la femme follette

sleepy

Mari has been home since Thursday, hanging around.  I have been mostly lying around, usually in bed, knitting.  We went to a hockey game on Friday & again on Saturday.  Overtime periods galore.  

 

 I am not sure if this scoreboard is a message about the Mayan prophecy or maybe something regarding Lunar New Year, or even perhaps the Father + Son & Holy Spirit.  But I took a photo, just in case we need to refer back to it. 

 

Mari & the kids were supposed to go to NYC yesterday, but just could not extricate themselves from the cocoon of our home & all of its food in the fridge.  Yawn.  I thought he was going back to the office Wednesday, but he said he goes back to the office, yk, sometime.  Like in the olden days.  Yum.

 

I took some of my knitting time to work on a sampler-stitch swatch for the Granny Square Knit-Assembly.  An actual swatch is being knitted.  I mean, I think this is the first time I have ever swatched.  No, wait: I swatched a long time ago for Kowalski's first pair of socks, because I was not sure how the yarn would knit up in the round.  I wound up not using that yarn, nor that pattern.

Usually, I just start knitting the thing & then check the gauge when there is a fat lot of fabric.  If the gauge is off, I rip it back.   I know I am not the only one.  But this time, with the pieces and parts & all the sewing, I want to make sure that I know how many stitches to cast on for my finished size. 

Valentine's Day is out there, on the horizon.  I am longing a lot, as is normal & usual & well-documented at this time of the year.  At least no one has almost died yet in 2012.  Jesus. 

I was doing the holiday cards in December & Mari said to me, after watching for a while, "Are you really going to write a personal note on each card?"  (There were 75 cards.)  

I said, "Yeah, I'm sending a card, right?  It's personal, honey."

He shook his head and rifled through the pile of already-personalized cards.  "You have really got to send valentines."  He just can't let that go!

 

After a slow & grating beginning, I am loving Pinterest.  So much, yes. 

 

Mrs Israeli & my Favorite Youngest Son are on their way to Tel Aviv right now, so safe travels to them.  Bisous for you all.  2012!        

wpa

Remember the Granny Square Times?  Yes.  They have been piled in the guest-room closet for 5 years, or however many. 

 

A couple of years ago, Anthropologie (I think), had a throw that was part-knitted, part-crochet -- it might have been granny squares, it could have been hexes, I forget -- and it made me think that patchwork-texture of  patchwork-craft might be a way to deal with those boring old grannies.

 

This month's Living has a blanket featured.  It is knitted, but in pieces, and there is a schematic, so it was pretty easy to think ab0ut assembling squares into blocks and then putting them alongside blocks of garter-stitched rectangles.  So that is kind of in the hopper. 

It is more exciting than this.

 

Way more portable, too.  xo 

veronica wiped his face

I feel like I want to respond cogently to the comments of Becky & Marsha from yesterday's post, but really, you know?  I just want to write about my excellent life, which is also boring, but not to me.

There were cranberries in Wednesday's CSA chare.  Well, ok, but really?  I had them lined up for a baked good -- like Fish says, Baked goods: it's right in the name! -- but was not sure if they needed extra handling, so was stalling. 

Last night I picked up a copy of the Thanksgiving Living.  This morning, I was flipping through it after the gymgoing, dawdling in the super-quiet before the children awaken -- I love 5-a.m. gymgoing because it means I can get ready twice in peace + quiet --  and there it was: a magical recipe for Martha's Cranberry Clafoutis.  Yes.  Post-shower, alors!

 

The berries bob around so cutely.

It was a good clafoutis recipe.  A lot of them are too-too eggy, like I am eating a quiche (different dish!) or too-too cakey (zzZzZzzz).  This was just right down the optimal-custardy middle.  Great.

 

Mari was sad, because he doesn't like custard.  But people need to know that after I brought it to his conference-call side topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream,  his bowl was cleaned.  Then he told me about how he did not like custard, as if I give a fuck.  I told him this is why I have never knit him a pair of socks. 

This morning at the gym, it felt like I was dialing it in, but I am kind of sore already.  Great pâté, gotta motor.

had

I have so much I want to write about, mostly about our week in Earthshakey, Hurricaned Washington, but I am not really of time nor temperament + also:  I have waited so long for this to come. 

 

I told Becky, "When that kantha quilt comes, I am going to blog the shit out of it.  I am going to be like one of those Mormon-girl bloggers."

Not really.  I mean, I did write that to her, but I do not think I meant it.  I think I was just pent-up from the longing.  As I tweeted on that morning I purchased it from One Kings Lane, I would have been embarrassed at having refreshed its sale page 150kabillion times waiting for it to be released from someone's 15-minute cart hold, except that I got it.  Recognize.  You have to be serious in this world.  Apply yrself.

I tell this to the kids all the time, Be serious.  There is also the inverse, the most dire dismissal, the most cutting remark anyone will ever suffer at my hands (worse even than I should have had an abortion, because that is all hyperbole even as it blossoms forth, hands waving the sky), which is the judgment of Not serious.  God forbid anyone darken my door with their insobriety.

Here's the thing -- it is like one of those logical thingos they give you in Philosophy 101.  In order to be taken seriously, you must be serious.  People miss out on things they say they want all the time because they are not willing to be limitless, because they get feckless and back down, wander off, wait for it to be easy.  Stay on top of what you want.  Be serious.  Focus.  Otherwise, you will have tunnel vision about what you let fall behind, what you should have done, instead of knowing you did what reflected yr intensity regarding the subject.  When a problem comes along, you must whip it.

Pancake, what are you on about?  One of you surely knows the provenance of this obtuse confessional that I know can be read, which does not bother me, because it is nothing I would not say right out loud, if only I felt like making my mouth form the words and then my ears to fold around the mewling and the protesting and then again with all the stony + unremitting rebuttals.  Tap, tap, tap.

It is like when Garçon ran off -- this position has actually been a litmus test of Serious vs Not Serious with people we know, and it is surprising how many people who know us line up with great relief on the side of Serious, once I elucidate the position.  People ask, Omigosh, were you worried?  What if something had happened? 

No, I was not worried.  Fuck if something happened, it was not my problem.  I did what I was supposed to do in the face of a horrible child, taking steps that were fully in line with all the parenting decisions we have always made in all the years prior.  Garçon chose to run away when confronted with the reasonable consequences of his unreasonable, vandalizing actions.  Every time he had a choice to make, he chose against the right way.  If something had happened to him because of his choices, that is the consequence of those actions.  It would be too bad if he had to live forever with the result of a choice he made when he was 12, but it is not my life.  Just like anything else in parenting.  Bye!  Go with God.  Live and learn. 

Also ... well.  Anyhow, the quilt.  It does look good in my treehouse. 

 

It is just the right weight for a throw that is not too serious, just to ward off a chill.  Which means it should be of limited use in our house this winter, but who knows?  The stitching is hand-sewn, and I spend a lot of time admiring it while I perch there and knit a pair of socks.  These are going to be the best socks yet, I know, even before all the mewling and bereft serenading.  Jesus. 

That is what I am up to, mostly ... knitting socks, drinking vodka, having the patience of a saint, going to sleep at 11, getting ready to swap the Havianas + backless dresses for Tory Burch suede wedges + Citizens of Humanity jeans + other Wonder-Woman-bracelet accoutrements ready for Ballet Season.  Getting my ass readied for Pilates Hours to start up again with ol' Pilates Chick.  Carryin' my big-assed purse to lacrosse practice, you know, all those things like we moms love doin'.  I hope you are all in anticipation of a lovely holiday weekend.  xox 

2x2

Do any others of us have the children who suck hickeys into themselves?  In the fleshy margin of the upper arm, where you can fit it into a mouth while insomniac, or anxiously watching Cowboys & Aliens or whatever?

 

Jesus Christ.  And because I am a bicep-gripper/child-hustler by disciplinary reflex, I always quail when I see marks like this.  Then especially because the child has no recollection of idly vacuuming his or herself into this condition, they can not say.  Every time this happens, and every time I realize that I could not just put that pressure on in a thumbprint, there would be a whole hand, so it is them.  Again.  Gross.

On the other hand, their mother was a cutter, so at least they come by it honestly.  I think. 

 

This is what happens, when Mari & I are lying around, chitter-chattering as we awaken, with our door open.  People come & go, chastised for disfigurement, and then others come lilting in to find out why their brothers are sulking.

They all perch right on the bed, even as they have not been invited. 

 

To distract us from this invasion, they look winsome and tell jokes.  Three strings walk into a store ... 

 

After they have successfully flushed us from our own goddamn bed, one of them cheekily returns to loll & chat-chat-chatterchat until I am afraid my head is going to come apart from my neck.  The endlessness!  Of a 10-year-old girl's breath!

Their father is going to take their badasses to Showbiz cross the river like Washington, and take them to a museum for education in the Physical Sciences, or something.  I am not going.  I plan to knit and drink tea.  Also, vacuum.  Ivy Leaguers are starting to return to our town in dribs + drabs, so maybe I will step out to sample our amenities before they are on in force.

 

Someone who is probably also dismayed at the slow-rolling start of a university calendar -- j'ai faim de toi -- has a new pair of socks on the needles.  This represents two days of half-hearted, not-too-much-focused knitting, which means the project will take about 30 days, both socks, cast-on to blocking, which is about par.  I am working a cowl for myself at the same time, also in 2x2 rib. 

I think ribbing is so punishing, mostly because I knit out of my right hand and have to make the full trip waving around the needle to switch from knit to purl.  This is nice, though, the socks on 3s for a few slick, metal rounds, then change to the flat ribbing on 11s, with bamboo's frictiony austerity for a break.  Ok, miles to go, à bientôt, gros bisous, etc xo      

the chores. the stores.

 

On Thursday, my train to NYC was delayed 45 minutes.  As we edged along super-close to Penn Station, I got a text from Sal that made reference to the Eva Gabor character Lisa Douglas, from Green Acres.

Sal is always texting stuff that I can not figure out, seriously, and it made no sense until I got to the hotel.  It is funny, because I was a little sulky about having to stay in the Financial District, because a. it is like, yk, Timbuktu, and b. it is too right-by the macabre clusterfucking & picture-clicking of the World Trade Center Site.  (We'll never forget!  No mosque here!, etc.  Gag.)

I was sunshiny, however, because this time, not like last time, we were next to Century 21, instead of on the wrong side of the canyon of destruction, a passage I found impossible, if you recall.  (Or, if not.)  Sadly, it also meant we were literally across the street from the site and it was the view from our bedroom window. 

 

You can see the pools now.  Also, with the trees, it looks like a little dollhouse model.  It's all so sad.  Anyhow.  I checked in and was anxious when told I was going to the 54th floor and also worried when my ears got pressured on the elevator ride and then I got to the room, which was ridiculously palatial.

 
 

Omigod.

Sal travels constantly, endlessly, in his position.  He called upon the use of his status as a preferred Hilton guest to upgrade to the nicest room they would give us.  This exceeded his expectations.  Then they handed over a wad of property-restaurant meal comps for use during our stay. 

