la femme follette

wherein I repeat myself a bunch. bonus prizes!

This is my 500th post, and it was about to feel monumental to me, so I am going to use it to write more about 2009's music, since on such a momentous occasion, Alex will go easy on me, if at all. I know!  I thought about doing a thingo where I say, "oh, leave a comment and I will randomize you to win a package of photo postcards," etc, but if you read this old thing & you want me to know that you read it, you probably already know where to email me & ask for a package and I probably already have yr mailing address, so good work!  Congratulations!

Anyhow, music of 2009:  I just feel like I have more to say about it, which is not like me to leave a bunch of stuff unwritten. 

  

First of all, there were several songs that I overlooked, that came up on other people’s year-end lists, and I thought, “Oh, god! I forgot about that song! I really liked that!” The thing about 2009 -- I think I wrote about this the other day -- was that it seemed like everything was good, almost nothing was exciting, and pretty much all of it was way above average.

So, there was just this onslaught of really good music, all of it likeable and it was a tough year to say, “I liked that better than the rest! Wow.” Everyone exceeded expectations at the very same level, I thought, even the new bands, who were likable and -- this was another problem -- all sounded like each other. BellX1 sounds like Fanfarlo, sounds like Metric, sounds like Animal Collective, sounds like Miike Snow, sounds like The Killers, sounds like Tegan and Sara, sounds like the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, sounds like Bat for Lashes, sounds like Dirty Projectors, etc.

Maybe this is the definition of the generation gap, where the kids all sound the same. But I did not have this problem in 2008 when Kings of Leon did not sound anything like Fleet Foxes, who sounded nothing like MGMT, who were totally different from Brazilian Girls. I can tell Death Cab from Weezer from the Decemberists! Hell, even all of Jack White’s side projects sound totally different from each other!

There is a fashion right now for heavy chorals and orchestral anthems and … I think it is fine, these musicians are all very talented and earnest, but, for example, I believe I would have been much more taken by Fanfarlo if Fleet Foxes had not beaten them to the studio.  It is unlikely, but also we will never know. The good news is that everyone in this style has outshined Coldplay, so phew! 

The number one song (of 100) on our semi-local public radio station’s listener-elected, year-end countdown was the Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes song, “Home.” While it is a fine song, it is astonishingly over-the-top in a Rodgers & Hammerstein direction. I like it, it has whistling, Mari and I sing it in its parts to each other when it is on the radio or when we are bored, it is sweet and has a rowdy Pogues-ish messiness, but that it would be number one is just illustrative of how gosh-darn all righty likeable the year in music was.

Also, I was thinking of music in general because at the same time I was quantifying my end-of-year list, I had slung together that 80s mix, which was very, yk, In the Beginning because of my age, and music is just so different now. I was struck by how -- and I had not listened to an awful lot of the music I put on that CD in 15 years -- energetically solution-oriented the music seemed. It was very overt and serious without being grim and also, with a lot of team spirit, the Team of Humanity.  It was very human without being too egalitarian, or maybe I have that inverted.  Possibly I have it all wrong, but the music was different, like the difference between a Maserati and a MiniCooper.   

One of the songs I forgot from my first list was Lily Allen's "The Fear," which when I first heard it months & months ago, reminded me so much of an updated version of Madonna's "Material Girl."  It felt very much to me like the same impulses, the same social-developmental quandaries, the same youthful oversight, just imported into this new century and thus entirely different. 

I wrote a while back -- this year, in fact, while more toward the bottom of this drift of really shiny, likable music -- that the problem w 21stc rock & roll is no one's high as kites or losing pals to junk or has endured a childhood under the Luftwaffe. Apartheid and the Cold War are over, too. And we need to think about this, going forward, because maybe the world is no longer bleak and we can not define music by the same benchmarks we have previously. Maybe rock & roll as we have always known it -- born of segregation and Liverpudlian exotique and dancing -- is just dead, undone by the loss of regionalism and the concurrent secularization + franchising of the globe.

Also, sound! The way the music sounds! We watched I Love You, Man, a few weeks ago, and the saddest, most right-on part of the movie is when Paul Rudd’s character is trying to explain Rush to his girlfriend (played by Quincy Jones’s daughter, ironically), and he fires it up & tries to get her to grok it from his tinny laptop audio. Rush on a MacBook, seriously?  Who ever would have imagined? I swear. So, maybe now that everyone has teeny little earbuds and laptop speakers, maybe this other audiophiliac stuff – which used to be super-important 35 years ago -- no longer matters. I can not say. Not tonight anyhow.

The nine 2009 songs I overlooked while quantifying and sorting and choosing I just threw up onto the 8tracks right here.  They are:

"Backwards Down the Number Line," Phish
"Periodically Double or Triple," Yo La Tengo
"Pale Horses," Moby
"500 Miles," Rosanne Cash
"Black-Hearted Love," PJ Harvey with John Parish
"Just Breathe," Pearl Jam
"Hearing Damage," Thom Yorke
"The Fear," Lily Allen
"Nothing to Worry About," Peter Bjorn & John

How nice that 2010 is starting with this long weekend! Enjoy!

gerda. st paul. too many metaphors.

It is so tempting to chalk 2009 up to the lessons of my bicycle crash.  I want to.  But I am an overthinker plus a reflector, so nothing is so straightforward, like, ever.  Plus, everything since my accident has seemed so on-the-inside, even as I go around, chattering and clattering and taking photos and baking. 

Plus, just the injury took up a quarter of the year.  Three months.  Poof.  I have spent a lot of time keeping busy and making things.  Eating cake for breakfast.  It is funny, because when I was looking at photos from the year to reprise for this post, I could not remember any of them taken after the crash, really.  I still feel quite lost, but I am trying to make the road, to walk it.

 

Oh, the bicycle!  The ride to the farmers' market!  So like the flight of Icarus!  But with a weekend trip to the emergency room and a prescription for a billion pills of a Schedule II narcotic, immediately slated for off-label use.  There was the upset of the smooth running of our household, the lessons the children were overdue to learn in autonomy, the frustration of not being able.  The letting and the asking are so, so huge for me.  2008's lesson in its mysterious, paraplegia-mimicking illness was about letting and asking and how many people would love me if only I would let them. 

 

At the very end of 2008, this time last year, exactly right about now, I was thinking of how I had been sullen and resentful and sad about my family, thinking of how they disrupted my right to a self-destructive autonomy.  While I was quantifying and reflecting and all that, it occurred to me for the very first time that they had taken nothing from me, but had in fact given me a whole bunch of other things.  That the lights in the harbor did in fact now shine for me.  Holy moly!

Oh, but the 2-way street of giving!  The willingness and the letting!  The asking and the confessing and the wanting and the needing!  The adapting!  Gah!  Does anyone not realize how much the electricity bill will be from those old shiny harbor lights?!  This is a lesson I can tell will need to be taught again and again.  O, bicycle crash.

 

Remember before the bicycle crash?  When first, I had a holiday of heartache (and thank god those lights got turned on, because I needed them, while I was out there, bobbing on Gerda's ice floe, realizing I could not look for Kay with neither a motorboat nor a time machine), then when I gave up sweet talking for Lent?  When I realized on the fifth day of those 40 that I had not yet worn on even for one week and I cried real tears? 

It was hard, I realized, because I use such a goldmine of  gabbling to deflect an actual interchange of intimacy.  Like Wonder Woman's bracelets -- ching! ching! -- sweet talk kept me from having to reveal; in its lavishness and truth and good wishes it allowed me to buffer against.  2009 had started off pretty strong with a lot of out-loud and/or face-to-face ardency, from friends who were feeling tell-all and troubled. 

 

I am pretty coy, unless I have a pen in one hand or a keyboard beneath both.  But from the start of the year, there was a marked upswing in many friends' fluency in verbal expression of things interior.  Then, in late January, many of us were thrust into a rippling effect of distress in fulfillment -- me with the total Snow Queen Kay + Gerda fragility & derangement -- all being where we are and with what there is left, and is this survival of stoicism why we wanted to grow up?  Stupid.  But, we were now into a new delicacy in condition + a need for what is said when things stop going unsaid.   

When I would remark upon this New Vulnerability, I was told that I engendered this hothouse climate of confession.  Perhaps.  Though I found myself struggling to stay upright in the face of all the disclosure, and always from men -- Midwestern men, who think of themselves as so taciturn and gruff -- and every time so emotional and exposed.  So, I adopted this over-the-top eyelashing in response.  It distracted long enough for me to make a clean getaway.  Like a pretty, glittering smoke bomb. 

 

Mid-morning on Ash Wednesday, an old pal caught by the blade of a Hearst layoff  got it on with me in a rather extensive confession which, at its foundation, was just the strain of the human condition, but it was a little intense.  My reply started with delirious petting & eyelashery and halfway through the second paragraph, I felt the incredible feeling of feeling avoidant.  Disengagement is my superpower.  When I stopped to listen over all the racket of my reassurances, I heard that what I really needed to communicate to him was I know.  Me, too.  Here is how.  Could I really say that?  Oh, so engagement-y and too exposure!  But this was a friend, of course, I totally should!  Then I considered this mindblowing option:  what if I said nothing?  Holy crap.   

