I’m also doing this for professional reasons; I recently read an agent’s comment that before she’ll consider a book, she checks to see if the writer has a Web site or blog. So I thought a blog more specifically focused on writing would be appropriate. For the same reason, I’ve opened a new, professional-writer-type e-mail account. I’m serious about making this writing thing work.

Anyway, you can catch up with me at The Literary Gargoyle…see you there!

Initially unbeknownst to my brother, I inherited a pair of his old jeans when I was in Colorado. They’re super comfortable and I wear them all the time, which may be why in the space of two months they’ve gone from having a hole in one knee to having gaping holes in both knees, a fraying patch in the butt, and unraveling threads in a dozen other places. (He did mention that with this brand, once they start to fall apart, they go quickly.) I’m wearing them today and thinking about how much I’ll miss them when I have to remove them from my wardrobe.

Last night’s bizarre dream: I was hanging out at Wrestlemania with Jessica Simpson. Don’t ask me why she showed up in my dream, because I have no clue. Because it was both Wrestlemania and a dream, there were lots of pretty boys with mohawks. Mmm. Anyway, we were talking and she mentioned the tabloids constantly harping about her weight fluctuations. After some reflection, I told her as tactfully as I could–with no feeling of cattiness, genuinely wanting to help her and thinking no one else around her would tell her uncomfortable truths–that if she didn’t wear clothes so tight you could see every ounce she gained or lost, the tabloids might have less to work with. At that point Bishop woke me up, so I’m not sure how she took it.

So that the trip would not be entirely in vain, I went to Joanne and loaded up on craft supplies. There are things I think I could sell online–wreaths, painted birdhouses, carnival masques, possibly some photographs–and these are the tentacles to which I refer in the subject line. I’m trying to branch out. I read several writers’ blogs, and many of them have other little creative sidelines, so I’m trying it too. I like creating, and if I can make some extra money doing it, then so much the better. When I have items available, I’ll set up links from here and my FB page.

I feel like this entry is whiny, and here’s probably why:  I’m starting to think I pinched a nerve or pulled a muscle in my neck during the long walk to and on the beach Friday. It’s been very sore, and lugging around craft supplies today seems to have made it worse. I’ve tried hot baths, the heating pad, and Icy Hot, and nothing helps for long. I just took ibuprofen, so I’m hoping that kicks in soon. The finger I broke rollerblading has also been really stiff for the last few days, maybe because of the plummet in temperatures. I wonder if I should put the splint back on? Would it still help? And please, no one say, “I told you so.” It’s impossible to work as en editor with a splinted finger. I was hurting my hand stretching around the keyboard at all kinds of crazy angles to compensate, and I don’t have the patience to type one-handed, and that’s why I didn’t wear the splint as much or as long as I know I should have. So there.

And while I’m quite over not having a car, I put on my super-skinny pants today, the ones I couldn’t even pull up all the way two years ago, and they fit comfortably. So at least all the walking has some other effect than just sore mucles.

In other news, I’m currently reading two very interesting books and will post reviews here when I finish them.

According to Wikipedia, this disorder fits under the Americans with Disabilities Act as requiring employers to make “reasonable accommodations.” I’d need an official diagnosis, of course, and I’m not sure how you broach it with an employer (or how many employers would consider shifting work hours a half-day back “reasonable”). But it makes me feel better about what I’ve tried to resist believing was just laziness and/or a character flaw.

I slept better last night, with dreams but not the draining, blood-filled kind.

In other news, I’m trying to write short stories specifically targeted to various anthologies and contests–nothing that pays much, but I want to get my name out there. I just finished my first piece of flash (under 500 words) fiction, called “Roadkill.” It’s quirky and I like it, but I’m not sure whether it works. This is a problem I often have with short stories and the reason I neither read nor write many of them. Short stories when they work well can be amazing, but most of the time, it seems like they fall flat. With most novels, if one element–plot or characters or setting, say–is weak, the others can make up for it. With a short story, there’s not time for the author or reader to have that luxury. For me, many of the best short stories end with a “zinger” of some sort–my favorites include “A Rose for Emily” by Faulkner, “Ligeia” by Poe, “The Landlady” by Dahl, etc. Even these writers did not always succeed with their “zingers,” though, and I’m not sure whether I do either.
 
