Illiterati

Demented and Sad, but Social Media

When I started working on my first novel, used to be that I would bump into people in real life--at the coffee house, the bookstore, the library.  And class.  I was still in school then, and if there was something on my mind, I'd simply talk it out with one writer friend or another, one mentor or another.  It made writing a novel seem like not such an exotic enterprise--we were all doing it.  No one looked at me funny if I said it was a novel-in-novellas.  No one raised an eyebrow when I cited Alice Munro as a huge influnce on that book or said "Alice who-now?"

Then we graduated, and I kept working on the novel.  Some of my writer friends moved away, temporarily (like me) or permanently.  My friend Corbin started, EarthGoat, a blog where the writers from my class could keep in touch with each other across distances, keep talking books and music and otherwise stay connected with each other's lives.  I started this blog for the same reasons, and for a long time it was a haven for me. I published that book.  I had a baby and moved away myself.   But I was still in touch with the people who mattered to my life, and my writing.

Then Facebook came on the scene, and EarthGoat started to be less where we gathered, and with the baby and the new job and the new book I was writing, the blog started to take a serious backseat.  If I wanted to "check in" with friends, they were, for the most part, on Facebook. I had less time to post, and less interest in posting. 

Two years ago, Brando and I moved again, this time back to the suburbs of Chicago from whence we came.  And like most suburbs, it's a nice quiet place to live, but it ain't exactly an artistic paradise.  Here, when I hang out at the tea house at the end of my street, I'm the only writer in the place.  I've seen Billy Corgan  there a couple of times, but unless I'm able to make him my new best friend (doubtful), I think there's not a lot of chance of talking music.  The local yoga moms and I don't have that much in common, since I don't do yoga.  No one wants to see this ass in Lululemon pants, doing Downward Dog.

And I think that's why I embrace Facebook, despite some of its obvious pitfalls. I like "bumping into" my friends there, seeing what people are up to, what's on their minds.  I like talking books and writing and music there, if not exactly the way we used to, then with enough frequency that I feel like they're still part of my life.

I know a lot of people taking Facebook breaks (and in fact I've had to invest in a copy of MacFreedom for myself, because, hello, look what I'm doing this morning instead of working on the new novel), but most of the time I don't feel the least need to apologize for being a Facebook addict. It's just another morning of shooting the shit around the coffee house before getting back down to work.

Now--get back to work.

Falling

I know I've been promising photos of our new digs for some time now, but until today I either didn't have time to take pictures or there was so much rain, the pictures wouldn't have turned out.  I realize we've had a drought all summer, but it was interfering with my photographic plans, and really, what's more important than that?

Today, thankfully, we had dry blue skies at last, so here's a little photo tour of our corner of the Upper Midwest.

This is the view from B's office.  The maple trees in our yard, to the right, are just starting to turn, but the rest of the neighborhood looks pretty festive.

This we took this afternoon at Presque Isle, which is a nature preserve and park at the other end of town.  I love this particular spot.

Here's B doing his best Julie Andrews impersonation.  You can see the harbor jetty light behind him, the one that's visible from our attic windows.

And this is the view from the beach of the mountains north of town.

And here is the downtown, looking south down our street toward Marquette Mountain, the local ski area--one of the few in the Midwest.

Finally, here is Marquette Harbor, featuring a few half-million-dollar townhouses on the far left.  Who can afford these, I wonder?

As you can see, we're having a beautiful (and somewhat late) fall this year.  Come up and visit us sometime.

What's Up Up Here

We just got back from the first of two weekends in a row in Iowa.  The first was part of our ongoing war against childlessness.  We stayed with friends SER and Bob in their awesome digs and got to hang with the little man.  Here he is, getting very angry that the toys on his exer-saucer won't go in his mouth:

I had to miss Bob opening for Suzanne Vega at the Englert, because I was laid up all day, but I hear it was teh awesome.  On Saturday we had a BBQ with Matt and Kristin and their little 'un, and stayed quite late (for us, anyway) until the parents were yawning.  We're nothing if not persistent in overstaying our welcome.

When we got back to the UP, I made some progress toward Halloween decorating, because I am a big big kid without kids and holidays with decorations make me happy:

You can see how brown our front yard is from the drought.  Also, we seem to be having some kind of a spider problem.

It's been raining all week, so I haven't had a chance to snap any pics of the fall foliage, but as soon as it stops, I promise, I'll get to it.

This weekend we head to Des Moines for my brother-in-law Tickle's engagement party, another ten hours each way in the car because we're still broke from the move and couldn't buy plane tickets.  But the whole family will be there, which should be interesting.  Tickle will be thirty at the end of the month, and there was much hemming and hawing in the family over how long he'd make his poor girlfriend wait before they got married.

I promise to keep Brando and Tickle from any more talk of scatalogical bets.  More when we return.

Back from the Beach

We just got back from our annual vacation with the family in Sunset Beach, NC, where it was HOT.  We are talking actual temps around 98 degrees and heat indices well into the 100s.  And the beach-tent company didn't put up tents for three of the six days we were there, because it was supposedly too windy:

Ha!  I'm from Chicago, people. This is nothing.

But that meant that my fine (read: pasty) Scottish complexion gathered the sun more quickly than anticipated, so now I look like this:

Mmm, pretty.

But now we're back in the UP to finish unpacking, and were greeted upon our return by beautiful clear skies and cool temps, and the lake out our attic windows:

Which will soon look like this:

So we'd better enjoy it while it lasts.

