la femme follette

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!

le weekend

This weekend was more roses, rose admiration. 

 

I said to Mari, when he got home, after not seeing him for 6 days, "Admire our roses."  This is the kind of jocular, pantomiming, schticky bullshit we love to play, because he knows I know he knows (plus, I know) that I actually have little to do with the blooming yield.  I water, and was prescient enough to plant in full sun. 

 

This summer, they are going on the much-heralded Rayford Reddell Rose Diet.  I am two months late with it, but this year's first show got me thinking:  If they look this great naturally ... how much better could they look if I tried?  Yes.  But Mari said to me, kind of excited & amazed, "Look how many buds there still are!"  Yes.  Exciting!  Smells so good. 

Saturday was a. Plant Exchange and b. Baseball Game, with a Big Lunch in-between.

 

Plant exchange was good, bringing a few love-in-a-mist divisions (or devil-in-the-bush for some of you & your outlook, you know who you are), a red columbine, one pink bleeding heart, one tiny startup of a lilac shrub, a strawberry plant (Fille's choice), an eggplant seedling (again), and 3 pink-flowering lilies of the valley. 

We came home from Acreage Town and Mari + Fille put together a compost tumbler while I made lunch.

 

Big Saturday Leisure Lunch is my favorite meal to make.  Grilled lamb chops, first lentil salad of the year, fried potatoes.

 

The lamb was from a butcher I had never used before because when I went to the covered market, my guy was folded up.  Gone!  Eh.  Mari said this lamb tasted fine, but I thought it tasted a little like reconstituted lamb.  Ugh, in the spring?  It should never.

Baseball game was lost, but had post-game fireworks over the river, which always win.  Fireworks are just as big & up-in-the-sky as they are in childhood.  They never change in their relative scale of Oh, wow.  Not many things can lay claim to such endurance in their sameness and magic.

 

Sunday we dropped the children off to their own activities and dragged ourselves quietly to a junior philanthropists' event.  We felt very no rest for the wicked and no good deed goes unpunished about it, at the same time.   There might have been a little sighing, and martyrlike acceptance, is what I am saying.  There was maybe a little beatific eye-rolling, as we may have seen His Holiness Pope John Paul II roll his eyes once or twice.  

Someone who organized a silent fundraising auction for an outfit dear to our hearts solicited a donation from us and we responded.  I guess the donation was generous ("What the hell kind of cheapskates do they usually call on?" was Mari's question.  Ditto.) and so we were warmly invited to the event alongside the auction.  Usually we demur the invites we get to this reception or that opening (unless it is a kids' thing or I get to use my eyelashes on, yk, amphibian conservationists), because I never understand who needs all this formalized gratitude in response to their charitable contribution.  Spend that money on the thing I donated to!

But this invitation was personally extended via a phone call from the director and I felt like saying no would be rude.  Plus, the event was not conjured to thank donors, it was the donors who provided the infrastructure for the event and its ticket-buying attendance.  Most of the donors, we found once there, were also ticket-purchasing attendees, so there was a weird, circle-jerking, hyper-clubby vibe.  It gave us this odd feeling of being there on charity.  Actually, no, no:  that was just me who felt like that.  Mari felt like he was a pillar of society who is always refusing invitations to celebrate his largesse. 

Anyhow.

When we rolled up to the event, I asked Mari to park around the back, away from the entrance, kind of by a tree.  How could he refuse?  Once there, I whipped out my lint roller and asked him to lint-roll all of the cat fur from my black jersey dress.  I had foolishly sat down on a dining -room chair to facilitate Fille putting on my necklace for me.  My Mothers' Day present necklace.  Remind me to get back to it; it's lovely -- freshwater pearls.   

Gracie's calico markings are deceiving. 

 
 

If I could prevail upon you to look at this photo yet again, you will see she is actually a white cat.

 

He rolled, and rolled.  So much white fur!  It took, like, 4 sheets of that lint-roller masking tape!  Then he gave himself a touch-up and pronounced us fur-free.  I told him, "That was so exciting!  It reminded me of, you know, back when we first met ... when you were my handler!  Remember?"

"We're not supposed to talk about that," he said, gruffly.  But it was in a gruffly perky sort of way.

It turned out to be fun, even the part where I had to wear high heels.   I mischeviously sidled around instigating fake bidding wars with people who obviously never shopped on eBay before and did not know that early bidding can drive up the price.  I drove one auction up so ridiculously high -- just me & this one gal who was determined her child should have the "Summer Leisure Basket" all full of, idk, a bunch of stuff I did not want for $205, so I was really nervous when I eked out that last, taunting bid minutes before the auction ended. 

It was with a lot of trepidation I walked to the table, and when I saw the clipboard was gone (they were to be collected by the winner), I wanted to fall to my knees in thanks.  Honestly, because I never would have heard the end of the ribbing from Mari.  She ponied up $210, about which Mari hilariously scoffed, "She only needed to bid $205.01!"  Ahahaha!   

It was a nice close to the weekend, a sophisticated, grownup outing with my husband, as we begin our 16th year of wedded bliss.  Nothing says Hello, Spring, like bare feet inside high-heeled shoes.  Unless it is lentil salad leftovers for a late supper. 

 

Lentil Salad, first of spring edition

Boil 2 cups lentils (love the lentil you're with; just not red) in 6 cups water with 2 bay leaves and a few cloves of garlic (do not bother to peel) for 15-18 minutes.  Poke them around now & then.  When tender, drain.  Rinse if you want, but I do not.  (Some recipe!)

While the lentils cook, whisk 1/4c lemon juice (bottled!  first of spring!) with 1/4c olive oil.  Dice one tennis-ball-sized red onion & throw it in.  Poke around.  Salt to taste.  Get the leaves & bulbs out of the lentils.  Pour it into the vinaigrette.  Add one bunch of chopped parsley.  Mix and mix.  Salt and grind fresh pepper to taste. 

Allez!   

c'est pas trop tôt

This is Mme Carrière's best year. 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

my equilibrium. my car keys. my pride.

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
 

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

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

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

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

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

Are you even following this?  Seriously!

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

 
That was me, with Shopping.  Mmmmmmm.

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

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

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

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

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

No one actually envies Mari, you know.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

may flowers

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

Look at who else is here.

 

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

mystery zone. national poetry month

I have a vague recollection of searching out just the right thing for this corner of the garden, and motherfucked if I can remember what it is. 

 

Hand-wringing about Mme Carriére to commence forthwith.

 

The Language
Robert Creeley 

Locate I
love you some-
where in

teeth and
eyes, bite
it but

take care not
to hurt, you
want so

much so
little. Words
say everything.

I
love you
again,

then what
is emptiness
for. To

fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full
of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.

cheers.

 

2010 was very different from the years immediately preceding it, and I will be a little sad to see it go, its quiet challenge, the way it held the line. 

It seemed kind of like nothing was happening, but toward the end I had to cling to lessons learned -- made clear, even -- in 2008 and 2009, the pages of such dicta I keep in a little metaphorical case chained to my metaphorical wrist.  My friend Susan died, and I assassinated my cat, Iris.  I always say -- like, not to everyone, but to myself, in a kind of Tracy Flick-y way -- I would rather regret doing something than have regret for not doing something. 

 

What was revealed to me this year -- when I got into a secure location and went over my metaphorical documents -- was the wisdom in remembering that sometimes doing nothing is choosing something, and there are times where that, in fact, can be the right choice, or the choice I will not want to regret later on, depending.

 

Then, on a lighter-yet-related note, I called old Kay a few weeks ago  & asked him how it was going at the Snow Queen's Palace and he was all, Naw, I skated out of there months ago.  I'm, um, I'm in Lapland, and this lady keeps writing notes on fish.  Did you really come all this way on your bare feet?  I was floored, just absolutely flattened, it was so unbelievably everything I had asked for in the universe, and God is so good.

 

Ok, that was not light at all.  I am incapable of lightness!  Except to say that I remain myself, and the roses will bloom whenever he returns home. 

Fille + Garçon were out of the house a lot this summer, with its long days and hot, hot weather.  They were with friends or at friends' houses or away with friends it seemed, like, all the time, and Mari & I spent all of our time watching movies, and hooking up, plus having unlimited uninterrupted conversations.  Bliiiissssssss.

 

 

 

I think we went to about 16 special + badass museum exhibitions up & down the Northeast Corridor.  We spent a lot of days in Manhattan -- consecutive days and day trips, too.  A lot of Washington, esp toward the end here. We got hooked on roller derby, which, what's not to like?  I went on six different boat rides this year -- more than all the years of my life before -- and I made a place in my house to hang out in a reclining position & sit still.  No, seriously, I did.  I named it The Treehouse.  Also, I went to bed at 10 for 40 nights, which was  curious bit of privation with penance involved.

