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mallorys_cameraBitch-bitch-bitch and moan-moan-moan. Nor did my horrible mood ease with the return of The Golden Boy from Thanksgiving vacation in Southern California. Apparently it's always fun-fun-fun at his father's house – games of Twister, family mushroom hunts, jaunts to the museum.
It's no fun here – we're too busy playing Survivor.
Where Reward Challenge for the past three months has consisted of endless iterations of the Max College Application.
The U.C. batch was due yesterday. No big deal – Max is in whatever percentile of the class that guarantees him a U.C. spot, although not necessarily one in the U.C. of his choice. Still, there were three essays to write. And the University of California regents see the application process as an obvious cash cow – an endless parade of hopeful parental units willing to cough up fifty-five bucks per app.
"Get MaryAnne to help you with the essays," I'd told him. "And get your Dad to pay."
So, of course, Monday night I get this email from Max – Mom, you need to go over the U.C. applications and give them your credit card number.
It's always the same choice – do I say no? Do I call Bill and MaryAnne, make idle conversation about the Kerry coven that meets under the full moon in the local butterfly sanctuary before working the dialogue around to, "Oh, and by the way…" Do I just tell Max, "Look, you've got a free ride at a perfectly good university and you're almost eighteen and I feel my maternal instincts receding like the low tide in the last scene of On the Beach?"
Of course, I do none of those things. I review the essays – okay, the kid can't spell ("persue!") But shouldn't he know about spellcheck? I fill in all the blanks – the social security number, the extracurricular activities. That takes two hours. I'm preparing to pony up the AMEX when my eye falls upon the last essay he wrote which is a stirring account of my divorce from his father –
Damn it! He's writing about the cup.
Yes, it's true. I once threw a cup at his father. Max was in the room. He was two years old at the time.
This is the seed memory from which his entire personality and motivation flow. This is how he knows I'm erratic, destructive, lack impulse control and am never to be trusted despite the fact that I have spent the past sixteen years putting his best interests before my own. MaryAnne, the spousal upgrade, once threw an answering machine at his father. How come he doesn't write about the answering machine? Bill is just the type of guy women want to throw heavy objects at. Shouldn't Max take that into consideration? The cup didn't even hit Bill! I have absolutely no hand eye coordination; it shattered against the bookshelf a good five feet away and I was immediately contrite, immediately furious with myself. But the damage was done: I threw the cup! And the cup has haunted my relationship with Max ever since. When he was much younger and more guileless and several hours earlier I had just vetoed a request for a particular Nintendo game, he would sigh.
"What's up, Bug?"
"I was just thinking. About the cup."
Oh, the guilt! Oh, the trips to Target!
And now when he needs me to do endless drudge work that he really ought to be doing himself, the cup reappears! In a college application essay.
I'm sick of the tyranny of the cup!
In other words, the store did over five figures in November which is much better than I thought it would but still not good enough to ease the panic attacks. Though oddly enough, I am sleeping like a baby at night and having really narratively complex, magical dreams. Things could be worse – I could own the teddy-bear shop. Instead it's owned by a nice pair of gay guys, one of whom wandered into my store yesterday and told me pleasantly, "Well, we made a whopping fourteen dollars today!"
"That's great!" I said. "That puts you right up there with the Vietnamese nightsoil gatherer at approximately one buck an hour."
We made about two-fifty. And on weekends we rake in the bucks. Still, it's very obvious that Monterey is absolutely the wrong place for an enterprise like this. If you're selling to the low-end market i.e. a purchase under $20, you really do need volume. And nobody comes to Monterey nine months out of the year. I mean, absolutely nobody.
Also trying to get my mind around the Benji Shake story. Even wondering whether I can write something that doesn't have deadline pressure or a fabulous cash bonus attached to it. Novels are about events and characters; short stories, on the other hand, are miniature existential crises. So what's Benji's existential crisis? "Lucius Pandit lost a boat and a dog in the same week, but the dog mattered more… "
It's no fun here – we're too busy playing Survivor.
Where Reward Challenge for the past three months has consisted of endless iterations of the Max College Application.
The U.C. batch was due yesterday. No big deal – Max is in whatever percentile of the class that guarantees him a U.C. spot, although not necessarily one in the U.C. of his choice. Still, there were three essays to write. And the University of California regents see the application process as an obvious cash cow – an endless parade of hopeful parental units willing to cough up fifty-five bucks per app.
"Get MaryAnne to help you with the essays," I'd told him. "And get your Dad to pay."
So, of course, Monday night I get this email from Max – Mom, you need to go over the U.C. applications and give them your credit card number.
It's always the same choice – do I say no? Do I call Bill and MaryAnne, make idle conversation about the Kerry coven that meets under the full moon in the local butterfly sanctuary before working the dialogue around to, "Oh, and by the way…" Do I just tell Max, "Look, you've got a free ride at a perfectly good university and you're almost eighteen and I feel my maternal instincts receding like the low tide in the last scene of On the Beach?"
Of course, I do none of those things. I review the essays – okay, the kid can't spell ("persue!") But shouldn't he know about spellcheck? I fill in all the blanks – the social security number, the extracurricular activities. That takes two hours. I'm preparing to pony up the AMEX when my eye falls upon the last essay he wrote which is a stirring account of my divorce from his father –
Damn it! He's writing about the cup.
Yes, it's true. I once threw a cup at his father. Max was in the room. He was two years old at the time.
This is the seed memory from which his entire personality and motivation flow. This is how he knows I'm erratic, destructive, lack impulse control and am never to be trusted despite the fact that I have spent the past sixteen years putting his best interests before my own. MaryAnne, the spousal upgrade, once threw an answering machine at his father. How come he doesn't write about the answering machine? Bill is just the type of guy women want to throw heavy objects at. Shouldn't Max take that into consideration? The cup didn't even hit Bill! I have absolutely no hand eye coordination; it shattered against the bookshelf a good five feet away and I was immediately contrite, immediately furious with myself. But the damage was done: I threw the cup! And the cup has haunted my relationship with Max ever since. When he was much younger and more guileless and several hours earlier I had just vetoed a request for a particular Nintendo game, he would sigh.
"What's up, Bug?"
"I was just thinking. About the cup."
Oh, the guilt! Oh, the trips to Target!
And now when he needs me to do endless drudge work that he really ought to be doing himself, the cup reappears! In a college application essay.
I'm sick of the tyranny of the cup!
In other words, the store did over five figures in November which is much better than I thought it would but still not good enough to ease the panic attacks. Though oddly enough, I am sleeping like a baby at night and having really narratively complex, magical dreams. Things could be worse – I could own the teddy-bear shop. Instead it's owned by a nice pair of gay guys, one of whom wandered into my store yesterday and told me pleasantly, "Well, we made a whopping fourteen dollars today!"
"That's great!" I said. "That puts you right up there with the Vietnamese nightsoil gatherer at approximately one buck an hour."
We made about two-fifty. And on weekends we rake in the bucks. Still, it's very obvious that Monterey is absolutely the wrong place for an enterprise like this. If you're selling to the low-end market i.e. a purchase under $20, you really do need volume. And nobody comes to Monterey nine months out of the year. I mean, absolutely nobody.
Also trying to get my mind around the Benji Shake story. Even wondering whether I can write something that doesn't have deadline pressure or a fabulous cash bonus attached to it. Novels are about events and characters; short stories, on the other hand, are miniature existential crises. So what's Benji's existential crisis? "Lucius Pandit lost a boat and a dog in the same week, but the dog mattered more… "
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Nor all your piety nor wit
Date: 2004-12-02 07:08 am (UTC)My family still talks about the Bagel Dog Incident.