I’m not working on any books right now. Which is… good. I think.

The launch party for my newest book is going to be September 19 at the Julia Ideson building near the downtown Houston library. You are invited.

Something that Happened

This morning, while driving to work in gray almost-rain, I saw a man walk into the middle of the street and pick up what looked like a child’s floppy bunny doll. But then I blinked and saw it was a kitten. A dead kitten, apparently. He picked it up by the scruff of the neck, walked it to the opposite corner, and semi-gently laid it in the grass. Then he jogged to the car from which he’d apparently emerged, driven by a women who I guess was his wife. Really, she looked like a nurse to me and I can’t tell you why. He was a citizen, not a city worker, as far as I could ascertain from the clues present.

I was concerned about this man touching the dead kitten. I wanted to take the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer from my glove compartment and throw it out my car window to him. I told myself that he was wearing a glove, maybe, that I hadn’t seen. Given to him by his wife, who looked like a nurse.

After I decided he’d been wearing a glove or had used his own glove compartment sanitizer (as I had to in order to move on with my life), I wondered why he had moved the kitten. Simply to keep it from getting squished by passing cars? Because it was a kitten he knew—maybe his kid’s—and he didn’t want his kid to see it in the street later? Was it maybe, purely, an act of respect?
I don’t know. It was the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a while. I wish I could interview that man and his wife.

Fantasies

I’m going to tell y’all these recurring fantasies I cherish, embarrassing and not, because it’s raining today.

1. I’d like to make documentaries, but about really specific things that would probably only interest me. For instance, I fantasize about producing and hosting a weekly local show about people’s jobs. The more boring the job, the better. I want to meet people with everyday jobs and find out every single detail. What do they do and how do they do it? How would they explain their jobs’ places in our economy and their roles at their companies? How do they get through each day? What’s fun about their jobs, if anything, and what sucks the worst? Are they good at their jobs? Do they think they’re good at them? If it was a weekly show, I’d do two people per episode. The documentaries are actually a separate fantasy, I guess. The first of those would probably be about grackles at various Houston restaurants.

2. I’m really bad at fantasizing, because I get all caught up in nitpicky details. For instance, I can’t just have a fantasy about magically healing people, like a normal narcissist would. My healing-superpower fantasies have to be way, way more specific than that. There are two of them:

a) I have the clairvoyant power to diagnose medical issues. I can do so by touching the affected person, but I like to let them tell me their symptoms, first, because that’s nice bedside manner. For this service, I charge $100 per person. Some people take my diagnoses to their doctors and demand treatment or at least testing. Eventually, some doctors and scientists realize/believe that I have this supernatural diagnosis power, and they work with me. But they still have to order tests to confirm my diagnoses, because of insurance company requirements. I wouldn’t want insurance companies to know about my super power, because they’d want to use it to deny coverage or raise premiums.

b) I have the magical ability to prescribe customized diets for people. This is less intense than diagnosing diseases, but still important. I’m able to touch a person and figure out what nutrients they’re in need of, and what eating habits are messing them up. Normal doctors can already do that, I know. But I can also figure out issues that maybe science hasn’t yet. Like “You are craving starches all the time because one of the bacteria in your stomach has a hormonal imbalance.” Or whatever. You know – things normal people can’t see. Mystery issues that bother us every day and yet aren’t important enough for medical science to solve. Issues that quacks take advantage of. So I’d listen to people’s complaints for two minutes, touch their arms, and then type up a detailed, varied diet plan for them to follow. The diet plan would right them. Then they’d probably have to come back for periodic adjustments, as their bodies changed. I’d charge on a sliding fee scale for this service. If I sold a person a custom diet plan and he/she didn’t try to follow it… oh, well. Not my problem. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help himself.

c) Yes, it would be more effective to simply heal people in my fantasies. But I wouldn’t want that power, because it sounds exhausting. And I’m not sure I believe that everyone should be un-sick at will. Plus, it seems like it’d be immoral to charge for healing. (But if I had to magically heal people, I wouldn’t be averse to bartering for my services.)

3. I always fantasy-plan parties that can only take place if I win the lottery. If I ever won the lottery, I’d have to move my birthday celebrations to summers (instead of December 27) and start throwing fundraising events in order to burn through all my stockpiled party ideas. Sometimes I shift to more realistic fantasies about becoming a professional party planner, but then I get turned off by that idea because I don’t want to use my party ideas on strangers who may turn out to be bad partygoers. Right now, my favorite party fantasy is renting out the entire Galveston Schlitterbahn waterpark for my birthday and hiring bands to play in the center of it. Second favorite is hosting a Shark Week party at the Capt. Benny’s boat-shaped restaurant on 290 and Mangum. With a band, of course, and themed decorations and shark gift bags for everyone to take home. I don’t think about the fun—I think about the details. I have long imaginary lists about guest lists, security, open bars, staffing, and food. It’s a horrible hobby, fantasizing about parties. It’s a lot of work. One of our friends recently started doing party-like events in real life. (He is a “promoter,” I think it’s called.) And we’re very proud of him. Sometimes we help out, but usually we don’t. “We” is me and my husband, who is also a fantasy party planner. He’s actually worked as a consultant on my Schlitterbahn and Shark Week affairs, meaning we talk about it sometimes in the car. Because we’re crazy.

The Future

I think I’m going to start my next book in the fall. It’s going to get in the way of my imaginary party planning, but it might be more soothing.

