Category: Explaining the Strange Behavior

books, Career, Explaining the Strange Behavior, Friends of Mine

Flat Friends

the outside lane

Did you know that you can track your pizza delivery from Dominos now?  With cute animated pizza guy and everything.  Like I needed something else to distract me!

dominos

Between that and Pottermore…

Some books, I wish I could experience again for the first time.  I wish I could experience all of Narnia again, A Wrinkle In Time, Skinny Legs and All, Tam Lin, and the first Harry Potter book.  And Slummy Mummy, because I laughed out loud at that book more times than you need to know.

Pottermore (and yes, I was sorted into Gryffindor, though I expected Hufflepuff) is bittersweet because even though JK Rowling writes for it, the adventure is over and no matter how many potions you get to make, Harry, Ron, and Hermoine have long left the building.  I like to think we’d all have been friends.  I like to think the Pevensies, the Murrys and I would all have gotten on–I always thought my dearest elementary school friend was exactly like Meg Murry, so I loved Meg Murry all the more. 

Yesterday, I was thinking back to how I got started writing.  I can’t remember a time I wasn’t making up stories for my own entertainment.  When forced to lie down for naps, I would tell myself stories–frequently involving Mr. Spock ending up as my guardian, since he was a favorite.  Then, when I was in 3rd grade, a friend introduced me to fanfiction, and it wasn’t long before I was crossing over Battlestar Galactica with Star Blazers.  –That’s an easy way to go to practice writing.  No character development required.  You only have to work out the plot.  Or, in my case, work out how live action could cross over with anime.

Maybe if I am ever a famous writer, Leonard Nimoy and Dirk Benedict will find out how instrumental they were to my development and–well, that’s not ladylike writing, and Leonard Nimoy might not be limber enough at this stage of the game.

Explaining the Strange Behavior

Tampons, Trials, Babies, Gay Marriage, Books–Oh yeah. It’s a Grab Bag!

the outside lane

I have many thoughts and not much spare brain resource, which means I start writing blog entries, then do the internet equivalent of crumpling them up and tossing them in the trash can. There is not so satisfying a bump sound, though, and I don’t get the joy of actually seeing the wad of paper arc into the can. I’m a writer. I find great comfort in seeing crumpled balls of paper overflowing from a trash can. That means the process is working.

Granted, I quit writing on paper over a decade ago.

So here are some random thoughts about things that I have taken very seriously. I ask you to forgive the poor structure, as I am writing with raw nerves and am utterly lacking in any poetry:

1. Tampons being verboten in the Texas Capitol
I have heard the reasoning behind why potential and potentially meaningful projectiles were confiscated from citizens trying to attend a vote on an extreme abortion measure in Austin. Those reasons may (or may not be, depending on how upset you are at the idea of a Senator being smacked in the head by a wrapped tampax) be valid, but the execution was flawed with a capital FLAW.

I’m not even going to get into the controlled handgun license issue, which has a lot of people upset. I have been focused on the fact that had I appeared at the Capitol doors while menstruating, I wouldn’t have been able to go in after they took away my feminine products because I need that stuff. If you take away my panty liners, we’re going to have a problem with your chairs. So, as a woman, I would have been barred from participation.

I cannot express to you how I despaired over this. I have tried, and tried to put it into words, but I can’t seem to knit anything around this bubble of despair. It is just naked, raw hurt and disappointment that officials would bar me from participating in government because of my gender. –and maybe you won’t get this if you’ve never had a bad period, but you have to trust me that if you take away a woman’s sanitary napkins, you are being demeaning, ugly, and unjust– You just can’t do that. It’s wrong.

I told my [horrified] husband that if I could spontaneously menstruate, I’d have driven to Austin specifically to bleed on something. I am not ashamed of my uterus, and no “official” is going to bar me from participation by trying to humiliate me into submission. I’ll ruin every pair of light colored pants I own before that happens.

2. George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin
This is one I feel like should have been cut and dried. If you kill someone who has entered your personal space and threatened you, I can see there being just cause. If you kill someone you have pursued, and whose personal space you have entered, I don’t see the just cause.

