I Can Write Anywhere

I spent years writing in my office, believing that if I stepped outside that sacred space nothing would come to me.  So every morning (or evening, depending on the year) found me sitting at my desk.  And that was okay with me.  I like my office; I always have.  Everything I love the most I keep right around me.

The inspiration for my short story, “Mixed Media”

My grandfather’s box

My dad sent me these koalas from Australia when I had brain surgery.

Then I ended up with a Second Grade Dropout a couple of years ago, and suddenly I had to write in bits and pieces, whenever I had time.  I distinctly remember sitting in my convertible

Hot

with my laptop, engine running and air conditioner at full blast while that dropout of mine tried an acting lesson.  I remember sitting on a bench at Laguna Gloria, trying to shield my laptop from the mist while that dropout of mine tried an art class.  I remember sitting on someone’s sagging porch, typing away as live oak pollen sifted around me and that dropout of mine tried a fire-making class.

I got better at writing when I didn’t have the physical space I wanted.  Some of my favorite scenes in my upcoming novel, in fact, I wrote while sitting in the front seat of my car.  Some of them I wrote in my mind, because that’s all I had available in the moment.

I was running when I realized I had to write an essay about my brain surgery; the first line–The man in the room next to mine has no tongue–came whole and pristine about a block from my mother’s house one Sunday morning.  The scene in my first novel where Adam meets David, I built around just part of one sentence–his kiss was terrible and wonderful–midway through a step class.  One word–cherish–dropped luscious into my mouth while I was in a simple downward dog, and became the core of a pretty damn good sex scene in The Crossing, which comes out this summer.

Movement thins the veil.

I still prefer working in my office.  But I know now that I can write squeezed between two men on a flight from Austin to JFK.  I know that even a walk around my neighborhood will bring me something.

My Muse always has a gift for me.  I just have to be open to receiving it.

p.s.  I’d love to know where you work best!  Leave a comment below.

Copyright  © 2013  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Anthropology

Sooo, I quit boot camp.

But wait, you’re thinking.  She said she loved boot camp just three days ago.  What gives?

Well, I could tell you that my friends were wholly unsupportive, which is true.  They kept asking me what happened to my kinder, gentler approach to exercise, or they told me that I’d never find them running sprints at such an ungodly hour, or they threatened to feed The Boy my chocolate-covered espresso beans since I wasn’t eating them myself.  But really, my friends had nothing to do with my decision.  Even Elsner, who told me on Tuesday night that she doesn’t like the heat and she thinks boot camp might be a good winter activity for her which seems awfully easy for her to say since it’s not even technically the beginning of the summer and so she has months and months of sleeping in before she has to revisit her decision didn’t sway me.  I mean, it didn’t help, but that wasn’t why I quit.

I liked boot camp just fine and I didn’t really mind waking up early and I always love doing something so few other people are insane enough to try.  I didn’t even mind so much that it wasn’t getting easier.  But on Monday, after I wrote my rah-rah boot camp post, I got really tired.  And when I get tired I get very cranky.  And then I went to my Nia class at six that evening and I had no energy to dance.  And that made me very irritable because I love Nia and I especially loved the routine that night and instead of feeling all twirly I felt like I wanted to curl up next to the giant fireplace in the ballroom and take a nap.  And when we stretched I thought, oh, hello glutes.  You’re very angry with me for making me do 126 lunges this morning, aren’t you?

And then I went home and I fell into my bed and I didn’t even hear The Boy wake up three different times during the night and so my husband-of-the-weak-ass-knees had to handle everything by himself.  And when I finally did wake up I had these giant creases all over my body from the sheet.  And I almost couldn’t get out of bed.  And all day on Tuesday I kept thinking about my husband’s potty chair

and how it would make my life so much easier if I could just sit in it all day because the act of standing up and sitting down made me want to cry.  And I was so tired and a little confused as to how I was going to get up on Wednesday morning and do this all over again.  And I was also kind of pissed because I usually go out on Tuesday night and instead I had to stay at home.  On account of boot camp.  On account of having to wake up at 5:45 and do 126 more lunges.  And so I was in a very bad mood and if I could have stomped around the house I would have but that hurt too much and so instead I shuffled around with a scowl until my husband said, “Um, do you think this is something you’ll be doing all summer?”

Actually, I only made the commitment through June.  But by Tuesday afternoon I didn’t even want to finish out the week, even though I’d already paid for my classes.  And so I whined to my life coach and she told me that I needed to take an anthropologist’s view to the whole thing.  You know, like make casual observations about how I was feeling over the course of the next six weeks.

