38 Things To Do Before I Die Turn 39

I am going to take part in a list making party that I wasn't actually invited to join. I saw it over at Schmutzie's blog who got it from her friend's blog Doobleh-vay. I find list making irresistable. I once filled an entire journal with lists. It was a diary in list form with lists sprouting sublists. It was quite impressive. Some people make lists specifically so they can cross things off of it later. I rarely cross anything off of my lists. Because for me it's all about putting something down on paper. Make it official. Make it stick in your mind better. I used to check things off my lists. At some point it just wasn't ever as satisfying to cross things off as it was to just write a new list.

Wouldn't it be cool to have a blog called "A list a day"? Or a book called "A Life In Lists"? Or "A Year In Lists"?

Yeah, so maybe you don't think lists are all that. (Freak!) Lists are like poetry, little succinct scraps of language laid out in specific form. The beauty is in the juxtaposition between the rigidity of the form and the fluidity of the intention.

Here is my list of 38 things to do before I turn 39:

1. Read two books.
2. Say "no" to five people wanting my time.
3. Make and use baking soda tooth powder.
4. Publish one issue of my dream magazine.
5. Reduce the size of my belly enough to be able to see my hoo-ha.
6. Start a new compost pile-and use it.
7. Make a string of festive porch lights using recycled materials.
8. Finish the two quilts that are waiting for you. Winter is coming!
9. Make a new pair of pants for self in spite of no weight loss.
10. Learn to change the oil in the Vespa.
11. Ride bicycle to work at least once a week.
12. Learn to use the Rebel XT.
13. Finish organizing my sewing room.
14. Clean up the guest bedroom.
15. Finish building the monastery garden.
16. Spread wildflower seeds in an empty field.
17. Read more about the teachings of Buddha.
18. Get the house completely clean, just once.
19. Write a poem that doesn't suck.
20. Learn to make spring rolls.
21. Take more walks.
22. Stop going out to dinner because you can't afford it.
23. Play more chess with Max.
24. Make ginger soda.
25. Eat less cheese or you will resemble a big hunk of orange Tillamook.
26. Listen to more classical music since it's got the power to calm you.
27. Make potions like a witch.
28. Don't buy the charms and bracelet you wanted from the toy store.
29. Be kinder to BBQ Sue or she might not think you appreciate her.
30. Get out the accordion and practice your favorite songs.
31. Find out how to make root beer.
32. Stretch your body every day.
33. Wear make-up at least four times a week since it always makes you feel better.
34. Stay on the course you know you need to take, don't get distracted from the purpose.
35. Put up a gallery of family pictures in the stairwell so they'll all feel closer.
36. Organize kitchen binder.
37. Make muffins.
38. Every day be thankful you aren't Angelina Jolie.

That was so much harder than I thought it would be. Partly because I'm going to be 39 years old in just three months. Not much time. How nice it must be to be 2 years old when your list would look like this:

1. Eat more.
2. Poop more.

Then again, that was a pretty dull time.

The River Deep

A wonderful weekend has passed with friends and family. Light like liquid gold floods my blood. Bounty is everywhere if only I can contain it and keep it. Motherhood is everywhere if I look for it. Fortune is in the details. Music is how we're all going to survive, as has always been true. Love isn't a volcano, or a riptide of desire. Love is the return of fall year after year after year. Love is the endurance of partnership, the spirit seeing into the shadows and piercing the light. Love is friends who, without lipstick, still see the glamour in every hour spent together. Love is knowing who a person really is and wanting to open that explosion of considerable complications.

Love is peace. Love is recognition. Love is in the details. My love sits down with me at a scarred table covered in dirty dishes and old food and says he will wait here with me for the next feast. Full of admiration and expectation he sees me as the director and seeks to whisper only suggestions. He always grabs me a plate from the buffets, of which I have considerable fear.

Love is always wanting to know more. Love is unfolding petal by petal the worn truth to find the fresh interior. Love isn't passion, it's constance. It's a ride across a vast ocean with just you and your other.

Love comes first. Then comes the constant dialog with self. Love allows the self to prosper in the light of comfort. In a cushion of acceptance. River currents rush towards the ocean while partnerships cling to the banks to take a slower pace. Self is there too. Holding slick rocks in the dappled light, holding the current like an impression of the heart.

Notes to self:

Must pumice feet if insist on wearing flip flops. Might scare away good people, nice friends. Plus, old nail polish is very questionable. Looks sloppy. Unkempt. No one likes a ramshackle foot on a woman. Remember man's obsession with dainty feminine feet. Don't worry about your hairy toes though, because until the "recession" is over there is no budget for lasering toe hair.

Why does sister Tara not have chin hairs like self? She thinks she got the short straw. Must remind her of seven five chin hairs plus hairy toes. Also of interest: the uni-brow she was not cursed blessed with. Me and Frida rock. Glad not to have a pole up my torso. Not lucky. Frida prettier than self, but unlucky.

Back is stiff all night like an old woman's. Gimpy hip/stiff back- kind of seems like old age has arrived before menopause. Has the world gone mad? Or do I have a tumor of some sort. Brain sometimes feels like a tumor. Very inconvenient. If I didn't always injure self doing yoga, would suggest yoga. Stretch in the morning this week. And take Allieve. Pam says it's like angels come to take pain away.

Must make grape juice tomorrow. Must find out if stomping grapes with athlete's foot not recommended. Must find out if Greeks and Italians were always fungus free while stomping grapes? Interesting to find out if athletes foot troubled people like Alexander the Great or Cleopatra. Wouldn't it be funny if Cleopatra suffered from jock itch?

Fruit flies suck.

Bob Dylan writes better than I will ever write. Must not let this deter self from trying. His tribute to Woodie Guthrie was incredible. Dylan is as genius as Mozart. Who writes as well now? It's more the words than it is the music though the combination makes me feel like a wisp of a spirit next to a number 5 hurricane. Who is telling our stories now? Maybe everything that needs writing has already been written. That's the most terrifying thought I've ever had.

Why does Pippa like beer?

Animals are as important to me as humans. Which is kind of funny to say because I know that humans are animals. They aren't even superior to other animals. I'll reevaluate my opinion when humans manage to stick around longer than cockroaches have. I think a life without strong connections to animals is much emptier than a life without kids.

Must not draw attention to the darkening mustache hairs. As if chin hairs weren't bad enough.

Must get another bad haircut. Or let hair grow out. If hair grows out must wear make-up at all times to avoid looking like scary biker bitch. Must not tress hair up in fifteen rubber bands all at once. Wonder what that unfortunate style is called? Getting hair cut is like getting a giant crush to ego. Love the feel of freshly trimmed hair. Love the feel of a good cut. Most cuts make me want to cry. So maybe get hair whacked when drunk. Hate being drunk though. Maybe should not mind being drunk in order to not mind bad haircut. Sometimes think hairdressers are sadistic and just don't like me because I'm not a debutante.

Knees too big to be a debutante. Always known that.

It was embarrassing to pass out while running the 400 run in fourth grade. In front of the love of my childhood.

Deep secret: red heads and curly haired people are like deep mysteries to me and I harbor prejudices against them as a group but never as individuals. Said childhood love was a short red headed boy. It went against my instincts to love him. I would not have wasted three years of my childhood dedicated to my silent love for him if I could have known that he was going to be really enamored of psychedelic drugs as a young adult. I cannot be attracted to men with really curly hair. sometimes I see curly haired women and don't like them because of their curly hair.*

Must make a list of aversions to see what it looks like as a group. Possibly should make now while in possession of beer.

List of aversions and fears:

• Buffets. I have buffet fear.

• Dull pencils. They squeak and shine and make me want to vomit.

• Parties. The time I silenced a whole room really made an impression.

• Tasting sauces by themselves. Really freaks me out.

• Someone else's scent on my pillow.

• Dry feet. Makes me sick to my stomach when my feet are really dry.

• Large groups of children. Lord Of The Flies could really happen. Kids are savages.

• Being pregnant. I have lots of nightmares about it.

• Giving birth. Not warm and fuzzy. I have lots of nightmares about this too.

• Hearing people chew their food.

• Hearing myself chew my food.

• Hearing myself swallow liquid.

• Making phone calls. Love e-mails. So much more relaxed. Phone fear.

• Shower water on nipples. Heebee jeebies. I have a method to get around this.

• Vomiting. Can count the times on my fingers. Would rather die than vomit.

• Playing games. All games. As discussed many times.

• Other people's breath on me.

• Sharing food. It makes me panic.

• Bunching socks. Max got this one. Poor fella.

• Dry lips. Can propel me into hyperventilation. Hence addiction to lip balm.

• Bladder infections. Because peeing is important. Especially with a small bladder.

• Lack of bathrooms. Because I always need to pee.

• Awareness of transition between wakefulness and sleep.

• Violence. Duh.

• Being touched. Have improved a lot on this one. Still prickly like thistle.

• Music being played too low.

• Music being played too high.

• Music and TV both audible at same time.

• Too many different sources of noise at same time.

• Smoke alarms. Hate them. Hate them. Would like to tear them all out. Hate them.

• Pap smears. Hate being touched. Especially with cold metal in my hoo-ha.

• Medical mysteries. Create obsessive thoughts.

• Low light. Darkness is fine. Well lit spaces fine. Hate low light, especially in kitchen. Panic.

• Busy restaurants, bars, clubs. Much prefer either slow or empty ones.

• Going to the movies when crowded. Makes me panic to find seats in a crowded movie theater.

• Bright sun. Makes me angry.

• Dry wind. Also makes me angry.

• Museums. Overstimulation almost always certain.

• Afraid of being a hypochondriac. To the point I sometimes don't take care of things.

• Going underground. Claustrophobia but only when underground. Otherwise like small spaces.

• Heights. Always want to hurl self from bridges and balconies.

• Party lines. I fear more than one voice on phone at once. Want to scream when it happens.

• Conference calls. See above.

• Other people being pregnant.

• Fire. Not just because we had a house fire. But that didn't help.

• Flying on planes. Though I LOVE airports. Go figure.

• Losing spouse. Panic panic panic.

• Losing son. Panic panic panic panic.

• New people in my house. Especially if unexpected.

• Riding in cars. Much improved with medication.

• Changing my evening routine. Like parting the sea.

• Phone ringing. Rarely admit to this one. Sound of ringing phone very stressful.

• Yelling. Deeply distressed by others yelling. Since having a kid I yell a lot myself.

• Smell of man-pee. So much stronger than woman-pee. Not kidding.

• Adults obsessed with childhood toys.

• Entropy. This is a family-wide aversion. Philip, Max, and I are all freaked out by entropy.

• Losing teeth. Constant nightmares about losing teeth.

• Smell of sweat, on self especially. Can smell it a thousand yards away on others.

• Returning merchandise to stores. I'm nearly incapable of doing it.

• Sudden food aversions. Comes over me without warning. Totally random.

• Musicals. Not kidding. Hate most of them violently.

• Junk mail. Makes me panic. It piles and then makes me panic more.

• Sink of water for doing dishes. Danger. Fear. Running water better.

• Changing smell of hoo-ha. Changing smell of elemental self scary.

• Driving cars. Death trap.

• Taking tests. Makes me panic. Even if I know material like own heart beat.

• Expectation of sex. Valentine's day is a firm "no sex" day.

• Listening to anyone's heartbeat. Shouldn't hear such an internal noise.

• To stop listening to "The River Deep" by The Devil Makes Three. Once I start listening to it I think it is the sum total of life and I can't hear anything else.

• Touching cold butter. Smell of it lingering on hands very upsetting. Also can't eat cold butter.

• Balloons. I secretly and quietly let the air out of them when kid is asleep to dispel my dread.

• Clowns. Make me so uncomfortable my skin gets itchy and crawls.
  

I think I'm going to drink "The River Deep" and fall madly asleep. I think I might never wake up with the mud splattered on my face. Because this music has wrapped me deep into its lore.


Note: I keep having to add things to the list as I remember them.







*Deep seated mistrust of curly haired people. Be assured that I have met and loved many a curly haired person because I always overcome my fear of the group as a whole to appreciate the merits of the individual.

Beware The Impostor!

(plus thoughts about the cold months ahead)

When you come to my house the first thing you will be greeted by is my ghetto gate behind which my ferocious dog will be frantically trying to draw attention to you. We like to make guests feel welcome around here. The next thing you will notice is me standing on the porch looking smashing in my favorite chicken-

But wait!!! That isn't me! It's an impostor! BBQ Sue is a master at disguises. She stands around all day imitating me. How can you tell the difference between Sue and me?

• Sue has no ass. I have the equivalent of two.

• Unlike me Sue is not spazzy, she never waves her arms around wildly.

• Clothes hang sadly off of her skeletal frame. My clothes don't even fit over my thighs anymore.
  

• Sue was too chicken to get her nose pierced.

• Sue makes teenage boys hot*. As a woman raising a son who will one day be a teenager I am pleased that I do not share this problem.

• Sue cannot cook.

In spite of the funky weather we've had this year and the fact that I lamely planted tomatoes very very late in the season, I am getting some ripening in my yard. What to do with them all? I love it when people say they have so many tomatoes they don't know what to do with them. I always want to say "Are you retarded?! Give them to me you idiot!" Ha. No, I'm not so mean. But I can think of so many things to do with tomatoes. I can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Today I'm using the tomato sauce I made this week to make a white bean and spinach sauce for pasta to which I'm thinking of adding some broiled or baked eggplant. I am also making a ricotta tomato gratin using all cherry tomatoes. I am thinking of putting the recipe for it up here. I made the ricotta yesterday. I am thinking of doing a tutorial for that as well.

My plan for the twenty pounds of romas my mom and I picked from my community garden row is to slow roast them and then freeze them. Wonderful to add to pasta in the middle of winter.

My dreams have been crazy vivid lately. I sometimes remember them as though they really happened and then have to flag them in my brain as dream snippets so I don't get continually fooled by them. The toy store has figured strongly in them.

I would very much like to know what this whole bank crisis is going to do to mortgage interest rates. Will they skyrocket? We were thinking of refinancing our home since there is supposedly nothing but worse economic times ahead. I am starting to hear the "D" word being tossed around. This is funny since our country has only recently acknowledged that we might actually be experiencing a recession. Some people like to think we'll never experience a depression like "The Great Depression" again. Why? Why not? It's the same as how so many people think we could never have another Holocaust, or Viet Nam (which we're currently in the middle of), or another civil war. Dudes, there are lots of people in the US who are still ardently waving their confederate flags.

Things will never be exactly the same. Certain details will change. But history repeats itself all the time with similar plagues, wars, and famines. The main thing we remember about the Viet Nam war was that half the country didn't think we should join that war, we spent years trying to win the war and couldn't, and finally brought the troops home battered-damaged-and not beloved by their people. The similarities are very clear. I know lots of people will say: "but it's totally different because that war was fought in Viet Nam not the middle east..." details. The political implications for our people here at home are very similar.

Anyway. Didn't mean to veer off there. It's just that I don't know exactly what our current crisis will mean for mortgages and not knowing makes it difficult to prepare for hunkering down. Will interest rates skyrocket? With the government not willing to acknowledge the truth of any current situation, it makes planning very difficult. What will credit card companies do in response? Will they crack down on card members? Will their rates be more or less competitive?

If we have another great depression, will me and my family be able to survive it? And where will the equivalent of "the dust bowl" be this time? If a depression comes, what kind of leader will be best equipped to steer us through it with the least amount of starvation and job loss? Now that I have a house I love, will I lose everything again?

What are the most depression proof jobs? That is something we should all really examine, isn't it? What can we do to protect ourselves?

I am already thinking about the cold winter months coming. Heating this house didn't seem exorbitantly expensive last early spring, but electricity prices have gone up.

I am working hard on reducing my water usage. I don't think we waste a whole lot of water except when I'm doing dishes. I use my dishwasher for most things yet because I cook a lot there are always a lot of things that don't do as well in the dishwasher that I must wash by hand. I am training myself to turn the water off while scrubbing. I like having a stream of warm water running over the dishes I'm washing because I can see what's left more easily and it's soothing. It wastes a lot of water though. So now I'm scrubbing heaps with just the soapy sponge and then rinsing all at once, if I miss something I can scrub again. I am also saving the water I use to rinse vegetables to throw on the garden.

