la femme follette

blue who

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blueberry Casserole
(adapted from Whole Living magazine)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sugar & spice

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

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

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

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

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

Honestly?  This?

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

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

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

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

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

Alors!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Look, sewing & smiling!

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

 

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

sleepy

Mari has been home since Thursday, hanging around.  I have been mostly lying around, usually in bed, knitting.  We went to a hockey game on Friday & again on Saturday.  Overtime periods galore.  

 

 I am not sure if this scoreboard is a message about the Mayan prophecy or maybe something regarding Lunar New Year, or even perhaps the Father + Son & Holy Spirit.  But I took a photo, just in case we need to refer back to it. 

 

Mari & the kids were supposed to go to NYC yesterday, but just could not extricate themselves from the cocoon of our home & all of its food in the fridge.  Yawn.  I thought he was going back to the office Wednesday, but he said he goes back to the office, yk, sometime.  Like in the olden days.  Yum.

 

I took some of my knitting time to work on a sampler-stitch swatch for the Granny Square Knit-Assembly.  An actual swatch is being knitted.  I mean, I think this is the first time I have ever swatched.  No, wait: I swatched a long time ago for Kowalski's first pair of socks, because I was not sure how the yarn would knit up in the round.  I wound up not using that yarn, nor that pattern.

Usually, I just start knitting the thing & then check the gauge when there is a fat lot of fabric.  If the gauge is off, I rip it back.   I know I am not the only one.  But this time, with the pieces and parts & all the sewing, I want to make sure that I know how many stitches to cast on for my finished size. 

Valentine's Day is out there, on the horizon.  I am longing a lot, as is normal & usual & well-documented at this time of the year.  At least no one has almost died yet in 2012.  Jesus. 

I was doing the holiday cards in December & Mari said to me, after watching for a while, "Are you really going to write a personal note on each card?"  (There were 75 cards.)  

I said, "Yeah, I'm sending a card, right?  It's personal, honey."

He shook his head and rifled through the pile of already-personalized cards.  "You have really got to send valentines."  He just can't let that go!

 

After a slow & grating beginning, I am loving Pinterest.  So much, yes. 

 

Mrs Israeli & my Favorite Youngest Son are on their way to Tel Aviv right now, so safe travels to them.  Bisous for you all.  2012!        

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 

serendipity. synchronicity.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

But: doughnuts!  Dude!

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. 

boozy smoothie

I have been trying all day to get this cake made. 

See, it isn't just twittering!  I was actually zesting a lime.  Menial!  I am glad that I did not gut it out and try to bake it any of the other days I bonked the project because it is just that time-consuming to me.  There would have been real tears, particularly if Mari had been here to dry my eyes. 

 

Also, I have to say that my opinion of the KitchenAid mixer is very poor.  Why?  Well, because it performs poorly.  You can do what you like, but I am pretty sure my $60 Sunbeam/Oster stand mixer from 16 years ago was finely & regally cloaked in ermine & silks, while this buster is naked!  Whatever about that.  I will make something more within my ken than royal icing or black cake before I pass this goes back to the manufacturer for total dissatisfaction judgment.

This is all the placemarking for which there is time; the frozen almond flour should be a little malleable by now & God knows I can not have the children down in the kitchen eating huge mouthfuls from the muck of kirsch-rehydrated fruits. 

Ok, Wednesday.  Yes.

moonlight. firelight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, but what happened?"

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

wetwork

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because I am a fucking classy broad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also, James Luna. 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Reader, it was an accusation. 

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

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

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

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

     

prescription: lobotomy

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

You could make it, too. 

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

More or less.

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

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

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

The children's chore chart is just:

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go, go now.  Go.

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did you just say?

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

veronica wiped his face

I feel like I want to respond cogently to the comments of Becky & Marsha from yesterday's post, but really, you know?  I just want to write about my excellent life, which is also boring, but not to me.

There were cranberries in Wednesday's CSA chare.  Well, ok, but really?  I had them lined up for a baked good -- like Fish says, Baked goods: it's right in the name! -- but was not sure if they needed extra handling, so was stalling. 

Last night I picked up a copy of the Thanksgiving Living.  This morning, I was flipping through it after the gymgoing, dawdling in the super-quiet before the children awaken -- I love 5-a.m. gymgoing because it means I can get ready twice in peace + quiet --  and there it was: a magical recipe for Martha's Cranberry Clafoutis.  Yes.  Post-shower, alors!

 

The berries bob around so cutely.

It was a good clafoutis recipe.  A lot of them are too-too eggy, like I am eating a quiche (different dish!) or too-too cakey (zzZzZzzz).  This was just right down the optimal-custardy middle.  Great.

 

Mari was sad, because he doesn't like custard.  But people need to know that after I brought it to his conference-call side topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream,  his bowl was cleaned.  Then he told me about how he did not like custard, as if I give a fuck.  I told him this is why I have never knit him a pair of socks. 

This morning at the gym, it felt like I was dialing it in, but I am kind of sore already.  Great pâté, gotta motor.

mum's the word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   

cockpit

Hello, blog. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

parenthetically yours

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

 

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

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

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

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

à mon âge les miettes voguent sur la rivière

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

 
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 
 

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

round tuit

 

rowdy electric

Saturday, the Like-It Edition.