 

He said, Saturday morning, before his presentation, after breakfast, while I was knitting & watching teevee, "You know the problem with a hotel room like this?"

I told him the problem with it was the thing I first said Thursday night, when I saw the full bathroom (the suite also had a half-bathroom) and its Jacuzzi tub -- I will never want to leave this room!  

 
 

"Well, yeah, that, too," he said.  "But aren't we going to be ruined for other hotel rooms in NYC now?"

 

I allowed this was a possibility.  Which is why we had to think of it as an apartment.  Possibly offered to us by a rich patron of stay-at-home mothers.  You see, then. 

 

I did, in fact, leave the hotel room, to take care of  familial obligations -- visiting, visiting, a seemingly-endless outing --  a little shopping, MoMA and a mani-pedi, plus also a trip with Sal to a spa for a massage + reflexology à deux.  After, we meandered to dinner, where we tried to order a glass of the same wine, so then we relented for a bottle of it.  Ramirez de la Piscina's Tempranillo, 2006.  Then we ordered a bottle of the Tempranillo de Emilio Moro, 2007.   The former was taut and crisp and almost-leathery, but not hard, not like the tack store, more like yr best buttery-soft, lamb's leather purse.  The latter was more expansive, and fruity, but a restrained fruit, like a pomegranate or a fig.  They were both so fucking good. 

I know: if you know, you are all, What's up with the boozing?  Or possibly, Omg, Jesus Christ, didn't you also text me about two margaritas?  I refer you back to the portion of this narrative in which I refer obliquely to familial obligation.  It was all v intense and unexpectedly affecting.  I am well-enough now.  Shh.  I topped all the wine off with a root-beer float, back at the hotel, so, you know, that was obvsly like a cleanse.  Saturday nite, wooooo!

The breakfast host kept every day putting us excitedly and proudly at this table at breakfast. 

 

When he did it first on Friday, we were both aghast.  I had to be pressed into the chair by Sal.  It was like asking us to eat  breakfast in a crypt, WTF.  Not that it stopped me from eating a full bowl of oatmeal with stewed apples and four pats of butter, plus a small pile of bacon, but good god, what is wrong with people? 

 

A few weeks ago, while bookcase switching, I unearthed a post-9/11 copy of The New Yorker and also one of Time or Newsweek or whatever.  I set them aside for the children, back then, so when I found them, it was strange -- Oh, I put these away from the children ... Oh, these are those children.  "Here are your magazines, children." 

So, even before I got there, I was a little Incident Tenderized.  Last Monday night, Fille shut the copy of the black-covered NYer she has been poring over and triumphantly slapped the table.  "Oh," she said.  "It's that there aren't any cartoons in this one!"  Or words to that effect.  I was so taken aback by her lack of sensitivity in thinking there might be any cartoons in that issue; I had to remind myself that she was 6 months old then and only just 10 years old now.

I told her how we were all so sad, all up and down the Northeast Corridor, but especially sad and scared in Washington & NYC.  I told her about how it was months and months and not a tourist in Washington, a ghost town -- empty museums, wide-open memorials, all the parking you could ever want.  That it was years before you would be in Lower Manhattan and not overhear reference made to 9-11 -- even about things as pedestrian as, yk, We have had a house phone to give to our babysitters ever since 9-11 or whatever. 

I told her about the photos people put up for the missing and the shmira sat  for months & months.  The air quality, how it was years and years at playgrounds and every time a fire truck went by, all the children, large & small, without fail, would instantly rush to the gates and press themselves against the bars like teenaged girls at a Beatles concert chanting in a chorus of little voices, "Yeah, firefighters!  Yeah, firefighters!" until the trucks were out of sight.

She was still in diapers then, but she looked thoughtful and said, "I remember that."  I explained to her how many firefighters were lost that day.  I told her about how when Halloween came, the next month in 2001, Garçon wanted to be a firefighter so I stenciled FDNY onto the back of a raincoat, because it seemed like a small, good thing.  Then, to bring home the gravity of the lesson, I burst into tears. 

 Ok, I didn't do it on purpose, but I could not restrain myself any more.   

 

I took this photo mostly for her, so she could see the scale of the disaster and how much space was left behind.  Real space, not the metaphorical space in our hearts, although there is that, too. 

 

But besides all of that reverberative nonsense, I enjoyed myself.  The last time I was in NYC with Sal, things were v hustle-bustle, there was a little bit of me letting people survey me for the first time in a long time, that sort of thing.  This time, I mostly kept close people closer.  I mean, I had to anaesthetize myself after every encounter, but I see all the desperate missives that come out of holiday visitation.  Same difference. 

 

I love to be on the ground right here, where the lines are on the road to get cars directed to the Brooklyn Bridge, or not, and the fountain, and the treesiness.  In that little \/ right there between Broadway & Park Row, traffic is not too whizzy, comparatively, and there was a time where it felt more peaceful than ghost town. 

 
I just adore a penthouse view!  À la prochaine fois, beautés.   

  

wednesday wip. nat'l poetry month.

Honestly, this world and its ragtag bunch of characters!  Where is my halo?

I am working on this blanket, still. 

 

It started out a lot smaller, two years ago.  I am surprised to see it has been two years since first I blogged about it, but ... it was not supposed to be a race to the finish, I guess.  Fille is very concerned about it, always checking & double-checking to make sure I am not knitting it as a gift for someone.  I am not.  It is supposed to be for our house.  I think it is kind of ugly, though.  It might be time to repeat some yarn colors, like an echo.

The second sentence of the third stanza here is a lot of my problem, often in life.  Sometimes that line & the one following are like an earworm. 

 

Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death
Christopher Kennedy

I'm sorry your parachute is made of cream cheese, but think of
the spectators and their stories, and the asphalt's loneliness until
you arrive, abruptly and without pretense.

You've heard of Jesus; now you get to be just like Him. Every eye
that holds your image belongs to a person who will know, once
and for all time, what it means to be alive. Those who loved you
most will place a wreath at the exact spot where you became an
exact spot. Footage of your fall will serve as an effective warning to
all who believe cream cheese to be a healthy substitute for silk.

This millennium needs more martyrs, inadvertent or otherwise.
My sympathy for you could be mistaken for love. Take
advantage; open up. You won't have many more opportunities to
share your doubts and fears, which, I'm guessing, have crystallized
into one completely appropriate aversion to solid ground.

I hope this isn't too much for you to process on your return to
our distant planet, where all is well as well as all is not so well,
depending on where you're headed, the east and west of which
you probably never stop to consider,
obsessed as you are with the physics of north and south.

 

Christopher Kennedy has a new book coming out this year.  Ennui Prophet.  I am totally looking forward to it.  It is a teensy bit embarrassing that he has some idea of this anticipation.  I am so laughing.   

my time is a piece of wax

I knitted something on the cusp of garden season here, which is good because the bulb show is lacking. 

 
 

Malformed hyacinths.

Don't know what they usually look like?  Here.  I did not fertilize the bulbs, which I think has ever just been like, zzzZzzz, makework right up until I mulched the entire garden with pinestraw last summer.  Oopsie!

I did not confirm that -- it could be that hyacinth are one of the bulbs that "wear out," which is fine.  Anyhow, what is done, is done.  As I wrote earlier, I do not expect to care too much about the garden this year. 

 

So much to say!  So much meaty meta -- a stay on shopping!  A limit on my intersex socializing!  How the supermoon made everyone lose their minds -- although that might just be spring, but it is hard to call.  No time to say any of it!

 

 

One thing I can follow up on:  With the Pretty Sisters shuttled along to their forever home, the cat population is down to 2.  My home has been fully-rated "Excellent" for the long-term stewardship of 2 (two) cats for a great long time, so it is a great relief.  Scooping four litter boxes three times each day was terribly exhausting.  I am glad it is over.  RIP Helmet and Orange!  Farewell Baby Cat and Calico Kitten!  If you know anyone who wants Elsa-Grace Panther Cat or Secret Squirrel, give them my number! 

 

 

These socks were, of course, for Mr Kowalski's birthday.  They were a complete surprise to him.  Uncharacteristically -- zero preamble, just one eye on the calendar -- I got into my stash and started knitting.  It was easy, because his troubled homeland goings-on have put us in a lot -- a lot -- of close daily contact for the last month ... maybe longer, I think.  Mari said, when I was narrating the uptake of one super-early-morning call, "Why is he reporting all this to you?"  

"I dunno," I said, fooling with my press pot.  "He isn't reporting, really ... he's just processing ... he doesn't have a wife, you know."  Sometimes people just want to have someone hang onto something for them, keep the meter running, etc.  Someone wh0 knows they would rather have jam than honey, in any application ... or just something like that, like those sorts of things.

The socks were the same as the last two pairs -- Eesti Trail Hiking Sock from Favorite Socks 275 or whatever the name of the book is.  What is different is that I did not make them at the bunchy gauge the pattern calls for -- worsted-weight yarn on size-3 needles -- because it is super-wrestly and I was not in the mood.  The yarn is [Someone's] 4-ply tweed on size 3 needles.  I lost the ball band ages ago.    

 

This lack of the fabric being piled up on itself meant that I could try the previously-snubbed, worked-in-decrease toe, which worked out fine, knitwise, but I would not like that seam marching at a weird diagonal along the top of my foot.  Kowalski's socks never quite fit me, though, so maybe it is not an issue at the right size.  I am sure I will hear about it if it is uncomfortable.  Anyhow, having knitted the toe in a decreasing fashion now, I see how my decision to wing Kitchener stitch on my very first pair (at that super-bunchy gauge) was visionary. 

 

While this pair lacks the excitement of a grafted toe, turning a heel is always something.  It makes me feel like Betsy Ross, Mia Wallace, and Jean Grey together, believe it. 

These are, possibly, not the socks of which Kowalski dreamed.  He has an intangible, inexpressible ideal of a sock, which I have not been able to quite get my mind around in our sessions of knocking around sock concepts and sock values. 

 

I think over time he will come to love them in their fulfillment and evident reality.  Maybe, years from now, he will wish he had appreciated them fully for what they ever were during all the time he had with them, from the very beginning.  Instead of, for example, waiting until the belated realization they were all along what they had ever been, and a different perspective could have made everything different all along the way.  With the socks, I am saying.  You know.  Yes. 

À la prochaine!

things

 

• We watched a couple of movies this weekend, staying up recklessly until past-midnight both nights, mostly because Mari failed to let me know that he would be back on travel right away tonight.  Too bad, because I could have easily skipped a screening of Brooklyn's Finest in the interest of getting it on. The case against Easy A would have to have been stronger, like doing it plus getting to be the one who slept in & awakened to a magical breakfast, but I'm pretty sure I would have skipped that, too, in such a case.

  J'adore that precocious fox Emma Stone. Someone told me recently they didn't know who she was & I promised them they will.

