Sunrise, Sunset

The Boy began his career as a soccer referee on Saturday. He went through the training course, passed the test, registered with the state, and is now qualified to earn $10 an hour reffing games for kids under ten.

He was nervous enough to have dreamed about it the night before, waking up to tell me about his playing a harp while marching around during a huge ceremony held to open the soccer season. I took him to the field and waited around to make sure he was able to figure out where to sign in and which games he'd be running, and I stayed for a while to watch.

He was the smallest kid in the group of mostly teen-aged refs milling around on the field, and his gold uniform shirt was big enough to make his chest look especially skinny. I could tell by his body language that he was feeling very insecure about the whole thing, but he made it through some instructions and discussions with a coach, and then he took off with the players (seven-year-olds), inspected their shin guards, and ran them through some Simon Says-like drills to make sure they knew where they would be and that they should listen to him. Then he blew his whistle and dropped the ball, and they were off.

And I nearly collapsed in a puddle of tears. My baby boy was competent and comfortable as ALL BY HIMSELF he took the little kids through their game, helping with goal kicks and throw-ins, running breaks, talking to coaches, jogging up and down the field with his whistle in his mouth, and generally being capable and independent in a way that made me so very proud . . . and so very sad that he's not my baby anymore.

He loved it, though. He loved the kids, some of whom he knew from school, and he loved how they listened to him and saw him as someone in authority. And later that day, when I asked him to get the laundry out of the dryer for me, he said, "Aw! But I worked all day!" Nice try, kiddo, but welcome to the world.

In other news, I am slightly addicted to knitting the Ball Band Dishcloth from the Mason-Dixon Knitting book (the M-D ladies say in the book that they took the pattern from the yarn people, and it is indeed printed on the label of each ball of yarn). I made this sunshiny one first, and quickly lost it to my mom the moment she laid eyes on it.


I washed and dried it to make sure it holds together well, and it does. It's soft and absorbent and awesome. I'm making a bunch now for C for his birthday. It may seem like an odd gift for an ex-husband, but he's a Clean Freak and will appreciate them. I'm using colors from his kitchen, and will wrap them with some dish gloves and Mrs. Meyer's dishwashing liquid, and he will love them.

You Know What's Good?

Laughing Cow Spreadable Cheese Wedges. I never would've thought twice about them, but my grocery store keeps them near the yogurt I like. I saw the little wheel of cheese and thought of Beth Littleford, who's too smart to be stuck doing cheese commercials, and so I bought a wheel of the Garlic & Herb stuff. (This is the first time in recent memory that a TV commercial influenced a purchase [at least consciously], which is something that kind of bothers yet interests me.)

I just had it for lunch, with some crackers, an apple, and a handful of walnuts, and it was very tasty indeed.

And now that I've eaten, I'm off to rip apart the knitting project I've been working on. It's a linen hand towel from the Mason Dixon Knitting book, I thought I would be smart and do it on a circular needle since it's kind of wide. HOWEVER, I forgot to take into account the fact that I AM AN IDIOT: I keep joining and knitting in the round instead of knitting back and forth. And I never really notice it until I've tuned back in from a blissed out knitting fugue state. GAH! So I'm going to stop for #5 straight needles on my way home . . . because I will scream if I end up doing this a third time.

Some TV Things

1- I bought a TV stand off Craig's List, and it is perfect. It's tall enough that the TV is at a good height, and it holds al of the game consoles and their attendant crap behind closed doors, but it's not too big for my room. Hooray for me!

2- I was a huge fan of Veronica Mars*, so imagine my delight when a friend told me VM's creator, Rob Thomas, had a new show coming up. It premiered Friday on Starz (which I don't get), and I just watched it on-line here. It's called Party Down, and while the title made me cringe, the first episode was pretty good. The cast is wonderful--Jane Lynch! Martin Starr! And a BUNCH of people from VM. The first episode was funny, and left me anxious for more.

3- Speaking of being anxious, I must confess that P and I watched Left Behind (I'm not linking because, ew) last night, and I am anxious to see the next two movies. I didn't know much about the Rapture Christians before I watched, and I know I still don't know very much at all, but the whole movie experience was crazy and puzzling and more than a little amusing. And while I fully understand that it's not right to laugh at peoples' beliefs, I feel like the whole "neener, neener" attitude of the LB crew makes it okay. If that makes any sense at all.

4- We also watched a little Buffy, two episodes of South Park, and a bit of the David Copperfield with Daniel Radcliffe so I could show P how much the actress who plays David Copperfield's mother, Emilia Fox, looks like Anna Faris.




