Friends and followers (all FIFTEEN OF YOU!!), I bring you, unabridged and undiluted and only marginally exaggerated for humor and readability, the thesis of the past twelve months. Otherwise known as The Year in Review. No gimmicks; no sorting by alphabet. No month-by-month rundown. Simply this:
Dear 2010, You Fucking Sucked. Good Riddance. Love, Rachel.
This could have been the Saga of D part Whatever Number We're On, but it would have been all the old bads (the Dumped, Depressed, DUI) and then some (the Dogshit my neighbor put on my windshield - I kid you not. Bitches be crazy).
But I'd like instead to say this. I left the radio station today, after accidentally interrupting the President (our breaks are prerecorded and broadcast on automation, so out of nowhere, when Mr. Obama decides to monopolize the NPR airwaves for some press conference or whatever, my chirpy little radio voice cuts in at 2:39 as per the schedule and Barack is midsentence and I am all "Sunny skies this afternoon! Wind chill! Talk of the Nation! Who cares about Obama listen to me!!!"), and decided I needed more sweaters. And so I tromped out to the Goodwill and navigated the wild road design that is Carolina Beach and did not feel guilty about not attending immediately to my young beast because I looked away for like 2 seconds this morning and next thing I know my brand new (albeit Wal-Mart) shoes were essentially demolished. (But then I scolded him and made him go in his crate to think about what he'd done and when he came out he was about the most sheepish and lovable creature ever birthed and so I forgave him.)
So. I am in the thrift store, and I am, as usual, grabbing way too many things off the racks--though now I actually look at the tag, which is to say that while I still shop at thrift stores, the days of old-man-polyester pants and ironic State Fair t-shirts are long gone--and trying them on and long story short, I spent $30.
At the Goodwill, $30 means this: two Banana Republic sweaters, a Coldwater Creek cardigan, a Gap turtleneck, a lined blazer, a cowboy shirt that's dry clean only, a Loft cardigan, and--wait for it--a little black Calvin Klein dress.
The point is not that I have become incredibly shallow and brand name obsessed (at least not wittingly). The point is that I can wear these things, and I look fucking good in them, because that's what I did this year - I changed. I dropped 45 fucking pounds. I did that.
The sheer colossus of what happened in my life in 2010 gives me vertigo, and yes, this has probably been the unluckiest year of my life. But then I think how I could still be compromising my happiness and living with an insincere individual who I only stayed with because he purported to love me, and, because I did not love myself at all, that was enough to put up with unspeakable amounts of bullshit. I could still be as miserable as I was with him, and still suffering through how wrong we were together just because I was too afraid to be alone.
And then I think that yes, I now have a DUI, I am now a felon in the eyes of Canada (though who cares--sorry, Meg), but I could still be drinking myself stupid with alarming regularity and blithely getting behind the wheel to procure a Big Mac from the other side of town--and maybe I would have ultimately sobered up and realized what a dipshit I was being without any ill consequences, but I feel like it's a heck of a lot more likely that what did eventually happen--my crying in the cop car, being handcuffed to a wall--would have happened in a much uglier way. A car-wrecking, pedestrian-hitting, serious jail time kind of way.
I go to my new therapist now and think, goddammit. I don't want to be this way anymore. I wish I'd never started this whole treatment business. It's annoying. I doubt seeking psychiatric help will ever not be annoying. But at least now I know what's wrong with me. I am not intrinsically bad, as I thought during high school. I am not innately hideous, as I thought all through college. I just have a lot of bad, hideous habits that have royally tampered with how I live my life.
The sum of all of this: I'm changing, and it's for the better.
Plus--and you know you couldn't read an entire blog post without my mentioning him--2010 was the year of Pinto. I cannot believe--literally, I'm trying and I physically cannot believe--that this time last year there was no dog in my life. I was working at the mall, Rob was working at Inclinix, and I'm pretty sure we spent most of our time avoiding one another and, at least on my part, looking forward to going home so I get away from him for a whole month. Which led to a lot of hiding in my childhood closet and weeping when I did finally get home, then going out drinking myself stupid, then reading to distract myself from how fucking awful everything had become.
And now? Now I am decreeing 2011 the Year of No Badness. This will be the year I finish my novel; the year I knock off another 10 pounds and keep them off; the year I make sure my rug is usually vacuumed.
I didn't want to write a month-by-month synopsis of 2010 because I knew I'd realized how much the good outweighed the bad. When you line up the days, there were really only about 10 that authentically sucked from start to finish, versus this, which I'd like to call: Okay 201o I Take It Back You Kind of Kicked Ass Too.
Karlena Janelle Riggs, aka The Love of My Life, visited me twice. Twice! And on one of those trips, we went to Universal Studios, and we rode like a hundred roller coasters, and then we got drunk and road more roller coasters, and it was so unfathomably glorious I am kind of dancing in my seat right now. And--and!--let it be known that she not only drove from Oklahoma to see me, she also brought me QuikTrip, which is actually the most wonderful thing anybody may have ever done for me.
All summer long, actually, my house was full, even though its previous tenant was the reason I needed so many folks around in the first place (AKA IT'S HARD TO BE ALONE WHEN YOU WERE SO BRUTALLY DUMPED). My mom came and we went to Wal-Mart actually every single day. My dad came and we ate oysters every day. My brother came and we ran with Pinto on the beach! Or he ran with Pinto and I just stood by and cheered.
I worked at the Census, and though it was probably the most ridiculous work environment ever, it was also far and away the most fun. I worked on campus, and then I made the only smart decision I may have ever made and quit. I work at the radio station--yes, I, and I'm saying this more to myself than any of you, little old me who used to sit in her bedroom as a wee bowl-cut-bearing child and sing into a microphone to make Rachel Radio, is now a bona fide radio announcer. At a real radio station. I mean--I interrupted the president today!
And I went to Maine. And I emceed a bluegrass festival. And I wrote--I wrote stories and I wrote essays and I wrote some of this novel and I wrote letters and I wrote this blog. I won some awards. I read some books. And I somehow made some of the truest bluest friends who have a porch and like when I'm on it. And I moved from a shithole of a townhouse where we parked in spaces to an ancient enormous downtown apartment where I listen to the noise of playgrounds every morning and where right now the fireplace is burning and my beast is chomping on a bone and my walls are green and covered in photographs that prove how loved I am and how incredible my life has been--there's a picture of Annie covered in snow in Sweden beside a picture of my brother in Cooperstown beside a photo of my mother at Bald Head Island, Karli at Village Inn, my father in our kitchen, the girls at Senior Formal, Dogs in the Back, the Reisenrad, the Rockies, the Big Blue Whale of Catoosa.
You can call it sentimental, but I took all of those photos.
