorcycle," or lyrics that say "I had sex with a rich woman in Hollywood and it was awesome, and now I'm an old, worn-out cliche of a rock star and I only have myself to blame"?

Or do I want to go back to my old favorite, with lyrics that say "It seems like we really hate women, but then again, we did steal most of this music from black musicians nowhere near as famous as us"? Now that Led Zeppelin's having a little comeback, I mean.

Silverfish, silverfish! It's Christmas time in the city!

I decorated our Christmas tree (Douglas fir, $17 at Lowe's with $10-off coupon) last night.

I'm not even going to tell y'all about the all-new holiday trauma tradition we started, which involved the whole family and the meticulous slaughtering of the silverfish that have been breeding in our garage, in the boxes that came over from our apartment more than a year ago, which contained all our Christmas ornaments and decorations.

I'm not even going to tell you about it.

Suffice it to say that tree is up, the garage is clear, and my children will grow up with beautiful holiday memories -- the strains of "Deck the Halls" intertwined with the dulcet tones of their mommy's voice, screaming, "There's one! KILL IT!" and "Bang it on the floor until they all fall out!" and "Because I gave birth to you, that's why!"

Beautiful. Priceless. You're welcome, kids. I love you, too.

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6:04 AM #
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Saturday, November 24, 2007

reminder of what I have

2007 has been a disappointing year for me, for various reasons beyond my control. A year of rejections, failures, unexpected expenses and medical dramas. I'm calling it, in my mind, a year of learning experiences and character strengthening.

The one thing I have been able to control is my own body--namely, how much I eat and how much I exercise. (And I know that's the seed of anorexia: focusing on controlling your own body when you feel powerless to control anything else. But don't worry; I'm very, very far from that.) So I've failed at increasing my income this year, but I succeeded at decreasing my weight.

So I need new clothes. And I'm broke. And I have a whole wardrobe of clothing that doesn't fit me anymore. So I thought I'd have a garage sale. But I couldn't, because my neighborhood association won't let us. And no one else I knew could get it together to have one... and selling clothes on eBay or Craigslist is too much work for too little money... But I was hoarding these bags of too-big clothes, thinking I'd sell them one way or another and then use the money to buy new clothes.

And then, the other day, my friend Letty, who works for the local women's shelter, called me up. I was walking around the clearance dress racks at Macy's when she called, in fact. She said, "Do you still have those clothes that are too big for you?"

I said yes. She said, "Would you consider donating them to the shelter? They just called me and said they desperately need clothes in that size."

I said uh, yeah, I guess, maybe. She said, "You don't have to give them all of it. They just really need work clothes and underwear."

I said, "Underwear? Y'all take underwear? I was just gonna throw mine away. I never donate underwear because that's kind of weird, you know? I mean, who wants old underwear?"

She said, "Well, sometimes women who come to the shelter have just been raped. So their underwear gets cut off of them when they're being examined. And, you know, we have clothes to give them, but we don't always have underwear--especially in the bigger sizes. So, you know, they just come to us..."

And I said okay, and I went home and got all the clothes together. And I went through my underwear drawer and pulled out the stuff that was fit to give away, and I tried not to think about how horrible it would be to have your underwear cut off, and then to move to a new place, full of strangers, with borrowed clothes and no underwear on your body. Or to try to start a new life with nothing but borrowed clothes, or literally no clothes at all. Not a wardrobe full of things that are a little too big, not a closet full of things you're a little bit tired of, but literally nothing.

Houston Area Women's Shelter needs larger sized work clothing and underwear, y'all. Especially sizes 20 and up. And winter coats. And toilettries. And diapers. And everything, all this stuff we take for granted.

winter storage

I gave Letty the clothes and then we had lunch, and we talked about a lot of stuff. I've known Letty since Kindergarten, and we don't have lunch as often as we should, but when we do, we always end up discussing massive things. Because we are massive-issue-discussing friends. Which is good. It unblocks our minds.

One of the things we talked about was fear of poverty versus the ennui of middle class existence. Most people educated in America know of middle class ennui, because we read about it. It's like, the prevailing experience of our literary canon, right? So I knew about it, but I didn't really understand it until I became middle class.

I just bought a house, and Letty's agonizing over whether or not to buy a house, and we both see now what it is--a huge financial commitment to a lifestyle you're not sure you want to live for the life of your mortgage. And, if you fail (foreclose), then you aren't just a failure--you're a failure with worthless credit. Marked for life.

And Letty's been wanting to go to grad school, but says she's afraid to be broke. AKA poor. (I hope she doesn't mind me telling you this. Letty, tell me if you mind and I'll delete.)

Assuming everyone reading this has a little money, and therefore access to a computer and time to read this entry: Did you grow up poor? If so, then you know what it means to be afraid of returning to poverty. Did you grow up rich or middle class? If so, know that all your friends who grew up poor and scratched their way up are secretly, desperately afraid to turn poor again.

So I understood what Letty was saying, on the house count and on the grad school count. And I told her that, even though having a house makes me completely broke (AKA land-poor), I don't mind because this time, I'm controlling my poverty. This time, I look at my budget and make conscious decisions. There's no shame in being broke--in eating ramen noodles, buying thrift store clothes--if I've made the decision to do so in order to hold on to my house. And, if I decide to sell my house and go back to renting, it'll be a slight failure, but again, something I controlled.

So... yeah.

It's winter now in Houston, finally. And it's the holidays. That means that, all over town, people who grew up poor are experiencing PTSD, and coping with it in various ways. Turning the heat up high. Not turning the heat up at all. Spending lots of money at the mall. Not spending money at all. Clinging to family. Avoiding family. Reliving old habits and trying to make sense of them. Creating new habits and trying to move on.

I turned up our heat a little today, because I think it's worth paying to be warm. I've been taking things out of storage--things people gave me that were kind of a pain to store all summer when we lived in an apartment. Tea pot. Coffee press. Warm slippers. Sweaters and coats.

And you know what? I'm glad I have these things, and people who love me enough to give them. And I'm especially glad that I have this little snail-shell house. Meaning it's heavy on my back, but it holds all the things that we need. In all senses of those words.

DJ Drama

Last night we went to local club Rich's to see Felix da Housecat. Because he always puts on a good show, and Rich's is our favorite venue. And, guess what? Felix wasn't there. There was a hand-written sign on the register saying he was in the hospital, and that cover would be free, and that our pre-purchased tickets would be good for when Felix rescheduled.

