With that said: commence an actual post

I'm taking a class called Wordlab at Wordspace, and it's really helping me get motivated on the novel...aie, the novel that's been floating about in various forms for about six month now, since first conceptualized last November.  Starting from scratch was the right thing to do.  The punk novella that was supposed to be the first part is cheerily moving on on it's own, a small press (hush hush, won't say who) is interested, I must come up with a revised draft to show the editor.  He thought of a title for it, Scaffolding, which I like very much.

The L.A. Novel that I'm working on now, I'm about...maybe three chapters into it.  It's, as usually, flagrantly autobiographical.  I've gotten so used to spilling my guts by now that it's just like, "typey typey herpes typey typey taking shots of triple sec type bum piss" and etc...It has no title as of yet, and I just changed the main characters name to Ginger. 

But Wordlab, it's been great help so far.  It motivated me to turn out ten more pages for class tonight, which I'm  nervous about presenting, but sort of excited at the same time.

And Featherless.  Right now I am waiting to hear back from three amazing writers, and I am so hoping that all three of them will say yes.  We are trying to get our booking taken care of farther in advance, thus.  Monthly it becomes a rapidly turning wheel, one into another, one stops and the next begins. 

I turn 34 in ten days.  My, I'm getting old.  I still have no job.  I have been floating along this summer on a miasma of SSDI payments, food stamps, careful budgeting and the odd sold book here and there.  I am thinking of trying the ticket to work program once Katie and I are married and the chaos of wedding planning and dual book revisions/writing/Featherless has died down a bit.

Drinking vodka like it's water, which should contextualize the otherwise vomit of bitter events of the last few days.  Actually, not all bitter and not all to be defamed.  First up. My car got stolen from outside a friend's house, and I've been crying on my dear girlfriend's shoulder and worried I may never drive LA's fair freeways again.  It really struck home when I couldn't leave the house to get a bottle, as we live all the way up on a hill, and I felt like such a teenage loser, or a mentally disabled adult in depends, unable to get my whiskey fix.

I pull the ring off. It itches.  I pull it on again.  I am in love.

Again and again there have been these moments that make me wish I wrote my blog entries in amicable word documents, only released when they were perfect.  No, this flies out raw from the vodka maw, which is to say, unusable and likely embarassing.

But ANYWAY.  I was turned away from the reading at Beyond Baroque this weekend as neither I nor my cohorts had the $5 necessary for entry.  We had driven miles out to Venice, in Stephen's car, I had parked my car at his house, from whence it was to be robbed.  I was so full of anticipation - Christine Wertheim puts on an amazing show! But alas, there was a cover.  I was overdrawn at the time, my finances are never good and often truly humiliating for a woman of 33.  I'm not exactly a functional adult if you hadn't guessed that yet.  The Disability check comes and it goes to rent, bills, vodka, and  that's about it, maybe a drugstore eyeliner if I'm feeling especially plush.  I did get my food stamp card today.

But anyway.  My feeling at the time was that I had too much dignity to spell out my long sad sob story to the long-haired teens at the register, I couldn't and wouldn't sneak in, and so Katie and Stephen and I made our way out and to a party in Orange County.

This post is brought to you by margaritas, thanks to Myke.  I am trying an experiment in, well, not drunkblogging, but tipsyblogging.  Katie is finishing up her homework, and I am bemoaning the fact that the Washington Blvd Concert blog seems to have been eaten by spam and shut down by the blogger gods.  While this is perhaps a tempest in an innertubes teapot, the concert long-over, it just seems a pity that all of that interesting documentation is erased.

The negative factors currently at play

1. I have a flat tire
2. I really can't put off the food stamp office any longer
3. I have to make an appointment at the free clinic to find out if I have face cancer.  wheee!!!
4. My grandmother told me she didn't approve of gay marriage....I'm engaged to a lady.

The positive factors:

1.  Katie is amazingly beautiful
2. Vanessa Place reviewed the poetic duo in The Constant Critic
3.  Hot glue-gunned myself some new typewriter-key earrings
4. Omar is back from London
5. Disability check arrives tomorrow
6. Don't have to do taxes this year

And the other most up and down factor is that I seem to have put on quite a few extra pounds in the last few months.  I'm considering going back on wellbutrin (as opposed to lexapro, my current anti-depressant), as it made me super-thin.  Curses to these beauty standards and all that, but, really, I can't help remembering little cocaine-addled size zero me, and considering that I'm now a size 12.  I would like a healthy avenue to being somewhere in between there.

poverty is not a moral failing.

I am trying to tell myself this.

My phone is about to be shut off, and I am about to default on my student loans.

I just saw Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A love story."

Very thought-provoking.  Perhaps a little heavy handed, but, really, as the film wore on I was shocked by how calculated the whole financial apparatus was.  Citibank owns my student loans.  My minimum payment is something to the tune of $4,000.  That's really interesting.

Anyway. I probably shouldn't whine about my financial woes on the internet, I suppose that's tacky.  I am lucky enough to have a roof over my head and all that.  I can't say I was ever a capitalist, but by this point, I'm definitely a socialist.

So, yesterday was my birthday.  Today is the party.  I awoke at 8:30 this morning, as I tend to do, I'm not sure why.  There is a knot of anxiety in my stomach - I hope it's fun, I hope people come.  It should be small, yet cute.

The anxiety is also due to stress about money, my former roommate is refusing to pay her share of the bills, so I have collections agencies calling me, and of course the student loan peeps.  My social security check is going to be late this month, and the motherfuckers at Wells Fargo won't let me advance any of it.  So I'm in the minus for however long, probably until the 14th.

This is what I hate - sanctimonious bank clerks who act as if it's my moral failing that I'm overdrawn.  You try living off of a disability check and see how well you fare.  For some reason the female ones tend to take a more bitchy-self-righteous attitude.  Did anyone see Drag Me to Hell?  A blonde self-righteous bank clerk wrongs the wrong gypsy.  It was soooo satisfying.

I even looked into monetizing the blog, but then - realized I wouldn't make any real money at that.

Someone, I believe it was Stephen's dad, said something about banks robbing the customers.

Anyway, rant over.