NoraSawyer.com

First day of school was great and invigillating and scarey. Unnfortunately. a financial mishap (which I was alerted to on my lunch break when my debit card wouldn’t work) put me on edge and made me feel raw and vulnerable for the rest of the day. Except when I forgot about it, which was surprisingly often. I like my classmates. I like their writing, for the most part. Suprisingly, I like my writing so far. Now if only I didn’t have that gap in my bank account to worry about until payday.

Word of advice: when you transfer money online from one account to another, be sure to hit the ‘confirm and submit’ button. Otherwise things go all screwey.

I start Friday.

Hurrah! Back to school, back to school.

Not what I expoected:

Joe Strummer… you’ve been through the cleansing
fire of punk, only to pick up a few venerial
diseases along the way. You’re more of an
optimist when it comes to fucked-up genius.
But you can write wicked-deadly riffs and lycs.

Which fucked-up genius composer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Lists:

Times I might have believed in magic:

1. When I was growing up, we would often spend a portion of the summer – anywhere from a week-end to a month – in a friend of the family’s summer house near a town called Tupper Lake. The house stood at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill stood a tall forest of pine trees. When the wind blew a certain way, the trees would sway in a disconcerting fashion. The summer I was eight, I developed a horror of this woods. At night I couldn’t bear to look outdoors, for fear of seeing the trees move against the starlit sky. In the morning, I would avoid looking at the trees, for fear that they had advanced during the night.

2. When I was very small, I can remember making a sandcastle (in reality, it was more a mound of sand, dumped out of a pail and patted into a rounded hump). In frustration, I tried to remember how to make rooms on the inside of the castle. I was convinced I’d done it before, and had made a home for a small farmer.

3. Walking in the woods with my dog, I thought I heard a noise. It sounded like a single note, played upon a flute or recorder. I quickly hurried home. Even in the suburbs, the sound was uncanny.

4. If my boyfriend goes to bed before me, I always have to turn on the light before I lie down next to him. Some primitive part of my brain is not convinced that the sleeping hump beneath the blankets is him, and needs reassurance.

5. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, I believe I can ’sense’ the future.

Things I wish I haddn’t said:

1. To my mother (age 13): “Up yours.”

2. To an ex-boyfriend (age 19), when told he missed me: “Get a dog.”

3. To a prospective landlord (last week): “This storage space is so large, I could take in a family of refugees”

4. Numerous other things that require a lifetime of context for their true horror to show.

Things I saw this afternoon:

1. A wonderfully ancient woman meditating. Her face was unwrinkled, but she looked as if she’d seen eons pass before her.

2. A moth dying in a pond. Its wings seemed motionless, but a multitude of tiny ripples radiated out from it, evidencing a stuggle just below the surface.

3. Three grouse, hiding beneath a bush.

4. A bride and her bridesmaids, having their photos taken in the park.

So, I can no longer blog from work – blogger’s homepage has run afoul of the company’s site-blocking software. It joins a hallowed set of sites I can’t acess from work, incuding Aaron’s comment section (oddly, other blog’s comment windows are not verboten), resources on urban gardening, and craigslist’s writer’s forum. Hmpf.

In other news, I am now the proud owner of a !new! G4 ibook (this is my first real new-to-everyone-not-just-me computer ever – I’m very excited). Thanks to dadoo and mamita for the graduation gift!

Now to work on that application – there are two slots still oopen in the grad school program I’ve been procrastinating about appying to for the past few months. No excuses now.

So, in brief, here’s what I haven’t blogged about since blogger access was blocked from work:

One of my co-workers, discussing a recent news item: “I think emulation would be just about the worst way to go”

Another co-worker, upon learning that I am not a fan of the electoral college: “Well you don’t understand the Bill of Rights then. And regardless, you have to agree that we were damn lucky Bush was president on September 11th” (I had to go outsided and breathe deeply for several minutes after that one).

Luckily, most of my life takes place outside of work. Dadoo has been visiting since Friday, and we’ve had great fun revisiting the city with him, and discovering new treats, like the fabulous (and free!) streetcar museum.

Anyway, c’est tout for now.

From Michelle’s Daily Dose for Writers:

Living the middle class life in America, many of us tend to get complacent about physical danger. That complancency is occasionally shaken by some unanticipated event: a mugging, the violent death of someone we know, a natural disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane. 9/11 reminded us all just how imminent and unannounced death can be.

memoir: Write about a time when you or someone you know was in grave physical danger.

I just checked my teeth in the mirror of the green plastic compact I bought at Walgreen’s last year when I decided it was time for me to start wearing makeup (I haven’t started yet). One of my two front teeth is still slightly chipped. I say ’still’ because the other one used to be more chipped, but I had it fixed.

‘Grave physical danger’ it wasn’t. It was one of those stupid accidents that has you second-guessing your self for days: ‘If only I’d stood up sooner, or not let the dog jump on me when we were playing, or had the sense to wear a mouth guard, like boxers do.’ It happened easily, like chipping teeth were a natural progression in the life of a sheltered urbanite.