The direction “Roadkill” took surprised me, which is fairly typical. Even when I think I know where a story is going, it usually has plenty of surprises for me along the way. In this case, and especially because the length is so short, I know there’s a lot more to say about the characters and situation; I’m just not sure what yet. But it should be fun and interesting to explore.

I chalked this up to being a night person forced to be out of bed by 8 a.m. on a regular basis, but it’s happening again now. Last night was a perfect case in point: I think I walked at least five miles yesterday, up and down hills, and soaked up sea air. I thought I’d sleep like a babe. Yeah, not so much. I watched the first disc of Storm of the Century and then read about the Haitian Revolution until very late/very early. (I didn’t check the exact time.) This combination may have contributed to some of the dreams I subsequently had; more on that in a moment.

I eventually closed my Haiti book and decided to try to go to sleep, not because I was particularly tired (I wasn’t, to an almost alarming extent), but because my eyes were tired and I was ready to end the day. Sleep, however, did not come, and every time it nearly did, Bishop intervened. To the point that he ended up in his crate, because being 3/4 asleep and then being roused by a dog bouncing over you to chase a cat or growl at the door or nudge the blinds gets old very, very quickly.

Finally I dropped off, and I had dense, intense dreams. A former friend of mine had let Bishop out into the street, and his back legs had been shot off in the war going on in my neighborhood. I was at some kind of maze-like museum that featured shells and tribal artifacts, and again we were in a war, and I was trying to rally other women to make a stand behind some tables deep in the labyrinthine maze. Somewhere in there, I was also collecting shells and trying to decide on a sort of half-tattoo, half-brand I wanted, but I didn’t decide in time and the artists packed up and left. Monica, Rachel, and Chandler from Friends were there and we were eating dinner. Then I was at some kind of religious retreat, both reading and living a diary by a woman named Jo Alexander or Alexandra Jo or something similar. (The simultaneous reading and experiencing is pretty common for me in dreams, as is, if the dreams have particularly horrible endings, going back to “rewrite” what happens–which I did last night with the war in the shell/artifact museum because we all got killed the first time around.) My sister was there, and my father, and the Alexander woman was counseling another woman whom everyone knew had sexually abused 30 children in Canada. Then I woke up (in the dream), and it was 3 p.m. and I was in a hotel room and starving, so I called my father. He, however, was in Ormond Beach, Fla. I’m not sure where I was, but hours from there. I panicked and started screaming at him. He said I was supposed to eat in the cafeteria at the retreat; I shrieked that I couldn’t because no one had awoken me. Throughout this part of the dream, my eyes were extremely heavy and wouldn’t stay open (again, not uncommon) and there was a fuzziness in my head that persisted for several hours after I awoke.

My alarm went off, several times, and I was so tired that I could barely bring myself to move enough to turn it off each time. (It’s broken.) This is the kind of sleep, with these heavy dreams, that exhausts more than refreshes.

I’ve always had skewed sleep patterns. Some of the deep sleep is likely due to allergies. Some of the skewed-ness is part and parcel of my psychological makeup, but it’s so erratic that it actually prevented me from getting an accurate diagnosis for years. (“Well, the other symptoms match, but your sleep is just off….”) My excellent doctors in Savannah were a bit stymied that medications that helped in other areas didn’t regulate my sleep.

In some ways, I didn’t and don’t want my sleep regulated. I like having colorful, bizarre dreams, at least when they don’t wear me out. I’ve always had intense dreams, and now I’m on medication that has vivid dreams as one side effect, so you do the math.

On the other hand, though, I don’t like dreaming about my dog running around on two legs with two bloody stumps hanging off his torso. I don’t like screaming at people. I don’t like the fuzzy head.

And now it’s 3 a.m. and I’m wide awake. I was about to read more about the Haitian Revolution, but I just finished watching the second disc of Storm of the Century and, remembering my dreams of last night, I’m thinking maybe that’s not the best combination. Maybe I need to look for something more mellow.

