California Slick

Yesterday's post had a comment from Denise of Not-What-It-Seems. She noted my vague attempts at updating my reading list and asked whether I had started Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love--and didn't I just love it. The answer to that is yes, and no. I am not finished with the book yet, having just begun the Love part, so I feel it unfair (hah!) to offer an opinion, a review, a critique, as it were. Because who knows what the author will manage in the last section. Suffice to say, the first two sections brought to mind an experience I had when I too was an ambitious writer looking to break into the NY publishing scene.

My career was more than promising then. I had by-lines in respected publications and a reputation as someone who worked with words as well as ideas. Somehow or other I got hooked up with a NY agent who had A Great Idea For A Book. He'd met one of those beautiful women who waft through Los Angeles, providing the look of A Scene, but little else. Her name was--let's call her Lisa--and she was gorgeous. She also had a personality defect; she was boring. Not in a Paris Hilton way, but in a maybe-I've-done-too-much-dope and my-voice-is-a-nasal drone manner. But she had a helluva a story to tell, which included big Hollywood names, big money, big drugs, big drama. So the agent had this terrific looking woman with this terrific story--and an inability to get it down on paper in anything that resembled a coherent or, even, interesting manner.

This is where I came in. I was the writer on the project. Not a ghost, because I negotiated for an AND credit, but certainly I would not be the one appearing on the talk shows. Certainly I would be the one doing all the work. We signed contracts with Random House and got down to work. Hah! Work for Lisa consisted of lounging on her bed, recounting her past exploits in a voice that was just this side of soporific. I would appear at her Benedict Canyon house three or four days a week and--little would happen. There was a manuscript floating around behind her story, a diary written by one of the principles, but I could not pry it out of Lisa's hands. You see, she wanted to be A Writer. I believe she once told me that her destiny was to be a writer, one she had prepared for by reading just about everything she could. She knew this story of hers was her big chance to be A Writer, and she didn't want me taking it from her.

The thing about being A Writer, though, is that you have to be able, physically and mentally, to put instrument to paper, and Lisa couldn't get a grip on that. Her best efforts, those that resulted in several consecutive sentences, were done under the blankets with a pillow over her head. Automatic writing, perhaps, but certainly not productive enough to get the draft for Chapter One that I was supposed to present to Random House in several weeks.

I recall an impasse and several phone calls to the agent. Finally, at last, Lisa handed over the diary and I worked at shaping it into something that would grab the editor. Our contracts, you see, depended on the first chapter being approved. So I winnowed and edited and spun dross and winnowed some more. Then I presented the chapter to the editor. We had lunch, as I recall, and I was certain that this was only the first of a lifetime of lunches with NY editors. He took me back to Random House and loaded me down with free books. Lunch! Free books! Hog heaven for a freelancer! In return, I handed over Chapter One. I don't remember being particularly enthralled with it, but then I never am until I've seen my stuff in print. I wasn't embarrassed, either however. It was what it was, considering the life grip Lisa had maintained on the material almost to the last minute.

The agent called me several days later. The editor had read it. He was still interested, but--it needed revision. It was, in his words, California slick. What was California slick? A genre born of glossy magazines that originated on the West Coast, which meant that they were, by definition less than anything produced by an East Coast writer. Random House needed this memoir to be, I don't know, more New York literary? I sensed that I had fallen down that rabbit hole labeled Coastal Rivalries, and this allowed me to break the contract Lisa and I had had, gracefully as I recall, but maybe not. California slick was the best I was going to be able to do, tied to this pony in a three-legged race. I packed my pages and went back to LA, never to see Lisa again. I don't know what happened to her story; I certainly have never seen her on the book-selling circuit.

So why does Eat Pray Love bring to mind this story? Because the writing is awfully familiar to me. It's the writing of someone in a hurry to get a piece of work done. It relies on quirks of personality to carry the story, on the writer's cuteness and flirtation with the reader. It's a big subject, written small. It's California slick.

But then I'm not done with the book yet, so I could be wrong.

Interview With A Blogger: The Official Version

Whit, over at HoneaExpress, didn't start this, but he's the one who caught my attention. These are the rules, as quoted by Whit:

That's it. According to the rules, which I am a stickler for, I am to post this information: Interview rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

And here are the five questions that Whit asked me:
.

1.� You've bitten me twice, turning me into a vampire and a zombie, respectively.� What's up with that?
There are many responses that come to mind and tongue here, but the truth is--I thought you bit me. The fact is that there aren't that many kids in my sandbox, so you get picked a lot. I would spread the wealth a little, but having freelanced, I know a needy soul when I see one. There is nothing quite like looming deadlines for shit that you don't want to do to make one pump up the effort in other arenas. When I was freelancing, I had perfectly plucked eyebrows. Used to keep a little mirror and tweezers by my computer and groom away when the writing got rough. So, consider my bites as invitations to play when you're so inclined.