 

I bought Twilight jewelry.  I know.

 

Music was so good this year!  So good I really can not even make a list.  It was just ... not at all like 2009, which was all so goshdarn likeable.  It was just a flood of records people were talking about and listening to and they just kept coming -- Broken Bells, The National, Josh Ritter, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Spooooooon, Grace Potter & her Nocturnals, She & Him, David Byrne, Ted Leo & his Pharmacists!  -- I told Mari, Omg, this must have been what it was like to be alive in 1969!

  

 

This is what I liked best about 2010's music:  the critical response to Janelle Monae's The Archandroid.  People loved the shit out of this record!  At the same time, people liked it without loving it even a little bit.  I was one of them!  I think Alex was another.  But it was there to be loved and people got really excited about it!  It was great!  So much better than the wan loveability of 2009's music that, in a lot of ways, just felt like a mercy fuck.  I mean.  Anyhow, one little negative thing about this year -- WTF happened to you, Kings of Leon?   

There are still 90 minutes left in 2010, but I am going to pronounce it great!  Exceeding expectations!  Thank you for reading here.  If you have never met me, I salute you!  If you know me and read along closely, you are too indulgent, and I love you back.  If you are a friend who reads along secretly, thank you for not trying to have me committed. 

 

Let's kiss!  Happy New Year, beauties!  Be safe!  See you in 2011. 

facelift

Someone asked me today, "So, when will it be cold enough for you to allow that it is cold?"  I knew the answer already, and I think we can all agree: cold is when you can make ice cubes during the day in the back seat of your car, and not before.

Today, demolition was finished on our wall where our mantel used to be.  Look at how there is a perfectly-good, non-combustible, decorative mantel already under there.  Yes. 

 

We could have just had that excavated and saved a couple of thousand dollars.  I was telling the sad story of this to the mason who is in charge of the second half of the job, and he said, "You can't know what is behind the walls in these houses.  Don't beat yourself up about it." 

I agreed to go along with him.  "Live and learn," I said.  Alors.  Also, it is a wee bit rustic for my taste and I probably would have been fussing about it for the last five years, at least.

I am going to dedicate this post to Becky, who had a birthday yesterday.

I was thinking of her yesterday, and wanted to message her from the weird-o-rama pseudo-spa medical office of the vascular surgeon with whom I consulted, but I got distracted.  (Not by fake ta-tas this time, but Mari wasn't there.  I am sure if he had been, we would have flushed them out.)

I know that vascular surgeon sounds scary, but I have a varicose bundle behind each knee that is lately making me nutty with the throbbing and whatnot, and veins are handled in a Cosmetics Interface.  Well, I guess one can have them remanded in a hospital setting, but when I asked the other surgeon I knew if he did veins, he said he did not so referred me to this dude.

This is the second time I have had a reason to visit an M.D. in a Custom Cosmetics environment and all I can say about it is: scary.  That is why I was thinking of Becky, because I am pretty sure she has lately had a medical reason to be in a cosmetic environment, perhaps for her first time.

All of the Botox coffee mugs and Restalyne Post-It pads and Latisse pens,  not to mention all the collateral everywhere promising how awesomely serene + full of renewed hope your life will be if you only have liposuction on yr flanks (that is the medical term for a muffin-top, did you know this?  Flank.) or if you engage in some kind of tomfoolery known as Nectifirm. (I have no idea what that is.)  The furnishings are kind of spa-decor upscale and that is fine, but the rooms were cold and after I had my leg ultrasound and was covered with ultrasound goo, all I got to wipe off were paper towels.  I mean, hello?  Even the freaking dime-store nail salon has hot towels.  I told the doctor that, too.  In nice + encouraging words designed to invite him to consider, but I did say something. 

I just want to digress & write one thing about muffin-tops:  What the hell is the point of wearing low-rise jeans if there is not a little hiccup of flesh revealed which implies promise, or the illusion of implied promise?  Is that not how we judge the muffin?  By the quality of its top?  Yes.  So therefore, I say, I do not understand the disparagement of the muffin-top.  Ill-fitting clothing and the whole Fashion Don't of Ten pounds of potatoes crammed in a five-pound sack is its own, sad, loathsome issue, but I do not want to live in world where everyone is showing me where their bones jut out.  I want to see something jiggling around, springy and elastic, lush and inviting. I know, I am lascivious and a hedonist, sure.  Anyhow. 

The point is that these Cosmetic Enhancement Places are freaky, like Fashion Magazines Come to Life.  It occurred to me yesterday that they are like a Disney Princess Store for grownup women.  It is alarming: the whole thing is so artificial and crazy.  Maybe it is not so noticeable when you are there for the Kool-Aid, but when you are there to get something medical, like to have a thing removed, or a vein ultrasound, it kind of limits their credibility.  I think.  Maybe? I dunno. 

One thing that got me down was the looking at the Before & After books they have there, where the photos are not airbrushed, the "After" photos are depressingly anti-fantastic in their gritty reality.  It made me feel sad, because they looked the same, really, but also because ... I don't know, it just did. 

I have been noticing a lot, as I come closer & closer to 40, how I do not think much about this stuff on my own time.  I do not think I do.  Maybe I do, like a nervous tic I can not notice myself.  I did spend a couple of months bothered by some sun damage under my eyes, so I started wearing sunscreen super-vigilantly and it faded.  I liked that eye cream I got from the aesthetician in the other surgeon's office; it made me look smoother & more-rested while I was using it.  Then I started going to bed at 10:30, and I never had enough time left for the whole routine.  Guess what happened once I started going to bed at 10:30?  I looked smoother & more-rested without it, yes. 

The women in my family look great, end of story, just plain great.  My great-aunt Ophelia showed a little leg until the day she died.  Everywhere she went, as far back as I can remember and until the end of her life, men watched her coming and going.  She was not the only woman in my family to be so good-looking in perpetuity, but she was the only one who also had a Personality of Eyelashes, constantly.  So, for me, not only did I feel like, yk, I will look like this forever, but also I knew that I could keep aloft this generator of charm forever.

I have been working this over & over in my mind, a lot, since last month or so when poor Paulina Porizkova wrote on and on in the Huffington Post about her not being young anymore and all that attendant horseshit.  But, I felt sorry for her.  Where is my halo for feeling really, really sympathetic to a supermodel married to a rock star! 

I thought two things when I read that Poor Paulina piece:  1. It is terrible the only tool she had in her box of charm was her looks.  It is such a passive and powerless way to give and to be received.  When Fille was a tiny girl, maybe 3 or 4, she asked me, "What does beautiful mean?"  One presumes it was because the leading adjective anyone not living in our home had ever used to talk about her.  Strangers!  Would talk about how beautiful she was!  Both of the children!  On and on!  Like, we would say, "Oh, thank you," and then they would keep talking!  For the first: detaining us.  Second:  OK, already!  After the third exchange of effusion from strangers and sincere graciousness from me and/or Mari, we had a policy of going to the source. 

"Well, look at us, really!  You know?"  It cooled the admirers, but only 50% of the time.  The rest of the time the admirer switched to geared-up flattery about Mari and/or me.  (I think Mari's tactic was to say, "You should see my wife," which led them to talk about how handsome he was.  It was 85% of the time well-put-together older women detaining us/him/me in this way.  Whatever) 

It made me panicky, at first, her question.  I had to spend a lot of time in my life unraveling a lot of guilt about beauty privilege.  My parents pretended it did not exist, which is ridiculous, but I think typical of that generation.  I have a friend whose mother used to tell her & her sisters, "That & a token will get you on the bus," but what gets left out of that kind of neutrality & denial is the plain fact that if you arrive to this world looking a certain way, you don't even need to have the token to ride the bus.  You do not need your parents to tell you that, the world will inform you in good time, and what I was left with was a lot of shame for this unfair advantage.

Eventually, I gave it a rest.  No one else cared that I was wringing my hands and beating my breast in the night.  It did not change the way other women treated me, it did not change the way men treated me, even after they knew me & I might appeal to them to switch to a merit-based system.  By the time I was 20, I was like the girl in the "Closing Time" lyric -- drink included -- I loved you for your beauty, that doesn't make a fool of me, you were in it for your beauty, too. 

