House:
Garden
Errands
Stuff to look for
Kinwork and Lisaism
Reading:
Exercise
This was the coolest read in a long time. Full of intra- and interbook references. It nearly opens with Catcher in the Rye's first line; not much later it plays with The Great Gatsby's, that book's first of a zillion appearances. There's Tender Is the Night, Moby-Dick, Tale of Two Cities, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Lord of the Flies; and Brigadoon and Bluebeard. JFK and the Rat Pack are only the most prominent of the dozens of 20th century personalities who feature or cameo.
I didn't get some few of the references--a dog wonders why the bone it found in the surf disappears in its mouth? and I haven't read Magic Mountain and while the book is probably perfectly comprehensible to someone who knows only the theme song, I think a reader's enjoyment would increase with her familiarity with the referenced books, Alger Hiss, Ed Wood....I haven't looked up a few of the names yet, and I will be amused to find out how many have no cultural referent but are just red herrings Tom Carson planted to make his readers think they'd missed something.
Did I mention The Ground Beneath Her Feet yet? One of the things I loved about it was in its world, some of our fictional authors, such as Nathan Zuckerman, are actual. Gilligan's Wake had the same feel, and I adored it.
Enough cherry sprouts had got big enough that they'd be easy to spot to clip by hand, but that entire section of yard was a foot tall so I weedwhacked most of it, clipping only some things like the weeds that look like monster dandelions on trunks of pure water and the cherry sprouts among the bishop's weed and carefully around the johnny-jump-ups.
If only somewhat better, the yard now looked shorter, and I looked at the other half. I prefer long grass, but maybe it had strong enough roots to be cut. This summer my primary task is Bindweed Vigilence. With kitchen drama this year, I didn't replace the grass, and buffalo grass is supposed to resist weeds once it's established. Fewer weeds in its soil will improve that resistance, and shorter grass means I can spot bindweed easier.
I had already raked the grass clear of everything I ripped out of the beds. Now I raked it twice, first with a leaf rake, and second a with a bow rake to comb the grass all in one direction. And then I mowed, such a pleasing rolling snicker-snick sound, first this way and then that. Either we don't have the right or enough grass or a reel mower cuts the blades differently or what I actually like is the smell of gas, because I didn't get that fresh-mown grass smell that I love, but it smelled pretty good. Even though much of it is four inches or taller, the lawn looks tidy and not bald: it's only May and the dead spots aren't yet in evidence.
I had previously read that cuts made by reel mowers heal faster than those made by power blades. This site's explanation is amusing: it says the reel mower was invented in 1830 and has been proven by over 200 years of worldwide use. What year is it again?
I planted 20 baby bishop's weed along the north side of the house, toward the front. The space needs another 30, say, but will have to wait until next year except for some gingerly transplanted attempts from the back. I dug big holes for each tiny plant to surround them with loosened soil, but I might have been too hasty. Last year I planted the vinca six hours after four inches of snow fell only because I was leaving the country the next day; this year I hope the bishop's weed will thrive as well being planted the day after a two-inch snowfall. But the vinca went into the unamended easement while the bishop's weed went into thoroughly compacted garden fill. The difference in the soil, dry under the eaves and soaking five feet out, was marked.
The north front garden should have enough plants in it now except for its slope, which remains barren. I planted three each of Centranthus ruber 'Coccineus' Jupiter's beard, Salvia farinacea Texas violet, and Salvia chamaedryoides germander sage. Shockingly, the first has red flowers, not blue or lavender.
As have the three Aquilegia formosa, red spur columbine, that I planted along the south fence. I hope they're hardy little plants that can beat up that daisy thing that is colonizing the back yard.
My thinking on weeds has changed somewhat. They used to be bits that grew on their own without care or water, and that was good. Now they take water from my deliberate plantings and prevent them getting established. That monster dandelion thing's stem is more a succulent trunk packed full of water. And I don't compost hot enough to kill their seeds--and I'm convinced some most weeds propagate from any smallest part, seed root or leaf--so all that water can't go into compost.
A few beans and and lots of spinach are coming up in the east vegetable bed, but no carrots yet. The south front garden is thriving, except for the Achillea ageratifolia Greek yarrow, which might only look scraggly, and one Penstemon pinofolius. The peony looks 11 months pregnant with octuplets.
I bought a two-gallon container of Caryopteris Blue Mist Bluebeard, whose name I just learned yesterday. Several form the beginning of a hedge along Dot Org's western boundary, and I admired them all last summer. No one knew its name, including one man who said very definitely that it was butterfly bush--despite its flowers having neither the right shape nor color. High Country Gardens sells the genus, I now know, and I had flagged its species for later, but the varieties it sells didn't bear enough resemblance to what I sought for me to connect them. Yesterday in Home Depot, where I did not find more of the round pavers I need for a path around the north corner through the bishop's weed to the spigot, I did find a well-established plant with a name and snatched it up. I haven't given up on the Cytisus purgans Spanish gold hardy broom against the porch, so I didn't put it there. I'll put it between the hedge maple (whose leaf buds still haven't opened--when do I decide it didn't make it?) and the pear, since that space is lonely without the piñon.
There is still so much to do: I long for tulips, but would they look out of place in an otherwise dry garden? I have to do something under the nectarine and pear, but whatever happens there has to be tough enough to withstand traffic under birdfeeders. I am leaving the porch bits empty for now, hoping the Cytisus purgans takes off and the Artemisia x 'Powis Castle' silver sage grows into its potential. I have to divide the catmint again, but I think it's divide and compost because if I divide and plant the divisions, it will divide and conquer the entire lot. It's like sourdough bread, always more proof. I love the wall one neighbor built and should have done the same before I planted the south side--I didn't because RDC worried about holding more water against the house. Building a wall now would mean sacrificing or at least risking the south slope's beautiful speedwell and stork's-bill and snow-in-summer. It's why I didn't plant the north slope this time. The north easement needs vinca too, and I'll take cuttings for it from the south side, which is doing very well, later this month.
I mostly know what I have to do; I just have to plan my projects. Next up to to scrub and seal the fence. Replacing the lawn will wait for next year. Maybe then I'll build walls--a reason not to plant the north easement this season, since that's where tons of bricks would be delivered. Eventually I must relay the patio, which is uneven and lacks, I suspect, landscaping cloth underneath it, and the walk, which is more chicory than brick.
