la femme follette

very funny, bitch

This spring has been a little stressful; I have alluded to it.  Half of the strain has been my health and running concurrently has been something else.  Something involving my children.  A person must be out of their minds to get between any woman and her children. 

When Garçon was born, there was a lot of neonatal distress, O₂with a bag & mask, etc, etc, blahblah.  The NICU chick came over to me and was telling me a lot of words I was not really comprehending and there was a lot going on: I was having a repair done, he was being monitored, and as he and I had almost just died (though Mari and I had no idea at the time), there were a lot of people in the room.  I said to the NICU chick, kind of implacably, "OK.  Well, just give him to me for a sec before you go."  She told me that he was fine, but they needed to take him away, etc, etc, and I said to her, "Maybe you didn't hear me.  I said for you to give me my baby."  It was kind of bizarre and hilarious at the time, and Mari told it as part of the birth story, this sudden maternal protection, but there it was and it is what it is and I, like most women I know, will fuck your shit all the way up if you try to tell me how it is going to be with my children.

The rumble is on the baseball diamond, where we are going to have a knife fight tomorrow morning, and I get to wear these excellent shoes, which came just for me, just for this outing!  They are just as foxy as the boots I wore in the first match.  I hope I do not fall down.  That would wreck the whole thing we have going, with the shiny hair and expensive shoes and richly-tailored Italian menswear and the highly-regarded consultants on our side.  Also, the part where we are a. right and b. not morons.  We will see.      

F train, F word

Thirteen years ago, I was in Brooklyn, living in sin.  Not even regular sin.  Like sin in the Netherlands.  I was not chastened by the fact that  it looks exactly like Sesame Street.  In fact, thinking back, it was something of an incentive; I am irrepressible and perverse in exactly that way.  I left some months later in something like despair, ran right into the arms of Kowalski, then once perfectly-salved I happened to run into my future husband at a party while I was telling a wry story featuring my irrepressible perversity and then the whirlwind rest and here we are, surprised to find ourselves on a weekend jaunt in Brooklyn. 

I had not exactly resolved to never return, but I had certainly no intention.  Saturday, I had to so that I could meet up with the beautiful entourage accompanying Jen to Renegade Craft Fair.  There were good times and bad, a little sunburn, a distressed (and distressing) late-night email, and some really happy children.  I never saw the children, because I stayed at the fair for most of the afternoon, then when I got the call to meet Mari and the children, there were madcap subway hijinks. 

Mari and Mr Jen were with all of our kids on the Brooklyn shores of the East River, to which they had ostensibly gotten on the subway.  I had read the service change notices and thought I knew (knew I knew) that one could not get to where they purported to be in that way.  I chose to have faith in their obvious location and go.  Except that the A train was indeed running on the F track and so then I spent the next hour underneath Chinatown not giving a fuck and being very, very tired.  In the end, aboveground at Smith in the pouring rain, surely contracting Legionnaire's disease, I found out from Mari that Mr Jen had driven them all in a car.  Of course.  That is always the way with me:  when I decide to have faith, I should have questioned.  When I question, I should have just kept it quiet, etc.   

Algren, who was with me at the fair while I was taking this call and complaining about trains and opaque instructions, said he understood exactly how I felt, but I do not know.  While this was all going on, I just never felt as shouty as he gets.  I did, while underground, compose an email full of bad language to The Israeli's wife, with whom I had tentative plans for Sunday.  However, I admit that all this train-riding is a little underground crazymaking.  I do resolve to be sweeter to him or maybe split the difference and meet in Bowling Green, where there must be one restaurant. 

Speaking of Bowling Green:  The 5 was running on 7th Ave this weekend and the 2 up Lex.  I whispered to Mari, with my eyes wide, sitting on the 5 (the 5 train!) at 14th St,This is anathema.  I did not regale him with the whole situation with the East Side & Their Subway Situation, because it would bore him, surely.  It only affects me when I am getting a haircut, anyhow.  The thing was not only that we had to board a 5 and believe it was going to take us along the 2's route, but that we had to do so by getting off of a perfectly good 2 train (which was on its way to run all along the East Side, wtf) to get onto a Brooklyn-bound 5 and further believe it was going uptown. 

