Bartering 2.0

As I get busier and busier with work and there are fewer and fewer hours in the day to check off my to-do list, it's nice to know there's someone there ready to lend me a helping hand.  Yes, that's right, I have finally gotten myself a personal assistant.  I'm sure you're wondering how I can afford such an extravagance.  After all, I'm no Hollywood celebrity or superstar athlete or corporate hotshot.  I'm just a simple writer making a modest living.  So how do I pay for my newly acquired personal assistance?  In frozen yogurt, of course.  To be exact, a Eurotart frozen yogurt with blackberries (and on occasion mochi) from Yogurtagogo in Sacramento.

Now, the next obvious question is, 'where in the world did I find such a gem of a PA?'  It was quite easy, really.  All I had to do was look no further than the gene pool from which I crawled.  Yes, that's right, I'm speaking of my mother.  For a trip to CVS to pick up contact solution or a dry cleaning delivery or a deposit of paychecks at my bank, she collects one heaping cup of froyo.  Pretty fair trade really for any of us who live and die for the frozen dessert.  I get the hummus I forgot to grab at the Safeway, and she gets a pint of Eurotart.  This whole fantastic transaction has got me thinking about the days when people used to barter for goods and services.  A fur coat for perfume.  Eggs for milk.  Yard work for construction.  Two virgins for six goats.  And on and on and on.

With the economy the way it is (aren't you just sick of hearing that line?), it might be a good time for a bartering resurgence.  In fact, I'm publicly offering my writing services to anyone who cuts hair, does nails, drives a cab, leads a boot camp class, cooks, massages (not that kind, sicko), has theater or concert tickets or teaches banjo.  What can I do for you in the way of writing?  Well, I can write letters of complaint, church bulletins, party fliers, threatening stalker letters, marketing materials, pitches and love poems (although the latter will cost extra as it goes against my nature.)  But we need not limit the movement to services.  I can see people trading books, clothes, music, shoes, pets, apartments (anyone live in Bali?  I have a terrific flat in Sacramento you might be interested in trading for a week), cars, electronics...  Hell, boyfriend swapping is perfectly reasonable if, say, your friend's bf is a lawyer and you need someone to impress the folks at Thanksgiving dinner this year.  In return she can have your hot out-of-work musician boyfriend to make her look cooler at her high school reunion.  It's win-win.

As a way to get this system started I encourage anyone with LEGAL good and services they're willing to barter to please list them in the comments section on this post.  If there can be a reality show about swapping wives, then we can certainly start swapping DVDs, no?

Top Seven Worst Dates

"Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man that I want my children to spend their weekends with?" - Rita Rudner

Recently a friend suggested she set me up on a blind date.  The sentiment doesn't really scare me as it does most people.  Not because I'm brave.  Not because I'm especially open minded or a risk taker.  And certainly not because the prospect actually sounds fun.  No, blind dates don't scare me because I've already had so many laughable, cringe-worthy, 'did that really happen?!' dates in my life that nothing seems to phase me anymore.  In fact, if a date is going to be bad, it better be extremely bad so that I can at lest get a good anecdote out of it to amuse my friends.  So in honor of being back out on the market (I love this expression... makes me feel like a prize-winning pig), I thought I would air out my dirty dating laundry and share the top seven (I like an odd number) worst romantic rendezvous I've had the exquisitely painful pleasure to partake in.

