That's My Bix!

Dolls Eat Your Soul. For Reals.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The above photo was taken a few weeks ago, as I was driving through a neighborhood in Milwaukee trying to find a place to do a legal U Turn. I shouted “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” and my passenger Suzanna Danna curled into a fetal position and just started murmuring “No no no no make it stop”. I grabbed my phone, snapped a photo (because otherwise who would believe this crazy shit?) and then promptly dropped my fucking phone into my glass of iced tea. It was, quite possibly, a one in a million shot, an Oreo dunk of technology that ended up costing me $200 and a second trip to Milwaukee. All because of my own stupidity and these fucking dolls. Seriously, though, who DOES that?

Is it just me or does it look like the little one is crying for help and the one behind it is pulling it back behind the drapes before someone sees? When I went back to Milwaukee to get my replacement phone, I considered driving down that same street again, but didn’t, mostly because I only wanted to see if the dolls had moved. And that would just be crazy. And also, the second time I was by myself and I’m pretty sure I would have crapped myself if they had.

I’m updating again, because Robyn Anderson said that blog posts about the process of writing could be used to torture prisoners and WE CAN’T HAVE THAT. She probably just wants an update about Jincy (who is probably at home sitting in my office window, looking imperious, because she is the boss of all of us) anyway. Next time, promise. Mean it.

So, Esteban’s job has been slowly killing him (he was basically locked in his home office for 90 hours a week and eschewed all forms of socialization for three months solid during the second quarter) and happily, he now has a new job with a huge company that has a very unlikely chance of being affected by the downward swirl of the economy, so that’s good. My own job continues to be a bit soulless, but things are getting churned again, the same churning that was happening at the beginning of the year, and well, we’ll all see how that plays out.

Up until this weekend, I had avoided speaking with my mother in 2010. It was pretty easy to do so, as I was out of town on Mother’s Day and she was fine as long as she got a present, and she completely did not acknowledge my birthday at all, and then for her birthday, I had considered playing eye for an eye and not acknowledging it but then my sister asked if I wanted to go in with her on a present, and I decided that here was the high road, smacking me in the face and I’d be a fool not to take it. So I did and avoided her yet again!

I was hoping to make it until the obligatory Christmas visit, but Fate intervened in the form of my grandmother (Mafia Grandma) being diagnosed with a nasty form of cancer, which meant that I spent the entire last weekend sitting in the hospital with my mother and her sisters Aunt Brunhilda and Aunt Drusilla. Man, I knew that I had some karmic debt to pay back for being a bad daughter, but seriously, that’s hard core. Like, we’re talking some 30 hours of quality time where you’re just sitting in a waiting room with nothing better to do than demonstrate a stunning level of passive-aggression. It was AWESOME. They are the masters of subtext-filled conversation, truly.

And yes, I feel like a complete and utter asshole about the entire situation.

As such, my head has been in a weird place. Probably understandably, but still, it makes my silly little plans for fall (pottery class, cleaning out the basement, tiling the breezeway, leveling the back flowerbeds, swimming 20 cumulative miles at the Y before Nov 1) seem totally trivial and pointless. I’m trying to be zen about everything: nothing real is threatened, I am but a leaf in the wind, blah blah blah, but at the same time, I feel the itch of an impending big change and it’s making me crazy. It’s like there’s a word hanging on the tip of my tongue and I just can’t spit it out.

For right now, I’m sucking on a sugar free Pep O Mint Lifesaver, though, and practicing slow deep breaths through the O.

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The Thrill of Having Written and the agony of Writing

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

My biggest problem with writing seems to be the fear that the act of writing itself will somehow not be as good as whatever supposed brilliance is floating around my noggin. That is, of course, stupid, because how would I know? And yet, half the problem with This Thing I’m Writing is just the simple issue of my not putting words on the cyber page.I’m so in love with the idea of my story, the sheer world that has been created, that I’m terrified I’m going to ruin it somehow with my clumsy attempts to share it.

This is the part where I whine: I use Scrivener, which makes things a little weird, because while it tracks your word count like an obsessed auditor, it’s all in weird little snapshots and I’m finding the idea of writing on boundless notecards to be strangely offputting. Writing is hard. And also? Writing is hard.

In effort to commit myself to write (by the way, that’s part of my excuse for the absence of blog updates: I am loathe to write words that aren’t going toward This Thing I’m Writing*), I made an agreement with Aych while I was in SF this June: I would write 500 words a day, or 3500 words a week. That, in theory, should give me something reasonably Thing I’m Writing* sized after six months. Our agreement is that we would check in with each other on Wednesdays and report in. Aych sometimes scares me, because I know for a fact that she knows how to beat people up, so I hoped that it would help me stay on track. Plus, I don’t want her to mock me, which she has indeed threatened to do.