The length of board we can lash to Cassidy, not the length of the space available, determined the length of the new vegetable bed. So it's 12 feet long, not 14. It's 44 inches wide, not 48, because of a sprinkler head that won't retract--why I don't just bust the heads I couldn't say, since I buried the system controls when I filled the north side in last year. And ha, my first instinct was right and I need 1.6 cubic yards of garden soil (no, I don't remember how I calculated it last time, only that I did it nine different ways of wrong first).
I figure dirt isn't sold by the fraction. I wish I had cooked enough compost to need only the one, because I'm not sure where I can tuck the spare 10 cubic feet of dirt. I did buy big pots for annuals on the porch columns, and I'll plant another squirrel climbing tree in the shape of a cherry tomato in a patio pot, but otherwise I think it will live in a heap in that triangle between frame and fence until I build up the front slopes into retaining walls maybe next year.
All the old cabinetry is gone except the drawers and doors, which have been on that bit of ground and are now within the frame doing their job as weed suppressants. By the time the next large-item pick-up week happens, that frame will be filled with dirt and seeds.
I wonder how long it will take for all the bindweed rearing ugly, hydra heads under all that particle board to grow through another foot of dirt.
I have no idea what brought this up yesterday, but as RDC and I were eating sandwiches at Heidi's Brooklyn Deli before funding another Home Despot timeshare, a couple of our acquaintances at UConn came up.
Oh no. Now I remembered, so I'm going to do that thing that my sister hates.
Like all good campuses, UConn's had its characters. A street person wandering by in Denver reminded me of whatever his name was who panhandled at the Willi Food Co-op. He reminded me of Paul, a fixture at any food function, who would often pay to eat in the cafeteria at Shippee--a women-only dorm--who walked as if on Thorazine, always wore a parka no matter the weather, and was off-putting in several ways. Although not as many ways as Physics Phil, who was as much of a lech as Paul was but for men instead of women (UConn had equal opporunity sociopaths), and whose untrimmed beard he groomed only with his overgrown nails.
Physics Phil reminded me of ROTC Rob, of whom RDC didn't know at all until Rob hooked up with our neighbor a few doors down from our first apartment, the tenement. When we first moved into the tenement, my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend were living in that other apartment--and when they left it, these acquaintances--the ones who sparked this entry, I'm circling around--moved in.
RDC, being not as much of a gossip as I am, was unclear on all the drama attendant on this couple. But when they came up, neither of us could remember if they got married because they were pregnant or if the pregnancy just happened really fast. I suppose I should be proud of myself that I cannot remember such a meaningless detail ten years old and so far outside my own life. It's either that or my brain is decaying.
Anyway, I looked them both up. The things you find on the web. Like me. Hi lurkers!
Can I just say, because I haven't told a story in so long, that the man, whom I'll call Faun because The Marble Faun was the one Hawthorne text he hadn't read, had Liked me when he first arrived at UConn? In his first days at UConn, he took a temporary job for my office’s beginning-of-semester cattle call, and that’s how we met and when he vaguely crushed (as he told me later). It was my senior year and I was newly single, but a much different single than my naïve freshling self--instead of looking for men to crush on, I was oblivious to those who liked me. My attention, it’s true, was elsewhere, and my singlehood didn’t last long.
Our casual acquaintance happened in the humanities building, where he and I were English students, graduate and undergraduate. Two years later I was a graduate student myself, single again, and friendlier with Faun. He was interesting and attractive but intimidating and not among that year’s noncommittal yet fraught with baggage dating victims. Late in the fall he hooked up with another English department acquaintance of mine, and the usual amount of time later she told me she was pregnant with intent to keep.
It didn’t take much imagination for me to consider what the implications my own dating Faun might have been. I was fond of him, because he was brilliant and weird and opined that the ties of an ex-friend of mine ran the gamut from A to B, which I cracked up at and failed to recognize as Dorothy Parker. But if I had, might I have wound up pregnant instead? Or as well. Yii. A lesson, not that I needed one, that casual hook-ups were not my way.
A month after that child was born, a new school year was beginning. The first time I met a new graduate student, she had lovebites all over her neck and shoulders and I was impressed at her wearing a boat-necked shirt without embarrassment. The biter had been Faun. Two years to the due-date after his daughter was born, he had another with this woman. What RDC and I couldn’t remember is how many months before the son was born they got married.
Anyway, what I found on the web suggests that he is still interesting and brilliant and that they are still married though each now to someone else. Tex called me scary, and I’ll cop to scary for remembering and being curious about people whom I have not seen or communicated with for a decade, but I don’t consider googling for three minutes and skimming publicly posted, personal pages scary stalking. Just mildly stalky curiosity.
ROTC Rob, though, he was a scary stalker. He, like Paul, would eat in Shippee caf because it was a single-sex dorm, although since he lived in a large dorm and therefore had a meal plan, at least he didn’t have to pay extra for commissary chow. After the first incident--leering, immature flirting, deep breathing, inappropriate remarks, cornering a hallmate in the elevator, whichever it was--that brought him to our attention, my next-door friend Michelle told me she knew him as Grocery Boy, because he worked in the supermarket she shopped in and would utter cheesy come-ons to her as he stocked tuna cans even when her mother was right there. My roommate took Tae Kwon Do and during stretching exercises was randomly partnered with someone who caressed her feet in a non-stretchy, non-Tae Kwon Do manner, didn’t stop when she told him off, and showed no remorse when she asked to be repartnered; he turned out to be ROTC Rob. He leered--focused, menacing scoping with pouting and tongue--at every (white) woman in my hall, all ten of us, before first semester was out, and I’m sure the entire dorm knew about him and avoided him.
After my ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend, after Faun and the mother of his son, the next tenant of the nearby tenement was a woman I didn’t know. She looked fairly skanky but even so, when I noticed ROTC Rob there regularly--that apartment was two buildings from mine and between it and campus--I was surprised anyone would find him that worthwhile.
Worthwhile enough to reminisce about but not to google.
The hood is up. It is not wired or vented, but it is on the wall, fitting exactly between wall cabinets exactly as it's meant to. Also it is no longer on the living room floor.
I am not unpacking more kitchen because we are going to remove cabinet doors before to paint walls, and let us not dwell on the painting drama, and anything not behind a door will get dusty. But we can walk through the kitchen and use its sink and the dishwasher and if I finished painting their doors we could put stuff back into the pantries.
I was kinda thinking of having one utter Unveiling but no more. Two months is fucking long enough to wait. I will use each bit of kitchen as it becomes functional.
