House:
Garden
Errands
Stuff to look for
Kinwork and Lisaism
Reading:
Exercise
Over breakfast I said something about powerwashing the fence, but soon enough RDC suggested Golden Gate Canyon State Park. So that's what we did. As soon as we got up to Fraser Meadow, the skies opened. Instead of glugging water and chawing a Clif bar or two, we immediately turned around to get back under trees.
We saw a grouse of some sort who scampered along the path ahead of us for yards and yards before finally veering into the grass and up into an aspen. We also saw a garter snake and another garter snake and then a skittering across the trail, which RDC thought was another snake. It was a rabbit, not much more than a kitten. I tried to point out some differences between a snake and a bunny to RDC, but he pretended that he already could distinguish between them.
Also he called the garter snakes something I didn't initially listen to. He repeated, "Some people call them grass snakes, some people call them garter snakes."
"I call them a sling snake," I responded to his cadence. He for once agreed that that was funny.
3.6-mile hike.
Carl Hiaasen's first attempt at a children's book reads a lot like I imagine his adult books to be: crazy characters' bizarre dialogue, a definite and proud Florida setting, Florida and more Florida.
I have never been too curious about his other books, but this is a Newbery Honor book, so I read it. As an ecological not-really-mystery Hoot reminded me of Jean Craighead George's Who Killed Cock Robin? Good messages for kids of how to deal with bullies and to achieve real change, good change.
Bike 8.3 miles in three legs and swim 750 meters. It rained only a little on the way home, mostly to show that it could and not really because it needed to.
Bike 8.3 miles in three legs and swim about a 1000 meters. Thunder and lightning began just as I meant to start my swim, so I swam inside, in the 20-meter pool. I didn't count laps then but did most with a kickboard, really trying to flutter-kick from my hips and dolphin kicking from my belly. After 20 minutes of rain, the sky cleared into blue cumulus perfection, and I crawled, breast-stroked, butterflied (one length), and side-stroked (tired now) to what I figured was a kilometer. My quadriceps ached and still do ache, and I took the homeward leg of bike quite slowly.
but I maybe didn't. A thousand meters more or less. I know I biked, two 3.6-mile city rides.
All day long. Many more than a thousand meters. More than a thousand kilometers even. To Chicago. To Syracuse. And beyond Syracuse.
When we got there, we were crazed for food and found the (the) pizza place. If we had braved the shrieking baby we heard in the hotel restaurant, we would have found it attached to Haitch's sister and the rest of her family and her and McCarthy.
But the pizza was good.
I expected this to be more tidbits like those in Daniel Pool's first, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. It wasn't, but instead a social history of mainstream Victorian novel publishing, interesting in its own right.
There were most excellent speeches from both sides, and then McCarthy's father called me out of the crow. Yoikes. I said something lame like hi and begged off until the morrow, by which time I would have finished writing the thing.
I got to meet Haitch's grandmother, her handsome, entrancingly voiced, well-named cousin, and millions of McCarthy's friends-and-relations. McCarthy Mater and I had bonded over brunch when we established that of course I know the family who keep the B&B in Old Lyme where the McCarthy parents occasionally weekend, and now I mingled up to her where she stood with a friend.
"Friend, let me introduce you to Lisa," Mater said.
"Oh, are you the mother of the bride?" Friend asked.
Even with my crest fallen as far as that bon mot dropped it, I like to think I do not quite look like I could be the mother of a 31-year-old. I mocked sobbing and gnashing my teeth on Mater's shoulder. Friend was embarrassed, pleading that she had meant to say "sister," not "mother" (which is good, because Friend had met Haitch's mother at the engagement party in October).
It was a fun night. Remind me to get a copy of Richard's toast. It is an excess of "Sense and Sensibility" in my head that makes me think his line was "Let not to the marriage of Brahmin and Okie admit impediment" but it was pretty good.
The author's name, Molly Gloss, reminds me of Molly Zero and her webblog Polygloss, and Jessie recommended it, so it was a very journaly book. Its setting evoked Annie Dillard's The Living and its protagonist reminded me...well, not of me, though she did Jessie of me, which I took as a tremendous compliment...of someone I wanted to be. Good hair, of course. Also of Peter Høeg's Woman and the Ape, but only because of the unknown simian angle. While again the journal format is not credible for the storytelling style or pace, whatever, I should learn to overlook that.
