Seymour’s Fat Lady

We picked up the dog on Saturday, renting a zipcar and praying our drive would not be made miserable because of snow. At 8 in the morning, there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the road, and by the time we left New York the highways weren’t even clogged with snow. 

Readers of this blog know that we kicked around some names for the dog but were holding the final decision until we met him. As soon as Rod picked him up, the dog looked at me out of a baleful eye that cinched his name: Sweeney, for the demon barber of fleet street. Poor thing was terrified, even though I’d diligently slept in a tee shirt for three nights and then mailed it to the breeder to give to the puppy, so he would recognize our scent when he met us. When I held him, he calmed down, so I suppose that tee shirt trick worked. Thanks, Amy, for suggesting it!

During our five-hour drive home, we stopped twice to give the dog a chance to get out of his sherpa bag and stretch his legs. He’s part pug, so he stayed put and looked at us as though to say, “It’s cold out there, ya dinks. It’s warm in here. You do the math.”

I was amazed that such a young puppy could hold it that long until we got home, but he did.

For the first two days I was a nervous wreck, so anxious that I could barely eat. Turns out, the dog is much more chill than I am, so he’s helping me relax about the business of raising him. I’m glad, because I don’t want to transfer my hangups to him.

Yesterday he was extremely brave at the veterianarian’s, taking two shots and two rounds of ear drops without making a peep or struggling. I was kvelling!

Some of the other hurdles he’s jumped in the last few days include wearing a collar and walking on a leash for four promenades across the living room, learning how to jump off the couch, navigating the chair legs under the table (puppy obstacle course), and lastly, dozing while the washing machine is rumbling and tumbling right next to him.

I trumped up reasons to be in the kitchen–cooked dinner, made lunch, swept the floor, sorted the mail–to ascertain whether the washing machine would freak him out, but I think my presence (and not the washer noise) was impeding his nap.

Does this dog have brass balls, or what? He’s a farm dog, so I don’t know what all he’s used to…could be he’s gotten accustomed to tractor noise and all kinds of machinery. But he’s an Amish dog, so he can’t have come across that much technology.

He shows amazing good taste in that he watches Godzilla movies raptly.

I got accepted into the acupuncture school I applied to, but I’ve decided not to pursue it. Who am I kidding? I’m a writer. I may sulk at a streak of bad luck, but I will never want to do anything else. I’m feeling much more on track now that I’ve gotten some freelance writing assignments and have been clocking the dollars while working at home and raising my two-month-old puppy, Sweeney, whom we just picked up on Saturday from an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania Dutch country, just north of Harrisburg, PA.

Here is what he looks like:

Okay, I’m over my  hissy fit and feel much more empowered now. I will never stop writing, but I need a more stable avenue of income. I strongly suspect that the freelance life is not for me. I need a little more stability. I never have these freakouts about writing when I’m in a salaried job. I just slide the rejected poems into another waiting envelope to send them out again and move on with my life.

I’m indebted to my friends for pointing out how my panic was derailing my logic and my magical ability to drum up money out of thin air. 

I’m still applying to acupuncture school, but I’m also going to start reading tarot again (which is a healing profession) just to make sure that I am able to complete my healing agenda and won’t kick a recalcitrant client in the kneecaps. In the past, I haven’t had the tact for healing work. One gruesome example is when a tarot client brought in a picture of her abusive spouse and I wrangled with her for an hour, telling her in no uncertain terms that she should call a women’s shelter immediately rather than go back to that house. It was perfectly obvious that she wanted me to tell her this man would change. It was evident from his eyes in the pic that he never would, and that he would eventually kill her. She went home crying, and I went home crying because I knew she was in grave danger and lacked the capacity to assess that for herself and wasn’t listening to me telling her to wake the F up because this was life or death.

I’m older now and have more sympathy for the ways in which we delude ourselves. After all, I know that a dirty martini and a pack of rolos does not constitute dinner, and that it exacerbates the symptoms of PMS, but I still call that dinner and then complain about PMS.

On a spiritual note, I’m having a good time tuning into the Christ in Christmas. It’s making me much  less grinchy; this is the first time in twenty-five years that I’ve cared about the Advent season. It’s also because some of my favorite holy days, the ones dedicated the the Virgin Mary, are in this month. Tomorrow is the feast of the Immaculate Conception; I will concentrate on what I want to bring forth in my life.

Catholicism is not so very different from goddess worship. It’s all about the focus.

I’ve applied to acupuncture school. Now let’s see if I’m accepted…and how I’m going to pay for it.

The point is, I’m beyond frustrated with working in publishing. For once, I’d like to work my ass off and actually get paid for it, and it seems as though, with a job in healthcare, that might actually be a possibility.

