la femme follette

just drive

Scarf, in progress. 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

happy hloene

 

Last night, we were unfortunately caught up in Ballet Town's Hallowe'en hoopla.  Fille & I dawdled after her class, having dinner at the Uzbeki place on the main drag.  When we came out, it was dark, and down the street we saw ... a throng of people, led by searchlights.  Also, the main drag was lined with spectators.  Holy hell, we have to get out of here!  I told her and we hustled it out.

I had a book to drop off at Ballet Town's library, but when I got to the parking lot behind the library, that it shares with the municipal building, there were cones & a group of bystanders.  I pulled over to the side of the road to get out and information-gather from the natives.

"You can't park there," one of them said. 

"I know that," I said.  "But you are cordoning off my usual parking space.  I have a book to drop off and --"  That was as far as I got before they started piling on with unhelpful suggestions, every one, no one getting to the answer to the question I parked my car to get out & ask.  "Are you ever going to let me talk?"  I asked, with no eyelashes.

After that, I found out that the facing street was not one-way heading on the grim course to Ballet-Town Parade, which was the confirmation I had sought.  Going around the town & coming back on Library Road, I again pulled the car over in front of the (closed) library to dump the book in the drop box.  Some Halloweeners were coming down the street with cats & bumblebees in strollers. 

"You can't park there," one of them said. 

"Why don't you mind your own damn business?!"  is what I asked him.  God, enough, Ballet Town!  Twice each week is enough of you!

 

Fille (sexy ghost!) is on her own tonight, with Mari & her best pals.  Garçon did not get to have Hallowe'en, which is baffling to all of us, but this is what he chooses.  He fell behind on his school work in a battle of wills (with whom we are not exactly sure), and Hallowe'en was at stake.  Well actually, it started out with Astro Boy being at stake, but then came into the week facing Hallowe'en, still with him stonewalling & alternately trying to get himself out of the weeds, and by the time he got down to business last night, he just did not have enough time to complete his work.

He worked somewhat feverishly today, my son, and then at 3ish (our Hallowe'en parade -- park where you feel like it! -- starts at 4) he came to me with a sad + unacceptable attempt at his last two assignments -- one-page wrap-ups of relevant extra-reading .  "This is really the best I can do with this, Mom, I'm serious." 

Mari & I had to explain to him that the truth was that this was the best he could do in the half-hour he had left, and the fact is that if a person is going to wait until the last minute to meet a deadline (never mind that putting me into the last minute for reviewing when I was trying to get my other child out the door is unacceptable, but group lead-time is not a concept we have worked on), they had better make certain they can crank out work that meets the standards in that last minute. 

So, I am home with him while Fille & Mari wind their way back from the farthest reaches of our route.  Then (!!!), Mari told him that if he were to complete his revisions, he would take him out when they returned (spoiler!), but no.  My son is upstairs in his room, right now.  Ok.  Whatever.

This is obviously larger than trick-or-treat, or homeschooling, or whatever.  People are quick to say, "Send him to school!" as the problem manifests itself aroud his schoolwork, but it is not a schooling issue, this is a parenting issue.  It is very trying and I am never sure what to do, or -- this occured to me a couple of days ago, while I was stewing over this latest -- maybe there is nothing to do. 

Much is made of how Fille is all into ballet & we go along, because it is her thing & not ours, but ballet still requires that we do something.  Maybe our job with Garçon is to do nothing.  He does not at all do anything in a way we find logical or sensible or anything.  Mari & I (and Fille, to boot), do not do things the hard way.  We choose what we want, we set the goal, find the most direct route between A to B , get in front of what we can and try to stay loose for the rest.  A. Eyelashes or B. Mind Your Damn Business, it is your choice when you get in our way.  I think that our flexibility is key and also, ironically, the thing we are not using to its best advantage with our son.

But the ballet thing was making me think -- Fille has a thing she wants to do, and it makes us go "???" but we do it for her, because she wants it, it is part of her being -- but again, it requires that we do something.  Drive the car, write the checks, think about performative gender and stereotypes & inhibitions and pervasive cultures!  Fend off stage parents!  Buy tights a lot!  So even though her way is mystifying, the doing & the direction is very familiar.

Our son is not so.  We are trying to sort out a lot lately how much of this is us and how much is him and what to do about it, or if there is anything to do.  We make our expectations very clear and we also are deconstructors and simplifiers and a lot of our previous conflict with our son has been about the fact that our feelings are so hurt because we try to make things clear and easy to achieve with him, but he blows it off, insists on doing his way.  Also, we do not get our way with our son, which is troublesome to us, and also, because we are Doers, we want to find the way to get our way.  Mari and I most certainly relate strongly to the child's will.  Just having to do with him, we feel like as he grows older, the stakes get higher, the things he will lose out on more valuable, but at the same time, he is only 10. 

Also, so what about our way?  Who can say that anything is right about it for our fin de siècle little boy?  Maybe he will develop some interesting + important method we cannot even yet conceive of!  Time travel!  Or something!  But not if he does not make it through the 5th grade.  See?  I am narrow-minded, but I am sorry!  How is this happening?  This child!  

I was talking to a girlfriend of mine the other day -- she has one daughter, who is 30.  I am not the kind of person who pretends that everything is just great, unless I think doing otherwise will bore you to death or give you social poisoning.  So, she asked, and I was halting and a little hesitant, but I told her more or less what was going on this week and how it was relevant to the whole of him, as a piece of it.  She said that we could not do more than we were doing.  So, all we can do is deliver the consequences, but we cannot, like, make him see that the consequences will be so awful before the consequence comes down. 

 

Obviously.  Anyhow.  This is way more intense than I thought it would be.  It is all that wiccan self-reflection shit in the energy of this time, surely.  If you have made it this far, internet, I salute you! 

wip friday + etc

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

no cowboy

Fille & I went to a party on Saturday, one of those day-into-night affairs, with children & adults running on parallel tracks. I love the family whose party it was, but I am not really much for the partying. I had to sit & chat amiably with a woman who would constantly use the word “urban” to sub in for “poor & non-white,” and the whole thing made me feel skanky and exhausted.

She is a pastor’s wife -- her husband leads a Lutheran congregation -- and my rather strict Catholic upbringing made me feel as if she should behave better (although the whole problem is that Martin Luther could not hack the requirements, right?), and about the time she started in on how she could not let her 9yo take the school bus because it picked up three blocks from her house, and the boulevard led to/from "a ghetto area" two towns over, I just could not take it any more. “Fear is the opposite of faith,” I told her, crossly, which is something I am pretty sure I believe + also act upon, daily. I don’t know. She was mighty tiring.

I wished that Mari had been there. We were all four supposed to go, but then Garçon defied logic & threw out a test of our resolve, the consequence of which was that he could not go, and since he is too young to stay home by himself (especially if he is disgruntled + we are 50 miles away), so I took the baby by myself.

Fille had a great time, fell asleep in their driveway as I was backing out, and I got to drive home in the dark & the rain burning up the miles with a provocative medley of Lyle Lovett, Bill Withers, and Drive-By Truckers on the car stereo. It was nice. I have not had the car out for a run in a good long time. Longer still since I have listened to Decoration Day, which in portions was so relevant as to take my breath away.

We caught up on some real, live teevee when I got home. Well, the internet’s teevee. It is a source of endless amusement for Mari that I can hardly resist any a/v recommendation from Phil Yu, at Angry Asian Man. (He has never, never steered me wrong.) So, I broke a streak of more than a decade without watching fresh, serial teevee to take a gander at the premiere of FlashForward.

It was pretty good, I thought, but now I am left with this wondering What will happen next to these people? Which I kind of cannot take, that I am not able to just pop in the DVD and get the rest of the season under my belt. I think I will be over it soon, anyhow, for the thing I think in equal measure with, “But why didn’t John Cho see anything?” is “Didn’t I see this show already? It was a movie with Sandra Bullock, right?’ Oh, yes.

Oh, and speaking of Phil Yu, man. I would have missed out on the whole story of Annie Le’s murder entirely if not for him. It’s too sad, and then I found out some more last night, via some clicky-making from his blog (I will not link to it, and if you want to go out in the world and clicky-click, do not blame me), and I was just so sad about it all. It was already sad, and then to find out that her mother could not even see her one last time. God.

I had to inform Mari in a despairing tone that the world is not sexy! Then I went off to bed in hideous sweatpants to fret myself to sleep. Too bad, it was kind of an anniversary.

all over, with shopping.