I am rereading something I have not read for 18 years if not 20. I remembered it well enough to want to reread it, to search for it through Loganberry Books. (Contributors there seem able to access Library of Congress summaries. I haven't found that on Thomas yet, but I haven't tried for a while. Nope, I still don't see it.) Now that I've started it, I can't isolate why I liked it. I remember thinking the being abandoned and found again and the overly refined technology society vs. the hand-powered, bound to the planet one. I remembered a couple of lines: "She was a medic, and medics did not allow themselves to become filthy"; and "they [chickens] never see a human" -- "How sad"; and the pity and bewilderment at deliberately not reproducing.
Now I want more about how the culture, not just the knowledge, decayed over 500 years. I see the gaps from things left unexplained or untreated. Apparently H.M. Hoover wrote a lot of speculative fiction for young adults, but this didn't leave me curious to read more by her.
Oo, MIT has a nest of maybe red-tailed hawks, and the clearest web-cam I have ever seen trained on it. Right now a parent is standing over the two? chicks, watching and guarding and also preening its extremely fluffy belly. I am a bird sicko, wanting to cuddle with a raptor. I know this.
I recently submitted three queries to Loganberry Books. All of them were solved within a month, which makes me think I wasn't reading obscure enough books as a child.
I can't find my query for what turned out to be Adam's Key, a beginning chapter book by someone Lattimore. All I wanted was the title, so I can rest easy there. I could give a range for this author's surname because of where I know it was shelved, the farther alcove. I could have narrowed the range if I could remember when the new cases were added, tall narrow four- or five-shelved cases constructed to either side of the children's room exterior door, which lay between the two alcoves. Those cases pulled Ls through Os closer to the nearer alcove and Narnia and Mrs. Frisby were now in the main room instead of hiding in the further, my favorite, alcove. The early alphabet never moved, so when I wondered about The Ghosts, I knew the author began with B (Nina Barber) because of where the book was.
Another query was "A girl is part of a behavioralist school environment. Adults are absent? as if the children were babies left in a Skinner box. They submit homework into mailslots and it is returned marked in brown marker (not red). Everything is regulated and hands-off, their laundry and cooking and sleeping. The title is something like The [Secret] [Project/Experiment] with maybe an alphanumeric. The ending smacked of the author’s not knowing how else to wrap it up: the girl (and others?) escapes, she runs home and tells her parents, they are mad because “that’s what you’ve been doing after school/late to supper for so long,” whereas the girl remembers being held away from her family for some considerable time. It was probably from the ‘80s, though it could be the ‘70s. I remember the cover was brown (or dark) with an a piece of notepaper on it, jagged on the top edge from being torn out of a spiral notebook."
This turned out to be Bernice Grohskopf, Notes on the Hauter experiment : a journey through the inner world of Evelyn B. Chestnut, which I might not have found in PGN at all since I don't remember where it was. Or, if I did, it unsurprisingly it turned out to be G--F through K and maybe early L, like Lattimore for Adam's Key, were in that further alcove.
"A teenage girl is a medic on an alien planet, descendants of a long-ago, forgotten Earth colony. A ship lands, perhaps accidentally or because of malfunction, with people from Earth, who are surprised at the divide between these people and themselves. The colonists are taller than terrestrials and cannot reproduce as well, whereas the terrestrials are flip about children and shocked at the colonists' lack of technology (the colonists use splints instead of automatic bone-healers, and they don't have orthodontia). The colonists might keep a kind of large, intelligent blue insect as pets. I remember the cover being mostly white, with the girl in brown in the foreground and muted, watercolory figures behind her."
This turned out to be H.M. Hoover's Another Heaven, Another Earth. I was wrong about Madam Pomfrey's Bone Re-Grow, which doesn't figure in it. From what other book do I remember someone's horror at the idea of a splint or a cast instead of an immediate healing? Also I was wrong about the cover. The girl was in brown in the foreground but the figures behind her are in bright, though still watercolory, hues. The pet was an intelligent reptile that ate the large bugs.
I couldn't give an author range for this one because PGN's YA section was so small, A to Z in ten feet on two shelves, an afterthought under a counter in the reference section, that I have no spatial recall about those books at all.
I do miss PGN, a foolish nostalgia since its physical structure is so changed and none of the staff I remember remain. At least the reading room remains largely untouched, with Phoebe gazing benevolently out from her portrait over the fireplace.
Last night instead of, oh, painting doors and pantries, which really needs to be done, I (the dishwasher) washed and (I) put away a lot of kitchen stuff. I had thought this lack of kitchen was kind of okay, except I was sick of take-out and eating out, and washing dishes in a small bathroom sink is no fun. But I am so happy to stack up boxes and fill one big box with all the bubblewrap and papertowels and styrofoam bits I have used. (A friend of mine who's moving will appreciate them, I'm sure.)
I have hardly come to the last arrangement of things in cupboards. For now I'm enjoying having five shelves instead of three per cupboard, but I think at least one shelf will come out so I have enough vertical space for champagne glasses. And I am so glad we didn't get glass-fronted cabinets. I want to look at my cabinetry and counters but I am not so in love with my stoneware that I want it on display.
So that's what I did while RDC paid bills and Blake rocked out (he likes "Won't Get Fooled Again" but not "My Generation"). While RDC grilled yummy choppage of lamb, I planted my new Caryopteris [species?] and watered all my newlings and weeded scads of bindweed away from the rose bush I mostly ignore and the red-leafed shrub whose name I have no guess of.
I think for now I will fill in the remaining ex-pine area with catmint. I know it transplants well and I won't be sad to rip it out later. Except that I will be sad to have a yard full of catmint. Perhaps I'll see if cuttings of sage and agastache and lavender, all of which I like better, would thrive.
Or lamb's-ear. My neighbor has scads of it and has often offered it.
I love my garden.
Two 3.8-mile city rides, and only the second week in the 18 months I have commuted all five days under my own power. I haven't driven all five days very often either, but at least one day a week a lot more often than I ought, especially this winter, with my bus route canceled.
Yesterday I watered the cherry and painted the doors one thorough coat, and I think that's all I did. Plus some playing in the kitchen. Today I watered the hell out of the raspberries. Also I cleared around the olive stump, which has been overgrown with bindweed and the two other, unidentified, main weeds since I ripped out the grass around it trying for for morning glory a couple of years ago--despite the thick of pine needles I naively thought would suppress other growth. I raked with the fork and dug out some of the not-clovery tree roots, and then pegged landscaping cloth all around it with flagstone over it until I get more chipped bark mulch.
