I’m back!

In case you were wondering where I’ve been* and why I left you with only Legolas the faithless elf for company, we’ve been on vacation. Instead of blogging here, I was writing a traveblog, which you can see here.

While I was away, I shared the blog with a restricted group of Facebook friends, my mom, and some aunts. But now that I’m back, I’m comfortable sharing it with the world.

I didn’t travelblog here because although you all seem very nice, and I know most of you, there are people who end up on this blog because they searched for phrases like “accidents that could have been prevented…”, “evil nun,” and “lady macbeth hugh heffner.” I really don’t want these people knowing where I am.

Anyhow, as I stated previously, I’m back and ready to blog for reals.

 

*You probably haven’t been, but like most bloggers I feel the need to mention that I wasn’t here and now I am.

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Dear Legolas, we need to talk.

Dear Legolas,

It has recently come to my attention that – prior to, during and after your stint as my 10-year-old crush – you were seeing other girls.

I am shocked. For all of my tenth year, when I was going through the hell that was fourth grade, you were my own personal, invisible boyfriend. These days, if I bring up your name at a gathering of Tolkien fans, a bunch of the ladies always sigh and get a dreamy look in their eyes. Why, you philandering Ken doll of an elf. It seems that you’ve squired whole generations of girls into adolescence.

Look, Legolas, I am very sorry, but in light of this new information, I am going to have to retroactively dump you.

No, I’m not buying that you’re the favorite literary character of these female fans. Please. Don’t embarrass yourself. You’re not Holden Caulfield or Jay Gatsby. In fact, character-wise, you’re about as three-dimensional as a child’s drawing of a house. No one is interested in your arc. They are interested in the way you fill out a pair of green tights.

I see now that I’ve been naïve. You were the only eligible bachelor in the Fellowship who stood higher than four foot five; other literate girls were bound to notice you. And then Peter Jackson cast Orlando Bloom as you in the freaking movies, and I knew that would draw more fans, but you know what? That didn’t bother me, because I really believed we had something.  I mean, I knew that I’d have to share you with Gimli, but that was fine, there was full disclosure about all that at the beginning of our relationship.

What I didn’t know was that I’d be sharing you with a legion of other teenyboppers. And you, Mr. Greenleaf, failed to mention that you were dividing your time between my prepubescent crush and a hoard of others. You’d think that by the age of 600, or however old you actually are, that you’d have learned to be honest in a relationship.

What’s that you say? That I’m now a married woman who is pushing 35 and that I should get over it?  Legolas, don’t be obtuse. You’re an elf. You, of all people, know that time is subjective. When I read those books, I’m still a gawky fourth grader with few social skills and no hope of a real-life crush, and you’re still my imaginary boyfriend. Also, mister, I’d like to point out that 25 years ought not to mean anything to you. You’re immortal. Twenty-five years should pass like 25 minutes. Yet you’ve managed to forget me already.  Fie on you, son of Thranduil. Fie.

Would Gimli tolerate it if he thought you were seeing another dwarf? I don’t think so.

Which brings me to my point: I’m giving you the axe. You think I won’t really do this, but there is precedent:

  1. In grade school I broke up with my preschool crush, the Grasshopper from the Grasshopper and the Ants, when I realized that he was a bug.
  2. In middle school, I broke up with the Tin Man, after reading the Oz books and discovering that he was actually kind of a weenie.
  3. On a similar note, in high school, I broke up with Luke Skywalker when I could no longer stand his whining.
  4. In college, I broke up with The Crow, because he was definitely not over his ex.

I thought you, of all my childhood crushes, would stand the test of time, but alas, you toyed with my affections, and I can’t stand for that.

Calm yourself, Master Elf. Flutter not your finely-boned hands. Toss not your flaxen mane in despair. Don’t recite Elvish poetry in an attempt to delay the inevitable. Man up, or rather, elf up. You should have seen this coming. In fact, I plan to post this missive online, and then, I suspect, you’ll be getting a lot of letters like this one.

