It's Mine!

Christmas was nice--most people were very pleased with their gifts, and most everyone got at least one hand-knit. The Boy received his knitted items before Christmas, but he was so over the moon about his new phone that nothing else really mattered to him. I've seem him hug it a little, and I wouldn't be surprised to see his engagement announcement in the paper.

The most important gift came today, though, after an hour of signing my name and putting my initials all over everything. I am a homeowner. I'm pretty sure we'll be living in the house for our annual New Year's Eve Goodness, if I can manage to pull it off.

Let the new set of worries commence!

Hooray! Boo!

Hooray! I'm closing on the house on Monday!

Boo! My landlord just informed me that my lease runs through the end of March; I was positive it ended at the end of February, as I moved in at the beginning of February six years ago. So unless I can find someone to sublet, I am going to be paying rent AND a mortgage for longer than I'd expected! Isn't that effing SUPER?

Someday--SOMEDAY--I will not feel the need to utter the Charlie Brown-like phrase, "I can't win."

The Dude Abides

I had no idea there was a new Jeff Bridges movie coming out until I saw a review of it on Salon this morning. I love him so much! And he looks sort of like Kris Kristofferson in this movie, which means I’m going to love him even more. Dreamy! Because this is my taste in men: Hairy Jeff Bridges, Kris Kristofferson, Sam Elliott. Sigh. Don’t get me wrong—Cary Grant is dashing and debonair and dreamy, as is his modern-day counterpart George Clooney—but the men I’ve been attracted to since I was a little girl are the ones who are scruffy and a little dirty. I like facial hair, long hair, hairy chests, soft jeans, worn boots, beat-up hands, and the smells of tobacco and whisky or beer.

The Grant/Clooney men are gorgeous and charming, but seem like they’d need women who regularly wear heels and make-up; they seem like being with them would be so much work. The scruffy men, though, are the ones who want women that don’t mind having messy hair or broken nails. The scruffy men are the ones you can relax with, and I’m all about being relaxed.





You know what I'd like for Christmas? I'd like one of these guys to pick me up in an enormous old pick-up with faded paint and the Allman Brothers on the stereo, and then drive me off to his cabin in the mountains to spend a weekend in front of the fire.

Lost Weekend

No, I didn’t get tanked and wake up wearing snow shoes in Tahiti with no idea how or why. That’d make for a pretty good blog entry though, wouldn’t it? Instead, I found myself lost without the constant, comforting voice of Davina Porter reading to me on my iPod. I’ve grown so used to listening to her read the Outlander books that I found I honestly couldn’t settle into a task without her. I tried listening to music, and then to Mike Birbiglia’s first comedy album, but nothing worked. I ended up reading while I walked on my treadmill (Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone, which is interesting but not quite as engrossing as I’d like it to be), and then it got so bad that I nearly downloaded the book I’m waiting for—the 4th one in the series, which I’d ordered ahead of time from the library but had to REORDER because I’d accidentally requested the ABRIDGED version, and WHY DO THEY EVEM MAKE THOSE? Anyway, I didn’t buy the audio book because it’s like $70. Granted, it’s 900 CDs, but still.

So! I was lost this weekend. Knitting was all wrong. I couldn’t clean or bake properly. Trips in the car were silent, because I WANTED MY STORY, and nothing else would do. The library is telling me it’s in transit, and I’m so glad! I have WORK to do!

In a positive development, though, the library’s lag time gave me another opportunity to recognize that my son is awesome. He was playing Assassin's Creed 2 last night, and the main character had to take part in a series of contests to win a golden mask (the game takes place in Renaissance Italy, and is essentially just like the early games in the Harry Potter series—tasks, puzzles, quests, and achievements all serving the narrative arc of the game’s story—only this story involves a character who travels back in time to try and kill various bad guys in an attempt to end a war that’s going on in the present). The Boy was playing and I was trying to knit while getting sucked into his story, since I couldn’t have my own, when he realized that women weren't taking part in the competition for the mask. He said, "What? Women aren't allowed to play?" I said, "OF COURSE NOT! THE WIMMINZ CAN'T DO ANYTHING," and without missing a beat he said, "Except look pretty and have babies." I high-fived him. He understands sarcasm and sexism, and . . . I've obviously done my job. Motherhood Mission accomplished.

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.

A Loop is a Loop is a Loop . . .

I slept in this morning--I think I went to bed without setting my alarm. I wasn't following my normal pattern, because I was all wrapped up in giving myself a pedicure before going to bed. I soaked my feet in the tub, did the scraper/buffer thing, and then took the lotion into my room to slather on my feet before putting on socks. I was so enchanted by my lovely soft feet, and the fact that I could snuggle into the comforter with a game of Scrabble on my phone, that I guess I forgot all about the clock.

I woke up a full hour later than normal, and only then because I heard car horns blowing outside, ten minutes after the time I usually make the Thursday morning pick-up of The Boy, who sleeps at his dad’s on Wednesday nights. I gathered my wits about me and made The Boy walk the mile to my house--he'd have been late for school if he'd waited for me to shower and get ready, and then drive up there, because the traffic snarl is terrible near C’s house at that time of the morning. Driving the mile through our neighborhoods takes five minutes normally, but after about 7:10, forget it—it takes forever.

