I miss my blog.
I just handed in the last of my work for this semester, supposedly my last semester of classes. Maybe that means I’ll start writing in my blog more? I hope so, because I miss it.
I miss all the people I got to know who came here to read what I wrote, regardless of how silly it might have been. I miss being able to say whatever the hell I wanted to say.
I am returning, my friends. I am. Slowly but surely, the Viki will Babble again.
I have a problem. Well, not so much a problem as an issue–one that I am having difficulty resolving.
For the past couple of months, I have been adamant about the application–and reapplication, when necessary–of Sally Hansen “No More Breaks” Restructurizing Strengthener to my fingernails. As a result, my nails have grown quite long and, contrary to the usual, look very nice. However, yesterday, I did something. I don’t know what it was–I bumped into something, poked somebody in the eye too hard, something–and the nail on the index finger of my left hand sustained a breakage right at the point where the nail leaves actual connection with skin. Actually, just the teeniest bit of the tiniest millimeter BELOW that point. The break wasn’t all the way across the nail, but kind of in the middle. In serious fear for how much the removal of the entire chunk of fingernail from the breakage point to the tip would hurt, I have been constantly applying Sally Hansen’s “No More Breaks” Restructurizing Strengthener in the hopes it would hold my fingernail together until such time as the nail grows out enough so that when cut off at the breakage point, I am not left with a throbbing little finger stub complete with a painful and bloody wound that won’t heal properly.
However, I could not stop myself from fucking with it. And it became so completely broken that I had to cut it off, carefully. It’s a little wavy-looking, because I did not want to cut it straight across, leaving myself with the above mentioned bloody wound and throbbing finger stub.
Here’s the issue: this looks stupid. I have a bunch of long fingernails and one short one. One very, very short one. In addition, typing can be said to be much easier with this particular finger, as there is no nail in the way. What do I do? Do I cut off the rest of my nails, so as to make things even, and also to facilitate typing? I mean, this could very well be the reason I have been blogging infrequently of late. Perhaps I was subconsciously irritated by typing with long fingernails? And what if I cut them off and I still don’t feel like blogging about anything?
I force my children to keep their fingernails clipped short, because it’s easier for said fingernails to be kept clean. Whenever I bitch at them to clip their fingernails, they point out that I have long fingernails. I point out that I know how to keep them clean, yadda yadda, typical parent-child argument ensues in which child attempts to point out that parent is being a hypocritical ass, and parent ends up saying something childish, as in, “Because I said so.”
Being a parent, it is frequent that I find myself being hypocritical. Don’t smoke! But you do! True, but I’m an adult, nevermind that I’m stupid. Don’t drink alcohol! But you do! And on and on. I just hope I’ve rid my home of all incriminating paraphernalia! I am constantly telling my children, for instance, that they should eat healthier. Yet, for dinner tonight, I made macaroni and cheese (Kraft, of course) and pigs in a blanket (“homemade” with little mini smoked sausages and crescent rolls). True, I put out a bowl of carrots, but nobody took any. It could be said that I put that bowl of carrots out because I feel guilty for feeding them food that, if eaten on a regular basis, will require them to have a quadruple bypass before they are 18. Whatever. I never said I was a perfect parent.
Just now, one of the children of this not-perfect parent brought me one of the brownies she made with a friend earlier this evening. They are absolutely disgusting. And by that I mean, they taste like eating the entire brownie might actually kill me or cause me to endure a great, long-lasting illness. I do not like to be ill. I had food poisoning once. I spent three days in bed, aside from frequent trips to the bathroom. Even though I didn’t eat anything for three days, I was still capable, somehow, of, shall we say, “voiding.” It was horrible, and while it is not an experience I wish to repeat, I could actually use an excuse for remaining in bed for 72 hours.
Sleeping in the winter is a pleasurable thing for me to do. I put these ultra-soft flannel sheets on my bed, and it creates the coziest of cocoons. There doesn’t seem to be any real pressing reason why I should drag my ass out of my cocoon and into the cold, dark, non-light of of a dreary Chicago winter’s morning.
And dreary our weather is. Even though the weatherman keeps claiming that it’s 50 degrees outside, and how fantastic that is for January, I can’t help thinking that it’s horrible. It’s cold and damp. As much as I hate a biting, arctic wind, I really do believe that I prefer it over this dreary cold/damp thing we’ve got going here. It’s so…pointless. You can’t go out and play in the cold rain. You can’t go sledding. You can’t go ice skating. You’re not sure how to dress, because while it’s cold OUTSIDE, every public building has its heat BLASTING, so you find yourself shedding outer layers, and then sweating in your inner layers, no matter where you go.
