Oh boy that was a weekend. TL:DR: We went many places and many things happened. Some of them were good and some of them weren’t good, and then some others were unclassifiable.
Long version: (oh yes this is long)
So the anthology was released on Friday, and it was a marvelous success! At least, so far as we can tell, up to now, which is still very soon. There were all sorts of technical dramas, and the Kindle version (which was supposed to be the ONLY version available Friday) didn’t meander onto the scene until Saturday anyway, but hey! It’s all there now. Here it is on Amazon. Here it is on B&N. Other bookstores coming soon, we hope!
The first story in the anthology is a gorgeous piece by Gabrielle Harbowy. I knew the moment I read it that I wanted it. And I placed it first: this was where I wanted the book to start. I didn’t even wonder whether the specific content would be an issue…but a few early readers began asking questions, and Gabrielle herself wrote me wondering if we should put a trigger warning on the story.
It’s so very gently (and beautifully) told, and not graphic; I didn’t think a trigger warning was called for. But I understand that my subjective reality is not anyone else’s subjective reality, and so I did write a guest blog post for the Evil Girlfriend Media site. Gabrielle also wrote a post (which will come in the next day or two)–I will link to it as soon as it’s up.
And among all that, Mark and I flew to California. The original reason for this short trip was to drive his parents to (and attend for our own selves) a party for his cousin Allison who is embarking on a two-year world tour, after graduating college. She’s blogging about it; it should be a kick! She leaves Wednesday. Stay tuned.
Anyway, the thinking was, we’d fly down to Sacramento, rent a car, drive up to his parents’ house in the Land of Very Little Internet, spend the night; drive them to the party Saturday, drive them back home, spend another night; relax and visit on Sunday, maybe help them stack all that firewood which just got delivered, and fly back to Portland that evening.
Yeah.
So between the planning of that and the reality of last weekend, as I mentioned, Mark’s dad has suffered a new phase in his dementia, and he is now in a psychiatric institute in Sacramento (an hour-and-fifteen-minute drive from the Land of Very Little Internet, aka Ca de Ferrari Sr.). This institute has daily visiting “hours” of forty-five minutes, from 2:00 to 2:45. In addition, only two visitors at a time are permitted. They police this very carefully, and no purses or cell phones are allowed to be brought in. I tell you all this in the interest of foreshadowing, which is a clever literary device by which the writer imparts information to the reader that will be important later, but which they hardly notice at the time.*
Anyway. I can see that this is going to get long. Indeed, I’ve just gone back and added the “TL:DR” piece at the beginning. Isn’t it interesting to watch the writer’s process at work? No? Okay, then, I’ll just get on with it.
So I spent a lot of Friday focused on the anthology release, and packing, and watering things, and feeding the fish, and getting ready to go. And Mark spent a lot of time scrambling to get his own work done, plus talking to relatives about this party for Allison, and to his mother, reassuring her that whatever she wanted to do, that would be fine, but we’re coming down either way, and we’ll see her soon.
And we flew to Sacramento and rented a stupid little car and drove to the Land of Very Little Internet and visited with his mother until Very Late, talking and listening and being there. And she did say that she felt like she wanted to go to the party, despite all that was going on–it would be a comfort to see all the relatives.
Saturday morning, we packed up for the three-hour drive to Alameda for the party. Mark very cleverly suggested that we pack for overnight, just in case some kind of breakfast was planned (for all these out-of-towners), or in case folks wanted to visit longer than the scheduled 3-6pm of the party, we could be flexible.
On the drive out of the mountains, Amazing Katie called, with the news that the anthology had hit number three on Amazon’s best-seller list of genre anthologies–behind George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Not bad company to be in!! Okay, it didn’t last all that long, but it was a thrill all the same.
After the three-hour drive, which took closer to four because reasons and traffic, we were in Alameda, and the party. Which was lots of fun, and of course didn’t end at 6. When 7:00 rolled around and Mark was talking to cousins and arranging with local restaurants about Sunday breakfast, I started texting my brother–well, actually, I texted his marvelous girlfriend first, and then him. She was at home, unpacking boxes from their incredibly-recent move in together; he was at the Cal game. “Um,” he said, “I dunno…?” “Come on over!!!” she said. “We’d love to see you! I’ll clear a space to the guest bed!”
So Mark’s mom slept over with relatives in Alameda, and we drove an hour to north Marin County, and had a marvelous visit with my brother and his marvelous girlfriend, and saw their new place, which is also marvelous. (Sorry, adjectives are in short supply this late of an evening, I’ve had to double and triple up.)**
But we had to be on the road by 8am, to make the (planned) 9am breakfast at Applebee’s in Alameda. The restaurant didn’t take reservations, but they’d assured Mark that, even with 15 people, we’d have no trouble getting served at 9am on a Sunday.
And this was where things started getting just unclassifiably weird. We hit every red light between north Marin and south Alameda–I mean, really, EVERY one. There was no traffic–just, EVERY red light, for no apparent reason. And then, on the offramp just as we got to Alameda, we were not rear-ended. And by that I mean: we were stopped at the red light at the end of the offramp, heard squealing brakes, and suddenly a pickup truck was stopped exactly to the right of us: on the shoulder. They had come screaming off the freeway, didn’t stop in time, and (thank god) swerved. We exchanged alarmed (us) and sheepish (them) looks, the light changed, and everyone went on their way.
