Dream Progress

I had one of those ridiculous anxiety dreams this morning, you know those? The ones where you show up late to an important meeting, wearing the wrong thing (or nothing), holding the wrong material (or your tooth brush), and you have only minutes to make it right, but each attempt you make to get back to where you should be gets trammeled by some silly obstacle, like the company toilet overflows but the closest towel is across a field and around a bend, etc...

My dreams like this usually involve distance that increases rapidly as I try to gain. My running slows, no matter how much I focus on my technique to make me faster. And somehow, that weird distance between me and where I want to be, gapes open.

Last night's dream was one of those, but first I showed up to an important meeting wearing a short, red-checked waitress uniform, complete with cute apron and white hat. The meeting was to find out whether I was good enough to get hired on the writing team for this new client. My prospective boss was infuriated, because his new big time client was about to get off the phone and join us. I had just minutes to make my outfit right. As it happened, I'd had a morning restaurant job and forgot to change before I came to the meeting.

So the anxiety unfolded, the toilet did overflow, the distance did open wide (home was far away), my clothing was all wrong...but with each frustration came a modicum of success. As I chased my tail trying to find the right clothes and get back to the meeting on time, I heard in my head how confident in me the boss was. I heard how well he liked my resume, and how talented I would be on this project. Turns out, shoes that I didn't expect but that worked for the occasion showed up where I least expected them. Somehow I found myself in jeans, and that cute red-check dress tucked into the jeans to make quite a hip-looking top.

Maybe I should have turned the apron into a cape, because I made it to the meeting! And in it heard these words: small, break it down, the new client will be into this if you package the project in small pieces, comprehensible and tangible, doable. He likes you. You relate easily. You know how to do it a piece at a time.

I wake up from the dream taking mental notes. Because later this morning, I have a first meeting with a prospective client. :-)

And I Feel Fine...

Today was my last day at work.
Tomorrow I swim, go to the spa to INDULGE in my near-unemployed status, get some of my own work done, then go on a date.
Sounds like a damn'd fine dayyyheehee indeed.

Pill for That?

Laura called me as she was waking up, thinking that maybe a conversation would help get her brain back in motion. She sounded drugged, and definitely not awake, even as the conversation progressed. But being that it's Laura's MENSA-grade brain we're talking about here, she managed to describe her sleep-grog thusly:

LAURA: You think they make a little blue pill for waking up? I suffer from Erectile Dysfunction of the Brain.

Science Lesson

My friend Sophia is 5. Her reasoning is this:

SOPHIA: Fish are not mammals because they don't breathe air. Boys are not mammals because they don't carry babies in their bellies, and they don't nurse their young.

New parts

Had a date last night. I've known the guy a long time in a work context but that's it. Told Britt and Chris about it today...

ME: I kissed a boy last night.

BRITT: Oo!

CHRIS: Is this a new guy?

ME: New to my lips anyway.

"Everyone's Got One"

You know what I mean. Now there's a clinical term for it. It's called:

Adult Onset Opinion Formation

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Every once in a while, a comment graduates to Bench-status.

Matteo Norteno said...

Ha!

That's right! She's ours. Portland wins, one-to-nothin'.
Can't wait for you to be up here, Pema. If you need anything, lemme know.

Oh yeah, and Santa Barbara, if you were a little nicer and maybe a little less arrogant, you could've kept her. Oh, but Santa Barbara, if you're not seeing anyone... call me!

July 21, 2008 8:30 PM

News

I'm moving to Portland, Oregon.
I leave end August, early September.
I'm a little bit happy about it and a whole lot petrified right now.
Petrified: immovable, stuck, holding my breath. I feel like I'm at an intersection, all trucks facing each other waiting for someone else to budge. So much information. Where will it go?
I gave notice at work.
I have a week left there.
I have money saved to focus on writing in Portland when I get there, and not get a job right away.
But I'm loathe to spend all my money, and not know where the end is to this leap.
Transition (a la David Bowie).
I do have a public reading scheduled there already, however!
Meanwhile, in SB, I'm scheduling a table reading for my play, "Talking Dogs." Collecting actors.
It's dark blue outside right now with a moon that was full just last night.
There's a cool breeze drifting in the open window. Crickets and night bugs chirp in surround-sound outside. Someone's wind chime sounds nearby.
It's beautiful here.

