Weekly Check-In

Something funny: I have a new boss at work, or rather a new boss's boss, a department manager over seven people who hadn't been grouped into a department before... I'll call her Laura Allen, which is not her real name (but is close). She started last week, and I really like her. But this morning, I was reading my email and there was a message entitled "Laura Allen - Getting Rid of Robert."

The message was from one of my picture-sharing groups, Laura Allen was the name of the artist and "Getting Rid of Robert" was the title of the painting; but I just about shit myself reading those words in conjunction. And then I had a great story to tell at work today.

Here's the picture; I didn't much like it when I first looked at it, but that may just be because it startled me; it's sort of grown on me since:


This last work-week, though, was completely awful. On Wednesday, we found out that one of our coworkers passed away on Tuesday. It was so shocking, and so incredibly sad... he was a really good man, with a big heart; and he was only 47, and had two young daughters. For three days, we were all just walking around stunned and saddened, murmuring in little groups and bursting into tears during meetings. We're still kind of shocked, but are adjusting to the shock; it helps that there is a memorial Tuesday and a funeral Wednesday that people can go to, hopefully get some closure.

Anyway, on Thursday, my sister called me at work and told me Grandmother thought she'd had another stroke... she (Grandmother) had been on the phone to her dentist's office, making an appointment, and she suddenly couldn't remember basic information, not her birthday nor her address nor her phone number. It scared the hell out of her, and she called my uncle but he wasn't answering, so she called my sister who came out immediately. I don't know why she didn't call me, I mean my sister lives in Santa Rosa and it took her an hour and a half to get here; but I think it's because Suzie's number is programmed in the phone (she's had that cell-phone number for years, through numerous moves) and my work number isn't.

Fortunately, it turned out to be nothing; or rather, it was just a passing cerebral episode with no lasting symptoms or apparent damage, she didn't even have to go to the emergency room. But in the three hours between hearing from Suzie leaving her house and hearing back that the Advice Nurse had told Grandmother she was fine, I was at work freaking out big time. I talked to a couple of people and shared what was going on and how scared I was, and while that helped a lot, it didn't help enough. I was a wreck by the end of the day.

So then on Friday, of course all this emotional upheaval triggered a depression. Friday was also the last day our two interns were going to be with us, and though I was glad that we get to keep one of them as a temp, I am sad to see the other one go; much more pressure came from the fact that I was in on the interviews to decide which one we were going to hire on.

And of course, since they're going, and the one we get to keep isn't starting until later this week, after the inevitable paperwork gets processed, that means Little Me gets to work in the Career Center for a few days, which weighed heavily on my mind that day. So all in all a sucky week.

But then on Saturday, I got my IKEA credit card in the mail, activated it, and hot-footed it down to the local IKEA and bought myself a new bed, as you may remember I have been planning for some weeks now. I ended up getting a different bed than originally planned, though... after visiting IKEA with Caroline shortly after deciding to get a new bed, I "test drove" the bed I'd planned on and a few other pieces as well, and decided I liked the Beddinge Lövås bed better, it has a higher back and is rather more comfortable than the Hemnes Daybed... and three hundred dollars cheaper.

On the downside, I had to wrestle the great heavy boxes and bundles off the shelves and onto my little trolley, then wrestle the trolley with the great heavy boxes and bundles on it to the front of the store, and then wrestle the great heavy boxes and bundles into my car, and then into the house. Plus I had to move my old queen-sized bed out, along with seven boxes full of books and magazines and whatnots from the bed and from under the bed and from the rest of the room, which all had to be schlepped down the stairs into the garage and basement.

Then I got to put the bed together, which was its own challenge, both physically and mentally. Caroline helped a lot, assisted with moving the old mattress and picked up a lot of junk off my floor and helped fill up the boxes, but it was a lot of very demanding labor in a few hours and just about killed me.

But now, though I am still sore and worn, I have a new bed, the beginnings of a brand-new and tidy room! I'm very excited about it. I'll show you pictures when I'm done, I still have some work to do with shelves and removing my closet door and rearranging furniture, so it's not yet fit to be seen. But when it's done, it's going to be lovely!

So a lot of ups and downs this week... new boss, new bed; losses both mortal and professional; worries and excitement. Rather more of a roller-coaster than I like, but I guess a roller-coaster is better than sitting at the bottom of a pit.

MOOD

My mood, considering the circumstances, has been quite good. I resumed taking the Zoloft, and it hasn't been disturbing my sleep, so I guess it was La Malaise after all. And though I did get depressed on Friday, I didn't get nearly as depressed as I have been in the past following comparable emotional upheavals. So I'm feeling pretty good about the efficacy of my new set of meds (Seroquel, Wellbutrin, and Zoloft, for those just joining us).