  Brooklyn's Finest was fine, but I dunno. The fun part about it was the marital side-chatter featuring Me as the Big-City Law-Enforcement Insider.  It was good enough, I guess. I did not know the director of Training Day was its director, but I kept griping lightly about how it reminded me of Training Day and saying things about the Ethan Hawke character like, This is all because that guy in LA trained him for Specials.  Not because there was anything wrong with Training Day -- I mean, Training Day stands out as the most accurate representation of policing I have ever seen in a film -- but I do not need to see the same movie over & over again.  This second movie got the policing part pretty well right, though not as holy crap dead-on.

  I got the strong feeling, as did Mari, that the original script had the Richard Gere character die. As Mari said, "He probably took one look at it & said, I'll be in yr movie, but I get to live." I was happy to embellish that supposition with all kinds of things Richard Gere does in movies, none of which are dying and most of which involve getting the girl, the case closed, the win, all with a wry smile. That is why he is Richard Gere. Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, they don 't mind dying as long as you spell their name right on the check. Anyhow, enough of that.  Movies.

• We also went to the ballet to take in a performance of Swan Lake.  It was extraordinarily beautiful.  As we gathered our cleaned-up selves together to head over the river to the theatre, I asked the family, nervously, "Isn't this one where they all die?  I feel sad, I don't know if I can keep it together if they all die." 

  Fille piped up from the back, "Everyone dies." I told her I could not take such sadness.

  "That's just how it is, Mom," she informed me, all-business.

  Luckily, it was the Christopher Wheeldon production, which seemed less despairing, but no less longing.  The ballerina who danced Odette/Odile was such a tidy confection as Odette; so wantonly delicious as Odile, and she seemed to really be having so much fun.  Everyone was so in love, just leveled by her.  Also, the danseur paired with her is one of my favorites -- he has such a light touch on his partners, and he makes it all look really easy, and also without being fey.  A lot of danseurs are musclebound and lumbering and look like they are going to crush their partners by accident, but never him. 

  I did like all the ballerinas (16 or 18, I think?) and all the crisply choreographed corps dancing. It was like the roller derby with all those girls up there. The house was uncharacteristically totally packed. Like, Nutcracker-level packed. Apparently, because of the Black Swan movie? What? I don't know.

  Omg, speaking of roller derby! At the first intermission, there were 35 women still in line for the restroom with the clock winding down to the last five minutes and a rogue faction of we ladies stormed the completely empty men's room. I was not the instigator, though I might well have been the accelerant. But, when we got out of there, all of the women who had been in line for the ladies' room were all gone, having not peed, not possible, and so, whatever. That could have been us! No way!

 

• Orange Cat was adopted into Heaven last week.  It was sad.  I was sad.  Helmet Cat (deceased), it must be said, was not a particularly-nice cat, until he became ill + pitiful and that memory remains.  Orange Cat was always something special.  He was the first kitten to stand in the kibble and try eating it while it fell from his tiny, milk-toothed mouth.  He was the first one to fall asleep on a human, which reflects perfect kitten civility.  He was the best pal of the smallest cat in the litter and I think she misses him.  It was Feline Infectious Peritonitis which killed him -- well, which preceded his euthanasia.  It sucks, but there was nothing to be done.  Goodbye, Orange Cat! 

•  I did two group-social shopping things last week.  The first was using a Groupon for a facial, which was fine, and dirt-cheap, but the spa was a little low-rent.  Fancy website, though.  The other thing was using a Living Social voucher for laser hair removal on a. bikini line, and b. underarms.  Let me say this about laser hair removal: 1. Lasers get really hot and 2. The process smells like frying hair.  Oh, also, 3. If you are a waxing veteran, it is a piece of cake.

• I am loving this song so much.  It started out, yk, for the obvious reasons, I love all the songs of the impossibly ruined beyond repair, I really like Ray LaMontagne's desperate, worn-over body of work, plus he has that one line in a song from the last CD about spanking & hullo?, etc.  But then, I was driving along last week and realized I love it because it reminds me of Watertown, the Sinatra rock opera?  It is as if Watertown were reduced to its 3-minute essence.  I love all 37-ish minutes of Watertown, and here this is.  It is like Sinatra crack.  Yes. 

• I was thinking the other day that this is the time of year about which I have in previous years blogged is when the knitting photos give way to photos of the garden.  I realized I have knitted very little this past winter and I kind of do not expect to give too much of a fuck about the garden this year.  Then I realized there were some reasons to get some things on the needles right now.  We will see if I can keep my interest aloft.  À bientôt!

overcome by events

 

Mostly, I am sleepy.  The confluence of:  a couple of Mr + Mrs Sloane gala events; a kitten adopted by the Lord; the shock of outside-work (after a 12-yr hiatus) under the rubric of landlord-tenancy;  observation class at ballet school, and an endless stream of questions about foot-binding from Fille culminating in the Out-Loud Bedtime Reading of Andrea Dworkin's Woman Hating has all done me in. 

When the end of the day comes, and I could be spending some quality time at the wire mother of the internet, I find that I would rather stay still and knit, no ruminating or documenting. 

 

Helmet Cat died of something persistent and mysterious.  I was the one who found him, dead, in our Cat Infirmary.  Fille & I had spent most of his last day visiting with him,  just hanging out on the bathroom floor.  I was spinning a jack for his amusement and she was engaging him while reading The Once & Former (future?) King.  After dinner, I was going back with an eyedropper and a cup of warm milk, but he was no longer with us.

I called Mari to come & call the patient deceased with me, then we had the children join us.  With the children's help, we crowded his cat-family in with us.  The other cats all licked him, over & over.  Some of the kittens got into his cat deathbed with him for the postmortem grooming.  It reminded me of the gorgeousness of shmira.  Fille was upset -- I pointed out to her that he was just the same as Daisy and Iris, he was here and then he was not.

"It's not the same," she mumbled, scalded by injustice.  "They were old."

So, you see, then.  Tiring.

RIP, Helmet Cat.  Thank you for finding yourself an eternal home.  You can be Charlie Louvin's cat.

wild life

I was going into the kitchen this afternoon around 4, gearing up for this first night of many postseason baseball games to come this month.  I was about to make a cup of tea and as I rounded the corner, I saw a MOUSE.  Right at the corner of the stove there, on the counter, but near the front right burner. 

 

Ok, I was mad.  Because enough, already.  But I screamed, anyway.  I can not help it, when I see a mouse, I scream.  Then the children come running, and they start screaming, too.  I know.  And I just wrote the other day that I was going to smack the next undead mouse I saw with the wiffle-ball's bat. 

I asked a child to bring that very tool to me.  One did and I screamed some more & then -- the mouse was still staggering around, not leaving, but maybe it was in shock.  Maybe it was hoping to be camoflauged if it kept still -- and I approached it, with the bat. 

When I talked about mice + bat before, I was also talking about it being on the floor.  Not on my counter.  Not right next to my stove.  Not where I make the food, for fuck's sake.  Also -- and this did not really parse out in my mind this way at that moment -- I am from Chicago: taking a bat to something means blood & fur & flecks of tissue speckling everything when it is over.  Which is fine for, yk, mad dogs, but unnecessary for a mouse.  This operation -- had I seen it through -- would have been less Joe-Pesci-in-Casino and more Bunny Foo-Foo.  But that is for next time, this knowing.

Omg, gross.

Anyhow, Fille & I were screaming our lungs out, even as we were very focused on solving the problem.  Finally, the mouse came to its senses & tried to make a break for it through the stove burner, down into the hiding place we discovered last week or whenever. 

I reached out and turned on the burner.  We have a gas stove.  I can not say why I thought incinerating the mouse was a sound idea, but I just did it by reflex.  So, it ignited, and the mouse was kind of caught up in it, but not consumed by flames or on fire or anything.  But then it was squeaking and running in the opposite direction on the counter and bouncing around like a ping-pong ball. 

Fille and I were back to screaming, every time it leapt up in the air, and finally it rounded the corner of the countertop and hid behind the blender.  I decided we should find a bowl, trap it under the bowl -- a bowl I was going to throw away, definitely -- and then just take a time-out.  Just a little time to reflect on cruelty and speciesism and burn victims.  I just felt like there was a lot going on & I needed a pause.  We got the appliance pushed away and the bowl went on.  Garçon went to leave a raving phone message for Mari, who was in the same meeting he has been in for about five weeks already.        

The children were jacked-up on adrenaline.  They had to go outside and literally run up & down the block.  While they were out there, I decided I had a good idea:  I went to the bathroom & got some cotton balls.  Then I went to the basement & found the bottle of Parson's Ammonia.  I put some ammonia on the cotton and slipped the wad under the bowl, with the mouse.  I waited around for the mouse to pass out from the fumes, figuring that I would just deal with it once it was unconscious.  This was my best idea.

It didn't work.  After a few minutes, I called Algren, who is handy, with his degree in biochemistry.  He had no idea, but assured me that it was not reasonable to actually wait around for this to work, this gassing the mouse plan.  While this was happening, the children were outside having major scream-o-rama issues with a dead garter snake and a gigantic spider on Fille's hat. 

Fille was super-upset, already about the mouse, long before the dead snakes, and she hates spiders, so anyhow, she was crying & crying and Algren was trying to be helpful and I could not really hear him, and anyhow.   

I calmed Fille down, finally, she went back outside; I still had a half-burned mouse suffering, trapped beneath a Gladware bowl in my kitchen. 

 
 

Garçon suggested we leave it there till it ran out of air, "As a message to any other mice that might come, Mom."

I panicked and got the decorative rock from Maine to weight the bowl and when I did that, he freaked, "Omigod!  Are you going to hit it with the rock?"  

Ridiculous.  Only a boy would think of that.  Or, you know, I thought, Kowalski!

Man, it was such a relief to tap his little speed-dial button and get him on the phone.  Just hearing him say my name was like swallowing a Xanax.  I took him by the metaphorical hand on a tour of the physical, emotional, ethical, and psychological landscape of my problem.  He was super-quiet while I explained the whole thing, the burning, the rock, everything, and then when I was finished I turned myself in and asked him to tell me what to do.  And he did!

He told me to find a file folder and slide it underneath the bowl and go from there!  Amazing!  Fille & Algren both had a suggestion that was similar, which was just to slide the bowl over & drop the mouse into a 30-gallon trash bag, but the whole free-falling rodent thing ... gross and potentially risky.  Yuk.   

It worked!  I got the file folder underneath and dragged the mouse along to where Fille held her trash bag, there was a rubberband involved to secure the top of the bag et voila!  Still gross.  Later I had to talk Fille through her conflicted feelings about it -- mostly, she thought we should have buried him/her.  I agreed that it would have been nice, but I was not willing to dig the body ftom the trash bin and we just have to accept in non-judgment that maybe that life needed to learn something about tupperware-bowl traps and fires.

But that Kowalski!  What a guy!  Applause!  Clapping!  Later Mari finally called back & admired my gangster-pioneer spirit in the fire-setting.  But, seriously?  Gross.  He also echoed something Kowalski said, almost verbatim, which was the mouse was half-poisoned or starving or whatever to be so slow.  I have no idea.  This was my first face-to-face encounter with a live mouse.  Let it be my last.   