Chicken Sweaters

After work happy hour conversations:

Scott went to Westpoint Military Academy. Eugen served in the military in Romania after high school.

EUGEN: If Westpoint wants to go green, they should make biodegradable bullets. The lead used to make bullets is really bad for the environment.
*

Steve said that chicken growers figured out how to breed featherless chickens, to require less work to pluck them in the processing. But the growers discovered that the chickens were too cold, and it would cost more to try to keep them warm and alive than it would to pluck the feathers in the processing.

STEVE: They could have made chicken sweaters. Can you see it? Employing a bunch of little old ladies to knit little chicken sweaters.

Why We Love Ms. Brindle

KARA: We won an Indian dinner and you two are invited!

SUSAN: Ooo!

ME: Can we wear saris?

KATE: Is that like a sarong?

KARA: Kind of.

ME: Have you ever worn a sari?

SUSAN: No

ME: Have you ever been sari?

SUSAN: No, but I've been sarong.



.

Overheard

Fascinating phrases I heard this weekend:

Babycakes
Stooped to canned beans
Painted her poodle pink
Mouth full of noises

I admit, the last one started in my head. But then I heard myself say it.

And "babycakes" isn't exactly original, I know, but when you stop and consider it as an adult, it's a strange word to call your loved one.

Flowers and Virgins

TANIA: I've never deflowered a virgin. How come I never got to deflower a virgin? I've always wanted to deflower a virgin.

PEMA: (channeling Lisa) That's okay. You're good at other things.

TANIA: Now I'm too old. If I want to deflower a virgin I have to be a Mrs. Robinson.

KARA: That's too bad! You're a professor! You're the perfect archetype for deflowering virgins.

PEMA: You deflower young minds!

TANIA: Oh my God that's right I do deflower virgins!

Stir Crazy in Yellowstone

So I fly into Jackson Hole, Wyoming, over the arresting and jagged Grand Teton Mountains, capped with snow and peaked like meringue, and I imagine the camping that will soon follow. Majestic wilderness, peace unfolding under the solitude of tree canopies and the sound of a creek rushing by. Flowers and butterflies floating on a summer br---eerrrtt!! That's the sound of the record scratching off its track. Imagine this five minute polaroid of camping life instead:

Setting: an R.V. park crammed with aluminum hulls on wheels and spilling with strangers and folding chairs and bicycles, electrical cords and hoses that hook up to running water. Just outside the edges of the park, which you can't really see because of the crammed nature of the people-in-parking-spaces carved out of the wilderness...is wilderness...of expansive grass and in the distance, roiling clouds in a limitless sky and those jagged jagged mountains.

Action: My sister-in-law, her daughter and two sons, and my brother, crammed into the camper playing cards, and laughing so hard that my niece pees her pants. That makes everybody laugh harder, but no one realizes till she gets up that Allie has left a mark on the couch! So Joyce has to take a picture of the spot, but she's laughing so hard, she can hardly stand straight to push the button. She keeps swaying and kind of falling over. She finally gets the shot while Allie is changing her clothes in the tiny camper crapper, and shortly it is time for bed. I'm on my laptop when the bigger of the two chihuauas, Chili, bounds over to me and barfs on my keyboard. Of course I flip out and attack the barf with wet Q-tips where it has seeped between the keys. Barely has the barf cleared, Q-tips still in hand, when the teacup chihuaua, Coco, pees at my feet, and Joyce's nose starts bleeding in the back of the R.V. Allie is by this time in the loft in her bed, laughing and laughing, and waiting for something else to happen.

Joyce says it's what happens when we're all in one small spot together for so long. I for one, liked it.

Kittymail

LISA: The kitties check their kitty litter like we check our email. "What's going on in here? (sniff sniff) Any messages?"

