Saturday, December 31, 2005

hi ho hi ho

I’ll be needing a job soon. Not so much for money, though pocket change is nothing to sneeze at. I cannot assume I’ll ever make money writing, though write I must, and it’s quite certain that no-one will pay me for playing fiddle or whistle. As far as I know, there is no money to be had in being a student of languages, or a crossword puzzler, so fortunately, no, it is not so much about the money.

It’s about being in the world. I’m noticing that my kids are getting pretty grown up pretty fast. As their explorations become outwardly focused I’m standing here thinking you can’t leave me here in this stinking house! Houses are boring!

I’m not sure where I will go for a job. Maybe a music shop. I’ve thought about even fixing lattes. I just need to see and interact with real live people on a regular basis, and with some continuity.

It kind of stinks that there’s no branch of Lark in the Morning in Annapolis, or on the East Coast for that matter. And I’m still kind of hoping that the cosmos will drop a “help wanted” clipping on my head so the direction to go will be obvious. But I’m afraid that, as usual, I’ll have to suck it up and figure this one out on my own.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

not for really religious people

Narnia did make me think. It was, all in all, a pretty good flick. As one who has read much by and about C.S. Lewis, I could not separate my awareness of the story’s Christian underpinnings from my viewing experience, so I was forced, as always, to confront my discomfort with what many consider fundamentals of Christian ideology.

In particular, the notion, beloved by many Bible thumpers, that that which we call God requires a blood sacrifice as due payment for human foibles. (Hence, of course, if you follow this line of thinking, Jesus stepping in as the killee.)

I’ve had some pretty good talks with that which I think of as god in my lifetime, and have never gotten a sense of its being that sort of blood-demanding tribal chief. But the language of the film’s analogy got me to thinking. (I’ll note that I was a great fan of the books as a young adolescent and read them all, despite my mild annoyance at the way Lewis glibly and callously wrote Susan out of the story toward the end.)

When young Edmund, one of the four principle Narnia kids, screws up big time, the bad witch points out to Aslan the lion (the Jesus counterpart) that there is “deep magic” in the land which dictates that Edmund’s life/blood/what-have-you now belongs to her, and it is for this reason that Aslan arranges to sub for Ed on the chopping block.

This is why allegorical stories can be a fine thing. They give you another vista on an archetypical theme. So in Narnia, the thing that’s going to get you is deep magic. What might that translate into in the universe as we know it? I honestly cannot envision a deity standing there, foaming at the mouth, as it demands blood be spilled because you stuck those lifesavers in your pocket (without paying) when you were seven. If the archetype of sacrifice works for so many people of religion there has to be a less primitive explanation.

I would suggest this: The human is a rare beast in its existential self-awareness. I have walked through (for example) the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and felt the weight of human guilt on my shoulders, and I’ve no doubt that many of my species have also experienced similar guilty pain at their awareness of the depths of atrocity to which people can sink. If the sacrifice archetype works for you maybe it’s because you yourself need someone to say “It’s ok, you can let go of the guilt,” and maybe, if you’re of the Christian persuasion, the person of Jesus fills the bill. I think we sear the red A for Accountable into our own forearms with a hot iron. Nobody named God condemned you to death.

Personally, I have no particular conviction that Jesus was actually thinking of this stuff when he was executed for what looked pretty much like political reasons. But I have a sort of sense that like the ten avatars of Vishnu, god can fill a great variety of needs, and for someone in need of salvation theology, god can be that shape.

Monday, December 26, 2005

bleeping beep

It is one of the inexplicable but inarguable givens of living in this house that things won’t work right. For the last few months it has been (among other things) the refrigerator. This is a big hulking hulk of a fridge. You could not go to Sears and find a reasonably priced model to fill the gap it will leave if I give the executive order for its condemnation. I do not like it beeping at me. There are enough things that beep at me. The oven beeps when you set the timer. It beeps when it finishes preheating. The dishwasher more than beeps. It sings--in beeps--when you open it. It sings--in beeps--when you change its settings. It beeps when you start it. So I really don’t need to be beeped at by the fridge. Because there are, as I’ve stated, enough beeps, and because it’s trying to alert me to the fact that it doesn’t work. Shut up I tell it. I don’t want to know that the fridge is running at 43 F and the freezer at 16. I push buttons (which beep) and insist that it go back to 37 and 0. It doesn’t believe me and beeps back. I turn it off, hoping that a brief respite from electricity may make it forget that it was acting up, and it will return to normal fridge behavior when I push the on button (to much beeping) again. That actually worked for a couple months. Today it just beeps. Three beeps actually. beebeebeep. A third repair company is coming Thursday. The first two didn’t fix it right even though they thought they did. I doubt if a more clever muse of circuitry will follow repairman #3 in the door. I do not want to buy something that would fill the gaping hole that fridge would leave. But I might have to.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Looking

I really did it for myself anyway. Pulling pics out of photo albums that date back to 1984--ones that he was in. Pics which I could see him in and remember what 100% looked like and felt like. I squished into the chair beside him, and showed them to him. I had the stupid magic idea that he’d see himself and things would clear up like the fog of amnesia lifting. He said, “That’s your brother.” I said, “No, that’s you.” He said, “Who’s that? Becca?” “No, it’s Olivia.” He remembered lots of things, but not, I guess, what it was like to see through those eyes in the pictures. “Thanks for showing me those,” he said.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Great house--free to good home

In my dream I suddenly found myself to be the free and clear owner of a lovely, clean, light-filled house (for the purposes of the dream, my sister had given it to me--but I don’t think that was relevent in the interpretive sense,) and the thing is, I didn’t want it.