Busy, Busy

Sorry for the lack of posts recently.  Much going on at the moment, in terms of getting the new house unpacked and painted.  I'm trying to do the painting before I finish the unpacking since I know how lazy I am and unlikely to get to those kinds of big jobs once I have to move all the furniture and such out of the way.

B arrived on Friday and brought the wireless internet connection with him, so I finally have reliable wireless all over the house.  Before that I had to go to the bagel shop a few blocks away to get caught up on emails and such.

It's also been hotter than hell here, as much as 90 degrees, and no one has any air conditioning.  I've probably lost 10 pounds from sweating so much.  (TMI, sorry!)

I also don't have the desktop computer packed, which has all the photo software on it, but as soon as I do I will update with pics of our new location.

Off to the beach on Friday.  Here's hoping the problems Northwest is having with canceling flights won't affect ours, because I am dying to hit the water with my little nieces and nephews.  Wish us luck.

Disgusting

So we're back in the IC, me for two weeks, B for three.  I have a second session to teach at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and he has a new subordinate to break in before we head for Sasquatch Country.  We're staying with friends SER and Bob Hillman, who have graciously offered their fab guest room.  Yes, I did have to keep myself from blindly heading to our old house on Sunday as I was driving back into town.

The ankle is still wonky, and apparently my doctor will not be in until Friday.  I think this is an honest-to-god sprain and not just me overreacting to things as usual.  It's been more than a week and I'm still having trouble with it.  I don't think I broke it, because I can technically walk on it, but I can't go fast or far.

At any rate, the new house is awesome, though B has to go up to the third floor every day and check that the view of the lake hasn't moved since the day before.  But the kitchen--my God, people!  I can 't understand how anyone would be willing to eat in a kitchen that dirty.  The countertops, which were originally white, were actually beige.  I had to take the Comet to them to restore their true color.  The stove and oven were literally covered with grease.  There was some kind of green crap crusted on the shelves, and I kid you not, the fridge seal was covered with black mold.  It took B and I all day to clean it out, top to bottom.  Infuriating.  I'm not the kind of person who expects to be able to eat off the kitchen floor (sorry, Mom!) but this was above and beyond even my slapdash housekeeping.  I think they seriously had not cleaned the kitchen in ten years.

At any rate, we're so glad to be back.  It's a little bit like we went on vacation instead of moving. 

With a little luck and some ibuprofen, we should make it through all right.

Weekend, With Girls

So in-between Iowa and Michigan I had planned, for the last few months, to meet up with my roommates from college in Missouri. We try to get together once a year or so, which has become more difficult as two of us have kids now and one of us (me) has been broke for the last six years due to going to grad school, that annoying following-your-dreams b.s. that, let's face it, has worked out SO well for everyone.  They were coming out to see me this year in Iowa, but because the house sold more quickly than we had anticipated (an excellent problem to have in the scheme of things) we decided to meet up this weekend in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for a few days of kid-free frivolity.

Which was fine.  Because, as I've said before, there are times in your life when you just need your girls.

Except that, last week, as I both taught my novel class at the Summer Writing Festival AND moved my entire life in the same week, I managed to make a truly spectacular dive off a curb and twist my ankle pretty badly.  (I have been known to take some pretty bad falls in the past, so much so that members of my immediate family have remarked that if they hear I've died from a tumble down the stairs, they will not be surprised.)  I had to finish the class and the move with a really awesome hobble.  Thursday was bad, Friday was all right, and then, on Saturday, I made the mistake of wearing flip flops and effed my ankle right up again.  So by the time my friends made it in from Detroit, I was in a lot of pain.

B, in his always-droll fashion, called it the latest casuality in my ongoing war with gravity.

But I was determined not to let the ankle stop me.  I wrapped it and took a shitload of ibuprofen.  Because I don't get to see the girls very often, and I wanted to make the most of it.

Here's the thing: my friends all have very grown-up lives.  Becky owns a bakery outside Detroit; Barb is a Washington correspondent for a North Carolina daily; Halley is an ad exec for a business publication in Napa Valley.  And I am the author of a book no one read who has basically been living like it's 1989 for the last six years.  I have more and better drinking stories than I did as an undergrad.  A night at the bar is a typical Tuesday.  I go to casinos more than once a month.  I still don't have kids, and if our luck continues the way it has, I won't anytime soon. 

But my girls needed to cut loose.  Without their husbands and kids.  They wanted to drink, and dance, and par-tay.  We browsed all the shops in town, then got dolled up like we were going to Shattered, except it was a Monday night and no one was out.  I hobbled after them, pounding Advil but determined not to bust up the party.  We drunk-dialed friends and relatives.  Meanwhile my foot looked like a loaf of rising bread dough. 

Last night, at 3 a.m., we finally had to break down and go to bed.  My foot was mangled.  It swelled like an engorged tick, a sacrificee to the gods of girlhood.

This morning we were all a little green.  It doesn't matter, though, because every once in a while, every woman needs to remember that she was once a girl.

Today it's back to the real world: the bills, the kids, the doctor.  But yesteday it was still 1989.

Six Hours

That's how long our house was on the market.  I left Wednesday morning at 10, and the sign was not yet in the yard.  By four, I had a phone call that an offer was coming in.

We had hoped to be able to spend the summer on our restored front porch, since last year we missed out due to the idiot construction workers who took six months to replace our windows, but it turns out we have to be out by the end of June.

Which means I now have to find a house in Marquette and figure out where we're going to live for the month of July.  It's not a bad problem to have, especially in this market, but still, there's never a dull moment around here.