I knew that part of my task -- for Fille's future mental health -- was to come hard at the deconstruction of beauty and its privileges.  We have, in the 4 intervening years, mostly to talk about how good looks + good manners will get you anything in the world.  Also, benevolence is required.  People being generous to you means that you have psychic space to be generous at other times.  With great power comes great responsibility, like Peter Parker, you know.  She is always watching me, and I am always doing my light-up show all around & getting what I need, particularly when I do not have a leg on which to stand, plus leaving everyone feeling good about it.  

"It means," I told her then, about beautiful, "that looking at you makes people feel good."  Which is pretty much all there is to it.  That is why the admiring of such a person is called objectification.  The rest, it is up to you.  I feel like Poor Paulina had things a bit mixed up, when she said words to the effect of, "People no longer think I am beautiful," because the fact is probably more like people no longer objectify her.  That now she is expected to participate in their experience.  Her facade is no longer enough, and that must make for some sad times for a woman who is used to being looked at without doing the work of engagement.  I mean, being beautiful is a gigantic, door-opening wedge but, to mix a metaphor, one needs to be after that ready to run on all cylinders. 

The other thing I thought (2.) was what a shame that she obviously was laboring beneath the delusion that 19 or 25 or whatever was full-fledged womanhood.  I was reared with the idea that it was all-girlhood.  Even after I was married, at 23, I was a still a girl.  I was a child bride, I was the woman of the house, I would soon be the mother of my children, but I was in no way an all-the-way-grownup woman.  I think that because Poor Paulina worked at a job so hand-in-hand with Youth Culture and the Patriarchy she got mixed-up along the way.

I have written before -- it was in regards to something else, I can not remember once -- that when I was a girl, 21 or 22, Kowalski used to embellish sincere flattery by ending, almost wistfully, "But you would really be something if you were 36 ... at a minimum."  He was always after me for being so young, as if he took it personally.  I never listened to anything he said, really, but it reinforced what I already knew: that I was a girl, and that one day, were I to be so lucky, I would grow up & be a woman.  

I looked forward to my 36th birthday with such excitement, because I knew that was when I would start to be in my fullest flower.  Like Mme Carrière, right when she becomes a flower, unfurled from her tight pink bud.  There will be decades (I hope I have them all) before I go to fullest flower, petals everywhere, in an excellent, oh-what-I-have-seen mess.  

So, anyhow, when I read about Poor Paulina, I thought, "Oh, how terrible no one ever told her or showed her that she would amount to no more than a bud until her late 30s.  Sad."  Just last week, the young man working the Starbucks kiosk at the Safeway walked over to me -- where I was standing on the middle of the line -- and escorted me back to his cash register for checkout.  Probably because I am not spending my time in line fretting about my fading beauty and how I will trim dollars from my grocery bill to afford cosmetic enhancements.  Latisse, maybe, because eyelashes that work as hard as mine deserve to be as long as a giraffe's, but the rest, not so much.

But anyhow, the offices of Medical Doctors performing Primarily Cosmetic Enhancements -- staggering.  My new camera came this afternoon, so maybe I can snap some photos tomorrow and do a full exposé.  Probably not, though, because after this vein -- only one leg is medically faulty -- gets lasered into submission (tomorrow), I have to wear compression hose and not sit or stand for long periods.  Walking and lying down, only.  Tough life.  Who is going to make dinner?

One thing about Poor Paulina's diatribe -- and I am a decade younger than her, so maybe I will see someday, but she gives an age I passed years ago as the death knell of her youth-- is that she pooh-poohs clean living as anyone's key to eternal youth.  Well, maybe Poor Paulina just can not hack it long enough to reap the rewards. 

Anyhow, now I am going on a long time, such that it seems as if I am coming down on Paulina Porizkova personally, which I am not.  I really did feel sad for her.  I really was a little eye-rolling about how she blew off healthy diet + yoga as the answer to long years of preservation.  I scoffed when she called Madonna once-brunette, as Madonna was only brunette for about 4 minutes in her career -- she has always been artificial, and she continues to rock that artificial look today.  She looks like a million counterfeit dollars, Madonna does.  So much else of what Paulina said was just so patently untrue, and sad.  It made me want her to have had a better life.  Where is my halo?      

es.ki.mo.

 

You know, it had been 25 years since I saw The Outsiders, but Heathers was released 5 years later and had a longer run, a billion more screenings, and a greater cultural significance.  In my ken, anyhow.  

A couple of weeks ago, I was finally able to find a taker for our awesome, retired, double stroller.  It was amazing, and still is, although we finally will never need it again, thank God.  The transfer of possession -- which is all another story about how people are awesome, from its start to finish -- was happening in Ballet Town.

 

I lugged the enormous thing from the car into Ballet's school so that I could cool my heels for a while until the drop.  When the kids were little, I would roll them everywhere in it and lock it up to a bike rack while we were inside with our shopping or librarying or lunching or whatnot.  Taking it from the attic to get it cleaned up to go to its next home was surprisingly emotional; I am glad to have given it to someone so great for her closely-spaced grandchildren.  But, anyhow, it was small enough to roll through a door, so I took it inside the school until the call came. 

While I was cooling my heels in the school's lobby, the Ballet Mistress made an international fuss over its tanklike excellence, and for the first time realized how close in age Fille & Garçon must be, given my need for such a magnificent vehicle of Swedish design.  She was asking me about it, conversationally, maternally, collegially, and I confirmed for her that it was such an amazing thing to move to the city with them and wheel them around along all the pavement of the county in such a stylish behemoth.  Before that, when we were in the bedroom suburb of DC, I had to put them in the car & drive them up & down the county highway every mid-morning until they fell asleep.  Or get up early and mall-walk them.  Lame.  Wheeling them around a town with a sidewalk culture and other people and children on the ground was such a different life. 

Mme Alexandrova was completely on-board with the misery of being home with small children and no diversion.  I confessed to her, conspiratorially, "A couple of months after Fille was born was when that woman drowned all six of her children, in her suburb, and I felt like I could totally see how it could happen."   

Now, let me just make clear, that I realize that Andrea Yates was seriously, psychotically ill.  But a. living in those conditions is a serious environmental factor to produce mental illness, and b.  those conditions would have, could have only magnified & exacerbated any psychosis anyone could have.  It is like asking someone with poor eyesight to make a living as a forger. 

Nonetheless, I was extremely upset by the entire event and left feeling extremely empathetic and also dismal about the way in which American society seems to hate women and children, but that is a tinfoil hat for a different time.

Anyhow, while I was telling Mme  A. this -- she & I just girls, talking -- one of the school's two Major "Success on My Child's Coat-tails" Stage Moms, the blonde one, had been sitting nearby, nosily mining our chatter, and when I said the thing about Yates, she gave me a look.  You know, one of those looks, it was very red-bow.  I gave her a look that I think expressed my jiu-jitsu stance of Nice, you were probably responsible for 15 cases a week of PPD in yr prime.  Mega-bitch.

I mean, can we all stop with this bullshit wherein we judge other women for telling the truth about how they feel compromised by the hard work of mothering?  I mean, we all hope we love the children, but frankly, they are not always likeable, and idle, non-method-specific fantasies of doing away with them and maybe just one fucking time having one fucking uninterrupted conversation just once this decade with the man you chose to marry are not actually aberrant.  Frankly, the children can be time-consuming and ungrateful and sometimes they do not sleep or they have undiagnosed neurological disorders, or maybe they are just run-of-the-mill sweet, little cupcakes, baked by the Devil, as my friend's mother puts it. 

Admitting any of that -- that sometimes we all feel that way, every one of us, in some measure -- creates a climate in which women do not have to feel despairing because they erroneously believe normal feelings that can come with the job are deviant.  I mean, how long do we have to live in this world where in order to be validated as matchy-matchy, people have to dally in a showcase of confection that gives everyone cavities of heartache?  Ugh, horrible! 

However, imagining the applause of everyone I love, I blew it off.  I am not about to rumble at Ballet's school.  Also, I already know that two bitches who sit & whisper and gossip and chirp for hours every single afternoon sitting around on their asses, sucking up to the Ballet Mistress, plus also encourage + enable + foster the same undignified, unprovoked behavior in their daughters, teen- and tween-aged, have problems best handled by industrial-grade pharmaceuticals, and not, say, my brand of souped-up Minnesota-nice.

But, God is good.  I usually pick the baby up late on Wednesdays, like an hour after her class ends, because I have Pilates.  I get a look when I roll in on those days, too.  You know, one of those looks, Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?  She has been here alone for one hour, needing your ministrations and performances! -- and I just let it go.  Because it is not their business, and some of us can not just sit around in the school's lobby waiting upon our precious darlings.  Some of us feel it is courteous and the very seat of marital bliss to keep it foxy (also, walking without a limp) for our husbands. 