My moms is coming out to see me on Sunday, and then we're loading up my Toyota and driving to Oklahoma. Pinto will be in the backseat, possibly on Benadryll. And the Sunday after, we'll be flying to Seattle, where we're having Christmas on an island, and then we're flying back to Oklahoma and I'll ring in the new year in the heartland of my own heart, and then I'll drive back to North Carolina with Pinto in the backseat, possibly on Benadryll.
That's a pretty dizzying itinerary, but I think it's in keeping with the year itself. I want as many miles between me and 2010 as possible; as many miles to show how many I've come.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
The Saga of Lessons.
Otherwise known as the Saga of D, part two.
The thing about Depression-with-a-capital-D, which, in my modest view, means you take pills, you see doctors, your life is adversely affected beyond feeling gloomy, is just that: you take pills, you see doctors, your life is adversely affected. It's a disease, an affliction, a condition. Point being, I'm sick, and I always will be sick--and fortunately it's manageable, but the mere managing can be just as rough.
Here's a slew of similes for you to chew up: it's like mono. Mono never goes away, but you don't wake up with a sore throat every day. It's like diabetes; you have to monitor yourself. It's like epilepsy because you have fits.
And when those fits occur--and they will--there's very little you can do except cram a spoon between your teeth and hope you don't swallow your tongue.
Some more bad similes: it's a rip tide because you can't fight it. It's like quicksand in the same way. And it's like vomiting, because you medically can't not vomit--there's no such thing as kind of vomiting (at least according to the sagely Dr. Snickerdoodle, otherwise known as brother-in-med-school). You're either hurling your guts up or you're not.
What this looks like to a depressed person is this: uncontrollable crying. Feeling about as fragile as the proverbial eggshell. Not being able to move. Thoughts that yell at each other to a pitch that becomes sheer noise, and logic that whirls--because you've trained your brain to do this, and you can teach yourself otherwise, but there will still be days that you forget all your lessons and regress.
When you're trying to get over an infection or a cold, you wake up and check your vitals: throat sore? nose clogged? aches?
When you're living depressed, you do the same, only you think: can I do this today? And this is simply getting out of bed. Then problems create problems--you sleep through work, your boss chides you, you're overly sensitive so a totally justified criticism becomes a personal attack, which you deserve--or so you think, because you think so insanely little of yourself that you deserve all the shit the world can dish out and then some--because you are a terrible person and wasting everyone's oxygen and nobody actually likes you, it's a vast conspiracy of politeness, and really, what's the point anyway, you've fucked it up all beyond all hope of repair anyway but dying is too tough so just go back to bed and stay there.
Pretty much every day this past week has been like this for me.
I'm hollering because last night, when the police man asked me from the other side of the glass if I had any conditions, I told him I was depressed.
And he said, "Aren't we all," and kept on with his paperwork.
So there's two lessons for you and a thousand for me in this. The first is that depression sucks, it's ugly, it's unavoidable, and cavalierly suggesting to a hysterical girl who's handcuffed to a wall that everyone is depressed isn't just a bad idea, it's plain wrong. I'm not asking for sympathy or pity or even understanding. I know that I fought a diagnosis forever because we have some collective myth that equates the word depression with simply feeling bad, and anyone worth their snuff can dig out of their own hole, right? "I'm depressed" means "I'm feeling sorry for myself and having a crummy day."
False, says I!
The second is this, and if I ever wanted to use this blog as a platform, now's the time--though I debated for a long while whether publicizing this would have any other benefit besides consoling me (because if it's an anecdote it's no longer a tragedy, right!?)--but hell's bells, here goes.
Don't drink and drive.
(So many d's!)
I was not drunk. I'd had three beers. I've been drunk before, and this was not it. But I also had an expired registration and a busted headlight and a lead foot on the gas pedal because a certain beast had neither had his dinner nor been let out to pee in about, oh, ten hours.
I have been crying so much lately that when the officer's car lights started blinking, I was dry-eyed. As I was when he made me walk and count and balance on one fucking foot and breathalyzed me, again, all of a block and a half from my front door.
When he handcuffed me in the passenger seat of the cruiser, though, it started, and continued all the way to the station, where I was walked into a plain and terrible room. He sat me on a stool. He asked if I was right or left handed.
"Right," I said, and he hooked my left wrist to the wall.
And it kept going as I exhausted every number in my phone searching for the one sober soul in Wilmington still awake at 2:30 who could come sign me out and take my pathetic ass home.
To say it took forever was an understatement, but you know all the cliches: the chummy other cops, "how're the wife n' kids" as you're sitting there, humiliated beyond belief, shocked, any buzz you may have had evaporated, and the slow paperwork, the ambling, all while you're sitting there with your hand stuck to the wall.
And I was angry and shocked and decidedly unhappy and thinking psychotic thoughts, but I kept quiet, and after eight hundred years and seventeen months and a few hours more, they let me go.
Even though my license is gone for at least a month and I've got attorney bills to pay, there were a lot of miracles in the whole mess. I called everyone--my friends, my co-workers, my boss--and, in my catastrophizing mind thought I'm going to have to sleep in jail because I have no friends. But, of course, this is crazy person thinking, and not only was my sober signer there, but also the girl I'd gotten in touch with who got in touch with her and--and!--another friend who'd called the station back and somehow deduced that Little Rachel was in the slammer.
In short, they came through, and there was a fucking committee of friendship standing outside in the cold waiting for me. Not only did they save me the unforgettable shame that would've been my boss driving me home (he would have, I know, but thank god the old fart was asleep), but it made me realize what a hugely distorted conclusion I'd made earlier. You don't stand in the cold in the middle of nowhere dealing with jackass law enforcers out of simple courtesy. That's just fact.
But this is the bigger one and the one you should pay attention to: I was two blocks from my house. I felt in control. My car is intact--albeit two blocks away--and my scarred psyche and your waning attention span are the only casualties of this whole shitshow.
It could have very, very easily been otherwise.
Which was what my family kept repeating when I broke the news today, all of them knowing that I'm gonna give myself more hell than the three of them combined could: no one was hurt. And we all know--you and me and my folks and everybody else--that there have been too many times when I was in worse states and didn't get caught. It's miraculous that when I did, it was last night, after three innocent beers and not, oh, say, nights of whiskey. And you've had them too.
Are you paying attention so far? Here's what we've learned: a) depression is a bitch. b) don't steer after beer. (I just came up with that!)
Here's what I learned:
Three beers is what I would have once called a nice, semi-buzzed limit. Three beers used to work when I was 45 pounds heavier, but also when I hadn't forgone dinner and slept til three out of paralyzing misery and wasn't, well, sick.
