Edge of Crazy

I've always thought that I could feel the edge of crazy. Standing on a cliff, looking down to how far it is below, how free and clear the air is, I can understand why, if I was crazy, I might jump. Not to kill myself, although that would be the unfortunate result, but to feel what it would be like to back up a few steps and then run until there wasn't ground anymore. Thank goodness I'm not crazy. But I get it, is what I'm saying.

Today I feel the edge of what it would be like if I had OCD about kitchen cleanliness. I'm already pretty clean in the kitchen, not crazy, but cleaner than most, and today I had to part out a chicken. I made the mistake (last night as we were brushing our teeth and we realized John hadn't parted-out the chicken for the soup I'm making) of saying, yeah, I could probably figure out how to take apart a raw chicken. Officially, no, I do not know how to do this. Today I taught myself how to hack one to bits, but it cannot be as hard as it was. People do this all the time. In many (most?) parts of the world chicken does not come in little pre-parted packages. My mistakes were many. First, I made a bad knife decision, but I was so disgusting with chicken goo that I didn't want to open any drawers to get a sharper one. Second, the giblets, which are gross to begin with, were really really gross. I think there was something included that normally isn't included. It was green. I won't say more. Third, I was trying to get the skin off also (so the soup isn't greasy) and that's not as easy as I thought it would be. There was a lot of pulling, some tearing sounds, fingernails were used. Fourth, a raw chicken is really slippery and I hadn't bothered to put a dish towel under my cutting board (and I couldn't exactly open a drawer of towels in the state I was in) so I was chasing the thing around the counter trying not to cut my finger off.

I could go on, but the point was that it made me a little crazy because when I was finally done (I had to throw away the wings, they were just too much) and needed to clean up I couldn't get rid of the little pieces of fat and membrane that were embedded in the cutting board, stuck in the drain trap, under my fingernails. I felt, for sure, the edge of what it would be like to have a cleaning compulsion. I found myself thinking, if only I had an old toothbrush, I could really get rid of this stuff once and for all...

Why I was parting out a chicken at 7:30 in the morning?

1. We don't have real blinds in the (east-facing) bedroom yet, so I was up.
2. Chicken soup tastes better if you use bone-in chicken, simmer it all day in the slow cooker, then remove the chicken, take off the meat and put that back into the soup. It's just better.
3. Normally, I would have used breasts with the bones in, but the grocery stores around our new house are lame. It's one of two things that I'm not happy with in my new house (the other thing is the long commute to work). How is it possible that neither of the 2 big stores by our house carry bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts? How is it possible that a Safeway on the edge of Seattle's biggest (I'm pretty sure) Hispanic neighborhood only carries one kind of salsa. I had to think for a second, am I just (bad) stereotyping by thinking that a Hispanic neighborhood would have more salsa selection? NO! It's a staple of their cuisine. We need to go a little deeper into our neighborhood. I bet Safeway only needs one kind of salsa because only white people shop there. Probably, everyone who needs salsa around here knows a better place to go. I need salsa. In our fridge growing up there was often only salsa, cheese, and tortillas in the fridge.

I am the closest I have ever come to being a vegetarian. And that includes when I used to be (in college, of course) a vegetarian.

Here is a picture of our kitchen, where this all occurred (except there's stuff in it now):

Paint Chips

This is the color I'm going to paint my new living room. This isn't a picture of my living room, just the color. My new living room has wainscoting and a fireplace, but it also has acoustical tile on the ceiling. It's our first house, we had to take the good with a little bit of bad. We officially close today and get the keys in the next day or two. I am nervous and scared and devastated all at the same time. We bought all of the paint yesterday. We were only at Home Depot for about 45 minutes. That's too fast to spend almost $500 dollars. I haven't written on the blog in so long, but I'm having a reach out and touch someone kind of morning. I found a pile of greeting cards Mom had given me over the years. They were in with my crafts because I liked the pictures. That's the devastated part. I could hardly look at her handwriting. I had to squint while I read. I found these cards in the midst of packing. Every one of them felt like a good bye. Every one has a different meaning now. There was a page from Sendak's In the Night Kitchen when the boy is flying a plane made out of dough, and all she'd written inside was "I wish this was me, flying to see you. Love, Mom."

