(Note - after a brief hiatus (okay, it's been almost 2 years) wherein I attempted to work like a regular person and realized it simply wasn't in the cards, I have returned to my blog. I realize it will take some time for anyone other than my mom to come across said blog, but just in case I'm going to roll out the good stuff.)
For awhile I was a matchmaker. Throwing dinner parties in my living room with mini crandberry brie sliders and awkward, not-remotely-sexual-tension choking the local singles to death in their turtlenecks. Best moment - when a baby mouse came wandering out of my son's room and a disgruntled single in his fifties said 'Hey, you know you've got mice in here, don't you?' I, in fact, was not aware. I would like to say it was MOUSE (singular) not MICE (plural) and that man was never going to find a girl anyhow. Too picky.
Also, I was a baker for the local bookstore and was this ever a great gig. My favourite moment was when I arrived with a big Dollar Store container full of caramel shortbread and two Blake Carrington-types met me at my car to take tem off my hands, so addicted were they. That day I thought for a second that I could maybe pull off a Mrs Field's and have a cookie conglomerate. Watched DC Cupcakes religiously for hints and, apart from pink rubber boots being just about the cutest thing ever, came up with nothing.
I've been a receptionist in a doctor's office and learned that people in general emit a different odour in a waiting room than anywhere else on the planet. Also, if you put six eighty year olds in the same room they can look anywhere from fifty five to one hundred and five. And when you ask the young looking ones 'What's your secret?' they smile secretively and share nothing.
I've done some time as a sommelier, which just means I can memorize things like 'spicy overtones' and 'about a one on the sweetness scale' and 'this is a hardy, cold-weather hybrid grape from Wisconsin.' Amazingly people believe me, even the Movers and Shakers. When I say to them 'Do you taste the wet earth and bath salts? That's a good sign for a bold red.' They lick their lips and say 'Mmm, yes. This is lovely, very bold. I'll take a case.' The power.
For the last two years I've tried to get away from writing not because it makes me unhappy, but because well - it's gotten more important to me to make it. To stop being a screw up and start providing for my kids, even if a 9-5 job feels like hard time in solitary confinement. I need to do well, to give my kids an okay life. To be a grown-up, so just in case my oldest son gets to college next year and finds himself $100 short he can call me and say, 'Mom, I need some money.' and I can have it for him just like that. Instead of saying 'Tell me about it. I'm $400 short. Good luck.' Full time writers are full time down on their luck.
But here I am, back at it. Because matchmaking was hard, harder than the Millionaire Matchmaker makes it look. Nobody wanted to pay, the women had absolute must-have checklists as long as their legs and the men wouldn't show up for even a cup of coffee just in case something better came along. Plus, if you give people blunt advice about their love lives in real life, they call you a bitch and storm off.
The baking turned out to be tougher than I thought. Turns out you don't make any money if you use real butter. One batch with accidentally purchased organic butter (at $9 a pound) and I was out of the baking game. Besides, it was making me hate baking.
The doctor's office...well. I can't say much just in case, but did you know doctors don't do anything - ANYTHING - for themselves? Like, they don't even like to cut their own fingernails? C'mon.
It turns out, for better or worse, I am meant to be here. Sitting in my yellow chair by the fire with my feet up and the sun on my back, drinking up the last sweet bits of tea in my cup, sending bits of me out to the great big void and hoping, hoping. Someone will hear me...
Very interesting.
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