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It turns out that the tree I've spotted along my bike root and admired for its height, tulip or trumpet shape, tough-ass leaves, and graceful droop is, in fact, American elm. This boggles me: I thought they were extinct.
Lyme Street used to run through a tunnel of elms, but they all died by, I expect, the '50s. Now it's overlaid with utility lines, much less attractive. And hotter.
ÜberBoss is certain any healthy, thriving elm I have seen must be sprayed early and often. I prefer to believe people don't use fungicides, at least not as many households as have these trees, nor the city on the several trees on public property, so was ready to believe they were another species, despite what I deduced from various identification guides. But sprayed or not, they're elms.
Then I looked closely at the tree in the alley because I was ripping out the not-ivy climbing creeper that's grown into it. It's an elm. An American elm, not a Siberian or Chinese. It's diseased, with beetles at least, and the fungus will follow in the beetle-weakened vascular system.
This comes up because I want to plant an elm in the front yard, but not if it needs any kind of -cide to survive.
We had a parting dinner out at Tamayo, on the deck overlooking Auraria and the mountains and the sunset, and talked about what I might do when I get back. I'm just noting that.
Today I had lunch with Karen and Mr. Karen, who were in town on their day to a wedding in Vail. Among the meal's other amusements was Mr. Karen's trying to think of a song on Peter Gabriel's So called "Chicken Run," so mangled had my comment on the animators become.
Then RDC picked me up and brought me to the airport.
Friday night at midnight Saturday morning my sister picked me up. I threw my bags into her back seat and got into the front, accepting from her hand a plate of still-warm oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (milk in a travel mug awaited me also). "How much for the whole weekend?" she asked. This took me a minute to process, making me as difficult to joke or communicate at all with as our mother.
I know my role as aunt, so as soon as we got into CLH's apartment I called for my niece. Kitty is, of course, adorable and purrfect and my sister has her picture up everywhere and I told CLH about the psychologist in Maus. When CLH first adopted her, she said she had intended a grey cat but Kitty's purr won her over. Maybe because she expected the sleek prettiness of a grey cat, she said--at the time--that Kitty's coat looked like a bad dye job. She looks like a tortoiseshell to me, and the purr really is something, and of course she is the prettiest kitty ever.
Over the weekend, the weather was flawlessly, perfectly gorgeous--as it would be the whole week until the last day--and we went to see Thomas Gainsborough at the MFA and to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (I had never been) and she showed me all the community gardens in the Fens behind MFA. Also we went on the Swan Boats, me for the first time. The Gainsborough was not so much what I like, a bunch of portraits. CLH prefers people to landscapes, or did for Gainsborough anyway, which makes sense since that was his fame. What I remember is that one of the pieces is the cover of the Penguin edition of Sense and Sensibility.
I learned at least two things about my sister: that "Sense and Sensibility" is also one of her favorite movies and that blue sky through green leaves is also one of her favorite colors. I am so glad to know we have such vital things in common.
We talked about Margaret Dashwood and reinvented the course of the Volga and I told her about Emma Thompson's and Ang Lee's two commentaries. We talked about Margaret Atwood too and why CLH didn't crack Oryx and Crake and how we both didn't like Blind Assassin. We wandered up Newbury Street and along Charles Street and I asked how her friend's restaurant Vesuvius is going and she knew what I meant because we were passing it but its name is Torch and she cracked up. Well, it had something to do with fire (isn't Vesuvius the restaurant in "The Sopranos"?) We ate lunch at the Gardner and somewhere on Boylston near Dartmouth and dinner at the Top of the Hub and a picnic from Whole Foods on the Esplanade.
Also we looked at the photographs she had from our aunt who died a year ago. She had already culled her favorites and I selected some for me. (I want a scanner. Now.) I have photographs of my father in the Army, and how he got in needing glasses that thick I don't know. I have photographs of my paternal grandparents traveling to see my father off to Korea, with Bump-bump not wanting have his photograph taken and slouching in work pants, shirt, and cap, and my grandmother properly suited, befitting the honor of the occasion. Among the photographs is one of me as a 14-year-old boy, which is my favorite.
We called our mother from lunch on Boylston. It was her and BDL's anniversary, which the Good Daughter remembered. They weren't home, so we nattered into their answering machine, so I got to score as many GD points as CLH did. Heh.
We called our father from the Esplanade two days later. RSH told CLH something so ridiculous she spluttered with incredulous laughter, and this is how her relationship with our parents is so much better than mine. If Dad had told me the same thing, on my own, I would have said, "Oh really?" and fumbled for better follow-up questions. Whereas when our father told CLH that as one of his duties as quartermaster of his branch of the VFW, he was going to call Bingo once a month, she could laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. He has retired and lives in Florida, yet he distinguishes himself as somehow other than a Florida retiree. And he will continue to do so even though he is Mr. Bingo. That's funny. He cannot enunciate for shit, such that when a friend would telephone the house and Dad would answer, the friend would almost invariably ask, once we got on the phone, "Did I wake up your father?" and ask timidly, because he's scary-sounding too. Yet he has to call letters and numbers clearly enough that a bunch of Florida retirees can understand him. That's funny too. So CLH laughed. I wouldn't've laughed, for fear of hurting his feelings. It makes me a fairly boring conversationalist. CLH, on the other hand, knew she could tease him without hurting his feelings, so did.
One night we went to the Top of the Hub to eat. I had been to the top of the Pru (and the Hancock) several times, but I had never eaten there. I have to have a clothing tangent here--it becomes pertinent (to me) later on. When I dressed Saturday morning in a short natural linen unwaisted skirt, I discovered my sleeveless button-down L.L. Bean shirt was stained. CLH lent me a fitted short-sleeved ribbed t-shirt. Fitted, as in would betray my belly if I forewent sucking it in and would inescapably betray the fact of my bosom. I wore it, having recently realized (or decided) that baggy is only acceptable over skinny, because baggy over bulge makes you look fatter where fitted over not actually fat yet but not skinny either just makes me look like me. CLH said that I looked like an After photograph in "What Not to Wear." That made me happy. For dinner, I wore my own long ivory sueded Nearly Perfect Skirt (only nearly because there's a seam down the center) and another loan from my sister of a fitted three-quarter sleeved (which I pushed above the elbow because I am only human), ribbed, slightly shiny, scoop-necked shirt. When I emerged, she said, "I don't think I've ever seen you look sexier." Whoo! "It reminds me of a day I was home from college, in the early summer, and I saw you out the kitchen window walking to the clothesline in this white bathing suit. It must have been the year everything changed about you, because I exclaimed something or other and BJWL looked out at you and back and me and said 'yep.'" I told her, laughing, that I remember that white bathing suit; on the day she remembers I would have been 16 or 17 (I was a late bloomer). I tried to find it again for years and I only just recently ditched white as my tank bathing suit color in deference to it. Its primary attraction for me was that it had side panels of dense mesh so I tanned on my sides too, though less.
There were plans for Walden Pond or a whalewatch, and the weather was so beautiful it might have been criminal to stay in the city and not be near water, but it was a really good time with my sister. Also I got to pay for meals with her--but I still carried everything. We decided that I am a camel in a china shop. One of my mother's more frequent exclamations is that I am a bull in a china shop. Since historically CLH has paid and I have carried, I have been the camel for years. Thus, camel in a china shop. My family role. I'll see if ACOA has such a listing.
