I’m writing fiction about nonfictional characters over at Black Magpie Theory.
Okay, maybe some of us wish those characters were fictional, but still……
What kind of trouble are you making for yourself today? What fictions are you creating? Am I going to need a lawyer?
It looks like slacking, doesn’t it? I write a decent post with some great material and then what? I rest on my laurels, raking in the laughs, gloating over my use of the word splendid, basking in the glow of compliments. But if you scratch the surface of a hack like me, you’ll find something else. Performance anxiety. So that funny post that nearly wrote itself? How do I top that?
I don’t. I ignore Blogger and instead open all kinds of other websites – the bank account to see if the jackpot of unemployment checks has started to roll back in (it hasn’t), three different email accounts where I delete most of the emails and neglect others, Facebook where I continue to mock the lack of creativity that exhibits itself with shocking regularity (bitchy!), Twitter where I get my political rage on, lots of blogs where I read and try to leave at least a speck of coherence in my comments (except for at Freida Bee‘s because she knows me well enough to not expect coherence), congratulating friends who’ve received a publishing contract, googling recipes and shopping the AT&T website for hours as I finally decided to use an upgrade to replace my old phone that is dropping more calls than it’s maintaining.
I’m pleased to sanctimoniously report that I went with a” free” phone that won’t add any fees to our phone bill. I don’t want anyone to think that this Welfare Queen will be texting away on some Cadillac smartphone. Be sure to tell your Republican Congressjerks who are still out there running their mouths about how the unemployed are the problem. Ho ho ho.
All of this is predicated on whether or not our bandwidth is available. Too many devices in this house requiring it these days, dang it, so much of my time has actually been spent reading books and another special project that I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you about so I’ll just stop right there.
MathMan has been coaching basketball which leaves me to manage, with my usual ambivalence, the children who are already on break.
Sophie spends most of her time lying on her back in front of some Disney Channel program while ignoring my pleas to sit up while she eats Doritos because I refuse to administer mouth to mouth to her Dorito breath when she finally chokes. I don’t care if it is Cool Ranch. She’s also participating in a round robin of sixth grade sleepovers. I dread the day when it’s our turn. I do so hope the girls will enjoy the game I have planned for them. Help Mrs. Golden Rearrange the Stuff in the Garage should prove to be a big hit. Especially with the soundtrack including Katy Perry and Justin Beiber.
Nathan has gone to some of MathMan’s games, but when he’s home, he’s pretty much lying around conserving his energy for I don’t know what and, frankly, after his busy semester of a heavy class load (Latin?), baseball workouts, and a long daily commute, I don’t care as long as he’s not underfoot or being escorted home by the police. The truth is, he’s been hanging out with me and just talking. At the risk of blowing my bitchmom cred, it’s been quite nice.
Chloe must have learned her lesson. She’s gone out with friends a couple of times since the Malt Liquor Incident of 2010 and hasn’t been sick since. While writing about how she and Nate shared some hot chocolate in the middle of the night is sweet, it’s not nearly as engaging as the other post, is it? Other than that, she’s been slinging barbecue at the place down the street and irritating her siblings by taking up space on the sofa as she hogs the TV catching up on the British murder mysteries I have on the DVR.
The tree is up, nary a game of Canasta has been played, I still have to find out which Chinese restaurant will be open on Christmas Day and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it twenty times in the last three days, I really should call my parents and say hello. Sometimes I wish they had a computer so that they could just follow me on Twitter and be my friend on Facebook to keep up with what’s going on around here and vice versa. That’s a lie. If my mother read this blog, I’d be grounded. Forever. And probably into the next life, too.
Finally, the cats are always hungry. But I read in Cat Fancy (got the subscription with some frequent flyer miles that were about to expire, tell your Congressjerks, no Fancy subscriptions for this Welfare Queen) that cats are like humans. They want to eat when they’re bored. So I’ve done what has been so effective with the kids. When the cats complain, I tell them I’ll give them something to do if they’re bored. That usually fixes it. They know “something” typically involves bleach and rubber gloves.
Also, did you know Peter Brady is a cat lover? He is. Every time I go to the bathroom, I look down and there he is smiling up at me from the cover of Cat Fancy. I piddle and think pork chops, applesauce and pussy. So wholesome.
Okay, I’ve got to go. I’m going to watch the President sign the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
So now you’re all caught up. Catch me up. Are you ready for the holidays? Are you in denial? Would you rather wing it to some warm place and pretend the holidays are over? What’s your favorite Peter Brady moment?
Is Mars in retrograde with Venus or something? Because the way things are going here, there must be some explanation beyond the biological. It’s like 1987 all over again.
