la femme follette

pulsing

For dinner tonight I made the lentil salad from stupid June's issue of House Beautiful.

It was ok.  Fille & I had it each on a bed of romaine with a poached egg.  My son doesn't eat eggs. 

I had tea with Eve yesterday; she was somewhat harried & distractable.  The 4 of us traveled to The New Barnes on Monday & it is everything every other reviewer says it is:  lighted (also, somehow more distressingly full of screaming children, idk).  Sunday Fifille & I had a restful, provincial-NYC visit; it was lovely.

It had been years since I'd had such a small radius on a NYC run:  We came into Penn Station in the late morning to saunter over to show for our brunch reservations at Cookshop; the ballet was at The Joyce, which was 2 more blocks downtown, back over on Eighth Ave.  The company was Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet -- they were so fantastic.  On our way back to Penn Station, we stopped to avail ourselves of 30 minutes of reflexology -- which isn't actually as good as it sounds once you work out it is only 15 minutes per foot -- and we were home by 9. 

It was really great.  Now the pool club is up + running every day & nothing gets done.  I swim a million yards while the kids goof around, mostly so I don't have to talk to anyone about anything.  If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone.  Goes double for you.  Yes, you.

provisional

This is going to drive at least two of you right out of your minds, but I let Mr Fox feed me, like, all the time.  He presses food into my hand & I tuck in. 

Everyone is totally envious of Mr Fox, for one reason or another, except my actual husband -- the one who lives with me, etc.  Lillo interrupted me one day when I was ringing off with [this or that reason I had to go, pertaining to Mr Fox], saying, "Why doesn't this guy have a job?!?" 

Ahahaha!

Anyhow,  Mari & I were sauntering over to the playground Friday to catch up with our kids + Extra Girl when Mr Fox wheeled up alongside of us.  We three were talking while he pulled down a little spray of berries from the tree above us and handed them to me.

They are Juneberries.  Say what?  Also known as Saskatoon.  I made them verify this wasn't a trick, a hit job hired out by Mari (or anyone else, for that matter), and then made him eat three times the amount he had handed to me, scrutinizing him the whole while.

They are pretty tasty, reminding me of the "strawberries" in major mass-market ice cream.  Or something, idk.  Eating them gives me a sense-memory of Baskin Robbins Ice Cream "parlors," so if you happen upon them & have similar feelings well up inside you, whisper them to me, please.  Anyhow, I saw Mr Fox this morning & he was in fine fettle, so maybe I can sublimate my rhubarb thing into these growing-all-over berries. 

Fille & I are off to NYC tomorrow to get a little culture, returning home in time for Shavout. I do not anticipate any granola-girls' rooting-around, not least because NYC is killing people with its trees.  We went roller skating today & I feel lucky enough to be in one piece, and also, suddenly, I no longer perceive biking as the same certain peril I judged it to be this morning.  For one thing, no one says, "Oh, it's just like wearing a pair of skates!"  Guess what, there is a reason for that.

Please let me know if you forage anything extra-plus during this next couple of days, I will not hold it against you if  you only pluck it from the long buffet table. 

 

make and take tuesday

Memorial Day weekend is next!  You might be going somewhere & you might have to bring a thing!  I give you a traveling green salad.  Miracle!  It is also not hard.  Also, I think that we can make it right-side-up or upside-down, right?  Like rhubarb.  Yes. 

 

It hails from here, the idea.  We had two bunches of kale in our CSA share last week; Mr Fox was coming by for dinner, so I could not just lay out microwaved potatoes & frozen spinach.  I was not feeling like cooking the kale up using my usual recipe (sauteed; because it was 87F, I think),  when I remembered seeing this recipe.

I did not have squash, nor shallots, because it's May here, you know.  I used red onions and dates to substitute.  I felt like goddamn Louis Pasteur!  Seriously!  Then, to show off the top of my range, I used some hazelnut meal I had lying around, instead of fooling around chopping little weirdly-shaped nuts!  I did not add cheese, because by now I was test-driving and I wind up at a lot of potlucks where there are starving vegans, one of them v often my son.  

It was roundly received as a smashing success.  Then! It held until lunch the next day!  Get out of here!  Amazing.  It requires a bit more chewing than I like to allocate for a salad, but OK.   

Kale Salad with Roasted Dates & Red Onions

Whisk 1/4c lemon juice with 1/4c olive oil.  Preheat the oven to 400F.

Wash & dry a bunch of kale.  Set aside the thick part of the stems (don't get too into this distinction, ok?) and cut the leaves + remaining stems crosswise into 1-inch-wide strips.  Yr salad bowl (this is mine, to compare) should be full, with room left for assembly.  Toss with the dressing.   Set aside for at least 30 minutes.

Slice 3 red onions longitudinally at 1/2-inch intervals.  Toss with  a couple tablespoonsful olive oil, just to make them shiny; don't leave them in a pool of the stuff.  Put in the oven.  When they are soft and starting to brown, add 8-10 pitted dates, sliced into thirds, maybe.  Poke it around.  When the onions are browned, but not crispy (or maybe just a teeny bit crispy on the very edges), take them out.  Salt the whole thing.  Don't get carried away.

Toss the kale with 1/3c of hazelnut meal.  Toss & toss & toss.  When the dates & onions are cooled enough to handle, add them & toss, toss, toss.  Serve when you are ready, but try to give the fully-assembled salad a half-hour to meld.     

blue who

We had blueberry casserole for lunch.  Any time we give a dish a pet name, it is True Love.

 

The given name is "Baked Oatmeal," from a not-too-too-long-ago issue of Martha Stewart's Whole Living.  I was going through a stack of magazines from Martha Stewart, looking for the recipes I wanted to archive, suffering page-turner's fatigue, you know, and my eye was caught by a closing/serving instruction to drizzle on with melted butter.  Wait, what again?  Go back.  Tell me now.  Yes.

On the night I sliced all those potatoes, Fifille & Garçon were going through Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian book to find a suitable recipe for a pile of thinly-sliced potatoes.  They were murmuring & reading and I heard Fille say to him, with a sad determination, "I could never be vegan."  I suspect it is about the butter.  I guess it could be about the cheese, but she has a cheese ceiling & no such thing exists for butter.  We are proud of her & so are many of you, I know.

When we were back home, at the legendary and yet prosaic Lou Mitchell's, we told her she could totally manage to spread her 2 pieces of toast on with 3 little peel-off cups of butter.  It was like a chug-a-lug contest.  You can totally get all three on there, we encouraged her matter-of-factly. 

She faltered for a minute when she realized the toast had been brushed with butter on the line.  I helped her out, explaining that was different butter.  "That was liquid butter, this is solid butter.  It's different.  Like ice in yr water."  I mean, fuck, right?  Seriously, come on!  Anyhow, she lathered on her 3 cups and there was a lot of high-fiving.  Just like a chug-a-lug contest.  Yes.   It was only an eighth-inch thick.  Fuck, I've seen people eat 10 times the butter piled on 1/3 the real estate, just because it was called frosting. 

OMG, butter.  How great to have a functioning, athletic, 11-year-old girl who eats butter at appropriate times, who is afraid of no food.  God is good.  Last week she said to me, while we were in the car, this:

All the girls in ballet class think their legs are fat because they jiggle when they jeté.

First, let us all clasp hands + thank God I was not operating the vehicle.  I was parked in the grocery-store parking lot.  Also, her father was there, in the passenger seat, not goading me exactly, but fixing me with a look.  A look that said, You're on again, baby.  Knock 'em dead.  But I was thinking, OMG, I'm so tired!  It was just last week we sat around for a long time, the 4 of us, talking about the NYT cellulite story.

 A long time ago, probably as many as four years ago, Fille saw a store-window advertisement for some Aveda product, the target of which was frizz.  Because some idiot let her learn to read, she asked me later, yk, what is frizz?  I told her it was a wide-ranging definition, but mostly it was marketing.  I reminded her of what remains after she brushed her curls smooth for ballet's bun, how when she let it down after class, she did not care for the resonant bigness of it (having v.t. issues, Reader, bonne chance), and that is what is demonized as frizz.

What came of that conversation, though, how I concluded it, laid the cornerstone for the place where I will dwell during these years she is entering, she with her friends. I told her everyone feels bad about themselves sometimes.  Everyone wakes up some day, everyone, and looks in the mirror & says, Omigod, it's me again! Even people who say, And omigosh with the perfect flawlessness, again!  It is fleeting for the strongest people, who move along from there.  But:

Any time you want to believe in a bad feeling about yourself, someone will be all too willing to help you, and they will take your money for something that they say will fix the problem the two of you have created.  So you have to decide how you want to live.   

We come back to that all the time -- constructs created by marketing, a culture holding fast to expectations no one can meet because people have bought into fantasy images, this kind of unquestioning devotion to unrealistic and unreachable standards. (Ophelia, breathe.)   

