It was a strange day today. The financing / producing entity here in our state which has had my romantic comedy script for forever has had a lot of internal changes happening; they didn't move forward on my script becuase of those changes. Now, however, they are ready to try to move forward. They have a new theatrical deal in place (which they are supposed to announce in the trades in a couple of weeks) which gives them access to more / bigger money for indie films, plus guaranteed distribution in the US as well as international. That deal also includes Blockbuster. In addition, they have been doing movies of the week (MOW) for several networks, so if they can't get my script done as a theatrical, they're feeling pretty positive that they can get it done as a MOW. For this particular script, I'm going to be okay either way because hey, it will be made. However, I am happy that they want to try to do it as a theatrical first. So I am now printing out lots of copies that I am supposed to send over there tomorrow and the woman I'm working with there wants me to check in with her often. We also talked about how, if this script goes, they would be very open to me bringing in something else and producing that.
I've heard that the Nicholl semi-finalist letters have gone out - someone has reported on having received a notice that they moved up to that semi-finalist status. I, of course, did not get a letter today; while I fully (and I mean that honestly) do not expect that script to advance, I'm still tense. I just sort of want it to be over with. In the 18 years of the Nicholl, I think only 4 comedies have won, and none of them were broad comedy / big commercial action like mine -- they were either more dark / cynical or twisted, which doesn't bode well for mine. Still, it was a good day today with great potential, so I'm just going to be happy and not lament the contest. (Oh, I will probably be very grumpy once I see the letter, so I am stocking up on chocolate.)
Every fall, the LSU students move in by the hordes and everything changes radically around here, particularly for the first couple of weeks. The light traffic we had in this area all summer becomes an insane gridlock, all of the restaurants in the area are filled to the brim and it's insane how quickly food sells out in the grocery store. I mean, I expected things like what happened last year (soup, cheap pasta goods, ramen noodles, etc.), but good grief, they've bought out all of the best cuts of meat and the best produce. It's a little weird. (Am I evil if I say I will be glad when a couple of weeks have gone by and they're all broke and back to eating ramen noodles?) (Yes, I know, evil.)
I think I have been waiting for this moment for years and years. In fact, I'm sure I have. It is such a simple moment, really -- the start of college for the youngest son. The oldest has one year (or so) left (depending on if a key course is offered next spring or not) and he seems pleased with this last year or so of school, feeling the fever of a bigger world to conquer just beyond, and the youngest one started college yesterday, all possibilities before him.
When you've worked so hard with one son to get past learning obstacles, everything about normal high school feels like a deadline, a lead weight against the soul, something that always feels like it's a measurement cut deep into wounds. But Jake started college yesterday, taking a full load, having gotten extremely lucky and gotten a great schedule. He seemed very positive about it when he came in afterward yesterday, and in addition to the course load being something he felt he could handle, the classes weren't so huge that he felt lost. Critical too (to Jake) was that there were a "lot of pretty girls" going to school there, and he grinned mischieviously when he said, "Mom. I have to start working out again." When you see the oldest son worry and worry over what he's going to do with his life, and worry that he may not live up to his potential, and you see that in spite of his worries, he already is... it's good. You know he'll see it, soon enough.
There's a moment you don't think you're ever going to come to as a parent, and even when you're here, you realize it's fleeting, that it's not marked so permanently that you won't move backwards and fowards a few times over it before it feels "real" -- but it's that moment when you realize that they have a lot of possibility before them and they're basically on the right path and there are no specific external deadlines to make us all crazy. They have time to continue to grow up, and at their own pace, and they have the ability to choose things they want to do and try them out, and they can dress and look and be whatever they want. There aren't any reasons for anyone to be locked into anything yet -- it's a world full of hope and promise. I've been a mom long enough to know it will not last (at least, not yet), that there will be problems and obstacles and despair and triumphs, because really, that is life. It's a feeling as if I've been holding my breath for Luke (for 21 years) and Jake (17) and I can exhale. But I savor this moment, this quiet day when things are very very good for both boys and there is this feeling that they will both be okay, no matter what.
You know, we usually have afternoon showers this time of year, pretty much every afternoon. It's a pain, of course, if you're trying to plan anything outside because they're generally so unpredictable, but right now, I'd be happy to suffer a little. Everything's drying up and dying. I just spent two hours watering the front beds because the soaker hoses just were not delivering enough water out there to combat the temperatures. I am now going to go shower because I swear, I think every bug that was out there, all 12billion of them, decided to hitch a ride on my shirt and I feel a serious heebie jeebie fit coming on.