This book with its sasquatches finds itself in the genre debate. Is it magical realism? Speculative fiction? I don't have the vocabulary for this debate.
We had our last walk as Dr. Haitch and Ms. ljH. (Later in the day, I congratulated Mrs. McCarthy, and she thanked Mrs. RDC. Ha! Our next walk will still be as Dr. Haitch and Ms. ljH.) I had to abandon her with big rollers in her hair to go pretty myself up, but I took up the reins as Bride Wrangler as soon as I could.
I shoved RDC out the door to hand out the programs I'd folded during rehearsal (with the now non-shrieking two-month-old baby on my shoulder: who says I can't multi-task?) and scurried back upstairs with chocolate and downstairs to look for the black velvet bag with the make-up brushes in the blue Blazer that Sister had driven back to the hair salon and upstairs to appreciate Haitch in pajama bottoms and veil and downstairs to curl my lashes and that was all nerve-racking and tremendous fun--once the brushes were found. And the hair, unrolled and coiffed, was perfect, very Haitch and sleek and flattering.
The bridal staging area in the chapel was in the opposite corner from the casas de pepe, and the casas were downstairs to boot. The chaplain offered us his individual casa, upstairs but still in the front. Instead of herding Haitch across the vestibule and up the left aisle, I brilliantly led her up the right aisle and across the transept. The first time not many people were seated, and I held up my hands to shield her. The second time, most people had come in, but I spotted a framed poster propped against the wall in the chaplain's office and made use of it as camouflage, quite effective and of course amusing as well, for us and the assembly.
I am pleased to say that my emergency kit came in handy: safety pins were called for to secure the flowergirls' sashes. I should have had water and good chocolate instead of having to resort to M&Ms from the vending machine, but I'm pretty sure I'm forgiven. Everything else--the alcohol swabs, earring backs, mints--was unnecessary, because we were just that suave.
Haitch's nieces, 5, almost 4, and not quite 2, were staggeringly adorable as flowergirls. Despite being released half a nave apart each, by the time they reached the first pew they were bunched together. The older two sat down sweetly, but the youngest couldn't decide whether she wanted to spend the ceremony with her father and fussing younger brother in the vestibule or with her grandmother in the front pew or by her mother on the presbytery steps flanking the bride.
I did leave the poster in the staging area. Sorry, Father. And I lost a fleece of Haitch's. But I did coerce people into signing the guestbook and posing for photographs at the reception. My toast seemed to go over well.
And Haitch and McCarthy are married! They had a lovely ceremony in a pretty chapel, dancing flowergirls (though not with me, sadly), good food, no noticeable mishaps, many guests ready to dance and toast, maple syrup in maple leaf-shaped bottles as favors, and Frater doing an impression of McCarthy's childhood charade of a run-over frog drying in the sun.
McCarthy and Haitch
Haitch and me. One day I will remember to put sunscreen on my nose so contrasting color doesn't emphasize its size even more.
RDC and me
Typically, I savaged a centerpiece and shoved flowers in my hair. (RDC asked if I was drunk.) I wore the one that isn't a rose traveling home, though tucked into my french twist and not so much Daisy-head Mayzie.
Another brunch, and then a late lunch in Syracuse (Haitch: have you found L'adour on Water Street? very frainch), and then trying to sneak onto an earlier flight.
At the ticket counter we encountered other wedding guests. The clerk greeted the five-year-old boy enthusiastically and asked how many were traveling. They responded, "Three," and I said, "Four!" because of the bear peeking out of the boy's backpack. But the clerk said he could fly for free. I asked the boy what his bear's name was. "Teddy," he said, as if that were painfully obvious. Maybe it ought to be, but none of my bears was ever named Teddy.
We had a whistler and a screaming baby on the Chicago-ward flight, and the same two happy-makers on the Denver flight with the baby right behind us kicking our seats for 1000 miles. There was also a 19-month-old boy in our very row, who was charming and merry and looked over the seat at the grizzler with interest but not mimicry. The grizzler was seriously in love with his own voice, and would wind down for a few minutes before remembering his purpose. Climbing Tree be thanked for earplugs, without which I will never fly again.
Home.
I sent this to my notification list:
This is not a notification but a plea for assistance. I have acquired a kayak and it needs a name. I do want a name before it hits the water, and that gives me 24 hours.
I could not think of Ged's boat's name, if it has one, and thumbed through Earthsea looking for it, but if I can't think of it straight off then I don't deserve to use it. Besides, islands will not feature largely in my paddling. My second instinct was Dicey, for Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman series and for my chances with a vessel, which I score as dicey at best. I considered Journeys in My Favorite Books, but Ratty's boat doesn't have a name and no one goes boating in Jane Austen and the punt in Watership Down doesn't have a name either. Except that I could call it Watership, and that would be literal and tribute both.
It is bright orange (and I will offer it a libation of orange juice over the stern when it first hits the water) so another idea is Ear of the Cockatiel. Except the orange feathers are ear coverts, not ears, and Ear Covert of the Cockatiel doesn't flow.
Possibly Viola, for "Shakespeare in Love," for stories must end in tears and a journey but I'm not wishing for tears here.
There are no boats in Possession and though Harold drew one with his purple crayon it didn't have a name.
Oo! Since I mean to stay on the surface, Watership Up!
Selectively transcribed from paper journal:
We set up the tent without snapping. Mostly. So it's a good tent. We spent fifty bucks on a screen house and now can cook and eat and maybe read without rain or insects. The screenhouse feels so luxurious, it's almost shocking. It's like the Weasleys' tent at the World Quidditch Cup. There are horses right behind us, a gorgeous walnut mare with a foal, a brown and white pinto with a black and white foal, two horses so large I am surprised their lower legs aren't hairy, and a black and white paint.
We downloaded Pat Barker's Another World. It is very different from the WWI trilogy, a contemporary family story with disagreeable relations, but both the grandfather and the house the grandson and his family live in date from WWI.
We have camp chairs with footrests, so we can sit elsewhere and more comfortably than at the picnic table. The campground has, lo, hot running water in its washrooms and toilets that don't feel like they haven't been cleaned all season. And showers.
I have a pile of books (Confessions of Nat Turner, Left Hand of Darkness, Unlocking the Air, History of the Siege of Lisbon, House of Splendid Isolation, Straight Man, The Brothers K., and Absalom, Absalom! Also From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for RDC. Plus nearly half of The Odyssey to listen to.
I do not know if these are lodgepole or Ponderosa pine. Probably lodgepole, because they don't smell strongly of vanilla. But they smell pretty good.
Yesterday as we drove to CostCo for a supply run (including the screenhouse), I discovered that the pen in the car had exploded. So I had to remember "hotdogs" and "windshield wiper fluid" without adding them to the paper list. Then as we walked through the Target parking lot for yet more supplies (groceries), I heard a parrot shriek. It was about 80 and someone had left a conure, perched on the steering wheel so it could see out, in her car, with the windows cracked. My hackles flared. I strode straight to customer service (CLH would do a great impression of the walk) and had someone announce that the driver of a white Jeep of this plate number should return to her car to attend to her pet. Another customer asked, "Someone left a dog out there?" "Conure," I replied, then expanded at the blank look, "parrot." RDC meanwhile was in the grocery area with our list, and he said he saw someone run out at the announcement. Good, we thought. Ten minutes later we left and saw that the Jeep was still there. I shaded the window with my hand and looked in. The conure now was in its travel cage on the backseat so it could not see out and therefore, yelling to greet passersby, attract attention. Since we didn't have a pen in the car we couldn't leave a note on the windshield: "You suck."
We had to scurry to REI for a valve for the stove. While we looked at bits, I spotted one box that claimed its stove was "Duel Fuel." I cracked up and cried "En garde!" at RDC, lunging at him with a pound container of propane.
On my way back from doing dishes, I stopped to pet some heads. Are there different words for mares and stallions in ponyspeak versus horsespeak? I'm not sure if the piebald is a pony. Her withers reach my breast and the palomino's my shoulder. They needed their jaws rubbed (because all pets secretly like to be pet in a cockatielian manner) and their necks and sides rubbed and--well, I thought they needed this last though they might have disagreed--their snouts gently berubbed.
They are so friendly, even the dams with foals, despite having other horses to assuage their loneliness and despite probably being mauled by anyone who's ever read Misty of Chincoteague as well as lots who haven't.
Why isn't there a collective word for magpies as for crows and ravens? Murders of crows, councils of ravens. Oh, there is! A tiding of magpies! What a great word.
