Scarlet Letters

Ian and I marched from the kitchen into the bedroom, where Jimmy had just gotten off the phone. We stood in the doorway with twin expressions of dismay, arms crossed. JIMMY: What'd I do? ME: The chocolate fondue I made for the party. Dark, rich, delicious molten chocolate from scratch. JIMMY: Down the drain. ME/IAN: *SQUAWK* ME: Nooooooo! IAN: Chocolate! JIMMY: It had gotten all hard! ME: It's CHOCOLATE. You plug the pot back in and it melts again! JIMMY: Oh. ME: You killed the chocolate! IAN: He needs punishment. ME: He does. IAN: He's grounded! ME: Or something like that. You are a bad man! A bad, bad man! JIMMY: I am not! ME: From scratch. That was good chocolate. You know what that costs?  You owe me chocolate. JIMMY: I will buy you chocolate tomorrow when I get paid. ME: It's not the same. JIMMY: *tries to kiss me* ME: No! I do not kiss bad men. JIMMY: *kisses me* ME: Bad, bad man!

Jimmy walks into my office (isn't that usually how this happens?) ME: ... JIMMY: What. ME: Honey, what are you wearing? JIMMY: Around-the-house stuff. ME: *grins* JIMMY: What? ME: Black sneakers and white socks. Shiny red Santa shorts. And a KISS T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. JIMMY: It's around the house! ME: *hysterical giggles erupt* Oh baby, you're so sexy. I mean, I just want to rip your clothes off. No, I mean I really  want to rip your clothes off. JIMMY: It's my Redneck Ensemble. ME: It's laundry day.

Me: So that pork roast? I found out why it was cheap. Jimmy: All that fat? Me: It wasn't fat. It was skin. It still had the skin on. Jimmy: Did you take it off? Me: I couldn't get it off! I hacked and hacked at it, but it wouldn't come off. So I looked it up on the internet, and it said you can roast it with the skin on and it will actually add flavor. Then it'll just slip right off. Jimmy: Then we can roast it in the oven. Me: What? Jimmy: Roast the skin, and it'll turn into cracklings. Me: Cracklings? Jimmy: *pats my knee* It's okay, northern girl. Me: WHAT. Jimmy: Cracklings. Roasted pork skin. Me: You just bake pig skin and eat it? Jimmy: Mmmm. Me: I have a theory that weird southern cuisine goes back to the Civil War, when everyone was starving to death, so they ate whatever they could. Then it became a point of pride: "We ate shit and we liked it!"  Jimmy: *laughs* Me: It explains giblet gravy. Fried pork skin inde...

Boy's English class is reading Romeo and Juliet. They are watching scenes from the Zeffirelli movie, because the Luhrman has violence, sex, drugs and transvestism - you know, just like the play.  Seriously, I don't blame them for sticking with Zeffirelli; it's safer than risking the parental reaction to Luhrman. But it means the kids miss the glory of Harold Perrineau's Mercutio, which is simply the finest Shakespearean performance in film. Luhrman's work is hard to take; it's frenetic energy and wild choreography hit you between the eyes, and it's often too distracting. But if you can make it through the first twenty minutes, your mind acclimates to Luhrman Land and that's when amazing things happen. I always liked DiCaprio's Romeo - he didn't play a lovesick waif, but a street-tough young man with intelligence and common sense who is simply bowled over by love. Claire Danes is passable as Juliet, but the supporting cast really shines,...

Bottle of hard cider, check. Boy in bed, check. Earbuds playing slightly creepy classical music, check. Distracted by internet. So what else is new. I turn on Freedom for Mac and instruct it to shut off my internet for a while. Freedom reminds me that I'm still in my trial period for this program, which leads to twenty minutes of searching my receipts file because I'm quite sure I paid for it, quite sure indeed, and there's no receipt so maybe I'm just dumb. Fine, turn off my internet, Freedom. Then I go to find the cemetery story file. It's not there. Oh God. That was a good story I had started. It was 1200 words of writing, and that's not much if you're, say, Bryan Smith or Angelia Sparrow. For me these days, that's an afternoon miracle. So then I was searching every possible corner it could have been auto-saved, trying to remember how I titled the file since the story doesn't have a title yet, and desperately hoping that it wasn't ...

ME: Urrrrrrrgh. I'm awake. MUSE: No, you're not. ME: Am too. I'm sitting up in my bed, holding my iPad. MUSE: Better put it to use, then. ME: You. YOU. Where the royal fuck have you been? MUSE: Working on this. Here, have the entire plot and every word of that project. *waves* ME: Holy crap. I know what happens. I know how it ends. I even know how to get to how it ends. I have the whole damn thing in my head. Fucking finally. MUSE: Told you I was working. ME: You might've shown up a bit earlier. This thing was due months ago. MUSE: Fuck you. ME: Glad to see you still have the same agreeable nature. MUSE: You gonna write that down or what? ME: I don't think I can get it all in the iPad. I should go downstairs and find my laptop. MUSE: You're not gonna be able to do that. ME: Why not? MUSE: I told you. You're not actually awake. You're dreaming. ME: What? I'm dreaming? So what about the story? The words? All this in my head - MUSE: It...

BOY: Mom, can I have a cuppy cake? ME: Hmm. How many did you have this morning? BOY: Two. ME: That's a lot of cupcake.  BOY: Pleeeeease? ME: First explain why you're calling them cuppy cakes. BOY: I've always done that. ME: You have not. You started when you heard Jimmy do it. BOY: Pleeeeeeease. ME: Okay. BOY: *arrives* ME: I said ONE cupcake! BOY: This one is for my imaginary friend. ME: Oh really. Who's your imaginary friend? BOY: Bob. ME: That's the best you can do? BOY: Wilfred the Magic Dragon. What. ME: Better.

Fighting with people online is like sitting on the beach and trying to empty the ocean with a cup. You pour it out on the sand, and it flows right back in. Social networking is a constant love-hate with me. I love that I can stay in touch with my family and old friends who live [anywhere but here] on a daily basis, bringing us much closer together than we ever were as children or as young adults. I love that I can talk to my readers, have a convenient feed of interesting material from wildly diverse sources, and toss my own stuff out for those who might be interested. The Social Network is a fun place for diversion. And I'm much better than I used to be about getting into fights. In fact, I first wrote this a week ago, and then shelved it because it wasn't worth the inevitable nastiness. We all know it's pointless to sink into the drahmah. But it's a struggle for me, because the very nature of my profession is to dispel ignorance with facts. Not truth - truth is a m...