I’ve got a busy day ahead so I’m just going to offer for your mocking pleasure this photo of my brother and me in our matching outfits and rockin’ boots. The guy in the red suit had boots, too, but I bet he didn’t wear his to an Osmond Brothers concert at the Cincinnati Gardens.
How are you going to rock your weekend boots? With whom will you be coordinating your outfits? Plans to sit on the laps of strangers? Wine, beer or whatever is left on the liquor shelf? Did you note Santa’s zip code just in case?
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I recently blogged about my friend Suzy who starred in the Seinfeld episode that featured the Black and White Cookie and the Chocolate Babka. Suzy played the role of Barbara Benedict, the woman who got the last chocolate babka, leaving Jerry and Elaine to settle for the cinnamon babka, a lesser babka.
A day or so later, I got an email from a friend who is pure New York. No really. He’s born and raised there. He knows the city like no one I’ve ever known. He’s has that perfect city accent. He’s also gorgeous, funny as hell, is one of those genuinely nice people, talented, smart as all get out and generally wonderful.
But enough about DCap. I have food to write about. So that email. He asked for our address which I provided. I didn’t think much more about it because we got distracted with an email exchange that I can’t tell you about because it may show up later in wikileaks. I’d hate to ruin the surprise.
So yesterday, the doorbell rang and I went to out to find a box on the porch. The UPS guys are working in pairs now. I want to assume that’s because of the holidays, but maybe it’s because word has gotten around about me. Anyway, when I opened the door, all I saw was a young man running after the UPS truck. The guy behind the wheel, who may have been the guy I locked in the basement that one time, was already making a break for it.
Confused, I hefted the box and went inside. On the side of the box was printed Zabars, a place I recognize although I’ve never been there. A small sticker announced that the box contained New York Goodies. Chloe told me later that she could actually see the light bulb go off over my head.
DCap.
I went to the kitchen and grabbed a pair of scissors and the squirt bottle of water. I opened the outer box and lifted out this box.
Which had this postcard attached to it.
And was filled with all this.
Chloe came closer to see. “Black and white cookies!”
I reached for the squirt bottle. She was too rapt over the carborrific treats to notice.
“Chocolate Babka!” she sighed right and lunged forward.
I had to shoot her.
You can never be too careful with baked goods around that girl.
For the record, Chocolate Babka is divine. The cinnamon rugelach is to die for. The black and white cookies are fabulous and no one broke a streak after eating them. I’m hoarding the tea for a special occasion and the Ghirardelli chocolate has been stashed for future biological needs. The I’m going to have the I heart NYC cookie for breakfast when I’m finished writing this post.
Update: I ended up sharing the cookie with Sophie who’s home on a Georgia snow day which is different from the rest of the world’s snow days. We had hot chocolate. And maybe I ate another rugelach while, in a nice bit of symmetry, we watched Larry David go into the Yohah Shimmel Knish Bakery in Whatever Works.
And if DCap gives me the okay, I’ll show you why that’s so perfect for this morning.
Thank you, DCap, for the Zabar’s treats. Thank you for sending some of your wonderful city to a rural corner of Georgia.
P.S. If you guys don’t see me around, it’s because I’m on the elliptical trying to keep from turning into a babka.
Back around 1982ish, I had this really cute boyfriend who lived just below town on the Ohio River. He was short like me, but since he was a guy, his lack of height had more impact on his ego. As a result, he was a risk taker, even maybe a daredevil. If there was some kind of extreme sport, he was going to try it.
He pushed me out of my comfort zone, introducing me to all kinds of things I would have never attempted without someone making me.
When we weren’t breaking every Catholic rule in the backseat of his fabulous Chevelle, we were riding horses or water skiing or snow skiing or crashed out watching Friday Night Videos. This was the guy who encouraged me to jump off the bridge from 33 feet up. He was also the one with whom I got two vehicles stuck in the mud because we were horny teenage idiots.
Thank goodness we came from a place where friends with 4 wheel drive trucks were common.
But this post isn’t about wild, teenage sex. It’s not even about clumsy teenage sex. Not really.
One afternoon we were riding horses up the hill behind his house. Who knows what kind of stupid thing I was doing at the time – checking my lip gloss or making sure I was sucking in my tummy, but in a flash, I was in the gravel and watching the back end of my horse trot away.
“Are you okay?” Cute boyfriend climbed off his horse and extended a hand to help me up.
“Yes, just my pride is hurt.” I tried to play it off while I rubbed my sore left butt cheek that took the brunt of the fall.