Well, I made casual observations over the course of the entire day!  I casually noted that my ass really hurt.  I casually noted that I had no patience for The Boy’s shenanigans.  I casually noted that I didn’t like having to turn down invitations for drinks on a Tuesday night because I had plans to torture myself in the morning.

But the clincher?  I was so physically tired that I didn’t have the head space to write.

Before I went to bed on Monday night I was thinking about my next vignette for “Untitled” and I knew I wanted to write something from Jack’s point of view.  Jack makes a brief appearance in my first novel and I’ve never really had a clear vision of what he looks like.  He’s always just been more of a feel.  And so I was thinking about Jack and I fell asleep and then I woke up with a jolt, with this perfect image in front of me:  dyed blonde hair, big blue eyes, angelic.  Young.  And the picture came with these words:  This is Jack.

So on Tuesday I sat down, all excited to hear what Jack had to say.  But he was very, very quiet.  And that never happens to me.  Mostly I can’t get these characters to shut up.  Instead I was staring at a blank screen.  And that was not cool.

So I quit boot camp.  And I’ve decided that I don’t really care that I have thighs like Scarlett OHara’s.  I can still dance circles around you in Nia anyway.

I also have Jack, who blabbed so much yesterday that I had to start cutting paragraphs.  And I went out last night with a friend and I ordered a margarita and took forty shots with my camera so I can post that photograph along with my vignette next week.  And then I sucked down my drink because I didn’t have to worry about someone yelling at me to get those knees up this morning.

I’m still a little tired, though.

Now where are those chocolate-covered espresso beans?

Copyright © 2010  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Pornography, Art, and Hot Guys Reading Books

So it’s been a full week and I still haven’t eaten any of the chocolate-covered espresso beans and that’s not because I’m not tired, because I am, I am.  Boot camp is kicking my ass, even though at the same time I kind of love it.  I guess I’m just the kind of girl who likes when someone makes demands of her.  “Good job, Baby Doll,” my drill sergeant instructor will say after I’ve completed a successful round of bicep curls, but then she’ll force me to do lunges until I feel like I’m going to throw up.  And for some reason that just really does it for me and so I haven’t eaten even one little bean.  But the whole experience has me thinking about titillation in general and when I think about titillation I automatically-even-though-I’m-really-not-trying-to think of porn.

And I can’t think about porn without thinking of Katie.

Katie was the most photographed centerfold in Playboy and Penthouse in the nineties, and no, I’m not going to include the links for either one of these magazines (though isn’t Penthouse out of print?) because then you’ll never ever finish reading my post.  And some of you probably can’t even find your mouse right now anyway because you’re so taken aback and I have to say that I’m right there with you.  Because the first time I heard this news I was hanging out at Katie’s place as a guest at her writing group and there was some off-the-cuff comment about sex with a certain rock star and at first I thought she was totally joking but then no.  She wasn’t joking.  And by the time the most-photographed-centerfold comment came up my eyes were this wide and I had to cram one of the fudge bars I’d baked into my mouth to keep it from gaping.  And I was like, where am I?

But what I like about Katie is that she subverts every preconception you might have about girls who take all of their clothes off for a living.  And she wrote a book about it, too, which should be out soon and which I highly recommend because it’s absolutely magnificent and funny and quite the feminist tome, which you wouldn’t expect from someone who rode a horse in front of a camera wearing nothing but a pair of short shorts and a smile.

And now those of you who aren’t unsubscribing are secretly hoping that I have a copy of the shot I just described and that I’m willing to post it.  And I could totally do that because Katie isn’t exactly an introvert and she already told me I can have whatever pictures I want.  And I’m kind of tempted because think of all the hits I’d get!

Still.  That seems kind of whorish and I have to draw the line somewhere.

And anyway, I was talking about titillation.  There are all kinds of ways to titillate yourself and I’m not just talking about porn or chocolate-covered espresso beans or even hot boot camp instructors who yell at you.  Art can titillate you, for example, or music, or photography.  And that reminds me of that Jason Langer photograph I keep meaning to buy, the one I’m supposed to get because my husband went all crazy buying guitars.  And you all were supposed to guess which photograph I wanted and some of you came so, so close.  But only my friend Tara got the answer right.  And if you want to know what her guess was and which photograph I plan on hanging right across from my desk where I can see it every time I sit down you’re just going to have to check out #30 on Jason Langer’s website.

