Falling in the Dark Tuesday, Oct 28 2008 

Autumn and Holidays and writing , , , , thewritingspider 10:58 am

     It’s about this time of year that I start feeling a little melancholy. First, I wonder why, and then I notice that it’s getting dark at seven pm. By the beginning of November things have evened out a bit but until then, I keep feeling a little sigh inside everywhere I go.

     I find myself turning on all the lights in the house to push back the blanket of autumn evening that manages to settle on my shoulders anyway. I put on my pajamas straightaway after work. I don’t like going out in the evenings much for a while, preferring to curl up on the couch and work on a crochet project or a book. Husband keeps finding me pressed up against him like a cuddle-happy cat.

     I love how autumn smells of wet leaves and spices, of crisp sunshine days and hot chocolate nights. I love Halloween for dressing up, candy corn, and pictures of black cats. And Thanksgiving of course, a grand meal set in a flurry of wind and leaves, and visits with the strangers you call family.

     The world is winding down for a few months, settling itself for a rest of its own, pulling up that blanket of darkness to hush us all, if only for a little while.

 

Baaad English Major Thursday, Oct 16 2008 

English literature and writing , , , , thewritingspider 11:23 pm

   Everybody knows that English major type who can quote famous authors verbatim. At the end of the night your buddy, who has been drunkenly hitting on all the women at the party and bragging about his novel that’s about to be published, turns to the crowd and charmingly slurs, “If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended”* and everybody laughs and forgets he’s kind of a dork. Or your girlfriend says coyly, “Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky”** and she sounds kind of sexy.
   I can’t do this. The only literature or quote I have memorized is “The Jabberwoky” from Lewis Carroll and that’s only because a summer theater program I was in when I was 12 performed it.

     The best I can do is say something like, “Didn’t Thoreau say something about a pond and how it’s like a long life and then…oh, I forget how it goes.”

     The English majors I know are always pulling out perfect quotes and themes and concepts from our long work as English majors. They got something out of those years with their noses in books – or at least they remember more of it than I do.

     When I read a book, it goes into the category of LIKED and DIDN’T LIKE. *** I remember the major plot points. Sometimes I remember something funny or a funny scene. I have read exactly one Thomas Pynchon book, The Crying of Lot 49, and I remember this: they’re playing strip Botticelli in the bathroom and the hairspray can is flying around the room.

     Other people have a maddening capacity for recollection. Husband, for example, remembers everything he reads and he reads really fast. I read slowly, and I barely remember what I read two pages ago. Other people remember who said what - Woolf and Dostoevsky, Dunne and Yeats, Dickens, Dickinson, Shelley, Kerouac, and O’Connor. I can’t remember what happens in The Faerie Queen or why I should remember it. I’ve read The Canterbury Tales three times for school and…well…there was a mooning scene, right?

    What the heck was I doing with my English major? And what was I reading? I think of all the books in the English major’s literary arsenal, I come up short on the side of ones I’ve read. I don’t think the Dresden Files are going to make it into college classrooms anytime soon.  It all makes me feel like a bad English major. Like I should remember more about the great literature I studied for so long.

     There’s just so bloody much to read!  

 

*I had to look this quote up to get the words right.

**10 points to you if you can finish the simile.

***My apologies to all my grad school professors who said that it no longer mattered if you like the book, we’re not reading for plot, and can you please just give me a Marxist critique of this novel?

 

Halloween Costumes, Pt. II Tuesday, Oct 14 2008 

Halloween and Halloween costumes and Holidays , , thewritingspider 11:24 am

     I really love dressing up for Halloween. I like it more now than when I was a kid and my mom made us go as stupid stuff like hobos* and scarecrows. Our neighbor had a box of really nice handmade cloth costumes her kids had outgrown. My sister and I got a lot of mileage out of those and went as a dog, a bunny, and a clown.** 

     I have also gone as a

     A gypsy – many skirts, many necklaces. I thought gypsies were jewelry saleswomen for a loooong time.

