Category Archives: Can’t decide on a category

Neither here nor there

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Some updates, rather than the interpretive dance I had planned. What can I say? Cold day, no leg warmers. Somehow I successfully purged all Flashdance clothing from my wardrobe. Sigh.

Hazelnut update: nausea has abated and I haven’t yakked in 5 days. I can now, maybe, enjoy Week 18 in digestive peace, wailed upon only from without for a change.

Novel update: another agent sent a “no thanks.” Must send out the next round, but it might be a while with my other deadlines. Rough count: two dozen submissions, maybe half a dozen read the first few pages, four requested more pages, none is going to reap the outrageous profits from the book’s eventual sale. The next agent wants an exclusive, so it’ll just be her and the manuscript for the next two months.

Geography update: we’re gonna be here for a while. But if houses still keep getting 8 and 9 bids, going for 8% over asking for much longer, we’re gonna reconsider the greatest place on earth and think about moving to number 4 or 5.

Peanut update: hardcore into flashlights. We often have to go “into the deep dark woods” in the garage to look for spiders and tigers. Thanks so much, Kipper.
Also popular: filling baskets and bags with household and toy detritus and carrying them around until just the perfect resting place is found.
Word of the day, uttered at least once per sentence: dammit!

Lit update: trying Delillo. Trying hard, but it shouldn’t be this much work to like books. Gonna keep at it for a day or two and if he doesn’t hook me, I’m off to something new.

Conference update: my paper is in critical care, with a thready pulse, threatening to code. But we’re giving it our best and we’ll see if it pulls through. We’re only scholars here; not wizards.

Ugh. I don’t wanna.

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I don’t wanna schedule appointments and go to them. I don’t wanna get ready and be on time for stuff.
I don’t really want to leave the house.
I don’t wanna do that project I promised.
I don’t wanna read that book I’m supposed to.
I don’t wanna make any more meals or clean up after any more meals or clean up after any more creatures.
I don’t wanna play games or blocks or cars or squirt stuff.
I don’t wanna smile at strangers even if they deserve it.
I don’t even wanna clean up after myself.
I don’t wanna put that away or get that other thing back out. I don’t wanna look for the thing I can’t find.
I don’t wanna hear about the sick and the starving and the abused.
I don’t wanna fight any more about being polite or sharing or eating or cleaning up or getting dressed or putting on clothes.
I don’t wanna answer the phone. I don’t wanna pay bills.
I don’t wanna puke any more.
I don’t wanna prepare for all the holidays and the craziness and the expectations and the visits.
I don’t wanna hear about what other people wanna talk about.
I don’t wanna hear any more sounds for, like, three days.
I don’t wanna be so drained after fun visits with friends.
I don’t wanna be such an introvert or so sensitive or so easily swayed off my precarious center.
I don’t wanna do any of this today. Or tomorrow.
I just don’t wanna.

That stings…

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Every once in a while I check DeadAtYourAge.com
It’s an amusing (usually) look at the people who died at about your age and whom you have now outlived. Yeehaw, I guess. Except that they list rather accomplished people, who did more in their limited years than I have yet to even try. But I’m letting that slide for now.

Today, deadatyouraage.com told me this:

You’ve outlived Judith Resnik by almost a month. She was a second U.S. female astronaut and victim of shuttle Challenger explosion. She died on January 28, 1986, when you were 13 years old.

Oh, wow, that made me cry. Then and now. Like most of the nation, I watched that on T.V. And was confused by what I saw because I had never for a moment considered their deaths possible. That day ranks right up there with some of the major national traumas—Iran hostages, Sept. 11, the heat shield astronaut deaths…

I don’t really want to think about that today. I don’t.

So I updated my “most popular posts” links. Go read something I wrote a while ago, when I had something to say. Right now I have nothing.

Ooooh! Shiny new quiz!

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Over at Inktopia, one of my favorite bloggers took a quiz and was proclaimed to be one of my favorite books. I couldn’t wait…

and doesn’t it just figure.


You’re Ulysses!
by James Joyce
Most people are convinced that you don’t make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you’re saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I don’t know whether to cry or celebrate. I’m inscrutable and loathed except by a few*, many of whom may actually be poseurs the likes of whom I’d never tolerate?
*(And now The KitchWitch will put that last nail in the coffin of her affection for me. Sigh. And I was getting to like Meatless Mondays on her site. Cuz the Joyceian innards for breakfast thing ain’t my cuppa.)
I disagree with their analysis of the book and of its popular repute, but whatever. Finding the universal and mythic in the banal isn’t…oh never mind. Who am I debating here?
I guess it’s a good thing I think Ulysses is a masterpiece in the top 10 of all time.

