la femme follette

mat party

Lilies are just obscene. Honestly.

I don't care for them at all & am curious how I wound up buying a big bouquet of Stargazers. I think it was because they were paired with irises. Also, because the smell of lilies was pervasive in the shop & I wanted a cut flower that smelled. Well, these have opened since then & indeed!

In advance of Mothers' Day, Fifille went to Mari, seeking his assistance in making [some kind of fancy, idk] dinner for me.  Mari told me that he got down to her eye-level and told her, "That's very nice, honey, but Femme doesn't want that.  Femme wants a day where she doesn't have to talk and everyone does their chores."

Best husband.  Yes.

We were sitting at the table Sunday morning, he & I.  My departure was imminent, but I was enjoying my second cup of tea and paging through The New Yorker, looking at cartoons.  Mari was poking desultorily at a piece of toast with jam and asking questions about cartoons that looked interesting.  First, Garçon came in to ask me if he could make [some kind of unusual] porridge for breakfast.  I said, "I don't care what you do, I'm leaving."

A minute later, Fille came in to ask me if she could have fig preserves in her yogurt.  I told her the same as I told her brother.

I looked at Mari, who was just sitting there.  "Do they not see their other parent, right here?  This is why there is a day, honey!  A whole day!  Good-bye!"

I went to the sauna, which, ok, I got a little ahead of myself on the calendar, sauna-wise.  I was just there Thursday because the forecast for the weekend was in the 80s, and I did not want to get involved in a whole sweaty Betty kind of a thing.  But, I got hung up on Thursday morning, returning emails and texting and doing laundry, so I did not get there as early as I wanted to do everything I wanted -- scrub, massage + general sybaritic wallowing -- there just was not time before I had to come back to the kids in the afternoon, so I had the scrub and the minimum pre-scrub wallowing required there.  Alors.

I decided to go back because I felt like Ideal Getaway Mothers' Day involved a massage and a nap, which, obviously there is only one place to go for that.  Throw in snacks and a lot of luxuriant bathing and good.  Great! 

When I got there at 11, the first massage opening was not until 4.  "Ok," I said. 

The dude was confused by my compliance, "But I meant four o'clock."

Now I was confused.  "You mean four o'clock today, right?"

Right, see?

I was so excited to have five hours yawning in front of me, to dawdle and paddle and rinse and mask and unmask and rinse and re-rinse and do whatever I wanted with no one to bother me!  Yes!  There are five freaking ways to take a shower there!  Yes!  So I spent the time in a comfortable circuit of, yk, scrubbing, steaming, scrubbing, saunaing, rinsing, steaming, scrubbing, rinsing, drying, then lying in the warm clay room while I waited to get antsy/thirsty.  Then I would put 0n my sauna-issue tunic and relax on the sofa, reading the January 2011 issue of Elle and sipping water and/or green tea.  Then I would lie in the hot-hot room, get all sweaty, and start again. 

I had a hunk of Ossau-Iraty in my bag with some almonds, and a stupid apple, which turned out to be good thinking when I decided I did not want to fool around navigating the co-ed area just to eat beef.   

I did not get into any of the pools/streams, because there were a lot of newbies there (so much confusion + confrontation about how there are not bathing suits allowed, people clutching towels to themselves in the wet room, like, ok), and I idly witnessed one gal take her completely inadequate pre-pool shower & I did not want to be anywhere in the range of her miasma. 

OK, I mean, maybe it is weird to be told there is nowhere to change and then find out you can't wear your bathing suit and then get to the room with the showering and find out there is nowhere to hang yr towel because the people in here are all naked and bathing and no one really expected you to clutch yr towel, you, along with your mothers and their sisters and your best friend, ok.  But clean yourself up.  Scrub it off.  Use soap!  There are at least 36 shower nozzles on three walls where you can point the spray anywhere you want.  There are 2 shower areas with spraying from every direction! Yes.  Also:  just be clean because God, ew. 

But for all that I am going on about it, it was ok, because I don't care about the pools anyway.  None of them are the right depth, and sitting on the bench is too shallow and sitting on the floor is too deep, so it's fine.  I do like the standing-around, freezing-cold waterfall pool, I did that a couple of times, but it was just standing knee-deep, not awash in someone else's effluvia, and anyhow, I never saw Miss DirtyPants in there.

I ran my wet room/resting/reading-snacking/sweating circuit about 5 times before it was time for my massage and I do not think there is anything better -- no greater proof of total relaxation! -- than dozing off intermittently on a massage table.  So, that was good, and then only thing that could have made it better was a wheelman, but still it was pretty great. 

I came home long past dinnertime to find both children spent the day cleaning their rooms and the kitchen was clean, and my husband was somehow showered, but still in his bathrobe, but he is a grownup and OK to that.  The kids watched that Christian movie about the shark attack on the surfer while Mari & I watched Underworld: Mike Ealey (terrible! but only 88 minutes, so whatever). 

Today I am making a form that children in this house must fill out and give to me whenever there is an argument with their sibling.  No unauthorized arguments!  Allez!

quiet endings

We had a graduation thing to go to today, for a workshop session Garçon has been in, lo, these 8 weeks.  There was a paper that came home to me -- how many people, what would I bring, etc.  There was a Sign-Up to Bring Checklist, and I got flustered by it, then forgot about it.  Later, Garçon told me he signed me up to bring crudités + fruit salad. 

I thought that was weird, since the list had choices on it like cookies, brownies ... cheese & crackers, things that people would surely bring that he could not eat in their most common variety but which I could sub with none the wiser.  But, whatever.  Also, fruit salad?  What?  Why?!  Chopping?  Nuts?  Peeling?  Melon??  Still April, fruit salad!

Garçon said, this morning, while I was puzzling around the Costco, "Maybe you should just make the one with the blueberries and the oranges."

I was pert when I reminded him he can not eat oranges.  He said, "Mom, it doesn't matter.  You make so many good foods that people enjoy eating, and I can always eat more of yr cooking."

Flatterer!  Scoundrel!  This comes right on the heels of my bittersweet realization that every year both children are allowed whatever it is they want to eat for supper on their birthdays, and they have never ever asked to go out to eat.  I mean, we go out to eat, and even for special occasions, but for their birthday dinner they always present me with a long, handwritten list of homecooked favorites to eat all at once.  (sweet!) This is another way in which they drain the life from me. (bitter!)

 
 

But the salad is dead easy, definitely in the Make & Take file.  I do not even remember from wherever this knowledge was transferred to me.  Pour one pint blueberries into a bowl, add 1 can drained mandarin oranges.  Sprinkle over a heavy snow of slivered almonds, toss.  Sprinkle with a haze of sugar, maybe a little lemon.  It doesn't hold up for a long time, but it is good while it lasts.  It makes a fantastic summertime dessert.  Or, potluck fruit salad in April.    À bientôt!   

snips + snails

 

My little baby is a teenager.

I don't even care about this kid anymore.  I don't care because he doesn't care. Garçon does not want to hear the benefit of anyone's life experience, and I am tired of being generous with the fruits of my labors.  I will keep my goodness to myself and good luck to him. 

Mari quails every time I have conveyed this to him, but I don't care about that, either.  You know what:  if he were a million other kids, he would be bar mitzvah this year.  The law says that [child] is then responsible for the fulfillment of 613 mitzvot without the nagging of the [father].  So, I am pretty fucking sure my actual kid can handle the fulfillment of the 12-15 chores on the 7-year-old chore chart without the nagging of his mother.  Let him be responsible for his own deeds & misdeeds.  Mari can use up his voice talking, talking, talking so that child can't hear any of it.  I am going to accept the things I can not change.  It's time.  It's acceptance!  It's supposed to be good, right?  Otherwise, they wouldn't say it in the serenity prayer.  Serenity now! 

This is the first day of the rest of my life.  13! 

national poetry month. again.

If Garçon sleeps late, Fifille draws a mustache on him with body crayon. She will also draw a little, tiny heart under his hairline, by his ear. Aw!

 

Last week, Adrienne Rich died.  It was 7 years ago last week that Robert Creeley died, which was a great loss, and even to me.  It was 7 years ago this month that I saw her read her poem she wrote in memory of him, a poem I have been thinking about, in part, for over a month now. 

 

In Memoriam
Robert Creeley
May 21, 1926 — March 30, 2005

AS EVER

As ever, death. Whenever, where. But it's

the drawn-together life we're finally

muted by. Must stand, regard as whole

what was still partial still

under revision. So it felt, so we thought.

Then to hear sweep

the scythe on grass

still witherless and sweet

 

[for R.C.]

—Adrienne Rich
April 2 2005

 

 

 

profusion

We stepped out last week to take a trip to view Washington's Peak Cherry Blossom Show.

 

It was a fun trip.  There was a Living Social deal for a Potomac River Cruise, so I snapped it up and the four of us + Sal went one evening.  Honestly, how many times can you see the blossoms from the sidewalk, right?  They are the same every year.  Pink & snowy and really lovely.  You can't really lose, so why not see them from the water?!

