Twin High Maintenance Machines

So my kid sister, Weathergirl (referred to in previous posts as the Meteorology Major), is coming to visit me for her 21st birthday. We have Big Plans. We are getting haircuts. We are going out to eat and drink. We are going to have our Seven Year Portraits made at the insistence of Our Very Dramatic Mother. We are going to invest modestly in the American economy and support capitalism, because as green as I may be in some things (laundry and dish detergent, bath soap, cleaning rags, meat and produce), shopping is something that the women of Scooter Nation were born into. Like a religion. Or a cult. The Sisters of Scooter Nation, aka, We Who Shop.

The Seven Year Portraits are a bit of an anomaly, I’ll grant you. My sister and I are almost a neat seven years apart in age, so every seven years, our ages are, in fact, multiples of seven. Don’t ask me to explain why my Mother—who holds a Master’s in music and couldn’t figure her way out of a paper bag—is obsessed with multiples. All I know is that Weathergirl and I had pictures made together at 1 and 7, then at 7 and 14, then again at 21 and 14. It’s now time for the 28 and 21 shots. Of course, Weathergirl and I roll our eyes at this—particularly as we get older. Our Very Dramatic Mother doesn’t exactly give us a choice in the matter—she refers to us, at Seven Year Portrait time, as the Greatest Works of Art she has ever invested in: “I spent good money on those braces! And contacts! And zit cream! You are my Picassos! I deserve to hang you on the wall if I want to.”

You see, perhaps, where her moniker comes from.

But we are, nonetheless, Rather Excited.

As a matter of fact, this year I’m Especially Excited because my friend Big (of Big and Little fame) is going to shoot them. And this year, you know, both Weathergirl and I are pretty much past that whole Teenage Awkwardness, so they might actually turn out to be something other than those Horribly Embarrassing Pictures that Mother Hangs on Her Walls. You know the ones. You hate them. She loves them. They’re the kind that you dread people seeing, especially when your significant other visits your parents for the first time and sees them and chokes back wild laughter because dear god, you looked horrible.

Of course, since passing the Teenage Awkwardness, I have now entered into the Evil Desk Job Frumpiness, but Big has assured me that with digital photography being what it is, he can remove any unsightly bulges and maybe even take a few subtle pounds off of my Ample Hips.

I asked if he could give me bigger boobs, too.

He asked, “How big?”

Oh yeah, baby. Not only will we feel like movie stars, but we can be air brushed like movie stars, too.

Picasso, here we come.


General Note

Apologies to my faithful readers (all 1.5 of you) for the extended absence—I do have Much Newness to convey! For now, though, I must madly clean my little hovel. If our Very Dramatic Mother taught Weathergirl and I anything, it’s that when company comes, Thy House Shall Be Spotless, and sister or no, Weathergirl counts as company. I do have my priorities: 1) Do mounds of laundry. 2) Terrorize Pre-Kids with vacuum. 3) Write prolific blog posts.

Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls

I have a Dilemma: thanks to the amazing wonders of email and the total lack of a need for face-to-face or phone-to-phone communication, one of the freelance editors I work with via the Evil Desk Job thinks I'm a Boy.

This Dilemma is entirely caused by the gender neutrality of my Given Name: Robin. It's spelled like the bird but also like the traditional boy spelling because I am, in fact, named after my Very Handy Father. His name is Robert, but here's the catch: so is my grandfather's. So my grandparents used to call my dad Robin. Which he hated. At about age 13, he stopped answering to it and started only answering to Rob, which worked pretty well, but my Yankee Grammy still called him Robin half the time. Then I came along, and what better way to make your family stop calling you an Unfortunate Nickname but to bestow said Unfortunate Nickname upon your child? People routinely respond to this Named-After-My-Father scenario with “Oh! How Southern of your family!” to which I have to reply over and over again, “No, not really. My dad's side of the family is from Massachusetts. It was more a matter of convenience.”

In my whole life I have known only two boy Robins (excluding fictional ones like Christopher Robin or Robin the Boy Wonder or Brave, Brave Sir Robin, or famous ones like Robin Williams). I know four other girl Robins, three of whom I met in college and one who I just met last year. After we moved from Massachusetts to Alabama, I became the only Robin in the entire Fairhope public school system, a status that I retained until my senior year when another little girl Robin turned up in the first grade.

The fact that my name is somewhat uncommon has never really bothered me—I've gotten so used to it that I'm actually surprised when I meet another Robin. I can't really fathom what it would be like to know lots of other people with my name. Weird, I think. I mean, I already have a hard time if I'm in the same room with a Rob or a Robert because when people call out a name to get your attention, they really only emphasize that first syllable, so of course I turn around and of course I'm not the person they're talking to, which bugs me. I can only imagine what it would be like to have that happen all the time. Still, maybe I wouldn't care so much if I had a more common name like Julie or Stephanie or Jennifer if it meant that people wouldn't confuse me for a boy.