I hope he isn't really hospital-worthy sick. I hope he just felt like flaking. But if he's really sick, I hope he gets well soon.

The opening act DJs did their best to make it up to us. They did a pretty good job.

After Rich's, we went to South Beach. South Beach is one of Houston's premier gay clubs. The reason we go there is JD Arnold. JD Arnold is, pretty much, Houston's best DJ. He used to work at Rich's for years and years and years. Then he went to South Beach (which is, incidentally, the phoenix risen from the literal ashes of hate-crime-ruined Heaven, as some of you will remember).

And then, JD Arnold left South Beach, apparently. Recently, I think. Because he was there last time we went, several months ago, and now he's not.

"What happened to JD Arnold?" I asked the door guys.

"Who?" they said. "Who is that?"

"Hey, what happened to JD Arnold?" I asked a bartender who was running around.

"Who?" he said, just like the caterpillar with the hookah in Alice in Wonderland.

A bunch of employees gathered together, then, and complained about some customer hitting on or failing to hit upon one of their number. I was kind of tipsy, so I said it again. "Hey, you guys, what happened to JD Arnold?"

They looked at each other, made faces, rolled eyes, and said in a haughty chorus, "Who?"

Then I got it. "Y'all are mad at him, aren't you? Y'all are, like, never saying his name in this club again?" They lifted eyebrows and scattered like feathers on the wind.

I still don't know what happened. South Beach hasn't updated their web site, either.

Last month we went to see DJ Sasha at Bar Rio. I know none of y'all listen to the music I listen to, and y'all probably just mentally blip over my long descriptions of the DJ shows. But, if you've read this far, know that in my fantasies of a post-lottery-winning wedding, I'm wearing a fuchsia silk cheongsam with embroidered peonies, and Sasha is DJing our reception. Got me?

A man called Spooky opened up that night, and he did very well. He's an older guy, looks like an extra on a Lord of the Rings set, in t-shirt and jeans. Not ranking on his looks at all--just saying he didn't look like you might expect a DJ to look. But he played like a mofo, so we loved him with all our hearts, right at that moment.

Then Sasha came out, and I was so, so excited, and I was right up there in the front where I could breathe his air...

... and he played this set that he later described as minimalist (in response to complaints, I think), but which I would describe as easy-listening techno. And I was sad, and disappointed. And I respect that he wants to try new stuff, and that he may be chilling out as he gets older, but, dude...
don't come to a dance club and play undanceable music.

Now I'm thinking JD Arnold will have to play at my wedding. If anyone can find him. If he hasn't been run out of Houston by the local velvet mafia, I mean.

crafting, baby

I painted a bunch of paintings--commercial interior dec stuff like they teach you to do on Trading Spaces--and they came out nice, and I'm happy. And it felt good to make stuff off the top of my head, with no pressure.

Try some crafting today. Start a holiday tradition. Put your dinette set in storage and make your family a crafting room. Let the cat help by stepping all over your drying canvases. (Because, of course, mine did. Thanks, Starbuck!)

Okay, that's all. More later. Thanks for listening.

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3:35 PM #
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Monday, November 19, 2007

Gourds!

We went to an HEB in the middle of nowhere the other day. (HEB is a big ol' grocery chain in Texas.) Out in front of the store, they had crates of bagged gourds and mini pumpkins for $1.50 per bag, surrounded by desperate fruit flies. So I bought three bags of gourds. Even though it's almost too late for harvest decorations, I bought them, figuring I could paint them silver and gold and use them for Martha Stewart-y xmas decorations.

Last night I cut open the bags and sorted through all the mixed gourds, picking out the best ones to display on the mantel. And, oh my god, I love mini gourds so much. I wanted to hug and kiss each one. They're so cute and harvesty. And now I don't want to paint them, because they're so beautiful just the way they are. I want to keep them forever. I want them to be my pets.

blipping over Thanksgiving

So the kids are going to their dad's for Thanksgiving, and we're not even cooking turkey--we're going to a Chinese restaurant. So, in a way, I feel like Thanksgiving doesn't exist and therefore I'm already planning for Christmas.

And it kind of makes me sad, to skip a holiday like that. But then again, I'm so glad to have the kids for Christmas this year, I'll gladly skip Thanksgiving in exchange for that.

vanity update

I got my hair cut, but didn't have it all cut off, like I threatened. They layered the hell out of it, but left the back long. While Tina hacked away, I noted the clear line of demarcation between my old color and my roots. So I went home later and dyed my hair Navajo Bronze, aka "light caramel brown," and it came out dark auburn instead, and it looks nice and I like it.

And we got a new scale, and I've lost 35 pounds total in the past 6 months. And my goal is to lose 20 more, and I'm giving myself 6 more months to do that. So... yeah. Wish me luck.

My boyfriend can cook like a mofo.

The other day we were ambling around the grocery store, trying to decide what to make for dinner. My boyfriend says, "How about chicken wings?" And I said, "You mean like buffalo wings? Eh."

And he made us baked chicken wings, with salt and pepper and garlic, and DAMN they were good. My boyfriend is the master of cooking stuff with just salt, pepper, garlic, and making whatever it is taste like a $29 entree.

My night elf, she is sad.

My World of Warcraft character, Xora, has been stuck on Level 32 for the past nine months. I'm on this quest where I have to go into a haunted house and kill a bunch of zombies. Whenever I log on, no one else is playing that quest so no one can help me out. So I'll go into the haunted house and kill a few zombies, until the biggest zombie kills me, and then I'll spend a while bringing my character back to life, and then I get tired and log off.

I told my kids that, unless they wanted to get grounded, at least one of them was going to have to get online with me and help my character level up.

"I can just play your character for you until you're like, Level 35," said my youngest, who is 10.

"I don't want someone else to play it for me!" I whined. "I want to level up by myself!"

"Fine," said my oldest. "I'll help you the weekend after next, if I have time."

It's that time of year, when the world needs new clothes.

My boyfriend Tad wanted to look at trenchcoats, even though he already owns at least two. But we finally had a cold front, and the temperature set off that trenchcoat impulse within him.