2.� I've had dogs my whole life and I have never seen one in a carseat until your Molly. �Did you come up with that?
I wish I had invented carseats for dogs; I'd be rich if I had. I just googled it and got 3,120,000 hits for dog carseats. We got ours when we travelled a lot with our Yorkie, and she would slip and slide all over the place. Perhaps your dogs have all been on the larger side? Perhaps they are used to riding around in the back of your pickup?

3.� You said that you have a lot of books by your bedside.� Do you always have that many, or do you dwindle the list down before building it back up?
I neither dwindle, nor build. I just haven't edited the list...because I would have to figure out the code for strikethrough, and that would be a pain. But since you bring it up, I will revise my list. And update. And maybe even annotate. I cannot go to sleep without reading in bed for a while. Milk and chocolate helps as well.

4.� Did you ever feel bad that you didn't include me in your list of people you met at the L.A. Blogger Party?� It's because I teased you about the apron, isn't it?
I didn't?! Well, now I do feel bad. Maybe it's because I went straight from meeting you to putting you on my Google Daily Reads list. That's a pretty big deal, you know. Not many people are on it.

5.� The URL for your site is one letter off from a site full of naked men.� Did you do this on purpose?
Are you going to make me guess the letter? And how do you know?

And who's being interviewed here, you or me? Or is this a case of, enough about me, let's talk about you--what did you think of what I just said??????

Well, that was enlightening, wasn't it. If you want me to interview you, follow the rules in green above.

Wedding Rings

Here is the post I intended to write, complete with illustrations. Actually, due to a fit of sheer laziness, enertia, and for-chrissake- it's- sunday, you are getting the unillustrated version.

First, a color photo of my hand on my wedding day wearing my wedding rings. They were a sapphire engagement ring that D bought for me and a gold band with invisible diamonds that we traipsed around Sacramento an entire day to find. The engagement ring was white gold, so to "match" (and what's a Jewish girl if her wedding rings don't match), we had to find something in white gold. Except white gold wedding bands look like plumbing pipe, and I was having none of that. The invisible diamonds on the gold band we found made it sorta kinda look like it had an air of white gold about it.

Second, a closeup of my hand sans rings. I took them off, wrenched them if you must know, in a fit of pique round about the second week of the current story of my life. I'll show him, motherfucker, I'll take my rings off--and then he'll be sorry. Don't know if he noticed or cared or what he actually felt. But there I was with my nude left hand, sort of dangling in the air, as it were. I thought it just needed some time to get adjusted to the light of day, but it turns out that the rings had some sort of permanent effect on my third finger, left hand. There is a line there, not of suntan, but of something within the actually flesh. Talk about a fucking metaphor.

Third, a closeup of my new, bought-by-me ring. I got it in Seattle. It is a sterling band, about tenth of an inch wide, brushed metal with the following stamped in cooly-wonky letters all along the ring: IT'S NOT THE DESTINATION, IT'S THE JOURNEY. Another metaphor, true, but this one at least is of my making.

The Weather Report: Sunny & Calm

Hey, I'm in an immeasurably improved mood today. 'Cause guess what: my garage walls are being torn apart while an electrician looks for "the worst kind of short you can have," the one that knows no name or place.

When I got home from my Travels With Molly on Wednesday, after I freaked out over some shit about D, I went to cool my parched throat with a Coke and found the garage refrigerator dead. Dead, dead, dead. As were all the lights and garage door. And there was zilch power is the laundry room next to the garage. You can imagine, particularly if you've experienced my creative way with bad words, how I cursed the missing man of the house. The one who knows what to do when bad stuff happens construction-wise. Because he spent 20 odd years in construction. And because he's a man, goddamit, and knowledge of such stuff comes along with the penis. So I called him, and I left a message along the lines of: "if you care anything about me at all, you'll call me back and tell me what to do..." He did and he did, but really fixing electrical problems when you're 700 miles away is a tad difficult.

So today, I looked up E for Electrician and a very nice man is now banging away. I'm not sure how much it will cost me, but at least I'll be able to wash my clothes. Which is a good thing, as Martha says, because I was running out of underwear (I have to use that word every once in a while because it makes my Google stats go up).

But that's not what I want to talk about today. You deserve something cheerful and light after my dirge yesterday, so I've got some Molly photos. She seems to make everyone smile; she's just that kind of a dog.

Lookin' out the window at a rest stop, somewhere near the California-Oregon border.

On the road again. She's in her carseat, which is fixed in the backseat, which offers not a lot of room because it's a little sporty VW convertible, but that's okay with her because she's a sporty dog. The carseat was bought originally for Pupi, our late, great Yorkshire terrier. Molly doesn't mind it being a hand-me-down. Nor does she mind that she is three times Pupi's size. She fits, somehow. Sometimes she leans on the front seat like this, and sometimes she looks out the window. I don't know what she's looking at, but I'm fascinated watching her because she seems to be taking in all the sights and scenery just like a human would. What can be out there that would merit such attention? If there's a dog in the mix, then she goes bananas, but otherwise, she's a Quiet Watcher. She's such a good traveller that I'm thinking of buying a camper and going on the road. Too bad I'm not a guy; she'd be a great chick magnet.