Temp Drops

Gap Fire is 30% contained and people are moving back into their houses. Fog has rolled in the last few nights. Threat is not gone, but we're not breathing as much ash as we were in recent days.

Last year a fire started in the back country on July 4 and burned for three months.

Gap Fire

I'm back. By that I mean from the Yellowstone vacation and the sickness I brought home with me. I've been in bed sleeping the last two days.

Before I hit the bed, I flew into Santa Barbara close to midnight, over the black night and orange flames of the Gap Fire. You could smell the smoke in the plane before we came in for landing. You could see the flames spread over the hills out the window, orange and smoky.

(Here is a panoramic my friend, Daniel Girard took of the Gap Fire late on 7/3/08. That's the fire to the right and town to the left.)

My roommates and I climbed the hill behind our house to take a look at the flames across town. It was about 12-15 miles away from where we stood, in the front country, city lights just below it. Our friends, Britt and Chris were evacuated (and are still staying downtown at Geoff and Henry's) and others of our friends have been in and out of their house on voluntary evacuations. They're here this morning for breakfast to get away from the heavy smoke at their house.

News last night said the fire was 24% contained and evening winds that fueled the fires earlier in the week had subsided.

I also heard on the news there are 300 fires burning in California right now. Wow.

Charming and Clever

Hi. It's Tania. I'm actually going to take an active role in blogsitting today. I decided to write about writers -- charming and clever writers, to be exact. It's a theme blog. But perhaps they all are. I love how blogging allows me a departure from my typically bone dry research article writing so I can write sentences that start with "but."

But I digress.

The first writer of the day is Stephen Sondheim. You read Pema's review of "Company." What you may not know is that I forced her to watch two of the songs from Act 2 because I thought that the play might be redeemed in her eyes if she heard "Being Alive." Also, she had to hear "The Ladies Who Lunch." Just because it was such a good performance and so over-the-top cynical. She went out of town, so I had to watch the interview with Stephen Sondheim all by myself (while doing yoga and pilates 'cause was trying to make the most of my Sunday afternoon). Anyway, he was certainly charming and clever, and the fact that he started as a lyricist was particularly inspiring for me as I like to make up new words to borrowed melodies, which is, I think what lyricists do.

Next, is a playwright who wrote a play based on Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd." His adaptation is set in San Francisco, and it's called "Sweetie Tanya - The Demon Barista of Valencia Street." Yes, that's right Dan Wilson, I'm writing about you! Pema had gone to see the play, and I was very excited to see a musical set in SF with my name in the title. It turned out to be everything I could have hoped for -- it was funny and the songs were catchy and clever and it was wonderfully feminist. Here's a review of the play from the SF Weekly.

I became a fan of the third featured writer when I heard him singing songs he made up on NPR. In the short time period since this piece aired, I made Lisa and Pema listen to the clip, I googled him, I sent him fan mail (with some of my songs, since clearly he was someone who would appreciate them), I heard back from him (as, indeed, he did appreciate my songs), I wrote a song about him (which also received a positive response), I read his entire blog (which makes me laugh out loud), and I bought both of his books on amazon. Of course, I'm talking about the charming and clever Marc Acito.

Finally, I want to pay homage to charming and clever Pema. In particular, I want to say how much I enjoyed the 10-minute play she wrote that was produced as part of a 10-minute play festival at our local community college. Here's what impressed me most about her play -- I would think that in 10-minutes you would want to fit in as many words as possible to communicate the context, characters, narrative arc, etc. But that's not what Pema did. I think all the lines in the play could have been read in about 45 seconds, and yet she managed to engage the audience, build suspense, convey development of characters and their relationship, and find resolution. She's good! And charming? Well, if you know Pema, either through her blog or in person, there's no question.

So that's my blog entry. I hope it provides sufficient substance, amusement, and brown nosing the blog owner that I will be forgiven for the sporadic nature of my blogsitting activities. Of course, if the blog licked my face at 5am, I might remember to feed it daily.

Oh, and props to anyone who knows the play about a writer that inspired the title of today's blog.