This picture has nothing to do with what I'm going to write about, but I just really like to have a photo with every post. This is the living room of Gina's lake house the morning of her wedding. I couldn't find a photo that related to the feeling of Fall in the air this morning. I woke up in the night and needed to pull my comforter over me and I was instantly, yes, comforted. It makes me think that I am truly a Seattlite (not Seattleite, stupid magazine) because the warm weather gets to me after a little while. Of course, I'm not having anything close to a normal Summer. It's hard to be sad when the sun is shining so brightly, when the flowers are at their best, when the rest of the world is pursuing Summer fun. It's easier to burrow down in a blanket and let sadness take its course when the morning is grey and the air coming in the open windows makes me curl up so I can cover my feet with the edge of my robe. Soup Season is a greater comfort than Salad Season. There's no comfort in a taco, but there is in a roast that takes 4 hours to cook and fills you to the point of needing to shut down and sleep. I predict this will be a Winter of Weight Gain, but I don't really care. Maybe I'll buy a house and live on Ramen for 6 months and that will hold off the comfort pounds.

Home Again

I love this picture that John took at the first of the two weddings we went to. This is taken over an elevated pool and then the tent was down a little slope. Beautiful evening. It is strange to be back, traveling was a complete distraction. Now I am on the lookout for other distractions - hallelujah, the internet is a great one. Maybe I'll just starting sitting here all day, every day, writing down my thoughts as they come. Perfect. Except that I don't have a really comfortable chair.
Instead, I'll just try to get back in the swing of writing new stuff and posting a couple times a week and generally trying to be too busy to think about things too much. Think about things some = good. Think about things too much = bad.

Me and Mom

scan0040, originally uploaded by talldrinkawater3000.

Hanna is getting all our old pictures on the computer. It's so great.

New Blog

Well, there aren't many people who read my blog, maybe because I don't tell anyone about it, so I don't think I'm breaking news to anyone when I just say that my Mom died one week ago today. I'm all cried out for now, so I feel a little better. I think my brain got used to the sad thoughts floating around in there and after a few days of tears tears tears I finally stopped crying so much. Now I'm trying to figure out if I'm just in denial about everything (very likely) or if might really be feeling a little better one week later. Probably what's going on is that the news of it, the sudden shock of it, is wearing off a little and now the next bad thing will be in about a month when it is really weird that I haven't talked to her. We've gone 10 days without talking before, so it's not so strange yet, but when it gets to be Fall, when it's Thanksgiving, Christmas, her birthday... I don't even want to think about it.

But I am starting a blog for my mom. I put a link on the side. She was the cool mom that everyone loved, so it's not a terrible blog to visit.

Is Paperwork False Comfort?

I am going to meet with a different mortgage lady today and, I admit, her request for tons of paperwork makes me trust her more already. Is that a false comfort inspired by the bureaucracy of government? She needs tangible things in front of her, so her loan will be more accurate. I feel like that's the thinking that makes me vulnerable to internet scams. Except that I am actually more skeptical that I should be - not that I am full of conspiracy theories, but I think I believe too much in "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." That was the problem with the other loan we were offered, it sounded too good to be true.

Here's something equally important: I AM READING THE BEST BOOK RIGHT NOW! Of course, she might completely blow the ending which happens so often, but so far I love Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. It's one of the only books I've read that succeeds in being both a great novel and a great detective. Read it NOW! (okay, not now actually, wait until I finish it).

Nubbin update soon! You will be Shocked and Amazed.