The Astrologer Daily: Mercury trine Jupiter. | BlogHer

I started reading KT, BlogHer's Astrology Contributing Editor, just about when she first started posting on BlogHer. Which was just about the time that my errant husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore. KT's daily readings just seemed to speak to exactly my situation, and to give me hope, and whatever else I needed to get through the day.

Which just goes to show how the stars can fool you.

Today's reading is: "Today is one of those great times when we can see the trees as well as the forest. Mercury, the planet that rules thought, logic and communication, makes an easy trine to Jupiter, the Big-Picture Planet. Details and grand plans merge in a delightfully complete scenario. Both planets are in energizing Fire signs. We feel optimistic and hopeful for the future. At the moment, words have more impact than we can imagine, so choose yours carefully. Humor, jokes and games go well now.

Today's moon:
Today the Moon is in Cancer all day. It's in the Balsamic Phase, closing in on the New Moon in a few days. It's 11% of full today."

Today I woke sadder than sad. Then I had to cut short Molly's walk because I was crying in the middle of the street, forchrissakes (fortunately I was wearing sunglasses, so other than the tears streaking down my cheeks and the snot blubbering out of my nose, no one could tell--I don't think). And then I got all weepy over Barbara Morgan, the teacher-astronaut, finally making it into space. A dream not so much deferred, but long in coming.

Shall I tell you why? Aw, c'mon, you already know. Why flog a dead horse, as the Brits say. Or try to shore up one's faith in a lost-cause marriage.

"Optimistic and hopeful for the future" is exactly what I don't feel. Able to see the Big Picture? Nope. Just a bunch of days and days and days ahead. The Moon is in the Balsamic Phase. Would that be, as in vinegar? And since four of my moons are in Cancer, not to mention my natal sign, would I be one big old vat of the stuff?

Phooey, I say. Phooey. And a pox on all their houses.

Still Wandering...

...and not sure when I'll be back. I could go home tomorrow. Or I could take a sidetrip to the coast. Molly's up for whatever, and me--I think all these hours alone in the car are....probably good for me. Maybe.

I had great intentions to blog along the way, but tonight is the first time I've actually achieved an internet connection. Perhaps the drinks and wine at dinner on the nights I was in Seattle had something to do with it. Here we are last night:

Liz and I haven't seen each other in--oh, decades and decades and decades. Our last memory of being together was a week we spent at Lake Candadhota with two other friends, Ellen and Karen. It was the summer before our senior year in high school. Liz and I made our own bathing suits. Hers was a red and black plaid with white piping, a two piece. Mine was blue-green silky print, fully lined, in the most daring of styles, a "hiphugger". I was always the girl with the shortest skirts, even in those days. I left after that weekend and started my freshman year at Pitt; my mother, who was in a hurry for me to get going, shoehorned me into college at year early. I never had a senior year. I never saw Liz and Ellen and Karen again. Do I sound bitter? Well, regretful, no doubt.

Despite the decades and decades and decades intervening, Liz and I picked up as if it had only been days. We marveled at that, and I, ever one for deconstructing every happenstance and emotion even unto death, tried to figure out what it was about us that created such an unbreakable connection. We met in First Grade; our mothers fixed us up, in the days before Playdates were so common. And we just stuck, I guess. Liz is the reason why I'm such a good Catholic: whenever we had Saturday night sleepovers, we had to go to Mass the next morning. She taught me to genuflect, to cross myself, and to bob my head at "Jesus" when I sang Christmas carols.

We didn't go to Mass this weekend, but we spent hours talking and laughing and catching each other completely up to date on our four marriages and her three children, where we've been and where we still want to go. It was, in a word, amazing.

Travels With Molly...

...and apologies to John Steinbeck, but I'm such a fan, and he did do Travels With Charley, and I am about to hit the road with dearest Molly.

We're driving up to Seattle to meet my BFF from the First Grade, henceforth known as BFF1. She's from the East and I'm in the West, but she's got a wedding or something in Washington, which is only about 750 miles north of Elk Grove, so what the hell, why not just load Molly in her carseat and GO!

We leave early tomorrow AM, and I am, of course, taking all electronics with me (I feel so ungrounded without them, doctor, do you think that's a problem?), so I expect to blog and Twitter along the way.

I'm excited. I'm also exhausted--from all the running around and cleaning of car and buying of snacks and washing of dog.

Here she is after a first towel off and then a mad shake and then a rubbing of oneself all over the quilted bedspread. The thing about dogs, or animals in general, is that they do make you laugh. And they do keep you warm in bed. And they are such willing travelling companions.

