Well, there have to be good things about Sunday. Sunday, especially Sunday night, has traditionally been a low point for me, dating back to when I was in junior high school (where everything started to go wrong in my life) and I dreaded the thought of getting up and going to Franklin Middle School yet again. This was only two short years in my life, but they were very formative (as well as pudgy, ugly, stringy greasy hair braces ugly glasses lots of acne) years, to be sure.
So, yesterday, Sunday, I tried to think up something positive about the day.
And when I was driving home last night, on Toronto Road, between Taco Bell and the 4-way stop that leads to Lincoln Land, over in that new subdivision I saw a HUGE BUNNY.
Easter, that is. A blow-up bunny, like the millions of blow-up Santas and snowmen and stuff you see at Christmas. The Easter Bunny is pink, and nicely lighted, and as I was driving I looked over at the subdivision and there was the huge bunny, warm and appealing and it made me feel good, just knowing of the existence of the enormous pink bunny. Part of the appeal is that you don’t see them everywhere, like the omnipresent Santas and snowmen.
Not the best Sunday I’ve ever had, but the giant bunny gave me hope. I realize this may be stretching things a bit, but just the fact that I could get a moment’s happiness at the sight of the great big bunny says that all is not lost.
I spent some time at Panera yesterday afternoon, free wifi, and while sitting there for a good long time, I kept smelling the smells and so ate dinner at the other Panera . Also a very good thing.
Uh, other positive things…is that it? Just the two? Eating at Panera and a giant pink Easter Bunny?
Surely, surely there must be something…
Oh yeah, I printed out a bunch of copies of my latest “graceuncensored” column, and I’m going to take them around to some different places on Tuesday. I did a few of these in the fall, but then things happened, I got kind of bummed out, and quit doing it for a while. But, MARCH FORTH, I’m all about that (I wrote about Marching Forth a few entries ago, I believe), so here I go, making a fresh start, my plan is to do one EVERY TWO WEEKS.
So please, if you live here in Spfld, tell you friends who can’t read me online, who don’t have computers because theirs got struck by lightening (like happened to my friend Randy), to go pick up their paper copy of my column. Tomorrow I’m going to take them to Recycled Records, the Cardologist, Food Fantasies, and the Wienerdog. I might take them a few more places, but it seems daunting enough to take them around to these four. Writing, I could sit here and write all day, but going out and distributing things, that’s another matter entirely. I don’t know why, it’s just the way I am, I can’t help it. But at least I do manage to go ahead and do it, even though it fills me with dread.
Why dread, anyway, for god’s sake? It’s not like they’re going to say, NO GRACE, WE DON’T WANT YOUR COLUMN, YOU CAN’T PUT IT UP HERE. It’s just me being me, the evil voice in my head that doesn’t think anything will ever go right ever again. But at the same time, I’m CONQUERING THAT FEAR. Because I’m all about that.
What I really need is a marketing guru or something. Somebody who could give me ideas on how to branch out, and, better yet, how to start making actual money with the writing.
Actually, my friend Thad is the head of online marketing at Gannet Publishing, the huge huge Fortune 500 conglomerate that owns papers like the Chicago Tribune and pretty much almost everything. But whenever he’s given me ideas for ways to market myself, he starts rattling stuff off like…getting people to buy ads on the newsletter and on the online column, and branching the online version out so I have OTHER writers, and expanding and doing all kinds of stuff…and my reaction is always to start humming a little song in my head as he goes on and on, as I just can’t bear the thought of all the information.
What I really need is somebody who just wants to DO all that kind of stuff for me.
Don’t we all? Yep, we all need somebody to do all the stuff we don’t want to do in life.
One thing about Thad’s overwhelming ideas is that I don’t WANT any other writers on my site, because it’s GRACEUNCENSORED, not grace plus others uncensored. Let them get their own sites. I just read something about how “we’re all, tragically, stuck inside our own heads.” And the site is my way of getting the stuff in my head out into the world. It’s absolutely right, that thing about being stuck inside our own heads. Somebody told me that I’m living in my own little world, which annoyed me, because that’s what we’re ALL doing, aren’t we? Yes, we are. It’s not just me.
I just saw the “Parade” section of Sunday’s paper; I never read Parade because I hate it. But on the cover it said “What people earn.” Only I glanced at it quickly and thought it said “What people EAT.” Which amused me, and I thought it’d be much more entertaining. Because mostly it seems like reading all these different jobs people have and how much money they make can make a person all bummed out. Sure, maybe it’s nice to know that I’m making more money than a woman who’s a martial arts teacher in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but I know that she’s either (a) living in a cardboard box somewhere, or (b) has a husband who is supplying her with plenty of money so she doesn’t have to inhabit a box.
Most of the people, though, are Condoleeza Rice, who makes $180,000, or John Travolta, who made $25 million last year. It’s slightly depressing realizing that SpongeBob Squarepants made $1.5 billion dollars last year, almost a billion and a half more dollars than I made.
But also, money isn’t everything, which is why it would be more interesting to read that a females professional skier in Alaska eats nothing but hot dogs and cheese whiz all winter long, or that a horror writer in Berkeley, CA (who also made less than me, and I’m sure he must live at home with his parents judging by his photo) treats himself to a lovely dinner at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse once a month.
Me, so far today (right now it’s 4:32 p.m.), I’ve had a bowl of Grape Nuts, one half of a Mel-O-Cream cream filled doughnut, and a cup of hot chocolate. I realize I’m lacking my 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables so far, but I’ll make it up at dinner. All I’m saying is, most people are all about the food, and it would make you feel you had a connection with Condoleeza Rice if you knew that she loved Captain Crunch for breakfast, as opposed to feeling resentful that she makes so much money (but not anywhere near as much as SpongeBob SP).
I started writing a journal when I was about 10, only then it was my diary, and it had a little bitty lock on it. And that’s pretty much all that was in it, what I had for dinner. I know I must have been filling up my time with more than eating dinner; I did read a lot, and watched TV, went to school, blah blah blah. Clearly, things must have been a little dull back then, though, but then again, it’s not like I could drive anywhere and do exciting things. Not like now, when I could get in my car and drive to…well, Walgreens, for one thing. How many Walgreens does a town need, anyway? Plus all the other drug stores – who’s buying all the drugs? Plus all the other tons and tons of crap they sell there. And why are there drugstores RIGHT NEXT TO other drug stores? I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but it continues to baffle me that they put up a great big CVS Pharmacy on the corner of Stevenson Drive and West Lake Drive, and RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET they built a Walgreens. I mean, I doubt they’re going to completely run out of Cadbury Cream Eggs at CVS, but it is comforting to know that if they do, I could get them at Walgreens. But this hardly seems justification for building an entire STORE.
There must be a big corporate drug store plan in all this; I bet Thad would know why they do it, and I bet it makes perfect marketing sense, and that’s why Walgreens is a big rich company and I’m not.
Anyway, like I said, please tell everybody you know to go pick up copies of my column tomorrow. I just want people to read it, that’s all. Spreading the word of Grace.
Ok then,
Grace with a whole lot on my mind.