Brian and I were living in Chelsea. Not the fun hip Chelsea outside of New York, but rather the seedy/scenic yet chronically unhip Chelsea in-the-near-of-but-virtually-inaccessible-from downtown Boston. We got a dog, Bowie (aka Mr. Boo) because our neighbors had one that we loved and because we both like running our hands over warm furry things with brown limpid pools for eyes and easy, unedited grins. And it was good, most of the time. Mr. Boo (as we call him) was wiggly and full of energy, and bore a disturbing resemblance to one of those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. But he was also stronger than me, with a tendency toward misbehaviour (”he’s one,” I told Brian “he’ll grow out of it”).

Anyway, one morning, Brian and I were dancing (as me and Brian do, from time to time), and just as I bent over to shimmy at the dog, he (the dog) jumped up to meet me.

crack!

ow.

My two front teeth were only slightly chipped, but one had a hairline crack that in the ensuing weeks started to widen and shift. One visit to the dentist wasn’t enough to repair the damage – ultimately, it took a surprise root canal and a porcelain implant over most of the tooth to make me whole seeming again.

The worst part was when the dentist had to file down my tooth in order to fit me with the implant. For some reason, he felt compelled to give me a glimpse of what I looked like ‘before.’ The memory of my flushed, anxious face, one tooth filed down to a smooth, un-toothlike nub, still haunts me.

Losing teeth has been a recurring nightmare of mine. For months – years now, actually – the remaining ding on my smile has been a source of mild horror for me – a reminder of the transience of all flesh (mine in particular) and the empty, hollow sound one’s vanity makes when struck.

blech.

Liar, Liar

So, this morning I awoke at 7:45 (from a lovely dream, natch) with the realization that, even if I left right then, I’d be late to work.

I shuffled to the baffoom and set about my morning ablutions, halfheartedly wracking my brain for some…any… not-too-overused excuse. Vauge abdominal distress? Done. Wracking headaches that mysteriously appear and disappear? They’ll probably insist I get a cat scan if I drag that one out again.

And then it happens. I slip, just barely catching myself on the edge of the sink. An involuntary ‘eep!’ escapes my lips.

Brian rushes to the doorway – “You okay?”

“Yup”

“That was quite an ‘eep!’ you had there.”

“Yeah? Well I was startled okay? I could’ve twisted my… THAT’S IT!!!!!”

Which is why I’m going to have to wear an ace bandage to work tomorrow. Send left-foot limpy vibes my way.

And find it comforting that I’m such a lousy liar. You, gentle reader, will never run afoul of my wicked, weary ways.

Am I blue?

For some reason, I haven’t been able to log in for days and days. I swear I had funny things to relate, but I’m drawing blank.

For those of you keeping score at home, my hair is red again, with violet undertones.

Tales of the Strange: Inappropriate Workplace Conversations

I’m sitting here trying to remember how the conversation I’m about to relay got started. Somewhere, somehow a door was opened. A doorway to someplace terrible. Like one of those space-bending Cthulu* stories. But more disquieting.

A bit of background here. As some of you know, I work as a secretary (excuse me – ‘assistant’) at a small brokerage firm here in San Francisco. It pays me bills, provides a paycheck, and is the kind of work I can forget about entirely when I walk out the frosted glass doors at 5:00.

Overall, I like the people I work with. Brokerage tend to have a bit of a frat house/locker room atmosphere, but I pride myself (to an extent) on being the kind of girl who can hear dirty jokes and ribald anecdotes without batting an eye. Words can’t hurt me. And some of those jokes are pretty fucking funny.

Anyway, there’s this one guy in my office. I’ll call him Tom (’cause that’s his name). If my lines are ever crossed, he’s the one doing it. And the thing that gets me is that he has no freakin’ clue where those lines are. I’ve met homeless transvestite schizophrenics with more tact. I’m not kidding.

So. Sometime today, I get cornered into a conversation with Tom. He’s at my desk with no sign of leaving. We’re having this stupid argument about the words ‘awful’ and ‘offal.’ Tom maintains that when people use the word ‘awful’ to mean ‘terrible,’ they really mean ‘offal,’ since awful really means ‘awe-full,’ or awe-inspiring. I am holding the line that while ‘awesome’ and ‘awful’ may have been synonyms once upon a time, the current usage of awful is fairly widely accepted. Plus, terror and awe are synonyms, form time to time.

Anyway. Somehow, this conversation takes a turn. And I do mean for the worse. I forget how or why, but suddenly, I see it coming – Tom’s going to tell me an anecdote. About sex. And there’s nothing I can do to stop him.

I turn my eyes toward my computer screen. Oh dear, he’s going there. I make noncommittal noises. He’s going into graphic detail. I’m trying not to look at him. Oh. No.

And then he laughs and saunters away, obviously feeling like he just told a great story. That he just showed his studly side.

Ugh. Cluelesness. God’s gift to the truly offal.

* my spell check tinks Cthulu should be “cutely.” How droll.

I want one:

available here:

SacramentoGirlieMen.com