Anyhow, when I got there, Fille was making nice chatter with the Blonde.  I took a seat while they kept nattering about something I could not pick up, until Blonde said, "I think it stands for words that are Latin.  But I don't know what." 

Then Fille said, "I know that, because my dad told me that, but I don't remember what else he said."

So I asked, conversationally, "What're  you talking about?"  Fille told me that they were talking about the words for which a.m. and p.m. stood.  "Oh, ok." I said.  " I know that.  It's ante meridiem and post meridiem." 

Fille said, "Oh,  yeah.  You do know." 

I turned to the Blonde, kind of full of swagger, and pointed to myself, like I once saw someone do in a rap video, and said, gloating a little, obvsly, "Homeschoolah!"  Then, we got out of our chairs and left.  I just thought it was kind of harmless & amusing, but then I got into the car & found out my hair looked dead fucking fantastic.  Ahahaha!  Lick it up, baby.  Lick it up. 

whatever

 

There is a long list of things I should be blogging about, but I feel like I do not have time and/or which to choose and also when I sit down, other things are so forward in my brain -- dreamy pals!  bitchy neighbors! -- and then I get into the fingertip-blurting zone and then, yk, zzZzZzz.  I was talking to my friend Charlie today and she said, "Blog a whole list!"  Smart.

• RentBoy.  If you have not been following the George Rekers RentBoy scandal, why the hell not?  Especially if you are one of these downer people who has been trying to follow me around and chat me up about the depressing Gulf oil spill & its [ insert the oil-spill-appropriate term for fallout].  The Homophobic Demagogue's European Vacation with a Foxy, South Beach, Gay Escort gets better every time you follow up, which is the polar opposite of oil spill story.  Stop trying to fill me in about oil spill, people.  Knowing all those details is anxiety-producing, I do not need it.  Stop telling me.  Let's talk about RentBoy.  It feels like Purim, really. 
  
   
  
• Iris.  My cat who is going to be entering her third decade this year, srsly. She is in good health, thank God, but she is noticeably declining.  If she were a little old lady, she would be at the point where she would just have a path between the bed to the window & the bath and she might forget to make her meals.  I sometimes forget not how long she has been with me, but how much she has spanned.  I was complaining about her crabby, old-lady, fussing demands recently, and Kowalski cut me off, That cat has always been like that.  Always.  What are you talking about?  I forgot that he knew her.  Please, Iris, just die in yr sleep.  Peacefully.   No rush, but she has had a long, good run, that one. 
• A couple of weeks ago, I borrowed The Accidental Billionaires from the library.  Then I started sewing and set it aside, during which time Mari read it.  When I went to recover it, he cautioned me not to read it, saying, "It's going to agitate you."  He went into the office today, so I figured I could read it and it would be my own bad luck to be alone + agitated if that were so.  I feel like it made me less ranty about Mark Zuckerberg overall, but man, o, man, I wish I had known that kid was a fucking hacker before I signed up for a website at which he is the overlord. 
  God!  Of course!  His whole schema ::slapping forehead:: is so hackers' code:  Information that is accessible is for taking & using, because if you cared about it, you should have protected it.  So 350 squillion-billion people are just giving him information with the kind of mistaken presumption that there is a social contract, but no:  he is a hacker.  Now you know, if you did not.  The real problem I was left with after reading the book -- and now my real problem with Facebook -- is this:  Is Facebook the only thing Zuckerberg is going to bring to the world now?  That's a fucking waste.  Too bad for us, because he seems pretty smart enough to program something important.  Whatever.
  
   
  
  
• Roses.  My Don Juan climber is out this year.  If you know me, or you have been reading this blog for a long time, you know how I have always been conflicted about it, but every year it lures me with bloom?  This year, it is not making the grade, so that's it.  Bye!  I am like that.  Next year -- after much + many calculations -- I am on order for a Gloire de Dijon, an apricot rose described over & over & everywhere as a rose people just love.  I already have one rose I just adore, so what if I had two?  I was in the living room on Tuesday, reading the NY'er and could smell Mme Alfred Carriére from her spot all the way outside; I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, really.
• I am getting a megaphone for parenting.  I am tired of projecting my voice three floors up and outside and over & over again.  Fuck it.  Megaphone.  They cost more than I would have thought, but I suppose I never actually thought about it.
• Health freakiness.  Some little girl in Fille's art class found out that she had never had a drink of soda and after calling her a liar for a little bit, apparently rested her case with "Your mom must be some kinda health freak!"  This has caused us no end of amusement, Mari & I, because of all the things to use as evidence in my health-freak indictment?  We feel like not letting a child drink what amounts to poison is really pretty zzZzzZzzz, as things go.  I mean, there are so many things I forbid, nutritionally, in their diets.  I feel like we do not even need to go so granular as high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives, dyes, and trans-fats.  The fact that I frown upon any kind of flour is all anyone needs to brand me for the freaky.  Anyhow. 
• Almond Dream Vanilla Bites are something new for me to resist.  Honestly.  They are like a stick-free, ice-cream bar, and last week when it was so warm and I had to make the haul to Ballet Town?  I put some little "bites" in a paper cup and ate them on the way.  Great idea!  But sugar depresses the immune system and I have recently become much, much more vigilant about never, ever eating it because ... 
• I have been reading Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Lifeand I have to say, this idea that an immune system is constantly dealing with invaders and threats and whatever and one of those things one's own immune system can combat, given the right internal environment, is something so far-reaching-seeming as cells that wind up in cancer, well.  Yeah, sign me up for some of that health-freakiness.  Also, put down the freaking Almond Dream Vanilla Bites!
• Related to health-freaking, I have overheard a bunch of different children saying to their caregivers, recently, about this or that garbage food, "Why can't I eat it?  I'm not fat!"  Which is great, that they are not already on diets, but wtf is wrong with this thinking that health is only reflected by girth?  Whither the conflating?  I wanted to pull one snooty girl by her ponytail -- "The sweetener in that Oreo will turn your fucking liver to swiss cheese!  Why don't you have a glass of scotch instead, little girl?!"  I mean, seriously!  When I was trying to kill myself, I drank a fifth of Dewar's every day and smoked 2 packs of Camels, as a constitutional, and now it is easy to be a health freak, maybe because I have been on the other side and at that time, I was not half-assing it.  Maybe the answer to this question of why people would kill themselves with Hostess treats and Snickers is found somewhere in the space where Prufrock and Marlowe intersect with Thoreau. 
• Which reminds me, in closing, that I asked Fille today about one of her ballet school classmates who was hella dawdling yesterday, still putting up her hair long after class started.  "Does she like the class?"  I was conversational, casual, but I will admit that the reason I was asking was because Lara is a normal-sized girl -- tall and sturdy, will probably grow up to be an hourglass, sized an 8 or 10, feeling like a gigantic fatass, especially if she stays in ballet, where even at this age, a third of the tiny girls talk about how "fat" they are.  If Lara were my daughter, she would absolutely not be in mothereffing ballet, I promise that.  Anyhow, without getting into any of that with Fille, I was curious to see where the conversation might head.  Fille shook her head no, and then elaborated, "No, she doesn't, but hardly any of the girls do."  Whaaa-at?????  This class takes 180 minutes in the studio each week, plus a thousand & change in tuition, and hardly any of the girls want to be there?  This was crazy to me!  Where are their parents? What the hell? 

dean martin or danny kaye.

One of the loonier, more far-out things I have done in the last decade is to have a  past-life counselor reveal to me what is my connection to the Israeli.  He & I had by then been discussing for more than ten years that we preceded our teenaged meeting.  I told him and our spouses at once:  She said that I knew you when you were a baby. 

 

He shook his head.  "I am older than you," he told me, on the verge of scoffing.  We all stared at him, but Mari & Mrs Israeli left it to me. 

"That's why it is a past-life situation," I told him, speaking slowly.  He was surprised and then allowed that multiple pennies were dropping on some things about me in that case.  Yes, indeed.     

Years ago, pregnant with Fille, I started dreaming of the Israeli.  By the time she was born, I was dreaming of him every night.  It was some of the most pedestrian dreaming ever visited upon me -- endless images of him & me shopping, eating, walking the streets of NYC -- but it was so vivid that I would spend my waking hours confused about who had been where and when [whatever] had happened.

It was exhausting, and I started to resent him for occupying all of my dreamscape even as I knew, logically, it was not his fault.  I was cross & difficult, hectoring, Only you would be the man in my dreams who won't even be the man of my dreams while he's there!  was one of my better, metaphysical complaints. 

