Oh ick! The first third of Pamela Aiden's faux Austen, Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view, really wasn't that bad. She used the exact dialogue from Pride and Prejudice, and her made up non-canonical interactions between Elizabeth and Darcy read okay though it's ridiculous to invent such. I wondered, when I read the books' description, why the second book doesn't end with, say, the first proposal, because cramming the proposal, Derbyshire, and denouement into the third didn't make sense.
And now I know why. It wasn't faux Austen, bad enough, but faux Regency Gothic mystery crap with nothing to do with Pride and Prejudice at all. Since I knew it wouldn't be set in Kent, I thought that there would be Darcy and Bingley, Darcy and Caroline, Darcy and Georgiana. He has to delude himself sometime, because he leaves An Assembly Such as This knowing Elizabeth doesn't like him, so how he is going to propose to her "without a doubt of [his] reception," believing [her] to be wishing, expecting [his] addresses"?
It is a trainwreck, and I cannot look away.
On the beach! Yes!
We walked from South Inlet Park in Boca Raton, where our towels waited for us, down to Deerfield Pier, where we could go into a restaurant in bare feet and buy cold liters of water.
Even along the water, the sand wasn't very firm, and we postholed the whole way, using lots of unaccustomed muscles and picking up pretty shells.
2.2 miles. Plus swimming!
Besides actually doing the distances, the absolute minimum that's not happening, I learned the most from this book about nutrition and core strength, which are my weaker-than-weakest points.
Christina Gandolfi, editor.
This, perhaps, has been my favorite piece from Tutankhamun's tomb ever since, 30 years ago, my fascination with him began.
I was eight years old. 1976 was the Bicentennial, an Olympic year, and the first presidential election I paid any--okay, an average third-grader's--attention to. "Roots" was on television (and I was permitted to stay up until 11 o'clock on six nights, some of which were school nights, to watch), Dr. Dolittle was my third-favorite non-family person (after my speech therapist and maybe still Captain Kangaroo), and King Tut was in New York.
Phoebe had a book with clear plastic pages, the next generation after the thin tissue of anatomy books whose successive leaves peeled away skin, muscles, nerves, organs, bones, that showed the layers of Tut's sarcophagi, coffins, mask, and linens. Also in this book were the 1922 photographs documenting Carter's room-by-room discovery and the 1970s photographs of the treasures.
The alabaster unguent jar. The cow bed. The cup made of calcite in the shape of lotus flowers. Another jar with an ibex, and Tut as Anubis the jackal. I loved it all. Even the song, though that would not come for a couple of years.
Particularly Marshamosis of The Egypt Game was fated to overtake Dr. Dolittle (if not Jip and Polynesia and Too-too) as my favorite fictional character. I agreed with April and Melanie about how fascinating ancient Egypt was. And I longed to be taken to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to see this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of a once-in-a-millennium discovery. Vocally, and joined by my older sister, and we weren't asking to be brought to see the Bay City Rollers. But It didn't happen.
(Four years later, deep into my love of Greek mythology (thank goodness the proximity determined by Dewey Decimalism led me from Guinness to Loch Ness and ghosts straight to the D'Aulaires), my mother did bring herself, Granny, and me, through the magic of a museum's chartered bus, to the Met to see the treasures of Alexander the Great. Which I loved, though I was disappointed that Claudia and Jamie Kincaid's bath-fountain was now mere extra seating in the cafeteria; and which was not enough to make me forget Tut.)
Thirty years later, it happened. When I first learned of it, I was mad at Egypt for going back on its pledge that Tut's treasures would "never leave Egypt again," and then I laughed when I learned that the country just needed the money. We discussed going to Los Angeles to see it, but then Ft. Lauderdale worked better.
Less than half the exhibit was Tut, but all of it was ancient and noble and chock full of Dust. When I finally entered the first room of his own possessions, I got the involuntary choke right under my sternum, of sentiment and awe, that I had hoped for.
The next step of my 30-year campaign is to get my mother to train down to Philadelphia next year to see it.
Anansi Boys read as derivative, and so it is, but after reading American Gods I see that Neil Gaiman cannibalized himself as much as anyone else. I caught a bit of Delirium in one spot.
On the beach! again!
We met a 70-year-old yellow-naped Amazon named Polly. You could tell she was old by the state of her feathers. She and her people sat on the sand, she between them, and really nearly in a sit rather than a sand, and she ran her upper mandible through the sand and kept up a constant muttering, beginning with "hi" as we approached, laughing when any of the four of us laughed, and saying "Bye! bye! bye!" as left.
2.2 miles.
Now, a real swim would have been from the jetty at the inlet to the pier, but no. I have not tried to do the equivalent of lap swimming in open surf in ages. I did some distance, with goggles against salt water, but I could breathe only to the shore side because of the surf on the ocean side. I also did as much butterfly as I could manage, maybe 50 meters: no flip turns.
Make it stop! I have a tome of Eudora Welty stories, and I've been reading them and readily interrupting them with anything else, and having read the stories that comprised a titled collection, Curtain of Green, that's it, I give up. I can't distinguish between her and Flannery O'Connor--Southern, miserable, rural--and I am 38 years old and I don't have to read anything I don't want to. Damn it. So I stopped.
I read an abridged prose version of this in my Greek myth phase and excerpts in freshling year's Classic and Medieval Western lit. Bernard Knox's introduction was fascinating--how did (Homer) compose a preliterate work that existed best or only in performance? what is the evidence of literacy in its context or content (someone does send a message scratched in a folded tablet)? how can men and gods, free will and destiny, work together? How much can Thucydides and archaeology tell us about the actual Troy?
I know about the judgment of Paris, about how Odysseus pretended to be mad but not enough to plow up infant Telemachus (unless that's in The Odyssey) and how Odysseus arranged for Achilles to betray his identity also to be pressed into service, about Paris's cowardice and Hector's bravery. I wonder where all the fatted cows came from. But if The Iliad has as many begats as I dread and is more about Achilles's rage than anything else, I might be done.
Unfortunately, I think that's where I might stop. I read the first several hundred lines of the actual poem and, forgive me, had no idea who was speaking about what. It doesn't help that I was on a plane, with or without earplugs, but still. I might have slightly given up.
Instead I listened (through earplugs and earphones) to the Kiera Knightley "Pride and Prejudice" and attempted my first SuDoku puzzles in Hemispheres. Then I tried again. I'm not overly hopeful.