Tuesday I dropped CLH off at her new job downtown, before sunrise even, and was on my way. At 8:30 in Old Lyme, I looked for breakfast but it didn't happen. Hallmark's offers it only on weekends, and a couple of other places weren't open yet. I miss the Lymelight. But I got to the beach before 9.
I walked out to Griswold Point, or what's left of it. There are curves of sea grass where land used to be. What land remains was covered in cormorants and sea gulls and plovers and terns and there no dogs can get at them, but there's less habitat overall. It was stunning and gorgeous and perfect in every way, breezy and sunny and warm in the sun and cool in the breeze and when I got back to the town beach I dove in. Lordy. I have not been at the beach in September for some years. The day after BJWL's wedding, I invited folks to the beach and TJZ came and ABW came with baby NKW, but it was cloudy and chilly. This was perfect.
People swim in artificial water for exercise and to cool off. Does anyone go into fake water to enjoy being in the water? I don't see how, the dosed water feels so wrong against skin. This was something else. This was perfect. I swam with no fear of jellyfish or jetskis, I floated in salt, I bounced in the strange formations called "waves" that Old Lyme only gets in September (and presumably over the winter, but even I swim only May through September).
When I started shivering I got out and lay in the sun until I decided dehydration and hunger weren't helping me to warm up. By this time the new café across from Phoebe was open, so I had a tomato and cheese bagel and a liter of water and shivered at a patio table in the sun as I read the paper. When I ordered, hugging my arms to myself and turtling my head into my shoulders, the proprietor asked, I think incredulously, if I was cold. It was a gorgeous day in the 70s by now--how could anyone be cold? "I just got out of the water," I told her. The wet hair might have been a give-away, but maybe not: there are showers. I went into Phoebe, listening to the grandfather clock strike the hour, looking through the children's collection, glancing at the new adult fiction, before heading to my main goal, the old reading room. I nodded to Phoebe, still smiling her Mona Lisa smile over the fireplace, and breathed. Eh: it's air-conditioned now, so no real air even in the summer. The geneaology room smells right, at least: no air conditioning can combat books that old.
Then I hied me to Uncas. The road is passable! One of Connecticut's means to balance its budget is to "return certain parks to a natural state," i.e., a reduction in services. There were never any services in Nehantic State Forest anyway, praise be, except to pave, in the most slapdash way, the road. It's now dirt and the smoothest drive I have ever had there. I spent four hours there, sunning and swimming and reading and looking at the sky through the leaves* and being almost entirely alone. Once two men arrived, which made me a little skeevey, but the older just told the younger about fishing here and then they left; another time when I was in the water a man showed up with a baby in a front-pack and a dog on a leash and soon left. Later a family came paddling by in a canoe. No smokers, no screaming kids, no one else in the long term. Peace. Water and sun and utter quiet. Not silence, because of the wind in the trees and the birds, but quiet, with just the wind in the trees and the birds: perfect.
My mother got out of work at 3 so I headed for the house. I remember this as an unstressful half hour, anyway. ABW showed up with her two boys, my mother went off to an optometrist appointment, and ABW and I gave the boys a choice: the beach, with waves and better castle-building sand, or a lake with warmer water and a playground and not very good sand. They opted for lake, so we went to Haynes Park at Roger's Lake, and thank goodness it was after Labor Day or my willy-nilly parking in town lots at beach and lake couldn't've happened. My mother and I would occasionally swim in Roger's Lake, but up in Town Woods, when she didn't want to drive all the way to Uncas, but I haven't been in the shallow, tepid water at Haynes Park since Hurricane Gloria, when after three days of yard clean-up and no electricity I biked over with a bar of Ivory. We attempted to build castles (too coarse a grain), to volley a ball in lacrosse-y baskets, and to seesaw. A 150-pound woman can teeter but not totter when at the opposite end are a 7- and a 4-year old. They scrunched waaaay back and I sat waaaay forward, ahead of the handle and nearly at the fulcrum, and that worked somewhat better. But not much. And then someone dumped a bucket of water on me, so then it was war! After a staggeringly healthy dinner at Hallmark's (fries and a mocha shake for me), they dropped me off at the house and ABW set off with a cargo of exuberantly yelling boys.
I spent the evening with my mother and BDL and that seems to have been fine too. Tedious as usual, but no tenser than usual. It was only after I reminded my mother of my plans for the rest of the week that the stress level ratcheted up, or that's how I remember it now. I had told her that I was traveling to see other people, Charenton and RPR and TJZ, who had guests or a trip to Vermont or baptisms that precluded their coming to UncasCon, but she didn't pay attention or believe or whatever. Now, this makes sense: hurt that I chose to spend so little of my time with her, she acted hurtly, and I got mad for feeling however guilty I felt, and maybe guilty for not feeling guiltier, and the vicious cycle continues.
My mother had Wednesday day off and so I had asked her for Wednesday and (not through) Saturday. This was agreeable, and we spent several hours of Wednesday together. I woke at 7:00 to find the car in the driveway but the house empty, including the cellar, where by this time I did not want to find her collapsed. Nor at the clothesline nor in the camper but finally around the front of the house weeding. She did not garden at all when I was growing up, and it's nice that she is now. One of the awkwardnesses in conversation is that she is so focused on her chemical-induced successes and proud of the open spaces created by murdering perfectly healthy century-old hardwood trees. I cannot encourage chemicals or slaughter, nor do I criticize (to her face, behind her back being so very much more admirable), so I am left with "Ah" and "This is a very large tomato" and similar inanities.
Over breakfast my mother (asked to see and) looked at some of my photographs of the house and garden and of southwest Colorado last month and of Emlet in May. She declined help in the creation of pancakes but glanced at me where I sat at the dining table assembling an iPhoto album to demand that I smile, Lisa! Because when someone isn't smiling, for whatever reason, decreeing that she do so is kind and effective. She showed me Granny's photograph albums and allowed me to select a few--so now I have family photographs from both sides! She had already let CLH go through them and I lusted after one on CLH's wall, of Granny in her 20s perched laughing and leggy on the hood of a car. This is why I need a scanner, so all of us can have all of them.
Then we went to the beach and walked farther than BJWL had ever been, past the sundial even. I showed her where Griswold Point used to be and remarked on the cormorants, which I don't remember seeing before. She said they have always been around. Maybe they have and I used to think they were loons, because I knew loons swim low in the water. But loons are farther north and fresh water. I wasn't much of a birder before I moved to Colorado--but wait (it occurs to me now, almost two weeks later): if, as she herself said, she had never been past the sundial into the bird sanctuary, how would she know whether cormorants had always been there? It was another spectacular, crisp, sunny, breezy, exactly warm enough day.
But not one that couldn't be improved by criticism. I picked up some litter, a shotgun casing and other bits of plastic, as I had the day before both here and at Uncas. She actually asked why I was doing that. "Because it doesn't belong here?" I responded, surprised why? at the question. She tsk'd about how dirty it must be--she was picking up seashells from the same beach--and forbad it on her property and didn't know why I should do it. "It's everyone's responsibility," I said, evenly: I am much less likely to make like a blowfish--puffy and spiky--at her concerning unmotherlydaughterly things, especially things as impersonal as litter, and particularly when I am perfectly confident that I am doing right.
