Bah.
That pretty much sums up my mindset right now. It’s officially winter and I’m trying desperately to get my warm winter ‘I love the world and Santa and snowflakes and gift wrapping even though it inevitably gives me paper cuts’ kind of attitude, but at the same time, trying to get Summer Slacker girl out of my brain is like trying to shove a cat into a cat carrier before going to the vet. She’s just not having this whole wool sweater and knitting and coating the world with holiday cheer thing. She looks at my pile of scrapbook crap and wonders when Dave Matthews is coming to Alpine again. She resents having to wear socks.
I should really be thinking about such things. Thanksgiving is in, like, four minutes! Normally, I have many presents purchased by now! I have lists of presents and lists of supplies and a cache of boxes I’ve saved through the year. I usually have a gift-wrapping theme picked out and a plan for executing said theme. A gift-wrapping PLAN! And right now, that sounds just like crazy elf logic.
I think I’m going to stand in Williams & Sonoma this weekend for a while and just sort of inhale the consumerism. Maybe if I’m lucky, they’ll be making the Ginger Pumpkin Spicey Pancakes Shaped Like People And Teddy Bears. And maybe my heart will grow three times that day.
Or not.
That having been said, it’s time for the traditional Holiday Card exchange again. If you want to get in on the card exchange and fill your mailbox with dozens of lovely seasonal cards, send me an email with your address (that you must be willing to share with other recipients on the list’ and if you want to be known as HotGrrl34 or ahem’Biensoul‘, make sure to list that as your name.) Last year, there were about thirty participants on the Big Exchange and I’m guessing it will be about that many again. I can’t tell you how fun it made the holidays, having something colorful in your mailbox that wasn’t a bill or junk mail. And fun! It’s fun!
And once again, like last year, I’ll have Esteban draw names and two lucky people will receive either a Bad Bar Weetamix or a Holiday Song Weetamix (winner’s choice, if they already have a Bad Bar mix). Also, I have, in the past, been known to save the addresses and send random cards throughout the year as well. Some people from the list got one of my handmade Anti-Valentine Valentine Cards last February. So many rewards and benefits from being a member, what more do you need? Frequent flier miles or something? Gah.
Of course, if you don’t want to be on the Big List and just want to exchange cards with me, that’s cool too. Just indicate your preference in the email.
Oooh’ I think writing the above paragraph may have sent Summer Slacker girl running. I might have to go to the card store during my lunch today. Squeee!
You know how the idea of baking a human inside my gut and then squeezing it out absolutely horrifies me? Not the concept, but the idea of it happening to ME. I mean, I needed mental recovery time when I had a wisdom tooth pulled, so can you imagine what would happen if that whole freak show went down? I don’t even like to think about it. The idea actually gives me a slight tinge of pain, like I have a bladder infection. Ouch. There it is again. Ouch.
But here’s the thing’ I could totally see myself adopting a baby someday. Some day when we figure out how to keep our house clean and not live like wild dogs. I think it’s the whole birth thing that makes me recoil in terror. Everything else’ the late night feedings, the inevitable tongue piercing at age six, the possibility that my child might like country music’ I don’t even blink. It’s the pushing thing. It’s the defecating on the table. It’s the’ oh god’ afterbirth. It’s the knowledge that from that point forward, every time you have sex, you’re risking the possibility of that happening to you AGAIN.
When I was seventeen, I bonded with a little baby named Hugo, who was adopted from China. We have pictures of him sitting on my lap and I’m feeding him cake. He loved me, for that instance, probably because I was feeding him cake. I have always had a conviction of Zero Population Growth, ever since my hippy upbringing, but was torn because I didn’t like the idea of shutting down the family track completely. But right then, looking at Hugo, I compromised that if I did decide to have children, I didn’t have to add to the overpopulation of the planet if I adopted. And I would adopt a little girl from China, because then there would be one less little girl who grows up in a culture where women have less value than oxen. Even after fourteen years, has always been constant in my brain. In fact, it’s one of the few beliefs I have which have gone unchanged for so long.
I’ve been reading with great interest Mimi Smartypants’s narrative of doing just that, and adopting the unbelievably adorable Nora. I told Esteban about my theory and he started babbling about Japanese schoolgirls being hot. So now I’m trying to negotiate the fact that I married a dirty old man in geek clothing.
My class workshopped the Car Salesman story this week. It went pretty well. Some people got it, some people came close to getting it, and some people didn’t get the ending at all. One girl thought I hadn’t finished it and that’s just where I left off. Another person had a problem with the fact that there wasn’t a motive for a character’s suicide. And also, the thing is riddled with spelling errors, missing words, really awful dialogue punctuation and a ton of awkward phrasings that need to be cleaned up. The professor’s comments were most helpful. He saw right through my struggles in the beginning of the piece, and noted exactly when the power of the story changed. It’s kind of freaky, though, that a reader could pick up on the same issues I was having as I was writing it. While I’m spoiled and pouted that there were comments other than ‘dazzling, truly dazzling’, it was good feedback and gives me fuel for revision. And now that I’ve gotten that one out of my system, I can dive into writing the shark story that has been in my brain since my trip to the New Orlean’s aquarium last January. I think the entire story exists so that I can use the term ‘echolocation bastards’. Writers are dumb, frivolous creatures. But then, you knew that already.
The words and pictures have been added to the latest Bad Bar entry. Also, Quoted has been updated. And there’s a crazy bidding riot happening on the comments of the blank entry which is making me giggle probably more than it should.