 

Celosia in Russel Wright cream pitcher.  Celosias are having a gorgeous bloom this year, same with crape myrtles.  Use it up.

Increase in our Little-Girl Population by 100%.

 

Paper dolls, and also girls feel! so! big! because once they got the self-healing mat out, I gave them each their own x-acto knife.  ZOGMACATS.

They are -- in the photo, you can't tell -- listening to the latest Wilco single on repeat, which I do not mind at all.

I was just telling Mari yesterday that I am so glad to have not known who Jeff Tweedy was when I met him all those years ago at AWP, because my story is a million times awesomer than it would have been if I had.  He was the nicest guy I met at the whole darn convention.  And his book of poems is x-great, too.  And now I'm a fan all-around, so I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, again.  (Yes!!)

I am putting a lamb roast on the barbecue again today and ... I don't know.  Emily is staying through dinner and I just love her so much.  She is one of those kids who eats, yk, 5 things + meat.  So, I was just quizzing her again -- because I forget that meat is a thing that can be fed to children -- about her roster. 

She said, "And ... hot dogs, and hamburgers, mmMmmMmm, lamb chops, aaaand --"

"You like lamb?!"  Lamb is such a meaty kind of a meat, plus not v marketed.  "Really?!"  I was so excited.

"I LOVE LAMB," she called out in a proclamation like 10-year-old girls can. 

I told her, super-excitedly that we were having lamb for dinner.  So, who cares if she won't eat anything else except the today except the fruit & cheese plate I have set for their afternoon snack and the crudite plate before dinner.  I can tell her mother I fed her PURE PROTEIN.  Exciting! 

Unless I ruin it.  Hm. 

 

I know, half of you are like, Honey, we believe you.  You didn't need to show us the raw meat.  The rest of you are all, Hey, what's all in yr marinade there?  I hope it works out.  Fingers crossed! 

This is my favorite photo from our last trip, Fille & Sal, goofing around at Hirshhorn Party.  They are playing Disaster Movie.

 
 

It was a better photo before I cropped it for Sally's privacy.  It is good to have old friends who are into your kids.

I dreamed about so many of you last night, so long, so much.  Even you.  Yes, you!  Don't blush, it was just a blow job about 100 years ago. 

Everyone, let's kiss now!   

bun

Ms Minty was in São Paulo a couple of weeks ago, and she let on about her exposure to pão de queijo, which, you know, yes.  I had this long talk with Sal, while I was using one of his two (!) blenders, about whether or not I had ever eaten these as a girl, like did I have some long history with them, because I "dated that Brazilian guy."

"No, I didn't," I corrected him.

"You did.  You went out with a Brazilian guy," he insisted.

"I did not.  I went out with 4 Colombians, a Costa Rican, and two guys from the Pyrenees, one French, one Spanish."  I was irritated, a little.  "Also, a guy from Buenos Aires I completely fucked over, ugh."

There was a long monologue of certainty, filled with error, intended to refresh my memory of the Brazilian suitor.  It was only irritating because I knew for a fact I was right.  I mean, it wasn't irritating because someone else was telling me about my romantic history.  No.

Just recently, Eve and I were remembering some event from our past and when the name of a guy who was a necessary part of it came up, I said to her, "I forgot all about him!  Omigod, did we have sex?"

"No," she said.  Then she reconsidered.  "Well, you know ... I don't think you went all the way."

"Wow, ummmmmm," I racked my brain.  "I dunno."  (Meanwhile, Mari: completely agog.)  "That guy's file is really smudged up.  I'll have to take yr word for it, Evie."

But the point is that the long, biographical testimonial to Proof of Brazilian Suitor drew to a close, finally, and I said, "No, that guy was Welsh."  Honestly.     

Anyhow, these cheesy tapioca buns are a great idea, even better if everyone is sodden-upon from museum-going in the Irene-beset nation's capitol.

 
 Stock photo, from my own food studio, lol.

 They are cute, aren't they?  Like Kogepan.

I used sheeps' milk feta, if you want to know. 

Anyhow.  Oh, hurricane!  Whatever!  My God!  Where to start?  How to pick a lede? 

We are not at home, obvsly, at the tail end of some great, quality, earthshakey visiting at Sal's.  Friday afternoon came and Sal was home from the office when the children & I returned from museum-going. 

"I think you should leave the children with me and take your husband to the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City.  They have a fabulous, Canceled-MLK-Dedication rate of $129!"

I demurred, Sal insisted, etc.  I resisted firmly and with finality on the grounds that I had every intention of seeing the Stella/Kandinsky exhibit at the Phillips Saturday morning, plus also I had no desire to pay for parking and after last time, I just wanted to ditch the car and walk hand-in-hand on my romantic getaway.  Sal made noises about a downtown hotel and I put the kibosh on him.  Then we all four went to meet up with Mari at the Hirshhorn for the Friday Sculpture Jam.

Saturday, we were half-lazing, half-headed out to duPont Circle, when Sal began again in the campaign of our Saturday to Sunday romantic getaway.  I allowed that it would be taken under consideration when we returned.  When we did return, I announced in my hyper-organized way that after a hot dinner, when people could think clearly, we would make some decisions. 