Lament to a Chicken Enchilada

Barbacoa is gone. It just disappeared. It was home to the best chicken enchilada I've ever had, to a cheese trough that ridiculously good, and to a great great mint julep. I guess it just closed up, the owners are doing other things. A new restaurant will open soon that's Euro/French/Northwest. I'm not excited.

Where will I ever find another Ibarra Flan? I'm so sad to see Barbacoa go. Damn them.

Home Buying for the Obsessive

Here's a new directions for my blog - we are pre-approved for a home loan and might start looking as early as August. Of course, the real problem is that we don't have any cash. If only we had some assets to liquidate, but we don't. So, we need to start saving our pennies. Because even if you get a Zero-down loan, that doesn't mean you don't need to have a lot of cash around. Ugh. We actually need about 3% of the price of the home in cash to give away, right away!

I am really excited, though, to start chronicling my obsession with home-buying on my blog. Maybe that will make me not bore people in person with it. First things first, I hate when bank people just skim over the details. I have a couple of questions that I only realize later the mortgage lady should have covered. Why does my pre-approval letter have one interest rate for the loan, but then also quotes an A.P.R that is a full percentage point higher? That seems important. Also, what are discount points and why is it that none of the other first-timers I talk to don't know what they are either? Maybe they're for richer people only.

Here's my other thing - I love the real estate web sites. They are better than ebay, better than sale sections, better than The New York Times, for sucking up time. They are even better than blogging for helping me avoid other things. Better than dirty dishes!

Too Much Fun

I have been having too much fun lately. My house is messy, my novel is lonely, and my plants are out of control. 4th of July is no different. We had another great BBQ in Mom's backyard. Thank goodness for Mom's backyard. But I've also been to a baseball game lately, had some incredible meals, and I've been out visiting friends more than usual. It's summer, that's all there is to it. The summer I missed because I worked too much it wasn't a matter of not being out in the sun, it was that I didn't do enough extra socializing. So here's a little selection of fun photos from the last week. More available if you go to my flickr account.

John got a foot-long. It was kind of gross it was so big. He ate it in the same amount of time I ate my regular one and then, of course, he regretted it.

Ben and Gina, John and I at the Mariners Game. The shortest game I've ever been to, but that was fine because we were really there for the food and drink anyway.


This is my brother being wheeled around in a lounge chair to see if they could drag him to the next party. Having just broken his ankle in a freak slipping accident, he was wisely cautious of the long-distance lounger trip.

Maddy (I know that's not how to spell it) didn't want to get her dress dirty. Who gave her that huge popsicle!?


This year we just took our chairs out into the street and the view was really good. If only we could cut down that tree and turn off the street lights.

Nubbin 3

First go look at the First Nubbin photo, then the Second one, just to remember how tiny it started out just two weeks ago. Then proceed down to the Third, and latest, picture. Yes, I had to go horizontal to get the whole thing in. And I can't help but think that this is why I have house plants (even though they are cluttery and time consuming and I always make a mess when I'm watering) - because it's so frickin cool to watch this thing grow! The other nubbins we noticed and then sort of forgot about, but this one, I am watering more regularly than normal and just generally lavishing with love and attention. It's totally working.

Bowl O'Cheese

At Barbacoa they have an appetizer that is pretty much a bowl of good melted cheese with chorizo mixed in it. What could be better than that? Oh, but then you see your plate afterwards and you think, I've had this three or four times in the last two years, how many years has that taken off my life?

Oh My God Nubbin Update

The Nubbin is so huge! I looked at the exact shooting dates and discovered that the first picture was taken on the 17th and the new picture today is just 10 days later. I hope it gets HUGE!

New Link

I just put a link on the side to my Flickr Site. I've been playing with it WAY more than I should (but starting tonight I am only doing it in the evening when I have already done my writing for the day so I will stop getting in trouble with myself). Anyway, I'm slowly putting my whole trip to France on there, and lately I put together a tour of my walk to work. One hint about Flickr, though - their slide show SUCKS. You can't see the comments and it's all better with the comments, so just click through instead.

