On the way to excitement, we texted one of my fave cousins (Andrea – not an alias) to see if she was down for some culinary adventure. As usual, she was, so we picked her up and then headed to the nearest farmers’ market.

At the farmers’ market, I was happy to find someone selling Texas persimmons, just like the ones I used to have on a tree in my yard when I lived in Austin. You can’t get those at the grocery store here. They only sell Asian persimmons, which are hard like apples or bell peppers. Texas persimmons are soft like overripe tomatoes. We shared one in the street on the way back to our car.

After that we took Andrea to this restaurant called Feast, because she hadn’t yet tried it. You can google Feast if you want, and you’ll find a lot of glowing reviews if you do, but suffice it to say that the owners are mainly British and they cook “snout to tail,” meaning they cook the cuts of meat that most Americans wouldn’t think to eat, but in an awesome gourmet way. They also do various British and French stuff. So we had cock-a-leekie and Bath chaps and crispy pork belly and Welsh rarebit and French onion soup and grouper on ratatouille-esque vegetables, and it was all very good.

After that we wanted frozen yogurt, because we’re all frozen yogurt addicts. We drove to the new frou-frou froyo place everyone’s been raving about, and it wasn’t as good as you’d think it would be, but they had a nice patio so we sat there and people-watched and discussed in great detail what was wrong with the frou-frou frozen yogurt. And my friend Ashley was supposed to meet us, but we finished our yogurt before she could get there so we told her we’d meet her at a bar, instead. Then my son Josh called and told me a really effed-up story about how his job interview with a reputable retailer turned out to be a multi-level-marketing scam with a disreputable bullshit firm. So I told everyone what happened and we all vowed to get vengeance on whoever was responsible for doing that to my child.

We drove to Boheme and were happy to see that Christopher was the bartender that day, because he makes their red sangria the best. So we drank red sangria and beer while Rory looked on, a little annoyed that we intended to sit on couches and do more talking. We wondered if it was strange that we were drinking at 2:30 PM, but decided it was okay as long as we drank a bunch of water at the same time. When Ashley got there, she ordered some quiche. She let Rory try it and that made him feel better.

We talked and talked, and then we decided to go to the zoo. It was Ashley who convinced us to do it, and then she said she had to go home. So we left her and went to the zoo, and it was hot as hell but we said we’d only see our fave animals and then leave before we died of dehydration. Andrea hadn’t been to the zoo in 19 years, she said. We showed her the aquarium and the bird house and then the primates. I showed her my very favorite monkeys, who will climb up the side of their giant chain-link enclosure and take tree stems from your hand. (I’m not telling you to feed the monkeys at the zoo, because that would be wrong.) Then we went to the goat petting zoo and petted the goats, which is always basically my main goal in visiting the zoo, meaning I basically pay $11 to pet a bunch of goats and my friends say Dat should just buy me a goat to keep in our back yard and it’d probably save us money in the long run. But half the fun of the petting zoo is watching little kids interact with the animals, so he’d have to buy me a little kid to keep in the back yard, too, and I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. Before we pet the goats, I actually got to pet the brahma cows for the first time ever in my life, which was nice. (Usually they’re haters and don’t come near enough for petting.) After the cows and the goats, we looked at the one sad deer in the Houston Children’s Zoo, and we probably did not feed it stems from trees it couldn’t reach, because feeding animals at the zoo is wrong. And it wasn’t even grateful for the tree stems, anyway. The monkeys at least look you in the eye.

After that we were going to leave, but then we went to see the Small Cats, instead, and then we went ahead and saw some big cats, too, and one of the leopards peed right in front of us. And then Rory realized that it was 6:15 and we needed to get the hell out of Dodge if we were going to make it to our concert on time.

So we dropped off Andrea and peeled out to the Woodlands (some suburb) where Rush was playing at 7:30. And we got there just in time, and Rory saw Rush play for the first time in his life, and so did I, actually. I never got to go to concerts when I was young, but this was Rory’s second concert. (His first was Depeche Mode, just this past year. His third will be the Gorillaz, in October.) Rory plays percussion at school and bass at home, so he of course admires Neil Peart very much. I thought the show was okay… until the encore, when it suddenly turned awesome. It ended at 11:00 and Rory fell asleep in the back seat on the way home. I texted Josh and ascertained that he was at his friend’s house, being just as good and responsible as college kids always are.

The cats got into bed with me while I checked on my Pocket Frogs and played my turn in eleven games of Words with Friends. Then I went to sleep and probably had pretty decent dreams.

I’ve been working like crazy, trying to write decent stuff and not hacky stuff. Like every other fall and every other time I’m under deadline to write a book, I have a lot of good ideas for other projects but NO TIME to do them.

Here’s my deal right now… let’s get it straight real quick, because it gets so confusing that not even my husband knows what’s going on:

1. You have seen, so far, in print in real life, my first short-story collection, my first novel, and two children’s books.

2. You will see, in January, my second novel. Also, pretty soon you’ll see my third children’s book. Both of these books, I wrote almost a year ago.

3. Right now I’m working on my third novel and my fourth and fifth children’s books. You will see those a little over a year from now.

See how it goes? Everything takes a year (at least) to get from me to you. So it’s like I’m working in a time machine, here. Kind of. People ask what I’m working on and I say “My next novel” and they say, “The one coming out in January?” and I say, “Um… what year is it right now?”

And I’m not high or drunk, either.

So it’s come to pass that, also, that next month, on November 20, you can see me on PBS in an interview I did a year ago. I can’t wait to see it, myself, because I remember enjoying the interview at the time, and it’ll be interesting to see what parts the editors and producers thought y’all might like.

Stuff keeps coming up like that: Time-machine stuff I do now that pays off later, or stuff I did a long time ago that’s showing results right about now. And all that is good. It’s like planting seeds.

Right now, between bouts of writing the books that you’ll see a year and a half from now, I’m trying to think up what I want to create for the year after that. Assuming, of course, that anyone wants to pay me to do anything by then. Because that’s always an assumption or a hope, but not a guarantee. I’m super glad, so far, that people are still paying me to do stuff for the future.

Do you like art? Do you like artists?

If you do… If you live in Houston and want to:

• See local artists and listen to them detail their artist processes in a laid-back setting
• Network with artists and arts community peeps in a decidedly non-network-y atmosphere
• Eat pizza and drink beer,

then you should come to the Spacetaker Speakeasy on Wednesday, October 21st, at around 6:30 PM.

Telling y’all this because Spacetaker is a local arts org that’s near/dear to my heart for the reasons described in the bulleted list above. I’m telling y’all this quietly, though, because the Speakeasy events are still kind of secret and cozy, and I’d hate for them to get too big too fast. So only show up if you really like art and artists, and only invite people you consider special and awesome, okay?

Admission is free and I don’t get paid to shill for Spacetaker. (I am a member of the Artist Advisory Board, though, so I want to see it achieve its mission, because that’s how I roll. There — full disclosure made.)

Work Days

I’m supposed to be the “Events Coordinator” for our department at work, which means, basically, that I’m in charge of thinking up reasons for people to bring cake to the office.

So we’re having a floor-wide, multi-department “trick-or-treat potluck” on October 30. No, it is not related to Halloween and therefore it cannot be deemed insensitive to hardcore Christians. It’s treating ourselves in celebration of coping with all the tricks we’ve been dealt during the last quarter. Get it? Trick, treat? See?

