Check out this interview I did with Eric Ladau of Houston's NPR station, KUHF. (Warning: It has either bad words or bleeped-out bad words in it.)
I'll be reading Growing Up with Tamales for story time at Blue Willow Bookshop, in Houston, on Thursday morning, May 15. Tell everyone you know with kids in the Houston area. How do you find and support local indie book stores like Blue Willow? By going to Booksense.
On Saturday, May 17, I'll be in Dallas, reading and signing at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, for the 13th Dallas Children’s Book Fair & Literary Festival.
On June 22, here in Houston, I'm going to do a poetry workshop. It's free and open to the public, y'all, and they're having one every Sunday in June, taught by local poets I love and respect. So come on down.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Life SkillsWhen I was in third grade at Roosevelt Elementary School, we had a very good teacher named Mrs. Dorothea Terry. Ms. Terry taught us a lot of important things outside the normal, Houston Independent School District sanctioned curriculum. I remember that whenever she had to discuss anything delicate or sexual, such as the time we read Johnny Tremain and someone asked what castration meant, she would first say, "If any of you feel like you can't handle this subject matter -- like you might feel uncomfortable and that will make you giggle or whisper -- please feel free to go into the hall and I'll call you back when we're done discussing it." No one ever left the room, and everyone understood that laughing during such talks was a mark of immaturity.
She taught us how to be good audience members. We were planning a fieldtrip to see The Nutcracker, and so she showed us the proper way to applaud. And I'm sure the lesson encompassed more than that, but all I specifically remember is the clapping, all of us lightly striking our left palms with the fingers of our right hands.
***
Since graduating from public school, I've noticed that a lot of adults in Texas missed out by not spending third grade in Mrs. Terry's class. Whenever I give a reading at a community college, for instance, I notice that a lot of my audience has obviously never attended a reading before. Either they'll pointedly avoid making eye contact with me and the other speakers, or else they'll look at us with facial expressions I'm sure they wouldn't consciously make in other situations. Or they'll quietly talk to each other during the reading, as if they're at the movies, discussing people on a screen. Or, saddest, they'll laugh at something that's meant to be funny, but they'll cover their mouths, thinking they're not supposed to.
I've been to community colleges where the professors treat the students like disabled high school kids. If I'm reading and someone starts giggling and whispering in the back, I'll do exactly what our teachers used to do to us in elementary school. I'll say something like, "Am I interrupting your conversation? Should I pause so you guys can leave the room?"
And then, afterwards, these students' professors will apologize to me and say, "It's hard for them... They come from different backgrounds... They don't go to many readings..." As if any of that is an excuse for rudeness. And I'll feel sorry for those professors and wonder what they put up with in their classrooms every day.
Sometimes I'll speak to a class that's well enough behaved, but very inhibited. And I'll interrupt my own reading/seminar and tell the students that it's okay if they want to laugh, or gasp or scoff, because authors expect listener reactions. I'll tell them, during the question and answer session, that they can ask whatever they want, and not only questions that sound teacher-approved. Because we're all adults, and a reading is meant to be enjoyed. And then the students will loosen up, and we have fun.
And afterwards, their professors will tell me, "Wow, they really enjoyed your reading!" and that they're going to do a class on audience ettiquette, or on how to interview authors, and that they're going to take their classes to more readings in the future.
A lot of times I'll do a reading for one particular class that's reading my book, and then other classes who aren't reading my book will show up to my reading -- required attendance for credit. So, when I go to community colleges or high-school-age events, the first thing I like to ask is how many people in the room want to be writers. Usually, only one or two people will raise their hands. Then, I'll ask how many people are there against their will, and most of them will raise their hands.
In those cases, I shift from talking about my writing to talking about acheiving one's goals. And that's when I get a lot of questions from people who want to be DJs, nurses, entrepreneurs, and etc. And, the more I do these kinds of readings, the more strongly I feel that I have a personal mission. It is to let kids know that they're allowed to do stuff.
You know? Because that's the big undercurrent in all these situations I'm describing to you. I think that a lot of kids are raised with sentiments like, "You don't go to plays and readings. Only those people go to plays and readings. Therefore, I don't expect much of your behavior on the few occassions where you're forced to go to a play or a reading." And how easily does that attitude cloud one's whole life?
"I go to community college. Only those people go to the university."
"I don't want to be an artist. Only people like that get to be artists."
"I'm not going to speak up. Only people like her are supposed to speak up."
I look at Facebook and see all these kids from Choate and Marymount bleeting out their opinions of the presidential candidates, all sexist and misspelled and uninformed, and I wonder where the sexist, misspelled, uninformed comments from 5th Ward and East LA and Compton students are. You know? No, I don't wonder, actually. I know. They're frozen in those students' heads, because only those other kids are allowed to spew silliness, right?
I'm not trying to brag, but I'm a very popular speaker at local community colleges, and the audiences there enjoy the hell out of my readings. I enjoy talking to them, too. My favorite part is after the reading, because -- inevitably -- a few people will come up to me and say, "I really do want to be a writer, but I didn't want to say it earlier." Or, "I write all the time at home, but I didn't think that counted until you said so just now." And, even if I don't sell many books at those readings, I'm always glad I went.
A while back I went to read to a bunch of junior high girls at a local community center. We ended up talking not about my book, but about applying for high schools. We spent more than half an hour erasing misconceptions about who's allowed to apply for better public schools, who's allowed to ride the school bus, who's allowed to get on the Internet and look for information, who's allowed to be smart without worrying about fitting in, who's allowed to want a little more success than their parents had. We didn't talk about writing at all. (But, even so, at the end, someone came up and whispered to me that she wanted to be a writer.) And I was glad I went. If all I ever taught someone was that she was allowed to do a little more, that would be enough for me.
***
Every time I go to one of my son's junior high band recitals, I resent most of the other parents because they're very rude. They talk and yawn during the performance. Between pieces, they make insensitive remarks. The band teachers wear suits and dresses. Our kids wear tuxedo shirts, bow ties, and vests. I wear whatever I wore to work that day ("business"), but then half the parents are in shorts, flip-flops, undershirts, baseball caps. Their hair uncombed. Their teeth full of food.
I used to hate them, but now I just pity them. You know why? Because no one taught them better, because no one ever thought they'd grow up to go to plays or readings or even junior high recitals.
More than that, I pity them because their kids will go places that these parents won't. And their kids might keep things from them, might say things like, "No, I didn't invite my parents to see me play in Boston, because you know how they are. They never go to things like that. There's no use even trying to teach them how to behave."
But, then again, that might not be so bad. I'd rather have my kids do things that I'm too ignorant to understand than have them be afraid to do things, because I never told them they were allowed. 12:05 PM # (24) comments
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
There was bad news, too.I went to court to finalize the arrangements for my middle son, Dallas, to go live [elsewhere] for the semester. And then, [magically, in a process I'm not supposed to describe in detail], my child support got reduced to nothing. And that wouldn't have bothered me so much if it weren't for [the emotional ugliness surrounding the process].
And I wrote a long, angry entry about it here. (And some of you responded with very kind, helpful comments. Thanks, y'all.) And then I deleted that post, because there's no use filling up my blog with [that ugliness]. You know?
So, aside from the fact that I miss my middle son and I'm even broker than I was before, life is still very good and there's no use dwelling on the ungood parts. Right? Right.
1/9/07: And now that I'm having to go back and censor this entry, lest it invoke more ugliness, let me say again how happy I am to have removed myself from my previous life. Thank God.
being engaged
Tad and I got engaged for a few personal reasons, particular and special to him and me and no one else. Namely, this ring symbolizes a promise to each other, and that promise is, "I promise you didn't just spend five years dating me for nothing."
I explained the word engagement to my kids. I told them it usually means the fiances are planning to marry in a year. But that we aren't getting married in a year. "How long?" my youngest asked. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe five years from now. Maybe two years. But probably more than two years. I don't know."
The kids accepted that answer, but no one else will. :)
On Friday evening, while visiting Tad at his place, I fielded my third or fourth phone call from congratulatory friends and family members, all of whom were eager to help us plan the wedding. RIGHT NOW. I was explaining to the caller that we wouldn't make plans until we saved up enough money to have the kind of event we wanted. The caller was trying to persuade me that we should have an inexpensive wedding this spring. Tad was on his second such phone call. We hung up and turned to each other over the turkey spaghetti dinner Tad was cooking.
"Man," said Tad. "I thought getting engaged would make people quit asking us quesitons. But now it's even worse."
I nodded sympathetically.
He said, "I'm telling people, 'She's not pregnant. We don't have to get married right now.'"
"People are excited," I said.
"People need to mind their own damned business," he said.
I told him it was a good thing, that people were so eager to see us married. It meant that they thought we'd be happy together. He grudgingly agreed, then we made up a unified strategy for dealing with other would-be wedding planners. Then we agreed we wouldn't talk about this anymore, for at least a year. Then we ate our spaghetti.
