Fall Foliage and Circus Dreams

Hello from underemployment land!

Things are getting a little kah-razy around here what with the lack of regular employment lo these last many months. This economy, however, is forcing me to open my eyes wide to all kinds of possibilities, that, in my laziness, I hadn't considered before.

Why in the old days, I could shoot off a mediocre resume into cyberspace and I'd have a high-paying job instantly. Usually with my fleshy old sugar daddy, Geeksoft.

Nowadays even Daddy Geeksoft doesn't want me! So for the first time in years I've really been looking around at what's out there (Food services worker with the Ringling Brothers Circus! Language instruction coordinator with the FBI!) and thinking about what I might actually do for a living (until my book *bursts* onto the bestseller list or I finally crank out another one, which I'm working on, don't worry, it's just taking a while OKAY?!!).

And you know, it's kind of refreshing to see the wide world of jobs out there! And to imagine myself doing something other than that mind-numbing work I've done for the last ten years to support myself. Even if all the ones that appeal to me are abysmally low-paying. But, like I always say: "Do What You Love and The Money Will Drain out of Your Bank Account."

I've also been - gasp - actually working on my resume for the first time in years. I mean, of course I revise it all the time, but I haven't really WORKED on it for a long-ass time, if you know what I mean. Because I haven't had to! It's been so easy up til now.

And though it practically killed me at first (I wouldn't have survived the process if it weren't for a gargantuan maple bar from Top Pot Doughnuts), the revisions have actually made me see MYSELF as a better employment prospect.

Why did you know I received an AWARD from Amazon.com from my creativity and initiative during those brief months that I was incarcerated there? Yes I did, thank you very much and I forgotten about that until I put it in my snazzy new resume!

(I am also getting much help from a career coach, who I highly recommend if you are in the market).

Anyway, enough job-related drivel. I got some classes coming up, yo, that you might be interested in. Check them out here!

I've also been getting out and about in the mountains and spent a gorgeous two days up in the Cascades FREEZING MY A*S off a week ago. The foliage was splendiferous, the views were poetic (see photo above), and the temperatures dropped to FIFTEEN DEGREES during the night.

I was prepared with a warm sleeping bag but still had to put on every layer I had with me when I went to sleep (at 7:45 p.m.), including:

• long underwear bottoms
  
• down pants
  
• two long underwear tops
  
• fleece shirt
  
• down jacket
  
• gloves
  
• two pairs of wool socks
  
• wool hat UNDERNEATH a fleece balaclava that was cinched around my entire face (nose included)
  
• chemical heat packs on my hands and chest

I'm probably forgetting something but you get the picture. With all that I was STILL kinda cold. Not to mention I pitched my tent at such an angle that my head was pointed seriously downhill most of the night, which, along with the cold, made for many disturbing dreams.

At least when you're battling the elements you're not thinking about your stupid resume, your credit card balance, and whether or not it's a good idea to run off with the circus (as a food service worker).

xo
Rebecca

Self-Pitying Rant du Jour

Grr. Only with the help of a very strong latte on (top of two cups of strong drip coffee) have I been able to dig up my usual optimism today.

Let's just say there has been more than the usual amount of rejection lately, what with getting FIRED from my last band and getting SHUT DOWN by ye olde Geeksoft for a job for which I was way overqualified and only sort of wanted anyway, and by the way paid utter CRAP.

(P.S. Yes, that's my pug Snuffy. When you work at home, you take a lot of pictures of your pug wearing glasses.)

Oh, and the band? Let's call them "The Old White Guys" cause that's what they are - especially now without the younger, perkier additions of me, Dave, and the drummer, who also got fired because we "couldn't put music first in our lives." Seriously, everyone in that band is like 60+ and playing tired old classic rock covers. I AM MEANT FOR BETTER THINGS!!

So it's true, I was stretched way too thin and not putting any time into the music, even though I wanted to. Thus my rock star career is currently on hiatus as I do a little soul searching but never mind. I SHALL RISE AGAIN. SO EFF YOU OLD WHITE GUYS AND GEEKSOFT. JUST YOU WAIT.

There. I feel so much better. With another five lattes, I might feel even better.