So The Boy walked, and the timing was perfect: He came into the alley as I was pulling out of the garage. Granted, we were both, as SpongeBob once said, “Late for bein’ early,” which means The Boy missed out on his time playing football in the gym before school, and I missed my morning leisure time (I usually pack or pick up breakfast, which I eat in my car or office before work while I read or knit and listen to an audio book in lovely peace), but we were both on time for what counted, and I guess that’s all that matters.

I have very little to report in the way of anything else. I did some much-needed clothes shopping last weekend, but as it was much-needed, the purchases themselves were unremarkable: I replaced some faded and/or worn out standards with some brand new standards, so I can go to work without look like the Poor Little Match Girl. I’m in the process of hemming the pants, though, which is kind of . . . not exciting at all, is it? See? I have nothing. I haven’t finished any knitting projects (Christmas shawl for my mom and Christmas scarf for C) lately, and . . . oh! Wait! Books!

I just read How I Became a Famous Novelist, and it was an odd and interesting reading experience. Reading about reading is always fun, but reading about reading and writing is the kind of meta that makes me want to write about reading, and then the whole thing becomes a Mobius Strip in my head and makes me feel like I should dedicate myself to doing some kind of important, culture-saving work. Yikes. Allow me to calm down and back up for a minute.

The book is about a smart young guy (I pictured the main character as Chuck Klosterman, whose books I enjoy both despite and because of his similarities to HIBAFN’s main character. I wonder how he would feel about that?) who breezes his way through school and college and finds himself an overeducated English major with little in the way of employable skills and no desire to go to law school like the so-called love of his life who abandoned him, and at whose upcoming wedding he is dying to extract revenge. He fumbles around for a while until he comes across an article about a best-selling writer who’s depicted in a sort of Robert James Waller, Bridges of Madison County vein. I think. The fictional author who gathers our protagonist’s interest is salt-of-the-earthier, but Waller popped into my head right away.

Anyway, this author’s incredible success in what the main character sees as posing and fooling readers sparks an, “If HE can do it, why can’t I,” moment. He wanders around a Barnes & Noble, noting titles and collecting ideas, persuades his med-school roommate to give him samples of a Ridalin-like drug to focus his attention, and then sits down and bangs out a novel—The Tornado Ashes Club—using every trope and affectation he can think of, often to hilarious effect. He really and truly nails it, and Steve Hely, who wrote HIBAFN, includes passages from the first novel and aborted attempts, the bulleted lists, excerpts from others’ novels in the Dan Brown, Robert Patterson, etc. ilk, an AWESOME fictional version of the NYT Best Sellers list, and other tidbits that make the whole thing even more fun to read.

Then again, the total package of the novel makes you wonder. It makes you wonder (not for the first time—admit it) if you could become a famous novelist. If you’re as cynical as the main character. If you know what’s good. If it matters what you read, or even that you read at all.

It’s a fast, easy read, and definitely worth checking out.

And . . . I guess I had more to say than I thought. Next time I’ll talk about the book I’m reading now, Lev Grossman’s cool and fun The Magicians.

Hi There

How's it going? I'm finally back to my regularly scheduled programming, after The Boy's annual bout of Fall Plague. Actually, I should probably call it his Autumn Ague, as the whole thing is mostly a few days' worth of fever with a little coughing thrown in for fun. So, yes! Autumn Ague, it is. I do love me some alliteration.

Anyway, I spent the week up to this point working abbreviated days, spending mornings and late afternoons nursing The Boy, taking his temperature, plying him with juice, and creating tempting little snacks to get His Majesty to nibble his way back to good health. That, and making sure he kept up with all his homework. I'm quite spoiled from working essentially part-time over the last three days. How great would life be if I could have my same salary and benefits but only have to work 10-2 every day? Sigh. That would be the life.

I did take The Boy for a brief outing on Tuesday, so he could get some books from school, and I caved into his pleas to stop at the AT&T store. It was time to renew my contract, you see, which meant that I could upgrade to a new phone. He was dying for a chance to help shop for the new phone, and I figured it wouldn't kill him. I ended up getting a Motorola Karma, and I think I love it.

It slides open to reveal a full keyboard, which I really like, and when it's closed it's all chunky and sturdy and square, JUST LIKE ME. We were meant for each other!

I'm still learning how to work with it, but it's pretty intuitive. Its camera has many more features than my old phone, so I have high hopes for it. Here are two shots of the shawl I'm working on, which I think looks like a stingray.


Can those holes down the middle be considered lace? Lacy? Lace-ish? I like to tell myself they can. My sister wants me to give the shawl to her when it's finished. She has visions of wrapping up in at work to ward off the cold in her office. We'll see. I kind of maybe want to keep it.

I also think I want to keep the library book I'm reading, Rage Against the Meshugenah: Why it Takes Balls to Go Nuts, about a youngish Jewish father who finds himself in the throes of clinical depression. First of all, how can you not want to read a book with a title like that? And second, it's interesting to read about depression from a male's point of view, since it's not often revealed or talked about. I'm pretty sure C dealt with depression in the time leading up to his coming out, and then during the aftermath of our separation and divorce, but that's the only concrete example I know of. (Plus, I have to admit that the Hurt and Bitter Shirty Within reveled in his unhappiness at the time. I mean, he was making me get divorced! He was making our son a Child of Divorce! He deserved it! Ahem.)

Another reason that I like this book so much--aside from the fact that it's honest and funny and very nicely written, I mean--is that I have a Jew Fetish. I have wanted to be Jewish since around third grade, when I first started reading Judy Blume--especially Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. I wanted to speak Yiddish. I wanted neurotic family members. I wanted an ancestry that was linked to the Holocaust.

I grew up enough to be grateful that my ancestors weren't persecuted, but the appeals of Jewish families never left me. I didn't want to be Orthodox or keep kosher or anything, but I was always drawn to it. C and I went to Israel for his spring break during his law school term in London, and I sat with my toes in the Red Sea and was stunned to think that it was Moses' Red Sea. I fell further in love when a close friend converted and asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. I loved everything about that from the the Chupah and breaking the glass to the signing of the ketubah and the chair dance. Oh, that chair dance! And then C and I moved back to Pittsburgh to have The Boy, and eventually sent him to the pre-school we liked best, which just so happened to be at our local Jewish Community Center. Those people were like a family to us, and The Boy made some of his best friends there. Granted, he was the kid at the pre-school who taught all the other kids to sing Up on the Housetop, his favorite Christmas song, but no one minded, and everyone loved him.

We've been through Jewish summer camps, Purims, and sedars, and we've eaten in a suka at Sukot. I know what a shofar is. I'm pretty sure I can still count to ten in Hebrew. I love the traditions and the emphasis on family, I love latkes, bagels, and kugel, and . . . pretty much the whole deal (though I've never been in love with Woody Allen--Annie Hall, sure, but that had more to do with Diane Keaton).

I was buying The Boy new soccer socks at our local non-big-box soccer store last Friday, and when two boys came in and wished me, "Good Shabbos," I was thrilled.

I am a Judeophile. But I can't convert: I'm not religious enough to even know what I believe, and I know many Jews who feel the same way, but the thought of converting just feels wrong. I mean, what's a formerly Catholic girl to do about Jesus, for one thing?

Wow. How did I start writing about books and end up coming out of this particular closet? L'chaim!

Hoggy, Warty

The Boy wanted me to knit something for him, and truly, I've been wanting to make him something for a long time. He's my favorite person--how could I not want to make him something more permanent than dinner and an endless stream of chocolate chip cookies? Anyway, it wasn't easy: He will not wear sweaters. He will not wear hats. I CANNOT make socks. What's left? A scarf, of course. He asked for a Harry Potter-style scarf in the design from the early movies, but he wanted it to be in his school's colors (because my kid LOVES his school more than any other kid I've ever known). It is perhaps unfortunate that his school's colors are purple and gold, but here is the finished Hogwarts scarf.




It's longer than he is tall, and it's soft and woolly as all get-out. He can't wait for it to be cold enough to wear it, and . . . I feel the same way.

I'm watching my nephew tonight, and he's clamoring for his own version of the scarf now, so I promised to take him to the yarn store tomorrow so he can choose his colors. But I'll be holding on to his until Christmas. I'm no dummy.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

It has been the most beautiful week in the history of Western Pennsylvania. The days are sunny and in the high 70s, and the nights are chilly, in the high 40s or low 50s. I don't know what we did to deserve this, and I'm certain it won't last, but I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Especially since I've spent some good time out in it. Like last Saturday, when P and I went to a Steelers game.

Yes! P and I (two bookish, librarian, Monk-type women with panic and anxiety issues galore) dressed up in black and gold (I had to give her a shirt, because even though she's lived here for like five years now, she didn't have one) and made our way to Hienz Field to partake in that most religious of all Pittsburgh experiences: Steelers Football.

It was so much fun! We parked Downtown in the Cultural District (for only $5!) and walked across the Allegheny River on the Clemente Bridge. Once across, we were able to walk to the stadium along the river, feeling like poor white trash relatives gaping at all the fancy boats parked (moored? docked?) in neat lines. The boat owners were picnicking and posing and playing, all decked out in Steelers regalia, all waiting to wander over to their most excellent seats in the stadium. P and I weren't invited to join any of the richies, so we headed into the stadium an hour before we were allowed up to our seats.

We found a place in the shade to hang out with our soft pretzels and enormous Cokes, and we watched the fans mill around. There were kids and families everywhere, which was kind of nice to see despite the fact that there was no way you could have paid me to bring a kid in diapers to a football game. I shopped a little, and found a non-scary garden gnome, Steeler-fied in black and gold and holding a little thing showing all six Super Bowl titles. You may not want it. I do not want it. She, however, will LOVE IT.


There wasn't just shopping and eating and watching rich people, oh no. There was, um, stretching!
(This is in no way homoerotic, is it?)

There were large rich men milling about.


There were beautiful views of my pretty little city.


There was the ceremonial pouring of electronic ketchup whenever our offense entered the Heinz Ketchup Red Zone (I know this is a bad photo, but you get the idea).


And, oh . . . there was football!



Of course, P and I being who we are, there were books (we were afraid we wouldn't be allowed in the stadium with needles, so there was no knitting).


We ended up not having much time to read, but it's better to always be prepared. I got in a little reading at half-time, as I had no interest in watching the people from United Way "kick-off" their fund-raising season. P headed for the restrooms, but I stayed put with Lily Bard.


The Steelers won, but it would have been a fabulous outing even if they hadn't. I'm not crazy about crowds, but this was a great one. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun!

And in other news having nothing to do with football, I gave my sister her hot water bottle cover. She knew what it was immediately, even though I'd wrapped it in a tiny shirt box and made every effort to confuse her with what should have appeared to be a sweater for a tiny dog. She's already used it, and reported that it's comfy, cozy, and most excellent. Yay!


I still have to finish The Boy's Hogwarts scarf (I had to buy two more skeins of both of the colors, because the original two weren't enough to make it as long as it should be), and I'm nearly half-way through a scarf for C, The Boy's dad. This one is knitted long-ways--I used a crochet cast-on onto a 40" circular needle--so the stripes run lengthwise. I can't wait to see the final product--I think it's going to be really nice.

And . . . that's it. I should get back to work.

Things, Life, What-not.

The Boy is in 7th grade. He’s growing tall and strong, and he’s practically electric with his shining good health and energy. Sometimes when I look at him I can’t believe he’s mine, and then I realize that . . . he isn’t mine. He’s his own person, one I can just watch, admire, guide for as long as he’ll let me, and love, love, love.

-----

I am nearly finished with my sister’s hot water bottle cover, and after a brief episode of panic surrounding a stitch dropped in the middle of the cable (I tried to fix it and felt like I was making things worse, so I wisely put it down until I could take it to Natural Stitches and have one of the fine people there straighten me out), it looks like it’s going to be very cute. I’m finishing the portion that will cover the neck of the water bottle, so right now the thing looks like a sweater for a little dog with no legs, but I swear that’s a good thing. I’ll post a picture once it’s finished and actually covering a water bottle.

-----

I have had a summer of series-reading, and it’s coming to and end. I read all of the Sookie Stackhouse books, including the most reason one, which I broke down and bought in hardcover because I really couldn’t wait. I’m pleased that after eight books Charlaine Harris still has things for these characters to do, but I sense that things are going to be wrapping up soon. Maybe another book or two, and then Sookie can be retired. In the meantime, though, I can’t wait to find out what happens next—especially with a certain little boy she’s become acquainted with.

I’m picking up the last of Harris’s Lily Bard series from the library today, and I’m looking forward to gobbling it up quickly. There are some similarities between Lily and Sookie that make me wonder about things Harris herself might have gone through—or at least things that are foremost on her mind. She’s an interesting person and a fun writer, and I have her first Aurora Teegarden book requested. I am a glutton.

I’ve also just finished the nine-book Little House series. I’d only read the first two when I was a girl, because that’s all my dinky school library had, but I sort of knew what happened even though I wasn’t a big devotee of the show. I mean, I saw enough of the show that all the characters in the book look like their TV counterparts in my head despite the illustrations, and every time Carrie was mentioned I pictured a little girl falling down in high grass. I knew Mary went blind, and I knew Laura married Almanzo, and I knew life on the prairie wasn’t easy. That’s pretty much all there was to it, right?

But somehow, there was more to it. They worked so hard, and were so resourceful. They loved each other so much, but their emotions were so repressed. They dealt with so many uncertainties so bravely. I used to think I’d have made it as a contemporary of Laura and Mary (I would’ve given Mary a run for her money at being the priggish little well-behaved rule-follower), but I don’t know if I’d have had the strength and grace necessary to make it as a contemporary of Ma and Pa Ingalls, what with the unceasing work, the continual threat of mortal danger to your kids’ lives, and the utter lack of book or time to read them.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading these. I have to admit, though, that I skipped over the lyrics to most of the songs they sang (and they sang a lot of songs—Pa and his damned fiddle). I also skipped the detailed descriptions of their outfits, as buttons and hoops and corsets and hoops and layers upon layers of underwear just bore me. But I loved reading about the housework and the farming. Awesome.

Thinking of Little House naturally (ahem) leads me to Sci-Fi, namely Joss Whedon’s Firefly. I’d tried the pilot of this much-beloved show twice, and just couldn't settle into it. It opens with a battle scene featuring characters that you can't care about because you don't know, and . . . it just didn't work. I decided to give it another go last night, and it finally worked. GOD, it's good! It's so riveting! It's an odd combination of Little House and Star Wars and Gunsmoke and . . . I don’t know—was there ever a TV show about pirates?

Odd as it may seem, Firefly is like Little House--although it's set far in the future (and in space), the universe is crawling with PIONEERS. Mal, the captain of the ship, has a distinct whiff of Pa Ingalls about him (although Mal's a lot more menacing). The far-flung planets have been somehow given atmospheres, so humans can live on them, but from what I've seen so far they look like the Old West. They have horses and wear cowboy clothes and worry about supplies. They're settlers. Homesteaders, even. Their currency seems to be food, specifically nutritionally dense blocks of some kind of protein supplement. I don't have the back story yet, but I think Earth may be uninhabitable. And I don't think anyone I met in the pilot was an alien . . . this might be a show set in space but populated entirely by humans. That's rare, isn't it?

