la femme follette

pulsing

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

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

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

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

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

provisional

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

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

Ahahaha!

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

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

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

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

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

 

mat party

Lilies are just obscene. Honestly.

I don't care for them at all & am curious how I wound up buying a big bouquet of Stargazers. I think it was because they were paired with irises. Also, because the smell of lilies was pervasive in the shop & I wanted a cut flower that smelled. Well, these have opened since then & indeed!

In advance of Mothers' Day, Fifille went to Mari, seeking his assistance in making [some kind of fancy, idk] dinner for me.  Mari told me that he got down to her eye-level and told her, "That's very nice, honey, but Femme doesn't want that.  Femme wants a day where she doesn't have to talk and everyone does their chores."

Best husband.  Yes.

We were sitting at the table Sunday morning, he & I.  My departure was imminent, but I was enjoying my second cup of tea and paging through The New Yorker, looking at cartoons.  Mari was poking desultorily at a piece of toast with jam and asking questions about cartoons that looked interesting.  First, Garçon came in to ask me if he could make [some kind of unusual] porridge for breakfast.  I said, "I don't care what you do, I'm leaving."

A minute later, Fille came in to ask me if she could have fig preserves in her yogurt.  I told her the same as I told her brother.

I looked at Mari, who was just sitting there.  "Do they not see their other parent, right here?  This is why there is a day, honey!  A whole day!  Good-bye!"

I went to the sauna, which, ok, I got a little ahead of myself on the calendar, sauna-wise.  I was just there Thursday because the forecast for the weekend was in the 80s, and I did not want to get involved in a whole sweaty Betty kind of a thing.  But, I got hung up on Thursday morning, returning emails and texting and doing laundry, so I did not get there as early as I wanted to do everything I wanted -- scrub, massage + general sybaritic wallowing -- there just was not time before I had to come back to the kids in the afternoon, so I had the scrub and the minimum pre-scrub wallowing required there.  Alors.

I decided to go back because I felt like Ideal Getaway Mothers' Day involved a massage and a nap, which, obviously there is only one place to go for that.  Throw in snacks and a lot of luxuriant bathing and good.  Great! 

When I got there at 11, the first massage opening was not until 4.  "Ok," I said. 

The dude was confused by my compliance, "But I meant four o'clock."

Now I was confused.  "You mean four o'clock today, right?"

Right, see?

I was so excited to have five hours yawning in front of me, to dawdle and paddle and rinse and mask and unmask and rinse and re-rinse and do whatever I wanted with no one to bother me!  Yes!  There are five freaking ways to take a shower there!  Yes!  So I spent the time in a comfortable circuit of, yk, scrubbing, steaming, scrubbing, saunaing, rinsing, steaming, scrubbing, rinsing, drying, then lying in the warm clay room while I waited to get antsy/thirsty.  Then I would put 0n my sauna-issue tunic and relax on the sofa, reading the January 2011 issue of Elle and sipping water and/or green tea.  Then I would lie in the hot-hot room, get all sweaty, and start again. 

I had a hunk of Ossau-Iraty in my bag with some almonds, and a stupid apple, which turned out to be good thinking when I decided I did not want to fool around navigating the co-ed area just to eat beef.   

I did not get into any of the pools/streams, because there were a lot of newbies there (so much confusion + confrontation about how there are not bathing suits allowed, people clutching towels to themselves in the wet room, like, ok), and I idly witnessed one gal take her completely inadequate pre-pool shower & I did not want to be anywhere in the range of her miasma. 

OK, I mean, maybe it is weird to be told there is nowhere to change and then find out you can't wear your bathing suit and then get to the room with the showering and find out there is nowhere to hang yr towel because the people in here are all naked and bathing and no one really expected you to clutch yr towel, you, along with your mothers and their sisters and your best friend, ok.  But clean yourself up.  Scrub it off.  Use soap!  There are at least 36 shower nozzles on three walls where you can point the spray anywhere you want.  There are 2 shower areas with spraying from every direction! Yes.  Also:  just be clean because God, ew. 

But for all that I am going on about it, it was ok, because I don't care about the pools anyway.  None of them are the right depth, and sitting on the bench is too shallow and sitting on the floor is too deep, so it's fine.  I do like the standing-around, freezing-cold waterfall pool, I did that a couple of times, but it was just standing knee-deep, not awash in someone else's effluvia, and anyhow, I never saw Miss DirtyPants in there.

I ran my wet room/resting/reading-snacking/sweating circuit about 5 times before it was time for my massage and I do not think there is anything better -- no greater proof of total relaxation! -- than dozing off intermittently on a massage table.  So, that was good, and then only thing that could have made it better was a wheelman, but still it was pretty great. 

I came home long past dinnertime to find both children spent the day cleaning their rooms and the kitchen was clean, and my husband was somehow showered, but still in his bathrobe, but he is a grownup and OK to that.  The kids watched that Christian movie about the shark attack on the surfer while Mari & I watched Underworld: Mike Ealey (terrible! but only 88 minutes, so whatever). 

Today I am making a form that children in this house must fill out and give to me whenever there is an argument with their sibling.  No unauthorized arguments!  Allez!

cap times

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

 

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

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

Man, anyhow.

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

I mean, honestly.  Focus!

 

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

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

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

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

Bingo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

still, life.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              

time can do so much

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Alex!  Speaking of you! 

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

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

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

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

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

Becky!

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

I hope you are all happy. À bientôt!

 

earth day. rainy night.

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

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

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

 

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

oh, a wiseguy!

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

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

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

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

Everyone: happy!  Yk, marriage.  xox

when morning comes twice a day.

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

  

  

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

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

profusion

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

This is the Potomac River spider. 

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

Then we came home & had a birthday. 

 

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

 

 

 

Mk 9, 49

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Je t'embrasse.  Enjoy yr wkend.    

this old thing

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

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



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

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

 

amber waves

When we were in Washington again, I can't even remember when ... I guess it was the time before Christmas; the mental-hospital/Holocaust-Memorial times (irony!), we took another quick pre-closing look at the National Archives' exhibit, What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?

Eucalyptus can just grow in the ground in North America? Why do we not have koalas?

It was really, really good.  We saw it right after in opened in June, and wanted a second look (because we did not just see the shit out of it the first time), but by then it was Summer in Our Nation's Capital and ugh, no.  Long lines!  Horrible people!  Bleargh! 

Anyhow, one morning while we were lying around, practicing our layabout, life-of-leisure moves, Garçon said, suddenly filled with purpose, "We should finish seeing that food exhibit, Mom!  It's going to close pretty soon!"

Because obviously, you see, he belongs immediately in a locked psychiatric ward.  Oh, am I talking about that?  No, not yet.  Shh.  Shhhhhh.

We set out right in that next few minutes to walk over & do just that.  It was a really good exhibit, really carefully-curated, and not to get into too much endless narration, but the second trip had really high yields.  We had walked the entire road of the exhibit, but there was so much, and we wanted to go back, yk, to absorb.  I like to apply the SQRRR method to museum-going & the children do, too.

Anyhow.  There was no photography allowed, otherwise I would have blogged the shit out of it months ago. 

Why am I writing about this?  Oh!  Right, yes.  Sorry.  (tap-tap-typing-tap-tap)

 

So, Garçon wanted the exhibit catalog (danger! to society!), and also the cookbook.  I demurred the cookbook, ultimately, because I have enough cookbooks; please understand I am in danger of becoming a cookbook hoarder, especially antique cookbooks.  Plus, this cookbook was $30 and I did not want LBJ's corn-dodger recipe that badly.  But!  Perusing the book to judge its worth, I saw there were two WWI pamphlets credited in every recipe that appealed.  They both came from the Office of Food Administration and were, obvs,  of keen interest to me:  "Wheatless Wednesdays" and "Potato Possibilities."

This is what the Library of Congress is for, and lying so conveniently between the Archives and Sal's house, too!  Wonderful!  God Bless America!

 

This is the bread called Oaten Bread.  The recipe is: 2c ground oats, 4tsp baking powder, 1tsp salt, 1cup milk, and one egg.  Mix dry, mix wet, mix together, let rise for 30 minutes, greased loaf pans in a moderate oven for 35 minutes.  I took this to mean a hair over 350F and also used one loaf pan for the whole thing.  I also, the third time I made it, cut the salt in half to no bakering effect.  It was way too salty before. 