My DayThus Far: By Jane

Molly and I got up relatively early this morning and hit the road for Starbucks by 8:30. We do the Starbucks trip every other day. When D is in charge, they do it every day: Grande Drip with room for cream and a Maple Nut Scone. They share it. Me, I'm not so generous. I do the Grande Drip, but not the scone. And the reason I go every other day? I only drink half the coffee. You know, there is really nothing wrong with heated up Starbucks the next day. You can trust me on that.

First stop: gas station. No problem.

Second stop: Starbuck's drive through. Very, very crowded. I listened to a program on organ harvesting on NPR. Very, very interesting. Gave my order, and decided to treat Molly to a shared Maple Nut Scone (she is definitely missing D). Waited for my order. Took my order, put the cup in the Very Inadequate Cupholder that my VW offers. Drove away. Stuck my hand in the bag to break off a piece of Maple Nut Scone. Broke off a piece of Oat Nut Scone--gag! Dry, tasteless, not worth the calories.

Third stop: Drove back to Starbucks and exchanged the scone. Drove away, again. Heard a popping sound: the coffee cup had flipped out of the Very Inadequate Cupholder and all the coffee was now sloshing around on the floor. Said fuck.

Fourth stop: Another Starbucks, closer to home. No drivethrough. Went in and ordered another Grande, etc. Mentioned in passing that it was my second of the morning and the barista handed me back my card. "It's on me," she said.

Drove home thinking warm and fuzzy thoughts about Starbucks. Pulled into garage. Exited car, carefully placing second Grande, etc. on a safe surface. Picked up clot of coffee-soaked napkins and keys in hand, went to throw them in the garbage.

Threw something in the garbage. Something that made a metallic sound when it dropped. Clot of coffee-soaked napkins still in my hand. Peered into the garbage can. Saw my keys lying in the garbage soup at the bottom.

Garbage can very, very big, i.e., deep. Not to mention very, very stinky. Can't reach keys. Curse D for not being there with his long arms to fish them out for me. Go into garage to see what is there that I can use to get the keys.

Passing by car on right side, see that I never refastened the gas cap. Have done all this motoring with it dangling outside the car. Flash on what might have been if I still smoked. Yeah, right....flash, indeed.

Get a wire hanger, open it up and, breathing through my mouth, lean into garbage can far enough to fish out the keys. Pretend I am doing it on Survivor. Get the keys. They are coated in something white. Don't look. Dump them in sink and run hot water. Will disinfect and think about them later, at Tara.

---some time later--

Clean off desk. Find bill for health insurance--due July 1. Wonder if I'll have to beg, or if I'll be forced to endure Kaiser. Blue Cross, bless their heart, is amazingly understanding and cancels my cancellation. I love Blue Cross. I tell them so.

It is now 3:06 and my day is only half over. What next, I ask you, what next?!

Randomness from BlogHer'07

I should have live-blogged myself throughout the entire conference, because I was so full of wit and pith, little of which I can now remember.

If you read my post from the airport, you can imagine what a woeful camper I was on arriving in Chicago. There were two beautiful beds in my room at The W and just one beautiful me to sleep in them. But I hooked up for dinner with my old friends, Sueb0b of RedStapler, Karl of SecondhandKarl and Celeste of AverageJane. Drinks were had and food was eaten, and soon I started to feel a whole lot better about life in general and me in particular.

Still, when Elisa, Lisa, and Jory welcomed us at the General Session after breakfast, I got all teary. And at different times during the sessions. And then at the conclusion of the conference, when Cooper & Emily made their pitch for the power of us in BlogHer's community activism initiative. Here's why (aside from my admittedly 'iffy' state of mind): I felt bathed in a huge tub of support, caring, hey-I-like-you, what-do-you-think, all from hundreds of women who valued the things I think are important and who "get" what I do, immediately, organically, thoroughly. That kind of support for each other, particularly from such a wide range of women, is not merely feminism as usual. In fact, I'm from the Second Wave, so I go back to the early days of the women's movement, and I can tell you we have not always played so well together in the sandbox. Even last year, there was a pervasive feeling that many of us left with; Leahpeah calls it oogy. There was no oogy at BlogHer07. I don't know why. I don't think it much matters. I do think that Elisa, Lisa, and Jory have managed to created a huge (11,000 plus) grand group of women who are now a force to be reckoned with, both on the micro and the macro level. This is what we wanted back in the 60s and 70s. It took this long, and these particular women, and this communication tool for it to happen.

The sessions I went to gave me exactly what I wanted, generally speaking. I came. I saw. I laughed. I learned a bunch of technical stuff. Even the session on branding when I was told in no uncertain terms that I could not blog about politics and knitting did not dim my lights.

I met tons and tons of women. And got tons and tons of cards. And I'm not going to even start now naming them or linking them. I'm going to save that for tomorrow.

To Be Continued....