When this memory first surfaced today, I am pretty sure it followed a train of connected thoughts. No idea, now, how it came up. But anyway. Freshling year of college, I didn't have a decent winter coat, having outgrown the brown woolen one with the toggle buttons. Winter descended with my usual amount of money (none) in Storrs's usual accessibility to goods (minimal). At Christmas, my mother gave me funds toward a coat, an amount she could scarcely afford but which still would be inadequate, I thought. Funds plus a ride to a discount coat store, where indeed I did find what I needed. I now cannot imagine what I was thinking (likely, warmth + affordability): I can't imagine a big puffy coat like that would be as warm as wool, let alone synthetic fleece, and it was a ski jacket, ending at the waist. Also, it looked like a Domino Pizza deliveryperson's jacket, the same shades of red and blue, except where the Domino's jacket was blue over red (I think), mine was the reverse (I know).
The following year an itinerant vendor made UConn an annual stop with a supply of used, wool(ish) overcoats. I bought a gray tweed that went smashingly well with the scarf Nisou knit me for Christmas that year and I wore it until the bottom corner of my backpack rubbed through it. Whew.
What I chiefly remember about the Dominoesque jacket was how huge it was--I think it was a men's jacket--and how convenient that was for me in state facilities that were obscenely overheated (72 or more degrees, when I had grown up in a puritanically spartan little village): upon entering a building, I could take the jacket off immediately without having to pause to shuck my backpack, because I wore the pack underneath. A little hunchbacky, but sensible!
Tuesday night, home again home again, I emptied my canvas Dot Org briefcase into my backpack, but not well. No, I didn't bring my travel-sized shampoo to work Wednesday but neither did I bring my wallet. I began to suspect when I arrived at work and leaning the backpack into the sensor didn't unlatch the door (my key card lives in my wallet), but that's okay because I could and did ring the front desk to release it just as they do for Fedex etc. I knew for certain as lunchtime approached. My checkbook lives in the organizey-panel of my pack, so I had that, and I called the supermarket a quarter mile away to ensure that they would take my check without photo ID. No--even though my employer could identify me, even though any number of their own employees would recognize me as a frequent customer. It is to protect against identity theft, said the manager undeserving of the name since he clearly was subordinate to a computer. My identity is safer in the minds of clerks and the files at Dot Org than in a vast database, I didn't say. Instead I borrowed some cash from Kal and bought myself a burrito from the faux Mexican place and sulked.
Leaving work, Tex unnecessarily but kindly held the door open for Shadowfax and me. We chatted for a moment, and I saw a man strolling onto Dot Org property with his dog. I am--I decided this on the instant--Dot Org's official on-site dog inspector, and any human using our dumpster to dispose of dogshit must submit to my interview. Tex laughed at this and left me to it. Angel was perfectly happy to do so, front paws on the top tube, face in my face, tail awag. She was half Lab and half Irish Wolfhound, mostly Lab-looking but slightly taller and leaner and with beguiling bearding. Her human thought I was insane. Stupid human. Angel clearly could have ridden away home with me without a backward glance.
About halfway home I paused to give another dog a chance to cross the street toward me. He was an 11-month-old Great Dane named Smith ("What was his other Dane's name?" I can't quite get that right), undocked but for neutering. I am not sure I've seen a Dane with a full measure of ears and tail--they have great ears! and a waggable tail! which looks disproportionately short and stripling compared to the rest of the dog. He was already hip-high to his daddies and had another two inches and probably 20 pounds of bulk yet to grow. A great dog. Why must all giant breeds be droolers? It's that even more than their abbreviated lifespans that keep me vaguely sane about them. But a harlequin Great Dane like Darcy's in "Pride and Prejudice"? Eminently craveable.
Last night I dreamed up the best-ever home for Minnie. As I told her this morning, it was quite a favor I did her and she'd have to pay me back by letting me live with her. It was a treehouse, though resembling a hobbit-hole in coziness and proportion. Its most enviable element, though, was its windows, every one of which looked out over water and islands and mountains, and where the walls were not paved in window, they were paved in books. And despite being in a tree, or perhaps because it was in the right kind of tree, there were also gardens out every window, flowers framing the view.
Being off the anti-depressant has been fine, though I expect it'll be a month or more before I'm clean, in reverse of the time for it to take effect. I chopped my remaining tablets in half and so only did one step down before off. RDC says the effect for him was immediate (and appreciated): I abruptly stopped my kickboxing kangaroo parasomniac act.
Voicemail informed me I had two items waiting for me at the library. I have to figure out how to get the system to send me email rather than voicemail. Or perhaps I have to stop thinking of voicemail as intrusive. Anyway, before I scampered thither at noon I checked online to see what treats awaited me: one was a book for the neighborhood bookclub on bellydancing, and another, for which I hadn't received a summons, was identified only as an interlibrary loan. The internal hold was on the regular shelf but I had actually to interact with a clerk to get the ILL. And, since I was at the desk anyway, I had him check out both books instead of using the self-scanner. Imagine, talking to a librarian in a library! What will they think of next!
The book turns out to be Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah from the Feminista list. I thought--I don't know why--that it was from earlier C20 but it's 1969. I started it at bedtime; good so far.
The bellydance book is Rosina-Fawzia B. Al-Rawi's Grandmother's Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dancing. The personal recollections at the front, about growing up in Baghdad within a vast household, I enjoyed very much, and the meditations on why the pelvis is a woman's center of energy. I admit to raising my eyebrows at a bit about how Arab-culture women take naturally to bellydance because of their awareness of and ease with their own sensuality compared to generic-European women. Bias rears its ugly head.
I'm looking forward to the book's discussion, of course. S studies bellydancing and her instructor is going to join us, dance for us, and give us a little lesson.
S recently gave me such a nice compliment, that she admires how gracefully and naturally I wear skirts, and yes, I can walk and run and garden and hike in them. Whatever grace they and I imbue each other with, however, is out the window when the time to dance comes. Further reports as bruising warrants.
Damn. A Common Reader, the best book catalog ever, whose company Akadine also reprinted deserving titles, has filed for bankruptcy.