I left at 4. RPR had called to change her day, and when I called Charenton to change their day, JUMB said that was swell--though she wouldn't say swell--and if I arrived in time could I accompany her in her car to the garage and drive her home. Of course.
I stopped just north of Norwich to gas up, and this is when the vacation took a u-turn. I think I mean that in the U-Haul sense, not in the shape sense. I pushed the button in the door panel that released the fueling door, a feature new to me, and I thought the button should have popped back up but then figured maybe it wouldn't until I clicked the gas cap closed--CLH had told me you have to turn it past where it feels shut. I gassed up, I turned the gas cap and clicked it closed, I closed the fuel door (mistake number two). When I got back into the cabin, the button had not popped back up. I tried to manipulate it up, but, ham-fingered as I am, managed only to dislodge it entirely from its mount. There was now a gaping hole in the door panel. Huh.
I drove to Charenton, JUMB and I drove to Tony's and dropped off her car and asked the mechanic to look at mine. He tried the ignition key a couple of ways as a work-around, but no dice. If I would leave the car there, he could try to fix it, but he had a full day tomorrow so he couldn't promise it would be done then. Huh.
I drove us back to Charenton, at which point the fuel gauge read 3/4. Norwich to Charenton to garage to Charenton: one quarter of a tank. Yoikes. I didn't remember how much gas I had leaving Boston, but clearly until the door was fixed I couldn't leave Storrs, not even to drive three towns north to see RPR, nor drive anywhere but Boston. I calculated: I would drive to the garage in the morning and walk to campus--three or four miles?--and walk back at the end of the day. JUMB suggested that LEB might be able to pick me up from the garage, and I called and of course she was willing to do this. So I tried to put i broke my sister's car out of my mind for the time being and enjoy my evening at Charenton.
We had shad and conversation and JUMB's bread and APB's stories and conversation and tarte aux poires and pictures of Emlet's visit in August and of the play ZBD had written and directed (full of princesses and dragons, of course), starring SPG, and conversation. My heart went pitter-pat: I had gorgeous weather and good swimming but no Emlet, no Nisou, no SPG, and now maybe no RPR and MPR, TJZD and RED and Soulmate, or UncasCon. I proudly showed my pictures of Bump-bump and Granny and got to explain how Bump-bump got his name (he bumped foreheads with CLH, whom he adored, and she named him), and APB brought out some of theirs going back four generations, and we hot-tubbed under a full moon and a blazing Mars. And I woke up even before the rooster, an efficient sort who crowed while it was still pitch dark.
In the morning JUMB presented me with Charenton's own "Pretty Virgin" maple syrup and dosed me with coffee and sent me on my way. I had to tell the mechanic I didn't know what year the car was, or what its plate number was--though it was probably the only one with Massachusetts plates--and he had to tell me he didn't know if he would be able to work on it that day. If I had arrived as a stranger instead of under the wing of a regular customer, I would have had no hope, I think. Leaving the car was hard: not that I could fix it myself, but this put it totally out of my hands. LEB picked me up and off we went to campus, where, I realized, I would spend more consecutive hours than I had since 1994.
The new office spaces completely threw me. There are holes through floors--deliberate ones--for air and light. And televisions in the old library (office space since before me). I greeted my former cronies and got the schedule for the only undergraduate I know, the middle child of the woman whose illness inspired me to donate my hair, because I had promised to look her up, but I was in no mood to chat with anyone, let alone a 19-year-old woman whom I haven't seen since before her mother died. Then I found publicly available computers, one with a nearby plug for my phone, now sad and voiceless. I emailed everyone I knew was coming to UncasCon, canceling because of uncertain transportation and expecting my sister to be mad that I broke her car, and stressed at RDC by phone. He suggested not stressing, and finding a VW dealership nearby who might have more experience or at least knowledge of how to bypass the broken switch, and also not stressing. The closest VW place was in Glastonbury, for pity's sake, in the opposite direction from Boston, and claimed to be available no sooner than two weeks out and in that case only for cars purchased there. The serviceman did tell me how a mechanic could get to the gas door through the trunk, anyway. That made me hopeful I could fuel the fucker.
I am a little too good at stressing and a little not good at anything else. And behind me the televisions displayed memorials, because it was Thursday, September 11th, and so I got to feel even guiltier for being so self-involved on such a day.
Emailing was time-consuming. The web interface for penguindust takes so damn long and has no spam filters and sifting through 450 headers looking for the 15 I wanted was more than I wanted to deal with. I didn't think to, say, ask anyone I emailed for a phone number, but then, I wasn't going to have access again to retrieve replies anyway. I canceled immediately instead of later because I was...overly stressing? or just being efficient and taking responsibility for the situation? Whatever. Possibly mistake number three, but probably I should stop enumerating them.
I had left the car to be serviced, I had let everyone know who needed to know, and I needed to get away from the televisions and out into the sun. I had been told, but forgot, that English is no longer in JHA (which is going to be demolished, along with HRM, long the two ugliest buildings on campus, hooray for instance of Change is Good!). I climbed to the third floor and immediately sensed Change. Aha, it now houses Linguistics. No wonder the doors are boring and undecorated. (I was traumatized by a Linguistics professor. I know now that the subject matter is interesting, but he did his best to disguise that fact). So I scampered to the new building, which houses English, Statistics, and Geography, which subjects all complement each other quite logically. Enough of all the foreign languages and Journalism being in the same building as English! What sense did that make?)
I found the office, I tracked down the bulletin board listing the professors, their office hours and room numbers and class times. Happily, RJH had office hours right then. I scampered downstairs and found his door ajar. I rapped, he called, "Come in!" and, OMFB, we were both ecstatic at the sight of each other. Though we're both lousy correspondents, as he said, "It feels like we were friends in another lifetime," because time and distance drop away when we're together. How I do adore him.
Ironic, innit, that nothing has changed in 12 years, that I still invade his office to compel him to entertain and shepherd me through various emotional crises. This time, again, he was talking me down from the same sort of nauseous panic: if Change Is Bad, well, then, good, because that hasn't changed. And, of course and always, he makes me laugh. I suggested he record it so his office would sound right.
I had to tell RJH this one: The courtyard in the Gardner is amazing. All bluey-lavender and white flowers, a mosaic patio, statuary, a fountain; it's just beautiful. CLH and I stood and gazed for a long time, and we looked at it from every window as we passed through the rooms. French windows (RDC said, "In France they probably just call them 'windows'" but Nisou tells me they are portes-fenêtres, door-windows) overlook the courtyard from almost every room, and as we looked out from the Dutch or the Italian room, CLH said, "Quote something from 'Room with a View.'" So I did, exactly in context because that's how much of a freak I am: "Come away from the window, Lucy, you will be seen!"
*Two days later at Uncas, of course this one repeated itself frequently: "My father says the only perfect view is of the sky over our heads." (It might be "real," not "perfect.")
RJH responded that his favorite line is "Excuse me, my dear, but it seems to me, you're in a bit of a muddle." This he left in the carel in the library where I worked for him, in Latin for me to English out, one very long time ago. And mine is "But I've got to go to Greece! The ticket's bought and everything!" And the wonderful thing about RJH is that he knows exactly why that's my favorite: that reasoning is why I entered the grad program.
