I will yell Happy New Year in the morning?

There are Trader Joe’s “Mini Morning Buns” in the oven. I suppose the morning is as mini as any. It’s 8:40, and I’ve barely done more than get the buns going and start the elliptical for Jeff. What it means to start the elliptical is 1)Turn on the TV to CNBC. Harder than you think. One remote to turn it on, and adjust volume, another to aim at the cable box for channel selection. And both subject to disappearing in couch crevices. Then I push the green button on the elliptical console, twice, and invite him to climb aboard.

Trader Joe’s mini morning buns come in an awkward packaging size for the current crew-in-residence. 12 minis/box. One box means I should only eat 2. Two boxes means I can eat 4 or 5, but there will be leftovers to dry out. Easy call: 2 boxes.

It’s 10:55 am, and my left shoulder is holding me accountable for having slept on it last night. Darned if there’s a position that works, without repercussions, anymore. I may look into stringing a hammock across the room this year. Seriously. Could work. Meanwhile, Jeff is about to be scooped up by his sister for a kindly social call to an old friend of his late mother, and I’ll visit the grocery for some last minute peanut butter cake ingredients, since I’m supplying New Year’s day dessert.

1:00. Eating leftover Indian food, in our usual scavengy way. Happily, there’s enough rice to dilute the chickpeas channa masala, which smart a bit straight. Then Jeff and Helen return, mission accomplished. Jeff is wearing a brown leather shoe on his left foot, and a mahogany suede shoe on his right. I point the discrepancy out, but he is baffled, so I take his suede shoe upstairs and swap it for the other brown one. I hand it to Jeff, and he reaches to remove the other brown shoe from his left foot. “No,” I say, “put on this shoe.” He remains baffled. “Where?” “Put this shoe on this foot.” He struggles with the laces. Olivia catches my reflexive movement and verbally holds me off. “He can do it he can do it!” she chides. He more or less does.

3:30. I am presently vegging on the living room couch. My macbook battery indicator suggests a re-juicing. At the kitchen table, four of us take turns plugging into to one AC adaptor, like the mermaids at Weeki Wachee sucking on the air hose so they can go about their underwater business. It is my AC adaptor. I am, consequently, only wired about 25% of the time when girls are home.

Girls are scuttling about, embroiled in the processes of getting ready to go out for the evening and/or head back to St. Mary’s County. Nail polish, heels no reasonable person could walk in, and the guinea pig...waiting patiently on the kitchen table while its ride takes a shower. Hazel-cat is intrigued, rolling around on top of the cage. The message is clear: I could really play with this animal if you’d let me. I busy myself with nonsense--Tiki Towers on the iPhone, Facebook stalking, anything. I’ve got chickenless nuggets in the oven for Gabe and Jeff, but I can’t relax and reheat more leftover daal for myself until the girls have launched themselves. I inform Gabe that he will be required to vacate the TV with dvd player in a while, as I plan to watch the film (500) Days of Summer which Becca has kindly left behind.

15 minutes ‘til movie time. It’s 6:40. Some combo of my glass of sauvignon blanc and general flaggedness at having launched the 3rd and final girl out the door has stripped me of any remnant of patience. I have a nonsensical conversation with Jeff about whether it’s ok for him to sit in his chair (it is) while the cat is sitting in the other one. (yes, still ok.) But I sound cranky. I wonder if I could have an email penpal, like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail, but agree never to meet.

Halfway into the movie Gabe gets a call. He’s going to Matt’s house for the night. Goodbye Gabe. The movie was ok. Sort of sad, but the protagonist got things straightened out in the end, maybe. Me, I’m still stuck in the part where he declares it all b.s. and quits his greeting card job.

Jeff tried to go to bed. It didn’t take. It is 9:10pm. Lately, in the morning, he lies in bed until I finally stop hitting the snooze button, then pops up exactly as I do. And bedtime is increasingly unlikely until I have also succumbed. I was warned about shadowing. I know what behaviors are likely to be coming. But, if you’ve ever played Sims, and bought the sad clown painting...you know what comes next. Yes, it’s like that, but without the sobbing. The clown begins to follow you around. Something like a heavy shadow that never quite gives you privacy, but never quite intrudes either.

So, we’re having tea. Tea is the answer, if there’s no other. This is called “Organic Easy Now,” and purports to ease tension and stress. ‘Tis a pleasant brew. Well...I’ve just hatched a plan: Tonight, just after I post this, I will start a new Pages document. Over the course of the year, I will fill it with good thoughts. Every time a little lost wandering good feeling wafts by, I will place its imprint upon that page. The little lost wandering good feeling won’t mind. They like to do things like that.

It’s 9:30. I won’t make it ‘til midnight. I rarely do. ; )

(heading added later...a fish couldn't do that.)

Blogging from the iPhone? As if that can do anything to sharpen my content. I know...maybe it will make my posts shorter. Snappier? Crisper? Posts like garden-fresh string beans? Or merely symptomatic of my koi-like attention span...

Reel? or no real.

Of course the new film It’s Complicated is entirely realistic in positing a middle-aged protagoniste as the object of the competing affections of two eligible (or, not so,) suitors. I hold out hope. All the fun cannot have been passed, like a baton, to the next generation. I won’t have it.

As for the supposition that the character, played by Meryl Streep, could a)run a successful cafe/bakery, b)maintain a well-appointed house, stocked full of homemade food, and c)cultivate a beautifully groomed kitchen garden? Nonsense. But this is the movies we’re talking about.

I have selective suspension of disbelief, as required.

Partly sage, but nary the time.

I am holding this book, The I Ching for Writers, by Sarah Jane Sloane, which my friend Katherine gave me for Christmas. Now, it is normal, when I consult the regular i ching books, for the proffered advice to chide me for my need-to-know. The i ching does not care for neediness or clinginess, and when you ask a similar question too many times, it responds with the taoish equivalent of “because I said so.”

But the I Ching for writers...now this is a side door knob I haven’t yet jiggled, so just maybe I can--if not outsmart the Sage--at least take it a little by surprise, and shake out a more definitive answer. Confucius would probably say “impatient dweeb should fold laundry,” but there’s no harm in having a go at it, is there?

So, I’m going to open with a question: Is the story I’m ever-so-glacially crafting completely useless pixelation? And now to go pester the cosmos for either a) a nod, or b) a smackdown.

My coins are a mismatched set--two bronze, one silver--of hole-in-the-center, small bit pieces that came home in my father-in-law’s pocket, from China, roughly 22 years ago. They spend most of their time happily tarnished, in a small black jewelry pouch that something came in from Sundance catalog, and they’re always ready to come out and play their role in a reprimand from the Sage.

Six tosses. And it’s heaven over water (whatever that means): 6, with a changer on toss #4, making the future potential a 59. Don’t try to understand this. Just trust me. I’m sure I’m convincing. So, excuse me momentarily, as I read the interpretation...

...Ok. So, apparently, the Sage is advising me to burn something down in my story. As a means of risk-taking. Just let me say it now: If--upon its completion--you ever read this book, and think to yourself, not bad, except for the part where the city was consumed by flames,...you must blame it on the Sage, and not me.

On to 59, where the so-called moving lines have carried me: I see. Tie up the loose ends. So, first burn something down, then tidy up. It has just occurred to me that this advice may actually be intended for my fireplace, which is badly in need of a good sweeping out. But, for want of better inspiration, I will first squirt it, like powdered graphite, into the joints of my story...and just see...

One last, and not entirely welcome thought: What was my original question? Oh, right: Is the story I’m ever-so-glacially crafting completely useless pixelation? I don’t suppose the answer hits the question in a very direct way, now does it? Or does it? Fire and tidy up? Throw the whole thing into the virtual furnace? That could be what the i ching is saying, you know. But perhaps the text should reassure me. The consulted chapter advised “Writing Dangerously,” not packing it in irretrievably. So, tally ho....or FIRE! (as the case may be.) Onward.

but no scree tea.

Hmmm...what was it? One Christmas stocking pb-filled chocolate maple leaf? Or was it the homemade candy ball, straight from the land of old-fashioned food goodness, Tazewell, Virginia, that pushed my touchy head into the ibuprofen zone this morning?

I am looking out at the shlorpiest of Saturday mornings, where the the constant splat of rain has turned what seemed to be insurmountable heaps of snow into the great dismal slush swamp. We will need to go out in it. There are leftovers in the fridge, to be sure, but Jeff ate the last of the cinnamon-raisin Trader Joe British Muffins, toasted in two extremely uneven halves, this morning. As he cannot be retrained to initiate a different breakfast, I will set out to obtain more, and some milk and o.j. in the bargain.

One Subaru emerged from the snowfall with wipers unwilling to function. I certainly erred in not bearing at least one child with mechanical inclinations, so we will need to throw a bit more money in the direction of Annapolis Subaru on Monday. The rivulets of water in the basement I will not worry about. One can hardly expect a 62 year old foundation to hold this much meltwater at bay.

I wonder: Is it ever possible for humans to be as content as a kitty snuggled up in a new RocketDog deluxe black microfiber, size 8M, ankle-boot box? I would happily give each of my children--and anyone else for that matter--such a box, sized just for him/her, if it would keep them happy in the face of a world where slush-swamps and chocolate headaches, but especially the vagaries of forging important long-term relationships, are often making the path a skid zone. Well ouch. I’d keep the headaches, and sweep up all the scree.

I think tea is our security blanket. It’s warm. It steeps. You can make it with cute equipment. And it does not, as far as I know, contribute to headaches.

On the hike, I will burn wood.

There are times when the simple pleasures really are. Melancholy ebbs and flows, washing in or out an assortment of tidal flotsam, and sometimes when you’re looking at a typical evening with the increasingly usual wry acknowledgment that life ain’t always all it’s cracked up to be, (but, then again, maybe it is...or more,) the best option is to add a java log to the fire, and an inch or so to the scarf you’ll be knitting forever. (Because you only add an inch about twice a year. And yes, I did check to make sure all the bathroom exhaust fans were off before lighting the pseudolog.)

Jeff wanders in to see if I have any interesting television plans for the night. Oh, possibly a crappy Hallmark Christmas movie in an hour or so. More than likely, he will tire of his chair soon, and--as it is too late for the usual distraction of coffee--go to bed. Gabe wanders in to admire the bogus uniformity of a flame born of compressed wax, coffee grounds, and who-knows-what-else, and challenges me with the following query: Who would win in a fight between someone whose superpower was telekinesis, and someone who could teleport? I predict that it would be difficult for the teleporter to lose, but...then again...it might be equally difficult for him to win. I should hope that if I ever find myself gifted with either skill, a fight to the death will remain unnecessary. But, at the very least, I would have an easier time acquiring real wood as needed, for burning.

I’ve got a wad of cotton, infused with liquid “Bio-Ear,” tucked into my left hearing appendage. It’s some sort of concoction of herbal extracts, designed to scare off the nascent ache in my eustachian tube. This will do nothing to impair my enjoyment of the badly written dialog I’m fixing to experience shortly, on cable tv.

Did I mention I’m sitting in a rocking chair? I really am. That’s another comfort. Odd though--to observe oneself a)knitting, b)watching the fire, and c)rocking, at a life interlude when other relatively uncontrollable facets of life have left you thinking they accidentally switched you with an 85 year old, is another one of those things you can merely observe with the aforementioned wry acknowledgment. Well. I hope that 85 year old is having lots of fun, and maybe even hiking the Continental Divide Trail! Actually, I’m going to assume, right here and now, that this is the case, because it makes me feel good to think so. I very much hope, in fact, she will send me a letter that I can keep, until one day, possibly at 85, it’s me.

hard to tawrrrrrrggggrrrrkkkkk.

I think I need a vocal coach. Not for singing, in particular, (though that could hardly hurt,) but for just regular speaking. This is not ordinarily a problem as, in day to day life, I am of a sufficiently taciturn nature that I rarely need to speak except in short bursts. But, in the event that I do need to utter more than a few sentences without a vocal break, my voice begins to grind like brakes without pads, or knees without cartilage. It’s uncomfortable, and probably doesn’t sound very nice to boot.

Lately this is troublesome, because I read to Jeff. There is not much excitement in a day of chair-sitting, and patio-sweeping, so, if we can break it up with a chapter of Bill Bryson, everyone benefits. Currently, we’re working on The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, and Bill is putting his unique spin on a dinner of “ineffable crappiness” in Virginia. Jeff likes it. I enjoy the opportunity to get the inflection just right on every sentence, and employ my best thespian flair to maximize his otherwise-impaired comprehension.