My brother's going to be on Discovery Channel's Monster House... but with a very cool twist.
Typically, Monster House has homeowners who've volunteered their homes for a remodel, and the Monster House people pick a theme (which gets approved by the homeowners) -- then they take one week, house the homeowners in a Coachman RV in front of the house, but where they can't see what's being done, and do the interior house in the theme. You can click on some of the episodes on that web site linked above and see some of the before / afters / descriptions of the houses and the themes.
There are usually five workers picked to do the actual construction, and they get paid a sum (I think the general amount is $1,000) for the week, plus if they make the deadline, they win a bunch of tools.
All of which is kinda fun in a flashy reality show / contest / HGTV sort of way, but this time, there's a very important twist -- this time, the show has been contacted by a charity which gives wishes for kids who are very seriously ill. In this particular case, there is a local boy who is suffering from leukemia, and all he wanted was a fort with a glass roof because his greatest love is to go outside and look through his telescope at the stars... but he can't do it here because of the mosquitos and bug bites because the chemo he's on makes him very susceptible to any type of infection, no matter how small -- even a bug bite -- and he'll be on the chemo for the next four years. His family couldn't build (or afford or maybe just didn't have the know-how) a fort with a glass ceiling.
Well, his mom got the national charity involved and they contacted Monster House, who just came down last week and filmed the build -- a huge fort in the back yard with many multi-levels, trap doors, an interior slide, and a telescope which was donated (along with the computer software to operate it remotely from his "control tower" and a plasma TV to see whatever the telescope is pointed toward... and this is a very impressive telescope). My brother had heard about the tryouts for the show at the last minute and since he happened to be nearby, he went for it. He's got alot of years of construction experience, plus he is super kid-oriented in that he's a fourth degree Master in Tang Soo Do and has his own school and over the years, has taught probably thousands of kids. He was picked for the build (which meant giving up going to the national Tang Soo Do Karate championships where he's the defending champion from last year, but in his heart, it was no contest).
The build went well -- they met the deadline (so the guys and one woman doing the build got nice prizes), but in this case, it was awesome seeing the family and the boy's response.
His episode airs November 22nd on the Discovery Channel. (His only regret / concern was that in one particular part of the build, the guy who designed the whole impressive thing -- and wow, it is pretty stunning, I promise -- measured where some concrete had to be poured, marked the area with paint and then left when the cameras turned on. Mike, my brother, thought it wasn't in the right place, and he adjusted it a little, but not having the plans, he didn't want to adjust too much... but it turned out that it was definitely in the wrong spot and they ended up having to break out the concrete and move it. It's going to look on camera like it was his fault for not putting it in the right place, but he was following the off camera instructions. I hope they don't edit it to make him look at fault, because he's talented and very cool, and there were a lot of alpha males on the set... I could see the show people manipulating something like that just to create conflict and "good" TV.)
Anyway, y'all watch it -- he's the one in the Zachary Karate t-shirts. (I'll post a reminder when it's closer.)
is when you see someone like Trump hype a board game based on his TV show, "The Apprentice" the same month his businesses announced plans to file Chapter 11 and "form a new corporate structure where Trump surrenders much of his control."
Hee.
So, the kids (i.e., big grown men I refuse to acknowledge could be the age of a child I actually gave birth to, hence "kids") came home from the job in New Mexico... with a puppy. They each contributed money to the purchase of one of the puppies anyway, in spite of Carl's story (see "puppy lust" below), but its home is going to be with one of the other boys.
When they got out of the car, this most adorable (and I will warrant, definitely not a full breed) little puppy bounded out, so playful and happy to see everyone. He was so cute, as puppies are, and I can see why the boys just couldn't resist. In spite of my extreme doubts, they have already housebroken it (I cannot believe that, but they assure me it's true) and they are playing with it constantly, handling it and not allowing it to attack, even playfully. They are going to get obedience lessons from one of the best trainers in the state (I am going to make sure of that) and they're also going to make sure while it still weighs five pounds, they get information from the trainer as to how to acclimate the dog around small kids, on the off chance that he comes in contact with a child who runs toward it, arms waving, excited.