In truth, it worked for about a week.

I’m such a lazy bastard. Now, in my defense, I haven’t given up, I’m just eking along, writing closer to half of my goal, which is dumb because I used to write 1500 words a day for Elastic Waist, if not more, and I still wrote fiction for grad school. Mostly because I had to, though, which is the crux of the issue. I need to “have to”.

It’s a weird myth that only the good writers get published. There are some lousy-assed writers out there getting published, who have agents and book deals and call themselves an author even though all they did was repackage some shit their dad said or old badly-written blog posts (please note: this does not refer to people whose books I own, for instance if your initials are MS, WM, GZ or JA). If you have any doubt of that, just look at the petri dish of the blogosphere: there are some JACKED writers out there with hit counts that MAKE NO SENSE. But what sets them apart (and those great, unlauded writers) from, oh, ME is that they are typing a lot more text into their empty DOC files. I know this. Of course I do. Blah. I should probably eat more green leafy vegetables too, but look! Candy!

It comes down to the lesson I learned in the pottery studio, at a profound level. You’ve got to persist, insist and exist as an artist (or a writer), which means that you “just keep making”, even though you are pretty sure it’s going to suck. Sometimes it’s just easier to do that on a potter’s wheel than when faced with a blinking cursor.

In semi-related news, one of my short stories (mentioned a few times in this blog as “the sleep story”) will be appearing in the upcoming issue of Drunken Boat, which you can read here. I’m banking on the fact that the thrill of Having Written and the feedback therein will give me some momentum to move forward. Here’s hoping.

*I have nothing against the word “novel” ok? And I’m sure that I’ll start using the word “novel” when I have a “novel” but until then, it’s not a “novel”. It’s a collection of larger snippets that is trying to be something more, and also, I hate how pretentious it sounds to say “I’m working on a novel”. It sounds quite a bit like saying “I’m not really a waitress”. It might also have something to do with the fact that “novel” is a scary word and I’m a super big chicken.

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Everlong Everwood

Sunday, April 11, 2010

I’m in the middle of a non-vacation vacation. It’s non-vacation in that I’m still working my usual work week (actually, less than usual, because I’m holding it to 40 hours rather than 50ish) but a vacation in that I’m not in vacation. It finally occurred to me that my job and farflung team members mean that duh, I don’t actually have to be working from the office. I have permission to work from home whenever I want and with the magic of cell phones and wifi connections, that home could be in Wisconsin or Berkeley, where I was in the early part of this week, or Everwood, where I am right this minute.

This week has gone by in a blur. I landed in SFO late on Friday night, after working a mostly full day and then suffering through the worst flight ever. What’s more, I purposely limited my luggage so that I could do carry on only, as I knew that I’d be landing late and with the added time to fetch a rental car, plus the drive over to the East Bay, I didn’t want to waste an extra half hour waiting for someone to throw my bag on a conveyor belt. Except that when I was boarding our very full flight, the gate agent came by and said that they were checking all roller bags because it was so very full. Sure! I thought! I’m a veteran of the gate checked bag! You drop it off at the end of the jetway, they store it somewhere and you pick it up when you get off the plane. You don’t have to worry about jamming it up into the overhead or making people wait while you do so. Brilliant! Except, no, that’s not what he meant: he actually CHECKED our bags. Bastard. I packed light and lugged my crap across the MSP airport for exactly no reason whatsoever. GAH! And then the rental car place was annoying on top of it, which meant that by the time I finally got on my way, I hadn’t eaten in like twelve hours and was a touch crankypants. Then I accidentally went to Alameda. Then I purposely went to In N Out Burger, because damn, y’all. Damn.

Mo and Ian graciously allowed me to crash in their living room for the California leg of the trip, and it was delightful. I thought I wasn’t planning anything, other than meeting Magnus (who is absolutely gorgeous and I can’t stop looking at his cuteness) and also, a last minute plan to race up to Napa for brunch at Ad Hoc (overrated, I’m sorry to say), but despite that, it still felt like every minute was full of stuff going on. We went out for tapas with the 3 Fast 3 Furious posse (Jenfu was even in town from Everwood, another bit of serendipity) and watched Drunk History at Nonk’s house (I can’t watch the Tesla episode without snorting) and had a complete tour of the Igigi headquarters, which involved an amazing montage where I was literally running through the rows upon rows of hundreds of Igigi garments, picking out what I wanted to try on next (that probably deserves its own entry) and also had the BEST SUNDAY NIGHT EVER playing Rock Band. I was Kim Deal! And Aych was Frank Black! And it was MAGIC!