Right after dinner, Sal's roof started leaking.  Omg, quelle horreur!  Measures needed to be taken and it is a good thing that Sal was not home dealing with this crisis -- getting up on the roof, nailing and fussing in a driving rain, mopping and swabbing and relocating porous items -- with only my dumb kids for company.

After we got that sorted out -- and thank God Sal drank down the bottle of vodka soon thereafter, because I was feeling pretty susceptible -- we were pretty wired and wondering what else we would have to fare.  Not to mention fretting a little about our own house, faraway, sitting in the path of the storm.  We replaced our roof entirely 10 years ago.  We live at the top of a hill.  I was worried about a power outage and what of the chest freezer's wares.  (Everything is fine there.  And here!)

We tucked ourselves all in on the sofa sectional to watch National Treasure, and everyone wanted something high in carbohydrates to eat.  More buns!  With blueberry jam! was the most-repeated idea.

But we did not have more feta.  Also, I had already chucked the jam into Sal's freezer.  And while I had heard tapioca buns are interpreted in Korean food with no cheese, just sesame seeds, I was nervous to leave out the fatty binding of cheese in a pinch.

I mean, they would probably just turn out like a popover, right, sure but ... do you know what has cheesily-similar properties?  Chocolate.  Fatty, solid till it melts, etc.  I swapped it in, gram for gram. 

 

They were ok.  A little less puffy, but that could have just as easily been due to my distractability.

They reminded us of chocolate-glazed crullers.  We discussed this, the three of us, long into the night, mesmerized by the endless Irene coverage, listening for the pattering of water on our strategically-placed Mylar blanket-carpet; a first-alert system for the failure of the Great Hurricane Roof Hack. 

It was not the richness of a cruller, but the chewy, slightly-sticky texture and this slight reminder of  a cruller's egginess -- more similar to a churro.  I could have done a better job grating the chocolate, but I do not think I will repeat. 

 

The chewy, totally-unphotogenic, mochi-ness of the interior is the same as when it was cheesy.  But the sweetness of the chocolate is not enhanced by the bun and the bun is not brought forth the same as with the salty unctuousness of the cheese, but anyhow.  Maybe with a fattier, saltier chocolate? (Valrhona.)  Yes. 

If there were a recipe, I would totally dedicate it to secretly Santos.  xo         

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!                   

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!        

2x2

Do any others of us have the children who suck hickeys into themselves?  In the fleshy margin of the upper arm, where you can fit it into a mouth while insomniac, or anxiously watching Cowboys & Aliens or whatever?

 

Jesus Christ.  And because I am a bicep-gripper/child-hustler by disciplinary reflex, I always quail when I see marks like this.  Then especially because the child has no recollection of idly vacuuming his or herself into this condition, they can not say.  Every time this happens, and every time I realize that I could not just put that pressure on in a thumbprint, there would be a whole hand, so it is them.  Again.  Gross.

On the other hand, their mother was a cutter, so at least they come by it honestly.  I think. 

 

This is what happens, when Mari & I are lying around, chitter-chattering as we awaken, with our door open.  People come & go, chastised for disfigurement, and then others come lilting in to find out why their brothers are sulking.

They all perch right on the bed, even as they have not been invited. 

 

To distract us from this invasion, they look winsome and tell jokes.  Three strings walk into a store ... 

 

After they have successfully flushed us from our own goddamn bed, one of them cheekily returns to loll & chat-chat-chatterchat until I am afraid my head is going to come apart from my neck.  The endlessness!  Of a 10-year-old girl's breath!

Their father is going to take their badasses to Showbiz cross the river like Washington, and take them to a museum for education in the Physical Sciences, or something.  I am not going.  I plan to knit and drink tea.  Also, vacuum.  Ivy Leaguers are starting to return to our town in dribs + drabs, so maybe I will step out to sample our amenities before they are on in force.

 

Someone who is probably also dismayed at the slow-rolling start of a university calendar -- j'ai faim de toi -- has a new pair of socks on the needles.  This represents two days of half-hearted, not-too-much-focused knitting, which means the project will take about 30 days, both socks, cast-on to blocking, which is about par.  I am working a cowl for myself at the same time, also in 2x2 rib. 

I think ribbing is so punishing, mostly because I knit out of my right hand and have to make the full trip waving around the needle to switch from knit to purl.  This is nice, though, the socks on 3s for a few slick, metal rounds, then change to the flat ribbing on 11s, with bamboo's frictiony austerity for a break.  Ok, miles to go, à bientôt, gros bisous, etc xo      

$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.     

soleil. solanum.

After I secured all of August's eggplant, I worried about what I would do with it. 

 

 (Besides still-life photos, obvsly.)

I forgot, first of all, that our oven was on the fritz.  (Mari is going to replace the thermostat this weekend, but made me promise ("promise") that I would make The Choosing Our Next Oven Project my second-highest priority.)

Second, I misplaced the knowledge that I would never turn it on to do any kind of eggplant-cooking anyhow, because the A/C is on and that makes no sense.

So, obvsly -- and this was a 30-second thought process that happened on the way to the car after leaving the market with 6 or 7 pounds of eggplant -- I would throw them on the grill.

 

After that, I remembered it was way too hot to stand over a grill that has fire in it!