It takes time to change old habits. But it's good to do it. I think we'll install a laundry line along the length of our covered porch too for drying some loads on a line even in winter. It's just about too late for installing a laundry line outdoors. We could do one in the basement too, though the ceiling is very low. I think I might do it anyway. This could really cut down on our energy bills this winter. Clothes take a lot longer to dry in damp weather, but who cares?

Time to make some extra blankets too. I think all of us here at the farmhouse should have snug robes to wear around the house and blankets to wrap up in. I don't have to buy any fabric for that either since I already have tons.

Lots to think about. Curtains to make too. I clearly have my head stuck in nest and hunker mode. How about all of you out there? Any thoughts to share? Preparations for the winter? Preparations for a continually sinking economy? Anyone out there found themselves accidentally addressing BBQ Sue instead of me? Anyone out there have too many tomatoes? Talk to me on this quiet Sunday.

*Philip overheard two teen boys gawking at Sue when she was outside our store. One of them said to the other "She's making me hot."

A Life In Narrative

My feelings frequently tangle as they reach towards the light, looking for the nourishment of expression, aching for water to quench the drying instrument of connection. In so many ways keeping this blog has been the best life preserver, the best sanity preserver. For two years I have spewed here. Let go here. Risked a great deal here. Let myself bleed freely and mostly honestly. Before I put it here it all had to go somewhere.

It went into notebooks. Fervently written in the night hours just as I sometimes do here. Religiously written in the morning over coffee as I usually do here. Spilling and spilling and spilling as though there was a limitless supply of words and guts. I have no idea where it all comes from or why the flow so rarely stems. Why if I get the slightest bit moved by something I see, hear, read, or touch it must be regurgitated in a thousand thoughts reaching out from the core like little independent branches cutting into the skyline.

I never run dry. I never run out. Though I can be dragging my physical bones through the required actions of life, the brain never sleeps. My brain never sleeps. Never pauses for breath. If I don't write here it must go elsewhere. I have layers of handwritten words. Typewritten pages in which I barely bothered to correct typos because to do so would impede the urgency of the moment.

Coming here is like an anchor. Using a voice that speaks intimately to a person, to you, makes it feel all a little less crazy. Because before I had this blog, I was still writing to you. Yes, YOU. I don't even know who you are.* Wouldn't it be a tremendous bust in the gut if "you" turned out to not exist at all? It doesn't really matter. I'd just go back to writing narratives to myself and to the ethereal others out there who I imagine are waiting to listen. Who are up at night as I am, plying their own version of words, in paint, or food, or photographs, or other words. Wrapping their stamp around the universe to say "hello". And again "hello, you."

Pictures have turned into words too. Tonight I was reading about roses. Then I was watching the last of the first season of The Tudors and it was causing brain collisions. Pageantry. The egotism of monarchy which is only slightly more honest in its egotism than modern government. Roses, blossoms, wedding beds, marriage, castles, castle light, and all the years that have accumulated history around us all. Flowers with names like "maiden's thigh" (Cuisse de Nymphe) speak of our most intimate moments. All of this reminded me that I have touched the thick walls of real castles. That I have felt the sea wind whipping my hair across my eyes where cannons have been fired. I have seen the light changing by the seconds across a parade of minutiae and tasted how gorgeous it is, this spec of remembrance, this fleeting connectedness we all share.

I am never happier than when I'm alone, but only when I have a very secure sense of belonging.

These pictures are what flashed through my head when I was watching the Tudors, feeling something come loose in my heart, it was the heady clear air of these pictures I took on my trip to Scotland that I needed to see because they remind me of feeling good, of feeling sure of who I am, that I have a place in history, that I am part of this world. More than that they remind me of how it feels to walk alone, with family close by, family that seems to love me even though I am not the same as I used to be, even though I have shown myself to be vulnerable and irrational at times, and larger than life really allows. And large.

In these pictures I am alone in body, enjoying the sound of the wind, the crisp sunshine on my cheek, the way the light floods the tiny daisies in the grass in front of the cannons, but I carry with me the weight of the love of my family. My sister and my dad who are hanging out drinking coffee together just a few hundred feet from me. My brother who is several miles away enjoying some time by himself too. My mother who always seems to be with me in spirit, though in actuality she was a few thousand miles away. My father (biological) loves me too and even though we fight and carry on with arguments...I carry his love with me too in these pictures. And of course, no one, no one has ever loved me more than my dear Philip and my acerbic wonderful son.

When I look at these pictures I see what a little freedom feels like to a loved person. I love to be away from my family. I love to wander off, to think alone, to absorb light into my eyes and memorize hillsides. To speak with the flora and fauna in that unlanguage we know from when we first crawled out of the sludge of water from whence we came. I remember what it feels like to do everything not knowing I had any love at all. Feeling completely alone. It's so different then. Empty and slick like cold metal, reflecting-not absorbing-light.

I think Henry VIII was an ass. And an asshole. I think he was a self serving nasty piece of work. In case anyone is concerned that I am being swayed by TELEVISION and its evil lies...I've actually read non-fiction about this time period and Henry the VIII and the fictional book called "Anne Of The Thousand Days". When you behead several wives that's what we modern folk like to call a serial killer. But, whatever. I am caught up in the story.

It makes me think of flowers. Of light on stone walls. It makes me think of how people thought and acted in courts that were, by necessity, lit with candles. It makes me think of the details that set well known history into action. It reminds me that I am happy to be a peasant-type person. It makes me realize how I don't like anyone losing their face. I don't like that anyone has to lose. This reminds me that my Grandfather and my dad (the one I grew up with) saying that I'm too soft. That I will never succeed if I can't handle the hard truth: people lose. Try not to let it be you.

Try not to let it be me.

They're right, of course. And I resent it. My father, I think, would also agree.

Well, my only retaliation is that I was made this way. My shadows and my light were all there the moment I came out looking like a wrinkled old man. Which is what I'm starting to look like again. Ashes to ashes and all that. I hear the dead, I hear the dying, I hear the sorrow, I hear the losing and it all whistles through my own soul like my own voice. There is no separation between me and them. We come from the same source, the same life slurry.

Tonight I am thinking of happy light. The kind of light that goes through your eyes and into your spirit in a pageant of color. These pictures here are punctuation for my words. They reflect a joy in aloneness while leaning on togetherness. Tonight I wish for everyone to have (and to recognize, however flawed) the pool of love that has been reserved for them. Go out into the light and drink it.

See those tangles of stems and flowers reaching for the sky without reserve? Be those flowers and stamens unashamedly flaunting what nature gives. Have your hour of light. Or your minute. Take what you get and treasure it. File it away safely so that in dark hours you can pull it out and relive it, again and again. That's why we take pictures. The clematis climbs itself joyfully into the light.

You must do so too.

Yes, YOU.

I'm speaking to whomever has their ears open tonight.

*Well, I do actually know some of you.

A Girl Works Up A Thirst

Some days, even though you're not supposed to be imbibing anything zingy, you just have to. Life DEMANDS that you have not only a Meyer Lemon Spritzer, but also some beer. Because cleaning up a boy's room can be quite traumatic and take many hours. I have been avoiding Max's room for months. I hate being in it because the entire surface of the floor is strewn with Lego pieces. There is always some carefully groomed chaos going on in there that gets "messed up!" if I take a step inside.

Not to mention the bloody tissues. Quite a lovely spectacle for those not expecting them. Yes, I am trying to teach my kid to use the trash for his tissues. Of course, then the dog gets to them which is really nasty and means I have to pick up five billion shreds of bloody dog slobbered tissues...all of this, as you may well imagine makes a girl thirsty.

I am happy to say that his room now (finally) looks like a real moved into room. I have a hell of a time with moves. Getting rooms reorganized. I can't clean a room that hasn't been properly organized. Nearly all the people who read my blog seem to be very smart so I'm sure you can extrapolate the challenges I have trying to run my house. Mad chaos everywhere!

My mother has offered several times to help me unpack and organize, and she's very good at it, but my head hurts just at the thought and I know that if she comes over she will have to ask me a thousand questions in order to establish order, which starts feeling like me doing it but having to answer lots of questions while my head spins.

It all makes a girl terribly thirsty.

I love BBQ Sue. My dog does not. My dog thinks she's an interloper. I just feel sorry for Sue. She has such a tiny butt and has to stand around feeling very inadequate next to my more robust posterior. See how she can't even fill out my "skinny" clothes? I plan to dress her in my style and then accuse her of stealing my identity.

Metallurgy is really fascinating. And fun. On Wednesday I got to drill holes in metal using a drill press. These curly cues remind me of metal class in high school, which I didn't take, by the way. They remind me of other people taking metal working class and me picking up the strange curlies. They are very sharp. Don't ask me how I know.

After braving the kid's room I also moved some other furniture around in some other rooms. My sewing room is in a more impressive mess than it's ever been in because I had to move so much stuff around. At last it is taking shape. I did some laundry yesterday and actually folded it. (I think everyone should get to have a national day off when I actually manage to do AND FOLD laundry on the same day, it's that rare.) Then, because I am a super-person I also made dinner. I made pasta with a walnut pasta sauce, steamed green beans, and for dessert I made an apple crisp. I almost never make or eat dessert. I love apple crisp and have lots of apples so why not have a fabulous fall moment in the kitchen?

All in all it was quite a productive Thursday. Except for the part where I couldn't seem to go four days without beer. Oh well. Three is such a nice number too. It's only three but what I really want to do right now is park my tush in front of some CSI episodes and chill out. I need to shake off the residue of the strange bits and pieces my day has lodged in my head, like the question of why people are attracted to "hairless" dogs? Especially those Chinese ones with the weird shock of fur just on their heads and feet. Someone asked today why they don't make more stuffed animals like them and I suggested that it might be because children actually like fur on animals.

That's my diplomatic way of saying that the reason why hairless dogs really aren't seen that often is because it takes a rare kind of human to appreciate them.

I'm still being diplomatic. Let's leave it at that.

The word diplomatic got me going on a whole political wave of thought, which I've decided not to share at the moment, probably to your delight.

I will leave you all with the following question: do you think there will ever be a time in this country when racism will truly be an evil of the past and not the present? If you think it is remotely possible, what do you think it will take to achieve a country where racism is not a national issue?*

Aren't you thirsty now too?

floaters, n (as defined in my personal dictionary): strange thoughts floating randomly through the sludgy river of my brain catching the dim light of my eye like glitter in the gloom.

*I don't know if I think it's possible to end racism or not. I want to believe it is. The realist in me thinks that racism (which is all over the world) is a component of being human- a real primal check mark between "us and them" which allows us to maintain our separateness. Unless all people stop procreating at the current rate, we will none of us ever have the choice to be separate. So in this people crowded day and age it behooves us all to evolve new primal selves that don't see race as a separating factor.

Letting Go

Letting go is hard to do. Especially in a culture of mass information. My kid is almost eight years old and I have just, for the very first time, let him walk home from school by himself. We live very close to the school. In fact, I can see the school grounds from the corner of my cul de sac. It doesn't sound like such a big deal until you consider how few freedoms children of his age group generally have these days.

I don't know any kid his age who is allowed to ride their bikes freely all over town as I did when I was his age. I don't know any kids who ride or walk themselves to friends' houses. I see very few kids who walk themselves to and from school. When I was seven I used to walk myself to and from school every day which was about ten blocks from my house. Was it safe? Oh, mostly, except for the time I got mugged for my milk money. That actually happened within sight of my house.

I have tried to let my kid live a real life, using real garden tools as toys, using real forks and spoons for food (back when he actually ate food that required them), and I never managed to lock everything dangerous up in the house as we are advised to do. Mostly that's because we're kind of lame and those childproofing locks are a bitch to install and are often not just toddler proof but parent proof as well.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I have never let him walk anywhere by himself. Letting him cross the street to the neighbor's house last year was a big step for me. He thought I was kind of dumb to worry. I stood by my kitchen window pretending not to watch.

We all know what the worst that can happen is. The parent's worst nightmare is the pedophile.

If you haven't talked to your kid about this, you need to. Teach them how to keep themselves safe.

When Max was three he was trying to get me to let him play in the front yard by himself. The conversation went something like this:

Me "Come inside or play in the back yard. You can't play alone in the front."
Max "Why?"
Me "Because then I can't see you and I need to be able to see you."
Max "You can look out windows." This was true.
Me "But it's not safe for you to play out front without me there."
Max "Why?"
Me "Because you could get hurt. There are lots of cars that drive by fast."
Max "I won't go in the street"
Me "I know honey, but there are a lot of other ways you can get hurt."

I was trying to avoid scaring him too much.

Max "I won't get hurt. I'm careful."
Me "But there's no fence on the yard and people I don't know can walk by."
Max "I don't care!"
Me "I know you don't care but kids are very small and can be hurt by others."
Max "You mean they might try to steal me?"
Me "Well...yes, actually."
Max "If a person tried to steal me I would kick them in the penis!!"

I still didn't let him play out front without me for another three years, but I admit that I was impressed that my three year old already had a plan for dealing with malevolent strangers.

In deciding that it might be time to let the kid have a little more independence I thought about how I could possibly prepare him for avoiding bad situations and people. How much to say? I'm always surprised by how much he already knows and has thought about. I asked him if he wanted to be allowed to walk home by himself and he lit up and nodded his head violently.

"Alright," I said "then we need to talk about a couple of very important things. I need to know that you know what to do in certain situations, OK?" I asked him a series of questions:

What do you do if a stranger offers you candy? I don't need your stupid candy! I have my own.

What do you do if someone offers you a ride to anywhere? I don't take rides unless it's you or dad or a friend like Rex who is one of my best friends. (Rex is 8 years old.)

What do you do if someone tries to grab you? Well, first I would kick him in the balls and then I would punch him and then I would...(he had a very complicated list of violent maneuvers he plans to land on anyone unfortunate enough to try to grab him.)

I always tell him to yell, fight, scream like a banshee, and to do whatever it takes to get noticed by other people to get away from the stranger.

Other than that, what can you do? There comes a point when you have to let go a little. Because if they are going to know how to handle independence as adults they need to have earned it gradually under their parents' guidance. This is one of the very hardest things about being a parent in my opinion. I don't consider myself a particularly over protective parent, but I feel like putting my boy in a protective bubble where no pedophile can enter.

You really don't want to ask me what I think should happen to pedophiles either. It is one of the areas where I am irrational and my feelings betray my general nature of non-violence. I do believe that my feelings on the matter are raw, jagged, and primal, as they should be. I would not trust myself to be a judge or jury in the trial of any child-centric sex offender. I could not be trusted to administer fair treatment or application of our judicial system. Too much tiger in my heart for that.

It would be a disservice to let my fears prevent my son from a normal amount of independence and chance to assert his capabilities as a growing maturing human. So I am letting go. Ever so slowly.



Ways to empower your children:

• Teach them martial arts.

• Send them to a self defense class.*

• Talk to them often about what to do in scary situations.

• Make sure they know that no secrets are good secrets if suggested by an adult.

*In seventh grade PE class we had to take a course on self defense and one of the tricks I learned there helped me get out of the grasp of a mugger in San Francisco many years later. I didn't even know I remembered anything from that class but right when I needed it- it came back to me.

Random Wednesday

more thoughts on the fly

I'm very excited to say that my Ballerina rose is forming little tiny hips so I'll have some to harvest this winter. Like so many people I find miniature things irresistible. Full size rose hips are beautiful and when harvested usually need to be cut in half, stripped of the hairy interior, and then dried. Tiny rose hips can be dried whole. I saw some rose hedges last year, in my old neighborhood, that had formed the tiniest bright red rose hips ever and I almost died from the cute factor. I only picked one (because the hedge clearly belonged to someone) to see how the hip would dry. It dried very well and remained just as cute as ever.

Rose hips are a valuable source of vitamin C.

