Echoes in a Hollow Space

7. And this is a weird one. Early this morning, about 12:30, I heard this great clattering noise coming from my bathroom, which is on the other side of my bedroom closet wall. I realized that some critter had gotten into the crawl space underneath my bathtub. Ever since the guy did the remodel, I’ve periodically heard critters in there banging up against the underside of the built-in bathtub. He apparently left some opening they get into. Rats or squirrels maybe. Something small. Usually, all I have to do is turn on the water or bang the tub and they scurry off in a hurry. Not so last night.

I could tell from the particular type of hissing and barking coming from my tub’s underbelly that the critter lodged in there this time was a ‘possum. Much larger than a rat or squirrel and apparently stuck and in a panic. Those hisses and barks are usually reserved for panic, when confronted with a predator/enemy or otherwise trapped. I banged on the tub and ran the water and that only increased its panic. I heard it clanging hard against the pipes in the wall and at one point it was scratching hard against the underside of the tub, desperate to get out. I really felt sorry for the poor thing, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I also couldn’t sleep with that racket and contemplated calling the exterminators for (hopefully) a trap and release.

Finally, sometime between 1-1:30 I remembered that there was an access way to the house’s nether regions on the side of the house right under my bathroom window. I wondered if the plumber, when he inspected the pipe the previous day, had somehow locked this critter in. So I went out with my flashlight and pulled the screen and the covering board off and came back inside. ‘Possums aren’t the brightest bulbs in the animal kingdom so it took another hour for it to realize it had a way out, but about 2:30 I heard its barking slowly diminishing in volume along the side of the house. Peace and quiet reigned and I could finally get back to sleep. 5:45 a.m. came painfully early this morning.

I asked the plumber when he showed up this morning if he could take a look at those bathroom pipes because I had a horrible fear that critter might have damaged them. Everything worked okay this morning, but I wanted to be good and sure.

The ‘possum adventures continue…

8. “The good news is,” said the plumber this morning, “this pipe I’m fixing today is the last of the big pipes. You’ve replaced all the other ones and any problems you have from this point on should be a lot less expensive.” Mom and I did a rough tote of plumbing expenses we’ve incurred since my parents bought this house in 1987. Spread out over the years we estimate we’ve spent close to $30,000 for various plumbing adventures. I sure as s**t hope this is the last of the big pipes. This is the part of the American Dream of Home Ownership no one ever tells you about, children…

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. There has not been much to report except the same old same old so I haven’t reported.

2. I continue to poke at The Numberless Stars, my Old California fantasy. Not really writing. I’m poking online research, specifically about the El Camino Real and the Los Angeles River and stuff. I’m obsessed with learning as much as I can. Considering that the bulk of the novel has nothing to do with these things, it seems a bit excessive, BUT I maintain that knowing that stuff, whether I use it or not, enriches the story.

3. I’m the girl who once read three books and countless partials on Robert Clive’s India for what wound up being one paragraph in my novel, Blood Geek. BUT, I do think all that informed the character of Jeremy Jones, the hero, so it wasn’t a waste.

4. I did a trip count Monday on the miles I drive on Monday and Wednesday when I come to work, go home at lunch, pick up Mom, take her to dialysis, come back to work, finish my shift, go home to feed the cat, go to pick Mom up at dialysis and thence back home. 52.4 miles on these days. I knew it had to be significant because I really notice the difference in my gas tank. Thank the gods it’s only twice a week.

5. I really must stop waking up at 4 a.m. and not being able to get back to sleep. I’m usually a champion sleeper, but things have been screwy this week.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. I finally got around to watching the taped season finale of Castle and the fourth season premiere. This is what I hate about episodic TV and why I stopped watching it: every season, no matter how dramatic or world-changing the finale, by the end of the premiere episode everything has been reset to square one. There’s no regard for character growth, the hard left turns in the script give you whiplash, but everything goes back to the way things have always been. Even on Castle, which is a better written show than most episodic TV. Yeah, there are hints that things will continue in a slightly altered vein, but the premiere really had to do some unlikely contortions to achieve their reset.

2. We’ve got summer weather this October, as often happens in L.A. in October. I wore short sleeves today, forgetting the fall/stress rash on my forearm which is now on display for all to see. Oh well. It had mostly simmered down so it isn’t too humiliating. Driving back from taking Mom to the clinic, everything was sunny and bright until I got to Santa Monica. Then the fog seeped down the highway and I wished that I’d brought my sweater.

3. Driving to the clinic, my mother and I discussed the weird perception of waking up and not knowing where you are, thinking maybe you’re in some place you lived in two or three moves ago, or whatever. These days that sensation has gone a step further for Mom: she wakes up and although she knows where everything is and everything looks the same, the neighborhood is familiar, she feels as if the house isn’t where it’s supposed to be. Somehow it’s moved, she knows not where. I said, “Maybe we’ve slipped into an alternate reality and you’re the only one who realizes it.” She laughed. “Maybe so.”

4. I sometimes have moments of hope these days—and that scares me. So much is beyond my control. I can concentrate only on the here and now. I have to let go of the rest. Whenever I get caught up in anger or frustration or trying to will my will in situations where my will has no effect, I tell myself, “You haven’t got time for this. Let it go. Save your energy for fights you can win.” This is a very difficult lesson to learn, not just for me, but it’s one the Universe has been trying to teach me for many long years: live this moment, and this moment, and this moment, and this . . .

