la femme follette

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. 

 

shaved

I have always wanted a mandoline, natch, and then I was leafing through one of the Bittman cookbooks where he says you could really think about having one.  Friday morning, I was at TJ Maxx and there was one, a Zyliss: not too spendy, probably not a piece of crap.  I bought it. 

I did not know what to make for dinner tonight, we were out late, the three of us, fooling around in the rain, getting the baby from her workshop in the car ... it was not the afternoon I had planned.  At 7, I realized I really did need to make dinner (this happens every year around this time), but what I really wanted to do was check out my mandoline in the process.

 

Garçon came downstairs.  "Mom, what are you going to do with all those potatoes?" 

I mean, what?  Couldn't he see I was checking out my new thing?  I wound up making Potatoes Anna and a stir fry from bok choy & some kinda green from the CSA box.  Not ramps.  It was so dark out by the time we ate.  I wish I had a cookie.  xox

privacy. privation. privileged.

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

 

this old thing

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

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



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

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

 

lifted

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

differences

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

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

Also yummy:

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

great and small

I have not the energy to write about this, but it makes pretty good oratory, The Pile of Cross-Cut Clear Up to Your Shoe-Tops, if you're so curious.

 

 

Remember our range issues?  When the thermostat broke last summer & I refused to replace it, citing an inability to participate in the shopping required of one for a major appliance?

 

Right.  So, Mari replaced the thermostat.  That was the second time he replaced the thermostat in the appliance, the third overall.  (The first time, a repairman took care of it.)  It was a $89 part, and the repair takes a half-hour, maybe.  There was a lot of grumbling last summer about my replacement-resistance, but I was not listening. 

Part of it was that major appliances bring out the -- what does Kowalski call it? -- Depression-era farm wife in me.  I am going to suck the marrow out 0f them.  Also, the stove & I have a unique relationship -- it is all mine, really, and I know a little something about how it works.  Not a lot, but enough.  Also, I keep it really, really, really immaculate, and if you know me, you know how I value this proof of my tenacity. 

 

 

If you look closely at the hood, at the front aspect of it, you will see where I once -- when we first bought the house from the slattern from whom the range conveyed -- scrubbed at it so hard that I wore away the paint.  This was not the first time I scrubbed something so hard the paint came off, but I know you already knew that.  But it was always kind of a bummer and a remonstrance ("Use ammonia, girl!").

We had a blip of semi-inspired "shopping" for the new range in the fall.  We were, separately or together, in stores for some other utilitarian thing -- Sears after my blowout; The Home Depot for [whatever]; Lowes for [whatever else], etc -- and would stop & look at the displays and then I would say something like, "Yup!  Those are gas ranges!  Look, they sure are for sale in the world!  Can we go?" 

I knew what I wanted:  white, mostly.  And also, very much, I wanted the electronic function of "Timed Bake" or whatever it is called, where you can put, say, 6 potatoes in the oven at 2, set the timer so the oven comes on at 5, and then arrive home from ballet at 6 to baked potatoes to accompany yr slow-c0oker soup?  Yes.  We had this feature on our wall-oven in Maryland, and man.  It was really convenient. 

That concluded my list of demands.  But I c0uld not bring myself to go out & participate in the commerce of it all.  Meanwhile, the stove still ran 50 degrees cooler than the dial at temperatures less than 400, the left-burners' igniter was snapped off by Mari in 2009, and at the v end of 2011, the front right burner started firing in an amorphous, globular way, instead of a round of neat spikes under the pot.  I started to disassemble the burners to investigate, but realized maybe this was the time to bid adieu.

I was on the phone with Kowalski, merbling about this very (interesting!) thing, and he asked me to refresh his memory as to how I came by the major appliances for the doll's house. 

Oh!  My God!  Our service guys!  They also deal appliances!  Wait!  I never thought about it because with the doll's house, I had some serious space constraints and I gave it over to them wholly -- Please bring the thing that fits and doesn't suck.  They were heroes in this matter!

Mari & I were in Ballet Town last week when my phone rang.  I went light-up (on -duty) and chattered for a few minutes about my list of demands, then dug the index card with the measurements from my pocket.  I chattered gaily for a few more minutes and rang off.

Mari asked, almost rhetorically, who had been on the phone.

"Rafe," I told him, still cutiepie.  "From Rafe & Bill's."  (Blink.  Blink)

"Honey," he was so resigned to my tactics; I was so in love with him.  "Did I really hear you tell Rafe that he would be able to be just like Santa Claus?"

"Yes!"  Because I am irrepressible!  "Honey, almost every guy wants to be a hero, but there is no one who doesn't want to be Santa."

There was mock-groaning.  I reminded him that I share everything with him.  It is like the last time we were at Sal's and his tub trap sprang a leak & flooded his first floor --  I was there so I oversaw the whole day's-length repair.  I also had the plumber replace the kitchen faucet with one I scooted out to get while he fixed the tub.

The kitchen faucet replacement was an add-on I had wanted for a long time in that house.  So, I had it taken care of  & added on to Sal's bill.  Reviewing the invoice with him, I told him that, yk, as long as the guy was there, why not? 

"Now," I told him archly, and more than a little put-upon + weary from the Flood, "you know what it is like to have a wife!"

Sal kept reviewing & asked what a parts charge was, down near the bottom.  

"Oh," I told him.  "Your sink line was all mucked-up with deposits and he couldn't get it back together.  All the plumbing in the under-sink cabinet is new, but he didn't charge for labor, just the parts."

"Now, Sal" Mari announced from the edge of the dining room where he had been all day, jockeying his laptop in his Frette robe, "you know what it's like to have Elle for your wife!"

Not quite Sal doesn't.  Mari told me today on the phone, "When I get home tomorrow, I want you to be in the bed: naked!"

I paused.  "Oka-aay," I told him, before I paused again (the wind-up!).  "Who with?"

Ahahahaha!  I won that one.  Ahaha!

 

 

Anyhow, the new range!  Yes!  It has the timer thingy+ also 2 hot-like-the-sun burners up front & one pianissimo burner in back.  Also, if you feel like we need to do the scales of math in repair cost v replacement costs -- which we ladies sometimes must do -- you should know for yr files we could have replaced that thermostat 9 times more.  But I would not have a new hood.  À bientôt!  

wpa

Remember the Granny Square Times?  Yes.  They have been piled in the guest-room closet for 5 years, or however many. 

 

A couple of years ago, Anthropologie (I think), had a throw that was part-knitted, part-crochet -- it might have been granny squares, it could have been hexes, I forget -- and it made me think that patchwork-texture of  patchwork-craft might be a way to deal with those boring old grannies.

 

This month's Living has a blanket featured.  It is knitted, but in pieces, and there is a schematic, so it was pretty easy to think ab0ut assembling squares into blocks and then putting them alongside blocks of garter-stitched rectangles.  So that is kind of in the hopper. 

It is more exciting than this.

 

Way more portable, too.  xo 

blabbity-blob

I'm not actually blogging because I do not actually feel like the endless narration.

The black cakes came out great, if in need of a little breathing/evaporation of the post-baking brushing of rum.  After the last trip to the pasticciera -- I am not being insufferable using the Italian, it's just that otherwise, in our house, if I just say Going to the bakery! there needs to be qualification, but if I say On my way to the pasticciera! I am only speaking of one place. 

 

Or maybe it is insufferable, for example, if one is illiterate.  But in that case, you were neither invited, nor are you valued generally as reader of this space.  Capisce?