After dinner, we went to a friend's art thingie, where a local string quartet played. While we listened to them, it flickered through my mind that it might be nice to have this string quartet play at our hypothetical wedding, however many years in the future. But I decided to keep that thought to myself. I didn't want Tad to think that I'd been infected with the fever.
After their first piece was done, Tad leaned over to me and whispered, "We should get them to play at our wedding!"
On Saturday, we went to Barnes and Noble so I could spend the last of the gift certificate my dad got me for my birthday. I couldn't help looking through the wedding mags. It's my right! This ring on my finger means I'm allowed! I picked out three of the least obnoxious seeming, then added something called Asian Bride to my stack. In case, you know, I decide to wear an Asian wedding dress instead of a white one. Well... I'm pretty sure I'm not going to wear a white dress. Not a white wedding dress, in any case.
Asian Bride turned out to be for Indian weddings only. (However, those Indian wedding dresses are pretty freaking awesome. I wish I had the slightest excuse to wear one.) The other magazines seemed to fall into one of two categories:
1. Magazines for brides who only care about looking like princesses on the biggest day of their entire lives.
2. Magazines for couples who care about their wedding guests... and thinking up a million ways to force their "personality" down their guests' throats.
I bought an issue of The Knot (Texas edition) because it had the nicest photos and design ideas worth knocking off for cheap. I also bought five gazillion non-wedding magazines. Thanks, Daddy! At home, I flipped through about a quarter of the Knot before thinking, "This is ridiculous. We don't need all this stuff," and putting it aside.
That night, Tad was visiting me at my house. I came upon him in my bedroom with my wedding magazine in his hands and a look of distaste on his face. "This is ridiculous. I don't think we need all this stuff. Do you?"
No. No, I don't. We don't need escort cards or signature cocktails or monogrammed favors or save-the-date cards. Shoot, we don't even need bridesmaids or groomsmen or big white wedding dresses. We decided it right then, as we flipped through the magazine. No superfluous expense. No symbols without meaning.
My friend Yvonne passed on really good wedding planning advice. She said you're supposed to decide which two elements of the wedding are most important to each of you. Then, you spend your budget on those and forget the rest. For Tad and I, the two most important things are food and music. We've already talked about it and decided that, years ago, even back before we ever admitted we might get married some day. Third most important thing, to me, is flowers. But I think we can just have it in a garden, then, and not worry about buying too many.
We've thrown a lot of parties together, and I've always been pleased by how well they go, and how our party priorities dovetail. So I think our hypothetical, years-from-now wedding should be just fine. The more we agree not to discuss it, the more I realize that we've already, pretty much, telepathically planned the whole thing.
"There's no use getting married until we can afford a bigger house," I said.
Tad agreed.
"I wish... Don't think this is weird, but I kind of wish we could get married and then not live together," I said. "Just get married and then keep doing the same exact stuff we do now."
"That's what I've been thinking, too!" he said. "Wouldn't that be cool?"
Maybe we'll end up doing that. Just have a tiny, beautiful wedding, with good food and good music, for our family and friends. Then go back to living our lives and being happy.
Labels: domestic, my sex life, parenting
6:13 AM # (16) commentsMonday, December 17, 2007
How is it Monday already?I have a long to-do list in my purse. Its primary purpose is as a focal point -- it gives me something to look at while I say, "How in the hell am I going to get everything done?"
My tooth hurts but I don't want to tell my dentist yet, because his wife just had a baby, so I don't want to give him bad news while he's still functioning on a half-tank of sleep. It's bad news because my teeth have become notoriously difficult to work on. I used to be the kind of person who wasn't afraid of dental appointments. Now I kind of dread them. It's a race for time -- catching and saving each tooth before it rots out of my head. I keep saying "Just give me full dentures now," but he won't. We are in the middle of excavating the left side of my mouth. I'm so used to blood and gore and drilling and needles now, it almost doesn't bother me anymore. Almost. I used to have nightmares about my teeth falling out. Now I think that would be a happy dream -- all my teeth picking up and leaving, just leaving me alone.
Oops. I didn't mean to talk about my teeth for so long. Oh well. Don't read that part.
We managed to have some good times over the weekend, though. Don't think it's all bad and I'm just going to complain at you. We went to the movies and cleaned our house and killed silverfish as a family, again. We all yelled at each other to stop being so effing negative. We opened the kids' Christmas gift last week (Guitar Hero III) and unlocked every song with our family-style fake-guitar-playing prowess. (I realized that I'm meant to be a bass player, not a lead guitarist. And that's just fine with me.) I told the kids that when I get my next book advance check, we're going to buy an XBox 360 and the Rock Band game. And then we will take over the world. I'm designing our band's logo right now, so we can stencil it on the bass drum. We don't have a band name yet, though. We toured Guitar Hero under the name Frostbight, but that was just for practice. Of course we will need something better than that for the XBox 360 stadium tour. The Partridge Family is already taken, and The Zepeda Family doesn't have the same ring. I don't know. I'll get back to y'all on that one.
leaves
The other day I gathered leaves from the cemetary by my work. I had to make up a practical excuse, so I said I would use them in a collage. I have two 16" x 20" canvases at home that I've painted very red. I said I'd put the leaves on those canvases, instead of painting yellow and orange gourds on them, like I'd planned. The leaves we gathered were burnt umber, gold, light olive, and a little bit of cinnabar red. My boyfriend didn't gather any, he just observed and checked my picks for insects. We walked around the graves, because I don't like stepping on the dead people. It makes me extremely uncomfortable to do so, because I suspect that they don't like it, either. But there were a lot of leaves on the edges of the plots, so everybody stayed tranquil. And I noted, for the zillionth time in my life, how very beautiful birch trees can be. Or maybe it isn't a birch, the one I always look at. It has white bark now and colorful leaves, but it also drops those balls that you step on to smash and unlock the downy, densely packed seeds. You know which ones I mean? The seed balls that look kind of like big, acorn-brown cherries? That's not a birch tree, is it? Or is it? I don't know, but I love that tree.
So I put the leaves in a plastic bag that I had in a desk drawer, and I took them home, and I hope they're not moldy now. Because I haven't had time to make the collage yet, of course. But, in the meantime, I've been thinking that I need to repaint the red canvases and make them blue like the sky, plus gray/white like the tree bark. Then I'll put on the leaves. Then the collages will clash with the colors of my living room. But that's okay. I'm okay with that. If they don't look right, I just won't put them in the living room. I do still want to make them, though.
I said I was going to make a bunch of gifts for Christmas. Made gifts only. But then I realized that I don't have a lot of people to trade gifts with (thank godfully, sigh, ha), and the ones I do trade with, I'm now worried that they won't like the gifts I have in mind to make. But really, what does it matter? How could they like it less than a plastic thing from Wal-Mart? And I've had this argument with myself, in my mind, 9,000 times now over the last 35 Christmases of my life. So I'll stop now. Move forward!
Here's some stuff about parenting teens now. (I wrote a subtitle about venting. Then I vented all this stuff, then realized it was mostly about parenting teenagers. So I came back here and changed the subtitle. Ta da.)
My children (oldest child, mostly) have finally reached the age where they've realized that I'm incredibly ignorant and have no business trying to raise them or even running my own household. And I'm supposed to argue my case -- prove that I am the smartest one, and therefore they have to listen to me and do what I say, always no matter what. Right? I mean, isn't that what you think, when you don't have kids or when your kids are still too young to question your authority?
You say, "I'm not going to let my kid talk to me like that. I will slap my kid across the mouth, and then she will know that I'm the boss."
Or whatever. You say all this stuff to yourself and your friends, about how awesome and fear-inspiring you're going to be, and how your children will be meek subjects who keep their noses clean and still get good grades. You see older parents at the mall with their teenagers, and their teenagers say, "No, Mom, that's stupid!" and you think back to the one time your mom finally lost her temper with you and slapped you across the mouth, or took away your Atari. Or the one time you eavesdropped and overheard someone tell your mom that you were a spoiled fucking brat, and your mom maybe reluctantly agreed, but still defended you because she loved you...
And you bleep over those painful memories and retroactively remove all the spoiled brattery from your own past, and raise your standards for the youth of today and for their parents. And you say... you say...
Whatever. It doesn't matter what you say, or what you said. Because you grow up and your kids grow up. And then they talk back to you, because they're smart and you're dumb, or because they're spoiled and you love them. And sometimes you do get mad, but sometimes you just let them, because you know by now that's what has to happen. Let the kids talk back sometimes. That's what they're supposed to do. Give them their chance. Maybe they really are smarter than you. You hope they are, anyway.
I say, "You're free to disagree with me or express your anger, but you need to do it respectfully. I gave birth to you, and for that alone, you need to respect me. Because, hello, that shit hurt. Y'all were big babies."
It used to upset me when they got angry. But now I'm okay with it. That's their job -- to be little fireballs of anger. Teenagers have to burn off a certain amount of anger, or else they won't grow, right? Anger is the byproduct of adolescence's chemical reactions, right? Seems that way. I kind of enjoy it now, seeing my oldest son get so pissed off. Even when he's mad at me. You go, little boy, I think. (Big boy. Little giant man, actually.) You get mad. It's your time to get angry now. I'm so proud of you for growing!