So we went to the Galleria, which is where a few rich people go to shop, and where zillions of poor people go to watch them. We went into Neiman's and pretended we could afford it. We went to Saks 5th and pretended we were classy enough to lift our noses at the mannequins. We went to the new Barney's and sniffed that it was nothing like the one in New York. We peered into the window of Fendi and disagreed over the spotlighted purse. (I was for, Tad was against.) We went to Club Monaco and enjoyed the music. We went to Nordstrom and left in a huff over the fact that there were no more BCBG sweater dresses in size XL. (Which was good, since I couldn't afford one, anyway.)

Most importantly, we noted that fingerless knit gloves (solid or striped) were all the rage again, just like back in the eighties. We thought my 10-year-old son might like a pair. But the cheapest pair we found was $14 at Urban Outfitters, and that was too much.

We left the Galleria. The next day, we went to Target, where we purchased a set of two pairs of knit gloves--one black and one black and white stripes--for $1.49. We took them home and cut off the fingers with pinking shears. When my youngest son got home from Austin that night, we told him our Galleria adventures, then presented him with the knock-off gloves. He takes after us... I couldn't tell if he was more enchanted with the trendiness of them, or with the fact that we'd recreated the trend for so cheap.

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6:37 AM #
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

No One Knows What It's Like to Be the Fat Pants

Okay, so only some of y'all will recognize this feeling that I'm about to describe. But I'll go ahead and describe it. You know how, when you cross the peril-fraught borderline between PlusSizeLand and MissesWorld, suddenly PlusSizeLand, the land in which you've lived for so long, looks like total hell?

I've yo-yo'ed back down to the weight at which I can shop at the roomier not-plus-size stores, and in the Misses' sections of department stores. Granted, I'm only talking about tops and skirts, here -- not pants -- and I still have to root for XLs and the biggest of the misses' number sizes on those tops and skirts.

So I went shopping last week, for myself as well as for my kids, because most of my clothes have gotten cartoonishly big and I needed a few new things. First, I rooted through all the misses' stuff and picked out the few XL items I liked. Then, if I didn't get very much there, I'd shift up to the Women's World sections, or on to Lane Bryant.

And you know what? I didn't want to shop in those places anymore. Just looking at their mannequins made me feel ill. You know why? No, not because I hate my former fat self, or because I didn't want to be reminded of it. It was because women's plus size clothing is UGLY. It's so effing ugly.

You don't realize, if you've been shopping in plus size for a while, how categorically ugly it is. Or maybe you do, and therefore you hate to shop. That's how I'd been for the past couple of years. I hated to shop, and when I did shop, I only bought the simplest things. Black pants and solid color shirts or twinsets. For the weekends, dark jeans and black tops. Not because I wanted to dress like that every day, but because I didn't want the plus size alternatives -- pink pants with blue stripes, beige suits with sequined appliques, purple flowered dresses with purple polyester panties...

So, now that I can fit into misses' sizes (sometimes), I can't even bear to go back to the "women's" sections. It's too sad. It's like a former prisoner going back to see his jail. Why would he?

Plus-size retailers: Please make better clothes. Look at Old Navy -- they make the same clothes in all sizes. Granted, they're cheesy clothes that fall apart at the drop of a price tag, but they're equally cheesy for all sizes. Come on, y'all. Fat chicks want normal clothes, too.

(Everything I say about fatness has been said before, I know. I think Wendy at Pound already said this a long time ago, about how all the plus size clothes have weird sequined appliques and stuff. Hey, look, even better -- she said something a long time ago about how the media hates Torrid because if Torrid tells white teenaged girls it's okay to be fat, then fewer white teenaged girls will be available for mainstream porn. Hell yes, Wendy! I just remembered reason 37 why I love you, all the way back since before 2005.)

So, um... yeah. As my weight wanes, my bad clotheshorse habit threatens to return. See you at Ross Dress for Less, where I'm tunneling like a mole through the aisles.

(What is a clotheshorse, by the way? Does anyone know what that actually means?)

I hope no one was put off by that last topic.

I mean, I hope no one Googles my name and then reads stuff about my diet or my feelings about plus-sized clothing, and then decides not to give me a job, or not to give me a writing award, or not to look for me on Match.com, or not to be my cyber-friend anymore, or not to say hi to me on the elevator, or to mention me in an article about someone else's blog and call me a "whiny weight loss blogger."

Tomorrow or the next day, I'll tell y'all a story about real life, okay? I have this story that I've been reading around town, about a real person, and people who have heard it keep asking me why I don't publish the story or put it on my blog or print it out on fliers and circulate it via telephone poles. So... tomorrow. Or the next day, at the latest. I will tell y'all the story, and hopefully you'll like it. Prepare to qualify.

A Dangerous Obsession

A while back, I was talking to a professional-type person about stress and ways of coping with stress.

"I've been kind of stressed-out lately," I told her, "and I get irrationally worried about things... and so I've been coping with it by thinking about Christmas."

"Christmas?" she said.

"Yeah," I said. "Sometimes, when I get super stressed out by the whole single-mom-trying-to-support-three-kids thing, I let myself get obsessed with Christmas -- you know, what gifts I'm gonna give, what food I'm gonna cook -- instead of, you know, drinking or doing drugs or driving my car off a cliff. It's kind of weird, I know, but it really helps me to calm down."

She said, "Obsessing about Christmas is a waste of time. Have you considered Wellbutrin?"

It kind of hurt my feelings when she said that, so I left her office and didn't go back. Instead, I went to the library and checked out 101 Things to Make for Christmas and A Southern Living Christmas and Christmas with Better Homes and Gardens. I even tried something new and checked out a Thanksgiving cookbook.

And now I feel great. Now I feel just awesome, and it didn't cost me a copayment or prescription.

You know the part of Charlie Brown's Christmas special where the kids wave their hands all over the sad little tree and it turns awesome? Well, the tree is me. You know the part where Charlie Brown pays Lucy five cents to give him psychological advice, and then he leaves her booth feeling worse than before? That is not me. I am not Charlie Brown. See, Charlie Brown is a cynic. I, on the other hand, am a consumer. Get it? Charlie Brown is just reading the wrong craft books, and shopping at the wrong stores.

Okay. Just a little pin prick.

That's all. I just wanted to warm up my frozen fingers with some fast stream-of-conscious typing. Because, you know, Houston is the most air-conditioned city in the world, and therefore it's August and I'm freezing my face off. I'm wearing hose and a sweater and a wool skirt, because the AC is killing me in this town.