I am watching "Summertime" for the first time. I had feared it would be technicolor and sappy but it's sweet. When Katharine Hepburn loses her gardenia in the canal, RDC said, "So she'll always known where it is" while I said "Tomorrow I'll steal you another." If he quotes "Harold and Maude" when I can manage only "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," then he is more romantic that I am. But he's still the one calling flowers the amputees of the plant world.
Isabel Miller. A lovely book, and a good companion for "Summertime" because the women finding love and sexual freedom (and for Patience and Sarah, social freedom as well) are not punished for their wantonness. I didn't know it was inspired by historical figures until the afterword.
My mother-in-law laughed and repeated aloud the question her visiting friend had just whispered: "Helene just asked if your boobs were real." MIL and I cracked up because we both know what kind of alternate universe it would have to be for me to do that to myself deliberately.
The next evening RDC's sister, modeling the outfit she was going to wear out, finally drew my attention by calling my name: "Lisa, you're honest. What do you think?" And I was stymied, caught between honesty and unkindness. I vacillated, saying--truthfully--that our tastes were so dissimilar, and--I thought truthfully--that since I don't wear anything that tight, I couldn't tell whether that was the look she was aiming for.
Helene piped up: "'Not that tight'? How about what you wore last night?!"
I am even more emotionally than rationally opposed to having, let alone continuing, any similarity with RDC's sister, and my first thought was that I should burn that shirt. It doesn't take an exceptional eye to notice I am overly endowed, but if the friend asked her question not because they're obviously big but because they're unnecessarily prominent, then I must have looked like a tacky whore.
When we were alone I put the questions to RDC--whoreishness? should I not wear that shirt anymore? He said not at all and the two outfits had nothing in common. My outfit was pretty and suitable and flattering, not demure but certainly not immodest. Which is what I had thought but wanted a non-Florida opinion about. The shirt that had elicited the question of augmentation and possibility of similarity was sleeveless, because I like my broad shoulders and strong arms, and a pale salmon-peach color like this one, which works well with my skin tone, and slightly stretchy so it skims my torso without clinging; plus I wore a long straight "undyed" linen skirt. In contrast, the outfit I would never wear involved skin-tight jeans that fought viciously against a protuberant belly (she is regularly asked if she is pregnant; an intrusively rude question but often asked by the intrusively rudely well-intentioned) and gave a denim water-tower effect; a black tank top; and a sparkly mesh shrug that, as shrugs do, emphasized the belly, which didn't need any emphasis. The paving of eyeshadow matched the maroon yarn of the shrug.
It's true that the barrel is my least favorite body shape. Some people are forced by genetics toward it, but it can be balanced by developing some muscle in the limbs instead of idling into flabby toothpicks and with good enough nutrition to minimize fat stored at the waist. At the very least, if you've got that shape, your belly is not what you should draw attention to.
That incident, plus late-night watching of "What Not to Wear" in the hotel (yes, I'm ashamed) led me to think of my own sartorial rules:
The two universal basics:
Also:
Everything else is idiosyncratic. Well, idiosyncratic in that they are my personal preferences, not that I have committed these offences (recently):
My personal rules:
George Orwell said of his own rules for written English, "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous." I am not that reasonable. Break any of these rules (except about weddings and funerals) to be yourself, as long as as you don't break my eyes, and are no tackier than you must be.
Today I attended my first No Kidding event in several years: it was within walking distance and involved a book. I walked over listening to White Noise, which I've finally almost finished. In a front yard I passed played two five-ish girls. One shouted to me, "Do you have any puppies or kittens?" On my person? That's what her question sounded like. I told her no, just a bird. "Oh, I love birds!" I asked if she had any pets; no. I asked, just your sister? "That's not my sister. That's my cousin." (How foolish of me.) There was more, about her going off to the store to buy snacks for the puppies and kittens, and asking where I was going, and what my friends' names were.
My answer to where I was going was to some friends' house to read a book together. This answer to an adult would have felt like a lie to me (and sounded like one: read a book together?) To an adult I could have said "book discussion" but the "friends" bit would have felt, instead of like reasonable shorthand, like a lie. I would have gone on and on in waaay more detail about No Kidding than a casual question warrants, or obviously stopped myself and then felt like lying for stopping, or awkward for stopping. I need to learn how to interact with adults as easily as I do with children.
This kid cracked me up, and the timing amused me more.
I reread Frankenstein in the morning, my second time through; the first time was for Revenge in Lit. This time I noticed conscience and responsibility much more than revenge. It made me think of Grendel and Forbidden Knowledge.
The people were nice, especially the hosts, though not readers except one, a current English major. Someone spoke of Brave New World's topicality, a society in a constant state of war. I couldn't help myself though I could control my tone in time (an improvement) as I blurted, "That's 1984." Someone suggested "Fahrenheit Four Five One" [sic ] as also topical. I didn't say "four fifty-one" because who knows, maybe you should say "four hundred fifty-one" and of course what he meant was clear (unlike with the Huxley-Orwell confusion). Someone else said that I must be from Canada or the U.K. and I said no, Connecticut, but with a slight speech oddity around my vowels. The hosts read primarily science fiction and fantasy and also wanted to read H.P. Lovecraft, because they had never had (that, to me, is like loving fantasy but never reading Tolkien).
Frankenstein creates his Monster and is so terrified of what he has wrought that he runs away. He has no interest in and no concern for Monster until Monster kills William, although if Frankenstein had showed Monster one whit of responsibility, Monster would have remained, I am sure, as kind as he awoke (and Shelley would have had no novel). The obvious English major pointed out that as a parenting statement, Frankenstein was an interesting choice for No Kidding. I was so glad of this particular attendee: she had had the novel in her comprehensive examination, she said (which included five whole books!), and so brought into the discussion several of the things that had occurred to me in my morning's reread, such that the group had the ideas out there without my having to be most pedantic one in the room (just the second-most). We talked of how good a mother Frankenstein mater is, taking in Elizabeth (as a bride for her infant son) and then Justine (because she's pretty), and in constrast how good a father Frankenstein pater might not be: Victor first says he had an idyllic childhood, and later represents his father as kind-hearted, but between those, when his focus is not his father but the inspiration for his work, the man appears dismissive and Victor to smart from it: "My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, 'Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.' If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies." The English major read aloud this entire passage, saying "AG-grip-ah." The point of this entire paragraph, therefore, is not the conversation this book can spark but how deliberately I included the name in a subsequent remark so that people would know that hers was not only the pronunciation option. She also pronounced "chimerical" as "TCHIM-er-a-kal" but, as with the Bradbury title, maybe I don't know that the word has been Englished away from "ki-MERE-a-kal."
