la femme follette

pulsing

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

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

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

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

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

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

quiet endings

We had a graduation thing to go to today, for a workshop session Garçon has been in, lo, these 8 weeks.  There was a paper that came home to me -- how many people, what would I bring, etc.  There was a Sign-Up to Bring Checklist, and I got flustered by it, then forgot about it.  Later, Garçon told me he signed me up to bring crudités + fruit salad. 

I thought that was weird, since the list had choices on it like cookies, brownies ... cheese & crackers, things that people would surely bring that he could not eat in their most common variety but which I could sub with none the wiser.  But, whatever.  Also, fruit salad?  What?  Why?!  Chopping?  Nuts?  Peeling?  Melon??  Still April, fruit salad!

Garçon said, this morning, while I was puzzling around the Costco, "Maybe you should just make the one with the blueberries and the oranges."

I was pert when I reminded him he can not eat oranges.  He said, "Mom, it doesn't matter.  You make so many good foods that people enjoy eating, and I can always eat more of yr cooking."

Flatterer!  Scoundrel!  This comes right on the heels of my bittersweet realization that every year both children are allowed whatever it is they want to eat for supper on their birthdays, and they have never ever asked to go out to eat.  I mean, we go out to eat, and even for special occasions, but for their birthday dinner they always present me with a long, handwritten list of homecooked favorites to eat all at once.  (sweet!) This is another way in which they drain the life from me. (bitter!)

 
 

But the salad is dead easy, definitely in the Make & Take file.  I do not even remember from wherever this knowledge was transferred to me.  Pour one pint blueberries into a bowl, add 1 can drained mandarin oranges.  Sprinkle over a heavy snow of slivered almonds, toss.  Sprinkle with a haze of sugar, maybe a little lemon.  It doesn't hold up for a long time, but it is good while it lasts.  It makes a fantastic summertime dessert.  Or, potluck fruit salad in April.    À bientôt!   

glug

Pollen Count: Buried Alive! 

Man, how awful!  Monday I had a sore throat, which caused me some concern, but I did not feel run down or like I was getting ill.  Then it was 90 degrees and I was so miserable and sweaty because I did not know it was going to be so warm and there was driving and I had kind of a headache, which responded to 800mg of Advil, so I went to bed at the regular time & did not think about it any more.

 

I know, this is dull, right?  But seriously.  Today I woke up, yk, and felt ok for about 5 minutes, until I started taking the deep breaths of the horizontal people of the world.  Then, after calling Mari to regretfully alert him to my impending demise, and also taking a super (!!!) phone call from Lillo (fingers crossed!), I turned my eyes toward choosing between allergy remedies.

Is the active ingredient in Allegra part of what was in Fen-Phen?  Or Phen-Fen?  I could only find Allegra-D, Allegra-Baby, Zyrtec, and Claritin-24hr.  I just took the Claritin, even though I wanted a D so bad.  I tried to think about which neighbor I might know who could have crystal meth, because it's in there, right?  Anyhow.  Riveting.  Read on!

Once medicated, I laid down again and pretty much slept all day.  I think it was around noon that I considered the possibility that I had the flu, but no.  Just drowning in pollen.

In keeping with my new pledge to eat, I did force down some food.  I was resentful & cross about my stupid body, being so susceptible and then also so requiring of sustenance besides, hiss.  But when I thought about what I wanted to eat, I was so glad to know I had the ingredients downstairs.

I sent the Israeli a text.  Spreading the bread of affliction on with peanut butter.  He tends toward matzo literalism.  These gluten-free matzo can't even go on the seder plate.  Whatever, yum. 

I feel better tonight, but still pretty wiped out.  I have located the Claritin-D, so will make that switch in the morning.  It's a bigger pill, so taking it will be more satisfying to my psyche, anyhow.  I have high hopes!  xox

serenity

I knew that once I linked feeling bananas to my radio silence, there would be auditing.  Mostly, I feel like I feel fine, busy, birthdays, trips,  etcI would like to build a bonfire & pitch everything in our home right into it, but fine. 

I have not yet made it back to the gym.

