Romily Bernard's Blog, page 7

The One About the Holidays

I just love the holidays. There’s all the food and family and garlands you can hang yourself with. I was told recently that my deeply embedded hatred for Christmas music stems from not having grown up with proper holiday traditions. To that end, I say:

Did so grow up with proper holiday traditions
And Rudolph still sucks

Anyway, I know several families that go out shopping together on Black Friday, which is supposed to be one of their traditions. My family would rather dig our eyes out with spoons. Black Friday is not us, but we do have Estate Sales. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s a lot like a Black Friday Sale. Everyone lines up. Everyone waits in the cold. Everyone bum-rushes the door so they can check out the stuff inside. In this case, a dead person’s antiques.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds gruesome, but it’s not that much different from Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve. Some of those old ladies fighting over Snuggies really are dead. They just don’t know it yet.

Anyway, my sister and I went with my mom for years. In fact, I’m reasonably certain that’s why she had us in the first place. Antique dealers who would stab another adult for turn of the century Wedgewood china think twice about shiving a kid. Well, they think about it briefly and that’s when Merrill and I would strike, smacking our hands or feet down on whatever had caught our mom’s eye. Looking back, it was kind of like a musty version of Twister.

You see the deal is as long as the item is in your hands, it’s yours. But the minute you put it down to look at something else/rub feeling back into your frozen fingers/wave to your mother for help, it’s fair game. You had to be aggressive. You could not show fear. And you could never, ever believe the lady eyeballing your mother’s stash of vintage linens really had a puppy that wanted to meet you.

We brought home some interesting stuff. There were the unused saddles, the floppy-eared rabbit, the 18th century French tapestry…there was also a gold-filigreed mummy lamp from the 1920s.

Oh, yes, I hear you. You’re asking who would want a mummy lamp that opens up to reveal the sexy, half-naked lady mummy inside.

The better question is who wouldn’t?

By the time I was ten, I could correctly identify different variations on Depression glass and Royal Dalton teacups.

Which was really useful stuff. ‘Cause, you know, that’s what normal kids discuss at the elementary school lunch table.

Yeah, right.

Anywho. What didn’t work with my classmates did end up working with all the, um, gentlemen working up at my mom’s Buckhead antiques shop. We got on brilliantly. Mostly, I think they liked me because I could correctly use “going to have the vapors” in a sentence and was willing to retrieve fallen nail polish bottles.

‘Cause picking stuff up off the floor is a bitch when your nails aren’t dry.

It was great. I used to sit at the front counter and listen to the guys bicker. I was seventeen before I realized most people do not expect to see a six-foot, forty-year-old man wearing a gold lamé evening gown, but, in his defense, it was Christmastime…and he was rocking it.

So, however you celebrate your holidays, I hope you enjoy them.

The One About Project Horses

Maybe it’s because ASHES has been sitting on an agent’s desk without comment for the better part of two months, but everything is starting to parallel the writing process for me. Can’t get my dishwasher to work? Neither did my last hero. Husband recently set himself on fire? Yeah, well, who hasn’t envisioned torching an entire manuscript? Incapable selling my latest project horse? Well, that comparison isn’t much of a stretch. Except it kind of is because we’re talking about Lucero here.

Or Lucifer as we are prone to calling him when his owner is out of earshot.

Anyway, it’s a gorgeous Saturday afternoon and Andrew is using one half-finished cigarette to light another. “Now listen to me,” he announces. “This is going to go great. Lucifer has as much jump as he does stupid. This will work in our favor…possibly.”

The comment makes me pause as I tighten Lucero’s girth. Andrew is especially evocative when nervous and half in the bag and most people would object, but we’ve known each other for so long I only hear the doubt in his determination.

But I nod anyway. Partially because there really isn’t anything else to say and partially because…no, there really isn’t anymore. That’s it. I’m actually pretty nervous myself. It isn’t that Lucero is evil, but he is a problem horse. High-strung and opinionated, he kicks like the storied mule and missed my head by inches last week during a particularly expressive temper tantrum.

That being said, I like him. Very much. But it remains to see if the waiting couple will. The waiting couple whose checkbook has the ability to put another financial wall between Andrew and a retirement spent eating Fancy Feast.

“Okay.” Andrew squares up his shoulders. “I’ve got this. Just let me do the talking, okay?”

Like, duh. Mine is not a personality that holds up well under scrutiny. I am perpetually one over-caffeinated blurt away from offending someone. This works because he always does the talking.