Our first attempt at No Kidding in the fall of 1999 taught me that the mere commonality of opting away from child-rearing is not sufficient basis for friendship. The second, drinks at a nearby tavern, was better only marginally for not happening in the corporate 'burbs. This event was better, with a focus for conversation; the hosts knew how to host; and these days I am certainly more comfortable among strangers, confident in being myself but also not punishing myself for holding back. Non-breeding is not sufficient basis for friendship; reading can be, but perhaps not here, because only one of the eight others was a reader and even she volunteered that she struggles with One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I stopped in Park Hill books on the way home. How I have missed its basement all these years? It was a treasure trove. I knew only of the staircase leading to the loft, but what I heard as I squatted at a bookcase was footsteps going up and getting nearer: from below.
Down I went. Franny and Zoey, The First Four Years, A Man for All Seasons, The Dogs of Babel, Incident at Hawk's Hill, Beating the Turtle Drum, Miss Hickory, and a book fated for the hidden shelf, there to join my one other Stephen King (Eyes of the Dragon), The Stand. Pulp and the miniseries cover. Shudder.
In the evening, the neighborhood bookgroup. In this case, reading wasn't the only basis for friendship. I really cannot believe my luck (or my willingness) that I like each and every one of these women very much, most of them very much indeed.
Kal called me just at 5:30 to say everyone was on the corner to make the arduous five-(short)-block journey together. I was a few minutes behind and said not to wait, but of course they did, though of course not just for me but for Scarf as well. I jogged up to everyone just before Monkey's stroller emerged from her house. It's a Norwegian brand called Stokke and struck me as kind of like a Segway and also like her parents have put her on a pedestal (and indeed why should they not?). When Scarf joined us and hugged me, she exclaimed, "You're wearing make-up!" So yeah, that's how shallow I am, that I wore cosmetics during the daytime, to meet strangers. I pulled my lapel over my face, embarrassed at my own superficiality, and she pushed it down again: "Let me see!"--and naturally everyone else had to inspect me too. She said it brought out my eyes--thank goodness, that being the intended effect--and I said eh, make-up on me is like gilding the sow's ear. Mixed metaphors are so handy sometimes.
This month's hostess's selection was Grandmother's Secrets, a book about bellydance, a little memoir, a little instruction. The hostess takes bellydance class and had invited her instructor came to gave us a bit of a lesson and a dance. Oh, and the hostess had a collection of things for us to play dress-up with, wheee! I wore my own full skirt but added a coin belt. The instructor had a belly on her, and I loved how sinuous she became not despite but because of it. I love how a dance requiring strength, stability, and stamina is best performed by a generously abundant body. She had a great smile, and of course she enjoys the dance and a smile is part of it but it didn't look a bit forced despite having a right to be, and how that smile and deep eye contact kindled explosions of sensuality in the room. In a contrast perhaps too obvious to remark upon, Samuel Johnson would have said of me bellydancing what he said of a woman preaching: "A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Admiring her belly made me think of what I said about barrel bellies the other day. I want to clarify that a belly dressed wisely is just fine (and in a bellydance outfit, can be delectable). A barrel (or any shape) painfully packed almost into clothing not sized or cut appropriately is what makes my eyes bleed.
A reason we chose to see Tut in Ft. Lauderdale rather than in Los Angeles or Chicago was to see RDC's family. His grandmother, who now was living with his mother, had been in ill health for some time, and he hadn't seen her since October and I since March. He cooked some of her favorites for her, like a pasta dish with escarole ("shk'DALL") and sausage, and we took her to have her hair done, and hung out in a mild kind of way with cannolis and "Skating with the Stars."
A priest visited her yesterday, and her daugher and granddaughter and great-grandson and a cousin, plus a hospice nurse, were with her this morning as she died. She was 85.
Don DeLillo, except for Libra, deserves rereading. I think I first read this on my own, B.C. (Before rdC), and in fact that I was reading it on that day at Uncas that marked the beginning of our cursory courtship. At any rate, I hadn't read it since, and now I know a little more about DeLillo and the Tibetan Book of the Dead and I got a bit more from it.
Was I on crack when I chose The Aeneid? A Blackstone production, read by Frederick Davidson who sounds like a male, British version of pretentious moi, such that his voice inspires self-loathing? Bleah.
But when I have rote tasks to tackle at work, happily I can listen to whatever with headphones, and I haven't read about old Aeneas, so whatever. It will serve.
RDC left for Florida this morning. We have not (I think we have never) done anything for Valentine's Day together but when he left I called AEK and ask her for a dinner date.
We ventured to Something Else, a new Sean Kelly restaurant (he is one of Denver's big-name chefs). It's where Claire de Lune used to be, a restaurant that I am sad never to have tried (it was painted a very pretty blue). Kelly drops the g from the restaurant's name so I am deliberately "mis"spelling it. They don't take reservations, and during the day the host I spoke with said they didn't anticipate a crowd, but when we arrived there was an hour wait and no bar. Therefore we retreated to Sparrow, on Seventh, which AEK had thought was a boutique, and there is a shop called Sparrow on Seventeenth. We had calamari tempura and bided our time, then returned to Something Else with what the host called perfect timing. We shared fried plantains and broiled mushrooms, and then she had a lobster bouillabaisse and I Moroccan-spiced lamb ribs.
It is the first time I have hung out with AEK on our own, and as nice as neighborhood bookclub or a weekend in the mountains with bookclub or Thanksgiving with a few people can be, one-on-one conversation is also great.
I had thought to go see "Brokeback Mountain" on Thursday but it was so unnecessarily cold that I did not venture from the house. Friday Kal invited me to dinner but when she called I was already in thermals and fleece and shivering over a bowl of chicken soup and disinclined to acquiesce to her request (one of the male figure skaters used music from "Pirates of the Caribbean"). Instead I stayed home and watched "The Aristocrats," except I had to switch over to the news while I finished my dinner, because if I didn't puke from the nauseous humor, I certainly risked choking and spitting with laughter, and that's just not pretty.