Talk to y’all soon. Don’t forget to look at the News & Events tab above and attend whatever events I have coming up, and don’t forget to buy my books, and [the requisite self-promoting etc.].

Hobbies, Interests, and Goals I Have Now, That I Didn’t Have When I Was Young:

1. Trying to take care of this mortal husk before it’s too late and my joints are ground to powder

2. Trying to improve myself or my life, in one way or another, each day

3. Breaking goals into small chunks with ample rest time between, as opposed to plowing through pages of goals and getting upset at the length of time it took me to acheive them

4. Reassessing pending goals and discarding the ones based on outgrown neuroses

5. Thinking about bifocals

6. Doing that thing where you try to click on a word with your mouse, but you click on the word next to it, instead, and then remembering when I used to watch older people do that with their mouses and boggle at their inability to click the intended word and wonder what their deal was — Did they need glasses? Had they not played enough video games in their lives to develop normal eye/hand coordination? — and trying to forgive myself for my past lack of empathy as well as my current inability to click the damn word that’s right there on the screen in front of my face

7. Avoiding the emotional dramas presented to me by family and friends, without feeling guilty about it

8. Letting my kids make their own mistakes, instead of acting like a truck that drives ahead of them and salts the icy roads in order to keep them from ever slipping

9. Letting go of responsibility for situations that have nothing to do with me, like a volunteer fireman who only puts out fires at his own house

10. Trying to react to adversity with forthrightness instead of surpressed anger or uncontrolled anger

11. Buying good quality shoes that won’t hurt my feet

12. Ignoring lists about what women should do when they’re forty

I was told, more than once, that I shouldn’t talk about the surgery. Shouldn’t tell people my business. And I already knew that to be one of life’s rules, because I’d learned it from my late family members. You don’t talk to people about your surgery. Especially your surgery for ladies.

But why? When it came down to it, I couldn’t figure out the reason. “I’m going to be out for six weeks, so Tiffany will handle your case,” I said to people. They said, “Six weeks? You’re not leaving us, are you?” I said, “No, I’m having surgery.” They said, very kindly and with genuine-seeming concern, “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

And I said…

The rule isn’t true, is it? You know what I always hear people talk about? Rotator cuff surgery. “It’s my rotator cuff,” you hear people say. Then there’s a long conversation about the basketball that got played in college. I never play sports, but I know that rotator cuff surgery is something that happens.

I said (whispered), “I’m having a hysterectomy.” If I was talking to a man, I whispered, “I’m having… surgery for ladies,” then felt stupid and added, “I mean, a hysterectomy.”

You know who has hysterectomies? Everybody. I swear to you, 50% of the people I told (meaning, like, six people) immediately said, “OMG, I just had a hysterectomy, too!” Some of the men said their wives had recently had one. And then I was glad that I’d told them, because they shared their stories with me and it made me feel less alone.

I guess the don’t-tell rule is left over from the era when we were supposed to pretend that half the population didn’t menstruate. I never cared for that era and its rules.

I wasn’t able to have the laser surgery, like I did for my gall bladder removal a few years ago. I had to have the old fashioned gut cut, which is very similar to giving birth by caesarian section.

While I’m sitting here recovering, feeling slightly pained but grateful and relieved, I’m going to tell you the most memorable thing anyone said to me about the surgery I wasn’t supposed to mention. A woman at my work named R, about the same age as me, who also had the cut and not the laser, told me, “I’m not going to lie — the first two or three days are going to suck really bad. But after that, it’ll be worth it.”

I thought of her words every day of the last week, and they helped me get through the hard part. I’m glad I broke the rule, and that’s why I’m breaking it here again now.

Fear and Loathing

In preparation for this, I kept thinking about all the elderly people I’d known who had way more serious surgery than a hysterectomy. In particular, I thought of a friend’s very elderly relative who had issues with her mouth that required… tubes. The inability to speak. Way back before I knew I’d have to have the hysterectomy, my friend had told me about the tubes down this woman’s throat, and just imagining it made me uncomfortable as hell.

So I kept telling myself, “If that woman could live through that (for a while, at least), then you can live through this, you big freaking baby.” I’m pretty stern with myself about things like this. I have little tolerance for whining.

Some day when I’m older, I might have to have a more serious surgery. Maybe more than one. That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Count your blessings. Etc., etc. There are lots of cliches that serve in situations like this. Also, I’m lucky enough to live in the age of Web MD. Whenever I’m having health problems, I like to look them up on Web MD and meditate on the worst possible scenario. Because, when you’re mentally prepared for the worst, the second worst is easy.

I’m afraid of what will happen to my body as I get older. I don’t mind admitting that to you. The older I get, the more I admire and respect everyone who’s older than me.

The Coping Mechanisms of Others

Before I had the hysterectomy, I had a hysteroscopy, which is like an exploratory mission. It’s like minor surgery, although it doesn’t always involve being cut.

Everyone has their own least favorite part of surgery. Mine is the time immediately after waking up. (Second least favorite is going under.) A lot people told me they hate the prep time most. And I can totally see why. It’s sort of dreadful. You show up at the hospital more than an hour early so they can make you strip yourself naked and lie under thin bits of cotton. They tether you to IVs and electronic leg warmers. Worst of all, they wheel you around like that and strangers can see you. You stop being a human being and become merely a human body. You’re like a piece of meat on a conveyor belt, rolling through the nurses’ factory.

