Category: Writing

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"Other people" Being a girl Children Drew Family Fashion Nonfiction Not awesome Parents Writing

In this case, E stands for “erroneous”

Stuff like this drives me crazy.

I realize this is just one little e-card. It’s not even a physical thing – it just exists as a jpeg. (And however things on the internet exist.)

This was probably a Mother’s Day card at one point. But I just saw it today, because this “your ecards” thing has somehow merged with Facebook and George Takei to create the unholy trinity that I like to call, “Why is my news feed now composed entirely of semi-funny, oft-shared pictures??”

Anyway. “9 times out of 10 children get their awesomeness from their mother.” What’s being said here? Why are we leaving out the fathers?

I’ve been running into a lot of father-bashing (or father-ignoring) on all the pregnancy boards to which I am now addicted. A common occurrence is that a woman will start a thread about being upset with her husband about a specific incident, and then comments will quickly pile up about how “it’s different for the men” and “they don’t understand” and how “they’re not interested in the pregnancy.”

Based on this and similar stories, Drew and I started a running “joke” about how much more important mothers are than fathers, which is basically us just repeating how the baby doesn’t even know who the father is until they’re 3 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old. (We just keep exaggerating because that’s what humor is.)

But this morning, I had to stop and say, “We’re both just kidding…right?” because it’s kind of getting to me. Enough is enough. Dads love their children too, and contribute to their health and well-being and yes, even to their awesomeness.

Maybe I just grew up in a very lucky kind of household, where my parents shared responsibilities and were around us equal amounts of time. I would say I get 50% of my awesomeness from my mom and 50% from my dad. And I would say that with a totally straight face.

It’s possible I’m overreacting to a stupid Facebook share. I mean, such things happen. (Some time last year, a WP blog post about bullying made the FB rounds, and everyone yelled about how their kid is such a special snowflake, and they would kill anyone who said anything mean to their perfect and sensitive child. I’m sure my coworkers enjoyed my attitude that day.)

On the other hand, maybe we’ve seen enough of FB e-cards, and enough of comments under-appreciating fathers. Hmm?

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Beginnings Being a girl Books Home improvements Sentiment Writing

Better late than never

Drew and I are in the middle of moving, as I keep mentioning. In fact we have given ourselves a goal of being completely out of here and living there by next Sunday. Which is slightly daunting.

This afternoon he went by the apartment and realized someone had left two pots of flowers on the doorstep. Since it doesn’t seem to be anyone that we know…I wonder if this means we have really sweet neighbors?

One funny thing that happened today as a result of being so far in the process, is that this afternoon I finished my other library book, and then I wandered around for awhile going, “What am I going to read now?” I had a few choices:

a) go in the guest bedroom and read a Cat Who book
b) read one of the (few) books (left behind) here that I have already finished
c) go out to my car and find something in the trunk

When Drew got home, he pointed out the Amazon box on the floor, under a box of ginger snaps, which I then remembered had 5 brand new books still in it.

See, every time I think we’ve got them all…

The other funny thing happened when we were unpacking all our kitchen stuff this weekend. We were pulling stuff out that we’ve literally never used. It’s mostly kitchen stuff, and, now that I think about it, it’s mostly stuff we didn’t register for, that we still liked, but just haven’t had the chance yet. For example, a sugar-and-creamer set…in a pattern that I totally adore, but we’re just not big coffee drinkers. (We should change that.) There’s also a wedding-style picture frame that we should probably use to display a wedding picture. One of these days.

A friend who was over helping us unpack suggested that it would make a good blogging project – to commit to using those things we’ve never used, and then chronicle that. So hopefully over the rest of 2012, I’ll be making an effort to get some of that great stuff out of its packaging and onto the table.

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Awesome Memoir Writing

A Celebration!

This happened on Thursday, and by some fortunate coincidence, I happened to be there to catch it at the precise moment:

So thanks to everyone who reads! As always, I renew my promise to try to stay interesting, optimistic, and as non-Dear Diary as possible.

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Awesome Books Love Writing

The King of the Bookshelf

I pretty much adore Stephen King. I think I’ve made that evident. This is his author photo from his latest novel, 11/22/63. I think he looks remarkably like an older, fuller-cheeked version of my dad.

Author photo by Shane Leonard

Stephen King, if you read this, I think you’re awesome.

