Writing on Writing: More Writing!

I have been inspired by Hightouch to try to blog...at least a little bit.....
But, alas, what to say?
Firstly I have to say that this semester is a motherfucker. (Pardon my swearing! I like to swear!). What is the nature of this M-Fness? Hard to say.
Mother Fucker Nature, let me list you:

1. Teaching a New Class: This is not as hard as it sounds, but harder than it should be. For some reason, I have these little over achievers submitting writing to me constantly. CON-STANT-fucking-LY. Whose idea was this? Mine, apparently.
2. Working on Committees. If there is a BANE to any existence it is the creation and subsequent meeting of this and or that committee. One may actually love some of their compatriots on this committee but that does nothing to dull the mind-numbingness of just the sheer fucking actuality of BEING on a committee. Enough said.
3. Writing. Am I writing? Hells no. But I have forced myself to write for fifteen minutes each night for say the last week. So I have done _some_ writing. (If I could make the font of the word "writing" smaller so as to indicate how little I do, I would). 
4. Anxiety. This, friends, is the hobgoblin of little minds. Namely, mine. I worry the shit out of everything. This, however, does not prevent me from watching more TV than is perhaps advisable, and, somehow I manage NOT to worry while actually watching TV (and maybe drinking wine, I won't lie...) but watching TV does not make the anxiety go away. It just distracts it for a bit. What is this anxiety about? Not working on my novel. But, hey, whatever.
5. TV: I watch some/bit/a lot of TV. To wit: Brooklyn 99 (Andy Samberg, what what?); New Girl (not as good as it used to be, but Schmidt! He does Crossfit!); The Mindy Project (um, hello?? hilarious, also Morgan!); Modern Family (tight suit!); Parks and Rec (please don't talk to me about the small number of episodes before I have to wait until January....); Continuum (netflix). I think that's it....

And so, friends, my fifteen minutes comes to a close. If you want to know what else I am up to, re: thinking, I will just say sonnets, earthquakes, Pangaea. You're going to have to do the rest of the work yourself. 

(Did I mention my neck is fucked up? My neck is fucked up! Tomorrow: massage!!)

Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon for Real People

Okay, I like French cuisine just as much as the next gal (actually, a little less), but seriously, Julia Childs? Really?
Here is my interpretation of what Julia tells us we should do. Obviously we have to remember that this cookbook was written when women who would make this kind of thing were NOT working and also probably only made it for some kind of big dinner party (or wine club, like me). But even so, the four plus hours this took....might have been worth it, because I'm only doing it once? Maybe.

1. A 6 ounce chunk of bacon: what is 6 ounces? Can't things just come in fractions of pounds? I mean, 8th grade was SO long ago. But, this did give me the chance to go to Tony Caputos and visit the extremely handsome men who work there and say intelligent things like: Do you have the kind of bacon that comes in chunks? Can I have some? You're cute.
2. Cut bacon into "lardons." Okay, Julia, I get it. You're "French." But what the fuck is a "lardon"? And if you have to say, (parenthetically) that it's a stick, can't you just say stick in the first fucking place? I mean, can't you?
3. "Simmer rind and bacon for 10 minutes in 1 1/2 quarts of water." Why boil bacon in water? I'm sure there's a good reason, but can't you tell me what it is?
4. Why does my casserole dish have to be enameled and fireproof? Am I in danger of catching something on fire? What? A dish?
5. How many dishes do I need? Why so much with the "remove to a side dish"? Have you seen the extremely petite kitchen in which I am working? Julia Child, have you seen my kitchen?
6. 3 lbs. lean stewing beef cut into 2 inch cubes. I get the whole cubing thing, I really do, but you know what? I have no idea what an inch is. Here's what I do: hold up my finger and go, how much of this is an inch? And then I use that as a guide. But Julia Child probably had huge hands, like, Shaquille O'Neal hands, so she couldn't just say, half a pinkie, because, you know, of her fucking huge hands. 
7. "Dry the beef in paper towels; it will not brown if it is damp." This is what we call Spa for Beef. Seriously? Dry it? Like, get out a towel and pat it down? Oh Julia, what would Freud say?
8. So you're browning the beef and the bacon and then taking it out of the pan and then putting it back in the pan and then putting all that in the oven and then taking it out and turning the oven down. Woosh! Who needs a drink?
9. "Stir in the wine." About time! Now I can really get behind French cuisine that calls for 3 cups of wine, which leaves some left over for you know who. Yeah, me.
10. So you stir all this stuff in and then put it in the oven for 2 to 3 hours. Okay! Finally, a break! I can sit and drink my "leftover wine" and do something else for a few minutes. What? There are two other recipes embedded in this recipe? Fuck!
11. Brown-braised onions: I'm not sure who invented these tiny little onions that need to be skinned and treated as if they, too, deserve a day at the spa (hot tubbing in beef stock & herbs which have to be wrapped in tiny blankets, i.e. cheesecloth), but I'm pretty sure it was the devil.  By the way, this is one of those whole other recipes embedded in this recipe, but you don't know it until you are halfway down the page.
12. Sauteed mushrooms: yeah, that sounds easy, but first you have to clean them, and then they, too, need to be treated with kid gloves, which means you can't "crowd" them in the pan, or else then they feel like they are on the subway in Paris and then, you know, they get mad. 
13. Okay, here's the fun part: "pour the contents of the casserole into a sieve set over a saucepan. Wash out the casserole and return the beef and bacon to it." In layman's terms what this means is that you dump the entire contents of the casserole (beef, bacon, carrots, onions, sauce) out, and then, in my terms, paw through the mushy carrots and onions to find the bits of beef and bacon (gold!). Try not to burn your hands. Don't swear, the kids will hear. Don't put your finger in your mouth (gross!), but get every bit of beef. Did you?
14. Also, who washes a pan and then puts the shit back in there? I wiped the gross bits off the top and then put the meat back in. Julia Child must have had a maid to do that part.
15. Then there's this whole bit about skimming fat off the top, which I did, for awhile, and then I was like, Done! And I just poured the sauce over the meat and put the top on.
16. Then I looked at the clock and I was all, when is wine club? Because I need a drink of wine, stat.
17. I told my wine compatriots not to tell me if it wasn't the most delicious thing ever. And they didn't.
18. (Actually, it was damn good. Julia sure knows her shit, but I'm not sure I'll be delving into that experience again soon.)