And the thing is, not even my middle name helps people out of this one: Lee. Spelled like the boy's name. Again. This one I have to thank my Very Dramatic Mother for, since it's her middle name, too, and it got handed to me like some heirloom quilt. Actually, it was my Southern Grandmother's idea—my Very Dramatic Mother had wanted to call me Robin Maria. I'm not sure what would have been better given those two choices. On the one hand, Robin Lee makes my name entirely gender neutral except for the fact that it hearkens back to a Rather Famous Southern General from the days of the “War of Northern Aggression,” as my eighth grade history teacher called it. On the other hand, Robin Maria, while very comfortably female, makes me sound either somewhat Latina or rather like one of Columbus's ships.

To compound the naming issues, we might as well add to all of this the fact that I have always had nicknames. Certainly the most common are Rob, Robs, and Robbie/Robby. Those that developed on their own through various circumstances too numerous to go into are Robina, Robino, the Great Robini (pronounced like Houdini, which became Bini for short), Robiña, Robinski (shortened to Binski), Bin, Robsy, Bobsy, and Bobbin. And just yesterday—in light of the Current Dilemma with said gender-confused freelancer editor—one of my workmates dubbed me Robinetta.

Of course, this freelancer is definitely not the first to confuse me for someone with a Y chromosome. I know it happened occasionally throughout grade school, but the issue really came to light when I started receiving college recruitment literature addressed to “Mr. Robin Lee ———.” Southern Methodist University was, in fact, so determined that I was a boy that they continued sending application literature to Mr. Robin even after I called to correct them. I didn't apply apply to Southern Methodist University. I routinely get magazine and credit card offers addressed to Mr. Robin. The World Wildlife Federation thinks I'm a guy, but a guy who cares about saving baby seals and who occasionally orders WWF checks with pictures of whales and polar bears and deer.

But as to my Current Dilemma: this is a whole new realm of gender confusion. Here is a person with whom I correspond fairly regularly via email, querying about jobs, answering editorial questions, passing invoices back and forth. Here is a person with whom I have a sort of working relationship, who has been laboring under the mistaken impression that this Robin Lee who sends her work is actually a Mr. Robin Lee and not a Ms. Part of me was more than a little taken aback by this realization. “I mean, how can she think I'm a boy?!” I asked my fellow Team Editorial member, Mr. Reliable. “I use exclamation points and smiley faces in practically every email!”

Mr. Reliable just grinned and rubbed his beard and shook his head. “Man. I don't know. I don't usually think of Robin as a guy's name.”

And then there was the question of what I should do about it. Did I correct her and make her feel foolish? Well, it wasn't that big of a deal. I mean, her confusion was Understandable, sort of. It's not like she did it On Purpose.

“Maybe in my next email I'll just drop a line about my husband,” I said to my friend and one of our project managers, the Keeper of the Perpetual Candy Dish. I was standing in her office, eating the cherry Jolly Rancher she offered me in consolation.

Candy looked at me for a second, “Well, that could work, but if she already thinks you're a guy . . .” She let the sentence hang there until—

“Shit! You're right! She might just think I'm a gay boy-Robin. Well, damn, that won't work.”

Clearly, I was Stuck.

Or more correctly, I am Stuck. I still have not resolved this issue. I spent the rest of the work day yesterday writing emails and trying to read them as though they were from a boy—I don't sound like a boy when I write—or trying to work out clever ways to insert the fact that I am a women into the closing lines of my correspondence—From one woman to another? No, that sounds like a self-help columnist. Women of the Editing World Unite? No, too socialist. Maybe Mrs. Robinetta Lee? No, that makes me sound like I'm 80 . . .

I guess the thing that amuses me the most about my Dilemma is how much I am alternately bothered by it and intrigued by it. Of course anyone can be anything they want to be thanks to technology—I could go online and paint myself as a middle-aged retired footballer who raises cockatiels—but the thing that gets me is that I wasn't even trying. I'm a Nonfiction Writer, for the love of Pete! I don't make stuff up because I don't have to because there's so much Good Real Stuff to write about already. But here is someone who's made up a fake Robin to stand in my place—a Not Me. A Boy Me. I could be a boy to this woman forever. What then? Should I change how I write my emails to her? Should I become more of what I would perceive as manly or boyish? How the hell does one write emails like a boy anyway? Wouldn't that just be perpetuating some skewed myth of gender appropriate language or behavior? What does she think of my ☺and !!!? That I'm gay? Because only women and gay men use excessive punctuation and emoticons, clearly. How narrow minded of her to think that. But wait, does she? How narrow minded of me to think that she thinks that. Wait, am I irritated that she thinks that I'm a guy or am I now irritated that she thinks that I'm a guy and she assumes I'm gay???

Ow. See? This is what happens when a few Feminist Theory classes from Grad School meet up with a Real Life Gender Debacle.

Screw it. I think I'll put on some make up, curl my hair, and maybe go buy Something Pink.

Is "Entmoot" One Word or Two? A Day in the Life of an Editor

So at this very moment, I am creating production files for one of the (Too) Many, (Too) Many Books I'm working on this week and this Has. To. Be. the Very Worst Final Spell Check Job ever to date. Ever.

Read On . . . Fantasy Fiction is a book for teachers and librarians and anyone vaguely interested in suggestions on which fantasy books to read. The author included clever puns for headings, such as "Fan-to-Sea: The Best of Nautical Fantasy", "Flights of Fantasy: High-Flying Fantasy to Read on an Airplane", and some just plain too-cool-for-school headings, such as "Steaming Up the Looking Glass: When Romance Is Nice, but Sex Is Better" and my personal favorite, "It Was the Dark Lord in the Conservatory with the Candlestick: Fantasy for Mystery Readers."

But people, do you know how many made-up words are in this thing? So many, in fact, that MS Word infomed me that it was going to stop putting the red squiggly line under them because it was Overloaded.

And do you know who is responsible for the Final Spell-Check on all those words that have Overloaded the poor spell-checker? That's right: me. Just think about that, for every book out there, some Poor Schmuck of an editor has had to sit and click Ignore once, Ignore once, Ignore all, Ignore once for every weird last name, purposefully misspelled word, foreign term, or perfectly normal word that the spell checker doesn't have in it's Meager Vocabulary.

Or, in my case, every instance of Valkyrie, aether, Umscrumug, greffyn, and hradani.

*sigh*

Maybe I'll skip it. I mean, aside from "Quidditch" and the odd elvish word from Tolkien, who's really going to know if these words are misspelled or not?

And I Miss You Like My Left Arm That's Been Lost in a War

Chapel Apple was waiting for me to come down the stairs to the bus. I could see her standing just beyond the slush puddle in a lime green North Face jacket approximately two sizes too big for her, wearing her rainbow hat that she'd thought she'd lost the last time I was in New York in winter. Which would have been about three years ago, maybe four.

We hugged. “You found it,” I said.

“Oh, yeah! But I lost the gloves that go with it.”

We laughed and the wind whipped past, suddenly, catching my breath. I remembered, again, that I'd forgotten to bring my hat.

I grabbed my bags from under the bus. I'd packed two small suitcases instead of one larger one so we could carry them more easily on the subway. I was Planning Ahead. I knew that the Port Authority was a ways away, in Manhattan terms, from Harlem.

We were standing at the corner waiting to cross the street—I was worried about not stepping in the slush puddles, about not taking up too much space on the corner, about not looking like a Tourist or a Bumpkin or the Unhip Frumpy College Friend now carrying a few extra pounds and wearing her frumpy Wisconsin snow gear in this place where you have to be hip and you don't carry extra pounds and my god, I was the only person I knew who didn't have an iPod. Who did not actually even know how to work an iPod. And what was I doing here anyway? And how did I get so far removed from all of this, from this kind of life that I could have had, maybe, if I'd pursued it?

“Oh, gee,” Apple said, too obviously to someone standing behind yet sort of in front of us in all the bustle, “Imagine seeing you here.”

“Yep, I was just hanging out down here around the Port Authority,” said the Clever Rockstar as he crowded in to hug me.

“Clever!” He took the bag Apple was carrying and the two of them ushered me across the street as the lights changed. “I thought you couldn't come! I thought you were auditioning, or something.”

Apple pursed her lips the way she does when she's managed a Good Surprise. “Oh, gee. Why would you have thought that, Sparky Lee? Hmm.”

They shuttled me into the subway entrance and debated the best sort of subway pass for me to buy. Apple worked the automated ticket machine for me. I was so concerned with lifting my suitcase over the turnstile that I forgot to slide my subway card and I rammed the bar full across my hips, stopping short. Tourist. Bumpkin. Unhip Frumpy College Friend.

Clever slid my card through for me.

We stood in a little cluster at one end of the platform, my bags in the center. I was worrying about not getting pushed too close to the platform edge. Apple was saying something about the rats. Her hair was short and wild from her hat and a stray lock was hanging, perfectly, on her trendy purple glasses frame—it looked good. She looked good. So did Clever, in his stylish winter hat (They make such things?) with his iPod wires hanging from his coat. Young. Hip. Urban.

“Oh, here Sparks.” Apple stuck her hand into one of the many deep pockets on her lime green coat and offered me something. “I brought you a hat,” she said. “You can keep it.”

I smiled. I took the hat and put it on—it was a little too big and covered my glasses at first.

We laughed.

“It's perfect,” I said.

“It's good to see you, Kid,” Clever said.

“Yeah,” I said, and stopped worrying. I looked down the platform for a quiet minute before smiling again. “It's really good to see you guys, too.”