So awesome in fact, that I have collected nearly all of your work. Here is a comprehensive list of Stephen King books (novels, short stories and collections, and nonfiction). I have italicized all the books I own, and bolded the NINE that I have yet to get my hands on.

novels:
11/22/63
Bag of Bones
Black House
Blockade Billy
Carrie
Cell
Christine
The Colorado Kid
Cujo
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Dark Half
The Dark Tower Series 1-3
The Dark Tower Series 4-8
The Dead Zone
Desperation
Dolores Claiborne
Dreamcatcher
Duma Key
The Eyes of the Dragon
Firestarter
From a Buick 8
Gerald’s Game
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Green Mile
Insomnia
IT
Lisey’s Story
Misery
Needful Things
Pet Sematary
The Plant: Zenith Rising (this one is actually an unfinished eBook that I thought would be impossible to find. Then I looked on his website and saw it’s just available to download as a pdf. BOOM)
Rose Madder
‘Salem’s Lot (I don’t have this as a single book, but in one of the collections)
The Shining
The Stand
The Talisman
The Tommyknockers
Under the Dome

nonfiction:
Danse Macabre
On Writing
Secret Windows

short story/novella collections:
Different Seasons
Everything’s Eventual
Four Past Midnight
Full Dark, No Stars
Hearts in Atlantis
Just After Sunset
Night Shift
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Skeleton Crew

as Richard Bachman:
The Bachman Books
Blaze
The Regulators
Thinner

There it is. My gleeful collection. Once I have completed it, I can set about replacing some of the ancient, falling-apart copies with newer, still-bound-together copies. Oh, I should also finally read all of them…because yes, there are some that I have only read once, years ago, and a couple that I’m sorry to say I haven’t yet read.

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Awesome Being a girl Home improvements Memoir Writing

Airing My Previously Dirty Laundry

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to submit a newspaper column once a month. I slacked off in February (hey, there was a lot going on) and while this one didn’t run until today, I submitted it back on Feb 28th, so I’m cutting myself a break on that. I will do better this month.

I also resolved to write one short story per month, which I neglected to do, so TWO stories in March!

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AIRING MY PREVIOUSLY DIRTY LAUNDRY

I am not a particularly domestic person. When it comes to cleaning, I’d say I’m more of a planner than an actual doer. Right now, as I’m typing this, I’m noticing how dusty my computer screen is, but I have no immediate plans to wipe it off. Let me try blowing on it and see if that works…nope, not really.

I do have general good intentions, and I make lists of things to do, like “fold all laundry” and “clean all dishes” and “vacuum all floors,” but when the weekend rolls around I cross off maybe one and half things and then applaud myself.

Drew and I are halfheartedly looking for a new apartment. Halfheartedly because we don’t really want to move anywhere until the end of April, and everything we look at now is available for new tenants on Monday. So it’s hard to look seriously at anything just now.

One of the amenities we’ve agreed that we want is a washer/dryer in the unit. Having a washer/dryer in your own place is amazing, no doubt. But I think I have discovered the downside to having such readily available appliances: there’s never an excuse to not do laundry.

When I have to walk it outside (or down four flights of steps) (okay, onto the elevator), I can always fall back on an excuse for not doing it today. I’ll do it tomorrow, I just put on pajamas. Or I’ll do it this weekend, I’m kind of sick today and don’t want to expose the rest of the building to my germs. Etc.

But when the washing machine is just behind a door (and not even a sturdy exterior door – just a flimsy interior door!), then I have no excuse. Oh look, there’s one full basket of dirty laundry. Why am I not washing it right now? There’s no reason to wait. In fact, there’s all the reason to do it right now. I’m not doing anything. If I wash it right now I can wear my favorite sweater again tomorrow. (Not that I will.) (But maybe.)

Heaven help me if I had to actually wash things by hand…like, beat them against rocks in a stream, and then wring them out and hang them up.

And let me be honest: of all the chores, laundry is one of my favorites. (Doing dishes is the other.) Because you start with a pile of something dirty, and then, a short time later, you have a pile of something clean. That’s progress. You know what I hate more than anything? Sweeping. Because after you sweep a floor, all you’ve really done is discovered that you need to mop it.