I guess.

Here’s the quiz. Good luck.

Guest post

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It’s not that I have a guest blogger today. It’s that I’m feeling lazy and have other stuff to do and kind of wish one of you would write a post for me. Or at least give me an idea. So leave a comment with a blog post you’d like to see soon, and I will oblige you. Even the really obscure or outrageous suggestions. In some form.

So here’s your wish list…

The art of Kim Cogan

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Went to the opening at the Hespe Gallery tonight.

Wanna see something cool? Here’s the man himself in action.

Having a three year old at a gallery was stressful. But he was pretty dang awesome. And his friend, also three, was there. And his new friend, one, was there, too. And a few other people brought their kids, about which the gallery owner was beyond fabulous and sweet. So the only one mocked—universally—was the lady with the freaking dog. At a gallery. Hanging out near the snacks table, where the dog ate all the stuff off the floor. Even my kid wasn’t that bad.

And I’ll tell you, the overwhelming lovin’ that people on BART showed my sweet and well behaved kid allowed me to step outside my constant frustration and battle with him to just appreciate him. thoughtful, silly, smart, and adorable. Freaking adorable.

Great night. Thanks, Kim.

My favorite, if forced to choose, btw…

SF plans this month

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Kim Cogan opens a new solo show at the Hespe in Union Square. Come on out because his work is absolutely breathtaking. Opening Sept. 10. Check Kim’s blog or the Hespe’s site for more info. (He has a show in New York while I’m there in November, so I hope to see him at Gallery Henoch, too.)

Infinite Summer ends and Booksmith holds a party. Sept. 28. Hope Spouse gets home in time to do bath and bed so I can clear out my tape flags in time to have a normal-looking copy.

And some time this month we’ll stay closer to home and hit Berkeley Rep’s American Idiot musical. Hope grandma can babysit.

I know it’s a lot to ask. Three outings in one month. Only one appropriate for Peanut. But come on. This is the reason we moved back!

Is it wrong that…

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I was buying Spouse shirts for work and found myself winking at one of the models? I should mention I was online shopping and the model was kind of smarmy, in that Chet kind of way. Of course it’s not wrong. Because I was kidding, right?

Is it wrong that I wanted to gouge out the eyes of the guy next to me in the coffee shop who kept interrupting my work to make inane banter? Of course not. But is it wrong that I didn’t actually gouge them out?

Is it wrong that I told my kid to give his new doll a tour of the house so I could close my eyes for two minutes and not worry that he would be breaking something or, you know, demanding attention or something?

Is it wrong that I’m having dreams about the people on 30 Rock because thanks to Netflix, Spouse and I are actually watching (old) television programming most nights and these are the only adults in my life?

Is it wrong to eat the same food day after day after day after day until you get sick of it, then move on to another item-of-the-week? If not, is it wrong that I’ve moved to an almost-all ice cream diet? Of course not. Calcium and protein, right? Right?

Is it wrong that I sat in a salon for half an hour today, leafing through Food and Wine, just waiting to make an appointment for a haircut? I didn’t *have* an appointment. I wanted one. But Spouse was at home with P and I felt as though I had all the time in the world. And they had two new Food and Wines.

Is it wrong that the bathtub has needed new caulk since we moved in four months ago but that I still haven’t gotten to it? Will it be wrong two months from now?

Is it wrong that I fantasize about going on facebook and calling all those liars and posers on their b.s. about how perfect their lives are? Or to ask them when, exactly, they’re too old to post drunken pictures of themselves out with friends? Seriously, who the hell gets a sitter so they can go party? I’m pretty sure it’s wrong to use party as a verb after age 25.

Is it wrong that the week where my nausea was manageable I willingly took the wallop of exhaustion because it was better to feel unbearably tired than puke 5 times a day, but that now the barfing is back?

Yeah, actually, that one is wrong.

Huzzah for Ben & Jerry’s

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Really, this is a huzzah for Vermont, but I love this symbolic show of support for yet another state making civil rights a reality not just a talking point.