I did the same on three sides of the new vegetable bed, which will be crawling with water- and nutrient-hogging weeds in a day or two. I swept the walk, out of which I cannot keep sand and weeds especially with the low spot right near the olive.
We ate off the grill at the patio table watching the birds attack the newly weeded old vegetable garden. One cock house sparrow took a dirt bath while another tugged out baby spinach leaves, the little fucker. Others feasted on the bugs in the newly turned soil. A flicker turned up after scoping the area more carefully than the sparrows and finches had. It went after bugs (I hope), flicking bits it didn't want to either side, for all the world like Blake eating his buddy chow, disdainfully flinging green beans.
Meanwhile, Blake himself was devouring enormous amounts of spinach. We had a pile for our burgers and he ate his way steadily through all of it, shredding it merrily while managing to get quite a bit down his gullet. We watched his wing muscles bulge out just moments later.
This is how the CD my sister and I made for our mother turned out:
Fiddler on the Roof, Prologue, Tradition
Because whenever we do something because we've always done it, we sing the chorus.
10, 000 Maniacs, My Sister Rose
More a sister song than a mother song, but a family song.
Aimee Mann and Michael Penn, Two Of Us
More a couple song than a family song, but pretty
Beatles, Julia
About John Lennon's mother
Cat Stevens, Where do the Children Play?
Well, where do they play?
Cowboy Junkies, Musical Key
"My mother's hands were always cool and soft..."
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Teach Your Children
"Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you."
Innocence Mission, Medjugorje
"You're everywhere
Everywhere"
About the Virgin Mary, so religious though not her religious. Also pretty.
Shirley Horn, Summertime
My mother told me she sang this to me when I was a baby. I can't quite imagine it, but it makes me happy to think of her singing "And your ma is so good-looking, baby/ She's a-looking good now."
Joni Mitchell, Love,
With a Biblical source even: "As a child I spoke as a child/ I thought and I understood as a child/ But when I became a woman/ I put away childish things."
Kate Bush, reaching out
"See how the flower leans instinctively/ Toward the light./ See how the heart reaches out instinctively/ For no reason but to touch." Also pretty
Kate Bush, this womans work
"I stand outside this woman's work,/ This woman's world./ Ooh, it's hard on the man,/ Now his part is over./ Now starts the craft of the father."
Louis Armstrong, What A Wonderful World
"I hear babies cry, I watch them grow/ They'll learn much more than I'll never know/ And I think to myself what a wonderful world"
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Our House
"I'll light the fire, while you place the flowers/ In the vase that you bought today."
Michelle Shocked, When I Grow Up
"Uh huh, that's what I said a hundred and twenty babies/ We'll raise ‘em on tiger's milk and green bananas..." I love this song. It's so silly and loving.
Shriekback, Cradle Song
A lullaby: "May the fire be your friend and the sea rock you gently,/
May the moon light your way till the wind sets you free."
Godspell, By My Side
Our favorite song from our favorite musical.
Sting, The Lazarus Heart
About his mother: "Every day another miracle/ Only death will tear us apart"
They Might Be Giants, Birdhouse in Your Soul
Another delightful love song: "Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet/ Make a little birdhouse in your soul."
Fiddler on the Roof, Sunrise, Sunset
I should have had just songs from musicals, though I can't think of an appropriate one from "Sound of Music." This is about parents watching their children grow up seemingly in a day.
The Waterboys, The Stolen Child
She used to be Irish, and Yeats is beautiful. "Come away, human child to the water and the wild/ With a faery, hand in hand/ For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
I am going to have to restrain myself mightily. My sister probably is moving in with our mother and BDL. The stories, they will flood in, and I have not enough thumbs for the dike. Already we have discovered that she--an LPN--had never heard of Tourette's Syndrome ("that sounds serious") and that a wooden toilet seat must be left up "to let the wood breathe."
Using unconscionable amounts of water, I blasted one length of the fence with a powerwasher. The ricocheting spray was not water-colored or even brown with dirt but black with city filth, hooray. I think the fence had never been treated at all. That was Saturday. Sunday I stained that whole length. I did two sections--a section being the stretch of slats between posts, whatever the technical term is--a cappela and bored out of my skull. I broke for lunch and did the remaining five sections with my iPod attached to speakers, much happier. And stained and sticky. When I prime or paint or stain, I am like a three-year-old with an ice-cream cone. It's a full-body experience.
Also this weekend I was RDC's gofer in the saga of Venting and Wiring the Hood. He cut a hole through the ceiling for the chimney, and an eight-inch crack opened out from the circle. Yea. So that has to be pasted up. Then the work in the attic began, which means emptying RDC's closet and kneeling carefully in dust and fiberglass insulation and cutting other holes and installing supports between joists and detaching the chimney from the previous, pointless ceiling fan and routing the hood's ducts to it and wireclippers and cowhide gloves sliced by jagged ends of galvanized pipe and of course, duct tape. After that the wiring and the thinking that the hood had a short and would need to be unmounted returned and haggled over and a new one remounted and then the big brain getting to work and the process of elimination and finally the discovering of a tiny nick in one wire right here and finally, whoosh suck whoosh, the hood working.
I am at least 15 pages behind in Ulysses and won't catch up until Tuesday at least, because Monday two cubic yards of planter's mix arrives and I am going to get in touch with my inner Stanley again. I wonder if I will be able to walk Tuesday.
The dirt was supposed to arrive between 3 and 5 o'clock. At 5:30 I decided fine, I would paint pantries and doors. Four minutes later the dirt arrived.
Three years ago, half again as much dirt took over twice as long. I had the driver dump it behind the garage on the concrete ramp, even though I had realized the person-door was too narrow for the wheelbarrow. So I had to shove every barrowful up a steep, improvised ramp from alley to yard. This time I lay a huge tarp immediately in front of the gate and had the truck dump it there. My plank wasn't a ramp but level from yard to ribs of the heap, and by the time I reduced the heap, I just left the wheelbarrow in the doorway and shoveled up and into it. So it was much faster.
I thought I was going to have a lot left over for the two column pots and the patio pot and maybe some other planters. There's some spare, but not much. It's after Mother's Day, so I wonder if any annuals remain for purchase anywhere in town anyway.
All of this lovely Virginia creeper I have destroyed this spring. I have no pictures yet of my progress in staining the fence. The length I finished looks much better than the undone parts, but next time I'm getting clear rather than cedar stain.