BlogHer Report, Part One - The Photos

I didn't take that many. I never do. Some photo ops I don't think about the camera until it's too late; other times I'm sorta shy about flashing it in stranger's faces. And those I took--well, they're pretty awful. Remember the line in my banner where I promised you mediocre photography? This goes beneath mediocre. But it's not my fault that I forgot to check the flash switch on my camera and it was on OFF for every pic, all of which were indoors. Still, in the interest of veracity or something or other, the set is over at Flickr.

On My Way, I think...

I'm sitting in the airport in Sacramento, waiting for my flight to Chicago, to BlogHer, to all things good and joyous.

D came over yesterday to stay with Molly. This is, I suppose, part of our sharing custody. Is it weird? Yes, it is. But mostly, I think, because he's something or other that doesn't feel natural to me. I can't put my finger on it, and I'm not sure what the source of it is. If I were to list (which, can't you just tell, I'm about to), I would say it's either:

a. He's wary of being sucked back in by our coupleness. I feel at times as if he's brandishing the sterling cross before me. I told him that. He didn't respond.

OR

b. He's just not "into me" and finds it somewhat aggravating to be in my presence. But how can that be, wonderful, witty person that I am?!

OR

c. He's still in a bad mood, permanently maybe.

Whatever....not much I can do about it. Not anything, actually. Except breathe.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho....

...'tis off to BlogHer I go. And if that little ditty doesn't stick in your brain, here's another one. "Leavin' on a jet plane/don't know when I'll be back again...." Except I do, Sunday night.

Of course this trip has been in the works since the winter. But yesterday I decided that I absolutely had to get my hair cut. I went to Chris, at Something or other Spa and Salon. I picked him because he was incredibly freaky, and freaky is familiar to me, coming from West Hollywood. Chris would have fit in very well at one of the leather bars there. How he manages in Elk Grove, I'm not sure. I told him I wanted something 'edgy.' He wanted me to define edgy. "You know, edgy. How do you define it." We discussed etymology and I guess we were each satisfied, because he picked up his scissors and began.

I don't have a photo of what I looked like at the end. I have, as well, managed to repress the few glimpses I got in the mirror. Suffice to say, I had a bundle of hair in the back, some awkward tendrils at the nape, and a long curving payess jutting out from the front of each ear. The whole mass was such a gooey glop of product, product and then more product that I had to get in the shower when I got home.

D arrived today to stay with Molly and said, "oh, you decided to cut your hair." He was trying his best to be diplomatic, and really he was, but one of his strong suits as far as I'm concerned is that I trust his judgment about how I look. So I asked him, and he answered: "Well, it's kind of wild." I was thinking I could get away with a mop-of-curls, je ne sais quoi look, but maybe I was a bit overly optimistic. "Do I need to get it cut again?" "Yes," he said, and D isn't a man who is affirmative that often (mostly he likes to hedge). So I hied myself to SuperCuts, where Verushka applied her magic scissors to my head.

Is it better? That's debatable. But it is what it is, isn't it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, is my Zen for the day.

I'm taking my laptop, of course, but last year the wireless connection at the hotel died from time to time, due to hundreds of women tap-tap-tapping away. This hotel in Chicago is much fancier, not to mention expensive, but what that will mean connection-wise, I'm not sure. So you may get full-blown posts or I may be updating on my Treo.

Blogging From My Bed....

Last night I couldn't fall asleep, I was so wired. My mind was a Tilt-a-Wheel, with Debate, Blog, BlogHer, and D, all careening madly around, crashing into each other. I finally gave up and came into my office. Maybe I could purge myself on line, I thought. It sort of worked, but really, I'm thinking I should get a cow. That way when I get up in the wee small hours, I can go milk her.

The clashes from the crashing Tilt-a-Wheel yielded the following sparks (with apologies to the late Marlene Marks, who used to keep my metaphors in line. But Marlene's gone so now there is no one to squelch my urge to, as she once put it, "put the bow on the box.")

1. The Debate: I Twittered it, and you can read my comments, such as they were, there. I've avoided reading any commentary today; isn't my own opinion enough, for god's sake! Which is:

• Hillary--looks good. She's witty, warm, strong, smart and there's no doubt she could conquer the world.
  
• Obama--eh! He is long on slogans and short on substance. I don't get what the fever about him is.
  
• Edwards-- I like him too, and he's got passion in the right places, but I think he's stronger on domestic, than foreign policy--and god knows we need a savior out there in the world.
• Biden--can't keep his foot out of his mouth. I'm sure the NRA guy appreciated being called nuts, which maybe he is, but still, Joe, not nice, not nice.
  
• Dodd--he comes across as mad, rather than impassioned, which I found somewhat threatening.
• Richardson--another one who comes across as mad
  
• Gravel--really furious, really scary
  
• Kucinich--I just want to bat this guy. He's like Howdy Doody--yap yap yap.
  