 

Thankfully, it cooled down enough yesterday that I could think about it.  Today it was even cooler + overcast and I was all set to take care of it.  I would put them on the grill, cover it, and then make baba ganoush.

After this monumental (& certainly deeply-interesting to everyone) decision, I found out we only had the tiniest skosh of tahini left in the can.  Uh-oh.  We are also down to our last head of garlic.  Whose house is this?  Oh, mine.  This is the house where I have been feeding the children hummous and Israeli salad for pretty much every meal for a couple of weeks.  Hm.

There may have been a little bit of pouting.

I remembered a dish I made a while ago, for a potluck's meze platter.  I looked around for the recipe but could not find it.  I know it is a recipe Claudia Roden put into the world in one of her books, and I am pretty sure (walnuts + Roden) it is Georgian in origin.  I did not want to make the exact dish, anyhow, but just use its broad strokes of eggplant, tahinilessness, the walnuts I always have in profusion, and also parsley.

The original dish I made was much more handsy, with slices of browned eggplant providing a foil for a smear of this walnut spread as anyone went along.  My children never feel as though they have been fed unless a knife + fork + shoveling-action are involved, so I scissored up the slices from the grill & tossed them with what was now more of a dressing. 

 

Later I realized I had three large eggplant from our CSA in the fridge from yesterday's pickup.  Oh.  I can do it again, though.  So can you.

Kind of an Eggplant Thing for You to Do Without Any Tahini or Much Garlic.
I would like to dedicate this recipe to Anthony Georgeff.

Slice the eggplants lengthwise at about a half-inch thickness.  Brush them with olive oil, if you want (I did not, because we are low on olive oil, too. Hummous! Yoooou!!), and grill until soft.  Flip once.  Or more, whichever.  Do not let them fall into the coals like I did! 

Scissor them into bite-sized strips with yr kitchen shears.  

( I used probably about 2lbs of eggplant.  The rest I left whole for a summertimey, less-cook variation of this dish, dressed with feta, yogurt, lemon juice, olive oil, chopped tomato, a drizzle of honey, minced garlic, chopped oregano, salt & pepper.)

Toss the eggplant pieces with a little red wine vinegar, like maybe 2 tablespoonsful.  Maybe sprinkle on a little salt.  Do your own thing.

Peel & give a little smoosh to a bunch of cloves of garlic.  Warm one tablespoonful of olive oil and throw in the garlic.  Poke it around and do not let it color.  So:  warmed-up oil, bunch of cloves of garlic, heated to the point of fragrance, no browning, no tanning.  Set aside.

Put two handsful of raw walnuts and one handful of parsley into yr food processor.  Rrr-rrr-rr-rrrr, you know, rrrrrrr.  Not too long because you do not actually want nut butter.  Think a kind of pesto-y thought.  

Add the garlic & the cooking oil, another splash of vinegar.  Whir & whir.  Maybe it needs more oil, maybe it needs more vinegar -- figure it out.  Salt it.  Dump it over the eggplant.  Toss.  Garnish with more finely-chopped parsley.  Serve it whenever you want, with whatever, wherever.  Do your own thing.

 

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!       

I am not humble because false modesty is a sin

So,  let me see if I've got this all the right way:

1. There are some women
   • who have a secret bulletin board
   • where they devote themselves wholly to the business of tearing down other women and the weblog-content those women put forth into the world. 
2. A bunch of them left comments here yesterday
   • in which they collectively reveal themselves to be pretty much illiterate,
   • in that they have no ability to detect  

   a. subtletly

   b. irony

   c. tone

3. which explains perfectly why they are obvsly incapable of working out that
   • my "vague terms" are to keep the entire population of internet grifters from getting into the business of my family + friends
   • plus also that those same familiars hardly need me to "deign to show them how incredibly gorgeous I am," since my God-given pulchritude is pretty much the single outstanding thing about me, (because it isn't all you need, but it gives one a prodigious headstart)
4. to say nothing of how very, very rich it is that  (see: a, b, and c, plus also: board devoted to tearing down other women) they accuse me of being a hater.  Ahahaha!

Did I cover everything? Are we about square?

So way past beyond-hilarious that hateful people on the internet would wonder why anyone would keep their business as tightly-leashed as possible, coded in a portmanteau for people who can hear the words on the screen in my voice.  Um, clearly because there are people like them in the world?

But there are in this world so many, many more people.  Everyday pals, faraway friends, best-besties, my husband -- none of whom need to read by the lights of their projectors and the horrible, noisy, whirring distraction, since they have been for two decades or more surrounded by an exchange of words in writing.  Or, because they have my g.d. phone number and can call for clarification if they need to know so much more.  

I would be remiss if I failed to mention a small but mighty group of generous people who have never met me and who know how to read for content and its fulsomeness.  This project is sometimes a jumping-off point, it is sometimes backfill, but this project is always mine, for me, this little scrapbook on the internet.  Yes.

Forward.  Because it is again an interval for making herbal medicines, at a minimum.  Looking at you, Lisa -- yr package is almost ready.

