Remember Me?

I have no excuse for not posting, other than not wanting to bore myself with my own musings. I do have a few updates, though:

You may have noticed that it’s December. December! The Boy will be turning 13 in two weeks, a fact which I find somewhat confusing: How can he be aging when I most certainly am not? I don’t quite get it. However this crazy Space/Time Continuum thing works, The Boy will be celebrating his birthday by joining seven other boys, his uncle, and his godfather for three rousing hours of shooting each other with small balls of paint. C and I will watch and take pictures, but we’re not playing. He doesn’t like to get dirty, and I don’t want to A.) be the only girl and B.) be the only MOM LADY involved.

We don’t usually have a real party for the kid’s birthday, usually opting for some kind of fun outing with a friend or two and then a sleep over, but we thought 13 was a big deal. It’s no bar mitzvah, but it’s a way to let him know that we appreciate that he’s growing up. Or something like that.

What else? Christmas is coming, and I am neither baking nor decorating because I don’t know where I’ll be living come December 25. Because I STILL don’t have a closing date for the stupid house. I am dealing with a large bank, one that has existed in this community for a very long time, and I cannot figure out for the LIFE of me why they are so inept. I mean, they seem to keep forgetting about things they need me to sign or fill out, and are sending things to me in dribs and drabs. The woman I’m working with JUST TODAY sent me the form asking me to list the addresses I’ve lived at for the past three years. Um, shouldn’t they have taken care of that one right off the bat? And don’t they already KNOW that, since they know every other freaking thing about me, including my shoe size, my mother’s maiden name, the name of my high school mascot, my favorite smells, and the name of the first album I purchased on CD?

I am so tired of this whole stupid process. I wish I could go to sleep and have the house elves wake me when they’ve finished packing and moving.

I’ve been having all of the Christmas gifts I’ve bought online mailed to my office, because who knows when I’ll move and when they’ll actually show up? At least I have that part of the situation under control. The shopping, that is. I think I pretty much have everyone taken care of, from The Boy down to the family grab bag—I’ve been shopping since August or so, and I’m very, very glad about it. Obnoxiously so, even. I just have to make sure I stay away from stores now, so I don’t end up buying anything else, thus spending more money than I had planned to and wrecking my whole carefully constructed Christmas budget. Thanks to C’s OCD, I keep a spreadsheet of Christmas expenditures, complete with pie charts—I’d be ashamed of myself if I wantonly spent too much and screwed up my precious charts!

Besides, I have to save the money I have left for things like movers. Not that I can arrange for movers without a closing date.

See why I haven’t written? I’m stuck in this loop . . .

Spinning My Wheels

The people I’m trying to buy the house from are jerks, and I’m really starting to hate them. I still don’t have a closing date, and it’s their fault. Stupid out-out-state trustees, going on their stupid vacations, stalling around while I hang out in stupid suspended animation! I can’t pack, because what happens if the deal falls through and I’ve got a houseful of packed boxes? Ugh. So I’m collecting a store of empty boxes, and cleaning out closets and drawers and getting ready to be able to pack. Pre-packing. And, you know, waiting. I keep getting to the point where I want to tell the sellers to cram the house up their indolent asses, but then I remember that I’ve already paid for the appraisal, the home inspection, and the “hand money,” and I decide I’m in too deep to do anything but wait it out. Bah.

In the meantime, I’m knitting and listening to the third audio book in the Outlander series, Voyager. I think it has to speak well for Gabaldon’s characters that I still care about them after more than sixty CDs, right? Thank God for the library, though, because who could afford to put the money into the CDs for the entire series? Yikes.

What am I knitting? Gifts, mostly. I think that since I last posted I’ve done my nephew’s Pitt scarf (Potter-fashion, but blue and gold), a pair of Mary Jane-style slippers for my cousin’s 24th birthday, and a pair of bootie-like (bootie, heh) slippers for The Boy. I’m using the leftover yarn from his big school scarf for those, and he requested that one slipper be purple and one gold. Whatever, weirdo. I’ve knit a tube scarf that’s like a Mobius Strip, which looked nice in the picture, but which I think I hate. I got the pattern and yarn from the Lion Brand site, and I like the yarn, but the scarf makes me look like I’m trying to squeeze my head off. Sigh. At least it was a fast knit, right?