Anyway, so I made the invitation for this event, along with a sign-up sheet that contains a lot of cheesy industry-related puns. (“It’s a mutual food platform!” HA!!)

After I sent the invitation, this guy Tom from one of our neighboring departments told me, “Thanks for doing that. It’s been so dreary here lately.” And that made me happy, that I could help lift dreariness a little, for one person at least.

And it’s kind of pathetic, maybe… kind of Office Space… that something like that could make me momentarily happy. But it did. I make fun of Corporate America a lot, y’all know, but I’d rather work for Corporate America than, say, Privately Owned Firm America, or Retail America, or Food Service America, or Construction Work America…

So, life is good. That’s what I’m trying to tell y’all. Hey, maybe I can just repost pertinent bits of this entry on Thanksgiving Day…

Later, taters. Talk to y’all again soon.

Right now I’m working on my third novel, which doesn’t have a title yet. It’s Saturday night and I’m writing the seventh or eight chapter, out of order, because I haven’t written Chapters 2 through 6 yet. But I have a good feeling about this one, already. I’m excited, and I think y’all are gonna like it.

In January, y’all will be able to buy my second novel, Lone Star Legend. Actually, I have ARCs (Advance Reading Copies, for reviewers) right now, so email me if you’re any sort of book reviewer and would like a copy to review sometime in December or January. Just know that the ARCs have some wonky formatting issues that affect my OCD, but will be fixed in the real books, in January.

Aside from the very temporary wonky formatting issues, I think y’all are gonna like that one, too. Especially y’all who are familiar with the Internets and the things that go on there.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for someone to re-design my author site so I can update with the events I’ll be doing later this year.

And, um… Also, I have another kids’ book coming out, called I Kick the Ball, but I’m not sure when, exactly. They said 2011 but I think it’s actually going to be 2010. I’m super-excited about that one, because it has a little boy for a protagonist, and as y’all can imagine, I have an affinity for little boys, seeing as how I gave birth to three of them. Also, they hired a really awesome illustrator for it, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes out.

There are also a zillion other things going on, all good, that I’m not supposed to talk about yet. So I feel like I can’t ever really update y’all in a real way.

But… there is a moral to the story. The moral = hard work pays off. Hard work snowballs and makes you glad you started it.

knitting stuff

I’ve taken a few knitting classes over the past three or four weeks, so now I know how to knit, and I’m super-glad because I’ve wanted to knit all my adult life but never managed to teach myself….

and now I know how, and I’m making a scarf out of cheap acrylic, and next I’m going to make a more complex scarf out of expensive acrylic, and after that we’ll see what happens, but I have dreams, y’all.

I’m on this knitting social networky thing called Ravelry.com, and my name there is Gwentown, in case you want to friend me so I can look through your projects and steal your ideas.

other stuff

Other stuff is going really well, all considered. I have no complaints, y’all.

I started to type a big old status report on my three kids, but then I felt weird and deleted it. I always feel weird telling details of their lives, but especially so now that they’re teenagers. I mean, I have the mom blog on the Houston Chronicle, now, too… So I’ll angst about the privacy issues there, and tell y’all here that my kids are doing really well.

I keep saying “my husband this” and “my husband that,” and people think I’m trying to remind everyone that I’m a newlywed, but really it’s just that I’m used to saying “my boyfriend” and I’m trying to train myself out of it.

My husband is out at a concert with his friend right now. I’m at home working. Well, I’m supposed to be working, but instead I’m typing this blog entry. Shhhh….

this little girl

Today I was knitting in public (which I’ve heard people say is tacky, but I don’t understand how it’s tackier than, say, shopping for clothes in public, but I think it’s mostly British people who say it’s tacky, and I’m in America, so whatever). I was knitting in public — at the hair salon, actually, while my husband got his hair trimmed — and there was this little girl.

Not to be judgmental, but then again why not, so this little girl and her brother were getting simultaneously bitched at and ignored by their parents, if you can imagine that. You know how I mean? Their dad was feverishly typing on his phone, but keeping up a steady stream of “Chloe*, be good. Steven*, be quiet. Chloe, shut up. Steven, I’m gonna spank you if you don’t behave.” (*Not their real names.) He wasn’t even making eye contact with them — just telling them to shut up and behave. Then he’d haul them outside and buy them ice cream, then haul them back in and bitch at them, without looking at them, for eating the ice cream like children instead of like adults. All while reading his phone.

So I was thinking, “Wow, this dude really doesn’t enjoy having kids.” But I kept my eyes on my knitting.

At one point, the discontent dad hauled little Steven outside to spank him or buy him a candy, and little Chloe started circling me like a hawk, staring at my knitting. It cracked me up on the inside, the way she literally circled me to see the process from all angles, then walked up really, really close. She was maybe seven or eight years old.

“You ever seen anyone knit before?” I asked her, finally, when I could feel her breath on my hands.

She shook her head.

“That’s what I’m doing. Knitting,” I told her.

She ran around to my other side and sat next to me on the salon’s sofa. She said, “Are you sewing a blanket?”

I told her I was knitting a scarf. I unrolled the scarf for her to see, and showed her the knitting needles.

Her dad came back in and bitched at her to sit on the other side of the room.

Later, little Steven won his dad’s attention by emptying the water cooler onto the floor, and Chloe took the opportunity to squeeze onto the sofa between her dad and me.

“Knitting a scarf,” she said slowly, to no one.

I smiled in her direction.

She sidled over and asked, “Does the yarn break?”

“Chloe,” her dad said warningly. But I ignored him and answered her question. Tried to. It took a while to figure out that she thought the width of the scarf was due to me secretly cutting the yarn. So I showed her how the yarn folded into rows. While I did this, her dad took Steven and left again, apparently deciding I couldn’t kidnap a kid with knitting needles in my hands.

Chloe asked more questions and I tried to answer. I wished, then, that I had one of those little knitting kits for children, because she was so fascinated and so clever, I felt like she’d be a natural at it. You know? But I didn’t have one, and I stopped short of telling her to ask her father for one.

Then my husband’s hair was done and we got up to go. I turned to say goodbye to Chloe, but she was busy getting nagged at by her dad.

Maybe it’ll occur to him to buy her a knitting kit on his own. She can knit, then, while he plays with his phone.

Or maybe she’ll take a knitting class when she grows up.

fish in hot bean sauce

When I first met my husband, I didn’t think that people ate fish fins.

Now I know that it’s the best part of the fish to eat.

We went looking for this restaurant that my coworker Jennifer Y recommended. It didn’t have an English name, she’d told me. The Mandarin name was, phonetically in my mind, “Lao Di Fun.” She wrote down the characters for me and I put the piece of paper in my purse.

But today, after the haircut, I realized that I was carrying a different purse and had neglected to transfer the Mandarin-inscribed paper to it.

We decided to look for the restaurant, anyway. We went to the shopping center where we knew it to be. It was full of restaurants with Chinese characters all over the windows and glass doors. We found parking near the most likely looking one and went in. My husband, who is Chinese but doesn’t speak Mandarin, made me do the talking. (I’m not Chinese, and I don’t speak Mandarin, either, but I was the one who’d gotten the name first-hand from Jennifer Y.)