 
 

Also, here:  I have created a fucking monster with the bespoke menswear, I swear.  I had to sadly tell Mari the tailor's shop is closed on Saturdays in July.  OK.  Additionally, I had to explain to him that they are away in August.  It was like the first time he impressed me, when I had to explain to him what Yom Kippur was.  Only now he's been married to me for 15 years and I was more than a little like, yk, seriously?  Italians go away in August.  Also, Greeks flirt.  Come on!

When we got off of the phone & I was hassling Fille to bring me her laundered yardage so I could start on her skirts, which obviously -- all this inability to be off-the-rack -- is it nature or nurture? 

Friday!  I feel great.  All the marking & listmaking & nonchalant interfacing makes me feel like I'm blogging Alex's blog, and this has the right feel for the rest.  Plus, same hairdo, obvs.

 

Gros bisous!

chains, gang.

I do not have the heart to tell Fille that her eggplant might not come true.  She is so pleased to have acquired it at the plant swap in May, but she is a little lacking in the consistency of watering department.

 

You can see the backyard in the background there.  We had it done over in June.  Simple, plain.  I plan to get the container plants out on the gravel to soften it up & make it less like a prison yard. 

 

It will fit for now, though, because we are getting this: our big next step.  I mean, yk, we always used the straitjacket when he was younger, and of course there are the bed restraints we've used -- shut up, they are humane restraints, it's right in the name -- and then since he has been older, bigger, I say, yk, Hey, babe, just head outside & cool off.

But if he is going to be running away ... not cool.  Measures must be employed.  Plus, it is modular & built to specs, so we are having it built big enough to put the bicycles in at other times.  Excellent in every direction.  Yes.

À bientôt, j'espère!  xoxo

I tried to be less awesome, once.

Things are OK.  It occurs to me that I started this little weblog to be a readalong companion for my sweetest + dearest friends, a lot of first-responders, with whom I could not move past the conversational triage of, yk, charlatans and liars, headbanging, destruction, flight, elective mutism, sourpusses, plus unhelpfulness.  Like, it was designed to be a place for me to record all the quotidian + normal things we did in a day here -- for a lot of you, if you know, you know -- and for Mari, who often felt conflicted about keeping his really great job even as it meant "abandoning" me with our son for sometimes-long stretches of time. 

 

Also, in some ways, it was supposed to be for me, so that I did not blow my head off or drown everyone, you know?  I mean, and things were ok in large chunks, big enough to write about.  Fifille -- whom everyone already loves -- got to be the star of the weblog, because she is topical, and parenting her is something relaxing and enjoyable, something that feels like relationship-building, instead of marking time.  That's just the luck of the draw, but I always feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

It is funny to me, because a lot of people who do not know our whole story will accuse us of favoring her, of shutting him out, of blahblahblahblahblah ... so I start bringing Garçon along with me to their house with us, accepting gaily every invitation, and after a very short while they shut entirely the fuck right up.   

But, so the thing is, to get back to my first point -- is that this blog was about the things that I did, we did, that were not like being in a warzone.  That in spite of what seemed like my first priority to first-responders, my child's life had not subsumed the rest -- I could still knit, make mischief, go the gym, manipulate unsuspecting admirers, shop, play swords with Mari, enjoy Fille, and there were even good times everyone could see where there Garçon was, too. 

After a while --  a couple of years, maybe?  -- we kind of got a break, things started to feel more normal, and as a result, Garçon took second-billing here.  Maybe he was even a co-star, I can not say.  I kept blogging, and people kept reading, for all the reasons I first wrote about -- supplemental text for my nearest + dearest.  During those years, also, old friends & past-life colleagues started reading.  Maybe only reading-ish.  I do not know, I don't give quizzes, and I did not mind, for the same reasons I wrote about alongside the supplemental-text outline.  After everything, I remain myself; nothing will surprise these once-loved, always-fondly-remembered people.   

But after those years, very recently -- maybe in the past 18 months -- things stopped being OK, stopped resembling normal, and went back to being fucked-up -- in different ways, but similar.  Kind of like how a sunflower shoot does not resemble the flower in bloom, but you can see how this gargantuan thing grew in the place you put that little, stripey seed while you were watering + tending + not reading the seed packet super-closely.  Kind of like that.  And there are people who wonder, reasonably, Why did you not employ a gardener?  

Because it all goes like this last bitch, is why.  This new benchmark in our oral history is right up there with the other Greats:  Oh, banging his head during tantrums to break mirrors and windows?  Obvs because you have a new baby or It doesn't matter what he does at home; it only matters that he cannot do it in our clinical setting or It's troubling because he insists on singing Thursdaaaaay's circle-time song on Fridaaaaay.  It is a highlight in a decade of low, low conversations with people who are not paying attention and/or not helping us, or both.

I mean, she was actually pretty weakling-par, which we recognized as soon as (like I said before) we brought the kids in and she turned dolly-dolly-chalkmark insipid.  So, while we knew we were going to have to tell her she was not a good fit -- not least of which because both children had deemed her interactive ministrations completely lame plus also were calling her Dr Bombay because they found her so puerile -- it was funny when she asked us, earnestly, after a long, passive-aggressive, assholey buildup, "So I guess I am puzzled, because [insert a lot of stuff we all 4 told her frankly with our mouths, not some Grand Psychological Insight] and I do not understand why you homeschool."