You break into my house and I shoot you, that’s fine. You look like you might fit the description of someone who broke into Susie’s house, and I chase you down, yell at you, engage in physical confrontation with you and shoot you…well? Come on. I started it. If I start it, do I get to kill you when I don’t like how it’s ending up?

It’s how I feel about people who climb into the tiger enclosure at the zoo. If you throw yourself at the tiger–who is at least KNOWN to be dangerous–and are then surprised when the tiger defends its territory and starts to eat the hell of you, killing the tiger isn’t the solution to the problem.

There’s no happy ending to this, though. Whether or not Zimmerman ever spent a day in jail, a child is dead. A Skittle eating, best friend having, hoodie wearing, loved child is dead. Eye for an eye doesn’t change that. No court in the world could change that.

I am disappointed that charges were not filed differently, to impress upon Zimmerman the cost of his own stupidity, but that’s done. There’s always civil court. That’s where OJ bit it.

3. Royal Baby
I really need for this Royal Baby to be born because it will make me all kinds of ridiculously happy. I have been in love with the Royal Family since Shy Di first came to my notice on her engagement to Prince Charles. I was 11, and she was a beautiful princess–it was also quite a shock to find out that not all princes were handsome. Rude awakening, frankly.

I need that baby to hurry up and get here.

4. Gay Old England
Some happy breaking news out of the UK, not involving heirs to the throne: The Queen signed off on the Gay Marriage law, and it will become legal in just a small matter of time. Equality! Justice for all! Huzzah!

Just think of the economic boost. Just think of how much busier the wedding industry is about to be. Love who you want, kids. Be happy, and be equal.

5. Rolling Stone cover
I am DONE with Rolling Stone.

6. Artistic Emotional Roller Coaster
I’ve been writing, writing, writing, editing, writing, editing, working on queries and making submissions. Writing is easy for me. Editing isn’t hard. Writing queries is painful (thank you, Arwen, for easing the pain), writing the synopsis for submissions is excrutiating.

You’ve spent however long birthing this brain baby, and you go through all these various emotions during the process: Pride, excitment, worry, upset, fear of failure, fear of success, hope, despair. You worry your work isn’t good enough. You worry that this thing you love isn’t what you’ve cracked it up to be.

Then, once you’ve gotten it into the shape you prefer (and given it to people whose opinions you respect and asked them to dent it up, and then reshaped it according to their sagacious suggestions) you have to boil it all down to 3 paragraphs that 1) Tell what the story is about, 2) Tell why the story is different and marketable, 3) Tell why YOU are different and marketable.

That’s bad enough, but then you have to write between 1 and 3 pages summing up the entire manuscript. You have to tell the whole story in a way that is interesting, entertaining, and engaging, giving away the whole plot, without being so explicit that the reader of the synopsis doesn’t feel the need to read the manuscript. I think most writers would tell you that if they felt it possible to write the whole story in 3 pages, they would never have sweated blood over the 213 pages the story turned out to be.

THEN, when you’ve written your query and your submission, you start casting it upon the waters. Messages in a bottle: Please love me! Please want me! Please validate me! Please tell me that I wasn’t wasting my time!

I grew up auditioning, so I know that a rejection isn’t personal. A rejection only means, “This doesn’t fit.” Like a cute dress. If it doesn’t fit, you don’t buy it. You may love it. You may agonize over wanting it. You may nearly talk yourself into letting it hang in the back of your closet until you lose 10lbs, but if it doesn’t fit, it won’t work. I’m sending my cute dress out to publishers and agents, and if it doesn’t fit, they are going to have to tell me no.

But it’s going to fit someone. Even if that someone is me, and I end up self publishing.

Still, I have exhausted my adrenal glands with all the Up Down of the process.

Aren’t you lucky I blog? Ha!