I’m waiting for a slew of books to come in from the library, and I’m also waiting for The Children’s Book to come in from Amazon. Thanks to one of BableBabe’s posts, I ended my budget-induced (see: Buying a House) moratorium on book buying and ordered that and Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone. Drabble is AS Byatt’s sister, so I want to see what she’s like. I hope they show up soon. I ordered a copy of my friend S’s favorite Sesame Street LP, Grover Sings the Blues, at the same time, and it’s already here. (She doesn’t have a turntable and the albums’s not available on CD, so I’m going to have it put on a CD and give it to her for Christmas. It’s the little things, right?) Here’s what she said about the album in an e-mail last week, “Grover Sings the Blues featured such classics as ".... around, around, around, around. Over! Under! Through!" and "... near ...FAR! (sung from across the room)". Truly, Grover shines on this album. I have no idea why he hasn't been inducted into the Rock Hall yet. Based on that album alone, he deserves it.” How could that NOT become a Christmas gift?

Speaking of Christmas, The Boy hardly wants anything. He admits to having just about everything he could ever want, so Christmas is going to be fairly small this year. He’s getting some video game upgrades, and we’re going to do our Heifer International family thing, and he’ll get some books, Legos, and this little Fiber Optics kit—and soldering iron!—he thought was cool while browsing a catalog, and that’s about it. Although one of the games he’s getting is Beatles Rock Band, so I suppose Christmas morning won’t be without its usual pajama-ed, messy haired, cookie munching fun.

One more thing about The Boy before I go: He went to another Bar Mitzvah last weekend, and the ubiquitous t-shirt maker was there. The Boy had a shirt made the first time he went to one, so didn’t feel that he needed another air-brushed representation of his name. He ended up coming home with two shirts last Saturday. One was for my friend P, for whom The Boy has a burning love I’ve not seen him have for another female since, well . . . me. He got hers printed with the Joker’s, “Why So Serious,” question, and I think her heart grew two sizes when he gave it to her. The shirt he got for himself, though, is truly remarkable. He said he couldn’t think of what he wanted printed on it, when he noticed that another kid had got one that said “Super Jew.” So my kid, the boy who went to pre-school at the JCC with many of the kids who were at the Bar Mitzvah, who taught those same kids the words to Up on the Housetop when they were three, decided once again to let his non-Jewish flag fly. He proudly requested that the fellow print "Secular Humanist" on his shirt.

WHAT A DORK. And OH, how much I love him!

Hi, Ho! Kermit the Frog, Here!

Today is Sesame Street's 40th birthday! Sesame Street is older than I am: I have never existed in a world without Sesame Street. I think many people who were little kids in the 70s, before anyone had cable, have the same fierce loyalty to the Street and the Muppets that I do. We were the kids who were too young to "appreciate" the trippy offerings of Sid and Marty Krofft (I can't possibly be the only person who was terrified by Lidsville and Pufnstuf, right? And just the thought of poor maligned Sigmund, persecuted by those other wretched sea monsters, makes me want to cry even now), and there was only so much Scooby Doo and other Hanna Barbera crap one kid could take. So we became the Sesame Street Generation . . . long before Douglas Copeland foisted his stupid Generation X label on us.

We learned to count to ten in Spanish, and we learned that Tolerance and Diversity were cool long before they received their capital T and D. We learned that learning was fun and could be super-cool.

My mom sewed my sister and me matching white denim suits (jeans and jacket) that featured the Sesame Street characters scattered all over them, and I loved wearing that outfit more than just about any other outfit I can think of. My grandparents took us to Sesame Street on Ice and bought me a felt Bert and her a felt Ernie that hung on the walls of our shared bedroom for years.

And we had the music.


This one was my very own, and my sister wasn't allowed to touch it. I, however, was allowed to use the turntable all by myself to listen whenever I wanted. I think it drove my parents a little crazy, but I will never forget the time that my dad silently set up the speakers in the bedroom where my mom was sound asleep, and then blasted her out of bed with the Count's signature thunder and, "Mwah, ha, ha!"