It was heartbreaking and insane to read about women in their sixth decade of life who were embarrassed by cellulite.  I mean, really?  The one woman who hoped to one day wear a bathing suit?  Even though Fifille was adorably puzzled & a little tart ("I mean, isn't she going to wear a dress at her wedding?"), I said to her, all grave & everything,  "This is where a woman can end up after a lifetime of believing in made-up problems marketers say she has."

So then, God, it was super-heartbreaking to hear about these 9-to-11-year-olds talking about their fat legs.  I swear to you, not one of these girls is fat, and they are not going to be fat.  We see their parents, their grandparents, all the time in school.  If we could grow them to their final statures today -- like super-speed --  they would all be between 5'8' and 5'10' and all wear a 4 or a 6, except 2 girls, one who projects shorter and proportionally more slender, and Fille, who is her father's child, you all know.

I asked Fille if her legs jiggled.  She said, "Yes! I told them, Legs jiggle because you have skin and ... legs!"  I asked her what they said.

"They said, 'Oh, Fille! You have the skinniest legs!  You're so skinny!'" she told me.  When she said those words, I placemarked the sentence by pressing my hand to Mari's forearm, and told him much later,  That is what I meant when she was 5 and I said no daughter but the one I have with you would dance ballet on my watch.

I reminded her what I told her about the cellulite ladies, about being long toward the end of a road.  I told her that at her age, they are all on the beginning of that road, yk?  Choose how you want to live.  Get your guns out.

Mari was less metaphysical, less bound-up in the deconstruction of patriarchy for sure.  "Tell them," he said, "that they aren't fat; they jiggle because they are weak.  Tell them to get strong."

Fille giggled righteously & said, "I know!" before I got involved, spluttering a little, telling her to tell no one that, and maybe if she does,  definitely tell no one her dad said to say that.  Good Lord.

It was a couple of weeks ago, we were talking while were on a walk, she & I.  It was before the cellulite story, before the heart-restorative story of this little girl, which also took up a lot of time, talking as we always have about the falseness of photographic images -- how the reason that one never sees women or men who look like the women or men in magazines is not because they live on some special island somewhere, it is because they do not actually look anything like that, because the images are not real.

The topic of our discussion, as we walked, was the outgrowth of a pair of jeans she was wearing.  They were already too short, and in my opinion, not enough room in the waist anymore.  She was resisting the latter assessment, which I wanted to address.

"You do know, honey," I started, somewhat gingerly, "you will not just get taller, but you --" I faltered, not wanting to say will get wider.  "You will grow in every direction." 

 "Yes," said she, confidently, excitedly, like a little girl who is still light enough to need to ride in a baby seat & wants desperately to pass that by. 

But then she said, in a still-excited, but more matter-of-fact tone, declarative, even, "I will become curvaceous."

The word she used! The fact that she already knew this! That sentence, when she said it,  blew away a whole raft of worries I had not even ever realized I had for her.  Expecto Patronum!  Yes.  So that was good.  This is a good life. 

Blueberry Casserole
(adapted from Whole Living magazine)

Butter an 8x8-inch baking dish.  Melt 3 tablespoons butter.  Cool.  In yr pre-heated oven (375F) toast 1.5c of almonds (I use pre-sliced ones, but you can do what you like, chopping later) & cool. 

While you wait, mix 2c rolled oats with: 1/3c granulated sweetener; 1/2tsp salt; and 1tsp baking powder.  

To the cooled butter, add one egg.  Whisk.  Add 2 cups milk + 2tsp vanilla.  Mix & mix.

Add half of your almonds to your dry oat mixture.  I have also always added 1/2c of almond meal, also, but you can skip that, I guess.  Mix & mix there, too.  

Pour about 2.5cups of frozen blueberries in the bottom of the baking pan (enough to cover it in a single layer, but x3).  Cover the berries over with the dry oat mixture, pour the milk mixture over the whole thing.  Scatter the remaining (chopped) almonds and another cup of blueberries on top.  Bake for about 45 minutes.  Or so.  You'll get the hang of it. 

I usually cut it into 6 pieces for breakfast, 8 for lunch.  Serve with a couple of teaspoons of melted butter per portion & then have some maple syrup, too.     

cap times

Have a still life.  I just thought these crazy old beans were pretty in the light.

 

Omg, this thing with my in-laws is so exhausting.  Nitter-natter, blibber-blab.  I wrote about it a long time ago, obliquely:  Why, why, WHY do you not change yr tune in the face of my music?  Um, what?  Are you even related to me?

Kowalski is after me, always, to remember that there are people in the world not nearly as hardened to the notion of eternal refusal as I, that they are not as shrewd in their calculations of a relationship's tensile strength.  I remind him, often, that I am fucking benevolent.  Because BENEVOLENCE IS FUCKING FUN.  Mostly because I can lord it over you ... and still.  Still! 

Man, anyhow.

 

We finally saw The Avengers last night.  I did not think it would be good, honestly, but was not going to resist it, because it actually could not be worse than Iron Man 2.  Not possible.  Every time, I would get a little cranky because I just thought, "Oooooh, it just will not be good," then I would remember Mark Ruffalo was playing Bruce Banner & then I would be filled with zeal.  ZEAL.

But I was right, in that what I thought was going to suck about it did: murky villain development (also right about Ruffalo as Banner).  Actually, it was a whole murky villain story, really.  When they are in Stuttgart, and the villain is acting up?  That villain should have spoken to all of those people in German and the movie should have had subtitles.  Because that would have been truly diabolical.  Instead, he was just shouting English commands to a bunch of gapers, and I was just sitting there, thinking, This guy isn't even from Earth.  Why's he so wedded to speaking English? Ok, whatever.

Ok, so, whatever.  Too sad that [redacted] had to [redacted].  He was one of my favorite characterizations from the Marvel film adaptations.  Mari says [redacted] isn't really [redacted], that he is totally going to be in Iron Man 3.  I hope so!

 

If you didn't know, The Avengers is, like, the world's most popular film, which is fine, but it puts pressure on a family of people who like just the just-right seats and are willing to get there to camp out a little, but then are thrust into a situation where everyone is getting there to camp.  The four of us were in position to get our seats about 40 minutes before the movie started -- Fifille was stationed outside of the theatre with Garçon, finishing her between-activities meal, and Mari & I gave the kids their tickets & told them to come in when she was done.

Mari got a phone call from work right as he put his hand on the lobby door to open it for me & I waited about 15 seconds before I pressed his ticket upon him and walked away to go find our seats.

I mean, honestly.  Focus!

 

I got to the door of the projection room screening the movie.  It was closed, and there was a gaggle of students in a huddle about 15 feet before it.  I stood there for a second before asking them what was going on.  They helplessly told me they were cleaning the theatre ("or something") and so that was what was going on.  I stood there for about another 15 seconds before walking past them all to go in.  As I made my way, there was shocked murmuring about my breach, which, whatever, but let's come back to that.  I made it into the theater, gingerly, tentatively, walking the corridor quietly.

The cleaning crew was there, cleaning, with their flip-down dustpans.  One of the gals sweetly told me they were still cleaning & that was why the door was closed.  I told her, also sweetly, a little conspiratorially, that I was sorry, that the people outside had told me so, "But they did not seem like credible sources." 

Then I started doing my thing, you know, the reason I am assigned any task, because of the mind control.  It went like this, after my regretful, confused pause in realizing the kids outside had been right in their information & I was, in fact, in the way:

Oh!  There is a scene after the credits!  And the woman in the ticket booth told me every show has been sold out!  Oh!  The turnover, must be so high-pressure!  No wonder you had the door closed! 

Bingo.

The response was deafening.  Then we chatted, sororally, you know, while they were working.  I was digging in my purse, looking for a piece of gum ("Gum, anyone?  Ladies?")  They were wrapping up, I was being encouraged to go on up & find the seats, I said, "No, no, I can totally wait until you are finished sweeping, I'm digging in my purse for my stupid phone anyway."

Then a guy came in & I had to enchant him, too, lest he ruin it.  I looked up from pawing through my bag & said to him, sure of his hero status, "Do you have a flashlight?  I lost my stupid phone in this giant bag. [blink-blink-blink]" 

Then I waited until I was positive they were finished, in fact, until they had forgotten I was there, and I said, "Are you lovelies all set now?" I was encouraged to avail myself, et voilà!  I was the first one in the theatre with a prodigious headstart!  Fine!  Accomplished, alors!  I have a very special skill-set, you know. (You know.)

The funny thing about this entire way-getting vignette, which I told Mari when he finally arrived (after even our children! Work calls!), was that as I was bustling past the hallway-students, and they were murmuring, quoth one, as I wrapped my hand around the door handle, "She's just like my mother."