• Cooper, Youtube & the debate: loved it. Not just for the clever videos, but for the ones that put the metal to the pedal (is that right? or is it the other way around? and what does it mean, really?). I thought it really gave the candidates a chance to do more than sloganeer and some of them took it. Not Obama, though, Or Kucinich. I have loved (in the most filial way) Anderson Cooper since he was hosting The Mole. He is my kinda journalist: a human being reporting what he sees and feels and thinks.
  

2. The way I am getting through the whole D situation is by sticking my toe in Zen, meditation, sitting--whatever you want to call it. That I don't know what to call it speaks to my pre-newby state. I'm thinking about starting a new feature/regular post here to chart my entry into the world of mindfulness.

3. BlogHer ought to put me on as a Contributing Editor to write about life at the far end of the baby boom. They have superb coverage of most other aspects of any woman's life, but there's no one talking about those of us who are war babies. We're not Elders and we're not, even if we are, Mommy's. Our issues are unique, and I don't see anyone covering them. So Jory, Elisa and Lisa--how about it?

Me, The Meme....



Me in 10 seconds? Holy shit. Would that be the witty me or the wise one? The goofy me? Or the shy one? The academic? The shrink? The political junky? The newly-single woman? Too many choices; too little time. I'm a writer, and my blog is my magazine. Kinda like Life, except my byline's ByJane.



Technorati link: Hit me again, Sam....

Ever a Newbie? Never a Prof?

I wonder how long it will be before I get this Blogger thing right. The other day, after I posted my tantalizing breakfast menu, a comment appeared. It was from SomeGirl'sName (Taffy, Candy--take your pick)53241 and she was sending me the link about making extra money this summer. Obviously, some bot or other picked up the checking out underwear sentence and popped me into the porn lineup. I did not take the bait. I, mature and wise adult (who should know better than writing about her underwear), deleted the comment. I had never done that before. It was exciting. Then I saw the little Moderate Comments tab and thought--hmmm, wonder what that means. So I hit it and said yes and then--nothing.

No comments at all on that post. Had I really been that offensive? What was I doing writing a whole essay on my breakfast when I hate to read other people's posts about what they ate? Oh, Jane, you are swiftly slithering down the pole to b-o-r-i-n-g.

I tried not to take it personally, which is the way I take everything these days, and I tried to be mature, as befits one of my age. So I logged on this morning to try again, this time a post on yard sales (another fantastic topic, doncha think?). Suddenly a screen I'd never seen before popped up, and what to my wondering eyes did appearing but a Comment, waiting for my approval before posting. So that's what Moderating Comments means.

I've turn that option off, by the way, so please do feel free to comment. Please, please, puhleaze--it's awful quiet over here.

Written from a fog somewhere....

I am groggier than hell, so forgive me if I babble. Sleep, as the commercials kindly put is, is eluding me. I fall off okay, but then I wake up about 3:30 or 4 a.m. and I AM AWAKE. Eyes open, brain twirling--I feel like I'm back in college and just pulled an all night on uppers. I'm having conversations with everyone, with D and my cousin and my nephew and my friend. They're good conversations and bad, about sweet things and sour. I'm superbly articulate, of course, and say exactly what I need to to convince said person to see the rightness of my ways. And they do, or at least they fade from the stage, and then the next person appears to lure me into my nighttime dialogue. Or blog posts--I'm writing entire blog posts in my mind. Incisive, deeply moving, wittier-than-shit blog posts. And you're not reading them? How can that be?

Last night I finally got up and had some toast and a glass of milk. And read Time. (nb: Time is a much better magazine than Newsweek; have you noticed that too?) And did not fall asleep upon my return to bed, so that's the old drink-a-glass-of-milk theory down the tubes.

This morning when I finally dragged my sorry ass out of bed (thanks, Sondra Jean, for the colloquialism), I was shakey and--hmmmm, hungry. Like when I was in college and would wake up with a hangover (and though I sound it, I wasn't one of the biggest stoners around) and had to shovel bacon and eggs into me toute suite.

I pulled the bacon and eggs from the fridge, lucky me to have stocked up last week. And put the bacon in the microwave for 10 seconds--what, you thought I was making it fresh? Puhleeze, don't you know there is pre-cooked bacon on your grocer's shelves. I pulled open a drawer to get the little yellow plastic ball in which I nuke my eggs only to realize it was in the dishwasher. Dirty. So of course I hauled its sorry ass out of there and peered into it (kinda like I would peer at the crotch of dirty underwear to see if they would stand a second wearing when I was in college--are you sensing a motif here?) and saw, much to my regret, too much schmutz to be able to ignore.

So I returned to the freezer where I pulled out another tasty treat: a frozen gluten-freeze organic buckwheat waffle with some sort of allegedly wild, allegedly berries. I fried that in the toaster, since the microwave was occupied reheating the almost full Grande Drip that I got yesterday morning at Starbucks but didn't finish. Finally, as the chefs on the cooking shows say, I plated my food, pouring Real Maple Syrup on my waffle, and sat down to eat, with a napkin no less.