I carry dried beans around in my pockets to look at when no one is looking. Actually, that's a lie. I show them to people all the time. Like a kid who uncovered Aztec treasures in his own basement of crap.

Is it weird that I really miss BBQ Sue? She's been living at the book store downtown and I keep meaning to plot her return. Mannequins are heavy and very awkward so I can't bring her home on a bicycle or scooter. I keep wanting to dress her up in silly scenes around the house.

That totally reminds me to mention that I have been seeing so many more scooters around town. It's awesome! What's even better is that I see a lot of older people driving them. Did any of you know that there is a secret hand wave that scooter riders and motorcycle riders give to each other? I'm sure Vespabelle knows about this. You hold your hand out near your side. It is very low key. Acknowledge your fellow two wheelers, but in a cool and quiet manner befitting the smooth crowd.

Me, I am much too spazzy to handle this mature and smooth move. I have to wave high and smile wide like a raving idiot. Which I admit I kind of am.

When I first started driving my scooter I would forget that you can't remove your right hand from the handle while driving. I would see a neighbor and my right hand would shoot up enthusiastically and my engine would idle. A little embarrassing. I learned not to do that after about fifty embarrassing incidents.

It's cold out. Brrr. I LOVE IT!!!!!

I've been saving a huge pile of socks that are too small for Max now with the plan to reinvent them into a new patchwork sweater for myself. I figure I'll save all the cuffs and toss the worn out curved foot pieces and then serge them all together in a patchwork of knitted blue and black squares and then cut out a sweater when I have enough of them. It could take a while.

I really don't like that Megan character in the Miami CSIs. First of all, I'm constantly aware of the actor trying to project a classicly tightly wound officer type character. The hard bitten female officer archetype. Just like a man, but with breasts and super skinny thighs that appear to bow out in the middle. Partly it's also the costumer who really embraces clothes that make skinny women look hideous. The women's clothes in that show are way worse than the women's clothes in either of the other two CSI series. Megan wore a pair of striped trousers in one episode that kept drawing my attention to her lady-bits. It showed her semi-flat ass in an unflattering light, and just made her look stupid.

The thing I love about women is that often they have the power to mature without attaining a stunted hard bitten personality. A woman can be brilliant, strong, and experienced without having to become brittle and posture like a fool. Men have a much harder time growing in this flexible manner.

This is why I like the Emily Proctor character who is a ballistics expert with a soft southern accent, who isn't afraid to wear braids, but never loses sight of the blood and gore and doesn't flinch when shooting rifles. Dude- she kicks ass!!! No "I'm so stained by the evil in the world I must show you how tough it has made me" type of crap. No need for the cynical exterior.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike cynicism? Oh yes, I think I did recently address this. I have been through quite a lot in my life. I had already been through a lot by the time I was 18 years old. Death, abuse, drugs, cults, racism, bullying, mugging, I had seen all these things up close and personal. I know there was a point where I heard myself trying cynicism on because it's what all my street savvy friends were doing. I realized that it just made people sound stupid. Having experience does not need to rob us of our humanity, or our ability to hope even when there is no reason left to hope, and while sarcasm is always welcome as a stress reliever, cynicism is dull and devoid of laughter.

It was possibly my promise to myself to never allow myself to become cynical that has continually sent the opposite message: one of naivete and newness. Does anyone look at me and guess that I have been attacked in San Francisco at 2am south of Mission? Does anyone look at my body and guess that it has been beat the shit up? Does anyone look at me and see that I know all about erotic asphyxiation? That I have been friends with criminals and prostitutes? Do I look like a person who has sat in rooms with people all falling into the jaws of speed addiction where they fade like shells of bruised skin and bones and their spirits have ceased to be lit?

So when I see characters, real or imagined, who are really tough and need to make sure you know it with every word they say, I think "YOU SUCK!"

And when they are dressed in awful trousers that don't do any favors for their skin and bones bodies? I just want to dress them myself. Being thin doesn't have to look so bad. Being thin isn't in itself isn't so attractive that you can wear anything. That is an enormous fashion myth.

Well, it's time to go cut and grind metal. Have a great Wednesday!


I don't have time for links today. I will add them when I return home.

Most random thought of the day: Rufus Sewell is....there are no adequate words.

Walking The Dog

and other domestic thoughts

Let the pictures of this post tell a calm story of sweet walks beside the hazelnut orchard because I don't have much time to tell anything. I must get ready and leave for work soon. I do most of my writing in the morning. This is my time. Except for when I'm working in the mornings which is three mornings a week now. I am a creature of habit.

Just like my dog. Chick is the best dog in the world. She won't let anyone hurt us. She is our little guardian and a huge love to those who mean us no harm. She's eager to explore like a child.

Always putting her nose into the danger zone. This red winged wasp is kind of beautiful in a terrifying way but Chick just sees "Frantic thing with wings" and must investigate.

It is hard not to love a being that so joyfully runs towards you every time you call. Who, with ears and tongue flapping would give you the earth in her spit if only she could figure out how to haul it to your feet.

It's also hard not to love a State who's sky is so breathtaking at all times of the year. Shifting and moving, never still. The atmosphere is always cracking open here.

I just got my first rose catalog in the mail- from Pickering. It has reminded me that this year I must track down and order a dog rose ("rosa canina" is it's unsurprising name). I want it for it's hips. It's one of the very oldest species roses. Wild roses aren't generally suitable for the city garden, but I want one to climb either my fence or my house. The rose hips are ultimately what I'm after. The rose hips on the dog rose have the highest concentration of vitamin C of all the roses. (So I've read.) So if anyone knows of a source, please tell me!

Pickering has great prices and the shipping isn't too bad. I got some from them this past year and the ones that I actually got in the ground are doing pretty well.

The minutes are dropping away from my clock like the leaves from my Elephant Heart plum tree. Oops...not sure yet if the tree is dying or reacting to fall. I guess we'll have to wait til next spring to find out.

I need two hours to write most of my posts. There's the writing, the linking, the editing, the re-reading, the font adjustments, the swearing at Blogger, and finally the post comes up all shiny and new. No time for all that this morning. Damn. So if there are typos and broken links...forgive my sloppy. I go a little crazier than normal if I don't do a post every morning.

A creature of habit, like my dog. I don't insult myself at all. To be my dog is to fly through hazelnut orchards with ears flapping, investigating alarmingly big holes in the ground (Max thinks they're snake holes and is scared of them) and spreading my bald enthusiasm in so many liters of drool. It's a good life.

Built To Last

camellia house for a king

It is the usual old-man grumble "In my day we built things to last...now things are made like crap so you have to replace them all the time." Yet, isn't it true? Cheap and dirty is such a false economy, but one that is hard not to fall for sometimes. When I walked through this beautiful building called the "camellia house" at Culzean Castle in Scotland, I couldn't help but feel awe that this building is now over a hundred years old, a building for housing and protecting a collection of camellias, built with infinite care, attention to detail, built of stone and metal and glass.

A building like this requires upkeep. The windows must be painted periodically to keep them from rusting, the wood parts must be conditioned, you can't just let it go or like all things on earth nature will reclaim her bits and pieces. These are things you wouldn't bother with if you had a fiberglass or plastic building. When companies claim that their product will last 25 years I read into that that the product might last 25 years but it will look 25 years old within the first couple of years. Hardwood floors age so much better than carpet, they take nicks and scratches and form a lovely aged patina of wear; the color darkens over time and gets warmer. Yet people still lay out their wall to wall because it's cheaper in the short term. Most of them are made of materials that, if you read anything about them, are pretty creepy and are helping to destroy the air in the making.

Ever since we've owned our own home and talked with others about home maintenance, and gone through the process of buying and selling homes a few times so have seen what is out there in our part of the world, I have found myself vastly annoyed by the assumption that what I really want in a house and yard is "low (or no) maintenance". Houses with vinyl siding that you "never" have to replace or repaint, aluminum windows, wall to wall carpeting, and concrete gardens dotted with juniper.

Energy saving is such a concern that everyone is replacing beautiful old windows with vinyl double paned. I understand why, but to me it is destroying something that should be preserved with love and care. Our house in Santa Rosa had so many gorgeous windows in it, all original and single paned, multi lights from floor to ceiling that let in light and framed the gorgeous sycamores outside our windows. All the glazing was shot when we bought the house and the first winter there were lots of leaks.

I learned to replace the glazing on the windows from a master and started repairing them. In the end we got them all fixed at once after the attic fire, but I was proud of the fact that I had learned to do it. I was proud of the fact that I had preserved the craftsmanship that went into the original windows. To keep old windows means you need to help keep energy in the house in other ways like have lovely insulated curtains on large windows. You can make them yourself. You can also fit them with paper or fabric blinds that fit snugly across them to help keep warmth in.

There is going to be lots to do on our current house. We can't afford to do anything right now so some of its issues will deepen a bit before we get to them. However, I am so happy to live in this well built home. There aren't a lot of pretty windows like I had before but they are still mostly original and let in pretty light which makes me happy.

I would like to build a green house out of old multi-light windows. Something that could be reglazed occasionally to preserve its integrity. My friend Sharon built one that is so charming, so sweet, and wonderful to sit in. It looks like a little synagogue. She is the one that showed me the potential to turn old windows into something new, useful, and beautiful.

I think it's time for all of us to return to the habit of making things to last out of materials that don't pollute the earth when they are done with their life of usefulness to us humans. It makes me sick to think of all the acrylic carpeting not disintegrating in the landfills. I think it's time that we save to buy good quality things rather that rush to buy crap. It's time to make more things ourselves as well. When we can.

As I work more and more hours I remember how hard it is to lead a good quality life when both partners in a family are working and no one is home making the good food, cleaning, gardening, building. All of these things add so much to a family's quality of living. How incredible it would be if all the two income family's who are doing well enough decide to stop chasing money and have someone stay home! Even part time is better than no time. So many people don't have a choice and I really feel for them. Sometimes though, we have a choice-we just don't see it. If you are both working so that you can make payments on two cars...why not have one car? If you are both working so you can have a really expensive house- why not find a less expensive house?

Our house isn't expensive as far as houses go. We have only one car. (Though I do have a scooter bought during a more affluent moment in our lives, four years ago now but there are no payments for either our car or the scooter). We don't have cable, or cell phones (!), or a vacation home, nor do we have sporting equipment, and we rarely take vacations. Most of the financial trouble we are in right now is because of two years of unemployment and unexpected difficulties in buying this house that caused us to go into credit card debt. This will not last forever. At some point one of us will be able to spend time at home making and doing all the things a home and family need for a good life.

I look forward to that day.

Sunday In A Small Town

and how wind chimes freak me out*

(reprised)

Sunday morning. Cold, grey, quiet. I love this morning. I also love how talking about my aversion to games started such a great discussion. I love how there is room for all of us; you can love games and its not hard to find friends to play with you; you can hate games and while it's harder to find like minded spirits, you can rub the dog's belly while others are playing. I am so satisfied with that!

I am really loving the Showtime show "The Tudors". It's true that there is way too much sex in it for me to be really comfortable, just as I suspected. Really no need at all to watch Mary Boleyn go down on Henry the 8th. I very much dislike Jonathon Rhys Meyers because he is such an arrogant actor (I've read interviews and he's such an asshole). However, I underestimated how much I love that time period, the history that accompanies it, the back drop, the costumes, and the fact that all these people had to operate without television news, radio, phones, or computers.

What I'd really like to know is, when will Jonathon start growing the famous red (unsexy) beard that Henry wore? And when will he start to wear the fat suit? Henry was NOT a skinny guy.

Sunday in my family was never about church since we weren't Christians. Sometimes my parents had us all sit in a meditative circle at their Buddha altar and "ohm". But mostly Sundays were about yard work and food. My mom always seemed to cook good food on Sundays. Sometimes after doing some weeding my parents would let us play with friends but friends were hard to find in Ashland Oregon on Sundays unless you went to church. Most of our friends were born again Christians. So Sundays came to symbolize emptiness in the afternoons. The whole town was steeped in an oppressive quiet.

It gave room for me to hear the wind chimes on every one's porches all across town in an eerie tinkling that sounded more like human keening. Sundays have always been a day of acute discomfort to me because of its emptiness filled only with the lonely aching longing of the chimes which sound like empty souls trying to find purchase on the banks of hell.

Most of my friends already know this about me and I have discussed it here before: my incredible aversion to wind chimes. Here in Mac someone very clever once left a little tiny wind chime near my front door. I sense that it was left there by a Christian person trying to untie my brain. Luckily it was so small it couldn't even really catch a breeze.

Wind chimes make me think of places where serial killers hide. Where bad things happen. Where humanity has deserted and all that is left is metal music in the wind. They are like ghosts whining about purgatory, caught in the metal tubes forever, like a pale recording of their shadowy souls. Tinkling tinkling tinkling away into the empty Sunday air like a persistent hammering in my brain.

I realize that chimes are just chimes. I am only telling you what they make me feel like and why they fill me with dread rather than delight, as they do for many people. My mom loves chimes. Many of my friends love them too. I respect that. They don't hear the same thing I do or have the same memories of the empty atmosphere filled with them. I never make a fuss about other people having them**. Even when they are tinkling away and unscrewing my head in the process. I just pretend I don't notice and then later I try to shake the sound back out of my head like water out of my ear.

I didn't really notice Sundays in Santa Rosa so much. Probably because no one I knew went to church. Instead it seemed to be a day for community, everyone out in their yards doing yard work but stopping to chat with neighbors taking walks and kids running around together in a great melee of shrieks and flying dirt. Sundays were for being home, or hanging out with neighbors close by. Sundays were for cooking, like they were for my family growing up, and then play. Filled with noise and laughter and friendly gossip.

Here it is the same as it was in Ashland. Most of my town is in church right now. There are even buses all over the place to transport you to church if you can't get to it on your own, which seems insane considering that there are churches within spitting distance of almost every house in town. We have a lot of churches here. I suppose there are a lot of spiritual needs that go along with all the teen pregnancies that seem to accompany very churchy towns. I heard Santa Rosa had a big teen pregnancy problem, but it can't compare to the rate here***!

Later we're going to go to a Slow Foods potluck for some good food and talk with other like minded people who relish cooking, the time it takes to make good food, and using as many local ingredients as possible. I have lots of food to make to keep it from going to waste.

I canned 15 pints of chunky spiced apple/pear sauce. I also canned five pints of grenadine. I worked almost all week. I have also finally propositioned friends to help write the magazine so we are all starting the great project of writing the thing. I'm very excited about it!

I hope you all have a satisfying Sunday, whatever it means personally to you.

*If by this time you are asking yourself "What the hell DOESN'T freak her out?!" then all I have to say is welcome to my world of anxiety. When people notice that I "worry" a lot, they don't really understand the half of it. Having generalized anxiety means that my experience of the world is fraught with both rational and irrational fears. I have a very long list of things that disturb me, freak me out, and depress me. Sometimes I even impress myself with it.

**Not to my awareness anyway. I know I've commented on them to people before but I don't think commenting is the same as making a fuss. I don't know, maybe I do make a big stink and I just block it all out? Only my friends and family can really say for sure.

***Actually, charts show that teen pregnancies are on the decrease here. That's good news.

Games

a very special hell

The sentence I most dread at any social gathering is "Hey! Let's play a little game..."

The minute I hear that sentence I know I'm going to be outed yet again.

I know I'm going to be cajoled, coerced, and looked at like a freak of nature.

It's not a secret that I don't play games.

I DON'T PLAY GAMES.

I was once accused by a friend of possibly enjoying not playing games just to be different and to make a fuss. Lord, like I need any extra ways to make a fuss, I can do that in my sleep.

What constitutes games? So glad you asked: board games, parlour games, group games, this extends into group activities that are structured to be "fun" (like games), card games, word games, any activity that comes with a set of rules to make the activity more "engaging", any activity with teams where the goal is to win, any activity in which you play against another person with the goal to win. I hate them all.

You might be asking yourself "How can anyone not like something so fun?" Believe me, this is not an original question.

You might be thinking "But, no one NORMAL hates games, surely?!" You have a point there that will surely keep me up at night.

It might occur to you to wonder "What could have happened to lead a person to such a distaste for FUN?" Truly, it's on every one's mind.

I would like to try to answer these vexing questions for you.

First of all, I would like to point out that the experience of having fun is a highly subjective one, that we all experience fun in different ways and while it's true that the majority of humans seem to thrive on competitive games between each other and find it highly entertaining, (sometimes even laughing in response to the activity), for a few of us these activities are like taking a hot little elevator to hell and not coming back until all our hair is burned off of our bodies.


What kind of people don't enjoy games? Are any of these people NORMAL? In all honesty, probably not. I know that I am a person with a clinical mental medical condition and it's entirely possible that everyone else who hates games has also got one (or a few). I think you may sooth your worries about personal safety though because these people tend not to be dangerous. More than likely they won't break your dishes in a fit of rage when they see the Scrabble board come out nor are they likely to suddenly sprout a third leg. However, don't be alarmed if you see them curl up in a ball in the corner of the room and start to drool.

As to the last question- how could this distaste for fun have come about? Was it a result of being hurt by fun? Is there a deep seated irrational fear or dark event in the past that has triggered this crippling distaste for all that is good and pure in the world along with kittens and ice cream?

I think I can only answer this question from my personal perspective. It all boils down to the fact that I am a socially retarded individual who finds nearly all group activities distressing in the same way that it would be distressing to try to swim with a group of kids if you were the only one who couldn't swim. It's like having to sing the national anthem naked in front of David Bowie. It's distressing to me on a molecular level. This equation may explain things a little more clearly:

people+rules+competition=desire to peel own skin off face.

What some people perceive as "fun" is to me like water torture.

The only card game I've ever liked was solitaire.

Because I can play it ALONE.

Yes, that's right, I'm a loner. A lone wolf. A real rebel. Oh yeah, I like to really shake things up and enjoy making everyone uncomfortable with my zany ways.

The truth is, (and Philip will back me up here), I don't like not liking games. It isn't convenient. People always want to convert me to their game playing ways, like it's a religion I need to join. I would never have to tell anyone about my game-hate if it weren't for the fact that those who like to play games can't stand it when someone doesn't want to join them. They don't understand that the activities that they find "fun" fill me with dread.

I make exceptions for my kid. I have learned to play "Chutes and Ladders" with aplomb. I can play "Uncle Wiggly" without wanting to gouge my eyes out. And I did actually enjoy the recent chess playing with Max, but mostly because I knew I wouldn't win and he was enjoying teaching his mama something new.

However, I tried to play Monopoly with him a few times and got a nasty panic attack each time and finally had to tell my boys that I can't do it ever again.

For anyone who's interested, here is a list of the games I've played and hated: Old Maid, War, Monopoly, Clue, Candy Land, Dreidel, Scrabble (except with Philip), Operation, Croquet, Blockus, Trivial Pursuit, Charades, Twister, Pin The Tail, Twenty Questions, Bingo, relay races, baby shower games (!!!), hide and seek, Battleship, card games whose names I blocked out of memory for sanity protection, ouija board, Sorry, Connect Four, UNO,Yahtzee, and many many more.

The only game I've ever really enjoyed was Chinese Checkers. But I don't want to play it with you. The only reason why I don't dread it as much as the others is because of the clacking of the marbles on the metal base. It soothes me just like a crazy person might be soothed by the sight of pretty shiny things.

Here's a break down what it is about games that I find so horrifying:

• Organized fun sucks.

• Winners and losers. Life is already full of real opportunities to win and lose and it's pretty serious stuff. I hate anything that reenacts the winner/loser dynamic.

• I loath any kind of competition. I think this made my Dad think I was broken when I was a kid. It means I not only hate all games, I hate sports too. With a passion.

• Games remind me of dusty jokes with stale punch lines that you are still expected to laugh at. They aren't fun in exactly the same way that clowns aren't funny.

• Group activities freak me out.

• Games create an air of expectation and pressure that threaten to explode my head.

• Most people don't like losing and I am acutely uncomfortable with sore losers.

• Just as much as I am uncomfortable with ungracious winners.

• Games bring out a side in people I don't like being around.

I have had a total of 38 years to become intimately familiar with my aversion to games and in that time I have been pressured into trying many many games and been coerced into a shitload of "fun" group activities that have left little scars in my head. I have come to a point where I'm very comfortable with the idea of never playing another game. I don't feel I'm missing anything in my life besides a lot of really bad feelings, dread, and the resultant panic attacks.

So how do you deal with people like me? (Some of my friends are still trying to work this one out). You leave us be. You play your games and let us sit quietly and watch. I can say that I don't resent others playing games, and I encourage my friends in their pursuit of the fun games bring to them, I simply want to be allowed to sit by and not participate. I don't want to be heckled about it or harassed.

For those who are on a quest to try and convert me into a happy game player- you will lose. How ironic is that? I know you will lose and it isn't because I'm being stubborn. I am merely trying to protect myself from activities that I know for a fact will make me panic, will make me itch from the inside of my bones out, will make me extremely miserable, and will guarantee disappointing my friends.

What I get to live with is that if I play games I will disappoint my friends, if I don't play games I disappoint everyone. It's not a good feeling and I don't enjoy having this issue with "fun". I don't enjoy being a person who doesn't like jokes with punch lines, clowns, balloons, practical jokes, games, sports, or group activities. It's something that has caused me plenty of grief, made me stand out like a sore thumb when what I really want to do is just blend in.

I forgive all my friends for not understanding this aspect of me. I forgive all the people who have tried to convert me, not understanding that it isn't a matter for conversion. I also forgive the people who aren't my friends who have looked at me like a freak when I decline a super exciting game of Twister because the idea of getting tangled up with a bunch of probably sweating bodies in uncomfortable positions didn't appeal to me.

Now all I can ask is that everyone forgive me for having an unfortunate quirk in my head and heart that make it impossible for me to be a participator. I really am human. That third leg is just left over from evolutinary change.

What?! YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION?!!!!***

***Great diversionary tactic. Yeah? I am so shocked that there are still people out there who don't believe the evidence that supports the theory of evolution. There is so much evidence stacked up to support it that I didn't actually think it was still considered a theory by some people that has yet to be proved. I'd set to work to prove it to them, but wouldn't that be a little like someone trying to convince me that games are fun? I will let them be. I will let them be their own kind of freak.

When I Was A Punk

I was never a punk.

I've been threatened by punks. Rich punk kids were always the worst. There was one in my high school who decided I had "Weak Ass" printed on my forehead and tried to terrorize me. Truth be told I was absolutely not interested in being beat up, I was scared of her. I knew I wouldn't fight her. She would stalk up to me all crazy-eyed punk spikes in the eyes and tell me to move from where I was sitting so she could have my spot. For a long time I just went with it.

But I got tired of the whole play. It finally dawned on me that if I just got beat up the whole game would be over and we could all move on to something less tedious. So one day when she ordered me to do something or other I said "Look, Karen, I'm not going to fight you. You know I'm not going to fight you and I know it. If you want to beat me up just do it now and get it over with." She was a little non-plussed. What do you do with that?

This, oddly enough, won her unending respect and she decided to be my best friend. Which was so unfortunate because I really couldn't be friends with a person who had spent a couple of months trying to terrorize me. I only won her respect when I lost all fear. The fact that her character preyed on the weak made her a person I couldn't like. Still she somehow clung to my side for months. I am a diplomatic person, I don't like hurting people, so I didn't really know how to break it to her that her kind of person was like dog-vomit slime mold to me.

So I let her hang out with me and my friends, who I think must have only barely tolerated her, and eventually she really did get me beat up. One dark and stormy...just kidding...one night me, my friend Lisa*, and punk-ass Karen went to the city so Lisa and Karen could score some tabs. Or something else illegal. We were trolling up and down upper Haight Street kind of late at night when a drunken skinhead exited a bar whose door we were standing near. The drunken person in question was very loud and it became immediately clear that she was not a happy Fred Astaire type drunk. She started harassing us and wouldn't you know it? Karen, the punk, decided to give some attitude back. I knew this was a bad move the second I saw Karen's posture stiffen in the classic "I'm punk rock-hear me roar" stance.

I had had enough of Karen's stupid attitude and awful personality. I started walking away from what was clearly a foul wind-a-brewing. I must have gotten about 20 feet away before I looked behind me to see where my friends were when a fist came hurling towards me like a cartoon and went KER-PLOWY!!! into my face, splitting my lip and giving me a bloody nose.

Ouch!! Getting beat up is so much worse when it's done by someone you love. When it's a drunk skinhead who won't remember a thing in the morning it doesn't hurt nearly as much. The ho-bag turned around and laid into Karen, ripping out several sets of earrings. We tried to use the bathroom at the Rock-n-Bowl joint but they wouldn't let us skanky bloody teens in. Damn them classy joints! So we huddled into the bathroom at the nastiest McDonald's I've ever been in. A place that cockroaches make reservations with for fancy feasts in the city.

I believe I found the motivation to cut Karen loose after that. I felt kind of sorry for her in the end because she had adoring parents, a room every girl dreams of, the nicest house in the nicest neighborhood and unlike my fridge- hers had lots of food in it.

THAT WAS A TOTAL LIE. I didn't feel sorry for her. I was just happy to get her out of my life.

I was never punk. I also wasn't truly a death rocker. I wasn't exactly a superstar, and I wasn't really ever a "cool" kid. I didn't fit in anywhere. I had a few good friends though, which is all anyone really needs.

I loved this suit which I bought at the Salvation Army. I also loved this tie which belonged to my Dad in the 1970's and I wish I still had it. I have always loved wearing suits and ties and would do so still if it wouldn't make me look like an obese Mr. PotatoHeadGangsta Version. See the Madonna style bracelet wad? That is the only style I think I got directly from her. Believe that I was very upset when everyone started attributing the vintage clothes craze to her influence! What you can't see in these pictures very well is the really stylish rat's tail I had going on. I'm not embarrassed by very many styles in my past, I tend to continue to enjoy most of them...but this one always makes me cringe. It's not any different from having a mullet.

Seriously.

You know, this is all so different from another bully story I have. One where I had an opportunity to kick my bully while she was down. Such a classic moment in a gradeschooler's life. My tormentor was getting beat up and I was invited to join in. I couldn't resist. For two years I'd been scared shitless. I kicked her while she was down. I remember feeling a little sick in my gut as my foot made contact with her side. It was so wrong. It was dishonorable, for one thing, to kick anyone when down. I knew that.

But it also felt wrong on such a fundamental level, to administer pain to another being. I still, to this day, 27 years later, feel lousy that I did it. But I suppose it was a good lesson to me. It didn't matter that this same person had pushed me out of my school chair onto the floor. It didn't matter that she threatened to beat me up in the alley right across the street from the school on the way home at least once a week. I knew that committing violence on other people was wrong.

A couple years later, when the two of us (my tormentor and I) were in Junior High I had lost all fear of her. As I found confidence in my weird-ass self I seemed to care so much less about Erin. She was a wasp with a bright blond stinger but my skin had grown into leather. She knew it. We both could sense when the game was up. I still remember the day when she made the first friendly overtures to me that she'd ever made in the whole five years we'd gone to school together. I didn't need her. It was a great revelation. When I didn't have fear of her, she ceased to have power and she felt me take it away.

I took it away from her. I took it away from Karen.

I think about what's happened to these two unfortunate souls from time to time. I see Karen as a high powered Marin County lawyer with a husband named Biff and two children as spoiled as she was herself, and a coke habit as well as a lover named Biff. Yeah, I know, what are the chances? Erin I always like to think of as having retained only 64% of her original teeth, one divorce and six kids later she's washing dishes at Big Al's Diner.

My fantasy life is so much better than candy!






*Neither Lisa B. nor Lisa E. I have had a lot of Lisas in my life. I don't understand it. I just go with it now. Obviously I like Lisas.

Naive

Every living being has the same basic wish – to be happy and to avoid suffering. Even newborn babies, animals, and insects have this wish. It has been our main wish since beginningless time and it is with us all the time, even during our sleep. We spend our whole life working hard to fulfil this wish.

Naive: –adjective

1.	having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality; unsophisticated; ingenuous.

2.	having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information; credulous: She's so naive she believes everything she reads. He has a very naive attitude toward politics.

3.	having or marked by a simple, unaffectedly direct style reflecting little or no formal training or technique: valuable naive 19th-century American portrait paintings.

4.	not having previously been the subject of a scientific experiment, as an animal.

Another definition of Naive: a person who disagrees with your views.

What interesting justifications do anti-choice people make in their minds for the killing of children in Iraq? Is it alright because they have a different religion? Or because they're a different race? Or because they're already born?

Judge for yourself. This is only my opinion. Which I'm supposedly allowed to share. So I'm sharing it.

Now back to the music and the canning and other regular programming...

Autumn
(and how I know it's here)

8 clues that fall has arrived:

• I have a crate of apples on my porch that I picked at a friend's house.

• All my canning equipment is sprawled across the surfaces of the kitchen.

• There is a cloud of fruit flies in said kitchen.

• I got cold, really cold, riding my scooter across town to the community garden and back.

• The leaves have just started showering the streets with their papery dry bodies.

• I just got in the mood to listen to Pachelbel's Cannon*.

• The light faded more quickly tonight than it does in the summer.

• My bones feel tingly, my body feels the shifting in the earth, and I felt a sudden elation that only the crisp weather brings.

I am fervently shutting out all the political talk that I brought on myself with a previous post and the insults to my intelligence and my knowledge of the world that came with it. I am, instead, realizing that if my views can be called naive then I am in excellent company since I share a lot of views with that guy who went on about "turning the other cheek" and all that peaceful crap-o-la and that other guy who sent the British packing from his country and that other one about whom I know a lot less but seem to have a lot of philosophical views in common with, plus we have that whole pronounced abdomen thing goin' on (clever us!). However, if anyone tries to rub my belly I will smack them back into the stone age.

Today I learned to cut through steel poles. I cut 36 lengths of it with spark spray flying and it felt so useful, such an honest work (as opposed to, say, trading stocks), and one of those activities like post hole digging that can connect you with a human rhythm that you can only feel when you're using your hands. I also ground the paint off of metal in preparation for welding which I really enjoyed as well- though I wasted an entire disc of sandpaper on my learning curve.

At the community garden, where I went this evening to water, I hung out with a very handsome large white cat who lives at the garden. I love him. He has beautiful blue eyes and is sweet and followed me around like a movie star. I know he's being fed because he's not emaciated at all. He normally seems pretty healthy but tonight he had an ugly gash of a wound on his temple. We hung out as the sun set and the wind kicked itself up. That's when I really felt it.

I've heard everyone talking about fall being here. Amongst friends, around town, on blogs- everyone has been talking about the swift arrival of fall- how could the summer ALREADY be over?! and the usual crap. Dang it, this is the best moment of every year!

I LOVE IT WHEN SUMMER ENDS!!!!

I got cold riding on my scooter and dry curled whispery leaves scuttled across my path all the way home, littering the roads in that charming way they do. Some one out there is muttering under their breath about having to rake those leaves- shush! I can hear you. Don't ruin this most bestest moment of all the year. This is my half of the year coming up. Winter is my birth season and the time I am at my most potent, most alive, and most happy. But autumn holds incredible charm and gifts as it leads me forward into the quiet.

Tomorrow I don't work so I am going to make one last mad rush to use of all of the produce I need to process and can so it doesn't go to waste. I plan on playing my music LOUD. I will not worry about anything at all** and I'm going to laugh as I play really silly 1950's traditional music and maybe some Vivaldi to vividly underline my transition.

Most plants and animals come most alive in the warmer months. Spring brings the rising of sap and increased activity in animals that are uncurling from their hibernation.

Fall bring the rising of my sap.

And now I'm going to go enjoy how unbelievably dorky that sounds and how I couldn't care less if I seem wisdomless to anyone (or everyone). I feel love right at this moment and that's all that matters because while love isn't all we need, it sure does feel damn good.






