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I  have hair dye on my head, and I'm seven minutes from being done. I will type fast and hard to say hello to you.

Those of you who follow me in either Twitter or Facebook know that I had a craptastic couple of days.

It all started with a fierce belly-ache that, as the hours went on, turned to something sicker. I was completely miserable, and didn't go to work. I stayed in bed, in pain, trying not to think about the fact that it was the first deathiversary of my little mama. At about ten o'clock in the morning, Lala came in the bedroom to ask where I'd parked, because she couldn't find my car.

Yep. The car was stolen. And it had been there when our neighbor went to work, so rather than thinking to myself OH GOD if only I hadn't been sick I would still have my car, I choose to think that by staying in bed I possibly missed running into the auto burglars deep in the throes of stealing my sexy, sexy station-wagon. (Who steals a station wagon? Dude! They also messed with neighbor Sam's classic truck, but he had the battery disconnected. The thieves were obviously not from my neighborhood. Nobody fucks with Sam.)

Good news: I have comprehensive insurance which also covered a rental car. In my weakened still-in-pain state I went to Hertz because the branch I needed to go to wasn't open the next day. Bad news: It took two hours. With a bad belly. Oh, sadness.

Worse news: Finally driving the Hyundai, I discovered that it was infested with ants.

And the next day after another hour line to exchange it, I left my house key on the ring when I turned it in, so after finally getting home with a nice little Mazda, I had to turn around and go back to the airport and start the workers searching the lot for the gold Hyundai (which we finally found, in the to-rent lot, ready to be rented out again, STILL FULL OF ANTS). But I got my key back.

After all that, there was only one direction to go, and Lala and I headed in that direction:

Loards, Alameda, fudge-ana sundae.

That, and an amazing RWA meeting where some friends and I steered my course for the next edit of Book Two, fixed everything, and today I feel just fine. With soon-to-be red hair.  Yee-haw! (Got the blog done in time! Will check later for spelling errors!)

Random Thing Number 1: GOAT SAYS HI. (Not my goat. A goat I met in my travels.)

 

R.T.N.2 – California high school elects gay male prom queen. I loved this story.

R.T.N.3 – And also, go see my friend Cari about a raffle that matters (and also has great prizes): GO HERE.

Well, now. That wasn't bad, not bad at all. I actually liked being home at Dad's, which I didn't expect. I thought it might be too painful. Or confusing. Or both.

But it wasn't. I'm here to tell you that a year later, you can really start to remember the good stuff. You can paw through the cabinets while making bread and pull out the beat-up bread pan without your heart breaking into ten tiny pieces and clattering onto the floor. You can eat at her favorite restaurant and not cry (very much) in public. You can marvel that your dad still writes his grocery list in the same notebook she used: a continuity both unexpected and lovely.

And last night I was lucky enough to hang out with some of my writing pals from the old days. At Cal Poly, Al Landwehr was the best creative writing teacher there was. A posse of six of us glommed on to each other and called ourselves Al's Gals, stopping just short of posing with him as Charlie's Angels. We wrote, we cheered each other on, we critiqued. Five out of the six of us finalled in the college's end-of-year writing competition, and five out of the six of us are still writing (Wendy Conti: where are you?). We were TIGHT.

Twelve years later, three of us met up last night at Al's house, and it was like no time had passed at all. With the three of us and Al and his lovely wife Lynne, there were five story-tellers at the table, all of us equipped with huge laughs and a sense of comedic timing. There were cocktails in the garden, next to the fountain. At the dinner table, there was fresh bread and the first tomatoes of the year, along with pasta alfredo and ceviche and rhubarb pie. The talk ranged from publishing to motherhood to hospitals and back to editing. It was the nicest evening in recent memory, and I've had some damn good nights lately.

Now I'm home, and I'm getting reacquainted with the fish and the cats and the dogs and the wife. Lala and I have a date planned tonight: Neko Case at the Warfield. There will be a burrito found along the way, I'm sure. All is well.

A migraine just about took me out yesterday, but I have recovered fully, and I'm looking forward to my weekend. Just a few more hours and I'll be free! I'm planning on heading down to my dad's house this weekend, spending a few days with him.