I turned to face them and said, with the kind of great satisfaction that I find is usually attended by some kind of button-pushing, That is because I am old enough to be your mother.

Which was great, and satisfying, really, but then dampened a little while I was digging through my bag by the realization that the edict was probably a teeny bit muted by them not realizing the absolute mathematical truth in my statement.  So maybe they thought I was just slagging on them for being pretend-babies, in that OH I'M SO MATURE AND YOU ARE SO YOUNG way, but no, really:  I am old enough to be any of their moms.  Their mothers are probably 15 years older than me anyhow.  I wrote about that once, too.  Oh, Ivy Leagues! 

 

When the previews started, I was served a heaping helping of crow, which was extremely satisfying for Mari, if you remember this. 

I could not shut up!  Whispering, Is this a dream?  It's a dream, isn't it?  Are they dreaming about dreaming?  [There was a football field, in some kind of distress]  That is totally a dream, I hissed.  [Another prosaic scene was exploding in some kind of chaos.] Dream!  [Joseph Gordon-Levitt showed his mug] Ooh, that guy dreams about dreams, honey, it is!  Then, JGL has a tense exchange with Anne Hathaway, after which editing cuts sharply to Christian Bale, darkly endangered.

 

I snapped to the same, rapt-yet-somehow-penitent attention he did on that long-ago day.  Oh, marriage!  This is why we have you!  xoxox

 

still, life.

We went back, Friday night, to the museum to take in the van Gogh exhibit, and frankly, should have just gotten a room since the weekend was busy-busy bridge-crossy full of cultural events.  Alors.

Eve accompanied us to the exhibit.  It was nice to see her and everyone played together nicely.  The museum was open until the unthinkable hour of midnight, because the people of the mid-Atlantic region need to see van Gogh, and honestly, my pert complaining about their refusal to accomodate notwithstanding, there are no museums I can think of readily that just grin & bear it with 2nd-shift hours in the waning days of an exciting tour.

It was a nice representation of the work in the period bounded by 1886-1890, roughly chaptered into: Paris; The Wheatfield Era; Clumps of Grass; Sous Bois; Radical Still Lifes. The audio-tour's exegesis used a lot of van Gogh's correspondence, which was very interesting -- he is rarely portrayed as being sociable or having a successful relationship with anyone but his brother.

In the outset, a museum guard was after me to tell me that I could not have my cell phone out during the exhibit, as there were no photos allowed.  I knew there were no photos allowed, which is why I was using the MemoPad function on Mari's camera-less BlackBerry, which I switched with him because my BlackBerry is outfitted with all kinds of recording devices.  I gaily showed her how my phone had no camera and pointed to the notes I was taking on the screen. 

 

I took this photo during Wednesday's general admission in the regular galleries, where photography is, in fact, allowed.  This is extremely representative of what was in the exhibit; also, paintings here & here.

Still Life with a Bouquet of Daisies, 1886.  Oil on paper, mounted on wood.  Vincent van Gogh.  Philadelphia Museum of Art, bequest of Charlotte Dorrance Wright.

 

"I am just using it to take notes," I said. reassuringly, sympathetic to her rigor.  "It is the 21stc, so I tend not to have pen & paper."

She was sympathetic to me, but insisted I put it away.  I asked her, coyly, "Do you have a pen?"  Because I did have a Moleskine, but I did not have a pen.  She told me then that there were to be no cameras, no cell phones, and no pens or paper in the exhibit.  Um, ok, whatever then.  I mean, right?  We had entered the zone of OK now you're just making shit up to be on a power trip.  I mean, honestly.  I got a pen from Mari and took notes on paper freely through the remaining galleries with no trouble at all.  But be warned, because the ubiquitous cell phone has ruined things for compulsive note-takers all over.  I did have similar dust-up at the National Gallery's Gauguin exhibit last summer, though they backed off (reluctantly) when I showed them there was no camera.

Anyhow.  The curation was tremendous; it seemed as if the narrative around which they collected pieces was to put aside this idea -- widely promulgated -- that van Gogh was just a wild maniac who flailed in desperation at the end.  The exhibit ended on a really optimistic note, with this painting, which I had never seen, nor heard the story behind.  Until then, I'd had no idea van Gogh ever experienced even one single moment of joy in his adult life, none of the five of us had (3 of us adults, 1 with a baccalaureate in art history), so that was a really high note to end on, we all agreed.

Again, Garçon was somehow listless & self-indulgent + amiable & civilized, at once.  The same as the time immediately preceding this trip, I let it go.  Just, yk, Whatever, child.  I don't care about you.  Shhhhh.  And all was well.

Things are fine, really.  I read this book a couple of months ago, called Unhappy Teens.  The reason I read it, mostly, was because it was written by a goddamn M.D., not some Ph.D. pretending to have some vast clinical experience, which (as we have seen), means only as much as you are willing to let it affect you.  Also, my care & keeping of a teenager was imminent. The primary thrust of this book was to say this:  By the time your child is a teenager, they know what you expect.  Shut up about it.  They know it.  Every time you talk about the thing, you make it into a thing.  Let the thing go & watch the thing happen. 

Ok, so I have to say that there has been -- in all the years leading up to this one -- no lack of exposition in our parenting.  There is a lot of transparency in our work.  So I think that my child, even more than the mean, is well-equipped to know what the expectations are.  Then when he was 13, yk, I said, Fuck it, good, he can do it himself, I have done all I can.  So that is going pretty well.  Sometimes he tries to get in my face, as is his way, and I just don't care about him.  It's like, "Are you still here?  Shh.  I don't care about you.  I'm reading The New Yorker, you're in my light." 

It is also somewhat helpful to have the maniacal , clusterfucking sideshow of last winter still ringing in our ears, so that when I have to, I can say, "You know, this is the kind of behavior that you have that when we report it makes professionals say that you belong in a mental hospital.  Do you need a rest in the mental hospital?  Think about it."  Because honestly, I do not have the time.

One hilariously adorable thing about him this last few weeks:  Annie Clark.  My son, who cares about nothing, I promise you, was genuinely moved by the accomplishments of little handless Annie Clark & her penmanship award.  Why, just last week, we were talking about Miss Annie Clark, by way of Marcel Duchamp & his poor, shattered Large Glass. 

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-1923.   Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels.  Marcel Duchamp. Philadelphia Museum of Art, bequest of Katherine S. Dreier.

As we sat right here, Garçon was totally dismissive of my musings that maybe Annie took her inspiration from Duchamp's spirit of persistence and ascribed to her v realistic, logical, laudable steps toward a goal, the sort of which I had no idea he even realized existed.  God bless you, Annie Clark.  Seriously. 

Anyhow.  I miss you, little weblog, come back to me!  xox

              

time can do so much

Due to a confluence of factors, there was reveille en fanfare this morning featuring a medley of The Righteous Brothers and a piano sorely in need of a tuner.  I have been thinking of Ghost ever since.  Ghost, right?  I forgot about that movie!  Holy crap!  But I was enjoined to participate in my own bloggy project et voilà, ok.

We traveled across the river today, since I was feeling better than I have in weeks, with the intention of seeing a major van Gogh exhibit in its final days.  We could not, because I do not pay attention to all of the discrete member mailings & emails from every museum we patronize like I should.  Had I, I would have realized that the Philadelphia Museum of Art treats its members like the general public when it comes to special exhibits with timed tickets.  The Phillips, The Barnes, MoMA, all give the green light to members to go on in at their convenience, whatever, thank you so much for yr fat checks, but not this one.   But whatever, we will endure the drive again & today, we took on general admission ... alors là.

You know,  we are show-goers -- we have to be, to make best use of membership fees and the way in which we can avail ourselves endlessly of our proximity -- and it has been such a long time since we have just loafed around a museum, loafing.  It was really great.  Even though Garçon was kind of inert during the excursion, it was fun.  I actually started to let it get to me & then I remembered this time & yk, even if he is ... Jesus Christ, you know what: it's enough to bring him to the water.  And he is 13, so I have to not care more than ever. 

But even a loafer's agenda needs a little direction.  I decided we should make our way to Étant Donnés, and honestly, I stand by my assessment -- who the hell would ever think to look for it in grimy old Philadelphia?

It is a long trip to the end of one of the wings.  Along the way, yk, plenty of the late 19th/early 20thc.  Fun.  Loafy!

The Large Bathers, 1884-87. Oil on canvas. Auguste Renoir. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Mr & Mrs Carroll S Tyson Jr Collection.

The Large Bathers is one of those canvases that draws me in every time we go here -- partly because of its location (location, location) in the corridors, but also because it is so replete with work and life.

Fifille mentioned today how you can see the girl underwater as you would in life.  Yes.  I mean, Jackson Pollack doesn't care about that kind of realism, but it is quite a thing. 

Cy Twombly would not care about it either.  I felt sad, today, knowing Twombly wasn't here in the world anymore. 

Fifty Days at Iliam, 1978. Parts 4, 5, and 6 of 10 parts. Oil, oil crayon, and graphite on canvas. Cy Twombly. Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of Samuel S White, III and Vera White. 

 

I was happy, in fact, to move into a room of Ellsworth Kelly canvases & remember he is very much alive.  Also, to send a quickie MMS to my pal Alex. 

Left to right:  Barge, 1955, oil on canvas; White and Black, 1955, oil on canvas (Collection of the artist); Study for Atlantic, 1956, oil on canvas, 2 joined panels (on loan from Jack Shear).  Ellsworth Kelly.  Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

Alex!  Speaking of you! 

Étant Donnés: 1. la chute d'eau, 2. le gaz d'éclairage ... , 1946-66. Mixed media assemblage. Marcel Duchamp. Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of The Cassandra Foundation.

This is, you know, when you look through the holes in the door! 

I remember last time we saw this, at the special Étant Donnés: Bits & Bobs exhibit: the security guard was all up in our grills about how we should not let our children see this part of it.  He was nearly hysterical and we were utterly nonplussed, plus all Thank you, but we heard you, now myob, ok?

I mean, isn't everyone's elementary-school kid readied for a weird kind of a mixed-media roadside womanslaughter display?  No?  Then go to more fucking museums already!  Sure! 

But please, please, let us get to what is really important.

Becky!

These are things which are for sale.  I promise you, if the salmon-colored creamer pitcher had been in this inventory, nothing would have stood between me and it.  Or, the turquoise sugar bowl, whichever.  As it was I had to pry myself away from it all.

I hope you are all happy. À bientôt!

 

if I had a hammer.

I flipped the calendar page this morning to see Fifille wrote this.  Adorbs!  High fives to homeschool! 

 
I think she has union gains confused with Gen 2:2.

 

I know, you're like, "Wait, no.  That's not how it goes, honey.  You are usually much more  OMIGOD YESSSSSSSSSSSS HIGH-FIVES TO ME I DID IT!!! than this."

 

Right, but I was like that in January.  We were at Sal's, sacked out in front of his teevee, watching October Sky.  Fille asked, "Why does Homer have to work in the mine?  His dad got hurt at work." 

Then Garçon told her, "Because his dad was management, [Fille], not union."   OMIGOD YESSSSSSSSSSSS HIGH-FIVES TO ME I DID IT!!!

 And don't you just always love Chris Cooper anyway?  Hearts!

Yeah, but high-fives to homeschool, mostly.  Garçon was doing a theatre class with a mixed-age group from 10-14.  He told me that the instructor asked the kids, "What makes a good story?"

Garçon said -- I don't know how many kids answered before him -- "Well, a good story needs conflict.  Your hero needs to overcome obstacles." 

So, first of all, when he told me this story, I thought, Get the fuck out of here!  This child has listened to something I have said?!?  Because that is a stock phrase from my mouth & you know it.  The second thing is, I guess, the instructor was like, WHOA, DUDE!  TOO FAST!  Which made me laugh, a little.

The three of us then started talking about basic narrative conflicts --  Man v Nature, Man v Man, Man v Himself -- I was asking them to name books they knew that used one of these conflicts.  But every time I would say, "Man against Man," or whatever, Fifille would pipe up in helpful concert.

"Or Woman against Woman, or Man.  Or Woman against Nature, or Woman against Herself," she would say, over & over, with some increasing amount of insistence. 

This went on for some time, her interrupting & pedantically revising, before I realized: She has no idea that we generalize with the masculine.  Whoa!  That was some kind of mind-erasing shit for me.  Breathe deep, Ophelia!  Twirl!

So that's mostly what we're up to here, yk, Commies, dismantling the patriarchy.  You have a great night.  xox

quiet endings

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

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

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

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

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

 
 

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

earth day. rainy night.

I bought these earrings on Friday.  A dangly clump of seedy, little, freshwater pearls.

On Saturday, I wore them when we met up with some friends who came up northward of their usual NE Corridor position to take care of  some obligations in our tri-state area.  It was really, really nice to see them.  Because it is great to see old friends right in front of you in this oft-tiresome digital age. 

Mari pulled me aside while the lot of us were rambling around, paired-off, adults freed-up by the magic of school-aged kids being nerds together.  He lifted my hair on one side & said, "I really like these.  Are they new?"  And that was nice, too.

 

Let's catch up soon.  I'll make the big bed with a million extra pillows & we can lie around on top of it.  After we've gotten a good bit out of chatter out of the way, we can read from the big pile of April's fashion/design/home-and-garden magazines and/or have a snooze. BYOB. xo 

glug

Pollen Count: Buried Alive! 

Man, how awful!  Monday I had a sore throat, which caused me some concern, but I did not feel run down or like I was getting ill.  Then it was 90 degrees and I was so miserable and sweaty because I did not know it was going to be so warm and there was driving and I had kind of a headache, which responded to 800mg of Advil, so I went to bed at the regular time & did not think about it any more.

 

I know, this is dull, right?  But seriously.  Today I woke up, yk, and felt ok for about 5 minutes, until I started taking the deep breaths of the horizontal people of the world.  Then, after calling Mari to regretfully alert him to my impending demise, and also taking a super (!!!) phone call from Lillo (fingers crossed!), I turned my eyes toward choosing between allergy remedies.

Is the active ingredient in Allegra part of what was in Fen-Phen?  Or Phen-Fen?  I could only find Allegra-D, Allegra-Baby, Zyrtec, and Claritin-24hr.  I just took the Claritin, even though I wanted a D so bad.  I tried to think about which neighbor I might know who could have crystal meth, because it's in there, right?  Anyhow.  Riveting.  Read on!

Once medicated, I laid down again and pretty much slept all day.  I think it was around noon that I considered the possibility that I had the flu, but no.  Just drowning in pollen.

In keeping with my new pledge to eat, I did force down some food.  I was resentful & cross about my stupid body, being so susceptible and then also so requiring of sustenance besides, hiss.  But when I thought about what I wanted to eat, I was so glad to know I had the ingredients downstairs.

I sent the Israeli a text.  Spreading the bread of affliction on with peanut butter.  He tends toward matzo literalism.  These gluten-free matzo can't even go on the seder plate.  Whatever, yum. 

I feel better tonight, but still pretty wiped out.  I have located the Claritin-D, so will make that switch in the morning.  It's a bigger pill, so taking it will be more satisfying to my psyche, anyhow.  I have high hopes!  xox

oh, a wiseguy!

Mari told me we were going to see The Three Stooges, sure, but that before the weekend was finished, I would see Wrath of the Titans. I could not believe his super-grouch insistence but whatever, yk, marriage.

Oh, he was driving us to the drive-in!  Surprises! The children did not remember ever having been to one, but Mari & I have not been to a drive-in since the kids were small enough to conk out in their carseats, which was a time that ended many, many years ago. 

When we were in Chicago, the kids had 115 channels to pick from & they were always watching the Stooges. I was so proud.

So most of us thoroughly enjoyed The Three Stooges, Mari saw Wrath of the Titans, and I went to sleep.  Fille & I just curled up together in the passenger seat & zzzzZzZzzzzzzzzzz.  Not at the outset, just after a while when it seemed like we could watch it better with our eyes closed. 

Everyone: happy!  Yk, marriage.  xox

sugar & spice

Look, look, look who is here!  More early than ever!  Bienvenue, Madame! 

In the very last days of January, Fifille had her audition class for the Prestigious Ballet School's Summer Intensive which interested her.  She seemed fine & mostly looking forward to the challenge.  She has always been lauded as among the best in her class, for years, but she knew that the girls at this audition would also be among the best, and then the rest of her mental-preparations came from Dwayne Johnson's character in The Tooth Fairy, and if you have seen it, then you know.  Her outlook was mostly, "If I am not any good, it will be good to know now."

We three left her at the venerable institution for the class and went to get a snack, plus poke around the town.  I was waiting for her outside the studio when it ended, a little late.  She ran to me and clung, discreetly, eyes full of tears, totally worried. 

"Everyone was so much better than me."  She was woeful.

I was not woeful.  "Honey, all of those girls were older than you."  She was at the bottom of the group's age range.  According to the first draft of her account, everything was fine by her until centerwork when everyone's legs went so much higher than hers.

Honestly?  This?

I see no downside to auditioning at her age, in being subject to high standards for relatively low stakes.  There is value in the experience of that kind of pressure with not too much bound up in the outcome.  Mostly because of things like this, the needless worry, the comparing, etc. 

I told her, "When you get in there, somewhere with judges, whose job is to judge you, but you get caught up in judging yrself and everyone else and making decisions, instead of letting the judges judge yr best work, from which you are distracted by yr ad-hoc judging ... well, that is not what you are there for."

You know?  Plus, I would not send her to anything if I did not think her best was good enough.  So we talked about that, the issue of my veracity. 

As the full story came out over the following days, we zeroed in on some very positive things that she has for her own, forever, no matter the outcome.  There were things she has never done -- pirouette, for one -- which she was asked to do and she performed.  Well, a 10-year-old on the Vaganova syllabus has not done a pirouette yet, and everyone knows that, so go her.  Also, at this age, the girls are not judged so much on training as they are on their potential, their bodies, really. 

 She was not accepted, which by the time we found out was fine.  It was pretty roundly accepted, by that point, that because she choked so bad, it was totally a slim possibility, and lo.  Her coterie of ballet people had a lot of really useful things to say to her, we have reviewed comportment under pressure and the rest,  so, the whole experience was valuable.  There is no way to do a mock-up, and this milieu is not one where everyone gets a trophy. 

Alors!

In February, a few days after the rejection, it was time for Observation.  We had not seen Fifille dance since May of 2010.  Well, in The Nutcracker, but it was a bit part & who could keep their eyes open?  After class, I said to Mari, "I see why she was not accepted to that intensive."  She was weak and she was stiff.  It is not a good combination for a ballet student.

On the bright side, she was much more at-ease than ever she had been with the parent audience, and her lack of self-consciousness was a thing everyone mentioned during our post-class exchange of bonhomie.  I passed this feedback along to her when we sat down the following week for our postmortem.

Usually, I take a few photos of her for our own documentation, but while watching her in February it occurred to me that she could use photo and video to review her own self.  My camera shoots video!  I can make technology work for me!  Then, I would not have to offer any opinion at all; I am not a student of the Vaganova syllabus, and she is her own worst critic. 

Mostly, in an observation postmortem, I let her lead.  I will always mention to her the evident lack of core strength, and remind her it will cause her to overcompensate in other ways (& has indeed led her to weak stiffness) which detract from her form in ways she can readily see in the photographs.  We talk about ways to hold herself, things to remember neuromuscularly, transferring her Pilates Matwork to the barre.  I think that as a family, we spend more time talking about core strength than most. 

This time, I did not actually say too much, except at the review of one photo in which she was actually listing (while in the clutches of her old nemesis relevé lent).

In a way recognizable to Jim Taylor and Becky, I asked her, "So, what do you think about all this?"

Fifille is tentative in her process, but once she decides something she is certain.  She was quiet for a minute, weighing all the things in her mind, and then spoke slowly and with great confidence to tell me she would like to meet with June.

June was her physical therapist when she broke her arm.  She specializes in dance physiotherapy, dance rehab, dance-injury prevention, and she is highly-regarded in our burgh and in Fifille's ken.  So now Fifille has a trainer in June, and a personalized, goal-oriented exercise regimen from her, which is good.  She first saw June the week after she asked, I try to make time for her to work through her exercises 4 days a week and she gets them in about 3.  There are owl stickers on the calendar for her exertions. 

 

Fifille came to me just before her birthday to report feeling improved strength in class, even with her archnemesis.  Then when we returned from vacation, I felt she had gotten enough traction to go back to June for a follow-up & the results are that yes! she is much, much stronger and very much improved in her range of motions and now she has a greatly-increased regimen.  So increased that I have to help her again.  Oh, I didn't say already, right: she needs a spotter and a counter and a cheering-onner, a brisk-rubdowner.  She is only 11, yk. 

She is not in posession of superpowers yet, which dismays her father greatly, while he waves the invoices at me.  Because, yk, injury prevention doesn't cost $27.99.

So, as you can see, things are great here as we sail on.  So fun to catch up & backfill!  I have not even begun to unpack the whole Travelogue yet!  I hope to, but I may never!  It is the way of the world.  À bientôt!

snips + snails

 

My little baby is a teenager.

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

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

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

serenity

I knew that once I linked feeling bananas to my radio silence, there would be auditing.  Mostly, I feel like I feel fine, busy, birthdays, trips,  etcI would like to build a bonfire & pitch everything in our home right into it, but fine. 

I have not yet made it back to the gym.

I was catching up with Kowalski this morning between this & that (some kind of a day where before 10 a.m. I had already crashed a men's room in the interest of not wetting my pants), and I told him I would probably flesh out the thing we were touching on someday here, if ever I felt like documenting again, whenever the day might come.  I mean, I feel fine, is what I was explaining to him.  We just had an incredible vaca on top of my good, clarifying Lenten action & I feel like I might write in a lucid + revealing + secret-whispering way, yk, in that way that I like to whisper secrets right into yr ear while typing on the worldwide web, but I was not feeling like it.

He offered that maybe I was turning into a new person who no longer obsessively documented.  Before that chat, I was going to bring Creeley to my national poetries again -- relevant as Creeley's cagey candor always is to me and especially in the face of all the hardcore loving raining down upon me this last week or so -- and then Kowalski brilliantly changed the earworm from Must/ I think of everything/ as earned to in my plan to be myself/ I became someone else, so you can laud him or not whatever xo

	Lisa Jarnot - Brooklyn Anchorage
	Found at Brooklyn Anchorage on KOhit.net

Brooklyn Anchorage
Lisa Jarnot

and at noon I will fall in love
and nothing will have meaning
except for the brownness of
the sky, and tradition, and water
and in the water off the railway
in New Haven all the lights
go on across the sun, and for
millennia those who kiss fall into
hospitals, riding trains, wearing
black shoes, pursued by those
they love, the Chinese in the armies
with the shiny sound of Johnny Cash,
and in my plan to be myself
I became someone else with
soft lips and a secret life,
and I left, from an airport,
in tradition of the water
on the plains, until the train
started moving and yesterday
it seemed true that suddenly
inside of the newspaper
there was a powerline and
my heart stopped, and everything
leaned down from the sky to kill me
and now the cattails sing.

when morning comes twice a day.

 

I was lying in bed this morning, before dawn, actually experiencing true anxiety about April 1st coming this weekend and my calendar guy here being on the previous month, and what is there to tread lightly around on April Fools' Day and what a day to avoid the whole internet, anyhow, right? Not as if there is anything to say, anyway. Except everything. Every day, there is something new for my head to swim around -- shootings, beatings, fires! -- and what is there to say anyway? Plus, so many have said so much about so many things, and there is nothing to add.

 

 

It's funny: I started shying away from my blog back in January mostly unintentionally -- there were some dirt-world happenings, events & goings-on which I wanted to document, but more abstractly than filing 15 or 18 inches because I did not want to reveal too much about us, in a geospherical way, to the whole wide world. The things which were happening were important, and specific, but I was waiting for my feelings to distill to their true generality in our life. (see: roman-fleuve if never you have.)

Because I never wrote them down, they started to be the things I was talking about, when people were calling to find out what they were. So in a way, for a little while, I lost my voice here because I was using it to whisper right into the ears of the people for whom I write.  During this time, something happened which was eminently bloggable, the actual stuff of this blog since time began. It was nothing, except to me it was everything. It was a precious little flame nurtured along from the speck of a hard-to-find ember that I had not realized was there. I was protecting it so it would blaze into something truly useful; it was a secret, it was private, I had not told Mari, I had spoken of it to no one, and actually I was not confident I had the language to express it as part of a dialogue, without it being accidentally blown out.

 

On the phone with the Israeli, just in a regular send-and-receive catch-up, I opened my mouth & breathed fire. There was no preamble, it was very matter-of-fact, and if I can mix the metaphors, I realized as I started speaking that this is a song we know by heart, he & I. 

So, that was weird. Just to me. I mean, if my husband doesn't know anything about me, he knows that I am secretive, and he doesn't care, but to me it was so strange -- it was emblematic of a thing that does not exist between us at all, so far away from who he knows me to be. It is like I have written before, during a snowy time, how I will think, "Oh, that is how I was," but in truth, this is who I am. But, really it was nothing. I mean, when I told the Israeli, there was no revelation implicit in it. It was like, "Well, of course you did, cookie."  The whole episode & its interplay chewed up tons of mental bandwidth -- the knowingness, the being known, at the same time there was no infrastructure for this part of me in my actual marriage, but oh, so with the guy Mari calls "my other husband" -- and I had to stay in the gym; it was bananas. 

 

February came. I rebelled against everything I know. One morning, I laid in bed, sulky & sullen, filled with resentment. Other people, I complained to myself, do not have to get up in the dark every morning to trip over roadkill and go to the gym and come back from the gym while it is still dark outside just to keep things on an even keel. They do whatever they want. They drink coffee! They eat Pop-Tarts! They never drink water! Well, I am going to go back to sleep!

 

Back to sleep turned into late-sleeping. Days and days in a row of sleeping until 7:30 or 8 and then sulkily indulging myself all morning in the tub. Scandalous morning-naps. This did not make things any better. In fact, as is reasonable to predict, it only made things darker and became a classic case of how people feel so good when they are doing the right things, they forget why those things had to be a habit in the first place.

