How do you like them apples?

I’m working on not letting things bug me. (Don’t laugh, Nathan.) But here’s a thing that still does. Bug me, that is. You know when people ask your opinion on something. Let’s say for example, someone says: “I can’t decide between eating this apple or this orange. What do you think?” And then you say, “Well, I’m sure they’d both be fine, but if I were you I’d eat the spectacular apple of goodness because it looks like it’s perfectly ripe while the orange only looks slightly ripe.”

Then that person goes around and asks five other people what they think. And each person gives their opinion on apples or oranges and the asker comes back and asks you again. At this point, you’re kinda like, “I already told you what I think and who cares anyway? It’s fruity goodness. Just pick one already!” Mumblegrumblegoddamnfruit.

And then the person goes and eats a banana.

I’m not talking about big issues, like divorce or quitting one’s job, or deciding what color to dye one’s hair, which of course are issues of utmost importance and require lots of debate and multiple opinions. (I’m not heartless, people.) But when someone is asking your opinion on a pretty trivial matter, like whether to eat an apple or an orange, or whether they should wear pants or a skirt, or if they should read this book next or that one, I mean, c’mon. I’m going to lose patience. You’ve been warned is all I’m saying.

Humans are my species

I love to watch people. I love to think about why they do things. For instance, the father of a friend of mine has a weekly routine. On Saturday mornings when he takes the dog for a walk, he puts an old dishtowel around his forehead to be his “sweat band,” finds his cigarettes and rolls them up in his T-shirt sleeve ’50s style, and fills his water bottle with his “Bloody Maria,” which is a bloody Mary made with tequila instead of vodka.

Now, c’mon. How can you not love that guy already? I’m not sure where I’m using him, but that father is going in a story or a novel of mine somewhere.

Last night, Nate and I watched “Harold and Maude,” a great character movie. H&M reminds me of what I love about my favorite films and books. There’s something about the people that makes me want to keep watching what they do. Like Maude stealing cars and explaining, “Well, if some people get upset because they feel they have a hold on some things, I’m merely acting as a gentle reminder: here today, gone tomorrow, so don’t get attached to things.” Some of my other favorites in the movie: Harold’s constant fake suicide attempts; Maude: “Get the shovel, Harold.”; the hearse; the funerals; the nude modeling. And, finally, “Oh, Harold ... that's wonderful. Go and love some more.”

Kids

Nate and I do not have children, but today he told me, “I think one of our babies is going to be red.” How do I explain this contradiction?

You see, we have some guppy reproduction going on in our tank. We haven’t gone all out and bought the nets, dividers, and the assorted paraphernalia you buy when you really want to breed the fishies. All we’ve done is buy this floating grass that the babies can hide in. I know this sounds bad, but we don’t really care if the baby guppies survive. We’ve got plenty of fish and usually the adults eat the eggs before they even hatch. BUT, we have seen little guys from time to time and we felt bad because they always got eaten. To assuage our guilt, we bought them the grass to hide in. Right now we appear to have two survivors, two teeny fish, and one of them appears to be red.

Even though we have a pretty lackadaisical attitude toward their survival, we still refer to them as our babies. Weird, I know. We sort of hope they’ll survive, but it’s a very cautious hope because we know it’s likely they won’t make it in the long run.

Then I started thinking about how I used to call Roscoe my baby all the time and treat him like one, holding him and squeezing him and just generally tormenting the poor cat. But now that we have Walker, who is a bona fide puppy at 10 months, I’m calling him the baby and squeezing him and bothering him instead. Roscoe will be four in December so he doesn’t qualify as a baby anymore. (I can’t believe he’s almost four. Next month, Sophie—the rott mix—will be 10.)

Even though we don’t have children, we feel like we do. We’re constantly cleaning up someone’s poo or puke and sometimes both. Walker likes to eat his own poo and will then often throw it up afterwards. Nice. And let me tell you, he’s lucky he’s cute because that poo-puke is a foul-smelling concoction.

Nate’s brother Travis thinks Walker might eat his own poo because he was a stray for a while and still seems slightly unsure that food will always be available. We feed both Walker and Sophi regularly, but if you are a little late and God forbid sleep in, then Walker will eat his poo when you let him outside. Oh ye, of little faith. The food bowl will not run empty!

So we clean up after three animals and their bodily functions, watch the circle of life in the tank, and psychoanalyze our pets. I sort of feel like we’re parents already.

Midland

As I get closer to finishing the novel, I’ll share more with you about the premise, the characters, the synopsis, etc. Really. I swear. But I’ll share this with you now.

I set the novel in Midland, my hometown, for several reasons. Primarily because the name itself “Mid-land,” was too perfect to pass up. The novel is about six members of a Mexican-American family in West Texas who are dealing with generational and cultural shifts.

Today, I’m revising a chapter that takes place during Lee’s annual homecoming game. I was googling for the high school football schedule. I think my search was “homecoming + midland + lee” or something like that. Somehow an excerpt from a book about Laura Bush came up in the search results. The book is called The Perfect Wife and the author is Ann Gerhart.