This is different from Garçon's very age-related & horrible resistance to this train or that one, which in the heat of Saturday made me certain I would slap him.  "Whaaa-at?"  he said to me, literally digging his heels into the platform before a Brooklyn-bound F train.  "This train says it is going to Coney Island??!?!"  I remanded him to the detail of his father and commandeered my usually angelic-child, who could not make it last this weekend, so turning on us this morning.  With Algren all last night at dinner lavishing her with his favorite & best attention, too.  She is naughty sometimes.

She is never this sulky in Manhattan.  Not when she can count the steps from The Israeli's house to the red-bean bun bakery to the Good Playground with the Library and All the Pigeons, wriggling along, dodging the septugenarians with his children while he and I make a taller-than-everyone, shiny-hair-and-good-shoes, raucous scene.    

I was feeling a little sulky about the whole borough, too.  Bleh. We made up at the fountain, she and I.  She was elated and cute and I tried not to look while she was getting all wet because I do not want her to hate it here just because terrible things happened.

   

love the exception

I am back into the regulation clingy, long-armed knits & low-rise jeans I wear three seasons and have dialed it down to Buffalo Springfield and solo Don Henley.  Don Henley from 25 years ago, not from the recent past where he styles like the male Faith Hill.  Kowalski called me tonight while I was out running errands and told me a funny, sweet story about someone we used to know, a story that is the tiniest bit sad.  I exchanged him, in the light of a sodium vapor lamp, a long confessional of the sort that is his purview.  He was noodling around on the piano while we talked and now I seem to have a thirst for Muddy Waters.  Or Outkast.  Leonard Cohen?  I cannot sort it all out just yet.  Obviously.

The rain continues and the eggplant are still inside, shivering.  If I had known that this spring would be this way, I would have planted spinach when I thought of it.  Sadly, I then considered the season too long in its tooth.  I have spinach from the farmer's market, however, still with its tiny roots attached.  It was being passed off as premium baby greens, but thinning the rows in the garden was my task as a child and I recognized the little roots attached to the babies as more of a waste not, want not situation.  Premium greens makes me laugh a little.

My (s)mother made this soup after Mass every Sunday when spinach was in the garden, which is in the Midwest a very, very long time.  It was always best with the thinned plants; I was happy to have 2 full bags.  It is the only soup I have ever known to be a fine companion to a plain green salad right alongside. 

Lentil Soup

Boil 2 cups French lentils in 10 cups of liquid as desired for soup* until quite tender.  Salt to taste, leave to cool. 

When ready to eat, give 4 to 6 large handfuls of clean, young spinach a quick turn in a 1/4c of butter on high heat, just long enough to wilt.  Pour spinach (with butter) into the lentils.  Puree to about a 70% smoothness, then reheat gently.  Taste again for salt, then add the juice of one lemon.  Serve hot.

I think it is Outkast, definitely.

*Chicken or vegetable stocks work well, although I always use water with 4 ribs of celery and 2 carrots, which I remove when the lentils are done.

don't. stop. don't stop.

I had a dream this morning that Mari was long-dead and I was getting it on and on with The Israeli's cousin.  I was telling it to Mari after I woke up, and he said, "Isn't he married?"  and I said, "Yes.  In the dream he said, I don't even like her!  and then I said to him, I don't even like you.  Take off your pants."  Mari gaped a little and I shrugged.  "You never knew me then," I told him.

Subconscious showcasing of then is surely due to the spectacle of cold on teevee last night, really.  I was not exactly homesick, watching all that excellent sub-zero, but I kept all night thinking of that Dean Martin line I quit drinking, now I just freeze it and eat it like a popsicle.  There is something purgative about the bleakness of an entire season of punishing, arctic temperatures, the scourge of just one minute outside, when breathing takes the breath away.  I always found the icy austerity such a comfort, its impossible severity so familiar to me, like my tenacious emotional frigidity.  I don't even like you.  Take off your pants.   

But enough of that, more about football and yarn.  I vowed I would not get caught up in yesterday's games, but then found myself involved in a yarn storage project, instead of getting in and out of the gym at a reasonable hour, like a daytime hour.  I have more and less yarn than I thought.  It has mostly been tucked in places and in parts, sorted by project or priority, and mostly with the goal of keeping my (once-) small children from "discovering" it and unraveling it all over the house.  Not to mention what they could do to or with the right-sized needle.