 

Anyhow, after the last trip to the pasticciera, I could hardly stand firm against the wrapped-up cakes anymore and even though I was saving every single one of them for a Dec 24/25 experience, I caved.  It's fine, the lapse in discipline.  I am happy about chewing through a slice, now & then, with a hot cup of tea.  I see the need for the peel I chose against; it's awfully sweet & peel would bring it up in flavor.

See, how the endless narration just slips out?!

Let us cling to the lifeboat of a list, ok?

• I think I could take the contents of all the neighbors' recycling bins and strew them through our house, on the floors, and my children would never notice.  Or, if they did notice ("Jesus, what a dump"), they would never reach down to place anything into a refuse container with their own hands.  OK.
• I settled on $75 for the children's guitar instructor, attending a heartfelt note commending his meritorious attentions to my son, in particular.  Mari still frowned at me, while I was assembling my heartily-overthought denominations into an envelope.  He choked similarly when I gifted Fille with a crisp $20 bill for a perfect-perfect dental checkup.  Honey, I told him then, rolling my eyes.  $20 every 6 months is comprised of a nickel every time she brushes.  This is a similarly-cumulative payout, less than $1 per lesson.  Everyone is happy.
• Am listening to Christmas radio, wondering how "My Favorite Things" became a Christmas song when the context it attends is not and also, trying to work out what would happen if Joe Jackson came upon Katherine Jackson in a clinch with Santa, in fact.
• The psychologist -- we like to call her Dr Vajazzler -- conferenced with us about her report in the first week of December, still recommending immediate inpatient admission for Garçon .  The following day, I went through a long list of every psychiatric facility with a pedes ward in the region and every one of them replied to me -- kindly & filled with the weight of their credentials -- by saying, essentially, This is an inappropriate recommendation for the child in this report.  What the hell?  I called Dr Vajazzler & said, "So, everyone says no to your recommendation & can you reconcile your urgency & their apathy?"  She railed at me for a long time, extremely defensive, super-bitchy, and that was the last I heard from her or anyone in her facility. 
  
  Until I sent an email yesterday which asked, essentially, once you cut through all the duplicitous civilizations of it, Does my kid need acute psychiatric intervention or not?  Are you totally unprofessional, or are you just completely incompetent?  Check 1 for yes, 2 for no.  Write me back!  Then the reply-to-all shenanigans commenced.  If you know, or if you are a close reader in this space, you know that these missteps were like the suediest handbag ever.  There was actual glee, with tiny, mincing, clapping.  Also, squealing.  Then I proceeded to fuck with them.  They must have figured out they were all emailing me in error, because today there is total radio silence.  Wankers.  Also, WTF about standards of care?  We recommend surgery!  Oh, well, but the surgeons don't, so ...  So I still recommend surgery!  I do!  Surgical!  I'm right!  This is your fault because you homeschool!  What?

Oh!  Accidental narration!  A spill!  Argle-bargle!

 

Mari found a sweater in a put-away pile of winter clothes I never wear, up in the attic.

"Is this Fille's?" he asked, reasonably. 

"It's mine!"  I said, snatching at it.  Then I inspected it closely.  It is a Michael Kors half-alpaca, half-merino sweater & I adore it, but have never worn it because it is never cold enough here to have even thought about wearing it.  I must have clutched it to my heart in the store without looking at it, and then somehow purchased it without realizing that it would only fit me if I were to keep my breasts in my pocket.  But my child is cold all the time and we have a similar kind of severity in our fashion aesthetic (french cuffs on the wedding gown, people), so alors.  Bonne chance, pretty girl.

I guess I should get back to comporting myself as a person who operates on a Holiday Open House paradigm, baking & procuring & all.  Hm.  I miss sports-journalism blogging already.  À la prochaine. 

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.

fast five

This manicure will not come off. 

It is a UV-color gel manicure.  Or maybe I mean a UV-gel color manicure.  In any case, this was after 3 weeks, a time during which I was doing all my regular things -- cooking, cleaning, etc -- plus had worked on my own car!  Yes!  I blog this for Marsha.  I had another one, Tuesday, but honestly, I've had enough colored-nail glamour to take me through the next quarter.  But it is nice to know that I can have a gloves-weather manicure with no drying-time frostbite.  You may also be relieved to know that since that phot has been taken, I found my handbag-tube of hand cream.

 We are, generally, on to holiday decorations. 

I love the red on this poinsettia.  It will be dead shortly, no worries. 

Those ornaments are from Urban Outifitters. I was just there the other day & they still carry them.  Wait until after Christmas, like I did when I bought mine, so you don't get soaked.

Who is at that party in the mirror?

 

What I really want to know: Does this flokati make me look fat? 

I know it is turned the wrong way, but even so, I do not even know if it belongs in that room.  I bought it last year, but we had those temporary cats, so when it arrived, I just left it.  (This is what that fat, body-bag bundle by the sideboard was! you are saying now.  Yes.)  We put it down the other day, to see, and there had to be raking.  Raking!  I kind of want to love it, in spite of the raking, but I really do not know if it goes in that room, especially not since I saw my true-love, Platonic-ideal of our living-room rug earlier this year in the Restoration Hardware catalog.  But the flokati is nice to lie on in front of the fire.  MmmMmmMMmM. 

I probably should have gotten it in black, I think, but the ashes in that room.  No.

I am getting ready to make someone's Thursday at work a little less pleasant.  What kind of wintertime pleasures are you indulging?  Gros bisous, so much.

 

metaspherical

I hate my calendar guy to be stuck on the previous month, so even though I have been suffering from Becky-itis, I forge ahead.  I thought about NaBloPoMo, for a sec, 'tis the season, but even if I use Alex as a model, meh.  It's funny, I did it last year because I thought I had such a great time when I did it three years ago, and then after about a week I remembered:  No, a great time was not had.  My earnest examination of the Jolie-Aniston conflict remains a low point in this blog, for me.  Also, now that Mari is working from home much of the time again, I mostly just want to lie around in my chonies listening to Wilco + The Beastie Boys, showing off my conjugal zeal.

 

I made panisse today, to go with our boring soup.  They are pretty.  They are also pretty easy, but people who can eat croutons and beignets and hot-water cornbread can live a full life without ever having these cross their lips.

Anyhow.

 

I was hard-cooking half of our last dozen eggs this afternoon, the beginnings of egg salad, thinking of sending a wry text-message to Fantastic Mr Fox about how since last we talked about my family's egg consumption (five days ago, when he was in a position to pick up some local food for me), we were down by three-and-a-half dozen!

(Four dozen eggs, he scoffed then.  Four?  then he laughed for real, plucking the $20 from my light grip.) 

But my handheld was in another room.  So, I was thinking of his forty-eight-egg amazement, while I frowned over the quality and capacity of the bubbles in the water -- is this a simmer or a boil here? -- and I noticed the price tag on the egg carton read $3.25. 

I remembered those eggs -- those particular eggs from that particular farm -- being $3 the last time I bought them, but I guessed I was wrong.  But I had instructed Mr Fox that I would like him to pick up 4 dozen of "the 3-dollar eggs."  And yet!  Lo, on my kitchen counter, the eggs that were on my mind!  Those are what he brought me!  Even though my instructions were flawed!  He stepped into the breach and bought the closest, most-likeliest item!  Then brought it back to me!  There was no confusion nor chaos! Nary a cellular-phone call about how no $3 eggs existed in the marketplace!  No empty-handed return with the mournful tale of the missing eggs!

I know for a fact there are four of you reading this who may be a little stroked-out in yr chairs right now at the very idea of such luxury.  I know!  He is like an electric boyfriend. 

Mari was going to ask him to go on a little neighborly outing to chainsaw up a fallen tree -- yk, for firewood -- the idea being we could share it between our households.  I was just in the middle of murmuring, Oh, that sounds like a fine way for you two to pass the time when I remembered something Algren said last week.

"Oh, that sounds like a fine way for you -- mmmphrrgl!  No!"  I threw out my hand to Mari, ready to grab his forearm if I needed to make him see my point.  "You can't do that!  I saw this years ago on an episode of Law & Order!" I clung to him a little, fretfully. 

"No accidents, honey!"

Seriously!  Didn't you see that episode?  You should tell me all about it because I only remember the germ of conflict in it.  They went rock-climbing?  You know?  Ahaha!

Omigod, speaking of Becky-itis's irate-message component:  No to all of you!  Mr Fox is a grownup!  He is my age!  If he were a child, I would never think he was foxy!  Does anyone know anyone anymore?

blob

Of course, scarcely a day after I formed a concrete thought about feeling like I did not want to buy pumpkins, the Notorious Greengrocer had them in a great size 3/$10, and in the smaller, decorative size at 3/$5.  Then there were plants, also.  Houseplants, not seasonal, outdoor pot-tricks. 

 

I could scarcely contain myself at the thought of a 9-inch asparagus fern for $4, but I did, remembering all those asparagus ferns I fell for, hard, before they died.  I tried to tell myself this time would be different, that they would be ideally-located in a humid part of our house, with all the endless boiling, and all.  But good sense prevailed, so: pothos.  Whatever.  Unkillable, so fine by me.  I bought a couple more to take over to the sweet, dollhouse-living gals.   

 

This used to be where I had those two 3-tiered hanging baskets, the bottom tiers of which I have repurposed.  I initially installed them to hold, yk, onions & whatnot.  But it is bright enough in that spot that onions kept sprouting, so bright enough for a plant.  If I can get the watering right. 

Mr Fox keeps wanting to know if we will go with him to Occupy someone's Street, north or south, but I feel like, yk, no.  Hullo, Nutcracker?  But also, I am not interested in it.  I am not actually in the pursuit of a whole-whole lot of knowledge about it, but based on what I do know it seems as if it is a lot of wasted energy.  I am not even talking about the regrettable drumming.  All those people, milling around, full of presence, bearing the weight of who we all are and whatever we can each bring to something and ... they are hanging out in a park.

More than that, a lot of people are acting like this is a new kind of holding this space that exists at this time, that this is a wildly and freshly-inventive representation of the so-called 99%.  It is not.  (Omg, "Hooverville," is what Mr Fox softly interrupted to say to me when I was trying to articulate this earlier.  Gentle Reader, I was super-glad in that moment I only have sex with strangers.)  They seem to be lacking a lot of historical context, about a great many things -- all the sucking on Michael Moore's cock but the wholesale repudiation of Congressman Lewis?  But, ok, I am digressing. 

The thing of it is, it reminds me, in a lot of ways -- the volume of people, the willingness to submit to a gritty kind of existentialism, the current unemployment rate -- of the aggregated circumstances that led to the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps,  the National Youth Administration, Rural Electrification, the rest.  That period in American history produced things which endure, things that represent a chorus in time, a physical manifestation of the beautiful concert of humanity present in their overrated human microphone. 

I am not saying that there should be a demand for some kind of top-down New Deal offer put forth by Washington.  There will never be.  The quiet desperation of the masses is only half of the story of the New Deal.  If you know your U.S. history, you know the other part -- like a hand in a glove -- is that FDR essentially called a meeting with all of the nation's barons and said, "You get to choose how you part with your money: you can write a check now, or you can wait for someone to loot your shit later."  Billionaires must have been smarter then.  Perhaps they knew a lot of history.

What I am trying to say is that I wish that the Occupiers would find a way to reflect the values they claim to embody.  Yeah, yeah, I get it, they are not hanging out in a park!  They are living joyfully and interdependently in their tent cities with libraries and solar panels and potlucks and cell-phone stations and haircuts and whatever, but it just feels to me -- if this is really about social justice, and not just about being a 4-year revolutionary -- like it needs to be less insular.

It needs to think bigger-er:  teaching children how to read, repairing the broken shit in apartments in which are residing old people and the disabled, training the elderly how to use iPads, running a mobile hospital, something more tangible.  Something that allows others to be involved in other ways besides a physical presence in a public square somewhere -- by donating more goods or more services or more professional credentials or whatever .... even just cold, hard cash.  I hear Warren Buffett is dying to write a check to someone! 

I mean, people in wooden necklaces mumble this all the time so much that it has become a cliché, but it really fits here, that I wish they would be the change they want to see in the world.  Gil Scott-Heron wrote America's revolution will not be a melting pot, but a toilet bowl,  and it is kind of that bad right now.  But this show of protest just seems like so much meandering in a passive resistance, bottom-feeding off of the shitty, dominant culture everyone already knows we live in.  This is a mass of people with time & energy who are kind of letting go of the opportunity to show people what can really be taken on, when we take back what is ours, what is everyone's.  But, whatever.  I know, I have now bored you to death.  Yes. 

I hacked out an apple cobbler this morning.  It was OK.  If I make it again & it gets better, you will be the first to know.  Bisous.

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!   

   

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.   

had

I have so much I want to write about, mostly about our week in Earthshakey, Hurricaned Washington, but I am not really of time nor temperament + also:  I have waited so long for this to come. 

 

I told Becky, "When that kantha quilt comes, I am going to blog the shit out of it.  I am going to be like one of those Mormon-girl bloggers."

Not really.  I mean, I did write that to her, but I do not think I meant it.  I think I was just pent-up from the longing.  As I tweeted on that morning I purchased it from One Kings Lane, I would have been embarrassed at having refreshed its sale page 150kabillion times waiting for it to be released from someone's 15-minute cart hold, except that I got it.  Recognize.  You have to be serious in this world.  Apply yrself.

I tell this to the kids all the time, Be serious.  There is also the inverse, the most dire dismissal, the most cutting remark anyone will ever suffer at my hands (worse even than I should have had an abortion, because that is all hyperbole even as it blossoms forth, hands waving the sky), which is the judgment of Not serious.  God forbid anyone darken my door with their insobriety.

Here's the thing -- it is like one of those logical thingos they give you in Philosophy 101.  In order to be taken seriously, you must be serious.  People miss out on things they say they want all the time because they are not willing to be limitless, because they get feckless and back down, wander off, wait for it to be easy.  Stay on top of what you want.  Be serious.  Focus.  Otherwise, you will have tunnel vision about what you let fall behind, what you should have done, instead of knowing you did what reflected yr intensity regarding the subject.  When a problem comes along, you must whip it.

Pancake, what are you on about?  One of you surely knows the provenance of this obtuse confessional that I know can be read, which does not bother me, because it is nothing I would not say right out loud, if only I felt like making my mouth form the words and then my ears to fold around the mewling and the protesting and then again with all the stony + unremitting rebuttals.  Tap, tap, tap.

It is like when Garçon ran off -- this position has actually been a litmus test of Serious vs Not Serious with people we know, and it is surprising how many people who know us line up with great relief on the side of Serious, once I elucidate the position.  People ask, Omigosh, were you worried?  What if something had happened? 