     A punk rocker – complete with spiky pink hair

     Bobby soxer – including my school uniform shirt

     Cher – I wore my mom’s long brown wig and my grandmother’s purple paisley leisure suit. I didn’t look like Cher, except that I had the gestures down like the head swing and the bent elbows and wrists

     Little Red Riding Hood – This was awesome. We went to the zoo for their Halloween party and a wolf walked the length of his pen beside me, his head hung low and eyes watching me

     Cat – sort of boring. It was leftover from my run as one of the Siamese cats from our school talent show.

     Morticia Addams – with Husband as Gomez

     My favorite costume, I think – and I could be wrong because I don’t remember them all – has to be last year’s turn as Elastigirl/Mrs. Incredible from Disney’s animated “The Incredibles.” I put the whole thing together myself with bits and pieces from the consignment store and my own closet. It helps that I’m sort of shaped like Elastigirl and I had the hair, too.

     This year, I don’t know if we’ll be dressing up. We won’t be having a party this year (sorry guys, I have a little get-together called My 10-Year College Class Reunion to go to the weekend before, which is when we would have had it).

*For the record my sister was the most adorable hobo on the planet. However, at the time, I didn’t realize that my sister was technically dressed up as a dirty homeless man who smelled of whiskey and beans.

** What is is about my sister dressing up as characters who are, typically, effing scary? Hobo? Clown? She grew up and went as Kid Rock one year… which was actually amazing. She did the hair and the clothes. It’s amazing what a little hairdo and a good gesture can do to transform someone.

 

Things I Shouldn’t Have Anymore Monday, Oct 13 2008 

stuff and writing , , , , thewritingspider 11:21 am

     I was putting the dishes away from the dishwasher this morning, waiting for my tea water to boil, and I considered the mug collection. While I pared down when we moved here almost 2 years ago, Husband and I still have too many mugs for two people, especially considering that there are about five we love, four we like, and a bunch that I can’t get rid of because of sentimental attachment.

     You read me. Sentimental attachment to a mug.

     There’s the local university mug because we’re fans and also I have a degree from there. The sunflower mug because I love sunflowers (but I never drink out of this mug!) The ultimately cheesy Precious Moments mug that is not only too small for a reasonable amount of tea but it has my name on it so who the hell will want it anyway? It was a birthday gift on my 16th birthday.

     Considering the mugs led me to think of all the other things around our home that don’t need to be here that somebody (well, ok, it’s either me or Husband because I don’t think the ferrets care) won’t let go of for some reason.

     I think I have an unreasonable attachment to these things. I know my friends in NYC don’t have this problem to this scale because they have wee apartments. My friend S lives in an impossibly adorable half of a carriage house that’s slightly larger than your average NYC apartment and I asked her once how she manages not to have all the stuff. She said clever storage helps and started pointing at furniture - there’s the bed and then there are 6 flat plastic bins slid underneath.

     I think my solution is culling. A massive thorough ruthless culling.

     My friend C’s mother-in-law is a Yard Saler of Professional Proportions. The MIL is currently getting divorced and needs to move to a smaller home with less room for her treasures so my friend C is helping sort – Keep, Trash, Storage, Yard Sale. C keeps coming home with “gifts” from the piles. It’s like a neverending game of Hot Potato – you get the stuff, you give the stuff away, the other person has the stuff.

     I think on some level the stuff is here to remind me that:

People love me enough to give me something they think I will like

I have friends

I had a good time somewhere

Someone else had a good time somewhere and wanted to share

I’m afraid I’ll need it sometime down the road (I think this translates into some kind of scarcity fear from when my ancestors had all the bones of the woolly mammoths lying around the cave and my great great great great grandmother said, “I can’t get rid of them…I might want to built a tent with them.” Or something.)  

      I just got up half an hour ago and now my head hurts from thinking of all the stuff.