On the lighter side, the puppy was very much afraid of our cat, who did absolutely nothing but sniff it a little. My cat, who is so extremely docile, will occasionally bristle up when an unknown dog comes around. Even puppies. This time, she just sort of blinked at him and he started scooting backward like she'd hissed and threatened to have him for lunch. Here's hoping he always has that attitude.
I felt like such a credit card fraud virgin today. I looked online at our AmEx bill, which I do with a freakish frequency. We've never before had anyone try to charge anything to a credit card, though I know friends with personal horror stories, but I do like to watch that balance. So, looking online, blad-de-blah, and suddenly spy a charge to Dell Computers. A fairly large charge, just five days ago, and it was on Carl's card (we're on the same account, different card numbers, and yes, he definitely wants me looking at everything, he hasn't paid a single bill or opened a single piece of mail in 22 years by his own choice)... so anyway, I call him to make sure he hadn't just bought something and forgotten to tell me and nope, he had not. So I call AmEx, who gives me a Dell number, and I went through a series of people until someone finally transferred me to the credit card fraud department (which I had asked for in the first place), and I explained to them what I was questioning. The nice guy helping me looked it up and said the computer we ordered was on its way... to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Monica M----.
Monica M---- honey? If that's your true name, which I doubt. You are so not getting a computer today or tomorrow. You will probably be calling and bitching about it not being delivered, and I really really hope you do, because I think they are going to try to "re-deliver it" courtesy of the Ft. Lauderdale police.
I called AmEx back, let them know there was definitely credit card fraud and which charges (Omaha Steaks from Nebraska!) weren't ours and they've flagged them and they're not going to pay them, so we won't be harmed. In addition, I cancelled the cards and new ones are on their way, so hopefully, that will be the end to that one.
Still, it makes me wonder just how that person got the credit card number. Since it's Carl's number, he never uses it online and he never calls it in to anyone -- he strictly uses it at places of business, which means someone got it when they waited on him somewhere. Then gave it to someone in Florida. Grrr.
Luckily I caught them in progress before too much damage was done (just under $2,000), but now I'm going to go get our credit reports to make sure nothing else funky is going on.
Funky, freaky world. (Is it weird that I'm sort of disappointed that M*nica the fraud didn't at least go for the flat screen for the computer? I mean, geeze. She'd already popped over the $500 felonly limit, why stop? Of course, she may have been trying to see what the spending limit was and if anyone would notice that big of a single charge.)
I have been writing. (I know, I know, no fainting.)
(I also spent four days in severe pain from the headache from hell, but since I get them often enough to know what to expect, when it's gone, it's wonderful! Which it is, right now. Gone.)
Also, the weather here? Stunning. I cannot remember ever in my entire life having cool days in August in South Louisiana. Very low humidity, a cool breeze, and reasonable temperatures which just felt glorious. I am very very sorry Florida suffered with a hurricane -- the (apparent) cold front we're having here reportedly pushed all the way to the Gulf, keeping it from turning this direction. Having gone through the hell of Andrew as well (it hit us after it crossed Florida and gained strength again) and having so many trees down, it looked like God had played pixie sticks everywhere surrounding our house.
Anyway, so the writing. Going well.
(Okay, for you non writers, lemme s'plain: going well means I'm not necessarily ready to find the nearest river and drown myself and that maybe, just possibly, it's not 100% complete dreck and I don't think I will be completely humiliated if someone actually glanced at it. Today. By tomorrow, I will probably be looking for that river, because I will have had time to realize it really sucks.)
There was this moment the other night which happened, and every time it happens, I am somehow lulled into a wonderful state of denial where I think everything is OK and PEACEFUL and will always stay that way... and that moment involved having actual quiet. No phones, no rush here or there, no crazy-making deadlines, no evil villains hovering over my shoulder, just quiet. And in those moments, I bask and relax and then I say to myself, "Wow. I think it's going to be calm from now on."
Cue: insanity.
Because it never manages to actually be calm, and I'm starting to wonder if I heard about this mythical "calm" in some sort of brainwashing program I must've paid for somewhere along the line, because I can't say that I've actually had calm yet. It is the holy grail, the lotto, and it's always just out of my reach, always won by someone somewhere in Iowa, like they have things to be riled up about in Iowa.
