The llama in the bathtub

Llama in the Bathtub is an example of a non-sequiter I gave to my young author/artist teenaged daughter the other night on the bus. We were talking about writing, and audience, and characters, and especially, kooky characters. I told her that I thought (as a reader and sometimes writer of short fiction) that sometimes it was better to have a character be outwardly dull and inwardly kooky. That rather than have your characters running around spewing non-sequiter nonsense (i.e., "there's a llama in the bathtub!") perhaps the more interesting character seems normal to some extent, until some part of the story's action impels him or her to out the inner kook.

This all comes right back at me. I am the queen of non-sequiter nonsense, and I love building kooky characters. I also haven't written in a long time. I can't seem to keep my focus. Plus, my life has become outwardly dull since quitting drinking and settling down four years ago. No longer do I run about with great crowds of chatty, cheerfull barhoppers, and no longer do I slip off my chair at parties. Nor do I have tolerance for much kookiness anymore. I get grouchier the older I get, and I'm young. What's worse is I work at a design school, and I love my job, and I think the kooky art stuff is cool, but I am also highly suspicious of it all. I've just become an old bore. I don't have a lot of friends in 3-D although I suppose if I put some effort in, I would. My best friends are my mother, my husband, and my kid. I don't want to spend time with other people. It's kind of like a hierarchy chart: After those three, there's connected people I would spend time with (just less time, and I couldn't guarantee not getting impatient and fidgety) including my Dad, all my brothers and sisters and their related peeps; my nieces and nephews, my husbands mother, sister and nephew, and next, the alpaca people. The alpaca people are people who share one thing in common with my husband and me: we own and breed alpacas. I see them once a year at shows and I enjoy hanging out with them and wish they all lived closer. They get me. I get them. I guess anyone who is willing to own animals that are expensive, that spit, that you have to feed and clean up after are kind of special people. But I wouldn't want to hang out with them all of the time.

But I am open to new friendships, now. Now that Obama has won, I think my new goal is to make some friends. I bicycle, I have a year-old job in a pretty cool place, so I have some chances here to make some connections and, I don't know, be nice and stuff. Like, remember birthdays. Go out to lunch. Listen to stories about botched surgery and the neighbor's fence. I can do this. I really can. But the friends I always go for are the elusive ones - the crazy ones. Not always. I have to say I have acquaintances who are not crazy and elusive. But it's almost as if I seek out the very woman as friend who might turn around and dump me the next day. The Queens. The Divas. The bitches who know what they want, and get it. Dangerous women.

So, with this blog, I hope to start digging a little, unearth that llama in the bathtub. I think it's okay to be a little dull sometimes, but I'm ready for the next phase of life.