My Face for the World to See (Part II):
The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly
a fiction
The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly
a fiction
August 1 - 10, 2012
|
My Face for the World to See (Part II): The Diary of Sherilyn Connelly a fiction
|
Friday, 10 August 2012 (heady early days) 8:42am I finally got to sleep last night, but I didn't get much of it, and not only are my neighbors and their houseguests still upstairs, they've put Janeway in the backyard so of course she's thumping on my windows and barking and howling. Thankfully, Marta says I can come over. 10:53am Got here while Marta was in the living room engrossed in a conversation with roommate / ex-boyfriend, resplendent in his pajama bottoms and wifebeater shirt. When I realized that I was indeed going to lose my shit, I went into her bedroom and did just that. She came in and tried to comfort me, but I was having a hard time explaining just went wrong (beyond feeling frazzled and ignored and unwanted, not by her so much as the world, there are so many people who aren't responding to me on writing/work matters) and she was clearly wanting to get back to her work, so I let go of her and laid down on the bed for a while until I was fairly certain that it was out of my system for the time being, and now I'm at my living room at my usual place at the table while she's on the ground working on her latest pair of jeans. The coffee I poured for myself early has gone way-cold, but I think I'll still be able to manage to write the article my editor just pitched to me. Only needs to be a few hundred words, and it's the kind of fluffy preview thing I've done before, so I can do it now, damnit. Also, there's a new review of Unthology No. 1 up on someone's blog. My two favourite entries are those by Viccy Adams and Ashley Stokes, but others that stand out for me are those by Mischa Hiller, Laura Stimson, Sherilyn Connelly, Sarah Dobbs and Tessa West.My annoying clinginess is the backbone of the story—heck, it's the backbone for the vast majority of my memoir writing—so I can hardly disagree with that characterization. I utterly disagree with the usage of "his/her" as a pronoun, but whatever. Lots of people just don't know how it works. It's also a shame that they're reading one of the earlier versions with the typos still intact, but that's how it is. 1:50pm Finished the article, put it in the queue, and it got published right away. Hooray for work. It was kinda clear that Marta was in a very bad mood, and my presence was not doing it any favors, so I've returned home for lunch and to spend the rest of day here until we (theoretically) reconvene for dinner. Not thirty seconds after I arrived here—I came inside, put down my backpack and purse, then went out into the garage to check mail—did my neighbors and their guests return home as well, loud and stompy. Frak frak frak. All I want is just some peace and quiet, but I am not allowed to have that. So I'm getting more and more back into my habits from the days of the giraffe, which is freaking me the fuck out. On the other hand, I've been needing to get caught up on the "Your Brain is God" series on Over the Edge, so listening though my earbuds with my fuzzy hat on over them and the earmuffs on top almost allows me to completely block out all the other noise. 5:14pm I managed to get some work done, work which doesn't require vast quanities of attention or brainpower, and I also laid down and semi-napped for a while, limnal-surfing while still listening to Over the Edge, which in a lot of ways is how it's intended to be heard. Still, the fact that I've needed to lay down twice today for emotional reasons makes me realize just how broken I am right now. The neighbors have gone again, but now there's bombombom music coming from down the street. It's blocked off with police, and I think it's a film or music video shoot of some kind, but fucking hell, the world is just determined to keep me from having even the slightest bit of quiet and serenity today, inside my head or outside. And as much as I want to hide from that world, I have obligations out in it tonight. 7:58pm Marta and I are having a meal of messy, messy comfort food at San Jalisco, which is where we go for such things. Also, Bad Movie Night has been approached about potentially riffing on a "marine-themed and riduclous" film at the big aquarium on Halloween. Crazy. 11:12pm We're now at a birthday party at The Dark Room, the raison d'etre for the trip. I feel like I may have once been good at this sort of thing, maybe. | ||
 | ||