The guy in the photograph is awfully hot but that’s not why I like it.  I’ve wanted this photograph ever since I saw it a couple of years ago in The Sun, which you should totally be reading no matter your political persuasion.  It accompanied an essay by Bonnie Linden called “What Is Offered” and there was something about the juxtaposition of that photograph with Ms. Linden’s essay, and about the word “offered” in that particular context, that really appealed to me.  And I’ve been wanting it for my very own ever since.  The photograph, I mean, not the essay.  I already have the essay.

But there’s this very interesting distinction, isn’t there, between pornography and art?  Because Katie’s photographs are definitely pornographic, even though some of them are take-your-breath-away beautiful.  And the Jason Langer photograph is clearly not pornography, even though the subject in question is half-clothed.  So maybe it’s the intent that differs.  I mean, they’re both titillating, but in totally different ways.  The same goes for my writing.  There’s plenty of sex in my fiction, but it’s there to further the scene.  It’s not there for, you know, other purposes.

Here’s another titillating tidbit for you, that’s not porn and not art either.  Check out this site:  http://hotguysreadingbooks.tumblr.com.  Go ahead, take a look because otherwise you’ll be lost.

Are you back?

Okay, honestly, is this not the BEST CONCEPT EVER?  What I love is that these guys are so diverse.  Most of them are so not my type (though I have to admit there is something about a guy reading and especially something about a guy reading a book that you’ve recommended and it’s probably even better if you’ve written the book yourself and since my book’s coming out in the next month or so I’m expecting to see lots of hot guys reading my book on this blog), but that’s part of the fun.  Everything is so subjective:  the guys on this blog, photography, even porn.

And that I find titillating.

Copyright © 2010  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Chocolate-Covered Energy

I went to Houston this past weekend to see my friend Katie and also my Colombian princess, though she has her hands full with that new baby and brunch at Benjy’s was pretty much all she could manage.  But that’s okay because Katie and I can talk talk talk the same way that my Colombian princess and I can talk talk talk and so when I got to Houston Katie and I went to lunch and then suddenly Dacapo’s Pastry Cafe was closing because it was already six o’clock.  And so we went back to her place because it was pouring outside and by eleven-thirty I hit a wall and I told Katie she was too intense and I had to go to sleep.  But really I just like her bed, which is a shrine to sex if I ever saw one.  I should have taken a picture for you but I was too busy crawling under her plush red duvet and pulling the covers over my head.  And her headboard almost touches the ceiling and she has pretty much the best mattress known to woman, which is exactly what I would expect from someone who’s Scorpio Rising.  And I’m lucky because Katie gives it to me every time I visit.  I mean, she gives me the bed, not it.

And then on Saturday I got to sleep late but Katie had to work because even though she’s the most magnificent writer I know she’s also a single parent.  She teaches nineteen fitness classes a week.  Nineteen.  And, you know, I kind of thought I was all that when I taught nine classes a week, but that was like, ten years ago, back when my body didn’t automatically curl into the fetal position at the sound of the alarm clock.  And Katie teaches nineteen!  And so she went to teach and I met my Colombian princess for brunch and I made the mistake of ordering one of Benjy’s Bellini Martinis and I should have known better because every time I drink anything with bubbles I get a headache.  And so I left my Colombian princess feeling considerably more subdued than when I had arrived.  And when Katie got back from teaching I told her that I couldn’t possibly talk anymore and we had to go to the movies instead.  And so we saw Chloe, which Katie hated and about which I tried to find redeeming qualities because I love Julianne Moore.  But I didn’t have much luck.  And then I was oh-so-tired and thinking about Katie’s bed but instead of going back to Katie’s place we went to The Chocolate Bar, which isn’t a bar at all but a place where sugar whores gather.  And I got some kind of chocolate cake with Kahlua and I probably should have taken a picture of that, too, but I was so rabid for a bite that there wasn’t time to get a shot.  It was sprinkled with chocolate-covered espresso beans.

I haven’t had caffeine since the day I found out I was pregnant with The Boy and that was over eight years ago.  The morning I found out I was pregnant I said to myself, you know, your period is really late, sugar pie.  And so I drank a Diet Coke and then I went to a killer step class and I had a ton of energy and I thought, no way are you pregnant, sugar pie.  And then I went to Walgreen’s and I picked up a pregnancy test and I went home and took it.  And then I went back to Walgreen’s and bought another test, a different test, just to be sure.  And after I took that test I went back to Walgreen’s a third time because I was deep in denial and I wasn’t quite ready to come out.  And after I took the third test I said, Oh shit.

