Cathy Seipp Is Dying

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Why I Love My Mom, Part 123

So, remember back when I was unemployed and loving it? Relaxed, concubine, watching my ass grow, etc., etc., good times? Well, my mom ruined that in one conversation. "You need to get a job!" she kvetched at me. "I'm worried about you! Nag nag nag, nag NAG!" And then in just one moment I was bored and depressed and hated being unemployed, even though I explained to her that I'M FINE, and I'M LOOKING FOR A JOB. Fast-forward to Friday night, when I stopped by her house to drop off the kid and get my ass kicked.
"You need to get a job," she kvetched again. "I'm worried about . . . blah blah blah, nag."
"Mom," I explained slowly and patiently. "My UCI class starts in two weeks; I prepped the course this morning. I'm going to be the web editor for Will's new Long Beach paper. I talked to a literary agent and three publishers today. I'm up for the job in ______, and I applied for jobs in DC and San Francisco yesterday. I'm working on a story for Riviera, and I'm tending bar at a party tomorrow."
She stopped. She looked at me.
"I don't want you working in a bar!" she bitched, and then she got on a roll about bikers and beer while I stood out front of her house loudly singing Rickie Lee Jones' "Easy Money" at her, about the hookers who want to roll the guy but their boyfriends scammed them first, complete with an interpretive dance about loosening their shoulder straps. Outvolumed, my mom went in the house and shut up.

Roller Coaster! (Of Love!)

So I was out with my buddy Dave and my homegirl Arrissia last night, taking in the twenty-nothings at the Prospector, when one adorable little girl started staring at me and Ris sitting there in our booth all old. Thirty-four is not agreeing with me, and Arrissia is almost 35. So I was feeling old, and then I started to have a small identity crisis because no one there feared me, and no one was kissing up to me, and I didn't have my professional wall to hide behind, and I was just some old unemployed womyn instead of a Very Important Young Lady. And then I started to despond myself over the handsome but married barkeep, upon whom I've had a small crush for close to a decade, and a different married man about whom I've been having impure thoughts, and for a moment I got really bitter and decided 34 would be the year I dated only married men, which, while I have indeed been around, I have never knowingly done, and I was mean-in-my-heart and didn't care about not taking what wasn't mine, and I was mean, and sad, and bitter! And 34!
Yow!
Then I decided to put on some lip gloss. And about five minutes later, I was happy again--glossy! shiny!--and and had sloughed off my slough and didn't want to leave. EVER.

But What About

meeeeeeeee??????

More at the Weekly

Managing editor Ellen Griley's last day is tomorrow, and staff writer Dave Wielenga (the guy who put HB mayor Dave Garofalo in jail) just gave his notice. That leaves three reporters, a features writer, the calendar guy, and two editors.
That sounds FUN.
You know, I was planning to stay at the Weekly; I knew exactly how many people were leaving, and I was freaking out trying to figure how I'd singlehandedly put out the paper. I was making plans to save that thing as best I could. And then the New Times suits met with me and . . . it sure didn't seem like they wanted me to stay. Even with four of us gone, they're still hassling the others instead of just making them feel respected and necessary. It just blows my mind.