It has been more years than I can count since we had snow on the ground all winter long. Is this global warming? Is this just a weird weather trend? Is this El Nino or El Nina (please mentally add the tildes)? In a week or so, it will likely be ridiculously cold, and then I’ll complain about that. I’m just wondering where the consistent, unending, freezing temperatures are. The ones that create a frozen, slippery crust on top of the constantly present snow.
I think I have to stop now. This most certainly isn’t anything near to being Randomly Connected Brilliance, as the title of the post implies. I’ve run out of steam. I started talking about my bed, and right now it seems perfectly logical to curl up in my pajamas with a good book (I’m reading What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges. It’s really fantastic. I’m looking for inspiration, as I’m trying to rewrite my novel into first person, in present tense) and a vodka tonic (I do wish I was able to lower myself to the point where I could train my children to make a perfect vodka tonic and not feel guilty about it). I suppose I could curl up there with my laptop, but at this point, this post is long enough, and my son has seated himself in front of our fireplace, in which a fire is raging, and I can see on the little scrolling LED message board we’ve installed above his head that tells us his thoughts that he is considering what kinds of things he’ll be able to get away with throwing into the fire, and I probably need to intervene.
I know that I put forth the idea that I am a big partier, and I’m always out having fun. That is a misconception. I am at the home of a dear friend, watching the Bears pretend to lose (a girl can dream), as my children and husband and friends play Yatzee in the other room. Yes, I’m drinking Grey Goose, yes we’re doing shots, and yes, we’ll either sleep here or take a cab home. But I’m not in the bathroom of a bar making out with a 22-year-old in between snorting lines of cocaine, so I’m totally ahead of the game.
I love New Year’s Eve. I always hated it when I was younger because I always got in trouble. Since I turned around 22, I stopped going out on NYE, and would sit in my apartment with a case of beer, my cats, and the television. Then I got married and had children, and I realized that it’s fun to sit around in my house with a bottle of Grey Goose, my dogs and my cat, and my children, and my husband, and some friends, and the television. It’s the New Year dawning, people. If I can end 2007 with the wonderful people I’m beginning it with, I’m a winner. That’s all I ask.
Time, and life, is weird. I’m not really sure what to make of it. Every year, seriously, has been better than the one before. So, by the time I’m dead, things should be rockin’.
I’ll be back.
Update, 10:20 p.m.–Okay, so the Packers beat the Bears on NYE. Whatever. Obviously, there was some convoluted and complicated reason for this that idiots don’t understand.
I will say, even as a hard-core Bears fan, that Brett Favre is (possibly was, notice how he “will talk in a few weeks”) an amazing player. A real football player, and I had a little talk with my son about playing the game with intelligence and heart, and I hope he doesn’t write me off as being drunk.
Back later.
Update: yeah. odkay. i broke off the front of Eric’s cabinet/drawer fajke frotnt thing. sorry. i’m making pigs in a blanket.
and we’re rocking out to AC/DC and I think I want to do apnother shot, (stop that, Grace, I’m trying to type)polp
of rumplem8i9nze
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peppermint
blame the 11 year old tryiungt trying to mess with my typing. poooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
pooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooppppppppppp hahahahahahaha shes gone and I can mess up her stupid thingy. Hehehehohohohahaha I got to taste some peppermint aloholic thingy. I tasted WEIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I the eleven year old think I deserve a better name than the eleven year old but I better go before i die of messing this up
Her name is Grace. She’s 11. She’s way cool, man.yah mon
I like it.
I also like pizza, but I don’t care if I get it from Lou Malnati’s or Pizza Hut, or Due’s, or I stick some frozen crap in the oven.
It’s still a plank of dough with sauce and cheese on it.
It’s the sauce and cheese that matters. Actually, it’s just the sauce. Mozzarella is pretty much still mozzarella, when you’re talking pizza. It’s the sauce that makes it.
And my CONTENT is the SAUCE. Granted, I haven’t written any sauce worth reading in months, but whatever. I don’t care about the cheese. I care about the sauce.