Tonight I’m on a weird little cleaning kick, and I finally tackled that immense, intimidating basket/pile of clean clothes. I folded like a machine, and I stacked and then I placed on shelves. There were nigh on six towels in that basket-pile. When I was done, I fetched the clean clothes from the dryer from yesterday, and I folded all those. You want to know how long it took me? Seventeen minutes. That’s the equivalent of four and a half songs playing in the background. My commute is longer than that. I’ve taken showers longer than that. And now that intimidating pile is gone. And I feel invincible. I even looked around for more things to fold, but no dice – I got ‘em all.

So what’s next? Will I clean the bathroom? Wash dishes? Vacuum out my car? Grab a Swiffer and wipe down my computer screen? Who can say? Today, domesticity… tomorrow, the world.

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Being a girl Books Dreams Fashion Food Friends Love Nonfiction Religion Self improvement Sentiment Writing

21 in 2 months

After yesterday’s post about how I have bought too many books since Jan 1st, a friend asked me to list them all. So here goes!

These are the ones I bought from Amazon with a gift card:

Cell by Stephen King – this is me collecting every Stephen King book
Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara? by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy – I saw this in the used bookstore I used to frequent when I worked at the Opera, and even though Erin said it was so-so, I’ve wanted to read it since then
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs – I want to own all his stuff because I think he’s a good role model for me
Naked, Drunk, and Writing by Adair Lara – I idolize her, and this is one of the best “how to” writing books I’ve ever read
A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs – collecting all the Augusten Burroughs books is a lot easier than collecting all the Stephen King books

A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin – so good!
Touched by a Vampire by someone named Jones – from the used bookstore, about religion in Twilight…it looks like a joke, and that’s why I bought it, although I paid $7 for it, so who’s the joke on now?
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume II by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – love Sherlock Holmes!
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather – love these Barnes and Noble volumes!
A Widow for One Year by John Irving – love John Irving!
More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin – I really liked the show at ACT, and I really liked the first Tales of the City, so I look forward to reading more

Oh! Here’s The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume I, near the foot of the bed. I was reading it about 6 weeks ago.

I shouldn’t count these since they were Christmas presents, but they are sitting out, so…

Etiquette by Emily Post – the 1922 edition!
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

This was also a Christmas present.

11/22/63 by Stephen King – one of his weirder premises, but I still enjoyed it!

Two major finds a couple weekends ago – two Stephen King books I thought were going to be difficult to get. But they basically fell into my hands!

Blockade Billy by Stephen King – $4.95 on the sale shelf at Barnes and Noble
The Colorado Kid by Stephen King – $2.95 at the used bookstore in Berkeley

Books 2 through 4 of the Underland Chronicles by the author of The Hunger Games. I love these books. I cannot recommend them enough. I also have the first one, but loaned it to Erin. I haven’t bought the fifth and final one yet, but I will when I finish the fourth one.

Gregory the Overlander by Suzanne Collins (not pictured)
Gregory and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins
Gregory and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins
Gregory and the Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins

Next to the bed! I’m about halfway through and really like it. I think I will read each book before the next season of the HBO series comes out.

A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin

So that’s 19 books that I’ve purchased since January 1st, plus 3 Christmas presents. But wait! I am currently awaiting two books from Amazon:

These are for next month’s book club – they’re both pretty short and we couldn’t meet for another 5 weeks, so we decided to do both of them. I am actually pretty excited about both, but I will probably read them in this order.

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney – this book has been on my “to read” list FOREVER

So there you have it. Twenty-one books purchased in the first two months of 2012. Will the trend continue like this?

The thing of it is, I’m obviously not embarrassed or worried about this behavior. I love buying books and having books and reading books. I have no intention to stop buying them. I make no promises like, “I won’t buy anything else until I read everything I own.” There’s a Barenaked Ladies lyric,

I don’t buy everything I read,
I haven’t even read everything I’ve bought.

I identify with that.

Stay tuned, and I’ll give you a full breakdown of all of Stephen King’s works, and the few I still need to complete my collection!

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"Other people" Being a girl Friends Memoir Writing

The Art of Bad Tipping

Over the holidays, some friends and I went out to dinner at a place that we have gone several times before. It was a late dinner, so although we had to wait for a table, the restaurant wasn’t full or bustling or anything. But the service was pretty terrible. We just kept waiting for things that should have appeared quicker. Things like a server, to take our orders.
 
Once we had our food (which was not delivered by the server, but by other food deliverers), one of us had to flag down a server (not our server) to ask for a spoon. About five minutes later, our server appeared with a spoon and said, “Oh, they already brought you one.” Then she wandered away.
 
My root beer mug sat empty, although the menu states in all caps, “FREE REFILLS,” through the last three-quarters of the hour we were there.
 
Once we were clearly finished eating, some bussers came and removed the plates…and then we sat and talked, which was nice, but that’s the appropriate point for a server to come back, ask if you’re interested in dessert or coffee or anything, and then drop off the check. We finally had to flag her down to ask for the check…and then again to pick up the check.
 
When it came time to write in a tip, the table was all in agreement that we should make some kind of statement with this optional dollar amount.
 
Which brings me to my main point – what’s the appropriate way to tip poorly, when you want to make it clear that you felt the service was below par? One person argued that we should leave a zero tip, because that leaves the clearest message. But I think that generally you should leave something so that they know that you chose to leave a small amount – and it’s not that you didn’t know about tipping, or maybe you meant to leave cash on the table or something.
 
I ended up leaving about 10%, which is pretty awful as far as tips go. But afterwards I was told unhesitatingly that I should have left a big fat zero. That 10% just makes it look like I am a bad tipper, but leaving no tip at all leaves the strongest message.
 
I’m really not sure where I stand on this. I usually tip pretty well, because I like the idea of positive reinforcement and I’m generally happy with the service. My generosity goes up if I frequent the business and if they start to recognize me. I don’t want to be the girl who never tips. And I remember working food service and how each time someone stuffed a dollar in the tip jar, it would just make my day.
 
I also hate to treat anyone badly if I don’t know their situation. Was our server just having an off night? Did her boyfriend just dump her? Was she up all night with some kind of home repair problem? Who knows? On the other hand, she is getting paid to do her job – that extra 20% of our table’s check isn’t guaranteed to her, and she knows that she has to work to get that optional money out of her customers.
 
She wasn’t overtly rude, and she didn’t make any mistakes. She didn’t blow cigarette smoke in our faces or bring us all the wrong meals. She was just absent the whole time. So what’s the best way to handle that TIP line on the credit card slip?
 
Retrospectively, I feel okay about that 10%. It’s not as harsh as leaving nothing, but I didn’t have to smilingly hand over a fistful of extra bills beyond what the meal cost. I hope she was just having a momentary lapse of concentration, and that today she is back in top form, slinging plates and scooping up gratuities.
 
I also hope that the next time we go back there, we’re seated in another section…something in the other room, perhaps? No? Well, we can just sit at the bar, thanks.

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Being a girl Drew Endings Memoir Sentiment Writing

2011 My Year In Status

Facebook does this thing I enjoy, where you can sort through all your status updates from the year and then it puts them into a pretty jpeg for you. The writing is a little small (that’s the first time I’ve ever said that!) but I still like the concept of seeing my entire year like this.

There are things I entirely forgot about – and lots of things that I totally thought happened over a year ago. This year was definitely not boring – but also not too eventful.

Unfortunately I couldn’t fit all of the statuses I wanted to. So here are a couple that I had to leave off, that I still enjoyed rereading and reminiscing:

  • First attempt at homemade lattes: aborted!
  • Just found out this play is called Seagull. Not The Seagull. Good to know. First preview tonight!
  • You know she’s your BFF when she texts you how much she loves you…in drunk Spanglish.
  • To the old woman sorting through the trash dumpster at 8am: I know you were most likely just looking for recyclables, or even treasures that some wasteful entitled person threw away…but you are the reason I’ve gotten all OCD about shredding all my personal documents.
  • Today is No Apologies Monday! Did you make a faux pas today? Don’t say you’re sorry! I was 10 minutes late to work…but I’m not sorry!
  • Things trending on Yahoo right now: HIV, M Night Shyamalan, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. #NoApologiesMonday
  • A word problem: If Safeway has a “Buy one, get two free” promotion…can two adults eat 3 lbs of strawberries before they go bad?
  • If USPS is going to “deliver” things by tossing them onto the balcony 3 days earlier than the expected delivery date, it’d be nice to get a heads up so I don’t leave the package out there in the rain all weekend.
  • I definitely thought the royal wedding was tomorrow. Who gets married on a Friday?? Was Westminster Abbey booked for another royal wedding tomorrow or something?
  • Jonathan Amores: a fervent enthusiast of good theater plays
  • Drew: Are we an item? Me: Yeah. Right? Drew: Eh, I don’t really believe in labels.
  • I ate so many jelly beans today. : (
  • From Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” – “In the “Great American Melting Pot,”…New York is that chunk of garlic that you bite into thinking it’s potato and you can’t get the taste out of your mouth all day. It all blends once you mix it, but sometimes you really have to grind it against the side.” I miss you, NYC!
  • I would really like to go up in a hot air balloon.
  • Finally used a Starbucks treat receipt! First time ever!
  • Drew: “We have a very important decision to make and I think we should both say what we think at the exact same time. Should we get a Christmas tree this year? We both say what we think on three. Ready…one…two…three–” Drew and me: “YES.” Drew: “–because it’s Christmas. Okay, good. So we’ll do that.”
  • I drove for 3 minutes in the carpool lane, before 9am when it’s open to all. Rebel!

I promise that’s the last of the 2011 retrospectives!

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Awesome Endings Writing

2011 In Review

And this is just one of the reasons that I love WordPress!

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Awesome Beginnings Being a girl Dreams Drew Endings Family Memoir Nonfiction Self improvement Sentiment Writing

2011 New Year’s Resolutions: Finis

Now is the time to look back on 2011 and see which of my New Year’s resolutions I accomplished. I’m happy to report that this year went pretty well!

1. Get off of unemployment

In June of 2010 I finished up a contract job at Marin Theatre Company, and I spent the remainder of the year patching together work from MTC, the San Francisco Opera, and reading for Samuel French, as well as supplementing with unemployment. While it wasn’t the tightest things have ever been around here, it was frustrating to be constantly thinking about trying to get enough hours among all the jobs. My number one priority as the year turned from 2010 to 2011 was to get off of unemployment. Which I did, basically right away, when I started subbing in January.

2. Get a career type job

Subbing was very interesting and I learned something, I’m sure. But it was obviously not for me. And like I said before, I was tired of cobbling together a living. My number two priority was to get a freaking real job, with stability and health benefits. Which I did in February! So far, 2011 resolutions are going great!

3. Lose 30 pounds

Oops.

4. Pay off at least one credit card

Oops again. Well, that was a tall order and I might have guessed that it wouldn’t happen.

5. Help Megan to have the best wedding ever

Done and done. I might add, I also helped Liz have the best wedding ever. A good year for weddings!

6. Change everything to my new(ish) last name.

The things I hadn’t yet changed over to my new last name (from my 2009 wedding) were my Mastercard, my gym membership, and three store credit cards. As of this morning I had changed my Mastercard and my gym membership. I planned on just moving this resolution to my “2012 resolutions” list, but then I had this big burst of inspiration, and so I spent some time on the phone this morning calling around and changing the rest of it. 2011 ftw!

I want to mention that every customer service representative I talked to said, “Congratulations on your recent wedding!” when I told them why I needed to change my name. I was too embarrassed to say, “Thanks, it was over 2 years ago.” How time flies.

7. Remember birthday cards for important family members this year

Well, unfortunately I had a couple lapses this year, and for that I am sincerely sorry. I have changed my system because having them in my planner is not working out as well as it used to – I’m just not in the planner often enough. I put the birthdays that keep slipping past me into my gmail calendar so that I’ll get a reminder 2 weeks out, so I can actually get something in the mail in time. 2012 will my card-sending, offending-no-one year.

8. Get a passport!

Thanks to Drew and the scavenger hunt he arranged for my birthday, I am now the proud owner of a passport. And I used it to fly to New York in October, so I know it works.

9. Write!

This was broken down into 5 categories to make it more quantifiable:

  • Script Frenzy in April
  • Submit to Samuel French Off-off-Bway Festival in July
  • Nanowrimo in November (I made the conscious decision to stay sane this November)
  • Blog 100 times over 2011 (the actual number is 168 public posts, counting this one)
  • Look into a Record-Bee column (I actually submitted about four of these)

I’m feeling pretty good about this year! So it’s time to start making me some 2012 resolutions. While I ponder over those and try to make them as specific and achievable as possible…let me know what your biggest resolution is!