Around Fille's first birthday, I dreamed about being back home with him, eavesdropping on him talking to a medical professional.  In leaning forward to do my best dream-eavesdropping, I woke myself.  I was sufficiently fussed about it that I called the next day & told him everything I remembered.  When I got to the dream-part I did hear them dream-talking about, he snapped out of his half-listening mode.  "Wait, tell me that part again.  What?"

 

Unbeknownst to me, he had been trapped in a real-life medical mystery.  The thing I "heard" in the dream was one of the things MDs were treating as a far-fetched, unlikely scenario, but in his reading was something that he felt was a distinct possibility, living inside his body like he was and all. 

Anyhow, he is Jewish, I am Catholic -- we do not require a hard sell on the mystical.  He went back to his doctor, pushed to be thoroughly explored in this far-fetched possibility and found the answer.  It was one of those situations where physicians say, you know, "It's lucky that we found this now."

After this amazing convergence, I was freed up to visit that past-life counselor -- something I had wanted to do for a long time, because honestly -- without ridicule from him or anyone in our families.  Bonus-y, my left-brained husband was schooled in the reality of the mysteries of the universe, so that was nice, seriously.

Anyhow, after eight years of not featuring the Israeli more than anyone else in my wacky-o typical dreaming with their bizarre thrills and spills, I have had two dull, dullsville dreams about him in 2 weeks.  Last night, dream-him broke some important news to me about his health and when I woke up, I could not remember what it was.

I called him, on his cell phone, lying still in my bed with my cell.  Omigod, it's you!  Hey, is there anything wrong with you, healthwise?

"I don't know," he said.  "Is there?  What did you hear?" 

I know!  I feel like such a bad friend!  No wonder it took a whole year before.  We had to make sure I was paying attention.   

global warm-ups

Emergency! 

  

Nelly Moser is not doing well this year!  Her flowers are too small! 

In other clematis news, I finally tidied up the old "Polish Spirit."  Yes. 

Nelly & feisty old Mme Carriére are in bloom at the same time this year, which has never happened before.  The flowers are all effed up this year, all over.  Lilacs have already come and gone! 

My own little flowers are effed-up, too.  I am tired of saying to them, "I know it was 90 degrees a couple of weeks ago, but it is April.  Please put on a jacket.  No, you can't wear shorts.  Hello!  Spring blizzards!  No scarves, no hats, you're dead!"

This little weblog gets a lot of traffic about Mme. Alfred Carriére at this time of year.  Last night, someone was looking for a clematis to run up against her.  Rouge Cardinale is what I use for that.  It is not period, but it was appealing and undernurtured at the nursery, so I brought it home.  I know.  Neither is Polish Spirit the right vintage for my garden, but with a name like that, how could I resist, mowimy po polsku, back home in the  City of the Big Shoulders + spring blizzards.  Oh, god, it is still National Poetry Month! 

Right, so, I have been reading Grave of Light, but none of Alice Notley's work can be properly graphically-represented here in this teensy column.  Also, I do not feel like typing. Here is a poem from when I was last asked to respond to a study of Notley's work, if you know it.  I know, I know, I am not being a good Nat'l Poetries Player this year.  Is there a test?  A grade?  Yikes.  I used to be better for April.  (I used to not have a sewing machine nor birthday trips.)

I was already thinking of this poem & a couple of others because I was just in an email exchange with someone excellent  about his poem written as a son, and so thinking of the poems I have written as my son's mother.  There are two sides to every story. 

Postcards
Elle Case

Dear Ex-Beau,

I thought of you, in Central Georgia, with
the oak-leafed hydrangeas and pie at breakfast.
Grits, coffee, sausage gravy on biscuits,
over-medium eggs, then pie. Everything
good ends in pie. What have I started?

Dear Ex-Beau.

There have been two weeks of sensational, perfectly-
plush weather since you visited. I am thinking of your birthday
because Creeley died today. The children eat steamed
broccoli in a picnic every night; we have run out of paper
towels and I do not care.

Dear Ex-Beau,

I want to answer you. Of course I am terribly in love with my
son -- he is all the good things about any man I have ever loved,
mystically assembled into one little, loose-toothed boy. It is a
rapturous cancer, to love someone so much when you know
they will leave you.

Dear Ex-Beau,

Of course, of course, I love the baby. But my son will grow
into a man. I must reflect upon the details I pave onto his senses.
What will he expect from women? He knows I am afraid of heights.
I love red and pink roses, never yellow, nor white.
I never eat tomatoes, for I can not risk disappointment.
Think of everything you know to expect from me. Had only your
mother prepared you for my arrival on the tide.

Dear Ex-Beau,

I miss you, too. I am sad and sore in my heart, so homesick
for you. It is surely the fault of current events and world affairs.
Who isn't homesick right now? The world is in pain from longing.

Dear Ex-Beau,

I was willing, it was you afraid to fall into my hands.
After the hara-kiri of your heart, I never would stay.
I write about it, sometimes. I trace the words backwards,
until everything I remember turns to smudges and loops.

early show

Looky, looky who has arrived.

 

Also, more exciting that Mme Alfred Carriére is this:  I have all the feeling back in my hands.  It had been two years my hands had been numb.  Honestly, I do not remember what having all the feelings feels like, but I am pretty sure this is it.  I am so excited!  It feels like a great gift of something I never really took for granted.  I burned myself today, making lunch, and was like, "Hey!  Ow!  Heyyy!"  Good.

I had to get into the garden yesterday.  I had 4 peonies and 12 dahlias to plant and then I had to make special accommodations and rush on out there, before the inevitable delayed muscle soreness of Pilates set in and I would be unable to use my butt in any sequence of gardening postures.  Seriously. 

I know I said this a week or so ago, but Pilates has been so hard lately.  I mean, I am working with Pilates Chick, everything is fine, she is super-good at what she does, and I feel bionic, every day, plus also taller, all the time, it is for the best.  But on Wednesday it was again all so hard.  So hard!

Kowalski, who was called to receive Hand-Recovery Report and then lingered on for the chatting -- asked me to quantify how hard is so hard, and the answer is, I was at the brink of whining.  Oh, yes.  So hard.  Because I might complain and I might even cry, but whining?  I mean, that just means it is hard in a different direction.  Like, there is something going on besides lack of physiological mettle. 

That is when the whining comes on, every time, is when I can not just put my shoulder to the wheel and do.  There is a subtlety and wholeness to Pilates I do not love.  Being strong can be a weakness.  Aauugh!  Just typing that makes me want to whine!  And yet, this is the lesson from which I recoil every time it comes to me.  Which is why it keeps coming.  Oh, life.  Why must I be so yielding to your lessons?  I mean! 

genesis

 

That rascally lamb might be lying down on Broadway, because she sure the hecks is not up & around, showing March the way out.  It has been raining for the lion's share of, well, March.  There were some amazingly sunny days.  There was one day it was 41 degrees and double-plus sunny, which I recall only because my next-door neighbor -- who hails from Duluth -- came home from work & while we were chatting, flung his coat to the ground and spread his arms wide to the sky.

"It's beautiful out here," he exclaimed.  "I mean, really!  It is just so gorgeous!  Feel this sun!"  Then he picked up his things to head inside.  "Oh, wow.  I'm coming back with a beer.  You want one?"

It was 11:30 in the morning.  I love him so much, this burly, bearded homeland guy, right in the next-door house.  I declined the beer, but when he came back, I had a fresh pot of tea next to me, and we sat there on our right-next-to-each-other porches, in our shirtsleeves, possibly the only people in a mile's radius who thought the weather was grand enough to leave the outerwear indoors. 

But it has been raining surely for the past 3 days.  I am starting to feel a little anemic in my brain, like I have forgotten how to see, or something.

If you need to know, you do already that Becky is having surgery today.  My best is with her and in her honor, I would like to proffer a list of things I am liking today.

1. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.  Because what more do we need?  How better to drive the fucking point home about America's dumptruck diet than by showing a room full of first-graders who can not identify a potato?  A mothereffing potato.  Lord.  Disgraceful, and that town does not feature anomalies, I promise you.
   
   
2. The Holiday,which we are maybe the last to know, but watched last night & immensely enjoyed.  It was rather complex & cerebral for a movie with so many good-looking people in it.  I was surprised to see (after we viewed it) that it was classified as a romantic comedy.  Really?  It was much more chewy and rather tidy for a script that had so much in the way of character.  Oh, when Kate Winslet's sweet, pitiable, English-rose character gets to Los Angeles and is hanging her head from the window, blown away by the California scenery, how do you not love her?  The only problem with the movie is that Mari & I had recently watched the Jack Black Drunk History segment in which he played a womanizing Ben Franklin.  We were on the verge of hilarity the whole time we were watching the movie and then, he ebulliently tells the Winslet character, "I am going to make a fire," and that was it for both of us.  Howling with laughter.  Good times.
   