Saturday morning Kal invited me to go to a dog show. I went, because though it was 5 degrees at least the sun had the decency to be out. I guess last year she and her friend...um, Koa, because he spoke on KOA (a radio station with three call letters? That's even wronger than call letters beginning with K) in what is now my new favorite story about him...discovered it. She and he and boyfriend Neal and I went. They assured me nothing was sacred and the point was the mocking. We mocked the people, not the dogs, doing the agility course, and we clapped when dogs successfully navigated the see-saw (that first paw past the fulcrum is obviously scary) and laughed when a dog overshot the entrance to the tunnel and face-planted against the lip. We wandered through the judging area and I pulled my scarf over my eyes and or hid behind Neal's hood when French poodles were in my line of sight. The horror. While we sat in decades-old seats (before Usans got so uniformly fat) and watched St. Bernards being judged, Koa considered which breed, if he had to be raped by dogs, he would choose. I suggested a smaller dog as less painful. He was leaning toward the St. Bernard, because they would give the best cuddling. He really needs to see "The Aristocrats."
KOA had asked him to speak about übersexuals, selecting him by randomly calling local colleges GLBT offices until someone turned up. KOA is a conservative mostly-talk station, and the topic was the latest buzzword, übersexual. The host asked him whether he thought Rush Limbaugh was one. "Have you heard that word before?" Koa interrupted himself to ask. No, but I live under a rock, I admitted. "Neither had I," he assured me. He said on KOA that no, Rush couldn't be because he doesn't meet the word's three main criteria of being cultured, treating women well, and taking care of his body. Then the host asked if he thought the term would last, and he said no, the only lasting contemporary coinages, he thought, would be "metrosexual" and "santorum." The best part of this story is that the local talk show host apparently didn't know the latter term and asked him about it; he said he couldn't define it on the air so the host suggested to his listeners--this was during rush hour, lots of listeners, to the station that airs Rush Limbaugh's show daily--that they google it when they got home.
My ongoing question--less amusing than Koa's, but such is my fate--is the Colorado Kennel Club's justification for the sign at all the show's entrances: Only AKC dogs and registered service animals were permitted. Why? I understand the possible threat to a bitch in heat, but, let's hope, most pets, mongrel or not, are neutered, and unintended mating by an AKC-registered dog of one breed to a bitch of another still would result in mutts. Unintended mating within the same breed can’t be desirable either. Bigots.
Judging and valuing a dog by its conformance to physical standards, instead of by its petfulness, loyalty, or actual usefulness in its appointed field, is ridiculous and abhorrent anyway (yet there I was, forking over a $3 admission fee to further the cause, yea me). It's wonderful how I can shunt those principles when I get to see lots of St. Bernards and mastiffs and blue heelers and border collies and merle-coated dachshunds and Portuguese water dogs and Rhodesian Ridgebacks and sheepdogs and Bernese Mountain Dogs and Irish wolfhounds (or Scottish deerhounds: I can't tell the difference at a glance) and Great Pyrenees and Gordon Setters and Clumber spaniels and bull terriers (I called them all Bodger) and even a Komondor, which I might never have seen in the flesh before. An owner--a groomer? a handler? another other fucked-up aspect of these things is how many budgets (not households) a dog is split (not shared) among--cut his eyes at me when I observed too loudly to Neal as we passed a grooming area that Bedlington Terriers look like sheep.
In the afternoon, AEK and I went to see "Transamerica." I am shocked, shocked that such filthy ideas are portrayed on film: in Phoenix, lawns of Kentucky bluegrass! bordered with saguaro cactus! Outrageous! Morally bankrupt.
Then she made dinner for me and MDD, a crab chowder that I think I could make. I copied the recipe. We'll see. Sunday I cooked one of my standards, a broccoli-tomato quichesque, and thought that pine nuts would be a good addition. I tried to toast them in a saute pan, as AEK had for her salad, but there was no visible effect on low heat and they burned as soon as I had my back turned (that right there is the Thing That Goes Wrong with my culinary efforts). Instead of whole pine nuts charred on one side, therefore, the quichesque has ground charred pine nuts.
I fed it to RDC when we got back from the airport Sunday night and he liked it. This makes me feel deceitful* because I am certain that had RDC seen the nuts, he'd've wanted them omitted or substituted with a different batch; also it makes me grin, grateful to know that sometimes he really cannot detect the pea under his mattress, and that reassures me.
*Deceit:deception::receipt:reception. "Deceit" wants a p. Silly language.
And they didn't stop there. By Luong Ung, who has since devoted herself to the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World.
Carolyn Sherwin Bailey. One of the most delightful Newberys I have ever read, it's aimed at a younger audience than is average for a Newbery and much younger than my usual children's books. The illustrations are perfect and I found the little bit at the beginning about how everyone in the book is exactly the same now as when the book was written to be terrifically reassuring.
I've been looking for lists by people about my age about their favorite childhood books, hoping for any description that makes my throat catch in recognition. This title came up in the search after Tread Softly surfaced. I don't think I read it at the appropriate time--it was a horse book, it was told by the older of two sisters, it involved death, strike strike strike--but now, for Your Old Pal Al's sake, I read this other Constance Greene.
A Newbery Honor I picked up (with the two previous children's book) at Park Hill Books, by Allan W. Eckert and John Schoenherr. As does Miss Hickory, it has an epitaph asserting its truth (something along the lines of "an enhanced version of a factual occurrence"); unlike Miss Hickory, its apparent failure to be backed up by, say, a mention in a contemporary Winnipeg newspaper or any other source makes this epigram a lie.
Jog 3 miles. I went slow, but today for the first time--somehow despite shunning all exertion for, what, almost a month?--I felt like I could do the whole distance. Yes, I've been running for six months and today I could run three miles. Dedication, baby.
I had the unrealistic plan to do all my distances today--a sprint triathlon after almost a month of nothing more than walking and bike commutes, this after reading but not heeding The Woman Triathlete. But I forgot my swimsuit so I only spun.
I wanted to use a spinning bike because they are closer to actual riding than Lifecycles, but I only just found out today that because they are meant for class, they have no metering, no rpm or even a clock. There are only two spinning bikes outside the spinning class, and one had clips my shoes couldn't mate with so I had to use the other, with cages. I spun hard for 25 minutes, 25 minutes not 60, and I don't kid myself that my rate was close to 12 mph.
