But Call Me Betsy

Going to be another hot day and then hotter tomorrow and hotter still on Wednesday. And yet many proclaim it has nothing to do with scientifically proven global warming trends. Couldn't figure out what to wear this morning-bought this cute skirt from Jane (a consignment shop in Princeton), but it's like floor length polyester blend and makes me look like I'm about to descend on a prairie. I could get away with it on a cooler day, but not when it's going to be sweltering.  Don't feel like writing any fiction this morning, am not inspired, but will try anyway. I can write a bunch of sentences in a row just to get it over with, but that feels almost like cheating--like I should have a better plan in mind for the arc of whatever story I'm working on (three now--the virgin story, the feral cats story, and the extension of the donation story). All of them are scattered throughout the online journal, so if I ever do decide to go back and fix them up, I'm going to...

Saw the new Woody Allen movie last night, To Rome with Love . I believe Dan and I might have been two of the youngest people in the theater--most were of the older generation.  Four stories that were loosely based on this idea of what celebrity means. My favorite was the Roberto Benigni story line--an ordinary Italian man who steps out his door one day to find that he's become famous overnight and the paparazzi are waiting to flash photos of him and ask him what he had for breakfast, how long it took him to shave, whether he wears boxers or briefs--the point being, I guess, how people can now be famous for just being famous. Talentless, insipid, and famous because of who they know or their level of wealth and connectedness in Hollywood (the Kardashians, the Hiltons, the Tori Spellings of this world). The second story line that was the most interesting was the one involving Alec Baldwin and that kid who played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. The kid falls head of heels for ...

It's hard to get to this blog when I'm writing in that 750 words thing every day (have done 165 days in a row so far). But then I look at the blog and feel so sad that it's neglected. So, maybe what I can do is to use the first part of my writing every morning to come up with something more general to say that I can cross post here. Right now, I'm reading Carol Shields' novel,   Unless , and really, not all that much happens in it from chapter to chapter, UNLESS you count that each scene shows this 44 year old mother trying to get on with her life after her daughter has taken to sitting on the street corner with a street sign reading, "Goodness" on it. I kind of don't like how the character keeps referring to her age, how she's in the first part of being middle-aged. That reminds me that I'm middle aged, but I don't feel like that. Also read a piece in the New Yorker that was really just this writer's diary from her time in Madrid w...