Big News

Submitted entry: [Todd wrote this entry in October of 2005, after lamenting his inability to read journal entries from 1997 to 1998.]

This is one of those entries that I’m not entirely sure how to write. I have big news but it feels weird to just jump in and say it but it also feels stilted and weird to beat around the bush. Okay, I’ve decided - I’ll just jump right in and say it. Sage and I are going to be parents at about the end of August. Surprised? I imagine you are more than we are since out of superstition (and perhaps a little sense of privacy) we didn’t let anyone in on the fact that Sage and I were trying to conceive. Let me tell you, it has been something of a wild ride getting to this point.

A few months back, Sage and I went to visit her family in Florida. Not a big event in and of itself but there were two elements that made this visit different. First off, though we didn’t tell anyone while we were there, a week or so before we got there we had something of an accident. To paraphrase - we found out why people say that condoms are not 100% reliable as birth control. So all the time we were there, in the back of our mind is this nagging wonderment as to whether we were going to be parents quicker than we had planned. Long time readers of this journal will know that we have waffled for years on the idea of becoming parents. We both would go from wanting kids and back to being terrified of the idea within weeks of each other. Knowing ourselves, we decided that until we were really sure we wanted kids we were not going to intentionally have one.

But here we were, in Florida with Sage potentially pregnant. And every relative of Sage’s that we meet has the same question. “When are you going to have kids?” And we just nodded and toed the party line - “Not for some time - we’re not ready.” all the while thinking that we could be less than nine months away from being proved to be liars.

It was further difficult, because Sage and I got to meet one of her “new” (well, new to us - she was four but we hadn’t met her before) cousins who was really fun to hang out with. Sage and her cousin got along really well and spent lots of time together. After a few family members saw the two of them together, the heat turned up a little still with calls of “Sage is so good with her” said to both of us and to me alone (as we watched Sage and her cousin together).

Well, to make a long story short, it wasn’t long after we returned home from Florida that Sage had her period. And something surprising occurred. We were disappointed. I don’t know about Sage but I was a bit shocked at that in a sort of “where the hell did that come from way. And after that point, we started to have more serious discussions. We started reading a few books - one by this guy, “Dr. William Sears” who published an interesting question and answer book that we read together while preparing dinner each taking turns first asking a question, then giving our own answer and then listening to his answer. He seems like he has some really good ideas. After a few months of that (plus frequent visits “just to look” to baby supply stores) we made our decision.

It wasn’t easy at first. Oh I know what you’re thinking - sex every day not easy - what are you, 35? No, not that - it was all of the other stuff surrounding it. Sage started reading the “Trying to Conceive (TTC)” boards and started in with the morning temperature taking and watching every other sign of ovulation. And for two months, she got progressively more discouraged. It was impossible, she thought, despite her doctor’s having said that everything was fine. Finally, at a particularly low point she called her mom and told her her troubles. Kite, a voice of sanity as always, told Sage that she was driving herself crazy and that it wasn’t happening because she was worrying too much. And so, the month she took her mom’s advice and put aside the thermometer and quit the TTC boards ended up being this one.

Friday night I called Sage on my way home from work to see how she was doing - she wanted me to pick up dinner on the way home (Malaysian from that new place in Coopersburg) and then we could hang out. When I got home Sage was at one of her lowest points ever - discouraged and depressed and thinking we should give up despite the fact that she was a few days late for her period. “Oh no,” Sage said, “that’s not the case - I feel crappy I’m sure it will start tomorrow.” But then it didn’t start on Saturday and by that afternoon I was getting a bit excited. However, consistent with our money management skills we were almost totally broke until next Friday. And so I did what any self-respecting hopeful dad to be would do. I gathered up a pile of CDs I wasn’t interested in and added a few more that I was and headed over to the used CD store where I got $32 for the lot. We then walked next door to CVS and picked up a pregnancy test. And though we wanted to head right home and use it, Sage wannted to wait until morning to use morning urine. And so we did.

At 4:00 in the morning, Sage woke me up. “It’s time” she said, and we headed for the bathroom where Sage followed the instructions and then we waited the prescribed amount of time. Neither of us looked as it was working. Then the timer went off and Sage’s hand clenched on mine in a death grip. And we looked and both said with commplete sincerity: “OH. MY. GOD.” and then wandered around like nutcases for the rest of the day.

sorry, Ralph, I can’t make it to lunch, I gotta sit and watch my life go by

Since I was in the middle of one of those quintessential British mysteries (my favorite exchange so far: “I’ve had a thought.” “Well, treat it gently. It’s in a strange place.”)

