Am I a Fiction Snob?

Because I've been reading non-fiction almost exclusively lately, I have challenged myself to pick up fiction. I never really thought of myself as a fiction snob, but I frequently am disappointed about the novels I pick up.

And I don't know why.

I'm interested in discovering this answer, both as a reader and a writer.

As a reader, I obviously want to be swept away to another time or place, fall in love with the characters, and/or be otherwise entertained. I usually stick to literary or mainstream fiction because I prefer a strong character arc to my books. I don't care so much about the plot, and I lovelovelove beautiful language.

I assumed that genre novels (romance, scifi/fantasy, mystery/thriller, horror) didn't focus on character development and were more akin to Hollywood blockbusters for the ADHD crowd.

But that's ungenerous.

So I've specifically challenged myself to read more genre fiction. I purchased seven genre e-books--mostly romance, but two darker ones. I thought maybe the romances would surprise me. I do, after all, enjoy romantic comedies. Though, I have to admit that my favorite rom-coms are independent ones, and not the Hollywood blockbuster ones. (Strike one for genre.) And my only experience with romance novels were a couple of unfortunate Danielle Steels and Victoria Holt's gothic romance in my high school years, Harlequins in middle school, and some Nora Roberts when I was desperate for a book to read in my early thirties.

But that's ungenerous. Again.

So maybe I am a fiction snob.

But that doesn't add up either, because there are plenty of "classics" and award-winning novels that I couldn't wrap my head around (or even understand sometimes) and even stopped reading before the end--unheard of in my earlier days of reading.

I think what I really am attracted to is voice. The author's voice.

So, as a writer, I'm interested in what makes me turn the pages as a reader. What is it about an author's voice that I like?

That's harder to identify. And--it seems--is completely subjective. Which makes it hard to duplicate as a writer.

Right now, I am reading Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber. More mainstream fiction. I know, I know.

But what's a girl to do with a To Be Read pile like this?

I'll read one of the new genre e-books next. Promise.

Why I'm Not a Realtor

Not a house we looked at. This was in Seattle.

Looking at houses for sale on the internet is addictive. So is driving by them, and going to open houses, and pestering your mortgage broker dude and realtor.


I don't want to do anything else. It's weird. Like I'd imagine a junkie would act--only looking for fixes, not caring about, say: writing, learning more about Scrivener, paying bills, eating healthy, or going to yoga class. But maybe junkies don't do any of those things anyway.

Saturday Ali and I went to two open houses, and yesterday three. But then we drove around for hours looking at more that weren't open and peering in windows, striking addresses from lists because a house was in that neighborhood, or it didn't have a big enough back yard, or it looked too small for our needs.

After we got home, I went through another six pages of listings in the online version of the Eugene Register Guard. I've started a new list of drive by addresses, and one list for the realtor of houses I definitely want to see the inside of. Seriously, it's as time consuming as first setting up your profile and browsing the singles on OK Cupid. Or Facebook.

Of course, this is all very pre-mature, as are lots of things I tend to do. We haven't even met with the mortgage broker to see if we can, together, get pre-approved for a home loan. That's tomorrow morning.

Moving in together will mean big changes for all of us, but mostly not-so-big changes. While Ali likes and genuinely cares for and worries about my teenage children, he's never lived with kids before. I'm worried that occasionally he'll need a quiet place to time-out in (not so much different from traditional parents, actually), away from the noise, chaos, or drama teenagers sometimes bring--depending on the kid. I'm sure Ali worries a little about this, too.

That--plus our three large dogs, and my desire to garden and raise chickens--creates some unique (but not strange) housing needs. We're quite obviously looking for a large fenced lot. And we'll need a certain amount of separation of space in the actual living quarters, not to mention the general square footage required for four people, three dogs, lots of art, and myriads of books.

In our preliminary searching, we've found one in particular that we keep using as a reference. Do we like this house as much as the other one? No? Then, strike it from the list.

