It was a grueling trip back.  The plane was late and they’d over-booked the flight so we sat in Dallas, waiting.  I got home at 1:00 a.m., which was 4:00 east-coast time.  It’s raining here and will be the entire week.  When I checked weather.com and saw pictures for rain from now ’till Sunday it seemed to depict my mood.  

My oldest daughter stayed here with her boyfriend and took care of the dogs and cat.  I found a knob on the kitchen counter, the one from the oven that controls the temperature.  She or he had snapped it right off.  No way to fix it.

Which brings up the whole remodeling issue; that I need to start.  Where is the team of housekeepers?  I miss the gleaming tile floors and the fresh towels.  Living in a small, beautifully decorated condo overlooking the beach, which they would clean while we were out, makes coming home hard.

I miss the sun and drinks by the pool.  Yeah, I wasn’t gonna drink and I was going to eat right but I didn’t.  I gained a lot of the weight back.  It was worth it, though.  I ate things like country-fried steak with greens and lima beans that were white.  We sat in a glider of a picnic table eating catfish and conch by the water but the best was all the fresh fruit. 

I read “Good Grief,” by Lolly Winston.  It was perfect for the plane.  It’s her first book and I thought she did a great job.  Some of it was really quite good.

This was the last year I will take a child to Florida, or anywhere else on vacation.  Traveling with a 17-year-old is not something you do.  And I don’t know why I didn’t anticipate that.  “That” being contrary, indifferent, moody; all the natural states which serve to help 17-year-olds push away out into the world, on their own.  Not in a small car in a foreign state, lost most of the time. 

The kind of map I needed I didn’t have so I winged it.  That involved driving around a bit.  I admit it was exasperating and I kept a running commentary talking myself through the more harrowing navigational fetes (U turns on freeways).  Her sense of direction is as bad as mine so at the first hint of trouble her seat would go back and she would feign sleep.  But really she would be awake, putting out this vibe of despair.

I think it came from having moved over here where no amount of looking at a map helped me get the real lay of the land.  It was those hours of driving around lost that taught me where things were, in relation to lines on the map.  I explored new territory this time, without specific destinations so I had no directions.  Dumb move.  I should have anticipated driving her nuts.

Soooo, anywho, I am back.  Filled with a general sense of relief mixed with a sort of limbo.  Underneath that, though, is fear.  Now that my vacation is over I am supposed to be getting started on the house, getting the book done enough to send out ( I was waiting until the trip to fill in parts that took place there) but scariest of all, is the job.  I need to work. 

But before I fixate on real life let me tell you about something hopeful.  I saw some men I liked the looks of.  I suspect they were all boaters, yachtsmen.  And that could be problematic — I get seasick — or not.  They looked happily independent.  I’m thinking in a few years, when maybe I can spend a month instead of a week, I might start up a long-distance relationship with someone.  It was just encouraging to actually see men I could imagine kissing. 

I just talked with the oldest, the one who broke the stove.  We’re going to work out on Wednesday.  Something about talking to her cheered me up.  I am happy to be home living a life I can actually sustain.  Everything is so expensive there and it feels too hot.  People either have too much money or nowhere near enough, it seems like.  It boggles my mind how you could have a big fancy yacht, a summer home, and a place in Florida, even if it is just a condo on the intercoastal.  Who are these people?  You see them parking the boats and they look like everyday folks.  The one thing that really struck me about them was the gleam in their eyes.  These older men who would be getting coffee or groceries to take back to the boat, they had a sense of adventure about them: places to go, things to see; nothing complacent about them. 

I would never want to spend the kind of money it would take for a condo but I think I will be able to find a small apartment I could rent for a month or maybe trade my home for theirs.  The thing that’s so important about trips is to get to someplace different where you can see new possibilities.  Instead of falling into limbo (not here, not there)  I need to focus on what I saw that I should bring into my life:  Cleanliness, those gleaming Mexican tiles on the way to the elevator, happy music played out by the pool, getting dressed in a cute outfit every morning.  I think each week I should investigate some fun new place I’ve never been, the kind you read about in Sunset.  And each week I should go look at things like tile or new stoves.  I should start a file with a collection, from magazines, of design ideas for the bathrooms and the kitchen.  But the first thing I’m going to do is find some good Reggae to listen to.

It’s a race to the finish.  My plane leaves Sunday morning and I am madly working my way through this checklist.  It’s my new thing.  I have two pieces of paper.  On the front of the first is the stuff I want to do each week.  On the back is what I should be doing every day.  The second piece of paper has a list for the month and then things that I should do once a year.  Ooops! I just thought of gutters.  Gotta go write that down.

So every morning I make out a schedule.  I am slowly getting caught up and it feels great.  Instead of getting on xanga in the morning I go to the gym.  When I get home I sit down and look at the comments you left.  But I don’t write back yet.  I go get a shower and DO MY HAIR.  This is huge because for a long time I have been lazy.  Plus I’ve had a haircut that didn’t require curling.  But with a little time and effort I look hot.  Well, maybe hot’s not the right word.  So then I come down and make a good  breakfast or sometimes go straight for lunch.  And because I’m doing weight watchers it’s super healthy.  After lunch I make some calls.  Yes, I have become more social. 

I decided to make an effort to see more people and it’s been really fun.  I go up and put some make-up on, get in my car and go run an errand or two, whatever’s on my list.  I just like getting out. 