We talked and laughed and he wrote a quiz and I read and he went to class and I walked up to the top of Cemetery Hill to kill some time before RCD got out of her class. I hadn't been up there since…probably RDC's and my farewell lap around campus, if then, but likely years before.
After I left RJH's office for the last time, in the later afternoon, I was after food, my first since a slight breakfast, and news of the car, and books. I stopped in LEB's office for the third or fourth time, but the garage still hadn't called. While LEB and I gossiped, the garage did call. The car was fixed. I should have pulled the levery button up instead of down (mistake number one), but it was fixed, a simple matter of popping the door panel off and resetting the thing. It was all okay. The relief was abrupt and physical and I didn't even try not to tremble.
LEB offered to drive me to the garage right then, but I felt grovel-y enough with the two shuttlings that I could not have her disrupt her day more. I called JUMB ("all okay") and RPR ("tonight is a go"). I bought a couple of Clif Bars and apple juice, because apple juice is what I drink when I'm miserable. Possessed of cell coverage, I called RDC and then my sister.
I had avoided that last step out of trepidation. But CLH was not at all mad. Well, she was, at Volkswagen, because the button had broken before, and her dealership--just like the one in Glastonbury, though without the excuse that it didn't come from there--also said "two weeks," until she--contrary to me in similar situations, evidently--got in someone's face and reminded him that one of the car's selling points was the dealership's service. Even though I pressed instead of pulled the lever, she didn't think it was my fault.
In front of the Benton Museum, under trees, near a trickling fountain, I slowly ate and drank and talked to my sister. She outright commanded me to use the car as she had intended me to do and to stop beating myself up.
So. I canceled to be responsible, I didn't try to uncancel because I thought that would be presumptuous. I went back and forth on this. A lot. Which I will spare you, gentle reader.
I got to RPR's house and talked to the barking dogs. I met the new puppy and admired how he seems to be extending the older dog's vivacity. She showed me all that they've done to the house and I admired the lovely painting job I did on the staircase last summer (I think I only primed it). We talked about the impending Little Stranger (hooray!) and I admired its little kidney-beanness with a thread of spine in the ultrasound. It is a remarkable thing, an ultrasound. Also I patted her not-yet belly and later rubbed her back until she went to sleep. It is interesting to me how different women take to pregnancy. I admire or sympathize or just observe quite happily from the sidelines. If the dogs are any indication, she is going to have the most well-behaved child ever. She picked up two treats, and the dogs ran out to their kennel and sat down to await their treats. At bed-time, she picked up two treats, and the puppy ran for his crate and the older for his pillow and they both sat down to await their treats and immediately lay down to sleep. It was a little freaky, but being owned by a whiny, overly indulged cockatiel, I can only wish and delude myself.
I was completely oblivious to MPR's arrival late that night, but again I woke absurdly early, a bodily manifestation of stress. I got to witness one of their Who's on First routines before we all left for work or errands or breakfast with RJH in Willi (me). I tore myself away from that gabfest well in time to get to Old Lyme before my mother's noon lunch period. She was unavailable, so I took myself back to the beach for another flawless afternoon. I made almost no progress with Goldbug Variations because it was much more important to watch the waves. The wind was strong enough that I avoided swimming for fear of freezing to death after I got out, but then I saw an older man splash in. If he could do it, I could, and so I did. It was, of course, wonderful and bracing and restorative, and when I got out I froze and put on my fleece and lay in the sun.
The first call I had made on Thursday was to TJZD, because she lives way the hell west, opposite to Boston. If I might have risked a return to Old Lyme, no way would I venture to Fairfield County. CLH specifically commanded me to go visit her, and I did. Perhaps I would have reinstated UncasCon if also specifically instructed? Anyway. The drive down was fine except just east of New Haven, where construction jammed traffic. I had water, patience, loud music, and an automatic transmission, so I was fine.
I saw pictures of Soulmate as a little boy where he looks exactly like RED. When I complimented Soulmate on RED's charming adventuresomeness and winning grin, he said it was mostly to TJZD's credit. But I had seen photographs and even a chalk painting, and he had a lot to do with this baby. The five of us, the three adults and the baby and the dog, walked to the playground of a nearby school, where we accidentally crashed the back-to-school picnic, and then another grouping, TJZD and I and her 13-year-old neighbor and her best friend, went to a carnival at her school, with cheap rides and rip-off games and a white elephant sale. We sent the girls off to ride nauseating rides and laughed at ourselves when we realized we would rather spend our time at the tag sale.
True to all church white elephant sales, the scariest things in the world lurked in wait. The most disturbing was a foot-high statuette of a child who looked like a Precious Moments reject and had entirely black, glass eyes, like Charles Wallace's on Camazotz (except black, not blue), like spice-eaters of Dune (more appropriate than Camazotz, because it was the whole eye), like Quint's description of a shark's eyes, "black, lifeless, like a doll's eyes." When we returned later to show it to the girls, someone had actually faced the hideous thing to the wall of the tent, which we should have thought to do. Yeah. So instead of riding rides (but I have never liked rides with spinning within spinning, even before I became such a grown-up), we mocked tchotchkes. We're old.
Not so old that I couldn't talk books with the girls. The neighbor had a bearded dragon, so we could talk about Holes; and she was about to start Walk Two Moons, which I praised possibly more highly than Holes; and the younger's mother was pregnant with her when the mothers met at the older's baby shower, so I told them about Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; and one talked about a principal's unfairness and plus they were best friends, so I recommended Bad Girls.
RDC vowed that this wasn't abridged, but it was. Maybe that's why it sounded choppy. I liked it, and there's nothing like an audio book for a lot of driving. The only time I listened to music on my road trip was during the one traffic jam.
In the morning I drove through pissing, peeing, or at least slobbering rain back to Old Lyme.
When I got back to the house at 9:41, my mother and her husband were just getting into the car to leave. If I had bothered to communicate with her since Wednesday afternoon I would have learned that Granny's sister-in-law's funeral was Saturday morning. As it was, they were about to head off and my mother asked if I would get in the car right then and go with them.
"I have nothing even vaguely appropriate to wear," I said, my clothing for the week being my beloved grey sweatskirt (currently), short natural linen skirt, long ivory skirt, and overalls.
"She won't care, but just put some feet on, we'll be late." I also hadn't showered since Friday afternoon, wasn't wearing underwear of any sort, and hadn't washed my hair since Thursday morning. Possibly, to honor my great-aunt's memory, attending her funeral even as I was would have been better than not attending. More probably, I should have called my mother to let her know my movements: she continued to expect me home every night despite the itinerary I had given her as recently as Wednesday. Also, I can change in a moving car as well as the next person and so could have swapped comfy for nice if not funereal, but my mother's husband would not have had a heart attack if I had put on a bra in front of him--in the back seat and without exposing myself would count as in front of him.
Being able to blame my nonattendance on superficial reasons of wardrobe or on my rudeness or on my callousness is better for my mother to do than to know the ulterior, ultimate reason: even if I had been close to this great-aunt, even if I had been clean and dressed, even if going wouldn't mean sacrificing last minutes at the beach, in no case would I have voluntarily entered that car to be engulfed in the clouds of my mother's Miasma (I don't know her scent, but that's a fitting name).