For a while now I have been dreading the run being at the end, because it is hardest. I figure the order has a few reasons. Perhaps something to do with physiology, that the body does these activities best in this order? Maybe something to do with exhaustion and danger to others, because if you swim especially in open water at the end you're more likely to drown and weary cyclists crash more and won't someone think of the children. Mostly, though, I think that most people consider the run the easiest, something possible after the others.
That I can't spin at 12 mph for 60 minutes (that I am sure of yet) doesn't bother me: I'm not in this thing to win (or place or show), and I can do the distance (she says, having not biked even six miles in a row for yonks), and if I have to walk the 5K I can do that too.
But I don't think I'll have to.
Anita Loos, 1925. Hootingly funny:
So while I was thinking it all over there was a knock on the drawing room door, so I told him to come in and it was a gentleman who said he had seen me quite a lot in New York and he had always wanted to have an introduction to me, because we had quite a lot of friends who were common.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
This morning the thermometer read about 25 degrees, absolutely fine, but because of either my throat or possible incipient illness or the stiff wind, I actually turned around less than a block from home to fetch and wear a facemask. Folded down away from my nose and even from the top of my mouth, but still.
A while ago I decided I should push on with the Feminista list, because much of the remainder of the Modern Library list is Conrad, Dos Passos, Dreiser, James, and Lawrence and life is too short to read remaindered books.* I requested several from the library at once, figuring that that would be safe and they would come available gradually. I suppose I overlooked what negative demand these books have, because all seven (Djuna Barnes, Ana Castillo, Anita Desai, Bessie Head, Patricia Highsmith, Anita Loos, and Grace Paley) came in at once, accompanied by a book I discovered while just noodling around, Louise Desalvo's Conceived with Malice: Literature as Revenge, or not noodling around but searching for Regina Barreca's Sweet Revenge: The Wicked Delights of Getting Even. Barreca, a UConn English professor, has been toward the top of my memory recently because Frankenstein was one of the books we had in her course on revenge in lit.
Before the eight fell on my head at once, I had plucked two books I own from my to-read shelf, whose combination, RDC said, might make my head explode. Yesterday I told Überboss that he might get a kick out of my current choice of books and told him RDC's opinion, then I produced from my backpack Lucky Jim and Naked Lunch. He snorted and agreed. This morning I asked him if he had ever read Gentleman Prefer Blondes, the funniest thing I've read since Tobacco Road. He had, and it is one of the funniest books ever, all funniest-ever books always being second to the actual funniest book ever, and I spoke in unison with him because he's suggested it before, Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog.
* I am a little sick today and thought that was funny. However, I also thought were funny, and offer as possibly funny or at least laughable, the following responses:
Q: When is Good Friday this year?
L: On a Tuesday.
Q: And does he now live in shame?
L: No, in Alamosa.
The first is because I heard the local news say that Mardi Gras (not Carnivale) would start on a Saturday, and I cannot back that usage. The second came about this way: The new intern (not, sadly, my beloved Intern, now in Argentina) is a college football fan and is obliged, for reasons I didn't follow, to dislike Big 10 12 [sorry, Haitch] schools, one of which is University of Oklahoma, and Überboss taught there for a spell. ÜberBoss, not a football fan and no longer affiliated with OU when it happened, remembers the Famous Tipping of the Sooner Chuckwagon Incident. (I know of it because the tipper is a friend of Haitch's.) The intern asked if the tipper lived in shame. Tragically, my Alamosa response could have been a falsehood as well as a straight line: I don't know if even Haitch knows where he's living anymore.
When Blake eats his buddy chow, he disembowels kernels of corn and swallows the sweet innards. The inside of a kernel is sticky, and a cockatiel is a messy eater.
One of Blake's least favorite activities is having his beak cleaned of quinoa (also sticky) and shreds of pea and corn guts, especially when his food has glued itself not just to his beak but to his jowls as well. However gently we rub a strand of jowl feather between our fingers, we sometimes detach not just the desiccated food from the feather but also the feather from the skin. This smarts and is undignified to boot.
Sometimes when he's munching on a single kernel of corn, working out the meat with his hammer tongue, the kernel jacket hooks itself on his lower mandible. This large thing he can shake off, leaving residue behind on beak and feathers to be polished away later by his parents. But while the kernel hangs there, effectively over his chin, he is Cornbeard.
Lay It Down, Lay It Down (Michael Timmins)
I'm So Open, Open (M. Timmins)
License to Kill, Early 21st Century Blues (Bob Dylan)
A Few Simple Words, Rarities, B-sides, and Slow, Sad Waltzes (M. & Margo Timmins)
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Trinity Sessions (Hank Williams)
Brothers Under the Bridge, Early 21st Century Blues (Bruce Springsteen)
Hunted, Pale Sun, Crescent Moon (M. Timmins)
He Will Call You Baby, One Soul Now (M. Timmins)
You're Missing, Early 21st Century Blues (Bruce Springsteen)
Black-Eyed Man, Black-Eyed Man (M. Timmins)
River, for a recent tribute concert (Joni Mitchell)
Just Want to See, Lay It Down (M. Timmins)
Miles from Our Home, Miles from Our Home (M. Timmins)
One, Early 21st Century Blues (U2)
---
Townes' Blues, Black-Eyed Man (M. Timmins)
State Trooper, Whites Off Earth Now (Bruce Springsteen)
Sweet Jane, Trinity Sessions (Lou Reed)
I dosed myself with two blisteringly strong teas beforehand, plus since the Fox Theatre is enough like a nightclub that it has service on the floor, I had a coffee at the end of the opening act: With the doors opening at 8 and the first band onstage at 9, I expected the Junkies to begin approxmiately at my bedtime. I am writing this at 6:30 the next morning because the new alarm clock is working so well that I not only get up on time on weekdays but wake at 6:15 on weekends as well, whee. On weekends I can come back to bed, but it's perverse merely to be awake at this hour.
I had not been to the Fox Theatre before--the last time I was in Boulder at all might have been Kinetics at Boulder Reservoir in 2001 (the festival that year featured the Cowboy Junkies). Thank goodness I brought a book: doors opening at 8 with the opening band due at 9 meant idle standing around. I stood at the edge of the stage, reading Patricia Highsmith in red stage light, until Milton Mapes came on.
