six word memoir
Adjunct Whore tagged me for this meme last Friday.
Instructions:
1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4 Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
(Which AW totally didn't do, but that's okay because I subscribe to her on bloglines and never miss a post. Also, I'm not going to tag anyone, because almost everyone has done this except Sfrajett, and I can tag her by walking across the room, so I'm hardly one to talk.)
I immediately knew what I wanted to write:
Because it was snowing last Friday. On March 21st. Snowing so hard our power went out, just as Sfrajett was putting together our new dining room table. (It's getting hard to eat hunched over our old "dining room table," aka the coffee table in front of the television.) At first this seemed kind of fun--new furniture, and a whole day to spend together without the guilt of needing to work because, no electricity equals no computers equals, I couldn't sit down and work on the stupid, worthless, lame book on once beloved, forgotten author who I am wholly sick of writing about/hawking/being invested in.
(Pause for a quick rant: that's basically how my publisher described it when she turned my project down, only her words were "I just don't think we can pull this one off." Even though the two books I've published with her on my forgotten author have, in fact, done well, and got me a great job, and get me recognized at my sub-specialty conference by the very authors who inspired me to do this work in the first place.
Oh well, as my co-editor put it, this publisher seduced and abandoned us and our forgotten subject even as the ink dried on our contracts, so move on, move on. But still, it smarts! Believing in this author is like being Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. I swear, she's right there! I can see her!)
But back to that snowy day in March. Our fantasy of staying in and being cozy and warm in our darkening apartment was ruined by our having opera tickets that night. And not just any opera, the last opera in our series and a Tchaikovsky at that. We'd been excited about this for months. But going out in the snow? To the opera? The problem is that even though we have nose bleed seats up with all the other academics, and aren't expected to do super fancy opera attire, I don't feel comfortable wearing jeans to the opera, and the right now the only warm pants that fit me are my Secret Fit Belly jeans (yeah, that would be jeans with panty hose sewn on the top. Shhhh. It's a super secret!) Because back half a lifetime ago when I started showing it was also winter, and I bought a few pairs of cords with a demi-panel, thinking they'd get me through the winter, if not the entire pregnancy. But it's still winter! And even though they fit my butt and my legs (which is to say, this is not my fault) the demi panel doesn't fit around my no-longer demi belly, and if you let it slide under your belly, like the impossibly cheerful model, it squishes your bladder and makes you sad.
So I had a melt down, because this winter has been too long, and I can't bear the snow, and I don't want to buy more maternity pants, and nothing fits. End of story: I pulled a pair of black pants, their cuffs whitened by salt from the roads because I also don't want to pay to get maternity pants hemmed, from the dry cleaning bag, pulled on a couple of layers of t-shirts and sweaters, and we went, driving through McDonalds on the way, which tasted really, really perfect.
And since it's snowing again today, a week later, and still, nothing fits (though I have nowhere to be, so it doesn't matter) I figured this would be the perfect time for my six word memoir.
Instructions:
1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4 Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
(Which AW totally didn't do, but that's okay because I subscribe to her on bloglines and never miss a post. Also, I'm not going to tag anyone, because almost everyone has done this except Sfrajett, and I can tag her by walking across the room, so I'm hardly one to talk.)
I immediately knew what I wanted to write:
It's still snowing, and nothing fits.
Because it was snowing last Friday. On March 21st. Snowing so hard our power went out, just as Sfrajett was putting together our new dining room table. (It's getting hard to eat hunched over our old "dining room table," aka the coffee table in front of the television.) At first this seemed kind of fun--new furniture, and a whole day to spend together without the guilt of needing to work because, no electricity equals no computers equals, I couldn't sit down and work on the stupid, worthless, lame book on once beloved, forgotten author who I am wholly sick of writing about/hawking/being invested in.
(Pause for a quick rant: that's basically how my publisher described it when she turned my project down, only her words were "I just don't think we can pull this one off." Even though the two books I've published with her on my forgotten author have, in fact, done well, and got me a great job, and get me recognized at my sub-specialty conference by the very authors who inspired me to do this work in the first place.
Oh well, as my co-editor put it, this publisher seduced and abandoned us and our forgotten subject even as the ink dried on our contracts, so move on, move on. But still, it smarts! Believing in this author is like being Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. I swear, she's right there! I can see her!)
But back to that snowy day in March. Our fantasy of staying in and being cozy and warm in our darkening apartment was ruined by our having opera tickets that night. And not just any opera, the last opera in our series and a Tchaikovsky at that. We'd been excited about this for months. But going out in the snow? To the opera? The problem is that even though we have nose bleed seats up with all the other academics, and aren't expected to do super fancy opera attire, I don't feel comfortable wearing jeans to the opera, and the right now the only warm pants that fit me are my Secret Fit Belly jeans (yeah, that would be jeans with panty hose sewn on the top. Shhhh. It's a super secret!) Because back half a lifetime ago when I started showing it was also winter, and I bought a few pairs of cords with a demi-panel, thinking they'd get me through the winter, if not the entire pregnancy. But it's still winter! And even though they fit my butt and my legs (which is to say, this is not my fault) the demi panel doesn't fit around my no-longer demi belly, and if you let it slide under your belly, like the impossibly cheerful model, it squishes your bladder and makes you sad.
So I had a melt down, because this winter has been too long, and I can't bear the snow, and I don't want to buy more maternity pants, and nothing fits. End of story: I pulled a pair of black pants, their cuffs whitened by salt from the roads because I also don't want to pay to get maternity pants hemmed, from the dry cleaning bag, pulled on a couple of layers of t-shirts and sweaters, and we went, driving through McDonalds on the way, which tasted really, really perfect.
And since it's snowing again today, a week later, and still, nothing fits (though I have nowhere to be, so it doesn't matter) I figured this would be the perfect time for my six word memoir.
posted by Margo, darling at 5:07 PM
6 Comments:
Ingrate here. I never got your earlier email!! So grateful that you took the time to type it out again. Much, much appreciated. - Lizzie
I'm now imagining your fabulous author as a six-foot rabbit. Nice.
So when is Mrs. Dalloway due? And do you have something to wear once it stops snowing? Perhaps a purchase along those lines would help you to believe in spring, which I know can be a fleeting hope at this time of year.
I'm due July 29th, so four more months. I have some dresses, and I just got some cute black capris that will go with just about every top I own, and should get through many a teaching day.
sorry for the lack of tag....you wouldn't believe me if i told you the insanity of my life of late. but more importantly: my birthday is july 27th so i'm going to hope for 2 days early!!! either way, little girl is a leo, very.cool.
AW, I know how busy you are. I was just teasing. I will do my best to fulfill the 7/27 request. It's a great date. We both really hope she'll be a lady leo. (nothing against lady cancers, lions are just really cool.)
Thank you for talking about how impossible pregnancy is for clothes! Thank you. I'm still early, in that transition between fitting into pre-pregnancy clothes and needing full-on pregnancy panels -- and I am so sick of the whole thing! It's nice to read about someone else going through the same madness. It's absolutely amazing to me how much clothes not fitting annoys me. But then, everything annoys me. In any case, thanks for making me feel like I'm not totally insane.
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