5. My creative life is stretching taut over my bones, but it’s swimming in my blood. I thought it was dead for a time, but it isn’t dead. It is not dead.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. I accidentally locked Min out of the house last night. For two hours! And after dark! She was scared and pretty glad to get back inside. I felt terrible. She probably thought she’d been abandoned/lost again. I’ll be extra careful from now on.

2. I finally finished Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris. I liked it okay, but you can sure tell the series is winding down. And this one seemed to peeter out just like the last one. I love Ms. Harris dearly but she can’t write action scenes worth beans. I’ve had a pathetic reading year this year. I think I’ve only managed to finished 17 books.

3. We’ve started calling the hummingbirds who frequent our yard “Nazi Buzz Bombs.” They are quite insistent when you’ve let their feeders go dry. They buzz around in the kitchen window giving out malevolent stares until they’re filled, and buzz your head when you go outside.

4. I still love reading Post Secrets, even when it makes me cry.

5. I actually find myself liking Pan Am. It’s not the T&A show I feared it would be. It’s actually about the nascent “New Woman” of the early sixties who rejected the idea that marriage and 2.5 kids were the only options for a woman’s life. There were painfully few career options for women back then: nurse, teacher, homemaker, dental hygienist, secretary/clerk, stewardess. The stewardesses were always considered the more adventurous women.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. Can anyone tell me why I wake up in the middle of the night with old TV show themes running through my head? Last night it was Who’s the Boss? I can sort of understand why that might be lurking in my subconscious. Late last week I heard a story on NPR regarding Tony Danza’s new reality show, Teach. At the end of the story they played a snippet of the Who’s the Boss? theme. But why did it wait a week to trigger? Last week, when it would have been more natural to trigger, I woke up with the theme song to The Brady Bunch. I guess I can sort of understand that because Florence Henderson has been on Dancing with the Stars and, well, it never seems to take much to trigger The Brady Bunch theme. But this is not a new pattern. I have woken up in the middle night with other old TV show themes—and even some commercials—playing through the head, though I am never dreaming about these shows or commercials when this happens. Clearly, something quite sinister is going on in my subconscious.

2. This morning as I was driving to work I stopped at a light about a block away from the Canal Club in Venice. Five skinny, tragically hip young men were standing around in front of the club on Pacific. A couple of them had pieces of paper in their hands. I thought, “Are they applying for a job as the club band? And however did the management get five musicians out of bed and on the sidewalk by 8:45?” As the light changed and I drove forward I saw the answer: on the side street beside the club (North Venice Blvd.) sat all the accoutrements of a film shoot with the lights and reflectors, et al., grouped around the actual entrance to the place. The five young bravos on Pacific were waiting for their cue to shoot a scene—probably to walk around the corner and enter. As I passed them, I couldn’t help noticing that besides being skinny and tragically hip, they were all rather short. The tallest of them was barely average height. I concluded he must be the star of the show and the others were probably hired to make him look less short. Oh, and for their talent, I’m sure. Hollywood is big on talent. A short actor acquaintance of mine—who really is talented—has often been hired for his talent of being shorter than the star of the TV show/movie.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I hope to return to real blogging soon, but it’s been hella busy. In the meantime, here’s another one of those numbered thingies:

1. Listening to the graduate students around here make excuses to their professors as to why they haven’t completed their coursework, it strikes me that not much has changed since elementary school. They’ve just found more sophisticated, elaborate, and convoluted ways of saying, “The dog ate my homework.”

2. I’m on chapter eleven of the read-through of Venus in Transit. I should be much further along as I hadn’t intended to do any restructuring or heavy editing, but you know how it goes. A couple (or more) scenes that just had to be rewritten, language desperately needed de-clunkifying, things had to be looked up and pondered… There’s still plenty more that needs fixing, no worries, but it’s amazing to me how many of the smaller threads of plot and characterization got left untied. I’ll definitely deal with those in the next draft.

3. I’ve acquired a sudden re-fascination with cunning folk, witchery, and folk medicine, et al. lately. I’ve been reading books and scouring JSTOR for articles. (I love JSTOR. Thank goodness for institutional subscriptions.) If research interest is an indicator of which novel my right brain next wants to write, things are looking good for my proto-novel, Time in a Bottle, the idea based in part on my novella, “Sealed with a Curse.” That novella involved an 18th century cunning man, infidelity, wastrelism, and a witch’s bottle. The novel version carries forward to the 21st century descendants of some of the folks involved in that affair. And maybe time travel. Or maybe not.

4. I’m wondering if a subscription to Netflix would be worth it to me since I rarely am in the mood to watch a movie at home more than once or twice a month? I used to devour movies at a massive rate, but I lost the love somewhere along the way. The $8.99 one would definitely be sufficient, but I’m not sure I’d get my money’s worth even then.

5. Come the Singularity, I suspect I will not be allowed on the lifeboat. I suspect I will be okay with that. Utopian visions rarely turn out well for humanity at large. I have zero confidence that techo-utopians will be any better at it than every other millennial movement that has wrecked humanity in the past. I am not a Luddite. I really do enjoy living in the bright, shiny techno-age—but sweeping mass social engineering never works. That’s the lesson of history. That’s the lesson of any close study of human nature. Power corrupts, even utopian techno power—and besides, these yahoos aren’t even trying to be egalitarian. This is all about ego and rich mostly whitefolk trying to escape the filthy masses.