When I was in NYC at the end of August, one of the stops I made was Sephora so that I could pick up a Stila smudge pot. We have a couple of Sephora stores here, but it is the kind of errand I save up for childless on-the-ground time in Manhattan. Like having my Blackberry serviced & my shoes shined.  My eyebrows done.  Anyhow, I got there, one thing led to another, Sephora being what it is, and I got confused + confounded and wound up buying one tube of NARS lipstick in Afghan Red and a bottle of Dior Diorskin Nude foundation. If you are keeping track, those two items do not even go on the eyes.

I do not even wear foundation, but I had just come from my hair guy & he had given me another of his frivolous blowouts. So, whereas I ordinarily have a rumpled, bedhead aspect to my countenance, after the blowout my hair was all sleek and alluring and I just felt blotchy and mismatched. Then, you know, Sephora being what it is, there I was in the lights, fooling around with foundation until I realized I was going to be late for eyebrows and so I had to get in the unbelievably-long, Midtown-length line and then halfway through my wait, I realized I had failed to get the Stila. Oh.

So, on Saturday, when Fille & I were at the Surgical-Stockings & More Store, one of the things I wanted to do was go to the mall, so we could go to Sephora and I could get my eye gel. Halfway there, I decided I did not in fact want to go to Sephora. One of the other things that confounded me so while I was in the Sephora, being swirled around in their vortex, was the woman who was with her daughter (oh, Midtown) who was from Wyoming or Rhode Island or Oklahoma or wherever they do not have a Sephora, trying on lipgloss.

She was wandering around, clutching a Dior Addict Lip Polish in her hand (how I know, later), and then made it to the mirror right next to me, where out of the corner of my eye, I spied her pumping the applicator in and out of the tube, smearing the gloss on her mug, and then jamming it back into the lip-gloss tube for a fresh load. I almost fainted. Honestly, I believe I did swoon.

Instead I watched her while she put the tube back on the shelf, walked over and snapped it up and relieved myself of it via the v next helpful, black-clad Sephora employee I saw. “This … is … contaminated,” I managed to gasp out and she took it from me with an eyeroll and a crisp + efficient gesture. “It happens all the time,” she told me. Um, no. Gross.

So, ok. Then I was fooling around in the mirror with the foundation, having decided via my hand which one I wanted to try on, and as I stepped away Ms Lac du Flambeau came back with a new tube from a different line. Same thing, but I was closer and more turned toward her, so as she lifted the plush applicator tip to her shiny jib, I threw out my hands, as if to stop her baby from falling before a taxi. “No!” She and her daughter stared at me. “That’s dirty! To put that on your mouth and back in the thing and if we all do that it’s dirty! It’s not good.”

I reached right in front of her and gave her a couple of the identical-in-aesthetic-and-utility disposable lipgloss applicators. They have the same furriness & everything! She was gracious, I do not think I was as freaked out to her as I felt about her, because on the inside I was like Munch’s dude from The Scream. I admonished her before I went back to honestly considering a $45 impulse makeup expenditure, “No double-dipping! Throw it away.”

Anyhow, on the way to the mall I remembered this horrible scene and decided I wanted to not go to Germy Old DIY Sephora with who knows whom’s grubby hands in the makeup. Stila’s smudge does not come in a plummy shade, anyhow, and I was in the mood for some full-service MAC action. Conveniently, MAC is sold at the Nordstrom at the mall’s exterior and I would not have to go inside the greater mall-area at all.

MAC was selling exactly what I wanted, something in their collection called Fluidline, which comes in the exactly-right color called “Macroviolet.” I also got ready for fall by replacing spent lipsticks in Verve and Underworld, plus also replacing a Hodgepodge lipliner, which I misplaced, but is distressingly de rigueur, lipliner, at my age. (Quelle horreur, seriously.)

Fille will never recover from the opulence of the Nordstrom experience. Honestly. Right away as we got there, still in the parking lot, she reported she had to visit the ladies’ room. I told her, on the way, there was no better public ladies’ room than Nordstrom’s. I regaled her with tales of having new babies and nursing in the Nordstrom mothers’ room, where there were tables and comfy chairs and magazines and a changing table set in a gutter so the baby would not roll off while you washed your hands at the sink within arm’s reach.

I tend to go on when I am piling on the adjectives, so she was all, “Yeah, Mommy, ok,” until we got to the ladies’ room and she squealed aloud at the luxury revealed within. Then she tried out all the chairs, admired how there were “so many rooms in here, like an apartment!” By the time we got to the toileting part of the enclave -- well-lit, big stalls; clean-clean -- she was out of superlatives, until we got to the hand-drying, with the Judy Jetson hand-dryer.

Honestly, it was crazy. I had never heard her pack so many syllables into Oooo-oooo-ooh, of which theretofore had only known three at her peak. Then I fell a little bit more in love with Nordstrom, because that dryer is awesome. (She just walked in here while I was finding that link and went glassy-eyed. “That is the dryer from the Nordstrom,” she told me in a dreamy tone.)

I finished maquillage procurement, a layer of LustreGlass Gloss was bestowed upon Fille by the pretty MAC gal as her reward for being polite & patient. A disposable implement was in fact used. Then she & I went to the Nordstrom Café to eat lunch, for we were ravenous. She could not believe such polish & luxe excitement in one day. It was like when Laura got a rag doll and a penny for Christmas.

academic

Garçon filled the dishwasher-detergent compartment with dishwashing liquid tonight.  I was not here, but Mari reports that in the child's defense, he very soberly removed the bottle from the cabinet and said, "Dad, it says right here, not for use in automatic dishwashers, but our dishwasher is not automatic.  You have to press the buttons and everything."  Aw, my little guy.

Is that the generation gap?  I mean, to our fin de siècle little boy, of course a machine that washes your dishes and has little lights and touchpads is just oh, so manual.  It reminds me of when we were watching The Jetsons ouevre a couple of years ago, and Fille asked me very nonchalantly, "If this is the future, why do they still have a Roomba?"  LIKE WHOA, DUDE!

I had a real 20thc moment today while I was over on campus -- I stupidly thought that because the students were back, but classes have not started, that it was fine to go over there in the early afternoon, of course not realizing that because classes have not started yet, they are free all day to be milling around en masse opening bank accounts and generally congesting the area with their slow-moving guilelessness.  Slow-moving and also (!) so many of them had septum piercings that I thought I was back home, caught in a field of Guernseys. 

Anyhow!  The point is that I was in the bank, which is so retro, going to the bank building, even though it was filled up with kids who should be able to do all this via their iPhones, which, even as I mused this, I considered that it was an exaggeration of my mind, but!  While waiting in the teller line I was informed via the bank's shifting LCD display that the children can link their student ID card to the bank account and this will be their ATM card.  Seriously?  The only thing we could use our university IDs for was buying beer in the union & library privileges.  And I know I have ceded this category to the next generation, for all I could think was That can not be safe.  I wonder what their parents think?  I am pretty sure I have read that this is the crew that chatters everything in a confession to Mom & Dad.  We are living in the future.

Today was the first day back at public schools here, those old Socialist, Communist, Third Reich, liberal constructs.  Free public education for all!  Balderdash!  Where does that money come from and how will it ever go on?  I will tell you!  I provide for my kids' education, and I think that free, public education is just inappropriate!  How is it the government's responsibility?  What about privacy!  Most Americans are against it, you know!   

Uh ... anyhow, sorry, (ahem), so (!) the children & I talked, while we walked over to the bank, about how to answer the questions people seem to love to ask them about school, which when we are out during the day starts generally with, "Oh, so no school today?"  Their response is usually to stammer out that they are homeschooled, which about 65% of the time leads to a barrage of questions designed to slyly elicit information from them so as to assist the questioner in their evaluation of the Quality of Their Educational Programme.  This does not happen at the library or a job interview. These inquisitive sorts are always, you know, retail-shop clerks. It is tremendously dull. It is just like, Are you trying to provoke some kind of thing with my family? About homeschool? I mean, it seems so strange, people's interrogations.  I mean, usually we are just, you know, hanging out in a peacefully taskmastering way.  They are not arsonists, or inarticulate, like that one little girl that made me so so so depressed about that baby-pageant show. 

For this year, I explored some different answers with them:

• No, no school.  What the questioner is doing, in the outset, is making small talk based on the fact that a school-aged child is before them during school hours.  This answer will satisfy them.
• Why do you ask?  I explained this to Fille -- who was championing "Mind your own business," as her favorite option -- as a way to invite grownups to recognize that they are actually not minding their business, without saying so.
• We have the swine flu, stay back!  This is from a cheeky homeschooling pal abroad, where they have national health insurance, so it is probably funnier there.  My kids are funsters, though, and I cannot be sure they will not crack it open a couple of times, just to see what happens.

