Boo! Blog!

What I remember about childhood Halloweens in Detroit:  

1. We (and by 'we' I mean my best friend Birdy and I) could run around the neighborhood at night, in the dark. 

And

2. We could wear makeup and jewelry and long skirts and be gorgeous Gypsies. Or we wore lovely flowing veils and were beautiful brides.

Here we are in all our radiant splendor. I assure you, the way we appear to the jaded adult eye had no bearing on the way we felt. We knew we were beautiful, graceful, lovely beyond compare, in our kitchen curtains.

(I am the shorter one, Roberta is on the Right) 

Then there were the lost years, where Gypsies and brides turned to witches and real brides.

Fast forward to Los Angeles. Upstairs apartment, funky neighborhood. I don my witches’ hat and nose, paint the face a sickly green, add lines and creases. I wear the trailing black slip and boots. I fill a giant bowl with candy.

And there I sit, all witched up and no one to scare. Not one kid comes to our door. Trick-or-treaters: zero. I cried.

Move to a different part of town. Oh boy! Kiddies to scare and scar! Oh cackle oh joy! Three little girls come as princesses, lipstick, blue eyelids, lots of jewelry.... and BAM! I’m in tears again! Biological alarm clock blares without warning: MUST HAVE DAUGHTER TO COSTUME IMMEDIATELY!!!   

I obey. Children come, they grow, they go. 

Now: Time again to dress. I take my lovely, latex nose out in preparation. Shake out the hat and slip and boots. Each year it requires less time and effort to achieve the same warty, wrinkled effect. The candy is bought, the neighborhood ripe with kids. No tears this year. I'm old and safe. Happy Halloween my friends!

Boo!  Amy 

Viva la SKYPE!

Once upon a time, in an acting class at Lansing Community College a boy named Treadwell and I were assigned to a scene study. I don’t know what the play was, or what set us off, but for some cosmic or chemical reason, we couldn’t look at each other without busting into giggles. Even when we averted our eyes, the sound of one of us trying to breathe, or utter a line, reduced us both to sweaty, face-cramping, pants-peeing hysterics.

Not a bad way for a friendship to begin. 

Treadwell's Painting

The details are dim for a while after that. I know that when we were unpaid slave/apprentices at summer stock we got a gig house/pet sitting for some poor overly trusting couple. I remember finding and hooting over their sex toys. And although we'd promised to leave their huge dogs outside at all times, we ended up letting them in to have a pee party on the carpet and eat the couch and shred the curtains. 

Eventually I moved away and got married a couple of times. Treadwell moved to New York and fell in love with a Swede or Dane or something named Dougas. I never felt totally comfortable with the absence of an L in Dougas’s name. And when he carted my pal Treadwell across the world to live in Germany, I felt my suspicions of his L-less-ness were utterly justified. 

For a few years, like 12 or 20, Treadwell came to visit once a year or so.  His english got worse as his German improved. He started putting his words in the wrong order. By then he and Dougas had become hot-shot Psycho-Drama-Therapists holding workshops all over Europe and Scandinavia. Treadwell was too busy to come to California, and I had too many babies and other excuses to go to Germany, where everything they said sounded like, "Put the Jews in the oven!" to me.

All we had was the telephone and e-mail and we both got lazier  about even using those. Dougas died, Treadwell got sick. Months would pass. Many months. 

But: I SAW TREADWELL TODAY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS!!!!!!

Not because either of us got off our asses, but thanks to the grand, glorious, miraculous, generous, brilliant invention of SKYPE!

It wasn't just his disembodied voice on the phone. But his beautiful face! In motion! With actual Treadwell-esque expressions! His cigarette smoke curling in real time! He held up his new dog for me to meet and I showed him mine. He showed me his most recent paintings, and I showed him I still had the one he painted for me ages ago. I saw his new mustache and the way he plays with it. And there was the tattoo I’d forgotten about on his wrist. His smile. His blue blue eyes. And, of course, his incomparable Treadwell laugh. 

So, whatever nasty things I may have said against technology in the past, I take it ALL back.

xo Amy

Writer's Madness

Sometimes I swagger through the house feeling tall and mighty and brave and brilliant.  Sometimes I hunch, scratching in the dirt, strangling the weeds, muttering defensively to myself.  Sometimes I hurl myself at the household chores with the tearful fervor of the newly saved, and sometimes I stare unblinkingly through the front window stuffing toast and jam and toast and jam and toast and jam into my face. 

