You're Doing It Wrong

Is there some literary rule that says a significant short story must be crushingly depressing? I just finished “National Book Award Finalist” Adam Haslett’s You Are Not A Stranger Here and I was glad to crawl out of the gloom. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a fantastic writer. The first story in the collection: Notes to My Biographer, has a great voice. The narrator is a this goofy older relative that we’ve all had a run in with at least once and he gets nuttier by the page. But overall the stories were so sad, mentally ill or generally troubled people trying to manage. It reminded me of Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America which I liked mostly. But I read it while I was at the writers conference from hell so I was already not in the best head space and one of the stories. I wish I could find the book, I’d tell you more but since it’s not in my room I’m guessing I drop kicked it across the garage or something. One story was so completely depressing I felt like throwing myself out the window (I was staying in hotel room on the 14th floor). And this reminds me that I was checking into a hotel room last night in my dream and trying to see if Holly Hunter wanted to be roommates.

Today we did yard work and the yard looks a million times better. The squirrels seem to think so, too. There are four of them out there now scouring the nooks and crannies for their hidden nuts. Whenever I find a wayward nut I throw it across the yard or put it in the compost.

On a whim I taped the Saturday Night Live with Colin Firth last week, only because he is so dreamy. I only made it through about 3 skits with barely a titter. Even after that experience, on a whim I taped SNL last night with Ben Affleck, who I really want to like, even though he hasn’t given me much reason to, and the first 30 minutes was HILARIOUS. I watched almost the whole show although admittedly did have a finger on the FF button for most of the last hour. Very funny. Really.

I’ve got a lot going on the next week and am preemptively feeling spun out. Luckily, I’ve got cold beer and The Sopranos start in a half hour.

I ordered the first season of Angel from Netflix and I got the first disc last week. It has 4 episodes. I watched the first two on Weds night (no Angel) and finished it yesterday. I wanted more. I even re-watched the first episode with the commentary track. Bob said the next disc might come today and I was chained to the computer with a mandatory time frame before I could get up and I heard the mail through the slot. I almost jumped up but I remembered I promised myself I’d work for that certain amount of time. I worked for a few more minutes and then I leaned back in my chair so that I could see the mail and sure enough, that red envelope that I know and love. I wanted to get up SO BAD. But I didn’t and we’ve got plans tonight (Happy Birthday Bob) so I probably won’t get to start the new disc until tomorrow. TV on DVD is a dangerous thing.

Bob was surprised to learn that we had a system for the refrigerator. His “butter” (margarine -gak) was on “my” side so I moved it to his side and then explained what I was doing. “I didn’t know we had sides,” he said. “We’ve had sides forever,” I said, “I’m surprised you never noticed before.” Then I explained: “On the top shelf, you have the left side and I have the right side. On the second shelf you get the meat drawer but I get the sides – left for soy milk and tofu and Baking Chocolate and right side for dried plums, dried apricots, Miso and Tahini. On the third shelf you put your pop on the left, the never opened bottle of champagne goes on the right and the butter and eggs go in the back. The middle is a free zone. On the bottom shelf the back is for my things I don’t use often like rye flour, spare butter and poppy seeds (do they need to be refrigerated?). The rest is for other meat products or vegetables that don’t fit in the vegetable drawers. He thought this was all quite hilarious.

Another typical Thursday morning. I thought I had so much more time than this …

Here’s a list of the 100 Most Mispronounced Words. For example– Don’t Say: triathalon. Do Say: triathlon. Comment: We don’t like [th] and [l] together, so some of us insert a spare vowel. Pronounce it right, spell it right.

Today was a perfect sunny spring day in winter. My first day since sometime in October where I didn’t wear tights. I even wore my skinny pants today because I can fit into them fine without tights. I ate a banana, meusli and yogurt for breakfast. And a sliver of coffee cake. For lunch I had 1 1/2 pieces of pizza and some raw vegetables. And I ate the crust. In the afternoon I ate 2 chocolate chip cookies that I made last night in between The Sopranos (Tony’s back!) and The Simpsons (repeat). For dinner I had 3 tiny pieces of pizza and salad and after I had dried apricots and some It’s Soy Delicious “butter” pecan ice cream.