I have got to start taking care of myself. I know, if I'd eaten, that little number on the breathalyzer screen would have been lower. And it wasn't self-denial, it's not anorexia--I just didn't eat. My doctor told me this: "You don't have an eating disorder, but your eating is certainly disordered."
And that's true--and so is my laundry, and my sleeping habits, and how I write, and just about everything.
Another D, Disorder. And another: Determined, as in how I am about how I've got to go on--harder, better, faster, stronger!
Both my parents told me, at the utmost least, it'd make a good story. I hope so.
Go forth, young readers, and be sober and mobile! May you learn from my mistakes. And may you also please give me a ride.
The thing about Depression-with-a-capital-D, which, in my modest view, means you take pills, you see doctors, your life is adversely affected beyond feeling gloomy, is just that: you take pills, you see doctors, your life is adversely affected. It's a disease, an affliction, a condition. Point being, I'm sick, and I always will be sick--and fortunately it's manageable, but the mere managing can be just as rough.
Here's a slew of similes for you to chew up: it's like mono. Mono never goes away, but you don't wake up with a sore throat every day. It's like diabetes; you have to monitor yourself. It's like epilepsy because you have fits.
And when those fits occur--and they will--there's very little you can do except cram a spoon between your teeth and hope you don't swallow your tongue.
Some more bad similes: it's a rip tide because you can't fight it. It's like quicksand in the same way. And it's like vomiting, because you medically can't not vomit--there's no such thing as kind of vomiting (at least according to the sagely Dr. Snickerdoodle, otherwise known as brother-in-med-school). You're either hurling your guts up or you're not.
What this looks like to a depressed person is this: uncontrollable crying. Feeling about as fragile as the proverbial eggshell. Not being able to move. Thoughts that yell at each other to a pitch that becomes sheer noise, and logic that whirls--because you've trained your brain to do this, and you can teach yourself otherwise, but there will still be days that you forget all your lessons and regress.
When you're trying to get over an infection or a cold, you wake up and check your vitals: throat sore? nose clogged? aches?
When you're living depressed, you do the same, only you think: can I do this today? And this is simply getting out of bed. Then problems create problems--you sleep through work, your boss chides you, you're overly sensitive so a totally justified criticism becomes a personal attack, which you deserve--or so you think, because you think so insanely little of yourself that you deserve all the shit the world can dish out and then some--because you are a terrible person and wasting everyone's oxygen and nobody actually likes you, it's a vast conspiracy of politeness, and really, what's the point anyway, you've fucked it up all beyond all hope of repair anyway but dying is too tough so just go back to bed and stay there.
Pretty much every day this past week has been like this for me.
I'm hollering because last night, when the police man asked me from the other side of the glass if I had any conditions, I told him I was depressed.
And he said, "Aren't we all," and kept on with his paperwork.
So there's two lessons for you and a thousand for me in this. The first is that depression sucks, it's ugly, it's unavoidable, and cavalierly suggesting to a hysterical girl who's handcuffed to a wall that everyone is depressed isn't just a bad idea, it's plain wrong. I'm not asking for sympathy or pity or even understanding. I know that I fought a diagnosis forever because we have some collective myth that equates the word depression with simply feeling bad, and anyone worth their snuff can dig out of their own hole, right? "I'm depressed" means "I'm feeling sorry for myself and having a crummy day."
False, says I!
The second is this, and if I ever wanted to use this blog as a platform, now's the time--though I debated for a long while whether publicizing this would have any other benefit besides consoling me (because if it's an anecdote it's no longer a tragedy, right!?)--but hell's bells, here goes.
Don't drink and drive.
(So many d's!)
I was not drunk. I'd had three beers. I've been drunk before, and this was not it. But I also had an expired registration and a busted headlight and a lead foot on the gas pedal because a certain beast had neither had his dinner nor been let out to pee in about, oh, ten hours.
I have been crying so much lately that when the officer's car lights started blinking, I was dry-eyed. As I was when he made me walk and count and balance on one fucking foot and breathalyzed me, again, all of a block and a half from my front door.
When he handcuffed me in the passenger seat of the cruiser, though, it started, and continued all the way to the station, where I was walked into a plain and terrible room. He sat me on a stool. He asked if I was right or left handed.
"Right," I said, and he hooked my left wrist to the wall.
And it kept going as I exhausted every number in my phone searching for the one sober soul in Wilmington still awake at 2:30 who could come sign me out and take my pathetic ass home.
To say it took forever was an understatement, but you know all the cliches: the chummy other cops, "how're the wife n' kids" as you're sitting there, humiliated beyond belief, shocked, any buzz you may have had evaporated, and the slow paperwork, the ambling, all while you're sitting there with your hand stuck to the wall.
And I was angry and shocked and decidedly unhappy and thinking psychotic thoughts, but I kept quiet, and after eight hundred years and seventeen months and a few hours more, they let me go.
Even though my license is gone for at least a month and I've got attorney bills to pay, there were a lot of miracles in the whole mess. I called everyone--my friends, my co-workers, my boss--and, in my catastrophizing mind thought I'm going to have to sleep in jail because I have no friends. But, of course, this is crazy person thinking, and not only was my sober signer there, but also the girl I'd gotten in touch with who got in touch with her and--and!--another friend who'd called the station back and somehow deduced that Little Rachel was in the slammer.
In short, they came through, and there was a fucking committee of friendship standing outside in the cold waiting for me. Not only did they save me the unforgettable shame that would've been my boss driving me home (he would have, I know, but thank god the old fart was asleep), but it made me realize what a hugely distorted conclusion I'd made earlier. You don't stand in the cold in the middle of nowhere dealing with jackass law enforcers out of simple courtesy. That's just fact.
But this is the bigger one and the one you should pay attention to: I was two blocks from my house. I felt in control. My car is intact--albeit two blocks away--and my scarred psyche and your waning attention span are the only casualties of this whole shitshow.
It could have very, very easily been otherwise.
Which was what my family kept repeating when I broke the news today, all of them knowing that I'm gonna give myself more hell than the three of them combined could: no one was hurt. And we all know--you and me and my folks and everybody else--that there have been too many times when I was in worse states and didn't get caught. It's miraculous that when I did, it was last night, after three innocent beers and not, oh, say, nights of whiskey. And you've had them too.
Are you paying attention so far? Here's what we've learned: a) depression is a bitch. b) don't steer after beer. (I just came up with that!)
Here's what I learned:
Three beers is what I would have once called a nice, semi-buzzed limit. Three beers used to work when I was 45 pounds heavier, but also when I hadn't forgone dinner and slept til three out of paralyzing misery and wasn't, well, sick.
I have got to start taking care of myself. I know, if I'd eaten, that little number on the breathalyzer screen would have been lower. And it wasn't self-denial, it's not anorexia--I just didn't eat. My doctor told me this: "You don't have an eating disorder, but your eating is certainly disordered."