I listen to my kids argue and complain, and they're now reaching the hardest issues -- the ones it seems like I've only recently overcome, myself.
The first issue is boundaries/control/what you can expect from the people you love. "I helped you level-up your orc but you never help me level-up my druid," in their minds, sometimes equals "You don't love me. I love you too much. You aren't living up to your contract as my brother/friend/guild member." And I have to talk to them about what we owe each other versus what we do for each other out of love, and I try to teach them to set their own boundaries and take care of themselves. And I have to make sure I'm practicing what I preach in my own relationships. Do they see me treat my boyfriend, my friends, my family, the way I tell them to treat each other?
The second issue is wanting approval from others, and caring what others think, and meeting social contracts. One of my kids is so concerned with what his classmates think of him, it stresses him out all night and all weekend. And that one is so hard, because I remember the pain of worrying about that, but I don't remember what finally made me snap out of it. (Time? Exhaustion?) So I just repeat to him what my family said to me, and of course it works just as well, which is not at all. And then he trips me up with logic. He says, "You said I shouldn't worry about what other people think. Then how come I can't wear shorts and flip flops to the party? I don't care if people don't like it."
And y'all know how that goes. Y'all remember, either because your own kids have done it to you, or because you did it to your parents. Right?
I feel like I have to hurry and mature faster, myself. I have to stay several steps ahead of my kids, in terms of maturation and personal development, or else I'll become worthless to them. So I'm doing it. I'm growing.
Cliched syndicated columnist lesson: Watching the kids go through this crap is part of what makes me grow. Duh. Y'all know this already. I don't have to tell you. I'm just venting.
Next
I've been wanting to write something here about reader mail. I got a really angry email from a reader recently, and I wanted to post it and dissect it here, and talk about the patterns that occur in the hate mail that gets sent to me. How it's usually Christian fanatics who feel compelled to scold me, or older women who think I'm making some big mistake in my life, usually related to either dieting or sex. (I used to get a lot of mail from politically conservative men who wanted to lecture me, then assure me that I was still smart and pretty enough to be worth converting. But that's dropped off a lot. I guess I finally turned them off somehow. Darn.)
Then I felt bad about that, and thought that I should instead (or first, at least) talk about the nice mail I get, and how very, very nice it is. I wanted to tell y'all that some of your emails are so kind that I have a hard time responding to them, because I can't figure out what to say because "thank you" doesn't seem like enough. Some of y'all's emails, I put away in my Save box to read again another day.
And I thought that I'd tell y'all that I myself am very, very bad at writing emails to people I admire and whose art I enjoy. I think I'm the absolute master of overthinking my fan mail -- trying to make it sound flattering but not fawning, interested but not stalker-y. And so, instead, I manage to come off as weird, rude, or pointless. This is usually in emails to musicians or artists or other writers. So, after all that, I appreciate y'all's nice emails even more, and it always makes me smile when y'all express fear that you're coming off as stalker-y or crazy.
(You aren't. The general pattern I see is that, if you worry you sound crazy, then you aren't. Because the few crazy, stalker-y people who do write me on a regular basis? Never worry at all about how they sound. They just pour out the crazy with all the confidence in the world, then hit Send and move on their merry, crazy way.)
So, yeah. I wanted to tell y'all all that stuff, and now it looks like I did. Want to see the hate email now? It's the most messed-up one I've received in a while, and I'm going to post it with the sender's full name, and this is why:
1. It's a beautiful exercise in hypocrisy and nonsense, almost to the point that it has to be fictional, in which case the fiction is art and should be shared. Or...
2. If this person, Melissa Mahoney, is as mentally ill as she seems, then maybe someone who knows her will read this and get her some help. Or...
3. If this Melissa Mahoney is just incredibly immature, then maybe someone who knows her will see this and ridicule her in real life, and she'll then learn a valuable lesson about communicating with people on the Internet. Also...
4. If I get murdered any time soon, y'all can give the police Melissa's name, and, most of all...
5. This email does double-duty as advance promotion for my next book!
And now, here it is. My hate mail, by Christian tamale-maker (and aspiring author?) Melissa Mahoney, uncensored and unabridged:
fucking stupid ass bitch. Me and my family make tamales too by Gods grace. FUCK your 'petty judgemental evil thoughts' you fucking antiChrist bitch. dont say 'Jesus Christ'! about some book you like. dont take my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Name in vain. He is Almighty God, and He saves. God gives me deep, merciful, non-judgemental thoughts by His grace. you shouldnt have judgemental evil thoughts. judge not, lest ye be judged. when you judge others with your evil thoughts, God will judge you. God has mercy upon us, and we should have mercy upon all by Gods grace, and not judge one another but LOVE one another by His grace. who the fuck would want to buy a childrens book for their children from you. Jesus Christ saves.
Thanks, Melissa, for reminding everyone that I have a children's book coming out in May, and it is called Growing Up with Tamales, it's in English and also in Spanish, and it is suitable for young readers, as well as for reading aloud to children who are too small or lazy to read it themselves. Email me your mailing address if you are an educator, librarian, reviewer, or book blogger and you'd like an advance copy to review.
:) 5:44 AM # (25) comments
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Sad NewsMy middle son is going to live with his father for a semester.
I'm sad about it. But it's not about me. It's about him, trying something new and hoping for certain improvements in his life. So I support his choice, like any parent would.
It's apparently a more common occurence than I'd previously thought -- kids wanting to try living with the other parent; courts allowing siblings to live apart. It's all been arranged better than I could have hoped, and all three brothers will still spend most weekends together, happily.
And that's it on this topic for now. Even if I felt like saying more about this, I wouldn't because I've agreed not to. In advance, I'd like to thank anyone who wishes to express concern. And I'll ask that they instead just send my son good vibes. Thanks.
Good News
We also got some good news recently, concerning my writing.
Annoyingly, I can't disclose the details of that, either. Yet. Sorry! I just wanted to tell y'all there was good news, too, so the more sensitive among you wouldn't worry too much.
:)
(This is me keeping my chin up. I'm like a British soldier in a Vonnegut novel, that way. Keep your chin up, keep your dignity intact, keep your stoicism fresh, etc.)
something different on which to conclude
I found a really exciting magazine. It's called Shop Smart. I'd seen it before, but assumed it was a knock-off of Lucky. Then, the other day, its cover caught my eye, and I flipped through and realized it was actually Consumer Reports, but for smaller things.
Are you like me, in that you've always loved the idea of Consumer Reports, but don't buy enough cars, trucks, washing machine, or bagless vacuum cleaners to make a subscription worth it? If so, I'm thinking they made Shop Smart for us. This month's issue rates hot cocoa mix. (Nestle's got hated on.) It calls out department store "sale" prices, comparing them to MSRPs. (Sears got burned.) It shows you which Barbies are worth money and gives you tips on decorating for the holidays. In short, it's awesome, and it's all I can do not to call in sick so I can read it cover to cover instead of going to work.
Labels: domestic, materialism, parenting, writing
6:06 AM # (12) commentsMonday, 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.
Labels: Christmas, domestic, parenting, Thanksgiving, vanity, WOW
6:37 AM # (6) commentsFriday, November 02, 2007
"You were destined for a pauper's grave."You wouldn't think listening to depressing songs would cheer a person up... or maybe you would. Maybe you know.
I am undergoing stress lately, so I listen to sad songs from the '90s and it cheers me up. Or maybe what I'm actually doing is listening to the sad '90s songs that got me through my last custody battle, and they are reminding me that I have nothing to fear in this recent custody battle. (Other than attorney's fees.) Because I'm still a good mom. In fact, I'm a better mom now than I was then. And Steven Malkmus and Ben Folds validate this feeling within.
speaking of
Okay, who knows what happened after Ben Folds Five recorded that song using Ben Folds' dad's answering machine message? What did his dad say? Was he amused? Embarrassed? Proud? I imagine he was proud, but I wish I could get an anecdote on that. Wikipedia has nothing. What, then, is the purpose of Wikipedia? I have to wonder, because it's sorely failed me in this regard.
domestix
Last night, as I read the kids their latest Harry Potter chapter, we got to the part of the book where Harry learns the astonishing, shocking, hardcore truth.
Usually my kids like to crack little jokes throughout the readings, or else poke each other and poke the cat, but this time everyone was listening, silent as heck, mouths agape.
"That's sorry," my middle son finally said, upon the conclusion of the chapter. His brothers agreed. What happened to Harry Potter was sorry.
I'm now gearing up -- gathering the emotional strength -- to read them the next chapter. AKA, the Tear Jerking Chapter. Y'all who read the book know which one I'm talking about.
I was telling my friend Joolio about this -- the Boy Who Lived and The Chapter That Awed -- and he asked if I purposely read the book in a dramatic way.
"Well, yeah," I said. "I try to do different voices and stuff. You know. You can't read aloud if you're gonna do it lame."
