Archives for October 2004

I’ve told you before about the couple who live next door to me, the young British couple with their two little kids. They actually own George, the Giant Aloe. My windows look into their yard, and I’ve spent happy hours watching Chris build things and Lisa play with the little ones. They’re one of those happy families that do the heart good to witness.

So yesterday when I was going through art supplies and found a HUGE box of Crayons, the super-duper crazy-cool hard-sided box, I took it next door. The kids are about four and five, and I think that’s the right time for Crayons…. I hope it is, anyway. I knocked on the door and waited. Then I rang the doorbell and waited. I stood on the porch and waved at Shirley who was walking by with her slobbery German Shepherd named Shadow, and I watched the nice lesbian couple across the street – we’ve never formally met each other, but we smile conspiringly when we pass on the street. I’m going to MISS this place.

Then the door opened, and little four year old Luke was standing there, naked as the day he was born, grinning at me with this huge beaming smile. Lisa came up behind him quickly and said, “Good god. Sorry about that.” She took the Crayons and thanked me and then gave me the best compliment ever. Luke was still standing there, looking SO happy to be gazing up at me, dancing from foot and foot, and Lisa said, “You’re his favorite lady, you know. He says it every time he sees you. ‘There’s my favorite lady.’”

Dude. When a little boy with those angelic curls says that about you, you can’t help feeling pretty awesome.

So I’m packing now. I’ve really started. It’s just as terrifying, and I still haven’t heard about the loan, but it’s good to have started. I began with the hardest part, too: The Desk of Doom. I hate that desk. It’s possessed. Every time I’ve moved it, I’ve sworn I wouldn’t do it again, because it cruelly attacks at least one person, usually drawing blood. It’s heavy as hell and too big and really ugly. And it’s broken in about five places. I have NO clue why I’ve dragged it around with me. A writer needs a big desk, I thought. How often have I written at that desk? Like, never. So it goes. I’m going to finish cleaning it out tomorrow (since I have to go in to work early tonight and only have time for a run and a shower) and then give it away to some sucker. I’m not telling said sucker about the blood-drawing, either. He can find that out on his own. I’m no dummy.

Well, nothing heard from the loan office, but who the hell cares when our gorgeous Cari is doing THIS?

And hey! Guess what? It’s La Brainy’s birthday! She of the excellent cat and wanderlust, she’s flippin’ the calendar over again, and looking better every minute. Go show her the love, wouldja? Darlin’, we adore you. GAWK on.

https://rachaelherron.com/well_nothing_he/

Dear Reader Sparkle said in an email to me, “Your energy feels kinda funky behind the blog.” I have to agree. Standing behind this blog, looking out toward you, I can admit that it’s just plain ole fear that’s making me a little weird. I’m not normally scared. I have the normal fears, of course, of fire and nuclear weapons and being tied to a red-ant hill by a short man with a scrubby goatee, but day-to-day, facing big things, I’m usually pretty strong.

I’ve found the point at which I stop being strong and start shaking in my sandals: When I have to pack boxes in preparation for moving out of the apartment I’ve loved more than any other, with little to no guarantee that I have a place to move into at the end of the month. The loan docs still haven’t come through yet. They were supposed to be in on Friday. Nope. Monday was a holiday. No phone call yesterday. Today? Here’s hoping. Here’s hoping super hard hope. I think if I signed documents and had a wee bit more assurance they’re not going to find a financial glitch or a problem with the property, I could have fun packing. I really could. Moving into my first home? Fabulous. Bring it. But this not knowing? I’m scared, and I’m putting off the packing, NOT a good idea, when I need to move the big stuff by October 24th.

Oy. My aching head.

You know what’s good for this kind of stress? (Quit it. This is not that kind of a blog.) (Okay, yeah, it helps. Happy? Really, people.) Good for stress: Ice cream, and a lot of it. Running (it really felt like I was training for Hawaii yesterday, 85 degrees and humid, even down by the water). Knitting Cromarty. I’m almost finished with this bad boy, and somehow the high level of difficulty is what my hands want to work on. I suppose it’s distraction in a way — stockinette allows me to worry, even if it’s only low-grade. A gajillion teeny-tiny cables make me focus for a few minutes.

I’ll keep you posted, I promise.

Now, pics of the Knit-Out. I don’t need to summarize what happened, ’cause my fabulous fellows have already done it for me. Go see Joanna, Celia, Nathania, Emily, Christine, and Silvia , who all do a great job of telling it like it was.

A group shot:

Won-Ju, Kira, and Rachel:

Nathania, bein’ surprised her Secret Pal tracked her to the Cafe:

We’re jealous; she got a GOOD Secret Pal (and I know who it is, neener neener neener):

Mystery Guest revealed!

Me’n’Won-Ju, Lala‘s wonderful, beautiful sister-in-law:

There were a coupla shots of me and Lala, and lemme tell ya. Y’ain’t gonna see ’em. Celia’s shot of my forty-seven double chins is enough for me. I don’t need to validate that on my own blog. Nuh-uh.

I’m immensely cheered now. What will be, will be. If I get the condo, good. If I don’t, something better is out there. At this moment, my heart knows that’s right, and I think it was thinking about my knitblog pals that made me realize that. Seriously. Look where the heart leads, after all, yes?

Assured MWAH!