It does not suck; it is not pretending to be anything it isn't.  Also, bears a mighty strange textural resemblance to cornbread, I think.  (It's been at least 5 years since I have had cornbread.  I should ask Mari or Fille, which had not occurred to me.)  It is the perfect vehicle for jam, nut butters, and possibly egg salad.  Definitely alongside soup, slathered in butter.  Or with 2 poached eggs and the last of the boczek from Christmas.  Yes.  À bientôt.

liege

2011 started off extra-strong with not having to secure babysitting to attend a rock concert.  Let's look at that again.  I'll make it bigger.

 

2011 started off extra-strong with not having to secure babysitting to attend a rock concert.

 

It was just that huge, that first time.  I mean, we would leave them to go to the supermarket or the post office, but to go out?  At night?  Not until that day.  It is still pretty trippy, every time we do it.  Bye, love you.  Don't use the stove, no fighting, no biting. 

Wow.

Then, yk: kittens, growing; kittens, facing mortality.  Then whatever to all that cat stuff because Kowalski's mother was dying, and there were the unyielding reports filed, every night, many mornings, there were a lot of confessions and solemn agreements made. 

By the late spring, my favorite + best, the Israeli, wandering in the haze of the untreatable, was promised a way out and that was resolved in its entireity and whoa, so many people are happy.  It was touch & go at the start of recovery's road, but for months now he has been so great and I am so glad. 

We had a great trip home & I no longer -- if ever I had -- believe that old saw about how you can't go home again.  You can, and it will still be every moment the right hometown for you.  I am still glad not to live there, but never for the reasons people think.  It is my secret. 

Things reached a head in our family dynamic this summer, and 2011 is the year of useless pediatricians, but now we are going to turn the page on every single one of them.  It is so strange, because, yk, we talk to people, we are processors & confessors and I am a confider in a few people, and every time, with the twatty health-care providers, I have had to review -- am I making something where there is nothing? -- and it's always, "No, no, their behavior is outrageous." 

Although, the Israeli did say, very recently, when I called him about Mental Hospital Detail, limply putting my metaphorical self into his metaphorical hands, "You know, cookie, when you go to a carpenter, they generally use a hammer."  Ah. 

So who knows where that will go in the weeks and months to come.  I pretty much still feel very whatever-y about him, but he is my son and not my husband, so I do not actually have to work it out.  Take Michael and Fredo, right?  Shake it up with Fermina Daza.  Shoot! See?  Snake-eyes.  Yes.  He is a lovely child, until you ask him to do something.  But on travel, anywhere?  He is fine.  So, we will just never be at home again.  Or, more likely, I will simply bribe them more with trips to get what I want when we are home.  We no longer have pets in our care, so E-Z. 

We were in NYC yesterday, site of much delicate-lounging during 2011, to go to MoMA.  You have to know that I was going to perish if I did not see the de Kooning exhibit.  It was so good.  So! Good!

 

(So crowded!)

There were no photographs allowed in the galleries, so there are none here, but it was such a grand scale.  It was completely thorough, and Fifille was excited about a lot of process discussed in the curatorial exegesis from the audio tour.  I love the MoMA audio-tours.  I am not really an audio-tour person, but anyhow.

Also, at the de Kooning exhibit?  Stanley Tucci.  He was taking a photograph of the two women with him flanking the canvas of de Kooning's Two Standing Women, which I had just admired before doubling back to see another thing again. 

He had his camera right out!  Using the flash!  Even when photographs are allowed, flash is never!  In no museum!  I sidled past him & said, whispery-y -- if you know, you know exactly how this came out -- "You are going to get into trouble!" 

He was wholly conspiratorial in response, "I know, I am, shhh, I have to hurry!" 

Mari, of course, was all, "Did you just chide Stanley Tucci?" 

I did.  Know why?  He was doing bad behavior.  Duh.  But he is really very handsome.  Also, as with many people from the audiovisual world?  Smaller than you'd think. 

Then we had dinner in the 2nd-floor museum cafe, naturally.  Flourless chocolate cake is back on the menu, bliss, and the coffee is still pretty good.  Garçon had been at a portion of IFC's Studio Ghibli revue with Algren, but they turned up toward the end of dinner for the hand-off. 

Then we all went to the Diego Rivera exhibit. 

I was flattened.  There is really not v much more to say about it.  His work has a reach & a relevance thematically that I feel is really something to see at this moment, in particular, so there was that, but also -- Rivera is never really highlighted as an innovator, or a problem-solver, in his work.  He is almost always presented as the leading North American Communist who was a muralist and  who was sought out to diversify the human collections of people like Ford and the Rockefellers, who refused to take any shit off of anyone.  And, yk, dayenu, but then to find out that he constructed a way to make his work, murals, portable ... it just blew my mind.  Man.    

In conclusion, before we can all look forward to a 2012 full of sports-journalism blogging, I offer the traditional 8tracks thingo of my favorite tunes from 2011.  I think I try to keep it to 10, but last year I could not whittle it down at all, two years ago, there was an A-list and a B-list, and this year is 11.  Or 12.  I think.  I LOVE THEM ALL. 

This is a pretty-exciting piece of media from 2011, also.

I pronounce 2011 pretty great, even as (especially as?) it ends with my total-laryngitis, which harkens back to so many ways in which I try to improve my self -- with the needing to ask & the reliance and the willingness to be helpless, but also the shutting up the endless yammering.  Like now.  Have a safe evening and a restful pair of holidays, whether you are near to me or far.  xox

 

serendipity. synchronicity.

If you might be taking your sensitive child along to see Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes endeavor, work in a trip to fully take in the Holocaust Memorial Museum's special exhibit on Nazi propaganda a few days prior. 

 

Because Moriarty's casual sadism has got nothing on the designs of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels.  I looked over at her during a scary part -- when Holmes was in a bad way & Moriarty was being super-madman -- just to check in, and she was enraptured -- totally secure in the knowledge that this was made-up.  Superb.  Phew.

 

Hanukkah is just somehow going the fuck on and on -- practically to the New Year! -- and it is getting me down.  Then it was on Christmas (unrelenting!), and I had some cake-issues -- two cakes went down the Nigella road.  We can get back to that, because I love to talk about fucking it up.  But, anyhow, in spite of the elation of fucking it up endlessly, I decided that I could withstand any kind of disappoinment and so I tried again -- for the first time in many years -- with the Hanukkah doughnut.

 

I grew up with latkes being on the periphery -- fried dough was the main event.  Just plain yeasted doughnuts -- bimuelos -- and when I met the Israeli, my eyes were widened to the jelly doughnut -- sufganiyot -- which are way less intensive than a bunch of grating of potatoes, with a bigger payoff, obvsly. 

I tried to adapt a doughnut our first gluten-free holiday, and it was te-he-herrible.  Not even filled with jelly were they edible.  When I made pão de queijo in the summer, it got me thinking.  Pão de queijo batter is, mostly, just pâte à choux, I mean, in its bones.  The oil, the eggs, the whirling.  Hm.  I substituted tapioca flour for all-purpose in the boilerplate pâte à choux sketch.  Et voila. 

 

I felt like Louis Pasteur.  You have no idea.  No idea. 

 

What happened with the cakes was too much sugar, two times.  I did not take a photo of the actual failing, but it looked just like the last time this happened, with a volcano of cake.  Blech.

The first time, I thought it was that I had subbed in blanched almond flour for the wheat flour.  That was some of it, because in the second cake I used starchier flours and it was at least cake-like in its crumpled-up way, if not an actual cake.

 

The problem was mostly too much sugar.  I had subbed -- besides the flour -- granulated sugar for brown sugar 1:1.  No.  Down with cooking by volume!  Brown sugar weighs 6 ounces to a one-cup measure and granulated sugar is 8 ounces.  So, I used a third more sugar than the recipe called for.  Now I know.  Live & learn. 

But: doughnuts!  Dude!

moonlight. firelight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, but what happened?"

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

wetwork

We were in Washington for the holiday, visiting with friends.  It was nice, I hope the same for you and your family + friends.

 

Jupiter has been on such an unbelievably bright display all month.

Before we left -- like while I was sitting in the freaking driveway, idling -- the nurse from the hospital with whom we had been dealing called.  She had seemed sensible right up to this moment, when she called to try to renege on a previously-set meeting date to get us to come in sooner for a meeting.

