From the Looks of Things

One of these nights I will sleep well again. Until then, I will write to you.

If someone stumbles upon this blog looking for more abortion posts, they will be disappointed since the last few entries make little mention of that. I think I will be writing more about aborted fetuses though. I can feel it coming and I am hoping this time it won't be so bad.

It is a possibility that I will be spending Thanksgiving alone after all.  I should be working on wangling another invitation or taking up one of the ones that came my way. But if this first plan doesn't work out, I have decided to brave it.  So maybe Thursday will be weepy, feel-sorry-for-myself day. Or maybe not.

The Book and My Inferiority Complex About Writing

Mai and Ricardo -- these two don't always make themselves available to my blogging or novelistic wiles. I don't know how to structure the novel. How do you go about writing 30 years of a person's life? Beginnings are nice though. Easy enough.

My novel is a fucking great idea for a book. But how do I do it?  Who cares if it's a good idea if it doesn't get written?

I was thinking this morning that the Ricardo character is turning into my alter ego. Not the woman, the man. Will this be true a few months from now?

I also wonder what will happen to the my blogging when and if the more maudlin events that have preoccupied me all year fade a bit more. Will even care to read about the crap that goes on in my mind?

Work and My Beautiful Shoes

At work I am making friends with a huge man named Doug. He makes fun of my smallness because he is 6'5. I make fun of how he is always cold and wrapped in down. I can tell he is half surprised by everything I say. A few of the women seem to like me well enough but they all just want to talk about shoes. They notice what I am wearing and want to know where things came from -- I do not like to discuss where I shop.

Clothing and shoes are my secret vice. Very few people know how much money has been spent on my shoes or the scarves. I will drop $500 on a pair of boots without a second thought. This embarrasses me because it turns me into a stereotype of your basic New York single woman. Or the Imelda Marcos Filipino thing (everyone mentions this as if they thought it up themselves). I choose my clothes for their plainness so it always surprises me when people notice.

Kindness

People are generally nice to me. I've mentioned this before. But lately it is quite obvious and it is to the point where I am a little freaked out. People are nicer to me than they are to other people.  I bring something out in people.

What is it?

At work, there is an Asian lady who slips me packets of green tea and leaves me mints and chocolates on my desk. She wants to know about my family and where I've been.

There is Professor Dick who I am about to ask to leave me alone.  HOW do I do this? I feel so ungrateful but I want him to leave me alone.

I think about kindness and this IT thing often because people often suffocate me.  But probably the bigger issue is that I am afraid that whatever this thing is that makes people nice to me will desert me one day and I will be lost. It's much like the beauty of some people.  What happens when the lines come in, when breasts begin to sag, when the woman loses that sexy thing?

What do *I* have to fear losing? Will I someday act or say the inappropriate things that I say now, fully expecting to get away with it only to realize that I have lost that thing that made my borderline behavior acceptable?

Is it because I refuse most things people offer me?

My Parents

It just occurred to me that I could be describing both of my parents.  They haven't lost their charm yet.  My father is as charismatic as ever. When we lived in Kuwait, my mother used to hate walking with my dad because all the Filipinos knew him.  It was like being with a celebrity.

And my father, I think, has always been proud of being the one to have married my beautiful mother.

In case you doubt me, reader, here is photographic evidence:

That's it for tonight.  This blogger has a date to keep with Colm Toibin.