The crust, however, is a different story. And while you might argue that the template is the crust, holding it all together, I beg to differ. Actually, I beg to be in the right frame of mind to think up some clever way to differ with you on that. Suffice it to say (because I said so) that this crust is holding this cheese and sauce together just fine.
Did I just compare my writing to pizza sauce? Should I just start posting photographs of naked breasts?
Merry Christmas, my friends.
I am always awed by the generosity of the people I love. This year, I got a lot of wonderful things. And, among them, was a CD by a man named M. Ward, of whom I have never heard, and who I now love. I wish I could figure out how to post the video that comes on the CD of this song, but the best I can do right now is toss you a live version from YouTube. Enjoy. And I hope the holidays brought to you what they brought me, which is a sense of being thought of, a sense of being considered thoughtfully. I love Christmas.
I’ve been baking cookies for HOURS. And I’m not done yet. My back hurts from standing for so long. The only thing that is making it okay is the bottle of wine I’ve been plowing through. I will, however, fully regret this bottle of wine in the morning, when I’m standing in front of 13 eighth graders, trying to run them through a writing workshop. I’m bringing them some of the cookies, however, and I’m hoping that bribery will work. “If you’re a good bunch of boys and girls, I’ll give you cookies!” I kinda doubt it, though. They’d rather torture me, I’m fairly certain.
I haven’t posted in a long time. My classes are over for the semester, but I still have a little work left over, and blah blah, long list of excuses you’ve heard a bunch of times before. I’m busy. If you’re so desperate to read what I’ve written, take a little trip through the archives. Read something from way back when, when I used to be entertaining.
Go Bears! Please. I made what seemed, at the time, to be a very wise bet, but I should have known better. What’s up with this Tank Johnson fool? Idiot. Gangster thug. If the Bears don’t drag their asses to the Super Bowl, I’m going to be very angry, and I’m going to blame Tank Johnson, just because I can, and I’m going to find him and bitch-slap him. It’s not like anything will happen to me. I mean, his bodyguard is dead, for God’s sake.
Oh, that was cold. Sorry.
Soon, I will be done Christmas shopping. Or Christmas will arrive and some people won’t get presents and then it’ll be over and too late for presents, and I’ll be off the hook. And then, I will post more. The kids will be home for their holiday break. I won’t have anything to do aside from work on my thesis, so posting to my blog will be an excellent way for me to procrastinate doing that.
Anyway, Happy Holidays, everyone. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Kicky Kwanza, auf wiedersehen, Good Night. Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.
Where’s my wine?
That’s right. No snow day for the kids. But it was a snow day for me! By 7 a.m., I was perusing the various emergency closing websites and listening to WGN, to no avail. My kids had school. Heh. I mean, of course, for their sakes, I did kinda wish that school had been canceled, if only so I could say, “PANCAKES FOR EVERYBODY!!!!” and dig out the chocolate chips from their hiding place and make a grand batch of chocolate chip pancakes and some sausage (they won’t know it’s veggie sausage if I hide the box, I was thinking), and then dig out the snow pants and gloves and shit and go outside to start a fort. Because today’s snow? Was PERFECT PACKING SNOW. And if you are still young enough, either in years or in heart, to remember standing in your front yard in your snow pants and coat and boots, legs spread apart as you lean forward to gather a couple of handfuls of snow together to gauge the packi-ness, and discover that that snow had just the perfect blend of moisture and ice to mold together in a way that makes for perfect snow-fort molding (and perfect really-hard snowballs for that crabby brat down the street’s back, sending her whining and crying into her house), well, then, god bless your pretty little heart. Because before my husband left for work, he blew the snow off the walks, came in to grab the lunch I had lovingly (;)) made for him, and a mug of coffee, and said, “That is some heavy snow.” And I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if school gets canceled and the kids and I can pull on our cold-weather gear after a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and (veggie) sausage and go outside and build an awesome snow fort? Then I thought, I’ll dig out the food coloring and a couple of spray bottles, and we’ll spray the fort some fun colors, and it’ll be awesome, and we’ll be all hot on the inside, and our fingers and toes will be frozen, but we won’t care because we’ll be having a freakin’ blast playing out in the snow together, and at some point, I’ll stop and wipe frozen sweat from my brow and lift my face to the sky and open my mouth and catch a million snowflakes on my tongue, and my kids will follow suit and then we’ll look at each other and laugh in that wonderful brand of glee that is only available to children and their parents when their parents stop worrying about bullshit long enough to go outside and build a fucking fort.