No, I was not worried.  Fuck if something happened, it was not my problem.  I did what I was supposed to do in the face of a horrible child, taking steps that were fully in line with all the parenting decisions we have always made in all the years prior.  Garçon chose to run away when confronted with the reasonable consequences of his unreasonable, vandalizing actions.  Every time he had a choice to make, he chose against the right way.  If something had happened to him because of his choices, that is the consequence of those actions.  It would be too bad if he had to live forever with the result of a choice he made when he was 12, but it is not my life.  Just like anything else in parenting.  Bye!  Go with God.  Live and learn. 

Also ... well.  Anyhow, the quilt.  It does look good in my treehouse. 

 

It is just the right weight for a throw that is not too serious, just to ward off a chill.  Which means it should be of limited use in our house this winter, but who knows?  The stitching is hand-sewn, and I spend a lot of time admiring it while I perch there and knit a pair of socks.  These are going to be the best socks yet, I know, even before all the mewling and bereft serenading.  Jesus. 

That is what I am up to, mostly ... knitting socks, drinking vodka, having the patience of a saint, going to sleep at 11, getting ready to swap the Havianas + backless dresses for Tory Burch suede wedges + Citizens of Humanity jeans + other Wonder-Woman-bracelet accoutrements ready for Ballet Season.  Getting my ass readied for Pilates Hours to start up again with ol' Pilates Chick.  Carryin' my big-assed purse to lacrosse practice, you know, all those things like we moms love doin'.  I hope you are all in anticipation of a lovely holiday weekend.  xox 

screw

All of my gym clothes are too big, which, yk, go-go gymgoing, but anyhow.  One morning a couple of weeks ago, I did not make it to the gym because my pants would not stay up on the walk from the car.  HauteLook had a Marika feature a day or two later, so good. 

 

As proof of how get it over with I was about it, Fifille said to me, while I was taking my back-to-school photo here, "Er, Femme?  Are those butterflies on yr pants?"  Yes!  I don't know!  It's fine!

Omigod, the EarthquapocalypsssssszzzZzZzZzZzzzzzZzzzZzZ.  What?  Omg.  People are calling, people are texting, I have no idea about their outpouring of love + concern -- Are you all all right?  -- for the first five or six missives.  You know, I was thinking this morning that Santos prob has 5.9m earthshakes all the time & she never talks about it & I never hear.  Here is my Earthshakey, True-Life, Non-Events Account. 

I was sitting in the dining room, closest to the back door, waiting for AAA to come winch my car out of Sal's driveway.  I heard the tow truck approach.  I realized it was not a tow truck.  I wondered if Pam and Addison, next door, were getting their floors refinished.  Why hadn't Pam mentioned it when I saw her?  Exciting! 

But, it could not be a floor sander.  Our floor was noisy all over.  Oh, it's just trackw-- Er, the Metro doesn't run under Sal's house ...   

Here is the only interesting thing about the earthquake.  As I began to realize -- and this was all very rapid-fire thinking, I think the whole thing lasted a minute? -- that what was jouncing the house was not mechanical vibration, I sifted through to my next conclusions, which were in this order:  a. terrorists, (no. no, that can't be right) b. Ohhh, earthquake.  (Earthquake, what the eff?)  Terrorists first, though, you see.

It is also, I think, worth noting that if I had never sat though a similar event in Los Angeles as a child (I thought it was mechanical vibration almost till the end then, too), I never would have concluded earthquake on my own.  I mean, Jesus, Sal has a tensionless, oversized, venetian blind propped up on a dining-room windowsill that unravels, clattering all the way to the floor, if you bang the door too hard.  It stayed firmly-fixed in place all the while.  And honestly, I thought these people in Washington couldn't shut up about snow. 

Let us now call, on this rare, leisurely morning, the roll of honor.  Oh, I am in receipt of yr other emails, yr voice mails, piling up around me in drifts, with their accusations of "slipping that in."  Yeah, I've got yr slipping it in right here. 

1. What's up with the boozing?  Do those 5 words look familiar?  I wrote them, last week, in that order, which is the very definition of not slipping it in.  After I wrote a love note to a long-lost cocktail.  I was not trying to get away with anything.  Things have been a little grim on the inside here.  Grim.  My choices were a. have a drink or b. have sex with strangers, but never c. drink a fifth of whiskey plus have sex with strangers.  That would be overreacting.  Grim!? you say.  Honey-bunny, cupcake, do tell!  Obvsly, in dribs and drabs, as I process, I'll write it here, like I have been for years.  Unlessssss you refuse to stop reminding me you are data-mining here.  That makes me shy, you know.
   
   
   
2. The Fantastic Mr Fox.  Again, I wrote all about it.  What else is there?  Hubba hubba.  Remember for all the long years we have lived in this nominal college town the joke has been building about my Fantasy Grad-School Boyfriend?  He was going to be old-enough so as to be interesting, tidy, there would be no cartoon characters carved in the butter at his well-appointed, grownup's house.  There would be no Legos on the floor to stab me in the bare feet, a claw-foot tub, the walls papered with pages from the Kama Sutra.   Oh, hahaha, how girlishly we embellished this hilarity, the kernel of which -- as I recall -- was a throwaway line about how I do not care for young men.  Well, it is like we dreamed him and he came to life.  And he is sssssssssssmart.  So let me press myself against halacha in this matter and never be alone with him.  For starters.  Also, cling to what is good, because if we all think back, we can remember that in times of despair, I only have sex with strangers & he is not one!  Phew!  Mostly I reflect upon 2011's Lenten action to avoid saying anything stupid.  I already did say something stupefyingly stupid, though.  It was pretty awesome & right up there with the Amazing Freudian Slip for Lillo of 1997.  But since then, I have applied myself to the lasting lessons of privation, again.
   
   
   
3. The weekly appointment with a team of cleaners.  Ok, I did sneak that in, a little.  But not on purpose!  Because it is a lot of writing and I was placemarking.  Plus, I am still working through a lot of it, in addition to just completing the work that I have hired them in order to be able to do, because they are not supposed to be a permanent staffing solution.  I can keep my own house clean, in normal circumstances.   
   
   
   
4. The baby, Fille, going to the beach with almost-total strangers.  Yes.  She made friends a few weeks ago with a same-aged girl from the only other truly-granola homeschooling family I have ever met in real life.  Coincidentally, I finally met the patriarch of this family a day or two before she met the girl -- they are outstanding civilians in our town, I have just never met them.  I do not cultivate people, you know.  But I liked the dad -- he is distractable, yet sharp, and he talks about everything as if you already know it, which is fine by me because I like to pick up as I go.
   
   Fille & the eldest girl (there are five) got on strong and when they called about 18 days later to invite Fille to the beach with them for the day, I said yes.  It was funny, when I stopped round to their house later, the girls' mother told me she'd told her husband before he called, "You said she seemed shy, she doesn't even know us!  She's never going to say yes!"  And all of that is true, but they did not invite me and Fille is not shy.  Also, these 2 kids of mine are old enough now that they can judge what makes them comfortable, they are big, and they have a lot of liberties.  A lot. 
   
   Which reminds me of a funny, idiotic presumption Dr Bombay made -- Omg, you are with them all the time.  Am not, neither!  Less & less every minute!  Why, every day this summer -- except for driving to ballet class and/or guitar lessons -- they have been at the pool, or the library, or the park/playground, and I have been right here at home, getting shit done.  They experimented with public transit!  One time this summer, one of my kids was out past 10p.m. walking home from the library 6 miles away & he got a ride home in a police car! (We will never let that go, the surprise in that suburban hike & the realization that no matter what, if he could do that, at least some of our job was done.) They feel appropriately-agéd and everyone is happy.  Anyhow, Fille had a blast with her pal and I was glad we have made their acquaintance.  Especially a house full of granola-homeschool girls.  OMG SQUEEEE. 
   
   
   

Speaking of the roll of honor ... I will write down this neighbor story in league with Becky, who is who she says she is and stands by her words.  (Obvsly, but she seems to have to explain it a lot.)  Is it the reporter's problem if a subject's profile makes the subject look ridiculous?  No.  If you did not know that, look it up.

So, pursuant to the topic of Quotidian Freedoms, no one else's great, big children are going anywhere by themselves, or even with siblings.  I get that.  The people in Ballet Town recoil in horror when they find out the children have been trained up on commuter rail-riding.  Whatever.  You know ... people can chauffeur all they want, but we bought our house on this side of the county line so that we would not have to drive children around like the King and Queen of Siam until which day we just gave them a set of car keys. 

All the publicly-transporting is new, but on the ground in our town, our kids are on their third blissful summer of free rein.  It started out with baby steps four years ago, but by now it is just two feet and a wristwatch, go with God, be where you say you are going to be, follow the route we work out, be home at [whatever time].  Old news. 

Last week, the kids wanted to go to the park and I said it was fine, sure, be home by x o'clock.  Then they nanced around on the block a little more, nancing the way they do, yk, getting distracted, running in & out of the house.  I told them to let me know when they were Actually Leaving & went back to what I was doing inside.  During the Nancing Period, they got mixed up with their pals who live across the street.  Presumably, there was more nancing.

I had to rebuild this from an amused debrief, but it seems what happened is that the Follette children said to the Neighbor Kids, "We are going to the park. Want to come?"  (The Neighbor Kids are the same age -- 12, 10, set of 8yo twins)

Neighbor Kids, or a representative, whichever, whatever, went to ask their mother, Ms Mixed-Up, who said fine, good, whatever.  This was at the same time as Fifille ran back here to shout through the screen door they were leaving.  Good riddance. About an hour later, I was in the garden, swearing, and Ms Mixed-Up drove by.  She stopped, and called through her passenger-side window.  "Oh, is Mari home?" 

No. 

"I mean," chuckling self-consciously, "of course he's at the park."

Mari is in Washington.

"Are the kids here?" 

 No, they are at the park. 

"But one of them, yr kids ... are my kids here?" 

[blank look, says only,Ne comprends pas.]  What? 

She got out of her car, and frankly, in retrospect, she was a little aggressive toward me, considering she was the dope who didn't know where her own kids were.  "My kids said they were going to the park with you." 

I thought about this for a minute, then responded.  "No.  Your children must have said they were going to the park with my children.  I'm here, at my house, obvsly.  My children are at the park, possibly with yours, it seems." She processed this, quailed, raced back to her car & sped off.

See, Ms Mixed-Up has had this problem of chaperone-presumptionbefore with me.  It would seem to me that when she heard my kids were involved, she would think to double-check the situation were supervised to her liking.  Jesus, yk, hers are the same damn kids who came down one day a couple of years ago to play thinking I was hosting an indoor playdate.  No.  Children belong outside, playing.  Especially six of them.  I gave them a pitcher of water, all the outdoor toys + games, and plastic cups.  They live across the street!  And then Ms Mixed-Up --  now that this is all rushing back to me, I remember -- hovered around outside between our houses, who knows why.  So I invited her in for coffee, and when she accepted, I let her in and firmly shut the door behind us.  Ahahaha.  I thought of it as a Queen of the 70s intervention.  Ok, that was a little bit mean of me to do to her, but honestly.  It still makes me snicker.   Anyhow.  That is just a little something I slipped in with fullness.  Ok, that's racy!  MmmmMmMmmmMmmmmmmmm.

Ahahaha!  À bientôt!                   

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!

cranky hour. drink specials.

• I will start here:  I don't know who Rick Perry is.  I don't want to, because look at how he's got you all so worked up.  No, you can't tell me.  No means no.  I am not going to let you rub it on me.  I'm not even going to put my hand on it.  No.  Here is what I will whisper in yr ear, while you get all heated up about the GOP primary, determined to show yr current-events stuff, etc, I'm going to blow your mind:  Remember McKinley.  Yes.  Didn't that feel good?

 

• On the way to Washington last week, all I could think about was the large, ever-present bottle of Rose's lime juice in Sal's refrigerator door, and how I would immediately upon my arrival be putting it to its best use, the vodka gimlet.  Sadly, the only vodka Sal had in his lair was Grey Goose, but you know what?  I said fuck it.  I will take those lashes in hell.  I had quite forgotten about vodka's tingly, rubbing-alcohol aspect, like drinking the snapping of rubberbands.  It had been almost 20 years since my last gimlet, a sweating glass perched on the clawfoot-caddy thing in the bathtub at Mr Kowalski's.  So far this past 7 days, I have had four of these tangy, scurvy-preventing cocktails.  (I know, I can hear you, What's up with the boozing?  Shh.  Later.)

 

• Also, related to drinks: if you know the SodaStream story, be advised that it ended with me pouting & asking why I had to jump through hoops & Mari asking why I just didn't tell him I was going to buy one, instead of volunteering to jump through hoops.  I said, still pouting, "Because that is not how Lucy Ricardo would do it!"  Then he told me he was not Ricky Ricardo and I was like, "Ugh, again, I know!"  Yes.

 

• Speaking of antics.  Yesterday the Fantastic Mr Fox was was returning an empty CSA box to me.  I had my hands full of cutting flowers to arrange, but called him from the screen door into the kitchen.  I told him I wanted him to take half of a huge cantaloupe -- no one will eat it but Fille & she can't keep up.  I asked him to stay put just a sec for its receipt while I was rushed to finish snipping the huge mass of flowers, stems underwater.  While my back was to him & the water running, he got down the cutting board, a knife, and neatly halved the cantaloupe that had been sitting on the countertop.  I saw none of this until he asked, indicating the half that was to stay, "Do you want me to wrap this?"  Um, foxy!  Hubba hubba.  No cocktails around this guy!  Children always right where they can see us!  Mmmmmphrggggl.  Have mercy!

 

• On to neighbors.  Mari is home.  He reported shortly after his arrival that on the walk home he encountered our around-the-corner NIMBY neighbor who asked him a weird question about me being home from rehab.  WHAT THE HELL?  Because Mari is null-gangster at the oddest times, he did not ask her WHAT THE HELL?  So, I marched right over hill & dale to do just that.  Mari scrambled to catch up with me because he can sometimes be a moderating influence.  He also knew that I was people-revved from a homeschooling-antisociable event today.  Vroom.  Let's open it up, now. 
  
  I let him lead while I stood, fixing Ms Nimby with an expectant gaze and a foot-tapping countenance.  She said, "Oh, I can't remember who told me that.  Just, yk, people talk."  She apologized for repeating gossip, said she did not even know what came over her, she was just trying to make conversation with Mari, repeated that she could not remember who told her such a thing, just, yk, people.  
  