10 Line June Beetle

This is the bug we found outside of work a few days ago. It's just a cell phone picture, but you can see it was really cool. I should have put my hand next to it for scale, but it made hissing noises when we disturbed it, so I was being a scaredy-cat. It was at least an inch long. The best thing about the bug though, was that it changed our entire day. We showed it to customers and co-workers, we looked up where it was from. It made me think partly about how urban even our small city is, that we were all fascinated by this bug. But it also made me think of simple pleasures - if only I could find a bug every day.

Nubbin

This is a picture of our cactus nubbin. It grows just a little bit each year and this nubbin always appears like magic. It's very startling when it happens because it's just poking out of the side one day. It's growing so fast it makes me want to set up time-lapse photography around it. I will update the nubbin's growth later.

Double Sunset

Okay, this is obviously a crappy cell phone picture, but it shows a little bit of what a beautiful sunset I saw last night at my Dad's. The clouds were so thick that the sun was completely blocked until it reached the sliver of space along the horizon. It looked almost like two sunsets - first as the sun appeared from behind those dark clouds, then again when it finally dipped behind the Olympics. A beautiful finish to a very nice Father's Day.

Thinking

Ever feel like your brain is on the edge of something? I can feel it shaping itself in the corners of my thoughts. I'm pretty sure I had the whole idea as I was falling asleep last night reading The Position by Meg Wolitzer (so good!). There's been a missing something in my novel for so long, I'm afraid to think I may be on the edge of figuring it out, but something H said the other night is still tickling me. It's right in line with what that weird Andy said to me years ago and what Binnie said to everyone... something about the missing part of the story being personality (mine or Netta's?). But I don't want every story I ever tell to sound like me, I want it to sound like the character... still thinking

Editing

Is it a matter of focus or inspiration? I can'’t tell anymore. When I'’m feeling inspired but I don'’t get anything done then it'’s a focus problem, and vice versa. Today I spent my morning posting pictures and reading a mystery. Then I sat down to write for real and my brain was all over the place - wanting to stop to clip my toenails, to check the weather report, to blow my nose, to see if the earwigs are still hiding in my poppies. I had to force myself not to do the dishes (and I hate doing dishes).

I know where I want the story to go. I think I can feel a worthwhile first draft of the new stuff in me, but I'’m having so much trouble lately actually getting the words on the page. Netta and Seth are trapped in a state of arrival. If I can just let them arrive, then it picks up again with the scenes that I like -– searching for frogs, falling in the mud, the boat on the rocks, all of it.

H suggested working on something else so that I wouldn'’t feel bogged down in the novel and I agreed. But part of me wonders if it'’s actually the opposite problem. I'’ve been letting myself multi-task too much, not forcing myself to really focus on Netta. It'’s like working out, like playing an instrument, like any skill -– you have to practice, but not so much that you get burned out.

So, is it a matter of lack of focus or lack of inspiration?

Reading Recommendations

I've already wasted most of my morning finishing a mystery/thriller I started yesterday morning and posting photos to my blog. Yes, this is going to be a great distraction from writing. Every time I read a good mystery (and Barry Eisler's Rain Fall is a good mystery) I decide I'm going to write my own. I can think up the characters, the location, some of the tension, but I just can't think of the plot, the all-important mystery to drive the Mystery. Of course, a lot of mediocre mysteries forget to put any mystery in and instead just rely on tension - which isn't really the same thing - but I don't want to write a mediocre mystery.

Also, in the last 2 weeks I read The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier, which was so strange and good. The kind of story that would have been maybe terrible except Brockmeier is a great great writer, so it was a great book. And I read a really short, intense novel about child soldiers in Africa called, Beasts of No Nation. Wow, talk about being completely transported to another place and way of living. There, 3 great books to think about, all very different, and now I will go work on my own great book.