I tried to read this a couple of times, including an attempt on audio in 1995 that didn't work enough that I was back to listening to music on my Walkman, and when it was time to move I just returned it instead of finding out how I could mail it back to the Hartford library. This time, although it felt like a fairly significant departure from Ulysses, War and Peace, and The Portrait of a Lady, I could still claim it as Significant in a Genre Whose Basics I Want to Know and By a Woman. Furthermore, after getting through the first hundred pages or so, I liked it. I thought there would be more exploration of the sociological implications of a unisex human race, and was disappointed by that absence, but I did very much like the exploration of friendship.
I brought Unlocking the Air with me as well, but when I started the first story I realized, or was pretty sure, that I had read it already.
Two hours Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, 16-18 August. I am sure that my technique sucks but I had no problem steering and moving through flat water. We saw a bull moose and his little Ganymede friend. These kayaks inflate in less than five minutes and deflate faster yet. My "personal flotation device," because "life preserver" maybe makes a promise it can't always keep, is designed for people with breasts, hallelujah, and I can move easily in it. Kayaking! I'm a fan.
Posted to the Usual Suspects:
We just listened to Pat Barker's Another World, ~7.5 hours, during vacation driving. The reader was really good, to my American ears, doing different gradations of Scottish accents, thicker for the less educated and moderated for the younger or more educated. It has two threads of narrative that Barker might have woven together more, but each thread was compelling on its own. It's set in the late 20th century so a WWI veteran can still be alive, and WWI is throughout the book, though not its only focus as in Barker's Regeneration trilogy. It's a good bridge for me to non-Regeneration (non-WWI) Barker books.
This is not on my main lists (his Sophie's Choice is) but William Styron did win a Pulitzer for it (so it's on another list). This is a kind of novel I particularly like, extrapolating a story and characters from slight little bits of known history. The first other example that comes to mind is Girl with a Pearl Earring.
What is known about Nat Turner is that he fomented the only sustained revolt in the history (the written record) of U.S. slavery. I thought Styron did an excellent job of getting into a possible Turner's head and showing his character and the development of his divine plan. Therefore I am glad to have Styron's afterword, written for this 1992 volume, about reactions to the novel: he presumed to write from a black man's perspective; he is racist to have written about slavery and how captivity and ignorance can warp spirit and potential; the book is so not worth reading that reactions against it, but not it, appear on college syllabi.
From email to my sister, who had also just finished it:
I don't read detective novels much (the last one I can remember is Don DeLillo's Libra about JFK's assassination (chock full of conspiracy theory for you) and before that the odd Agatha Christy or Where Are the Children?) so the pacing interfered with my reading in a way I am not accustomed to: Here's something happening! Quick, change the scene to leave your reader tensed and stressful!
In the opening paragraphs, a silhouette stares. That doesn't work for me.
Plus I saw [a spoiler] from miles off and I don't think Brown wrote the [mask the spoiler] scene nearly well enough to have pulled off that conceit. Also I think Brown watched "Eyes Wide Shut" too many times (i.e., once all the way through) and also followed "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" too closely. Also "Dogma." I did like how he took little bits of this literature and that history and wove them all together in a plausible way.
Except that some bits weren't plausible: claiming that Tom Cruise witnessed a goddess celebration instead of an orgy in "EWS" means that Brown is delusional, and putting in the bit about the dust spelling out "sex" over Simba's head--which is factual--to bolster a hypothesis about Walt Disney who had been dead for 30 years when "The Lion King" came out turned me off hard. Spoilers: A daughter carrying on two familial lines of a patrilineal society? Assuming Jesus was married because all right and proper Jewish men of his time were married might make sense; but he did tell his disciples (in canonical gospel) that they had to leave their families to follow him; hence it doesn't make me suspicious that his own spouse wouldn't be mentioned. Also if he was a right and proper Jewish dude and married, why ever would his wife be pregnant with their first child when he was at the advanced age of 33? So the implausible detracted from the credible.
The da Vinci stuff, the solving of the puzzles and all, the weaving of known and possible, that was all good too. Except I thought it was cheesy and manipulative of Brown first to give all four lines of a puzzle verse but then with later verses offer them to his readers only one line at a time.
(Someone told me an art historian of her acquaintance gets angry at the title, since da Vinci was known as Leonardo in his own lifetime. The plot doesn't support that particular title, but the market does; and the plot doesn't claim that he was so known, unless I missed that?)