A few paragraphs caught my eye, but this is the one that really stood out:

“The black population of Midland is and was small. During the 1960s, when the town had a population of about fifty thousand, perhaps five thousand blacks lived in the neighborhoods south of Florida Avenue. When I called to set up an appointment with Dr. Viola Coleman, a proud and determined physician still practicing in her eighties, who led the fight to desegregate the schools, she told me wryly: ‘Now, I'm black, so you know I live on the other side of the tracks.’ As I talked with other people around Midland, who were unfailingly helpful with questions about Laura, they always would ask where else I had been. And when I told them I had been over on Florida Avenue, their eyes would widen, and they would wonder what in heaven's name I could have been doing over there. Or they would look at me quizzically when I mentioned the spanking new Supermercado, with its tortilleria baking fresh tortillas daily on the premises and its shelves studded with calabaza and mangoes. It was a huge place, with bright purple and yellow walls, over past Big Spring Highway, but many in Midland seemed to have never noticed it, let alone gone inside. When I mentioned this to Dr. Coleman, she just smiled. ‘Even today, there are people who don't know there is anything past Big Spring,’ she said of the neighborhoods west of the highway, where the youngster George Bush once lived with his parents, that are now primarily Hispanic. ‘It is a community that remains invisible.’"

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/excerpts/2003-12-23-perfect-wife_x.htm

The father in my story owns two grocery stores very much like the Supermercado. This paragraph reminds me exactly why I’m writing this book. For some reason, this community, the one I grew up in, still somehow manages to remain “invisible” to a large percentage of Midland’s residents, even as Mexicans and Mexican Americans grow closer to becoming the largest minority (an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one) in the U.S.

There are other disturbing passages in the excerpt. Including this one:

“When Laura and George Bush hosted her high school class reunion at the Governor's Mansion in Austin in 1997, they threw open their doors to Laura's fellow graduates of Lee High School as well as to the members of the 1964 class of Midland High. Some five hundred people ate barbecue and drank Lone Star beer and twisted the night away, marveling how far the pretty girl with the twinkly smile had come. Nobody even thought to invite the members of the class of 1964 of Midland's third high school, all-black George Washington Carver. ‘Nobody even remembered,’ said someone who attended. ‘Isn't that incredible? Isn't that awful?’”


I don’t expect my book to change the world. I don’t even expect to change anyone’s opinion. I just hope to inspire people to look beyond their own preconceptions. No group is invisible or forgotten unless others let their ignorance blind them.

Keeping the Faith

One of the things I like the most about my new job is that I’m writing and editing at work again. I’m using the skills I’ve spent years acquiring. Plus, I enjoy these kinds of tasks. Proofreading a graduate catalogue may bore some people to tears, but I like it. The writing is fun, too, and there are so many different projects it’s hard to get bored. I’ll proof a graduate catalogue then write photo captions for the web site, then work on a brochure for a new academic program.

Did I mention I’m working for a local university? I don’t think I’ve said anything. I’m doing marketing writing. I’m also making 25 percent more than I made at my last job. Funny, isn’t it? I have a regular schedule, a private working space (no more sitting in a hallway), more money, more benefits (including free tuition), and nice co-workers. I'm now working in a creative environment where people are open minded. I really missed that. I don’t think I realized how miserable I was before. Well, maybe I did. I knew I was miserable. But now that I’m in a better place, all I can say is: thank you, God!

I talked to my friend Cristina last night. She’s finishing up her MFA in writing this summer. A couple of weeks ago she went to Mexico for a family reunion. While she was there, she kept worrying because she doesn’t have a full-time job, and she’d applied to various programs and gotten only rejections. She was worrying. What am I going to do with my life kind of worrying.

She just found out she got accepted into her top-choice program. In less than a month, she’s moving to Spain, somewhere in Andalusia, to be a teacher’s aide.

The moral of the story is: kept the faith. Life usually works out.

More Changes

Where to begin? As my husband says, I don't update very often anymore. I'm going to try to change that, but we'll have to see how it goes. Since the end of May, the following things have happened:

o My previous job ended. Thank God. (When you know your job is over and all you feel is an enormous sense of relief, then you know you were not in the right place.)

o I started a new job that, after only two weeks, seems like a much better fit. (I interviewed for this position back in May. I had mentioned this in an earlier entry about a potential meeting that could bring changes. Obviously, it did.)

o I am about 4/6 finished with another draft of the book. This fact is a little frustrating as I try to get used to my new schedule, work out, and finish this damn novel already. We'll see how I do with these three elements.

o An editor read a sample chapter and was “intrigued.” She wants to see the book when it's finished. (This was one of the two editors I contacted in May after the agent told me she was looking for work like mine. Still haven't heard back from the other one.)

o I've found that when I'm working full time, I can maintain a workout schedule or work on the novel but so far I've had a hard time doing both.

o I've been to Austin and Alabama.

o I've done a lot of reading.

o I'm happy to be back to my old self.