He said that he not only did voices, but he would also do dramatic hand gestures when reading to his kids. (Back before they turned to teenagers.) He said they'd tell him, "How did the monster do it, Dad?" and he'd have to do the gestures again. He did his monster gesture and I had to laugh.
But I wasn't laughing at his monster. I was laughing because it's kind of awesome to read your kids a story and have them enjoy it, and people who don't know that are missing out.
I said this before, I know. But I'm still thinking about it, because reading my kids Harry Potter is one of the best things going on in my life right now. Just like it was nice when we got into the van last night and the old '90s songs came on, and my middle son said, "I remember this song. Isn't this Ben Folds Five?" He's a musical genius, that one. He remembers every song he's ever heard.
weight-loss update
Don't think I'm being insecure, but I have something I need to say, to clarify.
Remember how I told y'all I lost 31 pounds? (It's 32 now.) Well, I meant that I lost the 32 pounds I've gained since 2003.
So, if you haven't seen me since 2003, you won't notice anything different.
That's all. Just wanted to disclose. Don't want anyone to think I'm misleading, here. For the record, I am still proud of this accomplishment. The other day I told my boyfriend, "Look. These are the pants I wore on our first date! They fit me again!"
He was like, "Oh, wow." But non-chalant. He's a very good boyfriend and therefore doesn't get too excited about the weight loss. I love him.
I was supposed to have lost 33 pounds by Wednesday, but I've only lost 32. Sighz. Okay, onward. 12:35 PM # (6) comments
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Right Now1. I am tired because tonight we did CathE's workout instead of Gilad's, and CathE is driven by demons. My triceps tremble and burn.
2. I am sad, tired, annoyed, resigned because my children's dad is trying, aGAIN, to sue me for custody of them. This time he claims that I neglect them -- that their physical and scholastic health is endangered every day that they spend with me. I strongly suspect that he's pulling this last ditch effort in the vain hopes that he'll get custody right before he has to show the court his latest 1040. (The one that shows that he just had a new house built, and that he still owns a big chunk of property that he's renting out to commercial tenants, and that he therefore cannot possibly make as little money as he's been claiming he does.) His most damning evidence against me: One of our children has plantar warts. ONE OF OUR CHILDREN HAS PLANTAR WARTS! I pray that the judge makes the right decision...
3. I am happy because I got my auto loan refinanced and will henceforth save 3% interest and $75 per month. Saving money! Yay! My Excel budget spreadsheet is happy. I fed it this arithmatic and it liked it.
4. I am (not as) stressed (as I should be) because I haven't yet begun to make my costume for Saturday night's costume party. I have all my materials, and I dyed the top half of my outfit. But I still need to make a skirt and wings. I need to take my sewing machine out of the closet. That's the hardest part, probably -- taking the sewing machine out and threading it. After that, it should roll like duck back water.
5. I am about to read Harry Potter to my kids. Remember the NYTimes book critic who said the last HP book sucked, and that his daughter was relieved when he gave up reading it to her half way through? I feel sorry for that guy and for his kid. Maybe he should take some lessons in how to read aloud. I get a lot of practice reading aloud, since I'm an author and I occasionally read to college kids and whatnot. College kids are a difficult audience -- especially the ones who are only listening to you for course credit. Anyway, maybe the NYT critic should read to college kids for a while, then go home and read to his daughter. Because I'm reading Harry Potter to my kids, and we're all into it. My kids are like, "OMG! Ron is annoying! Hermione is annoying! Harry is annoying! What's gonna happen next? Please read one more chapter, Mom!"
6. I am going to bed early, in the hopes that a little extra sleep will help me out. Lately I'm having lots of crazy REM time, and lots of dreams in which I eat sugary foods by the pound. Maybe because my body's pissed at me for working out now?
7. I am planning to wear something boring tomorrow. I've lost 31 pounds since May. Today I wore something a little bit less than boring, and I got a lot of comments. (I wore a skirt that fit instead of a skirt that's one size too big.) I don't really like it when people comment on the way I look. I mean, if you want to compliment my clothing choices, or my fitness progress, then that's fine and I will thank you. But it isn't necessary to compliment or backhandedly compliment my body or any of its parts.
8. I am looking forward to the year 2008. I have a feeling that's going to be a good year for me, and that 2007 was just prep time. So I'm still prepping. But I'll be glad when this year's tucked away and I can move on to new things. You know? 8:17 PM # (12) comments
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Dark Is Rising, people!Just have to say this real fast, before it's too late.
If you read The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper, as a child and you thought it was awesome, and you:
a) don't want to see the movie because you're scared it'll suck, or
b) didn't even know they'd made a movie of it because they only advertised it on kids' TV stations...
then you should go see it, real fast, before it leaves the theaters. Because we saw it last night and it was awesome. I went in with the a) mindset, above. I didn't expect much. They modernized the hell out of the story, setting it, like, yesterday, with the Stanton family keeping in touch via online video and Will Stanton having an IPod and all that. And some of the events were nudged around, of course. But, in general, it was awesome. The cinematography was beautiful, the special effects fabulous yet tasteful, and the actors, all unknown to me, were well-groomed and did their jobs very well. All three of my kids, ages 10, 13, and 15, enjoyed it. Even though the younger two hadn't read the book, they were able to follow along quite well.
It was better than that Eragon movie, and probably better than most if not all of the Harry Potter movies.
Funny thing: We were the only ones in the theater last night. (Actually, we were probably the only patrons in the entire cinema.) Since they were born, I've been very strict with my kids about movie manners. We don't talk during movies. Never, ever. Unless it's an emergency, and then we whisper directly into each others' ears.
But last night, since we were the only people in the theater, that rule could be relaxed. We talked, and then we yelled. Well, I did, mostly. I was like, "OMG, that's messed UP! No way! Dude! Oh my god, I'm freaking out! That is too scary for me!"
And my kids were very indulgent, only rolling their eyes affectionately or else politely yelling "Ooh!" a couple of times to keep me company.
I'm gonna go back and see it with my boyfriend, who never read the book, to see if I'm just imagining how good it was.
Okay, that's it. I have a hundred other things to tell y'all, but will save them for later.
Labels: parenting, pop culture
6:14 AM # (8) commentsTuesday, October 16, 2007
Possible Reasons to Get Into ShapeNot my reasons, necessarily. Just hypothetical ones.
1. To fit into better clothing.
2. To wear a certain Halloween costume that you didn't feel comfortable wearing before.
3. To participate in activities you were physically unable to do before.
4. To improve your health.
I know we're not supposed to say that fat people are less healthy, but I have to tell y'all that my hypoglycemia has improved dramatically since I've lost a little weight.
5. To look sexier.
Cheekbones, high waist-to-hip ratio. Human biology says these are sexy.
6. To be able to try new... um... yoga positions.
7. To get more clothing on sale.
Smaller clothes always seem to go on sale more often. To be able to find better stuff at thrift stores.
8. To go up the parking garage stairs without breathing all hard and making your lunch dates worry that you're going to have a heart attack.
Reasons to Lose Weight that May End in Heartbreak
1. So that people will love you.
2. So that people will treat you better.
3. For revenge.
4. So that your life will go from miserable to awesome.
Thrift Store Shopping
I don't mind telling y'all that I'm kind of broke right now. This mortgage and all the expenses that houses incur are kind of killing me. But it's all right -- I have a house. I have equity.
So, in the meantime, I've been losing some weight, right? Remember I told y'all that? And, I'm glad to be losing it, but at the same time, I can't afford to buy new pants as fast as I've been needing them.
Enter: Thrift store shopping.
I have tons of fluctuating issues with thrift store shopping. Sometimes I think it's cool, and fun, and good for the environment. I know lots of people who shop exclusively at thrift stores, and they find really awesome clothes to wear, and I admire them for it. I like vintage clothing, in general. I like the idea of wearing something creative, and something you won't find at every single mall on earth.
But then, sometimes, it gives me PTSD over growing up poor. The smell of the Goodwill will depress me, I mean, and I'll have to turn around and leave.
Other times -- times when I'm fatter -- I hate thrift store shopping because, apparently, fat people never give good clothes away. I don't blame them. When you're fat, it's hard enough to find good-looking clothes. Why would you give your good stuff away without knowing if you'd be able to replace it? No, fat people have to hold on to their good stuff. I know, because I've been fat. More than once.
I'm still pretty fat, but less fat than I was before. Less fat than the pants in my closet, in fact. So, over the weekend, my boyfriend and my youngest son and I went thrift-store shopping. And, oh my god, I am going to shop at thrift stores for the rest of my life, y'all. I mean, at least for as long as I'm less-fat and I have a mortgage I can barely afford.
We went to this one by my house -- one of those gigantic ones with a name like Value Village or Thrift Town or Used Universe or whatever. One of those ones where all the aisles are organized by color, and all the signs are in Spanish, then English, and the staff who sets the prices has NO IDEA what's valuable and what's not.
