Stephanie Gayle

Target has good marketing, affordable home goods and some cute Isaac Mizrahi clothes. They also have asshats in charge of decision making. How else to explain their continued support of a Target pharmacist who denied emergency contraception to a person who presented a prescription for it in 2005?

I stopped buying all Target merchandise after this became public. I urged friends, roommates, just about anyone, to stop buying from Target. I signed petitions. You know what Target's PR response was to complaints about this? We respect the rights of our employees. Oh yeah? The right NOT to do their job?
As a pharmacist your job is to fill prescriptions. Precluding health concerns (adverse effects, addiction) you have no right to not fill a prescription. Period.

Now I hear they claim that the 2005 prescription wasn't refused, but that's a newer story, and their stance still remains that their pharmacists have the right to refuse and refer patients to other pharmacies. I wonder if they ever refuse and refer script for Viagra or Oxycotin?

Planned Parenthood has been battering Target for years, trying to get them to back down. Even if they do, I will never shop there again. The damn clothes aren't that cute.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I was seized with one of my let's-rearrange-the-room! moods. Only it's tough to move anything in my room. One of my two bookshelves is too heavy for me to move when it's empty. And my desk placement is somewhat contingent on where the cable connection rests. Anything too close to the drafty windows is a bad idea.

So I ended up cleaning and moving small items around. It looks nicer. Plus, I finally got an empty box and put a bunch of paperback books inside to donate to Books to Prisoners.

But I thought it might be fun to make a list of items in my room to give you a limited, warped perspective of my surroundings.

# of live greenery in my room: four tulips in two old glass apothecary jars and one bamboo stalk
# of framed photographs: 11 (10 of family/friends and 1 of panda)
# of reams of paper on my desk: 5 and a half
Weirdest thing in my room: Tough one. Probably my panda face binoculars.
# of antique chairs I don't use for sitting: two
# of closets: two
Color of walls: very pale yellow, maybe buttercream
# of windows: two (And that view of concrete parking lot cannot be beat!)
# of pairs of shoes resting on the bottom shelf of my small bookshelf: nine
What I use to hold pens/pencils/scissors: A Brodies' Scottish Teatime tin (top removed)
# of alcohol bottles in sight: one, but it's a nip and my Mom gave it to me! She doctored a Southern Comfort to read Southern Discomfort.

Thanks for taking the tour!

Posted by Stephanie at 06:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why being sick sucks (for me at least):

I don't deal very well with boredom.
Afternoon television=terrible sh*t.
My dreams are pretty strange when I'm well. When I'm sick? They are ridiculous.
I can't enjoy food.
My attention span becomes gnat-like.
I become even paler when sick. Ergo, I become pure white.
Reading tires me out. The one opportunity I have to sit in bed and read and I cannot enjoy it!
I obsess about all the tiny items I should (but can't) be doing.
I want my Mom to come fix me. In most cases, this is not possible.
All I can talk about is being sick, and I start getting bored by myself (refer to point one).
Not being able to get into see my doctor, and instead being told the only person I can see is the one person I *won't* see in the entire practice (he's incompetent, truly).
Looking through the Merck Manual and becoming sad at all the horrible afflictions human beings can fall prey to, and feeling guilty at feeling happy I don't have any of these terrible diseases.
Getting pissed off at the Merck Manual for not telling me definitively what minor ailment is afflicting me.
Getting tired by the mere idea of exercise.
Having to nap because I really thought too long about exercise.

Frankly the only thing good about getting sick is getting better.

Posted by Stephanie at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This spring I decided to go back to class. I'm taking Master Fiction with Ellen Litman through Grub Street.
Last Tuesday was my first class. I knew it would be great to once again be surrounded by fellow writers and to talk shop. I thought I might even learn a thing or two. Wow, did I underestimate the class.

I forgot how much easier it is to see problems in fiction when you're closely line editing someone's work and how easy it is to then make the leap to your own less than perfect drafts. It leads to so many aha! moments. For that alone, the class is well worth what I paid.

But it's also just terrific to be among people who want you to succeed, who recognize the implicit struggle in writing (and publication) and whose criticisms are meant to make you and your stuff better. Facing my first book critics in the not too distant future, I doubt they'll have the same kind intentions.