“What’s the name of y’all’s restaurant?” I asked the hostesses.

“Spicy Szechwuan,” they said, in heavily accented English.

“Um… What’s the real name, though? Does it have a Mandarin name?” I asked.

They told me. It wasn’t Lao Di Fun. A waiter joined them. He asked what I was looking for. I said, “Lao Di Fun?”

They said, “What?”

I said, more carefully, “Lao… Di… Fun.”

They couldn’t understand me. Then, after like fifteen minutes, one of them goes, “Wait — do you mean Lao Di Fun?”

I said yes. They said, “Oh, it’s next door.”

Next door, the same basic thing happened.
What’s the name of this place?
Classic Kitchen.
The real name?
[Something in Chinese.]
Do you know where Lao Di Fun is?
What? What’d you call my mama?
Lao… Di… Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun! It’s over there.

Next restaurant over, same thing happened.
Hello. Bamboo Dumpling House.
Lao Di Fun?
What in God’s name did you just say, Caucasian Woman?
Lao… Di… Fun?
Oh! Lao Di Fun is over there.

And again, and again, and by now y’all are realizing that Jennifer Y must have given this place a very strong recommendation, and that we must trust her opinion. Well, yes. That, plus my husband believed that a place without an American name on the door must be very authentic and therefore worth trying.

We went in a big circle, with the last waitress pointing back across the parking lot to the first restaurant we’d entered, before giving up and deciding to eat at Alias Spicy Szechwuan.

(I suspect that Alias Classic Kitchen was the real Lao Di Fun, but that they literally could not recognize their own restaurant’s name coming from my mouth.)

We got menus with several pages, but my husband suggested we focus on the House Specialties section. In that way, we ordered “Fish in hot bean sauce,” (but one-star mild, please), plus fried string beans with ground pork. The waitress directed us to the “appetizer bar,” where we selected marinated cucumber, marinated seaweed, and pan-fried pork rind for our three-appetizer plate.

While we waited, I ate all the seaweed and most of the cucumber. We each tried a piece of pork rind but didn’t try more than that. I looked around at the restaurant’s decor. It was nicer than the average hole-in-the-wall in that neighborhood, with a semi-typical red and black color scheme. They also had the requisite aquarium full of fish, all of them flat and pinkish and happy-looking. A group of Chinese women came in with one white guy, who talked very loudly about the girl among them who was his girlfriend and the fact that she spoke Chinese and Vietnamese and therefore “spied” for him at Vietnamese restaurants, and then said loud Cantonese words to the waitress, who smiled very politely as she walked away. Behind us, a baby ate rice from a yellow baby bowl her parents had presumably brought from home. When she was done, she proudly flung the bowl on the floor.

Then, finally, they brought our fish to us. Whole, on a giant plate, in a pool of spicy, oily red sauce. Damn, y’all, it looked good.

“Look at his little head,” I said. “It’s so round.” His face was all covered with sauce, and they’d been good enough to remove his eye, so I didn’t feel as bad as I otherwise might have.

My husband, who is very gentlemanly, filled my rice bowl with rice and put a piece of fish on top. I tasted it. “This is really freaking good,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s fresh,” my husband said.

“Yeah, it tastes fresh,” I said. “It’s all like, soft and stuff. Like it was never frozen.”

“It’s one of the ones from that tank, baby,” he told me.

I looked over at the tank full of pinkish fish. “Aw.”

I felt bad for, like, three seconds. Then I remembered that all those fish were going to die, anyway, so they could at least die making people happy. Right?

First we ate the flesh that didn’t have bones. Then we ate the flesh that did have bones, putting it in our mouths whole, eating around the bones and removing them with chopsticks. Then, we sucked the fins. Then, we spooned the fish-speckled sauce onto rice and ate that.

This is gonna sound crass, maybe, but one of the things I like about eating at Asian places is that I can relax my table manners a little and no one minds.

At one point, I was sucking on my fish fin and staring into space, experiencing the chili flakes and oil and vinegar and something mysteriously sweet, and the waitress walked by and caught my eye. “Good?” she asked.

I nodded. “It’s very good.”

We’ll find Lao Di Fun next time, maybe. I was glad we found this place this time, though, whatever its real name is.

Adriana H: I do remember you, because I always remember that day we were on the parking-garage shuttle bus together. You pointed out the window at a woman walking down the sidewalk and said something like “I like that woman’s bag.”

She immediately stumbled over nothing and almost fell.

You gasped and said, “Oh, no! I always give people the ojo!”

I thought that was so funny and sad at the same time, because it was obvious that you had given her the ojo.

But, at the same time, I knew you were a nice person and therefore would never use your power for evil, if you could help it.

I’m glad you commented, so I could tell you that.

real quick – Robert S

Robert S: I didn’t get to talk to you long after the lunch thing on Thursday. But I wanted to tell you that I listened to your story and thought you were very brave to tell it – braver than I ever get.

Since my fiance and I started carpooling to work, I pushed my 8-hour work day back an hour, so that it now coincides with the busiest part of the morning commute, and also with our HOV lane’s 3 Rider Rule. For a certain portion of the morning, you have to have 3 people in the vehicle in order to get into the High Occupancy Vehicle lane. Therefore, even though we’re carpooling, we still have to pick up a stranger from the Slug Line each morning in order to make it to work in less than 90 minutes.

The Slug Line forms at the park ‘n’ ride bus stop. The bus at that stop goes into downtown on Smith Street. It goes all the way down Smith, then turns around and comes back to the park ‘n’ ride. The Slug Line is formed by people who don’t want to ride the bus – who stand in line and wait for drivers who need extra riders to meet the HOV requirements. See how it works? See the mutually beneficial symbiotic parasite relationship that’s sprung up?

We don’t work downtown. We work near downtown. So we pick up a stranger, haul them downtown, then turn around and hurry back out west, to our workplace in Houston’s beautiful Montrose.

If we drop off our passenger on Smith Street, we can easily make it to our workplace in time to enjoy breakfast at its cafeteria. If, however, we drop off our passenger anywhere past Smith, we fall into a time warp whereby each red light adds an exponential amount of minutes to our drive, and then we get to work late and can’t eat breakfast, and then we’re hungry, cranky, and sad. You see? Every minute counts on this morning commute, for us.

Some slug line drivers will take riders wherever they want to go downtown. I used to do that, before I started carpooling with my fiance. But some drivers don’t. Some drivers say “Bus route only.” Smith Street only, they mean. So we decided to start doing that, too. Before a rider gets into our car, we roll down the window and say, “We’re only going down Smith.”

Before I say anything else, let me say that this is America, and I was born here, and I believe that we all have the unalienable right to pursue happiness. If it makes you happy to wait in line at the bus stop for a free ride that’s going to take you directly to your place of work, like a hired chaffeur, that’s totally cool with me. I support your right to do that. Rock on.

You should, in turn, support my right to offer strangers rides to Smith Street only. Or to Milam only. Or to the Sam Houston Tollway, or to the moon, or to whatever point I choose. If you don’t want to accept a free ride from me, that’s fine. But don’t argue with me about it. When I say, “We’re going down Smith only,” don’t stand there and say, “I’m just going a few blocks away, to Fannin and Dallas. Why can’t you go to Fannin? It’s only going to take you a few minutes longer. Where are you trying to go?”