I mean, I can't tell you how disconcerting it is to hear the speeches of Clara Copperfield come out of the mouth of The House Bunny, but there you go.

5- I'm off to take a walk, but when I come back I'm going to knit and watch more Veronica Mars. Love!


*Seriously--I defy you to watch the first episode of VM and not be astounded and HOOKED. I just stumbled on the episode looking for the site to link to, and suddenly it's 40 minutes later because I had to watch. Bloody brilliant television.

FIVE Golden Rings

Okay, no. More like six pastel eggs. Here's the link to the pattern if you'd like to obsess over your own. I'll shut up about them now.

Crap Vacation

There, I've said it. The nasty truth is that I'm not having a very good week off. Too much menstruation, too many errands, too many things scheduled. Not only is there no fun, there's not even been much in the way of relaxation. The whole thing just blows.

But I continue to hope for improvement, and I continue to knit Easter eggs. In fact, I can't seem to STOP knitting Easter eggs. I honestly can't imagine another use for this pastel cotton yarn, so let's hope it runs out soon . . .

My Future Daughter-in-Law

The Boy loves her. Every time this commercial comes on, he says, "She's so cute! I love her!" Twenty years from now . . .

Sunday Stuff

I am off this week, because The Boy is on Spring Break. We have few plans that don't involve errands, various appointments, and some serious basement cleaning, but I'm pleased. The knowledge that tomorrow isn't a regular school/work day has made today a completely lazy day for me. The Boy had a referee workshop at a nearby school, but I had nothing. I dropped him off and took myself to the library and to lunch. I picked up a second Elizabeth Peters audio book for when I've finished Crocodile on the Sandbank (I heart Amelia Peabody), and I also picked up Mason-Dixon Knitting, thanks to Ravelry. I spent an wonderful lunch paging through the knitting book, and then came home to look up some yarns (I didn't even know linen yarn existed!) and order my own copy of the book--I want to make one of everything it it.

I walked through the park up to the school to pick up The Boy, and had a few moments to sit on the stairs with my book, the very fun and interesting Comedy at the Edge, when I saw this:


Not a torso or head in sight. Kids are weird.

I Freaking WISH

Here is Super Hero Me. Badger posted a link to it, and I couldn't resist.

Spectacled Barbarian, AWAY!

Holy Easter Eggs, Batman!

Look! I'm knitting Easter eggs! And it's not even that hard! It's like an egg cozy, really. It fits around one of those little plastic eggs, and I am in love.

And now I must go watch Friday Night Lights . . .

Simpsons Already Did It

Do you know the episode of South Park where Butters wants to pull a nasty prank, only to discover that his every idea has already been brought to fruition on The Simpsons?



Well, this week I read Christopher Moore's new book, Fool, and I listened to Ron Rash's Serena, and I can tell you that . . . SHAKESPEARE ALREADY DID IT. Serena is a take on Macbeth and Fool is a King Lear mishmash. Moore is very upfront about using the Lear story, but it was still odd to be dealing with two pieces of non-Shakespeare Shakespearean fiction at the same time.

Both books are good reads. Serena is much darker, but the writing is very rich and descriptive, and does a great job of evoking the novel's landscape and moment in time. It's one of those wonderful books teachers can assign to reluctant students to prove that literature is serious, yes, but not boring. Fool, obviously, is funny, but there's still some darkness. And Moore's underlying sweetness lingers on every page.

***

Here's a question: Am I crazy, or should the word biopic be pronounced "bye-OP-ick," rather than the "BYE-oh-pick" that I keep hearing? I mean, if the latter pronunciation were correct, wouldn't there be a hyphen after the "bio," to prevent it from rhyming with topic? Or is it just me?

I Smell a Short Story

Or maybe a summer blockbuster. Have you heard of the one-eyed filmmaker who's having a tiny camera inserted into his prosthetic eye so he can make a documentary about surveillance?

Okay, first: Yikes! That picture freaks me out. Second: Um . . . I think this is kind of terrifying. On the one hand, it really does mean that anyone at any time can be RECORDING WHATEVER YOU SAY OR DO. And on the other hand, how many people would want to have these for themselves? I can imagine a whole society of people who are so determined to document their every moment that they demand these eye cameras and spend their entire lives creating movies of their lives, instead of living them.

Or is that just me and my own paranoia?

The Boy

I don't think it's any secret that The Boy is a doofy little spaz, but I wanted to share a few recent examples.