Although I’m a control freak in normal life, I can handle the prep time. I can force myself to let go of my own autonomy and put my faith in the nurses. It’s self-induced Stockholm Syndrome, what I actually do. I try to exert good will in the nurses’ direction so they won’t forget about me — won’t let me get too cold, won’t let my IV fill my bladder too quickly.

My coworker T said about this part of it: “And they don’t even let you wear makeup.”

Yes! They don’t even let you wear makeup, or jewelry, or false eyelashes or perfume or anything!

I told her, “I hate that because it makes me realize how much I rely on cuteness to get by.”

She didn’t know what I meant. I said, “You know… I’m freezing to death, so I look at one of the nurses like this [smile, almost wink] so he’ll come over and help me. But he doesn’t. And then I realize, ‘Oh, shit. That doesn’t work without my mascara!'”

T looked at me askance and I thought, “Okay, maybe that’s something I’m not supposed to talk about.”

But, like I said, I’m okay with the prep time. I can’t be cute without makeup, but I can be pitiable if I have to. I can get extra blankets when I need them, using a certain voice. (God, that poor woman with the tube down her throat. Don’t think about it.)

Before my hysteroscopy, I had extended prep time. I was in a tiny hospital and my surgery room wasn’t ready at the scheduled hour, so my doctor ran off to do a pending caesarian and I had to wait on my stretcher for an extra hour. Next to me, on the other side of a nylon curtain, was another stretcher containing the woman who’d ridden up on the elevator with me 90 minutes before.

This woman was apprehensive. She had a lot of concerns, and she told them loudly to her nurses, her anesthesiologist, and everyone else in the room. Her doctor came by and she asked him in-depth questions, like how he’d done in his classes at Baylor and how he was going to avoid severing her nerves by mistake. She gave orders for specific drugs during the surgery and after. Eventually, she mentioned that she was a nurse, and I was glad because listening to her was making me feel like I hadn’t done enough research, myself.

This woman said, “I just can’t… I just can’t…” and then she stopped talking for the first time in a long while. Having received their fill of orders from this woman, apparently, all the doctors and nurses left the prep room. Then a new patient was wheeled into the room and deposited into the bay on the other side of my neighbor. The new patient started to snore. I remember feeling envious. I would’ve slept through those hours if I could.

Nurses and doctors filed back into our room and went to check on my neighbor. She told them, “The lady to my right was snoring really loud. I bet the lady to my left, who came up on the elevator with me, thought it was me snoring like that.” She said that two or three times, seemingly begging me to confirm or deny. So I called through the curtain, “I didn’t think it was you snoring.” She said, “Oh, good.” Then she told us all, “I had a panic attack, a little while ago. When I stopped talking? I couldn’t talk anymore, because I was having a panic attack.” She seemed proud that she’d been able to keep that from us.

Overall, she seemed desperate to cling to any invulnerability she had left. She may have been indisposed, but at least she wasn’t snoring. She may have been panicked, but at least she’d kept it to herself.

I couldn’t help but feel love for her, in a sisterly way, and wish her well. But silently, and not until I’d gotten the extra blanket.

My Worst Part

I’ve had about five surgeries now, throughout my life, and hands-down, the worst part is always when I first wake up. Every time, I’ve been in pain and very thirsty. Every time, I said so to the nurses standing near. Every fucking time, they gave me pain killers but not water. Not even ice.

After the gall bladder surgery, I couldn’t open my eyes but I could hear a young male nurse beside me. I asked him for water. Instead of answering me, he said, “She’s asking for water.” A female nurse, farther away, said, “She can’t have any. She’ll throw it up.”

I asked for ice. He said, “She’s asking for ice.” I heard no response but got no ice, either. I kept asking and he kept relaying my words with a slight tone of surprise, as if I was a cockatoo saying sentences that almost made sense. I got the impression that he was new at his job. Eventually, I said to him, “I can hear you. I can hear you ignoring me.” He shuffled away from me then and never came back.

After the hysteroscopy, there was only a female nurse seated on a stool ten feet away. I know because I was able to peek this time. I said, “Thirsty.” She said, “You’re thirsty? Okay. I’ll bring you some ice.”

I waited. No feet shuffling. I used all my strength to open one eye. I saw her sitting on the stool, writing in a file folder.

“I’m thirsty,” I said. She said, “Okay. I’ll bring you some ice.”

I passed out. I woke up again. I told her I was thirsty and she said she’d bring me ice. She lied. Again and again. I passed out two or three times, and every time I woke up, she was a liar. When I opened my eyes enough for them to wheel me out of that section, I told her — that liar, that Nazi — I said, “I remember all the times you said you’d bring ice and you didn’t.”

I bet she didn’t even care, though. I couldn’t turn around to catch her reaction because my neck was hurting like hell from the tube they’d apparently shoved down my throat when I was knocked out and couldn’t stop them. So I stayed still and imagined that Nazi Nurse looked chagrinned. And I made myself look pitiable again, and they rolled me to the room where the honest nurses feed you ice with a spoon and cranberry juice in little foil-topped containers.

It wasn’t until I got home that someone remembered to tell me that the hysteroscopy was unsuccessful. Because I’d read Web MD, I knew then that I’d have to go back to the hospital to have a hysterectomy. I didn’t cry when I realized this. I was disappointed, but mentally prepared.

My Neighbor in Everyday Life

Today is Tuesday. My hysterectomy was the Friday before last. I’m not supposed to drive until this Friday. But I drove a little bit this morning, and it felt so good. I can’t tell you why I like driving so much (or, if I could, it’d take another really long blog entry), but it felt so, so good to drive my car this beautiful spring morning with my MP3 player on. I will admit to you that I cried. Even when I went too far and my stomach began to hurt, I cried from happiness and not pain.