FITNESS

I've been eating a lot of comfort foods lately, cheeseburgers and scones and the like, requiring the comfort; but I also have neglected to eat for long portions of some days, so I guess it's evened out. My weight is the same, oscillating between 225 and 228, depending on the varying moods of the scale. And though I haven't been to the gym, I have to think that the labor I put in on Saturday was worth two or three gym visits as far as cardio work goes... I must have sweated two gallons during the project, I know I smelled as though I had.

So that's that for now. I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.

Picture Post: Blonds Have More Fun - Part 2

Picture Post: Blonds Have More Fun - Part 1

And if I may interject a pet peeve, here: the word "blond/blonde" is French in origin, and though it has been in English long enough to not require italics, it is still gender-specific. A male person or object is spelled "blond" and a female person or object is spelled "blonde." And the noun "hair" is masculine in French, so a blonde lady will have blond hair. Just so's you know.

Weekly Check-In

Not much to report this week... some drama stuff at work (which I shan't discuss here), and getting back to work on Worst Luck, highlighted the last seven or so days; otherwise it was all pretty ho-hum.

I did have a lovely evening Saturday at the ISE (Alameda Imperial) Coronation in Hayward. It was not densely attended, but there were some well-known faces in attendance, and some serious hotties on tap (the Emperor of Reno in particular...wowza!) and some people I haven't seen in a long time — notably David, the partner of the late Empress XIII Honey Hush (in whose court I served as Royal Entertainer — many years ago, considering we just launched the XXXIInd Reign), and her lovely daughter.

Plus, I looked fabulous, which always makes the evening nicer:

Caroline was looking pretty fierce, too... the theme of the Coronation was "Return to the Animal Kingdom: from the Barnyard to the Jungle," and we of course opted for the Jungle part of the theme.

So that was my Saturday. I have another event coming up weekend after next, San Francisco Ducal Coronation... my friend Pollo del Mar is stepping down, and another old friend, Cookie Dough, is a candidate for Grand Duchess and might be stepping up; so it will be an evening of friends. The theme is Russian Roulette, which I take to mean a Casino theme with a Russian twist... I'm going to be reviving my old Baroness von Beitte-Meihasse look for the evening (sort of 20s-era glam-goth) but with mega rhinestones instead of black jet jewelry... it is a Court event after all, and one must sparkle madly. And of course I'll post some pix when I do it, assuming I don't forget my camera like I did at Alameda Ducal Coronation.

MOOD

I started back on the Zoloft as soon as I got over the symptoms of La Malaise, shortly after my last post, as the crotchetiness was coming back in force and I was feeling overtly hostile toward the world and everyone in it. I figured I'd have to work around any sleeplessness issues, and the urethral resistance thing isn't so bad (though not so great, either), as the hostility thing was just not tenable. And since, I have been in a very good mood, very mellow and generally cheerful, no anxiety noticeable. Let's hope this holds, especially as the aforementioned issue at work is going to be throwing me back into the snakepit of the Career Center in the next few weeks.

FITNESS

Nothing to report, no changes. My waist feels a little tighter, and I notice on Saturday that the fat under my arms is less than it was last time I was in drag... but then, my corset was lower, too, so it might just be that there was more room for the fat to wander around in. I'm not worried. I have been feeling better in the afternoons lately, though, so I think I might make it to the gym sometime this week.

So until we meet again, don't take any wooden igloos.

Finally, a Beginning!

As I reported some weeks back, I have restarted Worst Luck in the second draft. I came to feel that the old beginning started off too intimate and too visceral in Danny Vandervere's reality; I came up with a conceit regarding luck and good fortune that gave it a more chatty and intellectual introduction to the various important elements of Danny's life and character, but as I developed it, it became fulsome and hyperbolic... I was starting to dislike Danny, the way he was unfolding. So I scrapped that and started afresh with an opening sentence that I was, for some idiotic reason, saving for another Danny story that I'm developing in the back of my head.

Anyway, I got started on this new beginning on Sunday, it came to me full-blown in the middle of church (where I usually pass the time journaling my fiction, either making notes or writing out scenes and vignettes) that there was no reason to save that first sentence for later, it would work just lovely here. And that gave me the kick in the rear I needed to get moving, first jotting a draft during the sermon and then typing in Blogger over the last three days.

But, in my usual manner, after getting what I wanted to say written down, I found myself unable to move forward. And whenever I get stuck in my forward momentum, I start tweaking the material I have until it becomes overworked and unweildy. So to prevent that, I hit the "Post" button and made myself walk away from it.