And these are my kinds of jobs. Using the powerwasher was fun: water, immediate results, and cleaning, as if I took a massive Bioré strip to the fence. Staining the fence was sloppy and goopy and brushing on a substance that is entirely more forgiving than paint. Shoveling dirt works too, at least in today's quantity: enough to be satisfying, not so much to be crippling, with a definite result, requiring only strength and determindedness and with enough of the latter not needing so much of the former.
I wonder how much creeper will have grown back by the time the fence needs its next treatment.
Yesterday I strategically suggested a trip to CostCo after work, achieving the dual purposes of more contact lenses for me and not having to bike home in 35-degree rain in no more than a t-shirt. (Today I took the bus, and possibly will bike home.)
When we got home there was snow too, dime-sized flakes that melted at contact with any surface. I filled the birdfeeder for the second time that day, a dispensation I wouldn't have made except for the unseasonable cold in nesting season. (I hope my robins are okay--robins are nesting in one of my plum trees!) We watched sparrows and finches shelter on the windowsills and utility lines under the eaves. RDC wanted to offer them the house, which I think would be fine. We need a sparrow to eat the moths that have suddenly erupted. Last year was a peak in the miller moth population and this year enough are left over that sparrows, so excited in their pursuit of fluttering yumminess, do not think to dodge traffic.
This morning I watched a soaking wet squirrel on my neighbor's windowsill groom itself. It's so unfair that they can be so cute. It washed its face like a cat or a rabbit, it pulled its tail through its claws to comb it and applied the water it wrang out to its hind feet, the muddiness of which I never would have thought would bother a squirrel.
Also at the bus stop I met a four-month-old golden retriever puppy named Mason.
It is entirely possibly I am way the fuck too easily amused. I am proud, though, to have proof that if I had a video camera, movies of Blake are not all I would film. I do have a love-hate relationship with the little fuckers, but this morning I was glad to see this one.
I showed one picture to ÜberBoss and he giggled (he has a great giggle). Actually I emailed it to him and I heard him laugh from my cube, when one of the worst things about the new building is that I am farther away from him than across the hall and therefore hear his giggle less. Haitch, stop reading now. Anyway, he told me that in his first Denver apartment, he kept seeing wet dead squirrels in the alley until finally he asked his landlord (who lived on the other floor of the house). The landlord shamefacedly admitted to having tired of bringing the squirrels he'd captured in Havahart (non-lethal) traps to City Park so now was drowning them, trap and all, in his bathtub.
The worst part of that story to me is why the fuck do these people bring their squirrels to City Park? I live too near City Park to think that's a good idea. The best part is, of course, the irony of drowning Havaharted squirrels.
Haitch and McCarthy were in town today for McCarthy's defense. She called the house to get my work number, which I had been too foolish to provide earlier, and she and RDC talked, and then she called me at work to set up a meeting time and place. I asked if she and McCarthy would have time to see the kitchen before they leave tonight (without me--I am not going to her unshower in Oklahoma tomorrow, which makes us sad). She cracked up, because that's exactly what RDC asked. She said, "It's not important that I see RDC or Blake but I have to see that hood."
I picked her up at noon and we spent the afternoon shopping after toasting Dr. McCarthy. Lord, I miss shopping with Haitch. The camera did not come out to document our hideous finds, as it has before, but our negligently omitting to document them did not mean they were less hideous. We did not find her wedding shoes, but we did debate various possibilities of Things On The Head, like veils and tiaras and earrings and necklaces and hair.
Her hair! is longer than mine. That is so odd. She accompanied me for my mourning-donation chop, and I have seen her only once since, last May right after she and McCarthy and their square of sidewalk all got together. It is only just longer, but in three months when I see her next hers'll be way longer (especially after my pre-wedding cut).
A bunch of us had dinner at Mezcal afterward. I asked the server to take a picture of the seven of us, which she did, the seven of us in the lower left, the giant chihuahua painting in the upper right, and two quarters of the poorly framed shot wasted. And that chihuahua is scary.
Friday RDC wired the under-cabinet lighting and some of the outlets. Today we selected a refrigerator and I think decided on tile too. I painted the bit of wall behind the fridge, a shoddy job but behind the fridge, and again how I wish we had had the time to repair and paint the walls before the cabinets and counters and appliances, and finally finished the insides of the closets. Tonight I was supposed to have put another coat on the doors--oops.
Our range is in Denver. Supposedly. Somewhere. Our fridge is scheduled to arrive Tuesday. If the appliances arrive, the kitchen will be wholly functional and only cosmetic treatment--well, tile is structural too--will remain.
Hoo yah.
My favorite of the Cornish trilogy, though I enjoyed all of them. As What's Bred in the Bone ruminated on painting, Lyre of Orpheus ruminated on music. All three ruminate as well on theology and philosophy. I love Simon Darcourt.
One of the criticisms I have read about Lyre is that Robertson Davies tells rather than shows. I noticed the Exposition Fairy smacking the characters around a lot, but as with Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, which is criticized for the same fault, I liked what the author had to tell me, so it didn't bother me.
Thursday we began our search for tile at one place. Saturday morning at the second place we probably finished it, choosing a medium-gray stippled square that we'll punctuate with diamonds of the blue pearl granite of the counter. The tiles are 13" square, so some will be cut in strips to fit above the main square.
I should have taken more before pictures, fascinating as they are. I didn't take pictures of the insides of cabinets, so now I can only admire my beautiful arrangements instead of also comparing their superiority to the former ones. Also I didn't take photographs of the floors, since we didn't initially consider refinishing them, so again their glowing wonder must stand on their own rather than feed my frenzied before-and-after gloating.
The red-tailed hawk bappies are thriving and huge at MIT, but the robins in my plum tree are not. I have not seen the parents in days. I did find one half of a robin's egg in the yard, but I can't tell if it hatched normally or was cracked by a crow or a foul evil cat or by a fall. Without the parents, even if a chick did hatch, it's dead now. Hooray. So I'm watching the hawks again.
I set up the soaker hoses in the two box beds and planted more spinach and carrots in some bare areas. Blake got to eat some of the first baby spinach. I weed-whacked the jungle under the cherry tree and mowed the grassesque again and wondered whether Round-Up will be able to kill everything for hopefully next spring's grass replacement. By the time I planted cilantro in a small container, Blake had left off chattering and began to yell--because he can't eat cilantro so finds it pointless and boring, I decided. But before that, as I knelt in the south garden weeding, Blake and I were having our usual conversation: "You're a good boy buddy" with my usual response, "Yes you are a good boy buddy. Blake is a pretty bird." (I always reinforce "Blake is a pretty bird," because he has pretty much stopped saying it, though he mumbles or whistles it sometimes.)