That was how I wound up staving off the weakness of sweetness for 40 days and nights.  It was really hard, to retire such a clangety cymbal.  There were milestone birthdays, more layoffs, rivalries, incurabilities, really poorly-timed pet death.  Oh, when Kowalski had to put his dog down, that was the worst, the worst of all of it, and all I could say was I am so sorry and stand by, listening -- with two hands clamped, clamped over my mouth so tightly -- while the rest of his story poured off, confessionally and full of who we are and what I know and why we endure, he and I.  God.  Lent is about making small sacrifices that represent a larger sacrifice, and it did not seem like much when I signed on for the privation, but oh, it burned. 

  

Paul (speaking of Paul, which I just was) wrote to the Corinthians that essentially, if they never shut up, they would never know love.  Too much talking.  But that if they shut up and listened, while people were speaking lovingly about love, then love would be revealed to them, and they would be a reflection of love.  But Midwesterners are tough in, on, and around love  ("Oh, I can't live without you.  Jesus, why can't I die already?") and honestly?  Gentlemen,  I just got the lights on in this harbor, do we have to start the fishing right away?  But coyness and calculation gave way to Frank O'Hara in the spring and there I was, recovered in the thaw.  Everything seemed ok, I was fine, everyone knew where they stood. 

But then, I crashed my bicycle.  I was benched for the entire summer, which meant -- among other things -- that I forswore all summertime visitation with my sweetest and oldest and truest pal the Israeli.  It meant the children had to learn to do things for themselves, it meant again with the asking and the letting and the admitting.  It meant that I had to try again to grapple with what Midwestern culture says about the inherent weakness of accommodating illness or injury and the shame I feel around letting and asking and the admitting. 

 

When I was finished, cleared and uncasted and returned to the long process of restoring myself for duty ... I could not remember what I had been doing before I got hurt.  I spent months feeling interrupted and interior and once I could sally forth again, I could not even remember why I had ever wanted to. 

I got upset one day on the yoga mat.  Well, it was first in the pool and then on the yoga mat.  In the pool, there were some hijinks on the far end of the lap pool and I had to get out from the deep end, and I did.  After 7 weeks on crutches, I was able to boost myself out of the pool easily, with no effort at all.  This is not how I am.  Who am I?  That was the first blow.

 

The second came the next day.  I thought I would run through a few sun salutations and blanked on the series of postures.  It was akin to losing my mind, the lapse, and it brought forth all kind of questions and answers and remainders that day, about hiding and recognizing and moving forward, going back, everything always being all-new.  The navigating the ways I was weak, but also had developed new strengths and I had better widen my view of who I was and which also torpedoes the idea of getting "back to my old self."  These things all feel so hard to me, so unnavigable and hard to confront. 

 

Toward the end of The Snow Queen, at the Finnish woman's house -- after the robber girl gives the reindeer to Gerda and they see the Lapland woman, who sends them with a note, written on a fish, to the Finnish woman -- the reindeer asks if the Finnish woman can not give Gerda some magic which will help her to rescue Kay.  Finnish woman says, basically, you know, no.  No, there is nothing more can be given to her.  She is only a child, but don't you see how she can coax man & beast, how well she gets through the world, in only her bare feet?

I think about that part of the story a lot -- I probably think about The Snow Queen more than I should admit to -- because I was a little girl who grew up in the dark, I should be like one of those fish, one of those in-the-dark blind-o-rama fish?  I am sure Alex would know what I mean.  But the point is that I have made it all this far along & just in my bare feet, with nothing but my eyelashes, and so what am I ever afraid of, anyhow?  The lights are on!  Let's fish!  Swim!  Sunbathe on a raft with cocktails!

 

In a sequence of events set in motion by my bicycle crash, I was mighty amazed to find myself late in the summer standing right in the Snow Queen's garden.  Kay is still captive inside.  It is not the same as I remember.  For one thing, this time, when the Robber Girl stole my muff, I cut her with her knife & took it back, along with her Ugg boots.  I kept her knife, too.  For another, by now, all these years later, Kay has been at the Snow Queen's palace for a long time.  He likes his new ice skates, and is grown up enough now to know, like the rest of us, that there is no reason to own the whole world -- there is distress in fulfillment and also in regret -- all the time we wasted on youth when we were young.  Ice skates are plenty good enough. 

 

Ever since, I have kind of been hanging back in the garden, with my lasting lessons of Lent, listening, thinking about grim calculation.  Also, the lasting lessons of an injury, the terror of making a comeback and the cultural forces that work against us and how our stoicism is confusing to the people we encounter away from home.  I remember what people have told me, in confidence, in confessions, and how they say what they say, and when what is unsaid needs to be lured forth.   As was the kernel of my distress at the onset of this year, I am not a little girl anymore.  It was distressing then, but now that I find myself here, I have to say, it is nice to have more tools than bare feet & angels.  Not that I require more for the job, but none of us any longer have the boundless faith of children, sadly. 

   
  
Sometimes I have something to say, something relating to engagement and not avoidance.  Frippery and flattery is dangerous where I stand now.  Very often there is nothing to say.  I sometimes point out how, you know, I used to come all this way barefooted and now I have come all this way again and how I am scared, too.  I might have mentioned about the helpfulness of the letting and the admitting.  It could end badly: I could die in the garden; Kay could drown on our way back home.  I could get tired of wrapping little notes around snowballs and chucking them through the Snow Queen's windows.  I might eventually get kind of cold.  

Was all of 2009 to get me right here?  It kind of adds up, but I can not say.  I mean, tomorrow is going to be 2010 and so who can know what is next.  Everything is always so new all the time.  But all the breakage and confusion and road rash and bruising and brooding and tears -- that kind of thing usually has some kind of purpose, sure, but to what end?  I probably do too much yoga to think straight.  But we continue to be ourselves, as Frank O'Hara wrote, everything continues to be possible.     

 
I know, right?  What the hell is she writing about??

Anyhow, speaking of possibility, which I just was:  Blue moon.  Get to work, no whining, on your long list.  Except for Australia, which does not have a blue moon.  You are excused, Ms Minty!  Happy new year to everyone!  Be safe!  Let's kiss!

new category

I want to document this dress project, such as I am able and willing, so as not to have it carrying over to 2010. 

 

Fille, my sweet girl, has a hard time finding dresses, really.  She is tall and quite slender, does not like frills, does not care for pastel colors, wants simple, clean lines without any frippery or patterning.  She and her brother dress very similarly day-to-day with the collective effect of a great blow against heteronormativity.  I have little to do with this, but it pleases me all the same.

At any rate, it is difficult to find a dress to fit her, with her aesthetic requirements coupled with mine of hem length and the fact that she likes her dresses to be sleeveless, even in winter.  Last year, she was shorter and we were lucky -- Boden made a velvet party dress that was modest, sleeveless, and came in a minky-brown color.  This year, we were not so lucky, and it occurred to me, paging through catalog after catalog, that I could make her dress myself.

As soon as I thought this, it was the stupidest idea I ever came up with.  But ... it was early November and I had plenty of time to do a little bit every day, and it should be fine.  I would counsel anyone who asked me about the best circumstances under which to stage a sewing comeback thusly:

• not on a deadline
• not for an event
• not during the holidays
• not on a dress-up dress
• not for a pattern which must be abridged on the fly, using two-decades-rusty skills

Ok.  So, that.  I would counsel anyone against all of that since that is what I did and it was a tiny bit more dramatic than I wanted my sewing comeback to be.  Also, the constant threat hanging over my head of unpredictable equipment malfunction.  The good news is, of course, that I have still got it.  Like riding a bike. 

I picked out a simple pattern for a sleeveless, plain-front bodice dress with a gathered skirt and buttons up the back.  Burda 9755, here.  I would like to take a moment to say, gathering.  Ugh.  I wanted the dress to have a lining, because it is so much more elegant and less-homemade-looking to have a lined dress than not and also it would drape better and plus, given all the deadline, etc, hijinks I was facing and the not loving my machine, I would not have to work so hard at finishing the inside edges. 

Also, I hate interfacing.  But that is another story.

Anyhow.  How it works to line a dress is overall like so:  Cut out two of everything, assemble + construct the skirts separately, leaving the bodices till the end.  Assemble the bodices, pin-basting everything, and sew the side seams only.  Attach each skirt to each bodice.  At some point you are going to have to start to put the two bodices together, but that really is going to depend on what is happening, dress-wise, fastener-wise, etc, overall.  I started putting the lining bodice together with the dress bodice at the point at which I was sewing the facings. 

 

In the end, when the pieces start going together, it is like a confuse-o-gram of  spatial relations and I just had to believe.  The dresses go together right sides together, sewing on the lining's wrong side.  The one thing I did absolutely right (very accidentally, but it was so so so good) is that I had a textured fabric for the dress shell, so there was a Right Side and a Wrong Side to orient me absolutely.