It's hard for me to get down there to see him. I'm not strong about it. Compared to my sisters who get down there pretty often, I suck at this Holding it Together Thing. I've been to the Central Coast exactly once, for less than twenty-four hours at Christmas and only because my family would have killed me had I flaked yet again.

A year ago at this time was rough. Exactly one year ago, I wrote this post. Lala was flying down the Central Coast on the AIDS ride, and Mom was still alive. She was home on hospice, and we all knew the worst and hoped for a miracle anyway.

It's her birthday tomorrow, and later this week it will be a year since she died.

Sometimes I think I'm having a rough time with it, but then, the next minute, I'm okay. It's not a great feeling, but it's not the worst feeling, either. GOD, I'm articulate, ain't I? Gud thing I writ bookz.

So anyway, for her birthday, I'm going home to see if I can steal any martini glasses from my old room. If I break one more glass, well…. Let's just say I use plastic most of the time now. It turns out I'm as good with glass as I am with confronting pain in the form of memories.

But I'm trying. Really, I am.

Hey, I have a couple of things to share, before I hit the road:

Kira has the cutest new pattern. I'm not a fan of shrugs, since I have the shoulders of a linebacker who swims, but I might even make this (what a great use for some handspun!):

Also, I am driven mad with jealousy by something Erika sent to me. Yes, I work in a dispatch center. Yes, our center sent fire-fighters to the Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara. WHY DON'T WE HAVE THIS? We just have a dumb fish. (But I love that fish. His name is Al.) 

I have a new writing group!

PensFatales.

(The cap gun that Sophie's holding is Lala's.)

I'm so damn excited about this group blog. I'll be writing there every two weeks (so you should throw it in your RSS reader), and the eight women writing with me are AWESOME.

These are the women to follow. I mean it. (That's why I'm hanging out with them.) They're pretty and smart and sexy and great writers and they have very good taste. (Unlike Pandora, which just started playing Zydeco. Now, Zydeco has its place, but its place is not in my room right now. Ack.)

And someday, I'm convinced, people will say, "Really? They write on the same blog? All of those famous New York Times bestsellers? Wow!"(No, really. I think that will happen.)

I didn't have a writing group for so long that I was parched, wanting that camaraderie. I guess it had been since grad school crit
groups, ten years (gasp) ago. And the women over at the blog aren't
critique partners, they're partners in crime. On Sunday, Sophie
Littlefield had an informal get-together at her house, with the
intention of working. And you know what? We actually worked. People
were draped all over her house, in various states of set-up. From
Martha on the couch with her headphones on, laptop keyboard afire, to
me at the kitchen table with my whole set-up — computer, keyboard,
mouse, writing stand, binder, pen, post-its. Once an hour, we cracked
up and talked and refilled our coffee cups, and the rest of the time we
worked. I finished my second draft of book two there, and I was SO
happy about it.

Come say hi and make us feel welcome. (Scroll down — there should be two posts by me, but you should read all of the others, too.) We're still a little shy, so let's show them who the Knitters Are.  HERE WE ARE.

(Hello, graveyard. Nothin' better for photos, no?)

PS – Not related to anything else, but I just found out that How to Knit a Love Song WILL be available in Canada, around the same time as it is in the US, in March. Hooray!

Oh, we are so excited! It is a HUGE fair that is full of robots and flying objects and computers and knitting and all good things.

It's the kind of fair I'm going to get dressed up for. Have to do a little bit of work this morning while Lala sleeps a bit longer, and then WE'RE GOING. It's to celebrate Lala's birthday weekend! Here we go!

Also in good news: the goats are back! The city of Oakland hires them from a company in the valley to come out every summer and eat all the weedy fire hazards off the hills. Baby goats! Leaping off logs and jumping and gamboling. They're very close by and soon I'll be able to see them from my office. I drove past them the other day and pulled over because THEY ARE SO COOL.

This is just shot from my car. I could practically reach out and touch them.

And then their protector encouraged me NOT to touch them.

COFFEE IS DONE! MUST HAVE COFFEE NOW!
Fun day commences. Thank god. It was a REALLY long week. (Yesterday I was so tired that for about thirty seconds I thought properal was a word (and that I'd forgotten how to spell it). Sigh.)