la femme follette

great and small

I have not the energy to write about this, but it makes pretty good oratory, The Pile of Cross-Cut Clear Up to Your Shoe-Tops, if you're so curious.

 

 

Remember our range issues?  When the thermostat broke last summer & I refused to replace it, citing an inability to participate in the shopping required of one for a major appliance?

 

Right.  So, Mari replaced the thermostat.  That was the second time he replaced the thermostat in the appliance, the third overall.  (The first time, a repairman took care of it.)  It was a $89 part, and the repair takes a half-hour, maybe.  There was a lot of grumbling last summer about my replacement-resistance, but I was not listening. 

Part of it was that major appliances bring out the -- what does Kowalski call it? -- Depression-era farm wife in me.  I am going to suck the marrow out 0f them.  Also, the stove & I have a unique relationship -- it is all mine, really, and I know a little something about how it works.  Not a lot, but enough.  Also, I keep it really, really, really immaculate, and if you know me, you know how I value this proof of my tenacity. 

 

 

If you look closely at the hood, at the front aspect of it, you will see where I once -- when we first bought the house from the slattern from whom the range conveyed -- scrubbed at it so hard that I wore away the paint.  This was not the first time I scrubbed something so hard the paint came off, but I know you already knew that.  But it was always kind of a bummer and a remonstrance ("Use ammonia, girl!").

We had a blip of semi-inspired "shopping" for the new range in the fall.  We were, separately or together, in stores for some other utilitarian thing -- Sears after my blowout; The Home Depot for [whatever]; Lowes for [whatever else], etc -- and would stop & look at the displays and then I would say something like, "Yup!  Those are gas ranges!  Look, they sure are for sale in the world!  Can we go?" 

I knew what I wanted:  white, mostly.  And also, very much, I wanted the electronic function of "Timed Bake" or whatever it is called, where you can put, say, 6 potatoes in the oven at 2, set the timer so the oven comes on at 5, and then arrive home from ballet at 6 to baked potatoes to accompany yr slow-c0oker soup?  Yes.  We had this feature on our wall-oven in Maryland, and man.  It was really convenient. 

That concluded my list of demands.  But I c0uld not bring myself to go out & participate in the commerce of it all.  Meanwhile, the stove still ran 50 degrees cooler than the dial at temperatures less than 400, the left-burners' igniter was snapped off by Mari in 2009, and at the v end of 2011, the front right burner started firing in an amorphous, globular way, instead of a round of neat spikes under the pot.  I started to disassemble the burners to investigate, but realized maybe this was the time to bid adieu.

I was on the phone with Kowalski, merbling about this very (interesting!) thing, and he asked me to refresh his memory as to how I came by the major appliances for the doll's house. 

Oh!  My God!  Our service guys!  They also deal appliances!  Wait!  I never thought about it because with the doll's house, I had some serious space constraints and I gave it over to them wholly -- Please bring the thing that fits and doesn't suck.  They were heroes in this matter!

Mari & I were in Ballet Town last week when my phone rang.  I went light-up (on -duty) and chattered for a few minutes about my list of demands, then dug the index card with the measurements from my pocket.  I chattered gaily for a few more minutes and rang off.

Mari asked, almost rhetorically, who had been on the phone.

"Rafe," I told him, still cutiepie.  "From Rafe & Bill's."  (Blink.  Blink)

"Honey," he was so resigned to my tactics; I was so in love with him.  "Did I really hear you tell Rafe that he would be able to be just like Santa Claus?"

"Yes!"  Because I am irrepressible!  "Honey, almost every guy wants to be a hero, but there is no one who doesn't want to be Santa."

There was mock-groaning.  I reminded him that I share everything with him.  It is like the last time we were at Sal's and his tub trap sprang a leak & flooded his first floor --  I was there so I oversaw the whole day's-length repair.  I also had the plumber replace the kitchen faucet with one I scooted out to get while he fixed the tub.

The kitchen faucet replacement was an add-on I had wanted for a long time in that house.  So, I had it taken care of  & added on to Sal's bill.  Reviewing the invoice with him, I told him that, yk, as long as the guy was there, why not? 

"Now," I told him archly, and more than a little put-upon + weary from the Flood, "you know what it is like to have a wife!"

Sal kept reviewing & asked what a parts charge was, down near the bottom.  

"Oh," I told him.  "Your sink line was all mucked-up with deposits and he couldn't get it back together.  All the plumbing in the under-sink cabinet is new, but he didn't charge for labor, just the parts."

"Now, Sal" Mari announced from the edge of the dining room where he had been all day, jockeying his laptop in his Frette robe, "you know what it's like to have Elle for your wife!"

Not quite Sal doesn't.  Mari told me today on the phone, "When I get home tomorrow, I want you to be in the bed: naked!"

I paused.  "Oka-aay," I told him, before I paused again (the wind-up!).  "Who with?"

Ahahahaha!  I won that one.  Ahaha!

 

 

Anyhow, the new range!  Yes!  It has the timer thingy+ also 2 hot-like-the-sun burners up front & one pianissimo burner in back.  Also, if you feel like we need to do the scales of math in repair cost v replacement costs -- which we ladies sometimes must do -- you should know for yr files we could have replaced that thermostat 9 times more.  But I would not have a new hood.  À bientôt!  

moonlight. firelight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, but what happened?"

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

fast five

This manicure will not come off. 

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

 We are, generally, on to holiday decorations. 

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

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

Who is at that party in the mirror?

 

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

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

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

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

 

all is bright

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

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

 

 

blob

Of course, scarcely a day after I formed a concrete thought about feeling like I did not want to buy pumpkins, the Notorious Greengrocer had them in a great size 3/$10, and in the smaller, decorative size at 3/$5.  Then there were plants, also.  Houseplants, not seasonal, outdoor pot-tricks. 

 

I could scarcely contain myself at the thought of a 9-inch asparagus fern for $4, but I did, remembering all those asparagus ferns I fell for, hard, before they died.  I tried to tell myself this time would be different, that they would be ideally-located in a humid part of our house, with all the endless boiling, and all.  But good sense prevailed, so: pothos.  Whatever.  Unkillable, so fine by me.  I bought a couple more to take over to the sweet, dollhouse-living gals.   

 

This used to be where I had those two 3-tiered hanging baskets, the bottom tiers of which I have repurposed.  I initially installed them to hold, yk, onions & whatnot.  But it is bright enough in that spot that onions kept sprouting, so bright enough for a plant.  If I can get the watering right. 

Mr Fox keeps wanting to know if we will go with him to Occupy someone's Street, north or south, but I feel like, yk, no.  Hullo, Nutcracker?  But also, I am not interested in it.  I am not actually in the pursuit of a whole-whole lot of knowledge about it, but based on what I do know it seems as if it is a lot of wasted energy.  I am not even talking about the regrettable drumming.  All those people, milling around, full of presence, bearing the weight of who we all are and whatever we can each bring to something and ... they are hanging out in a park.

More than that, a lot of people are acting like this is a new kind of holding this space that exists at this time, that this is a wildly and freshly-inventive representation of the so-called 99%.  It is not.  (Omg, "Hooverville," is what Mr Fox softly interrupted to say to me when I was trying to articulate this earlier.  Gentle Reader, I was super-glad in that moment I only have sex with strangers.)  They seem to be lacking a lot of historical context, about a great many things -- all the sucking on Michael Moore's cock but the wholesale repudiation of Congressman Lewis?  But, ok, I am digressing. 

The thing of it is, it reminds me, in a lot of ways -- the volume of people, the willingness to submit to a gritty kind of existentialism, the current unemployment rate -- of the aggregated circumstances that led to the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps,  the National Youth Administration, Rural Electrification, the rest.  That period in American history produced things which endure, things that represent a chorus in time, a physical manifestation of the beautiful concert of humanity present in their overrated human microphone. 

I am not saying that there should be a demand for some kind of top-down New Deal offer put forth by Washington.  There will never be.  The quiet desperation of the masses is only half of the story of the New Deal.  If you know your U.S. history, you know the other part -- like a hand in a glove -- is that FDR essentially called a meeting with all of the nation's barons and said, "You get to choose how you part with your money: you can write a check now, or you can wait for someone to loot your shit later."  Billionaires must have been smarter then.  Perhaps they knew a lot of history.

What I am trying to say is that I wish that the Occupiers would find a way to reflect the values they claim to embody.  Yeah, yeah, I get it, they are not hanging out in a park!  They are living joyfully and interdependently in their tent cities with libraries and solar panels and potlucks and cell-phone stations and haircuts and whatever, but it just feels to me -- if this is really about social justice, and not just about being a 4-year revolutionary -- like it needs to be less insular.

It needs to think bigger-er:  teaching children how to read, repairing the broken shit in apartments in which are residing old people and the disabled, training the elderly how to use iPads, running a mobile hospital, something more tangible.  Something that allows others to be involved in other ways besides a physical presence in a public square somewhere -- by donating more goods or more services or more professional credentials or whatever .... even just cold, hard cash.  I hear Warren Buffett is dying to write a check to someone! 

I mean, people in wooden necklaces mumble this all the time so much that it has become a cliché, but it really fits here, that I wish they would be the change they want to see in the world.  Gil Scott-Heron wrote America's revolution will not be a melting pot, but a toilet bowl,  and it is kind of that bad right now.  But this show of protest just seems like so much meandering in a passive resistance, bottom-feeding off of the shitty, dominant culture everyone already knows we live in.  This is a mass of people with time & energy who are kind of letting go of the opportunity to show people what can really be taken on, when we take back what is ours, what is everyone's.  But, whatever.  I know, I have now bored you to death.  Yes. 

I hacked out an apple cobbler this morning.  It was OK.  If I make it again & it gets better, you will be the first to know.  Bisous.

part of you pours out

I like to think that I would never use all-caps, but I kind of wish I would in order to graphically represent all that is afoot here.

• Mum-smuggling!
• New-car-learning! 
• Nutcracker-rehearsing!
• Husband-alluring!
• Locust-leaf-vacuuming!
• Apple-wrangling! 

There are a lot of apples this year.  So many, that we are kind of avoiding each other in the neighborhood so that, yk, "Oh, Femme, thank you so much for bringing those deeply-discounted mums!  Would you like some ap--" 

As they turn toward me again, there is but a puff of smoke where I used to be standing, holding a flat of chrysanthemums.  It is like what people talk about with zucchini season, which was decidedly not the case this year, with the squash blight, which I think extends to winter squash, because pumpkins seem quite costly this year; more money than I want to pay for food we will not even eat.   

I was actually going to just have an overflowing fruit-bowl still-life, but when I approached it, I was taken in again by the little bird I picked up at Anthropologie.  No, the other one ... discount Anthropologie ... whatsit?  Mmmmmmm.  No.  Well, it's from there.

I love it, so much.  You put little 3-inch pillars in there & it throws the speckly light all around, you know.  I wanted one of the concept for a while, but never fancied the reality.  Then: it was a little blue bird right before me. 

I keep choosing that same blue color in pottery over and over, like it means a thing.  Blue.   Omg, I love that album.  It reminds me of 1994, all of it, always.  Omigod, holidays!  Look at how you are still here!  Go, shoo!  You make me feel too reverberative!     