Eventually from his side of the fence I heard my neighbor's voice: "Who are you talking to over there?"
"My bird. Can't you hear him chattering on the patio?"
"I hear a lot of birds." He put his head over the top of the fence.
"Yes, but Blake is the only one trying to speak English." I brought the cage over, held it up, and encouraged Blake to call Neighbor a good boy, buddy. This he did not do, but he did make his sweet little greeting chuck. I interpreted. Neighbor chucked back to Blake. Blake bowed.
I would be extremely glad to know that Neighbor is usually that unaware of Blake. I'm afraid that must be impossible, though, because Blake can shriek plaster from the ceiling in the interminable time I cruelly allow to elapse between his spotting me, from his post by the window, to when I get my bike put away and my bike shoes off at the back of the house and my body arriving at his door at the front of the house.
Recently I borrowed another neighbor's basset hound, not because particularly because he's a basset hound but because he is old and gentle and slow. I brought him into the house on his little pulley leash, and it's a damn good thing Blake can flutter and the hound is as slow as he is, because I didn't know how to work the leash. The dog pulled, and the leash released, and Blake fled as well as he could, while I bodily blocked the hound and got a slight friction burn on my palms from grabbing the cord instead of the handle. The dog was a lot more interested in Blake than Blake was in the dog, and whether that interest was gustatory or not, it was still expressed far too rambunctiously for Blake's safety.
So that didn't go well.
I'm damn glad I didn't try that little experiment with this next-door neighbor's dog--he's a Boxer-Lab cross and strong as a mule. And sweet as a burro, if you're big enough to withstand his affection.
Two 3.8-mile city rides, despite the best effort of an oblivious driver in the morning who all-too-clearly assumed there could not possibly be more than the one person so unAmerican as to travel otherwise than by car--the pedestrian she had stopped for--and therefore nearly ran me down. Maybe I should have been an opera singer, since I can yell so loud.
I grow the most brilliant children. My youngest just graduated with a 4.0 and stopped at the Formigny B&B with her roadtrip companion on their meandering way east. I disappointed her companion with how few embarrassing babysitting stories I had, but I lived up to the warning she received from my children's mother at graduation this weekend that I remember every book I've ever read and will talk your ear off and never wear shoes (straight out of the car, she pointed at my feet and observed, "No shoes!"). The entire family is going to Ireland ("Do you need to bring a babysitter?") and my oldest is starting a global jaunt from there. My middle and oldest just went to the March for Women's Lives in D.C. In another family of victims, one sister got a job in her field, no mean feat, and the other is a high school chemistry teacher--hooray, because there can't be too many female ones. (Our high school had no female science or math teachers. Actually a majority of the teachers were male, and I wonder if that's because our teacher salaries were higher than average.)
RKC is looking forward to reading for pleasure again. Because she just took two semesters of Portuguese I told her about José Saramago ("Read those of his books with dogs"); because we were sitting in the living room I pulled The Golden Compass from the shelf and shoved His Dark Materials down her throat; because we both like Lemony Snickett I told her Sunny's best word from Slippery Slope, "Buscheney," meaning someone without regard for others; and because she said she wanted to read The Giver I actually gave her my copy. I told her that while it's great for kids, as an adult she might be disappointed by the holes in its structure. "And not good Holes either." She's also looking forward to Life of Pi and The DaVinci Code.
For graduation I gave her Sandra Boynton's version of Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Yay, You! because while Dr. Seuss is of course superior, everyone gives everyone that. Also a little card version of The Book of Questions to entertain herself and her friend in the car, "If You Were a Cereal, Which One Would You Be?" And, because I am a child of the '80s and my sister's suggestion of a Mother's Day present reminded me I could do this, two mix CDs, RKC & A's Roadtrip 2004 and RKC Graduation. Making the mix CDs occurred to me yesterday at work, and the first song I thought of belonged in both mixes, Cat Stevens's "On the Road to Find Out," which is good because, reading the song lists, RKC said, "Oh, I love Cat Stevens!" (and then, "Who is Kate Bush?").
Yeah, I made a mix tape for someone 13 years my junior. I was going to say, "I am sure I shall be monstrous glad of Miss Marianne's company, whether Miss Dashwood will go or not, only the more the merrier say I, and I thought it would be more comfortable for them to be together; because if they got tired of me, they might talk to one another, and laugh at my odd ways behind my back. But one or the other, if not both of them, I must have," but I didn't, because that book thing, you know.
(That book thing didn't stop my quoting to my new reading-friend-at-work (we sit mostly silently, but together, reading books we have propped on our meals), yesterday, after I coaxed her out of lunchroom onto the patio and into a stiff breeze, by way of apology, "She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this wind. Why does she not come in?" She is a reading companion, so she understood, so mleah.)
The best Gregory Maguire since Wicked. A retelling of Snow White, the bits with the dwarves, how and what they are and of course though not particularly how they are named, are super. Plus Lucrezia Borgia--how to go wrong?
Today as we strolled through the park I saw two boys, about nine, hurl a stout branch into the pond amongst a stampede of ducklings. The newlings fled, churning their little drumsticks and chirruping, and I don't think any was hit, but the hurler was certainly aiming for them and not just throwing an object to make a splash. "That's terrific," I said to them--they had so little shame that they did this despite being our being so close they could hear a regular speaking volume, and they turned to my voice. "That's just what I like to do around babies, to throw sticks at them. You should be very proud."
Hellions. Apparently I am out to correct stupid behavior, one event after another.
OMFB, the hood, with not exactly a parallel before shot to the left. Click to embiggen.
It's grouted (in the picture it's not) and gorgeous (in the picture it is). Yes, on the right you can see where RDC didn't cut a porcelain tile quite short enough and stuck it on the wall leaving not enough room for the granite tile above it so that he had to cut a sliver off the rightmost granite. To that I say, damn good thing the range has a high stainless steel back, and there will be no more tiling one wall in more than one session. Also, I say sssh. Imperceptible, right? The grease pencil lines we will scrub away.
I tried working with the trowel and thinset. It didn't go so well. RDC has noticed this time and again when I prime or paint or stain. With thinset, my usual method--seemingly to immerse myself in the liquid and then squirm all over the surface until it's covered--is even more problematic.