 

 

It was thoroughly enjoyable and as I have written previously, it feels so, so good in this era of constant, diluted, elective digital contact to be able to say to a friend I will see you.  And then to see them, and do something together ... to have so much fun that you are actually unable to take the time to tweet about how much fun you are having.  Imagine!

I do not think I had ever been on the water in Washington.  It is flattering to its features!

 

The Watergate!  Is on the water!  Yes, that Watergate!  I knew that, but never thought about it, zooming along Rock Creek Parkway to get to & from the dentist.  It's in the name: water.

I do not love boats, but I think I have been on more freaking boat rides & tour cruises in the past 2 years than all the years prior. 

I liked that peak bloom was so early.  I liked thinking of all the people who were just here for depressing sales meetings or for firing people or getting fired or putting their grandmother to sleep or working on their dissertations, and to think of how they were just here when the cherry trees bloomed a week-and-a-half early, and they got to see it, by chance.  Maybe it prodded them to believe in something, to think that the luck could be theirs -- maybe they will propose or make a change or feel propelled forward by this beauty -- what fortune!  What cheer!

This is the Potomac River spider. 

It was first discovered at Mt Vernon in the anteroom of Martha Washington in 1925.  Later in the 20thc, it was relocated by U.S. Park Service Preservationists to Lady Bird Johnson Park.  Winters, it shelters itself in the river cruise ship's window flaps under the protection of Rangers.  Yes.

Then we came home & had a birthday. 

 

That was nice, too.  Á bientôt, see you!  xoxo

 

 

 

just right

Mark Bittman always talks about socca (aka farinata) being custardy and/or creamy when he writes of it.  I have never any idea what that means.  Every time I eat socca, it is kind of gritty and, yk, unleavened. 

 

 

Yesterday I got it that way for the first time.  I was so excited!  It was pretty delicious.  I did not do anything differently, so who knows.  Maybe it is because of my Lenten action, transforming me!  Giving me powers!  Maybe it was just that I sifted the flour, instead of waiting for it to work itself out.  Only the Lord knows!

I wish it were more of a dynamic transformation.  Like a gateway to somewhere.  Maybe pizza!  Ahaha!  

Je t'embrasse. 

 

Mk 9, 49

We were in Washington's Ridiculous National Harbor Resort Area for President's Day weekend. I know, a week ago.  It was a horrible destination, I would not recommend it ever for anyone's getaway weekend, and that is even as I know that you probably would not be visiting during a Katsucon.

Looking back, that was its only charming feature, and girls dressed up like that one blue Jedi girl -- same sort as the dancing girl with Jabba the Hut, but blue and more awesome -- are not a permanence on the National Harbor's landscape.  

The Woodrow Wilson Bridge isssszzZzzZzzzz.  We had a great, old, Old Town dinner with old friends & their same-aged children, so that was the favorite + best.   

 

On the way down & back, we listened to Angela's Ashes.  Since then,  now any complaint from a child is managed by shaming: 

"Think of Jesus, hanging on the cross, suffering, his hands and feet torn to shreds, the wound in his side, bleeding?  Don't you think he'd like to have the troubles you have?  The folding of your own clothes & washing the dishes you ate from?  WELL?  Think of the Virgin Mary, with her only son hanging from the cross, her suffering.  Don't you think I would rather have you complaining and whining than hanging from a cross?  Well, right now, it pains me to admit to you that I don't know."

Then, conveniently, it was Lent.  Nice timing, that, since I was already thinking deeply of Jesus & the way he was bleeding from his side, what since I dislocated two ribs getting it on.  Right.  So, I went to my guy.  OK+ ow. 

Then it was erev Ash Wednesday & I turned myself toward Lenten introspections, about which I do not feel ready to hold forth.  This morning I was dreaming about doing regular things, yk, making breakfast & chatting in the hall about laundry, and in my dream it wasn't Lent.  When I woke up & realized it was, in fact, Lent, I burst into actual tears & sobbing.  I know.  It's supposed to be hard.  It is.

 

 

I bought this necklace while we were away, browsing with Fifille at a store called Charming Charlie.   

 

Shopping there made me realize I have a lot of nice jewelry that I really love but I rarely wear.  Necklace-wise, half of it has been gifted to me by Mari.  It made me feel unsettled, this realization, and reminds me of what I always tell Mari:  If ever you leave me, make certain it is for an heiress.  You will be requiring of her personal-security employees.  I require she has a helicopter.  Please only leave me for Veronica Lodge. 

Then he always grabs me up & says, "Baby, you are so Veronica Lodge."    I see his point. 

I did not feel like this necklace was Veronica Lodge -- not compared with all the real metals and gemstones I have at home.  I walked around the store, clutching it anyway, and bought it in the end, along with a headband for Fille.

I wore the necklace last Wednesday, the first day after I saw the chiropractor that I felt well enough to stand up straight.  I love it.  First of all, it is sparkly.  Second of all, it is noisy.  It reminds me of those clankety charm anklets from the headshop that a number of us wore all around summers in ol' barefoot Madison.  Kowalski once said, "I can hear you coming."  (I just wanted him to be ready for me!)  But because it is around my neck, not my leg, it isn't so relentlessly noisy.  Just if I change direction quickly, or maybe if I spin.

OMG this necklace is a gateway necklace!  Yes!  All my other necklaces are super-appealing to me now!  Friday, I could not wear the clankety necklace, but I knew there was another necklace more suited to what I was wearing & the occasion!  Exciting.

 

I mean, you know, the necklace gate is wide and the road is broad, and crowded.  No one cries big, raindrop-sized tears there.  Also, if ever Jesus or even the Franciscans call me up to walk with them, I'm going to have to get rid of them.  Heavy.  OK. 

 

This song has nothing to do with Lent, but I think it hits our high points in a summary, thusly:  is the season; Veronica Lodge; plans for living like so; promised lands.  Also relevant(!) because The Zombies were on World Cafe Live late last year, and Rod Argent told a story about Elvis -- about the privilege of knowingness and upon whom it is bestowed -- that took my breath away.  It was exactly as written in Matthew 13. 

 

Je t'embrasse.  Enjoy yr wkend.    

pie; maybe pancake

 

torch singer

Ha. 

 

 

 I think, mostly, I am trying to figure out why I thought "Roadhouse Blues" belonged on a Valentine's Day mix.  I love Valentine's Day!  I probably love you!  You don't have to be my valentine; just be who you are & I'll love it.  Unless I don't.  It's a pretty binary situation, there is not a lot of in-between.  Also, you have to just know because I can be an impossible-to-pin-down equivocator.  I know.  I'm sorry.  Believe in yrself!    

 

I hope you get everything you want!  Not from me!  I'm married!  Ahahaha!  xoxox

lifted

When the girls returned from Winter Break, the letter went home with each of them. The En Pointe Temps are upon us.

 

 

It takes some kind of time to be fitted for your first shoe.  There is an HR-traning-like portion of the endeavor for the child.  We took it easy today & sauntered over.  I mean, after a to-do & a trip & parking & some lunch.  The store is well-known to us by now, all these years later.   I have always loved the way the store is just a warren of pointe shoes.

 

 

The family is venerated for their fitting-superiority & its second generation -- retired dancers -- are the truest ad-hoc counselors on this ballet kinda stuff we have ever had.  I can ask them anything, and they will give the best answers.  Like bartenders, but without liquor.  I totally appreciate their counsel; today I showed with a box of sea-salt caramels in tribute.

 

 

Fifille is super excited and sat in the living room for a long time tonight, trying them on & admiring them.  They don't even have the fasteners sewn on yet; the classroom demonstration of fastener-attachment is not for 3 weeks. 

 

 

I had not realized she would be able to go up on them right away.  All of this is such a mystery to me.  I know, it wouldn't be if only I would read Agrippina's book.  Yk, those shoes are mostly just papier mâché.  Someone should make an English country waxed-satin version!  Yes!  Bisous!

vroom

I made cookies Monday. 

I used Elana Amsterdam's chocolate-chip/cranberry/walnut recipe, but subbed in cherries.  I put aside a half-dozen for my celiacky next-door neighbor, but our ways parted before I could give them to her.   

So, it's just me & these six cookies.  Staring each other down, revving our engines.  Hm.

Holiday undecking free to commence, finally.  As already written elsewhere on the internet, on Boxing Day when there were still three more nights of Hanukkah, I was like, OMG, get the fuck out of here, Winter Holidays!  Shoo!  I could have dismantled everything on Dec 29, too, by avoiding this real-life Christmas Day exchange with the children:

"Excuse me, children," then they came on their little floor-slapping feet.  "Why is everyone congregated in the stable with the Holy Family?  With camels, and trunks of precious resins and metals?"

 

(All of the animals were always there, and the Kellies with their hot cocoa were a gray area.  Fille said they were serving in a midwifery capacity, and being a proponent of things-Marian, I let it go.)

They hemmed & hawed, reaching no accord, then shrugged at each other.  Garçon spoke for them both & told me they just put everyone in for Christmas.

You know, I could just take a vow of silence and it would be just about the same to the knowledge base of everyone who lives here, big & small. 