The name Milton Mapes was glancingly familiar, how I don't know and perhaps only from the marquee. My stance used to be that I couldn't get into live music I didn't know (and thus would rather dispense with opening acts); maybe because I see only the Cowboy Junkies these days and am more likely to like what they like, but I have liked almost everyone I've seen with them--Sarah Harmer, especially Tim Easton, and tonight Milton Mapes. Bluegrass and blues, good stuff.
Directly behind me were a pair of women desperately flirting with a man. They conducted their conversation throughout Milton Mapes despite frowning glances from me and a few others. Perhaps they thought Milton Mapes was like movie previews. Hint: wrong. The man said he'd been listening to the Junkies since 1981, a neat trick for someone who said he'd lived in Boulder his entire life and therefore not in Toronto, where they're from, when their first album was released in 1986. One of the women shrieked, "I"m a new Junkie! Only four years! But I love them so much!" I doubted she was in the band but glad to know she was such a fan because that meant she might shut the fuck up during the show. But no, and the glances turned into pointed and scowling glares, and "shhs." If you're at a show to hook up, back off from the stage: not rocket science. During a very quiet "You're Missing" with only Michael, Margo, and Jeff onstage, with a conversation about Stephen King and Boulder clearly audible--would I have minded so much if the women weren't up from Castle Rock (actual Colorado town, fictional Maine one) and Stand tourists?--I reached my breaking point, turned to touch the closest one on the arm, and said, "Would you please just stop talking?" I think they moved off after that.
I was the closest I'd ever been, actually leaning on the stage. Margo looked five years older, which was fine; I've seen Michael that close only once briefly but he looked about the same. The biggest change was to Pete. Was that Pete? Or was this a case of all humans looking alike to me? He was wearing glasses, and maybe that was it. He had hair, which was surprising enough, but it was silver and he looked older than his two older siblings. I recently saw U2 on "60 Minutes" and Larry Mullen, also the youngest of his quartet, has aged the least gracefully, so maybe this is usual for drummers. But it wasn't Pete: Margo said her little brother finally turned 40 and promptly threw his back out. I missed the substitute's name [ed. Randall Coryell]. Of course I could hear Michael count into the songs but for the first time I noticed how he gestured everyone else to spin out a passage, to wind up a percussion bit, to allow Jeff to jam on his electric mandolin, etc. (Electric mandolin. It works, oh yes it works, but it sounds only slightly less silly than "electric hammered dulcimer.") During "Hunted" and "Just Want to See" Jeff was, to borrow a word, incendiary.
They plan their sets, which is unfortunate, not least because I can learn the whole set beforehand if I look for and look at the playlist. Of course I did, and I jigged at "River," which I figured would be part of the River Song Trilogy. Nope! It was Joni Mitchell's "River," which they had recently sung at a Music For Youth, Joni Mitchell tribute show. When Margo introduced the song, I had forgotten what I'd read on the setlist, and hoped, momentarily, wildly, for "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow," which is possibly my second favorite song after "Sweet Jane"; for Margo to sing it would have blissed me into a coma. But it was "River," and though I don't know Mitchell's titles necessarily, the song I knew.
As usual, Margo made eye contact (and some conversation) with the crowd, and this time, with me. I don't care if it's for show but prefer to believe, as with lovely Italian skater Silvia Fontana, the smile that's part of the act becomes real because you do love the act. When her eyes met mine and I grinned joyfully, I like to think that her answering smile was truly in response. Plus, three times--after "One" as they left the stage, when they returned for "Townes' Blues," and when they left for good after my beloved "Sweet Jane," Michael looked right at me, back at me, and waved. They're my best friends!
A good show.
Previous shows:
This is the show I learned about the day afterward in 1999: I Saw Your Shoes, Cause Cheap is How I Feel, Southern Rain, A Few Simple Words, A Common Disaster, Five Room Love Story, Townes' Blues, Good Friday, The Highway Kind, Hunted, Misguided Angel, Those Final Feet, Sweet Jane, Miles From Our Home, To Live is to Fly, E: Blue Guitar, If You Gotta Go Go Now.
Edited to add that I am not going to read the message board on the Junkies' site again. I read setlists for Crested Butte, Telluride, and Aspen, and I don't like my jealousy. I had my show, and that's that. My hunch is that the crunchier artsier towns get better sets, and I note to myself to, in future, see them in Boulder in addition to or instead of Denver. Telluride, the most exclusive of the three--which is saying something--got two songs from Caution Horses, my beloved "Sun Comes Up" and PLT's favorite "Cheap Is How I Feel." But I got to see them and to hear "Sweet Jane": I had my jam today, and that another town got better jam shouldn't mar my own pleasure.
GodDAMN, this is so unfair: "I was just in Mary Queen of Scots' bedroom." He didn't see the spot where David Rizzio was murdered nor Kirk o' Field, but he did see the Tree of Conspiracy, whatever it's called, or its site. Yesterday he visited a distillery that he described as Epcot with scotch. And he has a new t-shirt for James VI/I: "My mother got her head cut off and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." Plus Scotland and England have a rugby match today so Edinburgh has even more men in kilts prancing about than even is usual.
Perhaps this trip will open his eyes to how manly and dead hot sexy kilts are. Would a Napolitan Italian-American who some people think resembles "that younger one in the Sopranos" (a notion I scoff vehemently, since RDC's equally large, dark, and prominent eyes spark with intelligence and kindle with kindness, wholly unlike Christaphah Moltisanti's dull self-serving inward gaze: look past the oversized nose, people!) look out of place in a kilt? I doubt I'll ever find out, but I think not.
Really good! and a departure for me in that it was suspenseful and I avoid suspense in my fiction just as much as I do suspense and drama in my life. So tiring.
With apologies to Patricia Highsmith, I am somewhat tempted to see the recent cinematization. I was recently talking to someone about Philip Seymour Hoffman because of "Capote" and whoever it was said he was in that movie with Matt Damon, where he took over another man's life, and that was the first I learned that Hoffman was in it. If it weren't for Hoffman, maybe I'd be immune through having already seen Matt Damon in that role (in "Catch Me If You Can"). Edited to say, no I haven't seen Matt Damon in that role, since it was not he but Leonard DiCaprio in that one.
