blogging from afar.

so for a tick of time this morning, it looked like i might not make it to the airport. my ride never showed up. it was sticky and muggy and already warm at 4.45 this morning. by 5, when said ride was still not around, i called a cab. to their credit, the cab company got a car there quickly. the driver was nice. but the taxi itself? a wreck. every time the driver hit the gas to go, the taxi rumbled and sputtered. i did not think we'd make it to the airport. but we did. i checked my bag, skirted through security and had moments to spare.

and what great moments those were. for what was awaiting me at my gate? yup. you guessed it. crazy lady in red.

i spied crazy lady in red (CLR) moments earlier, at the airport starbucks. she was on her knees in front of the drink case, eyeing the juice selections. 'how come they're all from concentrate?' she yelled. 'how come there isn't any fresh? can't someone get me fresh?' the starbucks workers did not look amused. or pleased. she continue to goaded them, so much so that when i asked for a cup of water, they smiled and laughed and didn't charge me. yay, me! as i walked away, CLR was still hawking about the lack of fresh juice.

but then she showed up at my gate. ah, joy. she paced. she bitched. at one point, she asked the group of people standing innocently in line to, you know, board the plane, why they were just standing there, why weren't they moving onto the plane (uhm, because we weren't told to board yet maybe?). she bitched about no one answering her (uhm, maybe because you're a ranting lunatic?). she bitched about there being one measely desk attendant. she bitched about the elite flyers and the families with kids boarding early because they were boarding too slowly. she bitched and bitched and then bitched some more.

'i will call security if you don't calm down,' the desk attendant said.

CLR bitched more, tried to goad passengers into boarding - quickly, quickly, she snapped, waving her hands around - and made life generally unpleasant for all.

the desk attendant called security. there was much rejoycing.

when i got on the plane, the first flight attendant i encountered looked flustered. 'yes, we know about her already, she's on her way down,' she told us. walking down the aisle to my seat, it was clear there was a certain solidarity among the passengers already on the plane - it was 'us' vs. CLR. i swear two guys high-fived.

i was sure CLR was going to be my seat mate. happily, she was not. she was the last person on the plane and as soon as she stepped on, everyone fell silent. we watched fearfully as she made her way down the aisle and took her seat. she was the row ahead of me, in the 'f' seat, the window seat.

'i've got the aisle,' she barked at the guy sitting there. he gladly gave up his seat and moved to the window. i'm sure there would have been bloodshed had he not.

the rest of the flight was uneventful, which is always good for a flight. especially when you have a CLR as a fellow passenger.

now i'm in the minneapolis/st. paul airport. i'm tired. i still have an hour and a half before my next flight. and i have a sinking feeling CLR is going to be on it - she just stalked past, a starbucks bag in her hand. apparently she's been terrorizing workers here about fresh juice, too.

when food was so very bad.

i actually have a collection of old cookbooks and cooking pamplets, chock full of the recipes you'll find here. seriously, i love these old cookbooks because the food is so beautifully displayed - the colors are vibrant, the table settings are oh-so-perfect, the arrangements almost, almost, make you think the actually food produced from these recipes would be delectable. as for the ingredients? well...yes. the ingredients often leave a little something to be desired. but look at how beautiful this brunch spam recipes looks. i'd almost want to try it.

now wouldn't a really great blog trace the trials and tribulations of trying to recreate these vintage-y recipes and serve them to friends...recipes such as grilled spam with stuffed eggs or corn pudding or molded pork loaf

nakedness.

so why do people blog? do they think their lives are so interesting that their every moves should be documented? do they think they have insight and wisdom others don't have? do they long to be famous? is it a type of voyeurism - a chance to look into the intimate details of someone else's life? it is merely a way to keep in touch with those so far away from you? 

when melina and i were writing snarkygirls, it was a good read. we disguised our friends and enemies by giving them new names. we wrote about the people who annoyed us, who vexed us, who loved us. we were mean and snarky and full of venom. but we were also each pretty unhappy with the state of our lives. when we tried to revive snarkygirls, we failed miserably. matt d in japan explained it thusly one night to melina: "you all were bitches." and at the height of the snark, we really were. snarky part two failed miserably because, well, i liked my new life. melina liked her new life. we each had moved away from the tundra, onto better things. yay for us. bad for snark. 

but it's still a good read. 

now i blog because i desperately miss writing, and i need to get back into the swing of things. betsy and i recently became friends with a guy finishing up his mfa in fiction. he's cute and smart...and a really good writer. this is inspiring. i can't wait to talk with him more about writing. i miss that. 

not too long ago i worried i'd forgotten how to tell a story. i really hope this isn't something that turns out to be true.

here's a piece from the nytimes on why exposing ourselves seems like a good - and then very bad - idea, from a former editor/writer for gawker. 

space-y.

martha is space, not racist. &  lori made her outfit! lori's so talented and cute.

a space whore and a martian whore &  the creepiest christopher ever. 

little mostly lovely random bits with a tiny slice of sad.

