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i will follow where you lead

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” (Toni Morrison)

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Philadelphia for the weekend to love on Rachel, who asked me if I wanted to sit next to her on the bus on our field trip to see Cats freshman year of high school, and has been letting me yap at her ever since. I haven’t seen her since March, and it’s the longest we’ve gone in ten years. Never again. That Rachel, she is a friend of my mind.

Back Monday, with pictures and a full heart.

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Halloweenie

Oh MAN, it is dark and stormy outside this morning–one of those wet leaves glued to the sidewalk, watch your step kind of days. Lucky for me, I’m all cozy and caffeinated at my big old desk. I’m about to have some oatmeal. We’re ordering in for lunch today. And Tom is going to pick me up at five for a date at the Beacon Street Tavern. Life is not so bad.

Meanwhile, Kim sent this to me yesterday, and while it is quite possibly the most horrifying thing I have EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE, I couldn’t not share. I’m going to be out of town this weekend, but if I were here you can bet your ass we’d be having this for Halloween dinner, because that’s just the kind of sick bastard I am. I give you: meat hand.

(It’s really gross. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

While you recover, let’s talk more about Halloween! Who’s dressing up? Who’s trick-or-treating? Will told me last night that he’s gonna go to John Kerry’s house on Beacon Hill, ’cause they give out full-size candy bars. I always knew that kid was smart. I anticipate some serious sugar shock around these parts, along with a scary movie or two. And maybe–just maybe–some ground-beef extremities.

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Of Late.

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Plus! Day Nine of the Shred. Friday Night Lights. Still plugging away at the Updike. Glad the Boyfriend gets back today.

How’s everybody’s week going?

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DFKJSDFJH;FGHAS.

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Okay so here is the deal: I don’t have a driver’s license. This is weirdly stressful to a lot of people– “You don’t have a WHAT?” they always say–but it actually works for me just fine. I’ve lived in a city for six years. If I’m going somewhere the T can’t take me, odds are I’m not going there alone. And frankly, I am a flipping TERRIBLE driver. So, whatever. I am handy on road trips because I make good mix cds, and also snacks, but you should know that if you get tired of driving you are shit out of luck, because I called shotgun before we got in the car and shotgun is where I am going to stay. 

But. Lately I’ve been thinking it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have a license. It’s a life skill, I guess. It could be useful in emergencies, like if I was back home at my mom’s in New York and nobody wanted to go take me to get an iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and both my legs were broken so I couldn’t walk there (although I guess if both my legs were broken I couldn’t drive, either, so). And eventually I am going to want to punch out some kids, and maybe I will have to drive the carpool or something, or MAYBE I will get that farm I have always wanted and I will have to take the produce to market. WHATEVER. The bottom line is, I am off from work today, and over the weekend I decided I was going to go take my freaking permit test and get this show on the road, so to speak, once and for all. 

I studied the manual. I memorized speed limits. I wrote myself an inspirational “Git her done” message and stuck it on the bathroom mirror. I read the guidelines VERY CAREFULLY and made sure to have all my documents in order. This morning, when the Boston branch of the Mass RMV opened its doors at nine o’clock, I was standing in line. 

I waited. And waited. And when they finally called my number–“I’m here to take the permit test!” I said cheerfully–the woman at the desk explained to me in halting, broken English that I had the wrong papers. 

“No, they’re right,” I told her, pointing to the RMV-issued list I’d printed offline. “See?”

“Nope. Wrong.” She needed a copy of my lease, she told me–which was sitting in a file box back at my apartment, forty minutes away. 

JUST. What was I going to do? I trekked back to Southie, got her the damn lease, and trekked all the way back across town, where I stood in line AGAIN. I waited. And waited. I got to the front of the line, where a new woman now stood. “I’m here to take the permit test!” I told her. 

“Oh,” she said. “We’re not doing permit tests today. Machine’s broken. Could try taking it at another branch, though.”

Um. Would have been nice if the first woman had mentioned that, yes? But no matter. I was GITTING HER DONE. “Well, okay,” I said. “Where’s the closest one?”

“Watertown,” she told me. “But you’d have to drive.”

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I’m only interested in your process.

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I had a professor in college who used to say that. Freshman year he thought I was a genius and junior year he was disappointed to learn that I am, in fact, just a really nervous chick.

Here’s my process: I went to writing school, and then I didn’t write another good word for two years.

I mean, that’s not entirely accurate. Of course I wrote. I wrote  half-scenes and bits of dialogue that never went anywhere, that died on the table even as I scribbled them down. I wrote birthday cards and shopping lists. I wrote my name in fifty different styles. But that was mostly it. I just…had nothing to talk about. I’ve never been one of those people who write like they’re training for a marathon, who crank out a certain number of pages or words every day regardless of whether they have anything to say. I can’t. Do it. I’ve tried. It makes me frustrated and upset and pissed off at the universe, to sit in front of the computer or in a Starbucks and stare at a blank page, white like milk, white like blindness. I write–have always written–because I love it, because when it’s going it’s better than being in love.