   
3. My Liberty of London for Target gardening gloves.  True love.  I have the ones in the pink "Garla" pattern.  They are so nice and perfectly leather, which makes them perfect for dealing with old Mme Alfred Carriere, who will have her own series of posts any day, surely.  If ever the sun comes out.
   
   
4. What kind of animal [fill in child's offense]?  Remember in The Sopranos, when AJ got busted getting stoned & Carmela's famous, shrewish, rhetorical question, What kind of animal smokes marijuana at his own confirmation?  (That link is here, she is at 3:21. Such restraint!)  I have made good use of the base on this query lately.  Surprisingly, it has been my daughter on the receiving end of this trick question:  What kind of animal sits around and reads a book while her mother picks up her crap from the floor? and What kind of animal sticks pins into the dining room table?  It is pretty satisfying, I have to recommend it.  It is the kind of thing you could wear out, though.  Use sparingly.
   
   
5. FlashForward is back.  It went away for the Olympics and I forgot everything that happened before.  I can not remember anything plotwise that drives a fictional narrative, ever.  I am always asking Mari to remind me what happened -- Why were they so mad at that Wayne guy in Heat?  What was his name?  Wayne Grow?  or O, you know, I think this Angel [in Neverwhere] is kind of shady -- this was during the second time I read the book.  Or, this one, from just this weekend:  You know, I was driving and I was thinking of the character, with the blood on her hands ... which play was that?  Oh, wait, I know!  Lady MacBeth!  It was MacBeth!  Who'd they kill again?  Speaking of FlashForward, I was hoping that Mike Ealy could take over the Terence Howard position in Hollywood, because Howard is kind of a prick, honestly.
   
   
6. The new Gorillaz CD Plastic Beach is so great.  I love it.  Love, love, love it.  I think my less-than-140 character review the other day read:  It makes me wish I was the kind of lady who could make full use of her stoner pool boy.  I am so going to stick right by that.  It is grand.

thursday

I want to not forget this small piece of business I mentioned elsewhere in the intersphere to Becky.  Here is the front of my home this very afternoon.  Obvsly, we have no HOA here.

  
What we do have is a kindly/meddlesome neighborhood neighbor (debuted here), whose aging mother lives on this block, who came around last week or so (?) and swept down the length of the street.  I was already out there, sweeping up the leaves from the curb a little, because otherwise it rains & we drive on them, and they get clotted and the storm drains or whatever ... honestly, I don't know.  It is bad, though.  (Honestly, I don't know that it is empirically bad, but we get little dams here & there and it is annoying.)

The funny thing about Rusher is that when we first moved here, he would come round all the time & bring our trash cans back from the curb.  It pissed me off so much because I was going to get to it when I got to it.  As a rational person, I think he might have been trying to help -- I did have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, after all. 

One day, I ran into his wife around town & said, in my Tallulah Bankhead's tone, "Your husband keeps bringing my trash cans in and you can tell your husband that just because my husband is away two nights a week, that doesn't mean I am that kind of woman."  And I walked off, marshalling my double stroller.  Ahahaha.  (I don't know, but I did!  I am here to confess!)

Anyhow, whatever day that was, I walked back out -- I was super-multitasking -- and Rusher was there, sweeping up the dirt from the pot Fille knocked over in her energetic step-sweeping.  But now already the steps look like this.

 

Is it trashy?  To me, it just seems like fall; leaves fall and blow and whatever.  I am not worried.  Also, I do not have to worry about it, because I cannot see it from inside my home & I despise the neighbor directly across.  This is her view.  When I walk past all this outdoor, unattended, natural disorder, it looks like this,

  
so you might see how it could slip my mind, once I entered such an overthought oasis of velveteen + library books supplanting decorative pottery + unauthorized rearranged furniture + knitting all over.  Obviously I am some kind of indoor/outdoor schizophrenic.  Wait, maybe not.  I think it all goes back to the children. 

Close readers surely did not miss where I documented indulging myself in a real cocktail the other night and while it is not exactly scheduled to repeat, it is not out of the question.  My son, he is exhausting me.  Only after a go at fortification by grueling hours spent between the Gauntlet and the sauna.

The baby and I made a break for it today, just she & I.  We had to go pick up the car from our mechanic and after, we did a little shopping.  She has a new pair of shoes to show for it.  We walked into the auto shop and Fille grimaced, "Oh, ew, it smells bad!"  What's not to like?  It smells like fresh cigar smoke, fossil fuels and men.  I want a job there, really.  I would be so happy & high on yang. 

Today, I was enjoying this link I got in my hopper thanks to a farflung, past-life's colleague.  I love what I can see of the Obamas' marriage because it seems so real to me, or at least familiar.  Not the part where he is President of the United States, but the rest.  I recently read some interview with her where she was talking about a belt she owns that he disdains as "the Star Trek belt."  She revealed that her response to him was something along the lines of, "Get out of my closet; go run the world, OK?"  Yes, I know, it happens here sometimes, too.

I love this part:

Michelle Obama accepted that she was not going to have a conventional marriage, that her husband would be away much of the time. “That was me, wanting a certain type of model, and our lives didn’t fit that model,” she told me in an Iowa lunchroom in the summer of 2007. “I just needed the support. It didn’t have to be Barack.” Craig Robinson later told me that he and his sister, Michelle, had another realization: if their father, a city water worker, had the kinds of opportunities their generation did, he probably would not have been home for dinner every night, either.

I love it because it speaks to how no one's marriage is like anyone else's marriage.  Also, any marriage is kind of like the story about the blind men and the elephant.  Bystanders see where they are, what they bring to it; no one knows the whole beast. 

Anyhow.  I am trying to get things ready for an uninterrupted listen of Game 2 of the World Series.  Last night was a little bit crazy.  Cliff Lee, I suspect, may be bionic.  People of the world will see what happens tonight.

five by five

(She has arrived, by the way.)

 

1. The Israeli's birthday has come & gone and now my favorite & best is 40.  40!  I am always trying to avoid being in some kind of misunderstanding and Betty Rubble Trouble (more like Jeannie trouble, but doesn't really rhyme the same) with his sweet wife.  After 14 years I am pretty confident she does not think I am trying to Steal Her Man, but the patriarchy's messages on this topic are somewhat formidable and we as women can be sometimes confounded.  I made the decision to zip lips (lasting lessons of Lent, again so useful), and chuck something super-glam in the mail, but belatedly.
   
   
2. Saturday, at lunch before our screening of Wolverine, I was being forced to listen to a pair of loudtalker Ivy-League co-eds who got around to Nolan's Batmanfilms with Christian Bale.  "I really loved the backstory in the script," Co-Ed #1 said, and then went on for some time about what she thought was screenwriting genius, but was in fact boilerplate comic book bio.  It was so bad, her misunderstanding of the genre, that at one point I considered leaning over to gently inform her that it was from the comic books.  But really, she was the kind of a girl who would never give a comic-book-reading guy the time of day, so she was in no danger of embarrassing herself, except in front of a comic-book-reading guy to whom she would never give the time of day, in which case then comic-book-reading guy would be pleased to be able to feel superior to this know-nothing girl who would never actually ever give him the time of day.  So, I sat right in my seat & said nothing and I like to think the Universe is pleased with my decision. 
   
   
3. My own superpower is that I seem like the kind of high-polish girl who does not read comic books, but in fact (because really, where else would a simple midwestern girl get such ideas about eye makeup appropriate for daytime wear?)  I have read many & leafed through nearly all of the rest.  I have long been typically giggly & true for a certain sort of comic-book-reading guy & the books are always lying around on their shelves for the leafing.  So, I am able to know at least this much:  Sabretooth & Wolverine are not brothers, seriously, come on, stop it.  Also, Ivy-League co-eds who would never give the time of day to a certain kind of a comic-book-reading guy?  The patriarchy informs me you are trying to steal my man, so stop fluttering yr eyelashes at my husband unless you want me to kick yr ass like Jean Grey.   
   
   
4. Inspired by all the parents who brought their very young children to our screening of Watchmen (quelle horreur!) some weeks ago, Mari & I decided it was probably ok to take our children to see the new Star Trek movie, thus eliminating babysitting-securing hassle.  Mari keeps saying, "Do you think it will be ok?"  I do, because the Wolverine movie had the same PG-13 rating, plus is unlikely to have any of the necessarily dark & dire mutant-abduction/experimentation.  Actually, they are even old enough for that, except for the scene where Wolverine & Silver Fox confront the roomful of withering, whimpering mutant children caged in mesh cells.  That would have been super-too-much for a little girl that lives here & who recently spent a month of overnights deeply troubled by Holocaust nightmares. 
   