However, school was not canceled.
So, because I am a wonderful and dedicated parent, I made them go to school. I shouldn’t have. I should have said, You know what? Fuck it. Fuck school. It’s friday. Let’s make some pancakes and hot chocolate and go outside and have some fucking fun. Goddamnit.
But I didn’t, and I’ve regretted it all day. Really. After they left, I putzed around. I did some laundry. I cleaned the bathrooms. But every few minutes, I gazed outside at that perfect packing snow and I thought, Damn, I wish I had someone to play with.
Two days ago, it was 65 degrees. I thought, what if winter never comes? You’d think I’d just moved here, rather than living in this great state of Chicago for the last 37 years. And yes, I meant STATE.
The thing is, we love this shit, we Chicagoans. We love the first crappy forecast of the year, so we can stand around and debate whether or not the forecaster knows what the hell he’s talking about. We can say things like “It’s a slow news day. We’ll get flurries at best.” The fact is, we WANT the snow. We want a rehash of the blizzard of ‘78. We want to be completely immobilized by snow. We wish that snowblowers and even, for god’s sake, SHOVELS, had never been invented. Snow plows? What are they? We want 28 inches of snow to fall within a 20 hour period, and we want to have a story to tell about it taking 8 hours for us to make it home from the city. And when we finally made it home, someone special to us had made our home cozy, and handed us a drink, and we planned, with our children, to make an incredible fort the next day. However, because snowblowers are so readily available and relatively inexpensive, and because local governments pay guys ridiculous amounts of money to keep the streets clear, we no longer have any excuses to make it to work/school/whatever. And that’s really annoying. We want it to be so bad that the school buses don’t bother showing up. We want it to be so bad, we have to stay home and play like kids.
I remember a snow day when I was a kid, I think it was during that crazy ‘78 blizzard. My dad was out of town on a business trip, and in the years since, I’ve heard him tell a story of driving on a highway on his way through Indiana to Ohio, and getting off the road to get gas or coffee or whatever, and the snow blowing so thick and white, he got back on going the wrong way and drove for hours and ended up in Iowa. Or something like that. I remember literally shoveling a tunnel to the mailbox. I was ten-ish. It seemed like a tunnel. And there’s pictures of my brother and I hidden behind some bushes at the back of the house, and a HUGE drift had formed, and we used the air conditioner thing as a stove, and made meatloaves and bread out of snow, and held this all-day-long weird fantasy game of that being our snow-house. We made plates out of snow. We made everything we needed out of snow, and we played all damned day long, and when we came in, surely there was hot chocolate and cookies.
Is this post long enough? It’s snowy out. My kids are still young and beautiful and naive enough, and Chicago-bred enough, to think that when it snows, it’s Christmas.
So, happy season everybody. Whether or not you get snow where you are, take a minute to stand outside and look up at the sky and just be damned glad it’s still there. And if you do get snow? Toss on your snow pants and go outside and open your damned mouth and refuse to worry that the snowflakes might be slightly radioactive or poisonous. Build a fort. Throw snowballs at random cars and that cute girl down the street. It’s WINTER!!!!
since I last posted. That’s just your imagination.
Last week, one of my bilingual students, one of the ones who speaks and writes no English, spontaneously used an English word in one of her stories. The students had been chanting, “Read! Read! Read!” to get me to attempt reading her work in Spanish, and I gave in, if only because it made sense; I’ve been asking them to take a lot of risks, I guess I should take one too, no? So, anyway, I’m reading along, butchering the Spanish, giving them plenty to chuckle about, and I come to the word “house.” I stopped before I said it, and turned to Maria, and she said, “casa,” as if she thought perhaps I didn’t know how to pronounce it. I said, “No, Maria, it doesn’t say ‘casa.’ It says ‘house.’” I got up and showed her and she flashed me a smile of surprise and pride that literally blinded me. I was thrilled. I said, “Did you know you used the English word?” Someone started to translate my question for her, but she was already shaking her head “no.” Awesome, no?