As with every home, even "dream ones" you construct yourself, there are things about it that are not quite perfect. You'd change them if you could. But, generally, the positives far out-weigh the bad, and that is the case of this "reference" house we've found.

The back yard isn't as flat as I'd like it, the location of the home isn't in my favorite neighborhood, and one of the bathrooms would rarely be used--given its location in the house. Which just seems wasteful. Other than that, though, it's pretty near perfect to suiting our needs. The property taxes are lower than in some places, the dogs wouldn't bottle-neck in the hallways, there's a great place for Ali to escape to, AND it boosts an artists' studio. With at least three artists in the family, this would be great fun to have.

And, in lean times, if I couldn't manage my rent downtown, I could use the studio as a place to practice massage out of. It has an outside entrance, and an accessible bathroom--one that wouldn't have clients traipsing through my dog-haired living room, or messy kitchen.

All in all, pretty nearly perfect.

But here I am waxing poetic on a house I don't know for sure if I can get a loan for, a list of eight other homes I want tours of, and twelve more I'm going to drive by. Just to see. They fit under the category of: Eh. It might be cool. But it might be too small. I can't tell by the pictures. And I don't even know where Myoak is.

I swear I could make a full time job out of looking for a house to buy. I certainly spend enough time on it--it's even bleeding over into my writing! Though pretty soon I will be sick of it, and will just take whatever house I'm looking at the time. Which is why I'll never be a realtor.

Mechanic's Mystery Delight

Because I'm feeling a little quirky today, I posted this ad on Craigslist this evening, and wanted to share it with you in the hopes you'll get a laugh out of it. Or at least a lop-sided grin.

Mechanic Mystery Delight - $600 (West Eugene)

Boy, have I got a rig for you! I hope you can channel your inner-Click and Clack Brothers from NPR.

Our well-loved 2000 Pontiac Montana van needs to find a new home. It has many little things "wrong" with it, but none that impaired the driving of it. In fact, it ran just fine, until it didn't. I've taken it to a mechanic who deems nothing wrong with it. I've had the battery tested three times, and am told every time "it's pretty old, but you've got another year on it, probably."

I personally think there is an electrical "issue" that is micro-draining the battery. Because all that happens is it doesn't start. (It's not the starter, it's not the alternator, and it's not the battery.) I've even had it tested for an electrical drain at the mechanic's, and he said there wasn't one, "Unless it's some ghost drain, which sometimes happens." So, there you go. A mystery.

List of off-beat characteristics:
*VCR doesn't work
*AC doesn't work
*Fan selections 1 and 5 don't work, but the rest do.
*CD works so sporadically that it basically just doesn't. (Tape deck and radio work.)
*Radio read out display isn't viewable. I don't think it's a burnt out light, because you actually can read it if there is a high-powered sunbeam aimed at it. :-)
*Rear windshield wipers don't work.
*It's been in a couple of accidents with minor damage. The biggest being the right hand headlamp casing doesn't stay in anymore. (Though the headlights work fine.) I used to tape it in, but I finally just removed it. It lives inside the van now.
*The windows don't roll down anymore because I had the master switch removed. (One day it just started smoking, and melted.)
*The horn(s) are unplugged because the anti-theft program would randomly turn on the alarm sometimes while I was driving.
*The key fob doesn't work. Even with a new battery. You have to unlock the doors the old-fashioned way.
*And one last idiosyncrasy: the blinkers don't stay for long. They burn out rapidly.

But, here's the thing. None of those character "flaws" prevented me from driving it. What did end up sending me to a replacement was this: Every night I'd charge up the battery with one of those slow chargers (no big deal), it would start up right away and I'd drive off. But then, it would randomly not start throughout the day, too. Totally unpredictably. It was a huge stress for me to not have a reliably starting vehicle. But whenever I'd jump it, it would start immediately. No problem. I carried jumpers with me for months. :-)

Despite the frequent jump starts, I still don't think it's the battery. Because all the dash stuff worked. The radio, the lights (inside and out), the fan/heater, whatever. It just wouldn't turn over the engine. But sometimes it would, if I pumped the gas at just the right time.