Four hours. I just lost four hours trying to get onto the internet. Here I am! I shake my pompoms weakly in your direction. And I’m up for very little else. I’d love to write about our FABULOUS KnitOut on Sunday, or about driving all day yesterday up and down the coast (delivering Mom home and kitties to their temporary digs while I pack), but I’m hot and sweaty and disgruntled and I need to run. Really. I need to get some of this frustration out of my system.

Going offline again now. On purpose this time. Tomorrow, KnitOut pics? Hopefully.
Weak mwah….

The Pioneer said that she has been “circling” around her novel now, and I find that word suits exactly what I’ve been doing lately with mine. It’s there. It just needs to be finished. Then it needs to be rewritten. And maybe rewritten again after that. But can I finish it without a rewrite? Conversely, could I start a rewrite without finishing it? It’s so BIG. I’m proud that it’s so big, but at the same time it’s like someone who collects, say, hubcaps, and the collection makes him happy, but one day he looks around his small apartment and it’s no longer fun — it’s a health hazard, hubcaps piled to the ceiling and hidden in the suitcases on the shelves, teetering and ready to fall. (I’m talking about pages here, people. Get your mind of my yarn stash.) I have too many pages.

I have this thing in my mind — I can’t really call it an image, can I? But it feels like an image. In it I’ve taken the novel and pared it down and removed all the ways people get places and all the filler dialogue set over cups of coffee or bottles of beer (hell, there go at least 200 pages right there), and it becomes spare and lovely. Did you ever read Carole Maso’s Ghost Dance? It remains in my mind What A Brilliant Novel Should Be. Alarmingly gorgeous. Erudite. Clever enough to make the reader feel special and chosen. She might have been a little too clever for me, actually, since I put it down one day and never picked it back up. But in my mind, my novel sits next to hers in its brilliant spareness. In reality, my fiction writing is a lot more like the everyday prose that I spill here — sloppy, loved, rushed, careless, happy, not overly thought-out. Kind of like my knitting style, too. Okay, kind of like ME.

So why would I want to be Carole Maso-ish? Dunno. But I do, somehow. And that’s what frustrates me when I sit down to do the real work — that inability to breathe on my work and make it come out like hers. I’d have more luck running a marathon. No, wait….

I’m reading (finally) Art & Fear by Bayles and Orlando, and it’s got me thinking. Obviously. A couple of things have struck me from it: “Vision is always ahead of execution…. and uncertainty is a virtue.”

That vision? It’s so far ahead of the execution that it’s literally impossible to force this many pages that are already written into said vision. No matter how much I’d love a slender, tightly poetic novel (Housekeeping springs to mind), I ain’t got one of those. I’ve got one in which cats run up curtains and little old ladies get confused and girls just don’t know what to do about the little things, let alone the big’uns. And lots o’pages. I’m just set for supersized, I think. A&F says, “A piece grows by becoming specific.” The most imaginative part of writing is the very beginning, when the first sentences are being placed. As each subsequent sentence is written, more and more options fly out the window (unless, of course, you’re writing one of those neo-post-modern avant garde beat-the-drums let all the words out and not worry about sentence form or structure or logic kind of books, in which I wish you all the best in your weed-smokin’ quest). In my novel, I’ve painted myself into a corner. Or, since I’m not that good at painting, I’ve mopped myself into one part of the kitchen, and I’m not sure how to get out of it without leaving my dirty footprints all over my nice clean floor. (I know. The floor might need to get a little dirty. Aargh.)

But writing about it helps. Looking at it helps. Just hefting it from table to floor to backpack helps remind me that something must be done. I want to finish it, if only to be able to start something new. I may be able to have lots of different things on the needles, but this novel thing requires monogamy. Cheating would just be too complicated, and I’d say the wrong thing to the wrong book, call one the wrong name, and everyone would hate me. I don’t lie well. It would get ugly, fast.

So, to keep on Finishing. I feel like I’ve been this close for so long. A while longer, I think.

Happy weekend, all. Live a little dream in there, wouldja?

So I’ve set up an “open house” for Saturday. Doesn’t that sound rather tacky? For some reason I’m almost apologetic about it, but my schedule just doesn’t allow inviting the 20 or so people who’ve responded to the ad over in different time slots. So I’m going to tuck myself up on the couch and knit and let people look around. Weird, weird, weird. And I have to work a fourteen hour shift on Friday night, from 7pm to 9am, come home, get a three hour nap, and up at 1pm to do the last bit of tidying. I’m tempted to pull a Mrs. Fields and bake something so the house smells homey and chocolately. All right, now THAT would be tacky. But I might stoop.

Sleepy. Completely uninteresting. My car is making brake-squealing noises (I love how my Petunia has never had one problem in her ten-year life, and only started asking me for money as soon as I started home-shopping) and I need to take it in on my way to work tonight. There’s something in me that actually likes to leave my car behind me while I take off on foot. Granted, it’s only leaving it at the shop and walking to work. But it makes me feel a tiny bit less reliant on my wheels. I am Californian. I have to have a car. I hate it, but it’s true. I asked Em, “Do you even KNOW anyone at home who has a car?” She thought about it and said, “I think I USED to. But not anymore.” Now that’s cool. And responsible. I’m really neither.

(I also really like the feeling I had once where I packed my suitcase, walked out my front door, down to BART, which took me to the airplane, which took me to Italy. It felt like I was walking out of the country. I can’t explain it more than that. But I like to start a trip on my own two feet, not speeding down a highway. Y’know?)