Why are these children calling me Mommy?


Why are these children calling me Mommy?

Originally uploaded by zhadi
Two of my favorite cards ever. Maureen (the other half of the Murder for Hire team and my best friend since high school) sent these to me. Mo is a nanny and we joke about them being ‘her’ kids (and they both are eerily like her in different ways). So she superimposed their heads and hers on the card. THEN she sent the one with my head and the cats. I’m not sure which card cracks me up more… But I felt like sharing. Click on the picture to enlarge it so you can read the captions. 🙂

Sea Treasures


Sea glass haul 4.17.10

Originally uploaded by zhadi
This is actually a test post ’cause WordPresshas not been letting me upload images or use existing ones in my archives for the last few weeks. I’m working on this issue, but until WP stops being pissy about it, Flickr is there for me.

So stay tuned for a post about my 30th Reunion. All I’ll say now is that in contradiction to what I’ve heard about other 30th year reunions, much was still the same as it was during high school…

Oh, the glass and shells in the picture are all from Ocean Beach, four blocks from our house. I’d better figure out a way to organize my rapidly growing collection soon or we will be buried in the stuff…

Live In the Moment

This past weekend I had an object (or should that be ‘abject’) lesson in the folly of too much ‘saving for a special occasion.’   Specially, in this case, lingerie.  Back in my slender youth I did some modeling, which included quite a bit of lingerie.  I loved the stuff, bought the most romantic, frivolous items I could find (I loved the Gothic heroine look, for instance) and then squirreled them away in my dresser drawer(s) for the right occasion with the right man.  I wore some of it, but generally fell in the habit of sleeping in old comfy things. I wore several cotton chemises until they practically disintegrated from wear, tear and washing.

My lingerie collection moved with me from San Diego to Los Angeles, and then back down to San Diego again only to turn around and travel back up to L.A…and then eventually I ended up, along with my lingerie, in San Francisco.  I did get rid of some of it along the way.  I gave some of the uber-Goth/vampire/red lace bustier type things to the daughter of a friend.  Meghan was into the role-playing game Kindred at the time and I love nothing better than passing along my belongings to someone who will appreciate them.  It’s like sending them to a new home.  Yes, I anthropomorphize things quite a bit.

Other items I’ve held onto even though I’ve only seen them while pulling out of moving boxes to put back into my dresser. I’d think about wearing them every now and again, but after a long day at work/writing/caring for the cats/cooking, it just seemed like too much trouble.  Besides, in SF it’s almost always flannel pajama weather…  Sexy pj’s would be a tank top and nice underwear.  Something I could wear underneath the flannel pajamas, y’know? 

The last few months I noticed my antique dresser and its contents smelled kind of funky.  Musty, mildewy, as if they’d been stored in someone’s damp attic for a few years.   Everything out, into the wash, lots of white vinegar and sunshine.  All the drawers pulled out, put into the sun, white vinegar and bleach, hoping for the best.   Put everything back in and it seemed fine, until a few weeks ago the smell was back. 

So one more time, even more heavy duty mildew killers used in the dresser interior and the drawers, although not as much sunshine because we’ve had approximately five sunny days all summer long.   This weekend I put everything back in the dresser… except I decided to try on my lingerie just for the hell of it. 

Bad idea. 

Well, at least as far as my ego was concerned.  

Yeah, some of it still fits.  But not a lot.  Some of it looks like it could only be worn by a ten year old, yet I did indeed fit in it at one time.  This was, of course, after losing 15 pounds in two weeks after a particularly nasty breakup in which my heart was thoroughly broken – I was the thinnest I’d ever been during this period of my life.  At any rate, these gorgeous, frivolous things, some of them vintage (all of them vintage these days, heh) that I hardly ever wore… I would now never wear them again.  Saved for a special occasion that never arrived and now that I’m smart enough to create my own special occasions, I’m defeated by my changed body and expanded waistline. 

Was my waist ever 24 inches without a corset?  Yup, it sure was. 

Will it ever be again?   HAH!  Not unless I’m hit with a wasting disease, in which case I doubt I’d be in the mood to prance around in sexy lingerie. 

So I’ve put it aside in a bag for eBay, along with other items from my past that either no longer fit my body or no longer suit my personality.  The things I’ve kept that still fit and suit are going to be worn.  Otherwise in ten years I’ll just have to do this all over again.  And that would be a waste of some damned sexy lingerie.  

Not Posting Problem

Whenever I don’t post for a while, I start noticing things to write about.  By the time I get back to posting, I’m so overwhelmed by all the things I think I could write about that I achieve nothing but vapor lock and can’t think of a damn thing when I sit down to write.

For a while I got away with it by taking advantage of all the Comment Spam I get, those wonderfully convoluted comments that seem to have been translated from English to Chinese and then back to English again … by way of Romania. But one cannot blog on Comment Spam alone.

There are, of course, always cute cat pictures, but I haven’t taken any new ones recently and it feels like cheating to recycle old pictures.  Of course, given our feline horde, how would anyone know?  Hah!  I’ll consider this as a viable option.

I could gripe about the stress of waiting for responses on various projects out with editors, TV networks and production companies, but that gets old fast.  We all know I’m playing the waiting game on about three different projects. I’ll wait until they get back to me and that’s all there is to it (insert one heartfelt whimper here).

Then there are the inevitable Muni stories, like the man who sat next to me the other night on the N-Judah and kept making these gross sucking noises with his mouth, like he was sucking in noodles and air at the same time.   And me without my earplugs… ’cause I SO would have used them.  Better to have little pink puffs sticking out of one’s ears than to listen to that.  

And the list goes on.

But, like writing anything when I’ve taken a break for a while, the best thing to do is just jump in and muddle through, even if the end result is iffy.  I offer you a cute cat picture as compensation!

Why is it…

…A writer can get a bunch of rave reviews and yet the one that sticks out is the one really bad one? Is it because we have a deep inner need for everyone to love our work?

Well… yeah.

Okay, I do know that’s not gonna happen. My writing style, particularly my sense of humor, is not for everyone. It SHOULD be, but since I don’t have the power (yet) to bend minds to my will, I have to live with differing opinions and tastes.

But still… you’d think reading nine glowing reviews in a row would dull the sting of one downright ‘I hate this book! It’s a BASTARD book and I hate its ass face!’ review just a little bit more.

Dave and I had a discussion during one of our beach walks about how we tend to remember the really annoying people in our lives more than the nice ones, spending more time dissecting the annoying behavior than talking about how wonderful and lovely most of our friends are. Not that we don’t talk about our amazing friends and family too. But the negative stuff just seems to demand a front row seat in our minds even when told it’s not welcome inside. Guess it sneaks in the back door.

Note to self: Lock the back door and hire a bouncer.