So while I am forcing myself to ponder the next sentence, be a lamb and read the following paragraphs; then let me know if these paragraphs would induce you to read further, or if they'd inspire you to throw a book across the room.

Thanks!

Worst Luck - Chapter 1, Draft 2, Excerpt:

The first thing, perhaps the only thing one needs to know about Danny Vandervere is that he is beautiful. Not even merely gorgeous, not just cute or pretty or handsome or sexy or attractive, though he is certainly all of those things — but amazingly and deeply beautiful.

It starts with his looks: his face is exquisite, a pretty oval just squared enough to be handsome as well, with high delicate cheekbones and a strong sculpted jaw, framed by a cherubic halo of loose black curls with glints of blue and gold; his nose, where even the best faces go a little wrong, is quintessential — perfectly straight, perfectly centered, exactly the right length and width for his face, with an aristocratic bridge, a slightly upturned tip, and delicate nostrils; his eyes are large and almond-shaped with the suggestion of a faunish slant, his irises the soft warm gray of woodsmoke with wisps of lavender and sparks of gold, fringed in black lashes as thick and long as sable fur, and topped by dense and sharply arched black brows; his mouth is large and luscious, the rich red of ripe cherries, an architecturally scrolled upper lip and plump pillowy lower lip, the corners quirked with little dimples, covering toothpaste-commercial teeth; his complexion is milk-white, as clear and smooth as a baby's, with spanked strawberry cheeks, never touched by acne or sunburn, and still virtually beardless at the age of twenty-two.

This stunning face stands atop a tall body of classical proportions, slender but opulently muscled, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped; his pectorals and deltoids are plumply rounded, almost spherical, as are his thighs and buttocks, his back is deep and smooth, his laterals acutely tapered; but his belly and loins are lean and tight, a tiny waist etched with a wonderfully delineated pelvic girdle and traceries of colorless veins; his skin is thick and velvety smooth, completely without mark or blemish, and graced by only the merest feathering of silky black hair at the armpits and pubis; his hands and feet are large and elegantly attenuated, with clear glossy nails and pampered cuticles; his only proportional imperfection is found in his genitals, which are much too big, though not ungainly and quite beautiful in their own right as far as shape and color.

His muscles are agile and endowed with their own sense-memory, able to repeat any action perfectly, trained to dance a waltz or throw a punch with equal ease, as well as to ride a horse, hit a tennis-ball, parry a sword, run a marathon, and toss a football. His every movement, from the most instinctive to the most rehearsed, is as graceful as ballet, a true poetry of motion.

Danny's beauty is not just skin-deep, either: he has a beautiful mind, a remarkably retentive memory and a genius IQ disciplined and developed with the best liberal-arts education money can buy, conversant in music, art, languages, literature, science, history, and all the social graces; and he has a beautiful spirit, sweet-natured, gentle, generous, honorable, and unfailingly gracious. Even his voice is beautiful, a sonorous baritone with a supple feline growl under the surface, able to sing light opera and showtunes, to declaim Shakespeare and murmur the sweetest of nothings.

And since Fortune heaps her blessings on Danny Vandervere with a ladle rather than a teaspoon, all that beauty was born into wealth and privilege, where it could be properly nourished and cultivated, rather than taking its chances in a Midwestern trailer park or an Eastern bloc backwater. Danny's family is very rich with very old money; the third-largest landowners in California, the Vanderveres received a grant of just over one million acres of tree-covered mountains in the northern Coastal range when the state entered the Union in 1850; they are the largest paper producers in the state, and Vandervere Mills supplies the tissues, towels, and seat-covers to over eighty percent of the public restrooms in the western United States.

The paper-mill profits are added annually to a family trust of venerable age and staggering size, which pays Danny and his numerous relatives very comfortable allowances; he also inherited several millions from his Great Aunt Mathilda shortly after graduating from Stanford, which allowed him to buy property in the form of two apartment buildings on a quiet side-street in San Francisco's Castro district, one of which houses his own spacious flat.

Of course, in an ideal placement, Fortune would have given Danny into a family that was warm and loving; instead, she gave him a family that was not only cold and distant but which actively disliked the too-beautiful and too-gentle child in their midst, so different from the rest of the handsome, arrogant clan — but at least they could afford to hire servants to love him, so though he felt the lack of familial affection, he also knew he was indeed loved and could have had it a lot worse, and so never complained.