It’s none of your business where I’m “trying to go,” or why I might need the few minutes that dropping you off on Smith would save me. Step away from my car so that the next person in line can get into it. Wait for the next driver to come along, and see if she wants to play chaffeur.

When I very politely tell you, before you get into my car, “We’re doing the bus route only,” don’t stand there in the way and tell me, “What? Why? I don’t see what difference it makes.”

Yes, that’s right. You don’t see what difference it makes. And I don’t have to explain it to you. Just like I don’t see what difference it makes if I drop you off on Smith and you have to walk a block or two, the way you’d be obligated to do if you were riding the bus. I don’t think walking a block or two is going to kill you. And I wonder, if you can’t walk a block or two, why you don’t drive yourself to work, instead of putting yourself at the mercy of strangers on a daily basis. But I wouldn’t block traffic to tell you that, and I wouldn’t ask you to explain it to me. Especially when there’s a whole line of people behind you who understand the social contract of the slug line and who exhibit manners and common decency.

Most people in the slug line are perfectly polite. But some of them are so bizarrely entitled and rude. It would be funny to me, if it weren’t so early in the morning.

I don’t want to go on and on about bad behavior on the carpool. (Well, I do, but I won’t.) I’ll just say that, if you get into my car and I turn the air conditioning too high, it’s probably in a vain attempt to blow your cologne cloud out of my face.

Also: If you’re a blonde woman who lost a pair of glasses two months ago, or if you’re someone else who lost a pink mitten three months ago, email me. You might have left them in our car.

Weddings are like tumors.

Because they grow, you see. No matter how small you think you can keep it, it grows. But this one’s a benign tumor, so far, and I believe we’re strong enough to keep it that way.

We realized that Harris County doesn’t do real courthouse weddings. You pay for the judge’s or JP’s time, and it costs the same whether y’all meet at the courthouse or he drives to the location of your choosing. So we’re having Judge Yeoman come out to the house in the evening, right before our cake and champage wedding dinner.

The cake-and-champagne has become a dinner. Dat looked it up in his list of Cultural Heritage Statutes and realized that he’d been contractually obligated, at birth, to serve catered fried rice at any wedding in which he might eventually become entangled. So we’re doing that. (I love Asian parties because, along with the fried rice and egg rolls, they always have goi, which is vinegar-y salad with shrimp and peanuts. So we’re having that, too, of course.)

I’m relieved, because I felt a little uncomfortable about having a party and not serving a meal (Chicano Cultural Statute, Clause 57.03), and I was already planning to sneak in a brisket (Clause 57.92) next to the wedding cake… and now I can put the brisket on a nice plate, right next to the fried rice, and it’ll be beautiful.

You can’t have a dinner without extra seating, and you can’t have extra seating without building a gazebo in the back yard, and you can’t build back yard structures with remodeling the bathroom, first, and you can’t go through the trouble of remodeling if you aren’t going to wear a nicer dress than you’d initially planned. So you may as well have a photographer or three, and printed invitations.

And you can’t have relatives without opinions, and they can’t show up empty handed. So someone’s bringing flowers, and someone’s bringing lights to string through the trees, and someone’s bringing special crunk champagne flutes with our initials engraved in emeralds or something. And (more than one) someone has volunteered to do our family planning for us and tell us when we should have babies, and how many babies we should have, and what they should look like, and what we should name them. But that comes later… we told them to wait to the day after the wedding for that, if possible.

And… let me say right here, right now that I’m sorry that we can’t invite everyone we know. We wish we could, but we can’t. This was supposed to be a quick courthouse wedding because we couldn’t justify the expense of a lavish 300-guest fantasy wedding. But weddings are like tumors, so it’s gone from a practical elopement to a tiny version – a 1/10 scale model – of a real wedding. But our house is pretty small, as is our budget… so please understand that, and don’t be upset if you haven’t been invited. It wasn’t because we didn’t wish we could see you there. We wanted to invite you, but we had to invite our immediate family, first. We wanted to invite everyone we know, but there was literally no room.

art, life

Now, between books (assuming I write another book soon), I’m going through a mid-life assessment. Trying to assess where I am and decide where I want to go.

Every time I’m between books, I think up a lot of crazy ideas. But now that I’m in my mid-40s (i.e., 37), the crazy ideas seem not only more plausible, but almost obligatory. Like: “Do I want to spend the rest of my life [x thing]? No.” Like, “If I have to spend the rest of my life [x thing], shouldn’t I at least [y and z things]? Yes.”

I’m sure y’all know what I mean. Don’t you go through the same phases? Aren’t we all getting older, but also smarter and more efficient and better at making ourselves happy?

Hope so.

We went to Hobby Slobby last night and, man, were there a lot of shoppers in a bad mood. I felt bad for them – why in gosh’s name do people do things that make them unhappy for Christmas?

We went to get packing for the baked goods we will make in our Seasonal Elf Bakery Sweatshop. My kids wanted to look at ornaments. They pretended they wanted to h8 on them (“Black ornaments? What’s this for, an emo tree?”) but then I realized that they secretly wanted a Christmas tree. (“Mom, if we don’t get this for our tree, then I’m gonna buy it and put it on the end of a stick and use it for a weapon.”)

We have a yearly tradition at my house. Everyone says they don’t want/need a tree. Then, I have a burst of nostalgia and/or plant fetish, and I buy a tree, anyway. Then, I force everyone to get off the video games and help decorate the tree. Then, I totally OCD out and yell at everyone for decorating it wrong. Then, I end up decorating it, myself, while everyone else watches TV. Then, I turn on the tree lights and demand that everyone bow down and pay homage to the pagan shrine I have erected. Then, the kids go back to their video games.

So, see me sniping, three paragraphs up, about people doing stuff that makes them miserable?

Every year, I force myself to admit that I’m not a very pleasant tree-decorating-mate, and I tell everyone it’s okay if we don’t get a tree.

But, every year, the kids subtly hint that they want or expect a tree.

I can only conclude that they like having me yell at them, and like watching me get all perfectionist/insane, and like seeing the lights and the eventual presents.

My boyfriend is the one who doesn’t want a tree this year. But we’re overriding his vote. He just doesn’t understand the mysteries of our rituals. Neither do we, apparently. But it’s okay.

Don’t laugh at my weakness, Cold Hardy Types.

It got cold for a couple of days and everyone who grew up in Houston was sad, and everyone who grew up elsewhere rolled their eyes at us. But it’s okay. I found a new way to mini-bond with strangers – just walk up to sad, shivering people and say, “You were born here, weren’t you?” And they were, and so was I. And we’re all cold and sad together, and we can take comfort in the weather-related misery that loves company. And we can draw a line in the sand – not a Mason-Dixon line, not a Tree Line, but a Parka Line. Sand Truck Line. Snow Tire Line. I’m on the side of the line where we don’t like to have that stuff. We like it warm.

Two days later, it’s warm again. Of course. Our gods only give us as much burden as we can carry, right? The return of the warmth feels, to me, like the first hour your nose is unstuffed after weeks of sinus issues. You know that feeling? The extreme relief, accompanied by promises that you’ll never again take the default state for granted? And you’re just talking out your butt, because you’ll go right back to taking it for granted within a day? Yes.

