27 January 1999: Crowded House

When we got back from snowshoeing Saturday, I showered immediately, in extremely hot water and for long enough that my entire epidermis went crimson with heat.
RDC called in to me: "Voicemail from BJWL. D'ya want to hear it or should I summarize?"
"Summarize."
"What are you doing for CLH's birthday? Call her."
Bless the boy for small mercies. It pro'ly took her 120 seconds to express those two basic concepts.

So I called her while throwing our snowshoeing clothing in different piles. Wool sweaters that have to be dry-cleaned, snow stuff that has to be handwashed, snow stuff that can go through the machine, other stuff that, scarily enough, will not be laundered in any way. You would think I would be able to conduct a conversation with my mother while simultaneously tossing garments hither and yon into piles.

Wrongo. Apparently I was inattentive in addition to my usual sins of speaking quickly, not speaking loudly enough, and being married to a man who cooks.

At one point during the exchange, I asked RDC if a particular garment could be machine-laundered. BJWL said, on her end, "She's talking more to RDC than me." N.B. she was at this time talking not to me but to BDL. Our family is a multitude of sooty pots.

So anyway I fulfilled that biweekly duty.

Later, while RDC made supper, I programed a set from all my new discs. I wondered if RDC would run screaming from the '80s-fest. From Spike, "Let Him Dangle" and "Veronica"; from The Dreaming, " Pull Out the Pin" and "Get Out of My House"; from Melissa Etheridge, " Similar Features";and from Outlandos d'Amour and Zenyatta Mondata, "Roxanne," "Can't Stand Losing You," "Message in a Bottle," and "Bring on the Night." I was in an ecstasy of '80s and pranced about the house, singing a lot more loudly than I usually do when RDC is home.

Melissa Etheridge's first album came out the summer of '89 and I used to bellow "Similar Features" that summer, with or without accompaniment; its lyrics were pertinent and its anger soothing to me at the time. I haven't listened to it in ages. So I was bouncing around, expecting to be reminded of all that fury, but my bouncing petered out. "I remember this song being a lot angrier than this," I told RDC. "It came out before grunge," he pointed out. Ah yes. The anger threshold has been upped. Also the song and my situation are nearly 10 years old, which takes some of the edge off.

So anyway I was just singing along to Elvis, Kate, and Melissa, but with the Police my bouncing began in earnest. Dance like nobody's looking, they say, and that's what I do.

Someone's told me it takes a lot of strength to ski the way I do. I figure it would be a lot less tiring if I had more skill. Similarly, if I could dance, say, with steps and rhythm, my dancing would require a lot less bouncing and flailing about. As it is, I puffed and pranced and enjoyed myself.

"You're supposed to be tired," RDC pointed out. Ha. More proof of snowshoeing good, skiing bad. I could be such a sheep. (Ralph Steadman is the ideal illustrator for this. I had nightmares about it when I was 15 and refuse to reread it. It's got a high AM rating.)

Then I was a slug Sunday and Monday. Reading, writing, and pointless stuff like that. Step Tuesday. Today I Nordic Tracked and now I'm typing, having been virtuous for the day. Blake is on the chair beside my left thigh, his own left foot tucked up into his tummy feathers, whining at me. Excuse me, I need to pet some head.

I massaged Blake's cranium and stroked his feathers against the grain and rubbed in the corners of his mandibles until he got the yawns and snipped at me for disturbing his rest. Demanding little thing, isn't he? I cannot imagine having to care for a human child.

Speaking of which, today someone told me about videotaping his newborn niece and how much the footage had meant to the parents in the weeks afterward, when the baby was in natal intensive care and so wired up she couldn't move and they couldn't touch her. I asked if newborns are particularly wriggly; it occurred to me that maybe they would be since they have more room out than in to cavort. He said yes, and that while fetuses do kick, there's always resistance, so babies experiment a lot more once broken out of the Big House.

I completely lost it. That was the most disturbing mental image I have had in days.

He knows I don't want to reproduce and just laughed at me. He thought I was being extreme. He didn't use the phrase "the Big House" to describe the nurturing womb.

I realized I didn't want to spore when I learned about episiotomies. Imagining being a fetal punching bag does nothing to sway my opinion the other way. Resistance.

Resistance is useless!

By the way, the baby who inspired this conversation is fine and home with her loving parents now.