I decided last night to settle down in the bathtub and read a few more chapters, try to figure out whodunit. Todd wasn’t home yet. I’m always a bit nervous about taking a bath when he’s due home, because more than once I’ve gotten completely engrossed in my book and ended up squeaking and jumping (or as well as one can jump in the tub anyway, perhaps “thrash about” would be a better description) when he suddenly appeared at the bathroom door. The cats also tend to choose that time to run madly around the house, making sure their paws sound as much as they possibly can like clomping people-feet.

So when I was halfway through my bath and thought I heard a strange noise downstairs I shrugged and figured it was probably the cats, or the wind. When it happened again I felt crabby and nerve-wracked and…

…and three hours after I started this journal entry I’m sitting in front of the computer again. After typing the above paragraph I tried to check email and realized the links were down. So I curled up in the armchair with Shelly and finished up the mystery. (I know, it was a flimsy reason to finish the book, but I really wanted to know what happened.) I hadn’t a clue, by the way, whodunit, it was such a surprise that I’m definitely going to look up more of the author’s books next time I’m at the library. The links came back up just as I was finishing the last page. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the bathtub.

I assumed it was the cats and said, “C’mon, you guys, settle down, would you?” and tried to go back to my book. No such luck, there were more strange noises from downstairs and after calling, “Todd? Is that you?” and not getting an answer I finally turned on the hot water in hopes that it would drown out the cats. Imagine my surprise when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I quavered, “Todd? Is that YOU?” and was highly relieved to hear him say, “Yup, it’s me.” He looked a little bedraggled when he came into the bathroom and I asked how long he’d been home. It turned out that the noises I’d heard had been him knocking on the back door which was locked from inside and having to go through the basement instead which was pitch-black. I grinned and said, “Were you scared?” (I’ve been a little suspicious of the basement myself ever since we watched The Amityville Horror.) “Were there monsters down there?”

He rolled his eyes and said, “I was doing fine until suddenly this huge BANG BANG BANG started up, and eventually I realized it was the water turning on, but it did startle me.” Which I thought was pretty funny, given that I’d turned on the water to drown out the strange noises he was making which were startling me, and so on and so forth.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the Hypothetical Child; meeting Dress With A Head and enjoying hanging out with her so much was the catalyst for both of us to start wondering a little more seriously about whether or not we want to have children. The other day we were discussing the sort of house we want to buy and Todd said that we might want to take school systems into account when we decide just where we want to live, and I’m STILL mulling that one over. It makes me feel about two hundred years old and approximately twelve years old at the same time.

Something that finally did occur to me, though, that’s put quite a few of my fears/worries about children to rest. For years now I’ve been pointing out the different ways that parents mistreat their children and saying, “What if that’s us?” and then — and this is one of those can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees realizations — I was fretting over the possibility of being a terrible parent and out of the blue came the obvious. Or it just came into focus from its hiding spot on the tip of my nose in front of my eyes.

When we were in the Framingham Public Library parking lot and Todd said, “Maybe we should get married after all, what with you not being covered by health insurance,” and I said oh, all right, even though it seemed ridiculous to me to certify we’d be together forever, that’s just a given, an absolute — what I’m trying to say in my winding-road sort of way is this: I thought marriage was something you stood by and let happen to you. I’d seen so many people fuck it up so spectacularly that I thought there couldn’t possibly be any way to avoid that.

What I learned, though, was this: that it doesn’t happen to you. You live it. I decided to spend the rest of my life with my best friend, to make kindness and happiness and love and intelligence a priority, and I’ve made that happen. We’ve made that happen. We both wake up in the morning, after five years together, astonished that we found each other. Astonished that we could possibly be this happy together. Thankful to whatever forces in the universe made it possible for us to meet. So I finally stopped worrying about the possibility of being a terrible parent. Because I realized that you don’t have to be a passive participant in parenting any more than you have to be one when it comes to marriage.