And that's true--and so is my laundry, and my sleeping habits, and how I write, and just about everything.
Another D, Disorder. And another: Determined, as in how I am about how I've got to go on--harder, better, faster, stronger!
Both my parents told me, at the utmost least, it'd make a good story. I hope so.
Go forth, young readers, and be sober and mobile! May you learn from my mistakes. And may you also please give me a ride.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Saga of Maintenance.
Hello friends. Long time no blog, as the kids are saying these days.
And that's because there have been remarkable days, but just as many mediocre, and far too many slightly disastrous. This is a problem: I judge my worth by how many catastrophes I avoid per day. Examples: Did I eat only cereal? Did Pinto make a child cry? Did I sleep 15 hours straight on a weekday? Was I reprimanded by some superior, either because I a) slept through work or b) neglected to pick up my dog's droppings (seriously, people--I know it's gross but it's not like I'm tossing used heroin syringes from my pockets like appleseeds) or c) fucked up something else?
So I'm maintaining. When the close of the week approaches, I think, oh, I made it. Another one down. And when the start is imminent, I brace myself, because the way I'm living is a little like standing in the surf during a hurricane, waiting for the big one to come knock me down and sweep me away.
Fortunately, I have very good soles on my shoes.
(I am an excellent metaphorist, clearly).
I'm not complaining, because I brought this on myself. Me and my brother are both somehow engineered to have this sadistic yes I will do everything all at once! mindset that's been hacking away at us since high school. To use other people's cliches: too many irons in the fire. Too many pots on the stove. Or, in the immortal words of one Mr. Bilbo Baggins: "I feel like butter scraped over too much bread."
And I still feel like it's some form of penance for the epic desert that was most of the previous year--the movie watching and beer guzzling and general fucking around. But it's detrimental in a lot of ways because it makes me blind to so much goodness--like my freaking apartment! It's amazing! Huge! Old! Hardwood floors and a working fireplace (okay it's gas but still!).
Sadly I am usually scrambling to find my keys to get to work only marginally later than expected and the floor is covered in dog hair. Seriously. How can one beast produce so much?
But! To drag this already terrible metaphor even further, here are the cleats! Those little wonderments that miraculously prevent my daily drowning! (It's late! I should nap!)
My friends, because they are, miraculously, mine. I realized this in an unfortunate context, but I've learned something about myself--I don't think anybody should like me. I am kind of astounded when they do. I think it fitting that today, while being graciously watched by a friend, Pinto went a little happy-berserk and proceeded to use his torpedo-strength tail and knock over some guitars; it's fitting, because I said to Pinto, "Ah, we make a good pair. Everyone tolerates us." And then the owners of the guitars told me that was false and gave me dinner...again. And some Halloween candy.
(Halloween, incidentally, was a veritable hullabaloo. (Apparently there are only three l's in hullabaloo.) I went as Carrie, aka, I went as a terrifyingly bloody prom queen. It. Was. Awesome.)
My dog, obviously. Because he might have taken to vomiting whenever he eats (only a little), and he might bark like the world is ending when I leave him in friends' backyards for a moment of peace, and he might have eaten pretty much all my shoes, but then he sits on my feet and looks up at me and I'm like "Oh, you son of a bitch--literally--I still love you more than everything and anything."
And I know it's a rerun in terms of this blog, but this place! Wimmyton! My god! I never, ever tire of looking at the houses when Pinto and I go on walks. (I also never tire of the people who are very kind when Pinto leaps the fence to say hello to them even though it looks like he's about to eat their jugular.) The beach, though I haven't seen it in weeks, is right there! (A friend tonight said she was sorry she was late--she'd been drinking whiskey on the beach). And how could we not mention THE SERPENTARIUM!
But, moreover, the little microcosm I'm enrolled in, though lord knows it makes me grind my teeth at night at times, and my poor father has to suffer through my deranged, caffeinated phone calls when I'm feeling especially out of sorts with all that is MFA and literary and--Lord help me--workshopped. (Not that I dislike workshop, but I think their shine is dimming considering this will be my sixth year straight sitting in them).
This week was Writer's Week where classes are canceled and a whole slew of nifty events replaces them. I told my brother this and he got very pissy because there's no such thing as Doctor's Week for med school students. My attendance at such events has been patchy (see the above 15-hours-of-sleep mention) but oh, my little heart starts thudding when I'm there. Partially because it's a glorious thing to hear writers talk, to think I could someday talk so eloquently and, more importantly, deservedly, to get the cold bucket of water over the head that reminds me, Oh right! I like doing this! Writing is great! The world is amazing! Hooray for us all let's have more wine!
But also: Pinto.
No, that one was a joke.
But also: here. North Carolina. The South. The coast. The fringe. The sea and the drawls and the barbecue.
There was a performance a few nights ago of Dusty and Ace, aka two of my professors who flirt with guitar-pickin' and mandolin-strummin'. I went. I was sleepy. I sat at the front. And just as it happened a year ago at one of the first functions I attended, when the kids broke out the guitars and started singing, the lights went down and the music came on:
oh daddy won't you take me back to muhlenberg county
What happened next was an hour of songs I knew and couldn't say how I knew--cowboy tunes, slide guitars, fiddle solos. And, as I found out today, the man in the fanciest cowboy shirt up there is a native Delawarian. Delawarer. Person from Delaware.
And I called my dad as soon as I got home and said, "You would have loved it."
Likewise, tonight there was a reading that concluded in a piece about the ineffable glory and atrocity that is Free Bird. And I wrote in my friend's notebook - "I want to shout hallelujah."
What I mean is this--there's a reason I came here. Something is right in all this mess. Otherwise my blood wouldn't retain the lyrics to songs I never listen to; I wouldn't be here if I shouldn't.
So maybe it's the saga of hallelujah, actually. It's just good, so very good, to know that I can make things as bad as I possibly can for myself, and something, someone, or somewhat is out there to remind me that there's a method to this mayhem, that I'll probably--more than likely--actually definitely--be all right.
And that's because there have been remarkable days, but just as many mediocre, and far too many slightly disastrous. This is a problem: I judge my worth by how many catastrophes I avoid per day. Examples: Did I eat only cereal? Did Pinto make a child cry? Did I sleep 15 hours straight on a weekday? Was I reprimanded by some superior, either because I a) slept through work or b) neglected to pick up my dog's droppings (seriously, people--I know it's gross but it's not like I'm tossing used heroin syringes from my pockets like appleseeds) or c) fucked up something else?
So I'm maintaining. When the close of the week approaches, I think, oh, I made it. Another one down. And when the start is imminent, I brace myself, because the way I'm living is a little like standing in the surf during a hurricane, waiting for the big one to come knock me down and sweep me away.