Anyhow, then once they are assembled and also put-together at the bodice, you pull the lining through the dress so that the two pieces are right sides out, with the wrong sides facing each other.  All of the inside selvages are inside the dress, and it looks really finished, which I think is totally important and makes the difference between handmade and homemade.  Then, you machine-sew the shell's shoulder seams together and then you hand-sew the lining's shoulder seams together and also stitch the lining to the shell (because the two are not machine-stitched to the edges).  I used a catch-stitch for that work, and it was not my best work, as it is midnight-dark at 4:45 & I took this to a cafe to finish.   

I spent a lot of time at Ballet Town's Fabric Store during construction, pin-basting this & fooling around with it.  I am there in Ballet Town for a few hours each week, killing time, and the Store's Surfaces are all at the right height, plus also the sewing could happen in the presence of someone who would know what to do if the machine went sideways, which it did never.  So, instead of my 45-year-old Style-Mate I was able to use the store's machine, a Bernina Quilt-O-Matica or whatever.  It was nice. 

I do not know if it was $5 zillion of nice, but it was nice, certainly quiet.  I described it to Mari as being like the difference between driving our old sporty Acura Legend coupe and driving an old-school Cadillac sedan.  They are both fine & fun, but personally, I prefer to hear my car driving and feel the ground all rackety, vroom, and in the end you still get where you are going in either machine, so anyhow.

Ms Fabric could not believe that I would undertake an endeavor without a pattern's instructions.  I would get confounded by the sidiness of the lining & get a little wrinkle in my forehead and she would good-naturedly say, "I can't see why you would do this without instructions!"  I could not believe I would be expected to make something that was not exactly what I wanted. 

 Further, if I am making something, is the point not to make it exactly how I want it?  It does take more time, to figure out & use references and make sure, but in the end I think we were all happy, and really, WTF am I spending days & nights making something for, if not for us all to be happy?  What, so we can be OK about mediocrity?  Whatever.  zzZzZzzz.  I mean, I could have just written a check to secure a dress we did not hate.

 

There is more to this, something that occurred to me, lying in the bed on the morning of the Dress-Wearing Event, which is that I rarely follow patterns or recipes or anything to the letter.  That I am constantly abridging and amending and re-crafting.  In fact, many times do not need all the letters to fill in the gaps and produce the project.  What occurred to me was that Ms Fabric's surprise at my renegade willingness was not odd, that it was my readiness to blaze the trail.  But, anyhow.  That, also, is a reflection for another time.

In the darkest hours of the dress (all of which were at the beginning, for I despise pattern pinning & cutting), when the question Why am I doing this was the loudest in my head, I would hold fast to the answer -- Because there is no other way.

(That is not entirely true.  I could have dropped it off at any seamstress's to finish, but whatever, by the point I remembered that.)   

I was happy about the happiest accident, which could have been devastating.  When the time came to put the buttons & buttonholes on the dress, which I was saving for last -- it was funny, I was telling Ms Fabric about how I had to cut the square pieces and pin + seam ripper, etc, and she was laughing a little when she gently explained to me that in the 21st century, machines make the buttonholes automatically.  We live in the future!

(Ms Fabric also told me I should machine hem, which, hullo?  Puckering?  No.  So I did handsew the hem, as God intended, and it was fine.  It took less than an hour.) 

Anyhow, I was going to make them, last, and realized that because I had added the lining, the dress was smaller than the pattern wanted it to be (which is good, because looking at the model in the dress on the pattern photo, I was not looking forward to adjusting such an ill-fitting garment), and I only had room for an overlap fastener.  I used snaps, because I was dizzy from dress fumes by the end, but if I had had more time to set everything aside between stages, like I like to produce, I would have realized I should have used hooks and eyes.  But, I felt like it draped better & more elegantly without the bulk of buttons. 

 

In the end, it was pretty easy, I guess.  If it were not for my sub-par hand-finishing on the shoulder seams, the non-buttoned dress would in fact be reversible, which is cooler in theory than it really is.  I did not actually set out to make a reversible dress, ha. 

When I had finally ironed it to the end and we were looking at it here, hanging on the playroom wall -- I think when she is not wearing it, we shall have it hanging in the playroom, so we can all admire my workmanship -- Mari said, "Those people on that Heidi Klum show make, like, five of those every day." 

Do you give your husband the finger a lot in your house?  Any time he goes too far?  Sit right next to me.

slide into the light

Today, I opened a double-yolked egg!  Which is of course a portent of excellent luck.  Applause!

 

I love this photo, because it has an unselfconscious edge to it, with the way the bowl is off-centered there in a way I would never.  My camera's display is broken and my camera has no viewfinder, so I am since last week entirely reliant on my long years of familiarity to judge what the camera is seeing, plus then the tripod to snap the frame clearly.  It has been fun, really.  I hazarded some photos of some things that needed documenting, and along with photos from museum trips of yore, that should keep me busy + bloggy while my little Canon 4-megapixel sweetheart goes out on her long journey to the homeland for repair at the Canon Service Facility. 

This photo -- from the same session -- would be the only photo I would shoot, were I  in full control of the photographic faculties. 

 

I was all set to send away for repair, until I uploaded & saw the sweet accidentalness of the first photo.  Now, I feel less certain.  I love the very first photo so much.  Well, anyhow.  Nerdout.

It is time again for the listing & quantifying & wrapping-up, and except for old Alex (ironically), it always starts (or is easiest?) with music.  This was a hard year for choosing favorite music!  It seemed to me like all of the music that came out this year was really good, like, all of it B-plus music, but not much was really outstanding.  Also, because everything was so good, it kind of piled up in a pile of really-goodness and so, I could not even come up with 10 songs I really liked a lot off the top of my head.  I felt like I really just liked all of it.  I am not sure if this was anyone else's experience.

Two songs stand out for me.  The first is Patterson Hood's "Belvedere," which I think is the sexiest song about a girl and a car ever recorded, even including the many from Prince.  I was driving when it came on the radio, in the summer, when Murdering Oscar and Other Love Songs was released & from the first line of the song -- Last night I dreamt of a high school girl --  I had to pull over to focus on it.  I love it a lot.  There is a lot of ambiguity to it, it is very plush and spare at once, everything it needs to be, more than you thought you wanted, a thing you never considered until it was in front of you.

The second is Rosanne Cash's rendition of "Sea of Heartbreak," featuring Bruce Springsteen.  It is not a new song, being a 112-year-old song, and also a song I am most familiar with having heard it 9,328 times in 1993, when Kowalski devoted himself to it as his inroads to becoming the master of chord changes.  He also -- of all the songs in the world he could have selected -- chose it to taunt me, to hound me, to -- in another of his innumerable passively-aggressive ways -- make clear in his rich, solid baritone his displeasure with my nonnegotiable terms for our relationship. 

What Kowalski did not know was that I had long since claimed that song for myself, that I had long -- even as a child, when I first heard Don Gibson's version of the song -- felt the lights in the harbor did not shine for me.  Growing up with parents who abandoned me, even as they lived with me and nominally cared for me, but never really wanted me -- How did I lose you? Where did I fail? -- was worse than anything anyone could ever do to me, so really, I did not ever see what Kowalski's baby whinerpants problem was with our relationship, at a minimum because he was a grownup and I was hardly out of my teens. 

Further, Kowalski was very determined to come to my rescue, sometimes quite stubbornly, sternly, and whether I wanted it or not.  He was very willing to take me, and to keep me, which I fought off as much as I was able, so much it felt to me like too much unauthorized license.  I liked to keep things casual, at a minimum, and he once tried to steal me to Canada without telling me.  (His intentions were good.)  So, there we were, at a standoff, and because life is funny, he thought he was singing about himself where I could hear and for me,  it was about me while extolling his best feature.  I knew that if I left him, it was back with me adrift on the sea, and what I would not give to sail back to his shore.

So, anyhow.  It is always on the radio, it seems to me -- Cash's bruised delivery, Springsteen sounding at once austere & melodic and both of them so yearning.  It makes me remember viscerally the time with Kowalski, the strangeness of being loved, it was so many years ago.  I stumbled out of my parents' house, then, taken & kept, and now, in this life,  I am had & held.  That is a mightily-abridged biography, but I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, to have been so alone as a child, and in defiance of logic or expectations or analysis, to have stumbled into so much rescue and still, even still, I find myself opening up eggs that promise good fortune.  It feels mysterious and humbling and I try to stay thankful, even if I sometimes complain.

That said, I can not figure out why this list of my favorite songs from 2009 is so sad.  One at a time, each song seems a little subdued, but in the aggregate, they are so broken-down.  I think this is another example of what I was talking about the other day, where I think, This is how I was, but really this is who I am.  Life is funny. 

Ten songs, no real order, and here they are for anyone's listening pleasure right here at the old 8tracks. 

"Low Rising," The Swell Season
"Sea of Heartbreak," Rosanne Cash with Bruce Springsteen
"Belvedere," Patterson Hood
"Middle Cyclone," Neko Case
"Cheerleader," Grizzly Bear
"Growing Old (is Getting Old)," Silversun Pickups
"The Reeling," Passion Pit
"Crystalised," The XX
"Thinking Like That," Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions
"Baby," Devendra Banheart

It is almost 2010!  Get ready for some kissing!