1. During a dinner date with a basketball player I met at a nightclub in Sacramento (this should have been a warning sign, no?) the guy... and I kid you not... actually fell asleep at the table as I was talking.  I mean, he literally dropped his head beside his brick oven personal pizza and slipped into REM.  This same guy then attempted to call me every other night for the next two weeks wondering why I wouldn't go out with him again.  Must have hit his head quite hard on that table.
2. Here's the next scenario broken down into scenes, which is appropriate seeing as though it was a movie date.  Act I: Guy takes his retainer out at the dinner table and sets it in the middle of said table on a napkin.  My eyes remain fixated on the trail of saliva running from his mouth to the retainer as he tries to engage me in conversation.  Act II: In the middle of the movie guy realizes he left retainer on table and runs out, leaving me by myself at a particularly gruesome horror film.  Act III: Guy comes back upset, sweaty and smelling of garbage after having searched for retainer in the restaurant dumpster without luck.  He mumbles about the $500 he'll need to scrounge up to get a new one during the rest of the movie.  Needless to say, there was no Act IV.
3. My first date in LA was with a photographer I met on the plane ride over there.  He was quite a bit older but looked like Sting so I thought I'd take my chances.  Unfortunately, the entire date consisted of him ranting about his ex.  What sparked this diatribe?  I had asked him how he got the bloody cut across his face.  Turns out she went to town on his cheek with her car key.  I spent the rest of the night looking over my shoulder waiting for her to seize me by the hair and smash my face into my vegan meatloaf.
4. One guy actually had the nerve to call me an hour before our date and ask if his buddy who lived near me could pick me up and take me to my date's house.  This way, he wouldn't have to drive across town to get me himself.  His buddy who I'd never met.  His buddy who drove a pick-up.  I told him "sure", hung up and then called him back five minutes later complaining of a terrible stomach flu.  A stomach flue that lasted the three weeks it took for him to stop calling.
5. I made the mistake of inviting a new guy to my office Christmas party.  He showed up wasted (to calm him nerves, he said) and then proceeded to brag to my boss during a smoke break on the restaurant balcony the very intimate details of our first date.  Thankfully, my boss was a woman with a bad date list of her own.
6. A guy bit me.  I believe he thought it would be sexy.  Perhaps on some occasions.  But in the middle of a Mexican restaurant over a plate of enchiladas?  Not so much.
7. I was taken on a date to a very chichi restaurant.  The guy I was with insisted that we order the sweetbreads, promising me it was a vegetarian dish.  I ate them, of course, trying to look the part of 'classy lady'.  He said, and I quote, "those are just mushrooms inside."  Later I learned the guy had forced me to eat cow thymus and pancreas.  I still haven't forgiven that one.

So there you have it.  The worst of it.  Funny how the running theme seems to be dinner dates.  Perhaps I need to cut eating out of the dating equation entirely.  Nah.  Without the bad, how can you know what's good?  And without the horrendous dates I'm infamous for, who would my friends turn to to make their own horror dating stories seem timid by comparison?  So I guess it's fingers crossed for a terrible blind date in my near future... 

Honking And Yelling

There are two ways Americans love to express joy.  Perhaps above all other options.  And those two things are honking car horns and yelling.  The heroine of joyful articulations.  Last night, after the San Francisco Giants won the World Series, the streets of Midtown Sacramento came alive with a cacophonous mixture of piercing car horns and blissful, unhindered outcries.  A mixture that wasn't at all unpleasant.  In fact, it put a smile on my face.  Sent my heart racing like on Halloween night when kilos of sugar surged through my veins robbing me of sleep.  The way the horns sliced the air like knives and drunken men of all ages sent expletives flying into the night sky like confetti had a thrilling, almost punk rock quality to it.  We're not just celebrating... we're making some f'in noise!

It's not just the sports crowd that get into this.  We dress up bridal vehicles just for the sake of making complete strangers honk and holler in celebration of matrimony.  Sometimes I'm even tempted to do it when a funeral procession passes just as a way to cheer everyone up.  Can you just picture a row of car following a hearse with everyone honking horns and whooping it up out the windows?  Would be one hell of a send out.  (That may actually have to go into my will.)  We stand at street corners holding up signs that sum up our political beliefs in catchy slogans in hope that others will agree and unleash a litany of honking.  We do it as parades pass.  Or when we arrive at a friends house to pick them up for a night of debauchery, "HONK! HONK! HONK!  Get your butt down here!  And bring the flask!  HONK! HONK!  Woohoo!"   

My first introduction to this celebratory audial expression of delight was in 5th grade when the 6th grade teacher led his class and our own out onto the sidewalk to demonstrate against the war in Iraq.  The first one, that is.  Bush Senior.  We held up handmade signs in our little Catholic school uniforms and screamed at oncoming traffic "Honk for peace in the Middle East!" like pint-sized UN cheerleaders.  With each pounding of a horn or holler out a car window, my excitement grew and grew.  To a near feverish state.  I'll never forget this one guy in a white convertible with a matching white suit and tight Jheri curls literally driving around the block in circles to up the ante on his fantastic rave of honks.  At one point (while stopped at a light) he jumped up onto his seat and started honking with his foot.  I kid you not; I couldn't make this stuff up.  I had no idea what the war was about, but if raging against it caused a grown man to stomp on the steering wheel of his Chrysler Sebring, then I was a peace crusader.

It was this man I thought about last night as the honking and yelling lingered well past midnight.  That if I had planned better I would be an hour and a half away in San Francisco with my head out the moon roof of my Rav4 tapping out "We Are the Champions" on my steering wheel with my boot heel.  Well... there's always next year.

Why Have Kids?