Why am I supposed to want this house,I thought to myself, and what am I supposed to do with it? I was quite certain that my real life was somewhere out there--as in not in that house--and staying there, keeping it, would be an impediment. But not to worry--it was just a weird dream.

Friday, December 16, 2005

games and monsters

Of course I want to run away from the beast. It’s not a pretty animal. And it’s certainly not a member of a species I ever had thoughts of engaging, or would have wanted to engage had I known about its existence. But, the bummer--if it is a bummer, because bummer may just be the word I’m applying...one girl’s bummer may be another girl’s dream come true--the bummer is that it’s mine, and I’ve got to figure out how to wrestle it.
Or, to completely change metaphors midstream--What if you spent 20 years playing a really cool game of Parcheesi, and they suddenly yank the gameboard out from under the pieces, slip in a Monopoly board instead, and insist you go on playing as if nothing weird had happened? (So far my best guess is you learn to play Monopoly, even if you never really liked it.)

Thursday, December 08, 2005

good stuff to drink

Here’s an ailment that doesn’t play fair: Parkinson’s disease. So now they’re telling me that fewer years of education and a smoking habit lower your risk? I don’t think the news will induce me to stop studying Spanish, but perhaps I’ll jog the stairs with greater diligence, and...

...keep up the coffee habit. It’s encouraging that something so decadently addictive has Parkinson’s inhibiting properties in addition to its growing reputation for being chock full of antioxidants. Yum to coffee. And cheers to the nightly glass of vino.

Friday, November 18, 2005

back to fiddling.

The pursuit of a working fiddle has taken me to some interesting places. This summer it was the third floor of Lexington and Calvert, downtown Baltimore, to the Perrins’ violin shop--a bank headquarters in its former life, where now the walk-in safes in every room house spare pegs and bows. The Perrins guys gave me a nice fiddle set-up, for which I paid nice fiddle set-up rates--but still I had problems.

When, after a couple months of cranking out the five tunes I’ve learned well enough to not break your ears, my E and A pegs reverted to shameless and relentless slipping, I decided to try something else. I called Thomas Melton, whom I’d gotten wind of via the Acousticopia music shop in Annapolis.

It was a forty-five minute drive south, to a cul-de-sac at the tip of Churchton, Maryland, where the Chesapeake Bay took off in every direction but west. My sad fiddle and I walked into a cluster of houses and outbuildings where a back stair led to Melton’s second-floor shop.

Retired in name only, Thomas Melton has done well enough in construction to feed his hobby/business/obsession with violins. He also makes hand-turned wooden bowls, waterfowl decoys, and goes rockfish fishing in the Bay--interests which were all reflected in the tools and artifacts covering every spare inch of his shop.

It seemed that the Perrins guys hadn’t thought to clean out the 150+ years of rosin, oil, and peg dope which were gunking the insides of my peg holes. Melton did it, then rummaged through a drawer which must have represented a 200 year history of fiddle pegs, before finding me an E peg fat enough for my fiddle’s old holes. He noted that my chin rest was not only higher than average, but seemed to do me no good at all based on my hold, and traded me for something more suitable. I bought a shoulder rest that he had on hand, having never much liked my old standard-issue music student model, and he got me put back together and, at least for the moment, in tune.

He does it for fun, not money, which was evidenced by his charging me 25 bucks for some careful, meticulous work, and even then instructing that I should tell him if that was too much. It wasn’t. He has numerous music teachers who are both friends and customers to whom he’ll donate half and three-quarter-sized violins he’s acquired and patched up, when they have eager but needy pupils. I’m glad I met him.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

The earth is not always firm

When life takes off in a direction that runs contrary to assumptions you’ve held for years, it can take a really long time to adjust. Especially if you’ve had a shaky sense of self-definition all along.

Oh, and here's a problem with shaky senses of self-definition: I just picked up a Title Nine catalog. I basically like Title Nine stuff even though I don't need rock-climbing clothes. The catalog is sprinkled with vignettes featuring real-people models engaged in active pursuits while spiffily clad in Title Nine items.

This is typical of the profiles they print under the pics: "Juliska weaves prairie grasses into her own line of sleepwear while teaching Mandarin Chinese to her two toddlers. She enjoys striving for her personal best in 20K marathons, and leads yoga classes for the NYPD in her spare time." Sometimes I want to look at the clothes, and sometimes I want to take a bottle-opener to Juliska's stylin' spandex britches.

I guess I could be a Title Nine model. I would wear whatever they told me to, and the caption would read thusly: "Emily sucks dog fur out of corners while trying to convince her kids that she really didn't fix anything for dinner. She can dodge a teenage verbal zinger clocked at 60mph while hurdling a chopsaw. Her personal motto is 'get your own spoon.'"

Clements' EZ Park

There’s a small sedan blocking our front walkway and paperbox today. While I appreciate that the guests at the neighbor kid’s beer blast didn’t encroach on our yard, being three feet into the road makes the car an easy target for sideswipes. And as our entire front footage was parked in last night, I’ve been mighty tempted to re-institute our “Welcome to EZ Park--25cents/hour for pretty cars, 75cents/hour for ugly cars” tickets. (Plus, these guys should be charged extra for Jeff picking up their empty Bud Light cans.) I think it’s that we’re the people on the block least likely to get petty about sacrificing our border to other people’s parties. And I don’t want to be petty, but I’ve been trying to think of a humorous way to suggest that they might not want to leave the car there all weekend.

a dog walk

In the true spirit of a blog, here are a few themeless rambles.