As discussed, all around, everything is cake right now on the Garçon front.  I don't ask him to do anything except take care of his own self and he doesn't destroy anything by throwing it at me.  E-Z. 

The kids had a hippie homeschoolers' participation -- Garçon had a huge role, in fact -- in a community theatre production that ran last week, then we had the holiday, obvs, and now we are turning our fullest attentions to The Nutcracker and this weekend's run of 6 shows in 3 days.  Wonderful.  Exhausting.  And, frankly, all of it using up all the time we had for Extra Anything.

As to which result, we told these hospital people that unless he was hearing voices (which she had intimated he was & then recanted while I stood in the cold on Mari's cell phone in front of a mental hospital that could not screen him nor see him, asking her holy what the hell?) which he revealed only to them (entirely possible, sure) our first availability to dive back into their obviously disorganized waters was the first full week in December.  Because we are reasonable, see, plus also organized and they are obviously needful of a lot of flexibility while they sort things out as they go, so we wanted to make sure our family calendar is clear enough to sop up their freaking bullshit.   (Fool me twice, shame on the Luiseño.)

Anyhow.  On the phone, the day we left, Nurse Ratched was demanding a new date for the meeting with the two of us, the doctor who sent us on a wild goose chase, her resident, and the senior person in their department.  That date was earlier by a full week than what I told them represented our first availability, after which there was a meeting already set.  We thought.  No backsies!  So I told her no, while leaving, "WTF don't you understand English?" unsaid.

Because I am a fucking classy broad.

Then Nurse Ratched persisted, telling me that the senior physician in their department was available on this day but not on that day and our son needed to move forward with this care, blahblahblah, and after a while of exchanging sweet-yet-firm conversational demurrals, I cut her off.  The end.  I mean, seriously.  Because when do you want to die?  Tomorrow?  The day after tomorrow?  Bitch?

"You know, I don't have to go to work, but what I do know is that if the day should come that my husband needs to be at a meeting because he fucked up the lead direction on a project, he will not tell anyone he doesn't have meetings on this day or that day, no.  He will make the meeting happen when the  people want to see him. 

"Also, let me put this to you bluntly, because I have implied it without elucidating it:  I don't care at this moment what any of you think about our son's care.  Your outfit has lost the privilege of professional discretions due to the colossal disaster engineered by you just last week.  Let's get all on the same page, in the same room, and my husband and I will evaluate whether or not you are the professionals we want leading the project of our family.  Then maybe we'll be happy to go forward.  Hmm?"

So Mari was sitting in the passenger seat, kind of shaking his palms-upturned hands back & forth, as if they were pans sauteing at a high heat.  This is a gesture we cribbed from the preschool Fifille which mostly conveys a silent astonishment akin to Wait, what is happening?  Why are flaming chunks of the ceiling falling down all around us?  Whoa! 

I mean, I made the case clear to Mari weeks ago that we had to come out swinging with the hospital in every interaction because they have the weight to go to the state and claim we are neglectful and fuck that since they are not bowling us over with their qualifications.  However, Nurse Ratched had -- in all previous interactions -- been not a pain in the ass.  Until this phone call.

I made a show of gazing past Mari's gesturing, wrapped up the call with the nurse and rang off.  He asked me why I'd had to be so mean.  It was an accusation.  In my ongoing work to create my Wife of the Year portfolio, I did not respond to the bullshit in the charge, but instead looked at him, pitiably, and said, benevolently, "She told me that sometimes when she has an appointment, she just takes an early lunch.  Maybe you could just do that, is what she said."

I mean, first of all, how incredibly ridiculous, to offer such kindergarten, junior-intern's advice to any grownup person at all who has made clear that they are not available?  Secondly, what the fuck?  I should have my husband adjust his work schedule so we can meet up with you at your workplace?   Get yr client-service priorities straight!  But then, the killer is, as you are likely to know, to offer that as yr homespun, R.N.'s solution to the man in my husband's position?  OMG.

Anyhow, Mari barked up laughing around a mouthful of orange juice, immediately revoked his charge, and snickered intermittently all the way to the big bridge over the river.  I mean, right?

Then, we had pre-Thanksgiving, erev Thanksgiving, and actual Thanksgiving.  A zero-makework turkey, slathered in butter, roasted itself without fuss or bother while we took in the National Museum of the American Indian, which we thought was the place to be on Thursday.      

NMAI is my favorite museum, ever since they showed me Fritz Scholder and he stole my heart.

Also, James Luna. 

James Luna, The Artifact Piece. First performed in 1987, San Diego's Museum of Man.

 

If you can only know one piece of Luna's oeuvre, it has to be this.

 

But even probably without those guys, it would be my favorite, most important museum.  I forget what we were looking at, exactly, when I looked at Mari and said, "Every time a child tells me Indians used to live here long ago, I want to ssssssssslap them across the face."  It is so true and the only thing that stops me is that I know they are never told better, but OMG, does no one have parents?

 

Friday, we were at the American History museum, sitting in the cafe, visiting with Selene and checking in at intervals with our four at-large children at intervals, meeting up in Julia Child's Kitchen.  Speaking of no one having parents. 

 

I just desultorily chose the Child's Kitchen exhibit because it was close to the museum cafe, easy to find on the map, and hard to miss,  but I was drawn in, a little. 

 

Mostly, I was drawn in by the hordes of people who were so excited to be there.  Their excitement was contagious!

  

Then I got an email from another g.d. hospital professional -- the lead psychologist.  What the hell?  It is like they love the abuse.  I read it aloud to our table and Mari said nothing, but Selena chimed in with a fat lot of what to say about an experience in her family with a silly behavioral health professional.  Later, Saturday morning, I sent a perfect, perfect email which reeked of gasoline, one which came right up to actually calling her incompetent without actually saying, "OMFG, wtf are you so incompetent for?"

It did feature the accelerant-perfumed sentence, "Do you even know what you are doing there?" and the underlings whom she had copied on her outgoing message were included on my reply, so, yeah.  Because right in the email I gave her a matter-of-fact chapter & verse recap on how she fucked up.  Then, in a metaphorical way, I reminded her that she did not want me to strike any matches. 

It was a literary thing of beauty and even if you have known me for 20 years or more-- and seen me in nuclear action over & over, just laying waste to shit & going back to salt the rubble -- you would still say "Jesus Christ" when you read it.  And then you might have to sit with it a little while, admiring.  Honest.

The thing is, her reply to me was so fucking beautiful and the smartest thing she has done yet, wherein she came right to the fence of saying forget about it without actually writing "OMFG, Jesus, fucking forget it."  So things might be looking up, with that!  I think we are learning so much about one another in this dynamic.  Yes!

 

Oh, also, this, speaking of what is said & unsaid, omigod:

I was leaving the Willard Hotel on Friday night, on my way to get a bowl of Corner Bakery's fabulous lentil soup, and the man in his sleeping bag on Pennsylvania Ave-- on the sidewalk at the edge of the pool of the Willard's exterior lights -- stopped me & asked if I could help him.

"Sir, can I bring you a bowl of soup?" was my rejoinder.  He said yes, so I proceeded to take his order for dinner.  He flip-flopped on a sandwich and told me plaintively he could not get warm.  I assured him I would return shortly.

I did, with a large bowl of soup, a grilled-cheese sandwich, and a hot chocolate.  I set all of it carefully next to him and went inside of the hotel.  A while later, I was waiting outside for Mari to come with the car, nursing a cup of hot tea from the Starbucks on the opposite corner.  A doorman from the Willard approached me and said something I did not understand, mostly because he was finished talking by the time I realized he wasn't uttering some kind of boilerplate obsequiousness.

I invited him to repeat himself.  This time I heard him fine.  He said, "You gave food to the man?"

Reader, it was an accusation. 

I was thinking a lot of things, but said nothing.  I mean, if they didn't want dude laying on the sidewalk soliciting assistance and possibly picnicking then why the fuck didn't they man up and call the police on him?  At the same -- possibly incongruous -- time I was thinking OMFG I'm sitting in front of this 4-star hotel blinged-out like Carmela Soprano and an employee wants to get it on with me?  Is the world still turning?  Uh-uh.   

