Stephanie Gayle

I'm applying for a fellowship. Though, thus far, my application has consisted of me staring at the form and saying, "hmmmm." Part of my problem is excerpting my work. Choosing one's best 25 page sample is challenging. Plus there are persnickety questions such as "List five important professional achievements." I can think of two, maybe three. Does learning to read count? Probably not.

As applications go, it's not gruesome. I often have a hard time with self-promotion, though, and this stuff tends to fall in that field. Show us why you deserve this. Can't you just call my Mom? She'll tell you how great I am. Endlessly.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every now and again I am reminded that my waking life is no less fraught w/ weird stuff than any story I write. Examples this week include:

1. The 70 year old guy replacing our kitchen sink has a handgun tucked into the waistband of his pants. No he's not a cop or a detective or a bodyguard. Yup, I'm pretty sure it's majorly illegal too.

2. I disabled my knee while stuffing papers into a three ring binder. Actually the disabling bit came when I fumbled the binder and it struck my knee (pointing metal teeth open all the better to grip my cap of course). What are the chances?

3. Today at work there was a flashing light behind the "do not use" door in my office. My boss peeked his head in and said, "That always happen?"
"Nope," I told him.
"Must be the laser," he said.
Probably.

Okay, upon review, not that strange, but it's been a tame couple of days. My point is that writing about dolphins talking about God seems a whole lot less improbable when you look around you and think, "Huh. I forgot the monkey's head was by the back steps."

Here's hoping your week is weird, in a wonderful way.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe it comes from growing up in Massachusetts or perhaps its my enormous sweet teeth (the size of California!) but I love doughnuts. They were a Sunday ritual growing up. I'd drive with my Dad to HoneyDew Donuts and we'd get a dozen. I liked chocolate donuts (not chocolate frosted). My Dad liked crullers. I thought he was insane.

I even joined Key Club my senior year so I could be in the Key Club homeroom. Why? Because that homeroom got doughnuts every Friday before class. Yup.

Many years have passed, but my love of doughnuts remains intact. I ate three and half of them today. One and a half for breakfast and two at later times throughout the day. The doughnuts came from Verna's, which is a Cambridge institution whose doors very nearly closed early this year. I'm so glad someone bought the place and kept it open. Verna's does a damn good iced coffee roll and their buttercrunch are perhaps the finest buttercrunch I've ever tasted (and I've tasted a whole lot over the years).

So here's to doughnuts! Keeping my happy for lo these many years.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, in the car, bracing for impact (as you do every day in a car in the Boston area where people drive as if blind) I said, "Damn! I meant to look up the seven plagues of Egypt!"

The very handsome boyfriend asked why. A reasonable question. I said, "For a project." That's shorthand for I don't wish to discuss my nascent writing idea yet.

So he said, "Frogs and locusts and um..."
I knew the frogs and locusts. It was the other five that eluded me. "Famine," I said.
"No," he said.
"You're right. I'm thinking of the four horsemen of the apocalypse."
And so it went. Eventually we gave up.

So I came home and discovered via the tubes of the internets that there were ten plagues of Egypt. Wow.
The other plagues were: water to blood, lice, flies, dead cattle, boils, thunder and hail, darkness, and death of all the firstborns. I tell you that Old Testament God had one mighty temper. Makes Naomi Campbell look weak, though don't tell her I said that.

Anyway, I'm no longer sure my "project" such as I envisioned will work, but hey, I learned something new!
Something I might remember for the next few days, though don't count on it.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I love the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I have reread the books in the series several times.
So when I was 23 years old and I spotted Turkish Delight in the window of an ethnic grocery store in New York I acted like the freak that I am. "Turkish Delight!" I yelled, pointing at the display. "Turkish Delight!"

For those of you who have not read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Turkish Delight is the sweet for which Edmund betrays his siblings. I figured any sweet that good was my kind of sweet. I went into the store and bought a bag of the red, powdered sugar coated squares. And I ate one. And gagged.

Turkish Delight is terrible. Gobsmacking awful. It takes sort of like it looks, like tough jello. And the powdered sugar doesn't help disguise the tragically flawed flavor.

For this, I thought, we are expected to believe Edmund would turn over his sisters and brother to a witch?
For crappy candy?

When I read the story now I have to pretend that Turkish Delight is not what I know it to be but instead what I had expected as a child: a sweet to best all other sweets. In my imagination Turkish Delight has chocolate, and maybe orange peel.

I hope I haven't shocked and disappointed too many of you, but if I have performed the public service of dissuading you from trying it, then my work is done.

Posted by Stephanie at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)