 

 

Everything felt too hard and the simplest things were beyond my ability. For example, one day I had to go to the bank to withdraw a lot of money (in our cashless society!) to be able to pay our mechanic. Then I had to take public transit to pick up the car on the other side of the county. It was almost more than I could handle: the form-fillerism of dirt-world banking; the taking public transit on a route I had never run; plus the worry of having $1100 in real green cash on my person. Also, the children along with me, blabbering incessantly. But it was manageable. I had faith in myself! We were 25 feet from our house and I remembered I had the dollhouse rent checks back at the house, which I could take to the bank. I paused, and thought about it, but it made me feel like I had cartoon birds circling around my head, so we continued. 

Of course, I had to explain pitifully to Mari why I had not done something so easy. I had to make a second trip the next day to finish the work I could not manage the first. This led to more self-indulgent sleeping, instead of going to the gym. Everything remained too hard, sulking continued. The kids were fine, everyone was fed and things were cleaned, but ugh. Halfway between Charlie, I almost went crazy when Mario got busted and Ah, lunch! I think I am going crazy!

  

  

Then there was Lent and its Action, which had the effect of clarifying things, if nothing else. At the end of February, Mr Fox called to ask me about something. I was putting lunch on the table at the same time I was listening to him. He was not having it, the interruptions I was tolerating while he talked. I protested that I had to feed the children, think of the children! He asked what was for lunch, I told him (soup) & invited him over. He told me he would come over, but put a ban on multi-tasking.

What? Yes. He arrived and I was enjoined to sit in my seat and eat lunch. I would do one thing and that was eat, civilized, no going around, no filling glasses, no checking one more thing.

"It's exhausting to watch," he complained. "You're always doing, like, five things at a time." I mean, really. Exhausting to watch? Walk it off, dude! Every time I started to do a bunch of things at once, he redirected. There was a lot going on. There is a lot to do! But I never realized how many things I do at one time.

At the very end of February, its final days, a sequence of events ended with having some work done at the dollhouse. You know, the dollhouse that is not my project. But anyhow, it was 2 days of work. "Work," I mean, I was not replacing the HVAC system myself. I was on-site to answer questions, shape & guide, and write big checks. But it was like work in that it was an all-day endeavor and the dollhouse is income-generating, and a source that I tend to manage.

 

 

It was tedious, mostly, and for 2 days I had to scramble for dinner and had not seen the kids all day, but whatever just like a billion other going-to-work moms on the planet. On the first day of March, I had to get the kids up & fed & out the door to get to their dentist appointment on time. When we got there, precisely 10 minutes early and not-on-empty, I felt like Jonas Salk, Emperor Xerxes, and Jack LaLanne! At once! I was heroic! This job I do is hard! The way I do it is exhausting to watch! It isn't just that it feels too hard, there is a difficulty about it I have failed to respect!

 

 

 

Why is it -- this occurred to me for the very first time in this way -- that I don't take better care of myself and so eliminate long stretches of sulking in the tub every day? Or why do I not sulk in the tub more often, routinely? And I know, I know, you're like, "You don't eat garbage! You go to the gym! You drink a lot of water every day!" Yeah, ok, whatever. Eating like a bird and skipping meals and going to the gym for two hours before the sun comes up after sleeping for 6 is no way to take care of myself. We all need to remember that I have a complicated and dysfunctional relationship with appetites and stoicism and denial and self-discipline and wanting and self-restraint. For me, for years, I feel like not pouring in a fifth of whiskey and 2 packs of cigarettes and two liters of coffee is award-winning self-care. And it is, if you are a self-destructive personality like I am. But when you see things clearly, you can change.

 

 

 

Change is what that Mayan prophecy is all about, you know. I read about it, at the end of last year. It is not about catastrophes and John Cusack – evidently it is about a paradigm shift, wherein the weak will be strong and the boots on the throats everywhere will be lifted, bonds will be cast aside. Everything will go topsy-turvy! Like, for example, how it is 2012, and Lillo is freed from his psycho girlfriend because she got tired of us texting each other daily about the weather and while she was reading all of his text messages on his phone she saw how I called her a name because of that day she called me & hung up about 87 times.  You know, like what happens when you snoop through someone's things & see someone calling you a nutter because you are acting like a nut where they can see. 

That girl was so odd, like if Fatal Attraction were reprised with her playing all the parts from that movie -- even Michael Douglas's! --  and then Lillo, Mari, and I were in some kind of other kind of movie. Like ... if you could imagine a movie with Jason Statham, Seth Rogen, and, yk, Debi Mazar. So, then, if those two movies were in a mash-up and then it would be just exactly, totally like that. Anyhow, now she’s gone & he is free, is the point. I felt bad about it, for about an hour, and then I was absolved by Lillo, which, ok, obviously because I'm still awesome.  2012!

profusion

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

This is the Potomac River spider. 

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

Then we came home & had a birthday. 

 

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

 

 

 

hold

I texted the Israeli Monday afternoon, asking him to call when he had a minute between lectures. "Recipe help," I added, in light of what happened around this time last year. 

God, remember last year?  When my house was filled up with charity cats and I was a cat pusher?  God.  And a big shoutout to my sweet friend Charlie for taking two of them.  I hope they still have soft fur; I was missing their mom & her soft fur the other day.

Anyhow, back to the Israeli.  He called, later, while I was rattling around the kitchen like a old ghost.  I told him I wanted the perfect chicken recipe: I wanted a recipe that would turn something out which was creamy & unctuous after braising; something tender & toothsome. 

"You are asking me for a lamb recipe," he said.

"No," I was confounded. "Didn't I say chicken, honey? Oh."  Yeah, he was right.  I did want lamb.  I hate chicken.

He asked, then, "You don't even like chicken; why are you cooking chicken?" 

I started a long answer, in the way of the long answer which is characteristic of any conversation with the Israeli, full of vulnerability & confusion, outlining all of my distress, there might be a little whining, generously lighting up the way for him to be a hero.  It is how Mari says he can always tell I am on the phone with the Israeli in three notes or less. 

"Well, I had a chicken in the freezer I was ignoring, but I took it out, because ... there was this recipe, but I was having cognitive troubles with it ... hey!  Wait!"

Then he interrupted me.  "You know, the Dining section had a chicken recipe last month --"

"Yes, yes, that's the one!  The one that we both know to be a lamb recipe!  Omigod, yes!"

We chorused a little in the affirmative, and I got to the kernel of my late realization, "But they put cauliflower in it!  And olives, did you see that?  I didn't recognize it!"

The dish is Greek, it is called kapama.  Like most of the Greek stews, you can make it with whichever animal you prefer.  But not with cauliflower, wtf?  Yuk!

 

 

I used ricotta salata for the cheese.  I have a refrigerator uncharacteristically full of cheese.  It's all about matzo brei, cheese, and Weeds lately.  I don't know but my jeans still fit so that's all I care about.  When I opened the cheese-drawer the ricotta really appealed and I found out Fifille ate all the feta, which was the French kind anyhow, a little butterier, so eh.  I passed on kasseri and myzritha because, yk, a. melty and b. too much to get involved in.

I know, right?  Cheese.

But then this was so disappointing!  I mean ... Mari really liked it.  I cooked it in the oven in the old Le Creuset for a couple of hours at 300-ish.  It was OK; it was no lamb.  If Mari had not enjoyed it so much, I would be back to quitting chicken.  Yes. 

Bonnie Raitt has her way with ol' Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line" on her upcoming cd and it is ridiculous, the way she works it over.  It starts out making it, yk, just because she is Bonnie Raitt and you can't say no, even though you aren't really sure of the arrangement, but then by the bridge, you realize she is just killing it and you have to pull over to listen.  That last part is not a metaphor; I really did pull off of the road.  À bientôt!

just right

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

 

 

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

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

Je t'embrasse. 

 

privacy. privation. privileged.

Lent wears on.  It has hardly been a week; I am edgy and distressed, easily distracted and often tearful -- woeful, even.  Jehovah's Witnesses came by the other day & their little magazine was about Armegeddon.  I said to them, carelessly, "First of all, I'm shoddy on Revelations; there's no way in.  Second, John the Baptist said before he was killed that whoever believed in the Son of Man has eternal life, so good!  Why are you ladies worried?"

It is always the same woman at the door, paired with a younger woman, always different.  The elder woman wanted to fuss about the source of the eternal life quote & I told her, "It is Lent, and I am cross.  Don't test me."  And she did not, because I have wowed her & her companion many times with my readiness to talk about the Bible chapter & verse.  Then we talked about their special-feature (God Almighty!) Watchtower insert about social media and I told them I think everyone has lost their mind.  They agreed.

