I worship Lorrie Moore. She is one of my favorite writers. Her stories are warm and generous, clever and cute, funny and sad and funny again. Compared to L. Moore, I am a sour old picklepussy, a bitter melon, the old crank who doesn't want to share her seat on the bus. If I live long enough to become genuinely old, not only will I have long, white hairs growing out of my chin, I will also be one of those cranky seniors who barks orders at the retirement home kitchen staff:
What the hell is this white shit? I asked for REAL creme fraiche! To hide the taste of this shitty apple pie! You call this a crust? --Me in 2056
How can I be more like Lorrie Moore? How can I be "at once, sad, funny, lyrical, and prickly?" How can I get Michiko K. to form an opinion on me?
"Cut your whiskers and shut your mouth, Mrs. D!"
The first pregnancy of my Smith crew has been announced. Iowa is getting another corn-fed baby in January and she or he will be cute as hell. At first, I was a bit jealous of this announcement, but then I looked over at Little Bro and remembered that I could end up with a kid who can't order food at a restaurant without asking a million embarrassing questions. "Do you put sauce on your spaghetti?" I shouldn't be so hard on the kid, but doing shit like that makes you the person on the bus that no one wants to share a seat with. He is, after all, the biological son of the former stepdad, a man who is proud of the fact that he lives in a large house denuded of most of its furniture and has no plans to replace it. The reason he won't replace it is not because he can't afford furniture (he can) or because, practically speaking, he has no need to replace it, since no one is ever going to come over to play poker or anything. It's because he thinks that having huge empty rooms in his house is cool.
I am awaiting the rebirth of wonder.
Posted by Zerd at June 25, 2007 09:47 PM