Man From U.N.C.L.E.: the episodes your mother wouldn’t let you watch

This morning I woke up from one of those clichéd forgot-to-do-my-schoolwork dreams, feeling vaguely cheated by what was basically a re-run. At least it wasn’t forgot-to-do-my-schoolwork AND forgot-to-wear-my-clothes. There was one amusing moment, though, when I got up to sharpen my pencil and the teacher smiled and said, “Well, it’s nice to see that you know how to operate the pencil sharpener, I get more questions from the students on how to operate it than I get about how to do algebra!” which doesn’t seem too far off from reality these days. The pencil sharpener, one of those screwed to the wall metal ones, reminded me of how I used to sharpen my pencil six and seven times a day in sixth grade, because the route to the pencil sharpener ran right past Brian Nebel, who I was convinced was going to eventually realize that I was his one true love, if I just waited long enough. I went through pencils like there was no tomorrow.

We had a comfy, relaxed weekend, filled with hours of reading and crocheting and, er, other things, and even my latest driving adventure was pretty funny in retrospect. I’d driven us to a nearby Asian grocery store because we found out that the instant ramen they sell there is ten thousand times yummier than the instant ramen they sell at the grocery store, and from there we intended to go to the farmer’s market which is in a nearby city with relatively busy streets. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to drive there or not, and finally decided that it was worth a try, and ended up sailing past the turn-off for the highway because I was in the wrong lane, and then sailing past the next turn-off for the street which we could have taken instead because I misunderstood Todd’s directions, and then turning right onto a very crowded street at which point a trucker behind me honked his horn which was so loud it made me jump and then I surprised both of us by screaming, “WHAT DID I DO NOW!” and turned off onto a side street and Todd, looking shaken, said “No, no, it wasn’t you at all, he was honking at someone else, don’t worry…” and I pulled into a parking lot and took a lot of deep breaths and we switched seats, and I can’t stop giggling as I type this.

From the silliness file:

(Sage is sitting on the futon, crocheting and watching an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that Marian sent. Todd’s at the computer with his back to the tv.)

Woman’s voice: Ohhhh… Ohhhhhhhhhhh… Thank you…
Man’s voice: It’s a pleasure to be on my knees in front of such beauty.
Todd (laughing and turning around): What ARE you watching?
Sage: This is from the ’60s, sweetie, it’s not what you think — she lost a contact and he found it for her.
Todd: If you say so…

I’m really excited about it, I think she’s going to love the net (although I must admit to being a little nervous about her reading what I’ve said about her in a few journal entries) and I think it’s going to inspire her to start exploring her creative side, get to know people via email, etc. I hope so anyway. We had a good talk about what’s been going on in our lives and she sounded cheerful and happy, I was glad to hear it.

Last night it was perfect outside, a little windy but still warm, and I asked Todd if he wanted to go for a walk. Once we’d gotten outside, though, I thought wistfully, “Boy, this would be a perfect night to go for a drive for nothing more than the sake of driving,” and then I thought, “You fool, you can drive yourself now, remember?” so I asked Todd if he wanted to go for a drive instead and he tossed me the car keys. I drove up into a rural, residential area, with the windows open and Sting’s Nothing Like The Sun album playing loudly on the stereo, only the quiet songs, like “Fragile” and “They Dance Alone” and rediscovered the joy of driving for no reason at all.

on zee odder hand, Ah am le experte on ‘ow to write zee accent

This morning I heard a woman on the radio describe breast cancer as “…not just a disease; it’s your entire identity as a woman at stake,” and I would like to ask her to please speak for yourself darling, because my life is a teeny tiny bit more important than my tits, and I’d say goodbye to them in about one millisecond if it were a choice between life and death. This morning I heard a woman on the radio describe breast cancer as “…not just a disease; it’s your entire identity as a woman at stake,” and I would like to ask her to please speak for yourself darling, because my life is a teeny tiny bit more important than my tits, and I’d say goodbye to them in about one millisecond if it were a choice between life and death. No, I don’t think it’s that easy for everyone, no, I’m not talking about anyone but myself here.

Last night we needed to run down to the grocery store and Todd said he wanted to drive, if that was okay with me, and he took a different route than we usually do go get there and pulled into the parking lot of a closed plant shop out in the country and smiled and said, “I thought you might want to get a look at the comet.” We got out of the car and stood in the parking lot, almost no cars were going by, and it was very quiet, the air had that heavy about-to-rain smell and we looked for a long time before getting back into the car. We were both silent for a moment and then I chuckled ruefully and said, “D’you know, all of these years of human beings running around on earth doing all of these ostensibly amazing things, and really we’re all nothing more than cavemen staring awestruck up into the sky, saying ‘Look! Light in sky! Pretty!’”