Here are some of the choicer things I’ve heard in my publishing career:

“We don’t have the budget to pay you.”

“We’re offering five dollars for a five hundred word article.”

“So you have a master’s degree, so what? Get in line. Even editorial assistants have master’s degrees.”

or the worst of all:

Nothing. Silence. Zip. Not “thanks but no thanks for your pitch to our magazine, ” just a big howling echo of suckitude, the vacuum of the cosmos ringing out the message, “Magdalena, you were not meant to be a writer.”

I will always write. I love it. But trying to do it as a business has wrung every last drop of joy out of it for me. Honestly, I can’t take the rejection anymore.

I’ve sent out my poetry manuscript 75 times. The majority of the poems have been published in magazines, but the collection itself has not been published.

I’ve written five unpublished novels, the last of which I rewrote four times.

I’m at work on a memoir right now, and in workshops the feedback is always the same as it has been for my fiction: I suck at plot. Characterization, no problem. Plot, not so much.

I want a simple life. I want to work in a field where there’s job growth, not “Oh, you have a degree in creative writing? You want fries with that degree?”

And I’m tired of spending my money on writing classes and poetry magazine subscriptions and books, and getting nothing back.

Plenty of people manage to make a career out of this. I haven’t, though, and I don’t want to try anymore. It’s just as easy to fall in love with the conductor of the orchestra as it is to have a fling with the first violinist. In the same way, yeah, I love writing, but I love a lot of other things, too.

People in my age group will go through, on average, six career changes in our lifetime. And what the hell am I going to do with myself for the next thirty years while I’m working until I’m seventy and not retiring? Blogging about celebrities for five dollars a post?

Frustrated, sick at heart, and entirely at a loss as to what to do with myself. Scared that I’ll be taking out enormous loans for acupuncture school and then not be able to pay them back.

Turkey sandwich with cranberry chutney and brie

Turkey sandwich with onion compote

Barley risotto with minced turkey, pearl onions, and peas in a cream thyme rosemary sauce

Seriously, I have such agita from eating cheesecake for breakfast. Thank heavens Rod took all the chocolate out of the house. Well, most of it anyway. Like a wise man, he kept the Toblerone bar.

Frank and Lauryn’s pizza and champagne engagement party was fun. This is a tradition in Rod’s extended family, that engagements are celebrated with a pizza and champagne party. Frank is the latest cousin to fall prey to the marrying mania, so we headed to another cousin’s house (Jeff and his wife Tiffany hosted) in Bordentown yesterday. It’s a drag that most of Rod’s family lives in South Jersey because it takes us for frickin’ ever to get there–on average two and a half hours by train.

Today I spent most of the day copyediting, for which oh be joyful. I really do love copyediting, especially in the comfort of my own home. All I need are a few more clients.

I’m contemplating doing tarot readings in December while the writing center’s closed, to pick up some extra cash.

Read Deepak Chopra’s _The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire_. This is the first Chopra book I’ve read, and many of the principles he talks about are already familiar to me, such as how affirmations work. I enjoyed reading his seven principles and plan to try using the sutras:

Aham Brahmasmi: The core of my being is the ultimate reality, the root and ground of the universe, the source of all that exists.

Tat Tvam Asi: I see the other in myself and myself in others.

Sat Chit Ananda: My inner dialogue reflects the fire of my soul.

San Kalpa: My intentions have infinite organizing power.

Moksha: I am emotionally free.

Shiva-Shakti: I am giving birth to the gods and goddesses inside me; the express all their attributes and powers through me.

Ritam: I am alert, awake to coincidences, and I know that they are messages from God. I flow with the cosmic dance.

We’re also considering “Sweeney” and “Dodger” for puppy names. Although truthfully I’m torn between Dante and Groucho.

Thanksgiving went as well as it could possibly go, considering that I have the almost ungovernable urge to smack my parents about thirty seconds after we’re in the same room. I pray for guidance and wisdom and love and patience, as I always have, and I want desperately to rise above the small needs of my ego self and to tune into the divine plan regarding my progenitors vis a vis me.

Here’s what was on the menu:

Appetizers:

pita, hummus, baba ghanouj, muhammara, olive bread, onion compote, brie, crudite

Entree:

turkey, sausage/prosciutto stuffing, potato gatto (like a mashed potato lasagna, but without the red sauce), broccoli rabe, stringbeans and caramelized onions in a white wine vinegar reduction, mushrooms sauteed with onion and roasted garlic

Dessert:

cheesecake topped with strawberries, lemon granita with rosewater and honey whipped cream, two kinds of apple pie, and tiny pumpkins filled with curried tropical fruit compote

We won’t have to cook all weekend. Hooray! 

It was truly awesome to have a sit-down dinner for eight in the new apartment and not feel crowded.