Fred-fred and I took a very nice walk today. Odd, that since I live two blocks from Severn School, I’ve never seen the new academic buildings from closer than across the football field. Now, the fact that I don’t send my kids to the local private prep school is a matter of philosophy, economics, and handy public schools which are, all in all, not bad.

Still, I’ve continued to think about it as if it were the same venerable institution with creaky, ivy covered buildings. It’s not. Wow. Someone’s Harvard endowment contribution must’ve taken a wrong turn in New Jersey and ended up funding a couple academic buildings worthy of Bill Gates. The buildings are huge, the lounges are college caliber, the lunch room is enormous. And get this--there’s a pendulum in the entry way. That’s right. A big one too. Swinging from a ceiling 3 stories up. Severn School thinks its the Smithsonian now.

And then I noticed this plaque on one of the brick columned colonnades connecting an old building to the mega-new one. A plaque stating that the colonnade was a gift of--people I know. People whose kid Gabe used to go to school with at Summit. A kid whom he still considers a friend despite the fact that his attempts to interest this kid in a get-together over the past couple years have not panned out. Which I’m ok with since every time I used to have to wait at the electronic community gate to transport him to their chateau I was gripped by an unattractive surge of counter-snobbery and wanted to say to the speaker-box “No thank you--I’d best send Gabe up to entertain your child while I wait here so as not to bring cooties into the neighborhood.”

The truth is, they’ve never behaved snobbily toward me, nor has anyone else who sends kids to prep school--I must just get some kind of weird kick from playing inadequacy mind games.

Friday, October 28, 2005

can you think?

Remember these three words: Apple. Nine. Climb...Spell “world.” Now spell “world” backwards...Start at 100 and count backward by 7’s...Take your left thumb, place it on your right ear, and stick out your tongue...Copy this figure on paper. (um...it’s 2 interlocking pentagons.)...What were those three words again? Howl at the moon. Draw a diagram of the Nordstrom shoe department. Assign new names to the Gods of Olympus. Spell your mother’s maiden name in Pig Latin. Go home with a big headache. (The three words, by the way, were Lemon, pi, and soup.)

Sunday, September 18, 2005

somewhere else

I believe that I want a small, in-town house with at most a postage stamp of a yard. Lawns are for gardening hobbyists or the commited suburbanite. I am neither.


In fact, I’m experiencing a huge resistance to the suburban life. It’s for other people. People who like external socializing. People for whom that’s easy. People who want to be hostesses, or whose needs are so met by their nuclear family unit that they don’t need to see and hear passersby just to know they’re not alone.


Olde Severna Park kind of fools me. I can walk up Riggs Avenue or Avondale Circle and almost pretend that if I turned around and went the other way that there would be a welcome busyness, the hum of commerce, and people to see in action. Then, my street could be the place of quiet escape..


I think suburbs are designed to isolate people. I’ve also read that introverts only make up 15% of the human population, which means that, for many or most other people this isolation is not troublesome--they will find a way to connect because they are natural connectors..


But I’m not. So I want to run away and join the town.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Out of Body

I put on my usual chipper morning face.
The bearded cowboy on the tv says “Yew don’t recall ‘im? Or yew don’t wanna recall ‘im?”
Jeff has been up since whenever, as he does not have a circadian rhythm.
“What you watching?” I say. I’m friendly. It’s supposed to show.
“Um, actually it’s not a movie, it’s Gunsmoke,” says Jeff.
I didn’t ask if it was a movie.
“Can you tell I’m trying to be extra friendly to help you feel good?” I ask. In a friendly way.
“Oh,” says Jeff. “Ok.” He shuffles upstairs for today’s 6:15 am bedtime. Gunsmoke was evidently not all that compelling.
Becca and Olivia have actually woken to their alarms. Olivia makes only one reference to wanting to punch somebody, so I take her stress level to be low today. Becca breezes through, makes some toast and jam, has it all together. Her hair is floofed. She is Marilyn among the Munsters, with one exception: Sometimes she gets embarrassed by us.
Gabe, at my urging, staggers into the shower for a nap. After I bang on the door 5 or 6 times and say “wash your hair,” he stumbles out and scarfs some Honey Bunches of Oats. Then he squishes the dog into the corner of the couch. He is trying to occupy the same cubic footage as the dog. He is trying to defy the laws of physics and the dog knows it.
“I had an out of body experience in math yesterday,” says Gabe. Yesterday was the first day of school. It’s his last year in this school. Next year--high school. Of some sort. I’m not sure I want to be hearing about out of body experiences in math class.
“Do you think you could save out of body experiences for lunch or recess?” I ask. I’m silly. He tells me, and I already knew this, that you can’t control out of body experiences.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Good thing they can't fire me.

Two of Rachel’s friends from St. Mary’s stopped by here with her briefly yesterday, after a day in Annapolis. I don’t know why this kind of situation can make me feel so ill at ease--it’s related somehow to my domestic misfit syndrome.
One of the nice young ladies said “you have a lovely home.” Luckily, I knew the correct response and replied “thanks,” even though I was thinking something like this: Why would you say that to me? Do I look like the kind of person who would have a lovely home? Do I in any way resemble Martha Stewart? Is it not obvious that my rightful habitat would be a barn?

It’s probably good that I didn’t say those things. It might have confused them. They, after all, were following the script, and I was off on a wild tangential head trip. And I think I displayed ample awkwardness as the 3 of them (2 friends + Rachel) sat at the kitchen counter munching tortilla chips and hummus while I sauteed chard, Olivia made mac and cheese, Jeff pulled a Flatbread pizza out of the freezer, while I apologized for the fact that “we don’t really fix dinner here--we just kind of randomly eat stuff.