Thursday, 9 August 2012 (the phone, the tv, and the news of the world) 4:23pm Ilene came over this afternoon to watch more My Little Pony: Friendship Is magic, and also to bring me the Twilight Sparkle-inspired skirt she made for me to wear at Everfree next week. It's quite lovely. Now, I'm heading to KrOB's for more Jerry Lewis movies, though if it wasn't that I'd be finding something else to do out in the world, because my upstairs neighbors are having houseguests this weekend for Outside Lands and they're kicking things off with a "very informal" dinner party tonight. They invited me to join them, which is very sweet, but I just don't think I could handle it. But I can't stay here, either, because there's no way the noise won't drive me a little batshit. So. 6:03pm There are lots of purple-haired girls on Market Street this evening. Also, I've been assigned to a preview writeup thing for the Night & Day section of weekly's print edition. Hopefully, this is what clawing my up the ladder looks like. 11:47pm Got back home a little after eleven, and the party was still raging. I've tried to go to sleep, but even with earplugs in and my white-noise machine on full blast, I can't block out the thumpthumpthump of the bass of whatever they're listening to, and I'm so high-strung that I cannot sleep if there's rhythmic noise. I've texted them to ask if they can please turn the music down so I can get to sleep, but no luck so far. I could go upstairs and ask in person, but I'd almost certainly break down in tears. sometime after midnight The party has ended, but of course now there's the thumpthumpthump of the guests as they thump around getting ready for bed or whatever. I'm trying to take some small solace in the fact that my neighbors say I won't hear much of them past today because they'll be at the festival all weekend. So that's something. | ||
| ||
Wednesday, 8 August 2012 (cold august nights) 1:34pm I've been sending out many nudging "hey, remember me and that work we talked about me doing for you that I'd get paid for?" emails, and not so many responses. Ah, the biz. Two articles up on the weekly, though. One is about an awesome-looking Johnny Legend-produced compilation show at the Roxie next week, and the other is my recaps of episodes 24 and 25 of the second season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a project which will soon be coming to end. That feels weird, but it will be just in time for school to start back up, so I suppose it's for the best. | ||
| ||
Tuesday, 7 August 2012 (going vestigial) 2:13pm Late lunch at Gyro King (what do they do to their eggplants to make them so damn tasty?) after the noontime screening of La Jetée and Meshes of the Afternoon at SFMOMA. After the movies, we checked out the Cindy Sherman exhibit, which I probably would have enjoyed more if there hadn't been so many zillions of people. That's the peril of the free day. Tonight, we'll be going to Pete and Sarah's to watch Breaking Bad. There will presumably be far fewer people. | ||
| ||
Monday, 6 August 2012 (victory in pyrrhus) 8:19am Seriously, though, I need to learn how to not stay up until one in the morning after Bad Movie Night. In other news, I have a new post up on the weekly, about Liberace's 1950s television show. A featured entry, even! Neat. 5:10pm There's a certain anthology coming out this fall in which I have a story, and I'm told that there's a possibility that I might get flown (on someone else's dime) to Salt Lake City for a reading this November. It sounds neat, but it falls into the "I'll believe it when I'm in the air" column for now. | ||
| ||
Sunday, 5 August 2012 (running from the blade) 12:15pm I'll always take some pride in the fact that Marta's favorite taqueria-acquired huevos rancheros come from La Playa Taqueria in my neighborhood. It's the little things. sometime after midnight Typically mediocre turnout at Bad Movie Night for 9 1/2 Weeks, but afterward we watched the Mars Curiosity landing live on The Dark Room's screen, so that nearly made up for it, except for the needing-money part. | ||
| ||
Saturday, 4 August 2012 (hiding between the pages) 1:45pm A very Vietnamese lunch at the not very Vietnamese-sounding New Sandy's Cafe & Deli. So decadent. I've been getting some weird feedback on the SFnet piece, which has suddenly taken off in a big way. When poking, you never can tell which nest is going to belong to hornets. It's the kind of thing that reminds that it's just as well to not get a lot of responses, so long as I get to keep writing things in the first place. 5:31pm Work work work work. That's what weekends are for. | ||
| ||
Friday, 3 August 2012 (setting fire to the ocean) 11:36am I may have a line on another paid blogging gig. It doesn't pay much, I'm told, but it's worth looking into. 2:12pm Whether or not it ever has anything else on it will remain to be seen, but I now have an (automatically generated) author page on Rotten Tomatoes! Neat. 7:14pm Since it's been roughly forever, we're having dinner at Osakaya. | ||
| ||
Thursday, 2 August 2012 (holding and leaning back) 10:28am Turns out that the stuff on the weekly weren't the only things of mine that went live yesterday. Also published online was my first movie review for The Village Voice. So that's awesome, but even more awesome is the fact that a dress design for which Marta recently won a contest has been made into an actual dress in real life, and it's quite lovely. 7:23pm No Jerry Lewis movies at KrOB's tonight, nor Justified at Pete and Sarah's. Which is fine, because I'm not lacking for work to do right now. | ||
| ||
Wednesday, 1 August 2012 (less than happy to oblige) 11:33am Busy morning for me on the weekly. Not only are my recaps of episodes 22 and 23 of the second season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic now up, but also something I wrote about a documentary about SFnet that I taped off public access in the late 90s. Someday I'm going to run out of random things like that in my collection, and then I'll be boned. | ||
| ||