garage sailing
Here’s my theory. You can only really appreciate garage salegoing (not as a noun; nobody could appreciate it as a noun) if you are the kind of person who has spent some time in your life waking up on Saturdays feeling as if a large part of you had died in the wee hours of the morning while you were asleep or passed out, due entirely to self-abuse, and then spent most of the rest of the day recovering so you could do it again on Saturday night. This person who can now get up with the chickens on Saturday morning, have a cup of coffee and pull out of the garage at 8:00 and go out and knock down prices all over the neighborhood–this person rules the known universe.
Today I found a lovely knitted wool serape, destined to be turned into a vest for my poor cold self (or I will be a poor cold self if it EVER gets cold here, which I am beginning to doubt, as I do every year until some time around Halloween when the first blue norther blows in), a small wire basket, a lovely wrought-iron pushcart plant stand, and a (probably replica) antique milk can, only somewhat rusty, perfect for practicing faux finishing techniques.
I need practice. I need faux finishing. I need wool textiles and sewing plans, I need to give the pushcart a tasteful verdigris look, I need small baskets to dress up and fill with eggs. I need projects.
Because—let’s be honest—I don’t want to finish my novel.
No, that’s not quite right. I certainly want to have finished it. I just don’t want to wade in there and do the dirty work.
This is a second novel. I got the first one out of the way. The second half of it was good; the first half was embarrassing. It’s safely tucked away in a drawer somewhere. This second one is also something I needed to write, and I need to have written, only I can’t quite figure out how.
The main character is a reforming alcoholic. So no duh, that part’s easy. I know how to portray a failing yet hopeful reformed drinker. Intimately. No problem.
She cruises for relationships online. Not hard at all. I adore my own genius for internet real-time conversations, IRC channels, chat, whatever you want to call it. I swear, I should write a whole novel in chat-speak. You’d wet your pants laughing.
She hates an abusive man who tried to rape her. (Wouldn’t you?) Here’s where it gets difficult. Here’s why I started writing.
Maybe you should just never write what you need to write? No, I don’t believe that for more than a half a second. Passion comes from there, that wound, that issue that lies unresolved and unstilled, undistilled, that stirs up whatever you’ve got until it boils and explodes and screams for an exit.
Hatred is the issue here for me. It hurts me. It’s worse for me than the asshole himself, the guy who stalked and scared me. It’s more detrimental than the realization that I’m still, now and then, scared by the handwritten envelope in the mail, the phone ringing at 11:20 p.m., the doorbell when I’m home alone.
Hating somebody hurts you. It’s not likely to hurt that other person much. He already knows; he lies, he finagles, he tells himself whatever he needs to believe. You’re pretty much SOL if you really need to convince the whole world that you’re right and he’s wrong.
Fortunately, that’s not my problem. My problem is, I still hate the guy. And it’s wearing a hole in my psyche. Annie, my novel’s main character, is in the same position. I thought I could write her and resolve me. No such luck.
I don’t think I can write her until I resolve me.
I need more garage sales.
dirty industry
Okay, now I just hate people. Humans are horrible. I’m writing about asbestos and shipbreaking, and it’s a nauseating story. Go ask Google and see for yourself.
Oh, the places you’ll go, as a freelancer. On the other hand, I had to quick figure out how to mark up .pdf files last night for a proofreading test, so now I know something useful. Adobe Acrobat professional version is quite nifty for remote editing and markup…also a bit pricey for me at the moment, so thank you Adobe for free trials. If I get lucky I’ll have occasion to pay for the whole deal.
decoupage the house (2)
It occurs to me that I never formally announced the decoupage the house series. But it seems self-explanatory enough. Second only to my formidable sewing stash is my collection of papers, varnish, and wood destined for decoupage. I’ve got cigar boxes, shelves from garage sales and thrift stores, and two major pieces of furniture to work on, and now I’m eyeing several white fiberboard storage thingies in my office.