With much regret,

Ann

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Arts & crafts, and my sad, embarrassing history with Photoshop.

I do strange things for fun.

In the last few days, when I haven’t been grading or planning for work, I’ve been playing with Photoshop, creating Beware the Hawk tee shirts for my Zazzle store, and then posting the link to my middle-of-the-night artwork to my Facebook page. 

Beware the Hawk

and texting myself, pretending to be one of my characters.

Bad graphic design is how I cheat on writing. I’ve been playing around with Photoshop ever since I got my hands on a copy in college. I still remember trying to figure out layers on random low-res photos of mournful-looking fairies I’d downloaded from the internet.* I may or may not have Photoshopped my own face into that ethereal crowd. Can’t recall whether I did or not.  Unfortunately, my college computer suffered a horrible death and we can ever know for sure. At any rate there is no evidence.

Making tee shirts gives me something creative to do when I’m mired in not-very-creative work. Also, fiddling around with Photoshop doesn’t suck the soul out of me like writing occasionally does. Don’t get me wrong. I love writing. My life feels complete when I’m writing well and often. But I can get very, very involved in it. It can be draining. And sometimes I need to do something else creative for a while; something that doesn’t matter to me so much. Something that I’m not really committed to. Like tee shirts with photos of my couch on them.

I should clarify something, though. I’m not actually trying to sell you folks anything. My posting tee shirt designs is less about trying to make money and more about showing off.

I am basically still a preschooler. These tee shirt designs are my macaroni arts and crafts projects, and I am holding them out as I smile gap-toothedly up at you, intoning the word “seeeeeeeeee?” And when I tire of that, I will bound off to play in the dirt.

It’s the new Play-Doh sculpture.

And that sort of attention-seeking is what the internet is all about.

Also, you never know; someone might want to buy a tee shirt with a photo of my couch on it. If so, who am I to withhold such an item?

*I went through a very unfortunate pixie-and-fairy phase in college, closely followed by a much more unfortunate vampires-and-goth phase. Luckily the two phases flew by in an eight-month blur of candles, heavy eyeliner and bad wardrobe choices.

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The new tee shirt is here.

Well, it took me long enough.

More than a month ago,  I asked readers what tee shirts they’d like to see in my store and promised to get the most popular one posted sooner rather than later. Well, it’s later. The new tee shirt isn’t a phonephobia design or a baby fever one. Those are still on the back burner. What I am posting instead is a Beware the Hawk design. Check it out:

My protagonist doesn’t have a name, but I call her Pink.

This design was created with the ladies in mind. Not just because it makes reference to the color pink. Oh no. We here at The Garret* are far too progressive for that. It’s because if you’re, say, a busty gal who drinks a lot of red wine and you happen to spill some on yourself while you’re wearing this shirt, it will just look like part of the design. It might even improve the design.

What happened to the old Beware the Hawk cover-art tee, you may ask? Well it turns out that I’m not so good with copyright issues. I don’t have the right to sell any merchandise with the cover art on it, excepting the book itself. I can use it for promotional materials but that’s about it.

So here’s the new tee shirt, which is just one of many new designs I hope to roll out. I’m trying to figure out a Leo-themed design for guys, although this design can be ordered as a man’s shirt as well.

Enjoy.

*By “we,” I mean “me.”

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There’s always been a crowd in the ladies’ room.

“Oh good. I hate this quadrille. Grab your drink and let’s go to the ladies’ room.”

Why do women go to the bathroom in groups?

It’s supposedly the number one question men have about female behavior, right?

Or at least it’s the most inoffensive one they can post on Facebook. I’ve heard this question an uncountable number of times since I was a teen.  A quick search reveals that hundreds of versions of this question are posted on those online answers forums.

And despite the fact that this question has been answered literally thousands of times, it’s still been the foundation of many a lame comic routine.