So I hang back to adjust Lucero’s leg protection and Andrew strides out of the barn with a grin suspended by strings. I recognize the look. Used it at my last editor appointment actually. It’s the only shield you have when you’re about to present something you’ve made for someone else’s approval.

But for all of our worries, Lucero did well. He trotted and jumped and cantered and made it all look effortless. Except for the corner where he did, in fact, buck, but Andrew and I smiled it away. The couple passed anyway though and disappointment teethes on both of us as we walk our problem child back to the barn.

Their excuse was that Lucero “just wasn’t what they were looking for.” Put that on a form letter and any writer will recognize it. The implication is that there’s nothing wrong with Lucero. He’s quite nice. He might even be lovely, but he still isn’t right. There is something fundamentally lacking in him.

Writing can be the same way. You can be lovely and still not right. You can do all the revisions in the world and still not be what they want because our fundamentals, our bones, our selves just aren’t “what they were looking for” and that is what scares me the most.

We cannot change who we are and we certainly cannot change who we are on the page. The words can shift and morph, but the bones stay put. And what if that isn’t good enough? What if it will never be good enough?

But we soldier on if only because the alternative is to give up. After all, I have that new idea that just won’t leave me alone and Lucero’s younger brother is coming up for training. His name is Soleil, but his groom calls him Satan.

The One About OCD

It must be that time of year again. The kids are back in school, the summer light is smudging into orange, and my OCD is on overdrive. There are some benefits I guess. I get plenty of steps in when I hike across the house to touch the side door locks for the fifth time.

In that way, it’s great exercise and prevents me from cheating with my pedometer by beating it against the tabletop until I get my 7000 steps for the day.

Yes, you read that right. Apparently, the only thing I hate more than The Jersey Shore is not hitting my pedometer goal for the day. You would think, being OCD, cheating would bother me.

You would think wrong.

Anyway, after years of therapy and better living through chemistry, I can now say the words: “You are not (entirely) crazy. Your OCD is only acting up because you’re stressed and your subconscious is having flashbacks to school years spent getting stuffed into garbage cans.” But it doesn’t really matter what I say because I can’t eat the middle of my sandwiches.

Again.

Sometimes, we’re flying so high I can feel my teeth itch and my hair breathe. Other times, it’s an exhausting passenger living inside my skin, hijacking the controls: Touch this. Oh, God, don’t touch that. Don’t touch that either. Oh, but do touch that! Yeah, touch it again. And again. And—

You get the point.

I guess I should be grateful repeating certain actions is really the farthest my OCD goes. I don’t feel the need to press my nose to things or see green germs running up and down people like I’m living in my own personal version of The Matrix. My crazy is relatively easy to dress in drag and hide. And, even though there are days when forcing yourself to be normal kinda feels like you’re bleeding to death, it’s certainly safer than wearing your coat of many creepy colors.

It’s the ones who wear their crazy nakedly—either because they don’t care or don’t know—that amaze me. There’s a girl out at my barn who’s like that and, for the sake of this blog, we’ll call her J.

J is her own little person. Unlike me, she does not fake any part of herself. She’s the same with everyone and has a sort of genuine cluelessness that lends her confidence and cushioning from other people’s frustrations with her.

Or, at least, I thought so until she came sobbing to me in the barn parking lot and told me her dad was dying. The woman’s grief was bottomless, utterly raw. She was crying in that way where your sobs threaten to shiver you loose from your bones. I didn’t know what to say. And, really, what could I?

J’s dad is the one person who understands her and sees her as she was meant to be seen, as she wants to be seen. With him, she’s not weird. She’s just herself. Without him, the girl she is vanishes while the girl everyone else sees and ignores lives on. And though J may be crazy, she’s lucid enough to realize the terrible loss of this, how the self she operates in this world will be irrevocably diminished without him.  Because, wherever he goes, so does her acceptance. It will never be the same again.

In that light, there’s no comfort that can be offered. There aren’t enough Hallmark cards in the world to heal this. God knows I had nothing to offer. So we sat in the driveway until she was ready to go home. It took almost an hour and I never did think of something worthwhile to say…except maybe this: we spend so much time trying to fake it, so much time pretending we belong on the inside with all the sane people that maybe we’d be better off letting ourselves rest on the outside.

Seems like quite a few of us live there anyway.

The One with the Self-Help Book

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I think my coworkers are trying to domesticate me. It would make sense. I hit three months on Monday. The honeymoon period is over. My tendency to blow dry my hair via my car’s heater turned to full blast has gone from charming to…well, let’s be honest, it was never charming, but it did get the job done.