That’s very dramatic, isn’t it? It’s only been a week and a half since the surgery, and the recovery wasn’t that bad. What was it, but a few days of chanting, “It’s gonna suck real bad, but it’s gonna be worth it”? Easy breezy Cover Girl. I’m wearing tons and tons of mascara right now. I have nothing to complain about.

One of the places I forbidden-ly drove this morning was my neighborhood Starbucks. Yes — the Starbucks that I complain about on Facebook, because I prefer the more urban Starbuckses inside the Loop, in the neighborhoods I haven’t sold enough books to afford.

Our neighborhood Starbucks is a stage for a certain cast of characters. My neighborhood used to be classy in the ’80s, and now it’s far away enough, old enough, and cheap enough to host a certain demographic. That is, people my age who manage to work from home or retire early. I myself work part-time right now, so I can tell the difference between these people and the mere unemployed. These people hang out all morning at the Starbucks, chatting and leisurely fingering their laptops. They’re not feverishly searching Monster.com like the people at the cheaper independent coffee shop down the street.

There’s one guy who hangs out at our Starbucks every day, and he knows every single person there. He’s an older guy, and I think his name is D. Every time I go there for an Americano to go, D is carrying his latte from table to table, conversing with every single person in the place. If he hasn’t yet met them, he introduces himself and then finds out everything he wants to know from his newfound friends. I imagine that he’s a retired cop, but it’s hard to say for sure since I grew up in a neighborhood where the cops never stopped to chat.

I’m kind of a bitch. I mean, I’m not a very social person and my facial expression — when I’m not hoping for extra blankets — is a ghetto-wise, off-putting scowl. I’m an introvert, to put it kindly. If you’ve seen me do a reading out in public somewhere, you’re saying, “No, you’re not, Gwen! I know you. You love people and you always smile and you’re very, very, very nice!” (People say that. My own friends say that to me.) But no, performances don’t count. Ask my husband – I do not invite friendly overtures in public.

I hadn’t been to my neighborhood Starbucks in a good long while — not since I bought a fancy new coffee machine a few months ago. But, being out of heavy cream this morning, I drove there against my doctor’s orders and stood in line with my bitch face, lost in my world of MP3-fueled thoughts. I placed my order and then waited in the corner where you wait while the suburban barista misunderstands or messes up your drink.

In walked D. I recognized him right off the bat, even though his face looked a little different — swollen? more lined? — and he was leaning on one of those roll-y wheelchair-y walker things. Why was he walking with that thing? It startled me so much, I looked him directly in the face and smiled.

While I waited, D greeted everyone else in the Starbucks. For one guy, he bought a drink. When my drink was ready, I turned to leave but D’s wheel-y walker blocked me. He’d rolled all the way through to me by then, and he asked me how I was doing. He didn’t know my name because he’d only spoken to me once and I’d been standoffish enough not to give it to him. But this morning, when he greeted me, I pointed to his walker wheeler and said, “How are you doing? What happened to you?”

He said he’d had leg surgery following heart surgery, and both of those had been followed by surgery on the other leg due to infection. “Oh, no,” I said. In a more labored voice than I’d known him to use before, he described waking up in the hospital and finding his leg tied up like a pork roast. “Oh, no,” I said again, meaning it sincerely. He said he was in pain but was holding up as well as could be expected.

He looked at me as if something had changed and he couldn’t figure out what. Maybe, I thought, he could tell that I’d had surgery recently, too. Like we were fellow veterans in a way (but he a lieutenant and me no more than a private or corporal at the most).

He pointed at my wedding ring. “You’ve done well here.” I shook my head. “I’ve been married, but sometimes I forget to wear it.” I remember the lady beside me made a face when I said that. A lady doesn’t forget to wear her wedding ring! That’s almost as bad as talking about a surgery in her lady parts!

I told D that I hoped he’d recover soon. And I really, really meant it, so I went so far as to touch him on the arm. Then I left.

I know there is way more suffering in the world than I will ever feel. Way more than anyone in America will ever feel. But I hope that, if you have to have a hysterectomy in the future (knock on wood!), having read this will prepare you, mentally, a little bit more.

I Can’t Take the Time to Tell You These Things

… or write this site off on my taxes unless I say “Hey, guys, my next book is coming out in July. Don’t forget to buy it if you’re so inclined.”

Duty done. Until next time, peeps. Cheers.

Every time I write a novel, I gain ten pounds, like a bear in a cave. So I’m trying to lose that now. I’m trying to have a lot of fun and relaxation, real fast, before I start writing my next book. Because I do have a next book in mind, and I already promised to write it. So I’m torturing myself now. Every day, I’m like, “No, don’t start writing it yet. First you have to relax some more and have more fun.” It’s difficult, living like this. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on, relaxing and having fun and not writing. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Some stuff is happening later in the year that I’m not supposed to tell y’all yet, so pretend I didn’t say anything. Right now I’m teaching a class at Houston arts organization MECA, and that’s really fun. Once a week, I hang out with 20-25 kids ages 10 through 14, and I nag them to make their own graphic novels and chapbooks. Or, actually, I nag them to slow down and not make their books too quickly. Because they’re all clever and have good ideas, and it’s my job to make sure they get through the whole project successfully. Local comic store Bedrock Comics donated books to our class for the kids to use as inspiration. Poets & Writers is underwriting part of the course, making it possible for me to be there. Someone else is chipping in for art supplies, I think. Maybe it’s the City of Houston. I have some really nice college kids coming in and volunteering, sitting with the kids and helping out. Local artist Diana Muniz co-teaches the class, coming up with applicable lessons and reminding me that the kids need occasional restroom breaks and such. Like I said — it’s lots of fun. I’m hoping everyone finishes their books and we can have a little reading/reception at the end. The whole purpose of the class is to teach kids project management skills — to get them to do something from conception to completion, and to feel the sense of accomplishment one earns from stuff like that. And if they manage to sell their books and make a few bucks afterwards, even better. We’re focusing on “sense of accomplishment” more than profit, because we don’t want them to come away with unrealistic expectations about careers in the arts. Heh.

