nudle

What I love* today:

Coffee. 

Robert Horton, a principled, drily funny man of movies and comic books. I try not to miss him Wednesdays on Steve Scher's Weekday and I usually do miss him.

My kids, duh. (The 'duh' is a tribute to Iona. Yesterday when I picked her up from school late, she glared. I asked if it was an accusatory look. "Yes!" "But I'm only four minutes late." "Duh, that's a long time when it's raining, Mom!")

Corn chips, specifically the ones from the brand Late July.

Getting a good night's sleep after several nights of not getting a good night's sleep. Han is newly sleeping in a big-boy bed, and though he is excited and proud, he's afraid. Like we're all afraid of change. Afraid when relationships change, afraid when we change, and afraid when the bars are taken off the bed. Afraid enough to yell for Mom at three in the morning several nights in a row. Then Mom's afraid enough of lots of things that she doesn't go back to sleep. And talk about scary, try sleep-deprived Mom. 

Escaping all connected devices (this is what I'm doing next) to go write in the other house, AKA the guest room over our garage, AKA MY STUDIO!

. . . . . . . . . .

* I try not to use the word 'love' in a casual way. But I don't want to replace it with 'like a lot' right this moment; I need to get to the studio and write. I am translating the book into first person for draft #3. And, at some point, I need to sign up for swim lessons for scaredy-cat swimmers (fills me with dread), partly as research (MC is afraid of water) and partly because I'd like to make up with water someday and be able to have fun in it, with my family. That'll be a future blog post, or series of them. Also, when am I going to start that professional writer's blog? What shall I call it? How am I going to execute it? Now is when I wish I knew how to make a web site. Who wants to make me a web site? If only my best designer friend wasn't so busy making a movie. Okay, enough of this. Gotta go.

Just after I throw in random photos of a recent nice day, taken with iPhone because my camera is broken again.

  

I wrote my second query letter. Now I need to finish the book. During my query-letter-writing exercise, I learned that when I promote my work I feel tense and tingly, with a dash of excited dread in my neck region. I remembered that I like working; it feels good after. I learned that my characters get buried. I didn't know that until now. So I have to write the scene in which they get buried. Star Wars comes to mind. Remember the garbage compactor? Really loved that. I can't wait to send out my first queries. I have to hurry. Middle school applications loom. That almost sounds comical, if it weren't true.

Hey, it's sunny in Seattle. Come, go for a run with me!

Writing that makes me laugh: this and this. And this!

I just bought this.

Please push me off the ledge.

I've been trying to write this book, but writing is a leap of faith. I've always wished I had more faith, believed things would work out, that I or my team would be able to finish in time, that I would get that job, or get into graduate school, or Iona would get into any school, that the cookies would taste good after I pull them out of the oven. I always needed more faith that I could pull it off. Now I'm writing a story that's taking all these twists and turns and is not at all what it set out to be. I am trying to write a schedule to make sure I finish this, since I've never really finished any creative writing past the first or second draft. I've been at it, writing, for seven years. I have a pile of many, many drafted, unpolished stories sitting in bankers' boxes. Now I aim to finish this one story, aimed at kids. The act of writing a schedule makes me feel isolated and lonely. Why? Writing is an isolated, lonely business sometimes. I want to turn to someone and say, "Hey, do you think I can finish this?" And have them say, "Yes! I know you can!" But the dread in my belly says, "But no one has read this thing. What if it is bad? Why am I even doing this?" It is bad. It's not finished. And so the spinning begins. I need a reader. I need to rein in the fear. No, I need to let it go. I need to take a leap. I have no idea how.

What's been going on with me lately.

My birthday has come and gone. Forty-two sounds very old. So often I feel like I'm fourteen!

Seven is this weekend's milestone for Iona, who is having her birthday party in a giant bouncy place and is expecting a lot of gifts even though on her party invitation I wrote, "No gifts, please." So I'm on the hook.

Iona has asked me twice, "Mom, is Santa Claus real?" The first time I said, "Well, um, some people think he is. Moms and dads certainly help him out. I mean, it's a lot to get presents for all the kids in the world. Some people think he is a symbol for Christmas, you know, the spirit of giving?" She said, "Okay." The second time she asked, we were backing out of our garage too fast, late to school again, and I said, "Iona, I cannot talk about this right now."

We went to see my sister and my parents in Arizona and had fun, and then we went to Boston to see our good friends and had fun.