Gadzooks. Any reasonable mom of teens would be able to offer something on the spot. I think it didn’t matter. I think they’d eaten and snacked in town and weren’t really hankering for a mom-figure to lay out a repast.

And then they got ready to leave. The other nice young lady made a point of sticking her head in the kitchen to say “Thanks for having us.” I was thinking: Having you? I didn’t even do anything. I didn’t even get you a drink. (Luckily Rachel did!) You must have a real professional mother at your house who taught you what to say...which means--yikes! You know a bogus imposter when you see one! But I didn’t say that. I think I said something like “sure.”

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

I am Salieri.

I'm several chapters into book #3, and my confidence and resolve flag with distressing regularity. Is it the right project? Does it stink as much as everything leading up to it? Unanswerable questions. There's a faction that has suggested I stick to essays, but I don't have an essay project clinging tenaciously to my brain the way the story does. All signs, all portents, all the cosmic nods which I've so annoyingly requested have pointed to this ridiculous effort to channel Roald Dahl. Or something like that.

So I'm at it. Because to not be at it guarantees that my comfort with life will tank. Weird process. It's so easy to be distracted. Often, I would vastly rather squeak out a few tunes on the fiddle. And I wouldn't rather clean the bathroom, or see to it that there's food in the house, but those are necessities and hard to ignore.

Here are two categories of people whom I envy.
Category #1: J.K. Rowling
Category #2: Anyone who is engaged in a pursuit which keeps them calm and satisfied.

The thing is, I have never had an avocation for which I have received so many...as I've said--cosmic nods...as this book thing. I have also never wanted a job in the way that I want the writer job. Never ever. And I've wanted to want something. This is the only thing that's ever been right.

So I do feel--and this is kind of stupid, but I'm serious--I do feel that to continue charging at the gates of publishing success is one of my purposes for now. However, this conviction does not keep me from railing at the Cosmos for assigning me a task for which I feel completely inadequate. I mean, cripes, if I must feel compelled to write, at least send me a gifted muse. Instead, I got Clarence the crappy muse, and it's up to me to try to earn him his wings since he clearly is a muse in name only.

Thanks HAL.

So today we did it. Both our local McD's have recently sprouted red kiosks on their fronts, and today we rented "Ice Princess" from the Redbox DVD automated rental station. Seems a decent deal at a buck a night, and is a pretty slick process if you can overlook that you have to touch a screen all sullied by deep-fry grease fingerprints. It's basically a big atm that spits out your selection in a tougher than average case, and will, theoretically, suck it back up tomorrow. Ah, the joys of automation.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

baseline middling

There's something I've noticed. And I'll comment on it because of a couple things--One is that there's at least one person who finds my musings dismayingly negative. The other thing is an observation made by Rachel. She asked whether I used to enjoy the process of getting several small children ready for and into bed. (She was asking, I think, to compare her feelings about babysitting smalls--mainly positive feelings-- to how it was for me.)
I responded that I "kind of liked it. " She then correctly observed that for me to make that statement was the equivalent of her saying "I really, really love it!"
And I think it's true that I am given to understatement, even when I find something gratifying. The flip side of the 45 is that if my tone seems to be hovering a bit below neutral, this is unlikely to be indicative of serious negativity. Or at least not anything I'm wallowing in. Don't like wallowing. Maybe I can relate to Lou Grant when he told Mary that her first try at producing the news herself "didn't stink." Mary, of course, knew this was high praise and took it as such.
Anyway, go here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/peachkabob/ if you've an appetite for effusive enthusiasm. It is fortunate that curmudgeonliness is not always inherited!
(I'll get back to that thing about meaningfulness soon...)

You Don't Pick

There are people in my life.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sometimes I would have the people be another way. Or at least I think I would. Maybe.


Here’s one: This guy can annoy. I would say that he does it without half trying but I think he often does try, and more than half. Probably 3/4 or better. You cannot tell him anything. You are wrong, I’ll just let you in on that right off the bat. If you are silly, you can try to tell him that he probably can’t build a robot out of random parts he’s extracted from what used to be a functional clock radio and a broken telephone. You can try to tell him that it would take years of studying before he’d even know where to start, but, as I’ve already informed you--you’re wrong. At the moment I’m trying to get this guy to write a good paragraph on the conflicts found in the storyline of The Golden Compass. He is on refreshing break number 10.


(edited out a part here. Just because. There are things you should say, and things maybe you shouldn't say. ) I had a little online tarot reading recently, that spoke to [the edited out thing] with unexpected clarity. A great deal more clarity than my memory, in fact, but it said something like this:


I had 10 jars, all full. I’m not sure what they were full of but it was something good--it was the essence of goodness. Several spilled. Dumped. Gone. I have maybe five or six left. The reading went on to advise that I make the most of the remaining jars as opposed to going all cranky about how I used to have 10.
Anyway, if I want to personally extend the metaphor, I’d say that I have quite a few other types of vessels as well, in addition to those jars. I’ve got some amphoras, several pitchers, a number of coffee cups, and quite a bit of tupperware as well. All the more reason not to make life a shrine to the spilled jars.


So, I said I would have people be another way. But then I’d have to be able to suggest an alternate storyline. Which means it would be boring, and most likely trite. Which is another subject.
(next: My damnable need to have a meaningful life, as defined by my personal, inadequate comprehension of meaningfulness.)