Although, to be honest, many of the most disturbing dreams I have relate to what I’m writing, rather than what I read or what I watch. And that brings me back around to the core of the issue. It’s all in my head. My demented, imaginative, skewed, stubborn head.

Keeping the schedule I want to keep–staying up ’til all hours, sleeping all morning–isn’t preventing the insomnia and oversleeping. For the first time, I’m starting to wonder if I have some kind of sleep disorder. And if I do, would a cure (sleeping pills? NO, THANKS) be worse than the disease?

When you get to the bottom on the shore side, there’s a nice grassy area with picnic tables.

The day was cloudless and gorgeous, and you could see all the way across the Sound to the mountains.

The tide was coming in, but I still enjoyed walking along the water line.

 
And I found some cool shells

along with rocks and driftwood. I have vague creative plans involving the shells and driftwood. If the plans coalesce into anything cool, I might end up posting some results.

The shore was WAY too rocky and the air too cold to take my shoes off, which made my decision to plunge, fully shod, into a tidal pool to retrieve a few awesome shells…well, not the brightest thing I’ve ever done. But then, what is?

Never let it be said I let a little water stand in my way.

I had decided to call a cab to take me back to the bus stop, and not just out of laziness–the sun was setting and I didn’t love the idea of the fairly secluded walk back up the hills.

So I bade the beach goodbye. I liked it and I want to go back, but there’s got to be a better way to get there than the route I took.

* Note: Dogs on leashes are allowed and I saw quite a few, but with all the barnacle-covered rocks, I’m a little concerned that Bishop might hurt his pads.

This is Bishop hanging out just before I left.

Accordingly, I did some research into public beaches in the North Sound area, and since the weather was gorgeous today, I decided on an excursion to Picnic Point Beach. I planned out my route online, and it looked very simple: walk a mile to the bus stop by Target, take the 113 to Beverly and 148th, then walk  a third of a mile west, and you’re there.

Pretty flowers I encountered en route to the bus stop

Now, if you know anything about me you can probably imagine what actually happened. I got off the bus and headed in the direction I thought was west. I walked and walked. I consulted the very sketchy map in my bus guide, because I hadn’t even thought of bringing my city map. I mean, it’s the beach–surely there would be signs everywere pointing the way if I needed them.

Yeah, not so much.

I stopped to ask directions from a little girl walking a cocker spaniel. “The beach?” she said. “Uhh…I think there might be one that way.” She pointed to what I thought was the southwest. The fact that she didn’t know exactly where the beach was alarmed me–it seemed likely that this meant I was not as close as I’d thought.

Tree in bloom near where I encountered the girl and dog

I consulted my map and determined that the beach I wanted was very definitely to the northwest. There was sketchy guy who’d gotten off the bus who may or may not have been following me. Like, he was walking behind me. He stopped and a half-block back the whole time I was talking to the girl. When I started walking, he started walking again. Kinda put me in mind of a dumpy, middle-aged, maskless Michael Myers. And the road looked like it got a little secluded ahead, so I was not sorry to turn down a residential road that, from my map (which didn’t have most of the roads and didn’t label the ones it did have), looked like it might get me to Picnic Point Road.

Yeah, not so much.

Pretty tree in someone’s yard

Just recounting this is making me tired all over again. Walked down the street, which dead-ended. Turned around and walked back. Sketchy man still standing on the corner. I walk further down this steep hill and turn right on the next street. Walk and walk.

I’m occasionally surprised to encounter what looks like semi-tropical foliage in this decidedly not semi-tropical area.

Walk up a street, turn, keep heading in the direction I think the beach should be. Keep thinking it looks like the trees are thinning out in another block or so…

I don’t know how far or how long I walked–I deliberately avoided looking at my cell phone because I didn’t want to know how much time I’d spent wandering around these wooded subdivisions. Initially, I’d hoped to get to the beach within an hour or so of low tide. I gave up on that and started hoping just to GET to the beach.