I don’t have anything not-cloying to say.

I’m all like “Yay, I love the birds! Ooh, it’s warm! Yay, a restaurant! Ooh, the parts of Christmas that I don’t dislike!” Sorry. I’ll go back to complaining and ranting soon.

I have to censor myself very firmly right now, because I’m really bad at keeping secrets, okay? You know how, when you have vertigo, you avoid standing on a cliff’s edge because you’re scared you’ll be unable to keep from accidentally jumping off, despite your self-preserving instincts? That’s me right now, with the secrets. I’m like “Oh man, I better not type anything, because I might type what I got everybody for Christmas and then put it into my blog editor and hit Publish and then hit Yes, I’m Sure I Want to Publish and then I won’t delete it, and then everyone will know and the surprise will be ruined! Yikes!”

I’ve already almost-ruined it two or three times, now. In fact, I’m pretty sure everyone knows what I’m getting them and is just pretending not to, to be nice. *Le sigh.*

Let me go ahead and hang up with y’all, then. Let me go ahead and talk at y’all later. Happy December 25 if I don’t talk to you before then. Happy other days that you consider special.

I’m going to be at the Edward James Olmos 6th Annual Houston Latino Book and Family Festival on Sunday, at noon, on their children’s stage in the George R. Brown Convention Center, reading my first book for kids, Growing Up with Tamales. Last chance to get a signed copy before Christmas. It’s a free event. Not only will I be there, but they’ll most likely have lowriders, food samples, and people dressed as Clifford, the Poky Puppy, or other characters. You should check it out. It’s Saturday and Sunday, and it’s fun. Oh, and sometimes Edward James Olmos, AKA Commander Adama, shows up, too. I’ve met him three times now, at various points in my life, but he never remembers me. However, I like that, every time I meet him, I’m more successful than I was the time before. Hopefully I’ll see him Sunday, then, and I’ll be like, “Hi, Commander Adama! I have five books now! Last time you met me I only had one! The time before that, I had zero but I was playing Anita in West Side Story! I loved you in Blade Runner!” and he’ll be like “Hello, nice to see you,” and he’ll smile while my boyfriend snaps a photo of us, and the photo will come out with me in mid-blink, so that I look high or developmentally delayed, and I won’t be able to post the photo on my Flickr and no one will believe that I ever met Edward James Olmos at all, much less three times.

So you should come to the festival and see me. This Sunday.

Welcome to the (Publicity) Machine.

I had a meeting with my publishing peeps the other day and we wrote a bunch of dates on a bunch of pieces of paper, and now I have to do a lot of work to make the dates come true. I have to research stuff and email people and ask my publisher to mail books to people and write press releases and coordinate schedules. It doesn’t sound like hard work, and it’s not, but it is a lot of little details to manage.

Doing publicity for yourself is like a whole other job, in addition to your writing and to your day job, if you have one. And in addition to your parenting and your household-running and your girlfriend-being.

Most writers don’t like that part of the job very much. (I think it’s because most writers are introverts. Do you agree?) I’m not complaining, because I’d rather have something to publicize than not. But the publicizing isn’t my fave part, either.

Things I like about publicizing my work:

• Doing readings, making people laugh during the readings
• Meeting readers
• Traveling
• Exercising my creativity by thinking up new ways to describe my own work
• When they have free cheese and wine

Things I don’t like about publicizing my work:

• Needing to remind people about my work constantly, which makes me feel gauche
• Feeling like I’m bragging about myself
• Feeling frustrated that I could do more/better if I had more time
• Receptions where I feel pressured to “mingle,” instead of just eating free cheese and drinking free wine and chilling
• Putting my work and myself out there (like, say, on a Web application for sharing and rating books), inviting random strangers to criticize my stuff at will, as opposed to simply writing my stuff (like, say, on a blog) and letting interested people read or ignore it as they choose

But I’m getting over those petty peeves, with the help of self-directed cognitive therapy and the daily horoscopes of Mr. Rick Levine. Like I said, I’m not complaining. I’m just telling y’all how I feel so that you authors can empathize, and you aspiring authors can know what you’re in for. Some of you are reading my list of publicity dislikes and saying “What? That sounds like fun!” And to y’all I say, boogie on, reggae extroverts.

(That’s a take on a song by Stevie Wonder. “Boogie on, reggae woman.” Sorry – I’m kind of obsessed with that song ever since I saw a drunk guy try and fail to sing it at karaoke three or four years ago. So he danced, instead. Drunkenly and heartfelt. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I wrote about it, here on this blog, back when it happened, but I think that entry’s been deleted. But I still think about that guy and that song all the time, especially when I think about people doing what they want to do, despite the laughter of friends and strangers.)

(The subtitle of these paragraphs is my take on a Pink Floyd song. Yes, half my blog entries are actually just classic rock song lyrics, altered slightly.)

the birds

There are these birds migrating through Houston right now. I researched last year, and I think they’re indigo buntings. That’s what someone from the Houston Audobon society told me They’re grackles. That’s what Andrew at the Houston Audobon Society told me. We always have grackles in Houston (those are my fave birds), and then we get extra ones coming down for the winter, and then they all hang out together on the trees and electric lines.

Andrew told me that the grackles are very smart, for birds, which I already knew. I know this because they steal sugar packets from local restaurant patios, forcing restaurants to think harder. They take the Sweet n Low first, a waitress told me. The pink packets are their faves, basically. Even if they’re generic, I imagine.

Andrew told me that grackles go under parked cars and climb into the radiators to eat the bugs that gather there. Can you imagine?

People here have been commenting on how awesome the birds are for lining up on the electric lines, all spaced two bird-widths apart. I agree that it’s beautiful, and not just because I wish humans would keep two people-widths from me at all times, either.

Male grackles are iridescent black, kind of like black Infiniti G35s in the sun. Female grackles are dark dove-brown and always defer to the male grackles when it comes to food. No matter how many times you throw ciabatta pieces at female crackles, they’ll have to let the male grackle have them, if he shows up and wants them. Even if you yell at the male grackle, “Hey, you get out of here! Those are for her!” They have entrenched patriarchal inequality. But, besides that, they’re awesome.

One of my winning-the-lottery fantasies is that I’ll throw a masquerade ball on New Year’s Eve. For my costume, I’ll fly to Venice and have them custom sew me a (male) grackle costume. It sounds weird, but I have it all planned out, and it’ll be better than you’re thinking.

Don’t tell anyone I told y’all that, though. It’s kind of private, my grackle masquerade fantasy.

I wish PBS would do a show about city birds and their behavior. Maybe there’s one already? I wish someone would do a whole documentary about city birds in Houston. No, I wish someone would fund me and a team of ornithologists to do a documentary about the birds at three or four Houston establishments. Probably Empire, La Madeleine on Shepherd and West Gray, the zoo, and any random Jack in the Box. I wish it was my job, to make that documentary.

I’ve never understood elderly bird-watching hobbyists, but now I’m obsessed with grackles. I still don’t understand them, though, because they travel around, seeking out various species in the wild. I wouldn’t do that. When I’m too old to do anything else, I’ll totally go to different restaurants and name the grackles, pigeons and wrens. I’ll be like, “Here, Julio and Veronica, I bought you an almond croissant. But you have to share it.” And people will be like, “Oh, that’s so sad. Look at that old lady with ‘90s hair. She thinks those animals are people.”