Of all the excellent reactions from friends indignant on our behalf I and/or we have received when we get to this part of the narrative, the best was Lillo's ("Did you snatch out her eye?  Does she still have an eye?"), with its clear harkening back to the Kill Bill movie, which is always exactly how these lazy-assed crosspatches make me feel -- Bitch, you can stop right there, you don't have a future, when do you want to die, splendid, etc.  There is always a point with all of these "experts" where they say something so fucking stupid that all we can do is boggle, and wonder why the fuck they are saying this to our faces and are they fucking serious and are there not questions they might like to ask first? 

Jesus. 

And it is so typical, right?  I mean, if you know, you know:  all of these "experts" get all bossy and ride their horses down to the shore and boss us onto their freaking boat, assuring us they know the One True Way and we should let them, blahblahlahblah, they pride themselves on their tight ship, their results, their mastery on these waters, etc.  So we get underway and 5 miles out, the blubbering and weeping starts. 

"Oh, this isn't water!  This is not the sea!  This is ... blood?  Is it milk and honey?  Could it be lava?  Green tea?  We have to turn back!  Ohhhhh, whiner-whiner, boo-boo!  Baa-baa!"

Then the four of us peer over the railing & shrug, because whatever it is that is what comes out of the tap at our house.  Call it what you want, this boat is afloat, come on with the come on! 

No, no.  For this endless pool of whiners and weaklings, this is too-too hard.  Over and over.  Then we have to sail the weakling-baby's fucking boat back to shore for him/her.  All the time.  Except for that one speech therapist, and she only made it until she zeroed in on a relevant issue of her purview which did not worry Garçon.  Then he was all done with her, too.  That is what harpoons are for.

I totally want to remember to read Jaws again.   

God, anyhow.  This time, I did not say one word, because what I really was thinking (not helpful) was Are you fucking kidding me?  We've paid you almost $1000 and the best you have is some regurgitation of shit we told you plus also Why don't you send him to school?  Bitch, I can get this kind of impotent, unsubtle counsel from frustrated, angry, know-nothing bitches on the internet.  Do you think this is motherfucking eHow?

Waa-aa-aaay less Beatrix Kiddo, way more Samuel Jackson.  I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker.

So I just kept knitting my 2x2 rib, as if it were the most complicated eyelet lace pattern ever, frowning and holding each stitch up to the light.  Mari waited, and I knitted.  He took a breath, then paused.  I knitted.  I paused in my knitting and looked at him.  I smiled, expectantly, lovingly, before returning to my knitting. 

Mari folded.  Then he broke out his Arvin Sloane's work-voice.  Oooooh, j'adore.  Yes, yes.  He first very softly + patiently explained to her, slowly, that she had made a great leap to the erroneous conclusion that we would in fact, be able to make him go to school.

Dr Bombay went totally rigid, like a deer in headlights.  Ne comprends pas was written all over her lined face.  I knitted, wondering by which methods I would screen our next attempt, if indeed we feel like wasting our time again.  Because this stupid bitch was a total fail. 

Mari went on, still patient and slow, using great detail and a number of specific examples from our son's rich institutional history to explain why he does not go to school.  In my opinion, he went a little bit overboard, since we arrived there planning to tell her good-bye, but whatever.  I was not the one talking. 

At one point in his careful recitation, she made a guttural noise (so out of her depth, again), and when he was finished, after he coasted gently to a full narrative stop, she said, "Oh."

After a long pause, Dr Bombay offered she'd had no idea.  He kindly pointed out that was because she never asked.  My man.

I sat there, relishing her obvious + excellent discomfort for a minute before I pointed out to her, quietly, following my husband's example, the rest of the flaws in her plan:

1. Sending him to school is not an answer.  We do not have a school problem, we have a relationship problem.  Sending him to school against his will does not solve our problem, not only because it says, We deport you now from our richly-textured family life, outlander, but because also it gives him a fresh, fertile ground to make new problems in every direction.  We have been down this road.  School is not Las Vegas.  What happens in school comes right to you, via a conduit flush from a gushing spring of phone calls and parent-teacher meetings during which it is presumed that your home life is the problem anyway.  So, let us just keep it at home, because

2. it is poor stewardship to put a child like Garçon into a classroom where he is going to drain classroom resources from children who want to be there, whose parents want them to be fully-directed.  I pointed out to her, grimly, that if Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris had been homeschooled, we would not even know their names.  Although, as Kowalski pointed out to me, we have all heard of the Menendez Bros.  Well, whatever, maybe we're willing to take it on the chin (in the back of the head?) for the Greater Good. 

I kid about Columbine, but only a little.  Because it is not actually something we do for the Greater Good.  I mean ... that is an abstract concept that is in there somewhere, sure, but the fact is just what I already wrote, what Mari & I know: can't make him; anyhow, have a parenting problem, not a school problem.  I mean, what might be useful is having him move out -- goodbye -- but we can't do that, either, since it is not legal.

Speaking of legal, you know, it feels like the grimmest foreshadowing that the only people, the only experts we have dealt with in a decade who recognize anything, who are helpful + reverent + compassionate,  are experts in the juvenille justice system.  It started way back 4 years ago with the boring chick who came by because my eavesdropping, ear-straining, childless neighbors are fucking douchebags, where the caseworker who finally showed with her appropriate Fourth Amendment credentials was v unimpressed by the realities behind what she disparaged as the allegations of know-nothings.  That went in a different direction into a paperwork problem after I pissed off a different administrator, but whatever -- I was never in trouble for hollering or bicep-gripping. 

