Nattering

We had a mostly pleasant, busy weekend that started off with us purchasing the last bottle of Cockfighter’s Ghost (2004, Chardonnay), because the title and label were just unpassupable. We ended the weekend drinking it, with a fabulous, mostly homemade pizza. (There were a couple of other delightful Chilean wines in the interim.) And we discovered that the wine shop makes a great burger.

Four thumbs up to the opener of Hex, which is nothing like Buffy, but is pretty damn charming on its own steam. You’d never see teen sexuality dealt with quite so openly or cheekily on American television (at least not yet), but the tone and content are very similar to what you get in good YA fiction here. And none of us watching found it slow at all. (Though we were concerned about the nonexistent eyebrows/overplucking issues on display.) Also, a thumbs-up to The Family Stone, which I’d wanted to see ever since Laura Demanski (aka OGIC) wrote about it so glowingly.

I’m not taking an official hiatus or anything so dramatic, but posting may be heavy or light, depending on the day, for the next month. Between now and July 12 (my 30th birthday, coincidentally), I have to:

– do massive amounts of freelance editing work
– write an application essay (oh, woe, do these make anyone else feel like a moronic fraud?) and a critical essay for the MFA skool
– write at least two new chapters of Aztec Dance Tunes and polish the first 25 pages for MFA skool application
– ensure that husband gets story written and gets safely to Sycamore Hill
– make sure I eat and cat and dog theater are taken care of during the week he’s gone
– and everything else of the normal life tasks.

So yeah, posting may be light. It may also be full of typos and poorly thought out. (But how would that be different than normal, you ask? Moreso.) But rest assured: I love you. You’re my favorite. I’ll be back, just like the Ahnuld.

And things will normalize on July 13.

One hopes.

First off, Emma the dog is all antibioticed and doing just fine, to all you who have inquired. She already seems much better. Of course, ouch, $200-plus vet bill right after Wiscon, but so it goes.

Things learned from the Internet, # 14,501: Ants HATE baking soda, whoops, make that BABY POWDER. Scares them right off.

Now we eat chicken sausages stuffed with feta and spinach and watch probably crapish movies (Casanova, Flight Plan, something else). Should be a nice evening. Hope yours is too.

And blanketed in ecstatic dog, peeved cat and many emails (not to mention 983 new in my feedreader). Posting may be light until next week, though I’ll try to manage some version of the obligatory name dropping post and add the few remaining photos (I abandoned the camera halfway in) in the next couple of days.

Was great to see you if I did, and I wish we’d managed to talk more. The forever truism.

Preparing for a six day trip with two people is WAY more taxing than preparing for a day and a half trip with only one. Seek content elsewhere today. (And yes, I still owe many of you email.)

Did I survive my first-ever BEA? Seems that way. Only a good night’s sleep will bear it out for sure.

At the moment, I’m too busy lying to the cat and dog about abandoning them again next weekend to formulate a real post: tomorrow. Also, I’d rather be reading my most-coveted ARC snag of the show, John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines*, which you probably are not reading: sucker!

*So very good!

I realize this likely reveals just how out of touch I am, but:

WTF is Sudoku?

Wherefore the insanity? Can you explain the appeal? Anybody?

Yet another hellaciously busy week. (Though I was thankful of the diverting fun of spending so much of it talking about The Girl in the Glass. Not to mention, we discovered this delicious wine.) And I am beat, if not beaten.

There’s still one more freelance assignment to finish before Monday, but it’s a small one and the interviews are done. And the virus that laid me lowish the last couple of days seems to have departed (for other climes, unfortunately). The snooze alarm no longer exists, according to Le Cat and Le Dog; it may as well never have been invented. Pre-Derby lunch just makes me sleepy, it turns out.