And although none of these physical, mental, emotional states may take place in my office, at my desk, facing my computer, they are all about writing.

The book I'm working on now is all things to me from celebration to self loathing. 

Maybe it was like this with all my books. I don't know.  I can't remember writing any other books.  Like falling in love, and breaking up: it's always the first time.

Do dentists and data processors find themselves periodically dancing to the intestinal rumblings of an unknowable beast during their work day?  

Or, more to the point: Does a writer's emotional whiplash have anything at all to do with the work itself?  With how the writing is going?  With what is showing up on the page?  

I doubt it.

Here's what I suspect: Since we make up the story, and make up the people in it, and make up what these made up people do, and make up how they feel about what we've made up for them to do... We probably also make up how we feel about them and what we have them doing and why. 

Perhaps by spending all this time emeshed in so much making up we've simply driven ourselves mad.  Although maybe I'm just making that up.

xo

Amy

Doggish Intentions

There I was, innocently trolling facebook when I happened to notice a post by a friend who is forever putting up heartbreaking pictures of dogs who need rescuing. 

I knew I should have unfriended her the moment she started that, but I failed to do so in time to miss this photo.

He reminded me of the crazy dog who was dragged off to the gas chamber in the movie The Lady and The Tramp. Remember him? 

The facebook story was that this puppy needed a TEMPORARY foster home as he'd worn out his welcome with the dog, cats and chickens he was staying with.

A few days, maybe a week... 

Insert romantic montage of this puppy and my puppy, Wally, paw in paw on the beach at sunset, sharing a candlelit dinner of dirty underpants from our laundry bin, frolicking on our bed while we are trying to sleep...

 
The day approached when we were supposed to send him away. 

I balked. 

Negotiations began. Did we need another dog? NO! Did we need more vet bills while our finances are so precarious? NO! More shedding and dog poop? NO! 

Did I want to squash any chance of ever leaving town again at the same time as my husband? 
Was I looking for added unforeseen but inevitable drama and sorrow? A thousand times NO!

And what about the poor woman who was waiting with open arms? Who had already bought him new dog-toys and chews in eager anticipation of his arrival? 

Can you guess the rest of this story?

*Sigh* 
I'm sure there is a lesson to be learned here, but the real question is: What shall we name him?

xo Amy

A Workout For The Rest Of Us!

I know you’ve all been wondering how I managed to regain my girlish figure, so I’ve decided to come clean, so-to-speak.

But first, I shall tell you what didn’t work: My gym membership. Fact: Although I was in good standing at 24 Hour Fitness for nearly a decade, it became increasingly obvious (around the waist, butt, and thigh areas) that paying fat-dues was not actually the answer.  

What did pan out however as a marvelous weight loss boon, was becoming broke! And it was so easy! In fact, it required so little effort on my part that I hardly even noticed it was happening!

First it was farewell to all those high calorie meals out! Then, ta-ta to prepared food brought in. So-long to car insurance for my teens next. More walking equaled fitness benefits for the whole family! No need to drive to the market, all I can afford fits in one bag the perfect size for working those biceps! So, not paying for gas equals a firmer butt and smaller carbon footprint! A win-win-win-um, win!  

Good-bye to the gardener, and good riddance! I always suspected he was a brain surgeon in his old country because he sure was no gardener!  And since (unlike him) I can’t afford a leaf-blower, it’s all rake, shovel, sweep, saw and haul for me! Out in the Los Angeles sunshine the fat melts like magic! 

Meanwhile, the chores inside the house offer a fabulous, never ending work-out as well! Up and down that step stool building buns of steel! Wipe those mirrors and windows -- flabby arms be gone! Bend for towels off the bathroom floor, hoist the laundry basket! Push that vacuum, push, pull, eighty reps! Work it! Again!

And breathe.

Now, shake those rugs! R-e-a-c-h for those cobwebs! Flip that mattress! Then down on the floor to scrub, scrub, scrub! Feel the burn?  

And not only can this all be done without leaving home, I can do it EVERY SINGLE DAY! Switch it out to keep it fresh, laundry and leaf raking on alternate days with floor washing and lawn mowing! 

I think you’ll find that many of your friends and neighbors are discovering these perks of poverty! Look around. See all those empty shops? Where do you think all those workers have gone? Yes! They’ve gone HOME!