But really, getting pregnant with The Boy ended up being the best surprise ever.  He’s super cute and super funny and on Sunday night when I got back from Houston just in time to kiss him good night (which was really impeccable timing, if you ask me) he sang an “oh joy, Mommy’s home” song to me.

But when I found out I was pregnant I kind of freaked out.  And I knew I couldn’t have any more caffeine, among many, many other simple pleasures.  And after I delivered The Boy I figured that since I’d gone without caffeine longer than I had since I was maybe twelve I should just, you know, not go back.

But then I ate the chocolate-covered espresso beans on Saturday night.  And suddenly I was wide awake.  And I kept Katie up until two in the morning and then I relinquished her only because she had to get up in a few hours to teach more fitness classes.  And when she came back from teaching she took me back to The Chocolate Bar to buy more chocolate-covered espresso beans.

And I ate maybe a dozen on the way back to Austin and then guess what?  I couldn’t fall asleep.  And that was unfortunate because I had to get up at 5:40 the next morning to get to that stupid boot camp class Elsner insisted I take with her.  These days when someone tells me to drop and give them twenty I think they’re referring to the number of minutes I’m going to get to nap.  So I knew boot camp would kick my ass.  And when my instructor told me while she was pegging me with a medicine ball that I have amazing body awareness I was really excited and flattered until she said, Were you an athlete?  And that’s very different from asking, Are you an athlete?  She also told me not to eat sugar for five days.  And I wanted to say, Lady, I have chocolate-covered espresso beans at home, and I’m tired.

I’m really missing Katie’s bed.

What do you think?  How many hours/days do you think I can go without eating my chocolate-covered espresso beans?

If you guess correctly you can come to boot camp with me.

Copyright © 2010  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Foreplay

The other day I walked into my Nia class and my instructor said, Today we’re going to have a little extra foreplay.

And I perked right up, for the obvious reasons.  But I was also confused, for the obvious reasons.  And so I crinkled my brow and said, Foreplay?  And my instructor said, Floor play.  And I was like, Ohhh.  And everyone laughed.  But I was very disappointed because floor play isn’t nearly as fun as foreplay, no matter which way you slice it.  I’m Scorpio Rising and that means I’m all about sex and death and if you’ve spent even five seconds looking at my website you’ve probably already figured that out.

Anyway, I’m not a tremendous fan of floor play even in Nia, where it has nothing to do with Matchbox cars or building car washes out of blocks.  In Nia, floor play means quieting down and listening to your body and sliding into whatever stretch your body’s asking for at that moment.  And I’m not good at any of these things.  There I’ll be, flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling, and while everyone around me slips into a state of bliss I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to convince The Boy that summer camp can be fun fun fun or I’m wondering whether or not people are going to stone me for publishing that homophobic vignette or I’m trying to guess how many bites of chocolate cupcake

I have left at home.

I don’t mean that I never shut my mind off.  I just don’t do it often.  Really, the only time I shut down is when I practice yoga, and I’ve kind of been slacking lately, just in time for swimsuit season.  And every time I think:  this is the day to start up again, something happens.  Like I’ll remember that I have to bake 96 chocolate chip cookies and 60 fudge bars for the spring festival at The Boy’s school.  That’s what happened on Friday.  And my husband was out of town again because really, he’s never here anymore.  And I just wanted to know where my Friday nights have gone, and why I wasn’t out somewhere listening to Kevin McKinney or Raised by Pandas, with a nice, cold beer by my side instead of standing in my kitchen, mixing cookie dough that I clearly could not eat.

But I tried to make it all better, and so I reached for my this-will-get-me-through-the-baking-process bottle of wine.  But when I tried to open the bottle with my bottle opener

the corkscrew slid in and out with zero friction.  And so I tried it again, this time with a little whimper.  And still nothing happened.  And I really didn’t want to be so desperate as to smash the bottle in the sink and strain out the glass through a colander and so I said pretty please to the universe and the universe said be more specific because what I got was a giant vacuum which sucked the cork to the bottom of the bottle and produced a volcanic eruption of red wine all over me and my box of pizza from House Pizzeria.  Oh, and all over the ceiling, too.

I licked the wine off my arm, but I couldn’t do a thing about the ceiling.

Also, I have these little red packets full of rice and rum that my feng shui specialist mixed up the last time she came, and one of those packets sits right on my desk.

And every so often, when I want to shake things up, I shake the packet.  This very likely does nothing but appease my imagination.  And yet every so often I shake the packet.  And so today, as I was about to publish my homophobic vignette, I thought, I could use a little extra help.  And so I shook the packet.  And it exploded all over my desk.