The children are bigger now, also more afraid of what might happen if they fuck with my stuff since they now have some stuff of their own.  So I decided that it was time to pull it out and find a way to put it all together somewhere.  Oof.  We have these stupid cabinets on our third floor for years.  Good IKEA idea gone bad.  I hate them, they were originally intended for our bedroom (??? I clearly was high) but put them in the guest room in case our guests want to hang something up.  The closet in that room is kind of a joke.

This birch-shelf-on-white-cabinet look I saw at IKEA was much cuter at IKEA, I have to say.

I keep thinking it is not a lot of yarn, and it is not a lot, not compared to some of the stashes I have seen on the onlines.  But for me it seems like a lot of holdings.  Also, this is after two winters of more or less using what is in my stash.  Also, a crochet project.   Only a teeny pile consisting mostly of black cashmere and/or silk-mohair is stuff that I am hoarding for myself.

The rest of it is yarn (ok, a lot of yarn) I bought for projects that I have since turned my back on.  Also, I have three unfinished projects, one of which is going to its rightful owner, a co-knitter on a baby gift project which crashed onto the reef of Not So Much Her Friend Anymore.  The other is a poncho for Fillette, waiting for finishing, which is dumb, because it is a 10 minute seam to crochet.  The third project is a felted handbag, also part of a Concert Project, which I dropped out of, mostly because of fear of the unknown and also because I realized I did not actually want a felted handbag.  Now I look at the pattern and the whole thing is a cinch to complete, but it would be so anti-climactic, that it serves as better tension just lying around while hanging over my head.

Also, I found a shitload of accessories -- stitch markers, tapestry needles, stitch holders, four ka-cha ka-cha counters -- and a lot of  gauge swatches and little bits of leftover yarns from projects I loved, which I miraculously remembered to label in some way.

I finally left yarn all over the bed in the guest room and went to the gym, just in time to catch the AFC game's post-game show. Oh, curious!  Look at that what is on teevee!  I said to myself, not fooling even myself.  There is nothing, however, to clear a gym of its New Year's Resolvers like a major sporting event.  I whipped out a 5k on the rowing machine, then noodled around stretching and fooling around with a swiss ball until kickoff at old Lambeau Field.  Then I climbed onto a Stairmill machine and had an excellent discussion with the guy on the machine next to me, also with the game tuned to his little teevee, about the cold. 

"It seems cold there," he said.  I said, "Dude.  Yeah.  Where are you from?"  He was from Charlotte.  I rolled my eyes and looked at him sympathetically.  "Trust me," I told him.  "It could be colder, but it is plenty cold enough."  He watched a little longer and then turned to me , slightly horrified, and said, "The people in the stands?  They're not even playing football."  "Nope," I said.  "But they are from Wisconsin."  I was only not dying of homesickness because it was cold enough here yesterday and I was not very in the mood.   

I finished my (even-elongated for teevee-watching) workout before there was a score, and pretty much while in the shower vowed (again) to not watch it.  On the way out, I caught the score right before the half ended and when I came home reported to Mari (who knew full well where I had sneaked off to -- a place with teevee) that it was shaping up to be a nail-biter that I simply could not watch.  No way!  I meant it this time! 

We do not watch broadcast television here.  The children used to watch a little bit of PBS Kids programming when they were younger, but then about three years ago I got tired of them sassing me about whether they would or would not watch it, so I got rid of the rabbit ears and that was that.  Yes, rabbit ears.  So when I found out on ESPN.com that the game was tied in the 4th quarter, we went downstairs to find out if we could watch this game. 

We could.  It was pretty entertaining, an exciting quarter, though none of the game that I saw was any great football playing.  I mean, whatever.  Too much loose ball hootenanny, for one.  I have to say that I am relieved at the outcome because a. I now do not have to watch the Super Bowl and b. I now do not have to watch the Super Bowl in which the Patriots clean the floor with the Packers, after they worked so hard to win the NFC championship game.  But I might want to steal fleeting glances at the Super Bowl where the Patriots clean the floor with the Giants.  The gym will be so empty on that day.  I wonder if rabbit ears can still be purchased?  Maybe I could just use knitting needles.

frankincense, myrrh, waffles

I canceled the idea of a Twelfth Night party before Christmas even got started, so instead we got our neighbor to babysit and we went out to catch a matinee of Sweeney Todd. 

