I Hate the Way You Lay On My Tiger Sunday

Right after we opened my current show, over seven years ago, I took a creative writing class in the city. It was the first time in my adult life that I knew I would be in the same place for the next ten weeks and available every Monday night, so I took advantage of it.

There was a woman in the class who had one of the best short story opening lines ever:

“I hate the way you eat your sandwich.”

It did then and continues to now serve as the basis by which I measure good dialogue in fiction.

Good dialogue in fiction comes from real life- our instructor, author Matt de le Peña taught us that. A statement like the one above can only come from someone stuck in a situation with another person that feels so interminable that they’re either going to kill the other guy, escape in the dead of night, or sell their soul to Satan to make it stop. It immediately sets tension and speaks volumes, with very few words.

When you’re with someone your whole life- or what feels like your whole life- you can fixate on the way they take their socks off, the sound they make before they answer the office phone, how they always move your coffee mug. It can make you crazy.

mytiger — I hate the way you lay on my tiger. Just to mock me. Not even playing with it.

What do you fixate on? I’m looking for some good lines.

Here are your links.

My favorite description of a first encounter with foie gras: Duck, Duck, Gross on Friday Night Casserole.

A courageous post about mental illness: The Clothespin Theory on Going Round and Round.

I love this. From the about page: Honoring natural selection’s most baffling creations. Go home, evolution, you are drunk. WTF,Evolution?

I dug this post about taking a couple of teenagers to NYC for their first trip, and losing an audition: You Can Learn a Lot From Losing on Running On Wine.

Heart Disease is the number one killer of women. February is National Heart Month. This is a great post from Darla about her mother: What the Heart Knows on She’s a Maineiac. Please do also watch the really eye-opening and funny video at the end of the post from Go Red For Women.

Happy Sunday.

What’s that Sound?

I was in our bedroom writing. The kids were all downstairs and CC was at work. Casey was sacked out on the bed behind me.

And there was this sound. . .

One of those sounds that’s just on the edge of your consciousness. You don’t really notice it at first, but it keeps repeating. It repeats enough and you suddenly realize you can’t identify it, and that’s a problem.

Because unidentified sounds at home fall into one of two categories: Things That Will Kill You – think: burglars, bears, or bombs – and Things That Will Cost You Money like, say, maybe a tree falling on the house. Or a toilet overflowing for so long before someone mentions it that it floods the garage. Not that I would know anything about either of these.

This sound was a little knock-knock, a little tap-tap, with a bonus suction sound.

“What the hell is that?”

I said this out loud. I talk to myself out loud a lot. I am not bothered by this. It’s only a problem when another person is in the room and they go, “What?” and I get all indignant and say, “I wasn’t talking to you!” because they just interrupted me when I was talking to me.

I walked out of the room to investigate.

In one of many moments as a pet owner in which I have regretted not having a camera on my person, I found that a single dish had been left on the table when the kids cleaned up after dinner: the top to the tupperware cake keeper.

The cake keeper in our house serves only one purpose: to keep people from eating the cake between the time it is made and the time it is served. We never have “leftover” cake. Thus there was no need to replace the cake keeper top on the cake, since there was no more cake. Like many other things in my house, because it was unable to fulfill one of their immediate needs, it became invisible to the kids.

But not to Jack.

The knock-knock, tap-tap, suction sound was the sound of Jack having wedged himself entirely inside the lid as he licked out the little bits of icing stuck to it. He was moving himself all over the table as he shifted side to side, licking the edges. Kinda like one of those balance boards at the gym. Except with icing. And sides.

It reminded me of a similar experience when the one dish that had been left on the table was a measuring cup half full of gravy. I came out to find Jack, head jammed down in that cup, drinking for all he was worth before someone discovered him, gravy all over his ears.

Do you think there’s a market for cake-keeper-as-small-dog-hamster-wheel?

What’s your dog gotten into lately?

It’s Giving Me Nightmares

Okay, fine. I’m one of those people who’s all jaded about Valentine’s Day. No need for justifications and rationalizations; you’ve heard them all already from everyone else. I’m just not a fan.

But when you have kids, you’re not allowed to not celebrate the holiday.

My parents always gave my sister and I each a card and a little box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Some years, my mom made a heart-shaped cake (we had a special pan) with pink frosting and candy hearts pressed into it.

This year I thought, why be all bah-humbug to cupid? I decided to make heart-shaped chocolate crackers for everyone at work, homemade bath sachets with eucalyptus for my writers group, and a heart-shaped cake with pink frosting and candy hearts pressed into the edges for the kids, even if I don’t have a special pan.

Then I remembered who I am.

There were lots of doctors appointments, significant snow, and a shitload of paperwork that had to get done right now. Instead of staying up late to bake, I stayed up late watching Iron Maiden’s Flight 666 and Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage.

Because they’re awesome. And I didn’t want to do my paperwork.

I had a work call and two shows the day before Valentine’s Day. The florist shop was out of eucalyptus. There was no baking. There was no crafting.

Let’s be honest: there never is any crafting.

Two days before Valentine’s day, I was in the city and went to the drug store for gifts and cards.

Doesn’t two days before Valentine’ Day seem like a good head start? You’d be shocked at how few cards the average drug store in New York carries for such a commercial holiday. You’d be even more shocked at how few are left by February 12.

You’re standing there with all the other poor bastards who also think that two days is a good head start, maneuvering for leverage in front of the two and a half feet of shelf space where the last twelve cards are.

I needed exactly half of them.

I found two semi-sappy cards that didn’t make me want to strangle kittens and set those aside for #2 and #3. I found three cards that were supposed to be funny but weren’t that I thought could be salvaged with written modifications.

(I was remembering a birthday card my assistant had given to me years ago. It was a truly awful rhyming birthday card that was supposed to be from a husband to a wife, and everywhere it said “wife” he just crossed it out and wrote “boss”. I die laughing every time I remember it.)

I still needed a card for CC. I had one in my hands made of thick black paper with red metallic script. Gorgeous. And hands-down, the single worst godawful rhyming card I’ve come across in a long time. It had real potential. In fact it was so bad and so long that I couldn’t even finish reading it. I got him a Chinese New Year card instead. Which I then lost.

The card that referenced chocolates I gave to the kid that hates chocolate (#4). The one that was made for a toddler with a picture of a bee and the obligatory Bee Mine! we gave to #1 (the 19-year-old), with hand-written references to VD. Because that’s the kind of thing you can write in a 19-year-old’s Valentine.

#5 got this one:

Inside I wrote: Dear god, I hope that cat doesn’t eat you. Because I love you! Happy Valentine’s Day!

His father wrote: Dear Son, She’s Nuts. Love, Dad.

#5 woke up before everyone else (as usual) on Valentine’s Day and opened his card. Then he texted me: Dad’s right. You’re nuts.

When I tucked him in he informed me that the cat’s smile was big enough and bright enough that when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he can see it in the darkness even without his glasses.

#5: It’s creepy.

Me: Excellent!

On the way home from work Saturday night he sent me the above picture with the accompanying text It’s giving me nightmares.

I believe my work here is done. Clearly I have a future career in greeting card modification.

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