Again, I think it's electrical. But I'm not a mechanic. And, even if I was, apparently I would be saying that nothing's wrong with it! (Or maybe I just need a new mechanic.) ;-)

Anyway. It's just sitting in my driveway. And I'm still paying insurance on it. I'd like to pass it on to someone else now. Maybe you! Blue book says that a reliably working version of this van, with no additional features (which is basically what you've got now) could sell for $1K. I'm listing it at $600 because getting it to run is ... challenging. Driving it around after it's started is a piece of cake though! My kids are sad to see it go--it's super roomy.

Email me. Make an offer.

Turns Out I'm Old

It turns out I'm old.

I had a fairly busy week with two children's doctor's appointments, my daughter's talent show, volunteering at her school, my regular work, yoga, and chauffeuring -- plus, I started installing a garden fence. And then, on Saturday, I picked up Ali from the airport, and we drove to Portland to attend a reggae concert.

We checked into our motel first, then walked to the venue. The concert was almost three hours long, and then we walked the mile back. We got turned around a few times, bought food at a walk-up window, (Thank God it was Portland, Oregon and I could get a gluten-free hamburger at two in the morning!) and finally fell into our bed (to the chorus of a party next door that Ali called the manager about, and whom were subsequently kicked out) at 3:30 a.m. (Maybe four a.m. I was asleep by then and didn't hear the rest.)

It was a weekend of records for me.

1. I went 21 hours without sleep.
2. I slept in until noon.
3. I left Powell's bookstore only spending ~$30.

Never before has any of those three things happened to me in my life. Let alone all in one weekend.

Despite 8 1/2 hours of sleep, I still felt groggy all the next day. I snoozed during the car ride home to Eugene, I collapsed dramatically into bed Sunday night, and woke up seven hours later exhausted. With five new zits on my face.

Ali said he'd never seen me so tired before. Which is code for, "Oh, honey. You look old."

I suspect I will be catching up on some sleep in the next couple of days. It makes me wonder though, if I were five years younger, would I have been so tired in the aftermath of the concert?

Probably.

Try fifteen years.

I could have done it fifteen years ago, no problem.

But I still would've had those zits.

What's an In-Debt, Paycheck to Paycheck Mama To Do?

I've already exceeded my grocery budget and it's only the fifth of the month. Seriously, I don't think my grocery budget should count if it's a Costco month.

"Wanna see my fishtank?" -- an euphemism for ???

I recently met up with my other 37 year old girlfriends going through divorce (it's so wild that there are so many of us!) and we started talking about online dating. Two of us had met our ex-husbands and/or current boyfriends online, and two of us met them through regular social means. And two of us are currently on an online dating site right now.

It seemed that online dating (the merits and demerits of it) would be a good topic to write about here, because it is something that a lot of women have had, or will have, some experience with. Also -- and especially because -- if you are a single mom, the chances of you going through the online dating experience probably quadruple, or something. I mean, if you are a single parent of small children .... are you going to go to a bar to pick up guys? Well. Maybe you are, but that's besides the point. The point is, online dating is becoming more and more prevalent and less and less taboo.

So when my lady friends came over, and we pillaged through the snacks everyone had brought, and we made ourselves drinks, and we settled into the living room, and we started laughing immediately about nipple size, blogs and small children ... also marbles -- I opened up the online dating topic.

Writing about your Divorce

So.

Writing about your divorce is tricky. There's always the censor dude in your mind with a taser gun threatening to zap you if you: get too snarky, get too whiny, get too personal, say something that your ex would be embarrassed about, say something that your ex would be hurt by, say something that would alienate your friends -- your mutual ones anyway, or say anything that makes you look bad.

I have an online friend that I met once (I met her in real life first at a writer's conference and then became a lurker on her blog) who wrote about her divorce for all to see -- with no censorship. It was awesome. So refreshing, so real, so honest. And so damn funny! I want to be able to do that. ... Write without censorship. And. You know. Be funny about it.