Instead I left him to grouting and took a branch from the cherry tree, covered with bugs or larvae, to the Botanic Gardens so the Guy Who Identifies Stuff could see it (he's not in until Tuesday). The shoots around the trunk have always had these masses on the undersides of their leaves, but now it's up the main trunk. Last year the tree apparently was quite stressed by drought and I don't know if that has made it more susceptible to infestation now. I dropped off the buggy twig and wandered around, blissing out on plants, falling in love with Pinus bungeana or lacebark pine.
When we first visited the Botanic Gardens, I remember that the xeriscape bits didn't impress me. It took me a while to find the beauty in silvery-gray foliage and smaller flowers. Silly me.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Having clips completely changes the way I ride. I still do a lot of pushing, because 30 years of pedal-pushing is a hard habit to break. And I'm not good at pushing with one foot while pulling with the other. But I'm getting better at pulling, and it's amazing how much more easily I can pedal faster and harder while pulling than while pushing.
I have never read a novel by an Afghan before; I've read mighty few by anyone in an Islamic culture. This was an excellent place to start.
Khaled Hosseini's first novel, it's about two boys growing up in Afghanistan. One is Pashtun and Sunni Muslim; the other is Hazara and Shi'a. Both factors determine their socioeconomic status, but they are still milk-brothers and friends. A lot of gut-level recognition that people are the same all over, and then a few punches in the gut to remind me that theirs is a different world.
It reads like there are only a dozen people in Afghanistan, but the narrator excuses his coincidences by admitting that happenstances would be incredible to anyone who's not an Afghan. There's a middle section that reads like a memoir, a time-filling device, but the bulk of it is well-constructed novel. All the threads come together, but not to be tied in a perfect little bow, quite realistic.
For my birthday I got a hooked-up stove! It arrived Saturday and just getting it into the kitchen was an adventure. There were two delivery men, a short wiry one and a tall skinny one, and the skinny one really could not manage his share. Also the kitchen counter protudes into the doorway, which we knew, but so much so that the range had to go up and over it, which was a surprise. Skinny nearly dropped it, but RDC supported it. There it hulked, the gorilla in the room, for only two days. The universal fitting kit wasn't universal, but RDC was able to find the connection bits he needed at a specialty plumbing shop. So Monday afternoon he and SPM got it into place, with gas and electricity, and Monday night he made his grandfather's favorite dish of sausage and peppers.
(What you're not supposed to notice, but which I will not scruple to remark upon to all and sundry, is now it becomes obvious that the left wall cabinet was installed too far to the left. While the hood and stove are flush to their cabinets and counters, the hood is not centered over the range. What stands out is that between left cabinet and shelf are four inches and on the right, two and a half. It is a more important error than the notch in the tile...sshhhh.)
Is it common for permanent, established, on-the-grid residences to use propane instead of natural gas? My mother assumed it was the former, while the latter strikes me as obvious. Even rural areas of Connecticut are on the gas grid, so it shouldn't've been so mysterious to her.
I also received a fresh batch of pictures of Emlet, who continues to be delightfully beautiful (but apparently in for quite a shock when Siblet arrives next month), and a phone call from KREL in Paris, and a gardening hat from my mother (which I asked for, floppy and with a wide crown, and which she embellished with a lavender ribbon, and which would be perfect except it doesn't absorb sweat), and a check that will become books from my father, and from my sister a book of historic photographs of Old Lyme that would have been much better with a few more useful captions and a few less foolish ones about the lack of computers in 1930.
E.L. Konigsburg has still got it. Unlike Madeliene L'Engle, who should have stopped some time before Many Waters, Konigsburg is still writing Newbery-level books with 30-year gaps. This isn't as good as View from Saturday, but it's good. I would like to know why it's a companion to Silent to the Bone, as its blurb says. It takes place in Epiphany, NY, as Saturday does, but I've read Silent only once and don't recall any characters in common, or themes particularly.
The good thing is that it will be a pleasure to reread Silent to the Bone looking for the companionability. I wouldn't reread Troubling a Star unless forced.
The Schuyler bit makes me happy in a Nobody's Fool kind of way, and James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere also concerns Sarasota Springs and the same kind of urban blight issues Outcasts does. I am fond of Konigsburg's overly but believably bright yet still engaging characters, her pacing, the carefully crafted structure and points of view.
RDC and I have had big lulls reading The Egypt Game, which thankfully can handle interruptions. He says I have not read him From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a major omission on my part. That's next in line.
My mother-in-law, DMB, is moving house. Her husband has an African Gray parrot who lets no one but the husband touch him. Taz's cage is enormous and apparently they don't have a travel cage for him, so this morning, DMB used a perch to step him up and bring him out to the car. His flight feathers haven't been trimmed in a long time, and Taz usually doesn't go outside farther than the screened-in porch (this is Florida), so I guess he thought, Hey, freedom! and he flew. Not very far, just across the street (eek!) and over the pond (double eek!) whereupon he got tired and landed (unspeakable eek).
Parrots can't swim.
But this one could flap long enough for neighbors to emerge at DMB's screaming (she can't swim (!!!) and is afraid of water, especially since these artificial lakes in Florida can contain alligators and water moccasins) including the neighbor's guest, who flung off his clothes, dove into the pond, swam out to the bird, and swam back holding him over his head.
Back on shore, Taz announced to his rescuer, "Good job!"
Later, DMB shook her finger at Taz and said, "Just you wait until I tell your daddy what you did!" and Taz whispered, "Uh-oh."
I don't know whether Taz has ever said "good job" before. I know he knew "uh-oh." I love that he can remember and utter contextually correct phrases.
---
Blake does not like being got up in the morning. The usual thing is for us to remove his covers, open his door, and say good morning. Occasionally he's ready to come out and will sashay a little out from his sleepy spot to be stepped up. Most often he stays in his sleepy spot having a little morning groom and stretch. While he does this, we get his breakfast--fresh seed and pellet mix, fresh water, heated up buddy chow.
This morning I was downstairs watching the news (an easy habit to have fallen back into with the kitchen in the basement for three months) with my cereal. RDC uncovered Blake, gave him his breakfast, and then came down the back stairs to make coffee. When he went back up with his coffee, he called to me asking if I had the buddy. I leapt up the front stairs and found Blake pacing the landing.