*I used to be able to play this on my accordion. I wish I still could.

**This is all talk since I am incapable of this feat. GAD doesn't allow it. Ever. I'll do my best, is what I'm saying.

Honor Is Nonviolence

(or: why I will never put a hatchet in your head)

No government, no religious group, and no school of thought has the power to dissuade me from my steadfast belief in the desirability of balance in all things natural, in the universal connectedness between humans, plants, other animals besides ourselves, and the planet we all depend on for life, and in my belief that the only honorable way to live is nonviolently.

My religion is life and my family is human.

If you hurt me, you hurt us all. If I hurt you I hurt us all. So let's find better ways to live together. Let's all grow more food. Let's all keep hope lit because these are dark times and I hear spirits giving in to fear, to hatred, to hopelessness.

My religion is life and my family is human.
That includes you.

Working Girl

This is jalapeno jelly. I made 13 half pints of it after getting off work last night. Working outside the home is kicking my ass because the things that need doing around here still need doing whether I'm gone working all day or not.

These are the dry shelled beans I've harvested so far. Still have some more to go. All from one 10' row of beans. Not bad. I would probably have gotten a higher yield if I had trellised them.

Here's what I did yesterday:

• Took the dog for a walk.

• Made a new friend. (The most beautiful Tanzanian woman in the world!).

• Sent out Etsy orders.

• Spent an hour weeding and harvesting at the community gardens.

• Paid an urgent bill.

• Worked at the toy store.

• Cleaned the kitchen.

• Made fresh salsa.

• Made another batch of hummus.

• Made jalapeno jelly.

• Shelled beans harvested from the community garden.

• Possibly patched a frail family relationship. You can never be sure with my family.
  

I don't know how people keep up this kind of activity all the time. I am wiped out. Today I work at the toy store, must clean out the kitty litter box, finish juicing my pomegranates and make grenadine out of it, can it, help Max with homework, do a load of laundry, respond to some e-mails, figure out which urgent bill to pay next, and make final decisions on magazine content so that I can solicit my friends to start working on articles for no pay*.





*Aren't I the best friend EVER?!

Forklift Of Steel

Until today I've never known what it feels like to have 2,800 lbs of hanging bundled steel gently swing towards me and what it feels like to stop its progress. It is a powerfully heavy load to stop with your hands...in fact, you don't really stop it with your hands but with your entire weight centered into your hands. Whole body stiff. This is only when it's gently swinging in your direction. If it is barreling in your direction at a whipping speed- you are maimed, possibly for life. You have to have respect for that amount of metal.

My friend Lisa B.'s husband Lawrence is a welder. Today I started doing some temporary work for him to help him with a big job. I won't be getting to weld anything, but see all that steel tubing? Lawrence is going to train me to cut it to measurements for a hand rail job. I might get to grind the ends smooth and learn to clean up the metal afterwords too.

Today I learned to drive that forklift! It takes some practice to make it go in a straight line because it turns so easily and sharply it's hard to get the steering straight. I know it's kind of dorky but I love driving the fork lift. After I practiced for a while I got to use my new skills to help unload a total of 3,000 pounds of metal tubing from Lawrence's trailer to the supply rack. This endeavor took about an hour and a half of very careful work.

I have to admit that I love this kind of work. I am sadly out of shape to be doing anything like it but there is something very satisfying about working on projects that are going to be so useful. It isn't glamorous, but at the end of the job Lawrence will have put handrails down four flights of stairs to help keep people safe. I will be able to say I helped.

When Lisa asked me if I'd be interested in doing a little work for them she said she thought of me because the skills involved weren't very different from the skills needed to draft patterns. The tools, of course, are very different. The worst you can do to yourself drafting and sewing is to cut yourself with scissors or sew through your fingers, the worst you can do in a welding shop is kill yourself. However, she is absolutely right. While Lawrence was showing me the plans for the job on a blueprint it was very much like a pattern. There is a lot to learn, even though my part in this is very small. It makes sense, piecing together parts of a building.

I don't know what it is about drafting patterns that makes me feel so much in my element but putting things together always clears my head of everything else and sparks my brain like few other activities. This is why it was such a revelation to learn to use a skill saw a few years ago and plan and put together raised garden beds. I love tools. I love making things.

I know what it is: being capable of building things, especially when you are able to plan them out yourself to your own specs opens a world of possibilities up. It feels like nothing is impossible if I can cut wood, bend metal, nail boards, shape fabric, transform raw food into canned goods to eat later, all of these things make me feel more empowered in a world where there is so little I have control over. It ultimately means that given access to the right tools and materials, I can make my environment suit me and my family specifically. How many times have I wanted a built in book shelf to fit "just so" in a difficult space and wished I had the knowledge and skills to do it?

The thing is, the more you learn these new skills the less afraid you are to learn even more. So every step brings you exponentially further into the self reliant fold. If you can make things for yourself, what can't you do?

Not A Foot Fetishist

I do not have a foot fetish and this is definitely not some Shakespearean moment where I doth protest too much. sometimes life conspires to make us appear to others- other than we really are. For a budding photographer who has yet to master the fine art of the self timer feature or tripods, one's own feet provide easy access to personal moments. Like a quick line in a diary dashed off while riding the 80 from Sonoma to Marin County reading Jessica Mitford's brilliant book "The American Way Of Death" -

"Funeral business very funny. Corrupt. Passing Petaluma's wet fields now, always rippling under water. Man next to me just hocked up a loogie. Gross. May have shoved his hand in his pants too. I love buses."

I also love shoes. It is so fortunate for me that my feet are triple wide, high arched, short, pains in the asses that hit the "special needs" shoe department a long time ago rendering me incapable of wearing anything besides thick wide sexy "orthopedic" numbers, or else I would be the next Imelda.

When I was a kid, laid up in bed with a sore throat, I would balance my typewriter on my lap in and amuse myself typing up long lists of names to use in writing soap operas. I would list names like "Biff" thinking they were such funny names that no one was ever really named. I also made up names (something that has spread like wildfire amongst parents across our nation. Witness: "Latisha".) and I would imagine all the people in the world with such names.

The day I discovered that some women really are named "Missy" I thought life could hold no greater surprises. Until the day I found out that "Cookie" is also a real name. Cookie. Just like that. It opens up a universe of bizarre possibilities. I could name someone "Aspic" if I wanted to! Or how about "Nipple Junior"?

It was only a slight relief when I observed that most women named "Missy" and "Cookie" are from the East Coast. I think this weird tradition has yet to gain momentum west of the Mississippi.

I have not forgotten about the magazine. I am detailing the subjects and figuring out which friends I will impose on for content first. In case you were worried.

I know that each of us is born with our own gifts, that we must untie those gifts in our lives if we can, and appreciate them as they are revealed...but I confess that sometimes I wish I had Leonard Cohen's gifts. I don't think he would like me so much if we met. I am all over the place with "Dudes!" and "Hairy Balls!"* and spazzy excitement over canning and living la vide fatso, while he is ascetic, plain cell chic, and fucking brilliant.

Bastard.

Leonard taught me that poetry can be honest, hard at the corners, and coarse, yet still make a person almost weep for its beauty. I have no gurus, I have no named god, I have no specific religion, but I do feel that excellent writing is like prayer. Like meditation. Like connecting all the dots, speaking math at the same time as speaking art. Leonard taught me that a song and its lyrics can be so compelling that you need to listen to them like an addict needs heroine to hit the veins at specific rhythmic intervals. He taught me that you can use real language (as opposed to poncey high-falutin' lacy language tricks) to say what you mean and that the simplicity of it can haunt you forever in the best possible way.

Only Leonard can make blow jobs sound like still lifes.

Feet are pretty important.

My days have become impossibly compacted. Too too too much. I feel like I am always running. Good thing I have such wide feet or I might fall over.

Sometimes I think I only write because I am obsessed with the tools of the trade. I become attached to certain pens and use them exclusively for years until I discover the love of a new or different pen. Almost always fine tipped felt though a very satisfying blue ball point can really hit me in the sternum with its excellence. I really loathe using any other color of ball point. There have been a few black inked ones that were good but I confess that the blue ones are just the best. But it can't be fashionable blue. It must be the classic formula for Bic pen ink. Classic ball point blue.

The worst WORST is pink, purple, green, orange, or red ball point ink. I'd rather gnaw on a strip of rawhide than have to put them in my hands and connect them to paper. It's like a sacrilege. If there can be such a thing allowed in a writer's manifesto.

I have spent many hours of my life writing for the simple sake of feeling how the pen releases its ink into the fibers of the paper, how the tip wears down at such a pleasing angle that letters become distinctive. I have spent hours learning to write in different cursive styles, heavily slanted in either direction, or straight up like a soldier with a pole up his butt, or lilting gently like Camille sliding endlessly down her sick couch. I have written just for the sound of the ink penetrating the paper.

It took me a moronically long period of time to decide that writing on a computer was acceptable. Mostly its not. I still prefer a typewriter for the soul quenching "thunking" of keys hitting the paper and the return noise announcing new sentences or a pen gliding like magic across page after page of highly individual text making light scritching noise that only the insects and myself can hear.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I got fat enough that my hands go numb when I try to write by hand now. I haven't been able to write by hand for sustained periods of time for over two years. So you must know that making grocery lists is like a delicious past time.

A few years ago I found the perfect paper (holy shit-it's been ten!) and I almost never write on anything else. It is thick enough that I can use Papermate felt tip pens on it and it won't leak through the other side, it's silky, smooth, and buttery. It has narrow ruled lines and calls to me in my sleep.

Often I come to the computer now for the "real" writing and keep the notebooks for my notes and lists and organizing my head.

It is late and I should go to sleep. I resent sleep. It takes alone time away from me.

Tomorrow I go to "One Green World" to taste strange fruit. I will report back here.

Then Sunday I learn to cut metal with a metal saw.

Somewhere in there I also have to juice a gift of pomegranates and process apples.

I think I'll go watch Grissom and Sidle not get together for yet another episode.

Sleep well my little cabbages.



*Oh yeah, I keep meaning to mention this. Oh well, another time.

An Apology For War
the other side of 9/11

The heart of a people is often laid deep in the seeds of the fruits they grow. Open it up and you will see a history, a folklore written into the planes and angles of juicy colorful flesh, and you will hear a music you may or may not recognize. If you destroy the seeds a people saves, you destroy what's in their hearts. Today many of my countrymen and women are turning their attention to mournfully remembering the civilian deaths that were a result of the terrorist attack against the twin towers on September 11, 2001.

Every year, when this day rolls around I am made acutely uncomfortable by this lingering look at our losses when so much more and worse has happened since then. Every year as my people get in touch with their anger and their sorrow I feel like it is a dangerous idolatry, this memorializing of the dead made into a patriotic show. Personal sorrows were many and for each person I can understand remembrance. But every year it seems that people use this moment to justify war. "Remember all those people who died because of those heinous terrorists? It's a good thing we used that opportunity to invade a country that wasn't harboring the perpetrators of the crime because you know they are evil anyway..."

On this day seven years ago I heard the impossibly sad news about the twin towers and heard the death toll counts rising and I said to Philip "You realize this means we're going to war, don't you?" He agreed. I knew that our crooked president, if he wasn't somehow directly responsible for this heinous act itself, would absolutely use it as an excuse to go kill a whole lot of oil-hoarding evil Arab people.

What I kept thinking about was what impact all of these events must be having on the Arab-Americans in our own country. People with loved ones living in places that our government has vilified and then invaded, and then not seen fit to keep a death toll. We are a people made up of citizens from around the globe, a major part of our beauty lies in the people who have come to give us all the benefit of their cultural past, their perspective, their uniqueness, and to give us color.

The events of 9/11 must have had a tremendous impact on every American with a Mediterranean look to them. Going through the airports must have been hell, to be more scrutinized than other paler European-style faces had to have stung and felt like in injustice. What was it like to listen to people talking about Afghans like animals deserving to be executed? Afghanistan may be poor in the global economy but it is rich with history, with current vibrancy, and Americans didn't really care after 9/11.

The truth is that Americans didn't really care who had to die, just as long as someone paid for the deaths resulting from the crashing twin towers. Revenge is a very old past time and has not, even after thousands of years of seeking it, made anything better. It keeps our rivers full of bodies is all. We went looking for a fight the second we got the horrifying news. And when we couldn't find enough blood in Afghanistan we invaded Iraq because our President and all his evil men had our attention squarely set on the tragedy. "Keep people afraid and sad and they won't notice that we're invading a country we have no excuse to invade and even though no one else in the world would support us we are so righteous with God behind us...."

This is not a God directed war we've been waging. It's a political invasion and occupation. It can only end badly.

Once the evil was done and the death toll kept rising year after year I began to hear people say things like "We can't just leave Iraq now because we have to clean up our mess first." I have never heard such rubbish.

Let me ask you all this: If you had a plumber come to your house to fix a little leak, and he excavated and hammered at your pipes until all the plumbing in your house was broken and the water was gushing, the sewage sludging into your basement, even though when he arrived there had been but one small leak, would you consider this person qualified to clean up and fix the mess?

If you answered yes then you are deeply stupid.

So here we are. Seven years into war. A war we had no reasonable excuse to wage in the first place. The real terrorists were never caught but in the mean time we've managed to kill a shitload of Arabs, lose some more of our own people, deposed a leader, start a civil war, and one of the worst crimes we've committed? We've imposed rules on a people we have no right to impose anything on that have the potential to crush their heritage: we've made it illegal for any Iraqis farmers to save their seeds for harvest. They are required to buy their seeds from the United States, from our companies selling genetically modified seeds.

Like all true terrorists, we are attempting to rip out the hearts of an entire people.

This makes me sad beyond belief. I am sick inside with shame for my country. A country with the potential for greatness squandering all its chances on wars it should not fight and cannot win. I am ashamed at how hard it is to find out how many Iraqis we've killed, because if you're going to kill people you should be accountable for it. Our own laws support this. God supposedly agrees. Jesus doesn't even think we should kill at all.

If we're going to mourn everyone who died as a result of the attack on the twin towers then we need to also mourn for all the people who have died as a result of our seeking retribution. Americans love to print the numbers of American soldiers who've died so there's no problem keeping track of our beloved own (which undoubtedly includes plenty of Arab-Americans who have ties to Iraq, what a mind fuck that must be!) and so the total number of American lost (including the Twin Towers incident) is: 7,443 American people. *

I had to check a lot of sources, many no longer current, but it seems that if you average out the estimates available (which vary widely) everyone can pretty much agree that at least 100,000 Iraqis have died in the war, a huge majority of those civilians. Men, women, and children not in the military.

Women and children. The United States has a hell of a fucking lot to answer for. How many of these civilians were related to American tax paying citizens? Should we not also be honoring the loss of these people? People who did us no harm.

For every 1 American killed, we have killed 13 Iraqis.

What I want to know is: When will we decide that we've killed enough?

Our government has done this in our name, sullying all kinds of other names in the process such as "God", "Justice", and the most laughable of all "Freedom".

Enough was reached a long time ago. Enough is now. Enough.

I'm not going to throw rocks at our troops who, having enlisted in a job in which there is no room for freedom of opinion, have been doing what they promised to do which is doing what they're told. I don't respect what they're doing because killing people under any circumstance besides urgent self defense, is to me, indefensible and a crime. I don't care what flag anyone is carrying. I don't care what color your skin is. I don't care who you pray to. Killing is wrong. But bring our troops home. I will not harass them nor bring them down.

We've killed at least one hundred thousand Iraqi people.

We've become the Nazi's to Jewish people.** We just haven't reached the same death toll yet. Is that what it will take? Do we need to kill 6,000,000 men, women, and children before we see that what we're doing is wrong? That what we've done is invaded another country, oppressed them, killed their people-innocent people, and decided that we have some "right" to be there? What will it take for us to take our actions seriously and demand, as a country, that our tyranny over Iraq end?

I thought we viewed dictatorships as evil. We are the worst dictatorship of all right now.

So tonight I am sending out my apologies to the dead and the families they have left to mourn. I'm so sorry that my country has committed these heinous crimes against you. I'm so sorry that my country, of which I am a part, has smeared the blood of your innocent children (who resemble so many of our children) across the streets with grenades and bombs. I'm so sorry we've put laws in motion that could destroy your gorgeous and ancient heritage, family stories, and indigenous crops that you have grown for centuries.

I'm so sorry. If I could depose Emperor Bush and prevent his evil brethren from taking charge when he steps down, I would. If I could undo this stench of death in your country, I would. I am but one person. Please, please know that not all Americans are blood thirsty self righteous butchers. Please know that some of us think on your loss and wish we could send you back the seeds of your heart. Some of us wish we could open the universal rivers to share food, conversation, laughter, cultural understanding and enlightenment.

Tonight, while my country remembers the 2,974 people who died from the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, I am remembering the 100, 000 we have so far killed in an effort to make ourselves feel better.

My shame is deep and complete. Please forgive us.

* Sources for this information: September 11 attacks, and both American and Iraqi deaths,

**I am 100% aware of the gravity of such a statement. I stand by it. What we're doing in Iraq is slaughtering innocent people. It's what Hitler did to not only Jewish people but to all people who opposed him. I do believe that there is a deep racism in my country against people of Arab heritage and it is no different than Adolf's prejudice against jewish people. I'm was horrified to hear a relative of mine call someone a "raghead" once and until then I actually didn't realize there were derrogative words for Arabic people because in my circles people have few racial prejudices.

Cottage Garden

Today I spent all day with my friend Laurie who lives in the sweetest cottage in the country on almost half an acre. She has trees dripping with pears and apples and grape vines full of not quite ripe concord grapes which she's said I can have. I picked the prettiest Gravenstein's and pears and brought home a large box of each.

We took a short walk across the road and a large field to a piece of property that's for sale. Just for fun we imagined being neighbors and Max made us walk up to the second story of the very large creepy old barn full of bird and mouse droppings and dripping with spider webs. I love the house I'm in so much that I have no desire to move ever again...but Laurie's spot on earth is so lovely that it was fun to imagine living across the road from her.

Hanging out in Laurie's garden reminds me what I want mine to be: full of flowers and fruit. I have so much to do to transform my own much smaller space and it reminded me to relax into the process. I don't have a huge amount of space but I'd say I've got more than enough to create my own small version of paradise.

What a lovely lush day.

Around the Farmhouse

plus some very unattractive thoughts on birth

This post will be a snapshot of life here on my suburban farm, of things going through my head, of random thoughts. Why not a well thought out composed post? Because I have one batch of tomato sauce waiting to be canned, over 10 quarts of tomatillo salsa to process, a shower to take, and fruit to go picking at a friends house.

That is snapshot one: trying to keep up with food processing. I love this time of year. I love the urgent push to preserve the harvests coming in fast and loud.

It really beats having to push a human out of one's vagina.

Snapshot two: I have never lived in a town with so many babies, children, and pregnant women. Yamhill County should be renamed "fertile Valley". The sad thing is that for everyone having 3 or 4 children I actually know two couples who would make incredible parents, would like to have their turn, and all this high wattage fertility isn't giving them a single baby. May everyone else slow down and give my friends thier fertility for a while?

This leads me to a thought I frequently have (quietly in my head) when I see pregnant women about to pop (which happens to be all the time): "Dude! You are going to have to squeeze that human being out and your vagina is going to be so messed up!!!" Yeah, I know, not pretty, not a cuddly thought...but there it is. I see ripe pregnant ladies and I can't help but think about the condition their hoo-has are going to be in very shortly. Stretched, shredded, sore, ripped, cut, blown out...

Which, by the way, leads me to another thought I've had floating around in my brain about pregnancy: birth is not a miracle. A miracle implies that something inexplicable and unexplainable has occured. Last time I checked, birth is easily explained by the whole sperm/egg dynamic. They get together, cells divide, they keep dividing and- VOILA! You push that sucker out of your body and have to take care of it for at least 18 years.

Most of these thoughts come to me while I'm in the grocery store. Humans are weird. I watch us all and speculate and get philosophical in the isles. When I was pregnant I wondered if other women (ones who'd already given birth) were looking at me and thinking about the devastation that was going to occur to my nether regions. I felt like one big walking advertisment for SEX and I really didn't feel all dewy and beautiful. I felt like I had "Sexual Person" emblazoned across my forehead.

Snapshot three: Canning tomatoes has been kicking my butt. I'm working three days a week now and suddenly my time is at a premium so everything stands still while I core and peel tomatoes. Then there are the hours the tomatoes take to cook down. I will have only 9 quarts of tomato sauce to show for all my work. The tomatoes are worth it though. A mid winter pizza made from home canned tomato sauce is really incredible!

Last night we made another batch of tomatillo salsa. After I processed over 10 quarts of tomatillos and 2 quarts of jalapenos, Philip took over and did the rest. I am going to process them this morning. I will report on how many pints I processed later on (I should get at least 20). Later this morning I go to pick apples and pears at a friend's house.

Snapshot four: finally time to clean out the chickens' run and hen house. Time for fresh hay. They've been getting lots of treats lately. We got a mealy watermelon and they got it all! Hens don't care about mealy. They've gotten lots of cucumbers, and parsley, and tomato scraps. In return we've been getting eggs from them every day. They take very few breaks.

Snapshot four: shaving your eyebrows* and drawing a thin penciled line where they used to be is not attractive. I don't know why so many women in my town favor this look. I used to do something quite similar when I was a teen- I would shave off my brows and draw them back on in dramatically shaped thick dark black. At least they weren't pencil thin. If I hadn't been wearing freaky outfits and green hair to go with the style I would have looked much weirder. Like, if I did that now, the kind of people willing to be my friends would be a whole different crowd.

Snapshot five: I'm totally excited about fall being just about here. We're having a weird spell of warm weather. This will satisfy the heat-seaking natives. I will survive it by standing over steaming pots of food, like I always do. The nights are getting colder which I love!

Snapshot six: I love cow's cheese and I don't care how many people are allergic to it, it doesn't make me allergic to it too. Lactose intolerance is very real for some people and I respect that, but often lactose intolerance becomes a religion and it annoys me. I eat more cheese than I should, it's undeniable, but it doesn't mean that all my physical and mental problems can be attributed to evil cow's milk. I once went without all dairy for a month and I have to report that all these miraculous great health benefits that others report were not experienced by me. In fact, I didn't feel at all different or lose any weight. All I experienced was a higher degree of grumpiness around meal time.



*Trying to locate an illustration for this bit caused me great pain and considerable recoiling. I loathe clowns. I really do. Not the people underneath the make-up, no offense meant here, but clowns are the least funny characters on the planet. I really really find them grotesque and pathological. I don't understand the drive people have to become clowns.

Blackberry Season

Blackberry season is as fleeting and as capricious as the rush of power a teen first experiences on feeling hormones pulse through their blood like a tribal drumbeat, right before they get grounded for losing the dog. So sweet and potent while it flourishes, so purple-black-dark-sweet and necessary for summer to exist. A marker of time passing, year after year, and a reminder that for all that changes nothing really changes completely. The sun still creeps through the brambles with fire and tells the bees to kneel here, to wait for it, to believe the honey will come.

Riding on the last hot gusts of August the blackberries are the signature fragrance of that complicated loaded moment when summer leans into fall and harvest time with all the urgency of the coming of truth. The denouement of the entire year. The branches grow heavy with their burden.

I sped down country roads on my Vespa with the wind scudding through my shirt, warm and still until I passed through it. Summer air is sensual with promise. The promise of everything good, sweet, rich, and plenty. There were the clouds of delicate wild blackberry perfume I cut through, a kind of dark spicy pillow of warm innocence-like childhood would have been if there was always a band-aid for what ailed you.

Then there was the vinegar scent of spent apples, crushed, bruised, and going sour on the roadsides becoming an accidental elixir of health. From higher up I could smell the still ripening undropped apples like a symphony of sweet-tart dreams of a million Halloweens full of surprise and cinnamon.

All of this is on the air. Fresh mown hay bundled in angular rectangles feeds my eye a pattern, something to think on later. When I'm remembering the blackberries.

Blood.

Every summer I think about blackberries. I dream of them. I wait for them. I make them into jam. I eat them off their thorns. I taste so much in them. The dusky bloom they sometimes wear, (the dust from the road they inevitably line), are part of their charm. They are humble, they are simple, they are scrappy. They bite and tangle and reach for the stars. Like a reflection of the most hopeful sparrows. They never give up. They use their tangles like steps to the moon, without apology, without artifice.

When I'm picking them I lose myself a little to the heat their perfume implies. I taste them and I seek them, pushing aside spiders, webs, thorns, and probably rats as well, pushing through the bramble to get at the berries. I collect them like they are better than diamonds. Better than any other fruit. Their scent reminds me of something. I can never quite grab it straight on.

Summers in Oregon have always been punctuated by blackberry season. Faces smeared purple in the pursuit of ingesting summer to store against winter. The more blackberries you eat, savoring (in large quantities) the delicate black sunshine, the warmer you will be when the wind is smacking your windows with sleet and the memory of those late summer treats vibrate in your blood like juicy fire.

I bled picking them. Down my legs. Oblivious until the hot blood began to drip unceremoniously down my skin. I got it on my fingers too. I become so married to the acquisition of fruit that I feel separate from myself at first and see the blood for what it is- the juice of nature, no different from the juice of the berries I'm picking. Then I shake my head in the sun and see that it is me bleeding. I have been very far away.

It makes trails for new thoughts. I turn to see where they will go.

Why should people not bleed for their food? It seems natural when I am walking in the brambles, caught, squeezing into the thorns like a jigsaw of flesh in nature. I start thinking about people having this idea that we have the right to everything we need. I start thinking about how people are always looking for the easy way. They want eating to be easy. Because they view it as an inalienable right. If this was true there would be no starving people.

I start thinking about how life is a gift. All things that follow it, right up until death, are also a gift. They are a gift, not a right. Those of us who are living are lucky to be alive. Lucky to have things to complain about. Lord knows, I think to myself, I sure do take advantage of that. There are no miracles and no rights. There is only life pounding its way inexorably towards death. Even death is a gift. Though no one wants to see that because no one wants to get there.

I reach into the shadows to pluck berries back into the light, into my box. I am alone with my reflections. The air is heavy with my prey. The blackberries bleed for me and I for them. Life as it should be. Why shouldn't I have to pay for my sustenance with a little piece of myself? Why should eating be easy? Why should life be easy? I ask myself.

Blackberry picking is a charitable activity. It affords me the time to be grateful. Even when life seems to suck and be scary in so many ways, there is still this magic. Picking makes time stop. The bees are swarming the sugar, the air is holding close to everything because it will move on soon. I find myself flooded with love. A sentimental fool bleeding in the brambles.

For so many years I dreamed of coming back to Oregon, to pick blackberries as I did when I was a kid. So when I'm out there grabbing at what is left of blackberry season I find myself feeling complete. I feel Lithia creek cooling my feet, I see ice cream cones melting on the street, I taste that berry juice in my mouth like purple joy, and all the ghosts I carry on my shoulders fade into the canopy of leaves above me while I shut my eyes so that I might taste the summer just a minute longer.

A summer that has become pregnant with the bite of fall.

Blackberry season is almost over. I barely caught it.

Off To The Farm

(not "the farm")

One of my favorite things about this time of year (the end of summer) are the trips I take to my favorite u-pick farm, Bernards Farm, on my scooter. I take mostly back roads to get there to avoid the highway and I love the feeling of cutting through warm air. I love the smells on the air too as I pass farms and hay fields, ranches with cattle, and orchards full of dropping fruit.

I don't love it when bugs hit me like little speeding bullets. I should wear my full face helmet more often, but I feel claustrophobic in it. There were a lot of bugs drifting around yesterday.

I love picking in the fields. I usually bring my headphones or a friend. I like to see the sky moving all around me. I like standing in the middle of neat endless rows of tomatoes, beans, peppers...and feel the microcosm of intense biological activity under way and underfoot. The bees and bumble bees were very busy and the sun on the fruit was making science I could smell.

The only thing I don't like about it is being in the middle of the sun myself. Not being a creature of sun and heat I wither like raisin and get sweaty and I would get grumpy if it weren't for all the produce I see piling up in my buckets. How can I get grumpy when I see such abundance? I picked three 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes, 1 five gallon bucket of tomatilloes, 1/2 five gallon bucket of jalapenos, and bought one medium sized watermelon for $44.50. That is one hell of a good deal.

What I will be making: more tomatillo salsa, tomato sauce, maybe tomato juice, and jalapeno jelly.

I was going to write more because I have a post brewing in my head right now that started yesterday when I was smelling summer on the air, the last of it. But I have to get dressed, eat something, process a ton of produce, and I'm really hoping to pick a few blackberries. They are almost over and it seems a crime to miss out. There was a great picking place I went to two years ago and I'm wondering if it still has good fruit to give. It's close by so I might run over there to have a look.

I hope you're all having a great Sunday!

Virgin or Whore
or how 1 apple is not the same as 52 apples

This post is brought to you by an anonymous commenter who says "there is no difference in shopping 'only rarely' at Wal Mart vs. shopping there weekly. If you patronize the establishment then you are no better then the people you criticize. Once a year or once a week, it's exactly the same." regarding my criticism of Wal Mart and my efforts to shop there as little as possible.

This commenter brings up another enormous pet peeve of mine which is the all or nothing mind set. Here they are:

virgin or whore
black or white
life or death
all or nothing
good or evil

First of all, thinking in such stark terms is infantile. It is the first way our brains learn to evaluate the world. When my kid was five he was obsessed by the idea that everyone was either good or evil, nothing in between. It is natural for a kid to think like this. It takes more brain development and critical thinking skills to learn to evaluate the many shades of grey in between two opposite poles. An understanding of simple math can really be useful here and in a minute I'll show you how.

But first let me ask a few questions:

Is a girl who's had sex once a whore?
Is slapping a person the same as killing them?
Is stealing one dollar from someone the same as stealing their life savings?
Is being civil to a person the same as loving them?
Is shopping at Walmart once a year the same as shopping there every week?


Let's plug in some numbers: 1 is the number of times I generally shop at Walmart every year. My commenter is suggesting that going once a year is the same as going fifty two times a year. Is there any way we can prove his/her theory? Here's how it looks mathematically: 1=52. True or false? The only way we can make 1 become the same as 52 is if we somehow add another 51 to it. This means that in order for it to be true that shopping at Walmart once a year is the same as shopping there 52 times a year is if one shops there another 51 times. Which isn't at all the same.

I am bringing this up because this stark and irrational way of evaluating our life choices is something that is getting in the way of progress. If you believe that the only way a person can make a difference is to make 100% change, then you will probably not make any effort at all. Because, why bother? People aren't perfect. People aren't capable of 100%. Ghandi, who I look up to very much, wasn't perfect. Neither was Jesus.

I have gotten annoyed so many times by heckling commenters at my friend Riana's blog. People who seem to be lurking around waiting for her to do just one thing that they think isn't congruent with her efforts to live a slow life. They always end up sounding so stupid. Yes, I said stupid. They say things like "you spent $2.00 on eggs while you're supposedly not spending any money. You're no better than anyone else." What a tiny mind it must take to heckle people who aren't trying to be perfect in the first place for not being perfect.

Most people who are trying to make positive changes to help clean up our planet and their bodies and their homes aren't doing it to be better than other people. People cannot reasonably make huge changes all at once. You need to take it in degrees. Which is how virgins become whores. It takes a whole lot of work to get from one point to the other. To get from one pole to the other. To transform good into evil or evil into good.

The message I want to give today, very clearly, is that everything we do counts. Every dollar we spend in one store is a dollar we aren't spending in another. How we spend our money is one of the most powerful ways we can speak politically. Money is what drives a business to success or failure. Who gives a business money? Customers. So if you normally shop at Walmart every week, it matters if you decide to start spending a little of that money at an independently owned local store. They need you. If someone says to me "Normally I shop at Walmart for all my office supplies but now I'm buying some of it from my local stationer's shop." I would applaud that person's efforts to support a local business. I wouldn't say "Well, that won't make a difference. If you don't stop shopping at Walmart altogether then you are doing nothing worth talking about." Because EVERYTHING WE DO MATTERS.