 

Fakin’ It Saturday, Oct 11 2008 

Travel and writing , , , , thewritingspider 2:33 pm

     I went on a work-related trip to Miami in February. I had never been to Miami before, except as a Very Small Baby and that doesn’t count because I don’t remember it. The trip was a workshop for small business owners who provide a product my company offers to their employees and I was pretty much just a participant in order to get a feel for the team and how they do these workshops.

     During the course of the trip – which was only three days – I stayed in the poshest hotel I’ve ever been to, I had a $13 mojito out of a plastic cup, got shooed away by Avril Levigne’s body guard,* put a band aid on a smoke detector (see previous post, That Ticking Thing), saw my first professional basketball game** while sitting in a sky box, amazed a club full of Cubans that a white girl could salsa, and convinced a stranger that I was in fact British.

     After the workshop ended, we went to the game then back to the hotel for drinks around the pools. One of the guys from my team and I were sent in to the bar to open a tab on my corporate card. The bar area was sort of Marrekesh-ish, dimly lit by candles in red glass lanterns and intricate low-hanging light fixtures. It was pretty deserted as most people had taken their beverages outside to enjoy the night air.

     My colleague and I waited for one of the bartenders to take our order. I stood counting the kinds of bourbon they had on the mirrored shelves and listened to the man next to me give his order. Even though there weren’t many people in the bar, he was standing just behind and to my left so that I could feel his suit sleeve brush my back.

     “I need six sambuccas,” he slurred. “Yeah, I know, who orders sambucca, right? Sambucca?? They’re British, you know, I guess they like that stuff.” He was shouting as if it was extremely loud in the bar.

    In an effort to get a look at this guy who kept jostling me and who sounded like a jerk, I turned my head. He saw me. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you like, British or something?”

    I didn’t even think twice about busting out my best British accent.

     “What?” Which sounded sort of like, “Wot?”

     He rubbed his face and winced. “Oh, shit, was that…was that an accent?”

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, trying not to look him in the eye because that would’ve ruined the whole thing. “But I happen to like sambucca.”

    I couldn’t get out of the way of his backpeddaling. “OH, SHIT, I’m so sorry,” he babbled, “I didn’t know I mean I never met anybody who likes sambucca I just have these clients who wanted some SHIT I didn’t know sorry.”

     It seemed unkind of me to continue and I couldn’t hold it in.

    I grinned. “I’m just kidding. I’m not British.”

    He stared, unbreathing, tension draining from his pasty white face. His tie was mostly undone and his shirt disheveled.

     “Had you going there, didn’t I? I’m from Kentucky,” I said. He stared. The bartender smirked, shaking her head.

     He laughed nervously. “Oh. Well.” And then he promptly rushed out of the bar.

    Two minutes later he was back. He’d left all the drinks on the bar, and the bartender had his credit card.

    

 

* I actually didn’t recognize her as I was going to the beach and since the pathway was narrow, I didn’t think much of using it until a beefy guy in black stuck his chest out menacingly at me. She’s very small, Avril. Like a punky moody elf.

** Heat vs. Celtics

 

Charlottes are Gone… Thursday, Oct 2 2008 

Animals and writing , , , , thewritingspider 11:05 am

     Big Charlotte was hanging in during the horrible windstorm we had a few weeks ago. I checked on her a few times – not that I could help, just to see – and she was clinging to the shredded web, nestled down in the mint. A day or so later, they came to cut the grass while I was at work and when I returned she was gone. I wondered if the grass people had ripped up her web or killed her or something… Such a large bug is sometimes too great a temptation for immaturity, and the impulse to HULK SMASH cannot be overcome. Maybe they thought such a big yellow and black spider was poisonous? I don’t know if that’s what happened for sure. But all my writing spiders seem to have gone. 

     A bit later, we had a much smaller Charlotte appear, build a web, then vanish.

     I’m a little sad about this lack of arachnid authors. I’ve come to see them as my scribbling familiars who arrive to usher in autumn, share their silk secrets with me, blessing the garden as they do, and then climb into the shadowy web of the next life. Now that it’s turned chilly I don’t hold hope that another Charlotte will take up residence for the remainder of the season and that makes for a dark October indeed.