#1 - C got a Sonicare toothbrush for Christmas, which The Boy fell in love with. I'm all about encouraging the kid to love dental hygiene, so I promised him I'd get us a set when I got my tax return. I did as promised (because I'm that kind of girl), and as he was brushing his teeth yesterday morning, he called to me, "Hey Mom! Come here! Look!" I went to look, and was informed, "You bought me a Sonicare toothbrush, and look: It says, 'Son, I care.'"

#2 - He got out of the shower this morning and the entire front of his head and body were visibly DRY. He had clearly done nothing but stand with his back in the spray for ten minutes. So I made him lean over the side of the tub to wash his hair. And when he stood up . . . still covered in shampoo. He's a disaster. But at least his teeth are clean.

#3 - He's writing a story called Mathmatics Mishap for some of the younger kids at his school, and illustrating it in Power Point (no idea why he's using Power Point, but whatever). Here's one page--look how cute it is:



He has to turn in the form to register for his 7th Grade Electives by the end of week. I still can't quite believe he's that old. I mean, look at #2 above! He's barely past the stage of singing, "Standing in the shower, washing my bummy, now," which he spent plenty of time doing once he was big enough to be in the shower by himself. Come to think of it, at least then he was washing something. Besides those teeth, of course.

“The Superman exists, and he’s American.”

C and I discussed it at length, and decided to take The Boy to a matinee viewing of Watchmen yesterday. We were a little unsure because of all the . . . not the violence, but the darkness. C and I are both comfortable that screen violence isn’t going to turn The Boy into a sociopath (and The Boy is in fact squeamish, so while he enjoys seeing combat and things exploding, he’s not one for blood and guts as I was at his age), but we were concerned about the way certain issues would be portrayed.

It turns out that we needn’t have worried. The film is darker than dark, and bloodier than necessary (predictably, The Boy avoided seeing all the blood by turning his face into my shoulder), but deep, too. Too deep, really, for The Boy to have gotten much of it. In fact, he admitted that sometimes he was kind of bored.

After, the three of us talked about what The Boy had taken from it, and what his thoughts were, but he wasn’t sure what to think (other than a strong desire to have seen much less blue schlong, which I can’t really fault him for). After we explained things like the way these superheroes were some of the first to be portrayed as complex (and often very screwed up) characters with layers upon layers of history and personality and ISSUES (ohmygod the ISSUES), and about the idea that no one is totally good, nor is anyone totally evil, he saw it. And I have to say that there are few Moments in Parenting for any English Major that can compare to your first discussion about Man’s Inhumanity to Man. So he saw things, and he got it, but only after the fact. We had some good discussion, and I think it was a good experience overall, but The Boy admitted later that he liked The Dark Knight much more. I can see why, because compared to Watchmen, TDK is like a toddler’s birthday party. When we got out to the parking lot, I suggested we go home and look at puppies and flowers and anything pretty.

There’s so much tension and misery. So much ugliness and fear. But still, there’s hope. And life. And goodness.

Alan Moore won’t have anything to do with this movie, but the director (the guy from 300, which I’ve neither read nor seen) seems to love Moore with complete fanboy ardor and remains very, very true to the graphic novel. Moore knows that humans a much more frail and weak and sloppy and gross than they ever want to admit to being, and the movie is no different. In fact, I think one of the characters, the “new” Nite Owl, is even drippier for a while than his counterpart in the book. The director also catches the way Moore allows that women hold humanity and life together, even if men have all the power. Watchmen never does anything to empower women, even if the movie shows that Laurie Jupiter can kick major ass, but it doesn’t bother me that much because it doesn’t necessarily denigrate women, either. In fact, it occurs to me that Alan Moore and Judd Apatow see women that same way: They both seem to think that women are awesome, but they’re not quite sure what to do with them, so they don’t do much at all.

Anyway, the movie looks right and it feels right, but sometimes it sounds a little wrong. There’s a scene, for example, where one of the main characters is standing near a bank of elevators with captains of industry including the likes of Lee Iacocca, and the tinkling elevator music is an instrumental version of the Tears for Fears song Everybody Wants to Rule the World. It’s a silly moment and a break in the tension that I don’t remember ever getting when I read the book.

Those few silly moments aside, though, Watchmen is no fun. No fun at all. It’s moving, and it may even be important, but the only real fun I had with it was in discussing it with C and The Boy after. That, and watching the trailer for the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie. GAH! I was so excited by the trailer that I think I may have floated up out of my seat a little bit! I can’t WAIT for that one!! We also saw trailers for Pixar’s Up, which looks adorable, a new Seth Rogan movie that looks like other Seth Rogan movies, the new Star Trek, and the new Terminator. Eh, and meh. I’d see them, but I probably wouldn’t want to pay for it.

I would, however, pay for a t-shirt with Sally Jupiter on it.