A friend recently revealed to me their reason for wanting to one day have a kid - to have someone to take care of them when they get old.  A sound argument, but not convincing enough.  I mean, isn't that what hospice workers are for?   I, for one, have never imagined having kids.  Ask anyone in my life with babies, and they'll tell you I DO NOT HOLD THEM.  It's not because I'm afraid I'll break them... a rather cliche excuse if you ask me.  It's because I hate having to put on the 'look at me, I have motherly instincts after all!' song and dance by cooing at them and saying gooey things in a whiny baby voice.  I just don't have it in me.  When I hold a baby it's more like Jeremy Renner in the "Hurt Locker" carrying a bomb he's trying to diffuse.  I know it's gonna go off... but when?  So I grasp it rigidly in my arms with a look of terror on my face and try not to make any sudden moves. 

Yet despite my inherent fear of motherhood and pudgy, diaper-sporting mini people, there is one reason and one reason only I would want one of my own - to have someone to dress up for Halloween.  Yes, that's right.  Just as my mom dressed me in fabulous homemade bumblebee and Snow White costumes, I too want to take my little person and slap a pirate hook on their hand... a tiara on their head... a wart on their nose... wings on their back... a stinger on their butt... 

Perhaps more importantly, I want to raid their candy loot.  When I was little I informed my mother that the only candy off limits in my stash was the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  And every year, without fail, I'd catch her in the act.  Once she just breathed on me and, smelling the unmistakable mix of chocolate and peanut butter, I called her out with tears streaming down my face.  'How could you?!  I told you you could have all the Almond Joys and 3 Musketeers!'  Another time I found the orange and black wrappers in her bed, crinkled up and stowed away under the sheets after I caught her by surprise.  Me: 'Mom, are you eating something in bed?'  Mom: (With mouth full)  'Hmm?  No.  (Swallow)  Not me.  (Another swallow)  Why do you ask?'  Of course, as a mom I'll learn from such errors.  I will only eat my child's Halloween Reese's when they're at school and will promptly burn the wrapper in the fireplace.  Or is down the garbage disposal better?  The shredder?  Should I just eat the wrapper too? 

So there you have it.  Blackheart's reasoning for having kids.  A selfish reason?  Maybe.  But as I was getting dinner at the Subway in Flagstaff, Arizona tonight and a short, chubby Mexican boy wearing a muscle-bound Batman costume came swaggering in (after I just finished reading "Little Bee" none-the-less!) I thought to myself, 'Who cares?  Kids in masks and capes are freakin' cute.'  The best part is, when I told him, "Nice costume," and he turned to me and confessed, "This is my favorite," I saw his mom's proud grin in the corner of my eye.

Breakup in Revolt

When you breakup with someone you're left with a heaping pile of nasty side effects.  For one, you have to sleep alone.  Actually, I quite like that.  More room to toss and turn, not to mention my cat appreciates the expansion of her down property.  Then there's the ache of never seeing the other's family, again.  And for a girl with a rather small family, I always feel the downsizing.  Sometimes, when the breakup is a doozy, you even lose friends as they sheepishly (or vehemently) choose battle lines.  Then, of course, when you live with the one you love you have to divide your stuff.  I actually have a friend who lost an entire hybrid car in that debacle. 

This time around, however, there is one small effect of my breakup that is nagging me above any of these more acute, life altering consequences.  Right before we moved back to California, as my ex and I were going through what to take and what to give away, I was talked into getting rid of my copy of C.D. Payne's "Youth In Revolt."  I looked at it longingly, its 499 pages and cheerful turquoise cover full of whimsical cartoons begging me not to let it go.  When I first read the book in high school I hadn't discovered something so wonderful since I tried my first chocolate croissant from La Bou.  I rarely hang onto books I've already read, but there was something special about this novel that said to me, "Blackheart, keep me on your shelf.  I'm a reflection of your inner self.  People will see me there and know instantly that you're a cool, angst ridden chick."  "OK," I would reply to my paperback friend with each and every move, from that first college dorm to my current home in Nashville.  "For you, anything.  Hop in this Pabst Blue Ribbon box I scavenged from behind the 7-Eleven and hold tight!" 

But now, its thickness and weight was creating a schism in our relationship.  It was too big.  Too bulky.  It had to go.  For the first time in 11 years, it wouldn't make the cut.  So reluctantly I compromised,  setting it delicately on the Salvation Army pile and asking Nick Twisp (the protagonist) to please forgive me.  But my heart ached.  I had told myself I would always keep it.  A book to give my fictional children one day to show them how interesting and hip their mother actually was at one time, long long ago.  I hauled it to the charity drop-off and watched as two burly men brutally tossed it into a metal cage full of yellowed, trashy romance novels and sad looking childrens' books that made "Revolt" look like a bright shining literary star. 