  

If you want me I'll be in the bar.  Just this morning I told Fille an excellent story to make the point of how her bedroom bears an unflattering resemblance to my apartment in one particularly memorable morning after a night of intensely commemorative + place-marking blackout drinking -- end tables all askew, phone off the hook, sheets of paper scattered everywhere, the fridge wide open, a kitchen table lying on its side ... but contact lenses cleaned & firmly seated in their case; I was miraculously unbruised.

It is funny to me, how I could wake up not remembering anything, but -- even when I pieced it together later --will never forget each morning after, every plush, vacant interval of know-nothingness. 

Somehow, both children knew what blackout drinking was.  I questioned this & they both shrugged, then stated plaintively, "We read about it."  I refrained from saying, OK, but no, really how?!

Fille did want to know, last week, Why is there a Columbus Day if he was so evil and stuff?  Which I have never said, that he was evil & stuff, believing wholly as I explained to her: If you want to live in a town with a great salumeria and a bakery capable of torta ricotta, you have to let it go, let the Columbus flag fly.  Never mind there are a million other reasons to parade with pride.

 

Let them sort it out amongst themselves.  

 

I know, you're all Wait, is Alex guest-blogging?  No.

 

mum's the word

Ballet Town has this crazy greengrocer on its Main Street.  I think that the thing is they just charge a smidge above wholesale prices & wait to deal in volume while, yk, everyone else is sodomizing us with their gigantic markups.

This is the site of the Geranium Breakdown -- under no circumstances should you attempt to wade through all of that; just believe me that 10-inch hanging baskets were $6-- and now it is the cradle of the Great Chrysanthemum Distribution Origin Story.  Because 6-inch pots of mums were 6 for $5. 

Those are 24 pots of geraniums, none mine. That 14-inch geranium in the foreground was $10.  I had already bought my lot of mums when, in the hustle-bustle of Community Activism, there was so much visiting + chatter about fall decorations.  One neighbor said she had heard a tale told of the Ballet Town Greengrocer, and I felt duty-bound to confirm its veracity and also confess I had availed myself of its magic. 

Then, naturally, I was on the hotseat for Mum Hookup.  Word spread.  It was fine, I drive there twice every week.  Only 3 flats of mums will fit into my car ... Hey!  Only 3 flats will fit into my old car!  I can totally finish the job later today plus also pick up a few more as kind gestures for neighbors who did not ask but were nonetheless helpful & community-minded this past week!  Yesss!

God, there is so much horrible stuff in the world.  Yk, someone just asked me the other day to explain to them how a preschool-facility could be called a civic-use building, and I flew into the kind of quick rage the world has not seen since a jackhole from Connecticut made a Whatever, same difference kind of gesture when I corrected his mixup of  Wisconsin with Michigan.  Having a place to put the community's children is a civic use!  This is just all more of how America hates women and children!

Let's bake!  Decorate!  However we want!  Fuck it!  What's the goddamn point?  I am really grateful to know we have really great people living around us, mostly.   

Also, am grateful to see this guy in my gym today!  It is brand-new!  I made out with it a little!  The best news is that I only lasted about 8 minutes on the effing thing, so I can get better!  Well ... actually it took 2 minutes for me to realize I was not going to get the best of this machine.  At about the 5-minute mark I started to feel panicky.  The rest of the time I had to pretend I was on Battle of the Network Stars to endure.  Then I folded and went up to the secret rowing machine by itself near the boxing studio.  

Anyhow.  You should be at the gym, too, because the shit is going to hit the fan soon in the US, and you want to be able to at least survive, let alone take up arms, and really more like you just want to look good in post-apocalyptic fashion.  Hullo?  Dark Angel?  Terminator 2?  Get it together, beauties!   

   

round tuit

 

piece of cake

Mari replaced the oven thermostat this weekend, after which repair I was immediately inspired to apply myself to the task of replacing a major appliance.  In my head, mostly, but before -- when the oven was nonfunctioning -- I was unable to even consider such a step.  (I think -- based on a cursory pre-shop --  a major problem is going to be getting the appliance upgrade I want in white.)  

Then I was inspired to bake a cake. 

 

Actually, I had moved into cake's space already. 

There were the prettiest Italian plums at the market on Saturday, when I was on my way home with my Extra Girl.  I bought them, intending to cap the exciting-yet-easy company dinner with the David Tanis plum cake.  It is a nice, easy cake, it would offset the richness of the lamb, and be a staid, sober, non-sugary end to the day.  It is totally the cake you want yr child to have a big piece of before bedtime.  Also, it does not hold well, so better to have extra people to eat it more quickly.    

I totally had all this come together in my head and not once did I remember about the oven being broken.  Until we got home and I mentioned my plan to Mari.  If you can believe it, he did not instantly redirect himself to the repair!  I know. 

 

Today is rainy & chilly, with lots of barefootedness, desultory paperworking, obligatory catching up & relationship building with my favorite + best, taking phone calls from cranky people with mandolins, and leftover soup for lunch.  Today my oven works.  Good, because after the bestie catch-up (so great!) and halfway through the lunchtime mandolin encounter (so wtf?!), I needed a piece of cake.  It was too early for a gimlet. 

 

It will again be too early tomorrow morning, but I think this simple, high-protein cake works for breakfast, too.

Italian Plum Cake 
adapted from A Platter Full of Figs, etc by David Tanis

Melt 4tbsp butter.  Cut parchment to fit the bottom of a 10-inch, springform pan, and use more butter on all of that, too.  Turn the oven to 350. 

Slice a buncha regular Italian plums into thick slices.  His recipe calls for 2lbs, but I barely used 1/2lb.  (I used 11.)  If you don't know, you can just cut around the pit & push it out, like a knothole.  (I did not know that, once, apologies if you were born with the knowledge.) Set the slices aside.  

Put one cup whole, unskinned almonds in the food processor with 1/2 cup sugar (you know what I like:) rrrr-rrr-rrrr-rr-rrrr till finely ground.  It is going to be a lot of rrrr but keep pulsing & checking to make sure you are not making almond butter.  Add 1/3 cup flour (I used millet, because it is delicately-flavored and soft) and keep whirling until it is all whirled together.  Let it be.

In a large bowl, beat 2 eggs long enough to mix the whites + yolks.  Mix in 1/2 cup milk (I used "So Delicious" coconut today; I have used goat's in the past -- this is a love-the-milk-you're-with situation) until uniform.  Add  the 4tbsp melted butter.  Stir and stir.  Kind of sift over the almond mixture while whisking & forking & stirring to make a smooth batter. 

Pour the batter into the prepared springform pan.  Arrange the plums on top.  It turns out a pretty cake, so you will not waste yr time by trying to arrange them prettily. 

On the other hand, there is a pretty good chance you will break it on the dismount, so don't knock yrself out.  Bake for 40-45 minutes -- watch the edges to tell you when it is done.  And the toothpick-test, if that is yr thing. 

I forgot -- until I pulled this from the oven -- that the last time I made this cake I thought about next time pouring the batter over the fruit instead of placing the fruit atop.  Next time.      

rowdy electric

Saturday, the Like-It Edition.

 

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

Increase in our Little-Girl Population by 100%.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unless I ruin it.  Hm. 

 

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

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

 
 

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

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

Everyone, let's kiss now!   

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 

screw

All of my gym clothes are too big, which, yk, go-go gymgoing, but anyhow.  One morning a couple of weeks ago, I did not make it to the gym because my pants would not stay up on the walk from the car.  HauteLook had a Marika feature a day or two later, so good. 

 

As proof of how get it over with I was about it, Fifille said to me, while I was taking my back-to-school photo here, "Er, Femme?  Are those butterflies on yr pants?"  Yes!  I don't know!  It's fine!

Omigod, the EarthquapocalypsssssszzzZzZzZzZzzzzzZzzzZzZ.  What?  Omg.  People are calling, people are texting, I have no idea about their outpouring of love + concern -- Are you all all right?  -- for the first five or six missives.  You know, I was thinking this morning that Santos prob has 5.9m earthshakes all the time & she never talks about it & I never hear.  Here is my Earthshakey, True-Life, Non-Events Account. 

I was sitting in the dining room, closest to the back door, waiting for AAA to come winch my car out of Sal's driveway.  I heard the tow truck approach.  I realized it was not a tow truck.  I wondered if Pam and Addison, next door, were getting their floors refinished.  Why hadn't Pam mentioned it when I saw her?  Exciting! 

But, it could not be a floor sander.  Our floor was noisy all over.  Oh, it's just trackw-- Er, the Metro doesn't run under Sal's house ...   

Here is the only interesting thing about the earthquake.  As I began to realize -- and this was all very rapid-fire thinking, I think the whole thing lasted a minute? -- that what was jouncing the house was not mechanical vibration, I sifted through to my next conclusions, which were in this order:  a. terrorists, (no. no, that can't be right) b. Ohhh, earthquake.  (Earthquake, what the eff?)  Terrorists first, though, you see.

It is also, I think, worth noting that if I had never sat though a similar event in Los Angeles as a child (I thought it was mechanical vibration almost till the end then, too), I never would have concluded earthquake on my own.  I mean, Jesus, Sal has a tensionless, oversized, venetian blind propped up on a dining-room windowsill that unravels, clattering all the way to the floor, if you bang the door too hard.  It stayed firmly-fixed in place all the while.  And honestly, I thought these people in Washington couldn't shut up about snow. 

Let us now call, on this rare, leisurely morning, the roll of honor.  Oh, I am in receipt of yr other emails, yr voice mails, piling up around me in drifts, with their accusations of "slipping that in."  Yeah, I've got yr slipping it in right here. 

1. What's up with the boozing?  Do those 5 words look familiar?  I wrote them, last week, in that order, which is the very definition of not slipping it in.  After I wrote a love note to a long-lost cocktail.  I was not trying to get away with anything.  Things have been a little grim on the inside here.  Grim.  My choices were a. have a drink or b. have sex with strangers, but never c. drink a fifth of whiskey plus have sex with strangers.  That would be overreacting.  Grim!? you say.  Honey-bunny, cupcake, do tell!  Obvsly, in dribs and drabs, as I process, I'll write it here, like I have been for years.  Unlessssss you refuse to stop reminding me you are data-mining here.  That makes me shy, you know.
   
   
   
2. The Fantastic Mr Fox.  Again, I wrote all about it.  What else is there?  Hubba hubba.  Remember for all the long years we have lived in this nominal college town the joke has been building about my Fantasy Grad-School Boyfriend?  He was going to be old-enough so as to be interesting, tidy, there would be no cartoon characters carved in the butter at his well-appointed, grownup's house.  There would be no Legos on the floor to stab me in the bare feet, a claw-foot tub, the walls papered with pages from the Kama Sutra.   Oh, hahaha, how girlishly we embellished this hilarity, the kernel of which -- as I recall -- was a throwaway line about how I do not care for young men.  Well, it is like we dreamed him and he came to life.  And he is sssssssssssmart.  So let me press myself against halacha in this matter and never be alone with him.  For starters.  Also, cling to what is good, because if we all think back, we can remember that in times of despair, I only have sex with strangers & he is not one!  Phew!  Mostly I reflect upon 2011's Lenten action to avoid saying anything stupid.  I already did say something stupefyingly stupid, though.  It was pretty awesome & right up there with the Amazing Freudian Slip for Lillo of 1997.  But since then, I have applied myself to the lasting lessons of privation, again.
   