In my special ed kids class, I barely got out last time without killing someone. The brightest kid in the class refused to participate and spent the entire time folding paper into little claws which he fitted over his fingers. He threw rolled-up bits of paper into the middle of the semi-circle. He stared at me in utter defiance the entire time. Fortunately, I have been well trained to completely ignore those who attempt to get my attention in a negative way, and I did not beat him. I just ignored him, for the most part, aside from periodically trying to draw him into what was going on. Of course, the teacher was absent that day, and today when I taught, he was there, and things went much better, if only because I completely abandoned my set-in-stone plan and winged it. Wung it? Is wung a word? The teacher was part of the process as was the aide, and I think these kids might actually have learned something. Most of them wrote, except for the paper-claw kid, who still refused to participate, but really seemed to want to. I’ll get him yet, the little bastard. He’s extremely adept at playing mind games, and I just have to keep reminding myself that I am NOT 13 years old. I am an adult.
Anyway, Thanksgiving was pleasant. No one argued, so that’s always a plus. I ate so much I couldn’t get drunk if I’d put a straw in a bottle of Grey Goose and sucked on it all day long. Although, I certainly tried. I thought, for about five minutes, about all the things I’m thankful for. I couldn’t really think of anything.
Just kidding. I’m thankful for all kinds of stuff. I’m thankful for my wonderful, usually well-behaved kids, and that they’re smart and healthy. I’m thankful for my husband, who lets me get away with all kinds of crap and only yells at me a little. I’m thankful for my great family-I have awesome parents and brothers, and also in-laws I can stand hanging out with, which sounds like I’m belittling them somewhat, but some people have some really awful in-laws. I do not. I like them all. I have a gaggle of beautiful, healthy, sweet nieces and nephews and it’s really fun to play with them and then when they poop in their diapers or get whiny, I can send them to someone who cares.
I’m really, really thankful for my new kitchen. My new kitchen is fantastic. I made enchiladas for dinner tonight. In my kitchen. The table is back in the dining room now, but is already covered with mail and random crap, so everybody ate in random places, so things are back to normal. I’ll be thankful when my basement has carpet. And when it does? I’m going to go down there, before we put any furniture down there, and I’m going to play loud music and run and skip around. Of course, I’ll be bumping into a lot of walls because my basement is teeny, but it’ll be fun anyway.
I’m thankful that I haven’t had enough to drink to write a bunch of sappy crap about thankfulness and whatnot. Because Thanksgiving, is, like, so last week.
I’m thankful that this girl in one of my classes told me a little story about just discovering that her boyfriend is addicted to whippets. And by that I mean, just in case you don’t know, he inhales the nitrous oxide from the little canisters you can buy at both sex shops and Williams Sonoma for use in a whipped-cream canister to dispense whipped cream. As she put it, he was doing up to 500 a day. Of course, he’d be brain dead, but whatever! What a hilarious fucking story that is! Imagine sitting around in a group session in rehab, and everybody’s telling about their addictions, and among the booze, crack, heroin, you’ve got this guy who blurts out, “Nitrous! I’m totally addicted to nitrous!”
How could she not have known? I mean, weren’t there shitloads of little metal canisters around the house? Wasn’t there a cacophony of high-pitched metallic clanking every time she took out the garbage? What kind of pussy-boy addiction is that anyway? I’m also thankful that I have almost no morals and don’t give a shit about talking about this ridiculous story. Eventually, people will realize that nearly everything they tell me might make it onto the internet, and they’ll stop telling me shit.
Okay, what else? I don’t know. I’m rockin’ along on my thesis, at least I’m laboring under that delusion until my adviser calls me up and says, “What is this shit? Are you retarded?”
I’m TOTALLY thankful for my friends, especially those writer friends of mine (JULIA!!! FRANK!!! MEREDITH!!! DARWYN!!!) who invited me to join them on Sunday to sit around and drink beer and write in company, and that we all grooved along on a lovely writerly groove and got a lot done. I’m also thankful that this is my blog, and if I want to use variations of the word groovy twice in one sentence, I can get away with it. And there’s only a couple of my regular readers who will bother to make fun of me for it.
Okay, is that enough to make up for not blogging for 10 days? The semester is almost over, so things are busy busy, but then there’s a whole long-ass break from class and teaching, and I’ll have all kinds of blogging time. Of course, I’ll be whining about my kids being home from school for two weeks, but that’s okay.
that Britney Spears has, for reals, y’all, dumped that loser Kevin Federline, and is about to make the world’s most awesome comeback ever.
I am fully aware that there are lots more important things to worry about in the world.