But when it’s not going, it’s ASS. And frankly, who needs more ass in her life? Not this girl, that’s for sure.

So I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to force it, that I was going to read and cook and knit scarves and make lists and wait for it–whatever IT is– to come. That’s where this blog was born, actually: a way to keep the words alive while I waited for whatever was next to reveal itself. And, finally, it did: last spring I was in the right place at the right time and I found fuel for eight, nine, ten short stories, letters and paragraphs and dialogue spilling over onto the page and the screen faster than I could get it all down. Over the summer Tom got used to coming home and finding me doing things like eating cereal and broccoli for dinner, notebooks and markers like rubble at my feet. I could feel my muscles getting longer and stronger, making connections I wouldn’t have made before. A Shred, if you will, for my brain: and one with results.

But now it’s getting colder, and as I polished up the last story I worked on a couple of weeks ago I could almost feel those very same muscles protesting, the thoughts coming more slowly, the words a bit sluggish. And couple of days later it occurred to me: I have no new writing in the pipeline.

My first reaction was panic–oh man, not this shit again. I hate this feeling, the fear and impotence, the creeping suspicion that I’m probably not a real writer after all. I banged around for awhile, slamming doors and crabbing out and staring, staring at that luminous white page. But as the leaves start to drop off the trees I’ve been starting to reconcile myself with the idea that I might have some waiting to do this season. And that’s okay. Because if I’ve learned one thing about my process this year, it’s that it will come. It will come.

Happy weekend, kiddos. I’m off to find some alternate creative outlets. See you Monday.

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Carrot Top

I made Martha’s Curried Carrot Soup the other night while I watched Glee (which, oh goodness, Rachel and Puck, right? Did that give anyone else Feelings? It gave me a lot of Feelings), which turned out to be completely tasty if not entirely Tom-friendly. But Tom’s not here, so I can eat all the yuppie soup I want. 

 

wooo blurry dinner!

wooo blurry dinner!

 

 

Anyway, funny story: when we moved out of the last apartment we somehow left the top of the blender, and even though we have been here a year and our old roommates still live in the old place and we literally only moved two blocks away, we still haven’t gotten it back. I forget all about it until I need to blend something, at which point I swear and yell “DID YOU EVER REMEMBER TO ASK QUACK ABOUT THE BLENDER?” and usually just stick a plate on top of there and cross my fingers. Plate Trick works surprisingly well, usually.

Plate Trick did not work with Martha’s Curried Carrot Soup.

I was cleaning orange goop off the counter–and the toaster, and the walls–until way after Mr. Shu got Slurpeed. Yeah. I knew how he felt.

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could use a list of good things.

More than five, even.

how the flannel sheets we got from Tom’s mom have bears on them

new Old Navy dress with boots and a spiffy scarf

“Sweet Caroline”

when scheduling works out all neatly at work

postcards from Marissa

when Sawyer calls Kate “Freckles” on Lost

pile of pumpkins and gourds on the mantel, and some bright orange corn on the door

being on the fifth day of the Shred (it hasn’t gotten any easier, but I live in hope) and a plan to take Frank for a long walk tonight

catalogues from Harry and David and Dancing Deer

Blick

the smell of wet leaves

drinking coffee out of a Halloween mug

being a big girl

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When Tom is gone I like to bake.

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Success: Peanut Butter cookies for Dad, taken verbatim from 500 Cookies. Have I talked about this book before? I got it from my friend Toria for my birthday–she and Rach also got me 500 Pies and Tarts a couple of years back–and they’re both so totally cute and user-friendly and full of inspiration. Yum. Anyway, these were so good that when I took extras to work yesterday they MYSTERIOUSLY disappeared off the counter in five seconds while I brought the broken fax machine downstairs to the garbage. (Ok, also: so my job is sometimes really boring, so I have to make up little projects for myself, and this week I decided that every day I was going to take one of the old, obsolete, broken pieces of office equipment that are scattered all around in all the storage closets and on top of random filing cabinets and bring them to their final resting place. It is Thursday and I am not nearly done. In a related story, my office is dusty. In another related story, apparently I could have saved myself the hundred grand and not gone to college after all.)

Moral of the story: I like PB cookies because you get to smash ’em down with a fork. 

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Jury’s still out: cheesy beer bread. Okay, it’s so pretty, right? And the top is all crispy and cheesy and I really wanted to like it, but I used a LongTrail because all we had in the fridge was LongTrail or Corona, and in the end it just tasted kind of…bitter? I don’t know. A little too beery, in any case.  It was, however, DELICIOUS with lots of butter on it. Anyway, sliced and frozen for the next time we have soup for dinner. AND the whole thing was worth it because when you add the beer to the flour the yeast causes this instant explode-y chemical reaction. I love science. I think they should teach science using baking in school. I wonder who I talk to about that.

Moral of the story: Beer. Better drunk than eaten. (Drunk? Is that right? I think it is, but saying it out loud makes me feel…well, drunk, frankly.)

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