And this underlines the beauty of Danny's nature: he knows exactly how blessed he is, and is profoundly grateful for his blessings. He enjoys his own beauty the way one can usually only enjoy another's, and he enjoys his money and privileges as if he hadn't always had them; but he never once thought his beauty or wealth made him better than others, never felt entitled to anything because of them — they were just the blind facts of his existence, a parcel of extraordinary luck that had nothing to do with his worth as a human being.
___________________________________

Thoughts? Where to go next, what to change first, suggestions, complaints? Use the comment feature below, s'il vous plait!

Weekly Check-In

I started writing a "Saturday Check-In" post, but it's Tuesday... in fact, I haven't written a "Saturday Check-In" on a Saturday in so long that I've started to feel like a liar calling these posts by that name; so I've decided to scrap the day-specific title and just make it a generically weekly feature. A work in progress should not have to be wedded to a trope.

So this last week has been largely dominated by some weird cold/flu/illness (I call it La Malaise for lack of a better term, makes it sound glamorous, like Garbo's Camille without the coughing up blood) that's been making the rounds. At first I thought it was my depression, maybe my meds have gone wonky or it's That Time of the Month, but then other people started reporting the same symptoms... four people at work, dozens on FaceBook, even my cousins who live in Arizona were down with La Malaise.

And while I was lolling in my very un-Garbo-esque bed (like a rat's nest with brocade and books), I found myself becoming re-obsessed with The Sims 2, a sort of video game in which one creates little people and their little houses and watches them live their little lives... like dollhouses, but much more complicated and complete. I went through a few weeks of obsession when I downloaded version 2 a few months ago, after having been obsessed with version 1 off and on for several years. Version 3 is out now, but I'm not going to get it until there's more custom content available. It's all about the user-created custom content.

I've been so obsessed, in fact, that I may have called in sick one day more than was strictly necessary because I felt compelled to build another house or two rather than because I was too ill to work... I mean, I was ill, but was I too ill to work? I guess that my childhood training (in which one had to have a fever, vomiting, and/or diarrhea in order to stay home sick from school) makes me overcritical of myself when I stay home.

Nevertheless, I have been building some really fantastic houses, playing with elevated terrains and tiny lots and other intriguing architectural challenges. And I've been trying out different "lifestyles," women and children and vampires and witches, actually playing my Sims rather than just building and furnishing their houses and then abandoning them for a new family.

In the past I worked almost exclusively with a "neighborhood" of my own making, Andropolis, which had an all-male population. But now I've been working in Strangetown, one of the installed neighborhoods, and the oddness of the place has inspired me... I did a Victorian mansion based on the Bates house in Psycho with extra inspiration from The Munsters, and a gothic castle with a separate observatory tower, and an Arabian fantasy palace that's simply lovely.

I wish I knew how to take pictures in the game so I could show you some of them... maybe I'll work on that this weekend; I really want to share the fruits of my labors. I know it can be done, all of the custom content I download for the game comes with screen shots of various kinds, I just have to figure it out.

In other news, I saw The Hours over the weekend... I'd bought the video ages ago, but it's still in plastic wrap, I just never felt like watching it. I knew it would be a Serious movie, and Caroline (who knows nothing whatever about Virginia Woolf but saw the movie in the theater while on a date and was so impressed with it she bought the DVD when it came out) told me it was a big tear-jerker, so I was sort of avoiding it.

But anyway, Caroline and I had a Movie Day on Saturday since I was too sick still to go anywhere, and after watching Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (which wasn't very good, wildly divergent from the book and a annoyingly vague in the details, but the lead boy was very pretty and the cavalcade of big-name cameos was dazzling, so we didn't mind so much) we felt we needed something a little higher-brow and so plumped on The Hours.

I found the running theme of suicide and depression very difficult to deal with, since I have been struggling with them myself for such a long time; but it was a really beautifully made movie. I just wonder, though: was I crying through forty percent of the movie because the story was that poignant, or was I crying because the music was so poignant? As one might expect when the score is done by Phillip Glass, the music was an actor in the ensemble rather than just background noise; and while the story was poignant, and the acting expectably incredible, I have a feeling the music pushed me over the top.

It was also rather shocking when watching the Special Features (which I always do immediately after watching any film on DVD) to see Nicole Kidman in the interviews... my first reaction was "but, she wasn't in this movie!" Her characterization was so different from her usual kick-ass/strong-willed persona, and the makeup made her look so much unlike herself, that when she turned up for the interview all glammed up, it threw me for a loop.

Anyway, it was a really good movie... but then, you probably already knew that, I've waited so long to watch it that everyone else in the world's already seen it.

In other other news, today is my Grandfather's birthday... if he were still alive, he'd be one hundred and seven today.