There is context, of course -- who is doing the asking and how long will we be trapped by them -- and I did very carefully explain to them that no one wants a child to be rude to them, even if the child just thinks the pushback is setting a boundary (so no "Mind your own business," especially not for an opener).  At the same time, I acknowledged to them that people generally feel pretty free to just get all in the business of children without very much politeness or regard for the boundaries of common courtesy, so this was an area they would have to walk on their own.  It is part of growing up. 

God, omigod (!!) then this super-weird thing happened to us, when we were parking our car closer to campus than walking from our house, but still kind of far from the bank.  I was parking, and the guy parked in ahead of the space I was taking was opening his door, and then shutting it, then opening it and bringing it just to the edge of closing it without pulling it shut, and these kind of openy-closey door shenanigans.  Well, I cannot parallel park behind him and drive defensively at once, so I was waiting and waiting, and I could not tell if he saw me, but was hoping he would figure it out.

He got out of his car, and walked toward us, all the windows were down, and I said, "I was just waiting for you, to get out of the car."  And I was smiling & waving gaily and it was fine with me.  And he thought I meant I was waiting for him to get out of the space, and I said, "No, no, I was waiting to park, I didn't want to pull up next to you if you were getting out."  Ok, emphasis on "park," because now dude is not in his car with his waggly door, and so I could park if only he was not standing in front of my car talking to me.

Then he told me again that he was not going anywhere, that he had gotten out of the car to see what I was doing loitering behind him.  Great!  So, we have that straightened out!  He got back in the car, I pulled up parallel, put the car in reverse, backed up and then just as my front bumper cleared his door, he threw open his door and said, urgently, "I have a dentist's appointment!  And I'm late!"  Then he jumped out and ran off.

We all sat there, stunned, with the car idling, until the children just burst into peals of laughter.  I was all, "Oh my lord, kids, what the fuck?  Wasn't he all I'm Not Going Anywhere Guy a minute ago?"  I mean, we were in a business district.  It is not as though it was his residential parking space and he had to rush off.  He had driven ... well, anyhow.  Super-weird. 

wendy witch world

These dahlias are free, at this point.  Dahlias are not supposed to overwinter here, the conventional wisdom is that you are supposed to dig them up and ... fuck if I know how that instruction ends, because that is when I cast aside the instructions.  I cannot be bothered with a plant that needs special treatment, and obviously, these do not, since they have come back every single year.  I do not like Garden-y or Kitchen-y Makework, who the fuck needs to make work in the kitchen or the garden?  There is not enough to do already? I would rather save all that fussy, frilly, artisan's can-do, perfectionist's slavering for the fucking bedroom. Ok, I am just saying.

What the hell were you doing in the garden with your decimated ankle joint and your overused shoulders? is what a reasonable person would ask.  Digging up comfrey root, I would answer.  I wanted to make a comfrey root poultice and since I have the plant & a sassy cred in gonzo herbalism, I went out there and hacked away in the dirt looking for it. 

Why the fuck did you not ask yr able-bodied husband to do that?  ARP would ask.  Mind your own goddamn business, I would respond. 

Sometimes, it is more work to talk about something than it is to just crawl around on the ground and do it.  After I dug it up and threw the root chunks behind me, over & over, Mari picked it all up & took it in the house & washed it for me & cleaned the food processor (rr-rrr-rrrr-rr) when I was finished.  I put the poultice all over my foot & ankle, wrapped it back up in its fracture strap-on guy, hobbled around for a little bit, took my crutches out for a spin to go talk to a neighbor.  When I came home & washed if all off before bed, it was like someone had erased the bruising.  All that was left was a just a very faint rose-colored outline of a stain. Obviously, I was taking photos of the wrong thing on Sunday.

I had the camera with me in the yard because we had just come home from a Fathers' Day outing to a minor-league baseball game & I did not waste any steps going to the house from the car first.  Navigating a sporting stadium was pretty much the definition of Doing Too Much.  I fell to the ground and trying to make my way back to the comfrey -- which is one plant in from the margin of the garden -- I was literally swatting dahlias out of the way crossly -- God, if these weedy, what are these, red, oh, so thickety, hey! -- before I realized it was my bonus bloom.  Awesome.

I ventured out to the backyard to check on the vegetables today; nothing back there -- beans, a couple of squashes, cucumbers, 2 tomatoes, kale, nasturtiums -- is really growing very seriously.  Also, the god damned squirrels keep eating the sunflower seedlings. But I cannot be worried about it anyhow this summer.  Bloom, don't bloom; fruit, don't fruit.  It is as much trouble for me to get around the backyard as send my family to the farmers' market, so whatever.

Good things are happening, as I predicted.  Well, maybe. I tell the children to do things. I do not actually know if they ever do the things I ask because I mostly take naps and have dreams about eating candy bars.  Never since I was pregnant have I been so ravenous as since this accident!  (God, syntax, why do you never help me!!)

splash crash

I crashed my bike yesterday.  It was, like, the third time I have ridden it. 

 

I am so grateful to have only sustained a broken foot, a badly-sprained ankle, and two patches of road rash.  ("O, my knee!  It used to be so beautiful!" I said to the woman holding her umbrella over me while I gathered my limbs up from the asphalt.)  I did not break my bicycle, nor did I tear any of my clothes. My grocery cargo did not spill from the bike and so our food was fine. I am also grateful that we live in a very bikey part of America and four very kind total strangers were involved in my rescue -- which amounted to me getting out of the damn street and hobbling over to the curb.  The post carrier was the first on the scene.   

I was thinking of this graphic while I was lying there in the street. Maybe they could add "Throw yrself down in the road & get injured" to the list. Honestly.

After I got to the curb, while I was standing there, in the rain, in my stoicism, meeting & greeting & exchanging introductions with everyone, trying to decide if I was fine enough to ride the four blocks home or if I should accept a neighbor/stranger's offer to ride my bike to my house while her husband drove me home, in a bona fide miracle, Mari drove up with the children. They were on their way to run an errand and wanted to let me know about it on their way out.

Mari and Garçon dropped me at home with Fifille, who volunteered to be the Helper Nurse.  I felt very sad for her, for she is quite a good girl and she went around the house v helpfully looking for the arnica gel (and not finding it) while I lay face down on the stone floor in our kitchen -- having collapsed after diving into the freezer for the frozen peas, with my leg propped up on her Helper Sous Chef kitchen stool -- weeping and weeping from the pain.  Poor thing, she looked everywhere I gasped out for her to look and it was never there.  Eventually she did turn up an old emptyish tube and we got out enough gel to slather the worst of it, the huge and fleshy, swelling protuberance on the outside of an ankle that has often betrayed me. 

I must say right here that it is a really good thing that years ago when the children got their bicycles that I read that they should have gloves to keep them from scraping their hands in a fall.  They do, and the requirement to wear them is enforced with the same vigilance as helmeting.  Then last month when I brought my bike home, I rather reluctantly parted with the $35 for my own gloves.  Since the crash, I keep looking down at my own palms, tingling as they are, and expecting to see road rash and there is nothing and I am ever so glad to have paid so little money for that most valuable insurance.

Mari came home with our son and managed to restrain himself from asking why in the hell I had decided to take a header smack in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Then he passed out ibuprofen and a rolled-up towel and brought me a utility blanket and made me a little snack. 

A couple of hours later, I felt so good that I decided I had to get off of the floor and get out of my wet & dirty clothes. That was when I realized we should go to the emergency room.  So, that is that.

 

Now I have crutches, can not drive, obviously cannot bicycle, and walking is quite a chore with two sticks and one foot.  So is getting around our 3-story victorian home.  I said to Mari last night, as I tricep-dipped myself up the 16 steps to the second floor, "Well, I have been thinking of changing my exercise program to be more rigorous."  Ahahahaha!  Now every single thing I do is like an exercise devised by a sadist to get a starlet into a rigorous & sinewy form for a very important superhero movie with very important fight scenes and very many stunts.  Right now already, I can not even lift my arms over my head any higher than John McCain can. 

One v shiny-good plus-plus about all this is that the children are about to be home with me all summer long.  That I am unable to do things for them all the time on auto-pilot means that I can stop & force them to do the things they are capable of doing for themselves.  (Or for the house by themselves.)  Which was my plan all along -- to ratchet them up to the next level of taking it on -- but now there is no danger of me just forgetting in the smooth-running of a day and also, no arguing from them about how they should have a live-in chef and maid for all of their days.  So, good.

The very best thing about the accident is that I will not be afraid to ride again.  This town has a physical feature in its landscape, which is notorious for taking down cyclists, and in fact has its own lexicon.  I knew that riding on a street with this feature was at best risky and at worst dangerous.  I could have planned a different route and was quite mindful of my ginger riding in the rain, right up until I hit the pavement.  Everyone who rides a bicycle here has story of the time they had an encounter with this nearly inevitable smackdown.  So, I have just been inducted into the league of cyclists!  I cannot quit now!  Rah!

love will cross the picket line when hunger goes on strike

So, nothing horrifying happened at ballet observation this time, doubtless because there were only five students who made it.  I think the fact that the holiday pushed everyone's schedule round such that no one could remind the go-go crowd that we had Special Saturday Class, also the last class of the school year.