Todd was too tired to drive home, so I drove instead which made me feel useful and capable and glad, and lo and behold when I reacted to my driving mistakes with a grin and a shrug of my shoulders instead of obsessing over them I drove beautifully, better than I ever have before.

Dialogue is a tricky business. I hadn’t really thought about it too much until one day when I was trying to read Wuthering Heights and finally gave up on one character’s words altogether because they were incomprehensibly mangled into what was meant to be an accent. I mentioned it to my father and and we ended up having a fascinating discussion about dialogue and accents and what works, what doesn’t, and he showed me how one author (Faulkner?) had managed to flawlessly convey a heavy southern accent without one apostrophe or misspelling. He’d done it by putting the words together in the right order, by cutting out some and leaving others in. I was impressed. Ever since then dialogue has been something I pay quite a bit of attention to; I think the authors I love, like Beattie and Hoffman, have found the secret to believable dialogue in the realities they create. I bring all of this up because yesterday I was reading a rather poorly written mystery in which one of the character says, “…I sprinkled the berries on the snow,” and I’ve been puzzling over it and turning it over in my mind. Does it ring false (to my eyes/ears anyway) because of the word “sprinkled”? I think that if I were trying to convey the same concept I’d say “I dropped the berries on the snow.” People are so much less precise in speaking than they are when writing about something. But then I think well, gad, that quote above about cavemen is verbatim, and I wouldn’t necessarily find it believable if I were to find it in a book. Is the solution to keep dialogue simple? Or does it depend entirely on what atmosphere you’re trying to convey? Hmmm.

From the silliness file:

(Sage and Todd are at the grocery store, waiting in line at the checkout counter, and Sage is looking at the cover of People magazine.)

Sage: Sweetie, look at that. “Mourning After: Stars Who Have Lost A Child”. Charming.
Todd: Bill Cosby, Marlon Brando…who’s John Walsh?
Sage: He hosts America’s Most Wanted. He doesn’t count; he wasn’t a star until his kid died.

I’m starting to feel the urge to wear flouncy blouses and carry a sword

As much as I love winter — and that’s a hell of a lot, for a long time I wanted nothing more than to move to Antarctica and live there year ’round — I must admit that summer made a close second in my affections today. ’round — I must admit that summer made a close second in my affections today.

Now that I’ve convinced myself that I have an Undo option when it comes to life (”Pasta all over the floor? No problem. Now if I could just find a way to press control-z…”) I seem to be under the impression that I’ve turned into a car as well. Today when I arrived at the first intersection on my walk I reached over for my gearshift in order to downshift into second gear. At least it’s this way and not vice versa — the last thing the world needs is someone driving a car who thinks they’re walking and can choose to Undo anything that happens.

In case anyone’s not quite clear yet on what a Paul is, the following quote from an email message Damon wrote should be adequate explanation:

I used to watch Mr. Rogers all time time. Every day. Back when I was much smaller :) anyway, one day as the show ended and Mr. Rogers left out his door, I called out tv-wards, “Wait! Mr. Rogers, wait!” but he left anyway. My mother heard and asked what I’d wanted to say. “I just wanted to tell him I love him!”

My favorite line in the letter is this one:

Because I have been asked more than once to explain “what it’s about” (rather than because I think you’re dense*) [and then the footnote at the bottom of the page reads] *Let me know how this worked as an attempt to head off mother/daughter misinterpretation grongle

It worked beautifully, of course. For all she says about not knowing me as well as she’d like to and vice versa she knows (how to talk to, anyway) me better than most anyone in my life has except for Todd. I was waiting on writing back because I need a new printer ribbon, and she called a few nights ago to say she’d be house-sitting for a couple who wouldn’t mind at all if Todd and I stayed there too and did we want to come to stay for awhile, and I had to say no because Todd has to ask way in advance for vacation time and money and all that. Which was hard to do; I hate to disappoint people. Many years ago my father was standing in the front door of Patricia’s house and said, excitedly, “Look! There are bunny rabbits outside!” and Spring gave him that withering glance that only stepchildren can do really well and said, “Yeah, we KNOW, they’ve been living there for years.” And his face fell and he said, “Oh.” and even though I’m quite sure that he doesn’t even remember it happening I still wince whenever I think of it.