It’s a disease, kind of. I’ve seen decoupaged fish bowls. Decoupaged bowling balls. Decoupaged raincoats. I’ve even seen a decoupaged toilet seat.
My friends—and you are my friends—please shoot me before I go that far.
I’m still very much a neophyte at this point. Still trying to work out varnish. I am bedeviled by too many helpful hints. Don’t paint with a brush, you’ll leave brush marks. Don’t varnish with a sponge, you’ll leave air bubbles. Apply with the grain only. Apply in a X pattern. Apply cross grain for good coverage. Use fine steel wool between each coat. Never use steel wool or you’ll end up with rusty fibers sealed in. Throw away your brush after each project. This stuff yellows, that stuff gets sticky, and that one over there peels right off eventually.
Such helpful hints.
What I’ve been using is Liquitex gloss medium and varnish, slightly thinned. I still get brush marks and I’m not happy with them. I switched to Minwax Polycrylic for the latest boxes and thought I was liking it better, but after multiple layers I’m not sure; it looks slightly more cloudy than the Liquitex. Could be purely my technique. I was using sandpaper instead of steel wool, and I think that’s a bad idea.
I decided the real problem is that half of the pro tips you can find on varnish are for people varnishing their boats. I abandoned what I had read and went back to steel wool and tried a makeup sponge, the kind you can buy at Crudmart for $2 per bazillion. This made a beautiful finish on the plain sides of my boxes but it was too late to redeem the decoupaged sides.
And then I tried the Envirotex pour-on finish and it looked like this:
and everything else suddenly looks like complete crap. Easy enough on a tray, but I wonder if I can get it to work on a box top without dripping over the sides. It’s a two-part epoxy that you have to babysit for an hour or so while it is prone to flow, but then you’re done—versus 20 coats of varnish and all the work in between—so it seems a fair trade.
Anybody out there using this stuff?
I have enough projects for a couple of years, and I just finished reading about transferring images using Liquitex, slurping the color right off the paper, which I am going to go try right now. Most notably, it works with color laser copies, which means my book of Audubon birds and I will soon be hanging out at Kinko’s together late at night.
Ooh, you know what would be cool: miniblinds! That would be a hellish project and I’m never going to do it. But a girl can dream.
begin
“Katherine, what do you do?”
People ask me this sometimes. With the italics and everything. I take it as a compliment. I can hear gears shifting. I can hear somebody deciding there’s more to me than meets the eye.
“I’m a transcriptionist,” says I. And with a great deal of pride, “—and a freelance writer.”
“Really? What do you write? I need an editor.”
Just like that, I’m in like Flynn. I am an excellent editor but have not sold my services before. Suddenly I have decisions to make. Paper or digital? Red pen, green…pencil, maybe? Sticky notes? Are there whole sticky pages? What does an invoice look like? How do people do this?
At the same time, my real job shrinks away by half, something I’ve been campaigning for. I talk to Asbestos Guy and ask for more work. I answer some Craigslist postings with clips.
Begin as you mean to go on, they say. I mean to go on just this way…with great good luck. Suddenly believing doors will open. I’ve been working on the foundation for a good many years, mostly without realizing it, and now it’s stable and well paved, and I’m ready to roll. Bounce, even.
Random walk, anyone?
good things
We went out on the San Marcos river this morning and had most of it to ourselves. It was only 9:30; I guess lots of people get up and actually do chores before they play. That’s what I keep telling T. It’s a hint he fails to take.
Except, I thought, as I floated down the river while he swam and took pictures underwater with his second-newest purchase, it’s so damned hard to get both of us off our butts at the same time and out into the world of physical effort that maybe it is a chore after all to go play. Yeah. That’s it. It’s important to take care of these things early on a Saturday morning.
We shared the river with birds, turtles, spiders, a snake and a lot of fish, and that’s just the part we saw. And then a whole swarm of kayaks. Not one as pretty as mine. T. has been taking it out recently, which is a very good thing.