I told my boyfriend, "Oh, no, I accidentally dressed like an anime person today." And he goes, "You mean the sexy school girl?" And I go, "No, the frumpy maid who gets tentacle raped by her boss or whatever." And he nodded sympathetically. "I still love you," he said. "Shut up," I told him. "Stop your lying."

For lunch, we went to our favorite pho place, where I watched two Asian girls in grey pantsuits force a skirted Caucasian girl to eat a heaping spoonful of grass jelly, red beans, and packed snow. (Not really snow, but it looked like it.) And my Asian boyfriend was like, "I don't even eat that stuff," and I was like, "I know." And the Caucasian chick looked nervous as hell, taping her stiletto heel crazily under the table. I thought maybe her boyfriend was Asian, and she was having lunch with his sisters to be nice, and they were being subtly, psychologically cruel to her. Or maybe they were her bosses, even though they were all the same age. Because this Caucasian chick obviously knew her way around the chopsticks and the noodles -- she was slurping her food with the best of them -- but she was still nervous as hell. Maybe it was a gang initiation.

The sub-titles will no longer relate to the content under them. I have decided.

Really, I'm just bored. I want to be back home again, at night, signing more school papers for my kids and hearing that their second day of school went well, even better than the first. I want them to be happy and prosperous. I want us to make Christmas crafts, like a family that's happier than the ones on TV. They want me to read them a book at night. They said the last Harry Potter would be fine, even though they barely remember what happened in any of the previous. "What happened in the last one?" I quizzed. "Uh-h-h-h..." said my youngest. "Dumbledore died," said my oldest, now fifteen and six foot two. (Oops, spoiler, sorry.)

"Okay," I said. "Tonight, we read."

We got a new cat during the summer, and her name is Starbuck, (and please don't email me nagging stuff about pet ownership), and she's kind of tripping out right now. "You never told me you had three kids," she said, when they got home from the summer at their dad's. "I had them for you," I told her. "Now you can get them to pet you, instead of always bugging me." In response, she shed a hundred cat hairs on my pillow case, then slowly walked away, under the bed, to wait for me to sleep, and then to wake me up at 4 AM with noisy cat toys.

We got her from the county shelter. Don't go there unless you want to go home with 3 or 5 new pets. It'll make you sad, seeing all the pets that are waiting there for no one. I put some pictures on my Flickr page, but you can hardly understand them because my camera phone was in a bad mood that day. It made my cat all blurry. But that's okay, really, because I want to respect her privacy. She's not really recognizable in the photo, and Starbuck is her psuedonym. (Her real name is "the cat.") We bought her a water fountain for cats. She only likes it sometimes.

The Carousel of Other People and Their Hormones

My cube-mate has quit her job, and she'll be replaced by the most beautiful woman in our company. Which is fine with me, because the most beautiful woman in our company is also very nice. But it's funny... some of our men are pre-swarming. They're coming by, all like, "So, Gwen, how've you been? Heard you're getting a new neighbor, huh? Yeah, so, um... do you have any sprocket reports or widgets I can lend a hand with, today and every day from now on? Here at your desk?"

And I feel like telling them, "You know, it's okay if you want to use me as your excuse to be near Beautiful Chick. But don't start doing it until she gets here, okay? Just leave me in peace til then -- it won't hurt my feelings."

Other, other people are having the other kind of feelings - not the attracted, but the repulsing. Over at his job, my boyfriend has fallen prey to a Bitter Old Woman. You know -- the kind who is miserable and self-denying, and therefore has nothing better to do than to hate on happy people. The kind who stays at her desk on her lunch hour and monitors how many minutes everyone else spends at lunch with their friends. The kind who has no one to talk to, and so makes careful note of others' personal conversations. The kind who, instead of trying to elevate herself from her own misery, spends every minute of her work day working to drag others down, down, down to her miserable level.

So I sympathize with him. I know that type very well.

I don't care if you've got ten babies.

See how I quoted that song above? "I don't care if you've got ten babies, you can work the stick in my Mercedes"?

I don't have anything to say about babies or cars. That's just a lyric that runs through my mind at random moments.

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12:16 PM #
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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Chreativity

So now I'm in the post-holiday, early new year phase where I feel all pumped-up to start new projects. Why does this happen every year? Because Christmas fuels creativity, I think.

I have one writing project that's almost done, so of course I'm eager to start a new one. But discipline rules me, so I'll finish the first project, first. Then, of course, I'll totally lose my enthusiasm for the second, the moment I'm free to work on it. Because projects are like the dream rushes that Alice reaches for, on the boat with the sheep, in Through the Looking Glass. It's almost impossible to be satisfied with the project at hand, and you keep wanting to reach for the ones that look better from far away.

Postpone-a-roonie

You can't tell yet, because I haven't yet updated the sidebar over there to the right, but my novel with Warner has been delayed yet again, until the Spring of 2008.

The thing is, Warner got bought out by Hachette. Did you know that? No, you didn't, did you? You know why you didn't know it? Because Hachette hasn't yet done their big rebranding campaign, of course. Guess when they're gonna do it, then. That's right - right before my novel was scheduled to come out.

My novel is one in a brand new imprint, as well, so they don't want that imprint's launch to get overshadowed by the rebranding. So they postponed it.

All that makes perfect sense to me, so I'm not upset about it or anything. My editor and her boss were really sweet about it, calling us all personally and making sure we were okay. But I was totally okay. I know how things roll, and I don't want the imprint to get overshadowed, either.

Plus, I already got paid for that book, so I'm good. They can postpone it 'til 2037, as far as I'm concerned.

Ha, ha, just kidding. And, actually, I don't know if anyone reading really cares about all those details. But I figured I should type them out, just in case anyone's been wondering.

A Post-Christmas Nasal Miracle

Backstory: When I was 14 years old, my nose got broken but did not get repaired by medical professionals. Hence, my nose has been slightly crooked ever since that day. Not enough so that you'd look at me and think that my nose had been broken... just enough so that it always looks like I'm smirking or holding my mouth weird. Also, once in a long while my nose bridge hurts a little and makes me regret having been poor and unable to get it fixed back when I was 14. So...

Back to the present: So last night one of my kids and I were watching a marathon of Season Two of America's Next Top Model. And I was thinking that, whether you love her or hate her or are grossed out by her subsequent fame-whoring, that Yoanna certainly does have a beautiful face.

And one of the guys on the show agreed with me, and at one point he said, "Yoanna's face is perfectly symmetrical."