Fortunately, I have very good soles on my shoes.
(I am an excellent metaphorist, clearly).
I'm not complaining, because I brought this on myself. Me and my brother are both somehow engineered to have this sadistic yes I will do everything all at once! mindset that's been hacking away at us since high school. To use other people's cliches: too many irons in the fire. Too many pots on the stove. Or, in the immortal words of one Mr. Bilbo Baggins: "I feel like butter scraped over too much bread."
And I still feel like it's some form of penance for the epic desert that was most of the previous year--the movie watching and beer guzzling and general fucking around. But it's detrimental in a lot of ways because it makes me blind to so much goodness--like my freaking apartment! It's amazing! Huge! Old! Hardwood floors and a working fireplace (okay it's gas but still!).
Sadly I am usually scrambling to find my keys to get to work only marginally later than expected and the floor is covered in dog hair. Seriously. How can one beast produce so much?
But! To drag this already terrible metaphor even further, here are the cleats! Those little wonderments that miraculously prevent my daily drowning! (It's late! I should nap!)
My friends, because they are, miraculously, mine. I realized this in an unfortunate context, but I've learned something about myself--I don't think anybody should like me. I am kind of astounded when they do. I think it fitting that today, while being graciously watched by a friend, Pinto went a little happy-berserk and proceeded to use his torpedo-strength tail and knock over some guitars; it's fitting, because I said to Pinto, "Ah, we make a good pair. Everyone tolerates us." And then the owners of the guitars told me that was false and gave me dinner...again. And some Halloween candy.
(Halloween, incidentally, was a veritable hullabaloo. (Apparently there are only three l's in hullabaloo.) I went as Carrie, aka, I went as a terrifyingly bloody prom queen. It. Was. Awesome.)
My dog, obviously. Because he might have taken to vomiting whenever he eats (only a little), and he might bark like the world is ending when I leave him in friends' backyards for a moment of peace, and he might have eaten pretty much all my shoes, but then he sits on my feet and looks up at me and I'm like "Oh, you son of a bitch--literally--I still love you more than everything and anything."
And I know it's a rerun in terms of this blog, but this place! Wimmyton! My god! I never, ever tire of looking at the houses when Pinto and I go on walks. (I also never tire of the people who are very kind when Pinto leaps the fence to say hello to them even though it looks like he's about to eat their jugular.) The beach, though I haven't seen it in weeks, is right there! (A friend tonight said she was sorry she was late--she'd been drinking whiskey on the beach). And how could we not mention THE SERPENTARIUM!
But, moreover, the little microcosm I'm enrolled in, though lord knows it makes me grind my teeth at night at times, and my poor father has to suffer through my deranged, caffeinated phone calls when I'm feeling especially out of sorts with all that is MFA and literary and--Lord help me--workshopped. (Not that I dislike workshop, but I think their shine is dimming considering this will be my sixth year straight sitting in them).
This week was Writer's Week where classes are canceled and a whole slew of nifty events replaces them. I told my brother this and he got very pissy because there's no such thing as Doctor's Week for med school students. My attendance at such events has been patchy (see the above 15-hours-of-sleep mention) but oh, my little heart starts thudding when I'm there. Partially because it's a glorious thing to hear writers talk, to think I could someday talk so eloquently and, more importantly, deservedly, to get the cold bucket of water over the head that reminds me, Oh right! I like doing this! Writing is great! The world is amazing! Hooray for us all let's have more wine!
But also: Pinto.
No, that one was a joke.
But also: here. North Carolina. The South. The coast. The fringe. The sea and the drawls and the barbecue.
There was a performance a few nights ago of Dusty and Ace, aka two of my professors who flirt with guitar-pickin' and mandolin-strummin'. I went. I was sleepy. I sat at the front. And just as it happened a year ago at one of the first functions I attended, when the kids broke out the guitars and started singing, the lights went down and the music came on:
oh daddy won't you take me back to muhlenberg county
What happened next was an hour of songs I knew and couldn't say how I knew--cowboy tunes, slide guitars, fiddle solos. And, as I found out today, the man in the fanciest cowboy shirt up there is a native Delawarian. Delawarer. Person from Delaware.
And I called my dad as soon as I got home and said, "You would have loved it."
Likewise, tonight there was a reading that concluded in a piece about the ineffable glory and atrocity that is Free Bird. And I wrote in my friend's notebook - "I want to shout hallelujah."
What I mean is this--there's a reason I came here. Something is right in all this mess. Otherwise my blood wouldn't retain the lyrics to songs I never listen to; I wouldn't be here if I shouldn't.
So maybe it's the saga of hallelujah, actually. It's just good, so very good, to know that I can make things as bad as I possibly can for myself, and something, someone, or somewhat is out there to remind me that there's a method to this mayhem, that I'll probably--more than likely--actually definitely--be all right.
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Saga of Anthems, Adventures.
Two lines deserve to be tattooed on my forearms given how much I'm living my life by them. One is nothing new - The Mountain Goats' angry anthem, a determined and crazy and desperate mandate: I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me. (This, incidentally, lends itself well to insertions of "motherfucker" as in, I'm gonna fucking make it through this year even it motherfucking kills me). The other one is Otis Redding: I can't do what ten people tell me to do.
I vanished to the North for two weeks and it was an adventure full of smaller adventures tied up with an adventure with a side of adventure. Exploits include moose sightings, Indian buffets, an LCD Soundsystem concert, a wedding with bottomless Makers' Mark and lobster mac and cheese, leather jackets, and lots and lots of trees. Also, lots and lots of Milwaukee's Best. And lots and lots of driving. I saw two states I'd never seen, ate a homemade whoopie pie on the steps of an old church, and saw a moose. Did I mention there were moose? We decided the moose had organized a congress in the woods and knew of my arrival.
All in all, it was a much needed and wonderful span of days.
And I felt pretty triumphant when I crossed the VA-NC border, knowing my apartment was mere hours away, and my dog, and my bed. But there's also a hell of a lot of obligation here, which I felt as soon as I opened the door and wrangled Pinto to the ground (he missed me a lot). Emails from bosses. Missed phone calls. Voicemails.
That, paired with a residual claustrophobia from driving I-95 from Portland, ME to Rocky Point, NC, made it real real tempting to get back in the car and head West, throw my phone into the Mississippi, and rent some ranch in Montana with my student loans and adopt 8 more dogs.
In short, coming home made me feel like a crazy person.
Which, in turn, made me an incredibly ill person.