In celebration of Vermont’s new marriage equality, Ben and Jerry’s is renaming (just for Sept. and just in VT) their awesome Chubby Hubby ice cream and relabeling it Hubby Hubby.

I met Chubby Hubby in the mid-90s at Boston’s phenomenal Scooper Bowl (debuts of all the new ice cream flavors by every ice cream company on the planet, filling the Commons with free ice cream and insane amounts of goodwill). I love the flavor, for peanut butter and chocolate and pretzels are my idea of heaven, even though Cherry Garcia often spends more time in my house.

I’m so proud of companies that put their neck on the line for what they believe in. B&J is already doing awesome work for livable wages, poison-free farming and dairy ranching, the planet, and other causes near and dear to me. But it’s just lovely that they are rolling out a line of happy celebration for this new law. What goes on in other people’s houses is their business, and the number of cartons of B&Js now in my freezer, as of today, is my business.

The dishes debate

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Me: Are you up for doing dishes?
Spouse: Nope.
M: I cooked.
S: I got the groceries.
M: I read the stories.
S: I did the bath.
M: I did the songs.
S: We both did.
I did laundry.
And the cat box.
M: I swept.
S: I have an early morning.
M: Growing a whole person.
S: Aw, crap.

What can I say? Baby wanted pancakes for dinner, and now baby wants Spouse to clean the stovetop, too. Mama’s messy with batter.

Nooooooo! Not John Hughes!

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Oh, come on. Really? Sad for his family, of course. He was a human being first, and for his family I am deeply sorry.

But he was an icon for millions of kids who came of age in the 80s. Gys, no person made me feel like less of an outcast; no writer made me feel sure I would find a place in the world; no artist made me feel more at home.

Oh, Mr. Hughes, thank you for your movies. Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were what made high school tolerable. Were what made me feel better about my awkward, painful, social outcast years. Are still what I turn to when I need to feel at home.

Oh, Mr. Hughes. I still quote your films. Almost daily. I still live in the hope that you’ll write a film about a totally lost, out of her element, thirty-something mom.

And now you won’t.

Thanks for the shout out…

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Counting Crows* played an ode to my all-day-morning sickness in “Sullivan Street” today in my kitchen…

“If she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet
Either way now, I don’t really care
Cuz I’m gone from there

I’m almost drowning in her seas
She’s nearly crawling on her knees
She’s down on her knees
Down on her knees”

*if the entity is Counting Crows, then we say Counting Crows’s. If each band member is a counting crow, then we say Counting Crows’. But since the band’s name comes from the expression “counting crows” and since it’s not The Counting Crows, I’m gonna go with the band is singular but ends with an “s”. Hence Counting Crows’s song. Which is why I had to rewrite the sentence without any possessive. ‘Cuz that just looks wrong. Any band member is hereby welcome to post that I’m wrong on this one. Including the possibility that Sullivan Street is not about me. Which I doubt.

Like a cool drink of water

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Aaaah. Today was nice. Niyiyice. Compliant, happy, silly, observant child. Good weather. Great conversation with a genius writer with credentials out the wazoo who gave much more concrete, actionable, and loving feedback than the agent who, nevertheless, went to the trouble, if you know what I mean.

Sleep: not enough. Food: too much. Reading: not enough. Writing: way too little. Meltdown tally: two averted. Full meals cooked: two completed and edible. (Granted, one was semi-cheating, a homemade basil-heavy marinara and store-bought ravioli. But the other was all from scratch bok choy, portabello, tofu, and whole wheat soba stirfry with a homemade soy-vinegar-plum-perppercorn kind of thing.)

This was a pretty darned good day. And I owe it all to Spouse having 6 consecutive days off, getting some R&R at various family functions, a brilliant friend whose creative writing MA from Columbia is finally worth its weight in my appreciation, and a child who somehow, some way, has decided to settle down today.

Phew.

Chillin’

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No quote of the day today. I’m way behinnd in my reading, and I got to coo at new neices and play with family and friends today. So I am not up for assignments and expectations and such. I’ve been a bit too self driven all my life and I’m not in the mood today.

Got some solid feedback from an agent late last night, and I’m trying to decide what parts of it I’ll incorporate. I know I’m not fond of the “no thank you” part, but much of the rest was thoughtful.

So I cuddled babies and saw people I love and sucked on a big bag of sour grapes for a while. And I’ll tell you: having three small people smile at me today was worth not typing up a quote for you, the few readers who seem to be online this week. Where did everybody go?