There are lots of reasons why we women go to the bathroom together:

  • We want to talk  among ourselves.
  • We want to talk about the guys we’ve left at the table.
  • One of us made an unwise wardrobe choice and now requires assistance.
  • We need a break from the party and none of us smoke.
  • One of us needs to escape, and we’re aware that while only the most restraining-order-worthy of suitors would track a girl into a restroom, it is a rare gentleman indeed who will follow six women into a restroom.

And that brings me to the point I’m trying to make. Safety in numbers. The restrooms don’t usually occupy an establishment’s prime real estate. I’ve had to walk down some pretty scuzzy hallways to find the ladies’ room, and there have been times when I’ve wished for the company of a pack of friends as I edged my way across a packed bar, ducked down a hallway, climbed down a dark set of narrow stairs in heels and finally found myself in a dimly-lit basement lav trying had not to think of Buffalo Bill’s underground lair in Silence of the Lambs.

And then you have to get back upstairs to your drink.

I hate to admit it, but we ladies have traditionally stuck together the way prey animals stick together. Sometimes it’s paranoid. Sometimes it’s just good sense. Most of the time it’s been for protection, either the protection of our selves or, back in the day, for the protection of our reputations.

Check out this excerpt from Manners, culture and dress of the best American society, an etiquette book written in 1890 by Richard A. Wells.

“Married or young ladies, cannot leave a ball-room or any other party, alone. The former should be accompanied by one or two other married ladies, and the latter by their mother, or by a lady to represent her.”

Ladies, notes Wells, should also not cross the ballroom floor alone. It’s 2012 and I’m a liberated woman, but I have to admit, there exist some modern ballroom floors that I would not want to cross alone.

So women were leaving parties in groups more than a hundred years ago, not necessarily for safety, but so that their reputations were undamaged. At best, this was so none of them were seen to be sneaking off by themselves and at worst, it was because they were all keeping an eye on each other.

Maybe it was also for safety, because back in 1890 not a lot of people had indoor toilets, and really if you think about it, going outside is worse than any New York City toilet. Men could just find a convenient shrubbery, but ladies,  if you have to go outside in the dark to do your thing in a ballgown, do you want to go it alone, or do you want two close friends to hold your fan and your dance card and guard the jakes door?

 

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It’s a time for evaluation, and letters of recommendation …and other things ending in “ation.”

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It’s college finals time, a special time that only comes twice a year and, as the title of this post suggests, has certain traditions associated with it.

As does Hogswatch.*

Maybe that’s the reason I simply cannot concentrate on writing and revisions. The steady pace of the college semester is replaced by two weeks of constant motion for everyone in the college community – be they adjuncts, or students or professors. I’m just an adjunct, but there are still plenty of emails to send, and plans to be made and grades to be given. People who might be employing me over the summer break need to be called and emailed. Letters of all kinds must be sent.

So it could be that’s what’s breaking my stride this week as I try to buckle down and work. Writing has been unreasonably difficult this week. I  find myself staring out the window at weather that’s not so great. Or zoning out in front of my computer with a blank document open in front of me. Or clicking on Yahoo! News items. (“Star’s incredible transformation into Linda Lovelace!” “Kim dates Kanye!” “Mom takes toddler tanning!”) Or typing the same words three times and then deleting it all and cleaning the bathroom instead.

Really? What happened to all that April productivity?

It could be the changed pace of finals that’s throwing me off.

Or it could be my birthday, which falls this month. My mother used to say that as soon as my birthday rolled around every year, summer would begin for me and me alone. In my mind, my birthday heralded the start of a big ol’  Festival of Ann that started in May and stretched into the summer. I thought I’d abandoned that mindset in middle school, but hey, maybe my 34-year-old self is trying to regress.

Whatever it is, I’m going to beat it down with a word count of 500 words a day, even if they are 500 awful words a day. And I plan to do that while writing letters of recommendation. Even if I’m staring out the window between paragraphs.

* See below for the Terry Pratchett clip I’m paraphrasing. Recognize someone from Downton Abbey? You’re welcome.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdk7eAZ4X2o&w=560&h=315]

 

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