 

Halloween Costumes, Pt. I Wednesday, Oct 1 2008 

Halloween costumes and writing , , , , thewritingspider 12:28 am

     When I was a wee child, my dad was the chef/gardener/tailor of the house. He’s a jack-of-all-trades, my dad, and one year he decided my sister K and I were going to be bugs for Halloween. In my house growing up, store-bought costumes were for sissies. At our house, you made your costume and you made something creative, bygod. My father is, if you have never met him, endlessly self-deprecating, incredibly smart, and the most creative person I think I know. He’s like MacGuyver only he’s my dad, and he was a big part of the costumery.

     Armed with his Singer sewing machine (my mom used to sew when I was very very wee), several yards of thin canvas, and a couple cans of spray paint, he fashioned two bug costumes. My sister K’s was a bright yellow caterpillar with black stripes. She had little deelie-bobbers for antenna on her head, and her costume even had a bunch of little caterpillar-y legs down the side. It was adorable. It is widely acknowledged that K was an adorable child. I, on the other hand, had an unfortunate awkward phase that started in preschool and ended when I was about 25.

    Dad made me a spider suit. Well…not like a Spiderman spider suit. Nothing so sleek and lithe. I was the Ginormous Spider that Ate Manhattan, DC, and most of Poughkeepsie. I’ll try to do this costume justice in my description, but nothing I write here will help your mind’s eye see the awesome red orb of spiderosity that was me, Halloween circa 1987.

     The body of the was like a hockey puck with a space in the middle for my head and lower half, and four overlylong legs splayed out from the body. (The real problem with this costume was the stuffing. There was too much. Even Dad admitted that later, but what can you do?) There were sleeves that covered my real arms but by lifting my arms I could engage the other four legs strung together with monofilament fishing line – strong but invisible so that when I waved them, you might have clutched your children close and whispered, “Sweet baby Jesus, that is one big-ass spider!”

     I also had deelie bobbers and since my legs were sticking out and thus part of my overall look, I wore red tights and over them, my shiny burgundy running shorts because God knows it’s more embarrassing if they can see your knickers. I wore my favorite pale blue Kangaroos, the ones with the little pocket on the side. Of course, this was years before I got contacts so I was also sporting my large Sally Jesse purple glasses.

     The effect could not have been complete without my mother’s final touch. She sold Mary Kay at the time and in an effort to use things we had on hand, she added food coloring to MK’s signature masque – a Halloween costume that’s good for your skin, too! K’s was pretty yellow, but somehow mine only got to be a Pepto shade of pink instead of nice deep red to match my deep red spider costume.

     Off we went, me, K, and my mother, into the dusk, as Dad standing watch at the front door and manning the candy bowl. Just beyond our yard, I realized my left Kangaroo had come untied and I bent down to tie it.

    At least when I lost my balance – frankly, it was as if the planet Mars had sprouted legs and a head and fell to earth to go trickertreating and I wasn’t used to the shift in gravity - there was plenty of cushioning to break the fall. On my back, I rolled from side to side, trying to gather enough momentum to eventually roll all the way up and back on my feet. No luck, dear reader, and the best I could manage was to flail my various appendages – stuffed legs and fleshy limbs alike – vigorously to the amusement of my parental unit and sibling.

   They laughed and they laughed and they blew the house down, but Humpty Dumpty still couldn’t get off the sidewalk. My father, sealed behind the storm door of our Cape Cod, double in a silent fit of giggles. I finally blurted helplessly, “I cannot get up! Help!” And when my sister and mother finally righted this upturned and rotund arachnid, I had a few leaves stuck to my Mary Kay face masque. The horror.

     The rest of the evening was really fine, but then we realized that food coloring hardened on one’s skin in a face masque does not remove easily and I appeared to have been sunburned for a week.