ted kennedy has a brain tumor. this makes me sad. obama is doing well. this makes me happy. please hillary, won't you quit? hello kitty is moving up in the world. trixie belden has found a lovely new home. everyone she meets swoons and falls a little in love. this weekend was a space-themed birthday party for a friend. photos soon. it was a good night and much fun was had by all. i am still finding glitter in weird and random places.

recently i said 'i need to get high school graduation presents, but what do the kids today want?'

the funniest guy at work said, in all seriousness, 'kids today want ipods and condoms.'

and this weekend, rather than ecuador with lastenia and joe, i'm going to iowa city to spend some time with naomi and dave. yay! i am looking forward to baking challah bread with naomi and practicing my lame softball skills with dave. the good news? the co-ed work-related softball team i 'play' on (okay, i sit on the bench and cheer wildly and use my mad math skills to keep score) only lost by four points this week. believe me when i say that's pretty awesome.

oh dear.

so, this is kind of depressing.

and, really, so is this. i think. i mean, it's weird, right? it's not just me? i found the following noted on a blog. i don't know the girl who writes the particular blog i found it on, but i don't think i really want to. "ive never been a control-freak…until now. And that weirds me out! Control freaks are the single women who can't find a man to handle them so they stay single forever." uhm...really?

and i love bill clinton. i really really really do. i'm a fan of hillary. but i'm a bigger fan of obama. i would really be very happy right this moment if hillary would just please up and drop out of the race. otherwise, i fear it will be mccain in november. and i can't handle another four years of the repubs. honestly. who could?

nancy drew may have been chic, but trixie was full of sass.

so she's cute, right? i've named her trixie belden because she's spunky. trixie belden was, of course, the poor nancy drew, or at the very least, the middle class nancy drew. her parents weren't as rich as nancy's dad, her friends weren't as classy, the boys in her life weren't as debonair as ned, but trixie had spunk. she was sassy. trixie belden the dog is sassy. she tussles with the bean, prances on our walks, gives as good as she gets. it's pretty sad, then, that she isn't going to stay with us. as cute as she is, as sassy as she is, as adorable as she is…three dogs will push my world to the edge. so sam will take trixie to the tundra when her visit with melina is through. sam volunteers at the world's best animal shelter (they take in animals from kill shelters, for goodness sake!) and trixie will stay there until she finds a permanent home. it makes me so sad, though, that in her young life (10 weeks, give or take), trixie is already on, at least, home number 3. at least at brian's house and at my house she's been well loved.
*
it turns out that zoe and the bean aren't the a$$holes i feared they were. saturday we drove out to the dog park with brian, his three pups and his 2-year-old. i was weary. would the dogs act like jerks off leash and off road? would they try to kill brian's dogs? Would they bully the little boy? Happily, no and no. they were wonderful. Zoe and the bean frolicked through meadows and trails. They swam in the ponds. They played happily. it was a lovely morning. Little baby boy is at the age when all girls, apparently, are 'mommy.' He picked flowers for me as he rode in his wagon. He would say 'mommy' as he handed them to me. I would say 'lynda.' He would smile and say 'mommy.' I'd take the flowers and say 'lynda.' It went on this way for quite some time. alas, it went on for so long that eventually i gave up.
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it's a season of break ups.

fact or fiction: happy endings.

it happened with i., all those years ago. when he first met me, he couldn't get enough of me. He was in awe of my accomplishments, which was pretty endearing, seeing as how I didn't really feel like I'd really accomplished much of anything at all. I was teaching full time at Northern and half-time at North Central College. I'd already quit the wine bar and had moved to an apartment in DeKalb.

But the year i. and i met, i'd been to europe three times in nine months. he liked that. he saw the MFA. he was impressed with that. he was an aspiring writer who hadn't yet managed to get into an MFA program, though he'd been trying. his previous girlfriend, a poet, had gotten into the iowa writer's workshop and they'd broken up – under what, the weight of her success and his failure? it seemed so.

we started reading each other's stories. we made critiques and gave advice. He started to come round to dinner parties I had. His sister and her boyfriend bought a house near where I lived. I invited him to come watch me teach at North Central. We talked about writing - a lot. We talked about books - almost as much as we talked about writing. based on our mutual love of words, and the fact that he was tall and lanky and shy-boy cute, we dated.

Then came the news. Not only had he finally been accepted to a writing program, he'd been accepted to Iowa. The Writer's Workshop. On a fellowship. There was much celebrating. I bought a house. He kind of moved in for the rest of the summer. that august, he moved to iowa. i helped him move. we drove through the cornfields of northwestern illinois into the cornfields of iowa. and for a couple of months, we had a lovely little life – he in Iowa City, me in DeKalb, traveling the barely 2.5 hours between us on weekends. we talked a lot on the phone. we emailed.

and slowly – his awe fell away. Maybe he got to know me too well? Essentially, a phone call revealed a shift in his feelings – 'well, I mean, you know you write, well, relationship stories,' he told me one day, when I asked him if he wanted me to critique something for him. there was a long silence over the phone lines. In a matter of weeks, iowa and the workshop had gone to his head.