I stood up.  Doorman wanted to be in a confrontation and so I rose to meet it.  I said to him, only, "Yes.  I did."

Then I stood there, placidly.  I did not even raise my eyebrow in that come-and-get-it-I-dare-you invitational gesture you know I love to do, because there was nothing else to say besides Yes and  I did.  I waited, silently, while the light of rightness shone from my fingertips and my eyelashes and the ends of my hair, blinding him with the truth of humanity.  He said nothing more, which is too bad, because besides all the truth and the light and the rightness, I was thinking, deep inside, Say something else.  Anything else will do because brother, I am going to blog about you.

Then he walked away.  Because there was nothing for him to say.  And this is the lesson in which Roosevelt competently instructed us:  Speak softly and carry a big can of gasoline. 

     

the night's a girl

When we were at Arlington, we noticed this engraved granite quoting JFK, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds," etc.  I espouse a variation on that sentiment all the time:  If you display your weaknesses, your enemies will exploit them.  Oh, hahaha.  No, just kidding.  I mean, of course I say that, too, I say it all the time!  But the variation of that sentiment I am always repeating is Good behavior is its own reward.  

It was nice to see it, yk, there.  So I could say, yk, See, other people believe it, too.  They were important.

In another tale of deference to the witness of others:

Fifille is bummed out about performing in The Nutcracker.  She has expressed just wanting to be at the barre, doing what she is supposed to be doing, instead of all this costuming, making-up folderol.  The girls in her class are split between Omigod, Nutcracker Show! and Oh. Already? I seized upon this NYT story from this morning and gave it to her.  You have the love the work; performance is the glory for having the love of the grind.  There is nothing wrong with wishing for cast-in-Nutcracker backsies, especially at 10.      

 

Oh!  Remember when I said I was hoping someone would get to the other 30ish% of the patriarchal deconstruction required for Penn State Coverup Processing?  And if I saw it, I would be sure to let you know?  Here it is.  It's brief, like, yk, it's an introduction.  He gets right into it and pins you up against the wall and piles all yr hair in his hand and breathes on yr neck, but then he's all done.  Like, "That's it?  Aren't you going to stick it in?"  But, you know, Sunday Review space constraints and you get the idea.  Someone else can work you over.  Like on the late-late date, hello?

 

Speaking of late-late date.  Saturday-nite Drive-By Truckers! 

 

There is ol' Patterson Hood, getting ready to tell us about how he did a whole buncha crazy, stupid shit.  Hearts. 

We wore earplugs this time, which seemed (having never done it) like it would be totally uncool.  Opposite.  Best.  Hearing=great today.  Love.

Doctors and one senior hospital administrator were, late Friday, taken to task by me in a way which reminded my husband of the young demolition expert for whom he fell.  He was in love with the whole show -- starting with my chiding them for sending us someplace that could not accomodate us -- Even the lousiest, 2-star hotel makes sure they send you to a restaurant that is open for dinner, I said -- but particularly enamored of the way I detonated the building while talking to them about an example of what normally happens if professional discretion goes sideways due to a fuckup, as did ours with them.

I get that my husband's job is different from yours -- for one thing, as it pertains directly to national security, his job is important, I said, sweetly, sympathetically, before going on with just stuff & bothersomeness about very reasonable expectations for cleanup & accounting and how I very reasonably and sweetly expected this all to be addressed, and with some great amount of haste.  After the holiday, of course.  Because I am reasonable.  Also, sweet.  Until I am not, but, you know. 

I am enjoying the BloPo of Becky and her sister, Amy, this month.  Check it out.

Amy's story of a precious child in the air reminded me of a time with on my way back to Madison from a boyfriend's surgical conference one winter.  I already had a pretty loose grip on things, facing the dread of flying as I was when -- while sitting on the tarmac -- a baby started wailing from the back of the plane.  My beau hardly noticed: his specialty was pediatrics.  I noticed, but determined to cope, I gripped his arm and asked him if he could apply himself quickly & with his masculine ease to getting me a teeny bottle of rum.

He strode down the aisle to work his beautiful-person magic on the stewardess.  Next thing -- next thing -- I was whisked -- whisked! -- into first class.  He calmly folded himself in next to me, ignoring my questioning gaze, and handed me his great-grandfather's chronograph.  We'd discovered the week before on the flight to Miami that I found its heft settling -- its weight in my hands, the shiftiness in its bracelet's links, the way the steel's clinking sounded.

Once in the air, I finally asked him directly what happened.  He shushed me.  The stewardess fussed over me at intervals in an elaborate fashion.  I would ask him every time to tell me what happened, what did he tell her?  He refused me, in every language, and I sulked until I fell asleep, bored of my own petulance, cozy with my first-class airline blanket.

On the ground, in Chicago, checked into the O'Hare Hilton after retrieving his car from long-term parking, I asked him again. 

I told her you just miscarried and we could never sit by that baby. 

I was shocked, surprised!  No one ever knows anyone!  I protested, burbling, until he put his mouth over mine and that was that.     

prescription: lobotomy

It is hardly ever -- as in almost never -- that I make a new dish which is not a dessert and both children receive it with enthusiasm.  One might gleefully review the dish and the other will say, "Well, I ate it because I'd rather not starve."  Or they both will express concerns about some strain of flavoring/texture and offer advice on its next execution.  But this, this they loved. 

You could make it, too. 

Beautiful people are all, yk, What is up with Garçon?  And I make a grimacing mouth noise and say I don't care.  Which is really the key, the not caring.  I was talking to a beautiful gal on a ship-to-shore call a week or so ago and she posited that she often wondered if she could "do it all again" with her kids, she wondered about what she might change.  I said, "I would send my children right into the arms of a professional caregiver and have a wonderful job. Good-bye!  Take what you can, give nothing back!" 

More or less.

I was not thinking in the front part of my brain about her wonderful job and hired assists when I said that, and then she laughed and said she'd thought about homeschooling and staying home.  I told her that was nonsense. 

But I thought more about the question, since the time we talked, and I think that what I do think is that if I could do it all over, I would focus less on the long-term with him -- because what in the bloody fuck do I care if he has meth teeth?  We have insurance!  Never brush! -- and more on just having a pleasant day every day.  Which was of course unthinkable when he digs his heels in about everything, but now I don't give a fuck what he does with his days.  Demands are as goes:  chore chart; positive fucking attitude.

It's funny because people often react as OMGHZ, chore chart!  Abusive, horrible, Cinderella!  Perhaps they are boiling their children in brat juice. 

The children's chore chart is just:

• make bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, wash up after breakfast. 
• fold household laundry (dishtowels, napkins, etc, which I have laundered) and put away.
•  practice musical instruments. 
• tidy up playroom and/or bedroom for a quick 15-minute pickup.  go around the house and find yr belongings you have left laying around in common areas and put them away. 
•  Help wash up after lunch and dinner. 
•  Shower, brush teeth, wipe down the sink, tub and mirror after yr ablutions.  Go to bed. 

Three times each week they are called upon to do their own laundry, one of those days weekly involves changing the sheets on their bed.  Once a week, I ask them to together climb around on the kitchen floor, each with a brush, and scrub it clean.  Our kitchen has less than 100 square feet of flooring, so whatever.

Maybe it seems like a lot, but they are here all day, with time, oodles of time.  So, it is all self-care, toward the mastery of which all children should be applying themselves, but especially those who are in their own home all the livelong day.

Anyhow, so as long as that is all taken care of by the end of each day, and no one hits me or thrown anything at me, or destroys my house, I'm fine with it.  He is free to play with string or whatever other analog pursuits he enjoys.  Whatever.  He can read and write better than most adults writing commentary on the internets; he can solve for x.  Good.  His long-term is not my problem, because his adulthood is not my concern.  It has been relaxing and removed the endless tension under which we all labored from the house.  Things have been remote for all that time, but it beats bared teeth on both sides. 

 

A few weeks ago, in the used bookstore, I saw a copy of the David Kiersey book about the Myers-Briggs/Jung temperament sorting.  I paused and remembered how we came across the book in high school, all of us testing and temperament-sorting, in our junior year, memorizing each others' types, chiding or lauding one another for being so SJ or rather NT, or whichever.    

