Gone But Not Forgotten

Cordy,

My friend hasn't blogged in a week, and I'm worried about her. She's a writer who not so long ago was employed at a job she hated. Her disappearance could mean two things. She is happily writing and is focused on her work - the hell with the people who keep up with her via her blog. Or she is in a deep funk and avoiding contact with the whole world. If that's the case Iwant her to know that working is a crap way to spend ones life. But if she wants to write resumes to make ends meet for now I'd be glad to hook her up with a relatively pain-free freelance gig.

J


Dear J,

Well, you may have seen that I was going and looking at your website, so at least I wasn't entirely cut off from the world.

The truth is, I've been babysitting. So no more cooking tales of woe, and while I have many baby tales of horror (I will never feed my child fruit), at the end of those days I wanted to talk to people with a larger vocabulary than "meh meh meh meh," and wasn't so in to documenting my adventures.

I do have one funny story:Babysittee is a big bruiser of a year and a half year old (tis grammatically correct, and still uses the same word within two teeny words of each other! Neat!) who, when arriving at the park to play outside, would never get out of his stroller. I would go to unbuckle, and he would glare at me and block the buckles. "Meh meh meh!" Okay kid, sit in the stroller then. But of course, after a few minutes of this, I would start to feel guilty. After all, I was being paid to show this kid a good time and keep him healthy with outdoor playground playing and I wasn't going to let a little thing like him not feeling like it stop me.

So I pulled out the bubbles, and enticed him out of his stroller like the Pied Piper of soap. He followed, as did the other children. He pushed the other children down. These were his bubbles, damn it. I apologized to the fallen child and to the fallen child's mother, saying that Babysittee was kind of grouchy today and maybe the best thing would be to leave him alone. I enticed Babysittee to the toys, hoping to wear him out a little and produce naptime. Fallen Child, a glutton for punishment, followed us. "Would you like to play?" he sweetly asked Babysittee. Babysittee slapped him across the face. Fallen Child and I looked at each other in horror. I apologized again, told Babysittee that wasn't ideal behavior, and again reminded Fallen Child to maybe stay the hell away from the hellion.

Needless to say, Fallen Child got pushed once more before he got the message.

The other truth is, I finished draft 1 a couple of weeks ago, and am in a state of Tokyo Drift while (aHEM) waiting for Guy to get back to me with edits. (Actually, I'm attempting to behave like I would like a normal, polite would-be author to behave. But I'm deeply impatient, and I sense that I'll be playing the girlfriend card soon enough: "Hmm, what do I feel like doing this evening? Well, I think I'm going to go do something you would find incrediblly boring, like knit legwarmers in ever-increasing needle sizes. Why don't YOU go and read my manuscript?") I've started another, but please, I'm eight pages in and it's way to late for me to NaNoWriMo with y'all.

And this afternoon I'm starting temp work at a literary agency (oy), which will last through the end of the year. I suck at writing resumes (as you know--you edited mine, crazy lady) but do certainly welcome any freelancing work that I wouldn't totally screw up.

I only fall into the black hole of despair sometimes, I promise.