Never a Dull $!@%ing Moment

By Cornelia

So Monday morning I was feeling pretty damn good about life. I'd done readings for The Crazy School at the wonderful Book Passage and Diesel bookstores over the weekend and gotten to see lots of friends who were kind enough to come out and celebrate the release with me.

Plus, the magnificent persons at Grand Central Publishing put nice big fat ads for the book in The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, like this:


and which had me totally kvelling, I can assure you.

In fact, I was in such a good mood by Monday morning that I actually enjoyed spending three hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles--a state of mind which, given my normal world view:


Should perhaps have come as a bit of a warning that I was experiencing one of those Icarus moments--the kind where you think it's this:


when it's actually this:



and you end up wishing you had taken more of this:


or at least had the foresight, back in college, to stockpile some of this:


this:

and this:

(Painter Bruno Fonseca, now sadly deceased)

to get you through the inevitable goddamn rainy days.

Especially the inevitable goddamn rainy Monday afternoons, which suck the most hugely, in my experience.

Remember that essay that got emailed around a few years ago, purporting to be Kurt Vonnegut's commencement address at MIT, but wasn't?

(A sketch by the real K.V.)

In part, it said:

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

I didn't even make it to Tuesday, this time around.

Because on Monday afternoon, FOLLOWING my three happy hours at the DMV, I got a phone call at home.

From my husband.

Saying he'd just been fired by the assholes in San Diego.


Somehow, the fact that I'd said, "you know, I don't think you should work for those people, it sounds like they're assholes" a year ago--before he took the job--didn't really make up for the fact that he came home Monday night with exactly one month's pay as severance.

Here are the main facets of the bright side of this occurence:

1. smug satisfaction that I was so totally right.
2. free babysitting.
3. I didn't move to fucking San Diego.
   

Here is the potential downside:



As Sophie Tucker once so cogently said, "I been rich, and I been poor, and rich is better." I think I actually quoted her a couple of weeks ago on this very blog, when I was feeling slightly less poor.

I don't know... sometimes, you realize you're in a movie, right? And then it dawns on you that, unfortunately, your director is not Frank Capra, but:


which can make you feel:


Or, as my friend Candace used to say, that "there is a God. He's malicious.":


Although I prefer to believe he's just off his meds:




In fact, most days I prefer this guy:

to this guy:


Although I am tremendously grateful that I am here in Berkeley, safe in my house and only worried about money, rather than here:


Sometimes, you need to pull back and get the big picture, you know?




Which I'm trying to do.

But even so, if any of you guys have friends with lots of this:


Please ask them to come to Stacey's Books in San Francisco today at 12:30, or M is for Mystery in San Mateo on Saturday at 2:00 to splurge on this:



Because my children drink a lot of this:


Meanwhile, I will remember the time last year when my husband told me, "you need to give up this writing shit, because you're not making any money at it and I need a homemaker."

And I will smile to myself, picturing this:



And if that doesn't work, I'll just whistle this: