Monthly Archives: July 2004

More Joy — And From the Bank, Of All Places!

I love Francois Mercier.

I heaved a deep sigh when I brought my cheque into my bank at 10.06 this morning only to find out that my financial rep is on vacation. Regular readers will remember that she told me to bring my next cheque in to her before depositso that she and the manager could see it and officially flag these cheques as “ok in the past, speed up processing.” When I heard she was on holiday I thought that I was out of luck. But the receptionist assured me that they could at least get it going so that all she’d have to do when she returned was approve it.

They sent me to Frank, who listened with a slightly furrowed brow as I explained the whole situation yet again. I stressed the fact that my account had been noted as having this sort of thing happen the last time I had to deposit the American cheque. He said, “Do you have the new cheque with you?” I handed it to him. He said, “Let me bring this to my manager.” He vanished for a couple of minutes, I practiced Meditation Under Irritating Circumstances, and he came back. “Are all these cheques going to be from the same company, drawn from the same bank?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Same amount?” “Well,” I said, “this one’s nice and big, because it’s the advance fee for a book, but most will be about a third of that, coming in every three months or so.” “Okay,” said Frank, and he sat down, typed stuff in, and asked me what account I wanted the money to go to. I gave him all the info, and he worked out the conversion, named me a delightfully high number of Canadian dollars in exchange for the American ones indicated on the cheque, and handed me the deposit slip. “So when will this be available, then?” I asked, sliding my purse strap up my arm as I prepared to stand up. He blinked. “It’s there now,” he said.

I stared at him.

Oh, gods. I want to kiss a stranger.

“It’s there now?” I repeated.

“Yeah. And hey, I see you’ve been with our bank for twenty years. Your release amount should be over twice what it is. You know, when you deposit a cheque in the ATM, you can only access a couple hundred dollars rigt away? It really ought to be higher. If you like, I’ll prepare everything and make sure Kelley gets it when she returns; if she needs you she’ll call, but I’m fairly certain that she can do it and she’ll send you an update in the mail.”

Frank, you are a beautiful, beautiful man.

I left in a daze, transferred money to two other accounts, and paid down a lot of Visa.

All it takes is patience after initiating the correct process. That and telling the right people the right things.

Joy in the Mailbox

My advance cheque came in! My advance cheque came in!

Yes, I know I’ve already submitted the manuscript. But my advance cheque came in!

Now I’ll deposit it tomorrow morning, wait four weeks, and then magically have money once again. I know I’ve worked damned hard for it, but it feels like a gift. Knowing there’s another hefty cheque in a couple of months to complete the manuscript payment is even more delicious. Plus the two cheques paying me for the two books I’ve edited due out this fall… yes, indeed, I’m feeling much more financially with it.

Even more awe-inspiring to me is the knowledge that I’m actually being paid for doing work in the field I studied (both fields I’ve studied, actually).

No, the money’s still more impressive. I’m thankful for the working in my field thing, impressed at the fact that someone is paying me for it.

Time

I slept really well last night, and woke up to discover that it was 6.58 AM, and HRH’s alarm hadn’t gone off. It actually hadn’t not gone off, it was set for the proper time, but when our power went out yesterday morning and I reset the clocks, I remember making sure that I set it to the AM time. Although now I have a nibbling suspicion that when I went back to check it, I reset it again to the opposite of what it was, assuming that I had forgotten to do so in the first place.

All’s well, though; HRH woke up just fine, got ready and left in twenty minutes, plenty of time to pick up his passenger at 7.30. I made tea and brought the Sense & Sensibility Screenplay to bed with me, read it from start to finish, and then Emma Thompson’s simply killing film diaries which follow it. The only film I ever worked on was lots of waiting about and not knowing what was happening next, cutting lines left right and centre, and bagels (don’t ask), with no fun or chumminess at all. When I’d done reading I felt like popping in the Pride & Prejudice DVDs, although that would cut severely into the writing jam this afternoon.

It’s the last writing jam for a while, as most of us are here and there over the summer, and one will be working a six-month contract as of any day now. We ought to come up with goals or schedules and check up on one another anyway. E-mail each other work, and such.

Difficult to remember that I’m flying out to Hamilton on Thursday afternoon. I ought to put neon asterisks around the note on the calendar.

Those Who Know

Thanks to a meeting last night, everyone’s back on an even keel, on the same page, and there were even visual aids provided by HRH, who sketched neat little cars and drew people inside them as we worked out transportation to our annual spiritual retreat down in Pennsylvania.

Oh, and the Second Cup’s frozen hot chocolate? Delectable. You can actually taste real chocolate. I might skip the whipped cream on top next time, although after drinking the rest of the deliciousness the whipped cream ended up at the bottom, flavoured with the remaining chocolate. I’ll have to be in a decadent mood to order the whipped cream again. The drink itself, though — a definite winner. And what do you know, there’s a Second Cup only ten minutes away from me…

Autumn, the Human Barometer

Over the past twenty-four hours I have been driven slowly mad by the changing air pressure as mirrored by my sinus cavities.

Dear gods, yes — the pressure outside changes as the mini-fronts come through, an ice-pick suddenly appears digging deep into my cranium from one of the many lovely little sinus chambers. I often don’t realise it until I find myself attempting to curl my fingers through my skin and into said sinus cavity to release the pressure. Yesterday, I moved inside and outside my in-laws’ house a dozen times seeking relief as the pressure subtly shifted by a kPa or two.

They grilled shrimp for my birthday. Wasn’t that a wonderful treat? And they gave me a lovely leatherbound blank book, with a nifty red owl bookmark that will travel with me to Toronto later this week.

My newfound need for naps illustrates how miserable sleeping at night in Montreal has become, now that it’s summer again. HRH put the air conditioner in, but I still seem to sleep better in the afternoons. I also attribute my odd need to sleep so much to a reflection of how mentally exhausted I am after producing a polished book in ten weeks.

I’ve read two books since I finished the manuscript: Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Ancestors of Avalon by Diana Paxson (which was only so-so; I should have waited for the trade paperback), and The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (which was absolutely marvellous magical realism). I’m halfway through Rebecca Wells’ Little Altars Everywhere at the moment, which is possibly even better than Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (although equally disturbing in places). Today I’ll finish two book reviews and send them off to the magazine for which I write them.

Words for thought, from t!‘s interview with the Suffix9 zine:
“Regrets are for people who don’t understand their present beauty.”