People sometimes wonder -- not that it is really any of their business -- "Doesn't Mari care about blah, Kowalski, blah, blah," etc, but why would he?  Mari says it is like subcontracting: I can have someone who cares about me help me with something I can not do by myself, it isn't like I have any family, anyway; Mari can stay in his meeting for five weeks in a row; the problem is solved, everyone is happy, at the end of every day I remain Mrs Arvin Sloane.   

Sometimes I have to knit socks.  Everyone is happy about that, too, when that happens.  But right now, Mari is about to have his 40th birthday, and I need to really postseason-baseball apply myself to knitting his present.  It might have to be for his 40th Christmas.  We will see. 

Tonight's no-hitter -- another pink diamond in baseball! -- did not give me the time to knit I thought it would.  It went by so quickly, plus it is hard to knit + bite nails at once.  The Rangers' game is shaping up slower, but it is bedtime again.   À bientôt! 

same as last summer, with no fucking bicycle fucking it up

 

wip wednesday

 

I began this log-cabin blanket just about one year ago, when I first (and last) photographed it.  It is still going great!  (zzzZzzz)  I like it now, as a project; it has enough heft to it that I remember to work on it when I have it with me.  Also, it is the most excellently mindless knitting. 

The discipline & prioritizing involved in going to bed at 10 every night is the craziest lesson in about a billion of my weaknesses.  I try to remember, There will always be more time tomorrow.  And more work, too!  (God willing.)

primo vere

 

We are usually museum-goers, as a general rule.  I grew up in a city with a few I took for granted, but which are evidently world-class.  So, to me, this is what people do with their time.  Then, every time our phone rings and someone's fundraising department gets Mari on the line, they have won themselves a donor at the development level.  (I think he does it to impress me, which, aww, my guy!)  This means we get invited to a lot of extra stuff -- receptions, lectures, curator tours, meet & greets, starfucking -- besides all the regular free admissions one receives as a benefit at nearly all levels of support.  

We do not always attend the special, nighttime, pillar-of-society events (though I am partial to ones featuring burly natural scientists, holding forth about their areas of specialty), but we use our admission privileges, like, all the time.  I decided a couple of years ago that we would bind ourselves to a regular routine of three of the month's four Sundays on an educational/cultural outing for the family.  It is pretty easy to meet that level of commitment, mostly because a person could just be walking along around here & accidentally fall into a repository of art or culture, or even horticulture.

This last couple of weeks was too much, even for me.  Feb 23 was the preview of the Picasso show in Philadelphia; on the 28th, we drove again to see the Barnes Collection; then a couple of days later we traveled to NYC for the Man Ray exhibit and then Sunday we had a ballet matinee (more driving).  Not just any ballet, it was the Carmina Burana ballet, which imposed upon us its full intensity of orchestral + choral accompaniment. 

The performance was thrilling and exhausting, together, and what a way for us to close our run.  My god.  It was everything we love in a ballet:  rolling on the ground, barechested danseurs grappling, flesh-toned unitards, a big finale with everyone in their fake-naked panties, ballerinas with bare feet & loose hair, kissing, etc, and with the chorale singers and the lyrical Latin swagger buoying everything along to the sublime.  Fille turned to me, stunned, after the second dance, "That was amazing!"  She is usually more reserved.  Even Garçon thought it was "interesting," which is an accolade, coming from him.   

Since, I want to turn my back on highbrow culture and lie around eating Fritos, drinking Faygo Red Pop, and watching a Real Housewives marathon, but since none of those things are possible in my current incarnation, I have just been sitting.  Either outdoors or in the mohair chair by the front windows, admiring the piles of tulips Mari let Garçon pick out, knitting.  Also, wearing yoga pants with bare feet or shearling boots.  Not dressed-up any more. 

I wore high-heeled shoes -- a cute little pair of 2-inch kitten heels -- on Sunday because it was too warm to strap on a pair of knee-high boots, and I thought, What the hell, this is the last day!  I forgot I would have to hoof it a half-mile along jagged, downtowny pavements.  Then I spent the entire afternoon afraid of my formerly-ripped-apart ankle and the possibility it would give way.  It would have only taken one manhole cover!  Everything was fine & I credit my Pilates trainer with the win.  Tomorrow is Wednesday:  ballet class, Pilates session, fun! 

lenten action, use more commas

Just as last year's abjuring of sweet talk was part of a larger plan of careful concentration -- kind of vague, having to do with silence overall --  this year's abstinence from late nights is part of something bigger, something vague I have thought of as the Love, Honor & Obey project.  I am not sure what that even means, but when the space presents itself I plan to move into it.  I am not even sure what that means, but it makes sense to me on the inside.  I am sure if I sit quietly enough, I will encounter some direction. 

Having essentially clipped 20% from my waking hours means that I only have the time I have left, which is not very much, and that means prioritizing.  Hopefully my family will find themselves at the top of my list. 

So, how to spend the time I have left in the world, I do not know.  I know that I have to cook and I like to knit. 

 

Because this took no time at all, and I was trying to decide how this new schedule of my life should go along, I made this hat for Fille.  It is from the Golden Compass pattern at Froggie Meanie, first brought to my attention by sweet Aprill at Lulubeans.  

I used Plymouth's Baby Alpaca Grande, one skein of handpaint #8820 and one skein of solid, #1285 on size us #19 needles.  I had some trouble with sizing the pattern, with deciding what size to knit.  First of all, I am a tight knitter.  Then, I feel like I am never sure if people are blocking in the world, though I am pretty sure they are not.  For all that I refuse to swatch, the minute something finally comes off the needles, I am not just going to let it go into the world any old way. 

But blocking expands your knitting, blooms yr stitches, and especially if, as I do, you wet block.  Additionally, alpaca does not have a lot of super fiber memory; it lacks the eternal springiness of lambswool, but it is more sturdy than angora.  I have in the past used alpaca that is blended with silk, but I can not be thinking about every single eventuality every single minute. 

I did decide to use the "little kid" sizing for her, because of the blocking + fiber-memory issue, and it seems to have turned out fine in the end.  It was fast, fast, fast.  It took maybe two hours to knit, shaped up on the blocking board overnight, and with another 20-30 minutes to weave the ends and make the ties. 

Alors.

This weekend is ballet's observation class and I am quite sure I will need to have a cocktail and a lie-down when it is over.  Luckily for me, Mari very shrewdly last night gifted me the 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Kind of Blue, a present so stultifying that when I first opened it, I spent an hour or so looking over it, inventorying the extras and specials, stacking them up, reading the features list, and then bundling it all back up again before promising it, "I will get back to you."  (All this and still, lights out at 9:59!  Exciting!)  

Since, I steal longing looks at the box before I get it all out again and touch it and hold it.  It is cracking him up that I have not played any of it yet; while I know every note of the music on the original recording, this has a bunch of stuff I have never heard on it.  I plan to break it out in the evening after ballet class, while I lie wanly on the settee and wait for my cool to get rebirthed.  Those climber-parents can take it out of me, every time, I swear.

all yr secrets. all yr charms.

 

Mari and I met through mutual friends, with whom I had gone to university and with whom he, later, worked.  He first decided he fancied me when I pre-emptively collected his workplace's own notorious collector.  I made pretty quick work of the guy and while the dude was telling his sad + confused + highly-ironic rejection narrative to my pals, about the way in which I had shredded him, seeking counsel from them, the legend says that Mari poked his head up & said, "The hot chick that was here the other day did this?  Ha, she's awesome." 

He first got my attention a few months later while we were at a party together & I disapproved of the terrible way that another of his dopey co-workers was talking about his girlfriend behind her back.  I assured the guy I was going to march right over to the girlfriend & tell her.  The trash-talker begged, begged me not to, begged.  Then Mari spoke up from the side of the room, not unlike Quint in that scene from Jaws, where he drags his fingernails on the chalkboard.

"I'll give you all the money in my wallet if you tell."  While I barely knew Mari, he was somewhat renowned for always carrying a lot of cash.  I said to him, gamely, "How much?"  I had every intention of tattling whatever the case, but this just introduced texture.  He took out his wallet & counted; it was $156 or something like that. 

I sweetly turned to his co-worker, who was still begging and sweating.  "Welllll," I asked him, wickedly, "do you have [amount in Mari's wallet + $1]?"  He did not, so the deed was done, and I collected from Mari.  We agreed that each had found the other a pleasure.

It would be almost a year before we had our first date -- confoundingly, while I thought it was no big deal, I changed clothes 6 or 10 times only to finally settle on the first outfit I selected, yes -- and fewer than 3 months after that, we were engaged.  He was one night at my apartment with all of the Oh, I love you, to which I believe my exact response was Oh, blah, blah, blah, talk, talk, talk, you don't think I have heard all this before from other people?  If you want to impress me, you could do something. Then I mimed falling asleep with my hands clasped, pressed against my cheek, parallel to the floor.

Instead of leaving, which would have been completely defensible, he countered, advising me to not play games with him.  I told him that I was completely serious about not wanting to be subjected to endless talking talking talking talking and if he wanted to secure my attention, he should do something.  Then I said, and this was the thing, I said, "I just don't want to hear any sobriety from anyone about blah, blah, blah, until they want to tell me and God and everyone all at once."

It was true.  I never wanted a serious relationship unless it was going to go all the way.  It seemed silly to get all serious about a boyfriend.  God.  He, gamely, said nothing more about any of it, not at all, and then one day, he had a 2-carat engagement ring.  I thought, Oh my god, this guy is not a baby, not a whiner, and not a mama's boy.  Excellent.  I'm in.

So, not only is the foundation of our marriage a triple-dog dare, but Mari and I then decided in unison that what our hearts truly desired was a February 29 wedding, so as to avoid the hassle and external bullshit pressure of an annual wedding anniversary. 

We were not able to get the date, as the priest we finally convinced to marry us legitimately + sacramentally thought it was a "red flag" and "too gimmicky."  But we kept showing up to his interviews and taking his Meyers-Briggs tests and the rest and then finally, he decided to say yes, fine, whenever, but by then it was too late for us to pull together even the smallest event for Leap Day. 

Every spring, around our wedding anniversary, I send the old cleric a letter, letting him know that we are still happily married even as the years wear on and on.  It is not clear to him or me or Mari or anyone if it is meant to be gloating or reassuring.  I think it could be both, though, right? 

(I suspect it is gloating, since I last year had to stop myself from writing, It seems as if our marriage will outlast you, surely.  When I am bad, I am horrid.)

But that first most fervent wish confirmed again I had found the guy for me.  As I recently explained to the children, you do not have to be in love to get married -- indeed, I was not -- but you had better be sure the person you are marrying is someone who wants to help you build a greenhouse where you can grow some love.  And so we have, Mari & I, and today I most certainly am completely in love.

But back to the point, which is that neither of us really care very much for A Holiday of Demonstration.  Fuck bringing an A-game for an occasion; we would much rather give & receive a B-minus daily deliverable.  I mean, valentines are fine to give to other people, but we are always here with each other.  Just like Becky's husband for her, Mari is always packing my present.  Right on! 