This one came along a little later, and belonged to both of us. We had the proper Saturday Night Fever album too, and both were in heavy rotation.

I love Kermit with all my heart, and still, at the age of almost-39, can't hear him sing "It's Not Easy Being Green" without getting choked up. In fact, if I were an actor and needed to cry on cue, that could do it for me.



And I love Bert. Fussy, impatient, wonderful Bert.



Happy 40th Birthday, Sesame Street! I wish you many, many more!

Rube-y, Rube-y, Rube-y, Rube-y!

Sing it like the Kaiser Chiefs, but know I mean it like I'm spelling it: I think I got taken yesterday (no--not over the pending house purchase--don't even think that!). The building I work in is on the edge of a university campus, right across the street from a hospital. Depending on where I need to go upon leaving work, sometimes I cut though the hospital's facilities to make my way home. I did that yesterday, and happened to catch the eye of a man who was rounding the corner as I was waiting at a red light.

He approached me, confessed to being terribly embarrassed, and said he'd run out of gas for the first time in his life. He'd walked to the nearest gas station to find that they didn't have gas cans for sale, and wouldn't loan him one without a $20 deposit, which he didn't have. It was probably a load of crap, but I gave him the $7 I had on me without much hesitation. Why? Because he was nice, polite, and really did appear to need help. I thought about it as I drove home, and decided I was okay about having been taken advantage of, if that were the case. Someone asked me for help and I gave it, because that's what people are supposed to do, right? I wouldn't have given him a ride if he'd asked for one (because I am kind but not willing to jeopardize my safety), but I would have given him the money anyway, and called him a cab.

So maybe I'm a fool, but I'm okay with it if I am.

I'm still in House Limbo, by the way. The inspection was Wednesday, and went as I'd expected. The house desperately needs a new roof, which I knew when I made an offer that was significantly lower than the asking price. There are some other things the sellers have to take care of if the sale is going to move forward, and I'm hoping that won't be too much of a problem. Please cross your fingers for me.

I'll leave you with this, which was a wonderfully pleasant surprise for me. The Boy wanted me to knit a hat for him, which I did despite the fact that he probably hasn't kept a hat on his head for more than a single hour--TOTAL--in his nearly thirteen years. But it turns out that he LOVES his new hat (I credit the super-softness of the Malabrigo wool), and only takes it off while he's at school. How gratifying is that, I ask you? The simple little hat is now my favorite knitting accomplishment!

Not That You Asked, But

C once accused me of hating two things everyone else loves, the Olympics and Halloween. He was partially wrong about on both counts. I don't hate the Olympics, but I don't really enjoy them, either. And I don't hate Halloween, but I do hate one of its biggest components: I hate, hate, hate trick-or-treat, and I always have.

I grew up in the sticks--houses acres apart, with no sidewalks in sight--and had to be driven around to t-o-t. Ugh. Nothing ruins a costume like having to freaking drag its huge headpiece or hoop skirt or other enormous prop in and out of the car, where people would sit on you and step over you and bend/crush/stain/wrinkle everything. And then I hated that people would pretend not to know who we were, when we saw them every day and our parents were RIGHT behind us! And I hated the idea of going to the homes of people I didn't know and having them perfunctorily hand me a stupid snack that I probably wouldn't like anyway. Popcorn balls, Bit-o-Honey, Wacky Wafers, those stupid McDonald's gift certificate things . . . GAH! Plus, I always felt really super guilty when certain lonely old lady neighbors would give us little baggies of terrible candy that they had CLEARLY spent lots of time lovingly assembling. I remember feeling like crying at one particular old lady's door, when I could smell her farty dinner smells wafting out from behind her while her TV blared and her hands shook as she dropped bags of chalky candy into our stupid plastic pumpkin heads. I felt so bad for demanding anything from her. I felt bad that I thought she would probably love some company that I absolutely DID NOT want to give her. Shudder.

Now I resent having to spend money on candy for kids I neither know nor care about. I hate having to play nice with them and their stupid parents, who mostly stand carelessly on the street, talking on cell phones while their kids demand candy from me. I hate the high school kids who don't even go to the trouble of putting on a costume, but expect me to put candy in their damn pillowcases anyway.