Catching Up with Depeche Mode

Not really. I'm not Depeche Mode, although I did see them in concert that one time when I lived in Detroit. I had a crap time, by the way, mostly because of a girl I used to call Sunshine Super Shannon. As the young kids say: Bish plz.

Anyway, you're catching up with me. I spent the best Saturday morning ever watching the last episodes of Season 2 of Angel (so much fun was going on with Angel while so much horrible stuff was happening with Buffy--it must have been marvelous comic relief for those who watched both when they originally aired), working on my mom's sweater, and talking on the phone.

I usually hate talking on the phone, for the most part, but an old friend--and I mean old enough to have raced me through second grade homework assignments--called because "he needed to hear a sane woman's voice." See, he's a state cop and Marine, and had spent two weeks away doing Marine stuff only to come home for 24 hours before having to go away again for cop stuff. He was calling me from the road, though, having had to leave the cop stuff early because his wife called him, "crying and having a breakdown."

I'm not quite sure what he expected to hear from me, but I had to give him the speech about how hard it is to be a mom when you love your kids so much, want to be perfect for them, feel so lucky to have them and be able to take good care of them, and yet feel horribly guilty because all you want is for them to LEAVE YOU THE HELL ALONE. Because good, grateful mommies never want to do anything more than be with their loving broods.

And then I reminded him how, sure, there's pressure on dads/husbands, but that the fatherhood bar is set SO LOW that all men have to do is change the odd diaper, cook a meal, and show up to a school function, and they're GREAT DADS.

Ugh.

I think I schooled him. I actually think I got through to him a little bit. Here's hoping.

And here's the sweater so far:

This is the back, and there's still a long way to go. See the pattern up in the corner? That's what it's supposed to end up looking like. Believe it or not, I'm actually starting to think maybe it will.

And now I have to have some lunch and get some housework, and then figure out what to make for dinner. We have a new employee at work who moved here from Miami. She'd been staying in a long-term hotel deal, but now she's in her apartment. The trouble with that is that her FURNITURE isn't in her apartment yet. Poor thing. She doesn't know a soul here besides the people we work with, so . . . I'm thinking she might enjoy an evening of eating something home-cooked (not to mention getting to eat it while sitting at a table).

Off to the grocery store . . .

“Oh, my buddy Tim Bass he's working pumping gas. And he makes two fifty for an hour . . .”

I couldn’t wait to get a job when I was in high school, and the job I wanted more than anything was to be able to work at the tiny gas station and mini-mart about two miles from home. It had two self-serve pumps and a little store that could only hold about three people at once. You could buy gas, cigarettes, soda, and Beeman’s Gum, which was pretty much all I wanted to buy when I was sixteen.

I had such fabulous daydreams about working there—I could sit behind the counter at the register, drinking bottles of Mountain Dew (it came in fat green glass bottles then, wrapped in a thin layer of foam that was very pleasant to peel off and shred), smoking my Winston Reds (because you could still smoke indoors then), listening to the radio, and reading to my heart’s content. I could sell people coffee, pop, snacks, quarts of oil, and gallons of wiper fluid. I’d be the keeper of the keys to the bathroom. My friends could visit me while I was working, and there would be no shortage of hot men to ogle and dispense change to.

It was clearly the perfect job, but my mother was convinced I’d get robbed, raped or killed, and wouldn’t even let me apply. Alas.

Sometimes I think I’d still like to have that job, although now I’d skip the cigarettes and Mountain Dew, and rotate in some knitting along with the reading. Should I be embarrassed that I have little enough ambition that getting paid to read, knit, ogle men, and work a cash register still appeals to me? Was my education truly a waste?

I Get Too Hungry for Dinner at 8

“The threat of the male gaze has been making many women and gay men ill for years, but men’s magazines show that the threat has now become general enough to be counted a cultural worry. All men now experience other men’s looks, and that is one of the anxieties these magazines sometimes exploit and sometimes suppress.” –Andrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books

I spent a good part of my life being influenced by “the male gaze.” My dad had no idea how to contend with my mother, let alone how to relate to a daughter, so it became important to me at an early age to be fairly “boyish.” I wouldn’t wear dresses or skirts. I asked for and received toy guns, learned to use a grease gun and helped to reload shotgun shells. I had by own compound bow and .22 rifle. I played ball, climbed trees, insisted on a red boy’s bike with a thing on the handle that made noises like a revving motorcycle, I picked up and/or touched all manner of gross things, and I never, ever cried in front of anyone. Why?

Sometimes I honestly liked the butch things I did, had, and wore, but mostly I just wanted to be with my dad. I wanted him to like me and to approve of me, and it just seemed like the more boyish I was, the better he’d like it.