In all fairness, I must finish this culinary expedition exposition by telling you that the absolute best of all the dishes before me was the day-old coffee. Hey, wanna come over for breakfast tomorrow?????? I'll wash the yellow egg ball.....

My 200th Post....must be pithy!

But I am so not in a pithy state of mind. (Can we please set that to music and have Jamie Foxx do Ray Charles singing it?)

My mood is [puts-spit on finger to the air] pissy, I would say. When one has so completely fucked up one's life, how else should one feel. One would ask. And one would have no answer.

I am down and out sad. Okay, there; I've said it. And now what? I don't know. That's the problem: I don't know.

On Being A Mother - Why I'm Not:: Part Two

I promised you this post way back here when I wrote Part One. I didn't intend to get into this today. No, I had a far more intellectual post I want to write for BlogRhet, but epiphanies being what they will, this is what you're getting.

I just watched Leahpeah's interview, now on Alpha Mom, with Amy Storch of amalah.com--and I had an Aha Moment. Amy was telling Leah about the day when she first started working at home full-time and she got so furious with her infant son that she wanted to shake him. She didn't, but the depth of her feeling so scared her that she realized she needed to put him down and leave the room for a minute to calm down. Then she realized that whatever other mom's could or could not do regarding the number of children they could effortlessly handle while still chopping wood and pumping gas, she had met her limit. The solution for her was to get childcare. Amy wrote about it on her blog and the response from women who had felt the same and what they did was overwhelming, she says.

So, here's another response from a woman who felt the same.

The backstory: Miss B, my niece, had the wisdom to be born right in the middle of December, just in time for Christmas vacation. Thus, entire village--namely, my mother, my father, and me--was there in situ during the early weeks of her life. Holding her, feeding her, diapering her; you know, all that stuff. When it was my turn to do the middle of the night feedings, they wheeled her bassinet into the den where I was sleeping on the sofa bed. Now, I am the baby of the family, of all the cousins, in fact, so I had never really spent a lot of time with a newborn in the middle of the night. Certainly I was a dab hand at babysitting, and I prided myself on how I could calm my crying charges. But this middle of the night thing--well, really, how hard could it be.

Let me tell you, short and sharp. Hard.

Miss B was a pacifier baby, which was all to the good as long as she was sucking away. But when she'd fall asleep, those little cheeks would go slack, and, plop, the pacifier would fall out of her mouth. Which would wake her up and cause her to wah wah wah, where's my paci in that relentless way that only a newborn can do. This interfered, as you might imagine, with my sleep. And by dawn of the morning, I was ready to kill her. I tried to think of a way of attaching the pacifier to her mouth. When I was a kid, I had a doll whose hair bow was stuck into her polyvinyl head with a straightpin. I couldn't pin the pacifier to Miss B's cheek. I couldn't do anything. Everytime I'd lie down and start to fall asleep again, she'd be all wah, wah, where's my paci. I remember getting up for the umpteenth time, and standing over her cradle, filled with such, such--a strong desire to shut her up any way possible. I remember the feeling in my arms as I held them by my side with my fists balled. I was shaking with the repressed urge to pick her up and--what? shake her? swing her against the wall? hit her?

In that instant I knew, viscerally knew, how moms end up hurting their kids. I had walked half a block in their shoes, and I was wise enough to know that it was the fact that I had choices, that enabled my repressing that urge. I did not have a house full of other kids. I was not the only one responsible for the baby. I was not post-partum. I did not have a husband nagging and bills waiting. I could, and did, say to my sister and my mom, "nope, not for me. The middle of the nights are yours."

I also did not think, specifically, directly, consciously--ooooh, better not have one of my own that I can't hand off to someone else. I don't even know that I suspected how that night might have played a part in why I just never got around to having kids. Until today. Until I heard Amy tell a similar story about her baby. Until I heard her say that this was a common experience. Then, I realized that I had not known it was common. My mother never expressed such frustration; nor had my sister. I thought I alone was the uncommon woman. I thought, I guess, that I was unnatural, deeply flawed, not Mother Material. So I protected my unborn children in the only way I knew: by not having them.

Things To Be Thankful For....

1. In the last several days, since I first added it to my blog, I have earned $.07 from Adsense. I am thrilled. Really. I'm actually making money off my writing again which means that once more, when I fill in the blank at the passport office, I can put "Writer."

2. When I'm feeling out of sorts, no one else has to suffer. Although when I'm feeling out of sorts, it's maybe because no one else here.

3. I'm old enough to eat candy for dinner if I want to.

4. I'm smart enough not to.

5. I have a whoopy-de-do kitchen that faces my mega mega screen TV, so when I'm feeling out-of-sorts, I start cooking and watching moronic TV. A & E reality shows about dwarfs. And small female entertainers. (Does A & E have size issues?) It's a good thing that there are a seemingly endless supply of these shows as I'm just not in the mood for anything that may provoke, even in the slightest, an unwelcome thought or feeling. Nah, that's not true. I'm just incredibly shallow. But then I'm also incredibly over-educated. Are the two related??? Go read HerBadMother; she expressed it perfectly (as is her wont).