   
   
3. The weekly appointment with a team of cleaners.  Ok, I did sneak that in, a little.  But not on purpose!  Because it is a lot of writing and I was placemarking.  Plus, I am still working through a lot of it, in addition to just completing the work that I have hired them in order to be able to do, because they are not supposed to be a permanent staffing solution.  I can keep my own house clean, in normal circumstances.   
   
   
   
4. The baby, Fille, going to the beach with almost-total strangers.  Yes.  She made friends a few weeks ago with a same-aged girl from the only other truly-granola homeschooling family I have ever met in real life.  Coincidentally, I finally met the patriarch of this family a day or two before she met the girl -- they are outstanding civilians in our town, I have just never met them.  I do not cultivate people, you know.  But I liked the dad -- he is distractable, yet sharp, and he talks about everything as if you already know it, which is fine by me because I like to pick up as I go.
   
   Fille & the eldest girl (there are five) got on strong and when they called about 18 days later to invite Fille to the beach with them for the day, I said yes.  It was funny, when I stopped round to their house later, the girls' mother told me she'd told her husband before he called, "You said she seemed shy, she doesn't even know us!  She's never going to say yes!"  And all of that is true, but they did not invite me and Fille is not shy.  Also, these 2 kids of mine are old enough now that they can judge what makes them comfortable, they are big, and they have a lot of liberties.  A lot. 
   
   Which reminds me of a funny, idiotic presumption Dr Bombay made -- Omg, you are with them all the time.  Am not, neither!  Less & less every minute!  Why, every day this summer -- except for driving to ballet class and/or guitar lessons -- they have been at the pool, or the library, or the park/playground, and I have been right here at home, getting shit done.  They experimented with public transit!  One time this summer, one of my kids was out past 10p.m. walking home from the library 6 miles away & he got a ride home in a police car! (We will never let that go, the surprise in that suburban hike & the realization that no matter what, if he could do that, at least some of our job was done.) They feel appropriately-agéd and everyone is happy.  Anyhow, Fille had a blast with her pal and I was glad we have made their acquaintance.  Especially a house full of granola-homeschool girls.  OMG SQUEEEE. 
   
   
   

Speaking of the roll of honor ... I will write down this neighbor story in league with Becky, who is who she says she is and stands by her words.  (Obvsly, but she seems to have to explain it a lot.)  Is it the reporter's problem if a subject's profile makes the subject look ridiculous?  No.  If you did not know that, look it up.

So, pursuant to the topic of Quotidian Freedoms, no one else's great, big children are going anywhere by themselves, or even with siblings.  I get that.  The people in Ballet Town recoil in horror when they find out the children have been trained up on commuter rail-riding.  Whatever.  You know ... people can chauffeur all they want, but we bought our house on this side of the county line so that we would not have to drive children around like the King and Queen of Siam until which day we just gave them a set of car keys. 

All the publicly-transporting is new, but on the ground in our town, our kids are on their third blissful summer of free rein.  It started out with baby steps four years ago, but by now it is just two feet and a wristwatch, go with God, be where you say you are going to be, follow the route we work out, be home at [whatever time].  Old news. 

Last week, the kids wanted to go to the park and I said it was fine, sure, be home by x o'clock.  Then they nanced around on the block a little more, nancing the way they do, yk, getting distracted, running in & out of the house.  I told them to let me know when they were Actually Leaving & went back to what I was doing inside.  During the Nancing Period, they got mixed up with their pals who live across the street.  Presumably, there was more nancing.

I had to rebuild this from an amused debrief, but it seems what happened is that the Follette children said to the Neighbor Kids, "We are going to the park. Want to come?"  (The Neighbor Kids are the same age -- 12, 10, set of 8yo twins)

Neighbor Kids, or a representative, whichever, whatever, went to ask their mother, Ms Mixed-Up, who said fine, good, whatever.  This was at the same time as Fifille ran back here to shout through the screen door they were leaving.  Good riddance. About an hour later, I was in the garden, swearing, and Ms Mixed-Up drove by.  She stopped, and called through her passenger-side window.  "Oh, is Mari home?" 

No. 

"I mean," chuckling self-consciously, "of course he's at the park."

Mari is in Washington.

"Are the kids here?" 

 No, they are at the park. 

"But one of them, yr kids ... are my kids here?" 

[blank look, says only,Ne comprends pas.]  What? 

She got out of her car, and frankly, in retrospect, she was a little aggressive toward me, considering she was the dope who didn't know where her own kids were.  "My kids said they were going to the park with you." 

I thought about this for a minute, then responded.  "No.  Your children must have said they were going to the park with my children.  I'm here, at my house, obvsly.  My children are at the park, possibly with yours, it seems." She processed this, quailed, raced back to her car & sped off.

See, Ms Mixed-Up has had this problem of chaperone-presumptionbefore with me.  It would seem to me that when she heard my kids were involved, she would think to double-check the situation were supervised to her liking.  Jesus, yk, hers are the same damn kids who came down one day a couple of years ago to play thinking I was hosting an indoor playdate.  No.  Children belong outside, playing.  Especially six of them.  I gave them a pitcher of water, all the outdoor toys + games, and plastic cups.  They live across the street!  And then Ms Mixed-Up --  now that this is all rushing back to me, I remember -- hovered around outside between our houses, who knows why.  So I invited her in for coffee, and when she accepted, I let her in and firmly shut the door behind us.  Ahahaha.  I thought of it as a Queen of the 70s intervention.  Ok, that was a little bit mean of me to do to her, but honestly.  It still makes me snicker.   Anyhow.  That is just a little something I slipped in with fullness.  Ok, that's racy!  MmmmMmMmmmMmmmmmmmm.

Ahahaha!  À bientôt!                   

upgrade

Omigosh, I was so tired of those drab, tweedy, throw pillows on the playroom sofa!  I was a little bored of them texturally, and then when I saw them in the photo of the newly-expanded sweatshop playroom, they made me sad! 

 
 

Thankfully, the Lord placed IKEA's Baltimore store 66% of the way to Washington, right off of I-95, in the moments before one has to gird their loins to do battle with the greater metropolitan area's traffic.  On the way home, the distance between Sal's and the store is a little warm-up ride for the children (all of us, really), to have a last, leg-stretching refrain before we get down to the larger part of the journey.  It is a nice place to stop because there is no skanky, rest-stop vibe, plus also a pretty good cup of coffee.  I might sometimes deign to take them to the IKEA restaurant, especially since they serve vegetables.

The As-Is department is pretty conveniently-located just inside the door, past the clean bathrooms.  Last week, I was browsing, waiting for the children to reveal themselves to me ("Meet me in As-Is!"), and there were pillow covers in the bin.  $3.99! 

 

Wonderful!  Yes.  Dreams do come true!

$6 million girl

Can you remember my February?  When my house was full of cats and all manner of contractors and I had bicycles in my dining room and the pantry's groceries in my living room and Mari started being at the office 5 days in a row and it really hardly mattered, since I was rooming with Fifille anyhow?  Remember that? 

 

Right.  God, I remember taking this photo.  I was on the telephone with Kowalski, for the third time that morning, while he confessed a whole confession full of what I already know.  He had been working up to it, you see, so by the third time he called I was feeling less indulgent and way more distracted because look! at my dining room! and then I was just poleaxed.  So that was when that trouble began.  Any old way.  Onward!

 

One of the things that was crammed into the dining room was the freighting package with my brand-new, full-sized, Gratz Pilates Reformer inside.  It arrived in February, but it took five months for us to get around to getting it unpacked and in place. 

 

Mari said, as he unpacked it, You weren't joking about it being red.  No!  Because an upholstery choice was red!  Vrooom! 

I am completely excited.  Yes.

The delay in its deployment was  good, though.  The plan was always to put it in the playroom, to reclaim part of the playroom as Our Own Freaking Home, but once we got the playroom reconfigured, I could see that I did not want to jam this big thing in there.  Not to mention that putting a thing I do not want broken into the playroom is just asking for trouble.  Because if I bought an anvil they would break it.  And stand around the pieces mumbling sentences that started with We were just!  Hisssss. 

To put the Reformer in the bedroom, I definitely had to put the sewing machine elsewhere, right away, and so you know how that ended already.

There was the additional issue of that Naughty, Heart-Shaped Kitten and her scritchy-scratching.  So we waited, and waited, and as we all know, in mid-June, she was finally gone.  Bye, scratcher! 

Already, with it in my bedroom for only a week, I am telling children every damn day not to sit on it.  That is not a bench, get up.  Why are you in here, anyway?

Anyhow, it is super-exciting because now Pilates Chick can give me homework and I can get even better, faster, stronger than before.  It is going to be so amazing!  

So, reviewing August so far:  not ready for back-to-ballet-school; eggplants on grill; sewing machine in playroom, being used in its appealing, appropriate space; weekend getaway and/or interstate travel; Joe Pilates in the bedrooooom (not like that).

 

Check in on wry & pretty Becky in her BeckBloPoMo endeavor.  Blogging every day is a heck of an undertaking, but it can be done.  Also, this beautiful (and related) piece from pretty (& also wry) Orangette about making something where there was nothing before, to put it out for the world.     

imposing. magnificent. grand.

My favorite part of letting the kids out by themselves is making the maps.  There is one for every occasion. 

 
 

Oh, August!  I know I say this every year, but I always feel like you should be the name for the month of October because August -- you tend not to be so august, in the main.  Or, as I read somewhere, years ago, "August is the Mississippi of the calendar."  Yes.

You do have eggplant in profusion.

 
 

August has January's shoulder-wheeling, grindstone thing, without the respite of early-darkness.  I was tidying up a weird trail of hair elastics + bobby pins today & realized that Fille does not have her dress-code leotard yet for the coming year.  Ballet is going to be a major headache this year -- rubber, meet the road.  Again.   Some more.--  but I will smile & act nice.  I spent some quality time with my face in my palms today envisioning the whole calendar and anyhow. 

Man, she starts en pointe this winter which -- in addition to being an extra hour of class every week -- is just like, No, no, honey, go ahead.  Wreck yr body, baby, we love you! There is a fuckload more about that, but not here.  Dooce did not go first in this way for naught.

Typing this I realize I have not yet forked over her fees for what is now next month's start date.  Mostly because summer session was Garçon and me slowing the car so she could roll out, like an assassin, and while I had good intentions (and blank checks in my Filofax), I forgot.  On the last day I was ... getting a pedicure?  No, haircut, but anyhow. 

I also keep forgetting that our oven is not working.  It is & it is not, although, honestly, it has been 100 degrees for much of the last couple of weeks, so when the fuck am I going to use it?  I made a batch of granola a week or so ago, and found out the thermostat is completely shot and th temperature only soars to 400F.  Oh, ok.