After the show, I went to brush my teeth and idly wished that my face was a little more symmetrical than it is. Then, I looked in the mirror at my crooked nose, to remind myself of how crooked it is.

And, weirdly as hell, I saw that it isn't crooked anymore. In fact, I couldn't even see the little bump that used to be on the side of the bridge, up near my left eye. (If I touch it, I can feel it, but otherwise it's now undetectable.)

Isn't that bizarre? Either a good fairy wished my nose straight (in which case: Thank you, Good Fairy!), or else my nose gradually straightened out on its own.

Oh, or maybe I wished it straight, myself, after seeing Yoanna on TV.

Maybe Yoanna healed me with her magical, symmetrical, America's Next Top Model face magic!

Anti-Shopping Mode, Idle Boot Lust

I turned 35 a few days ago (It's too late to wish me happy birthday, so please don't worry about it - tricked y'all, ha, ha, now you just have to read this entry and wait til next year) and I kind of had a half-ass plan to buy myself a pair of boots. Brown ones, though, as I already have 3 or 4 pairs of black.

I couldn't find any brown boots I liked, though. Or, none that I liked but could also afford.

What's up with that? Where are all the nice, affordable brown boots in Houston? Is it that black boots hide their own cheapness better? Probably.

Besides that, I haven't felt like shopping much. Probably because I'm broker than living hell. Having a house costs a lot of money, as y'all most likely already know. But I have a house, so I'm not complaining. But I'm not shopping, either. Doh. Oh, well.

Actually, I'm lying because my dad gave me a gift certificate to Half Price Books for a very luxurious amount, and that's the bulk of the shopping I've done since xmas. That gift certificate has brought me days of enjoyment so far, in book-shopping hours and book-reading hours. So I'm happy. Thanks, Daddy! You rule.

Happy New Year, people. May you all have good daddies, good shopping, nice houses, and/or mysteriously self-repairing body parts.

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11:39 AM #
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Friday, December 01, 2006

Christmas Gift Expectations and Inadequacy

I have this friend. Let's call her Trudy. (Trudy, you're going to know I'm talking about you when you read this. But no one else will know unless you tell them. Don't be sad. I love you. This is a story about our love.) Trudy and I have known each other since 5th Grade.

No, wait. That's not how I should start this. Let's start again.

As longtime readers know, I grew up pretty poor. Actually, I was born rich, in the most beautiful neighborhood in Houston, but then, over the years, Corporate America and Cruel Circumstance shifted in such a way as to watch my family turn poor. Very, very poor. As poor as you can be while still having a house to live in.

So I was 15, 16, 17 years old, and very poor. And yet Christmas still occurred, every year, like it always does.

You know how easy it is for non-poor adults to get caught up in feelings of guilt and inadequacy when it comes to giving gifts. And you know how teenagers' lives are often just long strings of shame and melodramatic humiliation. So, I'm sure you can imagine how crappy it felt for me, as a teenaged girl, to be poor and unable to buy nice gifts for the people I loved.

So, I got creative. Often, right at the last minute - right before the party or the dinner or the choir rehearsal, I would run around our big, drafty house and grab all the materials I could - anything sparkly or expendable - and make my friends gifts. Often, the gifts would be comprised of completely nonsensical things. Or pilfered things. Or things I'd completely invented from found objects and scraps of paper.

Usually, they included writing. It wasn't enough, I knew, to give someone a pair of safety goggles that I'd borrowed from our high school's biology lab. But, if I wrote a story to go along with it - like, say, a story about the goggles having magic that would enable the wearer to view their football-playing crush's underwear - then it was passable. It was funny - a personalized gag gift.

Like I said, I would create these gifts at the last possible minute, and wrap them in comics or aluminum foil or discarded ribbons, and give them to my friends quickly, and swallow down the lumps of shame while I tried to graciously accept their beautiful gifts in return. And, as soon as Christmas was over, I'd breathe the pure relief, and go back to being normal-poor instead of Christmas-poor.

And then I got older, and I got a scholarship, and I went away, and I got married, and I got credit cards, and I wasn't poor anymore. And, thank God, and on the Christmasses that came then, I would by my friends completely normal gifts and feel so freaking good about it. And, once in a while, one of my friends would say, "Remember that year you gave me a whole box of stuff with a list of clues, and one of the gifts was safety goggles you stole from Ms. Alexander's class, and you said they were x-ray goggles and I could use them to see Elias's underwear?"

No, I'd say. Jesus, no, I don't remember that. Thank God. How embarrassing.

I have this friend named Trudy. She's been my friend since fifth grade. Like me, she grew up poor. Like me, thank God, she's doing well now, and I'm so happy for her.

Even though we've lived far away from each other for the last fifteen years, Trudy still always wanted to exchange gifts. Even though we sometimes didn't get a change to do it until January. Part of our ritual has always been exchanging wish lists, first. Sometimes the wish lists contain funny items. Trudy's, I noticed, often contained small things that sounded like groceries. "She must be worried that I can't afford anything better than that," I'd think. A lot of times, I'd ignore her list and buy her something nice, instead.

Last year, I told her, "Trudy, I love you to death, but it's getting to be a massive pain in the ass for us to do our gift exchange. Do you mind if we don't do it this year? Can we just try to get together some time for lunch, instead?"

I hate that we hardly see each other in real life anymore. When we do see each other, one or both of us always has to drag kids/husbands/boyfriends along, because God forbid two women with families should be allowed a single day on their own, right? Y'all mommies out there know what I'm saying. So, I kind of hated getting all involved with the gift/list exchange, then hoping for a chance to see each other in December or January. It was stressing me out. Plus, Trudy kept putting weird stuff on her wish list, and I kept stressing over what to actually buy her. Surely, she didn't just want socks and candy bars and shampoo. But how was I supposed to know what to buy?

A few weeks ago, Trudy called me and, among other things, said, "Hey, I know we said last year that we weren't going to do a gift exchange, but is there any way you'd want to do it this year? It'll only be you and me - we won't buy stuff for the kids or the men."

"Um..." I said. She wasn't the only person I'd skipped last year. A couple of my other friends sent out anti-consumerist emails stating that they didn't want to exchange gifts - they'd wanted to have dinner or lunch, instead. And it had worked out well. Gift buying really stresses me out. I was glad to cut my list short last year - why would I backslide this year?

