Day in the Life of an Idiot

 A little context: a month or so ago, I decided to check in on my ancient, but still functional, Hotmail account. I would get rid of it entirely, but back in the Late Jurassic I printed my email in the author's bio portion in Archangel Protocol (and all of the subsequent AngeLINK books.) Every so often, I still get fan mail to that address.

It turns out that my webpage (until a month ago!) also directed people to that old address. (Yes, it has now been fixed to send inquiries to my gmail account.)  I found this out, of course, because buried under all the spam was a email from a former teen student of mine, asking if I might be interested in coming to speak to Beloit College's writers' club. They meet on Saturday evenings at 5 pm Central and I could come in person or via Zoom... and there would be a stipend.

A rather generous stipend.

As has been discussed.

I knew this student was in my teen class, because she mentioned it by name. "More Than the Zombie Apocalypse." I only ever use that title for my teen classes. I've never changed the title either, because I've discovered something YA authors have long known: teens talk to each other and recommend things to each other. So, that was kind of a little ego boost, particularly after the disaster which shall not be named over the summer. SOME of my teen students still remember me years later. Ha! Loft! SEE!

At any rate, there was the usual back and forth and it was decided that I would speak via Zoom on May 22, last Saturday. Despite my panicking, the potential funeral, and the rest, it went great. I did take people's advice and put together an actual PowerPoint Presentation. I feel a little silly about this, but later, when I finally saw the contract (more on that in a second) I'm glad I did. The contract stipulated a "workshop" and there's something about a PowerPoint Presentation that feels more workshop-like than me babbling incoherently for an hour and a half. 

I showed up ten minutes early, like you do, and chatted with the half dozen workshop members who'd already arrived. I thought, "Oh, this is a nice small group, maybe I can ditch the presentation and..." but, at the clock hit 5 pm, window after window after window started popping up and I was like, "Oh. Oh, DAMN." 

Not, mind you, in a bad way, but more of a "Wow, okay, they did some publicity. I'm actually going to have to PERFORM."

And so I did.

I mean, I still always feel like I am a dancing monkey, babbling like an idiot, and/or punch drunk while doing these things, but people seemed genuinely appreciative and asked good follow-up questions. So, it seems as though all is well. In fact, I heard from one the of attendees a few days later because I offered that I could answer further questions via email and it seems as though I was generally a hit. 

SO YAY.

So about that generous payment I'd been all worried about. Well, I had literally heard nothing from their finance office despite one email from someone saying "I'm connecting you with ____." Well, ____ never said boo after that. In fact, by Friday (the day before) I was kind of starting to get worried that they'd baulked at the amount they'd agreed to pay me. I did one subtle, "So... is there anything you NEED from me before my workshop tomorrow?" query that seemed to not have the desired affect, so I went with the less subtle on Sunday, the day after the event, which was, "Say, I haven't heard a peep from your financial department, should I have??" 

Forms were belatedly sent, one of which I actually have MAIL back, but whatever. The payment is being processed, your check is in the mail, yada yada.

Oh, and about the funeral that we chose not to attend.... Shawn's brother said it was the best decision we have ever made. He and his wife considered bailing in the middle of the funeral service because it was so fire and brimstone and sin, sin, SIN in a way that made his fairly centrist to lightly conservative head explode. Shawn has two brothers. One old leftie and one kind of very middle of America (which is decently to the right, as you all know). This was the middle one? And, so if he was having conniption fits, the service was BAD. 

I can only imagine it would have been worse if ACTUAL sinning lesbians had been in the family pews.

 Tuesday is a coffee day, so I am coming to you fully espresso'd. Wooo.

One of the reasons we chose Tuesday is because when Mason was much younger and we were all doing that thing where we pile into the car every morning at some ungodly hour, drop Shawn off at work, and then take Mason to school, we decided that Tuesdays are actually stealth Mondays, and sometimes worse because you're kind of expecting Mondays to suck?  To mitigate the surprise suckage of Tuesdays, we started stopping for bagels on Tuesday morning. Of course, ironically, this often made Tuesday even more frantic, because we'd have to get up even earlier to accommodate this stop (important point of information, Mason's school had a start time of 7:20 AM.)  Despite this hassle, we doggedly continued the tradition and do so even now that school is over.  I suspect Shawn and I will keep this up long after Mason is gone off to college.