Sunday, June 05, 2005

something fishy

With a pet-load of 4 cats and a dog, and a houseful of bipeds who haven’t evolved too far from our Cro-Magnon days, I’ve seriously resisted all new pet entreaties.
But there wasn’t much I could do when the college freshman came home for the summer with two goldfish in a tupperware tank...refugees from the St. Mary’s bio lab where their alternate destiny was to serve as hors d’oeuvres for the big fish.

Rachel calls them Barbie and Tip. I prefer to think of them as Audrey and Audrey II. It’s not that they actually have audible voices, but their attitude, every time I walk into the room screams “FEED ME!” (This is not supposed to be my problem, but Rachel has approximately 3012 friends, all of whom must be visited during the next 2 months, so I’ve inherited fish feeding detail as often as I might have guessed it would happen.)


Barbie, (or Audrey,) is actually fortunate to be around to scarf the yummy goldfish flakes at all, seeing as how she decided, on day two of her residency here, to take a swan dive out of the tupperware. She owes her life to Freddi the dog, whose barking and sniffing alerted Olivia to the orange and seemingly lifeless body on the floor. I picked her up in tissue, in a quandary as to what to do next with Rachel still asleep, when the fish wiggled and I hastily redeposited her in the water.

Since then we’ve acquired a small tank with a safety lid, and a couple types of fish antibiotics to treat the black splotch disease which indubitably the little piscean’s near death experience made her more susceptible too.
But all’s cool now, if only I can resist those little sucky mouths making o’s at me through the tank walls every time I go in the room.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

offering

A week into May, nine letters left my house. Some were one-page queries, several included 3 short chapters, and a couple packed the whole 87 pages of the breathtaking work of fiction Breakfast of Scallywags.


Ok, I’m overstating the breathtaking part by a sizable margin. Truth is, it’s a pretty silly little yarn. More of the truth is, that if it weren’t for encouraging words from a couple of the girls around here, those nine letters might never have happened.


Completely truthfully, I only cranked out the full 87 pages by dint of stubbornness. There was the one of me who didn’t believe in the project at all--the me who wholeheartedly loves the cast and crew of my completely unsuitable-for-commercial-publication first book, The Legend of Logjam, and has never felt the same level of devotion to Fay LaFarge and Barnaby Hootsman--hero and anti-hero of Scallywags.


So, that I submitted at all is due to the prodding of the me who knew very well that, regardless of my personal “belief” in the project, there was value and integrity in seeing it through to completion.


So I completed it. And those nine letters were more or less an ethereal offering to the Universe. An offering. Not something from which you expect a tangible return. Maybe some kind of karmic harmonious (but undefinable,) return will cast a beneficial glow on some aspect of my life sometime somehow.
The first envelope, immediately recognizable because it bears my own handwriting, came today. Surprisingly fast, but Clarion is huge and can process thousands of submissions deftly and efficiently.


I was curious at how little I cared. Maybe I’ll care more as the other eight trickle in. But I might not. It was a little heartbreaking when I had to acknowledge that Logjam was unfit for the market--because I cared so much about it, and wrote it with a sense of destiny and conviction. A sense that was missing as I wrote Scallywags. Scallywags is an offering. May the Universe treat it kindly, and may I continue to feel completely zen about whatever form that kindness takes.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

carpool buzz

The most interesting characters I can think of are the ones I really know. I itch to spoof them. And it wouldn’t even be a spoof. The truth, possibly condensed but completely unvarnished, would be more entertaining, more poignant, and better than anything I could concoct.

But I fear that condensing the truth could be construed as not nice. So most people I’ll leave alone. But not my carpool.

Typical (30 minute) ride to Gabe’s school with a handful of 10 to 14 year olds:


Austin: Oh! I just saw Gore-bath City! It was the cooooooooolest movie ever! It was sooooooo inappropriate! Mrs. Clement! You’ve gotta let Gabe see Gore-bath City!

Me: I doubt it.

Gabe: (mumbling, his nose firmly planted in a fantasy novel) No thanks, I don’t like movies with slow-moving zombies.

Sandy: I hate Miss Snarfpooper!(Sandy has creatively altered the last 2 syllables of the teacher’s name.) She’s such a pooper! She gave me sooo much homework!

Riggs: (whose regulation khakis and polo shirt are completely obscured by a camouflage hat and camouflage jacket with military patches all over it)Hey Austin! Have you heard they’ve come out with G.I.Blastemup for PS2?

Austin: That came out 3 weeks ago! Everybody already knows that!

Robert: That game’s lame anyway. It doesn’t even let you snipe.

Austin: I know! Evilness of the Dead Dudes is SO MUCH better! Gabe, do you have Evilness of the Dead Dudes?

Gabe: I don’t like games with slow-moving zombies.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

ghost

The post that lived here was about opening the window and screaming.
But then you shut the window, and begin to sort of hope that not too many people heard that scream. But at the time, it just needed out.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

¿Sabes por quĂ©?

I don’t think we were Pleasantville on purpose. I don’t think any of the teachers I had, as I grew up in Anne Arundel County public schools, or the administrators, planned, as part of a calculated agenda, to pretend the continent south of us didn’t exist.

I guess, at the time, it was commonly assumed that European history was more, I don’t know..., relevant for a bunch of kids who were all descended from European immigrants. (You mean we weren’t all? Well, yes, there were a few darker complexions, and some funky last names ending in vowels--but that didn’t count, did it?)