“Well, this is your chance to show what you’re made of. You getting back on the horse or not?” He wasn’t impatient. It was a simple statement of fact, a practical matter. Were we going on with our ride or walking back to the barn?
I looked at my horse. He’d stopped and looked back at us over his flank. “Let’s go. I want to see that meadow.”
The meadow was just as he’d described it. It was a flat on top of the ridge, ringed by maples and oaks. Wildflowers waved among the tall grasses. We tied the horses to a tree and Cute Boyfriend spread out a blanket he’d brought along.
Getting back on the horse was its own reward. I‘m not afraid. I can do this. I won’t be beaten so easily. Reaching the meadow was a different kind of sweet. I liked to see this more sensitive side to Cute Boyfriend. He’d found a thing of beauty and he wanted to share it with me. Later, as I looked over his shoulder at the blue sky with high, wispy clouds and twined my fingers into his honey brown hair, I took a mental snapshot.
That night, I wrote something uncharacteristically wise and thoughtful in my journal. “Remember this day. Remember the lesson of this day. Get back on the horse.”
Do you detect a theme here? Are you good at getting back on the metaphorical horse? Who took my funny and replaced it with this cliche?
I’ve written a book review of Laura Munson’s This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness over at Buy-Her.
Please join me over there.
“What time is it?”
“7:24. Wait. Is it Monday? Don’t you have school today?”
“Yes!”
MathMan and Nate typically leave the house at 6:15a.m. All they could do at this point was mitigate the damage of being late. Thankfully, Nate didn’t have any exams yesterday morning.
Sophie made it to school just in time.
No bones were broken and cursing was kept to a minimum. Considering the frenzy we were in, this was remarkable. Are we, as a family, maturing?
After a beginning like that, I had no idea how the rest of the day would go. The plans I’d made for the day weren’t ruined, but now my timing was off. Would I fight the cats for a spot on the bed so I could lay around and watch Love Actually three times in a row? Or maybe finish any of the three books I’ve partially read?
When I went to bed on Sunday night, I’d had my whole day planned. Once most of the people were out of the house by 7:30, I’d work out, eat breakfast, shower, write, do more job searching, read and then, later in the day, make dinner and get the Christmas decorations out of the garage so we when Sophie got home, we could put up the tree, as promised.
So now what? It was already after 8 o’clock and that half an hour made all the difference in the world! Well, in my mind it did. It’s a ridiculous game I play with myself to keep from accomplishing anything. A ready made excuse.
When I got back from dropping Sophie at school (she missed the bus), I went around the house, picking up the trail of clothes and towels that had been left behind by people dressing in a hurry. I made beds, noticed that things were dusty and wow, did I really vacuum late last week?
Hours later, the bathrooms were clean, the whole house was vacuumed and dusted, furniture was rearranged (for the first time since we moved into this house in April 2009, our dining room is a dining room instead of an office), all of MathMan’s text books were in one place instead of scattered in three different rooms, dinner was prepared and the boxes of the decorations were in the basement and ready to go.
By 6:30p.m., I still hadn’t showered (gross!) or eaten or even consumed a cup of coffee. Nevertheless, I’d accomplished a lot. I’d even gotten the cat litter I forgot to buy the other day because Chloe drove to town and picked it up for me while she was there.
When I finally sat down to eat some dinner and drink a beer in record time (what happened to that martini drinker?), I thought about how the day represented life in general. Just because you’re tossed a curve, doesn’t mean you have to let everything fall apart. The ability to adapt is one of our most important survival skills.
Lately, it seems that I’m using that skill more often to navigate the job search (you would not believe the ways my resume has been adapted), the constant low-grade financial fever, and writing. Yes, even writing. Everyday I make plans to write X number of words or to work on X number of pages of revisions and every day something happens or I can’t pull it together blah, blah, blah.
But then I look back at the writing day and see that I wrote a few hundred words. Or I got through six pages of edits. Or I read some excellent writing which is as valuable as writing myself because it’s like the company you keep, right? I may not have met my big audacious goals, but that didn’t mean that what I had accomplished didn’t matter.
MathMan called me late in the day. “How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Good. Nothing came crashing down because we were late.”
“That’s good. I was worried. I got Sophie to school just in time. I also made sure that my alarm is set for tomorrow.”
“Excellent. I don’t know what happened. Oh well.” He pause and laughed. “Honestly? I haven’t felt this well rested in a while. It feels good.”
Yes, it does.
How are you adapting?
I’m blogging at Black Magpie Theory about one of the things that is contributing mightily to our very troubling troubles as a nation.
See you over there.
Lisa H Golden 