Mari and I differ by one letter (J/P), the qualifying of information endemic to each causing a lot of confusion in our newlywed years.  The book -- picked up at the library because I spotted it and remembered it being a gas -- cleared that up quickly + permanently, to our great delight. 

After all that positive memory, I realized that maybe some of the issue with or son was one of native temperament this book could illuminate.  I mean, I am tired of him, but leave no stone unturned.  I administered the sorter thingy, during which time he surprised both of us with his immense capacity to be self-reflective.  Um, excuse me:  All of this child's letters are backwards from ours.  Who sent this changeling to us?

 

But that in no way explains everything and in the way that we leave no stone unturned, we took him for a new evaluation by a group of pediatricians he had never seen in this capacity.  Yk, the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory of Pediatrics, over the river.  I mean, you know, he has been evaluated long before this, at children's hospitals, with no outcome other than purple-faced people outraged that a child stonewalled them (I understand) or a different sort of pert appreciation of his sly refusals combined with his great appeal (am familiar with that, too).  Not to mention all the aborted therapies, which may or may not be his fault but in any case mystify me because what kind of social skills group expels a child for acting like Helen Keller?  I mean, did you want to only rehabilitate the easy children?  Unprofessional.  Like that stupid twat we wasted our money on this summer.  But OMG, listen to this.  Crazy in a new dimension.

 

We took him in for a regular, old, boilerplate psych evaluation.  It was billed as a Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation.  In August -- after everything with the running away, etc, the stupid twat, etc, destroying, there was a lot going on -- I made the appointment.  November was the first date, don't you know?  (Whatever.)  In the meantime, I crafted my new I Don't Give A Fuck method of childrearing (this child).  It has been peaceful here.  There has been talking.  Most of the time, expectations are met after one reminder, instead of 17.

We showed up, prepared for our 4-6 hour exertions, everyone mostly sunny, fine.  We filled out our parent questionnaires, had lunch with Garçon, sent him back, met with one of the purviewers and our completed forms.  We gave her a little history, way back to preschool, but mostly told her our concerns boiled down to [this], and the rest you know.  (Or don't, if you are a hideous, lumpen jackal of a voyeur.)

Things were winding down and Mari & I were sitting with Fille in the waiting area, wondering what we would do about dinner, when we were called back for the day's closure with the entire evaluating team.

"We absolutely agree with your concern and we think that he needs to be taken in to a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation and possibly an admission.  You need to do it now," is what the lead psychologist told us.

Ok, so you already know (unless you are a hideous, lumpen jackal with her hands in her panties right now) that I wanted that to happen.  That during the summer I called around to hospitals to find out who could admit him.  He can keep it together pretty fine for a 4-6 hour evaluation:  he is a lovely child when you want nothing from him, but I thought that over time, things -- the kind of behaviors about which I raise my hands heavenward -- would become clearer to professionals. 

So, that part was fine with me, like, Thank God we could try for some answers.  But what was weird -- and it was Mari that intercepted this -- was the way she was so urgent -- You have to do it now.  Do it today.  Go here.  DO not stop at home, do not collect belongings nor $200.  Now.

Mari asked, "Did he threaten one of you?"  She said no.  So I asked what was it that came up in the eval that created such a immediate concern.  She was vague in her response.  You know, concerning things made her concerned.  And also, things beyond her ken, more in the field of psychiatry. 

I kind of shrugged, yk, because OK.  Mari had some more questions about remanding his son to an inpatient psychiatric facility and then I asked questions, most of which were procedural and about the facility. 

I specifically asked if they would have a bed.  Those words actually came out of my mouth.  "You want us to go here, but will they do the intake evaluation even if they do not have a bed, because if we are going right there, I want to be sure this is where we should go."

Go, go now.  Go.

Whatever.  We weren't doing anything anyhow.  You know, except eating dinner and planning for a long weekend of Nutcracker shenanigans.  So we went.  It was actually quite near our house, on the other end of the world from the Children's Hospital.  We were nervous, but OK.  I feel better about committing my child while I am not super-fucking pissed-off at him, because this way it is a hospitalization, not an imprisonment; assistance, not exile.  While we waited for the valet to take our car, I texted Mrs Israeli to let her know.

 

 

The hospital to which we were told to go, go now -- even after we expressed mild procedural concerns -- go, go now-- even after Mari expressed a wanting to know of a vague idea of some kind of hint about the DSM, some shred of information that might bear us aloft on this trip , even after I checked & double-checked that we did not need any paperwork from the one hospital to go to the next -- go, go now-- OMG, DO YOU KNOW THAT A. THE FACILITY DOES NOT PERFORM PEDIATRIC INTAKE EVALUATIONS and B. DOES NOT HAVE A BED FOR THIS CHILD IN THEIR PEDES WARD, EVEN IF THEY DID??????

And the admissions director was super-great, even as he was stupefied by who sent us here and why the hell without calling to make sure there was a bed and what the hell because anyone that answered the phone would have told anyone who called to make sure we could get in there that they do not do pediatric intake?

He asked us to wait, mostly so that he could figure out how & where to straighten this psychologist out, and also because why not?  He was most perturbed by the fact that we had no idea what her findings were that sent us to him.  I offered -- in an uncharacteristically diplomatic way -- that it seemed reasonable to me that she did not want to make a psychiatric diagnosis, as she was not a psychiatrist.  Mr Admissions Director scoffed.  I shrugged.  He took the appropriate numbers from us to investigate and invited us to sit in the reception area.

I spent the next few minutes asking Garçon how things went at the other hospital, during the eval.  He said he did some puzzles, did some math, nothing happened.  I took out the Parent Fact Sheet she gave us while she was telling us about the urgency of remanding him tonight.  I asked him if he said he was going to hurt himself, or any one, any of us?  He said he had not.  I asked him if he said anything delusional or talked about wanting to die or feeling dead?  He said he had not.  I gave him the Parent Fact Sheet, entitled, In A Crisis, with the homicidal/suicidal, delusional, depressed/anxious bullet points, and I said, "Honey, did you say anything that would make them think any of these things?"

He was like Beaver Cleaver.  "No, Mom.  Why would I say those things?"

Time went on, the sun set, finally Mari was on the phone with the psychologist.  She was telling him about how she has just -- since she got his beleaguered voice-mail message -- made arrangements (fool me twice, shame on Tallahassee) for us to go to a different facility, four towns over.  I saw what he was writing and said nothing.  He asked me, cupping the phone, if I had any questions for her.  I asked him if she told him what it was that had her so spun up about him.  He frowned & shrugged.  "Not really," is what he said.

I vowed to get an answer from her & held out my hand.  He said later he knew it was on when I stepped outside.  I asked her why on Earth we were there, when they can not service us, because of all the reasons they could not, when I specifically asked her questions, the accurate answers to which would have prevented this waste of my time.  She told me -- same as she had Mari -- that since Mari called her she made arrangements with this intake person at another psych facility, and I cut her off. 

"You need to tell me why it is you think he should be admitted and you need to be specific, because I am not driving all over tri-state, based on your vague concerns.  I gave you the courtesy earlier and now I am wasting my time, and you blew it."

I swear to God, sometime in the next two minutes, the words "Seeing as he is not at this time in crisis" came out of her mouth. 

What did you just say?

I mean, really?  Since we have been home, I asked Mari, did I hallucinate the part where she told us we had to go right away?  To have him evaluated right away?  He said, waving the Parent Fact Sheet at me, "It says In A Crisis right at the top of this!"

 

Man.  I swear to God.  I should have been motherfucking Black Mamba. 

"You are telling me he is not in a crisis, which is something we already knew, because we live with him, but knowing that, especially, we took you at yr word and believed that something dark was revealed which was truly awful and now I am out here, wasting my time, and we are all tired and my daughter is dancing in the goddamn Nutcracker in two weeks and Thanksgiving is in a few days and we should all be in bed and you think this is going to help our family thrive?  Are you serious?"

She tried to turn it around on the facility to which she sent us, and told me that she could not believe that they could not accommodate us.  I was so mad, it was like, yk, Incompetent Boob, please meet PMS. 

"They do not even have pediatric intake eval here.   Even if we'd had a psych eval done in your office before we set out -- they do not have a bed in their facility at this moment.  They are full.  And we are not having a crisis!"