Don’t get me wrong—he never, ever gave off any kind of “I Must Have a SON” vibe, (which is a good thing, as his only children are my sister and me), but I knew he wouldn’t be comfortable playing with dolls or having tea parties, so . . . I learned to do what I knew he’d be comfortable with. I knew my mom loved me and would want to spend time with me no matter what, so I guess I didn’t make much of an effort on her behalf. The Catholic school girl deep inside of me actually feels guilty for that, but I suppose that’s another post.

So, despite the fact that I spent a lot of time hiding out in my room reading library books, encyclopedia volumes, Erma Bombeck, Richard Simmons diet books, and whatever trashy paperbacks I could get my hands on (also fodder for another blog post), I spent most of one summer filthy, playing with the neighborhood boys and wearing a blue tank top with the number 44 on it almost daily. Despite the fact that I spent an entire winter creating a set of standardized tests (the Iowa Test of Basic Skills) on graph paper, complete with answer key, to administer to my sister and the neighbor girl when I forced them to play School with me the following summer, I asked my dad to take me to The Club with him, where I sat on a bar stool drinking Cokes, listening to my dad and his friends talk about cars and guns while they drank beer, smoked, and spit tobacco into empty bottles. Despite the fact that I used my sister’s Barbies and Strawberry Shortcake dolls to dramatize many a girly (and often Valley of the Dolls-type) storyline, I begged my parents to let me get a hunting license on my 12th birthday.

Sometimes I was Who I Was, but often I was the kid I thought my dad would want to spend time with. In truth, I learned a lot of good stuff. I know how to use guns and hunt and fish. I know how to change the oil in my car (although I pay someone to do that for me), and I know how to change a tire. I can drive a tractor hauling a wagon, IN REVERSE. I know how to use tools, how to read a map, and I can deal with cleaning up dead birds or other creatures who end up meeting their doom in my house or yard without outward signs of revulsion. My sister, however, who didn’t play The Perfect Little Son, can’t do ANY of those things.

So there’s that.

But I guess my point is that I’ve been aware that men are/might be looking at me from a very early age, and that I let it be important to me from a very early age. It evolved, as you can imagine, into wanting to be physically attractive to men, which involved any number of corrective garments, weight-loss programs, skin-care regimens, hair goo, and hours in front of a mirror. Plucking, poking, brushing, curling . . . all to (frankly) little avail.

Happily, I’m getting to a point where . . . Eff that. You know? I’m slowly becoming happy and confident enough in myself that I don’t care who is or isn’t looking at me, or what they might see. I only like wearing make-up for special occasions. So there. I don’t like fussing with my hair, so it’s cut to look nice without fussing. Take that. I’m clean and comfortable, and beyond that, all anyone should care about is how well I behave. So HA, ha, beauty industry. Bite me, anyone who thinks I should look like a model! Bite me hard.

I used to be so very grateful that I didn’t have a daughter to raise, because I couldn’t imagine getting her through it. I can see more and more evidence, though, that the quote from above is true, and that I’m going to have to be aware that getting The Boy through the fear of the gaze is going to be an issue.

I don’t want it to be that way! I want things to be more equal between men and women, of course I do, but . . . not this way! I don’t want men to have the kind of comeuppance wherein their looks have to be scrutinized and pressured and threatened! I want it to be the OTHER way! I want women to be able to have the same, “I’m so awesome that it doesn’t matter if I’m fat and have crazy hairs growing out of my ears—how can you not want me,” attitude that men do. Or used to. You know?

Not Much, You?

I finally forked over the $25 to become a lifetime member of Library Thing, which means I can finally get the rest of my books cataloged. I stalled out with the 200 books they allow you for free a long time ago, and then something made me think about it yesterday and I gave them my money. You know what's especially cool? Once all my books are actually entered, I'll be able to use my Touch to check the catalog even when I'm not at home. Oh, technology. How you entertain me. Look at the little screen shot I made on the Touch--so cute!


I can make the pages bigger so I can actually SEE them, of course, but I think they look so tiny and pretty like that. I'm a dork.

Here are two more pics for your viewing excitement. The first one is the hat I'm giving my dad for his 60th birthday, as modeled by The Boy.


And this is an example of the Tiny Bowknot stitch, which had been confounding me. Hooray for me for figuring it out, and hooray for the book Knitting in Plain English, which helped me get there.


This is just the guage swatch, but the tiny bowknots are supposed to become a cardigan/spring jacket for my mom. I've never made a sweater, so . . . please cross your fingers for me.