And then I flew to Everwood, to hang out with my bff at his parents’ house. We went to a giant copper mine, and it was all mine-y and then for something completely different, we went to afternoon tea where a chamber quartet made pop hits seemed austere and refined. We also went to an amazing sculpture garden that made me question my commitment to artistic expression. I don’t know that I have it in me to write shit in stone. I barely have a blog anymore.

That’s really the crux of it. I’m having some kind of identity crisis, I think. It’s this thing I’m doing which I’m not really doing. I call it “this thing I’m doing” (TM Wendy MC) but in reality, I’m not actually doing it. Although when I’m not writing, I’m still spending a whole lot of mental headspace inside the universe of “this thing I’m doing”. Perhaps if I had a garden to fill with pages dedicated to my faith, this faith of words and language, perhaps then I would see a purpose to it all, or maybe even feel worthy to do it.

Utah makes me think the wacky, I think. I’ll probably shake it off.

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Hair today, hair tomorrow

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

I’m kind of a princess about my hair. Perhaps it’s because it’s the only part of me that doesn’t get fat, or maybe it’s because I’m a princess about a lot of things, but even when I go through hippy periods where I forego pedicures and facial/eyebrow shaping appointments, my hair is still getting professional touch ups by a master stylist to hide the witchy greys every five to six weeks without fail. It’s expensive bullshit and I cringe at the price of my vanity whenever I hand over the plastic and make another appointment. It’s an expensive habit and the ridiculous thing is that I literally have the simplest hairstyle in the world right now: straight with blunt bangs. No fanciness. No trickery. No nonsense.

It’s also an annoying addiction: my stylist is really hard to get into, I often end up with inconvenient appointments and often get my hair did just in time to go home and go to bed. What’s more, my stylist is short! What does that have to do with anything? Well, if she happens to wear ballet flats that day, I spend the entire appointment with bad posture so that she can reach the top of my head.

But I keep going back to her because the color she uses is rich and perfect and makes my hair happy (unlike other colors, which make my hair limp and feel like it’s been colored) and she has never ever fucked up my head. Ever. Also, aside from her absolute refusal to give perms (which she gave as a caveat up front), she’s never ever imposed her agenda upon me. For instance, when I decided to grow my hair out last year, we did judicious and light trims and now whomp, it’s grown out. Contrast that to my previous stylist, who insisted that I looked better with short hair, so after two years of telling her I wanted to grow my hair out, I realized that it was shorter than when I started. So fired.

Also, as much as I pamper my hair, I’m totally not committed to it. I feel that hair should be performance art. It should be whatever color or cut or style that you feel like the morning you are sitting in the chair. It shouldn’t give you angst, because it’s HAIR. It will grow back. It will grow out. If you don’t like the color, you can change it. No big whoop.

I had the inverted bob that everyone else had four years ago (and some still have, much like others desperately cling to satellite dish bangs and mullets) (Oh not you, I’m not talking about you) and got over it and then just started going Mrs. Mia Wallace and then decided that I really sometimes wanted my hair off my neck, and hey, it’s impossible to do that when it’s too short to put in a ponytail. I’m the queen of ponytails, because as much as I insisted in the first paragraph of this post that I love it, I also hate my hair. I hate it when it gets in my face when the wind blows, when I’m bending over anything, when I’m at a club dancing, when we’re swimming, when basically EVER. When I do the laundry, no fewer than four ponytail holders fall out and then I have shame. Why? I don’t even know.

Then seemingly overnight, my hair went from shoulderlength to long-assed hair. The kind of hair that people come up to you and say “Oh my god, look at how long your hair is getting! When did you start growing out your hair?” Er, it’s always growing, right? But whatever.

Then, I was slouching in my stylist’s chair and she held up a hank of my hair, repeating her monthly question “What do you want to do with this?” and I shrugged. “Do you want to cut it? Are we going short yet?” And that’s when I made the critical misstep.

“No, I think I’m going to donate it.”

That was it. I think I’m going to donate it. How sweet. How kind. How damned noble, right? My hair going for wigs for kids with cancer! I’m not vapid, I’m Saint Bix!

Here’s the thing: They need at least 8 inches of hair, preferrably more. I have at least 8 inches right now but I would have to go right back to super short. I did super short in the early 00’s and didn’t really like it. It’s actually way more maintenance and required an actual committed relationship with a blowdryer, something better left to one night stands. Also, I really don’t want to ever be mistaken for Dooce. Which just might happen. You never know.

But now, because of the “I think I’m going to donate it” business, I really need to let it grow for another few months. And then it will be the heat of summer: a time that I can only really survive with a ponytail because of the aforementioned neck issue. Which means we’re looking at, oh, September.

September. Five months from now. The alternative involving the phrase “the kids with cancer don’t REALLY need wigs, do they?”

Sigh.

I hate my hair.