Preferably before dark. I finally found an older man who was walking and seemed friendly, so I asked him for directions. He told me to go back several blocks (I use “blocks” loosely, because the streets wound up and down hills and many of them were dead-ends) to Picnic Point Elementary School. “At the back of the school there’s a fence, and there’s a gate in it with a staircase going down the hill. That’ll take you to Picnic Point Road.” Slightly more complicated than the darn bus map. He shook his head. “Good luck. You’ve got a long way to go.”

So much for that one-third of a mile.

Gullies and streams cut beneath the road.

I found the school easily, and after walking around it, I located the break in the fence. I blessed that old man over and over. I hope wonderful things happen to him.

The stairs leading down the hill behind the elementary school

I climbed down several steep flights of stairs leading down the hillside. They came out in a little subdivision that in turn fed out onto what I assumed, for lack of a street sign, was Picnic Point Road.

Looking back up the stairs I have just descended, and firmly resolving to take a cab back to the bus stop

It looked like maybe, maybe the trees thinned out ahead. But that could be simply an effect of walking down yet another hill. My legs were exhausted and I didn’t know how I would make it back up all these hills, let alone find my way to the bus stop.

So I kept walking. On the right was a construction site, on the left a natural habitat refuge with a little stream and ferns and trees.

I think these little natural habitat preserves interspersed throughout the cities are very cool. I’ve never seen them anywhere else.

Based on my post-Okefenokee research, I think these are pitcher plants.

Finally I encountered the first concrete evidence that I was definitely on the right road:

But the beach was not yet in sight:

And then it was: I began to see the glimmer of water through the trees.

See that shine in the middle of the picture? That’s sunlight reflecting off the ocean.

I had arrived, finally, after what felt like at least an hour and several miles of walking.

I’ve sent out resumes, samples, stories, and pitches; I’ve filled out applications; I’ve submitted every completed piece of writing I have to publishers and magazines. So I’m playing a waiting game that, in my sanguine moments, I’m confident will result in some kind of work, some livelihood. But the depression-prone, God-is-a-cosmic-sadist part of my brain wonders how long? and how little money? and when? and what if nothing does turn up?

Today I spent time on a couple of contract-bidding sites. I submitted bids so low that they made me cringe, but that I suspect the employers will still find too high. This is a marketplace, after all, in which I am competing with people from India and Argentina and various other third-world locales where the price of labor and the cost of living are much different than here.  And some employers expect a ludicrous amount of work for what they’re willing to pay–I saw one listing today that was offering between 20 cents and a dollar apiece for articles. Many of the article-writing jobs are “mass productions” focused on keywords and SEO, and the employers don’t seem to care much about substance or quality. I suspect that eventually online advertising is going to evolve to weed out these kinds of articles, but right now, it’s the latest bandwagon.

Looking at these postings and at job openings in general, I feel like I have too much of the wrong kind of experience, or my experience is too specialized, or it isn’t specialized enough. I’ve even applied to two bookstores that haven’t called me. If I didn’t know as much as I do about the profit margins in retail bookselling, I’d be tempted to look into a small business loan and start a bookstore myself.

So the upshot of all this is that I’m operating in kind of a perpetual ADHD. I don’t want to get so engrossed in anything I’m reading or writing that I don’t meet my daily work-search goals or can’t drop everything in case a job does come in. But today I came to the realization that I need to look at this time as a blessing. Right now, my rent is paid and I have food in the cupboards and enough money in the bank to keep it that way, with some frugality, for another month or so. Right now, I have time, and I should be using that time to write and to read things that support my writing, not to watch reruns and play computer games.

So I think the TV is going to be migrating into my room (and out of my workspace, aka the living room) tonight. I need to start keeping real work hours, and not the kind I kept on slow days at the office. I have to stop waiting and just WRITE.

And you know, if you feel so inclined, please drop me a note of encouragement from time to time. I need it.