"The Baby goes in on Christmas Eve.  The Wise Men do not get there until later.  Why do you think it is called Three Kings Day?"

Fille wriggled forward toward me like a balletic Arnold Horshack.  "Oh, I know!  Because they were there for the brit!"

It did, as the Israeli would prognosticate when I told him this story, break my heart a little to tell her she was wrong.  But I did get to give them the lowdown on the history of the Octave Day (nerdout Mariology!).

 

Also from the out-of-the-mouths file:

Femme (serving a second lunch to Garçon):  Ok, here it is, but I re-heated it in the microwave, so now it has been irradiated & is devoid of all nutrients.

Garçon: Er, Mom?

Femme: I know,  I know (!), you don't believe that.

Garçon:  Yeah, no, I don't believe that, Mom.

Femme:  And that's fine!  You like machines!  But as your mother, I am obligated to tell you when I believe I have served you food that is void of nutrition. 

 

That is more of an out-of-my-mouth anecdote, you know.

I have been looking for a copy of My Life & Hard Times for Garçon for most of the last few months.  I think he will love it, but no bookstore has it.  And I only met one bookstore employee who even knew who Thurber was.  You either know how this is not a non sequitor or you do not.  Bonne chance!  Do not let me begin the endless narration.  À bientôt!   

 

 

reformation

We had oatmeal pancakes for the first time in a long time for New Year's breakfast.

I am notorious in my pancake-hatred; it is as nearly renowned as my ketchup-hatred.  My instant appreciation of these made the rounds fairly quickly, with some pretty significant people rushing to their griddles to find out what had wooed me thus. 

They are not a pretty pancake.  In fact, the greatest feedback I received was complaints over their failure to turn, their breakableness, which led to v many a-ha moments with old friends regarding an invitation to consider their ideal coloration of a cooked-pancake.  It was one of those things that lingered with me for a while, this kind of knowing about a guy's ideal pancake.  It stood there, taunting me, a testament to a thing I had long tried to sidestep and sidle by.  Anyhow.

Anyhow, we like them and they meet our needs.  Mari made bacon to go alongside for the two of us, but meh.  Pancakes are enough already.  Now oatmeal + bacon:  that is breakfast high-rolling. 

À bientôt, j'espère.  Also:  Fuck 'em, Bucky.  xox

liege

2011 started off extra-strong with not having to secure babysitting to attend a rock concert.  Let's look at that again.  I'll make it bigger.

 

2011 started off extra-strong with not having to secure babysitting to attend a rock concert.

 

It was just that huge, that first time.  I mean, we would leave them to go to the supermarket or the post office, but to go out?  At night?  Not until that day.  It is still pretty trippy, every time we do it.  Bye, love you.  Don't use the stove, no fighting, no biting. 

Wow.

Then, yk: kittens, growing; kittens, facing mortality.  Then whatever to all that cat stuff because Kowalski's mother was dying, and there were the unyielding reports filed, every night, many mornings, there were a lot of confessions and solemn agreements made. 

By the late spring, my favorite + best, the Israeli, wandering in the haze of the untreatable, was promised a way out and that was resolved in its entireity and whoa, so many people are happy.  It was touch & go at the start of recovery's road, but for months now he has been so great and I am so glad. 

We had a great trip home & I no longer -- if ever I had -- believe that old saw about how you can't go home again.  You can, and it will still be every moment the right hometown for you.  I am still glad not to live there, but never for the reasons people think.  It is my secret. 

Things reached a head in our family dynamic this summer, and 2011 is the year of useless pediatricians, but now we are going to turn the page on every single one of them.  It is so strange, because, yk, we talk to people, we are processors & confessors and I am a confider in a few people, and every time, with the twatty health-care providers, I have had to review -- am I making something where there is nothing? -- and it's always, "No, no, their behavior is outrageous." 

Although, the Israeli did say, very recently, when I called him about Mental Hospital Detail, limply putting my metaphorical self into his metaphorical hands, "You know, cookie, when you go to a carpenter, they generally use a hammer."  Ah. 

So who knows where that will go in the weeks and months to come.  I pretty much still feel very whatever-y about him, but he is my son and not my husband, so I do not actually have to work it out.  Take Michael and Fredo, right?  Shake it up with Fermina Daza.  Shoot! See?  Snake-eyes.  Yes.  He is a lovely child, until you ask him to do something.  But on travel, anywhere?  He is fine.  So, we will just never be at home again.  Or, more likely, I will simply bribe them more with trips to get what I want when we are home.  We no longer have pets in our care, so E-Z. 

We were in NYC yesterday, site of much delicate-lounging during 2011, to go to MoMA.  You have to know that I was going to perish if I did not see the de Kooning exhibit.  It was so good.  So! Good!

 

(So crowded!)

There were no photographs allowed in the galleries, so there are none here, but it was such a grand scale.  It was completely thorough, and Fifille was excited about a lot of process discussed in the curatorial exegesis from the audio tour.  I love the MoMA audio-tours.  I am not really an audio-tour person, but anyhow.

Also, at the de Kooning exhibit?  Stanley Tucci.  He was taking a photograph of the two women with him flanking the canvas of de Kooning's Two Standing Women, which I had just admired before doubling back to see another thing again. 

He had his camera right out!  Using the flash!  Even when photographs are allowed, flash is never!  In no museum!  I sidled past him & said, whispery-y -- if you know, you know exactly how this came out -- "You are going to get into trouble!" 

He was wholly conspiratorial in response, "I know, I am, shhh, I have to hurry!" 

Mari, of course, was all, "Did you just chide Stanley Tucci?" 

I did.  Know why?  He was doing bad behavior.  Duh.  But he is really very handsome.  Also, as with many people from the audiovisual world?  Smaller than you'd think. 

Then we had dinner in the 2nd-floor museum cafe, naturally.  Flourless chocolate cake is back on the menu, bliss, and the coffee is still pretty good.  Garçon had been at a portion of IFC's Studio Ghibli revue with Algren, but they turned up toward the end of dinner for the hand-off. 

Then we all went to the Diego Rivera exhibit. 

I was flattened.  There is really not v much more to say about it.  His work has a reach & a relevance thematically that I feel is really something to see at this moment, in particular, so there was that, but also -- Rivera is never really highlighted as an innovator, or a problem-solver, in his work.  He is almost always presented as the leading North American Communist who was a muralist and  who was sought out to diversify the human collections of people like Ford and the Rockefellers, who refused to take any shit off of anyone.  And, yk, dayenu, but then to find out that he constructed a way to make his work, murals, portable ... it just blew my mind.  Man.    

In conclusion, before we can all look forward to a 2012 full of sports-journalism blogging, I offer the traditional 8tracks thingo of my favorite tunes from 2011.  I think I try to keep it to 10, but last year I could not whittle it down at all, two years ago, there was an A-list and a B-list, and this year is 11.  Or 12.  I think.  I LOVE THEM ALL. 

This is a pretty-exciting piece of media from 2011, also.

I pronounce 2011 pretty great, even as (especially as?) it ends with my total-laryngitis, which harkens back to so many ways in which I try to improve my self -- with the needing to ask & the reliance and the willingness to be helpless, but also the shutting up the endless yammering.  Like now.  Have a safe evening and a restful pair of holidays, whether you are near to me or far.  xox

 

blabbity-blob

I'm not actually blogging because I do not actually feel like the endless narration.

The black cakes came out great, if in need of a little breathing/evaporation of the post-baking brushing of rum.  After the last trip to the pasticciera -- I am not being insufferable using the Italian, it's just that otherwise, in our house, if I just say Going to the bakery! there needs to be qualification, but if I say On my way to the pasticciera! I am only speaking of one place. 

 

Or maybe it is insufferable, for example, if one is illiterate.  But in that case, you were neither invited, nor are you valued generally as reader of this space.  Capisce?

 

Anyhow, after the last trip to the pasticciera, I could hardly stand firm against the wrapped-up cakes anymore and even though I was saving every single one of them for a Dec 24/25 experience, I caved.  It's fine, the lapse in discipline.  I am happy about chewing through a slice, now & then, with a hot cup of tea.  I see the need for the peel I chose against; it's awfully sweet & peel would bring it up in flavor.

See, how the endless narration just slips out?!

Let us cling to the lifeboat of a list, ok?

• I think I could take the contents of all the neighbors' recycling bins and strew them through our house, on the floors, and my children would never notice.  Or, if they did notice ("Jesus, what a dump"), they would never reach down to place anything into a refuse container with their own hands.  OK.
• I settled on $75 for the children's guitar instructor, attending a heartfelt note commending his meritorious attentions to my son, in particular.  Mari still frowned at me, while I was assembling my heartily-overthought denominations into an envelope.  He choked similarly when I gifted Fille with a crisp $20 bill for a perfect-perfect dental checkup.  Honey, I told him then, rolling my eyes.  $20 every 6 months is comprised of a nickel every time she brushes.  This is a similarly-cumulative payout, less than $1 per lesson.  Everyone is happy.
• Am listening to Christmas radio, wondering how "My Favorite Things" became a Christmas song when the context it attends is not and also, trying to work out what would happen if Joe Jackson came upon Katherine Jackson in a clinch with Santa, in fact.
• The psychologist -- we like to call her Dr Vajazzler -- conferenced with us about her report in the first week of December, still recommending immediate inpatient admission for Garçon .  The following day, I went through a long list of every psychiatric facility with a pedes ward in the region and every one of them replied to me -- kindly & filled with the weight of their credentials -- by saying, essentially, This is an inappropriate recommendation for the child in this report.  What the hell?  I called Dr Vajazzler & said, "So, everyone says no to your recommendation & can you reconcile your urgency & their apathy?"  She railed at me for a long time, extremely defensive, super-bitchy, and that was the last I heard from her or anyone in her facility. 
  