 

So, today I knitted and Mari noodled around hanging our lamp,which arrived yesterday.  Fille made  a Valentine card for me this morning & brought it while Mari & I were still lazing around in bed half-asleep.  "Where is Mari's?" I whispered to her after appreciating mine.  She said she would set off to make one that minute.

Mari said, when she left, "I don't want her pity valentine!"  It made me laugh and laugh all day.  Then, I put together a Valentine's Day mix for Mari & I, but I think most people who have always got the presents packed will like it.  That is here, although you probably have your own playlists.  You could tell me what they are, because I love to get nosy about that stuff. 

Happy Valentine's Day!  I can not believe Lent is on Wednesday already!  I am going to have to switch gears and dig deep!  The transformation of last year's grueling privation is going to be hard to follow.

breach

Things with my son soldier on.  I told Mari it was my executive decision we were not going to do lessons for a few months while I hunker down and think deeply, plus finish the Summerhill book -- which must have some application to our schooling situation short of us just letting the child build a radio and become some kind of a pirate -- and also remember the kind of educational, non-wrestling fun we used to have before we started to have all this 3x5 card dissent.  Three by five has become my new shorthand for anything not worth the conflict. 

Panic attacks are the new order of the day.  I have been anxious my whole life and just had my first flat-out panic attack a couple of weeks ago.  I blame my son and would like to thank David Chase, for without Tony Soprano in the back of my mind, I surely would have thought I was dying.  Instead, I thought I was dying -- is it a heart attack?  is it a stroke?  I am dying!  My heart, she is pounding! -- for a little while only before I realized I was having a panic attack.  No, no, I told myself, this is a terrible attack from which you will die.  Logically, I knew I was a Textbook Panic Attack, but I was pretty much convinced I was going to die from a panic attack.  Good god. 

My acupuncturist asked me, when I weakly reported this new development to her, "What were you doing?"  She was unable to conceal her surprise and amusement when I told her I was knitting.  I really was, just sitting in a chair here at home, knitting.  My heart started banging around and I got all flushed and tingly, and not in the way I want to be tingly, I am saying.  Acupuncturist guessed that something dramatic had been happening at some time recently, and I kind of howled, "Garçon!  Is so terrible and trying to kill me!"  It really does feel like I am war-torn.  I have been jumpy, and delicate, and prone.

Speaking of tingly, which I just was, Becky asked me about the narrative of Mr Youth's endeavor.  I will tell you, but I must preface it by saying that young men -- and this town, being a nominal college town, is lousy with them -- do not interest me.  They hardly interested me when I was young, and the ones that did were precocious in some important way.  That said, I am somehow interesting to them, which again, fine.  One of the things I like about living in a town lousy with rich, well-groomed college students is that at a time when a lot of my girlfriends are wringing their hands over our loss of youth & ceding it to the next generation wholesale, I am not so sure about that.  When I am surrounded by a gaggle of very young women, I never feel as young as them, or as taut and defiant of gravity, but by comparison, I always feel sexy as hell.  Why wouldn't I?  I am a grownup and I know a lot of stuff, and that is sexy. 

Anyhow, Mr Youth has actually been around for about a year?  And I guess he has attentional deficits?  Or, as I said, is half-blind and never noticed my wedding bling?  Mari does keep a pretty low profile, as these things go. 

What happened is that I was in the office of our neighborhood association, such as it is, with Mr Youth, and Lev.  (As detailed yesterday, Lev and I have a little frisson with each other.)  There were other people around, but they were not within earshot for the entire show.  Mr Youth & I were talking about a show I had seen at one of the museums, he had been meaning to see it, I put my hand over my heart while I assured him it was fabulous and well worth making the time.  He countered and I reassured, rolled out an anecdote from Fille's perspective of the show for him. 

We were winding it down and I was going to be on my way, and Mr Youth asked me, "So, wow.  Would you see it again?"  I reasonably heard this as Is it good enough, the show, to see it more than once?  So, I thought about it for a second, and then I said, "I would.  Yes.  It was very good." 

In the middle of when I was saying that last part, Lev, who was kind of behind me and on my left, starts giving off these strained bursts of gesture and wordlessness.  So, I was distracted, because what's happening, I wonder, and then at the same time I was wondering What is going on with Lev over there? Mr Youth said, "Well, are you busy this Sunday?"

It really was only because of Lev that I immediately knew what was happening.  I can be super-slow in this regard, many was the time as a girl I would find myself in a surprise makeout of confusion --  ::mmmphrrgl:: Wait! When I said we should come back to my place & watch Speed Racer, that ... that wasn't code! It's coming on in like 10 minutes, dude! Get yrself together! Omigosh! -- and I never know what anyone is thinking, plus, I am married and also I have two children, and also I am from a part of the world + also was last single at an age where signaling interest was not a mysterious process.  Come back to my place to watch Speed Racer was never code, but the minute the credits rolled, we could totally get down to sorting it out about getting it on.  So, anyhow.

So, I asked Mr Youth, "Do you know that I am married?"  Because although Lev's performance was making me think this was a romantic endeavor, I wanted to ask him.  Maybe he was going to say, "Yeah.  We could all go, I just want to see it with someone who knows her 19thc art."  So, I asked.  He did not.

He was apologetic and stammering and super freaked-out, but trying to keep it chill, and I reassured him that it was fine, he didn't know, whatever, blah, blah, blah.  Then I asked him -- and I know, he was mortified, but I had to know -- "So, you didn't know that I was married, but ... you do know that I am old enough to be your mother, right?"  

He insisted I was not, I insisted that I was, he said impossible!; I said, I'm from a blue-collar + Catholic family, o, yes.  He maintained his position and I said, "Oh, ok, but just tell me, for my files, indulge me:  were you even born when the Berlin Wall came down?"  

He got a look on his face that suggested to me that the only reason he knew when it was in the mists of time that the Berlin Wall did come down was because there was just the 20th anniversary of such.  Then he said, resigned + defiant, "I was in kindergarten."  I thought he was going to tell me he was in diapers, so he was in fact older than I thought, but obviously not by much. 

Speaking of things other people said to me, which I just was, ballet!  The school is in deep rehearsal time for the holiday show the Company puts on (separate from the schoolchildren), but the older students participate.  It is a hectic time for a lot of staff and students and families, but whatever, it does not affect us, so I do not worry about it.

Friday, I was at school, sitting and working on the Koigu scarf I am knitting.  I do not usually stick around, in fact, I pretty much slow the car down in front of the school & let Fille hop out before driving off, but it was raining and I was knitting.  (This scarf is ++slow going.)  One of the mothers of one of the new danseurs was asking me questions and then I was giving her the lowdown on Fille's old school and we were discussing matters of pedagogy and the differences in expectations for danseurs and ballerinas, long-term. 

Late Chick shows up (I cannot abide lateness in a milieu like this; it is disruptive to the children who were there promptly) with her kid, who she has made into Late Kid.  On her way out, she theatrically calls out to Mary & I, "Oh!  Now I have to go get the other one, take her to rehearsal, drive back here and get him and PHEW."

Mary and I were talking.  Heads together, backs to her, talking.  It was on the tip of my tongue to say, "You're interrupting," but then I remembered she was not 8 years old, so instead I just said, "You'd better hurry, then."

After she left, I was glad I did not tell her she was interrupting.  Suddenly, any kind of confrontation gets me all tingly & woozy & oh, my heart pounds.  On the way to ballet that day, I had to drive in a downshifting, defensive action which -- because the driver I was escaping was such a shitty operator -- was interpreted as an offensive maneuver, and the result of it was tingling & wooziness + an instant headache.  Now that I think about it, that was why I was at the school with my knitting.  Knitting is neither curative nor preventative for panic attacks, make a note. 

just drive

Scarf, in progress. 

 

The yarn is Koigu KPPPM #729.  The last time I knitted with this yarn was this time last year, when I was on a tear of baby knitting & it seems so long ago, last year.  So much has happened since then, I have had to learn to say so much about things that really only require listening, and I always leave feeling I said the wrong thing.

I know I always say the thing that no one else will say -- Oh, cancer in your liver, lungs, and spleen?  Wow, your husband must be going nuts, how are you doing with all that chaos?  or You guys are getting a divorce, I know, I heard about it three months ago, but I didn't want to be a drama vulture.  How are you, I saw the photos of yr new pad on the Facebook or Oh, you don't want to live anymore?  I don't know what to say, but I love you, and I want you to have what you want, even if it tears us apart later -- but that is because when I take it all in, with the listening & the reflecting & the reducing of life's fractions, I do not see anything else that should be said.

A long time ago, Chickie's mom died, after a lengthy illness and he slipped off quietly to deal with all of that finality, and while he had not told me exactly, I knew.  I called him one day and the outgoing message was different and anyhow.  Weeks later, when he returned, he returned my call & I saved him the trouble of telling me by asking him to confirm.  He did, and after waiting in our silence for a minute, I ventured asking how it all went.  And he exploded with this frustration about the ceremonies and the people and their goddamn platitudes and their useless chatter and ended a rant very much unlike him with, "And if people want to do something for me, they should bake me a cake!" 

 As it happened, later in the day I was at Target (this was ages ago, Target as a concept was still new), and there was a joint-merchandising effort with Duncan Hines and Pyrex that packaged a 9x13x2 pan with a box of cake mix & a can of frosting.  I snapped it up and mailed it to Chickie with a proper condolence note that ended, "I hear it is important to keep busy in these times.  Bake your own damn cake."

I try to remember that time, because in my unorthodox, unsentimentally empathic way, I always do get it right.  But it is hard, when I know that so many other people are tearing their hair and rending their garments and ululating about news that does not actually impact them.  That is not to say that we cannot feel feelings; I mean, I fall apart, plenty, but not in plain view of the person with the actual problem.  I cling a lot lately to a really sweet thing my old pal Bumpy said earlier this year, unrelated to this. 

Bumpy & I were talking about the "Mommy Wars," and how I happen to do a lot of pain-in-the-ass type stuff, but not to be a pain-in-the-ass, but because Mari & I value our values, etc, which happen to at this very moment, be popular values espoused in theory by a bunch of pain-in-the-ass people. 

He said, "Oh, yeah, of course.  The last thing I think of you is that you are just doing something you don't really want to do so that you can fit in.  Oh, we'll never be making room on the bandwagon for you, except in the cab."  And I felt gratified that at least people know that I am doing my own thing because I feel like, after I think about it, it is the right thing to do.  But it is all so hard, this life, and then, things fall apart.

I did not mean to write any of this!  I was going to write about how we are living in the future!  And so we are!  

 

Last week, after ballet class, when we were walking down the hill in Ballet Town to our car, the three of us, Fille told me that her danseur pal Jake showed her his underpants.  So, I am waiting for the punchline on this story and there is not one, but instead it seems like she is filing a report.  About underpants, which seems a. weird, and b. weirdly prissy, but OK.  