Anyway, I am totally thrilled to have this new television obsession, and I'm oddly pleased that there are only 14 episodes plus the movie. It feels so much more manageable than seven years of Buffy, and I’ll definitely be able to get through it before it’s time to go back to Dollhouse.

Oh, Joss Whedon, how do I love thee?

The Hilarious, the Crappy, and the Awesome

Hilarious (to me, at least) excerpt from a text exchange between The Boy and me:

Me: We play the vikings on oct 13--favre has to come here!
The Boy: Right after they play the scary ravens.
Me: Maybe playing us and the scary ravens will make him retire for good.
TB: Or it will kill him . . .
Me: We have to admit he's pretty brave.
TB: No, he's pretty bavre.

Get it? Favre = bavre? Maybe you had to be there.

Crappy accidents after work yesterday:

That's not my car. I took this pic this morning, and my car was parked in that spot yesterday.

I have worked in the same building for seven years, exiting through the same door nearly every day. Yesterday, I walked straight into this fire escape and bashed my head. Hard. Hard enough to make one of those unintelligible grunting noises people make when they're hurt and surprised. My first thought (being a hypochondriac and all) was of Natasha Richardson. Of course.

Once I settled in the car and concluded that I wasn't seeing stars, bleeding, or bursting into tears, I headed to the library to pick up the Charlaine Harris book that was waiting there for me (the third book in the Lily Bard series). The Boy wasn't going to be home for dinner, so I decided to splurge on a sub from the sandwich shop across the street from the library. Thoughts of eating delicious take-out on the couch, reading my book, in my nicely air-conditioned house went a long way toward making me feel less pitiful for having bashed my head.

I ordered my sandwich and sat and the counter with my book while I waited for it. Then I left the shop with my sandwich, books, bag, drink, and keys in my hands . . . and tripped over something (my feet? my shoes? the doorstep?) and was only prevented from falling into the sidewalk by flinging my bent arm (remember, I was loaded down with stuff) into the corner of the doorjamb. I didn't fall, and I didn't even drop anything, but OH how my forearm aches.

I'm very hopeful that I've reached the end of my yearly injury quotient. And I won't go into detail about how I left a message on my friend P's answering machine, telling her I'd hit my head. I asked her to call me when she got the message, and told her that if I didn't answer, I was probably dead. I did this, because I AM A PARANOID HYPOCHONDRIAC, and so is she. She called, was relieved to find I wasn't dead, and totally felt my pain. She even called again, a few hours later, and was able to talk me down from my Natasha Richardson fears, thus allowing me to take a chance on going to sleep. (I had planned on staying awake all night, to assure that I wouldn't die in my sleep, thus depriving my son of his mother. Because, as I mentioned, I am a paranoid hypochondriac. With anxiety issues. Thank GOD for P.)

And now, have a look at my awesome knitting:

Cables! This is going to turn into a hot water bottle cover for my sister. It'll look like a very small turtleneck sweater--only without arms--and I'm really pleased with the progress. I got the yarn from a sale bin, and I couldn't be happier with its texture, color, and the way it knits up.

So, there. I started with a joke and ended with something pretty. So even though I am revealing what a clumsy, paranoid freak I am . . . maybe you won't be too afraid of me.

A Beautiful Weekend in Photos

Finished dish cloths for my friend S. Ribbed, for her pleasure. (I've been dying to say that since I started knitting them.)

This pic is from my parents' local paper, which did an article about their church's annual parish festival and the ladies who make the pizzas. That adorable cutie is my grandma, who was mortified by what she thinks is a terrible picture. Come on, though--she's awesome!

This is my dad and The Boy, bonding over The Best Thing Ever -- the BB gun my dad gave The Boy. (With my permission and full blessing--I had one when I was 12, and I loved it.)

This is the target The Boy made to accompany the hanging cans my dad put up to shoot at. Note the evil cow, the Simpsons-like robot, and the clown--those were to be shot, but the butterfly and angelic bunny were to be avoided. Sport, you know. He also shot a pepper from my mom's garden and an apple from a tree in the yard. Good times.

And this is the pie I made for my mom and dad's anniversary. Look at those hearts! Because they LOVE each other. :-) I made them the pie and gave them a blown up and framed copy of the photo from my last post. People got choked up, which means it was a hit.

It was truly a beautiful weekend.

They Look Like They're Playing Dress Up

My parents’ 40th wedding anniversary is this coming Sunday. She was nineteen and he was twenty, and while so many kids were off to Woodstock or college or Vietnam (the army wouldn’t take my dad because he has stupid feet like mine—thank God), my parents were getting married and going to work. He was a Journeyman in a machine shop, perfecting his skills as a tool and dye maker, and she was working in a sewing factory. She sewed the bridesmaid’s hideous yellow dresses herself, the reception was in my dad’s parents’ yard and garage, and they spent their honeymoon night in a motel about twenty minutes out of town.

They started dating when she was sixteen, and she’s never been with another guy. She doesn’t romanticize it—she’s told me more than once that she was desperate to escape her (mean, drunk, controlling) father’s house, and that she knew my dad was a nice, solid, steady man. She was certainly right about that. Her father didn’t attend the wedding (in fact, she didn’t see him after that until I was born about a year and a half later, on his birthday), but her brother came home from Vietnam to give her away.