  Until I sent an email yesterday which asked, essentially, once you cut through all the duplicitous civilizations of it, Does my kid need acute psychiatric intervention or not?  Are you totally unprofessional, or are you just completely incompetent?  Check 1 for yes, 2 for no.  Write me back!  Then the reply-to-all shenanigans commenced.  If you know, or if you are a close reader in this space, you know that these missteps were like the suediest handbag ever.  There was actual glee, with tiny, mincing, clapping.  Also, squealing.  Then I proceeded to fuck with them.  They must have figured out they were all emailing me in error, because today there is total radio silence.  Wankers.  Also, WTF about standards of care?  We recommend surgery!  Oh, well, but the surgeons don't, so ...  So I still recommend surgery!  I do!  Surgical!  I'm right!  This is your fault because you homeschool!  What?

Oh!  Accidental narration!  A spill!  Argle-bargle!

 

Mari found a sweater in a put-away pile of winter clothes I never wear, up in the attic.

"Is this Fille's?" he asked, reasonably. 

"It's mine!"  I said, snatching at it.  Then I inspected it closely.  It is a Michael Kors half-alpaca, half-merino sweater & I adore it, but have never worn it because it is never cold enough here to have even thought about wearing it.  I must have clutched it to my heart in the store without looking at it, and then somehow purchased it without realizing that it would only fit me if I were to keep my breasts in my pocket.  But my child is cold all the time and we have a similar kind of severity in our fashion aesthetic (french cuffs on the wedding gown, people), so alors.  Bonne chance, pretty girl.

I guess I should get back to comporting myself as a person who operates on a Holiday Open House paradigm, baking & procuring & all.  Hm.  I miss sports-journalism blogging already.  À la prochaine. 

spoonful of sugar

No one will turn you away if you have dangling from your finger by its string a bakery box filled with Italian cookies.

 

Further, if you develop a reputation for being the girl who fetches a pound or two of Italian cookies from the county's best pasticciera to bring along to every gathering, you will find yrself invited to everything, even if you are not particularly nice and/or do not exactly cultivate people.  Every now & then you should appear with a rum sponge -- or for more intimate gatherings, a tray of cannoli -- just to keep people aiming higher.

Last night on Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor put words to something I know to be absolutely true, but for which I never had the words.  He was saying that [Midwesterners] are proud of winter, that it is embarrassing not to have winter, that we need winter to feel invincible.  Yes!  I can't believe I never looked at it so simply before.  Yes.  If you know that & you know that all I miss about a public, Catholic observance is the privation of Lent, well, then, you might know all there is to know about me.   

Invincibility is a pretty cool power.  It goes right along with the white box of cookies and the can of gasoline.  Oh, and Mari says it doesn't hurt to have big, googly eyes and long, long giraffe's eyelashes.  Hm.  We'll catch up about all that soon, I hope.  Gros bisous.     

moonlight. firelight.

I hustled my family out of the house on Saturday afternoon, bustling them in hats & scarves down to the highway and then beyond the wall, marching along the Queen of Hearts landscaping to the Ivy-League ice rink.  The weather was clear and crisp and just-right. 

Mari was the whole time shocked by my initiative & leadership role, as passive deferment rooted in a kind of agoraphobic tendency is usually my family-outing way.  It is just that all the other days in the week I am timekeeping & bustling and bicep-gripping, so when he is home & available to go with us, let him ... you know, there is a nautical metaphor that means take charge of it which I want to use here.  Maybe pirate-y, even.  Use it if you know it, because that is what I meant. 

I give all the credit to Twitter.  Sometimes, there are these event-related tweets that come at the right time, right when the mental ground is fertile for the seed of a plan, when anything seems possible.  Right when I will fiddle with my handheld out of nervousness or indecision, there it will be, positively serendipitous.  This is the second or maybe third time this has happened -- I know one of the other times was a call to attend the Executive Order 9066 Day of Remembrance, when all we had on our docket was a trip to Mt Vernon no one was too excited about.  Anyhow.

I shoved the children into their orange Hobey-seats one row behind ours.  "Hockey: it is like football on ice," I told them.  They stared at me.

"She means soccer," Mari explained.  The children nodded, relieved, because they know how to play the game English-only Americans call soccer.  I threw my hands up and turned toward the ice and its warming up + pre-game kibbitzing.

Fifille loved hockey -- which, of course: dudes wielding sticks are smashing into each other and a hard thing is hitting the glass with a scary cracking noise at random moments, producing ambience -- pronouncing it to be one million times better than baseball.  Garçon thought it was fine and fun, which, coming from him, is an accolade.     

It was fine & fun, except things were touch & go for the redhaired, sophomore goalie from British Columbia.

After Princeton tied the game in the last minute of the 2nd period, scoring two goals 10 seconds apart, everyone was so! excited!  Early in the 3rd, the Crimson scored easily to lead again.  Mari came back from the snack bar, asking what happened. 

"The puck went by the goalie," I told him.  "He seems really frustrated."  We were sitting right behind the cage.

"No, but what happened?"

"The puck, honey," I was patient, since my tendency with my mouth is to overly-reduce. "It slid past him on the large portion of ice he left open on his right."

"No way, that sucks."  Then he ate a hot dog.

Halfway through the third period, Harvard scored again.  I think this time the puck bounced off of the goalie a little first, but still.  He seemed crushed.  Crushed. 

 

Lookit how you can see how bereft he looks, even from the rear, even in a shitty cameraphone photograph!  Twenty seconds after I took this photo, Princeton scored and his relief was palpable, even through the plexiglass.  I still felt sad for him, especially in the last couple of minutes of the game, when he went off the ice so they could bring 6 men forward.  Sad! 

I was explaining the ditched-defense manuever to Fifille when "I don't even know you," is what Mari said to me.  What does that even mean?  Before that, he was all not-unlike the first time he found out I could really do math; for example, while I was shouting to the referee heavens not to remand cutie-cute Crimson #13 to the penalty box for holding.  That guy was wholly focused on the puck!  He never even saw the dude who tripped on his stick!  That dude tripped! 

But I do not even see why Mari would say that.  Chicago has a NHL team!  One of my college roommates is married to her Badger Hockey beau!  Just because I am not always going on about something doesn't mean I can't work it up when the cause presents itself!  That is what he should know after all these years. 

Princeton lost, in the end, but it was a highly-enjoyable game.  Harvard has a formidable team; it was a pleasure to watch them skate & shoot.  This concludes my sports-journalism blogging.  You're welcome.

Speaking of one ought to know and sporting:  someone has finally figured out she can use the banister on the 2nd floor landing as a barre. 

 

Goodness, I got her this book.  We are now in our house on a first name basis with Agrippina Vaganova.  As in, "Agrippina says that your knees should always be in line with your toes during [whatever zzZzZzzzz]." Or, "Do you know that Agrippina says that when you practice so that  [whatever zzzZzZzzzZzzz] your arms will become automatically so?"  This is all a kind of excited honing & polishing in readiness for her audition.   

 

 

She still made time to visit with her BFF and eat gobs of candy.  Sunday they had kits from IKEA + the inventory procured during a $9 trip to the supermarket with the bulk-candy bins.  I made royal icing in my new KitchenAid mixer which, I am happy to say, is not better than my former Sunbeam/Oster stand mixer of 16 years, now bequeathed to Mr Fox.  But I will get the KA meat-mincer attachment and then it will be better, empirically so. 

You know there is a lot of candy-consumption when you go and find a new toothbrush in the cabinet so you can make your child and her guest stop playing and brush their teeth.   

Holiday weekends are for entertaining!  Mostly. À la prochaine.

fast five

This manicure will not come off. 

It is a UV-color gel manicure.  Or maybe I mean a UV-gel color manicure.  In any case, this was after 3 weeks, a time during which I was doing all my regular things -- cooking, cleaning, etc -- plus had worked on my own car!  Yes!  I blog this for Marsha.  I had another one, Tuesday, but honestly, I've had enough colored-nail glamour to take me through the next quarter.  But it is nice to know that I can have a gloves-weather manicure with no drying-time frostbite.  You may also be relieved to know that since that phot has been taken, I found my handbag-tube of hand cream.

 We are, generally, on to holiday decorations. 

I love the red on this poinsettia.  It will be dead shortly, no worries. 

Those ornaments are from Urban Outifitters. I was just there the other day & they still carry them.  Wait until after Christmas, like I did when I bought mine, so you don't get soaked.