A Day in the Life, Explaining the Strange Behavior, Family, parenting, School

Some Days Start Badly

the outside lane

You know, I very rarely just make one mistake.  Usually, when I goof something up, it is a snowball effect of doom as I go into overdrive to try to correct the first error and end up destroying the space around me in true sitcom style.  Just ask Jamie and Wes, whose brand new beige sofa, barstools, and light colored walls I baptized with a large coffee.

I can’t even remember what triggered it, but I sloshed my coffee, and in scrambling to keep it from getting on anything, I splashed it out of the cup, slipped on what I had splashed, managed to toss the cup up in the air and somehow catch it by the handle as I swung in an arc around the living room that slung coffee from the breakfast bar, all the way across their new sectional.  Coffee in the floor.  Coffee on the cloth barstool seats.  Coffee on the sectional.  Coffee in my hair.  Coffee all over the place.  If I’d just stood still, there would only have been a small mess.

This morning, at 7:44, I realized I had missed the special parent/teacher conference that Thor’s teacher had asked us to attend at 7:15.  I panicked.  I waited until I got to a red light, then fired off an email apologizing and asking to reschedule.  The teacher wrote back and I couldn’t really read the whole email as I was driving, but some words popped out at me, including the words “field trip.”  I panicked again.

“Today is Thor’s field trip!” I yelled aloud at myself.  “And you didn’t pack his lunch!  AUGH!!!”

What could I do?  I was halfway to work, it was 7:55, and I couldn’t get back to his school with a lunch in time to beat the busses leaving.  I called the school and talked to the secretary, sounding like a crazy woman.  She assured me that they would send him down to the cafeteria to buy a lunch, and that they wouldn’t let him miss the field trip.

I hung up, starting to cry because a) I had forgotten my son’s p/t conference and I feel awful about that, b) I was afraid he was going to feel thrown away because I had forgotten to pack him a lunch, c) I was afraid he would feel weird because the field trip bus was waiting for him, and d) because my mistake had delayed an entire school full of 2nd graders.  I mean, that’s 100 kids on busses who are delayed because one mother forgot a lunch.  Have you ever been on a bus with a 7 year old?  Have you ever been a 7 year old on a bus?

I was just getting to the point of really worrying about my mascara when my phone rang.  It was the school.  The wonderful secretary had called to tell me she had spoken with Thor’s teacher, and the field trip is not until Thursday, so I hadn’t missed the boat entirely.  I laughed a crazy person.  She laughed like a concerned person.  I said, “Thank goodness!  At least I’m not THE worst mother in the world.”  She laughed again, uncomfortably, and we said our goodbyes.

Then, I was laughing and crying at the same time, and making like Alice Cooper with the mascara.  I crazy laughed for a solid minute before shaking out of it (when I missed my exit.)  So, while Thor might not know how close he came to 2nd Grade level trauma, his teacher absolutely, 100%, without any question knows where all of his shortcomings originate.  Maybe we don’t need a conference at all now?  Maybe she’ll just look at his tendency to forget things and feel sorry for him, given that it is a genetic flaw.

The kid doesn’t have ADD.  He has Related to Me.

continuing education, Explaining the Strange Behavior

Exit Stage Left

the outside lane

To audition for community theater, or not?  All my excuses for not doing it have evaporated in the past year, or so.

I haven’t auditioned for any stage work since college.  The last stage audition I did was for Into the Woods, where I blew my 2nd callback.  It was one of those things where, while it was happening, I knew it was happening and I couldn’t stop it.  It was like hitting a bum note that you have to hold a while, and not being able to correct that sucker back into tune.  The director asked for a second interpretation of a delivery, and I did the EXACT SAME THING again.  Twice more.  I could not physically change my delivery and it was amazing in how awful it was.

The director and I were locked on each other’s eyes, and he was looking at me like I was some kind of bad American Idol audition joke, and I was looking at him like I knew it.  Train wreck.

I did get a part, but I turned it down because I chickened out.  I was afraid I was going to have another acting-stroke, only in front of the audience.

