The Rose Thwarts My Foul Mood

Please note the circled area on the rose below. I know it’s hard to see, but it’s a small, grayish area that looks like a bump. This picture was taken the day we transplanted the rose.

Now, please attend to the same area this evening, taken from a different angle.

The previously gray, rather unnoticeable bump has turned the red one would expect from an area just about to leaf. That’s right. This ancient motherfucker is all, “Well, this seems like a nice place to leaf out and see what happens.” Note: If this rose gets one good leaf, that will be on par with what it got last year.

New York

After I got out of grad school, I went to New York to become a publishing industry bigwig. I pretty much failed. On a lot of levels. But most basically at the level of being able to live in New York City. It was too big and too different and I couldn’t find people I liked nor did I have any idea how to find people I liked. Everyone I liked there was just by accident and there just weren’t that many.

Eventually, I went to New Jersey and hid in my aunt’s basement and felt like a failure–like if I’d just been tougher or stuck it out longer or known to move to Brooklyn not Manhattan or whatever–I could have done it, but that I fucked up without even knowing what I was fucking up.

It was a really difficult time in my life. I’ve failed at things I wasn’t very good at. And I’ve failed at things I didn’t give a shit about. But I’d never failed to do something I really, really wanted to do.

But I did.

In Which I Confess about the Zigzag Afghan and Other Things

–It’s pretty boring. Making a zigzag afghan. I was going to make just a baby-sized one, but Christ. Even that is so dull. And you can’t quite not concentrate on it–or at least I can’t–so it can’t give your fingers something to do while you watch tv, because you have to pay attention to your count. But, obviously, it’s not complicated enough to keep my interest. The most fun I had was figuring out how to tell how many initial stitches you need if you don’t have a pattern.

–After all this time, I’m kind of afraid to get back to the Sue and Ben project. I’m afraid I’ll see that it sucks. I’m also afraid that, since I stole from it a little to make a couple of more conventional werewolf stories–“Allendale” and Project X–that it has implications for the Sue and Ben project. And I’m afraid to figure out what. And I feel like a baby for admitting that I’m afraid.

–Sometimes it just seems like a lot of work for something no one is ever going to read. I guess is what I’m saying.

–I’m going to work on a story or two, I guess. Just to be writing something.

–Bah, I’m actually not that down about it. Just have some nagging worries. Like that I suck.

–Or worse, that I’m good but just not good enough.