Charlie, I almost went crazy

Due to exceptional last-minute naughtiness, I put coal in the children's stockings.  I would do it again.  Fille was exceptionally pitiful, but I really did not let myself get sucked into her misery.  I think it was hard on Algren, who was visiting for the holiday & so here on Christmas morning, waking up with everyone else & the waterworks. 

People say, "Where did you get coal?  Real coal?"  Trenton makes and the world takes and a good girl like me knows all about industrial-use eyelashes.  People still use coal even to heat their houses here.

  
I got stung by a wasp today. We were all watching HP & the Goblet of Fire and I felt something like the sharpest pin in the world stabbing me in the shoulder blade.  So I sat forward to check this out and there was no pin, no staple, nothing sharp.  I could still feel it and it hurt a lot.  I kept asking Mari if he was sure there was nothing sticking out of my shoulder.  A few minutes later, my shoulder started just burning the hell out of me.  I think we all thought maybe I was losing my mind. 

Later, Mari felt something on his shoulder and brushed to the ground a staggering, flightless wasp.  Motherfucker.  What the hell kind of wasp is inside the house in December, stinging people?  Did it ride along with Santa?  What happened to thinking of the fellas that I have not kissed?  If it is because of the coal thing, I guess I can take that.  I would still -- the coal, I am saying -- do it again, even if the price is a ninja-style wasp sting.  Exceptional naughtiness, is what I am saying.

Next week it will be 2010 and I guess I should tidy up around 2009 in the time that is left.  RIP, Vic Chesnutt.  I hear you, man.  Salud.

five by five

 

1. We watched The Hoax, with Richard Gere, which could have easily been missed, except I wanted to watch something serious without being deadly and Richard Gere's mug is on the cover of the DVD and I was having fond memories of his understated disapproving routine in Pretty Woman.  (Note: That kind of horseshit is only tolerable -- even in cinema -- from a dude who is filthy rich.)  We had zero expectations, and wow, it was great!  Great cast, great screenplay, gripping momentum, good stuff.  I highly recommend it & Alfred Molina is really quite good plus, also, it really happened!
   
   
2. I really did buy the US magazine with the Elin's Rage cover story.  I have not really had the time to sit down with it, which is distressing, but is that really the most distressing part of this?  I think we should step back to the fact that I paid real money for the magazine.   But, I did have time to see Cate Blanchett on page 58, in a candid with her children, with the most amazing coat ever.  Anyhow, back to Elin Nordegren & her rage -- I did see the photos of the leading women of Tiger & had a little time for the text message transcripts, and I would run my husband over with our car if he picked such low-quality extramarital poon, honestly. 
   
   
3. Yesterday, Algren sent me a link to a newsy story having to do with our alma mater, which I read and then trenchantly commented upon before then sending the link to the Israeli, with a similar, yet different, brand of wtf-analysis.  Both men then responded with their own what-for and it was great fun.  Later, I realized with some kind of amazement that all this socializing took place without one toe in the motherfucking Facebook.   Email your pals -- they will be surprised, and we can reclaim the internet from that megalomaniac Silicon-startup child, whose terms of service say that he owns all your content and may at any time roll back what is public and to whom & when.  Hullo, ask yrself how it is that Facebook is turning a profit when it does not charge for its "service," ok, just saying, sorry, I have a surplus of foil wrap, as I am not roasting a turkey this holiday, ok!
   
   
4. A couple of weeks ago, at the library, browsing the CD collection, I left having borrowed INXS: Greatest Hits.  Ok, so you know ... wow.  I am always gratified whenever I realize that music from a band I have not listened to in about 20 years is as good (maybe better) as I remember it being.  One thing led to another, 80s-wise, and so I could not stop thinking about all the really good super-hit 80s music that somehow seemed really relevant suddenly.  My high-school beau -- who was himself no longer in high school -- had really amazing taste in music, also, so it was coming from every angle, and here is a lot of it that I had to be immersed in lately, on the Old 8tracks, it's all v pop, none of the Black Flag or Nitzer Ebb or what had we then, but anyhow, yes.
   
   
5. It is ballet's Christmas break and Fille & I are both happy.  Eight is focused on two things:  Who Cares and Nothing Matters.  I remember well my last 8-year-old's struggle with these twin perils -- the crying at everything and standing around breaking down, saying melodramatic things like, Growing up is too hard!  Fille has been feeling punk about the work involved in class and saying things like, "I want to quit because my hands get sweaty on the barre."  Mila, her instructor, said to me that is all nonsense and agreed that 8 is treacherous, plus she is doing very well in class and also, it is tiring for girls who have been in pre-ballet (for 3 years now) to enter the grueling world of the primary series, at 8, when, you know, Who Cares because Nothing Matters, so see you in 2010, Ballet Town.

 

easy wind. downy flake.

 

The vestibule is a tangle of extra footwear, a decontamination unit for snow.  The snow has changed so much about everything.  First of all, it is so light inside of our house, which is excellent and I am so happy, because usually it rains here all the time from November until March and it rains and rains, and rains, and I feel sad and blue and gray & chilly and there is never the extra reflection of the short days' light off the snow, there is no redemption of sub-zero temperatures to cleanse what ails us, in the streets, in our livers, lungs, and spleens, and to enhance our best fortitude.  There is none of that. 

Of course, I say that it always rains and that is kind of true, but an exaggeration and one of the reasons I have a weblog is so that when I am feeling like, "God, the rain, phooey!"  I can look and see that just the other day I took photos of x and it was light and so obviously I am deranged.  It is good to document, for the mind is a tricky thing, wily and always tricking itself.  I am susceptible to its schemes, I must admit, so I keep outside records. 

We are always amazed and dismayed in equal measure -- as I have written before -- about the elemental ways in which the children are strangers to us (we to them) and this comes out often around the issue of winter and snow.  A few weeks ago, there were snow flurries, it may have stuck in places, shadier parts of the region we saw in the following week had patches left on the ground.  Anyhow, that was the day that both children came to me, excited & a little bouncy and said, "It's snowy!"  Not, "It is snowing!"  And the difference, the distinction between the verb and the adjective, OH GOD, it made me so proud to have broadened their cultural horizons in this way.  This is important, and all I want for them. 

So, we do see this as snow here, but now the difference comes out in how we respond to it.  Like, while everyone else is measuring and polishing parallel-parking spaces to the pavement (drive over it!), we are just kind of nonplussed by the chatter beyond, "Oh, this never happens & so great!"  A friend's southern wife asked me, "How much did you all get?"  And I could not tell her, because I did not know.  A lot of snow.  It is just snow.  Drive over it.   

 

And it is a lot of snow for one storm, even for the homeland, but it is just snow.  Chattering about it would be like chattering about the sunrise or adding up the bushels of leaves from the fall .. that part in there, it is like the difference between snowy and snowing, the difference between not the beach and a freshwater sea. So I wind up feeling adrift in this place that is not mine when I can not go home because that place is so not my children's. 

When we were out on Saturday, driving, we were just out there, motoring along in the mostly-desolate streets.  Everyone else driving, we knew, was from the Midwest, or New England, or maybe Siberia, but there were hardly any of us out in the streets and it made me feel really lonely.  It was like that zombie movie, with Will Smith?  It was a place that we knew, but not at all like we remembered, and maybe collectively, we were the only ones here.  I have articulated this before, that the wintriest weather here is the best we can hope for back home, and to see how it sends everyone into a panic, it is mighty isolating.  (None of us make it better, with our scoffing, we know, but these people here are some of the complainiest people in the world.)

Then I find myself explaining snow etiquette to my children (Stamp off completely before getting into the car all clumpy!  When you melt, then what?? and No snowballs above the chest!  and -- I could not believe I had to explain this! -- Do not throw snowballs at driving cars!  Never ever!) and being flummoxed about the new changing area in the front of my house (bathmats, all the extras in the hallway), plus not knowing how much snow even fell, and then saying nerdout things to people, explaining what a blizzard is, technically (words mean something, and it is about wind, not snowfall, you can have a blizzard without falling snow, like a sandstorm), and among all of this, I realize, these are not my people. 

This, for me, is loaded with all kinds of extra mental horseshit, because of my family, because of my childhood, because, because, because, but it is still relevant as a human condition, the homesickness, and the longing.  While we were shoveling eleventy billion pounds of snow Sunday morning, I trudged into the backyard to see if the children's kid-sized snow shovel was against the house, because if it were flat in the snow, we would never find it.

 

We lose things all the time back home, dropping things in the snow and they are gone -- whooosh -- until the spring, which is rife with a different kind of possibility in the Midwest, a kind of recovery that does not exist here.  I could not wait, in 1993, to find my favorite earrings in Kowalski's backyard, dropped on a night they were gently clasped in my hand on the journey from his garage to his back door.  We as a region have a collective childhood memory – this lunchbox, that dolly, our favorite sled, our birthday coins, collected into a plastic bank the shape of an egg, given to us when we were born – left in the backyard and lost to us, until the thaw.  The world is littered with secret treasure under the snow -- and it leaves us excited for the possibilities in spring -- the opportunities to find our own things or to discover someone else's.