Have you ever tried to retrieve tiny grains of rice from between the keys of your keyboard?  If so, you probably sobbed as hard as I did.

But despite these two snafus I’ve had a pretty good few days.  I had fun at the spring festival, even if The Boy took one look at his classmates smashing cascarones over each other’s heads and announced that he was going home.  (And he did, even though I had to stay and watch over the bouncy castle.)  I’m really loving rereading Karl Soehnlein’s novel The World of Normal Boys in preparation for reading his new novel, Robin and Ruby, which is probably the novel I’m most excited about reading this year.  The Boy and I had a marvelous morning yesterday, eating cinnamon rolls at Uppercrust Bakery and reading books.  And when we got back to the house, this is what we found, hanging out on the numbers for our address:

Then, yesterday The Boy had a playdate at a friend’s house, and because I love the friend’s mother, Eileen, I was happy to drop him off and then linger for a while.  Eileen just bought a new house and I was very excited about seeing it for the first time.  Except it wasn’t the first time.  My friend, Brian, who sold us our house, would sometimes call me up before he moved to San Francisco a few months ago and tell me we should look at houses just for fun.  And so a few months ago I saw Eileen’s house, before Eileen had even seen it.  And it was a perfectly nice house but kind of dark and the energy was kind of dark, too.

But yesterday when I took The Boy over to play with his friend I got my (second) tour of the house and I was stunned by how light everything seemed.  And the energy was amazing and it just got more and more amazing the longer my friend and I chatted and it’s no surprise because she uses the same feng shui specialist I do.  And also, Eileen just has really fantastic energy herself.  And we talked for two hours about energy and fear and the fact that Americans are so terrified of death we can’t even talk about it, which is exactly what my life coach and I talked about last Tuesday.

And then I started thinking about how everything is so results-oriented in our society.  What’s the bottom line, the goal, the end result?  And I was thinking about the fact that my life coach has been yelling at me encouraging me to celebrate my accomplishments–like my website launch–instead of saying, well, I’ll celebrate when the first novel comes out in June.  And that made me think about that pithy little saying, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”  And while that saying could easily end up on my list of Shit That Makes Me Crazy, I started thinking that maybe if it was packaged differently I might be able to appreciate the sentiment without rolling my eyes.

So if death is the end result, or, um, climax, then everything that comes before–the cookies and the wine and the spilled rice and the butterfly–is foreplay.

That I might be able to get behind.

Copyright © 2010  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Yay Yay Yay!

So I’m super excited today, for lots of different reasons.  First of all, my housekeeper’s here, cleaning up the wrappings from all those chocolate-covered eggs the Easter Bunny was stupid enough to leave for The Boy, apparently not realizing that a steady diet of sugar and chocolate always ends in tears.  And not just for The Boy.  So right now tiny pieces of tinfoil litter the hardwoods.  But in a couple of hours everything will look neat and clean.

At least until I let the dogs back inside.

Also, lately I’ve been totally neglecting my Nia practice.  Usually I go to a Nia class on Saturday mornings.  But this past Saturday I had a foolish idea.  I thought it might actually be fun to hang out with The Boy and his father, instead of taking advantage of my usual space.  But they were making me so crazy by the time 10:15 rolled around that I screamed that I’d changed my mind.  And then I got the hell out of the house.

Unfortunately, I was no longer in the mood for Nia.  So instead I went to the historic cemetery down the street and parked myself on a bench with a book.  And I got a few odd looks from passerby, because I guess the cemetery isn’t the coolest place to hang out.  But I’ve already told you that I’m a cemetery kind of girl.  So really, I was perfectly happy.

Later, though, when I looked in my closet for something to wear and realized that nothing much fits anymore, I totally regretted not going.  But tonight I’m going to change everything!  Tonight I’m going to Nia!

I’m also super excited because after months and months of work, my website is finally LIVE!  And you should absolutely check it out, because then you can see what makes me tick.  And you can maybe fall in love with my characters the way I’ve fallen in love with them.  And then you can share the link with all of your friends!

And then, on top of all of that, I have even MORE exciting news.

I know, I know, it’s almost too much.

You know how I’ve been totally struggling with space and fear and play and generally trying to be a good mother at the same time I’m trying to rule the world?  Well, I’ve found someone to help!  I’ve found someone to answer my questions, which more than likely are your questions, too, since, you know, if you weren’t dealing with the same shit I’m dealing with on a daily basis, you probably wouldn’t be tuning in to find out what happened next.