"I know this is dumb," Trudy said, "but I really miss our gift exchange. Remember, back when we were kids, how we used to give each other candy and painted pennies and rocks and stuff? And we'd write each other letters, and draw cartoons? Seriously, Gwen, those were some of the best gifts I ever got. I know it's corny, but I kind of miss that."

When she said that... I know this is kind of corny, but it almost made me cry.

I didn't even remember, until she said it, that we used to give each other pennies that we'd decorated with nail polish. I barely remember any Christmas-specific letters or cartoons, but, thinking back now, I can imagine what they must have contained. Expressions of loyalty. Laughter over our hardships. Uninformed jokes about sex. Fantasies of what we'd be when we got older. All closed with SYBF - Signed Your Best Friend.

So then, all of a sudden, I knew what she'd meant for the last fifteen years. She'd never wanted "normal" gifts, or "nice" things. She wanted what we used to exchange - the tangible expressions of our love.

All that sounds completely cheesy and homosexual, I know. But I'm not playing Charlie Brown theme music in the background here, and I'm not about to launch into a story about us having a pillow fight in lingerie.

I'm just saying. For the first time in a long time, I'm excited about giving gifts this year.

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9:07 AM #
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Monday, November 20, 2006

Phases

Maybe this is only a societally conditioned woman thing, but: You know how you'll go through little phases throughout the year? Like, there's the gathering phase, where you feel like buying a bunch of stuff, and then the nesting phase, in which you feel like fixing up your house, and then the inspiration phase, when you feel like tearing a bunch of pictures out of magazines or right-clicking a bunch of images online? And then I guess there's a creative phase, when you make stuff, and a sort of purging phase, when you give stuff to the Goodwill or sell it on eBay. And maybe there's an organizing phase, too.

Right now I'm not in any of those phases. And it feels pretty good. Except that I think this is just the eye before the storm that is Christmas, and I'll have to go through several phases, in rapid succession, very soon.

Christmas is special. It has its own phases.

The Generosity Phase - you want to buy tons of stuff for everyone you've ever liked or appreciated.

The Socially Conscious Miser Phase - you want to stop buying things and only give people gifts of your time or whatever.

The PTSD Phase - you remember sad/mad/bad Christmasses past and cower on your couch in several minor panic attacks.

The Weather Phase - you live in a semi-tropical region and feel bittersweet that there's no snow. (Or else you have a snowball fight and wallow in nostalgia. Woo hoo for you.)

The Angst Phase - nothing you picked out for gifts is good enough.

The Greed Phase - you make big lists, mentally or on paper, of things you want, whether you give the lists to anyone or not. Sometimes you flip out and buy yourself a bunch of expensive luxuries, reasoning that no one's going to get you what you really want, anyway, so you might as well buy yourself a gift or three.

The Starch Phase - you want to eat a bunch of orange and brown foods.

The Decorating Phase - you want to put lights and garlands and crap all over your house.

The Over It Phase - you want to fly away to another country and come back in the middle of January.

It's very sunny and warm here lately, in Houston, so, like I said, I'm resting myself until Christmas draws nearer. If it were a little colder, I'd probably be panicking about gifts right about now.

Oh, and I don't get my kids for Christmas this year - their dad gets them. So, really, I kind of feel like I have nothing to be excited about. No... really, it just means a whole other set of phases to go through, some involving loneliness and alcohol, some involving exhilarating freedom and glee.

What are your phases? Which one are you in right now? Why? Or did I just make all this up?

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10:40 AM #
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Thursday, August 03, 2006

Domestic Awesomeness

Everyone knows the good things about owning your own home: you don't "throw away" money on rent, you can make improvements to your living space and it's actually worth it, and you "build equity," whatever that is.

But here are other benefits that I've recently realized and continue to realize during my first month of home ownership.

1. Holiday Decorations

When you live in an apartment, you're lucky if you can drag a Christmas tree up the stairs and through the door with less than 25% needle loss. Or, maybe, if you're very lucky, you can fit an artificial tree box in your closet, assuming you have nothing else to store. Now that I have a house, I can have a fifteen-foot Christmas tree, if I want. And an artificial tree in my garage. Shoot, I can have three Christmas trees up, all year long!

For Halloween, we're going to have pumpkins all over the front yard. And those little Indian corns, too. I could even make a haunted house in my garage and have a freaking party! I could buy one of those giant spiders and put it on my roof. At the apartment, we kept this plastic skull in the closet year-round because thumbtacks wouldn't hold it and I was too scared to piss off the property managers by nailing it to the door. Screw that - now I can nail skeletons, Easter bunnies, American flags, turkeys, or whatever the hell else I want all over the door, then when it gets too hole-y, throw the door away and buy another one!

I don't know if I'm going to be as hardcore as my cousin Helen, who has tons of decorations for every single holiday including Arbor and Columbus (just kidding but almost). The beauty of owning a house is that I get to make that choice for myself.

2. My Own Personal Storage Unit

I'm talking, of course, about my garage. Do I feel like putting my car in my garage? I don't know. Maybe. Or do I want to fill it, instead, maybe, with my boyfriend's dad's cast-off furniture? Maybe. Where am I putting my dead bodies and three artificial xmas trees from now on? Hello - in my garage!

3. My Own Dirt and Grass

I can totally start a mink ranch in my backyard. I can totally get some chickens and a goat. Then eat them!

4. Noise

We can play Dance Dance Revolution again! We can play Playstation Karaoke again! We can take up riverdancing in the privacy of our own home!

5. All New Threats and Guilt Trips

Now, instead of saying, "Wipe the seat! Do you want the apartment people to keep our deposit because you couldn't be bothered to aim it in the bowl??" I can say, "Wipe the seat! Do you want to build equity with pee stains on it???"

6. Everything Is Green

From now on, if I want to buy green couches and green curtains and paint the walls green, and then buy wooden chairs from garage sales and paint them green, and then buy a Ronco food drier and dry a bunch of grapefruit and apple slices and festoon my green walls with them, then my ex-husband can't say SHIT about it!

Oh, wait... I'm getting confused. That's not a benefit of owning a house. That's a benefit of getting divorced and then owning a house.

See? It's even awesomer than I first realized. Thank you, God, Baby Jesus, Virgin Mary, Santa Claus, and everyone else who helped.

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2:17 PM #
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Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Christmas List

I always love it when fictional characters tell what they got for Christmas, and I always hate it when a book encompasses a Christmas but doesn't divulge the gifting details. In that spirit, here are some of the things I got for Christmas and my birthday.