Who is at that party in the mirror?

 

What I really want to know: Does this flokati make me look fat? 

I know it is turned the wrong way, but even so, I do not even know if it belongs in that room.  I bought it last year, but we had those temporary cats, so when it arrived, I just left it.  (This is what that fat, body-bag bundle by the sideboard was! you are saying now.  Yes.)  We put it down the other day, to see, and there had to be raking.  Raking!  I kind of want to love it, in spite of the raking, but I really do not know if it goes in that room, especially not since I saw my true-love, Platonic-ideal of our living-room rug earlier this year in the Restoration Hardware catalog.  But the flokati is nice to lie on in front of the fire.  MmmMmmMMmM. 

I probably should have gotten it in black, I think, but the ashes in that room.  No.

I am getting ready to make someone's Thursday at work a little less pleasant.  What kind of wintertime pleasures are you indulging?  Gros bisous, so much.

 

wetwork

We were in Washington for the holiday, visiting with friends.  It was nice, I hope the same for you and your family + friends.

 

Jupiter has been on such an unbelievably bright display all month.

Before we left -- like while I was sitting in the freaking driveway, idling -- the nurse from the hospital with whom we had been dealing called.  She had seemed sensible right up to this moment, when she called to try to renege on a previously-set meeting date to get us to come in sooner for a meeting.

As discussed, all around, everything is cake right now on the Garçon front.  I don't ask him to do anything except take care of his own self and he doesn't destroy anything by throwing it at me.  E-Z. 

The kids had a hippie homeschoolers' participation -- Garçon had a huge role, in fact -- in a community theatre production that ran last week, then we had the holiday, obvs, and now we are turning our fullest attentions to The Nutcracker and this weekend's run of 6 shows in 3 days.  Wonderful.  Exhausting.  And, frankly, all of it using up all the time we had for Extra Anything.

As to which result, we told these hospital people that unless he was hearing voices (which she had intimated he was & then recanted while I stood in the cold on Mari's cell phone in front of a mental hospital that could not screen him nor see him, asking her holy what the hell?) which he revealed only to them (entirely possible, sure) our first availability to dive back into their obviously disorganized waters was the first full week in December.  Because we are reasonable, see, plus also organized and they are obviously needful of a lot of flexibility while they sort things out as they go, so we wanted to make sure our family calendar is clear enough to sop up their freaking bullshit.   (Fool me twice, shame on the Luiseño.)

Anyhow.  On the phone, the day we left, Nurse Ratched was demanding a new date for the meeting with the two of us, the doctor who sent us on a wild goose chase, her resident, and the senior person in their department.  That date was earlier by a full week than what I told them represented our first availability, after which there was a meeting already set.  We thought.  No backsies!  So I told her no, while leaving, "WTF don't you understand English?" unsaid.

Because I am a fucking classy broad.

Then Nurse Ratched persisted, telling me that the senior physician in their department was available on this day but not on that day and our son needed to move forward with this care, blahblahblah, and after a while of exchanging sweet-yet-firm conversational demurrals, I cut her off.  The end.  I mean, seriously.  Because when do you want to die?  Tomorrow?  The day after tomorrow?  Bitch?

"You know, I don't have to go to work, but what I do know is that if the day should come that my husband needs to be at a meeting because he fucked up the lead direction on a project, he will not tell anyone he doesn't have meetings on this day or that day, no.  He will make the meeting happen when the  people want to see him. 

"Also, let me put this to you bluntly, because I have implied it without elucidating it:  I don't care at this moment what any of you think about our son's care.  Your outfit has lost the privilege of professional discretions due to the colossal disaster engineered by you just last week.  Let's get all on the same page, in the same room, and my husband and I will evaluate whether or not you are the professionals we want leading the project of our family.  Then maybe we'll be happy to go forward.  Hmm?"

So Mari was sitting in the passenger seat, kind of shaking his palms-upturned hands back & forth, as if they were pans sauteing at a high heat.  This is a gesture we cribbed from the preschool Fifille which mostly conveys a silent astonishment akin to Wait, what is happening?  Why are flaming chunks of the ceiling falling down all around us?  Whoa! 

I mean, I made the case clear to Mari weeks ago that we had to come out swinging with the hospital in every interaction because they have the weight to go to the state and claim we are neglectful and fuck that since they are not bowling us over with their qualifications.  However, Nurse Ratched had -- in all previous interactions -- been not a pain in the ass.  Until this phone call.

I made a show of gazing past Mari's gesturing, wrapped up the call with the nurse and rang off.  He asked me why I'd had to be so mean.  It was an accusation.  In my ongoing work to create my Wife of the Year portfolio, I did not respond to the bullshit in the charge, but instead looked at him, pitiably, and said, benevolently, "She told me that sometimes when she has an appointment, she just takes an early lunch.  Maybe you could just do that, is what she said."

I mean, first of all, how incredibly ridiculous, to offer such kindergarten, junior-intern's advice to any grownup person at all who has made clear that they are not available?  Secondly, what the fuck?  I should have my husband adjust his work schedule so we can meet up with you at your workplace?   Get yr client-service priorities straight!  But then, the killer is, as you are likely to know, to offer that as yr homespun, R.N.'s solution to the man in my husband's position?  OMG.

Anyhow, Mari barked up laughing around a mouthful of orange juice, immediately revoked his charge, and snickered intermittently all the way to the big bridge over the river.  I mean, right?

Then, we had pre-Thanksgiving, erev Thanksgiving, and actual Thanksgiving.  A zero-makework turkey, slathered in butter, roasted itself without fuss or bother while we took in the National Museum of the American Indian, which we thought was the place to be on Thursday.      

NMAI is my favorite museum, ever since they showed me Fritz Scholder and he stole my heart.

Also, James Luna. 

James Luna, The Artifact Piece. First performed in 1987, San Diego's Museum of Man.

 

If you can only know one piece of Luna's oeuvre, it has to be this.

 

But even probably without those guys, it would be my favorite, most important museum.  I forget what we were looking at, exactly, when I looked at Mari and said, "Every time a child tells me Indians used to live here long ago, I want to ssssssssslap them across the face."  It is so true and the only thing that stops me is that I know they are never told better, but OMG, does no one have parents?

 

Friday, we were at the American History museum, sitting in the cafe, visiting with Selene and checking in at intervals with our four at-large children at intervals, meeting up in Julia Child's Kitchen.  Speaking of no one having parents. 

 

I just desultorily chose the Child's Kitchen exhibit because it was close to the museum cafe, easy to find on the map, and hard to miss,  but I was drawn in, a little. 

 

Mostly, I was drawn in by the hordes of people who were so excited to be there.  Their excitement was contagious!

  

Then I got an email from another g.d. hospital professional -- the lead psychologist.  What the hell?  It is like they love the abuse.  I read it aloud to our table and Mari said nothing, but Selena chimed in with a fat lot of what to say about an experience in her family with a silly behavioral health professional.  Later, Saturday morning, I sent a perfect, perfect email which reeked of gasoline, one which came right up to actually calling her incompetent without actually saying, "OMFG, wtf are you so incompetent for?"

It did feature the accelerant-perfumed sentence, "Do you even know what you are doing there?" and the underlings whom she had copied on her outgoing message were included on my reply, so, yeah.  Because right in the email I gave her a matter-of-fact chapter & verse recap on how she fucked up.  Then, in a metaphorical way, I reminded her that she did not want me to strike any matches. 

It was a literary thing of beauty and even if you have known me for 20 years or more-- and seen me in nuclear action over & over, just laying waste to shit & going back to salt the rubble -- you would still say "Jesus Christ" when you read it.  And then you might have to sit with it a little while, admiring.  Honest.

The thing is, her reply to me was so fucking beautiful and the smartest thing she has done yet, wherein she came right to the fence of saying forget about it without actually writing "OMFG, Jesus, fucking forget it."  So things might be looking up, with that!  I think we are learning so much about one another in this dynamic.  Yes!

 

Oh, also, this, speaking of what is said & unsaid, omigod:

I was leaving the Willard Hotel on Friday night, on my way to get a bowl of Corner Bakery's fabulous lentil soup, and the man in his sleeping bag on Pennsylvania Ave-- on the sidewalk at the edge of the pool of the Willard's exterior lights -- stopped me & asked if I could help him.

"Sir, can I bring you a bowl of soup?" was my rejoinder.  He said yes, so I proceeded to take his order for dinner.  He flip-flopped on a sandwich and told me plaintively he could not get warm.  I assured him I would return shortly.

I did, with a large bowl of soup, a grilled-cheese sandwich, and a hot chocolate.  I set all of it carefully next to him and went inside of the hotel.  A while later, I was waiting outside for Mari to come with the car, nursing a cup of hot tea from the Starbucks on the opposite corner.  A doorman from the Willard approached me and said something I did not understand, mostly because he was finished talking by the time I realized he wasn't uttering some kind of boilerplate obsequiousness.

I invited him to repeat himself.  This time I heard him fine.  He said, "You gave food to the man?"

Reader, it was an accusation. 