But when, a couple pages in, my voice begins to acquire the timbre of E.T. in his death scene, or Linda Blair with her head on backwards, I can’t help but wonder whether I simply don’t use my vocal equipment properly.

When I was 19, I took a basic music theory class in college. The professor had us meet with him in small groups, to practice hitting notes with the one instrument we’d have with us at all times--our voices. One exercise went decidedly higher than my comfort level, and I said so. “Any female worth her salt can hit that note,” he said. So I did. I hit it, (and higher ones, a good many more times years later when I took a voice class at the Community College.) And I remember one other thing that professor said. It was an observation, that I speak in a tone that’s lower than my “natural” speaking voice.

Why would I do that? Because I learned early that my “real” voice, as revealed by the cassette recorder/player that we kids got one Christmas, was (to my ear) babyish and squeaky? Maybe, after that, I developed a habit of trying to lower my voice. Perhaps, if I actually spoke “correctly,” I could get through a few more pages of Bill Bryson without rolling off the road into the vocal gutter.

But I don’t know how you do that. So, if we speak, and you notice my tone becoming oddly light and airy, just know--I’m merely recalibrating.

a blustery, only slighty frustery, day

How hard is this to open? The fact that I took the picture with my MacBook’s built in camera, which shoots (and displays) in mirror image and is, therefore, damnably hard to hold correctly when aimed at an object, and therefore gave me this nice “vertigo view” notwithstanding, that is.

Why do I ask? Because it is a timely case study to use in considering how neuronal pathways fail. I imagine that you would insert your fingers, from below, behind the semicircular convex object at center-top, and pull toward yourself. Correct. That is the simplest technique.

But what if you’d spent 40+ years using and selling hardware (including pulls of this very sort,) and in fact, installed this particular mailbox yourself and had been using it for the past 10 years, and this happened: You couldn’t open it one day. You completely missed the visual fact that it has a pull, and instead grasped fruitlessly at the sides, bottom, and rear of the box, not even thinking to pry the door down by its front edges. Luckily, in this case, “you,” are oblivious enough that you do not object when your wife takes over and gets the mail out.

Gabe reports that he happened to see Jeff trying to exit, via the front door yesterday. Jeff opened the door, stepped outside, then attempted to find a means of pulling the door shut again. He grabbed the tongue part of the latch mechanism that pops in and out, but realized he would shut his hand in the door if he continued pulling, and instead, stepped inside and pulled the door shut using the inside handle. Then, discovering he was not on the side of the door he intended to be, he tried again, this time pulling, correctly, on the exterior handle.

It’s a remarkable failure to try to comprehend. As Gabe said, it would be funny if it weren’t sad.

I realize, progressively, that these things are catching up to us, and we will, increasingly, feel the limitations. Today, Jeff and I took a field trip to Ellicott City, to walk the 18th Century mill town’s historic Main Street, visit the train museum, and have lunch. We entered a curiosity shop, of knick knacks and antiques, displayed in 9 rooms, on all 4 levels of a former duplex, now merged into one building. At each end of each level, was an ancient wooden staircase--the type where the treads are narrow, and twist at irregular points. (Clearly these were the homes of humble mill-workers--no grand entrances into the drawing room from elegant stairways here.) I was uncertain, as stumbling is becoming a consequential concern. But, we made it up and down, with minor missteps, although I changed sides of the house, as needed, to avoid the possibility that any calamitous falls would sweep a mother with small children down the stairs as well.

But it was a nice day. Cold. A little blustery. But sunny, and pretty, and--with a hat, scarf, and gloves, I felt perfectly equipped.

Maybe I am a green field?

Among the mysteries of my early education is this: Why did our elementary school music books contain the song “Marching to Pretoria,” and why did we sing it so much? I discovered much later that it was a marching song, sung by the Afrikaaners during the Boer war, but this would certainly have meant nothing to me in second grade, and, frankly, has little significance to me now. I remain confused.

It’s strange that the song would be a standout point in my memory. But stand out it does. Along with the textbook: Greenfield U.S.A. Of all the textbooks, in all the classrooms, in all the gin joints of public education of the late 60s, why I would specifically recall that book remains an unresolved question. Even now that I’ve acquired a copy.

