“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.”

— Margaret Chittenden, writer

Dear Internet,

Are you out there, or what? Why no comments? WTF? I mean, really — WTFF? (My mom’s favorite expression: “What the fucking fuck?” Yes, she says this in front of my children. “Ouch, my freakin’ ears!” — “The Simpsons.”)

I’m e-mailing agents. Rather, I’m compiling a list of all the agents who have previously rejected me, so I don’t bother them again.

It’s a fairly long list. I need to change my strategy. You know what I’m thinking I need to do? When I talk on the phone with my granny, I need to write down every freakin’ thing she says, and get that published.

She would sell. Here’s a verbatim monologue from when she was trying to use the public lift (Tri-Met provides this service super-cheap to needy seniors. And my grandma is needy cuz we all refuse to drive her places. Rotten children! Rotten grandchildren!). She was going to her friend’s birthday party in BF Egypt. (Do you mind if I say BF Egypt, Internet?) Anywho, I copied this into a word file and just found it. Am thrilled by my discovery:

“Wacky Mommy.” (First, I must interject. She doesn’t call me Wacky Mommy, she calls me Nancy, of course. Which is my name. But the way she says it? It’s more a command than a “hello” or a term of endearment. Also, she’s originally from Arkansas and has never lost her accent. She slays me. “That just fractures me,” as she would say.)

“Here, let me tell you this, about the party. Well, what? I took the Tri-Met Lift, because all the kids, you know, they’re busy with one thing and another.

Well. They said the party was at 1, so the lift would be here at 12, or no later than 12:15. So it’s 12:15 and I’m thinking, ‘Now, where???…’ and here in my driveway comes a Broadway cab. So I thought he must be lost, and turning around. But he says, ‘Mrs. So-and-so?’ and I say ‘Yes?’ and he says ‘Tri-Met sent me…’

…The meter read $44 by the time we got to Oregon City, can you believe it? Forty-four dollars. (She says it “four-teeeeeeeeee four-DOLLARS!”) The driver was Caribbean or something, I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. But he was so nice…”

(I stopped typing after this and just scribbled notes… after they got to the deserted-looking tree farm where the party was, he wouldn’t let her go by herself, he went and scouted it out first…)

“And he turned off the meter! Do they always do that? I wonder…”

More notes:
1) she didn’t like the “store bought” cake and scraped the frosting off her piece. So the 100-year-old gramps sitting next to her swiped it off her plate and ate it. “Oooooooooooh, that killed me!” she says.

2) And no, she won’t take the lift over here to see the great-grandkids. “Nancy, I am just so tired!” I told her sure, she’ll take it all the g.d. way from Tigard to Oregon City, or downtown to get her picture taken (she was in the newspaper a few years ago. And on the news. She is a media darling), but she won’t come over here.

She sez, “In one month, in one month I will be — next month! I will be 83 years old! You kids forget about how old and tired I am!”

Next month! She’ll be 87!

Happy birthday, Grandma.

Love,

WM