Every single time you recycle something instead of throwing it into the trash is one less item in the land fill. It's one more item that may be able to be made into something new. You have to consider the sheer numbers of people on the planet. There is power in that. If every person on the planet decided, today, to sing "Amazing Grace" we would hear it all across the universe. One voice may seem insignificant but when we work together we are powerful. Every gesture, every interaction, every choice we make today is a chance to do something positive and it always matters.

If every person who shops at Walmart decided to cut their spending at Walmart in half, Walmart's CEO's would panic. The company would hurt. The company would be less powerful. So why not aim to make change in steps that you can handle?

This has all reminded me how cool math is. But that's for another post.

Anyone else want to leave some naggy little comment? You anonymous people are giving me such good material for posting this week, so thank you.

Hummus
a recipe, and a sandwich to put it on

fTo make the best hummus:
Ingredients:

four cups cooked chick peas (garbanzo beans)
four tbsp tahini (sesame paste)
4 large cloves garlic
juice of two lemons
2 tsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1 bunch bug free parsley

Put all the ingredients in a food processor. Blend it until it's as smooth as you like it. I like mine very smooth. If it's too thick, add water a tablespoon at a time until it reaches the consistency you want. Bear in mind that it will thicken as it sits in the fridge.

The beauty of this recipe is how easy it is to customize it to get precisely the results you want. If you're stranger than me and you like a texture to your hummus, don't blend it as long. If you want more garlic bite to it, add more! You can used canned beans (I used two 15 oz cans for my batch because I don't yet have bulk chick peas to cook up myself.)

If you don't need as much as this recipe makes then cut the batch in half.

And no, I don't know precisely how much this recipe makes because I never measure it afterwords, I just scoop it into a fridge container and use it as needed. If I had to guess I'd say it probably makes about 3.5 cups of it.

The hummus pictured in this post lacks the parsley because of my crazy bug infestation which, frankly, rarely happens to my parsley. I don't even know exactly what they are.

The reason I like this hummus so much more than most I've tasted is that it has a clear fresh flavor which is partly from the lemon and partly from the fresh parsley. I dislike hummus mixes immensely. I don't much care for most store bought tubs of it either. Most of them are bland, or grainy, or include way too much garlic. I like this one for its balance.

Assembling a hummus sandwich for Angelina to eat:

A quick tutorial

You will need:
2 slices wheat bread

homemade hummus
2 slices of heirloom tomato (mine came from Oakhill Organics)
crumbled feta (about two tablespoons...or more...)
about two minutes of your valuable time

First you must toast your bread. Generally speaking I don't toast my bread for sandwiches because the toasty bread rips up the inside of my mouth. But some sandwiches call out to be toasted, and this is one of them. Use good bread. It doesn't have to be fancy, but let it be one with some character and flavor. Mine is from a local company that makes excellent sliced bread called Piontek. There's no weird things in it to make it last longer. And it can't tap dance.

Spread each side with hummus. Resist the temptation to pile it in high peaks because if you do then you will end up wearing it as it explodes out of your bread. That's not pretty. Or dignified.

Sprinkle a bucket some crumbled feta on each side. If you're vegan, omit the cheese. The next step will show you why, if you don't like (or can't) eat cheese you will not be sorry to make this sandwich. I personally can't resist any occasion to use feta.

Now cut two juicy slices of an heirloom tomato and put them in the middle. It is essential that you use a tomato that you grew, or got from someone who grew it near you. It is essential that it be a tasty variety. It is essential that you enjoy how it looks sliced for a few moments because tomato season for most of us is a short period of bliss.

Now you have a sandwich that has a great deal of wholesome protein, grains, and vegetable (fruit) all in one go. Aren't you going to take a bite now? What are you waiting for? Let me just warn you that if you leave it there much longer I will grab it for myself.

This is what I had for breakfast this morning and just moments ago for dinner. I had other dinner plans but as this was so stinking good and I thought about it off and on all day long I couldn't think of any reason to have something different while I still have the supplies for more of this.

Possible variations:

Instead of using sliced bread make an open-faced fresh pita sandwich.

Add lettuce to the sandwich.

Use provolone cheese instead of feta.

Add some roasted eggplant rounds.

Or fresh cucumber.

Crazy Water Pickled Lemon
Cookbook Review

These are Tiger's Eye and Jacob's Cattle dried beans that I grew in my community garden row. It is only a fraction of what I should be able to harvest in a few weeks. I don't expect to be able to grow enough beans to sustain us all year-we eat a lot of beans- but I wanted to find out how many pounds of dried beans I could get from a small patch of them. I also wanted to grow my own selection of varieties because as much as I love the basics (black, kidney, etc) I want the beautiful variety nature has provided to be preserved.

I wanted to look at prettier beans on my pantry shelf. Right now I'm in love with the Jacob's Cattle for its gorgeous red and white contrast.

Last night I made hummus to be eaten on sandwiches with fresh tomatoes (now in season!), grilled eggplant, and feta. I haven't had hummus in over 11 months. I didn't have any garbanzo beans and it wasn't part of my local challenge to get any since they aren't grown locally. I have missed it. My home made knocks the socks off of any prepackaged variety. I had beautiful parsley growing lush like jungle and cut a bunch of it. Four rinses later (all the water went into the pond, by the way, and not down the drain) and I was still getting tons of tiny little bugs off of it. I don't mind a stray bug that I can't see and don't know about but when, four rinses later, I'm still getting about a hundred tiny bugs...forget it. I don't eat bugs.

I'm bummed about that.

My head has been buzzing with food inspiration lately and I have been hankering to make some new dishes and try some new techniques such as Chinese spring rolls and home made veggie burgers. I have been wanting to buy a Chinese cookbook because I've never had one but it's not a great time for me to be purchasing anything new and I do have a lot of cookbooks already. So I took one of my very favorites ("Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison) to bed with me along with a newer cookbook that I hadn't yet really explored called "Crazy Water Pickled Lemons" by Diana Henry.

First of all, Deborah Madison delivers the goods! Note to self: always check Deborah's book first for recipes. She has three spring roll recipes. Her recipes turn out perfect 99% of the time. If you only have one vegetarian cookbook, get this one.

I bought "Crazy Water Pickled Lemons" because it's beautiful. My favorite food in the world is Mediterranean style. This encompasses the food traditions of a lot of different countries but all in all there is a style that asserts itself through the ingredients and links them all together. I buy cookbooks largely for inspiration.

I opened up Diana Henry's book for a quick eyeful, not expecting to read much. An hour later I was turning the pages, reading her notes and essays on spices and ingredients as though it was a mystery novel. I couldn't put it down. Diana Henry is not just a cook, she's a poetic writer. When she writes about spices I can smell them. I can taste them. I know what she means about the excitement of seeing interesting colorful packages of exotic food on the pantry shelves.

I don't actually embrace the wild use of herbs for desserts. I am also not a fan of lavender as a flavoring. Yet, when she's writing about them I think it's like an aromatic universe of possibilities.

What an incredible contrast to the brash clangy commercial world of Rachel Ray with her cookbook called "Yum-o"*. I didn't even bother opening up her book when I was browsing at our local book store. It looks like one big television commercial dedicated to how to cook fast from a package.

Diana Henry's book has got me thinking about eating local versus eating internationally. She roused my desire for olives, lemons, cumin, and rice. Things that don't grow here. Oregon produces wild rice but I'm not crazy for its grassy chewiness. California does grow basmati rice though and if I can get it there instead of all the way from China, that's a good deal less travel for my food. How can I eat the food my soul craves while adhering to standards of local eating that I deem important?

I think trade offs are the way to go. Just as I learned in my months of buying only local foods, it takes some homework. It takes some effort. I don't have to stick to a 100 mile radius either. California is a hell of a lot more local to me than Chile. Washington state is more local than California. I do plan to grow my own lemons (must be brought in in the winter here) so that I don't have to buy them from California. But I will still buy olives. I think one has to think of the exotic imports as treats. I've said that before. Spices have been travelling the globe for centuries and keep well. Spices are the heart of regional cuisines. If you have the right spices you can often slur the lines with local produce. If I can't find Napa cabbage for spring rolls I'll experiment with regular cabbage and then grow my own Napa the next chance I get.

I love almonds and sadly they don't grow in my region. However, southern Oregon grows almonds well and I can find sources for those grown there as opposed to almonds grown further away. Save those things that don't grow in your region for special treats. I could eat three avocados a day. But not a single one of them will grow here. I still have not bought any avocados. I am not going to add them regularly to my diet again because of the road they have to travel. However, as a special winter treat I may buy a couple to make a grapefruit avocado salad. (Grapefruits are also not local.)

I believe it's possible to eat largely how we want and need to while still buying mostly local. You have to be willing to experiment with your produce. I think you need to try growing some of the delicacies (like lemon grass) that your grocery store normally imports from far away and use substitutes wherever possible.

Here are some guidelines:

• Try growing special foods in your own garden whenever possible. (Experiment with what will grow!)

• Buy dried goods in bulk (except for spices) to reduce packaging use. Do some research to find out if you can get your dried goods from locally grown sources. You may be surprised by what your region is producing.

• When buying something that doesn't get produced locally, try to find sources as close to home as possible. Miles count. So count them.

• Save the non local purchases for special treats instead of every day staples.

• Consider making some of your own condiments such as harissa or chutneys that you might normally buy. Some exotic condiments are very easy to make at home and taste better anyway.

I just read some reviews of this book. Most were good but one was very sour. I thought it was interesting. This book is not a traditional cookbook. It is more than that. The sour reviewer was annoyed by the small type, the way the chapters are laid out by spice rather than dish, and that she included too much prose- the very thing that got me turning pages into the night. This is how we should be approaching food: put it into a context in history, in lore, in the pantry...working our way through flavors and approaching our nutrition as a deliberate and thoughtful process. Using our imaginations and traveling the world with our senses.

This is the kind of approach that takes cooking from a necessary daily activity to an exciting, stirring adventure.

I don't need to buy any new cookbooks. I have plenty.

Having plenty is not something I've felt often over the past couple of years.

Plenty is beautiful.




*Yes, I realize that this is a charitable thing that she's started and I am happy that she's doing it, but "Yum-o"?! Oh for crying out loud! I HATE "Rachelisms". EVOO is the stupidest thing ever. As though I'm much too lazy to say extra virgin olive oil.

Judge Not
and ye shall be a dupe

A commenter in my last post said she was "disturbed" by my assessment of a fellow shopper I described as possibly being a serial killer. I don't really know that on giving this person careful consideration I would really think he was a serial killer. This was actually just the exact flash of a thought that ran through my head as he first blazed past me in all his strange glory which I decided to share on my blog. My commenter thinks I am judgmental and doesn't see the value in saying the things I did. I have responded to the comment but I felt the topic deserved a whole post on its own.

I am judgmental. I make flash judgments all day long about people I don't know anything about. I make judgments all day long about people I know a lot about but since I am constantly receiving new information through my experiences with others and the world it is necessary to re-evaluate my original judgments all the time.

It is an enormous pet peeve of mine when people claim to be "nonjudgmental" as though judging people is bad. Simply making assessments of others doesn't harm them. Most of the time we make them silently in our head:

"Wow, that person has enormous breasts. I wonder if they're real?"

"That mom is so tense she is close to hurting her child."

"Don't make eye contact with that man, he is not right in the head."

If anyone tries to tell me that they don't have thoughts about others in their heads, that they don't have curiosity about people they don't know, that they never decide if they want to know someone based on how they look, they are lying. Not only to me, but to themselves. Or else they are dead.

If no one ever shared their thoughts, their judgments about others, we would be so much more alone than we already are inside. If we couldn't talk to others about the things we've observed then we have no way to build a compass against which to evaluate our own observations. Am I a complete jerk for not trusting men who live with their mothers as adults? Maybe. I don't know. What do you think? Is it a sign that someone might be a little bit off if they never make eye contact with other people or does it merely mean they are shy? I know what I think but I want to know what you think too.

How much can you tell about a person you're observing out in the world that you've never met? How fair is it to decide how you will interact (or not) before giving them a chance to show you who they are? It has nothing to do with fair and everything to do with navigating in a world full of people we have to interact with and being able to avoid bad situations because of a poor ability to make quick judgments. As the planet gets more and more crowded these skills will become more and more necessary for survival.

People judge me all the time, including myself. I am not averse to being put under the microscope. Not even yours. Go ahead: judge me. If you're not new here, you already have and keep coming back because you want to know more (which means you've decided to re-evaluate me) or you're judging me right now for the first time. Perhaps, like my commenter, you will find yourself disturbed by what you read and see here in my world.

When I was a green haired freak of a teenager I was judged openly all the time. People made all kinds of assumptions about me, some of which were true. Some not. Although I was frightened when rocks were thrown at me, I didn't ever get irate at others for trying to figure out what my deal was. We all do it. We have to.

The guy I was describing in my last post looked and behaved so strangely that in reality, he probably isn't a serial killer because supposedly serial killers don't ever seem like serial killers.

But here's what I know about this guy I saw at the grocery store:

He's got a well developed vanity, doesn't want to appear "his age", is excessively concerned with cleanliness, is uncomfortable around others, doesn't make eye contact, is almost certainly gay, would prefer not to have anything of his get too close to anything belonging to others, is not a nice customer (a no brainer, as I saw him making his purchase), and has a lot of self discipline.

Of course, I don't just make my judgments based on a person's looks. I rely very heavily on my extra sense (I don't know that it's the sixth one, there may be more) to support the physical details. I can feel people. I have an extremely good antennae for the human spirit. It's what makes me a good writer. I see, I hear, I touch, I taste, I smell, and I sense.

And then I write about it all.

How good am I at sensing things? I'm this good:

One Cinco de Mayo in San Francisco Philip and I decided to head down to the Mission district for some burritos and thrift shopping. It's a lively area on Cinco de Mayo since it's a largely Latino neighborhood. We got some food and after a while we noticed that it was getting more and more crowded and rowdy. I told Philip we should catch the Muni home. So we were waiting for our number but all of the buses were full. While waiting I started to feel a sharpening in the air, an edge in it that I couldn't place. I told Philip "It's not safe here. We really need to get out of here."

Still, all the buses were packed and it started looking like we weren't going to catch a Muni home. The feeling of danger where we were standing became acute and urgent. I told Philip that if we couldn't squeeze our way onto the next bus we needed to just start walking. People were everywhere, pressing in. We managed to get on one and left 24th and Mission behind us. It was an awful ride home but I knew we were lucky to have gotten on and away from where we had been.

Then next morning we saw why we needed to get away from that spot. Exactly where we had been standing, not five minutes after we left, a riot broke out and a person was stabbed to death at the corner of 24th and Mission.


I've mentioned this story here before, but I tell it again because it's the best one I have to illustrate my point which is that if you want to survive, you must trust your gut. The women who were killed by Ted Bundy didn't make good flash judgments about him. Everyone says he looked so ordinary, was so handsome, but if they had trained well to see inside people they would have seen something wrong. Even if they weren't sure what.

The point of discussing what we observe in the world, the point in sharing all our observations-even ones that don't seem fair or kind, is that the only way we learn about how to put our findings into the proper context is to compare our findings with those that others have made.

Furthermore, if no one ever told their stories, we'd have no books. We'd have no outlet for our imagination which takes our daily observations to another level. I've gotten in hot water for saying the wrong thing, for making someone else unhappy by saying what was on my mind, there is definitely a fine line between observing the truths of people as we see them and meanly pointing our fingers and saying things like "you should be ashamed to be who you are", a crime I rarely commit. I ask questions. I seek answers. I judge and then reevaluate because as we delve deeper into each individual we find the answers to their quirks, enlightenment sometimes, and we may often find that our flash judgments were fair based on the information we had on hand, but that when we have better more intimate information we find we were wrong about a person or a situation.