But also, there is this lesson in stoicism taught, that you can lose something, you will miss it, it will be gone to you, but one day, it will sit where you left it, in a patch of melting snow.  Or it won't, because someone else will see it in the snow first and take it, or maybe when you get it back, you realize you no longer want it, so where you lose things, what you lose, it is important, context is everything. 

Anyhow, all of this, in my head, and Mari came around the corner and I was sitting on the little piece of our porch steps I had shoveled, crying real tears at 6:30 in the morning over this, which I explained to him, blubbering and weeping.  (He said, "Oh my god, honey.  You are crazy."  I am always more homesick than he.) 

We love living here, we chose it, while choosing against other places, and I think that I think sometimes, when I think of life back home, I think, Well, that is how we were, but then things happen and I realize this is who we are.  This identity sometimes goes snicketing out of our hands and gets lost in the depths of the Northeast Corridor's vapid silliness, but it is always there, like the things under the snow back home. 

The paralysis here over the snow is paralyzing to us and totally foreign, not to mention that Tiger Woods has changed all of our lives.  My old friend Fish asked me last week, "How has the Tiger Woods situation impacted your life?"  Which was a wholly incongruous question from Fish, but I engaged it, and the phrasing lingered.  Well, he has!  Mari had an appointment yesterday and I dialed the number to the office to find out if they were there -- even though it had been two days since it snowed, there was a definite possibility they would still be scrambling to recover -- but then I hung up. 

Honey, I called up the stairs, did you make sure they were in the office today?  He had not, so I hit redial and phoned the office.  They were, and while I was making small talk with the receptionist, Mari picked up & replaced the upstairs extension a couple of times.  When I was off the phone, I told him it was all clear.

He came downstairs, "Was that them on the phone?"  I explained to him that yes, I had held the phone in my hand while I asked him, but that I did not want to call if he already called because I did not want it to seem like I was checking up on him when I was checking in for him.  He was puzzled and then I said, matter-of-factly, "Tiger Woods, honey.  He has changed all of our lives." 

I am so happy to hear that Elin Nordegren is back home in Stockholm.  She can just suspend this whole nightmare under the snow, where it will still be in the spring and she will be able to deal with it then, after a proper amount of rest & a goodly time spent exerting herself on wholesome, outdoor, snow sporting.  If I had been her pal, I would have told her never, ever to marry a guy from sunny California.  It makes no sense!  How can they learn any lessons in that climate?  Obviously.   

Père Noël, qui es aux cieux niegeux

 

Certainly, by now, you have all heard that there are snowstorm conditions across the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States this weekend.  I can confirm that.  Snowy.  Whoosh.  I remembered today that I do not like snow.  That in fact the reason that I love sub-zero temperatures so very much is because at those temperatures, it does not usually snow & if ever it does, it just blows away like magic dust. 

However, there are some things that I very much enjoy which require snow: cross-country skiing; snowshoeing; spinning doughnuts.  I refrained from the latter's vehicular merriment as the children were in the car, but trust that a fine time was had with Mari & me behind the wheel this afternoon + evening in a smooshy, unamended 4-6 inches of accumulation in the streets.  God.

There is a sweet Buddha nature required when driving in the snow -- knowing when to shove, when to yield.  It is never right to barrel along without regard for the conditions, but drivers should not be afraid to drive through the snow.  But it is not like regular driving ... wide turns have to be sharper, sharp turns need to be looser, a lot of things need to be faster.  Some things are counterintuitive -- the snow slows you down, and you need to gather momentum to get through it, but your foot needs to trend off of the gas pedal, and -- even when you slide -- never, never, never hit the brakes.  Also, these snow tires you all speak of in the mid-Atlantic region?  Usually as an excuse for your lackadaisical driving?  Snow tires are for off-road conditions, beauties.  No one needs snow tires so much as they just need to learn to drive.

I have been really into driving a lot lately.  Like, I spend a lot of time in the car, operating the vehicle, but I have been lately into driving it, not just running it from place to place.  I have put away the cell phone (sometimes in the trunk if I feel I will be weak), and have just been totally focused on the road and the awesomeness of German engineering.  Also, a lot of people are on the phone!  So, being the one with her hands firmly set on the gearshift and also the steering wheel just makes all the difference in smoking these distracted dawdlers.  Vroom! 

So, I felt like this was like my third date with our car, tonight, powering her along the snow-covered roads, paying attention to when it was time to pull back  & when it was time to let it out.  It has been a long time since I have had those skills out as needed at a high polish like tonight.  There is a curve in the road on a county highway we travel all the time -- the curve is probably 65 degrees, it is limited at 25mph, which is a 20mph reduction in speed.  Driving up to it tonight, I was calculating what I needed: the road is at an incline there, such that one can not actually see the curve until they are kind of dropping into it, so I needed to gather as much speed as I could going into it, but I also needed to be able to turn the turn while allowing for staying on the road and also remembering that braking is exactly the very best way to lose control of the car.  

I was so into the challenge, so excited!, and when I came up the rise, I took the curve as wide as I could.  The car started to slide a little, like a sled, along the road there, where it was opening up, right into the minivan that was oncoming.  I took my foot off the gas, turned the wheel away as far as I could, sharply, and the car just drifted, dreamily, right out of the way.  I felt like Yogi Berra, but even so, it was totally exciting & extremely sporty.  Mari & I had to reverently high-five each other over it.  He was the one who taught me to drive, and I have not had v much opportunity to develop my skill set beyond the first winter I learned to drive -- the first winter we were married & the last winter we lived at home, so it was pretty sweet for both of us, the triumph.  I am always happy to share these times with him.

Speaking of the institution of marriage, which I may have just been, Fille asked me last night this good question:  Who is Tiger Woods that everyone is talking about him?  I do not know what all she has overheard, but I thought I would write this in case anyone else should have to face this question and will not know what to say to the little darlings.  You know, more of Life's Unsolicited Tips.  Plus, it is kind of hilarious that she felt compelled to ask.  I did not ask her what she knew because we had been in the supermarket and he is on the cover of nearly every tabloid and also we were having dinner in Ballet Town's awesome tavern and I had heard the words Tiger Woods 9 times just while she & I were sitting there.

The truth is, I had the hardest time getting across to her that golf is a professional sport.  That hung her up for a good five minutes & the whole time I was like, "I know!  Me, too!"  But, lo, it is, and so that is what he does for a living.  (She kept saying, "Like a real sport?  Like baseball?  On teevee?" and such, ahaha.)

In the end, I just told her that he was young and had a pretty wife and two very young children and he went around having sex with a bunch of women that were not his wife.  I also gave her a briefly salacious roundup of his car-accident-night troubles, based loosely upon the narrative animated here, and told her it was what people were saying, which made it interesting to talk about, the gap between what is known and what is presumed.  Also, I told her, it is tantalizing that a new girlfriend seems to come round every single day.  She left the presentation mostly shocked that a. the PGA exists and b. someone would hit someone else with their hands, "instead of kicking them with their feet or biting them with their teeth."  My girl.

We left Ballet Town & I stopped at TJ Maxx for no excellent reason except that it was there.  Also, I knew all the Christmas shoppers would be getting ready for the 97 inches of snow in the forecast so would instead be grocery shopping.  We quietly pushed a cart around, way past her bedtime, while I gathered up a bunch of deeply-discounted pillowcases & hand towels and (!!!) a pair of size 7, 8-button-length Italian-made Guder gloves in black suede with a silk lining for TWENTY DOLLARS.  I wear a size 6.5 glove, but Guder seems to stitch a little small.  Black suede.  Silk lining.  Forearm-length.  $20.  It was a mismarked TJ Maxx miracle.  First, God gave me a son.  Yes.  Also, think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed! 

are you a man? or a mouse?

The other day, I took a photo in near-total darkness and corrected it to make it viewable.  Today, I have taken a photo which is perfectly excellent in every way and corrected it to be something less real in order to spare your eyes while preserving the documentary rigor.

This morning, I wandered downstairs this morning, wearing jeans under a silk nightie + a cashmere cardigan (a look I wore out of the house later, but later), yawning and 2-thumbs tap-tapping on my handheld.  Once fully in the kitchen, by the stove, the hearth of my home, I saw something that made me run back to the opposite end of the house, screaming, "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

 

I took that photo with my eyes closed, you know.  And corrected it while squinting through the fingers of my left hand.

Anyhow.  The children came down, clamoring.  I wailed a little, gnashed my teeth, and then picked up the phone to have this real-life exchange with Kowalksi:

Me:  You know ... I don't think you even tried to explain to me that if I had success in mousetrapping ... that I would have a ... a mouse carcass to deal with!  

Kowalski:  Oh, Jesus, you gotta be kidding me.  What -- what time is it?

Me:  Me, too!  I think it is early, too, but OH NO, OH GOD, A DEAD MOUSE!  AAAAAAHHHHHH!  Why?! Didn't you tell me??!? 

Kowalski:  Honey.  I thought even you could pay that much attention.

Me:  With all you know about me, why could you not see I was swept up in the conflict without seeing the trees?  I wanted to get the mouse, not OH GOD.