Mari tried to cajole me along and convince me the thermostat is a luxury, which ... I guess, in a way, sure.  400F is a good, solid temperature; I do not bake v much.  Part of me kind of feels like I did about the DIY BlackBerry repair last year, like, yk, Motherfuck it, all this planned obsolescence!  But also, I do not want to enter a Choose Your Own Next Major Appliance Adventure.  I just feel like, yk, we just got our countertops done and we got them done while I was all the while stanuchly resisting a full-on kitchen makeover!  And the thing is, even then, last fall, I wanted a new stove because I would like another burner and I would like some time-it on + off functionality, but I did not want it so much that I wanted to shop for + buy it. 

And now, more than ever, I really do not want to shop for one & buy one, because I do not feel like it and what if I make a rash choice and the one that I get is not the one that I want and then!  I am stuck with it!  All winter and for the next 10 or 12 of them, too?!? 

Now I just want to lie down.  But I am going to the gym instead.  My new gym thing is rowing and then the heavy bag.  iTrain.  Do you know about iTrain?  You should.  Now you do.  It is way better than a trainer because there is not any socializing.  I love Pilates Chick, plus also her work, but the weekly chitter-chatter every single week just wears me out.  We're on a break from her, too. 

À bientôt!       

chains, gang.

I do not have the heart to tell Fille that her eggplant might not come true.  She is so pleased to have acquired it at the plant swap in May, but she is a little lacking in the consistency of watering department.

 

You can see the backyard in the background there.  We had it done over in June.  Simple, plain.  I plan to get the container plants out on the gravel to soften it up & make it less like a prison yard. 

 

It will fit for now, though, because we are getting this: our big next step.  I mean, yk, we always used the straitjacket when he was younger, and of course there are the bed restraints we've used -- shut up, they are humane restraints, it's right in the name -- and then since he has been older, bigger, I say, yk, Hey, babe, just head outside & cool off.

But if he is going to be running away ... not cool.  Measures must be employed.  Plus, it is modular & built to specs, so we are having it built big enough to put the bicycles in at other times.  Excellent in every direction.  Yes.

À bientôt, j'espère!  xoxo

bowl of cherries

Sal called me from the office this morning, while I was dopily walking in circles, thinking of coffee.

"Don't you miss our fabulous Eva-Gabor hotel suite?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.  "But we have cherries so here's ok, too."

 

The cat is in "fake" heat again, the kind with real yowling all night and real tomcats trying to gain entry all day.  She is getting her ovarian remnant extracted tomorrow, if they can find it.  Then she will have to stay there a couple of days to get well with no jumping, or licking.  Or if she does lick herself open & exsanguinate, at least it does not have to be in my house where she dies, like Helmet Cat.  Also, that would be a third cat adopted by the Lord.  Fine by me. 

I mean, I like Gracie a lot (we have decided her name is exactly short for "graceful," if you could see her) but honestly, the scooping, the feeding, the caretaking.

Have you seen Oxo's Magically Contained bathroom series?  The plunger?  The toilet brush?  But the plunger, especially.  True love, because ick.  (Let us not now speak of how the plunger is on a platform above a brine of fetid runoff in there, though.  Shh, let me honeymoon.) 

Turtle Mountain's chocolate version of their aseptically-packaged So Delicious Coconut Milk is good, too.

Also, related to things to buy:  Mari asked me, exasperated, Why'd you buy an iPod docking station, exactly?  

I said no.  "No, no.  It is an alarm clock that goes all the way dark," is what I told him.

I never realized such a thing was in existence, until every Hyatt hosting us in the month of April had one, right in the room!  I have not had an alarm clock since ever because I am that girl from the Princess & The Pea, sleepwise.  I tried to find a model from any brand that was not a docking station and also maybe not $70 (because no way did I pay full price for it, yk).  Evidently darkness is not a feature desirable enough to promote, so if there are any fitting that description I could not know.

It has amazing AM radio reception and, hullo?  Baseball in the night?  It is more than anything of which I have ever dreamed. Plus, plus, plus, plus, ne plus ultra xox

c'est pas trop tôt

This is Mme Carrière's best year. 

 

We got her new growth up off of the ground in time, shaped her up with some judicious pruning, and now I just have to keep her summer poundage in check and we will cross our fingers for next year.  She is not even at peak bloom yet.  When I stand on my porch, the world smells incredible. 

Saturday was National Train Day.  It kind of stole the thunder from Mothers' Day in that I was extremely satisfied to get dressed and leave three ditherers behind me to take off without a backward glance (Your rations and provisions are not my problem.  Plans for lunch?  On yr own, right?) for my appointment at the eyebrow-threading salon. 

Brows threaded, idle wandering and an iced coffee commenced.  It was a gorgeous day.  After all that outside-nothing I came home to do pretty much nothing in my empty, silent house.  I accidentally to0k a 2-hour nap, after which indulgence I woke up and the house was still empty.  So favorite, so best.  When I woke up, I texted Mari to remind him it was also Free Comic Book Day.  They stayed out until bedtime.

There is no way to top that, certainly not with warmed-over pancakes and a glass of water served by a well-meaning 10-year-old girl who is not listening to what people are telling her about what they really want.

Yes, in true gift-rejecting mother style, on Sunday I covered my head with the blankets and groaned when Fille tried to establish my alertness for the purpose of serving the breakfast that I assured her over and over again in the days prior I did not want.  I do not want to eat while lying in the bed, I am sorry!  I will sometimes gratefully receive a bowl of oatmeal, but I can hover over that with a spoon in a prone position, truly slothful.  Once I have to prop myself up & use a knife and a fork?  That is the provenance of an invalid, or gouty old Liz Taylor.  Learn to make tea, little children!  Pay attention to what people are saying they do not want, when you want to give them something!  Mari is like this, he clearly gets it from his mother, is it nature?  Or nurture?  Well, I think we see.

After I rebuffed my only daughter, I proceeded to sleep out of sheer defiance until the unheard of hour of 11:46.  While I lazed across the bed, sleepy and a little sulky, Mari asked me what I was going to do with the day.  For all the fuss I made about getting away from my family on Sunday, I had not actually made any plans to do anything.  If I had, they would have commenced before noon.  Also, again, Saturday's idyll was just-right & pretty tough to follow.  I mean, that's a lot of pressure on a massage.  

Eve had called the week prior to see if  wanted to make plans with her, but it seemed like she was wearing her Frenemy Cape so I took a pass.  Jolie's mother lives right here in town, so I knew she was busy (they were at the sauna, it turns out).  Everyone else I know is so willing to let their kids crawl all over them in pre-fabbed homage, but their kids spend a lot of time with strangers, so I guess it probably feels reassuring.  But, you know, I am rocking this party eight days a week.  Getaway Mothers' Day is my thing.  Go away, little children!  It's right in the name!  Mine, not yours! 

I told Mari that I would go to the sauna if only I could bring myself to drive there in my bathrobe, like Tony Soprano.  Since that was ridiculous, I got up, put the children outside + locked the door, and made a whole pot of tea.  I continued wearing my bathrobe to watch the second disc of Ken Burns's Civil War documentary while I knitted.   

After a while I delegated a long list of garden chores. 

 
 

Eventually, I showered, got dressed, and came out to survey everyone's laboring.  Then, Mari and I sat on the steps and ate rhubarb crumble.

 

Rhubarb came in the CSA share last week, which was great.  Then two other CSA sharers did not want their rhubarb and so put theirs in the swap box.  I was extremely excited to exchange arugula and some young mustard greens for two pounds of rhubarb.  Not that I do not like those greens, but three pounds of rhubarb?  Come on!  Yes!

I put together a crumble while I was home alone on Saturday, which was especially nice because the feeding of the other meals was not down to me and the kitchen was already-cleaned by others.  I did not think much of it, honestly.  I felt like there was too much crumb.

 

When I took these interior photos (Rhubarb Crumble:  Beneath the Crumb), I was distressed and wondering how to compensate in the next encounter. 

 

I usually hack something out of rolled oats and some kind of a flour for a short dough, but I made this topping by riffing on an Elana Amsterdam recipe.  It uses almond flour and while it tasted fine, I felt for all of it there was, there was not enough floury soakerism happening; there was too much high-protein runoff of filling-juice.  I was already thinking of ways to regroup and happy I had enough rhubarb to try again.

 

My family disagreed with me, in words and deeds.  Also, begged me to come around to join their side.  I refused and I plan to re-engineer this week, mostly because Mari is away and the children do not have equal votes.  However, if you trust the judgment of three people who eat pretty much anything (although, it is worth mentioning there is not usually such rhapsody), alors!

Gluten-Free, High-Protein Rhubarb Crumble
adapted from Nigella Lawson's Rhubarb Crumble in Feast and also Elana Amsterdam's Peach + Blueberry Crumble in The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook.

For the filling, chop 1.5lbs rhubarb into 1/2-inch pieces.  On the stovetop, melt 2tbsp butter in a pan large enough to hold the rhubarb.  Toss with 1/4-cup sugar, 1tbsp vanilla, and 1tbsp tapioca starch (or potato starch, cornstarch, white flour, love the starch you're with).  Lawson says something weirdly lustful and anthropomorphic in her book like, "You're looking for glossy, pink gorgeousness."  Just make sure there are no lumps and get everything mixed up.  It will be a little gooey, don't be alarmed. 

Tip the filling into a 8ish-inch pan.  I use a cake pan; I do not have a pie plate deep enough.  At this point, you can put the whole thing on hold and chuck the pan into the fridge or even the freezer and come back to it later.

For the crumb, melt 5tbsp butter.  Add 3/4tsp salt and 1tbsp vanilla extract.  Mix.  Add 2c blanched almond flour. 

Here is where I report that Elana Amsterdam's recipes (and so this adaptation, too) use flour "milled" of blanched almonds.  It is really fine, fluffy, and really nice to work with.  A similar product can be had for this -- non-fluffy, non-textural -- use by whirring blanched almonds in the food processor until they are on the verge of nut butter.   

Mix & mix.  Roll the topping all crumbly across the filling's surface.  Cover with foil.  Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.  Remove foil and wait for topping to brown as desired.  It will take about 3-5 minutes. 

my equilibrium. my car keys. my pride.

I want to get this all down, even as I should probably devote my life to silence.

 

This statue of the Virgin is outside a convent on Capitol Hill.  Honestly.

Earlier this year, Kowalski's mother was dying, ergo, the Zac Posen Showdown, for starters.  Mother Kowalski took her time, months.  Listen, we should all want the same consideration as was afforded to her when we are that age, but it was so long by the end I could not remember when it started.

It was all upsetting to Kowalski, for a number of reasons -- some beyond the petty censurings of presumption, none of which I have permission to unravel here -- and it was upsetting to me.  First of all, I am a great fan of Mother Kowalski.  Second of all, Kowalski is extremely dear to me and his distress -- his wide-openness -- was palpable in every direction.  He was confused and confusing!  He was unpredictably and uncharacteristically emotional!  At the randomest times!  While I was cool about it, the fact is that in February I sent a confessional email to a friend that read, partially, and [it] feels every time like his hands are all the way inside my pants.

So, first of all, that was obviously not his intent, and second of all, My Issues.  Let us review the lasting lessons of sweet talk's forbearance, right?  Before sweet talk, my tactics were much simpler -- Oh, all this confessing is making me uncomfortable! I can take yr mind offa that.  Look at these.  Nice, right?  Come here.    

