cranky pixels

I had the right idea on the way down. Sitting at the airport, waiting for my flight to San Fran, I cracked open the laptop and started working on my long-abandoned first novel, which I rediscovered while backing up my old hard drive. Reading through it, my first thought was “Huh – it’s not that bad.” My second was “…and I know what it needs to be better.” I was merrily typing away when my plane boarded, and away went the laptop.

As it turned out, that was the last time I turned on the computer for fun my whole trip.

The trip was, in theory, broken into two parts. My “vacation” schedule was thus:

Saturday
5pm flight lands, 7pm get to SC, have dinner with sister & brother-in-law, pretend I’m not on the verge of collapse due to skipping lunch
7:30pm – 9pm: Oh, I’ve got a little break. I’ll just catch up on some work.
9pm: Dancing at the Dakota, where :cue sympathy: not even one of my friends bothered to stop by and say hello, despite the fact that I’d posted several bulletins saying “I’ll be in town! Come play with me!,” 12am back to Bec’s, where I do a little more work and then go to bed at 2.

Next day:
9am breakfast, work, 11am pedicures, 1pm meetup with Emily and Mia, 5pm dinner with Maggie, 9pm back to Bec’s, 10pm work, 1am sleep.

Monday, though tecnically the first day of the “Business” portion of my trip, I decided to “take some time off.” This seemed somewhat reasonable (given that I hadn’t had any downtime yet) and turned out to be a huge, massive, all-encompassing mistake. Because, see, when I was tooling around Santa Cruz feeling vaguely bereft but pleasantly unencumbered? I could have been working. And if I had been working, I would have at least been closer to being caught up, instead of firing up the laptop Tuesday morning and realizing that I have more work to do than any one person could do in a week…plus 8 hours of conference every day. But I digress. Monday, lovely day, hung out with Maggie and then hung out with Emily and generally felt better than one should feel on a Monday, especially when one’s kid is several hundred miles away. And then, after the lovely Miss Emily got back in her car and I was alone in the city, I realized something I should have thought of weeks ago.

There is only one of me.

Yeah! I know. I was shocked too.

So the me who was going to take it easy and spend my downtime crocheting and watching primetime TV? Out. The me who had grandiose plans of spending my evenings immersed in my writing and finally, finally getting to concentrate on the book for more than an hour at a time? Out. The me who was going to spend the week being gregarious and outgoing and picking the brains of the lecturers? Out. (This one was a real disappointment, because I’d been psyching myself up for weeks. But do you have any idea how much energy it takes for the pathologically introverted to do things like smile and not hide under tables? More energy than I have on any average work day, I can tell you that right now.)

And that left us with the usual me, the one who works like mad during every free second so that I can feel like I’m not a complete waste of space. I so dislike the feeling of being unprofessional and unresponsive that I actually worked during several lectures, flipping manically between taking notes and making intricate modifications to a comp in Photoshop so that I could email it to the client before the end of the day. After at least a few of the sessions, of course, I wanted to talk to the speaker (because his or her presentation had been fascinating) but I was afraid that I’d say something that would make it obvious that I hadn’t been paying adequate attention. Because god forbid I don’t know the answer to every question before I ask it! I bug me.

Naturally this did WONDERS for my already overwhelming sense that I really didn’t belong, given that I’m nowhere near being an expert in anything web-related, and clearly had nothing of any interest to say to anyone. (I scurried quickly back to the hotel after the conference each evening so my cavernous, gaping ignorance wouldn’t embarrass me.)

This, my friends, was my vacation. I missed my kid. I missed my husband. I spent a bunch of money at Sephora. (Okay, that part wasn’t so bad.) And I squandered the opportunity to rub shoulders with people I admire in favor of making myself crazy trying to be three places at once.

I ask you, internets: what the hell is wrong with me?

I signed up for NaNoWriMo. Why? Because I am a crazy person. Seriously, I have time for this? Between kid, work, school, visiting relatives, and Thanksgiving? (I probably don’t even have to mention that I have one, maybe two projects that are on a tighttighttight 30-day deadline.) Yes, clearly I can also write 50,000 words. Who needs sleep?

I fully intend to do it, though, because it will be good for me. I think too much. I plan too much. What could be more therapeutic than 30 days of enforced brain-dump? At worst, I’ll have some prolific sludge; at best, the bare-bones beginning of the Mommyfiction novel I’ve been making noises about for the last year. (My actual work in progress novel – er, one of them, anyway – already has 30,000 words, so it’s out of the NaNo running.) C’mon, it’ll be fun.

Speaking of “fun,” I’m leaving in two days for a web design conference. I will be away from my kid for five entire days. Days in which I will not be able to snuggle him or kiss his head even once. I think I might die.

“IT’S unbelievable how quickly it all happened – all I did was eat three bagels every morning with butter, peanut butter and jelly all over them, a few boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts for lunch and boom! I’m tipping the scale at 195″ – a very pregnant Milla Jovovich at the London premiere of “Resident Evil: Extinction”

ENDQUOTE – New York Post Online Edition: Seven

I used to know how the word “okay” came about, linguistically. I could look it up. I’ve already decided I’m not going to, though, so you’ll just have to take my word: it was entertaining. Or not. I really don’t remember.

Maybe I just have an unrealistic idea about what “okay” is. I keep looking for something that will make me stop having days that feel impossible, but is that even a thing? Are there people who don’t wake up in the morning and think “Oh god, I can’t do this”? Maybe the trick is to just limit those days, say, to one or two a week. Currently I’m clocking 5 or 6, which is disheartening.