I guess we talked about England because maybe they seemed the most like us, and then there was that whole business with Johnny Tremain, minutemen, and wet tea, so it was hard to exclude England. It was ok to talk about Greece and Rome too, because they did stuff like invent the architecture we used for our big buildings, and think up the Olympics.

But I can scarcely think of a reference to Central or South America prior to A.P.U.S. History and the Panama Canal.

Obviously, now, in the 21st C., Pleasantville’s plastic picket fence has been cracked in a few places. And I’ve stopped and looked around, and found--to my pleasure--that it’s really not unpleasant at all. There are lots of people around here who speak Spanish. That’s a big reason I’m trying to learn it. And though we don’t seem to be able to give more than a cursory glance to cultural issues in my clase de Español, I enjoy the textbook--primarily because of the snippets of insight into Latin American culture which were completely invisible in my childhood education, despite the relative geographic proximity of those cultures.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Shake, Rattle, and (with luck) Roll.

Before you can teach a kid to drive a clutch you have to observe your own techniques more closely than usual--that which you do instinctively may not be something you’ve broken down into its component parts lately.


It took me a bombed session or two with the first kid before I observed myself.
Now I’ve learned to describe the technique as a subtle balance between pressing the accelerator and releasing the clutch. Have you ever noticed? It’s the clutch which controls your initial acceleration in first gear--not the gas.


Daughter #1 got the hang of it, and was turned loose once she’d passed “The Hill.” That’s a rite of passage where we start at the bottom of an abandoned marina driveway and climb up, in 20 foot increments, starting on a significant incline each time.


Daughter #2 was somewhat vexed by my dogged insistance that our “extra car” must be a stick--but given a choice between Little Blue--the manual transmission Subaru Outback, and a clunky, dinged minivan, her motivation to learn has materialized.


Our first session today was, well, not half bad. A big point I’ll need to make tomorrow is that if you’re off to a shaky start, you need to hit the clutch again before the car’s tremors hit 8 on the Richter scale. I’m hoping the Community College will be sufficiently neglected by its often obnoxious Public Safety dudes tomorrow--Easter Sunday, that we can take advantage of the emptiness to actually hit 3rd gear a few times. Our local community is, unfortunately for this pursuit, too hilly and curvy to get an inexperienced shifter out of 2nd.


And then--The Hill. After which, the spouse gets his dinged minivan back.

Monday, March 21, 2005

raining, pouring

Our house in Baltimore had some leaky roof problems. In fact, in our entire history of renovating properties, leaking roofs have been the bane of our existence. All of this reached a horrifying climax in our nine months of rooflessness here on Avondale Circle. Nine months. 25 plastic garbage cans. 5 rooms with caved ceilings. And a few more giant steps toward either total insanity or the placidity of a cow eating clover. (not sure which, but then, neither is the cow.)
Now we have a roof which is so uber-engineered that it not only won’t leak, it would most likely survive a nuclear detonation. So, no more leaks, right? Wrong. Water doesn’t have to be rain. It can come from your very own kids’ shower head. And your very own tile, that you installed (inexpertly) your very own self is even more vulnerable to failure than any old roof shingles. Tupperware, and and a fortuitously unfinished kitchen ceiling are handling the problem for now. I hope some generously applied marine caulk will handle it for later. But someday, I hope to know--what is the cosmic significance of water, falling where one doesn’t want it? There’s got to be a metaphor in there somewhere.

Friday, March 18, 2005

frankly...

I envy people who are in a position to say whatever's on their minds...well, at least a little. I guess the Pope can't, and most politicians shouldn't, even though they might. Young people, maybe, can blog with more abandon, because the children they'll later embarrass or screw up aren't around yet, so you don't notice them.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

La casa loca

Fredfred the dog is very happy to be downstairs, finally. It’s been her unfortunate lot to be confined in Olivia’s room from 7:30 to 3:30 daily this week.
The good news is that this means we have a construction crew at work on the family room, and we presume that they do not fancy nips in the fanny.

Sadly, the cats find that the positioning of their cage in the kitchen is as unsatisfying to their sense of feng shui as it is to mine, but it will be returned to its place by the sunny family room window sooner or later, and anyway, if you’re the sort of creature who pees indiscriminantly you’ve pretty much signed away your two-cents in the interior design scheme.

The fact that we have construction hirees at all is the result of an intervention of sorts--in this case it was 3 of Jeff’s siblings who felt compelled to confront him. “Face it bro’,” they said, “you’re a bite-off-more-than-you-can chew-aholic, and you’re asphyxiating yourself. Furthermore, we’re afraid your saintly, albeit somewhat cranky, wife will give you the heave-ho sooner or later and we don’t want to take you in. Heaven knows, we’ve got enough personality quirks of our own without having you honking on your saxophone in our basements.

(a quick aside about Jeff: he did not think it would be that much trouble to live in a house with no roof for 9 months, catching the rain in 30 garbage cans. He does not think it would be that much trouble to dredge down to the Severn River to create our own Fallingwater, or import our own herd of buffalo so we can pretend we live on the great Plains. (One of these statements is true--you guess.) I have learned. Slowly, but I've learned. Now, this is as far as I'll compromise: We can hire a grizzled old cook whom we'll call "Hank," who will rustle him up some grub when he gets tired of Flatbread pizzas from the freezer.

So, Jeff has been strong-armed into a sensible, workable, kind of game plan. This does not, however, change the fact that I, as a matter of course, must still hide my hairbrush, my toothbrush, the kitchen broom, and my personal tools if I ever want to see them again. Additionally, I just ran a bright orange extension cord to the pc so Becca could do homework, since when Jeff unsuccessfully diddled with the light fixtures in the computer room today, he forgot to undiddle before he went to work.