But that is a thing of the past, because, yk, married.  Also, the lessons of that Lenten action endure.  But, man, even as unguarded as Kowalski was, I could still tell he was holding back at least a good 40% of his inside voice.  I worried, even as I knew he would never let on there was anything to worry about, and if ever I did reveal my fretting, he would shut up tight, and so lose his only outlet for processing.  So, I devoted my life to a beatific silence. 

I spent a lot of time -- weeks and weeks -- holding the phone to my ear with my hand clamped over my mouth, just listening.  Many times, we would end the call and what I was left with, what I had not said, oh, it would burn so hot and I would lie across the bed, exhausted, and think, What I need, what I need, is ... is a cow's fur purse.  Also, a cookie.  Just one little Taiuti cow's-fur purse and two little almond-flour cookies.  Nearly every night, this went on for months.

Even after the Zac Posen Standoff, I did not really put the distresses together.  I mean, kind of, in a piecemeal way, but it was not until I hit bottom that I realized I was having a Systemic Issue.  Even then, I did not know why, but I knew something was up.  I do not, yk ... Catholic girl and works of charity and all that?  I am a shopper but not a buyer.   

Normally, looking in a store is to me like viewing in a museum gallery -- it's just nice to look at it, nice to visit the stuff, ooh & ahhh, know the prices, investigate the market, touch things.  Forever.  Let us not rush into any kind of relationship.  If I buy something then I have to be the caretaker of the [whatever]!  I have to find a place to put it and govern its use and I can only have/wear/carry/display one thing at a time, so, yk, really. At some point -- and this low-water mark varies by individual, I think --  acquisition becomes more about something besides the thing being acquired.  I could buy all the nice things in the world and then hole up in my house with them on the shelves, in cupboards, in the rafters, but really?  Come on! 

It is ok to appreciate nice things, maybe even to want them, but for 23 years straight, I walked in the waters of Jesus saying that if you want to be complete, sell everything you own, give the money to the poor.  You will have treasure waiting in Heaven, stay with him.  But I also know what Judaism tells us about the reality of humanity, what Buddhism says about everything being fleeting and in turn.  It is ok to look at things, to appreciate them.  Lots of times, when something is so perfect and I am so filled with wanting I almost can't breathe?

 

Invariably, I take a photo of it.  Or I draw a little diagram of what was so neat about it.  Then I go on.     

Also, really?  How much stuff can a person really love?  Look at Gollum, ok?  The Precious?  One ring.  Look it up!  I have a terror of any kind of hoarder-like behavior.  Just because it is clean and also Elfa Shelving was hoarded and installed does not make it less odious.  Look at Imelda Marcos.  Right?  Yes.  Not that fetishy, one-note materialism is not its own problem.  Look at Gollum, and again, The Precious.  Look it up!

I do, however, love shopping.  Love, love, love, true love.  Shopping & I don't go all the way, though.  I like to go out with shopping and flirt with shopping and sit in a dark bar with shopping, just a tiny bit too close and just a smidge too docile while shopping tells me a story full of the truth of who he is, borne along by his fourth or fifth cocktail -- that is all fine.

Mostly, I stick to the staid respectability of Buying.  Buying is not the same as going all the way with Shopping.  Buying is different -- a utilitarian endeavor.  There is a lot of buying in my world, there has to be, a family of four eats a lot of food, uses a lot of soaps, the children are always growing.  My relationship with Shopping gives me the information I need to make critical, factual, informed decisions about Buying whenever I need to, instead of just being distracted by advertising or end-cap displays.  It is much the same as banging every guy in the county gave me all the data I needed to make a sound decision when a guy would turn to an idea about having, holding.  Buying is about What Is Real.  Shopping is about Possibility.  I think. 

But whenever the Shopping's seamy charm starts pressing up against me while I am Buying, it is always a sign there is something else going on and I need to walk right out of the store, immediately.  In the past, I have referred to this trouble as Cake Mind (cake! cookies! cow's-fur purses!).  

I go back & forth:  was hitting bottom this last spring the impulsive designer handbag?  Or was it the cat food? 

I bought a Foley & Corinna bag -- exactly like the one I own, but in red -- from the clearance page at Piperlime.  The day that it came ... ugh.  It felt exactly like every time a sweet, dopey guy I banged & wanted to pretend never happened would finally corner me somewhere.  It would sink in for him  -- slowly, pooling a little on the surface -- that I had been avoiding him deliberately, that I had very little interest in ever seeing him again, and surely not with his pants on. 

 
 

It felt so fucking good to buy that purse.   Just about as good as it felt to let a guy do whatever he wanted while he was too drunk to remember, because I was never as drunk as I pretended to be. Standing in my dining room, I remembered how heady it was, the buying, how loaded it felt.  Holding it in my hands, I did not want it.  (I already have one just like it.)  Also, it was non-returnable, which I know must have appealed to me when I clicked so many times to get it to my house.  It was like going home with a townie stranger who lived in the next county -- there were no backsies once I boarded that pickup, and I was never going to run into him at the library.

The truth is -- while it is much, much cooler to say that I hit bottom with a fancy-bag -- I definitely hit bottom at the Petco.  We had to buy cat food.  Mari dropped me off in front of the door and waited in the parking lot with the children.  What could go wrong? 

The cat food we normally buy was shelved next to another, similarly-nutritive, cat food which was and remains significantly less-expensive than the one we were using.  That second cat food was on sale:  if you bought 10 cans of food, sale-priced at 25% off, you would receive a free 3-lb bag of their kibble. 

This meant that I could buy their usual kibble, feed them the new canned food with what was left of the old in transition, and have a 3-lb bag of kibble to mix in toward the end of their last bag of current kibble, thereby transitioning them to the new, similarly-nutritive, but significantly-less-expensive kibble. 

 My home-ec hoarder response kicked in, somewhere in it my amateur animal-nutritionist decided to employ a more gradual switchitive solution, involving a half-bag (6lbs) of kibble mixed with a 3-lb bag of new kibble, for a week and then adding a second 3-lb bag of kibble, thereby increasing the new-kibble to old-kibble ratio, which is better, and then, once they were switchified, obviously, they would be eating this new-kibble, and they are giving away this kibble three pounds at at time! 

Are you even following this?  Seriously!

Shopping was breathing his breath in my ear, menacing me from behind with one hand wound in my hair and the other trailing along my thigh, sneaking under my hem.  I sank weakly to the floor.  Sometime later, I came out of the store, shaken and stunned.  Mari pulled the car around to help me unload the cart.

 
That was me, with Shopping.  Mmmmmmm.

"Hey," he said, totally casually.  "Why'd you buy so much cat food?"

I burst into fat, raindrop-sized tears and sobbing.  He was all, yk, Wait!  No!  What'd I say? 

When I explained it to him, he was sweet & listening, reviewing the receipt while I told him, about the shopping, and the confusions and the Cake Mind and the distractions.  The great deal on kibble. 

"It's fine, honey.  The math works out, and it's just cat food, they'll eat it.  It's fine."

More crying.  That is like saying it's ok because it's beer and not whiskey!  You don't understand!  More crying, again.

No one actually envies Mari, you know.

This realization did not stop me from going into stores, however.  The MAC store encounter was pure defiance, a taking a triple-dog dare, like the Joplin lyric -- nothing left to lose.  Some among you will realize this schema of mine.  I felt so beyond any kind of recourse.  It was a four or five days more before I gave Shopping a hard little shove with the edge of my foot and shut the door firmly against his pleas.

A week later, maybe 10 days, Mother Kowalski let go & went gently.  Adieu, belle-mère,  que Dieu vous garde.  After that, there were things to do -- the situation was actionable, in every dimension -- formalities were addressed, also frailties.  Still, my house was topsy-turvy (still!), Mari was away at the office 5 days in a row each and every week, kittens kept getting sick, and still, as far as I knew, I was incapable of walking into the most ordinary stores.  

Baseball came back!  The weather improved in every dimension!  The children had their birthdays!  I busied myself thinking less about the possibilities of shopping and more amusing myself with the potentialities of Pretend Adulterous Sojourn with our best pal's brother!  Yes!  Forget about shopping!  Distract bigger-er!  Yes!  I went home, with my family, which was a whole project that I put on almost all by myself! It was great!  It reminded me of everything I love about Chicago and why we will never live there again.  We saw friends older & newer, everyone so dear, and everything was just right.

I came back, and felt right as rain.  Then my wedding anniversary was right away!  Two small getaway codas, it was good.  So good that on Wednesday,  I thought about how the windowboxes around back could use some color.  It was rainy, so we headed out to the nursery because I knew, rightly, that it would be deserted.  While I was there I was told by a fellow gardener -- who spotted me longing after a hanging basket -- that 10-in hanging baskets were on sale at the greengrocer for $6.  Ok, if you know anything about the cost of live, seasonal decorations, you know that price too good to pass by.  Just as a principle!  I mean, for God's sake, there is a recession in America and a $6 hanging geranium is going to keep everything afloat in every direction!  Great!

 

I bought a hanging basket of geraniums for the backyard, and also a few 4-inch pots for the window boxes, more 4-inch annuals for the pots back & front, plus also three hanging baskets for my next-door neighbor's porch, as long as I was there.  This is right when my home-ec hoarder kicked in a ilttle and it started to feel a little crazy.  At the same time, I texted a sweet pal about something else & added at the end a desperate plea for direction.  She sweetly and empathetically went in a bunch of directions and it snapped me out of it.  I re-focused and bought a last basket for the ballet school's courtyard and left, dignity intact.  It was a success.

The trip was such a success that I decided to brave the Target store to see if Tuesday's inventory report from their website was accurate, if there was indeed a far-flung, mid-county store which still had both colors of the Calypso St Barth's elephant teapot.  At the greengrocer, I was already halfway to that store.  Ok, sure.  I am game.

The store did, in fact, have 2 pink teapots and one blue one.  One.  Now, I did not know if I wanted pink or blue.  I had not actually given it too much thought, since I did not actually expect to find myself confronted with them.  Oh.  Hm.

 

Shopping was all over my Buying.  Shopping likes to watch, you know. 

I like things in pairs, because I like symmetry.  I like that color of blue that the elephant teapot comes in, as evidenced by the number of mid-century pottery's occasional dishes and console bowls I have in that tint.  I wanted to buy the pair in pink and the one in blue (Clean them out!), then take all three home and decide.  I could always return any I did not want.  I might decide that a single elephant teapot would do ... or a single in each color.  Or something.  Fine!  Easy!  Breezy! 

 

I bought some other stuff while I was there, but none of it was a big deal.  It was not anything I went in to buy, per se, but serendipitous, non-fantasy buying is not a problem.  The baby availed herself of a couple of the cute Calypso tops on prominent display, while she tried those on and fussed + dithered, I went over to the beauty section to check out the Calypso St Barth's travel cases.  I traveled a lot in April and I needed something differently-organized to hold my makeups & grooming goo; I saw one of the cases online and it looked like just the ticket.