Anyway, that person is the amazing, revolutionary, visionary Danielle LaPorte!  And she’s agreed to talk to me!  HERE!  ON MY BLOG!

It’s all very exciting.

Danielle LaPorte will be checking in with us this Wednesday, with some avant-garde answers to the kind of questions that make my head swirl like I’ve just eaten a dozen chocolate bunnies in a row.  So you’re just going to have to come back and hear what she has to say.

Until then, take a look at my website.  And tell me you aren’t almost as excited as I am.

Copyright © 2010  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Hottie, M.D. (or D.D.S. or O.D.)

So I have this rash of doctor appointments coming up, partly because it’s that time of year and partly because it’s been a while since I’ve seen my neurosurgeon.  He likes to be sure that my brain tumor hasn’t returned and I like to hear that it hasn’t, so he makes me come see him every three years.  He’s super nice and super competent and the kind of guy that when you compliment him on the job he did not paralyzing your face or deafening you or killing your fetus he just kind of blushes and tells you it was a team effort.  So I’m going to be seeing him soon and that’s always kind of fun and I don’t even mind the MRI because really, when I’m in the tube I just think about my book and listen to the headphones they give me and you know you’re a mother on the edge when you consider a trip to the neurosurgeon a reprieve from your day-to-day.

But then, I really like my neurosurgeon.  He’s kind of like my own personal god.  I actually have a crush on him.  And that was a bit of a problem after my surgery because there I’d be, clutching my hands to my head because no one would give me anything stronger than Tylenol and so back to the hospital I’d go and as soon as I saw my doctor I’d perk right up.  And he’d look at my husband like, Why the hell did you get me out of bed at midnight when she seems perfectly fine?  But I couldn’t help myself.  He made me feel lots better, and not just because after the surgery I could, you know, actually speak and brush my teeth without convulsing in pain.  He just has a really good vibe.  And I think that’s pretty rare for a neurosurgeon.  I know, because I interviewed a lot of them and most of them are craaazy.

I also have a dentist appointment on Monday, and I’m even more excited about that than I am about my excursion to see my neurosurgeon because my dentist is waaay hot.  I mean, like jaw-dropping hot.  Like the first time I saw him I was sitting in the hygienist’s chair and when he walked in the room my mouth literally fell open.  Which wasn’t a bad thing, actually, given that I needed to open my mouth anyway.  I was just so stunned.  Because I’ve been going to dentists for a long time and I’ve never had a dentist like this one.  He’s just my type, too:  longish brown hair, lots of scruff, wrinkled shirt hanging out over torn-up jeans.  Totally unlike my previous dentist, who wore cowboy boots with heels because I think he was overcompensating.  And that’s probably why he tried to get me to have all of those unnecessary procedures, too.  Because he liked the control.  That and the fact that he had this giant new office he clearly needed to pay for.  And when I told him I didn’t want to get a crown unless he could explain exactly why he stomped his little foot and got really angry.  So I changed dentists.  And I’m so glad I did, for the obvious reasons.

Six months after my first trip to my hot dentist I went back, no need to send me a reminder card, thanks.  And on the way there I thought, well, surely I’ve over-romanticized his looks, right?  But just in case I’d actually showered and put on my very best yoga pants.  And when he walked in the room I started to giggle.  Because he was just as hot as I remembered.  And I told my husband he absolutely needs to go check this guy out, but my husband, who avoids dentists at all costs, hasn’t been persuaded, even though I’ve tried to tell him that he doesn’t understand, that this guy is hot.  Hot like Fantasy Boy? he asks.

Fantasy Boy was our eye doctor when we lived in Fort Worth.  But I didn’t know that at first.  To me he was just this guy in my abs class at the gym.  My best friend from graduate school and I would take the class every Monday and Wednesday, and we’d swoon and get all flushed and try to position ourselves so that we could do crunches right across from him.  He was so beautiful he didn’t seem real.  And so we dubbed him Fantasy Boy.

And then one day I was in the weight room before class and my husband was with me and when he waved to someone and I looked around the only person I could see was Fantasy Boy.  Who are you waving to? I asked.  Our eye doctor, he said.  And I was like, But that’s Fantasy Boy!  Who? he said.

And you can bet that I made many visits to see Fantasy Boy, and even bought new glasses, for the first time in years.  And when he dilated my eyes and promised me I could still make it to step class that night when in fact I almost crashed my car a thousand times on the way home I didn’t hold it against him.  And I tried many times to convince my husband to give the guy a call to play golf or maybe invite him to dinner or something.   But he never did.  And now I live in Austin and my eye doctor’s perfectly nice but she does nothing for me.