I guess I was lying when I titled this “Not Working.” I’m always working, but right now it’s only for 8 or 10 hours a day. But soon, like I said, things will have to return to normal. I’ll quit being lazy and start writing again.

Y’all save your pennies for the novel (and kids’ book) in May. You’ll read through them really fast — in less than 100th of the time that it took me to write them. And i’ll already be running behind on the next book for you to gobble up. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Also, I’m noticing that people don’t read blogs like they used to. Everything’s Facebook, Facebook, Facebook now, isn’t it? (Or Twitter, Twitter.)

I don’t want to give up this blog, because it’s like a really long-standing crack habit for me, even though I don’t have as much time to smoke it anymore. (That’s not the best metaphor, but this has no editor. Or royalties. Or deadline.)

Y’all feel free to follow me on Facebook, unless you’re a bad person. I only have one FB identity — no fan pages, book pages, or whatnot — so you’ll have to excuse the constant back-and-forth with my cousins about what and where we’re going to drink that weekend.

I’m disabling comments on this post (and probably on future ones, too) because I’ve received my lifetime quota of spam comments from people selling knock-off watches and bags.

See y’all around the ‘net.

Xoxox,

Gwen

I didn’t want to tell anyone that, as a result of taking way, way too much allergy medicine, I’d started having hallucinations two days ago. I couldn’t tell anyone until the loratadine and cetirizine hydrochloride left my system and the hallucinating wasn’t happening anymore. Partially because I hate admitting any kind of vulnerability, but mostly because the hallucinations were very cliched. I saw bugs where there were none. Where there were bugs (we have continued problems with water bugs aka roaches, being that this is Houston), I saw different kinds of bugs in their stead. That annoyed me. The hallucinating and its clichedness, I mean. I also had really vivid dreams. Those were okay. But don’t take a lot of allergy medicine in the hopes of inducing an acid-like trip, you drug addicts who may be reading this. I don’t do drugs but I’m sure there are better ways.

Washington, DC (and Photo Obsessions)

I went to Washington, DC, a month or so ago. I liked it very much. Some guy there asked me what I’d seen so far and I said, “The White House and the Lincoln Memorial. And Chinatown.” And he said that wasn’t really the city. But then I told him I’d walked to those places. I’d walked for miles, through a lot of different neighborhoods, and I’d seen a lot of things that don’t have names on maps. And he said that was better, that walking around was the only real way to see a city. He said he liked to walk in new cities until he got lost. But that’s too much for me. I don’t like to be lost, so I travel with my iPhone very close to my person, and I monitor my position on its GPS religiously. So… DC was very beautiful. Y’all know that if you live there or have been there. The funniest part was, on my last day there, in the cab back to the airport, the radio advised us not to be walking around. The heat was dangerous, they told us. And I had walked three miles that very morning. And the whole time, I’d thought, “It’s kinda hot here today, but it’s so much cooler than at home. I bet people love living here coz they can walk all year long.”

There are a million tourists in DC, too. I might not have seen one native, the whole time I was there. I love when there are lots of tourists because one of my hobbies is taking pictures of other people with their own cameras. I like to do that because I’m a control freak and photos are important to me and so many people take shitty photos of each other. I know that because every time I ask a stranger to take a photo of me, they do a really bad job. I’m good at taking photos, so my narcissistic fantasy is that, when the tourists I’ve photographed get home, they look at the pictures I took and think, “Thank God that woman offered to take our picture. I will cherish this photograph forever.” And maybe they get it framed or whatever.

See also: My hobby of taking pictures of people at weddings, especially weddings where I hardly know anybody. Although I’m no master at that — I’m pretty decent, but my friend Ashley (professional photographer) is the absolute Shaolin Master of candid wedding photography. She took pictures at my wedding, and even the snaps she did with leftover Kodak disposables make me want to cry.

I have Bad Photo Trauma, also, from when I was young. For a long time, I thought I was ugly. But I’m not, and I certainly wasn’t ugly at all as a child. It’s just that I knew a lot of people who didn’t know how to photograph people for shit. It pisses me off when I see someone look at a photo of themselves and it makes them unhappy. You know, when someone’s like, “Oh my God, I didn’t realize I looked that horrible.” Because that’s such a bad, damaging feeling for a person to experience. I swear, if I’m sitting on the bus and a total stranger says that, I will totally butt in and say, “No, that’s just a really shitty photo. No one looks good in a photo taken from under their chin, in that kind of lighting. Plus, that’s the kind of camera that flattens everything. Look at that vase in the background, the way it looks distorted. That’s how your hips are distorted here, too. It’s just a shitty photo. You look nothing like that.”