So. Brief moment of quiet, and then my youngest son calls with one of those phone calls that you don't see coming, but makes you realize that this is only the very tip of the not-calm volacano of "Things Your Child Can Do To Make You Nuts."
Jake, (who was out of town with his dad on a construction project), called and said, "Hey Mom! Guess what?"
In the history of language, somewhere there should be a footnote of sentences that should shoot fear into your very soul. They are, in no specific order:
"Here's the red phone, Mr. President."
"Well how are you supposed to pronounce 'nuclear'?"
"I'm afraid there's a tiny bit more damage than we expected when we gave you that estimate."
and
"Hey Mom! Guess what?"
Nothing good ever follows any of those sentences, and I gripped the phone with dread.
"What?" I say, secretly wondering if I have time to get a passport.
"You know how I always wanted a puppy?"
"What always? You already have a dog."
"But I always wanted a puppy. One of my own."
"This is your dog here. She's slept in your room from the time we had her."
"Mom. I've always wanted a real dog. DeeOhGee isn't really a real dog."
"What is she, a duck?"
"She doesn't bark. And she's scared of everything. I want a real dog." (She's a rescue, and the first time she barked was a year after we'd had her, and she scared herself so badly, she ran and hid under my bed.)
"What do you mean 'real'?" (I should have known better than to ask this.)
"A pit bull. And mom! Guess what! They have some pit bull puppies for sale right here -- and they're only $50!" (My blood pressure hit six billion over 23,786, thankyouverymuch.)
"No. No way, we are not getting a puppy. Especially not a puppy that will grow up into something that will eat the cat, possibly the other dog and god knows what else."
"But it's only $50!!! And I'll take care of him! I promise!"
"Exactly when will you do that? You are never home."
"I'll stay home now! Because I'll be taking care of my puppy!"
"Riiiiiggggggggght. And what about college?"
"Oh, I'll only be gone four hours a day! And I'll be home all the rest of the time."
"You have four one-hour classes, a one hour break in between and a half hour drive to and back. That's six hours."
"Yeah, but I'm off Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I'll be home all day then."
"So I'll just tell the brand new puppy that he'll have to wait until you're home on Tuesdays and Thursdays to pee. And he'll have to hold it all weekend while you're hanging with all of your friends. I'm sure that'll work great."
"You just don't want me to have a puppy."
"That's pretty much what the word 'no' meant, last time I checked."
"But it's only $50! And I'll be moving out the next semester, so then I can take him with me to the apartment."
"Fine. When you move out, you can buy a puppy."
"But then I'll be home and do you know what they cost there? $650. And this is the only kind of puppy I've ever wanted. Ever."
"So, save up. Because we're not getting a puppy."
"What if I get him and bring him home and then if you really don't like him, I could sell him to somebody there for $650. And I'll make $600!"
"How much you wanna bet me he doesn't have papers?"
"Papers?"
A few minutes later, I got off the phone and called his dad, who assured me that he would go out to the Wal-Mart, where apparently these adorable-but-cheap puppies were being sold by someone in the parking lot. He assured me that when he got through with them, I would no longer be the bitch that ate all of happiness. When he got back to the hotel, he called me, laughing, saying everything was fine and Jake was cool with not getting the puppy. I asked him how on earth he had performed this miracle, and he related this story.
He said, "I stood out in the parking lot, talking with a lot of other parents who were also being shanghaied by their kids and we started discussing how much work puppies really were. And then I said to Jake, 'You want to know what it's like to have a puppy? I'll tell you. First, you walk into that Wal-Mart and go straight for the little restaurant and get you a 44oz drink and drink it all down in one standing. Then you hunt out the cutest girl to wait on you and you look at her with your adorable eyes and ask her if she'll take you to the hardware section, and when you get there, you ask her to wait for you, while you roam around, clueless, and then you finally pick up a claw hammer. Then you go back out, looking all cute and everything, and ask her to take you to the furniture department, and when you get there, you ask her to wait. Then you walk around and around the furniture, sniffing it, and when she gets distracted by another customer walking by or the phone or some announcement and she has her back turned, you start beating the crap out of the nearest piece of furniture, splintering and shredding it. When she turns around, shocked and horrified, you keeping smacking it a couple of more times until she shouts at you, then you drop the hammer and try to look as innocent as possible, like it couldn't possibly have been you to upset her so much, and when she shouts at you again, that big drink will kick in right about that moment and you just start peeing right there, half on the furniture, half on the floor, and then you look up at her and bat your eyelashes and ask her for a date." That, I told him, is what it's like to have a puppy every day until they get old enough to really start training, and even then, it's still like that until they get the hang of that training, and if you can't be consistent with their training? It's like that for a lot longer. And all of the other parents were laughing and nodding, and even the woman trying to sell the dogs was laughing and nodding and Jake decided that maybe he better wait."