Grandfather was a very glamorous man; he grew up in wealth and privilege, his father being a pioneer of the canning industry and a brilliant diversifier, probably the richest Chinese man on the West Coast at the turn of the century. But what made my Grandfather exceptional is that when his father lost most of their money in the Depression (overextended into agriculture that was swept away by the Dust Bowl, the shipping line suppressed by the Sino-Japanese war, his bank failing along with the rest), Grandfather didn't sit around moaning about their losses but rolled up his sleeves and went to work, first selling insurance and then later working for the State as a cannery inspector... frequently inspecting his own father's canneries, now in other hands.

He worked for the state for thirty-five years, retiring in 1971; he started driving Grandmother nuts by trying to supervise the housework, and when he got tired of that he started doing the tasks that he felt she wasn't doing to standard... bed-making, dishwashing, and dusting. One of the things he taught me, a favorite saying of his: "If you want something done your way, you have to do it yourself."

He also taught me that "There's no such thing as 'free,'" not only telling me the truism but explaining it with figures and diagrams. It was very impressive, and has saved me much grief over the years.

Much of Grandfather's glamour rested in being very put-together. He always wore a coat and tie, even after retiring, and he always took incredibly good care of his clothes and shoes; he wore beautiful jewelry, a diamond ring and a gold watch from the Masons (he was thirty-fourth degree, I think) and a series of lovely tie-pins and cufflinks. He smoked Chesterfields and pineapple-scented pipe tobacco, and wore Tres Flores brilliantine in his hair... he always smelled wonderful to me.

He was very warm and affectionate... though perhaps a little distant, insofar as he didn't think of children as people one talked to... but he always kept jelly-beans or lollipops in his coat pocket to give us, as well as silver dollars whenever he'd been up to Reno with his Shriner buddies. He would also cut our nails for us, holding us in his lap and leaning over his ashtray (one of those side-table affairs with places to set pipes, and the bottom of the ashtray opened downward to dump the ashes out of sight).

He had a series of strokes when he was seventy-six (I was twelve), after which he slowly descended into dementia; by the time he was eighty, he was completely immobilized by Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, unable to talk or walk or go to the bathroom. Grandmother and I took care of him, she refused to put him in a home; frequently when I would sit with him, I'd sorely regret that I didn't get to talk to him about his early life before he lost power of speech.

I mean, I know the story of how he came down with a bad fever on a visit to China, and the ship's captain wouldn't let them bring him on board unless they brought a coffin along; and the story about him and his father (who spoke little English) driving across country looking at farms and packing plants from which to buy produce for canning, ending up in Florida (two Chinese men driving around the South in the 20s strikes me as rakish; there is a picture of them standing beside their car in front of an alligator farm, it's somewhere in the house and I need to find it); and the story about him going down to Hollywood in the thirties with his father's cargo ship, the SS Nanking, and working in the movies while he was there, meeting Spencer Tracy and Anna Mae Wong, and appearing as an extra in the original On the Waterfront as a coolie who gets rolled up in a sack and thrown over the side of the Nanking. But I know all these things second- and third-hand, I wish I'd been able to talk to him directly.

He died of emphysema exacerbated by pneumonia when I was nineteen, and I still miss him twenty-three years later. And I wish I could be more like him, put-together and strong-willed and adaptable to changing circumstances. He is a hero of mine.

I wish I had some scanned pictures to share, but I don't. Soon, soon.

MOOD

Well, honestly, I can't tell what is my mood and what is La Malaise... so I'm going to assume my mood was good and the illness is all that was keeping me down. I didn't feel sad or hopeless, though I did feel rather short-tempered at times, which I think is because I stopped taking the Zoloft. But now I have to wonder, was it the Zoloft that was making me so tired, or was it the beginnings of La Malaise? I'm thinking it might be a good idea to start taking it again and find out, but I don't really want to tweak about with my meds too much. I'll decide later. Or, and here's a revolutionary idea, I might email my doctor and see what she thinks.

FITNESS

This morning I got on the scale before I stepped into the shower, and it read 223.5; then I stepped on the scale again after I took off my jammie-pants (they are kind of heavy, gray velour and several inches too long which keeps my feet warm) and it read 225. I know I didn't gain a pound and a half plus the weight of my jammies in two minutes, so I can only surmise that my scale is inaccurate. So Goddess only knows exactly how much I actually weigh... and I really just don't care that much.

The main thing is that I feel pretty good about my weight right now, I don't look quite as flabby as I was for a while there, and when I put my hand on my waist I can feel the muscles under the fat (I couldn't for a long while).

Well, that's me for now. I'll check in again when I have more to say, or when another week has passed.

Cheers!

Picture Post: Randomonium