It went like that for a while.  Then I stewed a little, called Algren, who was a hero in this matter of mouse-carcass cleanup, then -- mouse cleaned up -- I told the kids to get dressed & we were going out for breakfast.  So we did and in all the excitement I forgot I had a Natori chemise fluttering over my low-rise.  Whatever, oh god.

Anyhow, I will not be doing that again.  Kowalski has told me from the start of this project to not fuck around with traps and instead poison them.  I resisted because 1. I really had this trapping project marked as this thing I wanted to get done and 2. Is spreading poison really how I want to live my life?  Is it necessary?  For a mouse??  God.  Then, maybe on Monday night, he said, "No, not the pellets, the paste." 

Oh, yes!  Now that they are conveniently-trained -- due to my previous mechanical failures -- to eat at feeding stations stocked with a provocative mixture of Nutella & wheat germ, I have now put down intentionally-disabled traps and baited them with little balls of poison paste, rolled in Nutella and wheat germ.  Fine.

So.  I made a different, yet similar, annual Christmas mix for the reprobate this year over at 8tracks.  I am less depraved this year than all the ones before, but the fact that I have bought SIX luxury handbags in suede over at the old eBay in the past three weeks and the fact that my house is tidy plus also eat-off-the-floors clean at once belies my exterior calm.  Also, the mousetrapping psychosis. 

One of those handbags came the other day & I could not even remember buying it.  It was like, "I bought this?  Really?  Wow.  It's nice, but ... I bought this?  I must have.  No one just sends things ... wait, unless it is Santa!"  No recollection.  Anyhow!  Santa, think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed.  This is the kind of year it has been.  Let's just live right there, it is Christmas.

God, speaking of fellas that I haven't kissed.  Mari has been gone in a whirling tunnel of consecutive business trips.  I think this is his ninth day away?  Maybe that is tomorrow.  It is starting to be a blur.  Anyhow.  He is at a big thing right now, in this second leg, like the kind of left-brain thingo where they probably have a decontamination trailer between the sacred workspace and the regular world.  He is busy.  This is why Mouse Support has been so subcontracted and high-stakes. 

Anyhow, this meant that his mother thought that she should call me last night, because she should not call him.  I do not want to talk too much shit about my mother-in-law on the internets, but I will say this: We are not friends, and we are not going to be friends.  I have rolled back my in-laws' border steadily in the past 14 years.  Since about June of 2008, they are completely out of Venn-diagram real estate and totally their son's problem.  Like, they can die from a spring-loaded bar to the face, so long as I do not have to deal with their corpses.  Whatever. 

The point is, her phone call was very reminiscent of these maddening phone calls I have been getting from the people in my family of origin. (I hasten to point out no one in my family makes irritating calls to my husband.  I am not sure they have bothered to make note of his given name.)  There is this kind of surprise and stammering and weak resentment that I am not changing my tune in the face of their music. 

What I do not get is this:  who does not go through this mental math when they conduct themselves abominably in a relationship, lighting bridges on fire & calling names and refusing and insisting and shit?  Treating people badly.  I am not a bridge-burner -- I might some day need to race right to that opposite edge and throw a Molotov cocktail -- but I am a quitter.  Like, you know, goodbye.  You know? 

People think that the tussle with me is exciting, they want to be victorious and control me and lord it over me.  Invariably, these people lose sight of what they are after (it is my superpower) & go too far, and then, I quit.  For me, it is fine.  It confuses people, because it is all eyelashes & kissing & clear articulation in a search to find solutions and then, it is ovah.  After that, I have a whole tray of hazelnut-chocolate truffles.  With wheat germ on them.  If you see what I mean.  That is how I do it.  No one who has ever paid attention is surprised.

five by five

• Mari has been away, so we are on a kind of (mousetrapping) holiday.  We have watched three movies, two of them of the Harry Potter oeuvre, one of those my very favorite HP and among my favorite movies of all time -- Prisoner of Azkaban -- from my favorite director, Alfonso Cuarón.  They were about to watch it & I was going to do something (anything) else, but I was totally drawn-in by the very first opening scene, with the wand & the light & his hiding and oh, God, it is the prettiest, prettiest movie; I remember going to see it in IMAX with Mari and just being flattened by it.  They are here, scared to death by its dark, wet, sinister glamour right to the edge of their seats.  
   
  Corrected because they were sitting in a dark room with a 60-watt lamp & the teevee.
  
  
  
• I cannot figure out how to set a fucking mousetrap, and two nights (three?) in a row, the mouse has eaten all the bait from three (THREE!) traps and nothing happened.  Then in the morning -- confronted by empty, unsprung traps -- I poke & prod with a knife only to find the traps are stuck fast and untrippable.  The fuck if I know.  I called Kowalski as soon as I could Sunday morning, extremely distressed, wailing, "I want to catch a mouse before my husband comes home!  I want to be the man by myself!"  Whatever that means.
  
  
• We have had a number of guests lately, and the freaky limbless baby dolls freak everyone out.  I moved them to the playroom from the living room because Fille had grown weary of the constant Whoa they elicited.  Mari said, "Yes, but do you remember when the children saw The Addams Family and they did not think they were weird?"  Yes, but the fact that the parents were always kissing & the kids were homeschooled made up for Thing & Lurch.  Duh.
  
  
• On Sunday, we are going over (with Kleenex) to an on-campus screening of  Miracle on 34th Street, with Natalie Wood. Garçon said, "What is it about?"  Fille said, "It's about a miracle ... on 34th Street."  And I said, "Yeah, it's about a miracle on ... hey!"  Words mean something, yes, but I never before connected the 34th Street of the film's title & location with the 34th Street that is my midtown nemesis.
  
  
• The most awesome thing ever happened today!  We went to pick up the CSA share and there were two (TWO!) bags of sweet potatoes in the swap box!  We were able to trade our turnips and our beets!  For sweet potatoes!  Which are a vegetable we all four find edible, if not delicious!

brave. new.

Here is the cake.  The frosting did not go over so well with the children, but as far as the cake being stacky & down for whatever, frosting-wise, it was great.  Really.  Mmmmmm.  I was very excited to make an honest-to-god layer cake.  Garçon asked me for a "layer cake" for his birthday and I wedged two slabs of brownies together with swiss meringue.  It was inedible, worse than fondant. 

 

So, that.

Mari is again away on travel until next week.  He is away a lot, but never more than he is home, never more than a couple of days in a row, and never ever on the weekend.  There is something exciting about having the children to myself on a weekend, but hullo?  Homeschool?  It is just so totally in my head.  I am excited anyhow.  I think we will have fun.

We started out with a bang-up, out-all-night trip to the grocery store.  I have to say, it is a horrible feeling to have your children out in a flourescently-lit supermarket, standing in the checkout lane at the late, late hour of 11:45, and your 8-year-old is crying because she is just so worn out from all the fun that has been had all the day prior and ugh.  But there we were!

It was supposed to be an early night after takeout latkes, etc, and it was going to be!  I was on the phone with a pal's husband -- he was taking a message slash catching up in her stead -- I was tidying up a little and I said, "Oh, Fish!  Fuck it."  He said, "Is this related to a rodent?"  Which is so weird, because it totally was and ugh.  

Fish, who lives with my pal in a comparably ancient house, started in with the rundown on his methods of extermination.  Extermination is something Mari usually handles, but I have to say he is never very successful at it.  So, anyhow, Fish managed to convince me that this was totally something I could handle, a nice weekend project, and gave me a ton of useful, technical, and specific information; testimony to the success of his methods, and a bonus story about his Wile E. Coyote tactics, used for one stubborn pest in their house a few years back. 

I think that some A+ mouse-trapping could give me some I Can Do It cred.  I have been feeling pretty helpless and beleaguered for the past couple of weeks.  This could be like when I drove to Boston all by myself in the dark and the confusion on the way to our Maine trip.  That was some fun.  I was so capable!  And responsive!  Exciting!  So, anyhow, that is how we found ourselves at the grocery store late at night.  I had some already-scheduled things to finish in the house before I could go out for extermination supplies:  spring traps; Nutella; Townhouse Crackers, and 3 new packages of sponges, because no, thank you, sponges that get accidentally left on the drainboard where a mouse may have touched them.  Ew. 

Already it is an adventure, because I cannot remember the last time I went out of my house after 10pm when Mari was not here to traffic control me back home.  Hopefully, I will move this invasion along before they build a rodent network.

Speaking of which, I broke up with the Facebook.  I want it to seem lurid & exciting & fraught, but it just seems lame.  The "privacy" setting thingo was so change-y for me, the way that information that used to be opt-in is now default-public?  And the way that in the past 18 months, many changes have happened at Facebook and there is this big outcry & outrage and Hey!  Ho!  Watch it, Facebook Guy!  But then, it all stays the same & people calm down, and etc.  Not to be too boring, and go on, but really, overall, Facebook was starting to feel like it was becoming the vehicle by which our messages would be delivered, and that was a little scary for me.  That reflection is the tinfoil hat in my pocket, yes.