I got sick in Maine, I think in part because I stepped out of the car in Farmington and realized I'd just fucking driven to Maine - and thought nothing of it. I'd hit a point as I was driving that was both terrifying and liberating--no one knew where I was, aka I was beholden to nobody, had no responsibility besides keeping the car on the road, didn't have to do anything. The other side of that, though, is pretty horrifying--I could crash and no one would know. I could just keep driving, reach Canada, see how many days I could go missing.
Again--crazy person thoughts.
But I got to Maine, and as soon as I stopped traveling, BLAMMO! Fever from hell. Fortunately my host was insanely gracious even when I slept for 15 hours straight and requested a bath at midnight (he had a Jacuzzi so it's not all that crazy). And it was a weirdly low-key vacation (though, to be fair, there are two bars in Farmington, and they're spittin' distance from one another) of watching movies and driving through the foliage and drinking coffee in jimjams, which was, weirdly, just what I needed.
I've been hesitant to type in this thing because it's inaccurate. It's a public forum and it makes me want to crack jokes, which is good, because cracking jokes keeps me going sometimes (I still think Grampa is a hilarious name for a dog), but it also feels pretty artificial at points.
Plus, man, I really just want to bitch about work and school and everything and that's bound to get me in more trouble than I inherently, perpetually find myself in (and I ended on a preposition but whatever!).
This is what it comes down to, though, and why Otis Redding has been added to the Rachel @23 Playlist Of Life: Pinto.
(BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS ABOUT PINTO!!!!)
No seriously guys this one isn't a joke!
Lately, I need Porching as early as Wednesdays, because by Wednesday, I'm as fried as a pickle and there are two fucking days left before it's the weekend--I lay in bed and think, "I'm gonna make it, I'll survive," but there's the corny question of survival vs. oh, you know, enjoying your glorious twenties. I realize I sound like I have some hideous disease (which, currently, I do, ha!), and, as far as I know, I don't. But I go to bed feeling badgered and hounded and--there has to be another animal verb--moosed and like I am before some tribunal and they are all so, so disappointed in me. My bosses don't think I'm working hard enough. My classmates think I'm a drunk; my peers a sentimentalist whose blog is the narcissistic, babbly ramblings of a dog-obsessed overgrown child. The editors of all the journals I submit to think I'm ridiculous for my stories about God as the Lincoln Memorial. My parents wish I would grow the fuck up already.
(Of course, all of this is supposition - I don't know what anybody thinks, but man, it sure feels like I do.)
And then there's Pinto. And what does Pinto think?
"I sure wish you'd take me out to poop soon."
Or: "Could you throw this hedgehog toy for me?"
Or: "I'd like to be on your lap for a while. Thanks."
What I mean is this: I can fulfill Pinto's needs. I am always doing a good job with Pinto, even when I'm not, because he's alive and well-fed and only gets the shits sporadically nowadays. I just got out of a relationship where I was supposed to be filling the other party's every need, and I couldn't do it, because no one can--but Pinto's a dog. He needs somebody to open doors for him because he has no hands.
So I've been deadly ill all week, and the only fun of it is hanging out with Pinto, who might be 65 pounds but is convinced he is a lapdog. And Pinto will not go get me Sudafed or a box of Kleenex or another gallon of orange juice (though I think he would if he could). But what he does do, and what he always will, is love me, no matter how bitchy or dirty or sickly I am.
And that, friends, is why I am going to capitalize on the Marley & Me market and write The Pinto Papers, which I plan on beginning as soon as I get all this MFA literary avant-garde shit out of my system first. Pinto's face is gonna be all over your Barnes & Noble - you just wait.
I vanished to the North for two weeks and it was an adventure full of smaller adventures tied up with an adventure with a side of adventure. Exploits include moose sightings, Indian buffets, an LCD Soundsystem concert, a wedding with bottomless Makers' Mark and lobster mac and cheese, leather jackets, and lots and lots of trees. Also, lots and lots of Milwaukee's Best. And lots and lots of driving. I saw two states I'd never seen, ate a homemade whoopie pie on the steps of an old church, and saw a moose. Did I mention there were moose? We decided the moose had organized a congress in the woods and knew of my arrival.
All in all, it was a much needed and wonderful span of days.
And I felt pretty triumphant when I crossed the VA-NC border, knowing my apartment was mere hours away, and my dog, and my bed. But there's also a hell of a lot of obligation here, which I felt as soon as I opened the door and wrangled Pinto to the ground (he missed me a lot). Emails from bosses. Missed phone calls. Voicemails.
That, paired with a residual claustrophobia from driving I-95 from Portland, ME to Rocky Point, NC, made it real real tempting to get back in the car and head West, throw my phone into the Mississippi, and rent some ranch in Montana with my student loans and adopt 8 more dogs.
In short, coming home made me feel like a crazy person.
Which, in turn, made me an incredibly ill person.
I got sick in Maine, I think in part because I stepped out of the car in Farmington and realized I'd just fucking driven to Maine - and thought nothing of it. I'd hit a point as I was driving that was both terrifying and liberating--no one knew where I was, aka I was beholden to nobody, had no responsibility besides keeping the car on the road, didn't have to do anything. The other side of that, though, is pretty horrifying--I could crash and no one would know. I could just keep driving, reach Canada, see how many days I could go missing.
Again--crazy person thoughts.
But I got to Maine, and as soon as I stopped traveling, BLAMMO! Fever from hell. Fortunately my host was insanely gracious even when I slept for 15 hours straight and requested a bath at midnight (he had a Jacuzzi so it's not all that crazy). And it was a weirdly low-key vacation (though, to be fair, there are two bars in Farmington, and they're spittin' distance from one another) of watching movies and driving through the foliage and drinking coffee in jimjams, which was, weirdly, just what I needed.
I've been hesitant to type in this thing because it's inaccurate. It's a public forum and it makes me want to crack jokes, which is good, because cracking jokes keeps me going sometimes (I still think Grampa is a hilarious name for a dog), but it also feels pretty artificial at points.
Plus, man, I really just want to bitch about work and school and everything and that's bound to get me in more trouble than I inherently, perpetually find myself in (and I ended on a preposition but whatever!).
This is what it comes down to, though, and why Otis Redding has been added to the Rachel @23 Playlist Of Life: Pinto.
(BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS ABOUT PINTO!!!!)
No seriously guys this one isn't a joke!
Lately, I need Porching as early as Wednesdays, because by Wednesday, I'm as fried as a pickle and there are two fucking days left before it's the weekend--I lay in bed and think, "I'm gonna make it, I'll survive," but there's the corny question of survival vs. oh, you know, enjoying your glorious twenties. I realize I sound like I have some hideous disease (which, currently, I do, ha!), and, as far as I know, I don't. But I go to bed feeling badgered and hounded and--there has to be another animal verb--moosed and like I am before some tribunal and they are all so, so disappointed in me. My bosses don't think I'm working hard enough. My classmates think I'm a drunk; my peers a sentimentalist whose blog is the narcissistic, babbly ramblings of a dog-obsessed overgrown child. The editors of all the journals I submit to think I'm ridiculous for my stories about God as the Lincoln Memorial. My parents wish I would grow the fuck up already.