The kickbike remains hard work, but I’m getting better at it. Mostly I’m waiting for cooler weather. We went to the local bike shop this afternoon to get me a helmet and just look around, and of course ended up bringing home a bike for T. to ride to school–also a virtuous thing, I’m sure. I’m thrilled, actually. Absurdly, we bought matching helmets although I can’t keep up with a bicycle on the kickbike and we are hardly going to be seen together. (Though I saw a sweet Trek Navigator that almost had my name on it, if I squinted.)
I have hope for us yet. There’s virtue in movement. I can see that so clearly now that I’ve started to drag and all I want to do is coast to a stop.
boing
I’ve lately been reading boingboing every day (our texas spiders made it and if you don’t think this is a cool story, there’s something wrong with you)–and it introduced me to Peggle so…there goes the neighborhood. Now I don’t have time to decoupage the house, or even answer the door when the magazine guys knock.
decoupage the house (1)
Enough is enough. I work at home. My husband works at home. We are not thrilled to answer the door and find an earnest young asshole trying to sell us magazines. There’s been an epidemic of these guys lately. They will tell you they are from some generic-sounding educational institute, they will introduce themselves and ask your name, they will say they are trying to earn points based on their interaction in the neighborhood in order to win a trip to Europe, they will ask if they’re sounding polite and pleasing so far; but they are selling magazines.
I don’t shell out money at the door except for the neighborhood kids selling Girl Scout cookies and candy bars for band. Even when it’s a green activist in my horribly depressing dirty-brown state, I’m not handing out money until I check them out. The polite ones get a strained look about the eyes when I ask if they have a website and a mailing address. But honestly, they could be anybody. And what’s the point of giving money to an organization that uses 65% of funds for management when you can do better, and you can never do enough?
And especially these magazine mills—every one of these guys is a con artist. And their handlers are even worse. I don’t want them in my face. I don’t want to hear what they mutter under their breath when I turn them away–although once I had a good laugh when a little guy who reminded me entirely of Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter said, from behind the closing door, “I’m sorry you don’t have a great personality.”
I don’t want the Jehovah’s witnesses either. Or the Mormons. There are not that many people home on our block during the day; our house seems to stand out as a positive beacon of welcome. Or maybe a den of sin. One or the other, I dunno. They ask, sometimes, if we know who else might be home. Yeah, we could tell them which neighbors really need to get some religion…but we don’t.
For a while we had a “no soliciting” sign up, a cheap plastic thing from TrueValue. It cut down on but didn’t prevent surprise cold callers, proselytizers, fundraisers. T. went so far as to print up little cards defining the word “solicit”—which I thought was funny but it reminded me too much of the control freakiness of my first husband, so I vetoed the idea. At any rate, I took the sign down to hang the Christmas wreath unimpeded and then lost it by January. Which was okay because we wanted the cookies anyway.
But it’s a couple of years later and these magazine pricks have just ruined it for everybody. I looked online and there’s a lot of frustration out there! T. isn’t the only one who is disgusted by the disregard of English-speakers for their own language. There are a hundred readily-available No Soliciting signs, some including definitions, for multibucks plus shipping and handling.
Fortunately, it’s fall, nearly, if only by decree here in central Texas, and that means crafting in this house. It’s a leftover from New York days, when the gardening was winding down, the canning was done, it was time for apple-picking and preschool projects and fall festivals and making Christmas presents. The decoupage bug has bit and left the building.
So T. and I strolled through the craft store (men are seen there only after 7 p.m., did you notice?). I picked up a wood plaque, we photoshopped it together, and the glue is drying even as we speak.
All this effort for an unfriendly sign. Worth it? I think so.
writer’s bio
Just when I thought I was safe from asbestos, the e-mail arrives.
