+JMJ+

(In which my writing career gets off on a rocky start)

This morning, my first day of freedom (or of shiftlessness: take your pick), I woke up from a vivid dream that just managed not to be a nightmare.

"Tita Grace was there," I told Patty, "and she was trying to stare me down."

"Mmph?" Patty asked through a mouthful of her quarterpounder with cheese.

"I haven't rung her yet--"

"What?" She had swallowed. "She wanted you to call her almost three weeks ago!"

"Well, what's a nice way to tell her that I just don't want to work with her--ever?"

"There's no nice way."

"Hmmmm. Maybe I could blog about it, and you could direct one of her kids to the post, and he'd tell her."

Patty gave me a withering stare over her quarterpounder. "What's so bad about working with her, anyway?"

"Well, other than the fact that I know next to nothing about real estate and bloody land banking . . . I just don't want to work with her. She didn't pay my student the agreed fee when he did that translation job for her--"

"Really?"

"She said that she'd pay 300 pesos for every page and that the document was six pages long. It was actually seven pages long. Then she dithered about meeting him, until I had to pay him, because he was set to leave for Korea and never come back. Then when I asked her to pay me back, she wouldn't give me the full amount."

"Oh."

"And that's not counting every other rotten thing Tita Grace has ever done to us."

My grandmother ambled into the room just then and caught the tail end of that sentence.

"Ah! Have you called Grace?"

"Not yet," I mumbled.

She looked appalled at a patent lack of good breeding. Apparently, a lady always returns her calls.

"Why not?"

Maybe because of the time she said she'd sell your car for you, said the deal fell through, never gave you a single centavo, and then was seen driving the same car for at least a year?

I didn't answer, though, so my grandmother just snapped, "It's money for you, you know."

Fuck the money.

I just pretended that I hadn't learned the fine art of talking with a mouth half full of french fries.

Anyway, it's clear that my future will not involve writing e-newsletters and press releases for a real estate company. That's the only thing clear about the future, however.

As for the present . . . I'm doing the profiles of the Indie band I told you about, an up-and-coming new artist I may have mentioned, and a lay missionary sprung on me at the last moment. After this project, I'm going to ask my editor for something steadier--or at least start writing for other publications.