I mean, it was like she prescribed prime rib and then sent us to an ice-cream parlor.  What the hell?  Then she started with a lot of bluster about this other facility and their policies and blur blur and mercifully, because God is so good, Mr Admissions Director came out to smoke a cigarette.  And I said, "Would you like to talk to him, Dr?"  and she said, "Yes, because I had information from -- " and I cut her off.

"Don't tell it to me, because I don't care about it.  Shhh, good-bye."

Then I gave him the phone.  They sorted it out, procedurally, and we are going to have Thanksgiving and The Nutcracker and then rendezvous with the psychiatric hospital.  We are going to do it civilized, with a packed bag and things to take, and pick some time where we can come visit a lot.  Garçon has never even spent one night away from us.  And then we will see.

There is so much more, but honestly, we still have telephones in this world.  

Remember back when I wrote that every fucking time we collide with one of these "experts" fucking it up, it is a galvanizing shot in our collective arm?  Yes.  So that is good.  People are prowling around the house, feeling a little quiet glimmer of camaraderie.  Good God.             

vetted

We were in Washington last week for Veterans' Day -- in defiance of the Nutcracker's rehearsal schedule! -- and went to Arlington National Cemetery in an early observance (because Friday was going to be too-too packed!).

Here are some photos of things we stopped to admire.

 

 

 

Here, we met an older couple who -- in our exchange of pleasantries with them regarding our mutuality in appreciating the vista -- revealed they were there to have attended a funeral.  I was left wishing I were dressed an eensy bit better -- just everything the same with the viscose blouse and newish flats, but with trousers, instead of just my fancy jeans.

With that in my mind, I was saying to the children, while we were driving back to Sal's, that while I did enjoy the rambling, high-points adventure, it felt funny to me to just be walking past all these people's headstones with nary a worry about who they were, and not too much of a way on the ground to find out.  I thought the trip lacked focus, which detracted from our desired countenance of high-minded propriety, which one is endlessly counseled to achieve, all over, by the signs. 

It was Fifille's idea that we find someone to commemorate, as is the programme at The Vietnam War Memorial.  We wondered and murmured about who and Garçon volunteered the idea of finding who among the 442 Regiment is finally resting there. Hullo, homeschool! You are who I am talking about!

People are talking about homeschool here, too.  I wish I had more time to talk about all that here, but parenting is mostly driving. 

What I will offer is this:

 

All of these children, sprawled out on the ground, disrespectfully gawking at the Sentinel on duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?  Visiting with a school group, every one.  Socialized is hardly the same thing as civilized.  

The funny thing is that one of the topics I worry is woefully lacking in our homeschool curriculum is this kind of practical-civics stuff.  We never say the Pledge of Allegiance before breakfast or anything.  But my children know enough to not splay themselves out to leisurely watch someone else work, because that is fucking rude.  They learned that here, at home.  I mean, they spend enough time here, they might as well learn something. 

They also have learned enough in all their time here to make it easy to explain the Penn State cover-up to them.  Good, because it was all the grownups wanted to talk about, in a round-robin of completely scandalized tones -- one person would talk until their mouth locked in the fallen-open position, able to talk no more, then the next one would pick up -- and we were tired of tiptoeing around them.  Half of our usual At-Sal's group are alumni of a school with a zillion-dollar football program and a Women's Studies department, so we were not too shocked by the motive and able to seek out the right salves.  We simply cannot imagine how the rest of you are coping in this time.  How are you? 

Maybe you could read this woman's higher education take on it, because it is incredibly good, and comes out to about two-thirds of what I think needs to be said.  When I see the other one-third somewhere, you will be the first to know.  Because of all of this, I have fallen into regrettable overuse of the word outrageous. 

We are having some neighbors over for coffee + cake, I guess I'd better get on that.  Gros bisous, à la prochaine.   

  

 

part of you pours out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

 

Let them sort it out amongst themselves.  

 

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

 

mum's the word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   

cockpit

Hello, blog. 

Man, all that endless talking to neighbors was a. exhausting, but also b. by the weekend, while I was sitting in the car, letting Mari drive, staring out of the passenger-seat window, thinking about i. how I had not updated my blog since ... when? and ii. what had I been doing all week? ... Oh.  Talking to people in real time with my mouth.  Like, while standing in their living rooms.  Yes.  It was a good series of thoughts to think.

Anyhow.  That was all over today, after I filed our intentions with the correct administrators at the proper meeting, and phew.  Concerns were aired.  Support was pledged, etc.  Residents who do not run in the same neighbor-y cliques as I marveled at my surgical charm.  While I knew our close neighbors wanted to stay focused on the Serious Business of Zoning, I v much sensed they wanted to bust out of there, getting down to some A-1 speculation about why it was that Fantastic Mr Fox was driving my car, yk, around, even with me riding delicately + with languid femininity in my own passenger seat. 

It was only because I had an official-paperwork exchange to make before the hearing.  It was in a sector with no parking, so he looped around in the car until we caught up again out front.  Magical!  Like having a Tuesday-Wednesday husband!  Or, a driver!  Clapping!

Additionally, what the fuck did I care?  At day's end, the car belongs to someone else.

Not to be all emotional about moving on in automobiles, but our car has had a great run.  Kind of like Iris.  The writing has been on the wall for years, that this car was not going to last forever.  We were so fucking spoiled by that Legend, its 170,000 miles with not a single fucking issue, other than regular wear & tear.  This car was fussy and kind of lemony from the start.  Car-people have tried to placate us -- Oh, blahblahblah, it's off of Audi's assembly line!  Ok, and I have to say, I have driven Audis and it really is the exact same damn car -- sometimes people do not believe the trouble we are having with a VW so I tell them it is really an Audi & they relent -- but anyhow.  The car doesn't work.   

Maybe something went wrong in the making the circles into lines.  Bleh.  This last summer, the transmission started to have major difficulties, instead of the eccentric, finicky demands of the last 4 or 5 years.

When I say "major difficulties," I mean that it would sometimes go in reverse while in gear to drive. Monday night I could not get it into reverse and, while attempting a 3-point turn, almost ran into a large sign on a masonry footing. Most of the time, with city-driving, I would be revving the engine at 35,000 rpms to get it to second gear.  See what I mean?  Not good.  The trip down to South Carolina was without incident.  Wonderful.  Great.  Goodbye, car. 

I have spent so much time sitting in this seat, for the last 11 years.  122,000 miles does not seem like enough.  Thank you for the good times.  For all the naptime driving we did up & down the 6-lane county highway when Fille was new & Garçon was 2.   

For all the late-night, twisty, singalong driving I have done with yr sunroof open; all the ridiculous 2-lane highway travel all across the American South and Ohio's coastal highway; yr zippy responsiveness that time the dude lighting the cigarette came close to creaming us.  I will really miss your luxe interior, with its heated seats and genuine wood trim.  I will not miss yr broken glove-box hinge, yr mysteriously vacuous windshield-wiper-fluid reservoir, nor the way you blow hot engine air into the cabin.  In fact, I will not miss any of yr (frankly) inexcusable cabin-design flaws.

I will miss yr stereo + 6-CD changer most of all.  Most of all.

 

Yet I am on to a new adventure.  It should be fine.  It is funny, because everyone who knows cars is super excited about this car that is twice the age of ours and twice the mileage.  Everyone except Kowalski, who was adamant in his counsel that we just buy a new car.  Fuck that.  I am not going to pay $30,000 for a car and also pour $3000 in gasoline into it every fucking year.  No!

All I care about is not being stuck in first gear at a green light, honestly.  Mari says if we get 15,000 miles out of this car, great.  Then we can be on to the next $1100 car.  We have a new rule, though:  there is no goddamn eating in this goddamn car.  I mean, of course we will, but we can aim high, right?  I want to get the windows tinted and drive around pretending to be deposed royalty!     

I have a blister on each toe from my stupid high-heeled shoes, which I stupidly wore bare-legged and bare-footed.  I was whimpering, a little, after the hearing, on the way back to the car.  ("This grouuuuund is too haaarrrrd!")  Fantastic Mr Fox offered to carry me, and I refused, still a little whimpery.  No, because Mari will be mad if you drive our car and drive me around in our car and then also touch me plus while rescuing.  But thank you.  I meant all of it.

When I called Mari to dish about the whatsits and wherefores, I mentioned this exchange to him.  He agreed it would have been a little much for one day.  I know!   