either Janet, or my neighbor

Boy have I been feeling crummy lately. I’ve been doing the same thing with all my creative efforts that I do while I’m driving: obsessing over things I’ve done wrong. Yesterday, when I was once again tight-lipped and near tears after trying to parallel park the car and failing miserably — no, I am not turning into a two year old baby, I just play one on tv — Todd pointed out that I only have Good Driving Days [cue Arvo Pärt and soft glowing yellow light] or Bad Driving Days [cue monster growls and Berloiz]. Because when I do one thing wrong, like stall out at an intersection, I’m so busy thinking, “You stupid moron, goddamnit, you can’t even drive a fucking car right,” that I do something even worse, like blithely sail right past a stopsign, which happened twice yesterday. On the other hand, when I’m doing well I get so excited and happy and hopeful that I will, in fact, pass my driver’s license test instead of being doomed to Driver Permithood for the rest of all eternity that my driving gets charmed; I hardly resemble the same person who not only sails through stopsigns but tends to only do it while driving by the police station.

I have a theory that the cops either can see by the strained look on my face that I’m learning to drive, or are so astonished by my gall that by the time they get it together to come after me I’m long gone.

Just recently we’ve gone back to reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series aloud to each other in the kitchen, we’d gotten disenchanted after far too many pages of a character who, given the opportunity to spend a month in England, finds nothing to do but complain about all of the amenities he feels are lacking. Having finally gotten past that part, however, we finished Babycakes and are now well into the first few chapters of Significant Others. And Michael (the same character, incidentally, who whined about England) is being morose about safe sex and the ways it limits his life and how he wishes San Francisco hadn’t changed and how wonderful it was In The Good Old Days when you could have sex with anyone you wanted without any worries. Kitey said something similar when she and Jill were here and Jill was watching the PBS Tales of the City movie.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t go through puberty until AIDS was a fixture in everyday life that I don’t understand a nostalgia for a time when people could have sex with anyone they wanted without any worries. The concepts of “sex” and “safe sex” are synonymous in my head. To hear Todd read about Michael’s wistful gaze into the past is like hearing someone talk about “how wonderful it was when humans could fly”. Perhaps I’m very much in the minority, but when I’m ninety five years old, sitting in a rocker with Todd by my side, looking at the sunset from our front porch, I don’t think I’m going to be saying, “Remember that hot summer day when we kissed upstairs for what seemed like hours and then…” No, I think I’ll be saying, “Remember that night in Boston when we ran through the rain holding hands and then suddenly came upon a laser show on the side of a building and a huge wedding and stopped and stood in the rain and watched it all?”

Funny, when I first sat down to write about this I was feeling crabby about the whole concept and I’m realizing that really it’s a completely different frame of reference, and of course it doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t even understand exactly what people are nostalgic for.

We made it just past the Famous Scene before falling asleep. Which is why I woke up an hour later, hearing strange sounds from the next door neighbor’s house, and decided that he was doing something evil and then got really freaked out when I heard one of the cats using the litterbox and convinced myself it was Janet coming to get me. If there’s no journal entry tomorrow you’ll know she succeeded…

you could say my admiration went up in smoke

Public service announcements about saying no to drugs never made much sense to me. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to do drugs, for one thing, and for another they were constantly blathering on about how you should “tell your friends no when they pressure you to do drugs with them” and the worst thing my friends ever pressured me into doing was going to a school dance when I knew I was going to have a terrible time there.

“Smoking is smelly and doesn’t make you cool,” the over-voice in the ads would intone, and I would think, “Yeah, obviously. Your point is…?”

I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t eat meat. I don’t do drugs. Once someone asked me if I had ANY vices.

I was reminded of my One Run-In With The Seedy Underworld Of Drugs while talking to a friend about this very subject, and thought I would talk about it here. My freshman year of college, there was a very suave, sophisticated woman named Autumn who lived a few doors down from my dorm room. She was very bright, always had something witty to say, and by the second week of school also had a sultry boyfriend. He was the sort of boy with a string of broken hearts stretched out behind him, but this time it was Autumn who had his heart on a string, and not the other way around. Although the strictly enforced rules were No Boys Overnight, Autumn’s boyfriend moved in with her and no one said a word. I wanted to be her friend; she seemed so worldly and sophisticated and smart, not to mention seemingly the only other politically liberal person in the whole town. But I was too shy to say much more than hello or ask what was on the menu for dinner at the cafeteria that night.