SAY. You'll indulge me for a minute if I point you to an article about me and my book from 2006, when I was briefly FAMOUS. I just discovered in my so-called "files" the hard copy of an article from King County Journal that is no longer available online, and was thrilled to see myself not only a giant photo of myself on the cover of a pullout section of the but also to see a giant photo of myself on top of Mt. Rainier on the inside. Yay, me! Those were the days.

And, to top it all off (no pun intended), it was much bigger than the photo of Hannah Montana, who was the subject of the next article. Ha ha ha hahhahah. EFF YOU HANNAH MONTANA.

I just scanned this sucker and put it on my web site so that we can relive 2006 in all its glory! Enjoy! (But be warned. It's a PDF. You'll read it anyway. WON'T you?)

Getting Religion in the Goat Rocks Wilderness

Ugh. I have just moved. That's right, moved. Back to the condo in Queen Anne from whence I came.

I won't bore you with the details of why we moved out of our lovely Greenlake rental back to the condo I own, which is a great size for one person (and one small dog). We'll just have to see if Dave and I can apply the living-together skills we learned in the two-bedroom house with the huge-ass basement to the 650-square foot one bedroom condo with one tiny storage locker.

Luckily, nothing was thrown during this move. (See the previous blog entry for details on last year's throwing incident). Or not really, anyway. Late last week I did throw an ear of corn. And while it wasn't directly move-related I think it the fit of pique in which I threw it (oh the shame!) was related to stress brought on by the move.

Anyway, moving on. (Get it? MOVING on?) Last weekend, because of course, I had no PACKING to do or anything, I took a backpacking trip to the Goat Rocks Wilderness area south of Mount Rainier. And Oh! My! It was a high-altitude world filled with wildflower-washed meadows.

I've posted a few of my (amateurish) pictures here for your enjoyment. Let's just say that going to the mountains is never a mistake, even if you're up to your eyeballs in stressful sh*t to do. Especially this little corner of the Cascades. Unless, of course, you make get lost, die of hypothermia, or fall off a cliff.

xo

Rebecca

Return from Vacation Alive - Check!

I am back from a week of paddling in the Canadian wild! Tan, rested, raring to go. We kayaked for five days in 80-degree weather: lounging on white sand beaches, paddling protected aqua waters, drinking red wine from our beachfront campsites while watching the sun go down.

Oh, there was mouse poop and banana slugs and snakes, but compared to last summer's Alaskan grizzlies, they didn't disturb me at all. Starfish and sea lions were our main animal companions on this sun-dazzled journey in the Broken Group Islands off west Vancouver Island.

We did, however, have on exciting wildlife encounter. Here's a snippet from an article I'm writing about it; you'll just have to wait until it gets published to read it all! (And if you haven't ready my article about last year's Alaska paddle, you can download it in PDF format here).

I’d just put down my book and pulled my sleeping bag around me when a loud noise broke the silence of our coastal campsite. Crash! Snort!Indeterminate rustlings!

“What the--?” Dave sat up straight. He peered out into the night through the door of our tent but his headlamp didn’t make a dent in the blackness. My mind groped at possibilities. My heart launched into a rock and roll beat. Deer? Wolf? Escaped prisoner in a murderous rage? Bear?

Now it's back to the grind (granted my "grind" is rather slow these days) but also to the dreaded MOVE. Yes Dave and I are moving back to my condo in Queen Anne for long, boring reasons I shall not go into.

Just pray for us, that's all I can say. Hope that there is not a repeat of our dramatic meltdown of the last year's move, which involved me topless and sobbing in a heat wave throwing bottles of household cleaner at Dave. (Although if there is a repeat this year, we really hope to catch it on video).

xo, Rebecca

The Summer Sun Has Made Me Loopy

Greetings Earthlings!

I have been most busy being underemployed and enjoying Seattle's precious summer months in our beautiful Olympics and Cascade Mountains where I enjoy taking bad photos of wildlfowers and wandering knife-edged ridges.

Oh yes, sometimes summer bothers the h*ll out of me with all its demanding sunshine but lately I LIKE it. Maybe because Dave's mom has a house on Lake Washington and I get to lounge on the grassy beach watching the yachts go by, pretending like I'm rich and famous even though I'm a downwardly mobile professional, albeit one with a cleaning lady.

