Reactionary

I just had an aha moment. Actually, I did a few days ago. I figured out where I’d seen this character before. Complete, from the tennis to the sister to the family money. When I was making him up along with the rest of this book, I thought I was starting from the beginning, but I wasn’t. All I did was reach into my mental grab bag and came up with a character I’ve had for years, for decades, nearly. It was like recognizing a face in the crowd. The hot blonde whose tennis prowess and the sheen of wealth hides deep anxieties and raging insecurity. He’s Joey from another very bad story I wrote when I was in high school that I never finished. It was almost humbling when I realized just how many similarities there were and how my so-called new character wasn’t new at all.

But personality-wise he’s different. Whereas the old one was a party boy whose ease with strangers provided a foil for his shy but decent best friend, this one wears such a hard outer shell that if he weren’t famous or wealthy, he wouldn’t have anyone around him at all. I have to be at my crispiest to write him at all, like on a day after a long shift.

It’s funny how things come back, though.

I wrote this on February 7th, 2010 | Topic: Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

Who knew? Crippling snowstorms would fall on the city on Saturdays in the same winter. Shocking. In a near reiteration of the last storm before Christmas, this one dumped 18″ on the city. Most businesses were closed in the neighborhood with the exception of places frequented by locals. The gyms were open, two coffee shops, and the cheese store. Starbucks, the one chain in the neighborhood, was closed.

I made paella and nearly imagined myself in Valencia. I also got a huge amount of work done except for any reading or writing.

I wrote this on February 6th, 2010 | Topic: Food, Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

My new chair whose delivery caused so much worry.

This is a great time of the year to make all kinds of home purchases since things are on sale. unfortunately, last year was punctuated by a death in the family, a stressful real estate deal, and general exhaustion. I felt I couldn’t spend any more money (just the act of buying anything at all costs tens of thousands of dollars, not counting the down payment). Also, I was so mentally exhausted, I couldn’t make any rational decisions about more things, especially things that would be costly. Anything involving work on a home is costly.

This year, though, I’m ready to do something and I can finally make rational decisions. My first move was to get rid of the oversized, out of fashion lounge chair I had. I saw this Delia chair on Room and Board’s end of year sale it was the exact same chair I had loved since the previous spring, in just the fabric I wanted. I bought it. After a lot of rescheduling thanks to my insane work realities, I finally got it delivered and had my other chair picked up by a local charity. It looks amazing with my throw pillow I got years ago at the old Matthew Izzo (that place is a local business but I hate everything they stock these days).

The painter comes tomorrow for an estimate of just the bedroom and bathroom. If I like her work, I’ll have her do the rest of the apartment. Slowly things get done and when a lot of money and big changes are on the hook, slowly is probably best. I’m one of those people who has a clear idea of what I want and I cannot and will not accept anything but that. That’s why it takes me so long to arrive at a decision. Hey, I hate it, too. But I can’t make excuses or apologies for being hard to please.

Next up:

• Get my spices organized
• Fix the files
• Change the bedroom closet doors
• Hang the Montmarte picture in the bedroom

I wrote this on January 31st, 2010 | Topic: Domicile |  Print |  Email | Say something

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

The best thing about this challenge was the side-challenge of the graham cracker recipe. They blow the store-bought ones out of the water. The second-best thing about this challenge was the relative ease of the recipe. After a grueling month of parties and ridiculous cooking feats, it was comforting to have a relatively simple bar cookie recipe. And it was no-bake! I don’t think I have ever crammed that much butter into so small a space, but it was fun and I did it on a weeknight.

I made the graham cracker pastry one day of the long New Year’s weekend and then rolled it out and baked the crisps on another day of it during such a bitterly cold day that I didn’t feel I was wasting the day by staying inside. The original recipe given was gluten-free but since I will probably never use those flours again and I hate to waste food, I used all wheat flour. The original is always the best. I also used something else from my pantry and instead of buying mildly flavored clover honey, I used some expensive Italian forest honey. It isn’t mildly flavored, but it was between that and my cherished jar of chestnut honey. It wasn’t a close battle. During the baking of the crackers, I discovered that a) I sucketh mightily in measuring dough, b) can’t cut in a straight line to save my life, c) my oven heats unevenly and c) none of that mattered. The crisps were delicious. Three days after making them and becoming afraid I’d eat and distribute too many to make the bars themselves, I forced myself to pulverise some of them to smithereens.

The bars themselves got made on a day off work after spending another long day at my favorite coffee bar in the history of humanity. This recipe had a lot of ingredients and a little of them like a few tablespoons of heavy cream, pudding mix, almonds, an egg, chocolate powder, a couple of different sugars, and a huge, disgusting amount of butter. The bars were done in an hour and I chilled them well before cutting them with a sharp paring knife. I allowed myself to eat and photograph one of them before packing up the rest for work. I got 36 out of the pan. I’ve never gotten so many bars out of a pan that small but I couldn’t imagine making them any bigger.