He came for my birthday weekend. It sucked. i think it's safe to say that weekend goes down as one of the worst on record. He didn't stay over once, opting instead to stay with his sister. He came to my party with the worst present ever – a brown wool beret with a flower attached to it. I mean, his sister came up with a better present, a beautiful scarf. Two days later, safely back in Iowa, he broke up with me over the phone. I hung up on him.

Vegan #2 fell hard. Our first night together, he professed love. 'I want to be your boyfriend,' he said. 'I can't get enough of you.' I was flattered. I wanted to be his girlfriend, too, so it seemed like smooth sailing from there. I cooked a vegan Thanksgiving. He took me to see a local production at the community theater. I introduced him to good wine. When we'd go up to the dive bar together, we'd hold hands. We were disgustingly sweet. He made me a mixed CD for my birthday. I felt like I was fourteen again. It was awesome. On Thanksgiving morning, we woke up to snow. A Southern California boy, he was in awe. We took the dogs for a long walk. He went home to make a vegan chocolate cake. I made squash lasagna. We drank with friends late into the night. A week later, he told me he couldn't commit, he was scared, we were over.

Jason, of course, went crazy. A PhD in German literature at a top tier school will apparently do that to you. It was too bad. I liked him a lot. He was kind of my undoing one summer. I'd had faith it would work out – but it didn't.

and then a nice long break. and a move to m-town.

Boy likes girl. Boy starts to pursue girl. Boy is going through divorce. Boy strings girl along, though it's important to note she did not mind being strung along. Girl liked boy a lot. More than she'd liked anyone in quite some time. Boy pursued. Girl allowed. One night, they had fun. Too much fun. Hook up fun. Girl isn't that kind of girl, not really, but girl really liked boy a lot. He liked her, too. He said 'I need time.' Girl stepped back to allow time. Divorce was finalized. Boy stayed away. Then, girl walked in on boy on date. Girl is sad. Boy wants to talk. He can't be with girl. Girl made boy a cheater. Boy can't live with that. Boy said other things to make girl realize boy just wanted to feel better and didn't want girl to hate him. Girl realized too late she had been the dreaded rebound girl. Now Girl and Boy don't talk to each other, go out of their way to avoid each other.

In a perfect world, Boy would look out his window and see girl, cute as ever, walking her dogs. It would be a lovely late-spring day. summer would be edging in, but there would still be a cool breeze. Girl's dress would float in the wind, swirl around her legs. Her hair would blow in her eyes. the dogs would prance. Boy, seeing this, would realize he'd made a mistake, Girl really was special, she really was worth pursuing, she was worth making it work out. he'd remember that this is how he first noticed her, walking her dogs through the park, her hair pale against the brilliant green grass. and Girl and Boy would reunite. There would be much happiness. there might even be rejoicing in the streets.

Only in my world, things don't seem to end this way. Rather, in my world, the boys seem to drift away, lose interest, imagine the girl as something she's not quite and determine she isn't worth fighting for. They go away to prestigious writing programs. They go away to Berlin only to come back and have a nervous breakdown along the side of the road, en route to see her, a trip that never gets finished, a destination that's never met. They surround their lives with rules to live by – what to eat, when to exercise, how to manage – and realize there's no room for her. they divorce and move on, branding her with motives and no conscience, winding her down until she is merely a figure to wave at in the distance.

in girl's world, there don't seem to be happy endings.

but why?

because, really, anyone can write.

my job is great, and it's about to get even greater. i love my job, mostly because i get to spend my days writing, which i love to do. my job allows me to be creative and to tell stories, which is obviously the kind of writing i most love to do.

sometimes my stories are posted to the web. today, a particular story, which was well written, engaging and just heart-tugging enough, was posted online. after a bunch of non-writers in the building got their hands on it. herein is a struggle we writers have with non-writers: because we do it so well and so easily, they believe that they, too, can write as well and as easily. which, of course, non-writers generally cannot.

now if the non-writers had made suggestions/changes that actually added something or improved the writing or story, i'm all for that. who doesn't love some constructive criticism? but no. the non-writers made changes that made the writing a bit vague, a bit ho-hum, a bit dumbed-down, if you will. there are now a couple of run on sentences where i had none. there are missing commas. there is unclarity for unclarity's sake.

of course these changes will stay, online, until we have a meeting at some point in the future to talk about why these kinds of changes won't work (there's an approval process at the place i work that is insane – seriously, how many people need to sign off on one story? you'd be amazed). most non-writers just can't understand that when you read something for approval, you aren't being given license to rewrite it just to rewrite it. you're looking at facts, your looking at the larger picture, you're look at it to ensure the information contained within is correct.

if you can't proof your own emails before you send them out, if you don't know how to correctly use a semi-colon, and if you can't identify a run-on sentence, you seriously should not be changing my copy.

snobbish? you bet.