I had not one desire to see the film because first when I found out about it, I thought, "egads, another Tim Burton movie, with Johnny Depp. ::yawn::"  Then I found out it was a musical and I became rather opposed to the idea of seeing it.  Then I heard the Zanuck interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air and decided I had to see it.  Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman are not Barbra Streisand, but I felt (as with Snakes!  on a Plane!) that if I skipped it, I would miss something that needed to be seen.  It was better than I expected, though I almost did not make it.

Mari and I were the only audience members under the age of about 70, the theatre loaded with loud-talkers who had seen the orginal production from its first night on Broadway.  It was touch-and-go for a while, surrounded by the AARP and their very loudly-voiced artistic concerns.  Then, in the first scene, I turned to Mari, panicked -- There are not words in this film???  He shook his head, didn't I know this?  Honestly, if every seat had not been filled, I would have bolted.  It was a terrifying Moulin Rouge moment, but in the end it was ok.   

We were standing outside the theatre, leaving when the movie was over, and one of the original loud-talking Patrons of the Arts told his companion, "I could have done without all the blood."  I said, loudly to Mari, "I could have done without all that singing!"  It was distracting.  I have auditory-processing issues sometimes.   

Our children are now old enough that Sundays we can sleep in late, at least until 9, while they play or read, and quietly sustain themselves with snacks.  Then I wake up and make waffles.  Gluten-free fucking waffles from a recipe I adapted myself, which pretty much leave me feeling like a goddamned genius.  Except for the fact that my new waffle iron is kind of mysterious.   

I am also feeling pretty seriously accomplished due to the big finish of the socks.  Mari said this morning, "Why do you keep calling them breakup socks?"  So I explained to him that Kowalksi has in all these 12 years never really exactly forgiven me for not breaking it off with him before I got married to Mari.

Mari gave me a look, the kind of look he has to give me pretty often -- which is really his own fault as he forgets he married a dangerous lunatic -- and said, "What?"  There was quite a reasonable explanation, which was just what he already knew:  Kowalski and I had a fearsomely on- & off-again affair which was carried on over a number of years.  He had no reason to think the switch -- which was always in my hands, because left to Kowalski's devices, we would have been ever-on -- would be forever switched to "off" in a matter of months. 

After a total of 5 months of radio silence, Kowalski tracked me down with some muscularity in honor of my birthday and I had to resolve the question of why I no longer went by my maiden name.  It was rather uncomfortable, as I recall, though I remember I rather petulantly pointed out to him that marrying someone else was about all the breakup anyone should need.  He maintained that it would have been nice to know.  I explained that I just thought it would have been too awkward.  I may have since retreated from my rather sociopathic platform just a teeny-weeny bit, and only just in the past 4 years. 

I have to say that I feel better about it all, now that I have knit a lovely pair of socks.  He will, too, upon receiving them, I am sure.  Socks get their own post later in the month.  Christmas can come down tomorrow! 

checkered past

This is a chair that we bought in the year 2000, along with 5 other chairs (two with arms), a drop-leaf table with two leaves, and a china cabinet.  All of it was made by the Drexel Furniture Co in 1961, according to the tags on the table, and Mari and I found it in Frederick, Md, while looking for something different.  The set consumed a lot of space on the floor of one of the antique sector's stores, and when the dude caught me circling it, he offered it to us for a song.  Well, that and we had to get it back inside the Belltway, for which we borrowed a friend's extremely boss (and brand-new) Ford F150.  A good friend, and gas was cheap then, wowee.

There was a wrinkle.  I was pregnant with Fillette.  These chairs were so hideous with their drab floral wrongness and once they were in my home, I hated them.  I also, by association, hated the whole dining room set.  I had craved a little drop-leaf table in a glossy, frenchy mahogany, with those curvy little chairs & a cute little corner-curio, the lot of it with groovy paws at the ends of the legs.  I spent every night after Garçon went to bed crying my eyes out about our horrid dining room set.  Mari was on travel the day after we hauled this thing home, and I would call him every night, weeping and weeping about how awful this dining room set was and how our lives were ruined.

Mari was helpful, because I told him in the store that I could replace the fabric on the chairs, that it would be a  snap.  He would remind me and I would cry and cry and cry more.  He would say "Honey, what now?"  And I would try to control myself -- so excellently, hilariously, stereotypically pregnant -- and then I would be fine.  Until the next night, where our son would go to bed, I would be alone in the house (and pregnant!  and irrational!)  and his cell phone would ring and it would be all the crying & confessions of true lives undone by ugly chair fabric.  Again.