So they pretty much got married as kids, lived with my dad’s parents for a while (tiny house, my Slovak immigrant grandparents and my dad’s three younger siblings, terrible cooking, non-stop polkas on the kitchen radio, and lots and lots of church), and then bought their own little two bedroom house—the house we all lived in until my little sister was two—for $8,000. Judging from some old photos and their sheepish reminiscences, there were lots of parties in that tiny house. Lots of motorcycles, lots of pot smoke and beer, lots of music, and a lot of happiness. My mom’s sisters and cousins and their boyfriends and eventual husbands all hung out there all the time, as did my dad’s friends and brothers. I had no end of attention from all of these young hippie types, and I loved being the star of the show until my wretched pest of a sister came along when I was about three and a half. (She had the nerve to be born on a night we were supposed to be going to the drive-in—I can clearly remember my mom’s water breaking as she came down the front porch stairs, which caused me to dance around singing, “Mommy peed her pa-ants! Mommy peed her pa-ants!”)

So my parents had two kids, a dog, a house, and an ever-changing stream of cars, trucks and motorcycles by the time they were 24 and 25. Money was tight and my mom was lonely and bored, so she fought my dad tooth and nail to convince him that it would be a good thing for her to go to school to get her nursing degree. He hated the idea. Hated it! Mothers were supposed to stay home, as his did—my paternal grandmother never even had a driver’s license! But she did it. She worked as a nurse’s aid while taking classes at the community college to become an RN, and then took classes at a branch campus of the state university to eventually earn her BSN while I was in college myself.

Their marriage had some tough times. He hated that she worked and went to school, and that her schedule actually kept her from church on Sundays AND saw her doing laundry and housework on Sundays—a double whammy, and very serious affronts to his Super Catholicism. He did little to help her, because he didn’t know or care how to do much in the way of housework—he had been raised with certain expectations, and was reluctant to change.

She met lots of new and interesting people, and I am almost positive there was a doctor who cared for her a great deal and wanted her to be more than friends. I was pretty sure when I was eleven or twelve that they were going to get divorced, and I found that I was okay with the idea for the most part, because I really wanted my mom to be happy, but I was sad for my dad, who I knew would never eat anything other than hot dogs and scrambled eggs, and who wouldn’t think to decorate for Christmas.

They got through it, though. And through a few more rough patches. Forty years, two kids, many pets and friends, two grandsons, one daughter’s divorce (hi!), the deaths of all of their parents but my mom’s mom, and they’re still going strong. They’re too used to each other to not be together forever. And if you prodded them, they’d probably even admit that they love each other a whole lot.

So . . . Happy Anniversary to them! Let’s hope we can throw them a huge-ass fancy party for their 50th!

Can Fun be Ruined by Something That Happens After?

The Boy and I took his one of his friends to join my mom, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew for a weekend of water park fun at Kalahari Resort in northern Ohio. We had a wonderful time in the water and on the slides, and the kids loved the huge Dave-and-Buster’s-style game room. The whole place was very clean and well-kept, there were life guards positioned all over the place—like every twenty feet or so—and all of the staff members were very friendly and helpful. Everyone had a very good time, and I planned to come home (after a stop at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton) and write a rave review of the resort as a great family destination for people within a three or four hour drive of the place.

And then I heard this morning that a three-year-old drowned there after we left yesterday. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we were gone when it happened—I know I’m cowardly, but I hope I never have to have contact with that kind of grief. The poor, poor family!

The mom said she lost sight of the little boy, who was playing with an older brother, and I can see how that could happen, because the pool areas got really, really crowded as the days heated up, because you don’t have to be staying at the resort to use the pools and slides. At one point the wave pool looked like a can of sardines. So I’m wondering if this kind of tragedy could be prevented if Kalahari would change its admissions policies to only allow a certain number of people to use the place at any given time.

Sigh. I had been planning on taking The Boy and another kid for a weekend over the winter, as they are well beyond the age where they need to be followed around, so I could just park myself in a hotel room, order up some room service, and read and knit to my heart’s content, but now I may rethink it. Not because I think they’d be in too much danger, but because . . . it seems weird to me to think of heading for a weekend of fun to a place where a child died. Is that stupid? I don’t know.

Hi, Apple Pie

I was in the mood for apple pie Saturday, and nothing else was going to satisfy me, so I baked one using the Old World Dutch Apple Pie recipe I found in the cookbook that came with my food processor. I only used Granny Smith apples (they called for mixing up apple types), because that’s all I had, but I pretty much followed the rest of the recipe exactly, and . . . WOW. My usual pie is pretty decent, if I do say so myself, but this one is out of this world. It’s got the crumbly top, made with butter, flour, brown sugar, rolled oats, and walnuts, and the filling is unbelievable: I mixed eggs, sour cream, sugar, and vanilla and poured that over the apples and then topped it with the crumblies and baked it.

I seriously think this pie may be the most delicious thing I’ve ever baked. It’s amazing. The crust is buttery and flaky, the filling is firm and sweet/tart, and the topping is slightly crunchy and caramelized. It is just unbelievable, and I had to make sure to invite people over to help get rid of it so I wouldn’t spend the rest of the weekend doing nothing but reading and eating pie. SO GOOD.