Friday, March 04, 2005

not funny

I hate painting ceilings. Oh, I’ve got a pole all right, to stick my roller on, and it’s really not a tricky job in the technical sense, but all that looking up leaves me feeling in need of chiropractic help. I don’t blame Michelangelo at all for being agonized--I just wonder where the ecstasy came in.

I can’t update my blog because I don’t feel funny. At all. It’s not that I’m not as surrounded by the absurd as usual--I most certainly am. Why just this morning the circuit that the coffee maker’s plugged into decided, completely arbitrarily, to take a coffee break. I tracked it down pronto--it was the switch between the one that handles all our auxiliary oil radiators and the one that sends every clock-radio in the house into flashing seizures. But I could discern no reason for its lapse of work ethic. It’s possible that the ghost who hangs out by the basement stair when Jeff toots his saxophone got tired of waiting for him to get home from exercise class and threw the switch in protest.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Twist & Shout. Or Croak.

Two microphone Karaoke Revolution is the biggest pile of fun I’ve had with my kids all month. It’s true that not a one of us would make it through the first turnstile at American Idol. It’s also true that my pathetically obstructed larynx is hardly a pleasure to listen to. But I can consistently hit and sustain pitches, and frankly, that’s all the game really cares about.

True enough though, that the girls squeak by me in the “Oops I did it again” sing off, but don’t even try to outdo me when I’m being a Mama in “California Dreaming,” or blowing Sonny out of the water in “I Got You Babe.”

But they’re not impressed. They know they need only fire up the B-52’s “Love Shack,” and those notes will be like wet soap in my grip.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Efficiency?

I’m working on Gabe’s room.


I don’t know whether he’s accrued the average amount of clutter for a boy of almost thirteen, but a quick survey of his belongings suggests his thoughts are rarely organized.


I’m determined that the next time it falls to me to distill 2 gallons of Bionicles, a quart of army men, and a pint of marbles from 3 gallons of magic tricks and random flotsam...my default action will be to sweep them all into a bag bound for the curb.


The people I live with aren’t the tidiest, and sometimes I tell myself that the right application of efficient planning will encourage even these trogs, who seem to believe that all floors should be evenly fertilized with dirty socks, to put their stuff away.


So I have, all ready to assemble, a mondo-sized IKEA wardrobe, with doors--(doors that close)--behind which can be stashed baskets which’ll work like this:
One basket will hold underwear, another socks, another school uniform shirts...etc...and these items can all be thrown, into the baskets, with relatively careless abandon.


He has a dresser, but the drawers are small and hard to close. He has a closet, but there are multiple psycho-motor steps involved in using hangers. The purpose of the wardrobe will be to both organize and hide items of clothing which belong to someone with minimal neatness skills.


The minute I moved out of my mother’s house, I adopted a similar approach to most housekeeping chores. It is true that I knew how to make beds with hospital corners, but it was equally true that it seemed a pointless exercise in tedium. So I thought ahead, and the minute I had only myself to please, I bought a poofy comforter which, when spread out, handily camouflaged the hastily yanked up sheets below it. That’s still what I do.


Several years ago, I turned the kids loose with their own laundry. While the girls’ rooms may look disastrous, they appear to know which garments lie in balls beneath which dust bunnies. It seems they do laundry more out of desperation than a sense of order...but the girls keep smelling ok, so I don’t worry about it.


I confess that I help Gabe with laundry. Partly because his early efforts involved generous experimentation with liquid bleach, and partly because by the time I pin him to his homework chores, he’s used up the quotient of energy I have available for him. Oh, and partly because he wouldn’t care if he did stink. But the rest of us would.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Why I Have the Audacity.

I refer to myself as a writer. It may seem a highfalutin conceit to do so, in light of the fact that I have (thus far) one "published," as in print-on-demand book (which has raked in a grand total of $42,) a second completed manuscript which is floating around the house hoping to garner enough positive feedback that I'll have the heart to send it forth into the unkind abyss of editorial slush piles, and a hard drive full of silly columns, written for a variety of silly purposes.
So, I'm not Michael Crichton. Or Lemony Snicket. Or even Barbara Cartland(...pant pant...oh. Maybe you've never read her.)
But here's what it boils down to.
If I'm not working on a writing project I am miserable and anxious.
If I am working on a writing project, I feel grounded and sane.
Those are the facts, and, believe me, I've tested them.
If my compulsion was to apply acrylic paint to canvas, and I persisted in doing so without hope of compensation, could I call myself an artist?
If I tootled my whistle every Tuesday night with my friends in a rousing and jovial session, could I call myself a musician?
If my metabolic system didn't function without the regular addition of synthetic insulin, could I call myself a type 1 diabetic?
So, if I must write to keep my mood and sensibility stable, can I call myself a writer?
I think so anyway.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Dumber than average

I’m taking Spanish classes. Three cheers for geekdom. Have completed Le Fantome de l’Opera, and am reading Harry Potter a l’Ecole des Sorciers. (Four cheers for geekdom.) Might even take German in the Fall (will hold off on that fifth cheer until then.) Turns out I don’t have a sincere need for meaning in my life, merely a sincere need to be busy. Guess I’m shallow that way.
True to form, I managed to put my foot in my mouth at, literally, the first opportunity, in Spanish class. The weather had turned wintry foul, people were drifting in, chatting a bit. La profesor walks in 30 seconds late, and I say, (in a manner intended to be light and bantery,) “We thought we were going to have to elect a teacher!” It’s possible that I imagined she spent the next hour and a quarter glaring at me...I don’t know. Perhaps I can redeem myself through abject obsequiousness--I understand college teachers tend to appreciate we aged students. But sometimes I can’t tell whether they see me as an aged student, or as an ugly kid who hasn’t slept in 5 years.
‘Twas interesting that, at Gabe’s last two Kung Fu classes, I sat near another kid’s French au pair who was reading a novel in English while referring frequently to her Dictionnaire Francaise/Anglaise, as I read Harry Potter while referring with even greater frequency to my French/English Dictionary. Perhaps what I’m really doing is preparing for my next incarnation in which I will actually be fairly bright.