When he got home after a week, he offered sweetly to take me to the fabric store, whereupon I (yes) began crying and told him that he did not understand that I could never go there under pressure to pick a fabric for how could I ever choose???  Then I turned into the irrational shouty pregnant lady.  O, pregnancy!  You and your inconveniencing hormones.

Eventually, while doing something else at the Crate & Barrel outlet near the midwife's office, I happened upon a red-gold checked fabric that appealed to me and I had it cut as quickly as possible & left.  This was because I had entered the phase of pregnancy known as "nesting."  Also, I changed the fabric myself in what seemed like record time.

Well, it is a quick project even without the hormones, as it happens.

I had been thinking of recovering the chairs, idly (because even when not pregnant, choosing decor is hard for me), and then in the Junior League Thrift Store a couple of weeks ago I got it all together.  I was fondling a gorgeous hand-crocheted baby blanket, while wondering if it was truly awful to pass it off as my own work -- in a sin of omission kind of way -- to that baby who just got its project scrapped, and I noticed a whole big wad of yardage of some cast-off upholstery fabric that appealed to me.  Great!  It was $10.  Grand!  No choices to make here!  It is a sign from the universe!  It was more than enough.

One thing is that I did fall in love with the wrong side of the fabric.  Ha-ha.  But when I got it home and figured out which way was up; I felt fine.  Because it seemed like fate.  Or Santa. 

So, recovering these chairs is simple, once the tools are assembled:  unscrew the four screws holding the seat on the chair; wrap the seats tightly in the fabric; staple it with a staple gun; then put it back together.  I can always hear Polly Perfection on this project -- take off the old fabric, yayaya, blahblah -- but whatever.  I am sure the day will come where someone will look at the undersides of my dining room chairs, but I will not give a fuck even then.  I will say, "It was a 45-minute job.  Go the fuck home."

There is a lot of the f-word in these projects here at my house.  As if Quentin Tarantino produced a show for HGTV.  My staple gun sticks a little bit?  That cocksucking motherfucking bitch heard it the fuck all the goddamned whole way through.  Shit.  Part of the problem was that I was stapling through three layers of fabric, but come on!  Lay off already, douchebag!

The one legitimate concern about wrapping and bunching the fabric any which way is that the seats have to be screwed back on.  If there is a lot of fabric covering the holes, the screws cannot reach.  But that is irrelevant!  I use a drill with screwdriver bits!  What does it say on the side of the drill?  It says Bad Motherfucker.  Fillette says, "Mommy, no.  Black and Decker."  Less than an hour, no tears, no baby on the way.  Phew. 

I do. I won't.

Mari and I are lately unable to resolve the matter of Superman spinning the world backwards to save Lois.  He says it is the stupidest thing ever.  I say it makes perfect sense.  He regales me with all the reasons it is "totally stupid," why spinning the globe to time-travel would never work.  I say, "yeah, whatever.  like a clock, ok?"  This is not like when I cheekily made fun of LOTR to love it & laud it in the end.  Resolving a conflict like this is why marriage was invented. 

will not star Natalie Woods & Steve McQueen

I spent close to two hours on the backwards escalator thinger at the gym, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, since "ER" was playing two episodes at a time on the TNT channel, and the Sirius Classic Alt guy was churning out a fun playlist, but I can hardly move now.  I almost did not make it to the not being able to move, for when I left the gym, all spaced out on endorphins and Oingo Boingo, I could barely keep it together and almost crossed the (busy, downtown) streets against the light three different times.  I was reading them wrong, or something.  I made a few cab drivers very angry with me. 

What I was thinking about, which was the bulk of my distraction while I was kind of wobbling down the street on jelly legs:  Weird Science kicks Superbad up and down the block.  Twice. 

I have been watching a fair amount of teevee while at the gym, since every little cardio machine has its own television display.  Mari and I were thinking, for several months now, of maybe getting satellite teevee service, but I had to tell him that I have been watching television and there is nothing on it but a bunch of crap.  Just! a! bunch! of! crap!!!  112 channels at the gym and the most compelling things I have found to watch most days are 1. episodes of a medical drama six years out of date (at at time that the show was 4 years past its prime) and 2. Japanese baseball games on IFC.  For this we should spend $60 each month?  No way.

Besides that, we would have to get a new television, since our 15yo teevee set a. does not have what it takes to adopt modern-day auxiliary and b. is about to blow its picture tube any day now.  I just five minutes ago finished up a teevee market survey and I have to say that when this television set goes, there will not be another one.