It is important to always be willing to find we've been wrong. What I don't do is make value judgments about people based on their race, their gender, their age, or their religion (except for the ones I consider to be cults, but that's for a different discussion altogether). I don't decide a person's worth based on any of these criteria.

Determining an opinion on the worth of a person should always be taken on with care and time.

So judge me.

If I was able to step outside myself and make observations as a stranger without any inside information I would make the following judgments:

overweight, middle aged, shops at cheap clothing stores, stares at people but tries to hide it, curious, obviously listening to everything, frumpy, hairy, polite, smiles a lot-might be retarded (who smiles so much when grocery shopping?), suspicious scars on arms-possibly not a safe person, over indulges in everything, maybe used to be more fashionable, eco-conscious, dirty nails, sloppy, probably a frazzled mom of four or five kids, not a good housekeeper.


How much of this is accurate observation? I guess you'll just have to run into me in the store to find out.

Walmart
like syphilis, only worse

I think eye candy is great. I love it. Especially when it's red and can be plastered all over my kitchen and craft room. Does anyone NOT like rick rack? I'm putting eye candy here because I'm going to talk about Walmart in just a moment and I think we all deserve to have pretty imprints on our retinas before we go there.

Do you see what's new? Philip bought the last Elephant Heart plum tree at the nursery. I wanted to establish one here in my yard this year. It's getting a little late but what the hell?! I was going to go for an antique apple variety but in the end I really covet, and I do mean that with all capital letters, COVET, this plum. I'm so excited!

See how I avoid topics I really want to? Yet, and here it is, I went to Walmart today with my kid. Now, I work in a toy store and it's an excellent one, but I knew we didn't have any Lego sets he wanted right now and he had some allowance money (which he earned by washing the car and the scooter) burning a hole in his head and so we headed off to the only other place in town that sells Legos, Max's keen passion. We rode our bikes (does that dull the stench we wear for stepping foot in one of the worst stores that have ever happened to our country?) and as we entered through the one entry door* Max experienced some confusion.

"Where are we mama?" he stopped and asked.

"We're in Walmart, the place with the Legos." I answered.

"This is the place? You mean there are actually Legos in here?! It doesn't look like a place that has Legos." almost shouting.

It is like a mecca for everything I don't stand for. What really freaks me out is that I now look like I belong there. I mean, truly. Seriously. I should never go there in unflattering clothes. With my gut hanging out so far that I couldn't spy my shoes I looked exactly like Walmart's demographic gold standard customer. Except that my kid, as though just landed on the moon, said very loudly "So this is the place where people are for Bush?!"

I had told him earlier why we do our best not to support Walmart. I told him how Walmart funds Republican campaigns and supports things we don't believe in. I told him that Walmart is like fast food: it is complete evil incarnate if you go there all the time and fork over your money to support what they stand for, but if you only go once in a while it won't actually kill you or the rest of the world.

However, I have my doubts about that.

We certainly seemed like the only reasonably happy people there. You'd think all that money you saved buying crap you didn't need that will break two days from now would give you some kind of shopping glow.

Max was so excited by the unbelievable selection of Legos that he was dramatically expressing his joy by writhing on the floor saying "NO WAY!!!! I HAVE TO HAVE THAT ONE FOR MY BIRTHDAY!!! SAH-WEET!" He certainly didn't blend in. His eyes weren't glazed over. He was having paroxysms of joy, for sure, and almost looked epileptic, but he kept me well entertained.

He didn't have a great selection in his price range but it was a great time. Until we left the Lego isle and once again made our way down isle after isle of stuff and more stuff. I figured that maybe since we were already there I would get more water filters, which I need, but I couldn't find anything I needed. Just crying babies. Lots of people wearing unnatural colored contact lenses. People. Lots of big people. (Like me, I hate to say.) Unhappy worn faces. Grey skin. Cheap cheap cheap cheap life. Moms who couldn't be older than fourteen. Harrassed looking parents. Old saggy people who don't seem to have anything left in their eyes. How does this happen?

That reminds me.

You know how sometimes you see a man and know that the only explanation for him is that he's a serial killer? I saw the weirdest most disconnected older, thin, face lifted, pale skinned, scary-groomed man the other day in my discount grocery store. He whisked past me down an isle leaving me just a little slack jawed and scared. His hair was colored to cover grey and what was left of it was swept back from his face. That man had a dark soul and not because he wore all black. So I get in line right behind him. I would have gone to another one but I was in a hurry (something I try not to be) and it was the shortest one.

I think everyone else knew he had no conscience either. He was very particular about keeping a keen space between his two items and my many. Like I was dirty. Like anything other people touch is dirty. I was transfixed by him but also terrified to make eye contact. Fortunately for me, the man was absolutely making a great effort to avoid human contact of any kind.

I'm almost certain this man lives with his mother and I won't say what else I'm sure he's up to because it will just freak someone out.

All in all it's been a lovely day. My boy (so far) isn't hating his school, his classmates, or his teacher. We went on an adventure today. He did some chores. We rode our bikes. We built Legos together. He ate watermelon and tater tots. (Never on the same plate.) I got a bunch of Etsy chores done (new things listed, taking care of business) and now I am going to go and rest my back. My second non-fatal** wasp sting has finally stopped swelling, though it still itches. If life keeps feeling this good I just might have to ditch my plan to develop some new curse words.


Here is some additional information on Wal-Mart's practices:
http://www.clrlabor.org/campaigns/wal-mart/resources.htm
supplied by my good friend Riana at These Days In French Life.





*I think it's ominous that there is only one double entry door but two or three exit doors...what does it mean? I know it means something.

**I am now terrified of getting a third sting because the second one was way worse than the one I got a week ago. It swelled up in about a 5" radius around the sting site and the skin felt stiff and weird. It itches and hurts. If the second wasp sting of my life was ten times worse than the first, what will the third one be like? And why do I taste so good to them suddenly? By the way, I wanted to try Jocelyn's suggestion for dealing with wasp stings but I have made a gross garden error- I have not planted mint!!!!! What is wrong with me?

Kisses For A Eulogy

I am full of eulogy this evening. There is a constant narrative in myself that dictates what it sees in the past tense. What has passed, what we thought about it, what seemed to be true at the time that in retrospect seems suspect.

I am full of those moments where you're seeing the world naked for the first time and wondering why you aren't more embarrassed. Those moments where clarity exceeds your years. Where you are seeing what some people take a lifetime to get hammered into their skulls. Where you're hemorrhaging with the voice of experience because it has become too full, too bright, and life has become engorged with vision.

These moments almost always happen with no witness.

They often happen in the middle of stifling heat waves. When the windows are open to catch lazy breezes and an ounce of air where it is sucked deep into waiting lungs. They pile one on top of each other in my San Francisco memories. The place where I was born. Returned to at fifteen with my mother. Like home. Like a homing pigeon come back to where all the messages originate. The dovecote waits for its inmates.

Nineteen years ago I put on my Bessie Smith album during an unusually sultry heat wave. I had lovely windows in my apartment which I had thrown open to full capacity to catch whatever errant chill might roll by. I was wearing my lemon yellow printed organdy 1950's dress which, due to its transparent nature, was made more demure by an old slip. I wasn't legally old enough to drink, and didn't drink much besides, but I had connections. I poured chilled plum wine into a glass. Probably not a wine glass. As Bessie sang the laundry blues I got it. Got life. What had been; what was yet to come. It all made a kind of pattern.

I was enjoying the early scratchy blues on the thick air, all of it blowing through my dress. As was nearly always the case, I lived in the moment, and I lived outside the moment, in a tumultuous tangle. I was keyed in to all the people in the city. I could hear all the dirty living out there. I could feel everything sluggishly easing through my casements and back out again. Like a stage set it wasn't completely real. I was standing part way outside myself. My room mate was out partying.

Our building on 27th avenue was almost next door to a Russian Orthodox church*. Have I mentioned how much I love strict religion for its pageantry?

I was reading (for the hundredth time) E.M. Forster's book "A Room With A View" when something dolores wafted over the printed letters, something I could follow with my blood, something tangible like liquid love. I turned Bessie off with apology. I followed the sound to my windows, already thrown wide open, and found the source of the lament in the side yard of the church next door. There was a procession in progress of priests in tall stiff hats followed by pall bearers carrying a box of dead trailed by mourners. The priests must have been doing the singing but I could feel the spirits of the mourners following the notes like identical hands shaping the air. Slow, deliberately, they took their time, made their song into the dark, as I watched.

Voyeurs are not romantic figures. Nor are they admirable. I intruded into the hot sinking air with my eyes, with my silent strange eyes watching.

Maybe not, though. I felt the spirit of the dead too. I followed it with my other self. The one not trapped in flesh. The one always free enough to see 180 degrees around. That self crawled inside the coffin and laid next to the corpse. That self said "Goodbye person. There is love enough for both the living and the dead. So feel peace."

The music faded. The entourage rounded the corner. I was left with the heat. With the humid earth funneling through the city lights and shimmering against the break of windows. Bessie's wisdom was still circling, resonating in the quiet. What was true before had become suddenly vivid. Technicolor truth.

We all end up in the same place in the end. It doesn't matter how we go. It doesn't matter if it's too early or much anticipated. It's all the same when we exit. The only thing that truly matters is how we acquit ourselves in this moment right now. Not when we know we're about to die but when we think we have the rest of eternity to be an asshole if we want to.

I was nineteen years old.

I was seeing inside the coffin.

I was just emerging from the crushing weight of the impossible cocoon of a dissociative half life.

I was just coming out of insanity with some of my head not lost.

Like waking up on the side of the road and remembering the gravel speeding up your nostrils in the dead of night. Asphalt tar streaking through you like a near-death imprint.

Waking up to wonder how you got to this stretch of road?

Soon I would trade in my sweet pretty shared apartment for life on my own. Life completely free of any unsolicited advice, company, opinions, or reality check. Soon I would be communicating directly with the cockroaches deep into the night while watching the needling in progress out my living room window.

That night lives in my memory like a portal to something so much greater than myself. It has sustained me through many transitions. I took a shred of it with me and stashed it into my private drawer. I'll never know the name of the corpse.

But I'll always send it kisses for a eulogy.




* I found this picture on Uzvards' flickr pages. This is the actual church I'm talking about in this post. From my window I could see the side yard of this large church which is where I saw the procession described. I loved this church but am now asking myself why I never went inside.

Back To School

Not his school face.

Today is the first day of school. Max starts at a new school this year because of our move. So not only does he get a new teacher, he also gets: all new kids he doesn't know, all new environment to get used to, and new rules. I was wondering the other day why most adults seem to assume that kids are excited to go back to school? They're always asking kids "So, are you EXCITED to go back to school?!"

Why not? What's so great about summer vacation; staying up late, playing with friends, your parents getting tired of having you home 24/7 and consequently letting you play as many video games as you want, sunshine, sleep-overs, sleep-ins, and trips to see old friends across state lines? Wouldn't everyone rather be going to school...doing homework, following rules, and sniffing that industrial school floor scent?

I did not love school. I loved having new clothes in the fall and new school supplies. The only part of school I really loved was sharpening pencils and putting them point down on fresh notebook paper to write. That first moment when you don't know what will come out of your pencil, when all the world is waiting to be recorded, it is a carefree and lovely moment pregnant with potential.

I didn't hate school though either. Not until high school. So I don't expect my boy to love school. I don't think it's a sign that he's a bad kid that he would rather be home playing Legos. Though I can see why any teacher would prefer kids who are happy to be in the classroom.

I don't get weepy about my kid going off to school. You know what made me feel bad though? His pants are almost three inches too short for him. I've been having such a hard time getting clothes, socks, and shoes for him that he will wear. He's not a prima-donna but he's extremely sensitive to textures so jeans are out. He won't wear denim. He wears sweat pants and sports pants (the kind that are made out of water resistant cotton) and he doesn't wear thick socks. The socks he usually wears got too small for him so I got him the next size up which were just a little too big for him so they lump a little in his shoes. So he's wearing no socks in his shoes. The only shoes he finds comfortable are the slip on Van's type of shoe.

So this morning he was wearing a sweatshirt that was about two sizes too big for him, pants that were 3" too short, and no socks. There's nothing like clothes on a kid that obviously don't fit them that makes me infinitely sad. Misfit. These things matter to other kids. As an adult, especially as a parent, we may look at it differently (rationally), but to other kids such an ensemble will signal: misfit.

Which is already how he feels. Which is what our family is. And now I've sent my wonderful bairne to school wearing clear signals.

So why send him at all? Why not keep him home as quite a few of my friends do? Because I am not a math teacher. I am not a science teacher. I could become one, of course. But I don't want to. It's enough just to help Max with his homework. Being responsible for his whole school education is not why I had a kid. Parents automatically are teachers of a lot of things and I'm satisfied to teach my kid what I know well and let others teach him the rest.

I send him because he needs the stimulation school offers him that I can't. I send him because unlike many of my peers (and my father in law) I believe in public education and even the teachers I haven't liked (like Max's teacher last year) have been good teachers who care about what they're doing and as a consequence Max is actually good at math and all summer long he's been reading both with his dad at bed time and by himself. He's learned to read at school but he gets his vocabulary from us.

I don't believe there's a better choice for us but that doesn't mean that it isn't hard sometimes.

Fall must really be here.

Window Treatment

the before and after

I love Battenburg lace. I think it's charming. But I really needed some color in my kitchen. There's a lot of beige and natural going on and a little of that can go a long way. We plan to paint the kitchen, but a quicker fix is to change the window treatment. I happen to love light just as much as color so I didn't want full curtains on this window that allows me to spy on my weird neighbors. Basically I wanted the same size and shape of valance that I already had, just cuter and brighter.

So I literally copied it. I hand traced the scalloping with tailor's chalk which is why it looks so rustic. My friend Lisa E suggested doing a double layer of fabric so that the outside would look just as cheery. I begrudgingly admitted that it would be nice to see the fabric from the outside too. The only problem is that light shines through both layers so that you can see them through each other. Oh well.

Now my kitchen looks a lot more like it's mine. This is one of my all time favorite Michael Miller fabrics. I used it to make aprons and they always sold well. I was going to make myself an apron in this fabric but I think I'll have used it all up by the time I make the matching valance for my kitchen door. It's worth it!

The neighbors' view.

I have to say that it is a complete pain in the tookus to have lost my zipper foot. I have not sewn a thing in months. Not since before the move. I didn't pack up my sewing room either. So there are a lot of missing things. My regular sewing foot (I'm using one that works but isn't the regular one) and my zipper foot.

Some random thoughts and observations:

I got my second ever wasp sting yesterday while I was picking tomatoes in my community garden patch. IN THE SAME PLACE THE OTHER STING OCCURRED. What has made me suddenly irresistible to the wasp population? This time the area of itch is like this 3" flat whitish pancake on the back of my arm. Will I go into anaphylactic shock next time? Am I getting more allergic with each sting? Will I have to live in a bubble soon? Can you get beer into a bubble?

Allergies suck.

I really love that the school year is starting up again. (Max is not excited.) It gives the structure and space we all need to survive. Max learns a ton, like he's supposed to, even though he thinks school has no point. Hopefully he won't have an annoying teacher who doesn't like him like he did last year. Poor kid. Women who don't understand boys shouldn't teach co-ed classes.

Fall is in the air. I know lots of people around here are saying that we never really had a summer and while I understand that the fact that it came quite late, and was very short, makes it feel like it didn't ever happen...but all those uncomfortable nights we didn't sleep because of the heat? That was summer. And I'm much more comfortable now. Bring on the fall!!

I am growing shelling beans in my community garden. They aren't dry yet. You have to let them dry in the pods at the end of summer. There were just enough already dry that I was able to fill one bowl three quarters full and I'm so retarded that I spent a half an hour running my fingers through them because they look so cool and feel clackety and smooth and I will eat them in soup at some point which kept making me smile. I must have looked like I was on some really great drugs the way I was enjoying those beans.