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Maybe my sister's right about my hair. Blake thinks it's a mess too, and he's doing something about it. Reading: Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose. It's amazing Moving: err. I finally did call Cook Park. I had it in my head that only Congress Park pool would have TR lapswim and Cook Park certainly would keep its MWF so that I could swim five days a week if I wanted and have the long bike ride to Cook. Nope. It has evening lapswim only on Fridays. This town really doesn't cater to my needs very well. Watching: thunderheads Listening: thunder |
9 July 2001: Fetal tomatoesFetal tomatoes have emerged from two of my tomato plants. One of the
two beefsteaks has three wee nubbins, one extremely wee and the others
the size of a powerful marble shooter. One of the cherries has a single
pea-sized zygote of a tomato on it. My beans have flowers on them; the
zucchini will take over the whole world, and the eggplant are hanging
in there. Now that it's as hot as eggplant like, the zucchini are crowding
them. So I'm learning about plant placement for On 3 April, I planted seeds. On 10 April, the first determined
little shoots uncurled from the soil. Two weeks after the alleged I am so proud. --- The aunt asked who the boy is in the photographs on my study/ their guestroom wall. "My father," I replied. He shares space with RDC's and my wedding collage, a collection of my beautiful nieces and nephews, and some of my grandmother's art work, and a picture of my mother. This reminded me of another comment of my mother's watching the house tape. She had three: whether RDC had gained weight, if I still had the photograph of her as a child, and where was the gateleg table. I've already mentioned the loaded nature of the weight question. She asked if I still had that photograph because the video--from last summer--happens to scan past the picture of my father still in the dimestore frame in which the photo came to me, but the absence of her own clearly proved I carelessly lost it. Photograph frames are something I seldom bothered to buy; tchotchkes, they were never a priority over books and dresses. Only last month did I replace the last of the cheap clear folded Lucite frames in which I have displayed photographs since college. In fact, her comment did remind me I hadn't got a frame for hers and I rectified that soon after I returned to Denver. (The only reason I'd bought one for Dad's earlier is that since it was in a frame at all, it therefore could be out, reminding me to get it a better one. My mother's remained unbesmirched in an album until two weeks ago.) I can understand how seeing the childhood photograph of Dad would make her wonder why not the childhood photograph of herself, but she's asked me "whether I still have it" a few times over the years. I dislike the repeated questions, as if I might have thrown it out since the last time she asked, but what gets to me more is that she won't come right out and ask for it back. She really hates giving anything away. Which bears on the poor gateleg table. I've written about it before but, as RDC says, the story will never be over until it's back in her possession. In the house video, the gateleg doesn't make much of an appearance, it's true. Neither does the refrigerator, but we do have one. She said, "I didn't see the gateleg table anywhere." This was a question, despite the lack of question mark. It means, in short, "You shouldn't have it." When RDC and I moved from Storrs to Denver, we moved from a furnished to an unfurnished apartment. We owned no table. My grandparents' house finally had sold, which meant my grandmother's solid maple dining table needed a home. I figured it would move into my mother's house, where my grandmother also lived; it was certainly a lot more countrified and thus more to my mother's taste than the cheap laminate-top dining table and four chairs I now asked to buy from her. I thought. She quailed but did rally enough offer me the gateleg, which surprised me. This was from one of her grandmothers' houses, and she had permitted CLH to use it in her small Boston apartments though not to move it to Aspen in 1994, which is how it was available it 1995. When I told my mother I didn't want to take the loan of a table across country (and be responsible for returning it on demand), she said I could keep it. I clarified, "You're giving it to me?" She said yes. When she first made noise about it, 2.5 years ago, I wrote her a letter reminding her of the gift; she hasn't disputed the facts but continues to wheedle. If the Happy Couple ever carry through on their threat to drive out here in their, I hate to confess it, RV, I am going to rope that fucker to the roof and send it East with them. Letting her have her way will be worth shutting her up. Except she won't shut up. Her chorus will merely switch to "I never asked for it back, dear," which might be syntactically accurate but is thematically false. I was mistaken to ask or accept anything from her. As I was on another occasion of outright giving. When my mother's paternal grandmother died (I was four or five), the family converged on her house to strip it, supervised by my grandfather. My mother received (at least) a set of china. Every Thanksgiving, I climbed on a stool to retrieve from a cabinet over the fridge a set of dishes--brown, wood-patterned ware whose plates we used for everyday and whose balance was for holidays. In the same cabinet was the china, which I always loved but which was never used. When my mother gave me the set for my bridal shower, I was touched and pleased and grateful. On one of my last visits to Old Lyme before we moved, less than two months later, she asked whether I really thought I should take the china with me to Denver and didn't I think it would be safer in Old Lyme with her. That really hurt, the fact she regretted letting it out of her hands into ones as unworthy as mine, which might (gasp!) use it. I pointed out, none too gently, that we were bringing with us everything we owned, including computers and stereo equipment and other items as delicate as the china, which we also now owned (remember?), and it would be fine. And it is. Except I dread that when she descends into my house, she will poke into my over-fridge cabinet and discover a missing lunch plate. She will never remember that she obtained and thus could pass on to me only seven. --- When we emigrated from Connecticut, we left behind the waterbed RDC had had in his swinging single days, the cedar chest Granny gave me that my mother ruined with mothballs, and the gray rug I bought when I got my first single at UConn (I think MAV found a charitable home for the latter two). We brought with us the futon we had