  I brightened up, sweetly, empathetically, and leaned in -- close and understanding, just between us girls-- and told her, with great compassion and big, blinkety eyelashes,  "Oh, I know.  Those are the same people that go around telling everyone you tricked the lady who owned [Ms Nimby's rental property three doors down from us] into signing the deed over to you while she was on her deathbed."  I nodded, somberly, sorrowfully, fully understanding our plight in our little 2-gal canoe.  Sharing is caring!  "They say," I told her, full of grim reality, "you stole it from her family." 
  
  It is true, that this is what people say about her.  It predates our residence by many, many years, so I have zero idea as to its veracity.  I made a tsking kind of a face recognizable to all midwesterners.  People.  Fie on them. 
  
  She protested, there may have been spluttering, and I just nodded, full of her protest's gravity.  "Yes, Ms Nimby," I told her politely and filled with sympathy.  "But that is what people say about you, nonetheless.  So I know just how you feel."  Then we wrapped up after a little gardening + zoning-board chatter and Mari & I sallied back home together, me leading Mari by the hand a little, as he was still reeling at the katana's prowess in my assault.  When it is surgical, you don't get any blood-spray all over you.  You can walk right in & make a cocktail.  Also?  Don't start nothing and there won't be nothing.  Bitch.      

 

• Related to rental property.  Remember this whole land-barony project of Mari's?  Oh, Mari?  The guy who is all summer in the office with Very Important Client Face Time on Steroids?  Oh, the one who has not been available to manage his land-barony project?  Right.  It has not been a problem, I would not say, but this was not supposed to be my freaking thing at all, see?  Anyhow, there were 3 friends living there -- two renewed their lease for a year and one left.  I got some of the lowdown on why they parted ways while I was doing the girls' year-end walkthrough last month.  Of course, the young man did not leave his key when he moved out and has not responded to anyone's messages/missives about any of the end-of-lease stuff, not even where to send back his security deposit.  We four decided we would wait until 30 days-ish had gone by before taking any steps. 
  
  When I was reviewing with the young ladies about this & a little more random-feeling dish this morning, on an adorable speakerphone-call (they work together, the girls), they told me something that chilled my blood and I asked, trying to keep it even-toned, "How old is [Mr Roomie]?"  He is 24.  It is certainly possible I was too stricken by that one episode of ER, where Lucy was killed & Carter was turned into a drug addict, but it sounded the super-hecks like the onset of schizophrenia to me.  The locksmith flies at 8:30 tomorrow morning and I might not sleep until that very minute.  Fingers crossed.  Keep the cocktails coming!        

$6 million girl

Can you remember my February?  When my house was full of cats and all manner of contractors and I had bicycles in my dining room and the pantry's groceries in my living room and Mari started being at the office 5 days in a row and it really hardly mattered, since I was rooming with Fifille anyhow?  Remember that? 

 

Right.  God, I remember taking this photo.  I was on the telephone with Kowalski, for the third time that morning, while he confessed a whole confession full of what I already know.  He had been working up to it, you see, so by the third time he called I was feeling less indulgent and way more distracted because look! at my dining room! and then I was just poleaxed.  So that was when that trouble began.  Any old way.  Onward!

 

One of the things that was crammed into the dining room was the freighting package with my brand-new, full-sized, Gratz Pilates Reformer inside.  It arrived in February, but it took five months for us to get around to getting it unpacked and in place. 

 

Mari said, as he unpacked it, You weren't joking about it being red.  No!  Because an upholstery choice was red!  Vrooom! 

I am completely excited.  Yes.

The delay in its deployment was  good, though.  The plan was always to put it in the playroom, to reclaim part of the playroom as Our Own Freaking Home, but once we got the playroom reconfigured, I could see that I did not want to jam this big thing in there.  Not to mention that putting a thing I do not want broken into the playroom is just asking for trouble.  Because if I bought an anvil they would break it.  And stand around the pieces mumbling sentences that started with We were just!  Hisssss. 

To put the Reformer in the bedroom, I definitely had to put the sewing machine elsewhere, right away, and so you know how that ended already.

There was the additional issue of that Naughty, Heart-Shaped Kitten and her scritchy-scratching.  So we waited, and waited, and as we all know, in mid-June, she was finally gone.  Bye, scratcher! 

Already, with it in my bedroom for only a week, I am telling children every damn day not to sit on it.  That is not a bench, get up.  Why are you in here, anyway?

Anyhow, it is super-exciting because now Pilates Chick can give me homework and I can get even better, faster, stronger than before.  It is going to be so amazing!  

So, reviewing August so far:  not ready for back-to-ballet-school; eggplants on grill; sewing machine in playroom, being used in its appealing, appropriate space; weekend getaway and/or interstate travel; Joe Pilates in the bedrooooom (not like that).

 

Check in on wry & pretty Becky in her BeckBloPoMo endeavor.  Blogging every day is a heck of an undertaking, but it can be done.  Also, this beautiful (and related) piece from pretty (& also wry) Orangette about making something where there was nothing before, to put it out for the world.     

imposing. magnificent. grand.

My favorite part of letting the kids out by themselves is making the maps.  There is one for every occasion. 

 
 

Oh, August!  I know I say this every year, but I always feel like you should be the name for the month of October because August -- you tend not to be so august, in the main.  Or, as I read somewhere, years ago, "August is the Mississippi of the calendar."  Yes.

You do have eggplant in profusion.

 
 

August has January's shoulder-wheeling, grindstone thing, without the respite of early-darkness.  I was tidying up a weird trail of hair elastics + bobby pins today & realized that Fille does not have her dress-code leotard yet for the coming year.  Ballet is going to be a major headache this year -- rubber, meet the road.  Again.   Some more.--  but I will smile & act nice.  I spent some quality time with my face in my palms today envisioning the whole calendar and anyhow. 

Man, she starts en pointe this winter which -- in addition to being an extra hour of class every week -- is just like, No, no, honey, go ahead.  Wreck yr body, baby, we love you! There is a fuckload more about that, but not here.  Dooce did not go first in this way for naught.

Typing this I realize I have not yet forked over her fees for what is now next month's start date.  Mostly because summer session was Garçon and me slowing the car so she could roll out, like an assassin, and while I had good intentions (and blank checks in my Filofax), I forgot.  On the last day I was ... getting a pedicure?  No, haircut, but anyhow. 

I also keep forgetting that our oven is not working.  It is & it is not, although, honestly, it has been 100 degrees for much of the last couple of weeks, so when the fuck am I going to use it?  I made a batch of granola a week or so ago, and found out the thermostat is completely shot and th temperature only soars to 400F.  Oh, ok.

Mari tried to cajole me along and convince me the thermostat is a luxury, which ... I guess, in a way, sure.  400F is a good, solid temperature; I do not bake v much.  Part of me kind of feels like I did about the DIY BlackBerry repair last year, like, yk, Motherfuck it, all this planned obsolescence!  But also, I do not want to enter a Choose Your Own Next Major Appliance Adventure.  I just feel like, yk, we just got our countertops done and we got them done while I was all the while stanuchly resisting a full-on kitchen makeover!  And the thing is, even then, last fall, I wanted a new stove because I would like another burner and I would like some time-it on + off functionality, but I did not want it so much that I wanted to shop for + buy it. 

And now, more than ever, I really do not want to shop for one & buy one, because I do not feel like it and what if I make a rash choice and the one that I get is not the one that I want and then!  I am stuck with it!  All winter and for the next 10 or 12 of them, too?!? 