It is the same predicament -- "predicament" -- we were in 12 years ago when we were married.  We each had not a television set and then got married and still had not one.  People were astonished by this, and frequently reacted as if we had told them our home lacked indoor plumbing.  We would defray the endless examination of this anti-establishment choice by coyly reminding our inquisitors that we were newlyweds, and so had more interesting ways to pass the time.  This was not entirely true.  I happen to think that watching paint dry is more interesting than watching what passes for acceptable broadcast entertainment. 

Eventually, a friend of ours upgraded his television set and gave his (still really brand-new) set to us.  We took it, and we use it to this day, but that is how we got a television set.  Before that, there was never a chance we would actually spend money that we worked to earn on something as crazy as a magic box that would help us waste a bunch of time.  Occasionally, we would find ourselves in a store that sold television sets -- Sears, Target, wherever -- and we would get distracted by the shiny flickerings of the television section.  Then we would start to think that maybe we could get one, it wouldn't be so bad, we did miss watching rental movies, etc, etc, and then we would see the price tag and straighten up and get the hell out of there.  $200 for ... what?  No way.

I still feel the same, browsing the Electronic Superstore's website now -- a friend had mentioned that to replace our same old 19-inch set, one with a boxy countenance, would be "dirt cheap" -- I just cannot bring myself to part with any amount of money to have ... what?  My son endlessly harassing me about whether or not I will let him watch a program on PBS that is for children half his age?  Or haranguing me about letting him rent The Simpsons on DVD?  I would not spend 50 cents to ensure such torment, let alone the cost of three brazilians! 

God, all Garçon wants to talk about is television, and he is a child who is lucky to get to watch as much as three hours of A-V entertainment every month.  He wants to discuss television and also the jokes he heard on the television shows he watched.  It is like living with Quentin Tarantino, if Quentin Tarantino were crushed-out on Fozzie the Bear.  Mari and I considered that maybe if he had all the television he could hold, he would become sated with television and then we would no longer have to hear about it.  That may be true, but I cannot bring myself to purchase a ridiculous television in order to find out.  At least with this one that we do have, its value long-fulfilled, I can fantasize about the day we get to throw it out.  I hope he grows up to have some exciting performance art about the deprivation of culture, but probably, he will just be a sullen delinquent who watches a lot of teevee.  As long as he moves out, I don't care. 

queen of the 70s

At the beginning of July, Mari and I spent a day cutting a hole in our the wall between our bedroom and the walk-in closet of the adjoining room.  Restoring a doorway, actually.  Our house is over 100 years old, but was "updated" by a developer about 7 years ago and I spend a lot of time walking around frowning and complaining about how if one is going to fool around with 100yo architecture, one  had better think a long time about it. 

In houses built before air conditioning and zoned heating, a lot of thought was given to air flow.  One cannot just build a wall where there never was one and expect it to all work out.  It has always been stuffy and airless in our bedroom, in spite of having two eight-foot tall windows in there.  It took us 3 years to figure out what the problem was.  Ever since then, we have been talking about removing the patch in the wall and reframing it, reseating the closet on the other side, yayaya. 

It was really, really hot in the beginning of July, night and day, so I woke up one day, completely deranged, more insomniac-suffering than usual, and said that today was the day that Mari would cut through the silhouette of the seam on our bedroom wall or I would take care of it myself with a sledgehammer. 

While the children were at camp we took everything out of the closet, moved everything out of the bedroom.  Mari cut a big, drywall-y hole in the wall, dust was all over the second floor, just everywhere.  I was downstairs cooking eggplants and then later, when everyone was all unshowered and covered in drywall dust and blood and olive oil, the "Mommy Police" came to our door.  It is necessary that one think of this term a tad euphemistically.

I do not want to spend too much time on the visit from the "Mommy Police," but they were called because of a counterfeit concern propped up mostly on the vindictiveness of Old Ms Officious + Bitchy Neighbor.  I could not actually believe they came over -- what with their incredibly busy schedules -- to check up on an allegation of Too Much Hollering (hollering what?  Get down in the dungeon??  Hurry, so I can drink gin and turn tricks??  I am from  Chicago.  We are a hollering lot.  I cannot help it, I am loud.) and Physical Restraint.  Physical restraint, really?  Ropes and latex tubing?  No.  Mommy wishes, and not for the little darlings.  Old Ms O+BN reported normal grabbing & squeezing of an oppositional + defiant + fisty 5-, 6-, 7-, then 8-year-old boy.