I mean, granted, what's valuable to me doesn't have to be what's valuable to them. It's good when everyone likes different stuff, right? But still -- it doesn't cease to amaze me how you can go into a thrift store and buy either a polyester jewel-toned skirt suit with big gold buttons for $11.97, or else a wool sweater for $1.93.
Luckily, this thrift store didn't have Depressing Smell. It just had the normal, slightly musty thrift-store smell that fades from your nostrils within a few moments.
I found two sweaters, one top, one skirt, a pair of work pants, and two pairs of jeans, for $30! Dude! And they were nice, too. Some of the stuff even seemed new. I've noticed, lately, that the Goodwill carries new clearance merchandise from Target, Mervyn's, and Wal-Mart. So maybe this Value Thrift World store does, too.
One of the pairs of jeans was from the Gap, and it was good to know that I can wear pants from the Gap now, because I haven't had the guts to try on Gap pants in an actual Gap store yet.
I probably would've bought more stuff, but I was tired of looking through the racks. You have to be in the mood for it, and we were pressed for time. My boyfriend didn't find anything because he wasn't in the mood. My son, however, found a $6 men's blazer that he simply needed to own. He needed it, y'all. For formal wear. For cool weather. For the simple fact that it was six dollars and it looked good on him. Never mind that he's only 10 years old. He needed it, so I bought it. I can't deny him. I know how it feels, to need cool clothes like that.
So we raked it in, and I was glad we went. Just like, for the second year in a row, I was glad we went thrifting for our Halloween costumes, too. A while back, we went to a smaller local thrift store -- our costume-luckiest, and my boyfriend bought a suit and a shirt to use in his costume, totalling about $9. I bought a bee-oo-tiful ladies' full slip (the kind of thing you'd only find in the lingerie section of the thrift store, these days) for $2.32, that will, with a few yards of tulle, become my fairy costume.
I know a photographer who uses thrift store lingerie for photoshoots. I know several bloggers -- including some of y'all reading this, maybe -- who regular post their thrifting finds on their Flickrs. I know artists who scout thrift stores for art supplies. During the summer, I bought a bunch of Barbies from the thrift store to use in my own project. It was, like, twelve barbies for six dollars. Something ridiculous like that. Beautiful Barbies in all colors and vintages. And then a big-headed Filipino Bratz boy, for good measure, for 75 cents.
Anyway. I'm happy. I'm broke but I'm happy. You know? I'm realizing lately that it's totally possible to be both, as long as you have people to love and a little bit of creativity.
Tell me about your thrift store finds, your reasons to get into shape or not, or whatever you want to tell me.
Labels: Halloween, materialism, parenting, vanity
6:25 AM # (24) commentsSunday, September 30, 2007
eBay SaleYou guys, I'm selling some crafty products on eBay, meaning products I crafted myself, as well as a few other things. Feel free to look at them or to ignore them, as you please. Either way, it won't hurt my feelings. I just have to sell things periodically so I can continue to write off my craft supply purchases on my taxes. It's a sickness, I know.
For sale:
bracelet with dangling pastel beads
carnelian and red agate necklace #1
carnelian and red agate necklace #2
rhodonite and rose quartz necklace
bronze and pink freshwater pearl necklace
pink and gray dangly pearl necklace
pale jade necklace
green wood bead necklace
amber earrings
silver ring
amber ring
garnet ring
silver cuff bracelet
vintage cross pendant
that painting I did a while back, of the woman
There you go. Happy browsing.
Get Rich Quick Scheme
The other day I saw a People magazine, and its cover gave me an idea. So I turned to my son who has Asperger's, and I said, "Hey, Dallas, how would you like it if Mommy wrote a book all about your Asperger's and how tragic it is and how dramatic it's made Mommy's life? And then Mommy could go on book tour and make a lot of money?"
My son said, "More money than you make writing fiction?"
I said, "Way, way more."
He said, "Would you tell heart-rending personal stories about your strength, your struggle, and your survival that would embarrass me, later, when I'm old enough to understand them fully?"
I said, "Maybe. Then again, maybe not, since you do have Asperger's. Maybe you'll never fully understand, or else it simply won't hurt your feelings. We can always hope, but either way, we'll make money. Don't forget the money."
He said, "Will you use the money to buy me a PS3, an XBox 360, and a bigger TV?"
I said, "Of course I will, honey."
He said, "Then sell our story, Mommy. Sell it away!"
Just kidding. That conversation never took place.
[Edited to clarify: Hey, everybody. This segment of the entry is referring to Jenny McCarthy, as featured on the latest cover of People magazine, promoting her book about her personal struggles with her kid's autism, and the power of Jim Carrey's penis helping her through it.
This segment of the entry is not about my long-time fellow blogger and author Rob Rummel-Hudson. For the record, although I've been catty in my time, I'm not catty/lame/rondo enough to hate on Rob on my blog, while linking to him and Facebook-friending him at the same time. If I thought Rob was selling out his kid for money, I wouldn't link him or Facebook friend him. C'mon, people. Y'all should know better than that.]
Inspirational
On the way to work, I pass a company that performs a very specialized service for other companies. It's not a service that I'll ever need, but I always stare at the company and remember its name, because it has an inspirational marquee. Know what I mean? They have one of those LED signs on which the owner has chosen to put a different motivational saying each day.
Weirdly, although I normally ignore crap like that, this marquee frequently inspires me. Like, one day, a while back, it said something like "If you knew you wouldn't fail, what would you attempt?" Something like that -- poorly worded, but it got the point across. What would I try to do if I knew for certain that I wouldn't fail? I thought about it until the end of my commute.
Usually, I end up thinking about the owner of this company and what his motivation is for providing these thoughts. He could use the marquee for advertisements, but instead, he tries to inspire us all. Why? What kind of person does something like that?
It's something to think about on a long, long drive.
Dazed and Confused and Swollen
If none of this makes sense, it's because I'm on drugs, because I recently had surgery, because my teeth are sad and lame, and yet strong and stubborn and constantly having to be messed with by surgical means. I had this jacked-up tooth remnant, under an old crown, and it turned bad, so my dentist (who is the best dentist in the world, fyi) tried to remove it with pliers and such, but it wouldn't come out because the rotten tooth was holding on with all its might to my jawbone, as all my teeth like to do, apparently...
... and so my dentist was forced to give up, sweatily and reluctantly, and he sent me to his friend, the best oral surgeon in the world, and she removed my tooth (and I told y'all before how she looks sort of like Mimi Rogers, but I never told y'all that she studied dance at the same school, at the same time, as Madonna!), and it went as well as possible, but now I'm kind of achy and drugged up. Bleh.
Oh, well, that's life, though. My super power is fast healing. My kryptonite is cavity-prone teeth. If teeth being fused to jawbones were a super power of any use, I'd be bragging that I had that, too. But it hasn't done anything for me yet. We'll see what happens, though. Maybe one day my stubborn teeth will save the world. 10:14 PM # (25) comments
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
LatelyI used to never drink red wine but now I only drink red wine. I've gone from merlot to cabernet and chianti, and next must be shiraz.
We bought our cat a water fountain. She likes to drink the water right from its trickle source. Some people would say it's a waste of energy, to keep it running, but I think it's such a small thing to make a small creature happy, and therefore worth doing. You know?
I think I'm gonna be a fairy for Halloween. Maybe. I'll have to make the costume myself, though, because I don't want to be a slut fairy, and therefore there's no suitable costume in the stores. (All the women's costumes for sale are slut costumes. Remind me to complain about that later.)
This is what I have time to do, between my long commute home and bed time:
1. monitor homework
2. monitor everyone getting fed, one way or another
3. nag about the chores that should've been done before I got home
4. clean up only the very messiest messes, concurrently with one of the tasks above
5. exercise with Gilad
6. nagging the kids to brush their teeth and wash their faces
7. the reading of the bedtime story
and that's about it.
Every single other thing -- dentist bank groceries bills boyfriend oil change tires laundry -- I have to do over the weekend. Or during my lunch hours. Or in my dreams.
I'm glad we got a cat. This one doesn't tear up the furniture or make a big mess, and I feel fleeting joy whenever I see her little cat face. She always has a funny or cute expression. She walks around in a constant state of "Hey guys," or "Am I interrupting?" or "JESUS, A SQUIRREL!!" or "In my fantasies, everyone is chasing me. Look how clever I am, running away from them. Oops, sorry.. smashed into the plant again..."
Back to the Halloween thing.
Not a slutty fairy, and not a pink or purple fairy, and not a gothic fairy, and not an overtly glittery fairy. I want to be a nature-based fairy, in shades of green or aqua with brown, and only a little bit of magic in evidence. In my mind, as I design it, I think the words "pond fairy." I'm a pond fairy, dammit. We're going to a party where I always feel a little insecure. No, strike that -- I always feel insecure at any Halloween party we go to, because I feel like there's this giant expectation that all the women must be dressed promiscuously, and they all must be thin, and the whole purpose of the holiday is to put them on display to the men serving them liquor.
And that's fine -- I'm grown-up enough to ignore any bullshit that I don't want to take part in. But at the same time, I want to get all into it and make a nice costume. Yet I feel there's no use in wasting my creativity on such an event. You know?