Then I whiled away at the kind of incidental buying I hate to get bound-up in:  when it is something that we need & will use, but for which could have just as easily postponed the purchase.  So, hair elastics, bobby pins, Advil, mascara because it is probably already time to throw out my current tube, to keep things hygenic, and the same for the pot of creme eyeliner, fine. 

By that time, Fille was back with her selections, we took our stuff to the checkout, I had to try & run the math of Is It Better to run this charge on our Usual-Miles Card or on the Stupid Target Card & get 5% discounted?  OH!  Right?

Anyhow, back to the matter of the elephant teapots, both in my head and at this point, in this (unending, I know) narrative.  I was squeaked down in a weird part of the county, where two Target stores are about 4 miles apart.  I thought I would cruise by the opposite Target & see what they had, teapot-wise.

The children were complaining about this next errand.  I told them I wanted to have a pair and what if I did not want the pink ones and further, what if I let the having of a pair of pink unduly influence me into having a color that did not actually satisfy me?

 

I am surprised, actually, that Fille did not tell me I sounded ridiculous.  She generally will intervene in a redirection if she thinks I have lost the thread of a trip.  "Mom, what else do we need to get here?"  is her best line.  I have found out since that she was certain she preferred the blue to the pink and did not wish to dissuade me.  Which is why the next trip drove her out of her mind.

When we got to the second Target, we were closing in on the lone, blue elephant teapot on the shelf.  The stores that we were at had them on end-displays, facing the main-traffic aisle of the store.  We were maybe 4 aisles up the aisle-road.  It was midday, the store was kind of empty.  There was a woman in the center aisle, walking toward the teapot, and as I picked up my pace, I let my brain actually formulate the idea that I would take it from her if she picked it up before I got there.

Then I kind of watched that plan of action swirl around in my head.

If you are in on the Tolkien joke, let me point out to you that my birthday is on the calendar.  I was totally going to strangle this lady, and take my teapot birthday present deep into the Misty Mountains.  Totally.

So, I took a casual left into coffeemakers and griddles and whatever and had a few deep breaths.  The woman did not buy the teapot, and I kind of did not want it any more, because, duh.  Both children were satisfied, "Great, let's go then!"

I know, you probably started this thinking I was the girl of yr dreams, finally, and now you know I am just as messed up as I have ever been, but prettier somehow.  Or, you are a stranger who never really thought anything of me, but read along out of perverse curiousity and now you are sure I am weak and oversexed, at a minimum, and a cheapskate, plus am going to go bald, lose my teeth, and turn green.  Not at all the junior philanthropist I could be if I applied myself.  Anyhow. 

We all like the blue one best.  Just the one, actually.  I don't know, maybe if I had two, but I could get one on eBay ...

 

Mari says she looks just like Dumbo's mom in the part before she goes crazy and wails on those kids.  He is, of course, completely into it.  Happy Mothers' Day.  If you read all this, mother or not, I salute you.    

may flowers

Good Lord.  I have so much to document and no time to sit here. 

First of all, spring's front-door decor is on.  So much more about that some day soon.

 

 

Also, the sweet kitten we called "Groucho" who became "Secret Squirrel" and also who is the "Baby Cat" in the absence of any littermates.  She has -- you can see it if you squint -- markings on her front legs that, when fitted together, make a heart-shape. 

 

We had a cat with heart-shaped markings once -- this is the same goddamned cat, I swear.  She disdains everyone except Mari, who she also refrains from biting, same as Daisy.  God.  Of course, if she were to live here for another 10 or 12 years, I would be crying my eyes out at the end, but right now, she is a pain. 

 

Look at who else is here.

 

Yes.  Exciting!  It is extremely busy here, while I keep the home fires burning for Mari, who loves the endless challenge of his work, and of course I am always glad in these times that he simply has a freaking job, but the toll of all that housepainting and the whole-family travel and all has caught up and might be like a big snowball blocking me at every turn.  It feels like I have a little house in Pompeii ... busy.   

dayenu

When Gracie, the cat, went into heat the first time, Mari pointed out to me at some time during all the antics that he was really glad we had always just spoken openly about sex with the kids.

Yes.  Because how else to explain the cat rolling around on the floor and just acting weird.  She was also helpful as an illustration -- with Garçon and Fille right on the brink of their respective gender's adolescence -- of how hormones make an organism all goosey-loosey and just plain weird.  This will make sense to you soon.  You will yowl, and roll on the floor, and then fall faint, exhausted; in a metaphorical way.  You will see. 

 
 

This is SexCat.

When Grace, the cat, went out of the window, back when she was still fecund, he was the cat we found with her huddled under the porch.  He was one of two cats that were always trying to get into our house while she was in oestrus, but he is the one who was most persistent.  Also, the cat who won the territory dispute with the other.   

We had Grace fixed just a few days after her out-the-window/under-the-porch episode.  That was months ago, in January, I think.  Because she was coming into heat when she had her surgery, she "stayed sexy" for a little bit, as the vet explained.  One night, about a week after her surgery, she escaped, rolling around in the dark with him, foiling all attempts to bring her back inside.  Then she rolled around and howled for days more, inside.  All night.  It was a grim time. 

She has been going out these last couple of weeks, as previously described.  The first day I let her out, I spied her in the backyard, in a face-off with SexCat.  I went to the back door & opened it and she streaked in with SexCat on her heels.  She came in, but he did not.

I told Mari he was sexually harassing her.  And what the hecks?  Why?  Since being spayed, she should just not even interest him, I would think.  I mean, I do not have a degree in Feline Sexual Behavior, but I did take biology and sociology courses at university.

This morning, I let her out -- super-early for the weekend, because I like her to be back in before people start yard-working or minding business that is not their own.  Forty minutes later,  Garçon was waiting at the front door for Mari and their Haircut Trip.  He called back to me, while he was peering out the window, "Uh, Mom, SexCat is out there with Gracie.  I think he is harassing her, like you say he always harasses her."

We opened the door, and Grace was clamped to the doormat, with her tail firmly wrapped around herself, growling, while SexCat was climbing all over her.  

He is so dumb.  I was glad Mari saw it, because I have described SexCat as a cross between Pepe LePew and Jack Black as Ben Franklin in that one "Drunk History" sketch.  (I don't get it, we fucked in the snow, we fucked that time under the car, I don't understand what the problem is.)     

We let her in and rebuffed him with a plant mister.  Then she crawled into a box in the dining room and hid from us.  (Omg! Poor thing!)  Mari said, "I think I will make that cat doorbell.  She needs a cat panic-button!"  Then he left with our son, while I was fussing over our patchwork doll & admonishing the icon of dumb old SexCat.  Have we not all known a guy like him?    

 

SexCat is sitting on my front porch even now.  He is under the mostly-dormant table festooned with the rag rug that is there for UPS to try & obscure our left-packages, staring down our front door, waiting for Grace.  He has a pretty meow, fine, but doesn't our girl have a right to be on her porch & breathe freely. 

Fille asked, "Can I pet him?'  I was so incredulous, because no!  We are not getting involved with any more outside cats, ever. Also, SexCat?!  He doesn't even know no means no!

 
 

Fille said to me, in her patiently-informative way, "Mom, I think you mean RapeCat."  Yes!  Omg, it works, all the talking!

  

 

The Portion Accruing to Ears
Alice Notley

(From her 2007 book, In the Pines.)

I know, from its primacy
shadow follow down over European
clutch of tones the same
I know shadow or clutch, so

whatever is told to you, no waiver
I was there, you can say
nothing accrues in safety           and no one safe
why should you be, or make sense?

all she wore was lace. why not?
or something else. treason, why not?
quote, the only thing I'm sure of, a
            kind of metric
but that thought don't I see, gone and for-
give. You do not have a light
to shine on me. I have it.

avril

Correction:  Hyacinths perfectly normal, if a little leggy.  Evidently, I have never noticed how they look before full bloom.

 

The legginess is due to the age of the plant, however.

Variety of daffodil known as narcissus poeticus is perfectly perfect.

 

 

The ebullience brought around by the beginning of baseball season has receded. 

 

Everyone here is lazing and/or sleeping, although the rest of us have availed ourselves of the luxury of the upholstered furniture. 

In fact, the only way I got Mari to get out of bed this morning was to tell him I thought a fine agenda for the day was to start with blueberry oatmeal-pancakes, followed by a fire in the woodstove.  Then we could sit next to each other while I alternated knitting with rifling through cookbooks.  

 

April is National Poetry Month, speaking of laziness, narcissus, and poeticus.  I like this poem right now.  It is a dream-elegy for someone who is still today alive.  I am thinking a lot about how I have been enjoined against an elegy -- even an accidental, prosey kind of rhapsodic eulogy -- for someone who is quite dead.  It happened just like in this poem -- so long that at the end I could hardly recall the beginning.

Poem
Elle Case

I dreamt of you. I was hungover from your homeland,
where we met, in this dream, and we talked.  You
were charming and nifty, useful and solid, our
occasion went on for hours, so long that at the end
I couldn't remember the beginning,

Days went by in my dream before you died. Still I
was dreaming. So, in the dream, I shyly showed
your lovely wife, your beautiful, brilliant baby girl
an essay I wrote about our time together. They loved
you ever more, this new window opened to them,
to look out where I put you on the horizon, shown
now on a backdrop of snowdrifts, steel mills, rivers
that run backward seething with blood. You

were so tall and true on those plains, rugged and
undaunted. Still in this dream, I asked to write an
elegy, and then your girls, they teared up and I
thought, in my dream, oh! how sad this all is!! In
the beginning it seemed only as a long picnic. You
were funny, you told me that everyone should only
remember your life, so you told me just everything.

You found out that as a girl I wrote news so you kept
leaning over, across the orange table set with our
endless buffet lunch, improbably outdoors, among
these magical beanstalks of dandelions and those
legendary japanese vines and saying, "Did you
get that? Make sure you write this all down."

 

exhibition

The hearing today to more fully explore the legal challenge to WI Act 10 and its violation of the Open Meetings Law was straight out of Picket Fences.  That was the teevee show from the 90s about quirky legal stuff happening in Rome, Wisconsin.  I was following Wisconsin ACLU's tweetstream today & man.  Wowee.

I went to IKEA today to buy some bookends.  I bought only the bookends and replaced the 3 plates Fille butterfingered today.  And the $30 late lunch, which was actually a re-lunch for the kids.  Then I had to have a long visit with a chaise longue in As-Is, but I left it there.  My judgment has been bonked lately, due to a confluence of factors, so I am on the shopping wagon.  Which is hard, because there is always more that needs buying around here.   

 

When I say my judgment is effed, I mean it.  Like this: I need to wear a dress on Saturday, ok, so I thought, I will shop for one!  I need it! but I have one right here.  When I went & laid my hands on it, I was ok.  But if I had not inserted myself between my id and the online shopping, I don't know.

Saturday, I am going to be a Lady in an Auxiliary Capacity at a fundraising thing at the hospital where Jolie's husband practices.  I was not listening to everything in the introduction when Jolie asked me & I said yes.  Most importantly, I did not realize it is A. at the Actual Hospital, well, and she says it is just on the hospital's campus, but, no, because you have to go into the building through the main hospital doors with the germy riffraff.  We all know what is in a hospital.  Germs.  Contagion.  The plague. 

