her able hands

It’s Friday night, everybody’s asleep and I should be too, but I just ate a chocolate cupcake with pink frosting and my skull is vibrating almost as fast as my eyelids, which is far too fast for sleep, so I’m picking up the whoever wants to tag for this meme from Kim at Relaxed Homeskool, and giving you my version of Four. Four what it’s worth.

4 jobs you have had in your life
1. Avon sales representative. I was sixteen, and rode my ten speed bicycle to deliver catalogs, and knock on doors begging for a minute of your time so I can show you these beautiful new lipsticks in shades of berry not known in nature. I only used the bike to drop off that one bottle of Skin So Soft that was a mercy sale to my mother’s best friend.
2. Meal planner and cook at a small retirement center in Yuba City, CA. I can’t for the life of me remember how or why I got that job, probably because shortly afterwards I relocated to NYC where I smoked most of those brain cells right the hell on out of my system. I do have vivid memories of making an impossibly large pot of ziti, getting it plated for the 22 residents, and dumping a whole tray of plates onto a table in front of six stunned elderly people who walked away from the meal looking like they’d been to the abattoir.
3. Waitron at a restaurant next to City Center on 55th street in NYC. Whenever we had to do double shifts, the whole crew would go across the street to sit in front of the Ziegfeld and people-watch while getting high. I have a few silly brushes with fame stories thanks to that job.
4. Designer-tron/janitor for major weekly news magazine. The only full-time job with bennies I’ve ever taken. I met a few amazing people because I took that job, and if you’re one of those people and are reading this, you know damned well who you are, and I love you. I know you never freaking hear from me anymore, but I think you’re the shit. And really? There is nothing more that needs to be said about that job.

4 movies you could watch over and over
First, I have to tell you that I suck at these media categories. I can never think of the ones I really mean until two weeks after I’ve written it or said it out loud. So grain of salt people, my blood flows with pink frosting.
1. A Star is Born with Judy Garland and James Mason. Shut up. I could watch Judy sing The Man That Got Away every day for the rest of my life and not get tired of it.
2. This is Spinal Tap, and I don’t think this needs explaining.
3. Living in Oblivion probably because I went to see this at the Angelika by myself when I had a few hours to kill between a job interview and a train home to my stressed out first marriage and toddler Tyler. Just thinking of that movie brings me right into the experience of wanting to get up to pee so bad, but not wanting to miss a word of it, and not wanting to break the illusion of my independence, sitting there watching an independent film without anything to distract me. If anything I ever do, or say, or write gets turned into a movie, I want Catherine Keener to play it.
4. Raising Arizona is a movie that I have seen all the way through five or six times, but also have caught chunks of in so many different situations and venues, and it always sucks me in.

4 places you have been on vacation
1. Cape Cod pretty much every year growing up, and a few times as an adult, which wasn’t nearly as fun even with the drinks! The Cape has become a people-bloated excuse for a vacation spot unless you go off-season. Which is lovely.
2. Puerto Rico which is where I spent the summer after I graduated high school, drank enough Bacardi and Harvey Wall Bangers with my Aunt and Uncle to, well, get me drunk enough to do some rather stupid things like swim at night in jelly-fish infested water, stay out by myself dancing with a bunch of Navy SEALS on leave, and fall in love with that one guy. Oh, right. I wound up marrying him. It wasn’t all stupid drunk!
3. Georgetown, Maine —for my friends Kara and Bill’s wedding. Pretty spectacular scenery there on the coast. Water’s goddamned cold too.
4. I just can’t count all of the trips to visit various family members as vacations, no offense you guys! I love coming to see you! I don’t think I’ve gone anywhere else strictly for the pleasure of it. I need to remedy that situation soon. Like maybe for my birthday.

4 websites you visit daily
1. The Silent K
2. FlitKnits
3. livejournal
4. gmail

4 of your favorite foods
1. Homemade bread of any kind
2. Soup, soup, soup
3. Chocolate & Vanilla
4. Sushi

4 places you would rather be right now
1. Sleeping peacefully knowing that I have knocked off 80% of the items on my to-do list for the day, rather than the 11% I’m shaking my head in a cupcake induced stupor at. I know I ended that sentence in a preposition, and that the preposition is a looooong way away from its object. It’s okay. It won’t remember in the morning.
2. The Sangre De Cristo Mountains, for no real reason. I just love the way it sounds. I can’t help but imagine that great things would happen there.
3. At the end of the first draft of the novel.
4. In a more comfortable chair. Note to self, add get a better chair to my to-do list.

4 Cars you have owned
1. Bright red 1986 Ford, Escort GT—The zippiest little 5-speed ever. Kids in Mazda RX-7’s always wanted to race me at stop lights, and I always won.
2. Puce 1979 Chevy, Impala—Das Boot—This car fit 12 people in it. This is also the car I lost my mechanic cherry to, thanks thermostat, honey! You rocked my world.
3. Silver 1996 Dodge, Intrepid—The spaceship. The most comfortable seats, which helped during all of those 7-hour drives between New York and Ohio. Very decent sound system and a moon roof. Great car except the tranny kept threatening to fall out. Had to let her go.
4. Gunmetal Grey 2003 Dodge, Ram—4-door pickup. Current ride, whose heat stopped working today—the coldest day of this winter, thank you so much.

That’s right. I’m tagging you. And you. And you. Yes, and you. Go on. Get to it.

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