bought to replace a donated, dog-reeking couch; the maple rocker Granny had given me; RDC's desk and chair; the mattress and boxspring EJB gave us for our wedding and the bedframe from his parents; a bureau I saw at EJB's family's discount furniture store that became CLH's wedding gift; a bookcase that BHM had donated to me; a weeny bookcase I bought from a tag sale for a quarter; and the gateleg table. A bridal gift certificate became one bookcase, ABW gave us another, and we bought yet another, large, ugly one from Service Merchandise plus a student's desk from K-Mart for me. (Our tenement had had a built-in one I used.) For other bookcases, bed tables, and television stand, we used scores of milkcrates. And dozens of copy boxes. For Blake's cage stand, we used the tall cardboard box the speakers had arrived in. While in Denver apartments, we bought and built more bookcases; received small hand-me-down pieces from CLH and SPM when they each moved; and bought folding wooden chairs (for dining), a television cabinet (now a hold-all in the garage), a couch, chair, and ottoman, and two computer desks. The computer desks meant we donated--to others in our apartment complexes, by placing them outside--the futon and old desks. For the house, we have acquired a bedroom set (bed, bureau, and nightstand; we still need another nightstand for RDC), a decent cage stand for Blake, a new futon (a chaise in my study or a bed in the guest room) and a dining table and chairs. We need more bookshelves. We would like to replace the two big dark laminate bookcases in RDC's study with nicer ones, larch, to go with his computer table. We will eventually want living room furniture. In none of this hoarding acquisition do I foresee much ornamentation of the sort that follows. ---
Seriously, I don't accessorize my house. I'm not into dust collectors and nonfunctional display items. We received several for wedding presents, most of which I do like and show: a branching candelabra from Sharon, a Pueblo (I think) wedding vase from Sooby, a nonfunctional wooden vase from LEB. We've received others that aren't out. I have bought extremely few such things myself. Several years ago, I bought myself Pooh bookends--Christopher Robin, Rabbit, and Rabbit's friend or relation pulling Pooh from a background (on the other end) that is not Rabbit's kitchen. They're functional. I keep my favorite oversized books in them. In the corner of this picture is the hood of the clampy desk lamp my mother gave me when I graduated high school, for college.*
The books are The Music Pack and The Art Pack (Christmas 1993 and 1992 from RDC, and I have just reversed them so they'll be in chronological order of receipt); Sisters (Christmas 1995 from my father); Good Morning, Captain (signed by my hero); The Father Christmas Letters (Christmas 1997 from Nisou); The Arthurian Book of Days (Christmas 1992 from RDC again); Oh! The Places You'll Go (graduation from LEB); Granddaughters of Corn (freebie from my publishing internship with Curbstone); Meetings with Remarkable Trees (a wonderful, heartening, humbling book from Common Reader); and a fantastically intricate pop-up of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Christmas 2000 from HAO).
On the fridge are my Fractured Proverbs magnets, which do count as pointless dust-collecting mess, don't they? I was out of the room but heard the aunt and uncle commenting on them, trying to think of the subject for "...stink after three days." (Answer: "Fish and guests," but I didn't like to tell them as they had already been here for five days by then.) I don't know how they reacted to "God/ is in the eye of the beholder" or "Two heads/ make the man." Last year, soon after moving into the house, I went shopping with Haitch for things like a rug for the kitchen, now that my kitchen had hardwood floors instead of linoleum. A 12x15" fake little doodle in Linens & Things appealed to me, but it was a stupid little unnecessary thing. Haitch had to convince me that I would regret not buying it. So I did. Now it's on my bedroom wall. That's not tape in the bottom center; that's me clumsily trying to mask the flash with Adobe ImageReady. --- A couple of days ago, I don't remember why, The Cat in the Mirror occurred to me. I forget how much I like it in the months between rereadings. I think I've mentioned this, but it bears repeating, that when I first read Erin's screaming about the effing waist of her nightgown, I assumed "effing" was a fabric or ribbon familiar to someone as wealthy as she and unknown to me, who slept in Sears & Roebuck pajamas. In the past few years I acquired the book from an online used book finder (bless them all) and reread it for the first time in however long. Reading that line, I cracked up at my own naïveté. Besides "effing," there were two other words I didn't know in Cat. One was "ichor," which I only just now looked up; and the other was "gauffered," which again modifies fabric. If fabric could be gauffered (some kind of waffling pattern inflicted on linen), why couldn't it be effing? Reading about Gail Carson Levine's The Wish (on Kymm's wishlist) made me want to read it Right Then. The library had only The Two Princesses of Bamarre, which is much weaker than Ella Enchanted and reminds me of Catherine, Called Birdy (unfavorably, since I didn't like that much) and of the Earthsea trilogy (favorably), because of Addie's conversation with a dragon. --- I have to bring my camera to the art museum in hopes that nonflash photography is permitted. In several exhibits are stations for kids' art projects. On one is a sign that rivals the legendary "hamb steak special": it says, "Caution. Scissors might be sharp." I want to be outside the asylum with Wonko the Sane, just sometimes. This despite my inability to spell "upholstery." --- I make no guarantees but I think I'm at the end of my mother griping for the time being. |
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Last modified 12 July 2001
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Looking
through my image files for the two of my parents, I found another image
that I haven't put up, either here or on my wall, in the 18 months I've
had it. I must get to a framing store--again, such a project counts
as accessorizing and has never been a priority. My sister gave me this
for Christmas last year. It belongs on my study wall partly to cover up
the Air Force blue paint (I guess I prefer crowding to that color)
but mostly because it's so me. 
Two
years ago I bought what I thought an irresistibly pretty pitcher from
that reliably tasteful source of housewares, Ross. Elsewhere in the kitchen
are bottles for oil and vinegar (bargained for at Pier One with gifts
we didn't like) and canisters (another shower gift). 