I am not at all against dressing in costume, Halloween parties, jack-o-lanterns, or black cats. The Boy spent several happy Octobers working with C on some fantastic costumes, and loved it, and that thrilled me. I liked going to his school's Halloween parades and parties, and I'm so glad he's got those wonderful memories. I love seeing my nephew and my friends' kids enjoy their own costumes, and I love seeing what costumes C and his friends come up with year after year for their annual Halloween party.

In summary, then, I don't hate Halloween; I hate trick-or-treat. I hate things that are forced and contrived, meaningless, awkward, and uncomfortable, and that's what t-o-t has always been to me.

I'm a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

What?

My potential leap into owning my own home continues apace. The Boy and I are meeting the realtor at the house this evening to make an offer, and we'll see what happens. I'm excited, but very nervous, too. I mean, I've never owned a house All By Myself. It's daunting to think about dealing with property and repairs and improvements without a partner to share the stress with. What if I can't do it? What if I'm not up to the challenge, and I end up with a yard with no grass, weeds growing through cracks in the driveway and sidewalks, holes in the roof, clogged pipes, termites, rats, cat hair all over everything, stacks of unpaid bills, empty cupboards, and overflowing litter boxes?

Oy. Breathe. Okay. It may not even happen. The last time I made an offer on a house, the guy who did my home inspection all but begged me not to buy the place, as it was going to fall down. Maybe there will be a similar hitch this time--there are lots of things that can go wrong between making an offer and actually closing on a house. But if it does happen to work out, and I can indeed handle all of the hazards of owning my own place All By Myself, the benefits will be great. I may close in time to get the tax credit. The mortgage payment will be significantly less than what I pay in rent. I will be able to retire--or at least potentially switch to part-time work once The Boy gets through college. And I will have something to leave The Boy when I die.

All good things. So please cross your fingers for me.

Some things seem to be going my way. I just spent an hour outside in this lovely weather

knitting this kick-ass hat for The Boy

Talk about peace and happiness!

And I'm reading a pretty cute book, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life, a memoir by a guy who moved with his boyfriend to rural Michigan, in hopes of creating their own version of Walden and finding, well, peace and happiness, like I mentioned above. It gets a little twee at times, but I like the writer's voice, and he's achingly sincere, which goes a long way. He's funny too, and there are many things to laugh aloud over. The only thing that troubles me, though, is that the writer comes off as a little . . . "Just Jack," and it makes me worry that he's trying to be the kind of gay fella straight people like.

Remember him from Will & Grace? He was funny, of course, and I liked him well enough--at least from what I saw of the first season or two that I watched of the show, but . . . he seemed pretty contrived, in a way that would make exuberantly gay men seem like nonthreatening pets that straight people could show off to their friends.

And gay people--even my ultra-flaming friend who collects Barbies and paid me to sew him a Size 24 bridal gown "with velvet, and satin, and yards and yards of tulle" one Halloween aren't as Sanitized for Straights' Protection like Just Jack. You know?

Now maybe Wade Rouse, the author, really is just like he portrays himself in the book. And if he is, that's obviously fine--good for him. But if he's altering himself to make him seem more appealing to straight folks (in exactly the opposite way, mind you, that he tried to make himself appealing to straights in high school by hanging posters of Farrah Fawcett on his wall and trying out for the football team), then . . . it's kind of sad.

It's a fun and funny book, though, worthwhile and tender. I'm going to request Rouse's other books to see if I get a better sense of who he really is.

How in the Hell Did it Get to be the MIddle of October?

October used to creak and groan along even though it was filled with homework and midterms and football games, but now that I'm old, it's like time is on fast-forward. I swear the days go by without my noticing them, and if that's not something an old lady would say, I don't know what is.

I have absolutely nothing exciting to report, which is why I haven't posted in nearly two weeks. What's to say? Okay, well, I could tell you that I might buy a house. It's a tiny little thing, but built in 1950 and so solid as a bomb shelter. I'm having trouble getting a mortgage, as I make pitifully little money as a public radio lackey and have a mountain of student loans (for that MLIS, which has so far turned out to be useless, but I'm not bitter AT ALL), so my debt-to-income ration is crap. I'm still working on it, though, and am cautiously optimistic. I'll certainly be posting a lot more about that if it works out.