He is probably physically capable of hopping down each step, though the full flight at once might be more exertion than he is used to; but he has never done and might think he can't. (It took him a long time to realize he could hop up and down between the den floor and my study floor.) He is used to yelling when something is Wrong, like being Alone, as here. He usually yells before fluttering down from his cage. He usually yells before coming to the front door to look out at us, if we have been in the front garden too long, or pacing the back landing if we've been in the yard. Maybe this morning the stealth jump was deliberately sneaking because he knows we don't like him wandering and grazing unsupervised. But I prefer to think he was lonely and getting as close to us as he could.
One of the news blurbs was on the national geography bee held yesterday. The final question was "Peshawar, a city in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, has had strategic importance for centuries because of its location near what historic pass?"
I'm quite sure I would have known that even if I hadn't just read The Kite Runner, because the country's been in this little skirmish over there...? So I suppose it was random and earlier questions were harder. What grieved me is that the CNN morning newscaster thought her co-newscaster was ohsointelligent for knowing it was Khyber Pass. She decided to ask him, after he said he sucked at U.S. geography, which five of the state capitals were in cities that begin with A.
This is Dot Org basics and therefore easy: Atlanta, GA (he worked for CNN and didn't get that!); Augusta, ME; Annapolis, MD; Albany, NY; and Austin, TX. After a commercial break a viewer and maybe their own graphics team had noticed that the map in their reveal placed Atlanta in Alabama. But no one seemed to mind that their flag would have had only 48 stars, that the map excluded Alaska and Hawai'i. That's a common thing we have to deal with in our 50-state maps, that the outlying states don't like being shoved into the Gulf of Mexico or wherever is convenient, and maybe it's bad that they're not to scale either.
The new software trainer at Dot Org is a big improvement. He devised a map-generating tool that I guess is handy for people who don't know what state is where. I still think my method is easier and results in better maps, but I have demonstrated it to enough people, even here, who confuse Mississippi and Alabama or New Hampshire and Vermont--though not quite North Dakota and South Dakota--that his text-based rather than my map-based tool is the better choice for them.
I read somewhere sometime about an experiment that concluded that cats really are physically capable of seeing color but that it's an extraneous skill that they have to be trained to. I don't know whether that's true, but I remember the analogy in the report: that humans can learn to knit with their feet, but what's the point?
Today I came into work wearing a violet knit dress and Intern, who is severely color blind, asked what color it was, guessing blue. I compared my skirt to two different books, one navy, one purple, and he guessed that the purple was the darkest when really it was the brightest (to me). I told him about the cat thing, suggesting that when someone razzes him about being color blind he can tell them they're knitting with their feet.
A quick read in verse in a running cadence. I don't understand how this and Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust count as poetry, but they do count as good. I have another Sharon Creech to read this weekend, and I'm looking forward to that.
From an information page about peregrines nesting on their builidng:
"People have been fascinated by Peregrine Falcons for thousands of years. Nearly decimated by pesticides, recovery programs such as the one in Rochester, NY, are helping to increase their numbers. Enter the world of Peregrine Falcons and learn more about these magnificent birds of prey."
"To destroy" already has so many synonyms that it doesn't need another when that other's meaning is so handy and specific. Whom do I sue?
Also I added this to the list of things I don't get: Referring to potential residences as "homes." A home is a concept and cannot be bought; a house or apartment or condominium or yurt is a physical entity and can be.
Much better than several of Katherine Paterson's post Jacob books, though not nearly touching even Master Puppeteer. Set in Vermont in 1899, its narrator was named Robbie, for Robert Burns, but he also felt a lot like Robert Newton Peck's Rob, both of Soup and A Day No Pigs Would Die--possibly because I can't tell fin-de-siècle from the Depression.
We did not tile. Instead we were as Murkan as Murkan can be and shopped on a Saturday: drawer organizers for the wide drawer, a new garbage can for the kitchen (stainless steel of course, and oval instead of round, very hip), new yard and camp chairs, a wedding present, mason jars for coffee, a cage for the sponge that suctions to the side of the sink, a spool for paper towel (the one disadvantage of undercabinet lighting is that it precludes undercabinet paper towel), and two sets of new sheets.
I read Ulysses during a brief rainstorm; raked up months of sunflower husks to start a new lasagne mulch; satisfied my whitehead-popping, sunburn-peeling itch by grooming the neighbor's easement of bindweed (when you pull a tendril out from under groundcloth and wind up with a handful? I love that); unpacked more kitchen and organized it; and watched "Big Fish."
It was a good day.
Sweet and simple, despite having with two Creech plot crutches, the baby-in-danger and the first-love-confusion. The fact that despite her use of these elements in almost every book, every book remains fresh and original, is testament to her skill.
It's the most gorgeous weather: perfectly sunny, perfectly clear, warm in the sun, cool in the near-constant, strong winds. Like September at my beach.
We left intending Golden Gate State Park, but as soon as we were on Colfax with a clear view of the west and the towering front, we aimed instead for our stretch of the Highline Canal. We saw kestrels and killdeer and western kingbirds and magpies, the last of which have been conspicuously absent in our neighborhood this spring, which makes me sad.
5.2 miles.
Katherine Paterson's Christianity is more prominent in these her later books--this and Preacher's Boy--than in her earlier ones, but it's still not preachy. The main issue of children of people in the penal system wasn't compromised, and the only weak point was that "everyone" else in school had new clothes and expensive notebooks, even in rural Vermont. Not an artificially happy and tied-up ending either, which is realistic.
RDC and I had dinner with Trish and Jared last night, or two separate dinners because of an incompetent host. There was monkey vivisection and smacktalk and gossipy speculation. And forgetting that Trish cooks and to let her know I received her birthday card and the usual dose of lisa-suckage.
Another thing I don't get: indoor pools with no natural daylight, though that doesn't stop me from using one.
The sort of elliptical with handles, 20'.
Recumbent bike, 5' cooldown.
Freestyle, but I didn't count 25m laps. About 30'.
There.
The question-and-answer episode let me understand the Odysseus and Telemachus parallel more than anything preceding, and the weird thing is that I had read it before, at least a little bit, because I knew about the flyspot.
I had also read bits of the last episode, Molly's soliloquy, before, because of Kate Bush's sensual world. I had sympathized with that character up to then, up to reading the entire episode. I read it aloud, or nearly aloud, mouthing more than I have since One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, to feel the words physically (Blake is also a fan of this method).
I do not make any claim to full comprehension. The brothel scene left me burbling and I decided it was a tribute to Lewis Carroll. The only chapter I felt like I understood was the exhibitionism and masturbation on the beach.
But I read it.
He said I was a flower of the mountain yes but now I've power o'er a woman's body mmm yes