 

 

The children were on the phone today with an old beau, who was explaining to them -- in his folksy, homespun, indisputable way -- about the importance of flossing and bacteria + halitosis and heart disease -- I could not really follow it.  It all happened when I reported we had been at the dentist & there was a report of noted flosslessness and he demanded to be put on speakerphone & then he started in with a lecture to them.

 

During this lecture, while I was desultorily sorting the mail, my brain just ran a crazy, loud, pop-up .avi file of something which happened between he & me many, many years ago. It was the kind of a thing I had not thought of in more than a decade, if ever I had.  I was so pole-axed by this unbidden recollection my chewing gum fell right out of my mouth.  It was just so strange, amidst the cheery, 3rd-party influence upon children he has never met + recipe swaps + a huge job as one of my main fixers, now, to think of how we were then, plus everything in between and to say to myself, while I picked up my chewing gum off of the Anthropologie catalog, I see why this fire still burns.

I blame my Lenten action, is all I know.  I miss everybody, everything, and no one will live forever, not one of us.  So much crying, and Harvey Keitel is really, really mean!  He broke my thing!  You guys!  Bisous.   

 

 

 

Mk 9, 49

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Je t'embrasse.  Enjoy yr wkend.    

pie; maybe pancake

 

sopa

I made this soup for the first time about a yr ago: as soon as it came in my Whole Living email.  Fille & I hate quinoa as much as Garçon loves the stuff, but I try to remain open to it.  That is what Fille hilariously says about so many ingredients -- I don't like [whatever] but I remain open to it.  She makes me laugh.

The thing is, though, the soup was awful.  Dishwatery & loose.  The first night the three of us were sampling it, Fille declared it to need tomato paste.  She was right; I knew it as soon as she said it, but testing bore it out.  Tomato paste, what a smarty!

 

Prettier photos have been shot.

I asked Garçon in November, when we were having it for dinner at Sal's (low points!), "How many days in a row could you eat this?"  I know that because of his age he is hungry all of the time, but because of his restrictions, he can't just drink up gallons of milk or eat a billion sandwiches, so that means I am more involved in a billion meals per day than I would like.  I wanted something I could keep in the fridge/freezer, something full of protein & vitamins that he could gobble as freely as he liked. 

"Every day, Mom.  I could eat it 590 days in a row."

Oh, ok, good!  Great! 

Black Bean & Quinoa Soup

Chop an onion.  Also, chop 3 or 4 cloves of garlic and as many carrots as you want.  I like 3.  Also, I no longer peel carrots to put them in soup.  Too busyworker!  Warm 2 tablespoons olive oil and dump the vegetables in with a couple of teaspoons of salt and just sweat them a little.  Ok, a lot.  Poke around.

Add one teaspoon of cumin.  Also, add 2tsp chili powder if you have it.  If you do not, just use 1tsp of paprika or smoked paprika or a smidge of cayenne and black pepper or whatever.  Add 1tsp of oregano, which, if you don't have oregano ... I dunno what to tell you.   Lather in 2 or 3 tbspful of tomato paste.  Stir & stir until mixed up.  Turn the heat down because the sugar in the tomatoes will burn, but when you smell it all caramelly, it's time to move along. 

Add one quart of water or broth or love the one you're with; also one 14-oz can of tomatoes and a chipotle chili canned with the adobo sauce.  I never use that, because adobo usually has wheat or corn or soy or something.  I usually use the chipotle salsa, I just dump the whole jar in, which checks out label-wise for us, but do your own thing. 

Add 1/2 cup quinoa, 2c cooked black beans (which is one 15-oz can + a smidge of the second, I believe, or do it yrself*), bring it to a boil, cover & simmer for about 15-20 minutes.  Garnish with spring onions, cilantro, olive oil, red onions, parsley, chip-strips, epazote, nopales, whatever.  It is soup.  Go crazy.

 

*Cooking yr own dried black beans:  Open the bag & rinse.  Add to a pot with 3qts water.  Add two bay leaves & a handful of cumin seeds if you want.  Maybe chuck in a whole onion.  Boil the hell out of them until they are done.  Hold with cooking liquid to cover in the fridge or freezer.  Easy. 

bears all things. believes all things. hopes all things. endures.

Remember how I was writing about split-sole ballet flats?  They need sewing, they come incomplete.  It is not the biggest deal, but it is something to be done.  Another thing on a long list of things.

 

 

Pointe shoes need elastics and ribbons sewn on.  Just stop because I will not even.  Her flats are leather, so it is pretty easy to sew to the lining without going through it.  Satin shoes are an entirely different thing.  Also, 4 sewn-on things per shoe.  No. 

I am not the hand-stitcher in the family, Mari is.  I mean, I like the dainty stitches required in hemming and finishing exterior seams, but honestly, anyone who lives here will wait forever for me to sew on their buttons.  When we got the note from school about the handwork-demo, I told Mari he would have to go.  He did, but somehow I wound up being the stitchery supervisor this weekend.  I mean, the meeting was mostly about where to fasten.

I think it was when I broke it to him that he would have to use mattress stitch -- invisible from either side -- which Fifille knows perfectly well from her knitting times.  But maybe he did not want to deal with her sulky attitude, which was a factor, definitely.

"Why, Mommy, why do I have to sew them on myself?  You have always sewed my elastics.  Why me, whyyyyyyy?"

Honestly.  Earlier this year, there was a day where I thought, from about two rooms away, that I would have to strangle her.  The hair-tossing, the eye-rolling, the foot-stomping, the kicking little kicks at the pillars and columns and staircases of the world.  The mumbling little mumbly, grumbly complaints under the breath.  Oh.  Oh, no.

Lucky for her, on that day I was awash in the satiny-pink afterglow of some heavy (metaphorical) lovin' the Israeli had laid on me.  So, I was watching her give the dishwasher's kick plate tiny little kicks, reeling, kind of analyzing how she was wicked, wicked, and I stopped. 

You know, and I know this is well-known -- even if you have never said it to my face -- I was wicked as a girl.  Not a 10-year-old girl, either; a 20-year-old girl.  When I was 20 (and 21, and 22), I was unspeakably wicked to my favorite + best, the Israeli, at intervals from the minute he began serving his compulsory, from 7,000 miles away.  In case you have never considered this, let me assure you that in the 20th century, it took an incredible amount of dedicated ruination to get a message across at that distance, but I succeeded by either epistolary action or default.  Sometimes I let other people do my dirty work for me -- everyone loves to gossip.

When he returned, I was not measurably better.  Things were much worse before they would improve, but all along the way, I have to admit he never killed me.  He doesn't just take it, but mostly he just waits it out, until I am who he knows me to be at my best.  In the meantime, he would never deny me a thing.  So I felt like, yk, OK, this is a minimum standard I have to achieve as the actual mother of this child.       

But Mari did not have this whole cathartic time with his present + his past, and plus he was not interested in showing her something he did not know at all when I was available to direct her.  So I did it. 

 

I explained to her that I have been sewing on her elastics as a courtesy because she was more comfortabe in shoes which came unfinished.  The other girls wore shoes that came finished.  Now that everyone is in shoes that come unfinished, she can be one of the everyones taking care of the business.  There was huffing in futility.  I waited, pleasantly, while playing upon her familiarity with the work because of a different project which she had enjoyed.   

She remembered how to do the stitch, and agreed, so I got things all pinned for her elastics.  Pinning, basting, try-ons.  Fine.  That was yesterday.  The funny thing that happened between Mari telling her she would be doing it with me (she had been hoping to get her way from her Pop, seeing as he is more malleable than I am in this way) and her getting the first shoe's elastic sewn on was that she realized Zomigod I can do this myself!  Me!  Not a baby!

It was just like the time Charlie & I watched her go all the way down the block all by herself (all! by herself!) to see if the neighbor had an ice-cream scoop.  She was bounding and smiling and so happy & so big.  It was huge. 

 

Look, sewing & smiling!

She did a great job -- careful, tiny, even.  Right now she is clomping around upstairs in them, trying to learn to walk while wearing them.  She is so pleased with herself.  "Mommy, everyone else's mom or grandmother is sewing their shoes for them!"

 

I mean, I told her, I don't know, maybe she will grow up & look back & think, Jesus maybe my mother could have sewed my shoes for me because I was only ten years old, but we will have to see.  Je t'embrasse.

aloha

Oh, good Lord, I was just getting ready to do some desultory blogging, probably about secret-keeping, because you know how February makes me (Oh, Valentine's Day, look how you are out there!), and I am self-sworn to not get into it blogwise this year, so it feels like I am deceitful.

Anyhow, you also know I hate for my thingy to be on the last month, but -- waiting for the blobbering interface to load -- I saw there is a long piece about Tyler Clementi & Dharun Ravi in The New Yorker that came today.  (Feb 6 issue.  Cover illustration=brilliant.) 

