The great thing about freelancing (otherwise known as "semi-" or "unemployment") is all the cool free time. The great thing about the current climate of employment (otherwise known as "crappy" or "mass unemployment") is that many of my friends are free and available during the day to play with me, having been laid off or being between freelance gigs. Another great thing about the current climate of employment is that many of my laid-off pals have made this their opportunity to study interior design, cooking, photography... whatever joyful activities they had put off for their careers. We all make careers of whatever seems the most lucrative, and we go into the chosen field meaning to make ho
When I was 15, 16 and 17 I think I was clinically depressed and technically sociopathic. Or maybe that's just teenagehood in a nutshell? I was the proud owner of a red 1968 Chevy Nova before I was even a licensed driver. That damn thing got me in more trouble...! Actually I got myself in trouble; the car was just a convenient medium for my kind of trouble. My mom and I fought constantly at that time. When I first got the car, at age 15, I'd end an argument by grabbing the keys and running out the door. I barely even knew how to drive; I just about had a handle on the basics, but I had no qualms about risking everyone's life including my own so I could careen out of my anger, flying in a red
I was thinking about what to get my mom for christmas (if anything;" Nothing" is my usual solution to the problem these days). And I remembered when I was little, like 7 or 8, my mom would give my brother and me each 10 dollars and set us free in the Sun Valley Mall (in Concord, where we lived then) to buy presents for the family. Usually I'd get silly cheap-ass toys for my brother and Old Spice for my dad (he must have had *buttloads* of that stuff!) And every year, I searched the mall for the most extraordinary, glorious, inspired gift for my mom to show her how much I loved her, how precious she was to me. My brother and I had been going to parochial schools for years, not because we were