I guess I could go to the Ren Fair, because the people who go there are more appreciative of creativity. But we're bored of going there and seeing the same exact stuff year after year. So I tell myself to make whatever costume I want, and then to photograph it and put it on my Flickr, and that'll make it worth the effort. But then I feel silly about that. How vain, to spend money and effort on photos meant to show off, right? (Same way I feel, now, about doing any creative thing for which I don't already have a fee negotiated. :( )
Worst part: I get envious of my boyfriend. He loves to work hard on his costumes and come up with something awesome every single year. And people appreciate it, and they compliment him. Then, they look at me and think, "Not sexy enough," and move on. And I feel... whiny because I haven't received enough attention, I guess. Hate to admit such a weakness, but that's how I feel. Creativity should trump plain nudity, in my mind, but it never will. Will it?
I was looking for inspiration online. (Fairy costumes, I mean.) I found this Flickr set called Convention Costumes Pool. Look at it. What do you think? How many of the women pictured here enjoyed making their costumes? And how many enjoy displaying their bodies to a bunch of convention guys? And how many women here enjoyed making their costumes, but got completely ignored in favor of the convention guys and the women displaying their bodies?
There were some bad-ass costumes among the social experiment, though. Check it:
1. Final Fantasy = awesome piping
2. meshy mer-person
3. Final Fantasy hangover?
4. Awesome Color Scheme Woman
5. I need this woman's wig.
And you know what?
Screw it, while I'm there, I'll just link y'all to some of my favest Flickr faves:
1. shoe fetish
2. If I had to date a non-human, it would be Relax Bear.
3. I want to eat this (then follow Jackie around and eat everything else she eats, too.)
4. Stained glass is always good.
5. So is just about anything that Jagosaurus photographs.
That's all.
Labels: domestic, fantasies, Halloween, lookism, parenting, photos, sexism, vanity, venting
7:57 PM # (9) commentsTuesday, August 28, 2007
No One Knows What It's Like to Be the Fat PantsOkay, 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.
Labels: Christmas, lookism, parenting, psychobabble, venting
12:16 PM # (25) commentsThursday, August 23, 2007
Things I Do When You're Not LookingI.
I listen to other people's conversations. Not in the eavesdroppy way that some people do it -- listening for something interesting and giggling within at my naughtiness -- but in a very concerned, involved way. I listen to people talk about the most mundane things, and then I form huge bubbles of perception around each person, and then I worry about them. In fact, I don't even need to hear people talk in order to do this. I'll see someone on an elevator -- the look on her face, her body language, her clothing -- and I'll suddenly know way too much about that person. And I'll worry. "She needs to quit worrying about her kids," I'll think. Or, "I hope she has enough money saved for her retirement." Or I'll think about the kind of man she might be happy with, and then worry that she'll never find him. I get way too involved, and then I'm tired and frustrated with the world at the end of each day, and I wonder why.
II.
When I meet someone new and their personality type isn't immediately recognizable to me, I'll become semi-obsessed with working out the details of that person's personality. My secret curiosity about that person is insatiable, until I learn enough to feel I have them all worked out.
Sometimes I will teach myself to mimic the person's voice. Sometimes I'll take my interactions with and eavesdroppings on that person and fashion them into quick stories with beginnings, middles, ends... and punchlines. Always punchlines. Then, I'll tell the stories to my friends.
Some of my friends have their favorite characters. "What's Olga doing today?" my friend Ashley will ask. And I'll tell the latest story I've collected about Olga. If it's someone who continually yields good stories, then I will start to love that person, secretly. I'll love them so much, and know them so well, I'll be able to make stories about them long after I've ceased to know them in real life.
I don't think my favorite characters know the way I feel about them, or that they could ever guess. Either that, or they're already my friends, and they've learned to put up with me applying creative license to their lives.
III.
I explain things to my kids. I got this from my dad, I know, because he used to answer our questions with long, round bubble strands of beautiful tangents. But I try not to do it like my dad did. Whenever my kids ask a question, I form a mini lesson around it. As succinctly as possible, I tell them the truest answer I know, then give them examples from their own lives, then talk about how the answer could affect them when they grow up.
I like to think that I'm good at this; we have long conversations in which all three kids share their perceptions of whatever topic we're on. Normally, this occurs in the mini van on a long drive home. Sometimes, we supplement our discussions by looking things up on Wikipedia when we get home. The other day, our topic was cologne. We talked about the purpose of cologne, signature scents, skin Ph levels, and our own (my boyfriend's and my) philosophies on just how much cologne a person should wear. (My boyfriend and I agree that your cologne should only be detectable by someone who knows you very well.)
When we got home that night, I let the kids smell various colognes I had, and test the most gender-neutral ones on their own skin. Since that night, we've gently pointed out to my youngest that the Axe spray deoderant he likes is not serving any of cologne's higher purposes.
I feel like there are hundreds of things I'm responsible for teaching my kids before they grow up and move away. I want to cover all the things I should have known before I left home. So far, we've talked about cologne, credit scores, the stock market, renting vs owning, sex, sexual orientation, healthy vs unhealthy relationships, insurance, checking accounts, interest rates, politics, religion, and morality. But there's still so much more I should tell them. I hope I have enough time. 6:52 AM # (3) comments
Thursday, August 16, 2007
I feel simultaneously old, proud, and broke.My son wants an electric guitar for his 15th birthday.
Maybe I'll dig up my old Led Zeppelin chord charts for him, while I'm at it. Ah, youth. Ah, memories. Ah, wasted lessons! Anybody got a cheap guitar for sale, let me know.
Houston, I love you, but you're stupid.
How hard is it to drive without touching your car on the other cars around you? It's too hard for people who take my freeway home, apparently. Especially the people entering/exiting on a certain exit. Every time the DJ says, "And there's a wreck on [Gwen's freeway]," I say, "Was it on [the exit where 90% of the wrecks occur]?" and the DJ says, "Yes, Gwen. Yes, it was."
So then, today, it was raining. It's raining a little because Tropical Depression Ernie (or whatever they named it) is edging its way into town. It might be followed by Hurrican Dean, and it might not. But that's beside the point. The point is, it started to rain, and therefore several people in Houston automatically lost the few driving skills they had. There was a multi-car pile-up on my freeway this morning. There always is, every effing time it rains. Not when it storms, and not when it hurricanes... all it has to do is rain, and people are wrecking all over the place.
People. Put down your cell phones. Put down your eyelash curlers. Stop texting on your Blackberries. For the love of God, stop working your Sudoku puzzles. (I swear to God on the Bible, I saw a woman doing that on the freeway the other day. While driving! Granted, traffic was stop and go. But still!)
If you know in your heart that you aren't a very good driver, or that you're easily distracted, or that you're really bad at judging distances and brake times... Please, please, please put down all your other stuff and keep your eyes on the road. Damn it. Seriously, people. Get it together. What would you do if you had to live in a city where it snowed? You'd be dead by now, wouldn't you?
Also: If you know your car's a piece of crap and it's likely to stall on the freeway, take the effing feeder road, instead. Or, at the very least, ride in the freeway's rightmost lane, so you can get to the shoulder if anything happens. Leave the middle and left lanes for people who can afford tune-ups and gasoline, okay?
I know no one who needs to is reading this. I know there'll be some jacked-up, time-consuming accident on the way home this very afternoon, in fact. Screw it. I'm doing happy hour after work. I'm not driving home til dark.
Food Patterns and Vanity
Do you ever get into a certain food flow? Like, a craving that lasts a long time?
Right now I'm really into eating eggs and toast for breakfast. Every day. I think I've had eggs and toast for about 18 days straight now. My body, it needs the protein. It wants the bread and butter for comfort, too. I'm thinking about buying a toaster, actually, so I don't have to outsource the toast production all the time. But I know the minute I get one, I'll stop wanting eggs and toast. I'll go back to Special K Protein, or Generic Version of Special K With Strawberries, instead.
My other food flow, lately, is plums. Plums are pretty awesome, don't you think? They don't get mushy as fast as peaches, and they don't get mealy like nectarines. And their skins hold everything in, and they're a compact, almost cute size, and they only have, like, 40 calories each. And you can eat almost the whole thing, apart from the pit and the stem. They're like cherries, but bigger and cheaper, and less susceptible to mold. So I'm really into plums right now. (You're like, "Uh, thanks for that info," right?)
Today, in other calorie-related news, I finally lost enough weight to wear this shirt that I've been holding onto, without its buttons popping off my chest and putting out somebody's eye.
Which isn't too crow-worthy, in the grand scheme of things, because that just means I've fought back down to the same weight I was at a year ago. And I still have quite a ways to go to meet my goal, which is "the weight I was at 2 years ago."
And the seasons, they go 'round and 'round, and the yo-yo diet goes up and down. I'm singin' 'bout a carousel of fat...
(Sorry, Joni Mitchell. Sorry!)