6. My mother modeled the cook-when-you're-feeling-punky activity. I just realized that when I wondered why the hell I am spending so much time in the kitchen. Cooking. For myself. When I rarely did so when D was around. And I'm making incredibly fresh, nutritious dishes, that I concoct myself, out of just the two or three things I happen to have in the fridge. Today it was golden beets, two kinds of zucchini, fresh garlic heads that I roasted, peeled, sliced and diced and mixed with some great northern beans (or should that be, Great Northern Beans), olive oil and white balsamic. I'll let you know how it is....

7. My hair will not look very good for BlogHer '07, so no one will have to worry about my tresses out-tressing them.

8. I made it onto Second Life today. For a second or two. I have a deep fear that once in, I won't emerge. But today I got in and out. And for that I am thankful.

Love,
Jane

There is a way of moving through life in which what happens becomes a foreground so overwhelming that nothing else is noticed. One moves from moment to moment, reading one’s life as narrative only. The background, all those elements that belong to the senses, are blotted out.

Yesterday was the funeral. I can tell about it, narrate the events. I can point to the oddities. That the setup for a traditional funeral, the folding chairs, the dais, the lectern, were all ignored, or perhaps rejected by the mourners. That her eldest son stood throughout on nearby gravestones. That the eulogy began, “she was a tough old broad,” and devolved to a retelling of old hurts and angers.

But all that is sterile, intellectual. It has neither color nor feeling. The sky is neither blue nor overcast (it was in fact blue). There are no sounds, no smells, no understanding or awareness. I don’t believe this is a case of life lived in the moment. I think it is a problem of life lived as a narrative.

This happened and then that happened. She said, he said. It is the equivalent of a genre novel, say a mystery, in which all of the elements of fiction that create a full-bodied literary experience are sacrificed to plot. It may be a darn good read, but there is no life to the thing once The End is reached.

On the other hand, there is that state of heightened awareness. It wasn’t that things suddenly had great significance, but that time stretched enough for me to see and hear and think and take note. It seems to me that this is the truth of living in the moment.

To live life as a narrative requires two things: the ability to observe, to remain intellectually alert no matter how provocative or evocative the situation. I stand in the midst of this family who have come to bury their mother, a woman with whom I have had a relationship as mother-in-law for over fifteen years, a woman who’s life has touched me in a way I cannot even articulate, but which has resulted in the only strong, organic, consistent writing I’ve done in years. Not seven months ago, I buried my own mother, the woman who was the linchpin of my life.

Yet here that day is what I observe: the oldest son has chosen, unconsciously I’m sure, to stand on the gravestones of someone else’s father. I know this because the Mason’s emblem is prominent in my mind, while I could kick myself for not registering the dead man’s name, birth and death dates. What telling details they would make for my narrative. (Here I must stop and ask myself what narrative I was creating that day: funerals of the rural non-Jew? Repressed sons? Disappointed women?) There is a solitary pot of flowers, baby calla lilies, sent to the funeral home by whom no one is sure or seems to care. One stem has been broken, and the bloom flops like a broken wing. (This detail now makes me want to cry, and I see that my narrative has much to do with the thing in my mother-in-law that has always touched me: what I read, when I create her narrative, as the supremely disappointing life of a woman at the hands of the four men she lived with, three her sons, two of whom are standing now at her graveside).
The sons are awkward in this situation. They have chosen not to have clergy (“Ma wasn’t much for ceremony”) and so it is all up to them to create whatever eulogy they intend their mother to have. “She was a tough old broad,” says the eldest.

“Yeah, she sure was,” says the youngest.

“But she had a hard life to contend with,” says the daughter-in-law.
There are few others at the graveside. Two grandchildren, out of five. A second daughter-in law who is already burnt yellow from the liver cancer that will kill her in two months. A former daughter-in-law whose attendance was not required, or even perhaps desired. She injects the single note of religion into the affair, some talk about Jesus and about the hereafter. She seems to go on forever, although it was probably only a minute or two. The eldest son scuffs his heel on the edge of the gravestone he stood on. The younger looks blank, and his left nostril flicks up ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly. The grandchildren merely look embarrassed. This was not a family of religious note, and even the short sermon was, it seems, inappropriate. When it was over, there was a palpable feeling of relief, and a chorus of muttered “amen…yes, indeed…amen.”

I wrote this seven years ago when D's mother died. I'm reprinting it now because it speaks to my sense of the importance of narration, of narratology I suppose one would say, to the way I view my life and this blog. Just as an addendum, the oldest son, the one whose best eulogy for his mother was, "she was a tough old broad" is now dead as well. I wasn't at his funeral, so I don't know who stood up to speak for him or what they said.