If you’re old enough to remember the wonderful weekly show on NBC hosted by great Briton David Frost (years before his accalimed Nixon interviews) called That Was The Week that Was, theme song sung by American Nancy Ames(?) . . . . we’ll probably never do coffee or better, and that’s okay. Anyhoo for some nutty reason I yam compulsed (compelled if you prefer) to share the week wichoo. It’s been the kind of week I would wish for . . . . if I could only make the dollars I need while doing it.
There has been no sub teaching this wee DANG IT, but it’s just as well considering what I have on my plate: a MAJOR editing of a local pol’s web site (if I told you more, I’d have to kill me) and a nagging, past-due need to concentrate on a major story for a great metropolitain new spaper. The editing could have, nay SHOULD have taken eight hours a day from me, instead of the six per day I spent with it. And if I had given it those eight, I would have been DONE with it by now, though probably not quite.
What’s really pathetic in this dream-scenario of me editing and rewriting six hours a day is that the PAIN of reading and editing the words as they lay on the page like so much of what grackels leave behind when they raid the dog chow bowls of my Labradors, Seeing what most high school seniors would score perhaps a D- from if they were blind enough to share it with their teachers and having to slog through this, correcting every mis-use of upper case, every run-on sentence, every statement repeating in the third paragraph what was said in the first . . . . . . the whole ‘xperience depressed me the more time I spent with it. On Wednesday, I could barely force myself to deal with it! That’s okay in a way. So what if I hate his writing; I still like the fellow for reasons a plenty. We agreed on a price for the completed edit; not a by-the-hour arrangement. If we had, I’d be earning as much per hour as a pidgeon guano remover working at a cheap hotel in Bangladesh. That would be based on the hourly rate. Do I care? Heck nada. If I live through it, I’ll have another gold star for my resume that nobody cares about anyway. BUT Friday was a magic day for me in that as I realized I was approaching the end of it, I could feel it pulling on me like the gravitational influence of the moon drawing astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the moon after leaving the earth’s grasp. Today, I enjoyed the editing, and I’m feeling so good knowing I have only five more pages to go, and I’ll knock them out after Writers Bloc Saturday that I’m feeling downright marginally cheerful for the first frikking time this frikking week!
It also helped IMMENSELY that the editor at elsewhere gave me until late next week to get a long-promised article to him. I cannot screw up this deal: what may be my first cover story since the feral cat piece in 2005. We shall c.
Earlier this week after slogging through a really testy time with the editing and rewrite action, I was determined to reward my froggy self. And I remembered a promise I made to me last December (which seems like only a few heartbeats ago). The promise was that in times like these when I NEED gratification and the Internet porn just doesn’t work the way it used to for me, I could enjoy wine or ice cream; never both at the same time. Since I was (naiively) harboring hope of sub teaching this week, and since I have accepted the fact Julia Roberts will never elope with me (so the Firestone around my waste is not the consideration it used to be) I went with the ice cream. Did you know the half gallons you THINK you’re buying at CVS are really 1.75 gallons? I didn’t until I read the frikking box Tuesday night. But I was too involved with my spoon to care. Well the ice cream had disappeared by bedtime Thursday night, and Carlo Rossi came home with me after I delivered my edits to Ernest Hemingway. That’s okay. I’m not a dangerous drinker; just a babbling one.
Thanks for reading this.
Live long . . . . . . . . . . . and proper.