Whew. I let myself into the house and closed off my nose and eyes as I got a glass of water and the phone.
Outside, I called AAC. Having canceled UncasCon, and with its being rained out anyway, I did the same as I did at UConn on Thursday, see more people longer than I otherwise could have. She was only too pleased to have a reason not to do her painting project and I cleaned up and was on my way. Possibly I project onto my three girls the head-shakingness I felt when my mother installed the second bathroom in her house years after my sister and I left: the house they grew up in was small for three kids, while this new one is roomy but inhabited by only 40% as many people as lived in the previous. And it is lovely and spacious and lofty and gorgeous and meant to look like a barn, with salvaged 100-year-old beams throughout and lots of open space, and a nautical mood to the decor. A set of drawers in the kitchen is shallow but wide and deep, for table linens and silverware, and AAC was pleased it recalled to my mind a map chest. She was also proud that I knew the purpose of the faucet over the stove (though without a drain as well, is a pot-filler so necessary? I guess it saves 50% of water-lugging).
AAC was an excellent baby-sitting mother by asking if I had pictures of the house, since RKC had said it was so charming. She spotted the album entitled "Blake" and looked at him, and she laughed at the one called "Nieces and Nephews," since none of those people is a blood relative, and she laughed further when she saw I had pictures of my sister's cat among them.
And of course, I got the latest dish on my girls.
My mother said they'd be home before 2:00, so I made sure to be back by then. I considered a detour to Uncas, but I had already canceled on everyone and my insanity does not extend to swimming in cold rain. Warm rain, maybe. So instead I went to the beach, where it was not raining. Really it was a good trip beachwise, because for years I have been home only in the summer when jellyfish make Long Island Sound not so nice for swimming. I returned to the house and was repacking my bags on the deck in between raindrops when they returned.
I apologized for not calling. Her expectations for my tenure in Old Lyme were delusional, and I had told her my schedule, but since I knew she had these expectaions and wouldn't register anything to the contrary, I should have kept her informed--silly me, telling her a thing only once and acting accordingly instead of calling to counter repetitious "but I thought you were staying here"s. She told me about her various family and I told her about mine, and her criticisms of me continued, and I continued to neither lash back (yet) nor learn how to deflect it.
Wearing a tank top, I was shaking out a canvas bag over the deck railing and my mother said nothing about particles of beach sand destroying her loam, which was good, but she did say, disdainfully, "You certainly do have your father's shoulders." If I were male she would not find so much fault with however true that observation is. And would she have me be craven-shouldered? Into this bag I put clothes for Sunday and toothbrush and syrup Charenton had given me and jam my mother'd given me. Clothes out and backpack crammed in, it would be my carryon. "Oh, so that's how you pack clothes, is it?"
I wish she would just outright say: "I don't like the way you pack your clothes" or "You look like a slob all wrinkledy like that" (this the woman who thought utter slovenliness suitable for a funeral) or "I just don't like you so I'm going to pick you apart bit by bit but I still don't understand why you don't spend more time with me." But then, I also cannot, or do not, say, "Ma, your constant criticism pisses me right the fuck off and hurts me to boot."
Except that I did. Wednesday at the beach, she asked, "Why aren't you wearing your hair in that nice style I saw back in January?"
I seethed. I said, "It's the same exact fucking cut it was in January. It's in a ponytail because we're at the beach." Then I tried a diversionary tactic and continued, "Actually my haircutter wants to take it two inches shorter, but I've refused so far."
"Is that why you jumped down my throat?" Woohoo, she actually called me on my tone and cussing! However, I don't think I'm unreasonable to infer that she thereby tried to blame my alleged defensiveness on my haircutter rather than on herself.
"No, it's not. If you can't hear the criticism inherent in your question, you're deafer than I think. Try to rephrase it."
She fumbled but couldn't do it. I explained to her that her saying my hair isn't in "that nice style" works out to mean she thinks it's in a not-nice style and it is not a pleasant or positive or necessary comment. She denied this. Whatever.
Friday night I mentioned this exchange to TJZD as an example of my mother's usual criticism and my, for once, instead of only seething at her, trying to explain my problem with her statement right then, instead of later in a letter when she'd call it "dwelling" instead of "a response carefully thought out and not in the heat of the moment." TJZD said her mother would say the exact same thing and think it a compliment, because after all she's saying something nice about you--though eight months ago and in contrast to now. We laughed.
So on Saturday after the clothes-packing crack I told my mother about telling that to TJZD and that how her mother would think it was a compliment. "Well, it is a compliment," BJWL interrupted.
"Of how I looked eight months ago," I pointed out again. "It's negative now." CLH got the logic immediately as well.
The other day I heard someone correct a child who said, "[Whoever's] mother brang us." She corrected, "She brought you." In the first sentence of the paragraph, is it clear enough that "whoever" is an indefinite pronoun, that I don't remember a name which is not pertinent to my point? My mother said something about funerals being a chance to see family. (She didn't mean that the reunion element superseded the mourning and consolation elements.) I agreed, commenting that on several occasions when I have seen someone's pleasant, even rather smiley, photograph of a large family group and asked the occasion, they'll say, "It was someone's funeral, but that was the last time we were all together." She followed my sentence with this question: "Oh, They forgot whose funeral it was?" She is mind-numbingly difficult to communicate with. I told her, in dulcet tones of annoyance, that the subject of the funeral was immaterial to my point, which was in fact to agree with her, that funerals are occasions when everyone is together so let's take a photograph of all the cousins. If people actually wore somber colors to funerals I might not mistake such photographs for ordinary family gatherings anyway, which is another thing.
Why is it, when my mantra otherwise in life is "Change is bad," that I so fervently hope it can be brought about in my mother?
Then I wasn't staying in Old Lyme long enough this day to suit her either. I might have stayed longer, but there was a game at Fenway and so I would have to get to Boston early enough to find a neighborhood parking space. "But CLH has a parking space behind her building," she protested, since I am an habitual liar. I didn't say "not anymore" because that would be telling her my sister's business and defending myself from false accusation, which I endeavor not to (want to) do. My other option was to arrive after the game, but I was tired. Weary from beating myself up over apparently nothing, from regretting that I had canceled UncasCon and wouldn't see HEBD and ZBD, and from sleeping poorly and eating worse. I was weary, and I was ready to go home.
I had Jessie's number and considered calling her and trying to get in touch with Molly to put together an impromptu BostonCon, but, driving, I realized that I was too tired even to drive, let alone go out and be merry and not talk about my mother all at the same time. For slumming and slandering, I wanted only my sister.
CLH and I ate potato skins plus I dug through all the various candy she keeps in a silver wine bucket looking for the chocolate stuff. Tragically, a lot of the chocolates had picked up the flavor of the powerful Wint-O-Green Lifesavers. (Note to self: exclude Wint-o-Green from future stockings in favor of chocolates.)
Also tragically (after the chocolates), Kitty's new name is Benedict Kitty. CLH and I were watching the Lana Turner "Postman Always Rings Twice" and I was rubbing her scalp when Kitty deigned to join us and lay down along my leg, not CLH's. In the morning, when I picked her up to say goodbye and made kissy noises, she gave me little kitty kisses back even long enough for photographic proof. Then CLH tried the same thing but Kitty would have none of it. It must be that cats are evil, as everyone knows, because otherwise, since CLH is the good daughter and I the bad, Kitty would like CLH better.