Neither does my gynecologist.

But I get to go to my dentist on Monday, and that’s a good thing.  Because I’m drowning in holiday preparations and I’m way behind on my gift purchases and last weekend when I went to Bookpeople I was accosted by such a crush of humanity that I left without buying a thing and came home and sat in my office with the lights off and Third Eye Blind in my iPod at top volume and it still took me almost an hour to recover.  And the fact that I’ve adopted a nothing-made-in-China mantra this holiday season has complicated things considerably because everything’s made in China.  And when I tried to go to Ten Thousand Villages on Friday morning with The Boy because I thought I could buy some cool fair-trade gifts my car started making this puttputtputt sound and now I think I need a new car, which is kind of annoying because the license tag renewal sticker just arrived this week.  And the fat beagle threw up in The Boy’s bed, right on the handmade blanket my husband and I got for our wedding.  And when I lost track of time in front of the computer the other day and tried to hunt down The Boy and two of his friends I found them in the big white dog’s crate.  All three of them, locked inside.  I mean, there are breathing holes and all, but still.  Still.  And that reminded me of the time that my best friend from graduate school and I took our then three-year-olds to Zilker Park and got sidetracked talking and when we finally hiked back up the hill to where the kids were drinking from the water fountain we saw that the basin was clogged with all kinds of stuff and the kids were just slurping away.  And when I told my husband he said, You know, you really need to watch him.

So yeah.  I’ll take my fantasy where I can.

Copyright © 2009  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Skater Girl

I went roller skating on Saturday night.  I had no choice; a friend of mine was throwing a party for her fortieth thirtieth birthday.  So I had to go.  And at first I was very excited, much like I was when I ordered the tickets for the Third Eye Blind concert.  I loved roller skating as a kid.  I had the white skates, the blue pom poms . . . I wanted to be a speed skater when I grew up.

But now I am grown up and I don’t want to be a speed skater anymore.   Instead I want a foot massage and an early bedtime.

So all day on Saturday I was dreading the party, kind of like I’d dreaded the Third Eye Blind concert.  In fact, I started wishing I was pregnant, because that way I’d have an excuse not to go.

This is exactly the wish I had at the concert when two girls lit up right beside me.  Maybe if I was pregnant, I thought, overcome by a cloud of cigarette smoke, I could turn toward them and they’d see my seven-months-pregnant belly and apologize and go away.

But then I thought about my best friend from sixth grade, who’s forty thirty and pregnant and unable to have a glass of wine at the end of the day.  And I thought about my best friend from graduate school, who just had her third child the day before Halloween.  When I talked to her on the phone last week she sounded exhausted and whispery and entirely too excited by the fact that she’d been able to sleep two and a half hours in a row.  And I had to be very careful when she asked how I was doing not to mention the Third Eye Blind concert or the roller skating party because, you know, she’s clearly not going to be doing anything other than changing nappies anytime soon.

And I also thought of the friend of a friend who should be my friend because we have, like, 100 mutual friends on Facebook, and she has nine-week-old triplets.  Triplets.  A year ago she had one little girl the same age as The Boy and now she has the same little girl and three babies, too.  And the romantic part of me thinks, oh, babies, babies, sweet babies.  And the saner part of me thinks:  Ignore friend request.

And then there’s the whole brain tumor thing.  My neurosurgeon gave me the go-ahead to get pregnant again, but then I’d actually have to be pregnant again.  And I found the whole experience pretty atrocious, even without the brain surgery.  The nausea and the weight gain and the middle of the night crying jags . . . it’s really not for me.  And when The Boy was about three years old my husband and I were feeling guilty about having an only child and we thought, well, maybe we should just try.  And we lasted one month.  And I was so relieved when I got my period because we had plans to go to San Antonio for the weekend and there was no way I wanted to go to Boudro’s and not be able to drink a prickly pear margarita.  And The Boy, as recently as a week ago, answered a resounding “No!” when I asked if he ever wanted a brother or sister.  And then he acted out the scenario:   “Mom, can you play?” he asked in his Boy-voice, and then he answered in a Mommy-voice, “Nooo, I’m busy with your brother.”

And then he shuddered.

And so I realized, standing there at the concert and inhaling smoke, that really, pregnancy would be so much worse.

But on Saturday afternoon I found myself thinking:  if I was pregnant I couldn’t put on skates.