So, I asked her to tell me again, what happened, from the top.  What happened was they were standing by each other after the main of class, but before reverence, her instructor was out of the room & Jake said, "Pssst!  I am wearing my underpants under my shorts."  And he was apparently wearing boxer-briefs and showed her the leg hem and then showed her the waistband.

I said, "???"  and asked her to tell me again.  So, she did.  Now, I think that what was going on was that he was wearing briefs instead of his dance belt and he was trying to share in the naughtiness, not realizing she would not know until after this incident anything about a dance belt.  Jake & Fille are pals because he is a firecracker and she is down for whatever, hijinks-wise.  But, while I was still trying to puzzle this child's weird weirdness (weird, but 8 years old, so whatever), Fille said, "So, I told Mme Egorova -- "

And I could not help it, I was like Harvey Keitel when Thelma & Louise drove over the edge -- I did not say a word, but everything about me said "Nooooooooooooooooo!"  She was all, what the frank?  Oh, wow, and I asked her why she told, why?  That seemed like the kind of thing she could handle her own self, Hey, keep your underpants to yourself, Underpantsy!

 Her response was kind of shruggy, like, "Well, I didn't know what else to do, so I told her."  Ok, that seemed reasonable, absolutely.  I reinforced her decision as a good one, ok, and asked her what Mila did in response.  So, apparently, the instructress said, "Now, children, let's not do anything inappropriate," and bustled around finishing up the class.  Phew!

I had to explain to her that we live in a world where little boys can get into trouble -- a lot of trouble -- for doing something simple and ill-thought-out and harmless.  That there are people in this world who would go crazy, "Omigod!  He was trying to rape you with his underpants waistband!  He is a criminal!"  She was immediately in the Harvey Keitel suit with me -- Are you kidding, Mom?

I assured her I was not.  I reassured her that when you do not know what else to do, telling the adult on the scene is always the right thing, but that subsequently, as we go on in this life, if she feels comfortable & safe in waiting until she can tell me about what happened, that she should do just that.  I have no words for how surreal this was, explaining to my daughter how we have to be in league to protect the sanctity of snips & snails.  But, here we are.  It is a whole new world, and one that every single day we cede to the next generation since we are just trying to keep alive to see it.  Man.   

meta. metaphor.

We very often have trouble in this house because my brain works on the right and Mari's on the left.  We do not communicate well.  What I have found in the last three or four years is that drawing works great.  It is like a million words.

 

 

As such, I illustrated Becky's  preschool-dropoff story today while passing the information along.  I am not sure if I got it right, but I got it across, and that is all that matters.  He & I were already talking about driving and regional expectations and I said, "Omgz!  Listen to this!"  Then I started drawing the layout.  "Where does she live?"  And I told him & he said, "Oh, that's a bad town for driving."  Yes! 

We are about to watch I Love You, Man while I knit away at a scarf.  Mari had never heard of the movie, and I was hemming & hawing, thinking of drawing a little picture, and then I said, "Well, Paul Rudd is in it."  He wanted to know why I did not start with that nugget.  

Anyhow.  Saturday night! 

5 of 7, 7 of 9, whatever

My World Series fingerless mitts.  It is hard to get a photo of your hands.  Maybe I should have just taken a photo of one instead of the pair.  Anyhow.  They are from the Fetching pattern, at Knitty, and knitted in Cascade's Soft Spun.  I knitted from this very pattern last winter and I just think Cashmerino is spongy and gross.  Then I lost one at NMAI in April, so whatever.  Good.  I like this well enough.

 

Oh, World Series.  It reminded me in many ways of a guy I used to go out with.  Not the ALCS guy, no.  The 2009 World Series has its own guy. 

This guy was fastidious & charming, highly self-disciplined, and notorious.  He was well-regarded as an activist & an intellectual, by individuals and groups in the student body, in the administration, etc.  He was well-respected and well-known.  He was foxy as hell, accomplished, and loaded with ambition.  He was in his second year of a postgrad program and I -- even in my third year as an undergrad -- was still a teenager a little shoppy about an MRS degree.  Kind of.  The idea of it was wearing a little thin. 

Anyhow, we became acquainted & he set his sights on me.  He was extremely compelling & we had a number of things in common.  I have a highly-developed Collector Detector, so I spent much of my time rolling my eyes at him and saying, "Cha," or whatever it is we said in the 20thc to signify what "Cha" has come to represent.  I must be clear:  he was an inveterate collector; inability to collect sends these types into a certain kind of hyperdrive.  Eventually he was forced to actually ask me out, instead of waiting for me to fling myself at him and offer myself up.  (Cha, as if.) 

After the requisite number of outings qualified going home with him, I did.  Sex with him was a highly-polished show of pyrotechnics, executed flawlessly and without a soul.  It was all very slick & faultless and though my body had betrayed me, after I caught my breath, I really was not into it.  I asked a couple of reasonable questions, which were certainly leading.  I believe he accused me of complaining.  So, I got around to some complaining.  I was very clear in my reference to the Orgasmatron of Woody Allen's creation.

He resisted my assessment long into the night.  It was quite a row, such as it could be, given that I was mostly wry & amused about the whole show & what it revealed, and he did not find my patronizing attitude ("Cha." [eyeroll]) amusing at all.  Additionally, he really had to reconcile this with me, because pretending it never happened was not an option.  He had, in some ways, bitten off more than he could chew, which was by then frustratingly obvious to him.  I could not resist pointing out how he had failed to think it through, due to the blinding, hyperdrive situation. 

He admitted, after quite some time, that his strategy for keeping many women on one string was to be impeccable in this way, beyond reproach.  The fact was (and is) that my criticism was at once devastating and irrelevant.  I certainly found his plasticine performance repugnant, but he had a legion of admirers.  He was thwarted in his mission to collect me, but I was not the right sort, as it turned out anyhow.  In spite of (or maybe due to) this rocky beginning, we stayed friends.  Every now and then, after a particularly giddy evening, he might put the moves on me, and before he would even get settled in at second base, I would excuse myself, for he would invariably slip & get all overbearing & self-important and he would stop being real to me, and I would have to go.

That concludes his relationship to the 2009 World Series, but for the people who love gossip, the last chapter on him is thus:  He would have a reprise a few years later, when I ran into him on the ground in our hometown.  He spent some number of weeks giving chase while pretending he was not actually married.  (Cha.)  Honestly.

So.  There!  If any of that rings true for you as a metaphor, sit right next to me & tell me about it!  I will not be following professional sports again any time soon unless a certain exciting homeland team makes it to the NFL postseason.  I will be watching FlashForward until the end, however, so you can tell me about that, too.  Right next to me!  

2 on, 2 out

Here is my finished American League Championship Series cowl, to celebrate the also-finished ALCS, played at great length between NYC's Yankees & Anaheim's Angels.  The pattern is "Cherry Garcia," from Ravelry.  The yarn is Araucania's discontinued alpaca hand-paint named Copihue.  Now I will generate one squillion billion hits from people all over the world looking for one more skein of Copihue to complete their [whatever.]

  
Oh, Yankees vs Angels.  Do not let me get started.  I will only say that it reminded me in every way of the time I went out this one guy.  In my orbit for years, we were only nominally friends.  We had a wagonload of mutual friends plus also, he was in my department.  I liked him, he was really interesting, I would see him around, he would shanghai me for coffee.  We would be at the same party and make a point of excluding others for a good, long time.  One day I asked him out. 

The date was fine, he was kind of not who I expected, there was a little more complexity than I had inferred in all those years, he had kind of a dark side, but there were no strikes against him.  The date went on longer than anticipated, there were a few location changes, but we ended at his place.  Much wine was consumed, but at the time, I was drinking a fifth of scotch every day, so I never got loopy, but instead went straight from coquette to splitting headache. 

For his part, he went straight from chatty and eager-to-impress to loaded and unable to come.  Oh, right, super.  So there I am, with a splitting headache, knocking boots with this cyborg in an interminable hookup, thinking all sorts of horrible things about this really nice guy.  Measures were employed, things were concluded, but man, I was put off by the delay.  Seriously.  As I fell asleep that night, I considered burning his house down to the ground, and even the next morning, I still wanted to put salt in his sugar bowl. 

He followed up, I followed along, subsequent outings (and innings, so to speak) were better.  And I liked him!  I really did.  Plus, I wanted to like him!  We had always had fun, the two of us!  The chemistry was good!  People I loved a lot were champions of him!  I respected his values and what he stood for in the world!  But once we went on that date, I just never again felt like I was having any fun.  I had been on dates before -- some coming before or after the ones with him -- and we were not awesome. 

Then as if by magic, a few weeks in, I found out first from a mutual friend and then after her from him & everyone that his research fellowship had finally come through & he was off -- poooooof! -- to Quetzaltenango by the end of the month.  I was so pleased.  I was happy because it was what he wanted, it was what our friends wanted for him, I knew what an amazing honor this was for him and also what it would mean to him long-term, and mostly: I was super-happy because it was over.

If any of that metaphor was meaningful to y0u, sit right next to me!  The Yankees will host Philadelphia's Phillies in Game 1 of the World Series in two days, on Wednesday!  I am knitting little mitts!  Exciting!

wip friday + etc

 

I left out this photo yesterday.  This is how the cowl is configured, when it is unwound.  In case there was confusion about where to pin, where to stab.

Nervousy & with too much time on my hands during the ALCS game last night (do not get me started), I cast on a new cowl.  The pattern is from Ravelry, the yarn is discontinued sale yarn I picked up at the yarn store last week.  The town adjacent to Ballet Town has a yarn store and a fabric store.  I know.  Mari has asked me to please show some restraint, and then I bought this discontinued yarn, so immediately found a pattern for it and lo.

 

This came up somewhere else on the intersphere, and also comes up a lot in our real life at this time of year, that the reason I need an array, a wardrobe of neckwear for the winter is because I wear most of it inside the house.  Mari & I keep the house, once we turn the heat on, heated to 62F, 57F overnight.  We refuse to turn the furnace on before December 15, and frequently it is closer to year's end before we pony up.  Conditions must be met:

1. The days' highs must not exceed 45F for 14 consecutive days.  That means if it is 34 degrees at noon for 13 days rolling and then on the 14th day it makes it to 49?  No.  Reset.  This is the hardest thing to check off, because the weather is goofy here.
2. It has to be below 55F inside, according to the first-floor thermostat.

That second condition is not as harsh as it sounds.  We live in a 3-story gingerbread house that was built before there was central heating.  On the second and third floors, it is possible to be warm enough.  Not toasty, but not freezing.  We have south-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows in the front of the house (on the first floor, they are shaded by the porch roof, which I guess is to protect the furniture?)  In a form + functional delight the sun pours in during the daylight hours in winter, but in the summer, the sun is too high and shines over the house, for the most part. 

 

Heat rises, obvsly, so it is usually about 60F, without the furnace, on the 3rd floor, which is where the children sleep.  60F is plenty warm enough for sleeping and taking a shower.  We are not running a spa here. 