Since then, I’ve excused myself because either I was too busy, lived too far away from any theater, or had a very small child.  Now, I live 1/2 a mile from the theater, have the time, and my child is old enough to either sit and read during rehearsals, or hang out at home with Daddy–those are good excuses to cover up the reason:  I’m afraid I don’t have the chops anymore.  I’m afraid of being rejected.  I’m afraid of not being Meryl Streep–I shouldn’t be afraid of this because I have never been, nor will I ever be an actor of that caliber.

Anyway, since it’s fear that has kept me away, I think I should face it and get my butt down to the auditions in two weeks.  Worst case scenario, I freeze up and some people giggle at me behind my back.  Best case scenario, I get the part I want and spend the run of the show making people laugh.  Likeliest scenario, I earn a part in the ensemble, make a few new friends, and have a laugh myself.

Explaining the Strange Behavior, Family, Religion

My Soul Cries Out to Thee

the outside lane

I left work early today, and I was home before Mom brought Thor in from their excursions.  I was more than two hours earlier than I ever get to the house.  When I heard them coming in the front door, I told B, “I’m going to hide.”  So, I threw a blanket over myself and sat on the sofa–hiding in plain sight works on 7 year olds.  It works on Grandmas, too because I had to wave at Mom to get her to notice me, and put a finger over my lips to keep her from exclaiming.

Thor was standing not 3 feet from me, and B said, “Hey, I think there is a lump over there on the sofa that might want a hug.” Thor paused, then walked over to me and started laughing.  And he laughed, and laughed, and laughed until he had tears in his eyes, hugging me, then leaning back to look at me and laugh some more.

It’s amazing and wonderful how something so simple and silly can bring so much joy.

My mom called me later to tell me how happy it made her to see how much the boy and I love each other, and to say, “And that’s how much I love you, too.”

You guys…I am humbled and grateful every day of my life.  It isn’t possible to do enough to deserve the love I’ve had around me, and it pricks at the most latent parts of my spirituality.  Critics talk about how the desperate and the downtrodden invent gods to make themselves feel better, but it is when I am at my happiest that I most want one.  I just want to say thank you and express my gratitude to someone–I need to say thank you*!  I’m after God’s heart because mine gets so full.  I miss my old zealotry and surety the most when I am bursting to say thank you.

Thor wanted to show me one of the Bibles my mom has bought him–it’s verse style, not story style, so he’s very impressed.  I asked if he’d like to see my favorite verse, and he said yes, but he certainly hoped it was in the New Testament because the Old Testament sure is boring.  He was in luck.

Romans 8:38, 39 reads, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

He read that out loud in whatever translation his was, and I said, “That’s my favorite verse, and that’s how much I love you.  Nothing can ever separate you from how much I love you, or change that you are mine.”

It’s always been the “because He first loved me” aspect of Christianity that attracted me to the faith.

At this point in my life, I have a thousand more questions than I will ever have answers regarding God, but that’s okay.  Because if the god I chose  loves me anywhere near the way I love Thor–anywhere near the way my mother loves me, then the questions and uncertainty won’t bother him at all.  Not even my disbelief could separate me from that love.  (Sacrilege!  I know.  But not even his willful refusal to acknowledge me would make me turn my back my son, and I am an imperfect being.  It is possible [I think not probable, since he doesn’t show any tendencies toward serial killing or despotism] that he could do things to horrify and make me not like him, and possible that he could distress and disappoint me, but there is nothing that could quell the love I have for him.  Maybe that’s part of the imperfection of humanity–if it is, I prefer it to deity.)

Anyway…it is in every sense of the word a blessing to be married to my husband and into his family, and to belong to the family I was born into, and to have the family of friends I’ve made, and especially to be the family that we became when we had Thor, and I want to express my gratitude to everyone who has made even an ounce of it possible.

Here is Thor, having bored himself to sleep, reading Genesis.
Here is Thor, having bored himself to sleep, reading Genesis.

 

*This is a real issue for me.  I have sat on hold for 15 minutes waiting for a store manager, just to say thank you for good service.  I have a compulsive need to show gratitude that can manifest in a slavish devotion depending upon the level of thanks I am giving.  I guess there are worse compulsions?