Facebook has worked out thus far really great as a Face-to-Facebook, to facilitate interaction on the ground without the boring kind of, Wait, so, hang on ... did you finish knitting that thing that I remember you mentioned last time I saw you? or Where do you work again?  Doing what??  What, since when?  So, I just bailed on everyone else who was, realistically, never going to be on that plane.  I can not tell, but I kind of feel like, I mean, we are on the verge of the 21st century's second decade.  Should we all just turn off the computer?  I mean, it has had a good long run.  Maybe I just need a rodenticide's shot in the arm to perk me back up.  Or a gramme of soma.   

yellow moon on the rise

 

Everyone knows this already, but please bear with me while I let the intersphere in on the Mrs Arvin Sloane joke.  When I was a little girl, I thought for sure I would wind up married to a guy just like Alain Delon or maybe just Desi Arnaz.  But, alors, I am married to a man who is not only very American, but very taciturn in the Midwest's mold.  He is also calm, goal-oriented, calculating, successful & silently sinister.  This is not anything like Alain Delon, nor Desi Arnaz, and in fact is like the difference between Ricky Ricardo and the character Ron Rifkin played in Alias.  But in terms of their sartorial splendour they are the same.  So, that.

So, Mr Sloane -- who is not to be confused with Mari, because Mari does not wear Zegna suits while scrimmaging with his wife -- was expected in the heartland today on business.  Unfortunately for Mr Sloane, his computer hard drive melted last night when he was having a -- pardon me, while I get this right -- test operating system sandbox mishap.  There should be some hyphens in there?  Go with God.  Something about encryption made it impossible for him to get it righty-o in a jiffy.  Words mean something, but sometimes not to everyone at once. 

Whatever, the upshot of it is that he was trying to procure some things and in the process of realizing he could not, he also realized that his travel itinerary was on the melted hard drive and known to no one else.  Oops. 

In the meanwhile, time was marching on, all over the hours alloted for sleeping.  I was on my way to bed, but stopped in to visit him, grappling with his twin perils of Lost Travel Itinerary for Pre-Dawn Flight and also Failed Hardware, holding on the phone with one of the cheerful 24-hour service people in that crazy, global corporation of his.   

"Do you want me to pack your things?" I asked him.  He declined, and I scoffed.  I mean, I had no intention of forcing him to let me pack him for a business trip, but I had to stop & scoff before I went on to bed.  Because, honestly?

I assumed my scoffing posture.  Did you really get married so that you could get in a jam, have to sort it out by yourself, and then pack all your own shit?  Dude.

Once I put it like that, he could hardly refuse.  It is a good thing, too, because while I was procuring all of these mysterious wintertime accessories from regions unknown -- hats & scarves and gloves from the chest full of winter clothes in the attic!  Cashmere vests from his very own dresser drawer! -- he said, "What are you doing?"

Um, it is December in Chicago.  It is going to be 25 degrees when you get there.  He looked at me like I had revealed something great & unknown.  Lord.  Good thing, too, because not only was it 20whatever, it snowed.  Additionally, it looks as if he might have a snowy little trouble getting out of town tomorrow.  He did not listen to me this morning about maybe wearing boots, but I did not press him because there was a pair of overshoes in his carry-on.  I am definitely the spouse to pack the other off to a different climate. 

But I was up late, doing that, and then up again early, chauffeuring him, so that was my sleep-deprivation.  Here is something great & unknown I can try to illuminate:  Starbucks VIA.  The instant Starbucks?  People want to know Why?  I can not speak for everyone, but I make terrible coffee.  Part of it is just I do not have a knack for it, and the rest is that I always had a master brewer around & so never developed good brewing strategy.  I will tell people I can not make coffee, have them scoff, then make the coffee and they cannot believe how bad it can be & from good materials + tools.  Also, I do not drink it every day, and sometimes I just want to & have it be not-bad. 

So that was what it was today.  Starbucks VIA.  A lot of clusterfucking industry.  A really unsatisfying nap.  Five or six emails returned with some length to them which  am sure were incomprehensible.  As will be this.  Tomorrow is going to be great, though!  I wish I could remember why right now.

house is haunted. ride gets rough. learn to live.

For Mari's birthday, I baked this cake.  I did not have high hopes, nor did I think much of it when it was done.  It was close to a flourless cake, but not quite, using a scant half-cup of flour.  It was crumbly in a way I attributed to flour-substitutions, but who the fuck knows.  Mari liked it, but I wrote it off as not my best product.

 

A friend asked recently why I never post the adapted recipes I use, since we do not eat wheat, corn, rice, soy, nor cow's dairy.  Mostly, it never occurred to me.  I mean, I adapt a recipe usually on the fly, in a very unromantic way, using non-wheat flours that seem right at the time.  Oat flour is bold and true; quinoa and millet flours are soft & delicate; sorghum flour tastes awful & I just want to get through the bag, and it adds ok body, so toss some in; almond meal is delicate and bossy at once.  Almond meal is an interesting replacement, because it goes along, until it does not, and it is not unpleasant, but it changes the whole character of a thing when let out of bounds.  I fear have just described myself.  Hm.

Anyhow, then when I get around to writing about it, I do not necessarily remember what exactly I did, and so I just post the recipe as written originally.  Actually, I try to link to it as often as possible, because what am I, a court reporter? 

Another reason is because, as I have written, I am not really about courting the whole internet in the hopes of  having a dialogue.  No offense.  I mean, as a result of the four years I have kept this weblog, I have interfaced with four new-to-me people who were strangers before I found their weblogs, and I am good with that.  Obviously, anyone can read this weblog and that is perfectly fine, but I am especially not looking for a relationship with a league of readers who want to make allergen-free foods.  God, they are boring. 

I was just at a pal's house on Monday and he asked what I felt like eating, for we were perched on the edge of ordering takeout and I hedged, a little, then said, "No pizza, no sandwiches."  Now, I have a long list of things I can not eat, but that would suffice to direct him & brilliantly directed he was to Middle Eastern food, and fine.  When the food came, I sized it up, decided the falafel were suspect, pushed them aside, and worked on the lamb and the israeli salad.  Which was the best israeli salad I have ever had in my life, apologies to the Israeli.

Ok, so the falafel situation is a good example of what I mean.  Sometimes falafel is bound by wheat flour, sometimes it is just beans, but one has to ask.  In my opinion, really what is the point of chasing down the etiology of visiting takeout?  Start with the potential for a language barrier.  Go on to how most people do not question food's infrastructure (so many people who have said, when it comes up we can't eat wheat, So, you only can eat white bread?), and so do not understand the question.  Move along to the fact that I will rarely eat there again, and if I do, I can again push the suspect falafel to the side, and few midwestern guys will not finish the food you have set aside on your plate, without any question more than Are you going to eat that?  So there is no need to get into the dullsville of allergy-articulation.

At our home falafel place?  Yes, I have asked.  The owner is garrulous & knowledgeable and takes a lot of pride in his restaurant, plus people love to tell me things.  People who either have us a lot or love us a lot keep track, though I do not expect them to, for there is so much going on here, food-wise.  But I am never out in the streets announcing how my family has allergies, though you will be briefed on a need-to-know basis if you are in a position to feed us.  This is, so sadly, not how it is.

We were at a reception Friday night.  At the refreshment table, I was helping Fille get her (goat) cheese spread on her (wheat) crackers.  There was a little boy of about 4 or 5, standing by the cheese plate, calling out to his mother, in a list, "Blackberries!  Cheese!  Chips!  I don't know! [I think those were the pita chips] Corn chips!"  

The mom was a few steps behind, as is often the case with that age group + snacks.  I made sure she had enough room to get around us and our chevre project and as she walked by, she said for no reason at all, "He has a lot of allergies, so can't eat anything unless I say it's ok." 

Narcolepsy!  Whatever!  Shut it, lady!

The other day, on Amanda Soule's weblog, she posted these lovely photos of her family's farm breakfast and fresh milks & cheeses, very Scandinavian, and some reader just could not wait to get in there!  I wish so much I did not have a dairy-allergic child, because we just can't eat milk or cheese or anything from a cow mustn't come within 500 feet, blah, blah, blah.  Shhhhhh!

I was in the Whole Foods Market in the spring, with both kids, surveying the baking-mixes aisle.  In the WFM I was in, the gluten-free stuff is kind of mixed in with the regular stuff, and I was looking for ideas, not merchandise, so I was hanging back, whatever.  There was a little girl there, again about 3 or 4, being real shouty with her mother about something.  My kids were kind of off to my left, this pair was kind of on my right, and as they get ready to go, the mom says to me, "She can't eat wheat, so I have to make her some doughnuts at home." 

What I wanted to tell that chick was Well, I hope she doesn't know what a doughnut tastes like!  Doughnuts are hard.  I tried, our first gluten-free hanukkah.  Hard.  Horribly disappointing, and I let it go.  Somewhere along in the intervening years, I started with a little jelly-filled muffin rolled in melted butter + sugar.  But at no time did I make announcements at the grocery store, god almighty.

It happens a lot that I will be accosted at the grocery store, by wild, arm-flapping parents, listing off their children's food issues, apropos of nothing.  I will check in my cart after these episodes, looking for the giveaway product that made them think they could find succor in me.  I do not buy gluten-free stuff.  It is usually overpriced, filled with rice, corn, or soy, and tastes bad.  (Also, like Mari's birthday cake, crumbly.)  I can never figure out why they tell me all this.  Do I have a sign on me somewhere?