Speaking of reading, I’m working my way through Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, and I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s pleasantly readable and oh-so-interesting, and I’m learning a lot, I think. It’s much like Barbara Ehrenreich’s books (of which I am a fan), but less judgey. It’s facts and flow and things to think about, and I highly recommend it. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to DO with the information and ideas I’m gathering, but at this point I want to put a complete hold on purchasing anything but food. I want to save up money to buy things of the highest quality—things made locally or regionally by craftsmen and artists and artisans—that will last forever.

For now, though, I will content myself with my knitting and making fewer trips to Target. Baby steps, man. Baby steps.

I’m taking sluggish, drowsy steps right now. The Boy got food poisoning at his camp and couldn’t get a hold of his dad in the middle of the night (WHY DO PEOPLE NOT KEEP THEIR PHONES BY THEIR BEDS?), so I had to fetch the poor puking kid at the crack of dawn Saturday after listening to him puke via cell phone in the wee hours of the morning. Talk about heartbreaking. The culprit was some chicken he had with his dad before leaving Friday night—I’m sure of it, because he brought me the leftovers, and when I opened the fridge Saturday morning, it REEKED. Gross. But The Boy was fine after some water, toast, and apple slices. He took a nice nap on the couch (I joined him), and I win the prize for Best Parent. C feels like the Worst Dad in the World because The Boy couldn’t reach him and left so many pathetic messages, and . . . frankly, he should. When he’s the parent on duty, he has to be reachable 24/7, whether the kid’s with him or not. Lesson learned. But thank God the situation wasn’t serious.

And then I spent Saturday night visiting with a friend I usually only see about once a year, so I didn’t get to bed until almost 5am. I am so not a night owl, and am so very out of synch. I can’t wait to go to bed tonight (after I’ve had some pie, of course). I bet I won’t even make it till dark.

Off to College

I just sent my boy off to college. He's got an enormous duffle bag filled with clothes, sports equipment, toiletries, a pillow, sheets, and blanket, a book and book light, his iPod, and an over-the-door mini-basketball and hoop set. For his dorm room.

He's going to a referee camp over the weekend, where he will play games, brush up on skills, and then test to get re-certified to ref for 2010.

He'll be home Sunday, for which I'm grateful. I know he's only going into 7th grade, but this whole "stuff for the dorms" business has me on high alert for flying time. Sunrise, sunset. :-)

A Very MLE Kind of Day

So the Jupiter thing is pretty cool. Imagine being that amateur astronomer who found something so major--how exciting! But as I listened to the story about this dark spot, I couldn't help think about this, from MLE's A Swiftly Tilting Planet:

"At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the Earth with its starkness —
All these I place
By God's almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness."

Remember that? To ward off the Ecthroi and their spreading darkness? Yikes. That's stuck with me for a long time. So I looked for a picture of Jupiter's newest feature, and found this:


The light spots are actually the dark thing, and I was relieved to see such a relatively small mass, rather than the ever-growing malignant cloak I saw in my mind's eye (I do have my drama queen moments).

And THEN my friend K sent me a link to an article about Sangeeta Bhatia. K saw Bhatia on NOVA the other evening and was terribly impressed with the biomedical engineer who's using "computer-chip technology to craft tiny livers." The woman is a scientist, teacher, mother, and mentor, and I love her.

I grew to love her even more when I read the interview and she said this, in answer to a question about what normally happens to liver cells when they're forced to live outside the body:

"Normally, when you take liver cells out of the body and you put them on a dish, they lose all their functions. They're not "happy" in that environment, because you've taken them out of the body, where they've gotten lots of signals that keep them happy. So the goal of my Ph.D. was to think about how to surround them with neighbors that would make them happier—to sort of give them a better community—and to figure out how that needed to be organized so that they would function best."

Does that remind you of MLE in any way? Think of A Wind in the Door, and those pesky litte farandolae--the one we got to know was called Sporos--who would "deepen" and so were screwing up Charles Wallace's mitochondria and cells and were killing him?

Sometimes MLE astounds me.

Perfect Weekend

I am truly easy to please. My perfect weekend? Friday night P came over for pizza, MST3K's Zombie Nightmare (with Adam West!), and Phase 10 with The Boy and me. We listened to the radio cursed one another for playing Skip cards and winning hands, and acted generally goofy and had a great time. C and I used to play Phase 10 with our friends all the time before and just after we got married, and I think that if Bjork or Morrisey had come on the radio Friday night I would have been crushed under the weight of some great time warp, but thankfully I was spared.

Saturday I got groceries early, so I nearly had the whole store to myself, and a lovely bagger boy helped me load the groceries into my car. The Boy unloaded them. I felt like The Rich must feel on a regular basis, and thought briefly of my recurring rich and loving-but-not-clingy husband daydream.

I did a bit of housework, lazed, knitted, watched the eminently unsatisfying remake of Yours, Mine, and Ours with The Boy, got my hair cut and colored (so far overdue that I was starting to want to wear a ski hat in July), and then took The Boy and my nephew to my parents' for general porch sitting and playing in their huge yard.