Fille is happy to say goodbye to the bossy taskmistress she endured for 2 years and so are we.  Even overhearing her while in the hallway gave me a stomachache.  Even if she was exclaiming things like "Wonderful!  Beautiful!"  I got a stomachache, every time.  We joke about her, Mari & I, where Fille can hear. 

Mari, for example, said at dinner the night we found out Fille can assemble her own hair in a suitable way for class, "Then Fille never came to me so that I could help her with her hair and then the next thing I knew, I heard Mme Anna saying, OK, drop & give me 20, you maggots! and I went to look and Fifille was already there in her line."  

Or Fille will try to tell me something Mme Anna told her that day in class and before she can finish the sentence, I will say, "Did she tell you fame costs?  Did she tell you you are going to pay her in sweat?"  Ahahaha.  In a credit to her self-discipline & resignation, Fille will stoically defend Mme Anna.  "She is only yelling corrections and instructions," she explains serenely.

I am glad there were no horrifying & existential parenting shenanigans, for afterward we took the baby out for dinner & then all to see Up.  Who failed to tell the world this movie was so sad?  I was weeping from the beginning, just leveled.  "This," I sobbed in a whisper to Mari, "was in none of those vague & cutesy trailers!"  I have been crying ever since, for I have been already in a state for months regarding matters of love & loss.  UGH, no more dying.   

licorice. rhubarb.

So, this is our first CSA week with our spring/summer providers.

No one else wanted their rhubarb!  So, I traded 12oz of mushrooms (whatever, fungi!) and my kale each for a pound of rhubarb.  Then, a head of speckled romaine (cannot make Garcon eat lettuce, unless I braise it like endive & call it bok choy.  it is v tiring, all the subterfuge) I swapped for an additional little bunch of white icicle radishes.  Looking at it now, I should have unloaded those spring onions, also.  Anyhow.

The problem is that our oven seems to not be entirely functional all of a sudden.  Super-annoying, because we just had the ignitor replaced 6 months ago, and now the same thing and the oven is only EIGHT YEARS OLD, but I was just reading something that said the days of a major appliance lasting 30 years are over, due to cheap manufacturing practices, so I guess not so annoying, really. But I have a compelling recipe for a stovetop rhubrab endeavor, so am looking forward to some downtime with that tonight.

We went to a fantastic Greek festival last night when the weather cleared (thank you, St George!).  It was still chilly, but we wore appropriate clothing and had supper outside.  It may be only the Greeks who can corner one so fiercely with cigarette smoke in an outdoor venue that this morning we woke up smelling like we had been out all night in a bar.  A doughnut-frying bar powered by ouzo fumes.  I do not care, to me it was like oxygen for I have been a teeny bit homesick for my hometown lately, with all its casual ethnic interplay & summertime feasting for all.

Mari is not v Greek-savvy.  In fact, it came out last night that he has never been anywhere Greeky except with me.  Chicago has something of a full representation of Greeks, but I can find them wherever we go, like Spidey Sense.  One day last year, I dropped by our local taverna one afternoon -- I was SO RELIEVED when the place opened, like spontaneous generation -- without the kids to get a cup of coffee & a salad and catch up on some correspondence.  The son, who is in his late 20s, was busying himself with a lot of cell phone calls & obviously pre-vacation-departure wrap-up.

I asked him, while I was noodling around at the counter, waiting for my food, "Are you going to Greece?"  He said, "Greece?  No.  If I go to Greece, will you come with me?"  It was like, whoa, dude, go aerial!  But it is super-fun, speaking as a high-stakes flirt, to go over the line & just let it hang there.  So, we admired it, both of us, his nerviness, and then I said something bright & eyelashy, which I think was, "As long as my husband can come, too!"   

Mari never worries about anything anyone says to me, and that is saying something, because Kowalski likes to talk.  But even he was a little "What the hell?"  when I came home.  "Why would he say that?" he said.  I told him, "Because he's Greek.  It is how they say it."  "Well," he was huffy, "how did he know that you would know that it was just because he was Greek?"  I mean, I did, didn't I?  Yeesh.  But my experience is that they are a mighty frank bunch with the ladies.  And last night, with all their ouzoing and man-talking and eating with their fingers, oh. 

A long time ago, when I was living in NYC, I encountered John Stamos.  In a bizarre vignette featuring a lot of hurdygurdy around him being the only celebrity in the room, and me being the only person in the room with no real opinion about this, we made small talk and he asked me a really bizarre question that made me extremely confused.  I ended the exchange shortly thereafter -- and accidentally insulted him in the bargain -- and everyone got back to business and it was my New York Story for about week when we would all catch up.

It was eventually established by People Who Knew that he was hitting on me.  I did not believe it, but by now -- having been hit on a time or two by guys not so much from the straight-talking Midwest (So would you like to go back to my place & meet my dog?  I'll clean off the seat of the truck for you ... you like pancakes? after the first bottle of vodka, is as coy as a midwestern guy gets) -- I have to agree.  But still, I feel the same as I did when I scoffed at the Actress lo, those many years ago:  He is Greek!  He couldn't do better than that?  

Anyhow, we had fun last night, pulling in just in time for an excellent supper, featuring for Mari and I this tremendous amount of perfectly-cooked lamb.  (When Mari & I had been married for about two years, I overheard him say to someone, "I don't like lamb."  I interrupted, "Well, you've eaten it at least once a week since we've been married."  Ahahaha!) 

I thought about having an ouzo, but I did not want to become confused and wander off to dance the syrto in a haze of smoke and with all the other women dressed all in black and with the shoes such that anywhere else at a daytime event, you would look like Sandy in the big Grease finale.   

Fille liked best the plate of doughnuts, pastries, and sweets she shared with Mari.  I had an ill-advised demitasse cup of coffee, syrupy with honey, and did not sleep well at all last night.  My children have reported they do not love the bouzouki, but! I got a schedule of festivals happening this summer in the greater metropolitan area  -- one every weekend until July and then starting in September, one every weekend until November! -- and so I will give them a chance to learn to love it over and over again.  They will have so much to remember with each other when they are grown, ha-ha.   

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. 

immaternal

I try to make a clean getaway on Mothers' Day.  A happy Mothers' Day is, to me, one that is low on the mothering.  A lot of my girlfriends will tell a tale of how they made plans to do X or Y some fine May Sunday looking at their calendar and when they mention the plan to their spouse, it gets halted -- But it is Mothers' Day!  We are going to take you to brunch -- and then there:  a fine afternoon in the garden or at the stables or the antique malls, wasted.

On the one hand, how nice their husbands & children remembered, and on the other, is the whole point of Mothers' Day not for you to do what you want?  I was a waitress when I was a girl for years -- y e a r s -- in the sort of place you took Mom for Mothers' Day, yr secretary for Secretaries' Day, yr wife for yr wedding anniversary, the graduate for graduation, on and on, and Mothers' Day just struck me as a time where only old Grandma was having a great time.  Because, typically, it is not so relaxing to take a bunch of preschoolers out to a restaurant.  I mean ... these in-the-saddle moms?  Did not seem so relaxed.  But, whatever.  They sure put back a lot of mimosas.  Welcome to Wisconsin.

Two years ago, I was really worn out by these two, and I went to Mari & told him that I wanted something from them, I wanted them to work very hard at creating something that proved their regard for me.  I wanted this because I wanted to see what they came up with so that I would not any longer feel justified in my homicidal fantasies about them.  Also, I wanted to know that they had sweated blood through their little fingers in a pressure to perform and please me.  I really felt like Franco; I was seriously dissatisfied with them. 

When I am feeling happy and even-keeled, which is ever before & since, I generally discourage any Mothers' Day shows of fussiness because FUCK A FLURRY OF SUPER-GOODNESS, Garçon and Fille, be a C+ of good-enough EVERY DAY.  Because they mostly succeed in meeting this low-investment, low-yield expectation, I do not really care about What Happens on Mothers' Day and mostly, I just want to go to the Korean sauna and get scrubbed and lay around to read magazines and then fortify myself with some light snack and a little shopping or whatever, but just freed from the burden of anyone wanting anything from me for a whole entire day.  What a luxury to just be able to walk out of the door & not worry one hair on my pretty little head about what is for lunch, or dinner or snacks or entertainment, or even if there are suitable provisions in the house.   