I was thinking a lot of things, but said nothing.  I mean, if they didn't want dude laying on the sidewalk soliciting assistance and possibly picnicking then why the fuck didn't they man up and call the police on him?  At the same -- possibly incongruous -- time I was thinking OMFG I'm sitting in front of this 4-star hotel blinged-out like Carmela Soprano and an employee wants to get it on with me?  Is the world still turning?  Uh-uh.   

I stood up.  Doorman wanted to be in a confrontation and so I rose to meet it.  I said to him, only, "Yes.  I did."

Then I stood there, placidly.  I did not even raise my eyebrow in that come-and-get-it-I-dare-you invitational gesture you know I love to do, because there was nothing else to say besides Yes and  I did.  I waited, silently, while the light of rightness shone from my fingertips and my eyelashes and the ends of my hair, blinding him with the truth of humanity.  He said nothing more, which is too bad, because besides all the truth and the light and the rightness, I was thinking, deep inside, Say something else.  Anything else will do because brother, I am going to blog about you.

Then he walked away.  Because there was nothing for him to say.  And this is the lesson in which Roosevelt competently instructed us:  Speak softly and carry a big can of gasoline. 

     

the night's a girl

When we were at Arlington, we noticed this engraved granite quoting JFK, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds," etc.  I espouse a variation on that sentiment all the time:  If you display your weaknesses, your enemies will exploit them.  Oh, hahaha.  No, just kidding.  I mean, of course I say that, too, I say it all the time!  But the variation of that sentiment I am always repeating is Good behavior is its own reward.  

It was nice to see it, yk, there.  So I could say, yk, See, other people believe it, too.  They were important.

In another tale of deference to the witness of others:

Fifille is bummed out about performing in The Nutcracker.  She has expressed just wanting to be at the barre, doing what she is supposed to be doing, instead of all this costuming, making-up folderol.  The girls in her class are split between Omigod, Nutcracker Show! and Oh. Already? I seized upon this NYT story from this morning and gave it to her.  You have the love the work; performance is the glory for having the love of the grind.  There is nothing wrong with wishing for cast-in-Nutcracker backsies, especially at 10.      

 

Oh!  Remember when I said I was hoping someone would get to the other 30ish% of the patriarchal deconstruction required for Penn State Coverup Processing?  And if I saw it, I would be sure to let you know?  Here it is.  It's brief, like, yk, it's an introduction.  He gets right into it and pins you up against the wall and piles all yr hair in his hand and breathes on yr neck, but then he's all done.  Like, "That's it?  Aren't you going to stick it in?"  But, you know, Sunday Review space constraints and you get the idea.  Someone else can work you over.  Like on the late-late date, hello?

 

Speaking of late-late date.  Saturday-nite Drive-By Truckers! 

 

There is ol' Patterson Hood, getting ready to tell us about how he did a whole buncha crazy, stupid shit.  Hearts. 

We wore earplugs this time, which seemed (having never done it) like it would be totally uncool.  Opposite.  Best.  Hearing=great today.  Love.

Doctors and one senior hospital administrator were, late Friday, taken to task by me in a way which reminded my husband of the young demolition expert for whom he fell.  He was in love with the whole show -- starting with my chiding them for sending us someplace that could not accomodate us -- Even the lousiest, 2-star hotel makes sure they send you to a restaurant that is open for dinner, I said -- but particularly enamored of the way I detonated the building while talking to them about an example of what normally happens if professional discretion goes sideways due to a fuckup, as did ours with them.

I get that my husband's job is different from yours -- for one thing, as it pertains directly to national security, his job is important, I said, sweetly, sympathetically, before going on with just stuff & bothersomeness about very reasonable expectations for cleanup & accounting and how I very reasonably and sweetly expected this all to be addressed, and with some great amount of haste.  After the holiday, of course.  Because I am reasonable.  Also, sweet.  Until I am not, but, you know. 

I am enjoying the BloPo of Becky and her sister, Amy, this month.  Check it out.

Amy's story of a precious child in the air reminded me of a time with on my way back to Madison from a boyfriend's surgical conference one winter.  I already had a pretty loose grip on things, facing the dread of flying as I was when -- while sitting on the tarmac -- a baby started wailing from the back of the plane.  My beau hardly noticed: his specialty was pediatrics.  I noticed, but determined to cope, I gripped his arm and asked him if he could apply himself quickly & with his masculine ease to getting me a teeny bottle of rum.

He strode down the aisle to work his beautiful-person magic on the stewardess.  Next thing -- next thing -- I was whisked -- whisked! -- into first class.  He calmly folded himself in next to me, ignoring my questioning gaze, and handed me his great-grandfather's chronograph.  We'd discovered the week before on the flight to Miami that I found its heft settling -- its weight in my hands, the shiftiness in its bracelet's links, the way the steel's clinking sounded.

Once in the air, I finally asked him directly what happened.  He shushed me.  The stewardess fussed over me at intervals in an elaborate fashion.  I would ask him every time to tell me what happened, what did he tell her?  He refused me, in every language, and I sulked until I fell asleep, bored of my own petulance, cozy with my first-class airline blanket.

On the ground, in Chicago, checked into the O'Hare Hilton after retrieving his car from long-term parking, I asked him again. 

I told her you just miscarried and we could never sit by that baby. 

I was shocked, surprised!  No one ever knows anyone!  I protested, burbling, until he put his mouth over mine and that was that.     

all is bright

Fille has a Monday ballet class that wears on until 8, so my children did not trick-or-treat this year.  While I must admit to missing my annual fun-sized Snickers bar, it is ok to just be sitting in front of the woodstove with Mari, smelling the Halloweeny smell of singed pumpkin.  Also, I do not have to have any gdmf conversations with any children who live here and are sugar-addled + obsessed with gdmf candy.  Did I write about what happened last year?  God Almighty! 

Happy Halloween!  I hope yours is safe and relaxing! xox

 

 

wheel in the sky

Last year, on the final Friday of October, instead of going to Ballet Town, we waited around the house for the vet to make her housecall and euthanize Iris, my spooky Halloween cat.  It was quiet & dignified, the very best use of an obscene sum of money that we have ever made. 

 

A couple of weeks ago, in bed, Mari shifted his ankle away from mine, kind of wound in the blankets, and it reminded me -- something about it-- of the way Iris would shift her weight around.  I remember the first night she wasn't here: Mari had just gotten home from the office and it was the right time for her to start fussing & yowling, reminding us about bedtime, but it was so quiet, and there were real tears.  It was funny, how we missed her.  We expected her and she was not there. 

Because God is good, by the end of the next week we had a whole family of cats, some of them spookily, Halloweenly, orange-and-black.  Some of them died, too, but not until closer to Valentine's Day.  

I was glad to have the Universe's loaner cats, to have the distraction, but equally glad to see them all gone.

 

Anyhow.  It is peculiar that she came to her end at the edge of Halloween, how Halloween will always remind me of her, how Halloween and all of its days around it & observances about it are for remembering the dead, anyhow.  I was reading something, I can not remember what, it was a magazine, I think -- someone said, The dead are not gone, they are here but they are different.  I thought that was pretty great. 

I hope you have happy memories of the people and personalities you most want to remember.  À la prochaine.

 

laughing forever

Fille is finishing up work on a series of scary fairies.

I'm pretty sure she is going to sell out, which is good because no one wants seasonal items left over.  Bisous!

cockpit

Hello, blog. 

Man, all that endless talking to neighbors was a. exhausting, but also b. by the weekend, while I was sitting in the car, letting Mari drive, staring out of the passenger-seat window, thinking about i. how I had not updated my blog since ... when? and ii. what had I been doing all week? ... Oh.  Talking to people in real time with my mouth.  Like, while standing in their living rooms.  Yes.  It was a good series of thoughts to think.

Anyhow.  That was all over today, after I filed our intentions with the correct administrators at the proper meeting, and phew.  Concerns were aired.  Support was pledged, etc.  Residents who do not run in the same neighbor-y cliques as I marveled at my surgical charm.  While I knew our close neighbors wanted to stay focused on the Serious Business of Zoning, I v much sensed they wanted to bust out of there, getting down to some A-1 speculation about why it was that Fantastic Mr Fox was driving my car, yk, around, even with me riding delicately + with languid femininity in my own passenger seat. 

It was only because I had an official-paperwork exchange to make before the hearing.  It was in a sector with no parking, so he looped around in the car until we caught up again out front.  Magical!  Like having a Tuesday-Wednesday husband!  Or, a driver!  Clapping!

Additionally, what the fuck did I care?  At day's end, the car belongs to someone else.

Not to be all emotional about moving on in automobiles, but our car has had a great run.  Kind of like Iris.  The writing has been on the wall for years, that this car was not going to last forever.  We were so fucking spoiled by that Legend, its 170,000 miles with not a single fucking issue, other than regular wear & tear.  This car was fussy and kind of lemony from the start.  Car-people have tried to placate us -- Oh, blahblahblah, it's off of Audi's assembly line!  Ok, and I have to say, I have driven Audis and it really is the exact same damn car -- sometimes people do not believe the trouble we are having with a VW so I tell them it is really an Audi & they relent -- but anyhow.  The car doesn't work.   