From my boyfriend, whose pseudonym is Tad: a French press single-serve coffee maker, speakers and sub-woofer for my laptop (that I often use as a CD player), Karaoke Revolution and microphone, the Achewood t-shirt I've been wanting, little thingies that will tell me when my tires need air (he can't resist giving me stuff I need), and a microwave for our new apartment. I think that's it.

From my dad: these awesome tiger-head slippers, with glass eyes and everything. (And money.) My slippers were white tigers, and he got Tad normal-colored tigers. The kids keep borrowing them from us...

From my best cousins: money. Thanks for the money, everybody! I'm enjoying spending it!

From my best weekend peeps: Shower gel (Some people think that's a cliched gift, but I specifically wish for it every year because I'm a shower gel glutton.), cologne and sparkle powder, a variety of liqueur-soaked cakes from Neiman Marcus, and very cute shot glasses.

From myself: three little houseplants, plus the dress I'll be wearing New Year's Eve. I plan to buy more later. The mall was insane yesterday, and I need to get down on my writing this week, so I will defer more shopping pleasures til later.

What did I get my boyfriend and my kids, you wonder? Tad got DVDs of Just Shoot Me, a Depeche Mode import single CD (the Precious one with both Sasha remixes), a pellet gun with pellets and targets, the Book of Secrets (includes Colonel's secret recipe), and some underwear. And a t-shirt which hasn't yet shown up in the mail, annoyingly. And snuggling, and love.

For my kids, I got various small toys, a subscription to MAD Magazine, a Real Food oven (like an Easy Bake, but better), a new computer to replace their archaic one, and a new World of Warcraft account so they can play in tandem. We're debating purchasing World of Warcraft gold, as well. We're ruminating on the ethics of it.

Well, that's it. I hope y'all got cool stuff, got others cool stuff, and/or had a really good weekend. More very soon.

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12:01 PM #
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Aw.

So my dad reads my blog this morning and then gets hold of me and says, "Why didn't you ask me to loan you some money?" And I say, "I was actually just about to when I finally got a check in the mail."

I hate to borrow money from my dad unless it's a super, duper emergency. But it's endlessly comforting to know that he's always there, ready to loan it if necessary.

Also, I like to write about the stressful things *after* they're over. So, no worries, y'all.

The Longest Week of the Year

Every weekday of this week has stretched longer than ever as we - my kids, my boyfriend, and me - wait for the day when we can hand each other gifts and then watch each others' looks of pleasure and awe upon the opening of said gifts. Hello - when will it be Christmas? I'm not even that excited about it, but my kids are, so I want it to hurry, for them. In the meantime, I'm sitting here at work trying to avoid eating all the free cakes and cookies that people have strewn around.

My Birthday Is Next Week

On Tuesday the 27th, I will be 34 years old. I never really expect people to celebrate my birthday because of its inconvenient placement on the calendar. And the older I get, the less sorry I feel for myself about it. But this year is totally screwy because Christmas and New Years fall on the weekends, so I don't even have a day to do a special dinner with my boyfriend. (He works weeknights.) And my kids won't be here that week, so I can't even force them to sit in there room for an hour and draw me elaborate birthday cards. (Just kidding. I would never do that to them. Instead, I would force them to watch The Craft or Sense and Sensibility on VHS.) My cousins Helen and Andrea are likewise screwed, because their bdays are on the 22nd and 31st, respectively. Normally we'd all have dinner together, but this year we can't fit it in.

But it's all good, because I have Monday off, and I'm taking my birthday into my own hands. After the kids go away with their dad at noon (unless he's late, which he always is), I'm going shopping. I have to buy a dress for New Year's, first of all, but I also promise to buy myself things that I really, really want, like books and houseplants. Shoot - maybe I'll even get a pedicure. Why the hell not? You only turn 34 once, right?

I like to make resolutions on my birthday. While I'm 34, I will create something awesome. Maybe more than one thing. Who knows? (Me. I know. I have plans, and I will not allow them to fail.) Also, I will make money. Also, I will let my hair grow a little longer. Also, I will start doing more exercise so that my bones don't turn to sawdust. Also, I will take up tennis. Also, I will go on a real vacation. Yay - 34 will be a good year.

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9:14 AM #
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Monday, December 05, 2005

Cycles, Over and Over

Yesterday I sang in the shower, which I hardly ever do anymore. I sang the old religious Christmas songs we learned so long ago, and it felt good, but then made me sad. I miss singing Christmas songs. Sometimes I consider pretending to be Catholic so I can do it again. But then... no.

I'm glad to see that gray is back in style, as a color for women's apparel. Now I have one more trendy color I can wear besides pink and green.

Every year I fear the holiday, then feel hopeful, then become certain that Christmas morning will make all our dreams come true. This year I'm more certain than ever: We're going to have a well deserved good time.

Aeon Sux

Okay, that was mean-spirited. But I couldn't resist the rhyme. Let's try again...

Don't go see Aeon Flux unless...

you're turned on by awesome wardrobe and interior design, to the point that you don't mind it being spoiled by bad lighting. Just saying.

Don't go see it if you need it to be anything like the animated series in any way, shape or form. Because I saw it, and I can tell you that a more appropriate title would have been Dying Hopefully: A Story Inspired by Aeon Flux.

The Question I Get Asked Most

Here's the answer to the question readers email to me about once a week, which is "How do you, as a single mom of three with a day job, find time to write?"

1. I wake up early and write a little bit before it's time to leave for work and school.

2. I stay up late and write a little while my kids are whispering themselves to sleep.

3. Instead of watching TV in the evenings, I sit on the couch and write on my laptop while my children are watching TV and/or doing their homework. (Unless America's Next Top Model is on. I have to watch that every Wednesday.)

4. I take my laptop to work. On my lunch hour, I stuff down some food in the cafeteria and then run to the parking garage and write for 30 or 40 minutes in my car. (I used to carry my laptop into the cafeteria and write there, but the other people are too distracting.)

5. Sometimes, in an emergency, on a deadline, I call in sick and stay home to write.

There. That is the answer, all kidding aside.

And now you know why I'm a crazy, irritable bitch who doesn't know what my coworkers are talking about when they talk about trista, ryan, lost, house, cheater, denise richards sitcom destined to die.

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2:34 PM #
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Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Can we fast-forward past the moving, please?