I had to go to a different hospital last week to fill out an administrative form and I touched every surface in the building with a fresh kleenex protecting my hand.  My favorite part of the trip was when we got to the elevator and Garçon was about to press the call button, Fille got airborne to knock him out of the way of doing it.  "Don't touch that!" she said, before bumping the "up" button with her elbow.  Ahahaha!  

Anyhow.  Also, B. I somehow did not get from the conversation preceding my assent that I am supposed to dress up, like a Ladies' Brigade, cap-sleeved shift + tasteful, low-heeled pumps.  I talked to Jolie about this late last night, a conversation during which I bristled at the term Society Matron (we are too young!).  We tried to float Society Dowager, to differentiate ourselves from the next-oldest demographic (no good!).  Then, we sampled Society MILF, but ultimately rejected it because of its misuse of MILF, which is rampant now, the misuse, but still.

You know, MILF is a term long-used to describe a woman who has a son with friends of legal (or at least prurient) age.  It is a term for attractive ladies old enough to be yr own mother, not an insult dressed in compliment's clothing to describe the surprising, shocking, incongruous fuckability of a woman who has happened to give birth.  Make no mistake, by that standard, we are all eminently fuckable.  Babymaking is a sexy business.     

Anyhow, I just, it was a surprise, is all, the Ladies' Brigade dress code.  But the work is a snap, something we can do in our sleep, mostly, and we will get our reward in heaven.  Or coffee.  I hear some fancy coffee is going to be on board.   

We were supposed to go to Washington this week for Cherry Blossom Peak Bloom, but Monday Garçon had the kind of bad behavior that was so immediately exhausting I crossed it out right in my mind, the trip.  Which was disappointing, because the last thing I said to Sal when I talked to him Saturday morning was I'll see you next week.  God, it feels so good in this era of constant digital contact to just be able to say that to a great, old friend -- I will see you.  We were supposed to see Fish & Flora, too.  And Mt Vernon!  But sometimes your kid's a dick & you can't take him on a leisurely vacation.  Prick. 

I have been parenting my face off with that child, too.  Nothing new there, really. 

I do not know what chain of clicking happened to me on the internet that led me to this story about Samantha Ardente, but I can not suffer alone with this.  I mean, why is everyone so down on sexworkers?  Even in Canada?  Anyhow, it is here.  You're welcome. 

I have the radio tuned to a baseball game right now & there is only everything right about that.  Yessss. 

Á bientôt! 

rant-o-rama

I hate these stupid fucking bicycles.

 

 

I hate the green one first, then the big black one, then the little ones, equally.  I hate them in order of their codswallop bullshit uselessness, their fucking volume of storage.  I am never, ever going to get on that green bicycle again.  I did not even ever want that fucking bicycle.  I had to stop myself from taking it out to the street and tagging a FREE sign on it.  Truthfully, the only reason I did not is because I did not feel like getting it out of the door. 

Yes, so that is the first thing -- they have to be stored inside the house in a house where there is no room for them.  If you kn0w, if you have been here, than you know that the room they are sitting in in that photo represents 15% of the square footage of my first floor.  It is a room right off of my kitchen which is half of the size of my kitchen.  Fine.  That is the first thing.

The second thing is that they have to be taken outside --from where they are stored inside -- to use them.  Ok, so that means they have to be carefully and gingerly negotiated through the hall to the front door or turned a tight corner there in the room where they sit (where the door does not even open all the way because of the fucking bicycles in the way) and then delicately carried down the back porch stairs.  Children are usually doing this work, knocking shit around, leaving tires marks on the walls, putting holes and dents in moldings and trims with their kickstands, murdilating plants in pots, etc.

So, that.  You know, I bet all of that would be just fine if we had enjoyable, enthusiastic bicycling lifestyle of which all this inconvenient storage and release were just an ineviable part, but we do not.

Mari does not like to talk about this -- neither would I, were I him, frankly -- but I never wanted that fucking bicycle.  The children had bicycles given to them when they had their ninth and seventh birthdays.  In short order they learned to ride bicycles as a two-wheelery skill and that was good enough for me.  Spit-spot!  Check it off the list!  They say you never forget how, and so my job was done.  Where is my halo, my golden crown?! 

Then, my husband got a bicycle.  I do not know and one day it was just here.  Whatever, he is a grown man, and God knows I bring home plenty of $$$ stuff I have never mentioned to him first.  I mean, it happens that way as often as it does not.  All right, s0 he went through a phase of taking his bicycle out.  To run errands, mostly.  Short errands for which the car is not necessary and for which walking would take too long.  Whatever.  God gave me two feet and the city infrastructure gave me public transit, but he can ride a bike if he wants.

Then he started taking the children on these same errands, on which they had previously always walked.  I said nothing along the lines of WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY OR OUT OF YR MIND LETTING OUR IDIOT KIDS RIDE IN THE FREAKING STREET??? 

I think I said a little thing, which was along the lines of "Ugh, that seems totally unsafe," but I was not out there, nor was I ever going to be.  Also, if my husband gets my kids turned into a grease spot, it is not like I am going to stay with him, also he would not want me to because fuck if I would ever shut up my intermittent musings about how I recalled telling him so, plus I have a cheddar parachute, so you know, Allez, two-wheelerers!

The problem came when they decided that I needed to have a bicycle so they could live out their vonTrapp family fantasies.  Remember that?  Ugh.  I let them pressure me into this because ugh.  You know?  And from the start I was -- as I wrote then -- calculating how many times I would have to play along with Riding Our Bicycles until I could call it good in the Monies Outlaid category.

Then, the fourth or fifth time I rode it?  I crashed it.  I did not just crash it -- I crashed it, tore every ligament in my ankle, except the one that stayed strong and pulled my foot apart, and I spent 2 months on crutches.  Well, that was a gold brick in that economy I was trying to suss.  How many more times will I have to ride it?  ZERO, SUCKERS.

So, I have never been back on it.  Not because I crashed it, but because I never wanted to and now I do not have to pretend I might be willing to.  I used to ride a bicycle, when I lived in grimy, old, windswept, outdoorsy Madison, Wisconsin.  I owned one that I kept out at a friend's house about 12 miles from downtown.  I would have it sometimes, one bicycle in my kitchen or wherever, and might ride it around.  It was never my favorite mode of transportation, but conditions are not always prime for skis and snowshoes. 

The difference is -- and I knew this before I ever even consented to the bicycle here -- that the population of Dane County, Wis is less dense; the roads are paved because the infrastructure is/was less ridden upon; and carless travel is valued there in the culture.  Not so here, none.

All of those reasons are why the children can not go out and ride, just wheel around the neighborhood.  I am not going to let them out by themselves to ride in the bike lane.  Look, the one thing I can cling to is that I have been on a bicycle in this municipality -- it is too hard.  You have to watch the traffic, and no one is watching for you -- everyone is pissed off that you are on a child's toy in the street, where cars drive -- the road surface sucks sucks sucks -- that is how I wiped out for my crash! -- so you have to be constantly looking down and forward and around and ugh.  I can not tell them to ride on the sidewalk, because it is illegal and also anti-social, because the sidewalk is filled up with pedestrians who are smart enough to not be on a freaking Death Machine Bicycle.

Plus, there is a reason we do not give children drivers' licenses.  The part of their brain that can be processing all this road/traffic/depth/speed, etc is not even fully formed yet.  Have you never seen a kid the age of mine on a pair of fucking Heelys?  No?  Is that because they are verboten everywhere?  Does anyone know why?  Let me tell you, I have seen it.  No bike-riding for children alone.

So then, right, it was Mari's idea, Oh, well, we'll go with them.  But that will not work either.  I am supposed to be watching my own road + traffic + space + speed while riding with them and monitoring theirs also?  When they regularly run me off of the sidewalk walking?  When I know for a fact that the only reason I am able to operate a motor vehicle with them in it is because I know they are strapped down?

Now we are at this family-leisure-time vortex of  Let's go for a bike ride! and then when I demur, it is never, Well, we'll go and leave you to have some peace + quiet in your own goddamned home for once, it is instead Ok, well let's pick a different thing we can all do.  Which is FINE, but what it means is that these bicycles are in my house taking up a lot of room for absolutely no reason.

Who wants a bike?!

 

 

all the king's men

This was the scene in my dining room Wednesday morning.

 

It has been the scene in my dining room for a couple of weeks -- since the Feb 7th or 9th or something?  But the last contractor left & took all his things on Monday evening and I was free to restore our living space.  Tuesday we were kind of dizzy with possibility and also running a few errands and the like, plus the floor in the utility-ish room that we have was too filthy with crumbled drywall (from the electricians) and sanded plaster (from the painter) that we had to stop & clean that up.

I say we, but I mean that I had to supervise Garçon crawling around with a scrub brush.  Because why should I?  He is young, he has nothing else to do.  Why should I climb around on the floor scrubbing plus also make 21 meals every week?  Right!  Anyhow.

Wednesday, I puttered around a little, not even really knowing where to begin, feeling down.  So I went to get a massage.  It was 10 in the morning, the kids were all mid-morning set, I had finished a bowl of oatmeal and a pot of tea and I called Reagan Baby.  "Hi, I'm going to get a massage.  Do you want to come with?"

She did.  Then I lied to my children -- Reagan Baby broke her right leg a month ago -- and told them I was taking Reagan Baby to a doctor's appointment and then to run some errands and I would be back in 2.5 hours.  But, a massage is kind of like a doctor's appointment and we did stop at the pharmacy on the way home, so it was not a total lie, but anyhow. 

Anyhow, then I got home and I still made not one move to restore my home.  Part of it is that I am feeling very get it out of here about a lot of the stuff that came out of the kitchen and the hallway to make room for the painting & the scaffolding & the stuff. 

The other part of it is that I am feeling very what's the point about it, because part of the problem is that some of what is in the dining room, taking up a buttload of space, is my brand-new Pilates Reformer (get a dubious diagnosis for a neuromuscular condition & run with it), still in the crate.  It needs to be unpacked for permanent residence in the room heretofore known as the playroom.  In order to do that, first we have to re-site the books and bookshelves in that room and then it just all turns into a killer octopus and you wonder if you can turn it into butter.  Like the tiger.  So, you see, then.

 

I swear I would have had a repeat of luxurious, craven uselessness today but for that we had a leaking-in-the-walls plumbing crisis.  My God.  I had to wait around for a plumber, the same one who was here last week to fix a different problem in the same bathroom, same leaking-in-the-walls kind of a thing, and I was so happy that in my nervous paralysis I had not restored the bathroom since his visit last week (groceries in living room, bicycles in dining room, bath shelving in hallway because whole bedroom is still crammed into office), so that was good, but today, after today, things were going to start to return to ship-shape around here.

 

 

So I kind of took care of a little of that.  Putting big things back where they belong and pooh-poohing needless things and getting ready to give them away.  Then I made a fire and laid on the sofa and accidentally fell asleep at 4.

Mari called.  The kids told him I was asleep, which he thought was strange until he found out it happened in front of the fire.  When I called him back, while I was making supper, he was all,  "Where did you get the logs to put in the stove?"

