Reading: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Moving: walked a few miles

House and Garden: Vacuumed. Dusted. Cleaned bathroom and kitchen.

Yule: varnished Emlet's things, inscribed and wrapped books. I hope the post office can assure me that stuffed mailed surface on Tuesday by will get to France in time.

Watching: "The Man Who Wasn't There"

3 November 2002: New York

The last time I went to New York was the winter of 1995. February, maybe. That it was butt-clenchingly cold and that I was in inadequate City clothes is all I remember. Oh, also that for the first time I went to MoMA.

For having grown up within 150 miles of it, I have barely been to the city. My first time was in seventh grade. Like every other child in the country, I clamored and begged to be taken to see the King Tut exhibit. Instead I stayed home and danced like Steve Martin, which was much less satisfying. So, two or three years later when the Met had an exhibit of Alexander the Great's treasures, either I was old enough (12) or had made my mother feel guilty enough or she had realized that we had missed out on a once-in-a-several-lifetimes' chance and didn't want to repeat that mistake.

Alexander wasn't quite Tut, but he got me to New York City with my mother and grandmother on some sort of museum-sponsored bus tour. I remember lots of silver, crowds, and that the cafeteria no longer had the fountain I had expected from The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I went once in tenth grade with my history class--maybe to the Met and certainly to St. Patrick's Cathedral--and twice in twelfth grade, with my economics class (same teacher) and to spend Thanksgiving with PSA. The summer after twelfth grade, ASZ met me in Penn Station and introduced me to Whack-a-Mole before we traipsed chez him and thence to the Moody Blues at Jones Beach. My friends and I went down for a day during winter break freshling year, Bleecker Street and Tower Records (I bought an Iggy Pop and a Spyro Gyra album) and SoHo. Junior year I went to spend the day with PSA and I probably made us go to the Met again. At the end of junior year, I went with NCS, his mother, and his brother, to see "Cats," of which more later; that summer he and I went again because one of us had delusions about being able to see "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the Park. He and I might have gone a few other times. SSP and I went once with friends--to the Met. It's big, okay? In 1992, Medieval Studies (and I) journeyed to the Cloisters (also part of the Met). Then the frigid weekend in 1995. Glory, that's maybe a dozen times.

So anyway. RDC used to go to New York the way I went to Boston. He misses it. I really want to see "Metamorphoses," plus I barely know the city at all. I would love to go to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, both on our list. Also, if we saw our families, or particularly if I saw my mother, over Thanksgiving, I would hope to divert some of her guilt-tripping over never going home for Christmas.

And this time, if we go, I would have better clothes, for both City warmth and dress up.

Last winter I unearthed a silk or faux silk scarf from a drawer and wore it around my neck under my woolen overcoat, with my Nisou-scarf still wrapped around my collar. It was, I realized, the first time I had worn that scarf since 1989. When NCS gave me tickets to "Cats" for my 21st birthday, that was all well and good if you (and he) forgot that I had broken up with him between their purchase and the event. Besides all that, which story is elsewhere, I had no clothing suitable for a theatre evening (and yes, I did call "Cats" theatre. What did I know?)

Freshling year, I saw two of my hallmates at a play at the campus theatre. I was probably in a skirt, but what I remember is being surprised and impressed that these two 18-year-olds--from small towns and working-class families like mine--had occasion or funds for little black dresses. Two years later, going to New York for an evening out, I still had neither a Little Black nor any other suitable dress. I wore a long straight black jersey skirt and a long-sleeved white t-shirt and that purple scarf, obtained probably from the Hoot, the only interesting store in a 20-miles radius around UConn, wrapped around my waist as a sash. That was the extent of my sartorial inventiveness.

(The following summer, I happened across a Little Black Dress. It works.)

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Earlier this week it was so cold I started thinking Yule and had to stop making cards to carve my pumpkin. I wanted to find new stamps for cards, but the only new one I have is a dove carrying an olive branch (Mr. Collins Jr.) Instead I am using previous years' cards. If there's writing on the front flap of a card, I keep the whole thing. Otherwise I just keep the back. Yes, I have your signature from umpteen years ago. Sometimes the whole front works, mounted on other cards; sometimes I can do a collage. I think the top left card was from Melissa.

Also, way too early, I am listening to a mess of carols I've stolen this year, culling the bad versions of each (easy) hoping to find a good one (hard) to make a decent collection. I conceived of this project as a present for my sister, and so it shall be. But I'm making myself a copy too.

There are a staggering number of bad versions of carols. I complained about this last year, before I borrowed, over time, a score or more albums from the library. I have six versions of "Away in a Manger" and they're all Wrong. November is too early to listen to them, just as January was too late. But if I don't start this now I won't have it done in time.

Speaking of Wrong. The Sewell cover of The Long Winter puts Ma in an upholstered chair, which is one thing, but worse it puts the fiddle in Pa's hands. Um, no.

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So it's been taking me months to get through The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Why? Laziness, mostly; also, partly, The Lives of Christopher Chant, The Magicians of Caprona, Steps Out of Time, Empty World, and Carnivorous Carnival. I would have enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones more as a child. Steps I wanted to find mostly because I couldn't remember it. Back in August, I submitted a query to Loganberry Books; in October someone posted an author and a title and I immediately found it on Amazon. It wasn't a favorite, but my peace of mind was worth a few dollars.

What a cheesy book. How the mist is able to change the time is not important, I know. Why he needs to travel through time is. Whatever. It's another time-travel book, and I loved those. Can I Get There by Candlelight? I wanted for the time travel, not for the pony.

And Empty World. I've really got to get my hands on the Tripods trilogy, which I also liked but which scared me. Whereas being one of a very few survivors of a plague on humans was apparently a theme I could reread with impunity as an adolescent. Me and The Stand. I still like World but since John Christopher is famous only for Tripods I really should give them another go.

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Did I mention Blake is going through a late moult? I hope he is now over the worst of the shedding, but his neck (the one approved buddy-petting spot) is like a porcupine's. The only two tail feathers he dropped were the two center ones, longer than the others and covering them when the tail is folded. When they were both out, the stiff undertail feathers that support the whole structure poked up between the two sets of five feathers on either side, giving Blake a d.a. Now those longest ones are growing in. They're significantly lighter than the others but not long or wide yet. Poor little guy.

At least it's been warmer. He hasn't wanted to look out either of his windows--this is the tiled kitchen windowsill--for a week. It got all the way up to 34 today and was wonderfully sunny. It wasn't the additional 15 degrees of air temperature but the sun that made the house comfortable today. Blake begged for the living room windowsill and stood on the metal latch, which radiated heat in the sun, and got caught up on the neighborhood gossip.