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Post Weetacon shenanigans

Monday, April 5, 2010

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More love for Igigi and also, dresses

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

I don’t wear dresses enough. Oh, I wear dresses, but then I get lazy and can’t find my tights or don’t want to wear fancy shoes or fuck me it’s cold outside or I feel cranky or crappy or roly poly or just don’t feel like having a big dry cleaning bill (the last trip? Oy vey) and I put on a pair of trousers or jeans or yoga pants and call it a day. And I should remember that I actually look pretty good in dresses, not to mention the fact that it’s basically wearing a fancy nightgown all day, out in public. Also, dressing becomes Garanimals-easy, in that I don’t have to find two totally different, matching and clean items with which to cover my nakedness. Sometimes that’s harder than you’d think.

For Weetacon this year, my fabulous and wonderful friend Shawn and I made plans to hook up in Chicago and have a repeat of the amazing Alinea dinner we shared 18 months ago, only this time we were all in, baby, for the 24+ course TOUR, not just the paltry old 14-course Tasting Menu, which exists apparently for the working class or something.

Shawn flew into MKE and with Chicago traffic being as UNSPEAKABLE at rush hour as it is, the only hope of making our reservation meant that she’d have to take the train in, with me having a head start to brace through the traffic for six fucking hours. I got to my Chicago hotel of choice (The James, for the fucking win), stowed my car, stripped my driving clothes, brushed my hair and tossed on my favorite packable dress: a knotted Daniella print dress from Igigi, with a very comfortable but quasi-dressy pair of maryjane heels (I call them my Dorothy Parkers because they’re very 40s or were until the pug puppy partially chewed off one of the flowers, now I pretend that oh, I don’t know, they might just be vintage) and whipped a quick cat’s eye in liquid eyeliner and lined some red lips. I think I spent at most 9 minutes getting dressed, but I did snap a photo for posterity.

You can’t see the pop of lime-y yellow but while I’m not a yellow person, it’s the thing that makes me love this print so very much. You just don’t get prints like this on fat girl dresses, people!

I went down to the lobby lounge, where I texted and Twittered and waiting for my friend. Two fabulous boys came in, carrying a tiny bag from Gucci, and I laughed because that’s basically my favorite shopping experience ever… coming in winded from a busy street, carrying an impossibly tiny bag that you know has something expensive in it. I sipped an elderflower martini and when the first fabulous gentleman ditched his cap and asked the other if his hair looked okay, I couldn’t help but look up to admire them. He caught me and said “Oh you, miss thang, in that dress, you can look too! What do you think?” And I told him that he looked pretty damn fine. And then we were besties. They invited me over because of my dress, the print, he swore! The print was amazing! I told him the story of my special connection with Igigi, about how I’ve worn an Igigi garment at three of the past five Weetacons, how I wore a black Igigi wrap dress to the very first Bad Bar night and how I’ve been wearing Yuliya’s designs since 2003 (a Pucci-inspired portrait collar top) and how I’ve been to the headquarters a few times and how I fell in love with this print last year ON THE BOLT and love that very dress even now because you can wad it up into a ball and it doesn’t wrinkle. At all. LOVES IT!

Shawn came in from the cold, toting her baggage, and was invited to sit down by my new friends, and we chatted about all things fashion and fabulous. Then it was time for us to run, as we had a date with Grant Achatz and we couldn’t be late, but they wouldn’t let us pick up the check for our drinks. The dress, he said. The dress.

It’s things like this that would make me roll my eyes at me. You can go ahead. I don’t blame you. But it happened. It was the dress! ASK SHAWN!

The next night, I wore another ancient Igigi dress: this one was a red wrap dress that I’ve had since…oh god, a long time. 2005, maybe? It’s old. It also can be waded up into a ball and refuses to wrinkle. Unfortunately, it’s a very deep lipstick red and I can only get away with it when I’m winter pale, as during the summer, my tiniest hint of a tan somehow turns it into a bad red for me, but right now? With the faux dark brunette thing I’ve got going on (don’t let it fool you, I’m naturally three shades lighter than this) it’s nothing but a good thing.

We danced and danced and danced. And there were hearts broken. More drinks purchased. Was it the dress or my God-given assets somewhat falling out of said dress? Probably a little of both. But still, a good time for dresses.