The Chicago leg was only normal, but when I emerged I saw a flight to Denver at the next gate in 15 minutes, rather than in the next concourse in 90 minutes, as I had scheduled. I scored an exit window on the earlier and called RDC to tell him and finally finished Goldbug Variations, damn. We arrived in Denver almost 30 minutes earlier than expected, so RDC hadn't left the house yet. I trained from B to A concourse, because you have to, and walked from A to the terminal, because I had time.
RDC and I arrived at the arrivals area at just about the same time, and I carefully held in my belly to give the full effect of the Perfect Skirt and the Okay, Okay, I Admit That I Have Breasts Shirt as he drove up. I expected to do the hug-kiss thing once I got in the front seat, but no, he got out and came around to the back. This was not because he was bowled over by the sight of me but so that I could get the full effect of him.
He grew a Van Dyke in the ten days of my absence.
My impression is that Richard Powers wouldn't've been able to write this without Gödel, Escher, Bach, except his book would have been Watson-Crick, Poe, Bach. I wish I understood anything about music theory. There wasn't much Poe, but the pun of the title worked well with genetic decryption. Biological imperative, a bit of art history, programming, and bibliaphilic trivia.
After RDC picked me up, we went out for lunch. That was enough for him for the day but later I heated up some pasta with marinara. Of course Blake needed to share so I rinsed off a piece for him, a bit of pasta the length and diameter of the outer two joints of my thumb, which he ate all of. The residue of sauce had enough garlic in it to give Blake severe garlic breath--a first for him and an experience we don't want to repeat, since he spends so much of his time on our shoulders--for more than a day.
RDC grew the van dyke for a joke, and yep, I was startled. It wasn't quite long enough not to be scratchy when I first experienced it, and I opined that if he didn't hate it, it might be amusing to let it go for another week, past scratchiness. I think he was really looking forward to my coming home not just because I'd be coming home but also so he could finally thoroughly shave. It was scratchy on the inside, as well as on the outside, and he removed it little more than a day later. I was relieved, yes indeedy.
Today I wore pants. Yes, it's true. Back in July I went on a second shopping expedition that I didn't mention, it being less than a week after the shopping spree that I did kind of mention. I went to the Colorado Mills, which is an entire "mall" of "outlets." I ventured into the Geoffrey Beene store because three years ago my sister gave me a shirt from there, dark lavender polished cotton, that I absolutely adore. One of the things on my mental list of staples was a pair of khakis to replace the frayed, seven-year-old ones from the Gap. I tried a pair of actually fashionable rather than conservatively traditional pants. They have no waist band, which is a fine thing in my head. They are flat-fronted, which should make Haitch happy. They fit, not quite snugly, but certainly more fittedly than I usually allow. They are also, OMFB, size 8, which makes Geoffrey Beene my favorite source of sizing inflation.
Today I finally wore them (with the GB shirt). Egg looked at me and exclaimed that I looked nice today. I said, "I'm wearing pants!" kind of proudly, the way I claimed that I grew a lot overnight and she realized that yes, this certainly was a momentous occasion. Also I figured out the first element of the "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" drinking game: you have to drink every time Carson says "pant" for "pants."
Also Egg is leaving. At the end of September. I am bereft.
I have accompanied RDC before on his semiannual expeditions for clothes but not this time and perhaps not again until I find an equivalent store for me, where the stock is stylish and high quality, where there are clothing and shoes, where a salesperson will assist you and a tailor fit you, yet you still have all your arms and legs when you leave.
Instead I sat across the street, on a patio under a tree, drinking coffee and petting dogs and reading Dostoyevsky. I did check on him once after my initial errand, a new bra. I found him with two saleswomen and a table covered with a new jacket, trousers, shirts. I really liked the jacket and said so, then left to him to what would have been, for me, wolves except that he is good at dealing with pushy salespeople and that, at that store, helping you is actually their job instead of an imposition.
I did have a salesperson fit me before I looked for the stupid harness. I felt like I couldn't breathe in the band size she assigned me, and speak not to me of demi-cup or push-up bras, which should be called push-out. I found another of the sort I like, in the size I say I am rather than that she thought I was (I say bigger band, smaller cup size). Dunno what happened to the previous one, probably nailed up over a bar somewhere.
We arrove at the gym just before nine. In the morning. On a weekend. But I discovered--well, I must have read it on the schedule months ago but I didn't take it seriously because the hour of nine o'clock in the morning on a weekend doesn't exist outside of my own house--a 9:00 a.m. step class. I took a step class! I couldn't keep up sometimes because I didn't know the routine, not because I am in lousy shape. Or not necessarily because I'm in lousy shape. Also because of the unreal hour, it wasn't as crowded as the evening classes. Let's hope this becomes a regular thing.
Neither of us expected to be thrilled by John Singer Sargent, me because he did a lot of portraits and RDC because he's too close to an Impressionist. We did go, finally on the last day, and while we weren't thrilled, a couple of paintings stood out: the play of light on water in Venice canals, the intensity of sun reflecting down an icy, stony, wet mountainside into your eyes, the corner of a building rendered rapidly but with much detail in watercolor.
We spent most of the afternoon downtown, wandering and eating and reading, an ideal last day of summer. We glanced at Oktoberfest in Larimer Square: the featured beer was Coors. Bah. We read and browsed at the Tattered Cover. I came away with Embers, which someone back east mentioned; and The Parrot's Theorem, which I think is going to do with mathematics what Sophie's World did for philosophy, and of course I picked it up because of the title. I started it over a late lunch at the Wynkoop (even though I had Crime and Punishment in my bag) and interrupted RDC's reading Al Franken by exclaiming that a parrot can't eat two pounds of Brie in one go and also about the maths. It's translated from French into British English, and I appreciate that it thereby keeps a foreign flavor and it's why I just said "maths" instead of "math." Or maybe I'm rebelling against Carson.
I only just started Crime and Punishment but I can tell why it's one of Egg's favorites. I will not read the foreword until afterward, but the endnotes say that Dostoyevsky's notes indicate that Raskolnikov's dream is at least partly autobiographical. A mare is whipped, deliberately in her face and eyes. Last night we watched "The Doors," even after realizing that Meg Ryan plays Pam, and at least twice during it, Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison raves about "whipping the horse's eyes." It reminds me unreasonably of Into the Wild's whatsisname's love of Tolstoy.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. This morning, a truck turned right on no-longer-red without noticing that the light's having turned green meant that the cyclist going straight in the crosswalk had the right of way.
I put a coat of paint on the new beams of the porch as soon as I got home. Just as I finished cleaning that, RDC had dinner ready (dorado, which is the new, Spanish name for the dolphin fish since its English name had obvious problems and its Pacific name, mahi-mahi, never caught on, with sun-dried tomatoes and wine and pine nuts, and yellow squash, and brown rice), and after I cleaned up that and cleaned up myself, I was done. A hint that I haven't been getting enough exercise: cramps really hurt.