I was catching up with Kowalski this morning between this & that (some kind of a day where before 10 a.m. I had already crashed a men's room in the interest of not wetting my pants), and I told him I would probably flesh out the thing we were touching on someday here, if ever I felt like documenting again, whenever the day might come.  I mean, I feel fine, is what I was explaining to him.  We just had an incredible vaca on top of my good, clarifying Lenten action & I feel like I might write in a lucid + revealing + secret-whispering way, yk, in that way that I like to whisper secrets right into yr ear while typing on the worldwide web, but I was not feeling like it.

He offered that maybe I was turning into a new person who no longer obsessively documented.  Before that chat, I was going to bring Creeley to my national poetries again -- relevant as Creeley's cagey candor always is to me and especially in the face of all the hardcore loving raining down upon me this last week or so -- and then Kowalski brilliantly changed the earworm from Must/ I think of everything/ as earned to in my plan to be myself/ I became someone else, so you can laud him or not whatever xo

	Lisa Jarnot - Brooklyn Anchorage
	Found at Brooklyn Anchorage on KOhit.net

Brooklyn Anchorage
Lisa Jarnot

and at noon I will fall in love
and nothing will have meaning
except for the brownness of
the sky, and tradition, and water
and in the water off the railway
in New Haven all the lights
go on across the sun, and for
millennia those who kiss fall into
hospitals, riding trains, wearing
black shoes, pursued by those
they love, the Chinese in the armies
with the shiny sound of Johnny Cash,
and in my plan to be myself
I became someone else with
soft lips and a secret life,
and I left, from an airport,
in tradition of the water
on the plains, until the train
started moving and yesterday
it seemed true that suddenly
inside of the newspaper
there was a powerline and
my heart stopped, and everything
leaned down from the sky to kill me
and now the cattails sing.

when morning comes twice a day.

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

  

  

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

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

Mk 9, 49

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Je t'embrasse.  Enjoy yr wkend.    

pie; maybe pancake

 

sopa

I made this soup for the first time about a yr ago: as soon as it came in my Whole Living email.  Fille & I hate quinoa as much as Garçon loves the stuff, but I try to remain open to it.  That is what Fille hilariously says about so many ingredients -- I don't like [whatever] but I remain open to it.  She makes me laugh.

The thing is, though, the soup was awful.  Dishwatery & loose.  The first night the three of us were sampling it, Fille declared it to need tomato paste.  She was right; I knew it as soon as she said it, but testing bore it out.  Tomato paste, what a smarty!

 

Prettier photos have been shot.

I asked Garçon in November, when we were having it for dinner at Sal's (low points!), "How many days in a row could you eat this?"  I know that because of his age he is hungry all of the time, but because of his restrictions, he can't just drink up gallons of milk or eat a billion sandwiches, so that means I am more involved in a billion meals per day than I would like.  I wanted something I could keep in the fridge/freezer, something full of protein & vitamins that he could gobble as freely as he liked. 

"Every day, Mom.  I could eat it 590 days in a row."

Oh, ok, good!  Great! 

Black Bean & Quinoa Soup

Chop an onion.  Also, chop 3 or 4 cloves of garlic and as many carrots as you want.  I like 3.  Also, I no longer peel carrots to put them in soup.  Too busyworker!  Warm 2 tablespoons olive oil and dump the vegetables in with a couple of teaspoons of salt and just sweat them a little.  Ok, a lot.  Poke around.

Add one teaspoon of cumin.  Also, add 2tsp chili powder if you have it.  If you do not, just use 1tsp of paprika or smoked paprika or a smidge of cayenne and black pepper or whatever.  Add 1tsp of oregano, which, if you don't have oregano ... I dunno what to tell you.   Lather in 2 or 3 tbspful of tomato paste.  Stir & stir until mixed up.  Turn the heat down because the sugar in the tomatoes will burn, but when you smell it all caramelly, it's time to move along. 

Add one quart of water or broth or love the one you're with; also one 14-oz can of tomatoes and a chipotle chili canned with the adobo sauce.  I never use that, because adobo usually has wheat or corn or soy or something.  I usually use the chipotle salsa, I just dump the whole jar in, which checks out label-wise for us, but do your own thing. 