Oh, anyhow, no, wait, I remember:  I was going to say that I was thinking, yk, Oh, blog, casting it in the light of all the richly-textured face-to-face relating I had been doing.  But then! messages and missives began pouring in about the yogurt cake's deliciousness + success!  Even from 3/4 of my people who did not know what from Italian plums!  I thought that was pretty neat, too.  Gros bisous!

parenthetically yours

Monday, Mari was home & some curious alchemy of him + our children got me encrossened (Cross out this family!) and I peeled out of here to go to the gym.  Bye!

On the way to the gym, I realized I could go to the Sadist's class, which I have not done in an age.  I first started skipping because I had some mysterious malady, remember?  For the past year, I have felt well enough (read: not too much like I would fall down) to go, but Mari has been away on Mondays and Sadist Class is scheduled at a weird, mildly-frantic time of day here.  On Monday, I walked away from all that.

I got nervous, ariving at the threshold of the studio, because, yk, Ow.  I weighed my independent-study options -- lap pool, rowing machine, StairGuy -- but told myself that it would all be fine, that Tuesday's time with Pilates Chick would work that all out.  Which it could have, in a way, but the Sadist had two words for us yesterday:  Bosu Balls.  I got through the class, but the jellified feel I was left with when we were done ... portent of doom. 

Then, Pilates Chick today was super-happy to display her merrily sadistic side, even as my locomotion could best be described as slithery.  Man.  It hurts my abs just to type this.  It hurts to brake the car.

However, I am not dead, so I will be stronger and thus, you know.  The Marines used to say, in their recruitment collateral, that pain is weakness leaving the body.  Ok.  I can not even muster up the energy to chew on a slice of cake, is how exhausted I am. 

It did not hurt me to take this photo.  All this baking and picture-clicking was Monday before delayed-onset muscle soreness set in.  I was still euphoric then.  Impervious to the louche charms of baked goods, yes. 

  

 

It is the standard yogurt cake.  I trust you -- fellas, you know who you are -- to all be able to find yogurt & pears where you are. 

Fille said, "Can you make yogurt cake with anything besides pears?"  I thought of this as a ludicrous question until I realized it was not.  It is not called yogurt-pear cake.  But my mother (and later, I) never made it with anything but pears.  It was like banana bread, for pears.  I hate banana bread.  I like yogurt cake.  This one was a little heavy on the fruit; I could have eased up.

Oh, omg, speaking of louche charm, Mr Fox came to dinner Sunday night.  Saturday?  The days are all mixed up to me now that my husband is on a different schedule.  Anyhow, love to dish, but I am not kidding, it is killing me to sit in this chair. 

Take three ibuprofen for me, every six hours.  Thank you.  One million kisses. 

à mon âge les miettes voguent sur la rivière

I made a honey cake for Rosh Hashanah, at the children's insistence. 

 
 

Sephardis are not big on honey cake, not big on honey for this holiday; honey cake was never around when I was a girl.  As I grew older, and dallied more widely at holidays, there was honey cake, lots of interpretations.  I do not like it.  I kept saying things to my children like, "Wouldn't you rather have a delicious cake?"  and "I have only once made a honey cake, let alone a specially-modified honey cake."  They were unremitting plus also flattering about their security in my ingenuity, so I went along and I made one out of nuts, ahaha. 

I used Elena Amsterdam's recipe, adapting it to include honey and exclude agave nectar, but not in the same exchange.  It turned out pretty tasty for a gluten-free Cake of Obligation.  I mean, ok, ok, it was really good.  I think if it were called something else, I could love it.  It does not actually belong on the Rosh Hashanah table, though, with the almond flour and all. 

After dinner, but before cake, the children got completely on about going over to the river for Tashlich.  Say what?  They were surprisingly knowledgeable (in the aggregate) of what was to go down.  Jesus, who taught these children to read?  I mean, look, I have a rich history of being all alongside the high holidays, but I was actually raised Catholic.  Family + close friends went to the river, but I stayed around the house & ate a lot of dates in anticipation, wrestled with seedy old pomegranates -- the kinds of things we do in observation now.   

At the same time, their hilarious quality-control is a direct reflection of ecumenical values we have expressed about the world of holidays, about the world in some measure:  Christmas is not the only game in town!  Halloween is bigger than candy! Purim is 100 times better than Halloween can ever be!  Diwali and Hanukkah and Moon Festival!  Down with ethnocentrism!  It feels really good to both of us, not just knowing they have heard us, but to hear that they want to expand their experience, to get a chance to grow along with them.

Also, they don't know everything.  Their cute determination was quickly degraded into the exhausting knows-it-all of their ages -- It's part of the holiday and we're late!  We were supposed to be there yesterrrrday, Motherrrrrr.   It was the motherrrrrr which made me pedantic and cross.  I crisply informed them that one has through Sukkot for casting, plus also told them they remind me of a joke. You know the one.   (I did not tell the joke to them.)  I have applied them to a slow, running start at the 10 days of repentance.  It is good, though, because of, yk, my son, his last year, and to put out this notion that we can begin again. 

Anyhow, who can say no to Fille now?  With her menacing, gangster's grill? 

 

 
 

Doesn't she look like Chamillionaire?  I know!  Yes.

I really did try to be less awesome that one time.

Let this day be ever remembered as the date Scheherazade met Jack Bauer.  It was amazing, and everything any one of you has come to expect from me.  It was, I think, my finest moment.  Mari said, to me, after my report, while he brushed golden stardust from my low-cut, flatteringly-twirly cloak, he said, Who are these motherfuckers in the world who have never read Sun Tzu and thought to act accordingly?

Weaklings, is whom.  Whose enemies are data-mining their egregious displays.  I was amazing, and I would love to tell any one of you about it, as long as we are on a secure line.  Let's kiss!

 

I am in receipt of a message along the last week from each one of my cookalong pals to tell me they do not know Italian plums.  What?   

 
 

Here they are.  I spotted them yesterday in the market called prune plums.  They are not like regular plums, they are less-watery and firmer, more texturally similar to a grape than a plum.  Or the difference between a peach and an apricot.  They just came into season, now.  If I can find them,  I am confident any one of you can, unless you make me think of upside down.  But, yes! 

 

I am so busy with the start of everything, the clusterfucking, snackpacking, lunchmaking grind, and also, falling ill.  I can not tell (because while I am amazing in a great many ways, with the light shooting from my fingertips and the ends of my hair and all, I am kind of a dope) if it is seasonal allergies or a good old-fashioned cold.  In any case, whatever.  I took a Claritin-D, 4 advil, a shot of feverfew tincture, and a tall drink of Emergen-C.  One of those things will help me. 

If you are keeping up with the SodaStream Chronicles, please know that I purchased one, new in the box, from a young lady via the Craigslist for us$65.   À bientôt! xoxo.   

gen 2:2

I just read an assertion somewhere, I can not remember where ... I guess it could have been in a crazypants comment section somewhere about one of those kooky Republican girls, but the assertion was that Catholics do not study Scripture, and I think it is probably a sign of early-onset dementia that I can not recall where I was reading, because I opened & shut my mouth like a carp for probably about 9 minutes.  I guess that depends on who schooled you. I mean fuck it, it would have made my reading load in high school a lot lighter, that is for g.d. sure.  But being from Chicago, as I have long known, is not like being Catholic much of anywhere else.  Except the rest of the west coast of Lake Michigan.

Anyhow.  For yr persual:

 

Lounging, squeezily.

 

 
 

Chard in the standard Eggplant Dish. (Excellent!)

 

 
 

Hairs cut!

 

 

 Relaxing, spa-backyard, pebble-walking!  For health!

Fille said a funny thing on Friday while I was getting her settled into the big pedicure chair -- long before she told me she thought Ballet Town's salon pedicures better (and I agree!).  The owner had already indulgently brought her a cup of water and turned on the chair's vibra-massaging function.  I was getting a magazine for her to read and, after rifling through the options, handed her a big, current issue of Bazaar.  "Here, this one has a lot of photos," I told her.

"Oh, good," she said.  "Because the worrrrds in all those magazines always are like [whining voice], Blah, blah, blah.  Why do I think I'm so ugly?  Blur, blur, blur." 

I am pretty sure that is 100% nurture.  I just want to keep her with us forever, even as we know she is too excellent to hoard. 