I happened upon her phone number that summer after school had let out and called on a whim, she seemed glad to hear from me and asked if I felt like going out to the movies and of course I did. I was surprised to learn that she’d thought of me as one of her few friends in school, and chuckled at her description of the sultry boyfriend as something of a dolt, though not half bad in bed. She took me to an artsy theater where we saw The Object of Beauty, which I remember because the whole artsy theater experience made quite an impression on me, and after the movie neither of us wanted to go home. Since she was staying with her father, who was ill, and I was staying with a friend, she asked if I wanted to go to her best friend Robert’s apartment and hang out there. I said that would be fine. So she drove us on over in her creaky old red Volvo and we arrived at Robert’s apartment after dark. She knocked, he opened the door, they said hello and hugged and she introduced me, I was really excited to be given the opportunity to spend the evening with such interesting, intelligent, cultured people. “Sage is a writer,” Autumn told Robert. “She’s an English major.”

“Yeah?” Roger gestured for us to sit down. “Do tell. What sort of things do you write?”

“Um, short stories mostly. Some really bad poetry, too.” I took a deep breath and plunged in. “Actually, I have a really short story with me, I could, um, read it…”

“Yes! Read it to us!” Roger turned to Autumn. “Hey, wanna have a joint?”

I already knew at that point that Autumn smoked pot; to this day the funniest thing she ever said to me, and she said it in all seriousness, was “Oh, you know, I love pot but I’m not addicted…I only do it once a day.” I just hadn’t expected her to do it right there in front of me. But I was hip, and I was cool, and I still remember how scornful everyone was at the one slumber party I was invited to in elementary school when they put Risky Business into the vcr and I hid my head under my sleeping bag because I wasn’t allowed to watch R rated movies, and I wanted Roger and Autumn to like me. So I thought I’d pretend that nothing was happening and while they were rolling and lighting the joint I preoccupied myself with finding the story I wanted to read to them in my backpack. I’d just recently written They Say Hell Is Fictitious and almost no one had read it, so the prospect of being able to read it aloud to them was twice as exciting as it might have been otherwise.

But here’s the pitiful part: I had no idea what pot did to a person. I assumed that I could read the story and they would be completely focused on what I was saying, that it would be no different from reading a story aloud to a stone-cold sober person. Before I started reading Autumn held the joint out to me and said, “Want some?” and I smiled and said, “Nah, no thanks,” and that was that. So I still don’t understand what people mean when they talk about peer pressure. I was shaking as I was reading the story; I wanted so badly to impress them and for them to like my work. I read it all the way through, didn’t flub one line or anything, and when I looked up for their reactions what I got was: nothing.

They stared at me blankly. They said, “Uh, was that it? Is it over?” and I nodded and they lay down on the floor and started comparing how spaced out they felt. So that was my first and last experience with drugs and, incidentally, the end of my interest in Autumn.

…and the way you adjusted the rearview mirror, excellent!

When I was very young, I used to write “About The Author” blurbs about myself in preparation for the day when I’d be famous. Well, okay, who am I kidding — not only when I was very young. All throughout elementary school, junior high, high school, and even college, I wrote them, on paper and in my head. I looked through my old writings in the hopes of finding one or two to quote here, but no luck. I remember what they were like, though. “Sage Tyrtle lives in Northern California. She is in fifth grade and spends most of her time alone. She loves to read and sing and watch tv. Her favorite book is The Secret Garden. She owes everything to her fourth grade teacher, Ms. Randolph.” Every time my life changed I’d rewrite it. Every time I moved, every time my father got a new girlfriend, every time I had a new crush or hated a teacher, or adored a teacher, I would rewrite it. I realized the other day that for the first time I can sit down and write an About The Author that people will actually read. Now if I can only figure out which page of my web site constitutes the back flyleaf…