I also hope that people, and by people I mean girls and women who are compelled to purchase and then wear clothing that keeps coming back every twenty years, cease and desist in the wearing of LEGGINGS. And by leggings, I mean, “pants” that are tight enough to make cellulite obvious, which end at the biggest part of one’s calf. Those things are just WRONG. WRONG I SAY. If you all stop buying them, they’ll end up on the sale rack for $3.99. And if you still, regardless of the seeming value of them, resist buying them? They’ll go away. And while it might be nice if the big retailers of the world gave away the clothes that don’t sell, even for 99 fucking cents on the sale rack, to the homeless? They don’t. Which means, with my little scenario here, we won’t be forced to give our pocket change to people dressed in pants that are too tight and too short. This little rehash of the eighties will disappear.
I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. I’m in a bad hotel in a town that is too far away to be considered a suburb of Chicago, typing away as my kids watch Kim Possible (love this show, Kim Possible is THE BEST multi-tasker EVER) at 11:48 p.m., while my husband is in the bad bar across the street with a gaggle of his high school friends. (Oh my! Kim is moving at hyper-speed! I need to watch. She’s moving so fast, time is standing still. I need to watch and learn. Bye.)
UPDATE: FYI: It appears that the hyper speed is due to some fantastic pair of shoes. I MUST GET A PAIR RIGHT NOW!
Because then, it would be against the rules for the Duke of Earle to tag me with a meme. (And, in a weird way, there’s something oddly appealing about children under the age of 18 being required to stand in straight lines, with a minimum of 5 feet between them (so that if they fall, they won’t bump into and injure each other), with their arms at their sides, staring straight ahead, speaking only in low, “inside” voices, wearing long pants and sleeves and flat shoes. And maybe being encased in bubble wrap.)
I don’t really mind, though, because I like to write about books. Here goes:
1) One book that changed your life:
Oh, for God’s sake. Books in general, their existence, has changed my life. A few, though, that have changed my life, in general, are: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (go read it. It made me afraid to get an ATM card when they first came out, and now every time I use my debit card at the grocery store, I have a moment of fear that it’s not going to work, and I’m going to walk out of the store all pissed off and prepared to call the bank, without the food I had been planning to buy, and there’s going to be a lot of military helicopters flying above, and I’m never going to see my home or my children or my husband ever again). Actually, any book or story collection or essay collection by Margaret Atwood. Cat’s Eye is pretty fantastic. Vladimir Nabokov rocks my world for his schnazzy and bold use of parenthesis and parenthetical expression and long sentences and fucking spot-on descriptions of places and facial expressions and characters and jeez. Nabokov is my idol. Also, Tom Robbins. My copy of Skinny Legs and All, which really, if I bothered to narrow this in on one book, this would be it, is held together by rubber bands, because I destroyed the spine by reading it so many times. Anyone who can make believable characters that include a spoon and a can of beans traveling across the country deserves my respect. He expanded my idea of not only character, but of subject matter. Somehow managing to talk about the middle east conflicts in the context of a contentious relationship? Genius.
This is probably going to be a long post. Just to warn you. I haven’t even read ahead what the questions are, so I’m probably just going to be babbling about books and writers for, like, forever.
You know what? Blindness by Jose Saramago. That book changed my life. Damn.
2) One book that you’d read more than once:
Sorry. I can’t keep that at one. Obviously, Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. Native Son by Richard Wright (frequently and wisely assigned in school), The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (I loaned my copy to someone, and never got it back, and had to buy another one, and read that one several times, and saw a play based on it at Steppenwolf. If you haven’t discovered it, you should. Right now. Go on. Amazon awaits you.)
I’ll stop. Honestly. There’s too many.
3) One book you’d want on a deserted island:
That’s just not a fair question. Readers who know me VERY WELL will laugh at this, but I’d have to say, desert me with the damn Bible, for Christ’s sake. That puppy is so chock full of story! I could be inspired by it forever.
4) One book that made you laugh:
Anything by David Sedaris makes my family look at me like they might be considering calling the men with the lovely white, wrap-around jacket. I laugh out loud every other sentence, even when he’s making me cry. The dog thing? Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? Something like that. If you’ve ever loved a dog, you’ll cry your eyes out. If you’ve ever had parents? You’ll laugh your ass off. So you’ll be sitting there, on your couch, with a cocktail and your feet up, reading and crying and laughing, and you’ll be too lazy when the men with the white, wrap-around jacket come knocking, and they’ll go away, and you’ll be saved from a stint in the looney-bin.