Then, the young patrolwoman who came to take the report when he split last month also heard everything I have ever told, but she heard what I was saying for what it is, for what it means in the world, not something we can uselessly attribute to an acronym for continued, useless spending.  The patrol officers who brought him home hours later also jacked him up a little about crimes of passion + how he should understand that discretion can be the better part of valor.  That was before they invited Mari & me to press charges, which I voted down with a tiny gesture not unlike when Ashley Judd's character advises that of Val Kilmer in Heat.  They then talked with him of real consequences, boys' homes, misdemeanors, restitution.  They all three have dropped by since to see what was what and how it is.  Fine. 

Kowalski, a couple of nights ago, asked why we did not send Garçon to military school.  I had to explain to Kowalski that this is not the 80s, old guy.  Military school does not want the loser kids and rejects any more.  Military school wants top dollar to turn out a high-achieving, motivated, college-bound student, like every other private school in America.  Plus which, I am pretty sure that no boarding school would take my kid because of his allergies.  It has made sleepaway camp needlessly difficult to sort out, especially since an accidental exposure to a couple of his allergens will turn him into a rage machine.  (Bad stewardship.  Not fair.)

 

Apparently, Dr Bombay thought we were a couple of homeschooling demagogues -- We don't want our son mingling with! We are controlling the influences! We blahblahblahblah!  I mean, maybe a teensy bit, as far as the maintenance and non-assault of our little Ophelia goes, but if we were so concerned with that kind of perfect environment, we sure the fuck would not have our son & daughter here together, since he is exactly the kind of disruptive prick no one wants on their kid's playground.  

I mean, Fille has got her eyes firmly fixed on what homeschool's flexibility allows her -- she does her work, she meets expectations of time-management and self-care, she applies herself to her obligations and devises productive goals of her own for the rest of  her time.  She has a terrible, internal situation right now where she feels as if she is wrecking the curve & showing off, grinding her brother's head beneath her heel, every time she is just herself.  I fully expect her to take her dance education, her art projects, and her careful documentation to a ballerina boarding-school program in a few years.  We will wish the best for her when she goes.  And we will miss her.

I started out writing (not really having sat down to write any of this, god) that I never meant to write about Garçon here, that it started while lulled into a period of relative ease with him during which parenting him started to resemble regular parenting.  It was nice.  Ice broken, the writing turned in tone as a. things did not stay aloft and b. my despair started to overfill our capacities to chat about it, plus also my willingness, as for the most part, I am sure tired of making my mouth say all the words.   

I do not especially want to write about this here anymore, but having opened it up along the way, I feel a little trapped with his chronicle here, not unlike I feel trapped by him in our real life, like I have given over so much of my power to his rule.  I do not know what to do.  I mean, the next step is clear, but it's a doozy to consent to it and also how many things do we have to agonize over only to have the people be weaklings some more?  Because is that necessary?  For what?  It is never fucking helpful.  So maybe I should just sleep with the Summerhill book under my pillow.   I wish I were kidding. 

And here is the thing that makes me really angry about Dr Bombay's douchiness, and it is important, so I am going to bold it so that even if you lack attention skills and study habits or have never experienced having to read in entireity for content (in case you do, I'm saying), you will see it, for it is important:

We told her from the beginning that we were not feeling antagonistic toward him -- I mean, sure on the inside, but we were willing to squash that with a game face -- that we were not interested in tattling on him for past [whatever].  We told her that we all play a part in this dynamic and what we wanted was to have a professional to assist him in crafting his account and creating a space where he would be free to tell his side of the fucking story, because we want to hear it.  Obvsly he thinks there is a reason to act as he does, so what is it?  Tell.

 So the thing that was so ridiculous is that she was so not-listening and creating this crazy bi-level of nonexistent power in her attention and then, yk, the kids decided they hated her and a great, big 12-year-old boy (12!!) took all of her business cards off of her credenza and drew on every single one of them.  Which was shocking, until the day I realized they both hated her and at least thank God they did not pee anywhere on anything.  Or smear feces.  Jesus, God.

However, in an effort, ok, not to end on a suicidal note, I have some things to offer!  Going back to my nautical metaphor, it is true that after every 3-hour tour, we wind up in a unified position, like our little team is ready to start training for the America's Cup, motherfuckers!  Did you see us?  Did you?!, etc. 

I mean, that is a metaphor, obvsly.  But we are in an anti-Bombay allegiance, with another heaping helping of Fact: Another doctor says, based on what we all know to be an accurate report of your everyday behavior, that there is something wrong with you.  Also, I emerged from my profound, reverbative despondence with the recurring realization that Jesus, God, this kid has never been hired out and we have come so far and that is because of my relentlessness.  But, while I felt really energetic in the beginning of this, mostly,  I just feel sleepy.  But I also want to say that while I regard him as essentially a DIY parenting project, I never feel like I am doing this alone.  You are good people, and if you know, you know.  And if I have not said it, if you have not received yr physical artifact spelling out my regard for you -- thank you. 