Why let the handy-man and plumber reap all the fitness benefits of repeated plunging and hammering? Or the house painter get all that great back and neck work? Why let the house-keeper walk away with your firm thighs and ripped abs? 

Chop that wood to heat and light the house -- unbelievable benefits for shoulders plus no need for costly electricity, you’re dead asleep, by dark! 

Disclaimer: When patching the roof and cleaning the gutters, do be careful on the ladder as the Poverty Fitness Regime does not come with medical.   

xo

Amy

Fiction Happens

Whether it writes itself, or has to be scraped out of the inside of your skull with a serrated grapefruit spoon, whether squeezed from the very bottom of your tube, or lured with bribes and threats... stories do come out of people and fiction happens. 

The alchemy of 26 letters + time + effort + other mysterious, unidentifiable ingredients... eventually equals a story where nothing previously existed. 

Libraries, magazines, on-line journals, newspapers, bed side tables, drugstores, bookstores and bathrooms are so full of these stories that we don’t take their existence as surprising or improbable.  In fact, we’re so blaze’ that we’re not even tempted to burn their creators as witches for having called these fictions up from the nothingness.

As readers we either like or do not like these stories, similar to the casual way that dogs either eat or do not eat the dead. We’re perfectly comfortable praising and castigating, scorning, dissecting, recommending and reviling other people’s creations. 

But when you have finished writing a story, or even a draft of a story, and it looks up at you, arms outstretched to be lifted from its crib, you can’t help but feel amazed at the perfectly impossible and miraculous thing that has so mysteriously occurred.  

xo

Amy

Slug vs Crop

Naked Eggplant

When my tomatoes suddenly vanished along with every leaf off my eggplant and cucumber plants, I figured the same cheeky squirrel who polished off my peaches was to blame.

My husband faulted our new dog Wally for not taking his squirrel-chasing duties seriously enough, unlike  dearly-departed, dedicated-crop-defender, Sweetie-the-Dog, our old black lab.

Historical Bad Guy

But then a friend in the know, knowingly said, “I bet you’ve got slugs.”  

We peeked under a planter and discovered a globular, wad of gooey matter stuck to the bottom of the pot.  Yep, slugs. Lots. Ew. 

Realization #1. I am a furist, defined as: One who finds annoying but pardonable behavior at the paws of the furry, way less adorable when the perp is slimy. And maybe I’m also a boniest, in that I prefer those with at least a bit of skeleton.

I posted a confession of my newly discovered personal bias on facebook, but friends assumed I was looking for The Final (Slug) Solution.  One recommended I try sluggo. Another suggested fobbing them into the neighbor’s yard as she did her snails. A third suggested beer, saying the wee lushes were drawn to the smell, and drown drunk and happy.

I called a house meeting.  

• Husband, himself a big fan of the beer-cure for most ailments and conundrums, reserved judgement. 
• Non-red-meat eating daughter said, “No killing. Period. No discussion necessary. Slugs are sentient, cucumbers are not. The end." 
• Her visiting friend said, "Slugs are not indigenous so we should feel free to kill them." I did not ask his stand on immigration but pointed out that neither our family nor our tomatoes were from around here, either.
• Philosophy-major-son wanted to discuss the ethical, moral ramifications /justifications of any killing.

And someone pointed out that we can’t really know that drowning in beer is a painless death. Isn’t it entirely possible the alcohol would sting their weird slippery skin?

Other questions were raised: How badly did I need my tomatoes? asked the child who does not like tomatoes and wonders why I persist in growing things she hates, such as vegetables. 

And: How much protection do we owe the plants we plant? Aren’t they entirely dependent on us? 

Slug One

We decided to have a look at the culprit. We upended a planter and scooped a small, muddy, slug out on the tip of a leaf. It curled slowly away from our prying eyes. 

We brought out a bigger slug. Much easier to see the details, the gill hole, the blue feeler-things. It crawled around on the leaf, fat, and slow, like the sainted, Sweetie-the-Dog. Son pointed out that it had a Fu-Manchu mustache.

And it had a face.

Sweetie-the-Slug

Realization #2. Having a face (slug) trumps not having a face (tomato).  

And that was that, Faceists all. So much for my time and attention, my water, my fertilizer, my compost, my grubby fingernails and salad dreams. My gardening adventure comes to a sluggish end, and it's the produce section at Ralph’s here on in.

xo

Amy