Mothers' Day also falls between my wedding anniversary & my birthday, so I feel already full-up on pre-fabbed homage.  I like to exchange a little goodwill among my friends who are parents, men and women, but otherwise, zzZZzz.  I am not very romantic about really much of anything, unfortunately.  (Or fortunately, if you ask Mari, who shudders at the thought of having to meet Mysterious-Yet-Critical WomanlyExpectations.)

Also, I like to do what I want, and really, the last thing I need to do is spend more goddamn time with my children.  When I am old & looking back on my life, the one thing I will not regret is not spending enough time with them.  I do not personally know another woman who spends as much time with her children as I do.  Also, on maybe the same hand, I do not know another woman who gets as much time away as I do, so I do not too much complain, plus also I do not feel like I need to be compensated with lukewarm eggs Benedict in a crowded restaurant.

I do like to use the day in kind of a performance review, in which we set goals for our mother-child relationships for the coming year.  This year is:

1. Never talk to me through a closed door again.  The door is closed for privacy & your endless yammering is the opposite of private. 
2. Do not demand things from me, really, as if I have a magic wand.  For example, "There is no milk," is no longer a valid statement, true though it may be.  I expect forthwith instead something with a solution attached.  "We are out of milk.  Will we have time to go to the store after lunch today?" 
3. Please stop calling me "Mom," because I hate the way it sounds.  If you feel too old to call me Mommy, you have long had permission to call me by my Christian name and anyhow Mrs Follette is fine, if you prefer.

I am all-business with the children.  I have to be, for this is what I do, days in and out.  I have girlfriend who just had her first baby a couple of years ago.  She reported that she used to always think that I was a little tough on my children, that I was v brusque & there were a great many boundaries.  She said once her baby got old enough to be a little push-backy, however, she realized that if I did not approach them with all the limits and rules I tend to define, they would eat me alive.  Um, yeah ... just about.

Any old way, in defiance of our convention, I was unable to get out of here today as we had tickets to a midday ballet.  It was fun, if quite a bit more Family-Togethery than I would have chosen.  Lots of women there with corsages.  I would wish for a do-over but the rest of the (year) is too busy, every single weekend.  Greek Festivals!  Bicycle Rallies!  Day Trips!  Webinars! 

When we got home I slouched around the garden and that was when I realized the comfrey was in bloom.

I am always realizing things are in bloom and it might be possible to infer that I have some kind of large, elusive garden plan, but really I am just not very attentive.  Children are very distracting, but less so every year.  Looking at this photo, I am am reminded to consider that last year, there were no bees on it.  Years prior there always were.  Come back, bees!  Come back, Getaway Mothers' Day!   

send kielbasa

I grew up a short stop from Wrigley Field, so felt conflicted about taking the children to tourism baseball.  Philadelphia is not their town, but it is the nearest MLB town.  Anyhow, I was surprised to find that half the crowd was from Jersey.  Was baseball more sovereign when I was a girl, or is it just my hometown?

The park is really pretty.  Like, so effortlessly lovely, the photo here is just some old snapshot from my tiny camera.

 There is a huge indoor concourse with a lot of shopping & eating.  One bottle of water, $4.  One bottle of domestic beer, $7.  Ivy League concessions are much less costly.  You can bring food into the park, though, and being from the midwest, I know about the tailgate picnic. 

One feature is a stand that sells child-sized portions at appropriate prices.  Fille has been terrorized by a bucket of popcorn or a pretzel as big as her head too many times in her young life. 

I did not take any photos during the game because I was quite busy explaining the rules.  And writing them down.  It was great fun.

Strike zone.

Umpires.

The walk.

Words used for pitching.

Never hit the batter.

Most people in our section seemed to feel the Brewers played well and obviously deserved the win. It was a nice, low-key game, a nice day for baseball, if chilly.  Thank goodness we forced the children to  listen to the Prairie Home Companion safety segment on Spring Blizzards, and we keep quoting from it.  (No scarves, no hats; they're dead.)It is only funny because it is true.

I'll break your arm

A week ago, I bought tickets to a Brewers game.  Oh, and the Philadelphia Phillies are going to be there, too.  They won some kind of ... was it a 4-H prize they got last year?  Or something?  I dunno. 

Anyhow, it has been raining and rainy all week, thunderstorms at night, very bizarre weather, and I have been mostly tolerant of it, get it out, I would think.  Because Thursday, I wanted the weather to be clear.

Which, of course, meant that this poem was on my mind.

The Rain
Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—-
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

The children can't get enough of these guys, like, ever.  This is their first ball game & I am bringing a big pad of paper and colored markers.  They have nine innings to learn the game.  The weather is going to be gorgeous. Seats behind home plate!

northern hospitality, southern time

I have an appointment with our dentist tomorrow.  People wonder, not surprisingly, "Why do you travel all the way to Washington to see yr dentist?"  And my answer is, "Because that is where he works."  Much like when people ask, "Why does Mari work in Washington?"  I say, "That is where his job is."  Duh.  People:  Megalopolis?  Hullo.

Anyhow, then Fat Sal had this thing in NYC and he was sad that Birthday Month kept me from joining him this time.  I called him Sunday to see if we could rendezvous this week, and the next thing I know, I was being signed up for some wacky road trip adventure.  Some kind of Freaky Friday nonsense where I would be here & Mari would be home with the children & then I would rush home to relieve him so he could come here, yk, for work.  Then I decided well, hell, and threw the kids in, figuring it would be fun for everyone to have a switcheroo & we could pass on Wed like 2 ships in the night (morning.)  Also, I could arrange it with the children so we could see a goddamn museum already. 

Did we ever.  We went to NMAI, which I do not know what to feel about already, but I was drawn to the tantalizingly named, "indian/not indian," an exhibit of work by an artist named Fritz Scholder.  Holy what the hell?  It was so strong in every way, all the work, I was blown away.  This guy's bio even without his work is fascinating.  We were sitting in the little short-video-loop showing in the exhibit and I was emailing & texting everyone I know who has been to art school, I cannot believe you have never told me about him!  Why did you never tell me? 

Maybe they never knew!  Maybe I'm on the cutting-edge for once with these crazy kids. 

I shot a bunch of completely lawless photos because  -- this is so inside-the-Beltway --  the chick whose job it was to make sure that no one was taking photos inside the special exhibition was around the corner with another "guard" gossiping and talking shit.  She would occasionally holler out in a monotone "Ladies & Gentlemen, No Photos."

I am forever-15 & have a problem with authority.  I mean, if you are in charge, fucking be in charge. Also, a teensy camera that fits in my palm & takes good photos, even when I am not looking. 

Also, it was all so intense.  I felt like if I left without anything I would have trouble recreating any of it in my beleaguered mind.  Strong.  Man.  O, man.  I still feel really flushed & woozy about it all.  It feels like love.

art-o-matic

When I was in school, I did a final project for a photography class that was a lot of skulking around the Art Institute of Chicago for some long time, snapping photos of people inadvertently imitating the art in the fore- or background of the frame. 

Blurry kids, Monet back.  I was about to delete the file and then remembered, then loved.

It was yesterday when the four of us headed on across the river to the old Philadelphia Museum of Art, because free or not, one can only look at the nation's preëminent collection of photography so many times. 

Ok, there were 5,374,983 people there to see the Cézanne thingy, which is about 5,074,980 too many for me to deal with.  I almost could not deal with it, honestly.  I just ... when Chickie & I were at MoMA a couple of months ago, the joint was jumping because of the van Gogh exhibit that was there.  I had never seen an art museum so packed with people and then when we sallied into the van Gogh exhibit itself, we were both astonished that so many people could be allowed into a gallery.  For insurance reasons, firstly, but also, fire codes? 

The thing that exasperated Chickie was everyone was clustered 16 wide and 6 deep around The Starry Night, which, hello?  If ever you did a bong hit, it was under that poster, christ.  Plus, it is part of MoMA's permanent collection. Meanwhile, you could swing a leopard around in the room where Starry Night over the Rhone was mounted.  That painting is a. knee-weakening and b. generally in Paris.  Chickie is an easygoing sort; I do not think I have ever seen him so fuming.  While I saw his point, I was totally all, Hey, more room for us, dude, my god, would you look at this?

Similarly, well, anyhow.  zzZzZzZzzzz.  Suffice it to say that yesterday was a little frustrating.  It happens all the time.  I was also reminded of when I went to the Spanish Painting exhibition at the Guggenheim with Fille & Algren and everyone was clusterfucking around all those Dalí, which zzzZzzZzz, and the three of us were free to frolic around with all the room in the world looking at the sweetest Picasso india-inked Passion miniatures.  Not to mention the awesomeness (the fucking badassness) of the Fontana show.