   
5. The children's library holdings should sometimes have a PG-13 rating, since that was where Fille was, reading this book after she just innocently pulled it from the shelves.  I do not have any problems with her reading it or scaring herself to death in the night, but I did not really have resources to salve her specific anxieties, which is when the Israeli came to my parenting rescue in the way of working a little double-duty to help me say the things that would minimize her fear without squashing her compassion.  A week or so ago, chattering by phone, I mentioned to him that Fille she had become part of the 7-12yo American Girl zeitgeistcommitted to a suitable length to be shorn for the the Locks of Love.  He rather wryly noted that this was a somewhat ironic pursuit, considering.  This is surely why he is my favorite & my best. 

rosy

I write about this goddamn rose so much that it should have its own category, like the children or my husband.  Anyhow.  Again.

When I planted Mme Alfred Carrière 4 years ago, I had bad information about how much room she consumed.  Or, more likely, I never realized that her maximum height & girth would be achieved in my teensy garden, overseen by my laissez-faire attitude. She came in a little coffee-takeaway cup, with a root ball that fit into the palm of my hand.  I scoffed at her chances for survival. 

Well, now I have a rose that is about 17 feet tall and 5 feet wide at her widest.  Ok, sure.  But my front garden is situated on square feet, not acreage.  Sure, the rose grows vertically, but how do we corset something that tall? 

I will say this: it cannot be done with those garden twist-ties and twine.  Oh, no.  It keeps falling down.  Obviously we needed to prune it, for a million reasons, dead wood everywhere, too many canes -- a mess!  Shameful!  But the problem was that even if I got her shaped up, there was still the matter of her being too big for our property with no way to contain her.  The big payoff was that the bloom was so gorgeous and profuse when she spent all this time with the canes going horizontal.  But the rest of the garden was suffering, big time.  I lost a sage plant, a lavender shrub, an oregano, and my peonies were not thrilled with their living conditions.

I was reading idly (if desperation can ever be idle) about roses last week -- climbers and support, specifically.  I found out that one way to support climbing roses is with a galvanized chain strung between between two supports.  Hm.  It was easy & simple & we never would have thought of this.  So, Mari's weekend project was to fasten the chain to the pillars holding our porch roof and then, the rest.

 

Monday, we were able to prop her up in a really undignified manner and clip & snip.   At times I almost needed a hand saw, but managed fine with my garden-bolt-cutter guys. I pruned off two-thirds of the bush. She is thorny, really. I couldn't find my gloves, then became so consumed by the task that Mari had to tweeze 12 splinters from my hands last night.

Now she looks really empty, but it is just our perspective.  Bloom time is nigh, but I am already shopping for another one to stick in between.  Or a Cecile Brunner for the backyard.  Hey, 27 feet of galvanized chain & a few snap-links are cheap!                      

cherchez la femme

There are no photographs of the shame & horticultural neglect, but a three-foot-wide, 10-foot-tall section of my Mme Alfred Carrière just fell right from its corset to flop horizontally into the garden.  For months I really could not make time to give a fuck about it (also, thorny!  ow!) and all along the way, it was as if she had been trained horizontally, so she is covered in blooms this year, but only along that section.  Something about the word axial.

I love the flower, have written about it before, the three stages of old Mme Carrière -- the tight pink bud, all flushed at the bursting seam; the ruffly crinoline, chocolate-box-tidy layers of the bloom; the flower at its end, every petal open in every direction, not a trace of pink in sight, just an excellent, slutty, I-don't-give-a-damn mess.  Alfred Carrière must have had excellent taste in a certain kind of foxy firebrand, of that I am sure.

I never cut the flower to bring it inside, however, because the cut flower is so top-heavy on its teensy petite stems and my frogs are none the right size.  I am too distracted to find out from where to get floral foam.  Also, without a bloom, the plant is just this big brambly green monster trying to scale our house.  But this year, I have extras.  So, I just cut a big pile of them and kept cutting away at each one until they could be propped in a café au lait bowl.  I am so glad for my success, too, because it all smells incredible.          

fleurette

I have previously waxed about the sweet pink bud of the rose named Mme. Alfred Carrière rose before, how she opens palest pink and blooms into this creamy white fullest flower, all summer long.

I love how slutty she is when she comes on all the way.  Not a hint of blush and all those blowsy petals everywhere like the inside-outiest sweater with the smeariest kohl and maybe with a tiny bit too much too drink on high heels.  I love this rose.  L-o-v-e.   True love, not The One I'm With love.

My Cramoisi Supérieur came yesterday, which is good, for I was not here today at UPS o'clock and the regular driver for my route (Sam!) is on vacation this week, and I do not think the substitute would have left it.  Why would he?  He and I have never worked together on package projects, of course.  It is much larger than I expected, in a 2-gallon pot.  Salty old great-gammed barfly Mme Carriére came in the teensiest takeaway coffee cup, with canes not as thick as a stir-stick.

Last week we came home with 7 dullsville hybrid eggplant, 6 dullsville hybrid zucchini, one "Black Krim," one "Prudent's Purple," a spearmint, a peppermint, one echinacea, two zinnias, a flat of nasturtiums, and a jalapeño pepper plant.  It was about 90 degrees and we arrived at the farm's nursery right at noon, which is how we wound up with 7 eggplants called "Black Beauty," I mean.  Garçon  kept putting them into the wagon and I kept being too woozy to say no.  (Last week was the final week of my infirmity-related wooziness, however.  I am back to something like fully-operational since the long weekend.) 

I was also distracted, on the phone with Chickie, while in the heirloom greenhouse.  He panned Mr Stripey, based on past experience, and also Green Zebra.  (I gave Aunt Ruby's German Green a pass.  I mean, whatever, green-when-ripe tomatoes.  Pah.)  The Pruden's Purple came home because I was told it was a cultivar like Brandywine but so dissimilar as to have provoked growers taking sides.  Neither of us can see what is so special about the Brandywine, so I will grow the Pruden's Purple to see if it is more appealing or if the whole genre is not for growers like us.  I can take this hit for the team. 

I have long been nominally interested in doing the Black Krim, so done.  In years past, Chickie and I have both been taken by the Czech tomato, "Stupice."  A small plant, easy to grow, not fussy about a lot of heat or blazing-hot sun all day, sets early fruits that are smallish, but abundant, easy for slicing or salads, and really tasty. I honestly do not even like to eat tomatoes.  I looked halfheartedly last week for a Stupice, but have not found it anywhere as a seedling. I cannot remember I started them from seeds the last two years.  I had not really planned to grow any vegetables this year, so I am the greenhouse's bitch. 

Fillette has been my helper in the garden this year.  I assigned her the starting of several zinnia seedlings for me, and she started 16.  I told her I would pay her ten cents for each seedling when they were ready, but that I only wanted about 10.  She asked if she might keep the rest herself and I wondered if maybe she wouldn't rather sell them to a neighbor.  She said, shrewdly, Will they pay me more than ten cents?  I offered they probably would, since they had not purchased the seeds, soil, and trays.

I was astonished and not astonished -- at once -- by the question.  It is perfectly in character for her to be so calculating, so careful, but on the other hand ... my baby!  It is not like the rosebuds, where I get a chance every year again to watch them bloom.  Of course I know this, but then to know it.  I always think I know, and then I don't.  I know how to think of it, but am always shocked at how it feels.  It feels lonely, to know how much I love them, to know they will leave.   

hide and seek

While checking my stats & referrers page to see with which permutation of "meeting strangers in airport bars for sex" Algren found my weblog this week, I found out  that for some reason (this post, natch) I am the first search result for "rouge cardinale."  I feel sad for anyone who would get here and then figure out that it was actually a post about Dirty Dancing. 

I do not actually have anything to say about the plant, but under the gun of first search result, I can try.  I bought my "Rouge Cardinale" at the Home Depot because it looked lonely and underwatered and I am pretty sure it was on sale.  I soaked it for an afternoon then plunked it into the ground next to the tiny baby rosebush of Mme Alfred Carriere and left it to chance.  It performs OK.  I think the plant actually does not get enough sun behind the spectre of old Madame and it is slightly anemic.  But the plant has early development issues, what with being at the Home Depot with no water.  Maybe it will catch up, but I got what I paid for.  It is about five feet tall after two years, and it steadily blooms 2-3 inch velvety-red flowers (the color is off  in that photograph and I will have no truck with post-processing software).  Its pruning requirement is unknown to me.  I think it is a hard-prune variety, which makes it unsuitable for growing up through a thorny shrub, but whatever.  I am the worst at putting the garden to bed, because by the fall?  I am just over it.  Plus clematis pruning schedules are only slightly less rigorous than the protocols for brain surgery.  I have actually vowed to be adequate about the whole garden dismantling this year.