PLT stopped à l'Hôtel Formigny last night. He skimmed our bookshelves. "Ah, here's the Gregory Maguire section," he said. "Did you like Lost?"
"Not so much. It pretty much lost me. Wicked was wonderful, and I liked Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister okay, but not Lost so much. His newest, Mirror, Mirror, is better than those two."
"I thought Wicked was good," contributed RDC.
"You haven't read Wicked," I contradicted.
"Yes I have."
We went back and forth a bit. I knew he hadn't read it; and he said he had, when it was new, in hardcover, in Florida once after he had given it to his mother; and I asked if he had read it why I had heard about it from Beth and then from PLT and not from him and why we've never talked about it; and he insisted he had, that he had given it to his mother who declared it had ruined "The Wizard of Oz" for her. Light dawned, on me at least. "You mean Was."
"That was it. Was."
"So you haven't read Wicked."
"No."
"So who is right?"
"You are, dear."
This was very satisfying, because I seldom am. And with an audience, better yet.
PLT hadn't heard about Was, and I haven't read it, and it wasn't under R in the main library so I figured it was in Florida or upstairs in the living room among the unread fiction. "I've read it," RDC protested its inclusion among the supposedly unread. But he did not fill the bookcase, and the top shelf is a continually refreshed two feet of my unread. Except that Mason and Dixon, which RDC has also read, is likely to stay there a while.
PLT's seven-year-old daughter is reading a Judy Blume-ish book, in that it has Issues, which surprised me--not her reading level but that that would be of interest. In second grade I read Dr. Dolittle and Little House and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle; I didn't read Are You There, God? or even Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing until...fourth grade.
Anyway, I hadn't seen PLT in almost four years, since TJZ's wedding. After dinner the three of us sat in the living room with our laptops (Blake approved of PLT and sat preening on his knee and snowed dander all over his black jeans) and played Boggle and looked at pictures of the sprouts. It was a fine evening.
Oh for heaven's sake. I have been wondering about the name of a book I remember about a boy who wanders nameless, subsisting as a migrant worker, until a sheep rancher takes him in. It's Ester Wier's The Loner and it was a Newbery Honor book in 1964, hardly obscure. After submitting it to Loganberry I did a better google search than previously: the first result of "book boy migrant homeless shepherd named David -Goliath -Saul- Copperfield" was a William Penn University bibliography of children's books about homelessness and running away.
Loganberry book detectives solved three other books for me:
I think you might be mixing two books here. I'm not sure about the Irish Setter book, but the German Shepherd guide book may be Follow My Leader by James Garfield. The boy was blinded as a youngster playing with fireworks.
Curry, Jane Louise. The mysterious shrinking house [original title: Mindy's mysterious miniature] illus by Charles Robinson. Scholastic, 1970. dolls; dollhouses, doll houses, miniature of the main house - juvenile mystery.
Jane Louise Curry wrote one of my favorite younger children's books, The Bassumtyte Treasure. Reading her more recent, mediocre A Stolen Life didn't affect my love for Bassumtyte, but unless I can purge my misgivings about Mindy's Mysterious Miniature (as it was probably titled when I read it), my beloved Thomas Bassumtyte might need a visit to reassure me.
York, Carol Beach. The witch lady mystery. illus by Ethel Gold. Scholastic, 1976. When Oliver rakes the leaves in Mrs Prichard's yard, will he find out if she is really a witch?
30 August: more solutions.
Keo Felker Lazarus, The Gismo/The Gismo From Outer Space, 1970. It might be this one: "The Gismo that Jerry and Ron have found is no ordinary gadget. It's part of an alien spaceship's radio and what's more, they must return it. But how?"
Lazarus, Keo Felker, The Gismo (from Outer Space). Chicago: Follett 1970. Pretty sure this is it - "The gismo that Jerry and Ron have found is no ordinary gadget. It's part of an alien spaceship's radio...and what's more, they must return it. But how? How do you keep a date with a man from outer space?" Original title is The Gismo, retitled The Gismo from Outer Space by Scholastic, and also printed in the Weekly Reader series. The spelling - gismo instead of gizmo - is what catches most people.
Elfrida Vipont, The Elephant and the Bad Baby, 1969. "One day, an elephant offers a bad baby a ride through the town, and so begins an adventure and a chase. But when the elephant realizes that the bad baby has forgotten his manners, the chase ends with a bump and tea for everyone." I had forgotten all about this book till you described it and am going to look for a copy for myself now!