Blog as Secret Facebook

I feel I should quit revealing my private life on FB, so that leaves my blog, which I'm coming to think of as a more private facebook, not because it is somewhat anonymous, but because if I post on FB, say, that I ate donuts for breakfast or drank wine AND jack daniels last night, my exercise friends will scold me.
Or, if I post some liberal screed my conservative friends will berate me.
Or if I decry Dan Brown's latest book as the death of the American Novel, someone, no doubt, will find me out as the snob I am. (As if all my diatribes against vampire novels haven't outed me already...)
In short, I think I will have to revert to "professional" FB, which sounds boring, but is probably what it is for anyway.
Which means I'll have to post my after finding-of-Son-and-friend, in the car with the windows rolled up, swearing screed here:
"Get the BLEEP in the BLEEPing car right BLEEPing now!!!! Where the BLEEP were you? You stay in the BLEEPing front yard! If I ever BLEEPing find you BLEEPing in the BLEEPing alley, I'll BLEEPing kill you. Do you BLEEPing understand? Do you?"
Or something like that.
It's not pretty. But as I told Son last night, love isn't pretty. Nor is parenting.

Some Questions

1. If an administrator speaks in an empty gym, does it make a sound?
2. Isn't critical thinking a skill? Isn't it?
3. Does absolute tequila corrupt absolutely?
4. What is the exact weight, in tons, of the unreadable texts I will read this semester?
5. If exercise doesn't make you thin (thanks Time magazine!), then does eating not make you fat?
6. And, if so, how many cookies do I need to eat?
7. Aren't all vegetable calories good? Like all those beets and that metric ton of tomatoes I ate?
8. When's the next vacation?
9. What's my theme song?
   
10. How many days until the semester ends?
11. What? It hasn't actually started yet?
    
12. Shit.
    

Son Reads MB's Mind

MB stubs his toe on an outdoor table in Idaho, yells nonsense, and sits down.

Son: I know what you're thinking, Dad, and it's the F word.

Top Issues in Unspeakableness

Here are some high (and low?) points from the panel on Saturday.

1. Mental illness: apparently if you are depressed, or if you drink a lot (in fiction) you might be considered "mentally ill." By this standard, most people I know are mentally ill. I mean, who doesn't get depressed? And by depressed I mean would rather stay in her pajamas all day and swear?
2. Swearing: Apparently, here in our corner of the universe, swearing is bad. Where I come from (not too far to the North) swearing is what people do. According to me and Raymond Carver, swearing is fun and a less fatal way of relieving stress than bar fighting. Also, according to me, swearing is the only sane response to people who honk at you for yielding to pedestrians. Someone (he must have been from Provo) asked me if I worried about alienating my audience by dropping the F-bomb. First, can I just say that I hate (hate!) the expression F bomb? I had never heard it until I moved here. This, despite growing up not too far away! Swearing is good for you! In the name of all that is holy, start swearing! And I answered that I never thought about it. Which is true. My co-panelist, Christine, said she tried to alienate people and in spite of this was invited by our friends down south to read. She thought they hadn't read her book, but they had. So we try to alienate, but we fail.
3. Alcohol: Christine's protagonist is a self-confessed alcoholic. Mine just drinks a lot (martinis, wine, margaritas). I said it was a "social lubricant". It allows her to do stuff, like relax and get on with life. Much like swearing.
4. Indeterminate sexuality: I think that it's okay to be gay and it's okay to be straight, but we don't much like people who can't commit to one or the other. And in my story, it wasn't a case so much of that. A few people have commented on the "sexual attraction" between the female characters. I never thought of it that way, but more that the main character was obsessed with the other's (pregnant) body. But that falls into some indeterminate category, which makes people uncomfortable. (One editor called my story "edgy.")
5. Unspeakableness: One sharp listener observed that if we were talking and writing about it, then it wasn't "unspeakable." I agreed, sort of. We write around things, like depression and alcoholism and hope that readers put it together for themselves. But then he asked, what is, truly, unspeakable. My response: violence against children. I think there are times when it is acceptable to talk about it, but as a subject for fiction, I don't want it described or, I don't know. I just don't read books like that, and I do, in some cases, think it shouldn't be published. I think it's unspeakable, as a writer, to talk about subjects or genres that the first amendment shouldn't protect, but I feel that way about violence against children.
   
6. Librarian rudeness: Our panel ended at the same time the library was closing. The librarians ran into the room and said, "You have to leave" then proceeded to hang around as if we were ruffians bent on destroying The Word and not participants in the Book Festival that they were hosting. It was...weird.

All in all, the festival was fun. I heard Janette Turner Hospital read and bought her new book, Orpheus, Lost, which is good so far.
You should also buy Christine Allen-Yazzie's book if you haven't already. It's great.