One month later, and I had not only lost one of my oldest, dearest books, but I'd lost my man, as well.  But the book, oh the book!  How it pains me.  So here's the possible lessons learned: 1.) Compromise sucks; 2.) The Salvation Army participates in book cruelty; and 3.) If he's the right one, the things you love will somehow find a way into the moving box.

Best Hangover Cure in Santa Fe, NM

Pops, the pups and I took a nice hike today on the Tesuque trail, ogling fall colors (yes, I took the cliche 'carpet of leaves' close-up with my BlackBerry camera phone) and the fresh powdering of snow from last night's mega storm that sent my cat running under the covers for fear of total annihilation.  On the way there dad decided he needed some fuel, so we stopped by Blake's Lotaburger  for a bacon/egg/hash brown/green chili breakfast burrito (I had the poor guy hold the cheese so I could take a few bites... selfish, I know.)  Now let me tell you, I wasn't hungover this morning.  Not in the slightest.  Not even one sip of Santa Fe Pale Ale consumed last night.  But, my god, if you're ever in Santa Fe nursing a head splitting alcoholic miasma, please do yourself a favor and get this stuffed tortilla manna from heaven.  After four days spent in Portland last weekend drinking my weight in micro-brews and reasonably priced vodka soda's (only $4?!  Are you North Westerners insane?!  Are your beards and too-tight skinny jeans stifling your Capitalistic good sense?!), it was like erasing every last sip.  Just five bites of this burrito worked like a sponge on the ole liver.  I feel reborn.  I feel replenished.  I feel sober...  I also felt a bit queasy, having just returned to occasional meat-eating.  But, man, was it worth it. 

Pros & Cons

Warning: This is a self serving blog entry.  Read at your own risk of boredom.

It dawned on me of late that I wasn't sure whether or not I actually liked myself.  Maybe it's a quarter life crisis (I could live until 120 right? Who am I kidding, it would have to be a 'one-third' life crisis)... or could be it has to do with my recent breakup... or maybe it's some larger existential dilemma.  Well, whatever it is, I decided to make a list of all the things that irritated me about myself and then sift through the muck and try to find some redeeming qualities underneath it all.  Let's begins with some of the cons (note: this list has been edited to protect the ego.)

1. My fingernail polish always chips a day later.
2. I watch too much TV.
3. I can't cook to save my life.
4. My bangs always curve in one direction as if by some magnetic pull.  And I could use more hair.
5. I'm terrible at keeping in touch.
6. My boobs are too big (and, yes, this is a con)
7. I have never been good with authority.
8. I prefer to read Stephen King over Yeats.
9. My one freelance TV script was never produced.
10. Babies frighten me.  As does marriage.  And spiders.  And failure.  And technology.  And any sport that requires balance.  
11. I get stressed out very easily.
12. I cannot focus enough to do yoga or Tai Chi or meditation.
13. I don't have a literary agent, and I've been at this game for 5 years.
14. I get my feelings hurt easily but am an expert at hiding it... which I hear is a bad thing. 
15. I never know the appropriate amount to tip.
16. I am quick to anger.
17. I should have put money in an IRA about 10 years ago.
18. I don't volunteer nearly enough.
19. I am a horrific gardener.  Plants die at my feet.
20. When I'm hungry I get very whiny.  And that's putting it nicely.
21. I can't tell one bottle of wine from the next.  It's red or it's white.  Done.
22. My feet are getting bigger from training.  WTF!!!!!
23. I am never up enough on politics and world events.  Don't read the paper.  Avoid the nightly news.  Shameful.
24. I find pleasure in cracking jokes about strangers.
25. I'm afraid of heights.
26. I am awful at romantic relationships.
27. I have neglected my banjo.  And my Italian.  And my piles of books waiting to be read.  And this blog.  And my current screenplay.  And, often, my cat.
28. I am extremely cynical.
29. My teeth need whitening.
30. Worst of all, I'm 30 and have no more answers about who I am and what I want than I did 10 years ago.

So considering this lofty list - a list that only scratches the surface - can there be anything in this Blackheart capsule I call a body/soul/personality worth celebrating?  Yes.  Two things.  There are two, count them two qualities about myself which have been there since the beginning and have only gotten better with time.   1.)  I am a strong person.  And 2.) I am an adventurer.  Both traits are very chicken-or-the-egg.  A symbiotic relationship.  To be strong in life you have to have a spirit of adventure, knowing that no matter what comes your way, there's still more to discover.  To be adventurous, you have to be strong, because you have to have the guts and courage to go beyond what's safe and secure and seek out the unknown.  Trite as this may all sound, it gives me hope to know that in the lengthy con list of life, I've got two things going for me.  And I guess, for now, that will have to do.