Add 1/2 cup quinoa, 2c cooked black beans (which is one 15-oz can + a smidge of the second, I believe, or do it yrself*), bring it to a boil, cover & simmer for about 15-20 minutes.  Garnish with spring onions, cilantro, olive oil, red onions, parsley, chip-strips, epazote, nopales, whatever.  It is soup.  Go crazy.

 

*Cooking yr own dried black beans:  Open the bag & rinse.  Add to a pot with 3qts water.  Add two bay leaves & a handful of cumin seeds if you want.  Maybe chuck in a whole onion.  Boil the hell out of them until they are done.  Hold with cooking liquid to cover in the fridge or freezer.  Easy. 

differences

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

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

Also yummy:

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

fast five

This manicure will not come off. 

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

 We are, generally, on to holiday decorations. 

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

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

Who is at that party in the mirror?

 

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

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

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

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

 

take a picture, it'll last longer

We ran out of things to do ("ran out," I mean.  You know) so we did a test run of Fifille's stage makeup.  Mostly because she is going to have to learn to do it herself.  I kept saying, "Watch carefully!  There will be a test!"  It felt like a test, there was a long list of cosmetic recipe to follow:  foundation! charcoal lid shadow, brown in the crease!  eyeliner!  lippie!  rouge!  ("rouge?")

Thank God I have all the world's makeup in my bag!  Except rouge (?) and I just used lip stain.  And waterproof mascara.  I'll have to buy some, it seems. 

She could not stop looking at herself forever. 

She said, finally, exuberantly and with great satisfaction, "I look so sinister ... like a villain!"  This is how everyone can know she is ours. 

After lunch, weary of her distraction, I told her to take that stuff off her face, before her mother saw her.  She is such a fervent, Hollywood-style stalker!  She knew right away to go and get the  California Baby's Baby Shampoo!   Yes!  I am reminded of when I last saw the aesthetician at the plastics office and she asked, casually, what I used at home to take off my eye makeup and when I told her ("Baby shampoo!"), she was all, "No, seriously."  I said, "Yah, I am!"  Fuck it, my optometrist told me to use baby shampoo.  She almost fainted from all the disapproval, but my eye-guy told me true.  Best lid wash ever! 

Ok, Nutcracker Mines.  Bye!

 

metaspherical

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

 

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

Anyhow.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No accidents, honey!"

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

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

wheel in the sky

Last year, on the final Friday of October, instead of going to Ballet Town, we waited around the house for the vet to make her housecall and euthanize Iris, my spooky Halloween cat.  It was quiet & dignified, the very best use of an obscene sum of money that we have ever made. 

 

A couple of weeks ago, in bed, Mari shifted his ankle away from mine, kind of wound in the blankets, and it reminded me -- something about it-- of the way Iris would shift her weight around.  I remember the first night she wasn't here: Mari had just gotten home from the office and it was the right time for her to start fussing & yowling, reminding us about bedtime, but it was so quiet, and there were real tears.  It was funny, how we missed her.  We expected her and she was not there. 

Because God is good, by the end of the next week we had a whole family of cats, some of them spookily, Halloweenly, orange-and-black.  Some of them died, too, but not until closer to Valentine's Day.  

I was glad to have the Universe's loaner cats, to have the distraction, but equally glad to see them all gone.

 

Anyhow.  It is peculiar that she came to her end at the edge of Halloween, how Halloween will always remind me of her, how Halloween and all of its days around it & observances about it are for remembering the dead, anyhow.  I was reading something, I can not remember what, it was a magazine, I think -- someone said, The dead are not gone, they are here but they are different.  I thought that was pretty great. 

I hope you have happy memories of the people and personalities you most want to remember.  À la prochaine.

 

part of you pours out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

 

Let them sort it out amongst themselves.  

 

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

 

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. 

piece of cake

Mari replaced the oven thermostat this weekend, after which repair I was immediately inspired to apply myself to the task of replacing a major appliance.  In my head, mostly, but before -- when the oven was nonfunctioning -- I was unable to even consider such a step.  (I think -- based on a cursory pre-shop --  a major problem is going to be getting the appliance upgrade I want in white.)  

Then I was inspired to bake a cake. 