The next night was the first night of Weetacon. Igigi graciously offered to provide Weetacon attendees with Igigi garments for review, so I jumped at the chance to check out the Spring release called the L’Amourette Dress. Pasta Queen also has great taste, so we agreed that she would wear hers at the Bad Bar and I would wear mine at karaoke. PQ and I weren’t the only two quasi-twins: Ladyloo and Poppy were black and blue versions of the same dress and yet, each totally made the design their own. What’s more, it’s so interesting to see the same garment on two totally different ends of Igigi’s demographic–Pasta Queen and I have different body types, but the dress just worked. It just worked. It was the kind of thing that if I had just seen PQ in the dress, looking so fabulous, I might have thought “Oh, I could never pull that off with this ass” but really, it was all good. It was also cool that I got to see the dress on another person the next night, from all angles. What is hard to see on the photos is that there is two layers of fabric, so when you move, the mesh has a faint sheen that moves. Also difficult to see is that the underlayer isn’t grey but rather a very pretty lavender that washes out to a more flattering pinky grey. Also, the skirt was super swishy and I couldn’t stop playing with the soft rosettes along the hem all night.

It’s SO hard to find awesome vintage clothing in plus sizes, but the L’Amourette dress satisfied all of my vintage longings without having the picky, stiff mothball-smelling “what is this stain, did someone die in this?” aspects of vintage that are not so awesome. So, I got this dress for free, but knowing my proclivities the way I do (and the fact that my closet is basically an Igigi retrospective, entirely funded by yours truly), I would have bought it anyway. So, clearly, I’m biased, so take that with a grain of salt, but I also do love the line. Yuliya is like the girlfriend you wish you had with you in the dressing room and she can do magic things with a dress. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

It was a super treat to coordinate the Weetacon Igigi review. I actually got to unpack all of the garments and check them out up close and while I have an Igigi addiction, I was turned onto things I wouldn’t normally have. For instance, when I first saw Karen’s Autumn Blossoms top, I gasped because it’s so pretty and vintage-y, but when I saw it on? DAYAM! And if you see Mary’s Carolina Swirl dress, you might be attracted to that great yellow pattern on the top (or her legs… woo!) but you should see her work that skirt. It’s swirl-on-swirl action! And BettyBighead’s review neglects to mention that when she walked into a crowded room and ditched her coat, it was totally a Marilyn Monroe moment: the entire room stopped talking and freaking APPLAUDED.

Um, HAWT!?

If you want to have your own Igigi fashion show, they’ve graciously extended a 20% off promo code to our readers* until the end of March. Just type in WEETACON when you’re checking out and then sit back and wait for the pretty. One bit of caveat though: don’t trust the website for availability on the size search. I found several instances where a dress was not showing up when I searched by size, but did have that size available, so if you love something, set it free, but also double check because it really might be meant to be. Shit, that rhymed. Sorry.

*Oh, and if you’re not plus sized, they have jewelry and accessories too and the promo code works just as well for that. Content yourself with the accessory rack, non-plus size girls! Ha! That never happens.

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Existential Crisis Take 47

Saturday, March 13, 2010

There’s a big buggedy boo at work right now, which always forces me to do a mental course correction. Sometimes I think the biggest bit of consternation in my gourd is the fact that while I’m damned effective at what I do, there’s still a bit of pointlessness to it. It always comes down to the zombie apocalypse. Doctors are useful in a zombie apocalypse. So are builders and mechanics and cooks and anyone in the military and probably ninja assassins. Hell, even storytellers will have their moments. You know what’s not useful? Excel spreadsheets. There will be no need for conditional formatting or vlookups in the zombie apocalypse, of this I am certain.

To a greater extent (and probably even more navel-gazy), I think a lot about what individuals do to make the world a better place. That’s why I think we’re here, a question I ask myself every single day: what did I do today to make the world a slightly better place. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur: the improvement I have on my surroundings is measured in millionths of a percent, but still, it’s got to be something, and certainly it has to net out to a positive contribution. It’s not just about refraining from being an asshole–failing to recycle, over-consumption of consumer goods, giving self-serving advice, all of that subtracts from the daily balance. It’s harder than it seems to stay in the black.

After all, one of my most integral beliefs is that we are responsible for being stewards to the world. I have a roof over my head and can afford $4 cups of coffee, so it’s my duty to also pass along a percentage of that good fortune to those who can or do not have those luxuries. Some churches call this tithing and since I don’t belong to a church anymore, every month I donate a percentage of my income to a charity that makes the world a better place somehow. One of my attempts at adding to the bottom line is the Weetacon Charity Raffle. It started three years ago when I had an idea while writing a blog post for Elastic Waist, during my 30 Days To A Happier Life series. After all, I had a ton of beauty swag that I was just giving away to my friends when they’d stop by: why not make them work for it and benefit a local charity at the same time?

That year, we raised over $400. Last year, the Weetacon posse also contributed items for the raffle. We raised over $1100 last year. This year, we got donations from outside of Weetacon. Bloggers, Etsy sellers, PR folks, our friends at Igigi and Saint Brendan’s Inn as well as the Weetacon posse donated items.