Now I just want to lie down.  But I am going to the gym instead.  My new gym thing is rowing and then the heavy bag.  iTrain.  Do you know about iTrain?  You should.  Now you do.  It is way better than a trainer because there is not any socializing.  I love Pilates Chick, plus also her work, but the weekly chitter-chatter every single week just wears me out.  We're on a break from her, too. 

À bientôt!       

bowl of cherries

Sal called me from the office this morning, while I was dopily walking in circles, thinking of coffee.

"Don't you miss our fabulous Eva-Gabor hotel suite?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.  "But we have cherries so here's ok, too."

 

The cat is in "fake" heat again, the kind with real yowling all night and real tomcats trying to gain entry all day.  She is getting her ovarian remnant extracted tomorrow, if they can find it.  Then she will have to stay there a couple of days to get well with no jumping, or licking.  Or if she does lick herself open & exsanguinate, at least it does not have to be in my house where she dies, like Helmet Cat.  Also, that would be a third cat adopted by the Lord.  Fine by me. 

I mean, I like Gracie a lot (we have decided her name is exactly short for "graceful," if you could see her) but honestly, the scooping, the feeding, the caretaking.

Have you seen Oxo's Magically Contained bathroom series?  The plunger?  The toilet brush?  But the plunger, especially.  True love, because ick.  (Let us not now speak of how the plunger is on a platform above a brine of fetid runoff in there, though.  Shh, let me honeymoon.) 

Turtle Mountain's chocolate version of their aseptically-packaged So Delicious Coconut Milk is good, too.

Also, related to things to buy:  Mari asked me, exasperated, Why'd you buy an iPod docking station, exactly?  

I said no.  "No, no.  It is an alarm clock that goes all the way dark," is what I told him.

I never realized such a thing was in existence, until every Hyatt hosting us in the month of April had one, right in the room!  I have not had an alarm clock since ever because I am that girl from the Princess & The Pea, sleepwise.  I tried to find a model from any brand that was not a docking station and also maybe not $70 (because no way did I pay full price for it, yk).  Evidently darkness is not a feature desirable enough to promote, so if there are any fitting that description I could not know.

It has amazing AM radio reception and, hullo?  Baseball in the night?  It is more than anything of which I have ever dreamed. Plus, plus, plus, plus, ne plus ultra xox

90++

 

psionics

I love my 10-toed shoes.  Love to the verge of zeal. Love them in spite of the fact that wearing them compels strangers to talk to me.  That is true love.  Let those who have never worn Crocs cast the first stone.  

 

The only problem with them is that I tend to trip myself up with too-long pants (they have no lift) getting caught on my big toe.  But, I am a super-klutz with a skittering, physical-comedienne's coutenance anyway, and this in no way reflects on the shoe. 

I thought for sure Mari would scoff at them, but he hardly has anything to say except:

Sometimes, I look over at yr feet & see yr shoes, and I think, "I'm married to Mystique!"

Yeah, that would be cool, right?  Thrilling!

Anyhow, in all of this cooing & burbling about my new footwear paradigm, Fille became interested.  Friday, she volunteered to spend her own money for a pair of her own, which was good because a. she already has shoes for summer, and b. she is still growing,  so you know, high-dollar extra shoes, go home.  She has plenty of money she has earned from fairy sales and mothers' helperism, and she is not much of a spender, so, whatever.  Fine. 

I did take her through some responsible-spending check-ins:  You will outgrow these shoes before next year ... The cost of these shoes represents three times the cost of one pair of ballet slippers, for comparison ... You have to sell eight fairies to earn this much money, etc, etc. 

She seemed good & confident in our talks, so, ok.  We went to the Internet's Shopping Mall.

I purchased my shoes at Campmor, in direct response to an email they sent about special pricing across the board in the Five Fingers brand.  My shoes -- at the time I purchased them -- were at the exceptionally low price of $60, well, because no one else wants fuschia contrast that looks lavender?  I do not know.

But days later, when we were going to get her shoes, the price (on the KSO Multisport, even in that same color) was back up to $85.  So I did not even show her that shoe.  The Sprint was $69.98, which was represented in our talk -- I had not been too dollars-and-cents specific about the price and $60 is in the same ballpark as $70. 

When she faced the actual price, writ large and illuminated on the website, she quailed.  I watched the ardor pour out of her, making a thick, cold, glugging sound.  I totally knew what was going through her mind.  It was she who gave words to this feeling that I totally recognized some years ago, while she was writhing in its throes -- What if I find something later and I like it more?  I mean, we can not have everything, she & I, we won't allow it.  It is unseemly. 

I used to think it was the nuns and growing up Catholic that made me this way.  While it did not help matters, I realize now, watching Fille, that I am just this way.  Bring your nature v nurture studies to us, definitely.    

I offered to her, quietly, in a matter-of-fact way, that I could share the price with her, asked her how much she would be willing to spend of her own money.  "Like a subsidy?" she said?  (Go, homeschool, go!)  We agreed and she said, slowly, that she would pay $45, plus also the shipping charges, if I would give her $25.  Sure. 

Then, I told her to wait a second while we took a pause.  I opened a new window to go to Google and enter a search for the shoe she wanted ("Vibram Sprint Slate 36")  We found the very shoe for 54.99, plus free shipping, at Moosejaw.    

I had never even heard of Moosejaw.  The order confirmation page asks you to tell nine friends, two strangers, and one person you don't like all that much ab0ut their outfit.  Writing about it here definitely fulfills their request, n'est-ce pas?

The value of comparison shopping has been duly revealed to Fille.  It was as if I showed her I could turn lead into gold.  Then I told her I would share the same cost with her, why not?  She will never forget the lesson.  The shoes came yesterday and any lingering remorse she might have had was evaporated.  Love.

 
     

le weekend

This weekend was more roses, rose admiration. 

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Anyhow.

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

Gracie's calico markings are deceiving. 

 
 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Lentil Salad, first of spring edition

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

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

Allez!   

lev 19:15

You know.  I know that I hardly ever write about current events here, neither politics, but can I just say that Molly Wei's plea bargain in the Tyler Clementi suicide case seems like the highest-profile exercise of beauty privilege in current memory?  For my memory, anyhow.  Holy crap!

Actually, it was weird that on Saturday, I was already thinking of the case.  Mostly, I was taking some time --  after which I would come home to read the print article reporting Wei's plea deal -- to weigh deeply the grand jury's indictment of Dharun Ravi (previously her co-defendant) with the heavy-hitting charge of a bias crime, which can put him in prison for 5 or 10 years. 

So, while I was driving, twisting & turning, I just ... you know, God, I have got an idiot kid, too, right?  Also, Kowalski -- when he was not much older than this idiot kid Ravi -- went to prison for a few years, which was just a few years, but also a permanent derailment.  It was an entirely different kind of charge, but idiocy is idiocy and runs rampant in this age group, particularly in men.

So, yk, I've got it on for idiots, whatever, fine.  I had been really hand-wringing about it in the weeks since the prosecutor's office announced the indictment, all 15 charges.  I kept feeling like, yk, Good.  At the same time, I felt like saying We have to make an example of this idiot fucking dumbass kid was so harsh.  Ok, maybe not so harsh, maybe just harsh-ish.  But then I would think, "No!  It isn't!"  I don't know.  I had a lot of thoughts! 

Driving Saturday, I realized that no one is making a example of this kid.  He is the example.  No one has made anything around it.  Not necessary!  He made it himself!  Here we all are! 

It felt really good, yk, in my mind, to be able to articulate that, just to myself, but Jesus Christ, what a fucked-up mess.  But for Wei to get such a sweet deal ... Ravi must have been ... she must really have some good stuff to say on that stand.  Holy shit. 