Any old way so, yesterday it seemed like a nightmare, but once we got past the entry-hall bottleneck -- shepharded by my awesome husband -- the galleries were pretty empty, surprisingly.  Then, once you make it past European art to the Modern Art Collection, forget about it.  It is the definition of desolate. 

PMA has a mighty mighty representation of Berlin-Köln-Paris-NYC Dadaist hijinks in their permanent collection and only a small part of it on view.  Hissssssss.     

While I was still fearful & trembling from the crowdedness of getting into the place, I lost the baby. I mean, "lost" and "baby," but she had been with me -- Mari & Garçon elsewhere in the wing -- then she was not.

This girl.

true relations

Wow, this was scary, this weekend jaunt to the Arctic, huh?  Oh, yes.  Ha-ha, just kidding.

What was scary was our little "oh, what's in here?" trip to a Pottery Barn store yesterday.  A lifetime of acquiring the 19thc castoffs of dead people plus snapping up textiles & cheap window coverings for people who really hate window coverings (Me & Mel.  Anyone else?) at Pearl River Mart will doom a person to a life of saying, "They want how much for that?  Whaa-aat?"  I mean, seriously?  I bought all the furniture in my house for the price of this sofa. 

And, ok, that is perfectly fine to, um, spend all the money I spent on our entire inventory of hard and soft furniture on just one sofa.  It is a sexy-deluxe kind of a sofa!  People in our exxxcellent America do not have the constitution to be in a house that will be furnished slowly & over time and only once.  Sure!  I get that.  

What I do not get is this:  once that PB furniture is driven off the lot, so to speak, it is worthless.  It has no resale value, there is no market, there will be no appraisers.  We are not trying to saddle our children with a house full of precious antiques or anything, but I guess it would be nice to leave behind more than kindling and a digest of snappy parenting comebacks like, Don't be sorry, be accountable, and Words mean something.         

What is funny about this little trip is that I have recently been sulky about the prices at the estate-furniture shoppe.  In IKEA recently, when I spied on the way out one of those water-soluble, foil-finish bureaus, I nudged Mari & commanded him to remind me next time he sees me balking at a $1,000 suite of cherry bedroom furniture for Fille, "One of those Hemnes thingos costs $250, honey."  Because, seriously.  Perspective?      

Perspective is important.  We were talking with the children over the weekend about the river we canoed on vacation last year.  "Oh, yeah," they talked as one child, "We remember that small river."  Mari & I started out telling them it was not small.  They insisted it was.  Mari & I beat a psychic retreat to our side of the lunch table & conferred, bewildered. 

We were about to shrug and chalk it up to kid stuff when I realized & grabbed my husband's arm:  These kids are growing up on the Delaware River.  They are children who have spent a lot of their short lives traveling & getting familiar with the Susquehanna and the Potomac and the James, not to mention easy eyefuls of the Hudson at Manhattan.  That river we canoed was big to us, but it would never seem big to them.  Oh, man.  Who are these people? 

thursday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

greek love

We spent a lot of time this weekend running back & forth across the river to Philadelphia. Sunday afternoon was the ballet matinee with dinner after and parking and all that and zzZzzZzzzz. Friday night was more exciting, a museum herpetologists' reception thingy, where I occupied myself with a wholesome & eyelashy 2-way flirtation with a foxy researcher in amphibian conservation.

This is the second or third museum thingy in a year during which Mari wandered off and came back to find me deeply interested in the attentions of a burly, tattooed life scientist. I cannot help it; I am married, not dead. I notice a guy who cannot leave his iPhone in his pocket noticing me, and I am ready to stand just a teensy bit too close to him and stay silent for just a teensy bit too long before a throaty inquiry about whether or not he happens to have a score on the Duke game.

Also, evidently, I smelled good both days. Sunday on our way to the ballet, it was Mari, flustered & full of questions about it, "What is this perfume? You wore this Friday night! Why do you never wear this perfume any more? Come back here, I was smelling you!" This is why I like to flirt with strangers & married friends who know I am not trying to fuck them -- there are boundaries. No one follows around behind me demanding I let myself be smelled. Honestly! That said, 1. L'Occitane Neroli, 2. MAC ProLonglash. Things that leave husband spluttering after 13 years of marriage. Important.

 

Philadelphia is not at all beautiful to me. Growing up in Chicago, where neoclassical & Gothic are shamelessly dry-humping Deco in the architecture, I find most of the rest of the country rather lacking in height, light, & elaborate decoration.  Beaux Arts architecture is very unsatisfying. I will allow that there are subtleties lost on me, which is what Mari pronounced, to which I relented with only the crabbiest reluctance.

After that, last night, an old friend bossed the world, which plus old Mari got me thinking about midwestern men and how they are bossy & resolute.  Of course if you say to them they are bossy, they deny it.  Even if you say it with the very sweetest & most admiring tone ( I v much love bossing with all trillion eyelashes), they still deny it.  "No, I'm not bossy," they say.  "That's ridiculous!" 

If you bicker a little -- and this is what occurred to me this morning -- if you get into a back-and-forth, chiding them for their czarist natures, their final response will be a plaintful (and v much so, for no matter how gently they are reproved, the word bossy is to them anathema), qualified surrender that goes along the lines of, "Well, look, the reason I said you should just do that is because what else was there to do?"

Oh, right.  Of course they do not think they are bossing.  They are v obviously only choosing the most sensible thing!  Would that we all could.  What kind of excellent stoic certitude there is in them!  How much I love it, so much, and I would get out my sweet, over-the-top flattery for it, except it is put away for another month, sad.

I showed the baby every comment about her lamb/sheep, and she is so pleased & proud. Thank you, Aprill, Tracy, Jen, Santos, for being other adults whose evaluation is important! (Because you cannot believe everything your mom says.)

waste not, want not

I have gone back and forth about my Pilates sessions, mostly about the cost, feeling silly & extravagant, wasteful, all that kind of yayayaya midwestern inside-voice nonsense. It is mostly easy to silence, because after a couple of months of Pilates rehabbing, I feel like Jaime Sommers, I cannot lie.  (Remember Jaime Sommers? Sure thing, but Mari & I just spent 25 minutes riveted to Bionic Woman clips on YouTube.)

Then, last night I slid on one of my socks down a flight of stairs.  Ow.  I had my usual grueling session scheduled for this morning & did not have to cancel.  I showed up & we talked about it, she watched closely & knew just what to do to make it all better.  Or at least all right.  I am still mostly bruised-up, but feeling like that kind of interaction with a specialist in mobility is worth every penny.

On the way home, I stopped at the Whole Foods Market to pick up a bottle of vitamins. 

Even the sale price of those Flowering Branches is way more than I spent pruning the neighbor's overgrown hedge for free!  I felt like the cleverest girl in the world!

harp

We took the children out today to see a Celtic music performance.  It was my idea, but because I am an idiot and also not Celtic, I was expecting a bouncy Chicago-style performance with girls in ribbons & clogs, or maybe something to which they could jig.  Like, say, the Dropkick Murphys, because you know, House of Pain would be asking too much.  Also, silly.  I am from Chicago and I do know a few things. 

Somehow I missed the word harp in every single promotional material I read before I arranged our little trip.  Ok!  I actually did not know anything about the harp, but if angels play it on clouds, it must be good!  It is Lent & I am agreeable.  Five minutes into the show, I realized it was going to be like Thistle & Shamrock.  Oh, ok.

Twenty-five minutes into the show, I remembered that I never listen to Thistle & Shamrock.  Why?  God bless Fiona Ritchie, but I think Thistle & Shamrock is dull.  To each his own, but American Routes or Mountain Stage are way ( and double-plus way, respectively) more my speed.  Trapped at a live concert with Thistle & Shamrocky music, I realize it is not actually dull, but it is extremely sleepy-making.  Some dude did fall asleep and was snoring rather loudly.  I just wished I had remembered to bring my knitting. 

It was an excellent day, overall.  Nice weather.  I took a bunch of photographs.  Maybe later.

clear. divided.

Today we went to the library and I actually verified for the first time that there is an upstairs.  Yes!  I have never gone before today & actually had to have the children show me where to go. It is where the magazine back issues are kept.  The children go up there all the time because one can only borrow back issues of magazines and Mari & I are mean and will not pay for them to subscribe to National Geographic Kids & American Girl.  I never knew it was there. That is because it is on the other side of fiction, which is a kind of book I never really read.

Coming down the stairs looks like this, which took my breath away because for the first:  I love muntins.  For the second, it looks exactly like the view from the landing on the teensy second floor of Kowalski's house, except instead of a double-hung window at the bottom of the stairs there is a door, also featuring a lot of exciting muntin action. Well, and there is not any ugly brass shit on the risers & the stairs are painted that color without that horrid kind of no-pile industrial carpeting. But apart from all of that, it is very much the same, with the muntins and the light and also the semi-gloss paint on the walls, which is all glowy & reflective but at night is kind of like a disco, shiny! But anyhow, that is the prettiest window I have seen in a number of days!