I just finished (finished! finished!) my freelance job that began last October. Satisfying, and really satisfying that it's over. Now it's time to get nesty and paint Han The Younger's room orange and red on one wall. Oh, and go buy Iona a lot of gifts, and fix the deck and weed the garden and do some physical fitness activities and maybe write a new short story.

I am ambivalent about the imminent arrival. That is to say, sometimes I want to get on with it already! And other times I feel dread in the pit of my stomach at the realization that my time will not be my own any more. And will I like him? Will he like me? Perhaps this is normal. Will I be depressed when the time finally comes? I'm happy these days, for the most part, and don't tend to be depressed as a general rule. So it should be interesting. Time to get that running stroller in working condition. (Add to list.)

The weather is beautiful and the garden, though it needs work, is beautiful. A big tree is blooming pink and the delicate fragrance of the clematis hiding the chain link fence wafts over when we walk from the garage to the front door. I wish I could stop time. And then I wish I could speed it up. Oh, ambivalence, you are my friend.

In a little while, after I fold some of the mountain of clean rumply clothes, I am going out in the beautiful and will run for a while, and get hot and sweaty and vitamin D. Running slows time, and I guess that's the best I can ask for.

On tryptophan, a phone meeting, and the ensuing regret.

I so regret eating the large turkey sandwich with lots of spicy mayo. I'm on the phone, in the middle of my first ever board meeting, of and for alumni of a large academic body. The people in the room are discussing the bylaws. I can't help but ask, on the day of the biggest bank failure in the history of the United States, does anyone really care about these bylaws? I guess they do, because we've been talking about them for forty hours. I mean minutes.

I'm struck too, by the formality of the meeting. Motions are made and seconded! Then "aye" votes are cast! What do I think of this? Comforting order in this time of uncertainty and irreverence? Needlessly Byzantine? Both.

Now we're on to institutional advancement. I love terms like that. I hope to get mileage out of it a short story sometime. Got to parlay this board thing.

I am thirsty. My head feels like someone stuffed it full of wadded-up PowerPoint slides.

We're halfway through the agenda and I have to hang up. I'm off to pick kids up from school. I bet I'm the only housewife on this board. Represent!

The funniest man on the internet.

Years ago I was sitting at my desk at work, feeling bad. This was in spite of the fact that said desk was in an architecturally significant floor of a landmark building where Al Capone once had his speakeasy. My desk was in front of a window. The job was one I had wanted for years. My lover worked there too so I could see him every day and use his secret parking place in the basement lot (in the middle of downtown Chicago, and if you live in a big city and are not sleeping with someone who has a parking place I suggest you start now). I was feeling bad because everyone in the firm was also miserable, because we were tanking. Financials were at an all-time low and many of us were helpless to do anything about it. Layoffs were imminent. The work was interesting and even exhilarating at times, but the day I was sitting at my desk feeling bad there wasn't enough work to keep us busy. So what was I doing? Surfing the Web. (Back then you still surfed, and you capitalized web.)

It was that day I first discovered James Lileks' blog. This was before the word blog even existed, but James Lileks didn't care. He was doing it anyway. Lileks is the funniest man on the internet and if you want to name someone funnier, then I just have to say to you NO. JAMES LILEKS IS THE FUNNIEST MAN ON THE INTERNET.

Sitting there at my sad desk I giggled uncontrollably for a while, then I hissed at my next-door-neighbor, Stef. The office was open-concept, no partitions, which made for better co-lab-or-a-shun (when we had work to collaborate on). It also made it easy to share online shopping advice and other non-work frivolity, like James Lileks. Word of Lileks spread quickly through the office. Emails with links to Lileks' site flew from sad desk to sad desk. Pretty soon the entire office was snorting with laughter in a place where only moments before the air was blue with sadness. I was moved to email Mr Lileks and tell him how he had brightened an entire office, and he immediately responded, thanking us for reading. Though that was the only correspondence we ever shared, I continue to consider him my internet boyfriend.

My actual, real-life lover eventually left the firm, and I lost the parking place. I soon followed him out and I haven't really worked since. The company is still in business and thriving now. My lover became my husband and we recently attended a swanky cocktail party hosted by our old employer in a fancy hotel. Getting together with those people was like getting together with family members who are charming and lovable and drink very heavily. I ordered two hundred-dollar bottles of champagne, and the firm paid for them as we guzzled the bubbles. It almost made up for the parking spot loss and those sad, sad days.

To ward off depression without medication, I recommend you look at James Lileks daily. Here's today's Bleat. But before you go there, go here. Immediately. Read it and weep (from laughter).