Chapter Nine: The End is Nigh

I've been away from home for more than two weeks, now. And I'm starting to feel the burn. The blows to the heart. A lost voice. An exhausted everything. I need a haircut and a manicure and a kiss from my baby. I don't know how people leave their kids for long periods of time. A week I can do. Even ten days. But anything longer than that and things start to get tricky. 

I'm looking forward to coming home. To spooning my boys in the big bed.  To being a mom, again. Wearing flip-flops and dropping Archer off at school in the mornings. Taking long walks with the dogs and Archer who holds the leashes. I'm dying to get back to work on my new book, Hal and my almost finished teleplay and my very first film project (I wrote a short film that will be made this summer, indie-rock collaboration with five -filmmakers... more on that to come.) I'm pretty much addicted to working and it's been a hard task to juggle working on a novel, putting together two proposals for new books of non-fiction and writing two scripts,  not to mention keeping up with two blogs and promoting a new book. I haven't had so much as five minutes to get excited about my pregnancy, too busy trying to get as much work done now, while I can. 

When Archer was born, I went back to work after three days. And I don't think it will be that easy this time. No way, right? Not with two children. But I'm going to try. Because I have to. Because I want to. Because I will anyway. Even if it means even less sleep and more lost voices. 

Lost voices always come back. 

The thing I've noticed most, while traveling, are the cranes in every skyline. Ever city trying to make itself over, reclaim it's youth and beauty. Urbania is so busy restoring itself, becoming something new, blemishing its profile for another high-rise or hotel. I'm still trying to work on what this metaphor means to me but I have a feeling it means something. I'm going to get to the bottom of it, too. 

The other thing I've noticed is that Dana looks nothing like a lesbian assistant. Not even close. She's so fucking sexy and smart and hilarious and real and delicious that I just want to eat her face.  

So, this is kind of an ambush of nonsense but at this point I feel completely nonsensical so there you go. My eyes hurt from the glare of the computer. My boots are broken from walking on them so hard. My clothes are creased diagonally from being a god-awful packer and everything I have smells like the perfume that broke open and leaked all over my bag. 

"What time is it?" I keep asking. "And what day is it again?"

At this point, I'm pretty sure it's two hairs past a freckle past time to go home. 

GGC

Please join me, Portland people for my very last reading/signing at Powell's Books on Monday, May 5th at 7:30pm (at the main store, Burnside location) ... BMC will be supplying cookies for the event, which is like, SUCH a reason to come.  That and the fact that if my voice is still gone by tomorrow, I'll be hiring audience members to read from my book while I act it out with finger-puppets. Jolly good.