I wonder if I’d even like grackles so much if they weren’t named grackles. If they were just crows or ravens or blackbirds.

Yes. I would.

Okay, don’t tell anybody anything I said about birds today. I’m starting to think it’s a little crazier than I knew.

I haven’t written here lately because I’ve been under some stress, and I never feel like talking on the blog (or to anyone) when I’m under stress. But now it’s all over, thank goshfully.

If I were in an airplane crash (God forbid; knock on wood), I already know exactly how I’d react. Cool and alert as hell, I’d put the oxygen mask on my face then put masks on everyone else. I’d pull out the floatation device seats, hand them out, calculate the distance, count it off “3, 2, 1, inhale!” and then swim everybody to safety. Then I’d go back for the more valuable plane cargo. Then I’d help with the rescue/recovery. Then I’d clearly and cogently debrief to the authorities.

Then, I’d go home, where I’m safe. Then, I’d go to the bathroom and throw up. I’d climb into bed, trembling, and cry. I’d cry for two hours, probably. Then I’d fall asleep and have a nightmare or two. Then I’d wake up and be ready to start a new day.

I’m guessing I’d do all this because that’s how I usually react in less major catastrophes. Except that I rarely throw up afterwards – it’s more like momentary nausea and retching.

Last week I finished my second novel and turned it in the night before deadline. (Extended deadline, actually, but that’s okay.) Also, last week, I had extreme Family Court drama that magically resolved itself on the same day that I turned in my novel.

And now I feel… relieved, right?

No! I feel stressed! I feel all knotted up and uptight and downtrodden. I feel crazy and unsafe. I feel scared.

I’ll probably try to cry a little bit tonight, before I go to sleep. But there’s hardly any time. I have a lot of stuff to move on to. I think I’ll just move on, instead, then. Sometimes I find that stress is the best distraction from my stress recovery.

(This is what you call Type A personality. This is what it takes for me to succeed. Don’t feel sorry for me. Be happy for me that I’m this crazy, because the sickness is what makes the dreams come true.)

shout out to Carl Jung

Do you ever have a recurring bad situation that makes you question your existence and your karma and all that? And you think “Why does this keep happening to me?” because you believe everything happens for a reason, but you can’t think of one single reason for this crappy stuff to keep happening to you over and over again?

And then, finally, you find the one silver lining in the crappy thing, or you realize the one lesson it’s taught you?

And then, the moment you have that realization, the crappy thing stops happening?

Yeah. That’s happened to me a few times. It happened just the other day, in fact. And I’m very, very relieved that the crappy stuff seems to be over.

Thanks, Carl Jung!

good weekend

I’m excited about this weekend. Here’s what I plan to do:

1. Go see that movie Milk
2. Go to the Turkish restaurant with the super fabulous dolmas that are not called dolmas in Turkish
3. Start shopping for xmas presents for my brats, since they’ll be at their dad’s house and therefore unable to see what I’m buying them
4. Go to an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood that a real live Indian person from my neighborhood said was good. (I totally, gauchely but desperately, hit up an Indian stranger during a carpool ride. I was like, “I’m sorry to be rude, but are you Indian?” He was like, “Um… yes.” I was like, “Can you please tell me if there are any good Indian restaurants in our neighborhood, because the only one I’ve found isn’t very good.” And he was like, “Oh! Yeah, sure.” And then he told me where two of them are. Thank gosh, because I was starting to have the Butter Chicken DTs and I can’t be driving all the way instead 610 for treatment all the time.)

Despite my irrational feelings of discomfort, which are probably only Seasonal Affective Dysfunction, anyway, things are pretty awesome.

Even the carpooling has been awesome, lately. I’ve been talking with a lot of nice/cool/smart people, and that restores my faith in humanity and makes me happy to be alive. The other day I met a geologist who seemed like a really decent person. Another day I met a guy who’s sort of obsessed with ballroom dancing and he told me a lot of fascinating stuff about that scene. I met a Republican precinct judge’s wife and a former Democrat activist precinct judge on the same ride, and that was a good chat.

I continually meet legal secretaries who have hilarious or shocking stories to tell. I often talk with older peeps who have insightful viewpoints on local issues. Sometimes the people are witty and we laugh, and that’s good, to laugh with strangers.

Today a transplanted Floridian and I gave a woman advice on what to buy her grandkids for Christmas, and I felt like we did some serious good. Usually, if I’m driving, I just drive in silence. Especially with men, who don’t care if you talk or not. Also, I like to concentrate super hard on my driving, so that everyone is comfortable. I’m currently obsessed with learning to brake my van as smoothly as possible, because my van has annoyingly tough brakes. Sometimes, though, I’ll get yakky with people and talk away the miles. Either way, it’s good. I don’t mind my commute anymore, now that I’m doing the HOV all the time. Even when I’m not talking to people, there’s always a lot to see out the window. I love my city, despite its flaws, so it’s good.

Some of you might consider this big news.

My boyfriend (fiancé) is moving in with us. I feel like I already told y’all that, or like most people reading this assume he lives with me, anyway. But…

(saying this next part knowing, and knowing that you know, and knowing that you know that I know, that plans like this are likely to change and shift and grow)

we’re thinking about eloping now. Or just going to the courthouse or whatever.

See, we’ve never been as worried about the wedding as we were about the marriage, and particularly about the physical love nest. So we set a long engagement, and kind of set the timeline around the housing market. Because we didn’t feel we could be married until we’d secured a house in a certain area. And that’s not feasible until at least two years from now. So, while we were in deep talks about that, people around us were asking about the wedding. And we’d be like, “Um… two years from now… string quartet, samba band, and DJ.”

But now, the stars have aligned such that it makes more sense for us to live together in my house. And, now that that’s happening, we’re like, “Wait, why do we need a wedding, again?”

It’s kind of like: living together was the final step, so why do we need an expensive middle step? You know?

It’s kind of like: why spend on a wedding, money that would be better spent on, say, a trip to Europe? Where we could hire an Italian homeless person to pose as a priest for a few photos to send back home? You know?

So, that’s where it’s at right now. In case anyone’s interested in that aspect of this eleven-year-long narrative. Plans subject to change, of course. Subject to Pricing, Funds, and Comp. Everything on Earth is subject to change, right? Even rocks, albeit very slowly.

soon

(Every time I write “soon” for a subtitle, I think of the My Bloody Valentine song of the same name. Do you?)

Pretty soon, I’m going to announce dates/times/locations for readings for my novel, Houston, We Have a Problema, which is coming out January 9th.

I’ll go ahead and tell y’all right now that there aren’t going to be many physical readings. I feel guilty about this, because every time someone’s asked me in the past, I’ve been all glib, “East Chickenfoot, Arkansas? Yeah, sure, I’ll do a reading there in January or February.” But it’s not actually like that. My publicist peeps have done the math, and they think online and media efforts sell more books than physical readings around the country.