As far as tastes are concerned, I adored the graham cracker recipe and I will be making those again though next time I may not bother cutting them at all and just baking two full sheets and rolling a pizza cutter through them a few minutes into the process. Measuring is for people who scrapbook. Seriously. They were amazing, though and I may get a straight rolling pin just for the purpose (I have the tapered kind since I usually make tarts). The use of good honey didn’t go to waste.

As far as the bars themselves are concerned, they were kind of fun to make but used a lot of dishes. The washing up was a bore, what with the bain marie, the mixer, a saucepan, and several spatulas getting used and that’s not counting what I needed to use to chop chocolate and almonds. They also had a lot of ingredients, including somewhat weird things I may never use again. Like the organic pudding mix I got at Whole Foods that will now rot in my pantry since my brain will hurt too much when trying to figure out how much to decrease the milk to make the box as stated. The heavy cream will also languish in my fridge. I may be able to use it in a soup or if in doubt, freeze it. The bars were too sweet for my tastes but the people at work *loved* them. Someone said the one she had eaten was the best thing she had eaten in her life.

Now back to the big project at hand…

Note: Picture quality is very poor since I’m still learning my way around this phone. I can’t be bothered with the big camera except for big things anymore.

I wrote this on January 27th, 2010 | Topic: Food |  Print |  Email | Comments (1)

With all forgiveness to earthquake victims and obit survivors, the article in the NTY today about More Men Marrying Wealthier Women was the saddest of all. Don’t let the title throw you off, it’s not about men seeking out rich women to marry. Take this snippet:

Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing.”

So now being smart is a detriment? What’s wrong with people? Overall, this has become a society that rewards mediocrity, where exceptionalism is treated as some kind of a handicap and real handicaps as some kind of Get Out of Jail Free card. Give me a freakin’ break.

Be smarter. Work harder. What happened to men here? Is it so accepted that they’ll be overgrown children all their lives that so many have taken the path of least resistance? It’s in evidence all over this town, and you can tell just by how people dress. There’s the girl who’s put herself through the wringer to dress well and look good and there’s the fat slob next to her with a backwards baseball cap and some sports logo monstrosity. Excuse me while I go vomit.

Grow a pair already, gentlemen. There’s nothing wrong with being successful. There are too many dudes and not enough Men.

I wrote this on January 19th, 2010 | Topic: Rant |  Print |  Email | Say something

It never ceases to amaze me how surprised people are that it snows in January in the northern latitudes. On a day in which a French child reminded me of the Three Kings Day and in which I took down the Christmas decorations at work, it’s a week into January. I am deep in the middle of the less-fulfilling, harrowing landscape of revision.

I also start pottery classes Sunday. And as a friend at work said today, “So if you die you can be buried in a potter’s field?” I have nothing more to say. It’s the three dog nights days of the winter.

I wrote this on January 8th, 2010 | Topic: General |  Print |  Email | Say something

Since I think time is circular and just an attempt for humanity to cut it up into chunks the better to administer everyday life, I’ve never taken the New Year’s holiday seriously. But I’m all for parties and am quick to agree that humanity needs diversions in order to cope with the harshness of reality and the loss of small battles every day. As the last day of the Gregorian calendar winds down under heavy cloud cover and new snow on the American Eastern seaboard, I have to find something over the past ten years to be happy about. It’s been roundly called the Decade From Hell and no one here is pretending it was all daisies and buttercups.

Over the last ten years, I left my miserable home town for the big city. I paid off my student loans. I started making decent money. I traveled a lot. The concert at Slane was one of the greatest things I’ve ever witnessed ever. I will never forget it. On the same trip, I actually made it to Wales, becoming one of the only people I have ever met outside of Britain who has ever been there.

I rediscovered Italy and now consider Rome one of my homes away from home. I learned the spoken form of the language. At the midpoint of the decade, I did what I’d been saying since college. I got a job in the OR and now work in the hyperkinetic atmosphere of a level 1 trauma center as calmly as others punch timecards. I continued going to concerts, up close, and traveling. I’ve pushed my cooking skills into another echelon entirely. The Food Network and other movements have transformed American cuisine once again and Philadelphia’s food scene has got stratospheric.

As the decade draws to a close, I’m revising the most promising novel I have ever written and I have finally seen South America. I own real estate and my money accounts have blossomed. And don’t forget the Adonis. Talk about a catalyst.

In the midst of everyone losing money and alarming job reports, continue onward. Everyone always thinks what they’re living through is the worst time and it only seems to be because it’s real to you. The past was just as bad, don’t forget history, yet people still got through it. People get through it. Don’t wallow. Don’t be careless.

Keep calm and carry on.

I wrote this on December 31st, 2009 | Topic: Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

And just like that, it’s Christmas again. The run-up always catches me by surprise. I leave tomorrow to try to get to the other coast without too many problems. Hopefully, the union-wracked, lazy, inefficient East has gotten its fair share of snow and I won’t have many problems. I’ll be off the radar until I get back here Sunday.

Happy Christmas.