 

Actually, I had moved into cake's space already. 

There were the prettiest Italian plums at the market on Saturday, when I was on my way home with my Extra Girl.  I bought them, intending to cap the exciting-yet-easy company dinner with the David Tanis plum cake.  It is a nice, easy cake, it would offset the richness of the lamb, and be a staid, sober, non-sugary end to the day.  It is totally the cake you want yr child to have a big piece of before bedtime.  Also, it does not hold well, so better to have extra people to eat it more quickly.    

I totally had all this come together in my head and not once did I remember about the oven being broken.  Until we got home and I mentioned my plan to Mari.  If you can believe it, he did not instantly redirect himself to the repair!  I know. 

 

Today is rainy & chilly, with lots of barefootedness, desultory paperworking, obligatory catching up & relationship building with my favorite + best, taking phone calls from cranky people with mandolins, and leftover soup for lunch.  Today my oven works.  Good, because after the bestie catch-up (so great!) and halfway through the lunchtime mandolin encounter (so wtf?!), I needed a piece of cake.  It was too early for a gimlet. 

 

It will again be too early tomorrow morning, but I think this simple, high-protein cake works for breakfast, too.

Italian Plum Cake 
adapted from A Platter Full of Figs, etc by David Tanis

Melt 4tbsp butter.  Cut parchment to fit the bottom of a 10-inch, springform pan, and use more butter on all of that, too.  Turn the oven to 350. 

Slice a buncha regular Italian plums into thick slices.  His recipe calls for 2lbs, but I barely used 1/2lb.  (I used 11.)  If you don't know, you can just cut around the pit & push it out, like a knothole.  (I did not know that, once, apologies if you were born with the knowledge.) Set the slices aside.  

Put one cup whole, unskinned almonds in the food processor with 1/2 cup sugar (you know what I like:) rrrr-rrr-rrrr-rr-rrrr till finely ground.  It is going to be a lot of rrrr but keep pulsing & checking to make sure you are not making almond butter.  Add 1/3 cup flour (I used millet, because it is delicately-flavored and soft) and keep whirling until it is all whirled together.  Let it be.

In a large bowl, beat 2 eggs long enough to mix the whites + yolks.  Mix in 1/2 cup milk (I used "So Delicious" coconut today; I have used goat's in the past -- this is a love-the-milk-you're-with situation) until uniform.  Add  the 4tbsp melted butter.  Stir and stir.  Kind of sift over the almond mixture while whisking & forking & stirring to make a smooth batter. 

Pour the batter into the prepared springform pan.  Arrange the plums on top.  It turns out a pretty cake, so you will not waste yr time by trying to arrange them prettily. 

On the other hand, there is a pretty good chance you will break it on the dismount, so don't knock yrself out.  Bake for 40-45 minutes -- watch the edges to tell you when it is done.  And the toothpick-test, if that is yr thing. 

I forgot -- until I pulled this from the oven -- that the last time I made this cake I thought about next time pouring the batter over the fruit instead of placing the fruit atop.  Next time.      

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!   

had

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

screw

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 

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

Mari is in Washington.

"Are the kids here?" 

 No, they are at the park. 

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

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

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

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

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

Ahahaha!  À bientôt!                   

gen 2:2

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

Anyhow.  For yr persual:

 

Lounging, squeezily.

 

 
 

Chard in the standard Eggplant Dish. (Excellent!)

 

 
 

Hairs cut!

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

upgrade

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

 
 

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

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

 

Wonderful!  Yes.  Dreams do come true!

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      

lemon melon

I know, I know.  But things are really busy & what I have time for is a late-July still-life. 

 
 

It reminds me of when the kids were babies -- they must have been one & three -- riding in the back seat, when Garçon sadly handed the watermelon paleta I had given him over to Fifille -- I can't eat this, Fifille, it has lemons in it.  There used to be little bits that burned brighter.

Alex & I were talking a couple of days ago -- so retro to each have the other's voice coming out of our texting device.  I told him I had to go back & write about this kid stuff, but that was like three weeks ago already.  We agreed that, ideally, blogging is just for going forward, man.  Like a shark.  Keep eating, keep moving.  I wish I were an octopus, instead.