"Oh," I said.  "So you admit to not leaving me any split wood?"

Oh, snap!  He asked if I had Garçon do it.  I laughed -- our son is weak.  He asked if I did it -- I do not even know how, and I was still laughing, because did I get married to an Eagle Scout so I could split wood?  No, is the answer to that question.  He asked if Fille did it, which was the least ridiculous idea he had yet, and I told him.

There were those big, dry, stumpy pieces of cut logs, you know?  He did. I threw them down the porch stairs onto the sidewalk and they broke into thirds and quarters.  Then I asked Fille to go and bring it in.

No wonder I was so tired.  The loss of infrastructure, the extra visual stimulation of the chaotic house.  The lack of order to cling to -- the only proof!  That I am not actually having a nervous breakdown!  Mari will be home this weekend.  We should make good progress together, getting behind the mule and all that.  I am sure I will be happy when it is all put back the way it goes. 

 

Thank God for the bulbs.  I put them in this Stangl dish a couple of weeks ago and it reminds me of how it used to be, how things really are, behind the GLOOM AND DOOM AND MISPLACED ITEMS. 

          

sounding louder

Hey there, beautiful.  This was the first of many, many mornings stretching lazily before me where there are no contractors in sight.

 

How about the tenacity of my homeland?  Yeah?  I am double-plus pleased + proud, even as I really know there is nothing different they could possibly choose.  Shoulder to the wheel and all that.  Forward.

This moment in history has taken a personal turn to relentlessly encouraging Kowalski -- who sends delightful, terse texts from every stop on his protest tour -- to hook up with the lovely vegan schoolmarm linking arms with him in the Capitol rotunda.  Or the smolderingly-restrained, gluten-free librarian who is ravenous in the face of all those pizzas delivered by the world.  Last night, I texted him, You won't even need to make a vegan cheesecake!  Just go over there & tell the jealous, leftist showgirl you have a heater in yr truck!

He texted back, making notice of how all these mythical ladies are variations on my themes.  I texted, I know what you like! Stop making excuses! You have to try!  Oh, I crack myself up.  Also, Mari, who still after 15 years can not actually believe how bold + bossy I can be with people I have known since I was in my teens.

I do not want to get off-road, chattering about Wisconsin, but I do not like it when my calendar thingo is stuck on the previous month, so while I have been limiting myself to 140 characters of indignation here & there, I want v much to keep a lid on general ranting against on the interwebs.  Plus, I am always talking about it in real life with pretty much every friend I have.  Also, reading to the children.  My throat hurts.  The other day, driving the car, I was thinking about going to a silent retreat, and soon.  

As Paul competently instructed the Romans, Detest what is evil, cling to what is good.

What is good.

• John Stewart's Feb 28 headline.
• I can get the bicycles out of my dining room, the groceries from my living room, and there are a lot of books all over.  Or something.
• One live kitten has finally been placed in a home that is not the Lord's.  (No offense to Charlie. Congratulations!)
• My children are adorably into the history of the labor movement. I remembered yesterday how Cesar Chavez was a hero when I was a kid -- in my house, church, school, town.  Hero!
• The pro-union cookie joke. (Thanks, Alex, for the tidy label.)
• Omg, Alex's crazily hilarious depression metaphor. It made me laugh until tears squirted out of my eyes.

I made a little mix and then wheatpasted it (har) at the 8tracks.  It is a perfect balm, maybe for you, too!  xox

 

eggshell

Saturday, we woke up in a house with no oats.  None!  The freezer's fifty-pounds-and-dwindling staple bag of steel-cut oats was gone.  While we waited for its replacement, the children had eaten breakfast all week by going through the two cardboard cylinders of rolled oats I keep on hand for weekend pancakes. 

Garçon does not eat eggs and I do not particularly care for them.  I was about to give up and get us out of the house for breakfast, but I noticed the large bag of frozen blueberries.  Hm.

 

I hacked a clafoutis out of a David Tanis recipe, which uses a handful of blanched almonds on top of the fruit.  I think the whole almond thing probably works better with the cherries he advocates.  It worked out fine, no one had any complaints, only concern that this was using up the pancakes' supply of blueberries.

 

The painting project soldiers on.  It is not very dramatic, color-wise.  The whole house used to be the same tan shade of white and now the whole house will be room-to-room varying colors of pink shades of white.  

Our bedroom ceiling is a blue shade of white.  Or something. 

 

I have been bunking with Fille all week because our bedroom is all packed up & pushed to the middle of the floor.  Anyhow, that has been fun; her bed is more comfortable than mine, I think.  We wake up in the morning & call each other "roomie." 

The last time we had a house painted, it was early on in our marriage, when we put our last house on the market; the children were babies and we did not have much in the way of anything, really, because of the way I am so choosy + forever-after about furniture.  There was no open shelving and very little in the way of tsatskes.  The dudes came in, bumped our furniture to the middle of the room, painted, put it back.  I am taking the inconvenience of all this immovable stuff personally.     

Mari is away at the office all week.  He calls & sounds sympathetic, to all this extra management of our household (bicycles in the dining room, dishes and groceries in the living room, an entire bin of scented candles and framed photos in the bathroom).  Also, he is good enough to fuss over my minute worries associated with the reverberations of being on Gerda-call and the anxieties of getting it all just-right.  There is always so much left to learn about everyone; it can fill as much space as anyone is brave enough to leave open.

super

I could go through a long, rambling narrative of my transformation into Packers fandom, in defiance of my hometown team's intense rivalry, but I am sleepy, anyhow.

Also, "fandom," since I have ever preferred college ball to the NFL, but anyhow.  I only have eyes for them whenever they are there to be seen, is what it is.  Just like all the rest of the homeland guys.

There was a piece in the NYer, I think, about concussions and then one of the dudes featured in the NYer article was also on Fresh Air's weekend roundup last night, talking about how some crazy, depressing number of retired NFL players have what has heretofore been known as the "punch-drunk" malady?  Oh, it was so depressing to listen to!  Sad!  Not a good pre-game activity.

 

We have been up to Lunar New Yearing.

 

Also, choosing paint colors.

 

Um ... also a lot of shopping.  Real, in-the-world shopping, not online.  It was refreshing.  Some of it was because all of this eating-all-day and sleeping-all-night has left me undeniably smaller and none of my jeans fit.  It is critical that low-rise jeans fit, or else they will slide right off.  Ask me how I know. 

I also bought three new dresses, and a longed-for Corinna handbag that was marked down + also a Commes des Garçons wrap skirt I have been visiting with -- petting it, murmuring lullabies -- for the last three months, which was also marked-down by 75%.  Then, I cast aside 37 articles of perfectly-good clothing that I just was no longer into (or no longer fit into), and three handbags.

Plus, a lot of visiting and social incoming, and I am not talking about social media.  Hardcore, dirt-world gaeity.  Many cups of tea, lots of polite + pleasant chit-chat with husbands as they arrive home.  We are supposed to go to a Super Bowl party tonight, but ugh -- all those extra people.  Some of them will be total strangers!

A sweet, old pal is having a tough time right now.  I wish I had those mitts from the robber girl.  I could totally make use of them where I would have to travel to, though in this case I should be able to do my best work via telecommute.  I will have to, the calendar is full through March; Gerda was a little girl. 

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.

unlimited commerce

Mari was going to take our car to the mechanic today v v early -- we have only the one car & I feel like we are the only people we know who have only one car; also, the same name.  I wonder if people think my husband is a marital rapist, too.  Oh, come with yr Google search terms*, I'm ready!  Anyhow, mysteriously he did not.  I am not going to ask why, since I wish to go to the grocery store, because it is time for our fourth and final holiday meal in a couple of weeks and for the third time, I am pretty unprepared & surprised to find myself here.  So, that. 

I did not make dessert for Christmas dinner, I realize now, and I might regret that, but fuck it, that was last year already.  This year, we have had dessert + holidays, so allez!

I have spent most of this first week of the New Year sorting things out, customer-service-wise.

1. The "French" Wire-Log Carrier Situation

Before Christmas, I ordered a log basket from One Kings Lane, since we were about to have a woodstove in and all so would need something pretty to place the wood in, certo.

(Last night, we were sitting around, talking about logs + kindling & such, Mari and I, and I just collapsed gaily & girlishly into giggles.  When I could finally get it out, the answer to the WTF-look on his face, I gasped, "I keep saying wood," and then I collapsed again, giggling and snorting.)

It came two days ago, totally broken.  Because of  packing failure! 

 

Like, ok, I expect this from an eBay seller, but not a real company, shipping!  Also, how to put Fragile!  Fragile!  tape all over a box and only use a thin sheet of paper within for "packing?"  How?   

 

One Kings Lane did not ship this to me directly, and when I called them, the way to the remedy was short + clear.  "If you can take photos of the damage and email it, we can take care of it quickly," Jamie said when I called.  And yes, as a replacement is on its way already.  They are heroic and I recommend them for all of your private online sales purchases.  Haute Look is OK, in the end, but not to quick, sure, nor brightly illuminated in their way.  Cheers!


2. The BlackBerry Situation 

My Starter BlackBerry model was an 8800, purchased sealed in the box, never-used, from an eBay seller who probably lifted it from the back room at his T-Mobile Store day job.  Just saying.  While it was still under warranty, it was replaced by another new 8800 because of a earphone-thingy malfunction.  Sometime last year, despite several restoration procedures along the way, I used the trackball to death.  I got another after-market BlackBerry, this time from a friend, who offered it to me. 

I should not say to much about it, but this person is in the slight purview of corporate appliances from a supply contract that lay fallow after one year or less.  I asked if they meant that I should use it for parts, which seemed like a good idea to me, but in the end I wound up using it whole.  Mistake.

I never liked this newer-model Berry, but it is never actually convenient to clear the decks and do BlackBerry surgery.  Not for a clerk-typist.  Anyhow, this is Sparta and so I finally went in to do the BlackBerry transplant, during which time I killed the patient.  Whoopsie! 

Anyhow, to make a long story short: When I called T-Mobile about getting a new device, they kind of pissed me off.  I have been their customer for 11 years, the latter half of which time I have not been bound to a contract, and they nanced around about my free upgrade.  In the end, they gave it to me, shipping waived and everything -- I was as charming as I could be, in the ridiculous circumstance -- but I did not want it. Particularly, I was chafed by their wanting me to get into a new 2-year contract.

Since I have no intention of leaving the service -- I have the sweetest monthly deal with them, $85 for unlimited everything -- asking me to contract is just words, but still.  Whatever. 

Anyhow, I soldered together the part of the Berry under the trackball that I accidentally ripped off and I am back in business.  It works!  I can not stop crowing to my husband or son about this triumph.  I feel so capable!  Yesss!  This seems to be 2011's theme!  I am capable, recognize!  Although, I am probably going to upgrade, since the newest BBerry devices do not use the trackball, which is probably better, really, but just for a little while I am going to savor the sweetness of my DIY.    

 

Bisous!

*reminds me that I was going to switch my Typepad setting to turn "search-enginey" back on for this thing -- which I had turned off because I like to put words together in perverse ways -- but I think I decided, as I typed marital rapist, that I prefer to remain privately online.  In honor of One Kings Lane!  Salud!