Today has been posited as a road trip day. Mason is not yet awake, but when he gets up, we'll decide if he's still up for it. In the meantime, I have made a list of state parks (and other attractions) within two hours of home (St. Paul, MN.) We could go further, since Shawn is home and so the only restrictions on our time is park closing time, but I have no idea if what Mason wants is the time on the road or the destination.  We'll see. If we go, I'll either post a second journal tonight with pictures or tomorrow.

Tomorrow is going to be busy because I have a critique client that I had to reschedule at 1:45 pm and a funeral at 3 pm over at the band shelter at Lake Harriet. I really wish I still lived on Girard. I could have walked!  But, as it is, I'll have to zip across town and then try to find parking. 

There have been a lot of funerals lately. Oddly, neither this one, nor the previous one (Saturday) were COVID related. Cancer took both of my friends--one of whom was only a year older than me. (FUCK CANCER.)  ( Read more... CW: death and funerals )

My friend had a giveaway table and I was instantly drawn to the postcards. As many of you know, I've been sending out postcards during the pandemic, including having started to reconnect with this friend through letters and such. That felt exactly right. So, I brought them home.


Image: An array of all sorts of colorful postcards.

I suppose all this is rather morbid? I blame being a Scorpio for my inability to be circumspect about death and dying. I have placed all the talk about the funeral under a cut, probably unnecessarily? But, because I have no idea, I'd rather err on the side of caution. 

ANYWAY.

I may poke Mason to see if he's up for a hike or not today. At least it doesn't feel like it should be too hot. 

Despite the rain, I decided to go down for the funeral. I left early this morning and mostly encountered fog and drizzle, though there were a few spots with some heavy driving rain (which Shawn told me a while ago, y'all had in the Twin Cities.) I waffled about the weather for days, and made a last minute decision to come down here because when I drove off to get my coffee in the morning, I started thinking about Ella and about why people have funerals and why people go to them.

I realized that my great-aunt Clara would most certainly make it to her Catholic heaven whether or not I showed up.. But that's not why people gather at gravesides. We gather to hold the hands of the *living.*

So that's why I went.

But I still find Roman Catholic funerals sort of strange. There's a lot that's familiar to me from having been a kind of honorary Catholic growing up (my family was all Unitarians, but the extended family is/was Catholic.) Some of it is familiar, too, because it's so ridiculously pagan. The Christmas tree, the poinsettas... their symbols, sure, but totally mine, as well. A white stag in the stained glass looked to me a lot like my own Horned God. The walking around the casket, clockwise, with incense.... I got that and respected it. The talk of Wisdom as a woman who waits for you when you seek for her in your own garden (Solomon 6:12-16), that sounded to me exactly like the words in the Charge of the Goddess where She reminds us that we can't find Her unless we know ourselves first.

But then there's the stuff that completely jars, like the parable for the ten virgins (Mathew 25:1-13). I ended up having to look it up afterwards in Wikipedia with my dad back at the hotel room, because out of context is sounds like God is a big, fat meanie.

Do you know it? The basic story is about five wise virgins and five fooolish virgins. These ten virgins are waiting outside to go into a wedding. The wise virgins brought enough oil to last the night, and the foolish ones didn't. The foolish ones ask to share, and the wise ones say no, go get your own in the market. They take off and come back only to find out the wedding started and the doors locked. When they beg to go in, the bridegroom (God) tells them, "I don't know you." Door in face. And the story ends. It sounds like the foolish virgins weren't so much foolish as screwed around with and then God is all "talk to the hand."

Out of context the story totally sounded like the priest is looking out at all the non-believers saying "sorry, dude, you aren't invited to the party." Or that God is so picky about who he lets into heavan that you can't even make a mistake with a bit of oil, and try to fix it. He won't look at you, all merciful, and say, "Hey, you're late, but I see you tried to get more oil, so I'll forgive you and you can come in." Nope, he'll say, "I don't KNOW you."

Harsh.

But Wikipedia had some good bits about how to interpret it, which the priest did not discuss in his sermon. Wikipedia suggests that this story was meant as an admonishment to clergy who thought they were "virtuous" and didn't need to do anything more to get into heaven. So you have to do more than just talk the talk. Nicer message. Wish I'd heard that at the funeral. Instead, the story just sort of hung there and then the sermon was about how prepared for death my great-aunt was. Literally. Not, like, how she lived well, but how she had stuff ready.

Weird.

Anyway, we got to sing songs and I held the hands of the living. It was what it was supposed to be.