And just to avoid sounding saccharine, I hate people who hate Christmas and I still hate vegetarians (and this article makes a good point).

I wrote this on December 22nd, 2009 | Topic: General |  Print |  Email | Say something

Snow Day

Well, the weathermen were finally right. I’m glad for them. They can keep their jobs now and with the constant bloodletting in the latest business news, I’m happy when anyone anywhere keeps their jobs, even if it’s weathermen, a subgroup of some of the shallowest people on Earth.

I was on call today but I think the storm may have saved my bacon. No surgeon was coming in from the suburbs unless it really was an emergency and the likelihood of those happening in a storm are much smaller than they are in good weather. So how did I spend my day? Well, I read a chapter of my latest how-to book, read a few chapters of the mind-blowing Brothers Karamazov, watched TV, researched Christmas Eve dinner, made crespelle, and spent half the day with Andrea Bocelli. All in all, it was a good day. I printed out my latest novel and wrapped it so I won’t be tempted to look at it before Christmas Day. Later on as the evening began, I went out to my neighborhood restaurant to buy bread and a protein and then my corner store to get milk with which to make the crespelle and the hot cocoa I plan on drinking tonight.

As I write this and sip beaujolais nouveau, I have arrived to a conclusion or two: I have to write a sequel and use the scene that’s been killing me this past week (even if I hate sequels), true emergency cases are rare and I get my ass called in for stuff that really doesn’t need to go, people may lecture on and on about how to write a great novel and yet I have never heard of their work (see the link above). Is it more important to be known or be true to some kind of fuzzy ideal? I think art has to be accessible and you can labor in your garret forever on writing a “great” novel or you can allow yourself to have fun with it. People need distractions and art should never be so far away that only a few anointed people can appreciate it. There is only one Dostoyevsky every century (if that), don’t kid yourself into thinking that you’re it or that anyone should be. This is a paralyzing ideal.

Luciano Pavarotti was the voice of God, like a volcano or a coming storm. Andrea Bocelli is more accessible and I love him. That’s all. I was struck by a falling bunch of snow by the passing PATCO train and I should go lie down. I’m confused…

I wrote this on December 19th, 2009 | Topic: Life, Shutterbug |  Print |  Email | Say something

This is why I have never attempted to publish anything before. This is why I have huge boxes of things I wrote that will never see the light of day. I don’t know if I could deal with the heartbreak… and by heartbreak I don’t mean the rejection of publishers. I can’t deal with it when it ends.

It ended today. I needed to finish it up so I could get on with my periholiday life that’s always spinning out of control. I needed to get done just to be done and because too many people know about it. Well, first draft is done. I wrote the words “The End” at about 1645 this afternoon at my favorite cafe in Philadelphia. It was shortly before I decided to stop worrying about what a loss the memory card is that the postal service refuses to give me. I decided it wasn’t worth my angst and I will write what I need to on the seller’s feedback page and never again ask for anything to be shipped via USPS. I will try to stop my mind from boggling at the sheer ineptitude of some people (white a lot of people).

I just finished a novel, probably one of the most poorly written but perhaps the best story I have ever done. I will not worry about some people’s accents coming and going, logic problems, and a supremely ill-written climax. I will enjoy it for a day or two. I will not read over it for the recommended two weeks. This means I’ll see it again on Christmas Day. Hallelujah.

It’s hard, though, it’s like when a love affair dies, seriously. It’s like losing a friend. That first run can never be duplicated and I’ll never see the plot spin out in real time of this particular story ever again. I’ll miss my characters, I’ve been thinking of them nonstop for six weeks. It’s hard to suddenly be without them. Suddenly, my Saturdays are free.

I’ll see you guys later, though, for Revision. On Jeanne, on Tina, on Stephen, on Marco. It’s been real.

I wrote this on December 11th, 2009 | Topic: Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

I wish I could write “out all night”. It would be so way more interesting. But it’s quite the opposite. I’m on the verge of finishing this thing around furious Christmas shopping. I can’t stop. I slept maybe an hour and a half before I was up again with buzzing scenarios both for Christmas Eve dinner (did I really need to plan it just now?) and the end of this novel. I want to finish it soon and be freed during the Away phase of novel-writing, that depressing yet elating time when you’ve finished and the thing isn’t full of problems yet because you have yet to reread it. I can rejoin the human race. Also, I’ve spent enormous quantities of money these past couple of days. I finally found a dress that might work for the holidays (that are around the corner) and I have to order all the things I’ll need for the multiple-course dinner I make for the famiglia on Christmas Eve. I’ll be squeezed for time thanks to not arriving until the morning of the 23rd (if all goes well).

There are other baking chores, too. The gingerbread house for the Daring Bakers, cookies for next weekend’s “cookie swap”, food for the work Christmas party, and biscotti to take home. Damn. I’d better get back to doing what I should be doing. It’s time to reclaim my weekends.

I wrote this on December 7th, 2009 | Topic: General |  Print |  Email | Say something