I was ravaging the back issues for a whole pile of House Beautiful & Traditional Home back issues.  I am thinking hard about a steer-hide rug for our living room.  I cannot decide if it is a. the kind of electrified, daring juxtaposition that will work magically and bring the room's whimsy all together to a laser's point or, b. the worst fucking idea I have ever had.  I am leaning toward the former, I have to say. 

I am still on all-new at the 8tracks about the ambivalence of Midwesterners in love.  I don't know.  Ever since candy-heart writing, I just cannot stop brooding.  I mean, I was brooding before candy-heart writing, sure, but candy-heart writing was illustrative in a way that talking about Kay & Gerda incessantly was not.   

five by five, or, name it twice.

See that Century 21 store? I want to be there. I also wanted to go to the post office, which is the stately old sandstoney federal building on the left in the photo. I started out on that side of the highway, having no idea that if I innocently & gamely went up a flight of steps at Greenwich Street, I was going to be trapped in a series of intractable tunnels on an irreversible path that would dump me -- after a long, long, journey -- only across the street. I felt v scratchy & clawy and certainly this is my unjust reward for being so irritatingly game to climb stairs.

Tuesday

Started off strong with new President.  I have to say that the not-matching gloves & differently-not-matching shoes on Mrs Obama pretty much ruined the whole inaugural experience for me.  Lady in hotel elevator, overhearing me & Fat Sal, said, "Let's hope for this to be the greatest tragedy of this administration, ok?"  Shore thing!  Battery Park City v late-night disorienting.  Despite total ban on sugar in quotidian fashion, gobbled turndown chocolate of mine & Sal's.  Hotel bar sadly lacking in hard cider, which is last time I remember is a drink I can drink until Friday.

Wednesday

Lazing in bed, for hours before eyebrow threading & catch up with Eyebrow Gal.  Continues strong with 90-minute tui na massage and half-tablet of Percocet.  Saunter over to hair salon to gossip & chirp, get hair cut and also, frivolous blowout.  Impulsive, late-night manicure, during which best thing ever happens:  I find the elusive Essie color known as Cha-Cha and not only have it painted on, but also take note of the name and the next morning purchase two bottles on eBay.  Solid!

Thursday

The forgotten Whitney Museum of American Art with everyone's favorite genius for exhibits concerning each Eggleston and Calder, in addition to an unfortunately-named exhibit -- Artists Making Photographs.  Say what?  Fall seriously, head-over-heels in love with de Kooning's Door to the River plus also work up a little heretofore unrealized interest in Pollock because of Number 27.  Coffee & hairdos with same genius (total fox, also) at Astor Place Starbucks.  Remanded to dark, dark, dark Lower East Side bar & total surrender to my favorite & best, the Israeli.  Late-night hipster's dinner with Fat Sal at the much-loved, highly-touted, richly-deserving (hard-to-find every time!  shake fist at Greenwich Village!)  Spotted Pig.   

Friday

Negatively entangled in rubberneckers at gigantic, seven-year-old demolition/construction site near NYSE building & Brooklyn Bridge, icy banks of Hudson, much dark scribbling in metaphorical thought balloons.  (see:  photo/intro)  Little Flatiron-y boutique shopping before nice, easy, non-exhausting lunch with the swellest guy I have ever been lucky enough to know. (also, polite bite of his octopus salad.  not a euphemism.)   Sidle over to Israeli's (in two days!  two times!  like Jim Morrison!) for all-too-brief domestic visit on-site with beautiful wife, sons.  Little more Soho shopping solo, then shortly with handsome, survivally-skilled homeland scoundrel who was good enough to contact me about dinner, over which he was enchanting, as usual.  Spend rest of evening back in hotel room, trying to remember how to write.  

Saturday

Hotel sauna.  Trip to Brooklyn.  Stroll around with aforementioned survival-skills star, then brief  + unintentionally-weighty encounter with greatest beauty besides my actual son.  Leave carefully-crafted valentine from night before with him, then poleaxed, meet up with Beautiful Actress for pignoli & coffee (back in confounding Village, where we spent 10 minutes walking in a circle, talking on our cell phones looking for one another).  Fat Sal says, hearing of my day, "Gosh.  Don'tcha wish you had just gone to see a show like I suggested?  Something light, like Little Mermaid?"  (A little.  But mostly, I find that I would rather regret something I chose to do than to have regret for something I skipped in uncertainty.) 

when we lay bleeding to death in the snow

I was in NYC, for five days, yes.  It was good, exceeded expectations.  Yes, yes.  I am always there, anyhow, though I have not spent any time way downtown since World Trade Center was the name of the island's compass.  People are still down there!  Clusterfucking & picture-clicking!  Anyhow, ok, later.  (Century 21!)

Before I left, I was having an existential suffusion regarding the empiricism of love.  Just in time to go to NYC to hang out day after day with a bunch of people I love and have loved and still love with a shameless affection --  the attendant eyelash-batting and lipstick-marking and hand-holding and helpless giggling --  that no one finds scandalous, not even my husband.  Especially not my husband.  This did not help me sort things out.  It did not confuse matters, however.  I saved that until the end of the trip, which took a sideways turn into heavy.  Oops. 

Thinking about this all, I fooled around a little at the 8 tracks.  There is a lot to think about, honestly.  Go ahead & make the clicky & listen to it, really.  Especially if you are similarly affected with ardency in defiance of convention.  Innocent impassioning.  The chastest longing, closest affections, the airborne kisses of defiant flirtations with the handsomest of devils.  The choosing what to say, where to keep what we recall, what to hold ourselves and what to let another hold onto.  Is it kept in pieces & parts?  So you have to be together for it to be whole, the recollection?  What a puzzlement.  Love.

Creeley wrote it best, with his stumbling eloquence, that sly reserve & coy confession -- Love, what do I think/to say. I cannot say it.   Oh, love.  I made you a little mixtape on the internet.  Let's kiss.  Oh, look!  Is that Valentine's Day on the horizon?  It is. 

Valentine's Day back home happens in what is still the dead of winter.  Mid-February holds not a hope of thaw.  Maybe we would all be more affected & swooning if we equated hearts with promise and bloom instead of icy severity.  I think I much prefer the grim determination of calculating categorization, however.

I am glad to be home again.  I do wish we had a housekeeping department, however.  Leaving towels in piles on the floor!  A fresh glass on the vanity every day!  Shiny mirrors!  Turndown!  Yes!

phallus. fallacy.

Ok, I am not going to complain about this any more after I write it down here:  I lost my brand-new hat in while in Washington DC.  This pisses me off and fills me with regret for two reasons:  1. I do not have a hat any longer.  2. What in the eff was I doing wearing a hat at 56 degrees?  Why, when I know better, was I wearing a hat?  Not to be all, "I am from the Midwest" about it, but why was I? 

I remember very many early mornings back [home/in the day] trying to get Kowalski to go out and ski with me when it was 8 degrees.  His rule was not below 10 degrees would he go out and I spent a number of mornings, tugging on him, trying to get him to see that the difference between 5 degrees and 11 degrees is not vast (it is).  But it was 56 yesterday and I was wearing a hat.  Dumb.

I think that one of the things that happens when people move from the Midwest, or the rest of the Great Lakes region, to someplace with a less-scourging (but still four-season) climate is that there is a transitional period, where we run around like the Little Match Girls, and then we sort of morph into the law-enforcement look (watch closely & you will learn that an off-duty cop never buttons his coat), and then we just cave and start wearing hats when it is in the 50s.  I do not know, maybe it is just me. 

It is so unthinkable to me that we ever lived in Washington for even one minute, let alone seven years.  And, as I have written now, three times in as many weeks, I never really confront a terrible ordeal until it is over, for what is the point, but MAN O MAN, I was sad when we lived there.  I think it is such an alien place.  (Oh, I like that piece!  Like a sweet, non-blaming little poem about how I hate DC.) 

One of the things that happens there is that you become completely inured to, like, everything that is really genuinely cool about living there -- the monuments and museums, sure, but also Presidential motorcades, helicopters always flying around, the Secret Service kicking out of yr office, the FBI wandering around everywhere, clearing everyone for their secure jobs.  I was crossing the street to go to the dentist, whose office is located in the Watergate complex, and I looked both ways and right there on the left:  The Washington Monument, big & pointy.  Hand to god, in all the times I walked over there, not even in one of the 27 times I went for my pregnancy-gingivitis scalings while pregnant with each child, I never fucking once noticed. 