Badly composed photographs are one of the scourges of our society, I swear.

The most beautiful thing I saw in DC was the two fountains outside the… Federal Reserve, maybe? Or the Treasury? On that long avenue/boulevard that connects the Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. I’m no professional and no artist, but I set a goal for myself to photograph those in a way that would convey their beauty to my husband. I took about 30 pics of each one, discarded all but three of those, and I think I accomplished my goal. We want to take a family trip to DC in October, maybe, when the cherry trees bloom.

“Post Partum”

A lot of writers say they experience “post-partum” depression after finishing a novel. I guess that’s what’s been happening to me for the last couple of months. A lot of writers get over theirs by hurrying to the next book, but I don’t like to do that. I can’t. I have to read other people’s books, watch other people’s TV shows (Mad Men and True Blood and re-watching Freaks and Geeks with my youngest son), view other people’s art for a while. Feed myself stimuli or whatever. Fill the tank. And then I feel lazy and rusted for a while. And then I feel afraid to get back on the bike and start again. But then it’s really easy to write something small, like here on this blog, isn’t it? I tell myself, every time, that it’s okay if I choose never to write another book, never to write again. Because it is okay. And once I believe myself saying that, it’s easy to begin again.

Right now I really wish everyone could hurry and see the work I’ve finished – the novel I recently finished, the kids’ book I finished more than a year ago that has really beautiful illustrations, and the YA mystery short story I’m kinda proud of. They’re all coming out this spring. Then, the spring after that, I think, you’ll get to see the last kids’ book I’ve written, which I hope gets really beautiful illustrations, too.

Right now I have exactly three kids’ books that I’d like to write — that I feel are really important that I write. I have one YA novel in mind that I’d like to try to do, if I can strike the right tone in it. I’ve always wanted to do YA, but I never wanted to rush into it and do a sloppy job, you know. I have one idea for a whole mystery novel, now that editor Sarah Cortez got me hooked on mystery, but I’m not sure if/when I’ll do that. And then I have this one novel (“literary fiction”) that I’ve been writing in my mind for about ten years now. My dad keeps telling me to do that one — he’s the only one I’ve told any of the plot to. I’ve been holding off on that because… of fear or whatever. But maybe I’ll start it right now. I’m trying to decide. I’m trying, at least, to decide to write exactly what I want, and not what seems the most commercially viable. Oh, and my sons want to do a book, too, a non-fiction piece, and I told them I’d edit for them. That’ll be fun. I think we need to go out of town and write that one in a hotel, because that’s how they came up with the idea in the first place.

That’s all for right now.

I wish… First I always wish I could tell y’all how happy I’ve been, lately. Then, I think that feels like bragging without purpose. So I wish, instead, that I could somehow type something that would make y’all feel as happy as me. Like an instruction manual. Like “Take your family to the Sabine Bridge on a nice day and listen to their jokes and then take pictures of each other posing as ninjas.” Like recipes. “Go to Washington, DC, on business. In your spare hours, follow the walking tour I’ve drawn on this map. Eat these noodles while this restaurant’s proprietor gets into this couple’s business and makes you laugh.” “Remember that it’s almost fall. Get excited.” “Eat a tamarind snow cone with chili powder while listening to your favorite songs.”

But that’s not possible, is it? So I’ll just wish y’all well. I hope anyone reading this, and anyone else, is doing well and being as happy as possible in this world.

– Ben Folds Five

(I don’t mind being the one you sit around making fun of.)

I’m going to talk about Carlos Santana. He’s not my favorite musician, and I’ve never met him. But I do like one of his old songs very much, and a lot of people in my family generally like his music.

One of my all-time favorite songs is his “Dance, Sister, Dance.”* I really like Greg Walker’s passionate vocals on it, I like the guitar solos and the Latin drumming, and I like the fact that the song’s “story” was ambiguous to me as a child, changing as I got older. First I thought the narrator was literally singing to his sister. Then I thought he was singing to a stranger who was Latina, like himself, and therefore his sister in an overarching way. Then I realized the singer was black. Then it occurred to me that his appreciation of this woman went beyond mere admiration and he probably wanted to sleep with her. But no matter who he was or who she was, her dancing inspired that song, right?

Every time I hear that song or any other one by Santana, it makes me think of several things: the old St. Joseph/MECA festival that took place every fall in my old Houston neighborhood, young men in my neighborhood who built lowriders, barbecues in my dad’s back yard, Sunday drives at Memorial park, my cousin tracing the art from a Santana album cover, and the Passengers Tuff Club remix of Michelle Branch’s “Breathe.”

I don’t know Carlos Santana in real life. I don’t know much about him, other than a handful of his songs and the fact that he’s Mexican and the fact that he has a line of shoes. And yet, he’s an important part of my life because of the feelings and memories described in the paragraph above.

I know he’s probably rich now. I’m sure he deserves to be.

*Note: I don’t care if you think I’m cheesy for liking that song or for liking ’70s rock — just un-follow/un-friend/un-like me now if it bothers you. Not to be defensive, but I’ve seen a lot of people whining about people who like 70’s rock lately (and I don’t just mean my Gen Y husband) and I’m so over it. The whining and the blatant fear of uncoolness only makes me want to like that music more.

II.

Last night I watched Work of Art and saw Contestant Ryan get sent home for his umpteenth “too literal” interpretation of a challenge. Like a zillion other people, I think the show is ridiculous and does not inspire good art, but I watch it, anyway. Last night in particular, I got emotional over Contestant Ryan’s story about his mother abandoning him because he chose to stop being a Jehovah’s Witness.