Because I know y'all want to hear about the last few mattress pads, vaccuum bags, and rusted wrenches still left at my old apartment as much as I want to drive there after work today and deal with them. And because there's nothing interesting in the world left to say about the drudgery that is unpacking. Even if some of the Barbie-containing boxes don't get unpacked, but just shuffled from closet to cross-town closet. Even if Mommy's tired enough to order pizza for dinner once again.

I want to fast-forward past the packing and on to the Christmas preparations. Then, after that, I want to blip over the revisions I still have to write on my second book, and hurtle toward the celebratory drinks that I will finally allow myself to have once those revisions are done. (That's when I'll post all the details, too. When I'm done with my final revisions.)

And, instead of filling out my son's high-school applications and then waiting for all his auditions and recommendations and praying and ritual sacrifices to be done, I'd also like to fast-forward to the day we know without a doubt that he'll be going to an awesome high school next year. And we know the morning and afternoon routes to my kids' three different schools, too.

Why not? Why not spend a few minutes hoping for the space-time continuum to bend itself to my convenience?

Averting the Stress-mas

On the way back home from Austin on Sunday evening, I talked to the kids about how some adults freak out around the holidays because of bad experiences with Christmases past. Then, I shared with them my ambition not to freak out over Christmas Present.

Then I had us go around the circle (or square, formed by our seating within the vehicle) and each say what we liked about celebrating Christmas.

Eggnog, stockings, and picking out one's own gifts, said Dallas.

Stockings, tree trimming, and having one's gifts be a complete surprise, said Rory.

Whatever gifts Mom can afford, plus waking up early and opening stockings, said Josh.

Good, I said. Then that is what we will do. All that, and screw the rest.

I'm trying to do most of my shopping online. This new apartment, unlike the old, has ample room for a tree, which we will purchase this weekend and which I will let the kids decorate. The stockings? I'm using the same ones I sewed them so many years ago, back a million years ago when I had time to do things like sewing.

So, all I need to do is buy some egg nog and rent a few movies... maybe a honeybaked ham and a low-carb cheesecake or two... and that's it. We're good to go.

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3:45 PM #
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Monday, November 14, 2005

I'm Dreaming of an Appropriate Christmas

Nothing is more of a turn-off than the local frou-frou shopping centers putting up giant Christmas trees on a hot November 1st.

I know this isn't the most original topic, but I have to say it anyway. Every year, the money-hungry stores put out their Christmas merchandise earlier. And, every year, I remove more names from my gift list. Always mutually, and with much relief. I'm not the only one sick of being manipulated into believing that Christmas = being guilted into spending money. Give me a break. I want to spend time with my friends, not run around town blowing money on my credit cards and worrying that the unnecessary things I've picked out will appease the Commercial Xmas Gods.

Back when I was a housewife, I got a thrill out of starting my gift-shopping early. I started in October, partially because it was fun and partially because it spread the debt a little thinner. And I made a lot of gifts, too. Now? There's no secret pleasure. You're expected to be planning purchases four months of the year. It's your duty as an American. Support the failing economy by buying plastic-snowman-emblazoned bullshit for everyone you know, or the terrorists have already won.

One fun thing some friends and I started last year, though, was a white elephant exchange party. We all brought food to Jorge's apartment and shared it in front of '80s movies and a Depeche Mode concert DVD. Everyone drew numbers for gifts, 85% of which were cocktail-related. (Hmm.) The best part was photographing each other opening the gifts. Everyone knows that pictures of people opening gifts are the most boring pictures there are. So several of us enlivened the process by making the most over-the-top excited facial expressions possible. I still look at those pictures and crack up, a year later. Can't wait to do it again.

Another fun part of the holiday is movies. Going to the movies, and renting movies with my children and friends.

We don't have snow here, but it'll be nice in December, when it gets down to 60 degrees each day and we can break out the extra blankets. That's when I'll start looking at Christmas decorations, you guys. When it's not hot enough to go to the beach anymore.

Kroger Sucks

Seriously. I'm not kidding. Kroger, one of our local grocery store chains, wins my prize for The Most Consistently Shitty Customer Service. I'm not talking about mere unfriendliness, or your run-of-the-mill lack of common courtesy. I mean that Kroger employees go the extra mile and take the time to show you, in so many ways, that they dislike their jobs and especially dislike being forced to help you with your groceries for their paychecks.

The Kroger on 11th and Shepherd is always a good source for rude teenagers who purposely slam your food into the bags and then giggle moronically when you ask them why they're doing it. However, for an all-out crappy customer service extravaganza, with maximum disrespect for your dollar, you simply have to try the Kroger on West Gray, in Houston's fabled River Oaks shopping center. It really is phenomenal, the way the employees there go out of their way to show their disdain. Whether it's the women in the deli rolling their eyes at you and walking off to finish their personal conversations while you're waiting for your order, or the sackers dropping your plants on the floor and then whispering "what a bitch" to their coworkers when you ask them to be careful, every visit to River Oaks Kroger provides a fresh opportunity to learn that your money is not welcome there. They should put up a sign that says, "If you don't like it, go to hell, or to Randall's, or to Central Market, or to Whole Foods." And you know what? I think I will. Thanks, Kroger employees! Sorry to have bothered you with my annoying attempts to spend my $500 per month grocery-budget allowance on your products!

And, on that note, here's someone even more demanding than me. Fictional character, but still hilarious.

One Last Shopping-Related Thing

How effing annoying is it when stores are closed on Sundays?

If stores are going to be closed on Sundays so that people can allegedly spend all day worshipping God, then I suggest that America declare Monday part of the corporate American weekend so that I can have more than one day a week to get my errands done.

Don't even start me on the fact that most stores are only open during the same hours that I'm at my job. I guess I'm the stupid one here, for not having a housewife to run errands and make purchases for me while I work.

But you would think that if America were the awesome bastion of capitalism that our president and friends are fighting terrorism for it to be, that someone besides Wal-Mart and Kwickie Mart would be open at an hour when 90% of the population can actually shop without having to take a sick day.

And don't even get me started on the suckitude and lack of logic that is Daylight Savings Time...

Instead of putting up Christmas trees the day after Halloween, maybe the local merchants should research more plausible shopping hours and petition the government to give us back our after-work daylight. THEN maybe I'd be able to do my job as a citizen of our God-based, consumerist nation, you know?

Jesus, people. Jesus H. Wal-Mart-shopping, Starbucks-sipping Christ.

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10:11 AM #
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