But maybe I would.  Because I did lots of thing when I was pregnant that most women don’t do.  Like have my skull sawed open, for instance.  Or, when the doctors realized that Tylenol wasn’t cutting it as far as pain medication was concerned, they hooked me up to a morphine drip, which wasn’t as awesome as you’d think because the rebound headaches blow.  And I did lots of step classes and kickbox classes because going to the gym was the only thing that made me feel even remotely normal.  And so 15 days after I got out of the hospital I was back at the gym, where all of the women wanted to see my scar and all of the men were squeamish.  And when I did squats everyone would give me a wide berth because they were afraid the baby would drop to the floor right there.  And my step instructor made me put these weird mats under my bench so I wouldn’t slip.  And about a week before I had my C-section, because oh yeah, I had a C-section, I’d had enough surprises, thank you very much . . . about a week before I had the C-section I was in a class at the gym and we were doing lunges and this woman announced in front of the whole class that she was a nurse for an ob/gyn and she really didn’t think it was a good idea for me to do lunges so far along in my pregnancy.  And I was like, Shut up, bitch.  Because until you’ve had your own skull cracked open, I don’t want to hear it.

Of course, even if I was willing to go roller skating while I was pregnant, the skating rink probably has some sort of policy that would prevent me from following through.

And anyway, think about what I’d have to endure just to get out of a few hours of roller skating!

So I went roller skating.

And for the first loop around the track I was terrified.  But after that I was completely fine.  And when the birthday girl insisted we participate in the races for ages 16 and up, I skated right out there and I only screamed a little.  And I was fast, though not as fast as Amy, who just retired from roller derby and made it twice around the track before the rest of us could finish even once.  And even though I stopped skating long enough to eat a birthday cupcake, I was ready to get back out there as soon as I was finished.  And I was kind of disappointed to take off my skates when the birthday girl announced that she was ready for margaritas, which they don’t serve at the roller skating rink for obvious reasons.

And now I want to go back, because roller skating was the most fun I’ve had since the Third Eye Blind concert.  Maybe I can even request some Third Eye Blind.

And when I come home I’m going to pour myself a glass of wine.

Copyright © 2009  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved

Dog Vomit Update

So I picked up The Boy from school today in a marginal mood.

I’m having a photography session tomorrow because I’m launching my website soon, and when I was looking through pictures I discovered that I had quite literally thousands of The Boy and hundreds of my husband and dozens of the big white dog and the fat beagle–and none of me.

Really, it’s like I don’t even exist.

So I have this photography session tomorrow morning and I’m wicked nervous and I discovered today that the chocolate-colored shirt I was planning on wearing in fact looks wretched on me.  And I was also angry because I hadn’t had the time to take a look at the checkbook in weeks and the City of Austin was losing patience and I was wasting writing time paying bills.

And I think we all know by now how I feel about my space.

But before I picked up The Boy I managed to squeeze in some yoga and I really did feel a tiny bit better until I arrived at the school and The Boy, who refuses to eat lunch and consequently morphs into some otherwordly creature by the time school ends, gave me a little smack when I declined his suggestion to take him to Quack’s for a cookie.  And I could feel my yoga high go poof.

I brought The Boy home.  And I insisted that he eat something nutritious before he moved on to popcorn.  Unfortunately, the debacle that has been our life the past week has prevented anyone from running to the store.  So The Boy could choose from carrots or stale bread or the last four whole wheat crackers with potentially moldly cheese shredded on top.

The Boy writhed and screamed, but finally agreed to the crackers.  And we sat down at the bar to read one of the Hardy Boys novels.  The Boy received a set of six for his birthday, and at first I was quite thrilled because generally The Boy disdains all fiction, much to my consternation since I write fiction.  But The Boy loves the Hardy Boys.

I do not.  I find them excruciatingly boring and droll and I know these books were written a long time ago but I’m really sick of seeing Mrs. Hardy in the kitchen.  So I try to spice things up.  I say, “Mrs. Hardy needs a job” when she packs huge picnic lunches for Frank and Joe.  Or I say, “These boys can get their own freakin’ snack.”  The Boy laughs, and I feel amusing.

So we sat down to read The House on the Cliff and suddenly we heard the fat beagle, doing that thing she does when she’s getting ready to hurl.  And I lunged from the barstool and made a beeline for the dog, but I was too late, too late!

The fat beagle had thrown up.

On the last remaining Pottery Barn rug.

Eighteen hundred square feet we have, nothing but hardwoods and ceramic tile–except for this one, puny, 5 x 7 foot rug in the living room.

And it was here that the fat beagle had chosen to vomit.

I mean, honestly, people.

Copyright © 2009  Jennifer Hritz  hritzontheedge  All Rights Reserved