Blake and I retreated to the living room with Westword, Ms., Harper's, and Crime and Punishment. The first three were fine but in the novel people were speechifying about whether commission of crimes is ever justified and I wasn't paying enough attention. So I resorted to television. I had recorded, heaven help me, some unreality shows, "Trading Spaces" and "Queer Eye" and a new one, "Clean Sweep." They are why TiVo was invented, but I hope even if I had 'flu (why is it given an initial apostrophe, for the in-, but not a final one, for the -enza?) I wouldn't watch these start to finish. I do like make-overs, but to see those all I need is the last five* minutes, muted. This is true for "What Not to Wear" as well. The process in Queer Eye, unlike that in the others, is still vaguely amusing, and it is the only one on which I can see a drinking game based: you drink every time Carson says "pant" instead of "pants." Didn't I already say this?
* Edited two days later: I first wrote "last final" because of final and five peskily sounding alike, also because I clearly have been tainted by Spirit Airlines announcing its "last and final boarding call."
Panic in the dining room roused me from sleep. A dream delayed my waking and disorientation delayed my actually getting up, and apparently I was still half asleep when I extricated myself from the covers: the first foot on the floor skidded forward from underneath me, the other leg was still in the bed, and down I went, all my weight on the folded joint of my hip, making me gladder I'm not older or weaker. Calling to Blake all the while, I found my feet and made them go, found the dining room switch and light flared out, found the covers of the cage and yanked them off. Supporting myself on the back of a dining chair, I was on the hinge side of the cage door when I opened it, and so when Blake fled the phantasms in his cage, he flew away from me and landed heaving on the hard floor. I limped to pick him up and tried to cuddle him, but he wouldn't make himself so vulnerable as to close his eyes and present his head for petting. We sat, waiting for his breathing to slow, his pulse to calm, his posture to relax, his plumage to fluff enough that I could not see his eyes from behind, waiting for me to see if I still worked. I crooned to him and gradually his crest lowered. I was quite ready to go back to bed, but he did his various Cockatiel Evasive Maneuvers to avoid stepping off my hand onto his perch.
More cuddling, more crooning, more maneuvering, until I was merciless. He stood on his perch, leaning down to look at whatever monster had arisen from the floor, in a scared little stance that made me feel crueler, and I turned down the light for him to settle down for a minute before I recovered him and returned to bed. I don't know how long he stays awake after one of his nightfrights, but I was awake for a long time.
This morning I was surprised to find myself almost not sore, and not bruised at all. But it's a reminder to keep up my bone mass density.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Later, actual exercise, two 20-minute stints on an Precor EFX elliptical, 5' warm-up, 35' at 20/20 incline and 12- or 13/20 resistance, 15' with two 2-pound handweights, and then 3' cooldown.
Back extensions, except not because while my sore hip made itself obvious during the elliptical, it hurt doing this.
Ab crunches on a weight machine, 100 x 75 pounds.
Not that this dress would have been appropriate for Sunday anyway, since it wasn't quite warm enough, but I could not zip a dress I bought in fucking July. I wore it, it's white linen so I dry-cleaned it, and Sunday I could, in fact, zip it, but it was obviously (to me) too tight. RDC disagreed and said that dry-cleaning can shrink things, and I don't know if that's true but it's why I keep him around, but I cannot have expanded in volume that much in two months. Can I have? Everything else that I bought in July still fits--including the Perfect Skirt and the closely-fitting pants with the silent s. Grr.
The Perfect Skirt is nearly perfect despite the middle seam down the front. This dress's seaming was hard to tell from the picture on the J. Crew sales site, and its center seam was nearly enough for me to return it. Now if I return it it will be because I'm inflated and therefore not allowed (and immoral, and probably impossible since it was an end-of-season)
Someone in an online forum I skim linked to a smut story. Sometimes the spoken flavor of its written words works, sometimes not. Sometimes a grammatical error--not a stylistic nuance--flares out and trips the narrative flow, as here: Someone has told the narrator he reminded her of a basenji. "What she was referring to I guess was my ears, which basenjis, according to the little picture in the dictionary, have big ones and so do I."
That's what I call a which splice. There are comma splices, someone joins two independent clauses with a comma and calls them a sentence. The previous sentence is an example of a comma splice. The which splice is a similar animal, in which the speaker conscripts the "which" as a conjunction. The clause following the "which" may or may not be independent grammatically, but it is usually dependent in thought, as in the Basenji example.
I have not yet come across the which splice in a standard publication. In speech, yes; and then in personal email, where in my experience writing follows speech patterns more than it does in longhand; and now in writing not traditionally published but paid for and on the web.
I don't claim to be a genius of logical syntax and pristine grammar myself. I just found, and I thought had admitted here but I guess not, an email, a posting to an online discussion group, in which I said, "The words now in my head is 'poser' and 'cheat.'" (I was talking about Barbara Ehrenreich, not another journaler, sorry no gossip here.) I think I wrote the sentence with one predicate nominative, decided it needed another, added the other and the -s to "word," but didn't think to change the verb. That's stupid and clumsy.
I do that often--just yesterday I found an instance where I tried to substitute a real verb for a form of "to be." I didn't strike everything I should have, and so I posted "...they were occurred while I read...." That's bad editing compounded by no proofreading, but I create clumsinesses like that too. Also I recently came across something more distressing: I wrote "in their." And I catch myself--I hope always--two or three keystrokes after impaling the possessive its with an apostrophe. But I shouldn't do the impaling to begin with. Anyway, I the pot am aware that the kettle and I are both cast iron.
Except that I am a well-seasoned piece of cookware, I know the benefits of a good oiling, and I don't want rust spots to form or, having formed, to stay. I don't call corrosion character.
Now, having disclaimed, the pot balances on a soapbox to declaim. Using "literally" as an intensifier instead of a modifier hurts, because English loses a necessary modifier to gain yet another intensifier. That's my coworker's particular peeve, but she uses which splices and pronounces the t in "often." A correspondent just bitched about corporate jargon like "thinking outside the box," but also wrote "your welcome" in the same email. I cannot remove the post from my own eye, but I can distinguish it from a mote. I got into a spat some time ago about the relative badness of "I wish I would have done this other thing" but couldn't come up with any examples or--this is my actual point, that I suck as I writer--properly articulate why it's a problem beyond saying "It sounds bad."
Over the past few days I've come across a few examples where that confusion of tense makes for unclear writing, makes syntactically unclear the order of actions when the significance of that order is the thought being communicated. Finally I understood the nature of the problem.
"I wish I would have done this, because if I would have done it, I could have done that as well."
All of the actions in that sentence occurred at the same time. Whereas with correct tense (or is it voice?), their order is clear: "I wish I had done this, because if I had, I could have done that as well." It's not just a wordier way to phrase the same tense, as "I am doing this" and "I do this" are. It's a different meaning.
So. I can be technically correct, if I try. More often I am blowsy and run on. More important, even when I am technically correct and, rarely, concise, I do not communicate a thought well. Effectively, evocatively, meaningfully, lastingly well. But I can damn well edit somebody else.
This morning I brought Blake for his annual well-check, the first time I have accompanied him in at least three years. In 2002 and '01, he had his check while boarding, and maybe in 2000 as well. He's healthy and I know it, but he is not a plant.