To breakfast. So 15 people, many of them elderly, converged on Applebee’s at 9am. Only to find that Applebee’s opens at 11am. Now what??@! Mark was, understandably, rather displeased. We could see employees inside the restaurant, and, lo, someone had stuck a piece of cardboard in the door, propping it open even though it was locked. In he went, demanded to talk to a manager, explained the phone call he’d had last night and the 15 (many of them elderly) hungry people standing outside, and emerged with many apologies and gift cards.
Meanwhile, his resourceful lawyer cousin (not Allison the world traveler but Anna, another world traveler) (hey, it’s an Italian family, there are a lot of cousins) figured out a much better place for breakfast, so off we went, and indeed, it was much better. This was the view from the parking lot:
And we had a delightful breakfast, and all too soon it was time to circle the wagons and head out.
Because Mark and his mom and I had to drive two and a half hours to Sacramento to meet this very specific visiting “hour” for Mark’s dad.
So we did, and that all went fine, except for another plethora of red lights and traffic weirdnesses–not too *much* traffic, just…weird traffic. Anyway, we got there, and Mark’s brother had also flown in from Idaho to visit, so we were four people for forty-five minutes of two-person visits (without purses or cell phones), which was awkward and difficult and hard. The whole institution was hard–very rigid, very rule-bound. I mean, I get it, but also, it was sad. It being Sunday, there were LOTS of visitors for people, and all the visits were held in the same small common room…yeah. It was hard. Mark’s dad does not understand why he is there, does not consistently remember even what happened to send him there, and has no grasp of what might help get him out of there. So all there really was to do was to tell him that we love him and we’re trying to help him, but no, he can’t come home with us now, which made him even more confused and sad and angry.
It just basically sucks.
But then the forty-five minutes were up in like a minute, and it was time to drive back to the Land of Very Little Internet, so that we could get the stupid rental car (because, thinking to be comfortable, we’d driven to the Bay Area in Mark’s mom’s car) and turn right back around and drive right back to the Sacramento airport, for our flight back to Portland. So that was another two and a half hours of driving.
But then there was some more driving, because first we tried to find gas for the stupid rental car a few exits before the airport, but we only found a Chevron (which is price-gougey and hateful) and a Shell (which is murderous and hateful) and a Safeway (which is great but had huge lines, because their prices were much better), so we gave up and went to the airport, where there was an Arco (which is great) but they were all shut down, which wasn’t apparent at first, because there were many people at the pumps, but it turned out that they were simply many angry and confused people, because the whole gas station was all shut down, because they had to do a computer reboot, and maybe it would be twenty minutes, or half an hour, or…? And our flight was soon, so we drove back down to the hateful and price-gougey Chevron, and then back to the airport.
And onto a crowded shuttle, to a crowded airport, to a crowded in-airport tram, to a VERY crowded security line, which took FOREVER, nearly dashing my hopes for a restorative glass of wine in the gate area.
And after I went through the hold-your-arms-over-your-head scanner, a large female TSA agent pulled me aside for… well, she couldn’t even explain it. “Turn around and look at your avatar,” she said.*** I turned around, and saw a screen with a silhouette of a female body on it, with a bright square mark on the breast area.
“I need to inspect you there,” she said. “I will be touching you with the back of my hand.” She was already drawing on blue medical gloves. “Do you want this done in a private room, or out here?”
“Um,” I said, looking around at the very crowded gate area, at Mark already done with his security theater. Thinking about the time ticking away, about growing up swimming naked on the commune, about the fact that I am wearing a sports bra with nothing hidden in it–not even underwire. “Out here is fine.”
She drew the backs of her gloved hands above, below, and between my breasts in a somber, almost ritualistic fashion, not quite meeting my eye.
“Now,” she said, “because I have touched you in a private place, you need to have your hands swabbed.” I stared at her, trying to make any kind of sense out of this statement, as she called for a runner. Another woman came at this call, asked me where my scanned carry-on stuff was (which had been sitting on the belt all this time, thankfully with Mark watching over it), and took me to a machine on that side. She swabbed both of my palms with a piece of cloth, stuck that into a machine. We waited a minute until the machine rendered its verdict: I was clean. “Okay, you’re good,” she said, and I was free to go.
I know you will be relieved to know that there WAS time for a glass of wine before boarding, despite all that.
That is, if you have read this far. 🙂 As I’ve been going along writing this, I’ve become more and more aware of the fact that I am writing this particular entry for myself. But what are journals for? This is a record of my life, and I needed to write this all out. So here it is, all two thousand (and counting) words.
It felt SO GOOD to get home, late as it was. Today has been about trying to get caught up on the jillions of emails, doing freelance work, keeping an eye on the anthology stuff, harvesting delicious tomatoes–OH, and now I am truly a Portlander, I rode my bike in a drenching downpour. I didn’t mean to; there was no rain forecast, so I rode my bike to the gym. My ride home was in a deluge. Oh well, I thought. I just went for a swim. I can get dry again.
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*Oh and now I fear I’ve drawn TOO much attention to the purse thing, and when you get to the actual story and realize it didn’t come to anything, you’ll be all mad.
**And the very FACT of their living together is so marvelous, I cannot even tell you. Seriously, she is GOLDEN.
***I am quoting all her words LITERALLY here, they were so bizarre.