Even just typing "Watergate," reminds me of how I was living there for years before I realized, "Omg, this is the Watergate building."  Maybe I am just slow.  I do maintain that it is no place to raise children, in my opinion.  I grew up in a hometown's hometown and I just wanted my kids to have that, which they do now.  Growing up in DC I would think is like growing up in Vegas or being raised in a brothel.  Endless traffic which is feeling weirdly obligated and not really investing in stuff you would love if only it were really all yours.  Or something.  Flawed analogy, whatever.  Also, there is not any sidewalk culture and not one damn ordinary restaurant down by the museums. I mean ... Chicago spoils people for sensible city planning, but Jesus Christ.

I was super-grateful for a link posted by a past-life colleague a couple weeks ago of an interview with Ana Marie Cox, formerly the Wonkette gal.  It all rang so true with me, and I read her answers to Q6 and Q3 with my mouth hanging open a little, because she seems way less fragile than I, but yes, yes, yes.  This is why Mari works there and we live here.  It is so much better this way.  (Also, her answer to Q5 made me feel caught up short.  More later, maybe.)

I lost my hat, though, see.  It was angora and wool, with a fleece headband inside and a contrast-color star knitted onto it.  It was toasty warm, without being too hot.  It was a little smashy, but duh it was a hat and hathead comes with the territory.  I bought it, but will be knitting its replacement.  I am really behind on knitting, even before this loss, which is actually what I meant to write about, but I got sidetracked by Washington DC.  For seven years. 

Persephone, pack yr things.

Halloween is on Friday.  Election Day is on Tuesday.  I say, here, here is America's health care crisis:  Why in the eff can I not get a prescription for, say, FIVE lousy Xanax.  Huh?  Yes, well, then.  I am just saying.

Les amoureux Follette are pleased and amazed to announce that our lovely children can recite right along with both Abbott and Costello the entire Who's on First routine.  I have not been so wooed since they became fans of the Stooges (the 3, not Iggy Pop's).  

       

The farm where we met our friends had a contest in the pumpkin patch.  $20 for all the pumpkins you could carry.  My guy, mon amour.

gates of love

I am not kidding when I talk about wanting a cigarette.  Everyone on the ground here is amused by my lament, what since I have not smoked in so long that people who have only recently met me cannot even reconcile my countenance with such a filthy, destructive, expensive vice that I swear to God was the key to Eden.

Cake Mind is killing me.  I had to develop Radio Cake Mind to have something to show for it besides prowling & frowning.

We went apple picking, which turned into a nature walk, mostly, since I do not like apples and did not really want any of the varieties available for the picking.

There were two birds' nests, with apples.

Busy, busy, angry, dying yellowjackets.

Soil inebriation.

I was only there for the last of the tomatoes.  Well, what amounted to thirty-one pounds of the last. 

 

Tomatoes can be frozen on cookie sheets into tomato popsicles, then tumbled into gallon-sized freezer bags for the duration. 

When a person cannot fit into their winter warmers because of their cast, it is good they have a mother who can knit a poncho. 

Most on-the-fly poncho, ever.  The basic Rectangle Poncho, in Reynolds Regal Andean Alpaca on 13s.  Crochet edging is Cascade Pastaza.  I did not make the rectangles so that the stitches would be oriented the same way once assembled and Fille had the nerve to detract.  I made that!  With my hands!  I let them cut a hole in my body! to get her out! And this is how she talks to me?

She got a Ponytail-Mom-withstanding-Cake-Mind hairy eyeball that shut! her! right up!  I could do a lot of yoga if they went to school.  One should hope I would spend the time on yoga.  Because Cake Mind has cooked up one hell of a Bloody Mary idea for those tomato ice cubes, I promise. 

unbound

This is what gazpacho looks like fresh out of the CSA bag.

People ask, "Femme, what do you do with all that eggplant?"  Not only is ratatouille not just the name of a Pixar film; fresh eggplant is a different, living, edible creature compared to all the old supermarket eggplant in the world.   

This morning is for the spa!  I love camp!

weeds and seeds

Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, in his own bed at Monticello.  Anyone can say what they like about Jefferson -- I mean, sure thing he could string a few words together, but so could Thomas Paine and with none of the associated and unforgivable controversy -- but would have to admit that old Jefferson knew an awful lot about having some nice things, and it is nice to look at them. 

Jefferson is like Martha Stewart.  I do not think much of Martha, really, but I sure would never turn down a chance to look at her stuff.  Also, really, the same in the way of needing to make controversy as compromise:  Martha, she had to have that whole unfortunate cheating scandal; Jefferson, he had his despicable slaving ways.  All that super-deluxe living costs a lot of money, people have to steal & cheat!    Also, keep humans in bondage!  There is just no other way!     

We took ourselves on a stop along the way to old Monticello, for I would not live if we only sped past Charlottesville without a tour.  We took the "Children & Family" tour, which is way less boring than the Regular House Tour, on which we had already been many years ago.  The house is ok, I mean, if you like old stuff arranged in a real fetishy way to which you cannot even get close, sure.  When we last went, it was January.  I just do not think enough of the guy to really get into his house, plus this was 8 years ago and they were really glossing over the whole Jefferson was all of these things plus-plus:  A Slaver! issue.  I found it really disingenuous and (again) fetishy, but this time when we went, they seem to have a new paradigm in the tours and collaterals.  Which is at the very least realistic. 

Anyhow, the tour is not even the whole house, because of the Fire Marshal's tyranny, and then in January there was nothing to see but cole crops and covers, and I was sad to see the amazing space allotted the gardens with nothing actually growing and I vowed to someday get back to see those gardens!  The gardens!!  The minute we decided to go to Virginia for vacation, I knew.  I was so excited!  I mean, fuck a homeschool history lesson, we were going to work on our horticulture!  Yes!  

It is really pretty there.  The children appear to be having some discussion about corn.  To their left are potatoes, to their right, a cover crop of clover.

Besides the 2-acre vegetable garden (in which the children are walking again, here), there are 8 acres of fruit growing at Monticello (including vineyards and orchards), and the whole endeavor serves as a preservation seed bank for 19thc vegetables, flowers, and fruits.  As a gardener, I love to see stuff in the ground, growing, and there is an awful lot of it there. 

I thought the most interesting part of the garden scheme was the retaining wall he had constructed to keep the garden where he wanted it.  It is just so fancy!  Over the little rail fence there is kind of a steep drop to the fruit garden (the vineyards behind Fifille).    At the opposite end of the wall from where we are standing (in about the middle, we are), all the way down on Garçon's left, there are about 27 fig trees, thriving in the reflected heat from the wall.

 

We ate cherries in the orchard.  I saw the smart trellising of beans.  I showed Mari the big bed of woolly ferns as tall as he is and said, "That is why we don't grow asparagus, ok?"  I mean, what would I do with all those fronds?  I now know what growing habit to expect from my sweet potatoes and what my potatoes are going to look like when I finally get them in the ground.   The flower gardens have been restored with all manner of period flowers and how nice to see them in real life!  I am v suspicious of anything in seed catalogs. 

I fell in love with the pincushion flower with the bees all over it, so bought some seed I found in the Monticello garden store.  Yes.  But there were so many more plants.  More than I could ever remember to name or with which I could retain my personal reception.  So many.  But I have pincushion flower seeds and I am excited.    

Here is our garden today.  

The first eggplant is on its way. 

Against the back fence, in the middle, there is a Brandywine tomato as tall as I am.  Eeek.   

A very happy birthday wish to the most loveliest Santos.  Here is a food photo for you.

 

virgin queen

Lie down with strawberries, wake up with peaches.  Or something like that.  Raspberries and blueberries have come to ripen in our absence also, and picking at the farm will commence any day.  As soon as I recover from a week slathered in DEET.

When two people from the state of IL travel to a place with honest-to-god natural features, they can't stop gazing around, mouths open.  When we first got to the top of the range, we were through the windshield transfixed.  Then we got out at a scenic view to pose the children in front of it, because who am I, Ansel Adams now? 

It feels like we have been gone forever, but it was just the tick-infested portion with a few days of predictable touring on either end.

I have over years shot a gallery's worth of photographs of my family walking away from me, or maybe it is me skulking behind.  Surely a strict Jungian would have quite a lot to say about this.

The children learned to paddle, pilot, and steer a canoe, which is just to me !!!!!  (I have no words.)

While happy to be home, we are not quite getting with it, since camp starts next week and there is some kind of suspended animation of anticipation. The week should be borne aloft by gardening, unpacking, and reading magazines delivered in our absence. Also, picking berries for the freezing and the jams.  Vacation tends to leave the children as companionable as ever, but also sweet and woozy with one another, and it is so much easier in the days that follow.