Still, there’s nothing quite like looking over to see your boss (perfectly groomed at 6:15 in the morning, cruising in her immaculate BMW) while you’re driving with your knees, draped over your dash, your 1997 Toyota belching black smoke to let you know you are not and never will be management material. Her expression was priceless. Really. It was such a perfect blend of horror and disbelief. Haven’t seen anything quite like it since I told my parents I wanted to be a writer. It’s good to know I still have it in me.

But, as usual, I digress. Back to my boss and my three-month review and how everything’s fine except for my tendency to wear the same thing over and over. I think she suspects I live out of my laundry basket…and she would be right.

My boss: “I just want you to think about your future.”

Me: “…”

My boss: “I want you to think about being…more polished.”

More polished. Right. She wouldn’t be saying that if she’d ever seen me try to walk in heels. Boy Genius says it’s like watching a hooker with a broken toe. But I’m reasonably certain these are not sentiments you share with your superior so I smiled instead and ended up leaving her office with the name of a Bloomingdale’s personal shopper and a copy of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I forget what I did with the business card, but I was excited about the book. No, really, I was. Being American, I am naturally interested in self-help books. Anything that promises to reduce the size of my ass or ADD is like a dog whistle to me. And, true to form, 7 Habits had a lot of good stuff in it. I could actually feel myself transforming into the employee my company wishes they had instead of me. I was more optimistic, more smiley, maybe even less prone to growling at people because, by God, now I was going to be more effective.

It lasted a whole eighteen hours. I was on my way down to the gym when two gigantic tools from upper-management crowded me, keeping me from getting to the locker room so they could tease me about my yoga mat.

“You want a real work out?” The first one asked.

I channeled my new effective persona. I am bright. I am professional. I am Suzie-freaking-Sunshine.

“Not from you,” I said. Okay, it was a little surly, but not bad. Improvement, right?

“Sweetheart,” he continued, getting in my space so I have to look straight up to meet his eyes. “Do you know who I am?”

“Why? Have you forgotten?” And I swished off. Because apparently I’m not effective so much as pissy. What the hell, right? We’re all a work in progress.

A Little More About the Dog, a Tiny Accident with the Husband

So I electrocuted Boy Genius again. For anyone keeping score—which apparently BG is—this makes twice. Now I’m sure a smarter writer could do a lot with this, but I’m in a creative cul-de-sac at the moment so I’ll just resort to my usual:

“I told you to cut the power!” Boy Genius is rubbing his arm with enthusiasm and it’s pissing me off. Like he’s the only one who’s been traumatized here. I mean I had to keep Turbo from doing a victory dance around his flailing body. This is not stuff you put on Christmas cards. This isn’t even stuff you admit.

Well. Maybe it’s just stuff you shouldn’t admit. But since when has that ever stopped me? I pass my personal line of decency all the time. It’s how I know I still have one.

“I did cut the power!” I make sure to stand over him, hands on hip, so I look properly aggrieved. I like to think this makes me look a little like Wonder Woman too, but the last time I did it BG sniggered and asked how work was going at the Lollipop Guild.

“It wasn’t labeled right,” I insist. “Maybe we shouldn’t have bought a house whose architectural drawings were probably done in Crayon.”

Boy Genius looks like he might agree with me even though we both know he won’t. He loves the house. He loves how much work it needs. He loves the challenge. Actually, he loves almost any challenge and we won’t reflect on what that says about his grouchy wife.

But back to our burnt-hair scented living room where Boy Genius’s features are waded up in suspicion. “What are you thinking? You have that look.”

“What look?”

“Like you’re on a conference call with the voices in your head.” Turbo comes up to sniff him and he rubs her ears. She licks his cheek and it’s all very sweet—except I’m worried she’s fantasizing about barbecue. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Of course not.” But I have about twenty ways I could dispose of his body if I did. I learned how to burn corpses from Forensic Files. I learned about lye from a murder mystery. My long-suffering critique partner told me she’d dump a body in one of the wide green belts separating the highways in Virginia. I could go on.

No, really, I could.

This is one the unsung perks of living with a writer. We can’t be trusted to have any idea where a screwdriver set is, but, by God, we can remember every character we’ve created since fourth-grade gym class.

Which does Boy Genius absolutely no good.

Anyway, we’re going to fix the lawn mower this weekend. Should be fun, right? We’ve got moving metal blades, a cranky engine, and two weekend warriors. I mean, really, what could go wrong?

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