Yesterday I took The Boy and another kid to a birthday party (they are starting to turn thirteen: The Year of the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs starts in a few weeks), and repaid myself for the drive to the wretched suburb with a trip to Half-Price Books, which just happened to be in the strip mall adjacent to the party's mini-golf course. I didn't find a SINGLE book I was looking for--I have Charlaine Harris Mania now, and would like to read her other series, and I was hoping against hope that someone would have read and discarded the newest Maisie Dobbs, which I've listened to but want to read/own because I have all the others. I was looking for a few other things too, but I couldn't find a single one. So I bought a copy of Cloud Atlas for a dollar, and then cleaned up in the DVDs. I got the first season of King of the Hill, the first season of Veronica Mars, the second season of Angel, and The Scorpion King (I love The Rock--sue me).

Add those scores to the fact that I picked up Gillian Flynn's new book, Dark Places, at the library, and it's great so far (Libby, the main character, is mean, nasty, bitter, and refreshingly unashamed to be so), AND the fact that I finished the back of the sweater I'm knitting, and it was just a really great weekend. The perfect mix of work, play, and lazy. Hooray!


I've never come this far on such an involved knitting project--I'm so proud!


Look! I've had that stitch holder for years, and never used it before last night!

I Have Problems

Okay, there are many people who have more problems than I do, like the fella I'm about to tell you about, but as you will see, I do indeed have issues.

You may recall that a while ago I mentioned a co-worker who insists that moon and June do not rhyme. I may not have mentioned at that time that said co-worker also collects (and talks to) Beanie Babies, wears bow ties with sandals, socks, and shorts (all at the same time), has a baby face, sings like an angel, and is a grandfather in his 60s. He's a very nice man--the kind who would never hurt a fly--but he's also the kind of person whose whimsical nature seems a little put-on to me, and there are few things that drive me crazier than forced whimsy.

So he bugs me, which makes me feel bad because I know he's really a good person.

Anyway, he stopped to chit chat this morning, and happened to mention that the university's ILL Department was able to find a book for him that he hadn't been able to track down anywhere, no matter how hard he tried. He was so grateful when he went in to pick up the book that he hung around to give praise to the librarian, who then--to humor him and maybe get him to quit embarrassing her, I bet--asked about the subject of the book. He told her the book was about Denny Dennis, known in the 40s as "The English Bing Crosby." "Oh," sniffed the librarian, "Didn't he abuse his kids?"

At this point in the story, my co-worker stopped to take a deep breath. He had tears in his eyes. He leaned over mile file cabinet to hide his face in his hands. When he was strong enough, he said, with shaking voice, "That woman is an asshole. Bing Crosby did not abuse his children. I know the truth."

Well. Oh, dear. What to do with this crying man child? I said, "You know, I have a grudge against that library--they won't give me a job!" We sort of commiserated there a bit, and then MY PHONE RANG, so he wandered away. THANK GOD!

So then I quickly jumped online to see just how hard this book would be to find. BECAUSE I CARE, for some reason. I don't care about the British Bing, but I had to know what was giving the crazy co-worker so much trouble. Turns out it's out of print, but readily available if you have a bit of cash. Why do I care? I suppose because I have a Master's Degree, dammit, and must use it whenever the situation presents itself.

I have problems.

Potterific

The Boy and I saw the Half Blood Prince movie today (I am dork enough to have scheduled a vacation day from work for it), and while there are a few problems/issues, I think it's the best one since Prisoner of Azkaban. We'll see it again at the drive-in with my mom this weekend, and I may see it once more on my own.

My GOD are those kids cute!



I seriously heart Luna.

The Hypocrisy of Disco

I picked up The Hypocrisy of Disco thanks to Badger, and I have to agree with her overall assessment. I almost didn't bother, because I was afraid the book would be too much like The Glass Castle, which put me off memoirs for a long time, but Clane Hayward never offers up any sort Poor Me feelings the way Jeannette Walls did.

Hayward is completely matter of fact about her childhood, even though there was a lot of sadness involved. She often didn't have enough food. She was regularly filthy. She realized once later, when an uncle's girlfriend was washing her hair, that no one had touched her lovingly or tenderly in a very long time--that's the saddest thing for me right there. My parents were super-young when they got married, and spent a lot of time living as super-young people in the late 60s and early 70s did (there are plenty of snapshots to prove it), but my sister and I always knew we were loved. Yes, there was plenty of alcohol and more than a few illicit substances involved in their Harley driving, Big Brother & the Holding Co. lives, but my parents held our hands, held us while we slept, kissed our sweaty heads, and made us bathe. Sure there was macrame and wheat germ and whiskey in my tea when I was sick, but I had a home and parents who loved me and took care of me when I was sick.

Did I sometimes wish we were more normal? Sure. I wanted to be "straight" as much as Hayward did--but reading this book makes me realize how close to straight we actually were. It's a good book, and sometimes a fun book, and I feel enormous respect for Hayward.

And now I want to go hug my kid and call my parents.

Pin a Rose on My Nose

Guess what I just did? I pre-ordered a book for my dad . . . FOR CHRISTMAS! Which means that I also just created the annual Christmas Spreadsheet, including a list of people to whom I'd like to give gifts, ideas for those gifts, purchase (or knit) date, and amount of money spent/pending so I can keep a sort of budget.

Line my eyes and call me pretty! (And then enjoy this picture of a lemony good Christmas tree from a few Phipps' exhibits ago.)