Friday, January 14, 2005

You do What?

So...what do you do?
The correct answer could be something like: “I run a muffler franchise,” or “I’m the scary desk person at a behemoth law firm,” or--my personal favorite, for its vagueness if for no other reason--”I’m a consultant.” (You have to say that with a confidant nod.)
I’m toying with a variety of other ways to fill the loaded silence that follows the well-meaning stranger’s query. It could be entertaining to lie.
“That depends on my next placement in the witness protection program--I can’t tell you yet.”
“I’m an assassin. Let me give you my card and some references.”
“I paint the boomerangs on laminate countertops. Business has been slow lately.”
Call me a goody two-shoes if that’s your inclination, or just leave my shoes out of it and scoff...but I’m a bad lier.
What I usually say is: “aaahhm...I kind of...do some...what did you say you do?” (This works best if you can suddenly drop your napkin on the floor, laugh lightly at your silliness, and duck under the table.)
The problem arises when there are no napkins. A truthful answer is the only way out.
“I’m a jill-of-all-trades, but strictly on a volunteer basis.”
“I put the home fires out.”
“I’m working my way out of a stressful but ultimately rewarding career in the multi-faceted field of child maintenance.”
“I’m a writer in the sense that I intrinsically believe myself to be a writer, much in the same way that someone with an painting habit might intrinsically believe herself to be an artist, due to the fact that she, does, in fact, creates works of art. Oh, whoopsie, did you drop your napkin?”
Perhaps the floor would stay cleaner if I just called myself a consultant.

Sunday, January 09, 2005

How to Not Know

The offsprings’ lives get bigger every day. More draws them into the world. Less compels them to say home. If they are with me, it’s for lack of a better offer, but the rolling snowball of independence is picking up speed and diameter. The writing is on the wall--or at least on the bumper of the car--and it gets straight to the point: I will, within a handful of years, have worked myself out of a job.
Initially, I was tickled and excited by the possibilities. But my wonderment at the opening doors has been muted a bit by the coincidental shrinking of my partner’s ability to wonder with me. (edit: this is improving...I think it is.)
I feel a lot of ways--ways that roll around and trip each other so that no single way of feeling can rise to an important enough position to demand attention.
I have no creditable career or function. Is it ok to become nothing more than a student of my own interests, or should I feel obligated to ferret out a useful position in society, even if such a forced search might lead to absolutely nothing?
Is it fair and honorable to live off the resources we have acquired over a couple decades, retire in effect, when the actual paid portion of the joint effort was carried out by the other? To be sure, I reared children through some mighty unpleasant conditions--conditions which might have been intolerable to many women--in order to facilitate both the earning of wages and the morphing of some abysmal real estate into lovely, inhabitable houses (while my own remained abysmal until recently.) It’s easy to forget, as the physical environment improves, that I did work long, hard, and patiently. (And there’s always the uncertainty of whether one’s “resources” are even stable, or whether they’ll be washed away like major portions of the southeast Asian coastline--and if that happened--oh well, at least necessity would dispatch confusion.)
One should feel useful. A sense of purpose is an essential amino acid, except, perhaps, to Nirvana-bent demigods, and I’m not one of those. But a sense of purpose cannot be plucked from the cosmic void--it has to come, I suppose, with experiential living and time. And maybe that is the answer. The living and time outlay which must be experienced before I’ve earned my next sense of purpose have not yet happened. I’m not done with offspring. Not quite yet. If one of those Nirvana-bent demigods would just stop by from time to time and remind me of that, then, maybe, I could relax.

Monday, January 03, 2005

Nonsense, of different sorts.

What next when you’ve just finished what is most likely the dumbest story you could ever write? Tossing it seems unfitting. I plan to revise, revise, and maybe revise a bit more...but since I really tend to edit myself all along, revision generally amounts to little more than some changes in phraseology. It may crisp up a bit, but a turn of phrase won’t change the underlying premise, which is an absurd trifle. But at least if I march forward laughing, eventually pitching my little manuscript through the doorways of the club with the big bouncers who remind me of that nasty game called “Red Rover” I had to play in first grade...well, maybe I’ll still be laughing when they snarl and toss it back out.

I've just polished off a little bag of cookies from the Korean grocery. I have no idea what they're called, but they look and taste like miniature vanilla wafers. The bag is decorated with what appears to be wiggling, winking, pigeon-toed gumdrops wearing eggshell helmets and licking their lips. There's something disorienting about a bag of cookies with writing, and subwriting, which might as well--from my pov--be written in Martian. I don't remember being as disturbed by meaningless characters when I was pre-literate, but now--to be faced with packaging that mocks me with its utter indecipherability--I lament my limited mind, which hasn't assimilated all existing forms of human script. I take small ...very small...comfort in the single comprehensible item on the bag--a trio of arrows in the recycling triangle, surrounding the word "other." At least I know these gumdrop babies go in the trashcan, not the yellow bin.