Fille is reading Animal Farm, which I am pretty sure is going to take the same shape as Garçon's reading of Old Man & The Sea.  It will seem like a book about animals, chatting.  Like the Arthur show, but with backstabbing.

independence

This weekend is all about declaring what we want. 

No, we don't want to come to yr barbecue.  No, thank you, we don't want to see your township's parade.  No, we have our own pool we are avoiding, due to the excessive gaiety, but you have a good time, thanks for calling.  No, I am a little bit like a worrying puppy, in that children with sparklers and drunk people with roman candles freak me out.  Thank you.  Thank you all.

Last I checked, Mari was napping, Garçon is at least not destroying anything, and Fifille is reading the entire Laurence Yep oeuvre.  I am alternating between still knitting, still re-reading Of Human Bondage.  Also, still baseball, obviously. 

 

Ok, so, actually, what my son is purportedly doing is reading from a large stack of biographies I dropped on him last week at the library -- Spielberg, Bill Gates, Jim Henson, Walt Disney.  You read these -- good God, this child, où est mon auréole? -- these life stories of people whose work you know and admire, and you tell me the minute you find the part where someone handed everything to them, where someone said,"Omigosh!  I'm so happy, you were just lying here on yr bed doing nothing and resenting everyone who asked you to do anything!  I wonder if I could prevail upon you to take over this barge of my hard work and steer it into the grand port of success."  Then you can tell me about how your father and I are wrong.  Start reading. 

Right?  I mean, and then of course, I bit my lip, because shit!  There was a Walt Disney bio in there!  Laughing forever, but it was very sanitized and they skipped over the part where he was a cheater and a thief.  Oh, Uncle Walt. 

There is more, with him, always more with him, but for now, yk, as long as he isn't bothering me I am perfectly happy to treat him like the roommate who never pays the gas bill and drinks all the fucking milk without ever replacing it.  Yes.

I did point out to him last week that in his weakness -- parenting catchphrase #9,236,762 If you display your weaknesses, your enemies will exploit them -- he has put himself in a position where anyone can destroy (or break, gobble up, use without permission, etc) absolutely anything in our home and then blame it on him and he wouldn't have a leg to stand on, because no one would believe he had not. 

"Why would they do that?" he wanted to know, very sincerely baffled.  Oh!  Everyone!  He is so young!  And it is so hard to remember that he is a child, when he acts like a monster, but Jesus, God.   

So, I asked him, "Don't you think that ever yr sister might like to have some bad behavior?  And better, to not get into trouble for it?"  I mean, she would never.  Not yet.  I can see her wheels turning, and who could blame her? 

While I could tell he was processing this, I asked him if he remembered the story of Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla -- that there are people who feel v strongly that Edison stole the light bulb from Tesla.  (Mari and I are two; it is one of the things that he overheard me say that made him go, "That girl is completely hot, excuse me.")  He did.  I asked him if he knew how Edison was able to be able to be in a position to steal the light bulb from Tesla. 

"He said he made it and everyone believed it, because everyone knew he could make it," he told me, unselfconsciously.

I affirmed, and underscored that yes, inventing the light bulb was completely within Edison's capacity.  Then I asked him, Would you not rather have the sum of your actions add up to people believing you could obvsly do something amazing than something obvsly wretched? 

They say, in goofy, old Waldorf education, that when the lesson is spread out before the child, your job is to shut it.  So I shut it --even though, I mean, if you have kids, you know, it is so tempting to rattle on & on .. "Blah, blah, blah, integrity, blah blah blah, who you are starts with what you do, blahblahblah."  But I zipped it.  :|

But Mari, who was in the next room, was already texting me, OMIGOD, did you just do that on mommy improv?

Yes.  I parent my face off with this kid, never actually thinking more than idly of that page from Joe Kennedy's book where is the lobotomy lesson.  Où est mon auréole? 

Have a happy birthday, K!  (Shhh! xoxo)

le weekend

This weekend was more roses, rose admiration. 

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Anyhow.

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

Gracie's calico markings are deceiving. 

 
 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Lentil Salad, first of spring edition

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

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

Allez!   

lev 19:15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

may flowers

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

Look at who else is here.