Or maybe it's because I'm currently not lonely and therefore not in one of my melancholy states of mind which is not to say I'm MENTALLY WELL-ADUSTED because then what kind of writer would I be? (Underneath that dorky "Seattle Sombrero" lies a tortured mind. I swear it.) But moving on...

Coming right up on Monday night at 5:30 p.m. is my long-awaited class at the Seattle Public Library called "Blogging for Beginners."

If you never saw me play the part of Helena in a "Midsummer Night's Dream" (sixth grade); if you didn't catch my small but pivotal role as the Russian duchess in "You Can't Take It With You" (eighth grade) if you failed to wintess my small but pivotal role as Amaryllis in "The Music Man" (senior year of high school) or God forbid failed to see any one of my million piano recitals when I was a kid or my rock debut at the Crossroads Mall or my on my SMASHINGLY SUCCESSFUL west coast book tour (all except for Bellingham, where no one laughed, and San Franciso where hardly anyone showed up, and - oh never mind), NOW IS YOUR CHANCE!

Or maybe you'd rather go have a pomegranate mojito at El Chupacabra on Greenwood. Cause if you did I would *totally* understand.

Monday Monday

Hello hello from work-at-home-never-leave-the-house-don't-talk-to-anyone-but-the-dog-land.

Things are peachy keen here! I'm getting supremely buffed by doing the workouts in Kathy Kaehler's Celebrity Workouts: How to Get a Hollywood Body in Just 30 Minutes a Day, which also does not require me to leave the house! OK, maybe "supremely buffed" is an exaggeration. "Slightly worked" might be more apt or "a teeny-tiny bit of defintion which I'm probably imagining" is more likely.

You can be the judge when I don my swimsuit for the Greenlake Open Water Swim next weekend! Oh hell. Maybe I'll do the Greenlake Open Water Swim. You know I have a fear of giant squid, even in freshwater lakes. No wait, that's Li'l Sis! Ha ha. She still manages to be a much better swimmer than than me, even though I beat her in that one impromptu swim race in Hawaii (not that I still gloat about that 10 years later). There are other things to be afraid of in Greenlake, like children's pee and goose poop. So we shall see.

It would actually require me to leave the house and "interface" with other people so I don't know if that will work. I have everything I need at home, like tofu, coffee, an Internet connection, and several Canon cameras circa 1980 that I can't bring myself to get rid of. Plus, of course, Yogi "Classic India Spice" tea. C'mon, buy some! I'll get like two cents if you do!



Just kidding. I get out a lot. I even went to a birthday party and band practice; led a hike at Mt. Rainier National Park, and went to a Mexican restaurant this weekend, where I drank a ridiculously huge margarita. (See, there I am at left in the mountains, fooling an unsuspecting member of the Mountaineers into thinking I am capable of reading a map, etc..)

On this gray Monday, however, it's back to the grind. Just me and the dog doing our celebrity workouts, drinking Classic India Spice tea, and simultaneously being annoyed and fascinated by stupid Twitter. Oh yeah - looking for a job too! (In case the unemployment office asks.)

A Walk in the Woods

Phew! I've been out of the blogosphere for a while, having spent last week taking a bunch of 7th graders into the wilderness. Yes, I know, very Lord of the Flies.

But in fact these kids were all sweet, well-adjusted, kind, friendly, and helpful to each other. There was nary an awkward teen among the bunch. No exclusionary cliques or power-mongering "popular" people out to destroy the "nerds." Oh, sure, they were fond of throwing rocks the size of coconuts and dancing around with their pocket knives in hand, and they often spilled dinner on the ground when cooking it (then threw it back into the pot, because after all, we had to eat).

Yet overall I was quite impressed with their group dynamics. They all go to a very small private middle school in Seattle, and I tell you, their seeming well-adjustedness was enough to make me want to send my future (hypothetical) kids to private school after being a lifelong, die-hard believer in public schools.

Anyway. It's all part of my plan to move into lower- and lower-paying work, which is going quite nicely, thank you very much.

"This is so much better than school!" yelled one kid as he plunged into the icy, sparkling Skokomish River on a 90-degree day after hiking for five hours. Insert the phrase "sitting in a windowless office doing work that makes me despise myself even though it pays a lot (though not as much as it used to)" for "school" and you have my sentiments exactly.