Not So Sparkly Sparkly

Alas darlings, nothing to say this week except I HAVE A HEADACHE and THANK GOD FOR HAPPY HOUR. I did post on my author blog today, however.

Kisses,
Rebecca

Gray April Day Blues

You know, sometimes it is rather glamorous being a quasi-employed, underselling novelist, occasional travel writer, undiscovered rock star, and pseudo ski bunny.

There are sun-spangled days spent in the snow; music-filled nights at bars around town; the occasional reader who tells me "I loved your book!" The nights I can stay up as late as I want reading; the mornings I spend getting to know the characters in my next novel; the freedom to do whatever the hell I want, when I want (as long as it doesn't cost more than five bucks). (Photo of Mount Rainier by Chris Olson)

Then again, there are the aimless days. When I am listless and tired from music-filled nights at bars. When the lack of structure overwhelms me. When it would be good to have an office to go to or coworkers to talk to or at the very least a dog to walk!

There are the days when I think good God, this novel will be so much WORK because it's not about ME and I have to create these people out of thin air, with all their histories and desires and lovable idiosyncracies! And after all that work will it even get published?

There are the days I stress about money and miss my high-earning past when I didn't mind selling my soul for a little security. When my health benefits were all paid for (and then some!) and that employee stock purchase plan made my money multiply like crazy.

Whoa boy, that all seems so long ago.

At least I just got some work to tide me over for a few weeks, and that will also help pay for the massive auto repair bill that just came my way. (Are there any OTHER type of auto repair bills than massive ones?) Meanwhile, in one of my less glamorous ski bunny moments, enjoy this video of me falling flat on my a*s while cross-country skiing while my friend Eric mocks me from behind the camera. (I fell again around the corner but no one saw!)

xo
Rebecca

Take This Job and Shove It II

Is it any wonder I'm having trouble going back to the cubicle? After a winter spent playing outdoors in the glorious Cascade Mountains?

In a fit of rebellion, I turned down a job at Hotel Californiasoft the other day after somehow managing to convince a group of four very serious techies that I was passionate about developer documentation and would do a bang-up job if they hired me. (Give the girl an Oscar!)

Only they wouldn't let me work from home at all. Hello? Excuse me? I don't DO the east side for work anymore. I don't DO cubicles anymore. Got that, MAN? You can take your cushy, million-an-hour, so-boring-I-want-to-kill-myself job and give it to some poor sucker who actually wants to make a living!

I do...uh...volunteering for good causes where I don't get paid any money but I get to ski! And read stories to kindergarten classes! And drinking expensive lattes around town as my savings account dwindles!

So THERE.

Commitment Issues - Moi?

For those of you who think I might have "committment problems," I will have you know that in the last 24 hours, I went house-shopping with friend-that-is-a-boy and filled out a form for "Seattle Pug Rescue!" (picture courtesy of The Pug Blog).

As I filled out the "Pug Rescue" form , which came right on the heels of going to look at this house, I thought whoa - what the hell is happening to me, Miss-Freewheeling-Don't-Tie-Me-Down-I-Want-to-Be-Able-To-Travel-To-South-America-At-The-Drop-Of-A-Hat-or-Date-Any-Hot- but-Inappropriate-Boy-I-Want-Breakup Babe?

It's not like I feel totally ready to move in with the friend-that-is-a-boy or get a dog. It's more like I know I never will feel totally ready. Ergo I will just jump in, do it, and get ready.

Then again, maybe not. We Geminis can never make up our minds.

It was, I have to say, a very cute house (triplex, actually ) in trendy yet still mellow Ballard within walking distance of everything (restaurants, clubs, library, coffeehouses)...a spacious two bedroom with hardwood floors and a garage for 1400 bucks a month.

If we were going to move in together it would be perfect. But it would mean scrambling for me to rent out my condo toute de suite and charging a lot of rent for it to cover my a*s-- that is if I can even get approval from the almighty condo board to do so.

But it was fun to look anyway and get that feeling of promise that comes with projecting your life onto a brand new space. (Ahh, with hardwood floors, I will finally realize the full potential of my genius, etc etc).

Anyway. Moving on. Hotel Californiasoft is trying to get me to come back now that my 100-day furlough has been completed. Though I am struggling against the idea, I feel myself about to capitulate. After all, my meager savings is half gone. I have trips I want to do. Skis to pay for. And let's not forget the effing mortgage.

It doesn't mean that I am giving in. I think I will still be able to check out someday. Just not quite yet, alas.

(Cue music: strains of Hotel California play softly as heroine, head hung low, employee badge in hand, enters the vast maze of gothic-looking office buildings and the door shuts with a firm and menacing click behind her).

Honky Tonk Memories

Chaos-as judged by how much crap is being stored on my bed-- descended briefly on my condo this week. For a couple days there, every inch of my bed was covered: with books, skiing gear, clean laundry, dirty laundry,and-to top it all off - a generous sprinkling of cracker crumbs that fell out of my backpack.

Now most of it is gone except a couple books, a few cracker crumbs and, the bag that I'm packing for this weekend. I'm off to do the Hog Loppet again - that fun silly ski event in Leavenworth wherein you ski 30 kilmoters just for the fun of it, thereby rendering yourself unable to walk for several days.