Saturday Lynn and Fiona came up from Seattle, and we went to Third Place Books, possibly the coolest bookstore ever, for lunch. I had yakisoba and this funky Japanese soda in an intricate bottle that contained a marble in the neck. When I’m feeling less lazy later, I’ll upload the photo of the giant piece of triple-layer chocolate cake Lynn and Fi shared for dessert. It was truly impressive.

While we were there, I filled out a job application. Working there would be serious temptation, but I’d be very good at it. Oh, and let me just mention here that I’m giving up book-buying for the rest of Lent. If I say it on my blog, I’ll hold myself to it. 

After the bookstore, we walked over to a cute little yarn and tea shop nearby. Lynn has been knitting for years, and I just learned in Colorado, so she’s introducing me to all kinds of cool yarns.

Today I undertook a bus odyssey around Lynnwood. I had to go to the pharmacy and the grocery store, which are about two miles apart on the same road. Turned out the easiest way entailed taking the bus to the pharmacy, then taking it back PAST my apartment (not on that road) to the grocery store. 
 
I never rode the bus in Savannah. I appreciate the buses here, though. Instead of “felons with guns do time” ads, the buses here advertise plays and restaurants. The riders are diverse and, for the most part, not sketchy. Today there was a loud guy talking to the driver about the earthquake in Chile. He said, “Well, we’re gonna have a lot more earthquakes…” and I mentally steeled  myself for an apocalpyse/ the Book of Revelation says… spiel. Heard a lot of those in the South. And instead, he shocks me by saying, “Because that fault line stretches all the way up here.” Wait, a loud, crazy person on a bus talking science? Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore!

Sometimes I feel like I’m on vacation. Sometimes I panic. Sometimes I think this whole thing might actually work out.

With some trepidation, I bought a couple of books about Hurricane Katrina when I was in New Orleans. I say “with some trepidation,” because I remember how awful it was during and after the levee failures; I remember being glued to nola.com and talking to a coworker from Metairie and reading blogs from people in the area. It was grim and unremitting and after things were a little better, I stopped paying attention to news of any sort for several months because I was wiped out. And since then, I’ve become somewhat self-protective; I try to stay informed, but I also avoid news stories that are unmitigatedly bleak, that will tangle up in the threads of my brain and replay themselves obsessively and catapult me into despair. So I wasn’t sure whether revisiting Katrina and its aftermath would be wise.

All that to say that I just finished one of the books, The House on First Street by Julia Reed. And I found it depressing, but not for the reasons I’d expected.

Basically, Reed and her new husband bought a house in the Garden District, spent a year renovating it, and moved in six weeks before Katrina hit, although the copy on the back says four. Speaking of the copy on the back, I bought the book knowing only that Reed is a reporter. I didn’t know that she’s also a rich girl from the Mississippi Delta and that she would name-drop relentlessly through the entire book–both of which made me far less sympathetic to her. (Drinking game: Take a shot every time she introduces a new person with the description “my good friend and brilliant painter/ writer/ artist/ restaurateur/ fill in the blank.” Be sure to stop before you get alcohol poisoning.)

I’m betraying my own prejudices and judgments, of course, but I found her difficult to relate to. Before Katrina even hit, her excesses with the house renovation had me angry and depressed. Imported marble from Tuscany? Blocks of blue slate from Pennsylvania? A liveoak tree so large they had to shut down the street to transplant it? It must be nice to have that kind of money to throw around; wish I had a little. She really lost me when she mentioned spending “literally hundreds of hours” choosing the perfect doorknobs. Doorknobs!

This isn’t to say she’s a bad or insensitive person. She buys huge amounts of food for the National Guard troops occupying the city in Katrina’s wake (as a journalist, she was able to get back in before most people). She provides financial and moral support to her housekeeper, the woman’s family, and her crack-addicted general factotum. She offers incisive critiques of local politicians, as well as lively anecdotes from her time covering the campaign of former governor (and current federal prisoner) Edwin Edwards. But when she glibly mentions writing a $400 check each year so she can ride with “the oldest and most prestigious” all-female Mardi Gras krewe, it’s a stunning reminder that this person operates in an entirely different milieu than any in which I’ve ever moved–or, frankly, would ever want to.