The whole thing irritated me.  Not because Old Ms O+BN called the Mommy Police, not really.  If someone really believes children are being mistreated, then it is their moral obligation to get involved.  (Although if anyone thinks my children are mistreated, they probably need to get out more + stop watching that kind of cinematic horseshit where everything school-age children do & say is precious & wise & important.  Maybe spend an hour or two at the local Walmart.) because it was bullshit.  It is bullshit because she has never had a conversation with my children, ever, even though they are out in the street long hours playing & drawing with sidewalk chalk and also home all day long, in the main. 

It is furthermore extra triple-plus bullshit because the one neighbor who is a friend and knows us well and will sometimes babysit the children for us is a social worker.   Also, Old Ms O+BN's very next-door neighbor.  But Old Ms O+BN never dropped by with a word for her.  Or, me, for that matter!  What about me?  What about going over and saying, "Hey, you hollerer, why don't you let those kids come on over and weed my garden?"  Ms O+BN would never do that because something so sensible is the provenance of reasonable people and also, MS O+BN does not have children (nor spouse!  nor love interest!) and perfect mothering ideals are the exclusive provenance of the childless since they have all the fucking time in the world to polish them and admire their vainglorious idiocy.   

The Mommy Police Officer was very kind & professional & thorough.  When the Mommy Police Officer comes to your house -- even if it is covered in dust & you in blood and olive oil & your husband in bits of drywall all over and everything you never unpacked is out of the closet and piled up in the hallway between the second and third floors -- it is probably a good idea to smile widely and invite her right in.  Apologize for your douchebag neighbor, then assure her that you know she has forms to fill out and get to work.  She will feel torn between your candor and your obvious busyness plus her necessary business and then you must smile still more sincerely + encouragingly as befits the daughter of the real police, and insist that she take her time doing her job and that you will love to help.

She will ask a number of questions about the children's and the family's administrative associations -- school, pediatricians, organizations -- and ask you to sign off on her checking with the physician to confirm the children receive adequate care when required.  It does not have to be a medical doctor, presumably it can be a shaman or a naturopath, as long as the children have never been neglected according to that paradigm.  There will be a lot of rooting around through one's filofax for numbers one never needs.  Then, she will ask to be taken on a tour of the house: the kitchen to establish that the stove, water heater, and refrigerator, are in good repair and that the last is appropriately stocked with provisions; the rest of the house to look for evidence of the children's activities and to make sure they do not sleep on a little bed of nails in the basement.

By then, the children will have been fetched from camp by a cleaned-up co-parent and then she will interview them alone.  She will ask if they have ever been harmed at your hand, if, how, and by what method & frequency they are punished, and that is all.  Then she leaves.  The Mommy Police are supposed to visit two times before they can clear a case, but she already called me and pretty much said, "You are not my priority because I have real work to do, so see you for this second visit sometime in 2010."   

So, that.  Forget about all that, it just spilled out because the point is: the timing of it was so excellent!  Of course, of course, the Mommy Police have never even driven past my house all the other 25,000 days of parenting that it was clean & tidy and I was beatific & well-groomed.  No, she came by on the day we were doing demolition in 98-degree heat.  Awesome!  More awesome, our house is now -- as constructed -- an excellent thermodynamo!  During this last heat wave, it was hardly above 83 inside and when the weather broke last night, our relief was instantaneous!  No waiting till 2010 or when they turn 18!      

will comply

The whole Lord of the Rings trilogy is not exactly my speed, but this Star Wars action our house has been seeing made me a little weak when I saw Two Towers at the library and I brought it home.  I saw the first one, [whatever is called], years ago on the drive-in screen.  I fell asleep at the end, protesting that I was watching it with my eyes closed.  I actually thought it was good and easy to understand, especially for someone like me, who is made cranky by sci-fi & fantasy + also has not any patience for Complete Suspension of Disbelief.  Give me something, jesus; I read history.