The Wellbutrin seems to be helping, in that it is no longer actively hindering. I cut my dose from 300mg/day back down to 150mg, and the difference was astounding. In retrospect, what the HELL was I thinking, going with a full dose? Am I a girl who follows doctor’s orders? I so am not. Yet I just sat there and nodded when he said that I’d be increasing my dose after a week, and then did so, on schedule, not unlike a lemming. When did I become a lemming? (Aside: I used to have a comic I’d cut out of the paper titled “Lemming Suicide Hotline,” which showed a bunch of lemmings on phones saying “Jump.” “Do it.” “Go ahead, jump.” Hee.)

So, no more lemming. I will take my 150mg and feel slightly more okay than before, and that will be fine, really. And on days like today, when the idea of leaving the house is absolutely untenable, I will just change back into my fuzzy slippers and curl up on the couch watching bootleg Glen Phillips concert footage on YouTube while I work on websites on Not So’s laptop. It may be the least I can do, but at least it’s something.

As you can see (from a screenshot! Of the sidebar! Of this very blog! Oh, I am so meta it hurts), I’ve completely and utterly failed in my goal to run 10 times in 4 weeks. According to my widget, I have 7 days to finish 8 runs. Which, sure. I could. But, let’s be serious people, I won’t. Some people say “Don’t start something unless you can finish it.” I say “Don’t fail quietly when you could fail spectacularly.” (Actually I don’t say that at all. Except that I just did.)

Seriously, though? I’ve been too busy to jog (even the sad, short little jogs of yestermonth). Projects deadlining, photo shoots, print work, proposals (to clients; I’m not looking to expand my marital options), school, sick babies, PMS, toymaking, med-juggling…it’s been a three-ring circus around here, and not the nice Ringling Bros. kind. (What am I even talking about? Am I about to embark on a metaphor about evil clowns? Everyone knows I love evil clowns.)

School in particular is pissing me off. First, there was the schedule. Two classes this session instead of my usual one. Each session is 5.5 weeks long, so two classes are going to make my head spin, but whatever. Then there was the bill, which I thought surely, surely was a mistake. I even called, laughing: “Someone misplaced a decimal point! Can you send me a new bill, with my real balance?” But no. There was no misplaced decimal point. Since I am taking two classes instead of my usual one, my financial aid won’t cover the difference in tuition. I can’t not take the extra class, since – and this was news to me – my graduation date has been moved from next spring to the middle of December. So, uh, yay? Except not, since apparently I have to pull $2500 out of the air and bestow it upon my learning institution. Yes please, allow me to pay you for the privilege of putting me $30,000 in debt! Please, sir, may I have another?

But, whatever. (Is this becoming my mantra?) I’ll be done with school in December (apparently), so at least I can take a break before deciding whether I want to go back to get my Bachelor’s. (Yes. This is only an Associate’s degree. I suck.) Part of me still wishes I was working toward somehow attending the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but since a) I have a web design company now and b) I do not live in or near Iowa, I guess it’s time to let that one go. Despite my regular check-ins, my husband is still unwilling to uproot us and live in Iowa for a year while I get my geek on. (The Iowa question is second only to “Don’t you want another one,” to which the answer, also, continues to be “No.”) Instead, I will have a useless degree to assist me in starting a career I already have. Go me!

Oh, doom! Oh, gloom! Would you believe that I’m actually feeling better?

You ever have one of those days when you realize that you’re never, ever going to look like yourself again?

Okay, that’s not the best example. Try this one:

I don’t even look like I’m related to the person I was ten years ago. I look a little bit like I might have consumed her. Like some sort of parasite.

Old pictures are depressing.

Kate of Shapely Prose put together a Flickr slideshow illustrating the difference between underweight, normal, overweight and obese according to BMI standards, and just like that I started feeling better about my weight. I mean, it’s one thing to suspect that BMI is a crock of crap; it’s another to see a woman with a healthy-looking figure and see the word “overweight” above her picture. And here I’d been feeling all bad about myself for being overweight. Fuck that, is what I say. The so-called overweight women in the pictures? They look great. Normal. Kind of like how I want to look. (The difference is that they have not spent the last few days wearing the same pair of sweats and a really unflattering Threadless tee shirt because they have cramps and are sulking about it.)

Speaking of sulking! I got interviewed by a woman from Willamette Week (one of Portland’s alternative weekly newspapers) for an article she was doing about the Portland craft scene. She talked to me for about an hour, and seemed to be taking notes of some sort. There were lots of questions about feminism, which I gamely answered, but – dude, I’m a feminist, but I do not have a ready spiel about the socio-political ramifications of the craft fair. Still, I talked, as I am known to do, and afterward freaked right the hell out about all the stupid things that came out of my mouth. But hey, I needn’t have worried: the article came out today, and I got two wee little quotes. Two wee little quotes and no mention of my craft business name or URL. Just, “makes handmade plush toys out of her home” and “a graphic designer who also makes plush toys on the side.” EVERY other woman in the article had her business mentioned by name. Almost everyone got a link. But I? I got nothing. Thanks, Willamette Week! (It is sort of cool to be quoted in an article, don’t get me wrong. But it would have been nice if, oh, people could actually click something to visit the Cranky Pals site. Like that. See how easy that was?) 

Oh well. I guess I’ll have to achieve worldwide fame and everlasting celebrity some other way.

Tags: willametteweek, craft, crafty mamas, cranky pals, shapely prose, BMI, weight, kvetching