Reading: The Princes in the Tower

Moving: hiked 5+ miles yesterday, today a slight possibility of weights

Listening: The Castle

Watching: "My Bodyguard," which is genuinely '80s and therefore scarier than "Freaks and Geeks" but has Joan Cusack and Ruth Gordon

Cooking: Green Green Noodle Soup from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

18 November 2001: Weekend

I had such a productive week. I Nordic-Tracked, I walked to work, I scrubbed the living room ceiling (Monday), walls (Tuesday), mantelpiece, and trim (Wednesday) and the next set of storm windows (Thursday). Friday I was given the afternoon off work and took the bus to Cherry Creek to the rubber stamp store. Which is gone. Which makes me sad.

I ventured into Sol, the lingerie shop Sabrina's friend owns. Bras on me must be functional, and functional on me requires enough engineering effort that prettiness falls by the wayside. Here I found that pretty bras in my size range do exist, if I were willing to pay $200 and up for a bra. I think they were expensive because they were designer, not because they were classed as permanent medical appartus. I ventured out again.

Even though I had made plenty sure that RDC knew about the badger, I decided Christmas was way too far off, and the rubber stamp store was gone. So I bought myself Pantalaimon. Also a bat for Nisou's child, except it's only for ages 3 and up. I was tempted by the lovely grasshopper, but I got the bat. I left a message for Dora, whom I had told about the badger when I first saw it, as I signed the credit slip, which in addition to being gleefully garbled is also interrupted by my telling the clerk, "Oh, please, no bag, they'll suffocate." And then I walked home, only to discover that Blake is desperately afraid of Pan. It was a journaly kind of day, because then I had to call Jessie to see if she thought it was Wrong to have a single animule in one shape named Pantalaimon. I figure I'm grown, if I hope not a grown-up, so my dæmon would have settled, and besides that Pan became a badger to make Lyra do something she was too scared to do on her own, a badger--surly, skulky, with black and white markings like the best tapirs and penguins and magpies--is a likely form for my dæmon to have taken.

And then I cooked. "Call 911," said my sister. I made Green Green Noodle Soup, which calls for spinach and onion and zucchini. When RDC got home from Vancouver, he had a birthday present (hidden under his pillow, as wrapping was beyond me) that he liked, which is a rare thing for me to have chosen (a 100-ounce Camelbak) and dinner cooked for him. Previous to this, I have made sauce (rarely) and boiled pasta to be topped with sauce. That's it. Ever. Except pancakes and cookies. So this is really remarkable. When I talked to CLH Saturday morning, I was able to tell her that RDC had actually seemed to like the soup. "Really?" she asked, not sounded as incredulous as she reads, and I amended, "Well, he is in the bathroom just now."

It was Family Day on the Phone yesterday morning: my mother called just before CLH did. She said she was calling because she needed someone to help her peel apples. For apple pie, I would do anything, include peeling apples for hours. She told me about this and that and that BDL was just coming in from dealing with the leaves. "He has a leaf-blower this year," she told me proudly.
"A leaf-blower!" I exclaimed in disgust. "I don't want to know about it."
"She doesn't want to hear about the leaves," she reported to BDL, hearing in my voice presumed nostalgia for the dozens of deciduous trees of my youth.
"Not the leaves, ma, the leafblower."
"What's wrong with a leafblower?"
I swear. "They're as polluting as snowblowers and snowmobiles and motorboats and skanky jetskis and lawnmowers and all those things. Don't you have a rake?"
"Oh, but he borrowed it from work. We didn't buy one."
This is about as worthwhile to me as saying, "I didn't buy the gun, I just used it."

Whatever. I have long asserted that my parents had children solely to have someone to rake the yard (and peel apples). Since I vacated the house, my mother first cut down about half the shade trees in the backyard, shade being unwelcome in summer if she had to rake it up herself in the autumn, and now uses a leafblower.

This would be an instance of what my sister calls my being overly judgmental.

Then we went to Golden Gate Canyon State Park and hiked five or more miles. As soon as we figure out how to download the camera, I'll have photographs. I have got to start taking glucosamine again, because my right knee was aching before we halfway up. Also to build some muscle in my legs. That might help.

Afterward we indulged in one of our favorite excesses, burgers from the Cherry Cricket. With cheese (smoked cheddar for him, provolone for me), mushrooms, tomatoes, and avocado. Hiking, I had said ridiculous things about raking and compost afterward; staggering into the house afterward, I knew that was that for me for the day. So today I raked and turned the compost and dug some new humus into the vegetable garden and added some worms from under the mulch pile and, in the den watching the first season of "The Simpsons," painted one side of two windows. If I can watch movies doing it, I'll get the windows painted much faster.

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The squirrels are now in a concerted effort. One distracts us on one side of the house so another can feast out of the birdfeeder unmolested on the other side. I really wish I could upload the photographs for this one. The neighbors on the one side have an air-conditioner in their bedroom window. It's badly installed, propped on bits of 2x4 (one reason it rattles so damn loudly) and badly insulated, with just accordion-plastic between unit and sill on either side. Between the accordion and the frame are a few inches, further badly insulated with only dishtowels. This set-up doesn't do much to keep either chilled or heated air in the house, but it does allow a nice comfy space, upholstered with cushy towels, for a squirrel to nap. I saw one tugging itself into the niche, curling its tail over its back for warmth.

It's hard to hate the squirrels who eat my sunflowers, nectarines, pears, plums, cherries, eggplants, and birdfeed, when they're so irresistibly cute. I ran for the camera, opened the sash, unhooked the storm, and stuck the camera out and around to get pictures of this infiltrating rodent. Its little eyes were closed, and it was so comfortable, and it lay there undisturbed until I made too much noise closing the two windows. So I have a last picture of one beady eye glaring at me. Later it woke up and began plucking, gnawing, and rearranging the towel to make it a better mattress-and-blanket.

I call it a concerted effort because when I watch the napping squirrel on one side (even if all I can see is tailfur blowing in the breeze), I can hardly be simultaneously in the kitchen, hosing the birdfeeder raiders through the window.

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Dear World:

All I want for Christmas is real Christmas carols. No winter wonderland or Rudolph or Frosty or seeing Mommy kiss Santa Claus or wanting two front teeth or letting it snow or any song written after 1930. I have Bing Crosby and Mel Tormé and Nat King Cole and Vince Guaraldi and the Chipmunks. I have a Very Special Christmas, which I bought solely for Sting's "Gabriel's Message." I have all the pop and jazz I want.

I don't want organ. I don't want the Vienna Boys' Choir or the Three Tenors, because I can't sing along with groups of 300 or three castratii. I don't want A Very Ally Christmas or any CD with a celebrity's face on the cover, because I want the songs instead of one person's vehicle for their individual voice.

I want "Greensleeves" or "What Child Is This?" I want "Adeste Fideles," not "O Come All Ye Faithful." I don't think decking halls or joy to the world is too much to ask. I want holly and ivy, three ships a-sailing, Jeannette-Isabella bringing a torch, herald angels singing, gentlemen resting merry, a good king named Wenceslas, and a drummer boy. Nights must be holy or silent. I would love a good version of "I Wonder as I Wander," but I'll probably just reread Jacob Have I Loved instead.

I want songs that sound like people caroling, either door to door or with their friends around a fire while stringing popcorn and cranberries.