I’ve been reading a novel all morning about people with children divorcing, remarrying, having new children, having boyfriends, having girlfriends, and although I’m trying my very best to read it in a detached way it’s dredging up some pretty unpleasant memories. Some good memories too, though. Like how one weekday morning my dad accidentally locked us out of the house and we ended up going to McDonalds for breakfast, and the food was terrible but we had a great time anyway. I think the most ironic paragraph in this book (and in my opinion it’s not at all meant to be ironic, it’s meant to be very Heartfelt and Oh Pity Us We Are So Downtrodden and Trapped) is the paragraph in which the divorced hero, who has one eight year old daughter, and the divorced heroine, who has a teenage son and daughter, are bemoaning their awful fate, to be stuck with three children who are in the way of True Happiness, but wait — all is not lost, because they only have to tolerate the teenagers a little longer, and the eight year old has to grow up some day, and what do they want to do with all this wonderful, glorious, newfound freedom? Yes, you guessed it. They want to have a baby. It reminds me of male animals who kill all of the current litter in order to force the female into heat again so that they can father a new litter.

Last night we went to the grocery store and the library, I drove, and when we arrived I was dying to show my favorite librarian the new keychain I’d been given, which is the flat shape of a coffee mug and has this quote engraved on it: “‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’ — T.S. Eliot” but she was busy so I plundered the new Agatha Christie videos instead. I remember that when I was eleven years old and visiting Kitey I started reading her collection of Agatha books, which gave me nightmares, and I still giggle over how traigic I must have seemed, saying earnestly, “I like those books, they’re scary but so interesting…I wish I had a dictaphone!” and she had to explain that a dictaphone was nothing more than a tape recorder and that I did in fact already have one.

When we arrived home I parked rather wildly because I was nervous, and Todd went ahead to put away the groceries, I stayed behind and re-parked the car on my own. Quite thrilling. The last time I drove a car by myself (okay, okay, you couldn’t really call what I did last night driving, more like forward/reverse forward/reverse steer steer steer forward — FUCK! I thought I was in reverse!) was the day I got my driver’s license, back when I was seventeen, and even though all I did was wander around the neighborhood it was such a feeling of open-ended possibilities. As if I could drive all the way to Florida if I wanted to.

From the silliness file:

(Sage is driving. Todd is in the passenger seat. Sage has asked Todd to point out when she shifts particularly well, or starts off spectacularly, so that she knows when she’s doing things right.)

Todd: Wow! That was great! Seriously, it’s like something clicked, you’re driving so well tonight. Good downshift!
Sage (smiling): Thanks, sweetie.
Todd: Good job downshifting at that light, really.
Sage: Hurrah! I’m finally getting the hang of this!
Todd: Aw, I knew you could do it.
Sage: Ack! Help! The back window’s fogging up — how do I turn on the rear window defroster?
Todd (pointing): Don’t worry, it’s right there, push that button.
Sage (pushes it): Phew. I couldn’t see anything for a minute there.
Todd: Nicely done!
Sage (giggling): Are you actually complimenting me on my ability to turn on the rear defroster?
Todd: Oh. Um, I guess I was. Whoops.

Misers With A Heart Of…er…Gold

About the author blurbs are mini soap operas, not to mention emotional roller coasters. Gad, speaking of emotional roller coasters, right after I wrote that line someone came tap-tap-tapping on the front door, and since I was expecting a package I didn’t answer the door because it’s easier to wait until the delivery person has gone away and then get the package then try to deal with eight curious cats who want to see who’s out there. The delivery person wouldn’t go away, though, s/he stood there tap-tap-tapping for so long that I wondered if s/he’d heard The Indigo Girls blasting out through the mail slot before I ran over to turn it off. In the end, the delivery person went away and I excitedly opened the door to see what wonderful things had arrived. All I saw, though, was a bright yellow slip of paper, reading “We Tried To Deliver This Package…” and thought, “Damn!” and felt like a fool for not answering the door, then read further to the “We Left This Package On The:” then eighteen different choices, like “office, carport, garage” and — hurrah! — porch, which was checked off. I opened the screen door. No package. I checked the yellow paper again, yeah, it really did say porch. I looked down. Evidently the delivery person had stolen the welcome mat, which we bought one day at a hotsy-totsy furniture store because it was the only thing we could afford…but wait, no, it wasn’t stolen, it was leaning up against the porch railing. And aha! The package was hidden underneath it. So, happy ending, I brought the package in and had a wonderful time opening all of the mail people who visit my web site had sent me.