The other thing I’ve been doing is shopping.  There are some things I haven’t bought in a few years because I didn’t like the styles.  But this year I like everything and I’m stocking up.  And because of the trip I really looked at putting together outfits.  I am feeling fairly inspired about being a woman.  I got so caught up in what was going on in my head that I forgot about the rest of my body.  It feels so great to get out in the world, wearing my new cute sandals.  Day after day I would sit here wearing cords, tennis shoes, and a sweatshirt, my ass growing larger my the minute.  I’ve only lost 7 pounds but it’s enough to get in my jeans and the new cropped pants I found that fit me just right. 

When I get home I work in the yard.  You can’t believe how beautiful it is here.  All these flowers have come up that I didn’t know I had. 

Have you noticed I haven’t mentioned writing?  I haven’t written a damn thing.  That’s not true.  I wrote about Moon.  It was my turn to workshop so I read this thing I wrote when I was at the peak of distraught.  It was pretty good.  I sounded like a nutcase but everyone liked it.  Only thing was they thought I’d made it up.  They started throwing words around like lesbian and love.  You’re not supposed to say anything until they’re done but I was just about to set them straight when this one blowhard picked up on how it was an ethereal love of ideas, a shared sense of spirituality.  Someone else used the word obsessed and the consensus was that I had entered this fantasy world where everyone puts forth this fabulous persona and it’s such a feel good place that I stay there all day and night.  When I say, “ I,” I’m referring to my character. 

I hadn’t anticipated their response.  Only a couple people have blogged before, one being the teacher.  But he looked the most surprised when I said I had written about myself.  A hush fell over the room and I tried to fill the silence with noises about how blogging can be a good thing.  They all wanted me to rewrite it to include some of Moon’s comments because if you write in first person there’s too much telling if you don’t have dialogue providing another’s perspective.  I said I’d just done it as therapy and would probably throw it away.  That’s when the teacher got pissed off.  And I don’t blame him.  He’s letting us use non-fiction in a fiction writing class.  Plus, we take each other’s work very seriously.  Shit, they’d talked about my piece for an hour.

That’s enough of that.  I gotta write an assignment and go to bed.  I will be back in a week!

I’ve probably started writing in this little box three or four times.  Sometimes I don’t even get that far.  I just came from class and am as motivated as I’m likely to get, to write anything for anybody. 

I haven’t written anything since I left Xanga.  And, as most of you know, I didn’t really leave I just quit posting and commenting.  Although, lately I’ve begun commenting some.  I was starting to feel like I should give back some, instead of sneaking around reading everyone and not contributing.

I haven’t felt much like a writer.  I have suffered over credibility issues.  Shaken deeply by Moon’s “trickery” I failed to see the point of these nightly sessions.  I went back and read her comments and Emails and remembered what promise she thought I had.  I guess we know what that’s worth. 

Closeness with strangers seemed like a dumb idea.  Besides, I was supposed to have the novel completely done before I went to Florida next week.  All that Xanga time should have been spent doing more productive writing.  So I started editing.

And I’m not saying there aren’t some really good sections.  But parts I did before I started taking the writing class need to be redone.  What my teacher calls “telling” needs to be rewritten so that it is “showing.”  That involves coming up with a whole lot of dialogue. 

I thought I liked editing but this is pure drudgery.  And it doesn’t shine, these parts that I’m fleshing out.  I never hear anyone talk about selling anything and it seems like you all are such good writers.  I gave up my fantasy of being a real writer. 

Then something happened tonight that made me want to write again. This young girl read her piece and when she got done my stomach was in a knot.  I was pretty sure she was writing about herself because the language was not what was compelling.  It was the story of losing your mind.  But it was subtle.  She hadn’t been herself for a couple months and the way she described her changed thought process, which she was trying unsuccessfully to get control of, was fascinating…..and frightening….and real. 

I started to think about how when we deviate from the self we are used to, how unnerving that can be.  I was standing out in the hall, hiding, crying.  I don’t know if I was crying because I couldn’t write or crying because she could.  I think maybe I was just moved.  The human condition and the fact that this young girl had, in very plain language, hit upon such a sophisticated yet common quagmire — The possibilities are endless.  If anybody can write about deviating from the self, it’s me. 

I’ve been rich, I’ve been poor.  I’ve had little tits, huge tits, no tits.  In one year I went from being physically in my prime to being bald and bedridden.  Instead of being secretary of the PTA, “mother of the year” and star court reporting student I became a bellydancer, erotica writer, pot-smoking bad mother of the year (because I left)  I used to have such a full social calendar and now I don’t keep one. If you look in my closet I have a complete wardrobe for all those personas and my address book has phone numbers of all the people I used to socialize with from those worlds.  I am none of those people and all of those people. 

And I think I just figured out why I’ve been so upset.  I liked the idea of being a writer because I could include all those personas.  Those other images were never completely a good fit but I really liked the sound of “writer.”  And so I started to take myself seriously.  Suddenly I had a very strong, new-found sense of self.  That Moon was a fraud made me feel like a sham.

But tonight, feeling my stomach unclench, noticing my alarm, I knew I, too, could evoke emotion in others.  And as I listened to the teacher and my favorite guy talking about how you can’t start out a story using second person if you’re going to ultimately write it in first, and I knew it read better keeping that line in second, I didn’t care if I ever got published.

So I guess I’m back.  Oh, and “Moon” – FUCK YOU.