(I just took a break from writing this & mentioned the tenor to Mari.  He said, "Maybe the universe is wanting to feather you into being an allergen-free food blogger!"  Do you give your husband the finger a lot at your house?  Sit right next to me & tell me about it.)

Anyhow, the point is that whenever I read an allergen-free food weblog, the person will -- Shauna Ahern is a great example of this -- go into the narrative history and detail the process of the adaptation, the misses, the fails, the rest, and never mind that her recipes do not work, anyhow, but she will every single time have at least 15% of her comments be from weaklings who are all, Well, that sure looks good, but I am allergic to eggs and do you think that I could use an egg substitute and have it turn out just as delicious as this, blah, blah, blah.

No, it will not, because when you substitute ingredients, you compromise or sacrifice or completely re-engineer quality and mouth feel and stop being such a weakling, you can not have everything, shut up.  

That is exactly what it would look like at this weblog if ever I hosted accidentally-on-purpose a bunch of free-ranging, desperate, allergic people.  It seems like it would be bad behavior to post adapted recipes, thus passively inviting people to read here when all they would do is irritate me to death.  Ahern once wrote about how she gets emails from people wanting to know how they can still eat factory-produced, trade-named garbage foods, and what is the substitute f0r that.  I would burn the internet to the ground if I got that email.  Sorry, internets.  I would apologize at my sentencing to all of you who lost the internet to arson, I would, but still.

So, anyhow.  Ahern's recipes never work for me, anyway.  They might work for you.  Go with God & good luck.  It helps, I guess, if you were raised on a diet of Lipton soup mixes, Chef Boyardee, and Oreo cookies.  

I have been intrigued by Elana Amsterdam for a long time.  First of all, her recipe text lacks hysteria and gluttonous slavering.  Second, the first two recipes I ever saw from her were things I was already making, more or less, and knew to eyeball them on the screen that they would work.  But, I am good over here, and was not looking to expand my repertoire.  Also, she uses a lot of agave nectar, which I cannot eat, and when you substitute within an adaptation, you open yourself to land of the fucked.  I am just saying.   

Amazon sent me an email telling me I should buy her book.  I guess it is getting a lot of mainstream press, and I am always buying cookbooks, and also various allergy cookbooks for reference.  I did not buy her book, though, because so many of her recipes are at her website.  I had some time to try one, so why not?  Chocolate cake!

 

Oh, omg!  It tastes like real cake!  I mean, we are not cake-deprived, not at all.  I made cake a priority years ago and then had a party to celebrate the getting of cake.  But they are tea cakes and tortes and bundt cakes and flourless cakes and flourless tortes and italian nut tortes, etc.  But a layer cake -- the kind of fluffy sponge that is mostly just a vehicle for the stacking & the frosting -- I did not have in my arsenal.  I tried fooling with Nigella's recipes a couple of years ago -- I blogged about it, how I made two (two!) different terrible cakes, that were terrible differently. 

Anyhow, good!  This is good.  I am excited.  And her frosting recipe for this project is so simple & so smart.  Like, Cook's Illustrated-level smartiness.  She has done the hard work with the grain-infrastructure replacement; I can definitely scooch around her on sweeteners. 

I love that she tells people on her website: I create my recipes by experimenting, often repeatedly. I encourage you to do the same.  Amen.  I would add only, and silently.   

dirty bastet

Every year, we host at least a couple of litters of weaned kittens on our porch, which has several good hiding places and full sun most of the day.  We have a cat problem in our neighborhood, which I find tolerable only because we also have a squirrel problem in our neighborhood, and the cats do not eat my plants, but the squirrels do, so whatever.  Both problems can be traced back to Feeder Neighbor, but do not get me started.

  
What the hell kind of trickster god put kittens on my porch at Christmastime?   A freaking pair of kittens, one for each child.  Hypothetically, of course.  I would not take one of those purring rats into my house for anything.  The children would never ask, because they know I am disdainful of anyone foolish enough to indulge these inbred creatures.  Plus, our own dowager cat would nevah tolerate it.  Evah.

Anyhow, I had been wondering why there were only the two.  We have cars and owls and that, so I would presume there is some attrition in the 6 or 7 weeks before they start camping delicately inside our flowerpots and all, but the litters we get are usually three cats, sometimes four. 

Today I was out with Fille, running an errand on foot and taped to a lamppost around the corner was a large sign declaring a LOST KITTEN, with a perfect description of the two living outside our house.  I do not understand this.  First of all, how can you live here and not know we have a feral cat problem, it is like Tel Aviv here; second, what the eff?  When people see squirrels, they do not bring them in and feed them & declare them LOST.  Yuk.  One of those kittens from our porch is seriously rheumy.  

I know, I hang tight with too many Israelis, but really.  Disgusting!  Health hazard!  Imagine if the feral cat population of Israel -- if this is news, it is estimated to be a million cats -- got infected with rabies.  It would be like the zombie apocalypse!  Oh, I hate to think about it, it makes me want to get started with Feeder Neighbor, which is a non-starter, because people who feed pestilential wildlife can not be convinced they are vermin, obviously.  I mean, I do have to harden my heart when I see them out there, huddled together when it is 40 degrees.  I am not a monster, but logically, blech.  

Up at 8tracks, uh ... well, it seems random, unless it does not, yes.  We are keeping it quiet this first weekend of December.  I will be sewing, I think the others are taking a trip to see the flayed people thingo?  No, thank you!  I would almost rather put one of those kittens in my mouth!

more of life's unsolicited tips

Man Ray, Indestructible Object, 1963

 
I have finally caught up on the Tiger Woods car crash thingo, etc.  A lot of it (ok, all of it) had actually gone over my head, but then I took Garçon with me to one of Ballet Town's taverns last night so that he & I could eat dinner and I could catch most of the La Liga match. 

When the middle-console tavern-teevee was showing the local news lead story to be Tiger Woods and not Obama's Afghanistan, my curiosity was peaked.  I was confused:  was this actually interesting, this Woods thingo, or had the teevee news mixed up their black men?  (Dunno.)

I can not even feel sorry for Woods, not even in a pirate-code, scoundrels' society way.  From the minute he says his name on a recorded message, it is too dumb to be believed.  Did Alec Baldwin go first in this voice-mail way for naught?  Honestly. 

I think I have written before that I have an affinity for womanizers, but only because they are my people, not because they were my guys.  I have to admit that watching a man over a period of months work away at 4 or 5 women in a compulsion of sociopathic coozehounding -- it is a thrilling spectacle, but not if they are dumb.  Tiger?  He was dumb.  Too dumb to have that much rope let out, because with all that rope, you can never hang yourself & you have to face the music.  A guy who is born a Collector will never make that kind of mistake.  It is why they are so thrilling, their shrewdness and defiance, their tenacity and elusiveness, the startling equivocations.

I heard someone say, in defense of Woods's wife, that men who will cheat, will cheat.  This was because there was conjecture that his wife was not, you know, keeping the bed warm.  I do not claim to know about Mrs Woods or whatever, but I will say that yes, a pathological womanizer can not be kept home.  But when I was a girl, I knew plenty of married men who were not getting what they needed, eyelash-wise, because they would tell me all about it while they decompressed from our first assignation.  Women, be wise.  As Aretha Franklin opined many years ago and the ladies of En Vogue updated us in our lifetimes, your love will surely make him yours. 

Then worry not about the supple co-ed who tumbles into his department office one day to introduce herself because she has read his entire book about [whatever] and just had some questions about page 319.  ("No, no, I am not in your class; I was just interested.")  He will answer her questions delightedly and in a fatherly way before inviting her to coffee where everyone on campus can see.  Doubtless, this will occur because you yourself read his book & told him how interested you were.  Alternatively, you might seek out a co-ed you know to have read it and ask her to feed you the high points.  This falls into a different area in which one should take care, as Sippie Wallace advised us:  Don't advertise your man. 

Those men that I met who cheated with me fell into 2 categories:  Category A: looking for something secret to keep to himself as a reward for his midlife and Category B: hates his wife and hopes she finds out & if not, he can not wait to tell her.  I developed a better radar to avoid Category B, although I will say that sometimes a Category A guy could slide into Category B depending on how honest he had been with himself, going in, regarding his dissatisfaction with his marriage's torpor.  Tiger Woods fits into a different category altogether:  More money and luxury than brains.  See:  Gary Hart. 

Anyhow, speaking of cell phones, which I was, I would like for everyone to stop having boring conversations at loud volumes on their cell phones.  The next time I am on public transit helpless but to listen to someone's phone call, I would like it to be full of scandal and intrigue.  People are always talking about work and meetings and garden-variety, post-divorce, shitty dates.  I want to hear about how you blew two guys at once and then stole their coke, ok?  Why is no one ever telling that story on their cell phone where I can hear?!?  Why is no one ever breaking down the compendium of adultery?  Save the dull, Franklin-Planner phone notation for your own car, please, but no crashing or, like, running into your 9-irons with your mouth.  When you do that, I want you to talk about it really loud on your cell phone where I can hear.