The rest of the house is warm enough, for people who are fully-dressed, wearing shoes, base-layers, and a sweater.  One of the best things about keeping the house so lightly-heated (besides the fact that we get out of the heating season for about $600) is that we can be inside, properly-dressed for the weather, without being too warm, and then we can just leave when it is time to go, without overdressing in one big blubbery layer. 

This idea that people should be able to wear t-shirts and be barefooted indoors in the winter is silly.  Someone saw it on teevee or something.  Because then when you leave the house, what then?  Well, after living in the Midatlantic for 12 years, I now know, I have seen:  you jam on some shoes and throw on a down parka over your t-shirt.  Well, that is silly. 

I have been battling this with the public about my children all of their lives, but here is the truth:  when it is cold -- really cold -- outside, your clothes go on under your clothes.  You dress from the bottom up in layers so that when it is finally at 5F (on a warm winter's day) you are wearing all of your clothes with your outerwear atop.  So when old ladies tsk-tsk at the sight of my children "only" wearing a sweater & a hat all winter, what they do not know (besides how to be strong) is that the children are wearing silk long underwear, a couple of t-shirts -- maybe a thin wool jersey layer for Fille, who runs colder than her brother -- and then a sweater, plus the hat.  The hat is really key.  I scold the children all the time, "Hat first!  First the hat!  Before the jacket, you put on a hat!  Then if you are still cold, you can wear your fleece." 

I do not even buy them a coat anymore.  They have a fleece jacket with a down vest to put over if it gets cold enough, which it did last winter, and we were out in it all day, every day, because I was flushed & in love.  13 degrees!  So close to 9!  Which also beings up an important point:  if it is 13 degrees outside and you are out in it for 2 hours, tromping or running errands or bicycling or making trouble, 62F feels plenty toasty enough when you come home to it.   

It does make the rest of the world super-hot, though.  Lord, I was at the Met with Algren a few years ago -- and it was December in NYC, like in the teens, definitely.  I was dressed appropriately for the weather & hoofing it all over the island of Manhattan.  Well, museums are all heated to 72 degrees, which escaped me when I was getting dressed.  So, we were in for Egypt & Medicine and Spirit Photography, we checked our outerwear like civilized people, and in Egypt, I started roasting, just so hot & flushed and I was going to combust.  At one point -- because I was a little spacey and wandering because I was hot & confused -- Algren took me by the hand and dropped it, immediately -- Jesus, you are so warm! -- and I was mewling weakly, and he pointed out I was wearing two sweaters.  So I was, two thin cardigans -- one merino, one cashmere -- layered atop one another.  I took one off and stuffed it in my bag and was somewhat relieved.  

We made it through the fairy hoaxes, and along the way I took off the other cardigan, which left me in a tank top -- a cashmere tank top, but still, so much of me was uncovered -- and I was still so warm.  By the time we got to Prague (shiny!), I was just broiling and I really thought I was going to faint when it struck me that under my skirt I was wearing silk long-johns under my tights.  So, I had to go to the ladies' room & solve that problem and spend time running cold water on my hands and swooning, and that is an argument for piling up all of your clothes on the outside, but really.  It is not way to live in an Arctic-cold climate.  Not that we live in an Arctic-cold climate, but what if the children find themselves in one? 

I think that over time, this idea of expanding their ability to know what resources are at their disposal for weather issues has superceded our other reasons for the miserly climate control -- the fact that the weather here is so variably warm, the fact that we live in a big, drafty house that takes a couple of days to bring to temperature, the fact that, really, it is not all that cold here and are not doors, walls & windows enough? 

We used to think the children's total relativity about weather was a little cutiepie, the way Baby Fille would fall to the earth and cry if she had to go out when the temperature hovered around freezing, for example.  Or the way that the first morning it was a little chilly our son would put on cotton pants and a bulky woolen sweater.  We realized when that guy died in Oregon because he abandoned shelter, that weather ignorance was elementally dangerous and the very opposite of cute.  Would that he have known that never abandon shelter is a cardinal rule.  Or any number of things about the relativity of cold, but also its reality. 

I think that people outside of New England and the Midwest, Saskatoon, Siberia, seem to think that weather is something that is happening to them, but really, the weather is just something that is.  There is an essentialism to living in it.  The fact is that back home, when it is -45F, it is not toasty in anyone's house.  Cold is relative, but so is warmth.  Heating the house to 72 or cooling it to 74 just seems like escapism, like a fatal flaw that will be one's undoing.  Not to be all Jack London, but seriously. 

Mari and I sleep in the draftiest room in the house, and have an electric mattress pad.  There is a space heater in our bathroom for spa-bathing, in which Fille is allowed to indulge.  We talk about moving our winter quarters to the 3rd-floor, to the guest room and the 60F bathroom, but neither of us can ever be bothered in the end.

If I feel sad & weak about our paradigm, which I do sometimes (I swear!), I just read select passages from The Long Winter. Invariably, that reminds me of a night I spent in the North Woods of Wisconsin during a blizzard in an unheated cabin, and that was really cold, not pretend-cold like my 58-degree house.  I figure it is for the children's best interest and at least we are not starving at the same time.  Also, I have the cutest, softest winter accessories to wear around the house.  And a pair of tall Uggs in pink!  Plus, everyplace else is so heated.  Trust me.   

pennant

 

So, I finished my cowl last night & then when I woke up was kind of astonished to find it there on the night table, because it was all kind of a blur.  Man.  I think that if a person only sees the score on the last game of the NLCS, they might think that Philadelphia ran roughshod over LA, but it was not really like that.  The game was pretty riveting, even (especially) on the radio.  LA made a lot, a lot of mistakes, though, and failed to use strategery.  Honestly. 

The most exciting thing remains the dramatic, sports-historical, final-inning, walkoff tie+win from Game 4, though.  I am so happy that I will be able to tell my great-grandchildren about it, this pink diamond in the history of baseball.  I can also tell them about the Berlin Wall coming down, which in its 20th anniversary coming up is making me feel a little old. 

I was telling Algren a couple of weeks ago about sitting across from some Ivy Leaguers, one of the dudes trying to be all wit + sparkle about Berlin-Wall quipping, which seemed off to me until I realized that none of them had been born when this happened.  Then I had to repress a serious get off my lawn impulse, because, hullo!, plus old lady, and also, cede it to the next generation.  Egads. 

So, I think I have determined that knitting during a major sporting event is maybe too distracting and there will always be mistakes.  I was ready for this one, though, I had strategery.  It is true that this is not the 360-degree cowl I set out to knit.  I changed the yarn and then dicked around with the needles' size since the yarn was worsted-weight instead of bulky.  I used Classic Elite's Posh, which is 70% silk and I forgot how much it would drape in that case.  So, it was not going to be a standup cowl, because of gauge + drape.  This was immediately evident when I set it up for blocking.

So, I decided to just make it a little buttony neck-snuggle, which is fine, too.  Also, I had this really cute glass button I picked up at a thrift store for a nickel that I had been dying to use and here it is, so. 

  

Anyhow, I knitted the cowl according to the pattern (attention ! .pdf file!), blocked it, realized it was not going to work, and then made plans for adding the buttonhole loop.  So, I pretty much stood in front of the mirror, winding it around and checking where it would fasten.  Then I marked the spots with pins, stabbing myself in the neck & fingers a whole lot, and then I just, I can show it here

 

picked up seven stitches on the spot I determined in the try-on and marked with the pin, and I knit for 3 rows, to make sure the flap was on there, and then I made a 3-stitch buttonhole, knit another row and then bound off.  I was lying in bed last night finishing this & did not want to get up and find some buttonhole instructions -- I was going to use a Debbie Bliss baby shoe pattern to get a sense of flap butonholes -- I stumbled across this recipe with my handheld, which was like no buttonhole I have ever knitted, but it worked out so perfectly, I thought.  Super-tidy & very tight, a lot of integrity.

The cowl is perfect for wearing around the house, because a scarf is dangerous when you are cooking and cumbersome when you are washing dishes and you might die like Isadora Duncan when you are wearing it to sleep.  We keep it pretty cold in our house in the winter, since we are notoriously miserly in the area of climate control, what since it is not cold outdoors or anything. 

Mari is going to be happy to get his (photographed here), but I think I will hold it until his birthday, since I do not have a better idea.  Anyhow, I am happy with all of it, both of them (whatever), which is not something say very often about things that I knit for myself, since I am impossible to please.   

Next for the knitting schedule!  Little World Series Mitts!  Applause!  Clapping!

fondanty!

A confluence of factors came about to remind me of this cake the other day, posted by the lovely Santos a year or so ago. 

 

So I made one, frosted it with ganache.  Meli told me on a ship-to-shore call a month or so ago that she did not know how to make this ganache of which I spoke.  (Actually, it was in a photo of mine & she just had to have the recipe.)  Here it is.

Chocolate ganache
Put 1/2c cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan with 5oz (140g) chocolate, 1 tsp butter & 1tsp vanilla.  Put heat on super-low, bring it to a bubble -- a slow froth -- remove from heat & whisk & whisk until it is shiny & smooth.  You have to use it pretty much right away because it settles in place in a seamlessness of chocolate.

Also, this is from the NYT the other day?  About Your Hideous, Divorceable Parents?  (Mine, too!)  Then, they put it to the commentersphere on the NYT Blog& WTF?!  It is eleventy billion pages of stories just like mine!  It is a little weird, because I have been reading along (I think I have only been able to make it to, like, page 7), and not only will I see someone's shred that swims to the front of their narrative and think, Holy shit!  My mother lied just like that to all my relatives about me, too!  Yeah!  I'd blocked that!  but also -- with the benefit of some distance from all this world-class insanity -- I can see it kind of fresh & for what it really is, and I can hear Kowalski's head exploding c. 1993, all over again.  God almighty.  Thank the Lord for Billy Bob Kowalski, Dewar's, and my specialest pal, Maker's Mark.

It seems like the Philadelphia Phillies are about to wipe up their real grass with the LA Dodgers in a little bit here.  Which, I mean, fine, but is LA really just going to let them?  They were so much more spunky last year.  I think I have only 5 innings left in the NLCS to finish this cowl! 

rapport

Everything I cook uses at least one chopped onion.  While I was on crutches, I used the wheeled-rack system of cooking, and during that time I thought a lot about restaurant kitchens, about prep cooks, about what I knew about restaurant kitchens & prep cooks. 

 
Sometime in the last month or so, it occurred to me that instead of pulling down the big maple cutting board every evening to herald the start of the dinner shift I could instead reach into the fridge and pull out my already-chopped onions.  I chuck 6 or 8 into the food processor bowl every few days and then I am all set.  It is exciting.

Also, exciting:  Major League Baseball's Championship Series games.  I spent 30 minutes discussing the finer points of each league's highlights with a girlfriend this morning.  I hate to stereotype, but I think that 30 minutes is a long time for women to talk to one another about sports.  In my experience, anyhow. 