So… if you’re a book blogger or media peep who wants to review my book or interview me or otherwise be involved in some way when this book comes out, now is the time to tell me, so I can put you on the list or put you on the calendar. Actually, tell me also if you’re hosting any literary events or own a bookstore and would like to have me visit. I’m not supposed to invest a lot of time/energy/$ in readings out of state, but I am going to do a few, even if it’s only for the excuse to travel around a little and write it off on my taxes.

So, yeah. Contact me now. Our operators are waiting to take your call. Buy my product. Get a giant one for her pleasure and doesn’t leave you. All systems go. See you soon. And thanks.

Love,
Your blogger/author,
Gwen

and therefore envy those of you who don’t. I wanted, on Election Night, to be somewhere full of people. But I couldn’t think of where that place might be, in my part of town. My own little neighborhood is very lackadaisical and quiet, and no one on my street had signs of any kind in their yards. (Shoot, they barely had Halloween decorations.) But our neighboring ‘hoods were peppered with McCain/Palin signs and I couldn’t think of a nearby restaurant or bar where those people wouldn’t be standing around looking sad/mad.

My boyfriend came over to watch the news with us, but I was falling asleep on the sofa by 9:30. It’s the freaking time change, plus the sun. The sun keeps taking off faster, and it makes me fall asleep. The other night I went to bed at 7:45 PM because I thought it was 8:45 and was too tired to be ashamed. I’m not nocturnal. I’m a rabbit or a day-time lizard, even though my boyfriend (fiancé) is a bat or a marmoset or whatever stays up at night with red eyes – you know those ones in that special red room at the zoo. That’s what he is, and that’s what I’m not. So I conked out, planning to celebrate in the morning.

I woke up early in the morning and did my normal commute routine (commutine!). Everyone around me was silent, like usual. I don’t know what I was expecting, but everyone stayed quiet. Downtown, a man passed me carrying several newspapers in one arm. He was holding them in such a way that Barack Obama looked out from the front page. I saw that and smiled a little, then looked up at the man carrying the papers… and he had such a look on his face. Not happy, but kind of defensive. Like daring someone to say something against Obama, the day after Obama had won. I dropped my smile and minded my own business.

All day long, I read Twitter and Gawker talking about people celebrating. Here in Houston, it was silent. There are a lot of people at my work who voted for Obama – I know there are, because they told me they were going to – but now that he had won, everyone was silent. Only one person (a person I love but who is immune to social mood) said anything about it above a whisper. She was immediately engaged in conversation by an unhappy McCain voter, who told us unhappily and earnestly that Obama was working very hard to make abortions “easy” to get.

Day 2, this morning, I didn’t feel like going to work at all (Seasonal Affective Dis-Wanting-to-go-to-Work) but marched myself to the park-n-ride, where I was picked up by a married couple in an SUV.

I don’t like to say ugly things about the strangers who give me rides, because they’re giving me rides for free, but I have to say that the woman drove very poorly and that their SUV smelled bad. They talked amongst themselves, like married people, while I sat in the sour-smelling back seat. I had to wait for a break in their personal married-people conversation to tell them where I was going, and make sure they could drop me off there.

They talked and talked, and I had the impression that they were aware of me as their captive audience. You know – they said some cutesy things in a louder voice for my entertainment. You know what I mean? Me and my boyfriend (fiancé) do that to, sometimes, with the captives we pick up from the park-n-ride. I think it’s a natural human compulsion.

But mostly they talked quietly about all the many, many things they were planning to buy, and how stupid people were for not driving or buying SUVs, now that gas was magically cheap again. I pulled out my brand new, special-ordered Math Puzzle Book and worked on math puzzles (trigons, for those who know). During yesterday’s ride home, I completed a whole trigon (6 digits, for those who know) on the bus ride home, and I was very proud of myself afterwards. But this morning, I couldn’t make any progress at all. That’s how I am on the trigons. Either my brain is working in such a way that I can do them, or else it isn’t.

I put the book away and meditated throughout the rest of the half-hour ride, then. I told myself not to get upset about the smell of the SUV, its horrible suspension system, or the woman’s sloppy driving. Because I had chosen to get into their car, and they were doing me a service, and I should just be silently gracious. Graciously silent. Either. I tried really, really hard not to listen to the couple’s conversation, because it was none of my business, and because I’m trying not to be so judgmental, now that I’m older and more mature and etc. But I couldn’t help but hear them list all the things they were going to buy for Christmas and other occasions. The man’s very important business phone call. His suggestion to his wife that she try a personal trainer that so-and-so had sworn by. “I get it,” I thought. “You guys are rich. You’re completely awesome. Ride’s almost over, ride’s almost over….”

And then, right at the end, the woman switched the radio from Houston’s annoying Top 40 station (Roula and Ryan, for those who know and can commiserate) to a conservative talk station. And the talker said “blah blah blah Barack Obama.” And there was a pause in the couple’s conversation. And I said nothing, but I felt weird, all of a sudden, like there was tension in the air. Like maybe they wanted to lament his winning, but censored themselves because of me. And for the purposes of this story, I now have to tell you now that both of them were Caucasian.

The pause un-paused, and the woman launched into a story about making fun of some young man. She recounts that the young man retaliated by telling her, “Oh, yeah, well I heard you’re pregnant.”

She’s telling this story loud enough for me to hear it, mind you.

And she says, “I told him, ‘Right, I’m pregnant, and the baby’s due in 2015.’” Pause for audience laughter. Her husband obliges with a chuckle. I keep pretending I can’t hear her, even though I can’t avoid hearing her, because I’m polite like that. She continues: “I told him, ‘I’m having sextuplets, and one [is] Obama.’”

Her husband chuckles again. I’m puzzled. One of the sextuplets is Obama, or Obama’s? Or they’re named Obama? I’m not sure what she said, exactly.

She goes on to the final punchline: “And two are Michael Jordan’s!”

Long, long pause for audience reaction. Her husband chuckled, but more faintly. I maintain my pretense that I can’t hear them, even though it’s obvious that I can and that she meant for me to hear. I don’t even know why. Was I supposed to laugh? Maybe. They wanted me to prove my solidarity by laughing at the joke, so that they could feel “safe” with me and go on to disparage the president-elect, maybe?

The thing is, her joke was so effing stupid that, even if I were a bigot, I wouldn’t have laughed at it. You know? I like to imagine that, even if I had been born in Vidor, Texas, to the Grand Daddy Dragon of the local KKK, I’d still have a decent sense of humor. Or… well, forget that. I haven’t really considered that scenario, ever. I’m just saying – her joke was racist and lame.

I thought about piping up and saying, “Oh, yeah? My husband’s black, too.” That way I would not only deflate their racism, but emasculate her husband by pretending I’d assumed he wasn’t her husband.

But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. I was scared to. I admit it. I was in their car, and I was relying on their kindness to get me where I needed to go. I said nothing.

They stayed kind of quiet until we got to my stop. I steadily pretended to be interested in what was out the window, but it was obvious that I’d failed their test, and they knew that I knew that they knew that I knew it, and she was emanating the stink of the bully now, who has a victim cornered, and he was radiating the smallest bit of shame, because he seemed to know that her joke was lame and because there was now a specter in the air of his wife being impregnated by at least two men who were not him and not even of his own race.

(Instinct tells me that we’ve reached the climax and I should wind down now for maximum story flow, but I’ve been writing this blog for so long that I can break rules and ignore instinct and go off on a tangent here, and be even MORE candid, because I’m never going to run for office, so I just don’t care, so check this out now….)