Yes, I did. It’s one of the marvels of the internet age, that the title Greenfield U.S.A. needed only flit through my head at an Amazon moment, for me to discover that I could get one. For 19¢ + shipping. “Aha,” I thought. “Here is my opportunity to discover why I am so indelibly marked by blandness that my college art professor decreed my efforts to be trite, except for the one where I accidentally smudged the chalk, and gave the child-subject an evil glint.”

Surely it all goes back to Greenfield U.S.A. Or, at least, Greenfield U.S.A. must serve as a token--a representation encapsulating all that shaped my developing aesthetic into something that now struggles, blandly, to break free of its cultural tupperware.

I examined the book. It was smaller than I remembered. (surprise!) Copyrighted in 1964, by D.C. Heath and Company, this particular copy was stamped by the Board of Education, Pittsburg, Kansas, which probably only retired it a couple years ago when they discovered it makes no reference to intelligent design.

I continued to explore the text, determined to discover--now, with my razor-keen insight--the insidious presumptions foisted upon my young brain, which doomed me now to eternal blandness.

And I think I found the key. Like it or not, Greenfield U.S.A. is a perfectly pleasant book, exploring life in front of and behind the scenes of the classic, Main Street-focused town, which we’d all like to live in, but scarcely exists. And was very rapidly going out of business even in 1964. Of course I opened the book with questions and expectations related to gender-identity and ethnic diversity; all those things that hit an assortment of fans in the decades following the book’s publication, and I will highlight a few.

I wondered if women in Greenfield U.S.A had jobs. Ever. Suffice it to say that in most of the book's vignettes, they were moms, and wore uncomfortable clothes. However, there were minor exceptions. A female store clerk did sell Mary a red raincoat, there were female nurses in starched white dresses when that idiot Fred fell out of a tree and broke his leg, and there was this: Proving that those skills learned by eager girls in their Future Homemakers of America clubs still could come in useful, even if one didn’t find Mr. Right. Most reassuring.

Meanwhile, I discovered something that I had possibly not noticed at age 7: Policeman Bill was quite a studly muffin,
and it was therefore no wonder that the teen-girl-squad pictured below walked straight into oncoming traffic against the green light in order to elicit his intervention.
Most likely, however, they got more face-time with the same starched nurses who’d helped Fred with his leg.

I wondered if every person in Greenfield U.S.A was, by decree, of Euro-heritage, whitebread stock. And the answer is, mostly. Look closely, however, at this parade scene, and you’ll note that a man of possibly African/Asiatic heritage has sneaked into the background, catching the eye of the red-haired woman who is visible between the tuba and trumpet players. She is intrigued. The rest of the town is, fortunately, too distracted by the parade to be appalled.

So, no. Not too many people of color in Greenfield, but, if you keep reading, a very small chapter at the end of the book discusses “living in other places.” One of those other places is A City Neighborhood. Here, apparently, Tom could learn to swim in an ethnically diverse crowd, and--remarkably--seems none the worse for it. Did you ever wonder what happened to the “skinny guy” from your old comic books after he used the Charles Atlas method and punched out the bully? Well, now you know. Here he is, teaching Tom and the other boys to swim at the Boys’ Club in the Big City. Do not ask me what they are doing at the Girls’ Club. You already know: They are learning to wash heads of lettuce.

Well, anyway, at least I now know what’s wrong with me. Greenfield U.S.A presented life as it “should” be, and I--apparently--believed it. More or less. I don’t know. Maybe if Mary had said, “No. I don’t want a red raincoat, I want a lab coat, like Dr. March.” Or maybe if Mike had said, “No Dad, I don’t want to go fishing, I want to wash lettuce.” Maybe then, just that one slightly unexpected twist would have--like the butterfly effect--launched my immature neurons into a lifetime where feats of the imagination are easy, fresh, and unexpected.

But that didn’t happen. So, like acquiring a second language post-childhood, I continue to attempt to acquire creative spark, and a mind inclined that way. And Greenfield U.S.A has supplied a clue. I am bland because I was raised in abject blandness. I know now why thinking outside the tupperware box--to a mind forged in Greenfield--is as tough as learning Japanese.