Not that I have time for such frippery. Numerous deadlines are encroaching on me next week: classes to teach, articles to write, all of which I am seriously underprepared for. Who knew that being unemployed would be so much work?

Meanwhile, my band played to a small but PBR-primed crowd at the Mars Bar last night (see poster above). I played a new piano intro to one of our songs that I worked and WORKED on to the point where I knew I was working on it too much and then of course I effed it up - leaving out the cool fill that would have made me sound like a real honky tonk piano player instead of some chick from Palo Alto who who grew up playing Mozart. But at least I didn't play any wrong notes; I just left out the coolest part and messed up the rhythm the tiniest bit.

I couldn't hear myself when I sang harmony either so for all I know I could have been singing something that was totally NOT harmonic at all. But people were dancing to our songs and that makes it all a success. Plus we made five bucks apiece. With that and my unemployment checks, I am rolling in it.

Grover to the Rescue!

I've had a case of the blahs lately. My day to day life feels dull. Dull! And this despite the variety of exciting projects I'm working on such as a new novel featuring a lovable but repressed public defender; my blogging class full of funny, motivated students; creative writing workshops for kids, and, uh, some other stuff that is also no doubt very exciting but that I can't remember right now. (Photo of Grover courtesty of Muppet Wiki)

Part of it is that I spend too much damn time alone. Sometimes the only people I talk to the whole working day are baristas who make my coffee. Part of it is just being jaded and momentarily ungrateful of the great BOUNTY that is my life, full as it is of health, fun fame, and hot men. I mean man. Hopefully I'll snap out of it soon.

Yesterday's blahs, however, were blown away by a class full of kindergarten students who formed the uber-appreciative audience to my stellar reading of "Where the Wild Things Are" and "The Monster at the End of This Book." (I volunteer for a literacy program called Page Ahead where I read stories twice a month to a kindergarten class).

The Monster at the End of This Book (featuring the lovable muppet Grover), while perhaps not as famous as Where the Wild Things are, is a minor classic in its own right. I remember being both terrified and thrilled when I read this book as a child. On every page Grover warns you not to turn another page because there was a MONSTER AT THE END OF THE BOOK! His warnings turn to begging; his begging to desperate pleas. DON'T TURN THE PAGE! tension grows. You are terrified; and then...

Well, I don't want to give the ending away. But let me say that at first I felt guilty reading this story to these children, who started clutching each other in fear, their gasps turning to to screams after every single page ("NO NO DON'T TURN IT!"), so that by the end of the book it was mass hysteria, and I thought oh no, I've forever traumatized them!

But apparently not, because "Read it again!" they all screamed when it was over.

Now how can you be blah after that?

Me No Like Driving in Snow

Sigh. Not to complain or anything but the freelance lifestyle is giving me a headache. (That is the front of my new vest. More about that later.)

Working by myself has lost some of its allure. Oh sure I get to hang out in cafe after cafe but sometimes you just get a little jaded by that. And how many grande extra hot soy lattes can I drink in a day anyway before I start moving on to more fattening things or alcoholic beverages?

I like my new gig at Mt. Rainier. But that has its challenges too. It's like going on vacation and coming back once a week, with all the attendant excitement and anticlimax and packing and unpacking and garbage starting to smell while you're gone and ignoring more practical tasks that you should be doing (ie practicing piano or earning a living). Let's not even discuss snow driving.

I don't do snow. I grew up in California and never drove in the damn snow. There are no passes that you have to cross to get to Mt. Rainier, which fooled me into thinking that I wouldn't have to deal much with snow, but I forgot. It is - literally - one of the SNOWIEST PLACES ON EARTH. In 1972, it held the world record for snowfall!

Last week not only did I have knock two feet of snow off my car(with a tiny, ineffectual ice scraper suitable for tiny amounts of ice), which resulted in snow all over me and inside my car, I then had to drive for at least thirty miles on icy, snowy roads on a two lane highway in the dark with snow doing that horizontal thing it does that makes you all disoriented. Yes, those of you from snowier parts of this country can MOCK ME NOW.

I've never been so happy to see the strip-mauled suburb of South Hill (known as as "South Hell" as those who drive through it all the time), with its lights and many lanes and rain instead of snow.

In other news, I bought a new vest. Last week I wore this vest to a party at which I encountered the Seattle rock star Rachel Flotard of Visqueen. I saw Rachel perform last spring at the Sasquatch Festival and wished that I could be just like her. So when she showed up at this party, I was too shy to speak to her for most of the night.But when I did, she was quite charming and friendly. AND she raved about my brand-new used vest I had bought that very day at Buffalo Exchange. I glowed with her compliments for the next two days. (That is the back of my vest.)

Then, just yesterday, I saw her again in Victrola (whose help has gotten kind of surly, I must say) and I was wearing the same vest! (Wouldn't you wear this vest every day if it was yours?) Anyway, I deliberately avoided her and luckily she did not see me.

OK, this story needs a better ending. But I don't have one.This is the kind of situation Teahouse Blossom--the queen of slice-of-life vignettes -- would write about. Only she would give it a punchy ending and write about it better than me.