2009 was a year of economic uncertainty. Our Weetacon attendees come from all socio-economic backgrounds and some of them have been hit by the recession pretty hard, losing jobs, working through debt. Some of them flew into far-flung airports and shared rooms so that they could afford to come to Weetacon. We even have a Weetacon Tribal Fund established to help cover registration if needed. I did not have high hopes this year for Paul’s Pantry, although I tried not to let it show. I cleaned out the beauty closet, packaged everything up, and held my breath.

This year, we raised over $2100. More than the last two years combined.

I don’t know what I did to get so lucky to know these people. When people ask me why I throw myself into Weetacon so hard, it is because I need to make sure I’m holding up my side of our friendships.

This year, I drank mostly water (with the exception of one very yummy apple shot delivered by Boyd via a pole extended out over the crowd) at the Bad Bar night, a night that typically sees a lot of wild drunken abandon. I was fully within my faculties and struck by the number of people who came over and confessed how much better their lives are because of Weetacon. I would have normally blown it off due to “I Love You, Man!” tendencies, but the number, the sheer emotion–it was an eye-opening thing. It’s not just a party but rather the spirit of the gathering, the people they’ve met because of it and the concept of a chosen family. Suzanna likes to call it a Tribe, and I have to agree with her. It’s our Tribe

I need to start paying attention to these little things that seem like so many nothings that, to quote one of my favorite movies, mean a lot more than so many somethings. And while I will absolutely not take credit for it, maybe it’s doing its part in making the world a better place too. Maybe the world really just got a millionth of a percent better because of these fabulous people.

If so, then that’s a pretty good thing. I’ll take it.

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Blinded me with Prednisone

Monday, January 18, 2010

Last week, I started feeling my niggling little cold morphing into what was the undeniable signs of wimpy lung bronchities. Sometimes I wonder about living in an iron lung: could it really be that bad? Would you have to work on spreadsheets? Couldn’t you just say “Oh, sure, I could whip up that spreadsheet, with conditional formatting and a triple layer pivot but did I mention that I’m stuck in an iron lung?” And then people would feel badly about asking me to do shit and go the hell away. Is that the same as being a Bubble Boy? I’ll bet now that there’s the internet, it’s not even that bad.

I finally gave up and went to visit my doctor. When I got to the doctor’s office, they made me put on a stupid Spamthrax mask. I don’t have Spamthrax. I actually got the Spamthrax vaccine because of my stupid limp lung condition, but whatever. I humored them.

Long time readers of this blog (and yes, I’ll be putting the archives back at some point, with all of my free time and shit) might remember that I used to go to Dr. Perky, who was so very awesome and also, perky. Dr. Perky transferred to do some work for the government (I imagine that she uses her perkiness to operate on aliens in Roswell or perhaps give Malia her flu shot) and I got my current doctor, whom I don’t believe has a nickname. She’s lithe and beautiful and always has amazing make up and I thought immediately that I’d hate her, but in actuality, I love her even more than Dr. Perky. She is Awesome. Dr. Awesome. A few years ago, she confessed that she saw me at the farmer’s market with Esteban one morning but didn’t want to say anything because she was afraid we’d think she was stalking us. And this last time, I was mentioning her nurse, and when I stumbled over the name, Dr. Awesome said “Oh, it’s Debbie. In fact, whenever you don’t know a woman’s name in Wisconsin, just say ‘Debbie’ because she’ll probably answer. For guys, it’s ‘Mike’.” She also called one of her co-doctors “a farty bastard” or something like that once, and for that, she can now do no wrong.

Also, when she walked in the door of the exam room and saw me sitting, she said “Oh my god, you can take off that stupid mask.” And rolled her eyes. LOVE HER.

Dr. Awesome agreed that I was well on my biennial route to having pneumonia (seriously, what’s with the even years?) so she hooked me up with the Limp Lungs Cocktail of prednisone, codeine cough syrup and a Z-pack. None of these things by themselves work at all, two of them might work, but the trifecta? Works every time. Not being sick is nice, but I loathe being on the ‘sone. Between the spurts of fake energy (I feel totally like kicking ass on all of my household projects, but then I try to carry a (fucking) laundry basket across the house and I start to sweat for half an hour and my muscles quiver and I get very close to swooning, not in the Jonas Brothers way but for a much more weak and pathetic reason), the lack of sleep (hellooooo grudging 1 am bedtime!), lack of appetite (I imagine this is how thin people are able to stop eating something really delicious, because I earnestly am choking down most everything just so that I can take the stupid medication without burning a hole in my gut. I don’t WANT to eat anything, unless it’s a Hostess Fruit Pie, which of course, I won’t because I have vowed to only eat baked goods if they are less than 365 days old) and the general random bouts of fever for NO REASON WHATSOEVER, I’m kind of miserable.