This is my first ongoing freelance writing job, for those of you who missed the intro; I’ve been turning out thousands of words on asbestos and asbestos-related diseases for a new website. So far there is only a title page visible, but I’m sure the rest will follow shortly. The guy who pays me produces web content, from cheap and admittedly crappy filler to better stuff to highly specialized researched articles. I was working towards the higher end, fortunately, and it paid well enough, but I’ve become quite bored with asbestos fibers and their histories. The medical part was much more to my taste. I thought we were done, but the e-mail says that the client is happy with our stuff, and they want more. And they’re even going to credit us with writers’ bios.
This is a step up from pure ghostwriting, and it gives me something to point to when I’m looking for more work. This is good. Right? It’s good if the rest of the writing is good. If it’s all worse than mine, not so good. But the title page is impressive enough; better than if I had written it.
So…how do I write a bio? I don’t want it to sound braggy. I don’t want it to sound lame and grasping at straws, which is more likely than bragging in my case, let’s face it.
My writing history is certainly not impressive. It’s not bad for somebody who hasn’t tried very hard, but I don’t want to spin my wheels long enough to explain all that. My main work experience is in medical transcription. I happen to know it’s tough to do superlatively well the way I do it, but most people assume it’s just a woman’s typing job. There was a movement a while back among MTs to start calling ourselves “medical language specialists” but that sounds to me like code for somebody trying desperately to change her image. Which is what we were trying to do. I gave it up and decided to just keep on laughing quietly all the way to the bank.
I guess I’ll fall back on my old business card. Professional speller, it says. That’s me.
Freelance writer: that should cover a multitude of sins.
Working on my first novel? Second? Third? Do you have to count false starts? Do you have to count first completed project that now embarrasses you, for which you thank the gods at least once a month that it didn’t get published?
I’ve been trying to follow a public policy of not bragging, not letting on how much I know, remaining silent and being thought a fool, even—it’s eventually highly gratifying if you’re not one. But then how to write a promotional bio?
This is a thorny problem, due tomorrow. Thank goodness for deadlines.
tag
WordPress has this great tag surfer feature to help you find bloggers writing about your own interests. I checked out the community. Plenty of blogs feature chickens, even suburban pets like mine. Several on worm farms, coming soon to a blog near you. Decoupage, that’s out there. Choir music. Spanish lessons. Income taxes, oh yeah. Sewing. Clocks. Books. Gluten-free food.
Cigar boxes, a dud search. Same with some of my other collections. No eyewash cups. No Akro agate. Rebounder, nothing. Kickbike, equally nothing. Anybody out there do this stuff? I’m tagging this blog so the next person to search for the same odd assortment will get some hits. I’m dying to meet a gluten-free Spanish-speaking tax preparer who rebounds for exercise in the morning and kickbikes to choir practice in the evening in between dusting the glass collections and decoupaging the chicken tractor.
moving day
It’s Labor Day weekend and I need something to do besides the dishes, the laundry, the writing, the five sewing projects, the decoupage boxes, the proofreading, the exercising, the Spanish lesson, the dog walking, the book reading, the swimming, the kickbiking…eh? Don’t want to get into too much of a rut.
I’m fed up with Myspace.com and so I struck out in the covered wagon and here I fetched up, checked out the acreage, staked my claim, filed my papers, and it’s mine. The Olde Homestead. Didn’t have to abandon my worldly possessions or starve or even age, particularly…the Internet is a benign frontier that way.
I guess there’s no point in bringing over all that old junk from myspace so I’ll just leave it there a while . Hard to say goodbye, even to little pieces of nothing like that. Once I get them set down, they’re pieces of me. But they and I have never really been at home on the myspace playground. My fault; I violated my original inclination to avoid the place like the plague, and so, as T. would say, I had to pay the horrible, horrible price.
But no, I didn’t really. All I had to do was move. Here.
And yes, one of the chickens actually did eat a snake today. Mostly alive. She also hogged a whole bunch of tomato I tossed out to all the girls. Maybe I should have sent some oregano her way too. And a garlic clove.
I wonder if her eggs will taste like snake.
I wonder how I’d know if they did.
