The Not-So-Secret Diary of a Bad Luck Girl

I’ve become even more impatient and have decided to start posting bits and pieces of my memoir even before uploading to Scribd. In case you’re curious, here’s the first installment.

I’m already finding myself revising this for blog writing – more immediate maybe? – than writing for print.

I still have the second half of the book to revise more extensively, but I *think* the first half is somewhat ready. I guess I’ll see as I’m posting.

Now off to enjoy the sun (and low humidity, yay!).

I have: work work, my independent study proposal, this delinquent blog post, but all I want to do is go shopping.

Had a nice long weekend, which now seems ages ago. Friday night we saw Terminator: Salvation, which, like Wolverine, had some good action sequences, but overall was pretty dumb. Saturday we spent most of the day outside, walking around the Upper West Side and having a picnic in Central Park. We also had a late lunch at Spoonbread, our favorite Southern restaurant. Short ribs, mac and cheese, and Spoonbread punch, yum!

Sunday was mostly a work day, coding for MB and writing (finally!) for me. Recently The New York Times ran a piece on Scribd, a document sharing system where authors can sell digital copies of their books. I used to not like the idea of self-publishing, or at least of having to pay to have my book published and handing out copies to my friends, like, “Look at what I did!” But I’ve gotten to a point that I just want to get my stuff out there, regardless of how.

For a while I thought I’d just throw it up on my blog, but since seeing that NY Times piece, I’m curious about trying Scribd out, once my memoir is done. It will be fun to market it via various channels. I don’t expect to make money off it. I just want see what happens.

Anyway, on Sunday for a break, we did a little shopping in Union Square, but it was so hot and humid, neither of us felt like staying at too long. That night AY and her boyfriend came into the city, and I met them for dinner (MB was too “in the zone”). We had tasty Japanese curry and then fancy Japanese desserts. I like Asian desserts since they’re not as sweet. I had a green tea Bavarian cream concoction. It was gooood.

Monday was more working, followed by a field trip up to the new Muji store on Port Authority. Wah wah waaaah. It was big but we weren’t too impressed with the selection.

~ ~ ~

Apropos of nothing, you know when you’re on Facebook and find a friend from high school or college, and you barely recognize them, aside from the fact that they’re trying to squeeze their three kids into their profile pic, and you look at yourself, and you look and feel and act pretty much the same as when you were in your 20s, and you think, What have I done with my life? and I kind of want to kill myself?

Imagine your relief to find that 37-year old Winona Ryder looks almost exactly the same as she did in Reality Bites, and she’s not married and doesn’t have kids, and is still talking about Johnny Depp, and unlike “frienemy” Gwyneth Paltrow, seems to be living a life similar to when she was younger, rather than a pretentious organic know-it-all-y one.

A lot of people of my generation feel like they grew up with Winona Ryder. I was 14 when I saw her in Lucas, and a senior in college when I saw Reality Bites. Our lives pretty much diverged after that – I think it was Bram Stoker’s Dracula that did it – but I’ve always felt like we were living parallel lives. Me, Winona, and tens of thousands of other women our age.

She couldn’t find the right guy (been there), and then there was that whole shop lifting thing (haven’t been there), but I think most of us can identify with those days that you feel you can barely hold it together, like the woman I saw yesterday in her good shoes and wrinkled coat and too much eye makeup, asking shakily for Vietnamese takeout soup in a paper container, not plastic, and when told again there is no paper, just plastic, barely holding it together as she walked back out the door.

I think I’ve been in a stable place for quite some time now, and I hope Winona feels the same way. But still it’s a great comfort to see that, after all these years, we’re in the same boat. Except for the rich and famous part that is.

I was at my parents’ house this weekend, which always leads to, no matter how much I try to avoid it, talks about the FUTURE.

Not the future like we all have flying cars and wear skin tight body suits, but like how much money are you saving and you should buy a house and what about, yes, wait for it, babies.

MB and I have agreed that although we want kids, we don’t want to go through fertility treatments, IVFs, and all that stuff – that if it happens, wonderful, if not, we’re okay with that too. My parents didn’t know this – all they knew was that we want kids but don’t want to get married, which they’re okay with, at least for now – and so every time my mother told me about someone being pregnant, or I mentioned that so and so now has three kids, her voice would get all weepy, which because she’s my mother only annoyed me.

Why was she so upset? I’d think. I wasn’t. I love my life right now.

What started her off recently is a childhood friend of mine is pregnant. I know she and her husband had been trying for quite some time so I’m really happy for her, which is what I told my mother, but she still sounded all weepy.

“What about you guys?” my mother finally asked this weekend.

“Yeah sure,” I said. “You know we want kids.”

“But are you, you know – “

What? Having sex a lot? Freezing MB’s sperm? Scouting out Octomom’s doctor?

“Still using protection?”

Oh lord. “Um, no Mom.”

“Oh okay. Good. How long?”

“Mom! Do you really have to know that?”

For some reason she seemed satisfied with this, and agreed with my not wanting to do fertility treatments and whatnot if I don’t get knocked up the “natural” way.

“You could adopt,” she said. “Everyone gets babies from China. Hopefully you’d get a cute one though. Sometimes they’re not so cute.”

*Sigh.*

“And then you’d have to have some kind of ceremony.”

“What do you mean? What kind of ceremony?”

“You could have a small one.”

Small WHAT?

But I knew what – starts with a w, ends with a drunk bridesmaid getting it on with Uncle Steve in the coat closet – and at that point all I could do was walk away. Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Time: About midnight
Place: Bed

MB (asleep): I dreamed my alter ego believed in bubbles.
Me (half-asleep, thinks, Oh, he’s talking in his sleep again, then, Wait, that kind of made sense): Are you awake?
MB (still asleep): Yes.
Me: . . .
MB (not awake): I just felt the need to explain that to you.

He remembers none of this, btw. At one point there was also laughing, followed by, “That’s awesome!”

Either last night was a talkative night, or I’m usually asleep and don’t hear it. No more caffeine after 1 for me.