Maybe something went wrong in the making the circles into lines.  Bleh.  This last summer, the transmission started to have major difficulties, instead of the eccentric, finicky demands of the last 4 or 5 years.

When I say "major difficulties," I mean that it would sometimes go in reverse while in gear to drive. Monday night I could not get it into reverse and, while attempting a 3-point turn, almost ran into a large sign on a masonry footing. Most of the time, with city-driving, I would be revving the engine at 35,000 rpms to get it to second gear.  See what I mean?  Not good.  The trip down to South Carolina was without incident.  Wonderful.  Great.  Goodbye, car. 

I have spent so much time sitting in this seat, for the last 11 years.  122,000 miles does not seem like enough.  Thank you for the good times.  For all the naptime driving we did up & down the 6-lane county highway when Fille was new & Garçon was 2.   

For all the late-night, twisty, singalong driving I have done with yr sunroof open; all the ridiculous 2-lane highway travel all across the American South and Ohio's coastal highway; yr zippy responsiveness that time the dude lighting the cigarette came close to creaming us.  I will really miss your luxe interior, with its heated seats and genuine wood trim.  I will not miss yr broken glove-box hinge, yr mysteriously vacuous windshield-wiper-fluid reservoir, nor the way you blow hot engine air into the cabin.  In fact, I will not miss any of yr (frankly) inexcusable cabin-design flaws.

I will miss yr stereo + 6-CD changer most of all.  Most of all.

 

Yet I am on to a new adventure.  It should be fine.  It is funny, because everyone who knows cars is super excited about this car that is twice the age of ours and twice the mileage.  Everyone except Kowalski, who was adamant in his counsel that we just buy a new car.  Fuck that.  I am not going to pay $30,000 for a car and also pour $3000 in gasoline into it every fucking year.  No!

All I care about is not being stuck in first gear at a green light, honestly.  Mari says if we get 15,000 miles out of this car, great.  Then we can be on to the next $1100 car.  We have a new rule, though:  there is no goddamn eating in this goddamn car.  I mean, of course we will, but we can aim high, right?  I want to get the windows tinted and drive around pretending to be deposed royalty!     

I have a blister on each toe from my stupid high-heeled shoes, which I stupidly wore bare-legged and bare-footed.  I was whimpering, a little, after the hearing, on the way back to the car.  ("This grouuuuund is too haaarrrrd!")  Fantastic Mr Fox offered to carry me, and I refused, still a little whimpery.  No, because Mari will be mad if you drive our car and drive me around in our car and then also touch me plus while rescuing.  But thank you.  I meant all of it.

When I called Mari to dish about the whatsits and wherefores, I mentioned this exchange to him.  He agreed it would have been a little much for one day.  I know!   

Oh, anyhow, no, wait, I remember:  I was going to say that I was thinking, yk, Oh, blog, casting it in the light of all the richly-textured face-to-face relating I had been doing.  But then! messages and missives began pouring in about the yogurt cake's deliciousness + success!  Even from 3/4 of my people who did not know what from Italian plums!  I thought that was pretty neat, too.  Gros bisous!

à mon âge les miettes voguent sur la rivière

I made a honey cake for Rosh Hashanah, at the children's insistence. 

 
 

Sephardis are not big on honey cake, not big on honey for this holiday; honey cake was never around when I was a girl.  As I grew older, and dallied more widely at holidays, there was honey cake, lots of interpretations.  I do not like it.  I kept saying things to my children like, "Wouldn't you rather have a delicious cake?"  and "I have only once made a honey cake, let alone a specially-modified honey cake."  They were unremitting plus also flattering about their security in my ingenuity, so I went along and I made one out of nuts, ahaha. 

I used Elena Amsterdam's recipe, adapting it to include honey and exclude agave nectar, but not in the same exchange.  It turned out pretty tasty for a gluten-free Cake of Obligation.  I mean, ok, ok, it was really good.  I think if it were called something else, I could love it.  It does not actually belong on the Rosh Hashanah table, though, with the almond flour and all. 

After dinner, but before cake, the children got completely on about going over to the river for Tashlich.  Say what?  They were surprisingly knowledgeable (in the aggregate) of what was to go down.  Jesus, who taught these children to read?  I mean, look, I have a rich history of being all alongside the high holidays, but I was actually raised Catholic.  Family + close friends went to the river, but I stayed around the house & ate a lot of dates in anticipation, wrestled with seedy old pomegranates -- the kinds of things we do in observation now.   

At the same time, their hilarious quality-control is a direct reflection of ecumenical values we have expressed about the world of holidays, about the world in some measure:  Christmas is not the only game in town!  Halloween is bigger than candy! Purim is 100 times better than Halloween can ever be!  Diwali and Hanukkah and Moon Festival!  Down with ethnocentrism!  It feels really good to both of us, not just knowing they have heard us, but to hear that they want to expand their experience, to get a chance to grow along with them.

Also, they don't know everything.  Their cute determination was quickly degraded into the exhausting knows-it-all of their ages -- It's part of the holiday and we're late!  We were supposed to be there yesterrrrday, Motherrrrrr.   It was the motherrrrrr which made me pedantic and cross.  I crisply informed them that one has through Sukkot for casting, plus also told them they remind me of a joke. You know the one.   (I did not tell the joke to them.)  I have applied them to a slow, running start at the 10 days of repentance.  It is good, though, because of, yk, my son, his last year, and to put out this notion that we can begin again. 

Anyhow, who can say no to Fille now?  With her menacing, gangster's grill? 

 

 
 

Doesn't she look like Chamillionaire?  I know!  Yes.

I really did try to be less awesome that one time.

Let this day be ever remembered as the date Scheherazade met Jack Bauer.  It was amazing, and everything any one of you has come to expect from me.  It was, I think, my finest moment.  Mari said, to me, after my report, while he brushed golden stardust from my low-cut, flatteringly-twirly cloak, he said, Who are these motherfuckers in the world who have never read Sun Tzu and thought to act accordingly?

Weaklings, is whom.  Whose enemies are data-mining their egregious displays.  I was amazing, and I would love to tell any one of you about it, as long as we are on a secure line.  Let's kiss!

 

I am in receipt of a message along the last week from each one of my cookalong pals to tell me they do not know Italian plums.  What?   

 
 

Here they are.  I spotted them yesterday in the market called prune plums.  They are not like regular plums, they are less-watery and firmer, more texturally similar to a grape than a plum.  Or the difference between a peach and an apricot.  They just came into season, now.  If I can find them,  I am confident any one of you can, unless you make me think of upside down.  But, yes! 

 

I am so busy with the start of everything, the clusterfucking, snackpacking, lunchmaking grind, and also, falling ill.  I can not tell (because while I am amazing in a great many ways, with the light shooting from my fingertips and the ends of my hair and all, I am kind of a dope) if it is seasonal allergies or a good old-fashioned cold.  In any case, whatever.  I took a Claritin-D, 4 advil, a shot of feverfew tincture, and a tall drink of Emergen-C.  One of those things will help me. 

If you are keeping up with the SodaStream Chronicles, please know that I purchased one, new in the box, from a young lady via the Craigslist for us$65.   À bientôt! xoxo.   

round tuit

 

rowdy electric

Saturday, the Like-It Edition.

 

Celosia in Russel Wright cream pitcher.  Celosias are having a gorgeous bloom this year, same with crape myrtles.  Use it up.

Increase in our Little-Girl Population by 100%.

 

Paper dolls, and also girls feel! so! big! because once they got the self-healing mat out, I gave them each their own x-acto knife.  ZOGMACATS.

They are -- in the photo, you can't tell -- listening to the latest Wilco single on repeat, which I do not mind at all.

I was just telling Mari yesterday that I am so glad to have not known who Jeff Tweedy was when I met him all those years ago at AWP, because my story is a million times awesomer than it would have been if I had.  He was the nicest guy I met at the whole darn convention.  And his book of poems is x-great, too.  And now I'm a fan all-around, so I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, again.  (Yes!!)

I am putting a lamb roast on the barbecue again today and ... I don't know.  Emily is staying through dinner and I just love her so much.  She is one of those kids who eats, yk, 5 things + meat.  So, I was just quizzing her again -- because I forget that meat is a thing that can be fed to children -- about her roster. 

She said, "And ... hot dogs, and hamburgers, mmMmmMmm, lamb chops, aaaand --"

"You like lamb?!"  Lamb is such a meaty kind of a meat, plus not v marketed.  "Really?!"  I was so excited.

"I LOVE LAMB," she called out in a proclamation like 10-year-old girls can. 

I told her, super-excitedly that we were having lamb for dinner.  So, who cares if she won't eat anything else except the today except the fruit & cheese plate I have set for their afternoon snack and the crudite plate before dinner.  I can tell her mother I fed her PURE PROTEIN.  Exciting! 

Unless I ruin it.  Hm. 

 

I know, half of you are like, Honey, we believe you.  You didn't need to show us the raw meat.  The rest of you are all, Hey, what's all in yr marinade there?  I hope it works out.  Fingers crossed! 