I was as thrilled as the next Elf-freak about Lord of the Rings’s success at the Oscars and I don’t know who all took the gamble on Peter Jackson but they deserve the grand prize for taking a risk on that guy. (And I think, considering the bazillions of dollars the movies have made, that the risk takers have done just fine.) What brings me to this topic is a film called The Frighteners made in 1996 and starring Michael J. Fox and directed by … Peter Jackson. This movies rates a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and I’d heard it was good and defied genre etc. and since I’m studying scary movies right now and since I think Peter Jackson is so fantastic, I rented it recently. As Jar Jar Binks would say: PEEEEYOOOUSSA. Bob and I started watching it together and Bob left before the first act break. I finished it, and it did have a few elements to recommend but the dialogue was consistently painful and the special effects didn’t quite work. MJF saved the day and we are damn lucky that PJ has improved much since then.

After Christmas I bought some Saranwrap on sale. It was “festive” holiday wrap and there were pictures of snowflakes on the box and I thought that meant there were snowflakes on the wrap so I was all excited and bought Saranwrap even though I normally use Reynolds wrap. Holy Crap. Saranwarp is garbage! It’s worthless. Mr. Saran ought to be ashamed of himself. And there are no snowflakes. It’s just plain red and not even particularly festive. It’s a pain to tear off. It’s a pain to wrap your stuff in. It is just plain wrong. At the market tonight I bought Reynolds Wrap in festive green and put the Saranwrap in the back cupboard for emergencies.

Bob and I spent the night in Olympia so we could cruise around downtown this morning before heading home. We didn’t have a place in mind for breakfast and were sure if we wandered around something great would pop up. Of course it’s never that easy and we tromped around finding interesting places that were closed and alterna-cafes with colorful awnings and dogs wearing hemp collars tied up out front. We went to the outdoor outfitters sale tent to see if someone could point us to something good and the guy said, “I’m not much of a breakfast person.” We decided to walk up one more block and passed an old van with Yoda on the dashboard. I said, “Look Yoda, it’s a sign.” At the next block we saw a guy leaving a restaurant with a styrofoam container. Bob said, “It was so good he took his extras with him.” The place is called The Urban Onion and we got a great booth in the corner and they poured a delicious cup of coffee. I got huevos and Bob got an omlette with smoked salmon and cream cheese and substituted the potatoes and toast with two pancakes the size of bus tires. After breakfast we went to Orcas books where I bought a large pile of books to go into the stack I’m already too busy to read. A perfect day.

We went to Tacoma for Wintergrass yesterday. We ate dinner at Over the Moon Cafe a place we found by accident at Wintergrass 2 years ago and have been looking forward to returning to ever since. We rushed in to catch Sam Bush followed by Barbed Wire Cutters at the church and then went back to the Sheraton and went up and down the stairs between the convention center and the ballroom plus caught Jimmy Gaudreau & Moondi Klein at the bar. As per our usual luck, we ended up sitting near obnoxious talking people in the convention center. Why go to a kickass bluegrass festival and then stand in the corner with your friends talking and being squirrely? Also the hot accessory this year was a tiny baby. There were tiny babies everywhere. I have a theory that if you have only 1 tiny baby, other than the sleep deprivation and large satchel of baby-shit you have to haul around, you can pretend that your life still hasn’t changed all that much and you can get out and do the things you used to do. In the ballroom they were trying something new and had the chairs cleared out for dancing. It was only partly successful. There was the requisite hippie guy with dreads wearing a skirt dancing away, the hippie chick doing interpretive dance, 1 or 2 couples doing organized couple dancing and a bunch of grown ups dancing with their kids. No large scale hippie mob groove.