“This is a real apartment!” my sister Jennifer said. “You’re grown-ups now. Look at this table. It looks like Aunt Rita’s table used to look when we were kids.”

It’s true. If my niece had been able to join us yesterday, she would’ve seen the rich ruby color of the tablecloth as it complemented the terra cotta orange of the walls, the candelabra’s flames flicking in the huge wall mirror, the baskets of fresh fruit, the crystal decanters of wine. She would’ve felt the pleasant lethargy at the end of a meal together. The desultory conversation. I used to be in awe of how my aunts, grandmothers, and mother coordinated such a vast effort.

Yesterday was a result of my editorial ability, to synthesize a meal out of disparate elements. To delegate. I did something different this year. Usually I cook what I know everyone else likes. Yesterday, I just cooked what I like to eat, and I asked all my loved ones to bring the dishes they make best. Consequently, I sat down to my ultimate meal, composed of every single thing I love.

Rod likes to brine turkey. He enjoys the science of that aspect of cooking. So he was on turkey and giblet gravy. Giblet gravy makes me sick to my stomach when it’s cooking; looks like a severed baby’s arm boiling up purple in a pot. The smell, also, is nauseating. I lit some frankincense during the process.

My sister Jennifer was on stuffing. Our great aunt makes an amazing stuffing with Italian sausage and prosciutto in it. I’ve never been able to duplicate the recipe, but Jennifer can! She also brought gatto, which is a casserole of mashed potatoes mixed with eggs, parmesan and mozzarella cheeses, and parsley, and topped with bread crumbs. Also makes a wonderful midnight snack or breakfast when it’s ice cold from the refrigerator. I tend to overthink my gatto and put too many things in it, like caramelized onions, soppressatta, and peas. Jennifer’s gatto is proof that you can’t improve on simple, wonderful ingredients baked with masterful delicious intention.

My sister Patt brought the tiny dessert pumpkins filled with tropical curried fruit compote, which took much more attention to detail than I’m usually capable of, and which were beautiful and dainty as well as tasty.

Our friend Kenwyn brought the onion compote, which is a Splendid Table recipe that tastes a lot like the sauce for Chicken Marbella, as it involves prunes and capers and mustard. 

My parents brought the table cloths, for which I’m deeply grateful, as Rod and I don’t own any. We just got the table a few weeks ago!

Here’s the short list for puppy names:

Groucho

Gomez

Dante

Egon

Got any other ideas?

We’re having my family over our new apartment for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I don’t enjoy cooking for my family, because they don’t really like trying new things, and I get bored making the same old saturated fat extravaganza of antipasto, etc. etc.

So I’m making Middle Eastern apps instead: hummus, baba ghanouj, muhammara. My friend Kenwyn’s bringing an onion compote that is wonderful eaten with brie and crackers. I’m feeling defensive already because I know I’m going to hear complaints about the appetizers:

“Where’s the mozzarella?”

“How come there’s no stromboli?”

Life does not revolve around stromboli, however compelling the illusion may be that cheeses and meats wrapped in a pizza crust can save your life and give it the kind of purpose that your kids, your job, and your spouse don’t.

Here’s the problem: When I have PMS, all I want to eat are egg rolls. And my cooking mojo goes out the window. I just made a cranberry apple chutney that’s making me sick to my stomach because of the burnt sugar smell. It tastes fine, but I can’t even go near the pan because it smells so vile.

I located a bed frame on craigslist. Rod and I went to the Slope to look at it. Liked it, since it’s a unique oak four-poster with charming engravings. Bought it. Went to U-Haul, rented a van, moved the bed frame here, set the bed frame up.

It looks ridiculously tiny beside our gigantic queen-size mattress.

Oh, sure, it *fits*. We can sleep on it and not be pitched onto the floor during the night because the mattress is unstable.

But it looks like a hippo stuffed into an anorexic’s prom gown.

I have just about had it with buying things online. First there was the Doc Martens on Ebay debacle, in which nineteen pairs of Docs arrived at my house simply reeking of mildew that would not be killed even though I left the shoes out in the sun for four days and washed them with bleach.

I feel so stupid for buying this bed frame. It looked huge in the picture, and ginormous in that couple’s tiny apartment in Park Slope. Did I measure the mattress, like a smart person, before I put my agreeable husband to the trouble of hauling this bed frame home? No. That would’ve been too easy.

Someone just came by to look at the bed frame today–a potential buyer. She was so imperious and jerky that I’m sorry I let her into my apartment, because her assy energy is all up in here pissing me off. Must sage the entryway before I start cooking.

I’m so disgusted that I’d like to take the frame at a loss and just put it out on the street. Anyone want a full-size headboard and footboard?