I'm reading more carefully, and paying more attention to the rhythm of my words (possibly not on display here, since I've just finished editing two stories and revising my own for tomorrow's class).

It's good to be a student again.

Posted by Stephanie at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I would visit my town library many years ago I used to look at the space on the shelf where my book would be if I wrote a book.

Now that I have a book about to be shelved I like to play this game in bookstores. I'm always happy when I realize my book is eye-level or even the row below or above eye-level. But I get sad when I realize that my last name places me on the lowest shelf, because I never bend to check out the bottom row unless I'm specifically looking for something. I'm more likely to check out the top shelf (being on the tall side).

The other day in Borders I told my friend Maggie about this game and then we spied a computer terminal where you can look up books.

"Let's look for you!" she said.
I gamely clicked on and began typing.
"That's great but you misspelled your name," she said.
I looked up. She was right. I'd left the "h" out. I was Stepanie Gayle.
Damn I'm smooth sometimes.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've not been posting lately because I have been feeling less than chipper.
I've had a mean case of Holly Golightly's "mean reds." Some of it has to do with personal losses and some does not.
The private losses break my heart, but in a sad way, a you can't beat Death way.
It's the public losses that infuriate me.

Loss of civil liberties, loss of reproductive freedom, loss of lives to a war my country started. When I was in DC recently I felt hopeful at the giant feet of Thomas Jefferson. It was inspiring seeing so many people touring the city, reading the words of our past presidents. Checkered success rate or no, those men could write and they had some truly beautiful thoughts. I'm not seeing many beautiful thoughts lately.

When I was in school we were taught that when we were older we would become voters and government rulers. The world would be ours. I don't like my world lately. It breaks my heart in a this-is-not-my-dream way. And you know, given my lack of political activism, maybe this is the world I deserve.

I intend to change that. Starting today, it's political action time. If I can make time to write creatively, then I can damn well make time to write a letter or two to political representatives letting them know I want the world, and I want it better.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My mother telephoned me to inform me that my grandfather (whom we call Bumpa) had been evicted from his nursing home. The same nursing home he moved into two and a half days ago.

"You're kidding! Why?"
"He went for a walk."

Please note that while the nursing home he was in, and which he was excited about moving to is lovely, the surrounding area is not. It's rough. So they don't let their residents walk unescorted outside. My Bumpa loves to walk. They placed a heavy duty plastic "wander guard" on his ankle that rang every time he approached an exit.

My Bumpa is the first resident ever to cut through his bracelet and get away. He came back, but the staff insisted he couldn't stay as they couldn't be responsible for what might happen while he was off property. So they've moved him to another facility that has enclosed grounds he can wander at will.

I told my Mom, "I'm oddly proud of him for cutting through that bracelet."
She said she was too.

Here's to Bumpa, and his freedom.
I hope the new place is nice, and that he enjoys the views.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I'm back.
DC was great, if unseasonably cold. It was very odd to be walking among snowflakes while surrounded by blooming trees and flowers. They've got tulips, cherry blossoms, hydrangeas, pansies. So when we got to our humble home I half expected the garden to look green and happy. It didn't. It looked brown and dead.

I did a virtual whirlwind of monuments while touring our nation's capital: I saw Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln and several war monuments: Korea, Vietnam, World War II (which Sara insisted we see because she thinks it aesthetically hideous). The Korean War memorial, of which I knew nothing, really surprised me. The silvery statues look as though they are stealthily creeping, their gear-laden backs hunched. It gave me a sense of men in battle, which is something few memorials do.

And of course I saw the panda. And of course he was adorable. He's a panda: it's in his DNA.

Now that I'm back and have done laundry and made enough banana bread to feed a small village it's time to get back to it: writing, that is. Stories, alas, do not write themselves. Not matter what they tell you.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, my bags are packed and I'm ready to fly.
(I already told Tracey she has to hold my hand on take off.)
We're going to DC!
It's a roommates reunion!

And you know what DC has? Pandas! Pandas! Pandas!
Butterstick, I'm coming to see you!

We'll return to our regularly scheduled program next week.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)