5) One book that made you cry:
I cry at a lot of books. I cry because I wish I could make someone cry the way any writer who made me cry made me cry (read it out loud. That sentence MAKES SENSE.). I cry because I’ve come to love the characters and I’m sad for them, even if they never existed. One book, though, if I have to list one, that really wrenched me, was Dorothy Allison’s Bastard out of Carolina. That is a brilliant book. It may have started a whole trend of sad abuse stories, and I avoided reading it for a while because of that, but I’ve read it several times since (and she was our visiting writer at Columbia in the spring, and a fantastic human, she is), and I cry every time.
I did, last year, cry during a workshop when I was trying to read back what I had written. It was the last scene of my novel, and I’d never written it (and I have a lot to write to get to it). I cried because it was the last scene, and it made me all crazy emotional to have found, in a magical moment, the last scene, and to know that was really and truly the last moment, and that it was going to be sad and oddly hopeful for the reader. I also cried because it was sad, and I know this character better than I know myself and also in the same way we don’t know ourselves but other people know us, and I saw her from this weird distance, and my heart broke for her and all in one insane, scary moment, I found a piece of myself that I’d been either ignoring or not noticing or hadn’t found yet. And I cried. And then I was embarrassed to be crying over my own work. So I said “Excuse me,” and went to the bathroom and looked hard at myself in the mirror. It was a little strange.
I hope that I get that book written, and that people read that last scene and cry. That may sound weird, but if you are a reader, and you get emotional over books, you’ll understand.
6) One book you wish you’d written:
I wish I’d written already the book I’m trying to work on, rewriting it from third person into first, after having rewritten it from first person into third. I wish it was over and done, and I was in the process of sending it off to agents.
I also wish I’d written it really well.
7) One book you wish had never been written:
That James Frey thing. He pisses me off. I may have to thank him one day for messing with the line between fiction and non-fiction, but right now? He pisses me off.
One book you’re currently reading:
Right now, I’m reading, or rather I just finished, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, for a class. I’ve read it before, but it is a masterpiece of Creative Non-Fiction. I’m reading a collection of essays about writing by Ray Bradbury called…shit. I don’t know what it’s called, but the word ZEN is in the title. I’m too lazy to get up and get it out of my bag. It’s a goodie. I love Ray Bradbury.
9) One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Obviously, you’ve never been in my living room. The books I’m meaning to read are shoved in piles on the bookshelves in front of the books I have read, and also in piles on the floor, and I recently asked the guy who’s commandeering the remodeling of my kitchen and basement if he could find a way to build bookshelves on the walls next to my fireplace, and in the corner, and pretty much anywhere there is space for bookshelves. I have a problem. And books are my problem. Okay, honestly? I have a lot of problems. Books are one of them.
One book I’ve been meaning to read? Out of many? I’d like to read Night by Elie Wiesel. I haven’t yet, and I actually have two copies. I just haven’t made the time, which is silly. It’s not a long book. But I have a feeling it will take up a lot of emotional energy.
10) Tag five people:
Oh, thank god I’m at the end. This was torture.
Hmmm.
Definitely Megan. That way, I can kill two birds with one stone by giving her something to post about.
The Queen? For sure, although I have a feeling she may have done this before.
Somebody’s Son. Because I’d like him to show me he does something more than play football, kick asses, and drink. And love his fiance.
Allison, because she’s basically closed down her blog for whatever reason, and maybe this will get her to come out of retirement, even if it’s for only one post. Although, I’ll understand completely if she tells me to fuck off.
Ummm. Oh! Kunstemaeker. Only ‘cuz I’ve just recently discovered him, and I like him, and I think he’ll give me some more books to read.
Only, here’s the thing. I’m not going to email or visit these people to tell them they’ve been tagged. I could claim that it’s because I think they visit my blog on such a regular basis, they’ll discover it quickly on their own, but really it’s because I’m a lazy person.
And, when they discover they’ve been tagged, I’m adding on to this meme that they must come back to this post and comment and tell me they’ve posted their response, with a link to it. That’s fair, no? No. It’s not fair. You just go on and visit those people and see if they’ve responded to this meme, okay. I have to go to bed now.
UPDATE:
A couple of people I tagged have responded!
And as more do it, I’ll update with a link to their post. Because, presumably, that’s really what this whole meme thing is about.