 

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

pie: out like a lamb edition.

 
 

all the king's men

This was the scene in my dining room Wednesday morning.

 

It has been the scene in my dining room for a couple of weeks -- since the Feb 7th or 9th or something?  But the last contractor left & took all his things on Monday evening and I was free to restore our living space.  Tuesday we were kind of dizzy with possibility and also running a few errands and the like, plus the floor in the utility-ish room that we have was too filthy with crumbled drywall (from the electricians) and sanded plaster (from the painter) that we had to stop & clean that up.

I say we, but I mean that I had to supervise Garçon crawling around with a scrub brush.  Because why should I?  He is young, he has nothing else to do.  Why should I climb around on the floor scrubbing plus also make 21 meals every week?  Right!  Anyhow.

Wednesday, I puttered around a little, not even really knowing where to begin, feeling down.  So I went to get a massage.  It was 10 in the morning, the kids were all mid-morning set, I had finished a bowl of oatmeal and a pot of tea and I called Reagan Baby.  "Hi, I'm going to get a massage.  Do you want to come with?"

She did.  Then I lied to my children -- Reagan Baby broke her right leg a month ago -- and told them I was taking Reagan Baby to a doctor's appointment and then to run some errands and I would be back in 2.5 hours.  But, a massage is kind of like a doctor's appointment and we did stop at the pharmacy on the way home, so it was not a total lie, but anyhow. 

Anyhow, then I got home and I still made not one move to restore my home.  Part of it is that I am feeling very get it out of here about a lot of the stuff that came out of the kitchen and the hallway to make room for the painting & the scaffolding & the stuff. 

The other part of it is that I am feeling very what's the point about it, because part of the problem is that some of what is in the dining room, taking up a buttload of space, is my brand-new Pilates Reformer (get a dubious diagnosis for a neuromuscular condition & run with it), still in the crate.  It needs to be unpacked for permanent residence in the room heretofore known as the playroom.  In order to do that, first we have to re-site the books and bookshelves in that room and then it just all turns into a killer octopus and you wonder if you can turn it into butter.  Like the tiger.  So, you see, then.

 

I swear I would have had a repeat of luxurious, craven uselessness today but for that we had a leaking-in-the-walls plumbing crisis.  My God.  I had to wait around for a plumber, the same one who was here last week to fix a different problem in the same bathroom, same leaking-in-the-walls kind of a thing, and I was so happy that in my nervous paralysis I had not restored the bathroom since his visit last week (groceries in living room, bicycles in dining room, bath shelving in hallway because whole bedroom is still crammed into office), so that was good, but today, after today, things were going to start to return to ship-shape around here.

 

 

So I kind of took care of a little of that.  Putting big things back where they belong and pooh-poohing needless things and getting ready to give them away.  Then I made a fire and laid on the sofa and accidentally fell asleep at 4.

Mari called.  The kids told him I was asleep, which he thought was strange until he found out it happened in front of the fire.  When I called him back, while I was making supper, he was all,  "Where did you get the logs to put in the stove?"

"Oh," I said.  "So you admit to not leaving me any split wood?"

Oh, snap!  He asked if I had Garçon do it.  I laughed -- our son is weak.  He asked if I did it -- I do not even know how, and I was still laughing, because did I get married to an Eagle Scout so I could split wood?  No, is the answer to that question.  He asked if Fille did it, which was the least ridiculous idea he had yet, and I told him.

There were those big, dry, stumpy pieces of cut logs, you know?  He did. I threw them down the porch stairs onto the sidewalk and they broke into thirds and quarters.  Then I asked Fille to go and bring it in.

No wonder I was so tired.  The loss of infrastructure, the extra visual stimulation of the chaotic house.  The lack of order to cling to -- the only proof!  That I am not actually having a nervous breakdown!  Mari will be home this weekend.  We should make good progress together, getting behind the mule and all that.  I am sure I will be happy when it is all put back the way it goes. 

 

Thank God for the bulbs.  I put them in this Stangl dish a couple of weeks ago and it reminds me of how it used to be, how things really are, behind the GLOOM AND DOOM AND MISPLACED ITEMS.