I stumbled onto Vendela Vida’s interview with Susan Straight (who is blogging at Powell’s this week) in a collection of Believer interviews with writers. I liked how Vida described Straight’s writing in her intro:

Straight’s prose is tight and her metaphors striking: In the arresting opening of High Wire Moon. Serafina is captured by police while her daughter Elvia, sits on the floor of a car, the “mouth” of which had “hit something hard, like a fist against teeth.” Straight describes what lies beyond the daughter’s vision with such original descriptions as “Braches and leaves covered the windshield, pressed tight like a blanket of black knives,” and “a pair of white hands pressed up like a snail’s underside against the glass.” And then there’s Straight’s dialogue which is so perfect, so real, that even after you’ve turned the page – and your attention – to a new scene in a new local, you’re aware that the characters from a previous scene are still carrying on, still talking. You can almost hear them.“

It reminded me, for some reason, of that dumb obituary exercise that self-help books and Steven Covey books make you do. The idea is to write down how you want to turn out in the end and it inspires you to get it together and start being nice to everyone right now, plus work on your Pullitzer.

I think this is a good exercise for writers: Write Your Writing Obituary. I.e., how you want the world to remember your writing. Here is the first cut at how I want people to remember my writing, assuming something kicks in pretty damn quick and those useless words skipping along clogging up my cranium fuse together in some useful way and make books.

Teresa DiFalco’s prose sears like a hot curling iron, or an iron after the water has all steamed out and smoke is coming out of it. Her characters are as exposed and repugnant as week-old raw hamburger, after being left out in the rain. Her sentences boil and bubble up like Campbell’s Chunky Soup (steak and potatoes) turned up on high, left front burner. A strict grammarian, DiFalco is no slouch with an em-dash; her punctuation rattles and her semi-colons shimmer and shake. Her dialogue punctures the roof of the mouth, leaving it and you numb, in the same way as microwave-nuked pizza. Teresa DiFalco writes like a brick house. She’s mighty, mighty. Letting it all hang out. Rock the Kazbah, Teresa. Girls rock your boys.

I bought the April Kids — Martha Stewart’s crazy crack mag for robo-moms. She turned free-range organic soy and flaxseed fed chicken and quail eggs into cute little farm animals. I found a $3.99 bug egg kit at the bottom of one of the piles in the Target Easter aisles on Easter Eve Eve.

This is what came of it.

The kids are locked in their rooms, A. off to Walgreen’s to get the last Easter baskets in town, me finishing off the little liquor bottles we got at the “adult” Easter Egg hunt today at Amy’s. Tonight, after stuffing 30 pastel-colored plastic eggs with book quotes (you know … Diary of a Worm, Knuffle Bunny, Good Night Moon) I’ll finish off the piece on my breasts that I’m submitting to the well-titled anthology Knockers. Oh, the book quotes. Yeah, well, they have too damn much candy already, so we’re drawing picture clues and writing colorful quotes — taken straight from their personal collections –on scraps of paper and if they guess one or two, they get a basket.

Bon Easter tout la monde … or something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mom sent this today, which saved me the trouble of scanning it. It’s one of my favorite columns of all time, on the wall in my office. The women emailing it around were all sort of disgusted, which was the intent of sending it.  Not me, nope. My mother-in-law mailed the hardcopy to me a few years ago when I was just starting the first draft of My Book.  I had just quit my cushy country club job and was full of crazy dewy-eyed dreams of quality of life and managing my family, blah, blah.  I wanted to be The Good Wife.

From “The Good Wife’s Guide”:

Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it … Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

I wanted a housedress, I wanted kids at my ankles, I wanted to be smiling and pulling out the roast.  I wanted to stick the scotch in his hand, grab his briefcase and give him a sexy housewife kiss. I never quite got there and then after 9 months of trying, A. was at home and I was going to work and then I wanted to lie down and have the cool drink and talk about my day not his, and have him be gay (no, not like that), etc.