I really love my husband.
(But that calm thing? Ain't ever gonna happen. I demand a refund.)
Anytime you have a dream that includes both Zeus and Bob Newhart, you have probably gone round the bend.
(I'm not sure what's scarier... that I had that dream or that in dream logic, it made perfect sense for Bob Newhart to be one of the gods.)
I was trying to do a good thing. It has backfired. I feel like I'm going to have to kick a three-legged puppy. I am going to hell.
This was a long, rambling entry about how someone asked me to read something, how he's in a wheelchair, suffering from cerebral palsy, unable to communicate verbally and how he wrote to ask if I would read his "novel"... and how badly written it turned out to be. (Let me 'splain. No, too much. Let me sum up.)
We communicate through e-mail, but he does show up at my door with notes taped to him. (I'm not sure who does the notes or the taping.) I thought my advice (in e-mail) (very carefully worded to not knock him down, to be encouraging without lying outright and saying it was good when it was dreadful) and all of the links I provided him for him to keep learning the craft if he wanted to apply himself would work. But it hasn't. He's shown back up at my house (two hours later) asking me to read it again, since he has now "finished" it -- even after I wrote him a second time, going into more detail about how much work he had to do, why so many of us writers have heard that sort of thing, how we all hate having to keep working to polish, to learn, to rewrite, to polish some more... he's back. I went to the trouble to explain how hard the business is, how cruel, how tough to break in, and how to break in, once he's done the work. I'm going to have to very firmly stop him, because he's not doing the research I gave him, he keeps showing up here, and I have scads of work to do. It always startles the crap out of me when he just shows up at the back door (because he's in a wheelchair and can't ring the doorbell, so he just waits by the living room window until I can see him.)
I feel evil, though. Like I'm kicking a blind, three-legged puppy for pure meanness. I hate this.
So. We're rocking along with the construction business going pretty well. The partner-for-the-potential national business thingie that I discussed (back in May, I think) had not recovered as well from his open-heart surgery as he had expected, so in my mind, that pretty much wiped out the potential for this new business. He had been doing better, but then took a turn for the worse, and the last thing I wanted to be was someone whose new business stressed him out and harmed him. Which is what we told him, and as far as we were concerned, that was that.
Well. He's called and it turns out that the company which had been doing all of the work -- the one we were hoping just to have the ability to compete with -- has been terminated by the national company they were doing all of the work for. They have been ticking off the customers, apparently, and being greedy from what we could see, trying to get a whole lot more in the way of "maintenance" contracts from the customers than the customers wanted. Among other problems. So the national company -- who knew about our interest earlier, and with whom our parnter has a lot of ties -- called our partner and told him about terminating the other company and asked him if we were still interested in doing this. He said yes. He's now gone into deep research mode (meaning, attorneys have been hired) and there is much looking and discussion about purchasing the other company outright (since they will no longer have the work, they will go under and lose everything or have to sell it off piecemeal, so this is a win-win situation... well, win-win in as much as it wasn't us who put them under.)
We've already talked about what it is that we would do differently than what they had been doing before in order to remedy the problems. I'm assuming none of this will happen super fast -- they have been given a 90 day termination notice, so it'll probably happen before that -- and then we'll have a business to run. A national business. 48 continugous states and some stuff in Canada and some in Mexico.
I am a little freaked out. I'm not afraid of the actual business -- I know that one. I understand it probably a lot better than the people running it, because I've been dealing with their customers (for other types of stuff) for at least twenty years now. But having that much responsibility? Whoa.
Of course, none of this has happened. It could all fall apart. It could all change tomorrow. So I'm just watching and waiting. And writing, because it might be a bit busy around here later.
I have been a little crazy busy this weekend with family and work stuff, but am popping up just to gross you out with a link to this story.