"One" suits the anti-war message of Early 21st Century Blues and I reflexively prefer it to U2's original, but I surprise myself by preferring Warren Hayes's cover to either. When I first saw (and heard of) him, he was opening for Phil Lesh at Red Rocks in 2002. It took me a couple of bars longer to recognize "One" than it should have, perhaps because I had mostly broken up with U2 by the time Achtung Baby came out, and perhaps because Hayes is the superior musician and not the ego-thumping strumpet Bono was when I saw them in 1992 (obviously not having entirely broken up with them, but U2 in Boston on St. Patrick's Day? It was their last best chance).
A friend of mine who was dumped in early 1991 made himself a Tunes to Kill a Camel mix tape o' misery that I had cause to borrow not long after. Among other songs, there were the Church's "Under the Milky Way," Laurie Anderson's "Sweaters" and "Walking & Falling" and, through his roommate's contribution, Eric Clapton's "Promises," and the Cowboy Junkies' "Cheap Is How I Feel."
That was my introduction to the Junkies, and I immediately needed more. I might not have lived the 15 years since bereft of their barbituate blues since a little less than a year later I housesat for friends and, as usual, availed myself of their music collection, which included Trinity Session, but it was a good thing for me to have had Caution Horses throughout 1991 instead of only afterward--and I was glad to tell Michael Timmins of the debt I owe that album during a meet-and-greet at Twist and Shout.
I met Trish and Jared at the Mayan to see "Brokeback Mountain." I got there early and browsed the shops along Broadway. The used bookstores all close at 6, good for my wallet, and the only store open had an age limit. I looked at corsets and pleather trousers and a pair of boots that you could wear only en pointe. Ow. Other objects in the store made me wince, too, but the funniest thing was that I was looking at bondage gear and sex toys with season three of "Gilmore Girls" under my arm.
Dinner at the Hornet: most appreciated. I had a buffalo burger with cheese and mushrooms and guacamole and except for a bowl of cereal and fruit it was my first food since lunch Friday.
A lovely movie. I snorted once when Jack was telling Ennis about their paradise ranch because it reminded me of Lenny and George. Also I thought of Butch and Sundance when they jumped off a bluff into a pond, though they did it more sensibly without clothes on. The one point in the movie I noticed that the scenery didn't work is the bit I should have noticed: Annie Proulx mentions that except for the one scene in deep moss, the setting feels right. Gorgeous, of course. Except for Texas. Of course.
Of course, I am morally outraged that such things should be portrayed in film: Anne Hathaway with icky hair at all, especially blonde hair, and with tobacco stains on her teeth. I got the shivers.
Just call me Rosie the Riveter. Today I nearly did the three triathlon sports at the sprint distance. I swam .75K, biked 20K (at least), and knew before I started that the 5K on foot was more likely to be at a walk than a run. And so it was. But I did it!
Anita Desai. The book is called Chekovian, and I can kind of see that.
Like I needed another lesson in How Cars Are Bad.
Saturday I drove to the Mayan because I wanted to stop at Gart Bros. and get a new bathing suit. The one I bought in January, even though it looked like the exact same Nike model I was replacing, must be cut differently or I must be fatter because my right arm stroke pulled that breast half out to the side, and that just doesn't work in swimming. This new one is a Speedo, possibly higher on my sternum than the Nike, and definitely more around the side than the Nike. I used it yesterday and everything remained properly contained. The Gart parking garage's stalls are not divided only with yellow stripes on the surface but also with yellow columns. Backing out, I passed too close to the column and cracked the side headlight.
And I could have taken the bus! I could have taken the Colfax west and transferred downtown to the Broadway but nooooo because--even though Gart is right on Broadway--waiting for two southbound Broadway buses would have been inconvenient. I could have walked from downtown, at 15th, to Gart at 10th, but it was getting dark. I could have walked from Gart to the Mayan at 1st, but it was dark by then. And it's not as if I would have had to take the bus home at 10 o'clock, because Trish offered me a ride and was even surprised I was in a car: she said it was the first time in the two years we've been hanging out that I drove. Well, usually we meet downtown, whither it is ridiculous to drive especially from my house. Instead I cracked the headlight.
RDC suggested I not drive much until it's fixed, not to worsen the damage. But I drove this morning! Because I am going to grocery shop after work. Because I didn't grocery shop after my tri-attempt yesterday because I was too tired and my panniers were too full of sneakers for a gallon of orange juice and it could wait until today.
35 mph in at a 20 limit, in a school zone to boot.
Cars suck. So, apparently, does my driving. Fuck.
Arthur Inch advised the production of "Gosford Park" for accurate detail about service and I looked forward to his book about the art of the table for lots of esoteric detail. This I did not get. I know not to double-dip and how to eat an artichoke and not to serve corn on the cob at a formal meal; and if he allows table linens to be other than the traditional white damask, why is stainless steel not acceptable at formal occasions? Poo.
Not only did I not get a speeding ticket today, I met a dog--half border collie, half husky, black and white with a plumey curled tail. Plus I met the Lab-Irish wolfhound cross again. Cars are evil.
Two 3.6-mile city rides.
It was nearly cockatiel murder for me to leave the house only a half-hour after I got home, but I did. I walked to the next street over with a bookgroup neighbor walking her dog, chatting about her dog and yoga and her being 16 weeks pregnant, stopped to talk with another neighbor (mother of Increase's birthday-mate*), and finally arrived chez AEK to go to yoga with her and her friend Ines.
Two hours, lots of balancing, lots of poses whose names I don't know. That doesn't mean much, because plank, table, swan, down dog, up dog, warrior, eagle, cobra, bridge, tree, salutation, warrior, devotional, child, and corpse (the latter three being my favorites) are about the extent of my repertoire, by which I mean only that I know, not necessarily can do, the pose. We did lotus and peacock feather pose and triangle. The instructor roused us from corpse with a low, faint gong or chime, but not before I joined the ranks of Those Who Sleep Aloud During Corpse Pose. Plus I loved how she described the stretches: "just until it feels delicious [or yummy]" and "open your armpit like a yawning mouth." Plus I love how yoga instruction is given, as if, yeah, I can move my pubic bone independently of my tailbone and consciously relax the flesh at the tip of my nose.
* Her and her wife's baby boy shares Increase's exact birthdate, so he is my Increase-surrogate the way a coworker's son, a day older than Emlet, is my Emlet-gauge (I don't see him enough for him to be a surrogate, but he gives me an idea of how tall Emlet is and what milestones she might be knocking over).