I was able to solve my Don Juan problem with the order of a "Cramoisi Superieur, cl" which fit my requirements of "red 19thc climbing rose."  That problem solved, I was immediately dealt a new gardening problem.  One of the things I like about gardening is that there is always something new.  I ordered the rose on the old online from Antique Rose Emporium on Sunday night.  Serendipitously, the banner at the ARE website said something to the effect of "We are all done shipping for the spring.  We will ship again in September!" 

Great news!  The last mothereffing thing I want to do is babysit a transplant all summer long.  Last summer it was 100 degrees every day, with no rain, and my front garden sits in full sun all day long.  Because I had established perennials, I was lazy about the water and got away with it.  (I will not run that roulette wheel again this year.)  Additionally, to plant the Cramoisi I have to dig up the Don Juan, which I would like to keep (love, irrational love, it does not perform, but still I love too much.), and move it to the back, and baby it through its transplant shock.  This is all a job for fall's cooler temps, natch.

Yesterday, I checked the voice mail and got a message left Monday by a gal at Antique Rose Emporium.  She said, "We got your order and you chose fall delivery, but we are calling to let you know that we are shipping this week, so if you would like your rose to come this week, you can get it this spring.  You will have to call by Tuesday morning if you want it to ship this week."  It was Wednesday afternoon.  I called back to follow-up, because I am like that, to let them know that i got the message, I did not want the rose and everything was grand.

I was befuddled when I was told the rose shipped the day before.  The woman was understanding and said they would ship me one in the fall, but I mean, I have one that will be here next week.  The plan is for me to stay loose and in touch with the nursery.  I am willing to have it hang out in its pot for the summer and plant it this fall as planned, but I do not have high hopes for a container plant in my care.  I expect I would scarcely do better than the Home Depot.

seduced

This is the rose that I talk about hauling out.  I love this flower.  Love.  I talk a big game about how I am just so ready to rip it out, no mercy, etc, but then it blooms and I cannot, because that is how I am:  love the one I'm with. 

But the truth is that this plant has some performance issues and I just cannot keep it.  I love it while it is in bloom, but bloom is such a small part of life, no? (Somewhere, Kowalski hears a sound like the ringing of concrete in sub-zero temperatures)  Part of the problem with replacing the plant is that I really do love the flower.  So red, so velvety, so so so fragrant.  Also, while I have been eyeing up a Gloire de Dijon for quite a long, long time, the fact is that this mystery flower looks so smart next to that old Polish Spirit. 

So, I finally was moved to look it up, which flower was this?  Blaze or Don Juan?  It is, in fact, a Don Juan climber.  I could not tell it from Blaze's flower, in the .jpgs I was turning up on the internet, but it occured to me to look at the leaves.  Also, apparently, Blaze is just covered in blooms all summer long.  This is more of a major summer & major fall bloom, although it flowers sporadically through the season, one or two blooms.

Come this fall, I think I will be replacing it with a Don Juan grown on its own roots.    This rose has been in this spot for four years and it has only grown, well, not very much at all.  Not at all.  I mean, it's gained about four feet in height.  Five feet?  I planted next to it this specimen of Mme Alfred Carriere just two years ago, this is its second summer in the ground where it is.  When I got it, it was tiny.  Teeny tiny.  The whole root ball fit into the palm of my hand.  I remember thinking those rose people were very vengeful people to instruct the digging of a hole three or four feet deep and just as wide into which to put something the size of a Klondike Bar.  But now just today, Mari and I were outside planning her coming corseting, because she is not getting any smaller.  I have never even fertilized the plant.  Gosh.

So, this underacheiving Don Juan grows alongside and it is, these past two years, just an irritant to me.  Then it comes into flower and I soften.  Every single year I do this.  I start out, ready to rip it up (even before I planted Mme Carriere alongside, I knew it was a slacker) and then I hedge.  This year, I am setting about getting exactly what I want.  The only problem is that it is not a period plant.  Don Juan is from 1958, from Italy.  I am looking for something from the late 19thc or before.  Gloire de Dijon fits the description.  Oh, that is a beautiful plant, peachy-orange and leathery foliage.  Every time I see it I stop and wonder about planting it instead, and then I remember the bloom on this one.  So lovely I do not even cut them to bring indoors, for fear of spoiling the show.  Then, I stagger along under the weight of my inertia, spring comes, and I am still with the same old plant.  Then it blooms and I am so taken all over again.  It does not escape me that I am so ambivalent, so entwined and enchanted by a plant named Don Juan.  Oh.      

girls gone wild

The Nelly Moser clematis is in great, showy bloom right now, covered in palm-sized flowers, the plant as big and wide as a teenaged football star, and people stop to ooh and ahh over it and if I am sitting outside neighbors wish to talk to me about it and I tell them the latest story in Nelly's scintillating memoir, of how she almost died last year and I was v concerned because her fall show last year was so scanty, hot summer, sulky waterer, etc.  People love Nelly.

I was out yesterday, convalescing in the fresh air of the porch, hiding from Nelly's admirers behind the considerable mass of the climbing rose -- Mme Alfred Carriere -- that is planted at the foundation, right behind old Nelly.  When the clematis is in full show, no one notices the 8-foot tall and 6-foot wide medium-green rosebush full of buds swelling pink against their seams.  But in a few weeks, after they bloom with that smell --the fragrance! -- and half the show is fully-opened to its whitest color while the rest are all still palest-pink, well, then people will talk about that.  I planted Mme Carriere just two years ago with a root ball that fit easily into the palm of one hand.   The whole thing came shipped from Heirloom Roses in something the size of a church basement coffee cup.  This year already, I have to consider a strategic pruning so that next year it doesn't take over my house.

My operation went well, though there is still time for a terrible infection to set in and kill me, I suppose.  I was feeling pretty surly when we got to the hospital at quarter-past six in the morning, what since I had not had hardly any sleep and certainly nothing like breakfast and was ravenous.  I tend towards contrariness at best in a medical facility, I just chafe at rules, but I was pretty well reigned-in, I'd say. Almost certainly, Mari would disagree.

I did manage to perplex the hospital registrar by politely but firmly declining to disclose my maiden name, though her response was a stellar kind of acceptance of my position.  Mostly, my inner scofflaw was satisfied enough to have broken the rules by lying about having had anything to eat or drink since midnight, though by my kind of Clintonian rules (v handy for scofflaws), it was not actually lying.  I did not eat or drink anything.  It is just that I was holding a piece of dark chocolate in my mouth on the way to the hospital and I am not sure what happened to it. 

It is surely the tiniest boost from those two squares of gingered Green and Black's that kept me from dissolving into hysterical tears at the sensory cruelty of the slipper socks, the IV's paper tape, and the cute anaethesiologist's confoundedness in the face of my egg allergy.   Note to the girls at the hospital surgical center:   It is just sadistic to brew the waiting room coffee when patients who have not eaten are arriving.

In the end I had the most excellent satisfaction of being discharged into Mari's care, turned loose into the ritzy, high-dollar neighborhood surrounding the hospital with weather that was sunny and gorgeous and I was wearing the cutest back-fastening blouse with the cutest embroidery that made me feel a little like Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson.  I bought the shirt on Wednesday from Anthropologie because the pre-op nurse told me I would need something that fastened instead of pulling over and I owned nothing of the sort until I marched right on over to right this surgical wrong.

(must note:  scofflaw about starving; on board in regard to fashion.  revealed priorities) 

The excellently satisfying part is none of that.  Well, the blouse, but the stuff of seamy and lurid tone that I love was that I had the most excellent hair that was the most excellent bouffant combination of salon-blowout, ultra-fuck-bedhead, and matted down with blood.  I was still stoned & wild-eyed on fentanyl, so when we got to the well-heeled crowd's restaurant for breakfast, it was just as if I was winding down after the most excellent all-night party ever.  Totally Katharine Hepburn meets Valley of the Dolls with an extra Cronenberg feature-ette.  (which totally equals Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson, now that I think of it.  no?) Then my husband brought me 45 percocets and a raft of antibiotic capsules.  I suppose I shall be sitting in the garden again today, still stoned as Betty Ford and squarely against biotics.