(Of course, all of this is supposition - I don't know what anybody thinks, but man, it sure feels like I do.)
And then there's Pinto. And what does Pinto think?
"I sure wish you'd take me out to poop soon."
Or: "Could you throw this hedgehog toy for me?"
Or: "I'd like to be on your lap for a while. Thanks."
What I mean is this: I can fulfill Pinto's needs. I am always doing a good job with Pinto, even when I'm not, because he's alive and well-fed and only gets the shits sporadically nowadays. I just got out of a relationship where I was supposed to be filling the other party's every need, and I couldn't do it, because no one can--but Pinto's a dog. He needs somebody to open doors for him because he has no hands.
So I've been deadly ill all week, and the only fun of it is hanging out with Pinto, who might be 65 pounds but is convinced he is a lapdog. And Pinto will not go get me Sudafed or a box of Kleenex or another gallon of orange juice (though I think he would if he could). But what he does do, and what he always will, is love me, no matter how bitchy or dirty or sickly I am.
And that, friends, is why I am going to capitalize on the Marley & Me market and write The Pinto Papers, which I plan on beginning as soon as I get all this MFA literary avant-garde shit out of my system first. Pinto's face is gonna be all over your Barnes & Noble - you just wait.
Friday, September 3, 2010
The Saga of Can-Do-Ismus & Work Work Play.
And suddenly it's September.
Friends, I had a remarkable revelation the other day--and no, it was not if you make Pinto's leg thump hard enough while scratching him he will fart, nor was it that it's probably time to buy groceries when there's only some sad eggrolls and a 2-liter of Coke (to be mixed with rum) in the fridge, nor was it oh, my underwear is inside out.
I learned this: if you taunt me in to doing something, I'll fucking do it.
Seriously! And this does not mean I did something insane the other day ("Hey Rachel bet you won't snort this line of ants off the front porch" "WATCH ME MOTHERFUCKER") but only that lately I am feeling pretty unfuckable, and I don't mean that in the copulative sense. The contrary, actually. As in, every cigarette is a victor-ette solely because it can be.
Hence the affliction, Can-Do-Ismus. This is the strange and wonderful phenomenon of doing things because you can't see a reason not to, and, more importantly, because you can. And I don't mean shoplifting. I don't mean running red lights. I don't even mean not flushing the toilet as soon as you use it.
I mean being content.
I've been rustlin' with this whole idea of happiness for oh, well, ever, and I sometimes hesitate to sit down and type on this very public narcissistic badly syntaxed bliggity blog because I have no conflict to report. And no one wants to read about Rachel's wonderful days. We want drama! Intrigue! Action!
Sadly, I must disappoint. Things are really, really good. Like freaky good, like "oh shit is this the best time in my life ever I THINK IT IS" good.
And that is fairly remarkable to me.
"But Rachel!" you cry, shaking the corners of your computer screen like a lover's lapels! "What are these things? Why must you wax so philosophical? You realize it is a Friday night at 11 p.m. and you are in your jimjams blogging for Pete's sake? Who is Pete, anyway?!"
Pete, incidentally, is a name I would only bestow on a cat, because cats, unlike dogs, are allowed to have person names, but it's much funnier when a cat is named after a trademarked thing (Kleenex, Velcro, Ziploc, etc--great cat names). Dogs, on the other hand, are only permitted to be named after inanimate objects and preferably those that begin with P (but that's a personal thing)--my next dog, because while normal people are out there making shopping lists for dinner, I am eating eggrolls and planning dogs, will be named Potato. Followed by Pimento. And possibly then Pinata.
The things are these. I have arbitrarily chosen three of them because it's a nice, curvy number.
ONE. Work.
At last! At last, the gilded deluge of a paycheck, albeit monthly!
One of the reasons I don't blog with any form of consistency, friends, is my insane work schedule. I have twin jobs, one sitting at a computer designing ads for fancy pants cultural events and writing press releases and clambering around campus display cases, and the other, as you know, at W HQ R. My daily schedule has three parts: job 1, job 2, and class. When I get home, 10 hours after I've left, Pinto has often demolished something, but who can blame the little guy? Ten hours is a long time to go without peeing. Try it sometime.
I should record this now before the new station manager arrives and rattles everything up, but I really, really love working in public radio. Sometimes the egos are a little asphyxiating and the quirks are borderline deadly, but you guys! I am "a voice"!!!! And I didn't think anything of it because I am just a little old intern at the end of the day, but I can't tell you how many folks come up to me saying "I heard you today! You were great!" This also might have something to do with my new stint as back-up host for Morning Edition, which means I wake up at quarter to five, let a very groggy Pinto out of his crate, brew some hideously strong coffee and clomp to the station in the pre-dawn dark; then I go live, and there are 40,000 people listening to me.
Did you catch that part? 40,000!
That is a whole lot of people!
So now I have added "professional voice work" to my infinite list of actually paying post-MFA potential job opportunities. I'm informed there's an anime studio in Wilmington that hires voice actors, so someday you might be watching some disproportionate big-eyed schoolgirl in a sailor suit as she battles (or gets screwed by, let's be honest here) an octopus monster and you'll think, "Wait, shit, is that Rachel?"
And maybe it will be!
Two. WORK.
I don't want to speak too much about it because I know I'll jinx the whole thing entirely, but this year I am writing a novel. I have around six dozen pages of diagrams and scribbles and strangely oriented fragments, but it's actually coming along. And yes, it's about Tulsa, and yes, there are dogs' perspectives in it, and yes, the Rock-a-Fire explosion, and beyond that I am not so sure. What I know, at least, is this thing has got to get written because I want to put Tulsa on paper. The Admiral Twin Drive-In burned down this afternoon, and the fact that I got so heartbroken, adding it to the list of Tulsa Lost (Bell's and the Metro and the Rose Bowl), actually made me think, "Holy cannoli, I'm actually going to write this thing, aren't I?"
Considering the last novel-length undertaking I took was Harry Potter fanfiction in middle school (unfinished, but still really awesome), this is kind of a big deal.
And I read an excerpt from it to some fine folks who gathered at the library, and while they did not lift me on their shoulders and go marching off into the night singing, they might as well have for how good I felt afterward. It went well. It went freaky well.
So that work, the real work, is likewise happily pooting along (like Pinto on a walk).
Lastly, THREE. Play.