Chocolate Cupcake Tower

Chocolate Cupcake Tower, originally uploaded by johnnyblegs.

Yumm, cupcakes are delicious. I would like a cupcake tower please. Oh, I am just loving posting pictures on my blog. It means I don't have to think about what to write about this morning.

Lazy Luna

Lazy Luna, originally uploaded by talldrinkawater3000.

I just had to put this on my blog. First, it's just a cute picture of my sister's dog, but second, I think it almost looks like a professional took it, like maybe she hired someone to come take portraits of Luna. What a little princess sleeping on the couch.

Too tired

Too tired, originally uploaded by Perfect Princess.

oops, I deleted this post on accident, but I really liked having it on my blog.

Earwigs

I am having major earwig problems in my garden. I am usually pretty good about not freaking out about bugs (after a childhood of spider phobia brought on by finding them - at different moments - in my hair, ear, underwear, bed, and sleeping bag), but earwigs give me the serious willies. I am tempted to rip out all my plants and start from scratch. Good thing I'm broke and can't afford to do that. They hide inside the flowers and I'm sure that one of these days I'm going to sniff something beautiful and inhale an earwig into my sinuses. No one gets cut flowers from me this summer until the outbreak is under control.

Clarification

Just to clarify, I am not smoking a joint in the previous picture. It says right in the post that I'm a good girl, for cryin' out loud (at least good enough to not post of picture of myself smoking a joint on my new blog!)

Gina's Graduation

Oops, had too much to drink, but I am a good girl. I am brushing my teeth before I fall asleep. I think this is the funniest picture I have of myself as an adult.

You're

You're, originally uploaded by talldrinkawater3000.

This is my cute sister. She likes taking pictures of herself.

Loans

I can't write today. I look at my story and all I feel is bitterness. I am so angry at myself right now, so angry about the choices I made at Columbia, I can hardly think. My loan payments are going up in July and up again in March. That will take them from being one third of my monthly income to being almost half my monthly income. It's ridiculous.

And I wasn't even that young when I decided to take out these loans! I wish I could say that I was so young I didn't know what a bad decision I was making, but that isn't really the case. I just thought there was no way I'd make it as far as 2007 without having my book out, without having some sort of advance to sink into the loans and lower the payments. I didn't think I'd be a famous bestseller, but I was positive I'd have a book published. Now the date for the final, brutal increase is getting closer and the book isn't done and I'm going to have to quit the job I love (the job that inspires me) so that I can find a better paying job (that will probably be awful) to pay off the loans I took out to learn about writing.

So I think I'm going to watch Montel Williams or that Regis show because I can't stand to look at this unfinished novel today. And I promise that if I ever have enough money I'm going to start a grant that helps out foolish MFA students like myself by covering their loan payments for a couple years. Better yet, if I'm ever out there on a book tour or something I'm going to tell everyone who asks me about MFA programs that they're great - BUT ONLY IF you don't have to take out a loan to pay for it.

Want

Today I am wanting everything. I want to understand HTML because my post yesterday turned into gobbly-gook when I tried to change something. I want to be able to walk to work without sweating. I want a haircut, but my stylist seems to have disappeared. And I want silly things like a new set of fluffy towels, new jeans and new running shoes.
What's with all the wanting?
I also sort of want to throw out all my house plants and 50% of all my clothes and shoes. I'll regret it later, so I'm not letting myself do. But the plants just clutter up the window ledges and are constantly needing to be watered. Would people think I was crazy if they came over and I didn't have any house plants anymore. Everyone has house plants. No spider plant drooping from the bookcase might make it look like I'm losing it. And, inevitably, it will seem like a judgment on my friends who have far too many houseplants.
It's similar to me not liking dogs. I don't hate dogs, I just think they stink and take a lot of work, and I'm really just too lazy for that. But sometimes when a dog person hears that I don't like dogs, I see them registering the judgment. She doesn't like dogs, so she doesn't like me, or she thinks I shouldn't like dogs either. Really it's just that I know myself enough to know that even if I had a dog that I thought was cute and fun, the mess and poop-picking-up would drive me crazy.
I want a cat.