I get why the judges kicked him out of the competition, but I wished the cameramen/editors had shown us more of his piece. He put up pictures that looked like child’s drawings: of himself as a pirate, of himself as a child with his mom, and of something else. Under that, he had a bunch of angrily crumpled drawings and supplies. I wanted to see the pictures better, even if they weren’t good enough “art.” I wanted to see how angry he’d allowed them to be.

I hope he went home and did more art on the subject. I won’t feel sorry for him, because just being on that ridiculous show might have connected him to people who will buy his art. Also, it probably helped, on some level, people who felt abandoned by their parents because of religion or cults. At least it made them feel less alone in the world, right?

III.

We rented the first three seasons of Mad Men and watched them all within the past few weeks. If you already watch the show, you don’t need me to tell you how good it is. The writing’s really good. The show makes me feel like I’m reading and I take the time to consider and interpret, which is rare and awesome for TV.

I went to IMDb and looked up some of its writers and was amused to see that some of them used to write for Baywatch and Star Trek: Enterprise. Then I was happy for them, yet sad for people who might be writing for cheesy shows right now and wishing to God they could score something better/more worthy of their talent.

I hope everyone who creates Mad Men ends up rich.

IV.

Whenever people tell me that they downloaded a bit torrent of someone’s music/art/writing for free, I think of that scene in The Craft where Fairuza Balk’s character tells the bookstore-owning witch that “everything in Nature steals.” I believe that she was right — that everyone steals. But I think if you can afford not to steal, you should try not to steal art. I used to download MP3s for free. But now I get more pleasure from buying them. I imagine the musicians seeing my purchase on a list of their statistics and feeling glad for it.

I’m really glad that I can afford to pay 99 cents for a song or 9.99 for a book, because I believe that’s a really low price to pay for something that will make me happy for hours and maybe stick in my mind for decades.

I wish I could afford to buy visual art. I can’t, yet. But visual art is generally worth the thousands of dollars per piece, I think. I sometimes buy books about art, or prints of art, or little pieces of merchandise based on art. I buy what I like, when I can.

V.

I’m a writer. An author. I’ve sold eight books now in the span of ten years.

Before I wrote my first book, I had certain motivations. I will tell you, without undue judgment on my younger self, that those motivations included the phrase “rich and famous.”

Every time I write or try to sell another book, my motivations are different. They shift. Maybe if I were more forthcoming on this blog, I’d be able to tell you that they still contain the word rich, but it’s further down the list and close to the word maybe. But let’s just say that I get older with every book, and a little more realistic than I used to be. And yet I haven’t stopped writing. (Yet.)

VI.

Recently, I was talking to another author about self promotion. She was the same age as me, and on the same level, writing-career-wise. She’d been trying venues I hadn’t yet tried, and she reported that they hadn’t made her rich and famous.

She told me that she didn’t mind promoting her work, as we’re all required to do, but that she didn’t want it to take away from the other important parts of her life, like spending time with her family.

I agreed. I will promote my work — I have to, it’s in my contract — but I no longer want to obsess over it, like I did when I only had one book. I want to have a balanced life. I want to try to be happy, like everyone else gets to.

VII.

I meet a lot of strangers. I go to a lot of conferences to promote my work, and I enjoy doing that, although maybe not for the reasons you’d imagine. I like to do readings and presentations on stage because I’m good at public speaking and making people laugh. I like to see different cities and different hotel rooms. I do like talking to strangers, on airplanes or in hotel restaurants, but not about myself.

Usually, I don’t have to talk about my work much. Lately I find that telling people I’m an author will make them talk about their own reading habits. Most of the strangers I meet don’t read, or read very little. They apologize to me for that. The ones who read will tell me what they’ve been reading, and the vast majority of it is genre fiction (mystery, romance, vampire) and most of it serial genre fiction. (“I’m on Letter F of Sue Grafton.” “I’m on Book 18 of Anita Blake.”) Sometimes these strangers confess to me that the books they’re reading are boring, or that they don’t really enjoy them. But at least they’re reading, they tell me. At least they read.

I’ve joked around about Twilight fans a little, here, and you might get the impression that I don’t respect people who only read serial genre fiction. But that’s not the case. I meet a lot of really nice, polite, decent-seeming strangers with interesting careers who do good deeds for their communities. How could I be mad at them for going to the bookstore once in a while and buying the genre paperbacks they find on the tables up front?

If you wanted to start listening to jazz, you’d probably try Miles Davis. If you wanted to try eating Thai food, you’d probably start with pad thai. I learned to knit last year. Am I a loser because I started by purchasing acrylic yarn at Hobby Lobby? No. I’m a good person. I try be courteous to others. I try to do good things with my life. I like the Harry Potter books. I used to read Regency romance. I used to enjoy Lilian Jackson Braun’s “The Cat Who Something or Other” series, back when I couldn’t afford books and only read what was at the library, and I will never stop loving genre paperback god Lawrence Sanders. I will probably start reading Sue Grafton soon, because all those readers can’t be wrong, right?

VIII.

The other day I got a royalty statement in the mail. It itemized how many copies of my first novel got sold. Actually, it did more itemizing of how many copies got returned by book stores who couldn’t sell them.

When I saw the statement, it looked to me like it said, “You have failed.”