I was supposed to have a business trip this weekend to Tampa but that got pre-empted, so instead I spent all weekend trying to get Weetacon business in order. Every year, it gets down to T-minus 7 days and I am suddenly faced with so many things that could have been done months and months ago! Stupid things! Like, why do I always wait until the last minute to make the annual collage? Or why am I always messing with the Charity Raffle bags on the Tuesday before people are arriving? These things aren’t time sensitive! It is because I am stupid, I think. And also because, in hindsight, I am prepping for other things that end up getting kibboshed and then having to redo and whatnot. But this year, I am determined! It will not be that way again! Triumph! Prednisone! Huzzah!

Today was the first day in the last ten when I actually felt well enough to attempt to run an errand or twelve. Actually, I shouldn’t say that: I did attempt a trek to a mega craft store because for some reason, I was absolutely convinced that it was crucial to fetch Charify Raffle gift bags and that all planning could move no further until I had those items. Which was totally the Prednisone talking, because just driving across town felt like way too much exertion, and then I tried to engage two different workers of mega craft store with questions and managed to confuse the hell out of both of them. Heck, I knew what I was trying to say and I couldn’t even understand what I meant. They ended up giving me major discounts, I think because they thought I was a crazy woman. Also, I sweated at them the entire time. Hey! Who needs those stupid Michael’s coupons, just go into the store sweating and speaking in tongues and they’ll hit you with a 60% discount just to get you to leave their store.

Today, I ended up going back to the mega craft store because I have two Amy Casey prints that have been languishing in my house for ages. Well, one was for ages, and the other less time because it showed up on 20×200 and I had to gank it for my very own last month. I thought about turing on the sweat again and speaking like Margot Kidder, to try to coax another discount because seriously, when did custom framing become more expensive than, oh, a CAR. Seriously, to have two prints framed, it costs more than the car my mother bought for me to drive in high school. In fact, it costs more than that car and also the GAS for that car, which, by the way, is quite a lot because I think it was a 72 Grand Prix, which was so large you could sit three chunky teenage girls in the front seat and not have any “cootie overlap”. (God, we were dorks.)

I also made a stop at the laundromat with our two (TWO) down comforters that had been doused with pug pee in 8 days time. Seriously, the dog is 99.99% housetrained, but apparently that two hundredths of a percent occurs on whatever unfortunate down comforter happens to be on our bed. The laundromat wouldn’t take the down comforters, because they both had labels that clearly said DRY CLEAN ONLY on large tags that were impossible to hide casually with one’s hand. I ended up dropping it at the actual dry cleaners (oh fine), where it will cost an arm and a leg (but not as much as having something custom framed… yes, still bitter).

Then I hit Target, where I had a list that I followed more or less to the letter. The only bad thing was that I was plagued by a trio of stay-at-home moms. They were always within one or two aisles of me and were always but always talking. I couldn’t help but hear their conversation, tried as I did to ignore them. I felt like I was getting dumber, just internalizing it, and finally changed my route around the store (does anyone else do this? Up through the clothes, then across the back, then zig back through housewares and then hit the H&B and media section, ending up in the groceries? Just me then?) and yet the bitches followed me! Always an aisle away! Could not break them! I rushed through the last bit of my shopping and then checked out, where I was cringing for the total (because yeah, totally didn’t follow the list to the letter, and lied at the beginning of this paragraph. I cannot walk through the dog and cat aisle without caving, people. Can. Not. Do. It.) but it ended up not being too bad, which was just weird. And then the three chicks got in line BEHIND ME and continued with the same conversational thread they had been on since the detergent aisle! Did she? She did not. I swear, I was like, oh my god, whatever, you’re so lame. And then my kids were like, so tired, and I was like, yeah, I’m over this.

I am almost positive that they were sirens, luring me to the rocks. Or perhaps a Greek chorus, scaring me the hell out of there. Either way, I hope I don’t see them and their weird Monday Shopping With Bump-Its In Their Hair outfits ever again.

Ok, that last paragraph just went to a very weird place, so I’m taking this as a sign that the Prednisone is starting to take hold again.

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Ahem

Monday, January 11, 2010

Her: You haven’t posted for awhile. November 21.

Me: What? Certainly not. I’ve posted more since then.

Her: November 21. I check frequently.

Me: Huh. But…but…the Year End Video counts!

It didn’t quite go that way. Mostly it went that way. Because yes, I did the opposite of Hollidailies, it seems. And also, I suck.

January is already kicking my ass, is what.