This weekend, I plan to do next to nothing, except read the books I’m reading. I might update the sidebar. I’ve been engaging in promiscuous book behavior, rather than just reading one at a time; this is highly unusual for me. At the moment, it’s three excellent books, Alan‘s story collection Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead (the fucking A-bomb), Fernanda Eberstadt’s Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France (beautifully written and charming), and James Morrow’s The Last Witchfinder (delightfully funny and I realize now I heard him read from this lo many years ago at an ICFA — in 2000 maybe?). And the other run of research books with plain cloth covers, footnotes and amazing contents, dominated by Christopher Faraone‘s stuff.

Oh, and yeah, I must get the butt back in the Real Writing chair and bang out some new book pages. I’ve been researching and thinking lots about it and, frustratingly, know exactly what happens next, but I haven’t actually written anything new since I got a mini-flood of smallish freelance assignments. I have to figure out how to balance that better.

But the weather is beautiful, the dog and cat are happy, and life seems long. No worries. Happy Cinco de Mayo.

So, yet another weekend with Far Too Much To Do. Emma is now Officially Officially ours forever and ever. (Not that anyone could have taken her and kept their limbs before the paperwork was signed, but … now it’s signed.) C’s in finals week. I am still shamefully behind on email. Yeah.

BUT. Next weekend I look forward to a blissful Only What You Want to Do Weekend. I suggest you have one as well.

And I had a massage Friday night and got back into writing-the-book headspace, as opposed to writing-freelance-stuff headspace. (Boy, does it suck only having X amount of available time sometimes.)

All good things. Stop by the LBC frequently this week for Jeffrey Ford/The Girl in the Glass goodness and please comment and email me and etc. etc. — tomorrow will open with a wine-fueled post by yours truly. Oh joy. And I have to hit publish regardless.

Night.

Whew, that was some weekend.

Friday night we went shopping for supplies, the nature of which will be revealed later. Some assembly was required, but mostly took place feverishly on Saturday morning. Then we took a morning trip to pick up a Codeword and go to a lesson for Codeword.

Saturday night was spent in the most excellent company of Erin and Jason, who came to town for Sarah Vowell’s reading as part of the Women Writer’s Conference. The great thing about the Women Writer’s Conference being that most of the really good events are free and open to the public, so you don’t have to shell out 200 bucks, dress like a frump and talk about how great Natalie Goldberg and The Artist’s Way are for a weekend to reap its benefits. Hey, I’m just saying.

Vowell was fantabulously terrific, as we knew she would be. She was charming and acid and funny as hell. The Q&A was one of the most bizarre, painful things I’ve ever witnessed — hello, organizers, you have to have a mic before you can take it away when someone goes crazy. Since there was no mic and no screening of said questions, things got a bit out of hand. Let me just characterize it thus: I think if Tod Goldberg had been there, his head would have exploded from the sheer quantity of f*cktarditude on display. An older woman in a giant purple muumuu could not get it through her lead-dense skull that the presidential inauguration is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. She more or less accused Vowell of being a liar for saying she hadn’t needed an invitation to attend. She did it over and over again. Before moving on later to ask something about hair plugs.

I kid you not. And that’s not even dealing with the girl who asked a question about her "favorite story by you" only it wasn’t by Vowell at all. As I said, Vowell was great at dealing with these, but it was still torture to observe; I at least hope she got a good anecdote out of it. She even very classily agreed to stay and do a signing afterward and was very amiable and chit-chatty with the folks in the signing line. Then we waited and waited for a table for dinner, over which we dissected Top Chef and gossipped about philandering poets.

Yesterday, I finally got to meet Jack Womack, his wife Valeria Susanina and their lovely daughter Lily, who were in town visiting family. They were having rental car issues, so we drove over to Jack’s mother’s place to hang out for a bit. All three were exceedingly charming and Christopher inadvertently kicked Lily in the head. She eventually sort of forgave him (after being promised chocolate ice cream) and promptly fell asleep.

Then we came home and took Codeword, aka the newest member of our family, for a long walk. She likes walks, she does. Meet Miss Emma, the amazing basset/golden retriever mix.

Christopher just handed me a little laminated strip the size of a fortune cookie fortune that says: "Everything will be okay!"

I will now officially stop freaking out about All The Things.