There were so many long, long seconds between the end of her joke and the few blocks to my stop. And I’m so observant or intuitive or hypersensitive or overly imaginative that I was able to draw long threads of story out of each of those seconds. I’d already noted, upon entering their car, that while he looked and sounded like a run-of-the-mill son of a bootstrap Republican, she was lower class who’d married up. God forgive me for saying this – some of you are going to comment or email me and tell me I’m just as racist/hateful as them – but I could tell by her eyeliner that she’d grown up poorer than him (black inside the lower lid with sparkly color underneath) and I could tell by her voice that she was so, so proud of that fact. So there was that. But then, when she made the joke about her multiracial sextuplets, while he might have enjoyed her crude racism, just as he enjoyed her looking up to him as her financial savior, I could tell that the Michael Jordan reference had gone too far for her husband.

“Why Michael Jordan?” he was probably thinking. “I get the Obama part, but Michael Jordan hasn’t been in the news for years. Why didn’t she say Tiger Woods or T-Mac or Tracy Morgan? Does my wife have a secret crush on Michael Jordan? Does my wife wish Michael Jordan would get her pregnant?”

There was just starting to be that level of silent awkwardness when we got to the corner where they’d agreed to let me off.

“This is the end of the ride,” I told myself. “Now you can safely say something against them. Do it right before you get out of the car.” I thought up what I would say. I would look at her and say, “Thanks. Congratulations on your pregnancy!”

“But,” I told myself, “isn’t that kind of chickenshit, to say something right at the end like that? Isn’t that every bit as chickenshit as making racist remarks in front of a stranger while she’s trapped in your car and you’re not alone?”

I was going, with 70% certainty, to say it. But right before I got off the car, the woman turned to me and, in a voice as sweet as small-town-Texas honey, her best Southern hospitality voice, she said, “Have a good day, okay? Be safe!”

I muttered thanks and got out of the car and walked away without looking at them. I’m sure that, after I was gone, they told each other that I was rude.

I swear to God…

Some of you want to think I’m making that up, but I’m not.

Some of you think, “Well, Gwen lives in Texas, and the South is full of racists, so I’m sure that happens every day.” But it doesn’t.

Usually, I have to know racists for at least a few days before they’ll make those kind of jokes to me. And then I’ll say, “Yeah, my dad’s Mexican.” And they’ll say, “Oh, well, I didn’t mean you,” and then they’ll get quiet and hate me, but at least they’ll have learned not to assume everyone around them wants to hear racist shit.

But it’s very rare that complete strangers say those things around me. I was kind of shocked.

That makes me think that the racists in Houston are very uncomfortable and are seeking comfort from the herd, just like I was when I wanted to be in public on Election Night. No succor for anyone, then.

After I got off the racist SUV, I plugged my ipod securely into my ears, to soothe myself. After that, I got on the bus, which had riders of many ethnicities. Everyone looked uncomfortable. I wondered why but didn’t wonder hard enough to unplug my ipod. I was tired of uncomfortable people.

There were several black gentlemen sitting in the back of the very small bus. One of them was talking very loudly, throughout the short ride to the complex where most of us work. Despite my earplugs, I heard him say the words Texas, McCain, and racist. I saw the other riders, of all colors, glance at him and look even more uncomfortable. I left my ipod in, as did the woman sitting next to me. I’m not a Texas McCain racist, so he wasn’t talking to me. He was only talking loud enough that I was his captive audience. But he wasn’t driving, and I had my ipod.

I thought he was a rude and hateful person. But, at the same time, I tried to imagine him undergoing what I’d undergone in the strangers’ SUV, times 5000, for his whole life, and especially since the election. And I couldn’t imagine it.

So I said nothing.

sometimes

Sometimes I wish I lived in a blue state. Usually, I wish it around election time. But in general, I do still love Houston. Because, ironically, it’s diverse. And it’s warm, and we have good food, and the people are usually friendly.

I never lie. Sometimes I exaggerate for a better story, but I never lie.

I told a friend that story, this morning – about the racist white people and then the angry black man. And I don’t think she (a liberal white woman married to a black/Mexican man) believed me. She said, “God, why does stuff like that happen to you?” I think she wanted to believe I’d somehow caused it, that it wouldn’t have happened on its own.

But I said, “Because I’m out among people. You live nearby, and you get in your car and drive straight to work. I’m out with strangers every day.”

She had to admit that it made sense. She was sad. Yeah, so was I, because that shit is sad. Hopefully it’ll stop happening soon. Some day in the future, before my children grow old and die.

Someone finally let me in on the secret — you can put your life in the hands of strangers, in the mornings as well as the afternoons, by getting picked up at your local park-n-ride and hitching a ride into the HOV lane.

Someone on Twitter tried to explain this to me — said it was called “the slug line” in their city. But I’m such a car-town noobie, I didn’t understand what exactly it meant.

You can ride with strangers downtown, for free. You can listen to strangers talk about their lives, and no one makes eye contact.

If you’re me, you can try picking up your own hitchers one day. You can pick up two men at 6 AM in your mini van. After they’re in your car, you can notice for the first time that your mini van contains, in order of nearness to your passengers:

• one torn cover of a Victoria’s secret catalog
• one girdle, with all price tags, that someone other than you bought last Halloween
• no fewer than three pairs of shoes that smell very, very bad
• the contents of a busted box of emergency OB tampons, rolling all over the very back seat

You know I’m freaking awesome, because I turned around and saw all that, and then I just shrugged. And flowed down the road with my NPR on. Driving like a champ, even though my two male passengers were watching like a hawk, waiting for me to drive poorly. Sticking out my hand when I had to stop short, saving the life of the stranger on the passenger side, as if I’d given birth to him, myself.

The guys were good sports about it. I told them I’d pick them up at the same time next day. But I was lying. Next day, I caught a ride with someone else I’d never seen before. Another silent social contract. Another new face that never looked directly into mine.

The Sad Cowboy

I’ve been trying forever to tell y’all the story about the sad cowboy singer who works (worked?) at Larry’s BBQ Buffet on 290. But I never remember.

Or else, like now, I remember but I can’t tell you because I’m too tired. I’m so effing tired right now, I don’t even know how I’ve typed this much so far.

I have a lot of stuff on my Master To-Do List. A lot of work I don’t have time to get done.

So the cowboy has to wait. That’s all he ever does, anyway. Wait and sing, wait for tips. Wait for someone to cut him a break.

I’m not supposed to tell you this, but

Shh — one of my children went to his first dance on Friday night. First dance, first date. Shhh! Don’t tell him I told you.

We were so happy to see it all go down. It was incredibly normal. Not like my first dance and not like my boyfriend’s. But the two of us knew how a first dance was supposed to go, so we worked hard to make it happen for my son.

The girl he went with turned out to be a dud in the most cliched sense. (“I’m mad at you now.” “Why?” “Figure it out.”) But I’m even kind of glad for that. I pegged her from the start and was hoping they wouldn’t start dating for real. I have the feeling I’m gonna be one of those picky-bitchy moms, for whose sons no girl is ever good enough. But oh, well. Everyone has faults, right? Even cliched ones, sometimes.