So, some things: I’m going back to graduate school this semester. Oh settle down, inner crazy monologue, it’s not necessarily going to stick or anything, I just had this longing to take another writing workshop and it seemed like a really good idea last fall when I was under the delusion that I’d have all this fucking free time in January. You see, I have good intentions, especially during these darkest months, the raw truth of the matter is that I pretend that I’ll have all of this awesome free time once the craziness of fall subsides and then the holidays, which are also crazy, and then New Year, which is (say it with me) crazy, but really, I’m just kidding myself. I hate January. In spring, my nostalgia colors January as though it is one unending evening spent dreading the next day, which is essentially what it feels like, except that really, I’m fucking knackered this month and I just figured it out why. Because I am stupid.

So, there’s the writing workshop, which has eleven million books to read, which apparently I think I’m going to flip right through since it’s on writing creative non-fiction and hello, four point eight million words written on a fucking blog much? And also, I swore that I’d resume taking Ave to obedience training once I started working again, and like an asshole, I didn’t sign up for the last session on time and thus, had to wait, and now we’re going to do six weeks of quality time on Saturday mornings, which is when I normally do all of the things that hold my life together, things like grocery shopping and laundry and marital bliss-related activities (we have refined the art of going to Starbucks). And on Sundays, I’m apparently permanently going to need to go over to my Aunt Drusilla’s house to help her understand how her PC works, all because I gave her a damned MP3 player last year and she doesn’t understand how her CD collection could possibly fit on something the size of a pack of gum.

And I really really wanted to do another session of pottery. I heartily love pottery. I love pottery more than I rightfully should, quite honestly. I get on the wheel, make my pottery type stuff, and for a beautiful three hours, I am completely not thinking about anything other than making my hands work in ways they don’t understand. You can mesmerize yourself with the tactile feeling of a lump of gushy porcelain clay spin spin spinning between your palms. And the smell, the dusty talcy smell! It’s a grounding force, that smell. And as much as I hate glazing (boy howdy, do I hate it), it’s really all worth it for the Saturdays spent hunched over a wheel, giving oneself chapped hands while shaping mud that’s cold like it was stolen straight from the grave.

The other awesome thing is that it’s a stress reliever. The stress of my job is something I am having a hard time getting around, and I can tell when it’s building up because I start biting my nails in my sleep. I did it again two nights ago, bit my left forefinger to the quick until it bled, all while dreaming of something I’m probably glad I can’t remember. Pottery is good. Very good.

And then there’s Weetacon. Weetacon! The best most amazing time of the year. Last year, when the Badness was going on, I wasn’t sure that there would ever be another Weetacon, particularly when the economy seemed so foul and the amount of energy expended seemed so ridiculous. And now, it is so. We’re having Weetacon in less than two months. Weetacon, which absorbs way more of my spare braincells than I’d like to admit. Sure, I pretend like it ain’t nothing but a thing, except that really, I agonize for hours over little details like scheduling decisions and venues and color schemes. For as OCD as I am, every year, I’m kind of stunned that this thing turns out at all, much less that people want to come back year after year.

And here’s the incredible thing: it sold out last week.

This is my sixth year throwing this thing and we’ve never sold out two months in advance. We usually sell out two weeks in advance, or have one or two spots left, depending on where I set that high water mark, but this year… oy vey, 8 weeks on the dot and the mofo sold out. And then there was a waiting list, two of the three of which were veterans who had been to the first two Weetacons, and one (Trance Jen) who had never missed a Weetacon yet, not even when she was nearing death’s door with some kind of pre-H1N1 Hanta virus thing that knocked her flat all weekend. Waiting listed!

I talked to Esteban. I talked to the bus company about renting their biggest bus. We took a deep breath and then said “Fuck it. Let’s do this shit.” Ok, Esteban didn’t say that. I did. Under my breath. And then we raised the cap, to the highest possible point we can raise it, no kidding, that’s as big as this thing can get. And then we got another bunch of registrations. LIKE THAT. Wham bam thank you ma’am.

Everyone’s coming. Weetacon veterans that missed the last one, two, or three are coming back. It’s the second highest incidence of new folks (since the second year. We don’t count the first year, because everyone was new.) People who have been telling me for years that they wanted to come to a Weetacon are booking flights. Veterans are bringing their spouses. There’s a whole lotta love, baby, so much that the Bad Bar just may turn Good for one night only.

Because of this, something had to go. It was either the day job or pottery, because I’m certainly not going to slack on Weetacon. Not this year. Not these people. Can’t do it. Nope. Not going to do it.

It probably doesn’t hurt that the pots I make look like they were crafted by chimpanzees. You know, the smart ones that use sign language, but still. Chimpanzees.

If you’re interested, there’s still three spots left in the Bigger, Better, Uncut Weetacon. Seriously, look at this roster. It’s insane! Everyone who is anyone. Everyone that I love. All in one place. And still room for you, baby doll.

We’re waiting for you.

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Day 6

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

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