I was kind of surprised when I looked over the years for that 5th anniversary post I did last week or whatever to see how many fun times there had been.  It was nice to remember -- for as I recently recited, I could not recall -- and it has been part of my reparative strategy in this helpless time -- Do you remember what Garçon said to you when you were so heartbroken about having the sharkmouth?  It was really the perfect thing, honey, what you said to her, do you remember?    For an example.

Dr. Bombay called a couple of days ago to follow-up & refer.  After I got done making fun of her ("Did yr tummyache go away yet?") I told her we would yes be thinking hard about doing something similar but different, and for which we don't need her administrative gate-pass.  She said, "I don't think that is a good idea."

"Well," I told her, "you're not a big thinker, so you don't get a thinker-vote."  Scha-wing!  Two times in one call!  Heaven!  Applause!  Clapping!    

There is this also just this one little thing.

 
 

He has stopped biting his nails.  This is huge, enormous, and something no one else could do for him.  As a former child-nail-biter and a decade-long chainsmoker I know this is something of an accomplishment.  I will sometimes, while we are sitting around, hold up his hand in front of his face & remind him of this, wonder to him of what else it is he is capable that we have not yet seen.  It is the bellwether of something, but who can say what.  Maybe he is just growing them to better snatch out my eye.

five by five

Puellae (Girls), 1992, Magdalena Abakanowicz. Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation to the National Gallery of Art, 1998.

I have been writing this little weblog for five years.  Alors.

One

1. I reference Marion Ravenswood, Karen Allen's character from Indiana Jones, for the first time.  There will never be a last. 
2. After reading the Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon book Plenty, I put our family on the 100-Mile Diet.  It remains.  After homeschooling, but before letting our children call us by our first names, it is among  the weirdest things we do. 
3. I teach myself to crochet.  For several weeks, in love with the one I'm with, I do nothing but crochet.  One square short of an afghan, I stop.
4. Fille & Garçon invent a game called Rope Zoom.  Garçon invents a disease called The Gribbles.  Yes.
5. After a lot of processing, and over Mari's scoffing, I buy a baby sling to carry a 5-year-old.  She will require it two months later when I give her the chicken pox.

Two

1. We retire the wooden play kitchen and I reconcile the truth in my experience of mothering with marketing's insidious fantasies.  Everyone turns out mostly-fine. 
2. Garçon starts in the league of classical guitarists.  Fille switches to an appropriately-Soviet ballet school.
3. I knitted socks, which were so complex in their reverberative physicality I had to knit another pair to spread the meaning over four socks, for who wants one pair to be so heavy? 
4. We visited Maine, but not before I drove the children all on my own as far as Boston.  This achievement will fortify me forever.  J'adore. (Also, I learned how to show my photos in size large.)
5. We fought the law, but more importantly, we stood our ground against the patriarchy and the complacency of dominant culture.  We won.

Three

1. Fille broke her arm.  Because of this I got to drive a BMW (omg vroom forever) and we (again) have a lesson in what a badass we have in a daughter.
2. I knit a lotta baby stuff.  Booties!  Hat + booties!  Mittens +  booties!  Blanket + booties!  Also, my own baby learns to knit her own stuff, too.
3. Cake Mind settles in, but by year's end I have dispatched it permanently as a febrile affliction.
4. Charlie, I almost went crazy when Mario got busted.
5. What began as a coy tease led to the abjuring of my weakness in sweetness for 40 days.  It was grueling, the privation, but did not kill me and I am one million times stronger + smarter for it. 

Four

1. I crash my bicycle and spend the summer on crutches, sure, but what next?  The ensuing summer-long crisis in identity for my whole family, sunburns, confusion about who cleans what, and what means clean, etc.
2. Fille embarks upon the primary series of the Vaganova syllabus and all that exertion for us all, not to mention the having to listen to other mothers' complaining.
3. I skip all my classes that fall to lie around in Postseason Baseball's apartment, making out with him and always losing my bra on the floor.  He shows me his pink diamond and mostly I just compare him to a bunch of other dudes I've known.  Then I get back to my gal pals plus also: stunt driving.
4. There is a lot of snow that snows.  I vacillate between cranky, ecstatic and maudline, but am in all directions homesick (for Wisconsin!).
5. Sewing comeback, featuring despair, a lot of mechanical ineptitude, a dress for Fille, a bunch of other finished projects of the sort I generally knit, but whiz-bang sewing is faster.  As was the case with crocheting, one can hardly pay me to touch that machine again.

Five

1. I find out bereft is the past participle of bereave and my old friend Suse will be forever 39.  I review all remaining relationships with a practiced + cynical eye.
2. Half of the way through my 15th year of wedded bliss, I finally get rid of my wedding gown.
3. We replace our kitchen countertops and clothes dryer, heralding both an examination of marital processes & divisions of labor plus also including the woodstove project and also the painter, opening a season of contractors working in our home.  (Charlie, I almost went crazy.)
4. Iris, my 21-year-old cat, careens stiffly to her end and I subsequently blog of almost nothing but cats for months.
5. We head home to Chicago, traveling with the children all across I-80, I-90, and Ohio's Hwy 2, surveying their ancestral homeland for 11 days.