But anyway, what I started to say is that sometimes I get more involved in the about the author blurbs than the books themselves. Shelby Hearon, for example, was single, then she got married, then she had children and then on the back inside cover of her latest book — just Shelby again. No one else was mentioned. I spent the entire book worrying about what had happened to her husband. And Ruth Rendell, too. Years and years of “living in England with her longtime husband” and then he disappeared. And now Joyce Maynard. I borrowed two books she’d written from the library, one written in 1981, one written in 1995. 1981: “She now lives in New Hampshire with her husband and daughter.” 1995: “She lives in Keene, New Hampshire, with her three children.” I want to read the first book all over again, to see if I missed what was wrong with her marriage. I want to write her long, rambling letters, saying, “But Joyce, what HAPPENED? You seemed so happy!”

In other news, we’re going to be misers. No, really, we’re going to follow through this time. Last night Todd came home from work feeling tired and dispirited and we got gloomy over the fact that we don’t own a house and it’s extremely difficult to rent one with eight cats, which means that it’s extremely difficult for us to move, and frowned and heaved big sighs and then thought, HEY, saving up to buy a house doesn’t have to happen next year. Or even in six months. We can start saving up tomorrow. We both grew up as only children (well, for all intents and purposes anyway, since our little brothers didn’t come along until we were much older) and we know how to entertain ourselves without spending a bunch of money. We decided to look at every dollar we spend as a piece of our future house (this morning I made Todd two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat on his way to work and put in a note in the sandwich bag that said, “2 sandwiches = $4.50 not spent on breakfast = 1/12000 of our house!”). Last time we tried this we thought we’d be misers who occasionally spend a lot of money, which as you might imagine was not exactly a roaring success.

I can see the Monty Python sketch now. “John Cleese stars as The Miser With A Difference”.

I’d like a sproutburger, sproutjuice, and a side of sprouts — hold the broccoli

Friday night I was drifting around the house, not really sure what I felt like doing, and suddenly thought, gad, we haven’t been to Todd’s favorite restaurant in months. On the good side, it’s a health food restaurant, which means they have yummy vegetarian options and know what the word “tofu” means, but on the bad side it’s a health food restaurant, which means that they have non-junky vegetarian options and know what the word “tofu” means. In other words, I don’t like sprouts.

Am I making any sense yet?

I have a theory, which I’ve talked about here before, that people who eat health food as children (sprouts, tofu, steamed broccoli — oh no! Not the broccoli story, anything but the broccoli story…) are more likely to love junk food as they grow older. And vice versa. Me, I will turn my nose up at a spicy hot lentil dish in favor of Taco Bell any day. I ate my fill of what my friends christened “brown food” as a child and I definitely do not need to eat any more. Not that I thought the advent of Spam in my father’s household was any improvement over the sprouts, you understand. Todd, on the other hand, grew up with parents who were quite happy to make him any junky thing his heart desired. In fact, his mother would make up menus of dinners he liked and he’d pick out the things he wanted to eat. It’s amazing that he didn’t grow up into a spoiled monster. And Todd, who assumed for a long time that vegetables only came in cans, adores sprouts. He loves tofu. He would be happy to eat steamed broccoli every night for a year. Which is why this restaurant is his favorite one and why I’m not particularly fond of it.

At first I thought I’d ask when he got home if he was on about going there, and then I thought hey, why not be a little fancier about it, and I decided to put a note on the computer monitor saying something like, “Let’s go to your favorite restaurant, want to?” Then I remembered the way my elementary school teachers used to have the class make books of coupons for their families with gifts like, “Free Foot Rub, Redeemable Any Weeknight” or “Garbage Removal, Good For One Night Only”. So I gleefully sat down at the computer and created the graphic on the left, cut it out, put it in an envelope, wrote “Todd” on the front, and taped it to the computer monitor. When he arrived home and found the coupon he was a little teary, and said it was a great present, I was really glad I’d done it.

And I’d forgotten how good the food is there — like I said, I prefer Taco Bell, but I can appreciate delicious food when it comes my way. The proprietor, a beautiful woman, and I mean beautiful in the sense that she positively radiates warmth and comfort and her eyes are always crinkled as if she’s about to laugh, came over and said hello and I almost told her the story of the coupon and then thought better of it, because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by starting out the story with something like, “I’m not as fond as this place as he is…” We stuffed ourselves silly. A great idea all ’round, if I do say so myself.