I mean, none of this really matters, in the grand scheme of things. But, at the same time, I'm happy to be wearing this shirt again. 11:57 AM # (10) comments
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The Plant WhispererIf you give me an office plant that's been neglected, I will bring it back to life. On my desk, that plant will flourish.
You know why?
Not because I water it more than you did. No. Not because I put it in the sun.
The office plant will do well on my desk because I'll love it. See?
How do you love a plant?
Do you talk to it each day, so that the carbon dioxide comes out of your mouth and nourishes the plant like its oxygen nourishes you?
No.
You just love it. You don't have to tell it. The plant knows.
Also, I regularly remove the dead leaves from my plants. And sometimes I do talk to them, then. But just about regular stuff. I don't say anything sappy or overdramatic. Just stuff like, "Look at you. You're looking nice. Let me get this crap off your branch -- hold still." But that's about it.
I have this plant on my desk now. I rescued it from the desk of a bitter person who left our company. When I got the plant, it was sad, but now I have to say that it looks pretty happy. Recently, I made the decision to cut off about 85% of its foliage, because it had gotten very leggy and sparse while on the bitter person's desk. It was kind of risky, cutting off that much, but I felt that it was time. And, while I did it, I actively felt love for the plant. It sits where I can see it as I type, and whenever my eyes make contact with it, I take a split second to think of it with love.
And now it's bushy, and happy, and it's even putting out a new little arm to reach the sun.
Plants are pretty simple beings. They're just like pets or babies or cars, in that they're happy to be loved, and you don't even have to say it aloud.
Lately
I feel like I've been super busy lately, and yet when my friends say "What's going on with you?" I can't think of anything to tell them.
My kids are coming home from their dad's in a couple of weeks, and then the school preparation maelstrom will begin. Hooray. That hooray is sarcastic, but I will be glad to have my kids back because, without them (this is very untrendy to say but I'll still say it), my life doesn't seem to have a lot of purpose. I mean, I spend the whole summer saying, "Wait... what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Should I just get drunk now? Should I just lie on my bed til my kids come back home?"
Just kidding. Sort of.
I'm pretending I might write another book now. Go back to work on a book I've already started, I mean. In theory, I should have been doing that all summer long, the whole time the kids were gone, but I didn't. I just couldn't. And that's okay. Sometimes mommies just need to rest. And drink. Right?
Just kidding. I really haven't even drunk that much lately, because alcohol has lots of calories. A glass of red wine has, like, 70. Michelob Ultra Light has 95, and it doesn't even taste good. The frozen sake belinis that Mo Mong sells for $2 on Monday evenings? I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing they're 200 calories each. And, as y'all know, I am counting them. See, I just counted a whole bunch of calories in this paragraph, alone.
Speaking of Calories
The other day, in one of those cheap, photo-full celeb mags, I saw a picture of manorexic Steven Tyler (lead singer of Aerosmith, who sings "Sweet Emotion," which I've decided is one of the best rock songs ever made*).
And... Steven Tyler was quoted as saying, "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels."
And I know he didn't make that up -- he's just quoting some gay icon from the '70s or something -- but the image of him saying that has stuck within my brain.
"Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels. [Swee-ee-ee-eet... ee-mo-o-o-o... shun!]"
And I disagree.
Things that taste as good as being thin would feel, in my mind:
- carrot cake
- lemon-filled donuts (from Shipley's, though -- not from some assy chain)
- high-quality cheesecake, maybe
- creme brulee with ginger crust
And that's just the desserts, off the top of my head. That's not even getting into all the other categories of good-tasting food.
However, I can see that a piece of carrot cake probably tastes exactly as good as it would feel to fit into a dress from one of those boutiques that doesn't carry my current size. I mean, walking into Charlotte Russe or Forever 21 and trying on a cute dress, even if I end up not buying it because I don't want to look all mutton-as-lamb... probably feels as good as a lemon donut tastes.
And so I'm still counting, and resisting, and lifting weights with the sadistic woman on Fit TV. But I still like myself, too. I don't have to be as bone-thin as Steven Tyler in order to like myself. Thank God.**
Sadness
I'm practicing healthy techniques for coping with stress. The main one is, "Don't be bottling up all your stressful thoughts inside." So, in that spirit, I'm going to share with y'all something that's been making me very sad.
Something is wrong with the shower in my master bath, in the house that y'all might remember I bought exactly a year ago.
The shower is leaking water into the floor somehow, and it wets the carpet and the pad underneath, and it's starting to rot the bottom edge of the door frame.
And it makes me sad. And I know it needs to be fixed, but I'm also imagining that fixing it is gonna cost more money than I have at the moment. The shower stall is encased in wall tiles -- it's not one of those fiberglass deals. So, it all has to be broken apart, probably. *Sigh*.
So that's been in the back of my mind, and I'm trying to gather together the money to fix it. And I'm trying not to spend more than 10 minutes of each day mentally cursing the hucksters who sold me this house, wishing for them to have as many problems with their new house as their neglect has caused me. (Seriously, though, if you guys are reading this, I hate you both and dearly hope for instant karma to get you.)
So. Yeah.
I think I'm supposed to feel better, now that I've unburdened myself like this. I can't tell yet. Well, whatever.
Talk to y'all later. Send me good plumbing vibes, would you?
* One time this guy told me that the Clash's "Rock the Casbah" was the best rock song ever made. While I agree that that's a very good song, I personally don't believe that the best rock song ever made would have piano.
** Okay, so not only did someone else already write a blog entry using this exact theme... but she name-checked carrot cake, too! I tip my hat to you, Laura Moncur. 12:06 PM # (9) comments
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
How to Be an Artist for MoneyThe other day I took my kids to a trendy toy store. While browsing the girly section, I came across a pack of four tiny journals, all in complementary oriental floral schemes.
Big deal. I have tons of pretty journals at home already, stacked in drawers in date order. I use them to record the more depressing moments of my life -- the stuff that's too grind-down-y to report here in cyberville.
But these were pretty, so I picked them up, and saw that, lo and behold, they were not journals at all. They were... [drumroll] make-your-own books! For only $6! "These little books of blank pages," they said, "are all ready for you to write whatever stories you like." On the back of each one, it said "This Book Belongs to ________."
I got so excited, at that point. A myriad of thoughts ran through my head. These thoughts, in rapid order:
- OMG, I can make my own books!!
- They can be about whatever I want!
- I don't have to show them to my agent or any editors!
- I don't even have to show them to anybody!!!
- They're already bound and stuff! All I have to do is write them! Oh my god, I have so many ideas! I'm going to buy these right now! This is going to be so effing awesome! I'm so happy! Yay!!!!
I bought them, along with all the stuff my kids put up on the counter for me to buy. (Gyroscope, hackey sack, primordial ooze. They know that anything over $6.99 is pushing it.)
In the mini van, as my boyfriend chauffered us around, I told him about my little books and all the plans I'd made for them. "That's great, baby," he said, in the same way you say it when your child brings home a Mothers' Day card made of finger-painted coffee filters.
But, already, more thoughts about these little books were flooding my head. Different thoughts than before. See:
- When am I going to have time to write these little books?
- Maybe, instead of writing little books, I should be writing big books that I can actually sell. Or, at the very least, looking into applying for a second job, so my kids can eventually go to college.
- What if... what if I write the little books -- still about whatever I want -- and then, if they're good, I rewrite them on a Word manuscript and submit them to my agent?
- What if I do that and my agent hates them?
- Maybe I should just quit trying to write. Really, what could I possibly write that would be more marketable than all the books already at Barnes & Noble? Plus, it's not like print publishing is even that profitable anymore. I already know this. What am I doing? Why am I wasting my time? I should go back to school and get a Masters in something that'll pay more. How am I going to pay for college for three kids? How am I going to retire with anything to eat more than cat food? I need to quit wasting time. I need to make some money. Or, at least, buy some lottery tickets...
Late that night, I told my boyfriend, with a tremulous chuckle, that the purchase of the little books had somehow turned into an existential drama, in my mind.
He said, "Baby, you have to express yourself creatively in order to be happy. You know that. Just write in your little books. Try to relax and be happy for a couple of hours."
While he snored, I thought more thoughts:
- He's right. Screw it -- screw the whole effing world. I'm gonna do it. This week, I'm gonna write a little book. If people call while I'm working on it, I just won't answer my phone. I'll turn off my phone! I'll... I'll call in sick to work!
- Then, I'll proudly put my books up on my bookshelf. "These are the latest books I've written!" I'll tell people when they visit. "I published them myself!"
- No. No. No. I have to hide them under my bed. I don't want my kids to look back, years from now, and know that I was goofing off, making little books for no reason, instead of working a second job to buy them Nintendo Wii.
- I think I might be going crazy, because that was, like, a record-time swing from manic to depressive. Maybe I should see a therapist.
- No. Remember last time, how that therapist hated your guts? And she said, "You might want to be careful with all that sex you're having. You could get a yeast infection"?
- Remember the one before that... how you liked her so much, and then she liked you, and then y'all spent every session talking shit about her other patients? That was wrong. That was not productive.