Hoard.  Good God, I watched an epi of Hoarders on Netflix-Insta yesterday and oh, man!  Heartbreak!  Squeamishness!  I hope people everywhere are finishing off a relaxing Sunday. If you have insiders' information on Monday, please do tell!  xox 

upgrade

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

 
 

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

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

 

Wonderful!  Yes.  Dreams do come true!

needs

We slipped away to Washington, mostly because it is there and we can, and why not?  Mari is ever still in the office.

 

Remember how I owe us all a nice photo of the Library of Congress ceiling?  Especially Alex?  Because I was between cameras last time?  I stopped in just for you, guy.

The trip was nice because the kids & I did our usual, nancing-around, home-education tour.  Mari, evenings, slipped away from the office for an earlybird dinner at Sal's, whereupon we would double-back for an early-evening second shift at the same museum on its late-night summer schedule.

Here in this photo we can all see now that my son is taller than me he is turning his attention to gaining on his father.

It started out, the trip, with a lot of scowling and sullenness.  (Something about the wrinkle in yr forehead, you know.)  You know, in the beginning of this new endeavor, it was fine.  I had mostly a peaceful, easy feeling about it, me + Glenn Frey, largely because I take a long view to Mari's office hours and he was working from home for much of the last of 2009 and just about all of 2010, so fine.  For February, March, April, and most of May, I knuckled down as I imagined Marmee March would do, right?  What else to do?

At the end of May, as the transition time wore on and on, it came out that Mari himself does not love this new undertaking.  Problematic!  We do not need the money, but he loves the work-in-general, and it is great having a man who loves his work and being the king, and the bespoke suits, I know.  I get that.  And I know, his valor, and untarnished reputation, his credentials, and it is an honor just to be asked, etc.  He took it on and made agreements and is a gentleman first, honor, country, blabbity blah, yeah, yeah, I live right there, too, but come on.

Then summer came and I got distracted by, I dunno, driving my son away from our family and sorting out the piles of outgrown clothes and driving people to unexpected sessions of summer-ballet, etc.  Hiring + receiving a weekly team of cleaners.  And it was good because Mari is not here to be bored to death by the 5 days I am dining in hell, so it works out.  But I miss my husband.  When he gets home Friday night, he is tired, and then Saturday and Sunday we all 3 want to be all over him and there is not enough of him to go around and then he is back to working 14-hour days and that.

I told him I had devised the perfect solution to weather his new extra-domestic demands, on my end, anyhow.  The kids were out in Sal's backyard, playing outside.  One of them was getting set for the toaster.  I was drinking a gimlet.

 

"You're getting a boyfriend," he said. 

"No," I told him, resolutely.  Although it would make my life a lot more to my dullsville liking if Mr Fox across the street were a eunuch, I have to say.  "But I am glad you said that, Mari, because you will like this.  It's better."

"You're getting a girlfriend."

"No.  But again," I was laughing, "you are going to like this, so good.  Ready?"

He guessed a few more times, ridiculously, before I told him.

I have decided that I must go on as if he is my sugar daddy and not at all my baby daddy.  See?  Wonderful.  Brilliant!  This, also, is proof of the wide utility of Kanye West!  Yes, because it came to me while I was listening to him on the drive down!  I have no shame!  Pay for all goods and services, bearing me aloft in the manner to which I have become accustomed, drop in on the weekends, take those badasses to Showbiz, then stick it to me all night long.  I do not know why I did not think of this before! 

He said, "This sounds like we are going to have sex more."  Hullo!  Genius.  I am the cleverest girl alive.

   

We lazed around & watched Fair Game one of the nights.  I thought it was tremendously realistic in the way in which it made both Naomi Watts and Sean Penn all frumped-out, Washingtonian-stylee.  If you watch it, and you know the horrors of the fashion inside the Beltway, you will be amazed at how right-on they got it. 

I did not follow the whole Valerie Plame thing too closely when it happened, and in fact, most of it escaped me until I was trying to catch up to the adorbs Decemberists' lyrics.  But I was amazed when she had a mid-conflict chat with some fat, CIA, Sansabelt-pants-wearing motherfucker, sitting on the Ellipse in the rain, where he was vaguely threatening to her & ended by saying she should speak with her husband.  I mean, hell to the no!  

I told Mari I could not believe she went past that point, sallying on in her resistance, yayaya.  Mari needs to know that if ever anyone told me I should speak to my husband?  Like my man is some fucking bitch?  Omg, it would be all the way on, that motherfucker would have gotten his fat ass handed right back to him.  I mean, sure her life & high-powered, much-beloved career was falling apart, but hell no.   

The next day we were in the Hall of Mammals & between that & something earlier in the day with Garçon, Mari pointed out the leopard.  You.  And certain of yr bestest. 

 
 

Oh, yes!  And also Mari.  We will take it down, and then haul it up into the tree and dare you to come and get it, motherfuckers.  Totally gangster.  Get your swords out.  Yes. 

diversion

Philadelphia is pretty.  Not gorgeous or anything, but it will do.  It is always right there, over the river + a scooch, for whenever.

 

Met swell gal-pal, Ange, from university right here, where last we all saw Rocky Balboa.  A lot of determined, sweaty, virtuous people ran up and down while I waited & watched.

 

I wish I had Photoshop.  Then, couldn't I erase those hideous buildings on the right from the vista?  I mean, I would have to a. have Photoshop, b. have an HR training session on it.  Oh, snap!  I'll bet there was one at BlogHer! Har.

 

Saw, for the first time, this amazing painting from Degas which reminded me so much of Hopper.  This is pretty much where we dropped off of the tour, in favor of gossipping and catching up 15 feet behind.

 
Interior, 1868, Edgar Degas. From the Philadelphia Museum of Art Henry P McIlhenny Collection.

It was tremendously exciting to hear from Ange's actual lips about her awards + etc amazing work-life plus also get the dish on handsome beau.  Also, the rosy haze that feels like eating stars of being able to -- in this world of digital endlessness -- see people and touch them.  Particularly girlfriends, of whom my children (I guess reasonably) felt I had none.  Your bra strap is showing. ::snap::  You have a mosquito, hold still.  ::fwap:: 

 

Then we struck out boldly in a direction none of us knew & had a delicious, late-night dinner en plein air. 

 

It isn't so far back across the river to get home but we had a whole Philadelphia! Outing! Weekend! planned and zZzZzzzzz.

 
 

Wyndham has the weirdest hotel rooms.  At check-in, we impulsively extended our stay-over layover by another night.  It was the best choice because someone was so tired from College Reunion Up All Night that she was impossible by 1:30 p.m. and had to be put down for a nap like a little child.

One must be rested up for the deafening awesomeness of roller derby.  Minnesota Rollergirls All-Stars!  It was an entire weekend of beautiful women coming back East, obvs.  We generally go to a lot of WFTDA tournaments instead of bout-by-bout, so we have seen a lot of teams skate in a dizzying fashion and Minnesota is my favorite team.  They have a rigorous kind of strategic defense to their skating and let us not forget about the power of 189,043,758,340 childhood hours on ice skates.

 
 They lost, but it was a nail-biting bout, highly-enjoyable.  The score was tied for very much of the game, the alternating leads were very close until the final.  In the third-to-last jam, when Phila got the lead jammer designation, the Minnesota girls -- instead of conspiring to bump her off-track or just clog up her sails -- started just hauling assat the front of the pack so the scoring skater could not pass them, and so prevented her from scoring in that way.  It was such a plainly-obvious defensive manuever, but one we had never yet seen.  The whole bout was thrilling, really.  My new roller-derby name is Mommie Dearest.  Because she is totally scary! 

Fille spent a long time going around, meeting and greeting.  After the first bout, she disppeared for a while and came back with a program full of signatures.  Were you in the locker room?  Yes, she was.

After which Seeking Autographs All Night Long Doubleheader-Bout Exhaustion Relapse we were happy to put her right into a room where she could do almost nothing but fall asleep, and not anywhere by us, because Jesus, she can be mean.

 

Today, she napped the perfect-nap-length trip the way home and so we are home again.  The children are building smiling-face houses and I am thinking of putting lamb merguez on the grill.  I think we might be out of briquets. 

 

I am seeing for the first time there is glue on the playroom-sofa cushion.  Hm.  Still summer!