A still-life will have to do for now.  It's just that old Claudia Roden recipe -- cannellini, pickles, parsley, olives, thinly-sliced onion, lemon vinaigrette.  Mmmm.  Bisous.

this old thing

Hi, yes, many things -- ballet, recipes, marital secret-keeping, knitting, homeschool redistribution of rights + resources, and I'm still holding out on Mental Hospital.  Totally!  Yet, I hope you came with yr Faygo Red Pop & a bag of Bugles, because this is where I am today.

1. I confess herein that when I read this story about the $300ish rent-controlled (huge!) apartment in the Village, my only & immediate reaction was What steps do I have to take to get married to that dude?  Because a rent-controlled lease conveys.  I would lock that shit down, honestly.  And if you know anything at all, you know it would be an Anna-Nicole level probate battle. 



2. Lana Del Rey:  I love her.  It is funny because the "Video Games" single started getting radio play at the end of November, and I thought it was being warbled by someone much older, more worn down, rode hard, put away wet.  Then I saw the video & was amazeypants at how young!  Which was something of a topic already afoot here in our house vis à vis Adele & her really off-base cover of this song how she has this gorgeous, rich instrument of a voice which she mostly uses to belt out a lot of chirping (she is the beltiest chirper!) about Facebook misunderstandings.  Additionally, the realization upon her death that Etta James was 22 years old when she recorded "I'd Rather Go Blind" and wow.  22!  Ok.
   
   
3. Because three different people have asked -- three being a holy number -- regarding the late, great Etta James:  I was in fact subjected to "Sunday Kind of Love," endlessly, vituperatively + yodelingly. 
   
   
4. I went with Jolie to a Fancy Town estate sale on Saturday morning.  I was kind of into it, but was mostly along for the ride.  Then I saw this bag, behind a neatly-organized Imelda-style pile of stuff inside of a closet.   
   
   
   
   
   
   I have always wanted a Louis bucket.  Always.  Mostly -- and this I think maybe only Charlie will recognize -- so I can pull that Upper West Side powerplay of What, this old thing? when necessary.  OK, but a good girl reared all Franciscan-y in the Midwest can not avenge herself in that way with a bag for which she paid full-price, even as that is the spirit of the manuever.  (If you would like to split the hair wherein a Franciscanette from the homeland should not avail herself of the wordless clawing in the play, I say to you: When in Rome.) 
   
   I took it to the sales directress & told her, "I will take this for $12."  I had the bills in my hand and I was ready to deal.  She was aghast and gave me the once-over.  Ok, so speaking of when in Rome, I was outfitted Rome-ly, mostly just by straining under the heft of my left ring finger, but I bring it, a little. 
   
   She said patiently, as a person who is surely used to dealing with skinflints, "I am afraid $150 is the best price I can give you for that." 
   
   
   The fact is, this bag is no longer in production. The one that is, its closest cousin, is almost 10x her best price. Whatever. 
   
   I gaily explained to her that I could give her $25. "It's a purse," I finished, calmly, as if she were a sister who had fallen under the spell of a powerful cult leader. 
   
   She countered, explaining to me in a kind of brittle tone that it was a Louis Vuitton.  I held up my hand while my mouth dropped open a little.  I gasped.  Not so fast, it all said.  "This purse has a tag in it that says it was made in America."
   
   
   
   
   
   It does!
   
   If you know, than you know that little paper tag is the most authentic authentication a Louis Vuitton handbag can have.  She did not. So she apologized, briefly, and told me in a hurried way $12 was fine.  Can I just say that Mari has no idea what this all means, except that obvsly for once I was charged the true value of a handbag.  Lord.
   
   
5. Let's talk about teevee: 
   • Mad Men.  Due to some knitting willingness since the summer, we have finally watched the entire first season and a couple of epis of the 2nd.  Why is it so slow, this show?  This show is like the guy at work who is always like, yk, "Oh, man!  How was yr weekend?  Oh, I had a great weekend!  Pret-ty great weekend.  Oh, you had a great weekend?  Whoa, maybe you don't know from great weekend, brother.  Wow, etc," zzZzZzzzzz all to get you to say, What did you do this weekend, which you do not because you do not care.  It is just like that!
   • Weeds.  I started watching Weeds however many years ago that I first found it on DVD at the library, maybe 4?  I am just now on Season 3, is it?  Where U-Turn keels over & his pal smothers him.  I described that episode (who knows why?) to Mari & it is now a joke between us to stand in our new lexicon for crocodile tears.  U-Turrrrrn!  one of us says, to the other, melodramatically.  Ha, ha-ha.

For some reason, writing about crocodile tears reminded me of my senior-year English teacher who had the hots for me -- we were an entire classroom of girls all agog at his condition, like, "Dude!  Seriously!  Jailbait!  We're all wearing douchey uniforms!"  I mean, he never touched me or said anything pervy ... he would just stop talking in the middle of a sentence sometimes and everyone would look up & he would be staring at me.  My yearbook is covered with references to my mind-control powers.  He was the one who had me do the presentation of "The Miller's Tale."  God, I totally wonder what happened to that guy.     

 

lifted

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

differences

In a departure from my usual methods, wherein I let my husband preserve his schema in which everything for sale in the world costs $27.99, I alerted him to the impending cost of a pair of pointe shoes.  Yes.

Yesterday was kind of a day like no other, and I am not a weather-baby, but tromping around rain-wise is different.  In yet another departure, I skipped the gym this morning and slept until 10.  Yummy. 

Also yummy:

 

This delicious kind of quinoa-oat porridge lately.  I love it, in spite of the fact that I mostly hate quinoa. What I do not like about it is that it is so granular in the mouth; the way you have to chase it around with yr teeth to chew it.  Stay together, quinoa!  But this is pretty good.  Whole grains and protein! 

 

I finished a book today, finally -- Emily Rapp's Poster Child.  It was really well-written, but the whole time I was totally distracted by her current predicament and the reverberations of her past in her present -- her mothering and her own mother's mark on her.  Man.  It took me so long to finish the book because ... man.  What is her soul here to learn?  Bless her.

Ordinarily, when I finish a readable book which is not too taxing -- and it has been years, I hardly read books anymore -- I forward it along to Lillo.  This time, I will refrain, since his girlfriend is obvsly out of her mind.  Mari & I are waiting in a grim silence for that to run its course, same as we did with the last.  She is certainly doing her level best to hasten its end (much the same as many of the last).  I saw a teevee show like this once, so shhh.  I would hate for him to fall through some ice somewhere far from home. 

 

I let the kids make some kind of terrible-seeming brownie from January's Everyday Food which used black-bean puree in place of some of the butter.  They turned out fine. 

 

Every day that I need to wear my waxed-canvas jacket, I love it more.  Yesterday, I decided I might need a waxed-canvas bag.  You know, it rains & then you need, yk, gear.  So I am shopping for that.  Expect the search to be terribly pinteresting.    Update:  most boring shopping ever.  I googled & this was a steal, so now I'm done!  Mari will not be impressed by its low, low cost, because why would it cost more, ever?  All the purses cost $56.  Except the ones that are $27.99! 

 

more of life's unsolicited tips

But first, more pancakes. 

 

 

You see?  The Molly-at-Orangette Pancake is a gateway pancake.  I saw these at Deb-at-Smitten-Kitchen's spot & then --  finding them too floury -- of course I had to fool around with them.  They are progressing into something altogether different, I will keep you posted.

 

If you want to try to figure out when in the near future you have an appointment, but for whatever reason do not wish to call up like a fathead and admit to not having any sort of an idea about being able to keep your gdmf appointments straight, here is what you can do:

Hello.  This is Femme Ininité calling.  I have an appointment for an Aspercreme Rejuvenating Desolarizing Jetsonista Far-Out Facial tomorrow, and I am so terribly regretful, but I have to cancel it.

Then you will talk about what time the appointment is.  Be very certain when you say, "10:30," but then when the administrator can not find it, weaken and admit it could be, yk, 1:30?

You will eventually get to her searching by yr name, at which point she will tell you that yr appointment is actually next Thursday at 4 and then you will be both bewildered and relieved, plus glad to hear her good news, for you do not have to cancel at all! 

Can you see the subtle difference here?  Calling to find out when yr appointment = asking her for something.  Calling to cancel and finding out you don't have to is allowing her to give you something.  It's small, but mighty.   

Be profuse in yr thanks to her good news, and laud her as a hero.  Write down the appointment and stop trying to keep everything on little slips of paper, plus also order the gdmf Filofax insert for 2012 + smite anyone who tries to tell you about their grimy, fingerprintsy, kludgy iPhone.  Yes.   

 

I still love this song as much as the first time I heard it.  I think it's the bridge that makes the whole thing so big to carry you away.

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!