I usually bring him in his entire cage, which is tall enough that from the highest perch he can see out the car window. This time I decided on the much more convenient (for me) travel cage, about the size of a cat carrier. Stupid me: he could not see out the window, did not like that one single tiny bit, and let me know it the entire way. Sorry, buddy.
His veterinarian, whom I maybe haven't spoken to in that long, commented again on what a great personality he has. He asked if the bird is as outgoing and friendly all the time as he--Blake--was being with with him, who is, as an avian vet, very much a parrot person. Pretty much. When he encounters non-bird people, mutual nervousness compounds into a hopeless relationship--my sister, Nebra, Lou, and CoolBoss--but when he meets anyone who shows the vaguest interest or even calmness around him, he's Mr. Sociable.
The weekend after I cut my hair the shower wouldn't drain and we had to have a plumber come in. On a Sunday morning. After the plumber had snaked the last of my two-foot hairs from the drain (the picture of the tail that I donated disgusted my sister enough that I didn't bother to take a picture of that clump), Blake insisted on meeting him. Two years ago when a police officer was in the house taking a statement after we had been burgled, Blake wanted to meet him too. Hi, please take us seriously, and if you could just ignore this yelling thing that rules the roost.
His plumage is in great shape, his eyes and ears and nares and vent are clear, he chucked enthusiastically and bowed to his doctor, he weighs 93 grams ("medium to medium-plus, which is fine"), and the vet observed without further comment that he is eight, so I guess I don't have to worry about his age yet.
I tried to be good. First I went to the Bookies, the unfortunately named but independent children's book store. They had ordered a scant nine and those nine were, surprise surprise, gone, so I contented myself with books for shorties instead. What does an almost-seven-year-old read, or have read to her, after having had The Silmarillion read to her, by her choice, after hearing first The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings? Then I resorted to Barnes & Noble and bought what I was after. I had a coffee and read some there; I looked for a non-bar with outdoor seating along Pearl Street and decided I would shiver anyway; so, yes I'm a terrible person, I went to the mall and ate in the California Pizza Kitchen. Which I pronounce at least half the time as "California Pizza Chicken" because I am a latter-day Spooner.
Also I bought a pair of shoes, of girl shoes. I realized that the shoes I want for the new pants are Dansko clogs, of course, but they cost more than I was in a mood to spend. I bought a much cheaper pair of shoes in the meantime, at no savings at all because I will get the clogs as well, some time this fall.
I'm pleased to report Lemony Snicket hasn't lost his touch yet. I have just decided that it is my new tradition to take myself out to dinner with every new Unfortunate Event (only three left, malheureusement!). There I sat, innocent as a lamb, reading away, when the book made me snort and cackle. I giggled. A woman at the next table was laughing at me, with me not at me. Wordlessly, with a slightly abashed expression, I flipped up the book to her ("See, it wasn't me, it was the book!") and she made an inquiring face back. I'm still lisa, somewhere in here, so I nipped over to her and her companion to answer the inquiry.
I introduced the book in a fraction of a minute, "See, there're these three orphans who have all these unfortunate events happen to them, starting with their parents being killed in a fire, and villainous Count Olaf is after their fortune and they're trying to elude him and solve various mysteries through this, the tenth book (there are going to be thirteen of course). The older two are young teenagers but Sunny's a baby, just learning to speak, and only her siblings understand her; but right now she's been kidnapped by Count Olaf," and I pointed to the passage (not a spoiler, since Carnivorous Carnival ended with her in his clutches, separated from the older two, though in my opinion the funniest bit in the book):
I had sized them up correctly before I nipped: they laughed. I don't recall that Daniel Handler has done anything that overt before, so part of my laughter was surprise, but mostly it was sheer love for Sunny.
The psychology of the book's characters is beyond anything in any novel I can remember. Because of novelistic conventions, I had a guess where each character would end, but the conversations and justifications and philosophizing that brought them all to their ends of their ropes I had no hope of foretelling. I can see why it is a favorite of Egg's.
I talked to my mother today for the first time since I left Connecticut two weeks ago. She asked what we were doing this weekend so I told her how I had intended to paint the porch swing but discovered, while scraping it, that it's painted in oil, which I've never used before at all and we don't own any of, so that put the kibosh on that project and I cleaned out the fridge instead, and RDC put the swamp cooler to bed for the winter. She asked what a swamp cooler was and I briefed her. I asked her in turn what she'd been up to, and she told me about a painting project and about planting a slew of bulbs, and about attending her aunt's funeral. All of these things I already knew about, but listened to again anyway, because that's how it goes.
She asked, after her description of the services, "Did I tell you that Aunt G died?"
"Mom, I was there the day of her funeral, remember?"
"Well...," she thought back. At the start of the call, after the usual weather opening--rainy and humid and warm there, cool and brightly sunny and perfect here--she asked, "You brought the good weather back with you?" Now she said, "I do remember that you were here for the best weather of the year..." so I prompted, "I got home just as you were leaving and you wanted me to come with you?" This she did not remember.
Does she really not remember? She remembers that Aunt G died and that she went to her funeral, but does she really not remember my [lack of] involvement? Or is this her memory-block, applied because she would prefer not to recall my lack of involvement? Honest question here: does she truly not remember, in which case no wonder she considers my lingering responses "dwelling," or is she being coy?
RDC suggests she probably honestly doesn't remember, "because how many times has she asked you, and have you told her, what a swamp cooler is?" Yep.
She also asked how the garden's doing, so I told her that we're so overrun with yellow squash that I was thinking to make bread from it. Yellow squash bread should follow, according to the grocer's baker, a pumpkin rather than a zucchini recipe because its texture is more like the former; however, the pumpkin bread recipe says to cook the squash first, too much effort, so I just foisted it off on Babushka instead (except I said "our poor elderly neighbor who's always glad of our extra produce," since I didn't expect her to remember Babushka's name). She said that she had lots of zucchini bread recipes and would I like her to me them? I said, "No, thank you, because, as I just said, it needs a pumpkin not a zucchini recipe and that I gave it away anyway."
You would think that knowing she doesn't remember things not only two weeks past but just two sentences past would make it easier for me to cope with her, would enable me to adjust my expectations of her actions and responses. Apparently, however, I continue to be unwilling to cut her any slack. As, in fact, she cannot cut me any, disappointed in my appearance, skills, and choices as she is. But probably she just forgets who I am, so that the presence in her life of someone whom she misunderstands and disapproves of so thoroughly continually surprises her by her [mine, that is] failure to conform.
Later: And the fact that my mother cannot expend the effort to remember such a rare occurrence as a visit home is, damn it, reasonable cause for resentment.
This is, of course, the real reason I don't use the webcam that often. How many pictures of a yawning cockatiel does anyone need? At least 12. Note the turns, trying to find the side of my leg from which the tip of his tail will not touch the chair. Note (row one, second picture) the scratching-the-head-induced yawn. Note that the more open the beak (the later into the yawn), the greater the distance between feet and head as the head tries to capture the yawn.
More than 12: in this particular yawnfest, I snapped the cam 30 times. My response time and that of the cam are poor, so I didn't capture all thirty yawns. But I got to watch them, OMFB, so yours is the poorer existence.
Did you start yawning at the sight? Or at least by reading the word "yawn*" so many times? I am extremely susceptible to catching yawns, even cross-species, even in print. That would make me the sucker, not y'all.