I think maybe it would just be better if, like, remember (or maybe this is news to you, dunno) in Numbers 16?  When Moses called upon the Lord to split the earth and swallow those people who were being completely uncivilized?  I think that would be best in this situation.  All the same justice, people will talk about it forever -- it will make some kind of an impression! -- fewer tax dollars spent.  Yes.

 

Anyhow.  Yeah, my roses are blooming.  Even old Don Juan has stepped it up. 

 

You know, it's been hard with him, over the years.

 

 

I bought some skeleton-feet shoes.  I love them.  Don't be mad!    

c'est pas trop tôt

This is Mme Carrière's best year. 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

my equilibrium. my car keys. my pride.

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
 

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

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

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

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

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

Are you even following this?  Seriously!

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

 
That was me, with Shopping.  Mmmmmmm.

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

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

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

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

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

No one actually envies Mari, you know.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

diversion

The other night, I was fooling around with a new makeup smoky-eye kit & went too far, like Secret Squirrel, who is only on our radar because one of the kittens looks just like Secret Squirrel. 

 

Anyhow, it was funny, because I posted a photo to the late-nite twittersphere & was talked out of mortification (thank you, K!), but it really does not look that bad in the photo, which is I guess why everyone puts so much makeup on people who are having their photo taken.  Anyhow, it was pretty ridiculous in real life. 

 

Although, it seems to me that is just how I look most of the time in the mirror, with the eye-makeup, so I guess I know that if I want to look like that in a photo, I need to add three times the makeup.  The camera:  adds ten pounds, takes five off yr makeup.  Helpful tips!  

Also, today, I bought the MAC Viva Glam Gaga II lipstick.  I don't know.  I think after all that smoky eye, I just wanted pinky-beige lips.  I went in, honestly, because I just left the gym and all of its CNN and I was feeling some feelings and wanted some distraction.  

It worked!  Right when the super-gorgeous, extremely well-groomed MAC steward sharpened the lip pencil and let on that he was going to give me the whole treatment, I was totally distracted.  Then, when he pulled out the disposable applicator for the Gaga 2 Lipglass, I had to focus all my energy on protesting, carefully, without using my lips.

On't oo ink eye a ill oal fff li-loss?

He said that was ridiculous, slathering the whole while.  I was submissive to his ministrations, but remained skeptical while he went on about how that was a myth and lipgloss added glow.  Ok, but he was right.  When I held up the mirror, I could not conceal my delight.  Then I told him I loved it, but had to only get the lipstick, because I have a kissing-heavy occupation.  His eyebrows went up, but I told him, yk, I'm just a mom.  Lotta kissing.

I have a dream that I will work at the MAC store when the kids are bigger.  The only person who took this in stride was my friend Charlie.  Well, Mari, too, once he kind of got over the surprise of me stating a wish to work outside of our house at all.  I think once he put it together with the makeup store, he found the whole idea less startling. 

Anyhow, Charlie, when I told her about how exciting it was to me that I finally wanted to do something (work retail!), was completely on-board in the first take.  And, she wants to hear about my purse I love so much.  So, alors.         

My story starts in August, 2010, when last I was in the mall, buying that wedding gift at Tiffany.  Remember?  Right, ok, and while I was there -- you might remember, if you know it -- I was shanghaied by a kiosking-pair of Israelis and bought a jar of bath salts I did not even want for $60 because it is the only way I could get away from them. 

I was mortified.  Really.  The good thing was that I was prevented from snapping up a half-price Radley clutch on the way out through Lord & Taylor.  But then, adjacent to the sale handbags display, I saw the new fall Abbey Road purse from Lucky.  I liked it.  I liked the fold-over part of it a lot.  I liked the colors it came in -- it was appealing.  It came in suede!  At $180, it was enough to make me think about it and wait -- and not just on a day where I had spent too much money on some uncharacteristically dumb thing.  I mean, $180 is not the limit of the handbag-cost's stratosphere, but it is enough to slow me down and make me go through the list.

I was still thinking about the bag a couple of weeks later -- I had already shopped it a little on eBay, thought about it some more, toyed with its idea -- when I saw a previous season's iteration of the same bag at TJ Maxx.  It did not pass my evaluation.  

First, for all as large as it seemed, it really was not very large.  The decorative stitching was uneven, the pieces of the bag did not line up, like they had not been sewn straight-on.   There were cut-outs in the one that I tried out and they were not crisp or clean ...  the whole bag just felt cheap, more like a $58 purse, in my opinion.  Not even TJ Maxx was selling it for $58, so I left it, and forgot about it.

But I still loved that foldover-tote feature.  Man!  With a shoulder strap and handles?  Wowee!  My whole thing is that I love a bag I can hold in my hand.  I love, love, love, love my Brahmin satchel (see here) but I just cannot carry it all the time.  Sometimes, I need two hands.  And while the Brahmin has a strap I can clip on, the purse has a squat, little, bumpy profile that makes it uncomfortable to shoulder.  It just dangles there, like trying to carry a lunchbox on an organdy sash.

I switch back & forth between the Brahmin satchel and a kind-of-unwieldy Coach bag -- the Patricia or the Pamela or something.  Constantine?  It is one of the "Legacy" bags, I think it is the one they don't make any more -- the one with the zip-top and the turnlock pochette on the front?  The whole line is gigantic, so big that I wind up shouldering it all the time, which is bad for posture!  It makes me all hunchy!

 

Enter the Foley + Corinna Mid City Tote.  Hello, sailor.  I mean, handbag. 

It had me, as old people say, at "hello."  It is so pretty!!  So soundly-fashioned!  I have carried it every single day since I bought it, for which I have only Mari to thank. 

I balked at the price -- I mean! -- for a long time; months this bag was on my radar.  I was in & out of Nordstrom, buying an eyeliner brush at the MAC counter (!!!), stopping to use the pretty ladies' room, and there it was.  There was visitation, much planning, the shopping equivalent of doodling our names together inside of hearts in the margins of my notebook ... Mari said, "WTF buy the damn purse."

I demurred, I protested.  He pointed out that -- as far as we can tell -- I have lost $40, a library card, and many, many valuable hours, over time, on purse-switching.  What have we got to lose?  he wanted to know.  Ok, he was right.  I had to admit he could be right, even in the face of how much I hate to pay any price even close to full retail for anything with a value over $100.  (I waited, trembling the whole while, for it to go on sale.  It did, but only a teensy bit.) 

But, he reveled in his rightness last week, when we had the Swan Lake matinee.  I took the purse, no switching.  I carry it all the time & then I took it to dress-up time.  This has never happened.  I do not even carry the Brahmin to the ballet (it is super-fucking beat-up).  Fancy times.

I love this purse so much.  Love.  It is indecent. 

 

Also, this love (and its sheer size) heralds the demise of the NYC Purse Paradigm, which is our inadvertent cash-storage system in today's cashless society.  If we find ourselves stuck in the house, in need of greenbacks to tip a delivery person or pay the guitar instructor or Mari needs an early infusion of cash so he does not have to stop at the ATM in the dark or whatever:  look in the last bag I carried when I went to NYC.  There is always at least $20 in there, rolling around in the e-z-access pocket; one time, the record, there was $78.  But this purse has a good-sized exterior pocket on each side of it and foldover and handles and shouldering and ... no one is ever going to put their snack or their freaking juice box in it though.  Never.