"...and they went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta all down the road."
Ezra Jack Keats, Pssst! Doggie, 1973. I know the date's a little later than you were looking for, but this seems to be a likely book. It is described as "almost a wordless book." The library catalog description is "A dog and cat dance their way through several countries."
Keats, Ezra Jack , Pssst! Doggie-- 1973. If the dog and cat dress up and dance their way through various countries, this is your book.
Now damn it, these people seem to be able to search the LOC summary in the front matter. I've used the catalog but to no avail thus far.
I wonder how many other dregs of memory might resolve into actual books.
Fall arrived with a whomp today. It peed with rain almost all day, sometimes pissing like a racehorse and sometimes dribbling like an old man with prostate difficulties, not the best weather for an outdoor concert. But there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. Tell that to me when I'm camping.
I drove--PLT bikes to work every day, and where he lives is not without rain and fog, though he's spared snow--and scampered to Target at lunch where I acquired two of those lawn-seat things, in which the weight of your body on the ground cushion braces the back support. They were quite comfy on the grass, especially since the concert area at the Botanic Gardens slopes considerable-like. We filled our backpacks with fleece and Gore-Tex and cheese and wine (and juice and cookies, because I am 5) and walked the mile or so thither.
The David Grisman quintet! Their site is too annoying to navigate, but the music too good for that to matter. Enrique Corea played a meticulous but expressive guitar. When they played "Grateful Dawg," he didn't twinkle as Jerry Garcia did, but he sounded a lot cleaner than Jerry ever did, without ever sounding clinical. There was an upright bass, possibly my favorite instrument; and a flutist who played both a regular and a bass flute. A bass flute? I had never heard of such a thing. But it was beautiful. A fourth musician played everything, fiddle and mandolin and both expected and found percussion (by which I mean bongos and a cardboard coffee cup, including the little corrugated waistcoat hot cups wear). And David Grisman on mandolin.
I had previously known Grisman only for his work with Jerry Garcia, Not for Kids Only and Shady Grove and the pizza tapes, but I liked his Dawg music very much. Their songs had overlays of swing, bluegrass, salsa, and whatever else they cared to improvise. At recent local bluegrass festival, a 14-year-old boy won a mandolin pick-off and was given a valuable instrument as a prize. The quintet had him on stage for a jam during "Grateful Dawg" and he was as composed as could be and riffed with them all, and played lead to Grisman's rhythm.
The rain had ceased by late afternoon and didn't start again until most of the way through the show. David began by greeting the audience, "It sure is nice to be out among all you...plants tonight." This struck my funny bone and I cackled the lisalaugh. If it was this pleasant during drizzle, with the nearly full moon occasionally peeking from among clouds, it's got to be wonderful on the more usual beautiful evenings. We'll go back.
Also I might be at the end of an era. After we bought the Grisman tickets, the Cowboy Junkies announced a date at the Fox Theater in Boulder last night. Their latest album, One Soul Now, despite the title's nod to The Grapes of Wrath, does not appeal to me. That's three ungood albums in a row, and this one, however ironically they mean its religious overtones, is too preachy in its lyrics, undistinguished in its sound, and as for Margo's voice...eh. Nor are we going to Keystone to see them tonight.
Once upon a time at the Bloom Boarding House, an earthquake shook up two people on a porchswing. Grandpa Bloom said, "Ethel[?], I think the country's shifting to the right again." The ground might rumble as I leap from the Junkies' bandwagon to Aimee Mann's. Aha, no: they're in armchairs and the line is, "Brace yourself, Bess." | Rumble | "The country's moving to the right again."
Tangentially, the beautiful thing about Jessie is that when I said, "Well, maybe it wasn't that bad, but Lord, it wasn't good," she knew I was quoting Opus. I will blame today's explanation of my musical shift by way of Bloom County on her recently introducing us to Rosebud; however, I cannot blame on anyone but myself the urge to respond to the perennial question "Can I help?" with "Hose me down!" I'm lisa, and my cultural referents are 20 years old.
