Hurry, Hurry, Hurry, Hurry–

Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry up Tuesday.

But wait! AB leaves on Monday.

Slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down now.

I think AB threw away my kitchen sponge. I didn’t have it for any other reason than the scouring power on one side. She thinks she’s helping, I know, but all she’s doing is contributing to my now near-constant fear that I’m losing my mind. I had a sponge. I know I had a sponge. It was right on the sink, on the left hand side, so that I could get at sticky food problems, like dried curry on a plate. But the sponge is gone. The good news is right now I have an excuse. AB must have thrown it away, like she did with all the other sponges I’ve ever had in my life (I am now a towel and washrag girl), thinking I’d been slipping back into old habits.

When she goes home on Monday, I no longer have any excuse for when I can’t find something or can’t remember something. At this point, it happens at least once an hour. When it happens and AB laughs at me, I often say to her, “You’ll be sorry you’re laughing when we find out I’m ill.” To which she always says, “You’re not sick; you’re on strike. Your brain’s all strikey.”

So when AB goes home, I can only blame the strike. But when the strike ends, AB could come back here.

Yes, that’s what I want. Like it was earlier this year. AB was here, the strike wasn’t. And I had a sponge that sat in a location I remembered.

I opened this only to link to Rivers Cuomo’s solo project. But then I felt bad for wishing for Tuesday.

Why am I recapping this entry?

week six. more honking, less cheering.

So apparently I walked right past Jane Espenson today, because I was staring at the guy she was walking with, thinking, “There’s Doyle from Gilmore Girls! And on my other side I’m walking past Peter Krause for the fiftieth time!”

Sorry, Jane. I really wanted to meet you.

That’s a much better story than what happened to me yesterday, when in less than an hour someone leaned out of his truck window to give me the double bird, a man shouted, “Go home, please!” and then a woman hit me. She came up behind me, jogging down the street, and punched my sign as she passed, causing it to hit me in the back of the head.

It took a second for me to realize what had happened. That the sign stick smacking me in the back of my head wasn’t due to my own klutziness, but because the woman passing me on the street on my left, clad in neon green spandex and a visor, had just hit me. With her hand. Because she didn’t want to either pass me on the right (I was standing at a crosswalk), or spend any of the ten minutes she’d spent running up toward me to say, “On your left!”

Instead she took a swing at me. At my sign, which was a part of me.

I drove home furious with myself. I wish I wasn’t the kind of person who immediately thinks, “Gee, I guess I was in her way. I should be more careful. I wish she hadn’t scared me so much. My head really hurts now. She hit it hard. She must be mad about the strike. Hasn’t she known we are on her jogging path for the past six weeks?”

I wish I had been ballsy enough fast enough that I’d have thrown down my purse and just took off after her and fell into a pace next to her as we ran. “Hi,” I’d say, falling into marathon mode. “I was just wondering what makes you think you have the right to commit battery? Do you have any right to hit me? From behind? A complete stranger who was standing at a crosswalk? Do you seriously think you have the right to hit me? And where are we going? Because I’m going to keep running until you are just as scared as you made me, you egotistical asshole. How dare you hit someone. Anyone. How dare you punch a picketer who wasn’t even in your way? I was on the curb! You were running on the busy street! What is wrong with you? Apologize to me!”

Man, all the way home, I was driving and cursing at myself. Why didn’t I run after her? Why didn’t I make her apologize? Why did I let her literally do a hit and run?

I’m still mad. I can’t seem to get over it. Every time I think of it I get just as mad as I was driving home. I mean, who does that? Who hits a stranger while they’re jogging? She punched my sign! Like I was a mannequin or something! Like a target!

Calm down. Think nice thoughts. Peter Krause.

About that. This morning when Jenny and I were walking she did that thing where she talks without sound and all you hear are these little pops and clicks of her tongue (It’s crazy, and it makes me giggle), and she mouthed, “That’s Peter Krause.” And I looked at the guy in front of us who was wearing sunglasses and a skull cap and a SAG shirt and I was like, “Oh, yeah! Good eye! Let’s walk near him.”

We did, trying to make sure it was him, and the second he said something to someone we both looked at each other and said, “No.” Not him.

An hour later, Peter Krause magically appeared. Standing next to fake Peter Krause! And Jenny balled up her fist and shouted, “Dammit! I just wasted a wish! I wonder what will never happen to me now that I made Peter Krause appear.”

strike life: laura and liz

I just looked up “fatigue” on the Internet. That can’t be a good sign. I’m so exhausted, you guys. I can’t even explain it.

One day during the Top Model strike, I went to visit Dan and sat with him for a second. He kept staring straight at his water bottle, the sunburn on his nose looking painful, as he mumbled, “I don’t know. I guess this is my life now. This is my life now. I hold a sign. For free. All day. And, I don’t know. Negotiations. Honking. My life. Not… not… why am I outside? Still? And… is this… what day is this? Why is the weather–? Are you? Do you have to go? Do I have to go? My phone’s ringing, isn’t it? Am I boring you? Are you… did you… we… I’m still thirsty.”

Right now, I’m in the middle of that feeling. I looked up today and saw my friends holding signs that say ON STRIKE and I suddenly thought, “What the fuck is going on?”

thank you, john.

I wouldn’t be sitting here right now were it not for the advice of John Scalzi, many many years ago at a Journalcon in Pittsburgh, where he calmly explained that it might not be the craziest thing in the world for me to attempt to be a full-time writer. Like, as a career.

He forgot to mention what I should do when I walk away from my job and smash my car to bits all in the same week. When you use different words to describe my life, I sure do sound like a bum.

Anyway, now John’s all fancy-pants and king of the sci-fi world, so he’s very busy with a deadline. This is good news for the readers of Whatever, because this month John is showcasing a different writer every day. The good news for me is that I got tagged for today. Good luck with your deadline, John. And thanks for the kind words.

gentlemen, pay attention.

I found Jenny this morning quite giggly and wiggly, bright and early for the morning picket. She was munching an apple. “Hey!” she said.

“Why are you so happy?”

“Oh!” she smiled, gloating. “That guy just asked me if I was in SAG!”

2007 Strikers Guide to LA Studios

This is the funniest thing to come out of the strike. When searching for your ultimate picketing destination, don’t leave your home before checking Jonathan Schmock’s Essential Strike Guide.

Two You Tube Finds and Ray

First: everything you need to know about the strike, with Neal Pollack and his five-year old son Elijah.

Then, another from the series Strike Life. This one features friends Laura House, Jason Allen and Liz Feldman.

And for those of you wondering how to one day find yourself semi-naked with Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman, Ray offers his easy thirty-two step plan. (For reasons I cannot understand, he omitted the part where six years ago he wrote his goals in black Sharpie on the walls of our brick patio.)

Sian Heder: Mother

It’s technically on my iTunes because I’m old school with the iPod, but I just watched my sweet friend Sian’s award-winning short film MOTHER, which you can download off iTunes. Support independent filmmakers!