I thought I would be on good behavior, since I was kind of desperate to have something on the teevee while watching which I could wander in and out, as I was putting away a bushel of vegetables.  Judging by Mari's annoyance, I am not.  Flippancy is the reward for watching it with me while I only pay half as much attention as I can and insist on having renamed all the characters and their situations -- Harry Potter, Phillip Seymour Hobbit, Aerosmith-Elf, Pirate-Elf, Viggo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader & the Emperor, plus that creepy animated monster that is going to be so happy when Frodo gives him a pair of socks so he can go free -- they are all the same movie, honestly.  I will recast entire plot-point references like, Wait, so when Aerosmith-Elf was on the Oregon Trail there, was that real or just the Ferengi Dad's dream? and expect Mari to know what I was talking about.  He always does get it right away, which bolsters my claim that it is all one movie.  Of course, there is that for someone who does not care for sci-fi, I sure do for the past 20 years get dragged along to an awful lot of its display.

We picked a lot of vegetables Saturday.  Pounds and pounds of eggplants, zucchini, green & red tomatoes.  Also, raspberries that were so much fun to pick -- in spite of the Japanese beetles, shiny motherfuckers -- during which harvest Garçon was not lazy or surly or boneless at all and I have such hope for his future as a good citizen.  Additionally, they were delicious; there was 1.5 quarts that scarcely made it into the house before being devoured.  The blueberries were just a last-minute thing before we left, but it was nice for us to sit at the foot of the shrubs, in their relative shade, and just jostle the berries down into our containers while we drank water. 

One of the things about picking our own produce is that in the field, I have no sense of scale.  It looks so little, and then we get home, and I am all, oh, holy shit.  I did know that I was picking 12 quarts of berries and what that meant, and how that would look in my refrigerator, but 3 dozen eggplant didn't seem like such a big deal until I got them home.  Until I blistered my finger knifing them up.

While we were juggling all this produce along the route from the field to the cashier and then struggling along to our car, a woman stopped the straggling Mari and asked what we would be doing with all that eggplant.  He told her, "Well, you can make eggplant soup."  What?  Couldn't he just say, "My wife is over there?"  I would have let her know that ratatouille is not just a movie from Pixar.  Two dutch ovens of ratatouille just about finished off all the vegetables on the table there.

I had enough left to make a plain eggplant saute that consists of cubed eggplant, tossed in olive oil with garlic, over medium heat, requiring an amount of stirring that begins to rival that required of risotto.  Fillette will not eat it ("It is gray, Mommy!"), Mari and I consider it to be edible at best (and only with the freshest eggplant), but Garçon loves it so much it makes him pine for the season.  He will eat it even with terrible, flabby, bitter, supermarket eggplants, and then of course he sneaked seven eggplant seedlings into our cart at the nursery at the beginning of this growing season with that dish in his mind.

Everyone's favorite seasonal dish right now (until Garçon gets home and finds out I sauteed a dozen eggplant) is summer squash soup.  I made it just this year, right at the beginning of the season, not believing.  Who would make such a thing?  Why had I never heard of this?  But Fillette was going on about the beautiful farm market vegetables and making a nice vegetable soup, and I had a book from the library called 225 Classic Ways with Squash, or something, and it had a recipe for "Summer Squash and Squash Blossom Soup."  Plus, I still had 10 squash to deal with after sneaking them into hash browns had long become dull. 

I went into it expecting nothing, figuring I would feed it to the children who mostly eat anything, but it was amazingly delicious!  And at 5 cups of grated squash per pot, it could cook up quite a bit of summer squash overflow!  Also, freezable!  I keep making it, and we keep not tiring of it.  I may slack off soon, because our own front garden glut is still to come and I do not wish that we should be weary over it.    

Summer Squash Soup to serve 4 -- adapted slightly from 225 Classic Squash Recipes [or something like it]:  Grate one yellow onion, and enough summer squash to make 5 cups (4 or 6).  Saute squash and onion to tenderness with 4tbsp butter.  I like to add a teeny bit of whole cumin here, to brighten up the flavor, no more than 10 seeds.  Add 6 cups of stock (I use rapunzel vegetable bouillon, honestly), and bring to a bubble.  Cool to puree (or use a stick blender), reserving one cup of it as shreddy (I do not care for totally smooth soup), and reheat gently. 

The recipe called for floating 4 slivered blossoms in the finished product, but I hated that.  It was not romantic, it was wet & wilted, like eating something wrong.  Instead, I now finish it with a squeeze a half-lemon over the pot before serving, then salt and (white) pepper to taste.  It would be good cold, I think, if one used olive oil instead of butter, and maybe even a little hiccup of heavy cream at the end.