This is my favorite photo from our last trip, Fille & Sal, goofing around at Hirshhorn Party.  They are playing Disaster Movie.

 
 

It was a better photo before I cropped it for Sally's privacy.  It is good to have old friends who are into your kids.

I dreamed about so many of you last night, so long, so much.  Even you.  Yes, you!  Don't blush, it was just a blow job about 100 years ago. 

Everyone, let's kiss now!   

diversion

Philadelphia is pretty.  Not gorgeous or anything, but it will do.  It is always right there, over the river + a scooch, for whenever.

 

Met swell gal-pal, Ange, from university right here, where last we all saw Rocky Balboa.  A lot of determined, sweaty, virtuous people ran up and down while I waited & watched.

 

I wish I had Photoshop.  Then, couldn't I erase those hideous buildings on the right from the vista?  I mean, I would have to a. have Photoshop, b. have an HR training session on it.  Oh, snap!  I'll bet there was one at BlogHer! Har.

 

Saw, for the first time, this amazing painting from Degas which reminded me so much of Hopper.  This is pretty much where we dropped off of the tour, in favor of gossipping and catching up 15 feet behind.

 
Interior, 1868, Edgar Degas. From the Philadelphia Museum of Art Henry P McIlhenny Collection.

It was tremendously exciting to hear from Ange's actual lips about her awards + etc amazing work-life plus also get the dish on handsome beau.  Also, the rosy haze that feels like eating stars of being able to -- in this world of digital endlessness -- see people and touch them.  Particularly girlfriends, of whom my children (I guess reasonably) felt I had none.  Your bra strap is showing. ::snap::  You have a mosquito, hold still.  ::fwap:: 

 

Then we struck out boldly in a direction none of us knew & had a delicious, late-night dinner en plein air. 

 

It isn't so far back across the river to get home but we had a whole Philadelphia! Outing! Weekend! planned and zZzZzzzzz.

 
 

Wyndham has the weirdest hotel rooms.  At check-in, we impulsively extended our stay-over layover by another night.  It was the best choice because someone was so tired from College Reunion Up All Night that she was impossible by 1:30 p.m. and had to be put down for a nap like a little child.

One must be rested up for the deafening awesomeness of roller derby.  Minnesota Rollergirls All-Stars!  It was an entire weekend of beautiful women coming back East, obvs.  We generally go to a lot of WFTDA tournaments instead of bout-by-bout, so we have seen a lot of teams skate in a dizzying fashion and Minnesota is my favorite team.  They have a rigorous kind of strategic defense to their skating and let us not forget about the power of 189,043,758,340 childhood hours on ice skates.

 
 They lost, but it was a nail-biting bout, highly-enjoyable.  The score was tied for very much of the game, the alternating leads were very close until the final.  In the third-to-last jam, when Phila got the lead jammer designation, the Minnesota girls -- instead of conspiring to bump her off-track or just clog up her sails -- started just hauling assat the front of the pack so the scoring skater could not pass them, and so prevented her from scoring in that way.  It was such a plainly-obvious defensive manuever, but one we had never yet seen.  The whole bout was thrilling, really.  My new roller-derby name is Mommie Dearest.  Because she is totally scary! 

Fille spent a long time going around, meeting and greeting.  After the first bout, she disppeared for a while and came back with a program full of signatures.  Were you in the locker room?  Yes, she was.

After which Seeking Autographs All Night Long Doubleheader-Bout Exhaustion Relapse we were happy to put her right into a room where she could do almost nothing but fall asleep, and not anywhere by us, because Jesus, she can be mean.

 

Today, she napped the perfect-nap-length trip the way home and so we are home again.  The children are building smiling-face houses and I am thinking of putting lamb merguez on the grill.  I think we might be out of briquets. 

 

I am seeing for the first time there is glue on the playroom-sofa cushion.  Hm.  Still summer! 

five by five

Puellae (Girls), 1992, Magdalena Abakanowicz. Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation to the National Gallery of Art, 1998.

I have been writing this little weblog for five years.  Alors.

One

1. I reference Marion Ravenswood, Karen Allen's character from Indiana Jones, for the first time.  There will never be a last. 
2. After reading the Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon book Plenty, I put our family on the 100-Mile Diet.  It remains.  After homeschooling, but before letting our children call us by our first names, it is among  the weirdest things we do. 
3. I teach myself to crochet.  For several weeks, in love with the one I'm with, I do nothing but crochet.  One square short of an afghan, I stop.
4. Fille & Garçon invent a game called Rope Zoom.  Garçon invents a disease called The Gribbles.  Yes.
5. After a lot of processing, and over Mari's scoffing, I buy a baby sling to carry a 5-year-old.  She will require it two months later when I give her the chicken pox.

Two

1. We retire the wooden play kitchen and I reconcile the truth in my experience of mothering with marketing's insidious fantasies.  Everyone turns out mostly-fine. 
2. Garçon starts in the league of classical guitarists.  Fille switches to an appropriately-Soviet ballet school.
3. I knitted socks, which were so complex in their reverberative physicality I had to knit another pair to spread the meaning over four socks, for who wants one pair to be so heavy? 
4. We visited Maine, but not before I drove the children all on my own as far as Boston.  This achievement will fortify me forever.  J'adore. (Also, I learned how to show my photos in size large.)
5. We fought the law, but more importantly, we stood our ground against the patriarchy and the complacency of dominant culture.  We won.

Three

1. Fille broke her arm.  Because of this I got to drive a BMW (omg vroom forever) and we (again) have a lesson in what a badass we have in a daughter.
2. I knit a lotta baby stuff.  Booties!  Hat + booties!  Mittens +  booties!  Blanket + booties!  Also, my own baby learns to knit her own stuff, too.
3. Cake Mind settles in, but by year's end I have dispatched it permanently as a febrile affliction.
4. Charlie, I almost went crazy when Mario got busted.
5. What began as a coy tease led to the abjuring of my weakness in sweetness for 40 days.  It was grueling, the privation, but did not kill me and I am one million times stronger + smarter for it. 

Four

1. I crash my bicycle and spend the summer on crutches, sure, but what next?  The ensuing summer-long crisis in identity for my whole family, sunburns, confusion about who cleans what, and what means clean, etc.
2. Fille embarks upon the primary series of the Vaganova syllabus and all that exertion for us all, not to mention the having to listen to other mothers' complaining.
3. I skip all my classes that fall to lie around in Postseason Baseball's apartment, making out with him and always losing my bra on the floor.  He shows me his pink diamond and mostly I just compare him to a bunch of other dudes I've known.  Then I get back to my gal pals plus also: stunt driving.
4. There is a lot of snow that snows.  I vacillate between cranky, ecstatic and maudline, but am in all directions homesick (for Wisconsin!).
5. Sewing comeback, featuring despair, a lot of mechanical ineptitude, a dress for Fille, a bunch of other finished projects of the sort I generally knit, but whiz-bang sewing is faster.  As was the case with crocheting, one can hardly pay me to touch that machine again.

Five

1. I find out bereft is the past participle of bereave and my old friend Suse will be forever 39.  I review all remaining relationships with a practiced + cynical eye.
2. Half of the way through my 15th year of wedded bliss, I finally get rid of my wedding gown.
3. We replace our kitchen countertops and clothes dryer, heralding both an examination of marital processes & divisions of labor plus also including the woodstove project and also the painter, opening a season of contractors working in our home.  (Charlie, I almost went crazy.)
4. Iris, my 21-year-old cat, careens stiffly to her end and I subsequently blog of almost nothing but cats for months.
5. We head home to Chicago, traveling with the children all across I-80, I-90, and Ohio's Hwy 2, surveying their ancestral homeland for 11 days.   

make lemonade.

Fille had a lemonade stand with Emily and Allison, Emily's sister.

 

 

There were also Toll House Pan cookies the sisters made and Rice Krispie treats from Fille.  It feels funny to write that, that she is a great big girl who can make her own bake-sale goodies.  They sold out & made $60!  Then they came to our house to eat lunch, play water balloons, and just basically hang around increasing our little-girl inventory by 300%. 

 

We went to see the psychologist today and she said she can not help us.  On the one hand, it was good, because it saved us from having to talk about how we did not think she was a great fit.  On the other, we have taken our son to so very many people in just about the past decade and not one of them has been useful to our family, ever.  Oh, no, that is not true: he had a speech therapist about 5 years ago who worked with him on the TH sound.  That was useful, because at least now he does not sound like a retard while acting like a vandal.  Clapping!

Anyhow, spanking him & withholding food is free anyhow.  Maybe we'll start that.  If I could die, I totally would.  Like, if I were in an accident, there would be no reason for anyone to say, "Whoa, she's really a fighter!"  I would just cave and code.  I might feel better tomorrow.   

I grilled a butterflied leg-of-lamb tonight, but then was too sad to eat it.  So maybe that will cheer me up tomorrow.  Mari said it was really delish.  Obvsly, he is not taking things too hard.  Or he is and so needs to keep up his strength.  Idk.  Ciao.