As I thought about the statement later, over the next 48 hours, approximately, I remembered it saying, “Writing books is a waste of your time and you need to put full-time effort into advancing in Corporate America.” I was sad about that, then angry at myself for having the nerve to be sad about it.

I was angry at a lot of random, faceless people, and then angry at myself for not working hard enough to sell my work. I told myself that I was lazy because all I did was work a day job, manage a household, and write a few books. If I weren’t so damned lazy, I’d spend more time promoting the hell out of myself and out of the books I’d written.  Or else I’d quit effing around and write something that people actually buy, like a book about vampires, except not vampires because that market’s flooded, so it has to be the next big thing. I’d have to figure out what that was. “Figure out what’s going to be bigger than vampires, you lazy ass! Figure it out right now, or else stop writing and start trying to make more money at your day job!” I told myself, loudly, in my mind. And then I replied, “Stop screaming at me! God, you’re so mean!” And then I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t, because I was dehydrated. So I went to Starbucks and got something that dehydrated me even more.

But after I drank my fourth Starbucks and the 48 hours passed, I talked to some friends and to my agent and forced myself to chill out. Then I re-read the statement and it turned out that it didn’t actually say anything about me or my career. It didn’t say anything but a number. A statistic. And as we all know, statistics can be manipulated or construed into whatever point you’re trying to prove.

IX.

I get a lot of emails and Facebook messages from strangers. Sometimes the emails are from people who want to be writers. They desperately want to be published, and they want my advice.

I’m tempted to tell them that whatever they think they’re going to get from being published is probably not going to happen. But I don’t, because writers who tell people that get totally hated on. I see stories about it online. “Dr. Joe Blow snapped and told his Short Story class that none of them were gonna get rich from their writing and they should give it up if that’s what they were hoping for. What a dick!”

I’m not rich and famous, but I keep writing, so I must be getting something out of it, right? For that reason, I go ahead and give the strangers my advice. I give the same basic advice every time:

1. Read as much as you can.

2. Write. Don’t talk about how you’re going to be a writer. Just write. Before you knew my name or J.K. Rowling’s, we were sitting at home writing, alone, while other people went to cocktail parties and told everyone they were gonna be writers.

3. Go to the library and look at The Writer’s Market. It’ll tell you all the steps to being published. If you feel afraid, read The Artist’s Way or Bird by Bird.

X.

Sometimes the emails and Facebook messages are from strangers who’ve read my books and want to tell me that my work meant something to them. Those are, of course, my favorites. They make me very happy, sometimes for as long as 48 hours each. Because, besides the rich/famous thing, one of my motivations has always been to create work that means something to someone.

(What’s cheesier: Classic rock, or the thing I’m about to tell you? I’ll let you decide.)

I believe in karma, probably because I used to be Catholic. Or maybe I believe in something that’s not actually karma, because my dad used to be into Jung. But whatever it’s called and for whatever reason, I believe that it serves me to do good things for others. If I write things that help people or motivate them or make them feel less alone, those actions will create a web of good vibes that will attract the good actions of others and keep me safer than a person would normally be, by default, in this world.

It’s smurfy, but it gets me through the day.

XI.

Every year and between every book, I try to figure out how to get what I want out of life. Lately, I’ve also been trying to decide what exactly I’m trying to get. It’s really difficult. So far, the list only says, “Get kids through college. Maybe knit a whole sweater some day.”

After every book, I say that I’m not going to write another. Especially after this last novel I just finished, because that one took a lot out of me and, as a result, put stress on my family and pets. But that phase has already passed, like all the phases do, and I have one or two ideas for future books.

While waiting for my editor’s feedback on this last book, I sent the manuscript to a friend. She read it in two days, finishing it at one a.m. She emailed and told me it was great. That made me very happy. I’ll be happy for at least 48 hours now.

XII.

I don’t imagine that Carlos Santana would want to know how I feel about his music. I imagine that he has a really nice house with a pool and a solarium, and that either makes him happy or else it doesn’t, but my opinion of his work has absolutely no effect on his life, either way.

But I also like to imagine that he and Greg Walker and Sheila E’s dad (and the Mad Men writers and Sue Grafton and Ryan from Work of Art) are surrounded by a web of good thoughts — grateful feelings from strangers — that will help them and keep them safe. Even if they never even realize it.

Learn from the last person who stole my credit card number and used it to make a fake credit card. Learn from his mistakes, and you’ll be able to steal more money from my account:

1. Don’t go to McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts. I never go there. Try Starbucks, Einstein Bros. Bagels, your local bubble teahouse, or Jack in the Box. That way, my bank won’t immediately look at my transactions and say, “What the…? Gwen never eats McRibs! And there’s no way in hell she’d go to Dunkin Donuts instead of Shipley’s!”

2. I don’t know what the last guy spent $211 on at Duane Reed, but you be sure to buy your drugs at Walgreen’s, and throw in a bunch of buy-one-get-one-half-off lipglosses to make it look authentic.

3. Biggest hint of all: Don’t use my credit card number in New York. I don’t live in New York.

4. If you must disregard tip #1 and go to McDonald’s, anyway, then at least refrain from going twice in the same day. Dude. Come on. Spice it up a little. What’s the use of being a criminal if you won’t even risk trying new foods?

I just want to say that, if you’re one of my MySpace friends or you’ve recently sent me a message on MySpace, and it seems like I’m totally ignoring you, I’m not. I’m just too old and slow to figure out how to work MySpace, usually. That’s all.

My Space.