As usual, I am living in the Hamilton mindset of work hard and play even harder. So I'm home on a Friday night because my throat feels like I ate a sandcastle (and now I have to take care of my voice because it's suddenly a product, a commodity, this shit is crazy!) because we gathered on a porch last night to welcome the season's first hurricane, Earl.
Long story short, the jerk didn't even call. Not a drop of rain. Just some breezes, and a lot of beer drinking, and I bought a pack before coming over and, well, it's got two left. Even typing that makes my lungs cringe.
But it's truthfully been one of the most fun summers of my whole little life--I am having far too good of a time. I am spending way too many hours on porch swings. I am taking far too many notes--but I'm not squirreling away this good and gladness because it's just the start of how things will be, because they can be good and they are.
Watch me, motherfuckers.
(Okay I feel bad about calling you guys motherfuckers. I didn't mean it. I love you all.)
Let's toast to ourselves and bake ourselves a cake! Because we can!
Friends, I had a remarkable revelation the other day--and no, it was not if you make Pinto's leg thump hard enough while scratching him he will fart, nor was it that it's probably time to buy groceries when there's only some sad eggrolls and a 2-liter of Coke (to be mixed with rum) in the fridge, nor was it oh, my underwear is inside out.
I learned this: if you taunt me in to doing something, I'll fucking do it.
Seriously! And this does not mean I did something insane the other day ("Hey Rachel bet you won't snort this line of ants off the front porch" "WATCH ME MOTHERFUCKER") but only that lately I am feeling pretty unfuckable, and I don't mean that in the copulative sense. The contrary, actually. As in, every cigarette is a victor-ette solely because it can be.
Hence the affliction, Can-Do-Ismus. This is the strange and wonderful phenomenon of doing things because you can't see a reason not to, and, more importantly, because you can. And I don't mean shoplifting. I don't mean running red lights. I don't even mean not flushing the toilet as soon as you use it.
I mean being content.
I've been rustlin' with this whole idea of happiness for oh, well, ever, and I sometimes hesitate to sit down and type on this very public narcissistic badly syntaxed bliggity blog because I have no conflict to report. And no one wants to read about Rachel's wonderful days. We want drama! Intrigue! Action!
Sadly, I must disappoint. Things are really, really good. Like freaky good, like "oh shit is this the best time in my life ever I THINK IT IS" good.
And that is fairly remarkable to me.
"But Rachel!" you cry, shaking the corners of your computer screen like a lover's lapels! "What are these things? Why must you wax so philosophical? You realize it is a Friday night at 11 p.m. and you are in your jimjams blogging for Pete's sake? Who is Pete, anyway?!"
Pete, incidentally, is a name I would only bestow on a cat, because cats, unlike dogs, are allowed to have person names, but it's much funnier when a cat is named after a trademarked thing (Kleenex, Velcro, Ziploc, etc--great cat names). Dogs, on the other hand, are only permitted to be named after inanimate objects and preferably those that begin with P (but that's a personal thing)--my next dog, because while normal people are out there making shopping lists for dinner, I am eating eggrolls and planning dogs, will be named Potato. Followed by Pimento. And possibly then Pinata.
The things are these. I have arbitrarily chosen three of them because it's a nice, curvy number.
ONE. Work.
At last! At last, the gilded deluge of a paycheck, albeit monthly!
One of the reasons I don't blog with any form of consistency, friends, is my insane work schedule. I have twin jobs, one sitting at a computer designing ads for fancy pants cultural events and writing press releases and clambering around campus display cases, and the other, as you know, at W HQ R. My daily schedule has three parts: job 1, job 2, and class. When I get home, 10 hours after I've left, Pinto has often demolished something, but who can blame the little guy? Ten hours is a long time to go without peeing. Try it sometime.
I should record this now before the new station manager arrives and rattles everything up, but I really, really love working in public radio. Sometimes the egos are a little asphyxiating and the quirks are borderline deadly, but you guys! I am "a voice"!!!! And I didn't think anything of it because I am just a little old intern at the end of the day, but I can't tell you how many folks come up to me saying "I heard you today! You were great!" This also might have something to do with my new stint as back-up host for Morning Edition, which means I wake up at quarter to five, let a very groggy Pinto out of his crate, brew some hideously strong coffee and clomp to the station in the pre-dawn dark; then I go live, and there are 40,000 people listening to me.
Did you catch that part? 40,000!
That is a whole lot of people!
So now I have added "professional voice work" to my infinite list of actually paying post-MFA potential job opportunities. I'm informed there's an anime studio in Wilmington that hires voice actors, so someday you might be watching some disproportionate big-eyed schoolgirl in a sailor suit as she battles (or gets screwed by, let's be honest here) an octopus monster and you'll think, "Wait, shit, is that Rachel?"
And maybe it will be!
Two. WORK.
I don't want to speak too much about it because I know I'll jinx the whole thing entirely, but this year I am writing a novel. I have around six dozen pages of diagrams and scribbles and strangely oriented fragments, but it's actually coming along. And yes, it's about Tulsa, and yes, there are dogs' perspectives in it, and yes, the Rock-a-Fire explosion, and beyond that I am not so sure. What I know, at least, is this thing has got to get written because I want to put Tulsa on paper. The Admiral Twin Drive-In burned down this afternoon, and the fact that I got so heartbroken, adding it to the list of Tulsa Lost (Bell's and the Metro and the Rose Bowl), actually made me think, "Holy cannoli, I'm actually going to write this thing, aren't I?"
Considering the last novel-length undertaking I took was Harry Potter fanfiction in middle school (unfinished, but still really awesome), this is kind of a big deal.
And I read an excerpt from it to some fine folks who gathered at the library, and while they did not lift me on their shoulders and go marching off into the night singing, they might as well have for how good I felt afterward. It went well. It went freaky well.
So that work, the real work, is likewise happily pooting along (like Pinto on a walk).
Lastly, THREE. Play.
As usual, I am living in the Hamilton mindset of work hard and play even harder. So I'm home on a Friday night because my throat feels like I ate a sandcastle (and now I have to take care of my voice because it's suddenly a product, a commodity, this shit is crazy!) because we gathered on a porch last night to welcome the season's first hurricane, Earl.
Long story short, the jerk didn't even call. Not a drop of rain. Just some breezes, and a lot of beer drinking, and I bought a pack before coming over and, well, it's got two left. Even typing that makes my lungs cringe.
But it's truthfully been one of the most fun summers of my whole little life--I am having far too good of a time. I am spending way too many hours on porch swings. I am taking far too many notes--but I'm not squirreling away this good and gladness because it's just the start of how things will be, because they can be good and they are.
Watch me, motherfuckers.
(Okay I feel bad about calling you guys motherfuckers. I didn't mean it. I love you all.)
Let's toast to ourselves and bake ourselves a cake! Because we can!
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