Last night, I was really ready to go to bed, just waiting for NLCS Game 4 to end.  Until the Dodgers' pitcher walked a guy.  I mean, come on!  Walking in the bottom of the 9th when you only lead by one run is just careless & sloppy!  Then, the next batter got hit!  So, with two on & two outs, I was steeling myself for the long shot of extra innings, but the Phillies came from behind to win, just like that; their shortstop hit a double and that was it, game over.   

It all happened so fast + at the end that I still have not really caught up.  If the Phillies win tomorrow night, the NLCS ends, right there.  It seems so crazy, and I was looking forward to the 7 games that sports pundits forecasted.  Anyhow, I love this series more than 2008's.  I am glad I get my own cowl to wear from this!

tupelo honey

I am more thrilled than I expected or imagined with the National League's Championship Series so far.  I was particularly stricken by the internal poetry of today's game: it was so much like a regular season game -- a day game!  3 up, 3 down, easy! -- in such regular-season weather in Los Angeles, and then the 8th inning came and swept everyone away.  In the turnaround, I remembered it is the postseason and we are in the Northeast; here, it is fall.

 

Tonight, we had a little bit of a conflict with our Strong-Willed Child.  According to my new paradigm, in the face of his staunch defiance, I genially suggested he take a time out.  He refused, and I pulled up a chair and asked him to have a seat.  He refused again and I called to my husband to open the front door.  Then, I picked him up, which was a mighty surprise to him, and carried him out to the porch.  Then, I came back inside, leaving him outside for his cold, rainy, dark time-out. 

"I'm setting the timer for ten minutes!"  I called over my shoulder, very reasonably, as I walked to the kitchen to do just that. 

Then he got into a rumble with Mari because he banged the screen in the screen door until it separated, and wow, did that make my husband angry.  So, that was between the two of them, and when he writes a weblog you can read about it there. 

Mari had approached the door & found out about the destruction only because he was taking the child's shoes to him.  I was going to let him be on the porch in his sock-feet, for this reason:

After Garçon got chewed out & got his shoes on, he called out, "Don't even try to stop me!"  And then he was gone from the porch.  I was not worried, because it is about 38 degrees outside + raining and he was wearing a t-shirt and some khakis and he has zero stamina (o, but he is all will), so I knew he would be back & soon.  Nevertheless, I felt compelled to find my husband and say to him, "Hey, you dope.  What'd you give the kid his shoes for?  Now he's gone."

I mean, on the heels of Balloon Boy, who can take another crafty son? 

Anyhow, he was out there, lurking in the shadows -- a skill that surely is to serve him well in life.  He returned to the porch and blubbered and then, when his time was up, I went to the door and asked him if he wanted to come in & do the dishes or if he needed more time outside to think about it.  Yes!  This was about a routine household chore!  This is the way in which he is horrible!

He said he would come in & wash the dishes.  Then, as he set about the chore, he sheepishly apologized for his refusal.  It sounds crazy, but it works!  Go, Yankees!

déjà vu

 

I made this pan-baked tart from Bittman for breakfast.  It came out of the pan a little shauna-ahern, if you know what I mean?  But it was very good.  Like a gluten-free matzo brei, weirdly.  I will haul it out in the spring & fool around to make it savory, because I am one of the savory people. 

Last year, I spent the length of the Nat'l League Championship Series listening to the games & knitting a cowl.  The cowl was thus imbued with the memories of post-season baseball -- sitting on the kitchen floor, waiting in the car for the children to finish their afterschool program, having to take a break to go 2 doors down to my neighbor's to witness with my own eyes the Favre-like precision of Hiroki Kuroda's pitching in Game 3, the thrill of finding out in that inning that those radio guys are really good at their job.   

It was a fantastic series -- Game 3 was one year ago today and it was intense, the way the Dodgers were not going to get whipped in their own yard, wow -- though the cowl did not fare so well & much to my dismay had to be re-knitted.  Happily, I have no recollection of what I was doing during the re-knit -- it was sometime in February, so moping, probably, about grief -- so it is ever-suffused with those happy 2008 NLCS times.

Sad to say, while re-knitting, I was so carried away by [whatever] that I knitted for one too many cable-repeats and the whole thing turned out too tall.  I was going to just forget about it, and rip it back & stash the yarn because who the hell wants to knit one thing three times?  But then, my husband coveted it.  Well.  That does change things. 

The issue of Mari's lack of hand-knitted finery came up while I was forging the sock mines for Kowalski.  The question that was kind of out there in the ether was Why are you knitting socks for a man who is your guy, but not your man?  My sassy reply all around was None of yr fucking business, but really, herein is the answer: 

I once knitted my actual husband a cowl for a birthday gift 5 years ago or so.  He opened it, and having barely admired it, criticized some imaginary design flaw.  (When this answer was finally revealed  & only to Mr Kowalski, his response was, I believe, "Heavens.  I see.") 

In response, I (because in this marriage, you had better have your sword ready) promptly mailed it to someone who was happy to have it.  No, really.  I packed it up and then when he came later & asked me about it, I said sweetly, "I mailed it to someone who wasn't a bitch."   I mean, honestly.  When the foundation of yr marriage is a triple-dog dare?  Behave. 

But, ok, so now enough time has passed, plus he has paid, what with the mailing the original gift off to someone else and also the knitting of not one, but two pair of socks for the Tavern Leaguer with the eternal flame.  So, this year, I will be gifting him with this cowl, and not just that, but hopefully I will have knit myself my own (finally?) so that it is not just, "Oh, this old thing that doesn't fit me, you can have it," but it is almost like I made one just for him in the making of this new one for me. 

 

So, anyhow.  The problem was that the one I cast on the other day for myself can never, never be able to live up to all this pressure and the third-time knitting -- plus I have already had to frog it once because I dropped a purl stitch after a cable sequence and did not realize it till the end of the repeat.  Can I not just buy something at the store?

The 2009 National League Championship Series starts on Thursday, with the Philadelphia Phillies playing the LA Dodgers and so it is like the same thing all over again and I can have my own cowl interwoven with memories of the series.  I am too excited for this.  Last year, wow, it was such great baseball.  Plus, a fight!  Yes!  Oh, yes.  This Game 3 is on Sunday, o, can it ever be that way again?  

wip wednesday

I am working on this Clapotis from years ago Knitty for Mother's Day.  I hope to have it done soon because it is meant to be a shining light for Mari's aunt, who is excellent and attentive in every way, and as such, a slap at his mother, who is wretched, inattentive, and a stranger to accountability.

There are a lot of ktbl shenanigans in this project.  I was talking to a knitter pal and she was saying that it is just to make the fabric sturdier, with the twisted stitches.  Um, this is getting knit up from fingering-weight yarn on size 5 needles.  It is long past the possibility of sturdy.  I am blowing off the through-the-back-loop busy work as of today. 

Here is the recipe for the socca I have been making.  I make the second variation, and use (obvsly) all chickpea flour.  Speaking of links to food, Hartmann's makes the most incredible kielbasa.  It is the best I have ever had.  I grew up 5 blocks from the biggest Polish neighborhood in Chicago, so this is meaningful.   

in which I talk shit about the local yarn store in v many tenses

I was in one of many local yarn stores yesterday for a quick needle pickup.  There was this lady in there while I am there -- she is buying a wagonload of yarn for some other project, who knows.  A few minutes before, while the wanker who owns the store was winding winding winding her endless booty of hanks into pull balls, she admired the item on the mannequin nearest her.  It was a scarf.  He told her that the pattern is "free" with the purchase of 3 skeins of the yarn they used to knit it up. 

She asks him if she can just buy the pattern.  He says, "No, the pattern is not for sale by itself."  I mean, this guy!  Is such a wanker!  I admit that before I had only sensed that he was a wanker, but with this, I knew!  First of all, it was a scarf!  Not some rippling, on-the-bias, triangular effort, no.  Just a 7 x 60 knit knit knit rectangular item!

Second of all, this chick was spending a couple hundred dollars on yarn in his shop when there are four other yarn stores downtown.  It is not like she just walked off the street and asked him to give it to her!  I know, I am from the midwest and all, but people here do not think ever about any kind of cultivation of customer loyalty.  It is so shocking to me.  It is bad behavior.

So I told her, right in front of him.  "You know, it's just a stitch pattern."  She was astonished by this information.  He was chagrined, so much that I boldly went on, still clutching my circular needle, still waiting on him to wind.  

"Look at it," I held the end of the scarf up.  "It's purling, all the way ... purl, purl, here's your yarnover row, purl ... it's a 4-row repeat.  Cast on evens or odds depending on your yarnover ways."  Oh.  Look over there.  There is just a boring guy behind that curtain.  Hm. 

Now, she is angry, you can tell.  I am all shruggy and whatever-itis.  Dude is beside himself, all spluttery and red & cranky.  No one in the whole store feels sorry for him.  I buy most of my yarn at Yarnmarket, anyhow. 

I went out to the car, where Mari was waiting, ready to spill.  He told me I was like a terrorist.  Wait until he finds out I realized I could knit up one of those pretty scarves for his dutiful great-aunt in order to snub his slipshod mother.  Terror, indeed.  Who said I could not be subtle?

thursday

Hm. I am starting to take risks with this blanket, but mostly? It makes me cross.

This story from a little bit ago makes Kowalski happier than any old sweet talk. 

Mari & I ran into a couple that we know, but not very well, but whatever.  They live in our neighborhood.  Mari & I were picking our kids up from a workshop at a botanical garden and they were there admiring the same botanical garden with their son and also a newish baby.  

I exclaim over the baby, a girl, we catch up a little, we have all been fine.  Fine.  We are kind of wrapping up to move along and I remember to ask for the baby's name.  

"Lucille," they say at once, happy and in love.  

I lit up at the name with recognition and gasped, clapping my hands a little, and singsonged, "Oh, sweet!  Like B.B. King's guitar, aw."    

They were not happy about this thing that I said to them and kind of said goodbye in a tightlipped way.  Mari said, "Honey ..." and I said, "What, so they didn't know?  Um, everyone else does.  Whatever."

Mari, in total Arvin-Sloane mode, rather condescendingly reminds me of Lucille Ball. I maintain my whatever-itis. "I don't know a thing about Lucille Ball's childhood, but I do know that B.B. King loves that damn guitar."

Also, in the category of baby names & the not-knowing?  I keep meeting + also hearing of hipsters (oh, hipsters) naming their kids Dashiell and pronouncing it as the former Senate Majority leader.  The count is up to three I have met and four I have heard about.

I asked that the first time I heard it, because the chick said, "Daschle" and I said, "Like the Senate Majority leader?"  She rolled her eyes like I was the stupid one & told me there was a writer.  Um, yeah. That guy's name is pronounced D'Sheil. With one L.  I mean, look, call your baby whatever you want to say, but can you really say you have honored the memory of the name of this hardboiled-detective novelist if you do not know how to pronounce it or spell it?  Some fan. 

Also (hipster-hilariously), with 2 Ls, it is the name of a WWII US Navy destroyer.  Ahahaha.