- Okay, so this time I will look harder for a better therapist. What time is it? Does this hotel room have a phone book? I wonder how much you can glean about a therapist from their yellow page listing.
- I knew I shouldn't have bought those little books. I knew they were too good to be true -- just a siren call for failed writers and bad mothers. Nice waste of $6, Gwen. That could have bought Josh half a used textbook.
- Ooh... I know. My first little book can be about used textbooks, and how it makes them sad when college kids write uninspired notes in them.
- Hey. What if the little books come out good, and my agent wants to sell them?
What is the point, then?
The point is: Do not date a not-bestselling author, and do not have a not-bestselling author for a parent. And don't have kids until you have college funds already matured for each of them. And don't get married, either, unless he's rich and about to die. And get a better career path, now, before you have to wonder if you need one. And you can't win the lottery if you never, ever play.
No. The point is, actually: Sometimes you think you need fancy little journals, when, really, all you need is anti-anxiety medication.
No, just kidding. Seriously, seriously, just kidding.
This is not a cry for help. This is just a note to self.
Self: Take some time to relax. Please. 6:33 PM # (7) comments
Monday, July 16, 2007
All I WantAll I want, as far as "autism advocacy" goes, is awareness.
I don't want to sue the people who vaccinated my kids. I don't want the government to give me lots of money (unless they just have their hearts set on it), because there are autistic kids who need the money more than we do. I don't want people to treat my son more specially than they treat other kids. I just want awareness.
Have you ever heard anyone say, "Ew -- that kid has Mongoloid features and unusual speech patterns, and he isn't as intellectually developed as his peers. What's WRONG with him? He's freaking me out! He's a weirdo! His parents must have totally messed him up somehow! He's creeping me out!"
No, you haven't, unless it was a thirteen-year-old bully, or a really lame stand-up comedian trying to be edgy. And you know why? Because most adults in America know what Down Syndrome is, and they know that people with Down Syndrome can't help having it, so there's no use making fun of them, unless you want to come off like a complete asshole.
Do you ever hear adults in America say "Ew -- that kid acts weird. He's socially stunted. He talks funny, and he's strangely good at math. Do his parents homeschool him or something? I bet he gets beat up in school all the time. I bet he's never gonna have a girlfriend, ever. He's creeping me out. What the hell's wrong with him? He's a freak. His parents must have messed him up somehow"?
Unfortunately, yes, you do. I recently saw it happen on a site that I frequent, in comments regarding a YouTube clip of a young spelling-bee winner who pretty obviously, in my opinion, had Aspergers or autism. And I'm not going to link to those comments here, because the young urbanites making them were obviously trying to be "edgy" by expressing fear/loathing of alternate cultures (i.e., homeschooling Midwesterners), and had no idea how to identify Pervasive Developmental Disorders. I want to believe that these people, had they realized it was a condition the child and his parents couldn't help, would have refrained from commenting on it. Because only a rude dumb ass makes fun of something like that, and some day a real rain will come and wash away all the rude dumb asses. (Right? Hope so.)
When adults meet my Aspergers-having son for the first time, they tend to react to him in one of two ways. Either they completely ignore him, because he inadvertently gives off social cues that discourage them from asking him the same questions they ask my other two kids ("So, how old are you now?" "So, how do you like school?")...
or else, way more rarely, they feel compelled to draw him out. And that's usually because he reminds them of themselves, or of someone else they knew who was quiet, but ultimately intelligent and rewarding to hear.
In either case, I find myself telling everyone I know that Dallas has Aspergers, if/whenever they express curiosity about his behavior. (They say, "Dallas... likes to keep to himself, huh?" or "Dallas is kind of... intense, huh?" or "Dallas reminds me of my uncle, who also preferred drawing complex machines to hanging out at family barbecues.") Why do I tell them, instead of keeping it private?
Not because I'm trying to excuse his behavior, and not because I'm looking for pity. It's because I want to help create awareness. I know that none of my friends would make fun of someone for acting a little different. But maybe, if they come across someone else who would, they can pass on what they know. They can say, "Dude, don't make fun of that guy. He was probably born with Aspergers. Don't be lame."
(Social shaming: the fabric of polite society. :) )
So, yeah. If you know me in real life, and I start giving you an informal presentation on Aspergers, autism, and PDD -- I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable, I promise. I'm just trying to do my part. Until we get a popular actor who outs him/herself as having Aspergers, this awareness thing is strictly viral marketing. Grass roots. Underground. Help me out, okay? Spread the word. 6:00 AM # (14) comments
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse...The other day my boyfriend and I stepped into the Hot Topic store at a local outlet mall. I thought maybe I'd score some cheap t-shirts for my kids.
Hot Topic, for those who don't know, is a little boutique for kids. It has t-shirts emblazoned with the names of all the coolest bands, plus t-shirts related to anything else that could be considered trendy and/or edgy. They sell jewelry made of vinyl, studs, and chains. They have, like, fake nose rings, for thirteen-year-olds whose parents won't let them get the real thing. My two older sons aren't really into that look, but my ten-year-old makes me stop every time we pass one. So, even though my kids are with their dad for the summer, I went into Hot Topic, looking for clearance rack bargains.
As we browsed, a quick, high-pitched disco tune blared over the store speakers. It was kind of catchy, and something about it seemed familiar. I found myself swaying a little to its beat, kind of like I already knew it. The vocal came on, sounding very much like the BeeGees... like the BeeGees on acid, more like.
You are only coming through in waves! [Boom... boom... boom!] Your lips move! I can't hear what you're saying! [Boom, boom!]
"Oh, my god," I told my boyfriend. "Listen -- this is a cover of Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb'!"
I wasn't the only parent in the store. Across the t-shirt rack, a woman about ten years my senior shopped with her son. She looked unhappy. She winced. Then, she muttered, at no one in particular, "Who had the audacity to cover this song?"
"I know! Pink Floyd!" I couldn't resist saying to her. "I was just saying that!"
"It's horrible," she said.
"Really, you think? I don't know... It's kind of catchy," I said.
She shook her head no, and I gave her my most sympathetic smile.
As we left, I asked the bleached and pierced clerk who was singing that song on the speaker.
"The Scissor Sisters," he said. And I felt proud of myself, a little, because I'd actually heard of them before.
Sometimes, among old people, cover songs cause strong emotion.
My boyfriend is Tad. His best friend is Mike. As far as boyfriend's best friends go, Mike is pretty cool and I feel lucky that he's my friend-by-boyfriend.
Mike and I are closer in age than Tad and I, and Mike and I share an old-school love of hard rock. For instance, Mike and I are planning to go to the upcoming Rush concert with one of Tad's other friends. Tad, however, will only accompany us if I buy his ticket, and even then he'll be physically inable to keep from remarking on Rush's lack of synthesizers. Because he is younger, and he needs synthesizers to survive. He simply can't help it.
Anyhow. The other day, Mike and Tad and I were at a noisy eating establishment. A song came on the speaker and Mike said, "Oh, that's that song I like."
I listened. The song said, Take a look at my girlfriend. She's the only one I've got. I said, "Oh, Supertramp."
Mike said, "Is that who it is? No, I thought it was by someone else."
I listened closer. "Yeah, that's a cover. Of a song by Supertramp."
Mike said, "Really?"
I said, "Mike!" Because I was ashamed of him, at that moment. I mean, that's the kind of thing I'd expect from Tad -- not recognizing a rock song from the '70s -- because he has only freshly entered his thirties. But not from Mike, who likes Rush and really should know better.
At that moment, then, I went on a two-hour-long diatribe about the fact that people keep covering Supertramp lately, and no one gives them proper credit. The Goo Goo Dolls' cover of "Give a Little Bit"? Did nothing but rip off the complete awesomeness of the original, without giving Supertramp the proper respect. Just thinking about it now pisses me off. Dammit. Whoever's covering "Breakfast in America"? Same thing. Damn you people! Damn you uncreative young pop stars!!
At least the Scissor Sisters took a Pink Floyd song and did something new with it, you know? Personally, I don't think you should cover a song unless you're adding something artistic to it. Otherwise, you're just plagiarizing, basically, as far as I'm concerned.
I think the law should state that, when a band basically plagiarizes an old song, DJs should be required to say so on the radio. You know?
This means I am old now.
Sometimes I have to laugh at myself, for being so old and curmudgeonly about things like that. Mostly, though, I'm glad I'm old now, because I don't want to wear the clothes at Hot Topic. I don't want to get my face pierced.
All I want to do is listen to my CDs in peace, and then crankily point out unoriginal covers to the younger generations.
I'm glad kids have Hot Topic, though. I like to take my son there, and see his face light up when he uses his allowance to buy a wristband with an embroidered happy-face skull or whatever. That lady who got pissed off about the Scissor Sisters cover -- she cracked me up. She was curmudgeonly, but she was there, you know? She went into Hot Topic with her kid, braving the music, instead of telling him "no we can't go there," or else sitting at home in front of her TV, ignoring her kid altogether. Because of that (and because she recognized that song), she is my secret sister.
It's okay