I've been indulging my trashier self and listening to Outlander, the 28-CD audio book that's the first in Diana Gabaldon's series of the same name. The book is generally a lot of fun, but it's a bodice-ripper of the type I haven't paid much attention to since high school. I got the idea from Knitting Outside the Lines, wherein either Ann or Kay suggests that listening to the series could get one through quite a bit of knitting. That's an understatement! No one mentioned, though, that I might have a terrible problem with wanting to speak in a Scottish accent, though, after listening to Davina Porter's reading of all the Highlanders. Och!

I got some awesome yarns last weekend when one of my local stores was having a pre-inventory sale, and promptly made a hat for The Boy out of some beautiful (but still cool enough for him) Malabrigo, but I keep casting on too many stitches and making the damned thing too big. I've ripped it out twice, and am hoping the third time will be the charm. Otherwise I'm going to accept that fact that the yarn is some kind of magical, cursed, GROWING yarn, and use it to knit a skirt that will grow along with my ass. Sigh.

Oh, speaking of sighs (and curses and shouts, but that's just me and my anger), have a look at this Salon article about Courtney Cox's new show if you have a chance. I haven't watched the show, but reading the article filled me with a lovely Red Rage of Righteousness, which should pretty much carry me through the day. Why so angry? Well, because the show is just as patronizing and insulting as its stupid Cougar Town title indicates. Here's the beginning of the article, by regular Salon writer Heather Havrilesky:

"If aliens learned about our culture by watching our newest television shows, they might assume that planet Earth was terrorized by predatory middle-aged women with hairless, bony bodies and the same blank expression on their overly Botoxed faces, a look of creepy awe at the joys of 20-something tenderloin.

"They're addicted to those botulism injections, which make them jittery and sick," the aliens might hypothesize after watching shows like "Cougar Town" and "Eastwick" and "Accidentally on Purpose." "Their lives are so addled by substance abuse that they pace and second-guess themselves with their googly-eyed, like-minded friends, then giggle and high-five like schoolgirls at the sight of some well-defined abdominal muscles, which are apparently a sign of inner purity."

"Why don't the other humans just snuff them out?" some young alien would interject, but no one would answer him because in the galaxy of Zoron, young men are seen as hopelessly naive and confused and are generally ignored until they hit 35. Besides, all of the older aliens would already recognize that these "cougars" clearly serve as some sort of cautionary tale for female humans, a moralistic narrative that humans refer to, strangely enough, as a "guilty pleasure" -- "guilty" in this case meaning "it makes you want to stick your head in the oven" and "pleasure" referring to the feeling humans get from having their fingernails ripped off one by one."

Sweet Jesus! It makes me absolutely livid to think that this show's writers (two men) are taking the opportunity to further the idea of grown women having sex into a cartoonish joke. It's a cruel bait and switch: A show about a 40-something woman who is confident about her sexuality! She's into younger guys! It's about time the tables are turned, when older men have been praised for scoring young chicks for generations! No, though. That's not how it is. Really, women who want to sleep with hot guys are sad, desperate, frantic, and laughable. It makes me sad. And mad.

The weird thing, though, is that I don't think most men feel this way. I think most men want woman who's relaxed and happy about sex and her own skin . . . right? Real, actual, run of the mill men who live outside of NYC and LA don't want a woman who's Botoxed and Brazilian-ed and starved/exercised into a tense, tight version of herself in high school. Right? That's just a trope, isn't it? If that's the case, who keeps supporting it? Is it really commerce that's doing it? Are the corporations who sell make-up and hair-dye and diet pills and Spanx and gym memberships and Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers and manicures and pedicures and waxing and anti-wrinkle cream so vested in our collective fear of aging and insecurities about our appearance that THEY are the ones with the power? Has The Patriarchy been replaced with . . . what? The Market? If so, that's going from bad to worse, because it means women are more complicit in their suppression that they ever were.

Okay. Enough. Sorry. It just . . . chafes a little it all.

I have to get back to work.