Now I’m at it again.  Home with kids.  My days are like acid trips:  I’m giddy, I’m sad, I’m ecstatic, I’m happy, I’m mad, I’m guilty, I’m lonely, I’m paranoid … and on and on.   When A. did this for a year-and-a-half he was a piece of stone.  He either has never had one single conflicted emotion, or keeps them vaulted like a Brinks truck.

Regardless, today is the day to weigh in on marriage and families and the merits of a good vodka tonic.  I’m listening. 

Regarding men and Mars and marriage, I also found this piece. My headline’s a bit sensationalized (better ratings) because of the 7 things they name, A. does only two. Two things wrong, not bad! Though I think apologies should be on this list. Sucking it up and apologizing sometimes, instead of winning would be huge. That never having to say you’re sorry business is totally lame.

Anyway, here they are, Seven Things He Won’t Know He’s Doing Wrong Until You Tell Him: (A. does 2 and 3.)

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My marriage is going crappy, so this morning after an exhausting night of glares and mutual ignoring, and lethal misunderstandings, I looked up John Gray. Why not. I had about 6 minutes and I thought he’d have a quick fix. He did. It cost me $3.95. Two lists: 25 Ways A Woman Can Superglue Her Marriage and 25 for men.

Here’s a teaser of what Mr. Gray says to do:

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Well, there, you go.  I have it.  Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome.  Crap.  No cavities, never sick, good bone structure, healthy lungs, heart, digestion, but there had to be something.  I found out on the treadmill today, at the Y.  The always-relevant local news featured the breaking story of a really sick lady who saves her papers.  Intensive follow-up research led me to the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation who says on the Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome page of their web site that CHS is characterized in part by this:

“People with complusive hoarding syndrome may have immense difficulty throwing anything away … for fear that they might need those items in the future.  Their homes [or white Chrysler minivans] are often full of stuff that the rest of us would call “junk.”  The most commonly saved items include newspapers, magazines, old clothing, bags, books, mail, notes and lists.”

As proof of my diseased mind, I offer this:  One of about three million shopping lists I have, stuffed away in boxes and shelves and corners of my closet.  This particular one was salvaged from the van and is a partial list from our Oscar party.  (Which you weren’t invited to because we only had A’s MBA group … oh, and um, Janet, and Gary … hey, our room is small and Channel 2 doesn’t even come in very well, the TV has bad sound … you didn’t miss anything!)

Rocky and Sally Ann arrived yesterday and I was on the phone with Aunt Betty. “We got tadpoles!” I told her. “Oh, I remember that,” she said. “We used to go down to the creek and scoop them up in a jar.” I didn’t bother telling her how I did it, the good old-fashioned way — driving to the Discovery Store at Bridgeport Mall, buying a gaudy plastic piece of crap called the “Frog Pond Terrarium” and sending away to Uncle Miltie’s for two frog babies: $13.99, including shipping. Times change.

Anyway, I stayed up all night listening to them splash around. They’re totally cute. (Rocky’s on the right.)

Oh, and for a treat today, here’s a room in my house.

Note my retro ’70s Lounge Lizard sofa, workout clothes that miss the gym, Batman suit on far right … ummm, the stupid May Vanity Fair on coffee table with Julia Roberts ruining an otherwise cool cover. A pair of Dora the Explorer underwear which I can see when I sit on the couch, but you can’t see in the picture, has been on the shelf beneath the coffee table for about a week.

Because talking about toilet-cleaning or “housewifing” or To-Stay-Or-Not-To-Stay-At-Home, or whatever, is cool this week, here’s some more kinds of crazy fun: selected headlines from Frugal Homemaker! Wheeee!

• Build your own casserole!
• 9 Traits of Organized Kitchens!
• Organizing Magazine Information!
• Taking Control of Your Clutter!
• A Clean Bedroom, All the Time!
• Gift-in-a-jar Fundraising!
• End of Summer Memory List!

(There. Take all that to your next cocktail party! Who says we aren’t fun to talk to?)