Corned Beef

Here's a food picture (because I don't have one of risotto). This is my St. Patrick's Day feast. Huge! Yumm!

Feral Chef

Last night I had dinner at Dad's. He made a great bell pepper and shallot risotto. I felt like maybe I was in a foreign country - the way he made risotto, the ingredients, and most of all his bizarre cutting prepping techniques. I name him The Feral Chef. Being a surgeon he knows how to handle a knife, being also a carpenter he knows how to be efficient, but since he's a self-taught cook, he doesn't know the "normal" way you cut an onion. He cuts off the rooty ends first, then cuts it into rings like onions rings, then makes a tower of the rings, then cuts that into rough pieces. And maybe the strangest to me was that they don't refrigerate their Parmesan cheese. Instead they have a "Parmesan Cheese Cover" on the counter (can you say Williams Sonoma?), so the cheese was so rock hard even with a fancy grater all I could make was cheese dust that seemed to disperse around the room from our breathing.

And he wasn't stirring his risotto constantly! What would Marcella say?

But I am dedicating today to the Feral Chef's risotto that turned out great and wasn't made in anyway like how I would make it.

Quality Control

I just deleted a long post about the bakery where J works. I decided that I don't really have an ax to grind with them, they just aren't efficient and that bugs me. Why would you run an entire company in a way that is so inefficient?

Really, I want to talk about my wiffle ball injury. When was the last time I even saw or touched a wiffle ball? Long time, that's for sure. So to be hit in the face - hard - with a wiffle ball and to now sport and small, round mark, well, wiffle, on my chin (that really just looks like a you-know-what that I picked at) has made me think about how I don't play enough. Not just wiffle ball. Because even if I owned a wiffle ball and a flimsy, faux-wood bat I wouldn't go out into my non-existant yard and "knock" the ball around. But I do wish I played more games. Stupid board games and cards and air hockey.

Yes, lots more air hockey. Except I would start working out if I was going to play more air hockey so as to avoid a repeat of last week's debilating air hockey "injury" (that's a very physical game for the right forearm and inner elbow).

Face

This is a picture of me in Villandry in the Loire Valley. I have to post a picture of myself if I want to use it in my profile and I am planning on distracting myself from writing a lot with this blog so I ought to have a picture on it. Yes, my glasses are always always crooked. There's nothing to be done about it.

House Cleaning

If I kept my house cleaner, I would write more. I know it. I always say that I need to stop watching tv so that I have more time to read so that I don't use my writing time for reading. But really I need to stop watching tv so that I can clean the house at night and then there won't be any cleaning to distract me from writing in the morning. Yes, that's the new plan (or, more accurately, the latest plan).

Or here's another one: I should move to the Skagit Valley and live in beautiful house with a garden and a cat and J can have a dog and I won't even get tv reception and then I'll write all the time. That's what I think every time I come home from the Skagit Valley. Then the weekend wears off and I realize that really I'd garden and plays with my cat and J's dog all day and not really get more done at all.

I always think of Paulo Coehlo when I have that Skagit dream because I read an interview with him once (yes, I used to be a big fan of his, but I was young and there was a boy involved) and he said that after he made his Money from The Alchemist he rented a Swiss Chalet to write in. He'd always dreamed of writing in a Swiss Chalet. He's from, I don't remember where, someplace very urban and Spanish-speaking. So, he rented this Swiss Chalet and tried to write and got nothing done. He was bored, unstimulated, distracted, all of that. He went back to Lisbon (?) and had to squeeze his writing in between the rest of life and, of course, got the book done right away.

What's the trade-off? How stimulated do I have to be to write, without being so busy that I never get anything done? Or does that really have nothing to do with it?

Hold on, I have to switch my laundry.