Another indication that fall is here: Blake was so dreadfully riled up by his seasonal hormones yesterday that the only punishment we could think of worse than our leaving him alone in the house was to bring him with us out into the dark 50-degree damp. He seems a little better today, but he's not just in a foul (fowl?) mood: today on the floor by his cage were two perfect feathers. Usually he loses tail feathers when he's very bad, since RDC's plucking a broken feather often humbles him, but otherwise he hangs on to his plumage. I have more of Percy's tail feathers, despite his living only 2.5 years and my gifting them away, than I have of Blake's at 9 years. And this is one of the two center, longest tail feathers. The second is a sexy crest feather, also the longest, but he has such a full crest that he doesn't look bald or badly barbered.
After all that I had to read Was, of course. I can see how it ruined "The Wizard of Oz" for my mother-in-law, although I hope that was only temporary. In his acknowledgments, which come at the end as they ought when they give away as much about a book as today's do, Geoff Ryman showed a bit of the man behind the curtain: not himself but his source material, searches, eliding over the unknown or inconvenient, how the unknown fell from the known (buried under Los Angeles freeway foundations, the last extant copy stolen).
Like my recent Confessions of Nat Turner, Ryman builds on the history that remains, though feels no need (nor ought to) to be faithful to it. I read the last chapter of Was as I did the last pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude, that is, breathless in the current the author unleashes and sustains; this is not as high a compliment as the comparee (I made that up) would indicate because the whole book is not as fine as that. The whole book was good, but the last chapter, like the first and last of Underworld, was sublime.
With a swan rake I combed the grassesque, unsnagging bindweed, and then with a leaf rake I groomed it, pulling straight tendrils of bindweed in hopes that I could more easily find their root ends. I combed and groomed and unsnagged and pulled. I did this in back and forth and to and fro. I raked out the half of the south bed where nothing has successfully taken root and weeded around the blue-eyed grass, columbine, thyme, and that other thing I myself planted but now cannot identify. I snipped baby cherries and weedwhacked under the cherry tree and along the walk. After the grass recovered somewhat, I mowed it, to little avail. I churned the more cooked compost, pitching near-loam from the trapdoor at the bottom onto the top. Then I dug leaf loam out from under the leafpile and added it to the south bed--well, piled it there, to be thoroughly dug in later--and added other leaves to the two compost bins. Finally I raked up all the seed husks and added them to my expanding lasagne
During this work, I discovered cat shit in my grass (without quite stepping in it), and discovered more cat shit in the leaf pile (nearly picking it up and adding it to the compost), and had a mouse leap from the compost bin and scurry over my feet. It was not until I was scooping, with bare hands, husks riddled with disease and coated with guano into the wheelbarrow, and spotted a limp sparrow.
RDC came to the window. "Did you just scream?"
"Yep. Look what I'm picking up on the rake."
So this afternoon I felt fleeting disgust and pity. But it wasn't until later in the day that I recoiled in horror and dread. I had no expectation of an extended swim but I had not packed a book into my backpack. (After I swam a leisurely kilometer, I read someone's Denver Post until RDC was ready to go.)
About three hours of yard work and a 1K swim.
I am working on breathing every other stroke instead of every one. Then means I inhale more deeply and exhale more thoroughly. I do notice an increase in aerobic exertion.
I made--I mixed; the hardest step comes after setting by refrigeration--my favorite cookies. Blake wanted to help. He doesn't usually show any interest in what is happening on the counter if it doesn't involve a toaster, but I think he was intrigued by the back and forth motions, of shaking the sifter and shredding ginger on the grater. He paced the windowsill and commented distractedly. Perhaps he would rather have listened to rock and roll instead of The Odyssey.I doubt Australia grows peppers as hot as America does, and wild American parrots have been known to munch on cayenne peppers just for fun.
Lately we have been using the old comforter as a tv blanket instead of my cozy fleeze blanket: Blake does not fixate on the comforter, and it's bigger if not as warm, and best of all it is quilted with nylon threads that have popped over the past decade and therefore need to be groomed.
This morning I met a puppy named Nellie. Eleven weeks old, big paws, agitating stern, sweet face, needle teeth in my bike gloves, woolly coat, chocolate Labradog. This evening I watch my feathered, crested, monocular, hammer-tongued, zygodactyl, sweetly dusty smelling buddy, pretzeling himself to do his tail, tangling himself in my hair to preen my tendrils, slowly relaxing his crest, fluffing his plumage, tranforming from sleek prancing falcon into puffy sleepy beak-chewing squab. I love Blake. And I don't think it messes with his head too much that I call him my puppybird.