I am crushing your head

Zhou, New Year's Eve, 2009, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

This weekend my friend Psychic Friend announced "How was your Christmas (holiday, New Year's)? is no longer a greeting I will acknowledge." Shit man, if I'd'a known that was all it took, I'd'a gotten a t-shirt made.

I swear, I have been living under a cloud since early December. Not the same cloud the entire time - hoo boy, that's when I go into therapy. Different clouds. Clouds of various sizes and shapes and degrees of ominousness. Ominosity.

And. How about I don't write about them? I'm being all unexpected-y, it's a new thing I'm trying. Because usually I am so predictable, right?

But yes. No. I am not going to list off all the crap that has been hanging over my head for two months. I like it. This is working for me. Nothing says "I'm over it" like forgetting all about it. I MAY list the successful resolutions of the things that have worried me.

Like this:

I run a Circus Arts Club at the elementary school. Hula hooping and slapstick routines, a little juggling. I have a unicycle that nobody's tall enough to ride without jeopardizing their future offspring. We try a little stilt-walking. We do a performance in front of the whole school at the end of the club season. Did that worry me? It did! Did I have nothing to worry about because the kids are funny and remembered what to do! I did!

Let's go to the video.

Circus Arts Fall 09 All-School on Vimeo.

You can't see me cringing in the wings every time someone takes a slapstick punch or does a fall, but you can hear all the kids in the auditorium cracking up. I take credit for none of it except the music. Those kids are a riot.

And then it snowed. And the snow caused me no dread whatsoever. In fact, we spent that day hanging ornaments on the tree and listening to holiday music, also sledding, and drinking eggnog with rum in it. That was a break in the battle.



The snow, of course, caused the children to never go back to school ever. Two weeks of winter break! Getting presents wrapped was a challenge, and I also fretted that I'd been so occupied with Circus Arts that I'd neglected to buy them anything of consequence. T-shirts and coloring books. Until Auntie Lo (who is neither my auntie nor the auntie of my kids but who is in a figurative sense everybody's auntie) told me that I fret about this every year.



They like coloring books and t-shirts.

I mean, what the hell have I been complaining about? My parents even took the boys overnight one night so that Bob and I could go see The Allmighty Senators, who hadn't played in like a year, and as a result played just about every song they knew.

After we picked up the kids, we ate many delicious things at Cross Street Market, and then hit the mall to stand in the returns line. Even that was not so dreadful. We bought Mao a pair of orange Vans, and I found jeans at Lucky for half price. Our children sat through me trying on five different pairs of jeans, and were complimentary about every pair. They treat me like a queen, and I should try harder to deserve it. I hope that when they grow up, they do not give me cause to wonder what I have done to piss them off.

Treat your parents decently, or tell them why you do not.

On New Year's Day, our neighborhood roasted a pig. I made barbecue sauce and tried my hand at glogg, a delicious blend of port and cardamom and orange, heated until it turns into an alcohol 8-ball. It was a wonderful wonderful day and I snatched pieces of that pig right out of the roaster all afternoon.



All this time, though, like a lingering metaphor in a Cheever story, the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom has been backed up. Every time the mad whirl slows, every time I have a morning off, there it is, with 2 inches of rusty water in it, and the self-adhesive grippy goldfish we stuck to the bottom when the kids were tiny gradually curling up. I poured Drano and Liquid Plumber down that drain. I plunged. I used baking soda and vinegar, and I used lye. I broke the snake OFF in that fucker. I asked Facebook for advice. I despaired, and meanwhile we all carried our clothes and our shampoo down two flights to the basement, and got kind of lax about toothbrushing.

That clog got stuck in my brain. I saw it, deep in the pipes under the tub, at least 8 feet away from the drain, because I paid out at least that much cable from the drum auger. In my mind it was slimy and black, and made of my hair, and possibly hid a tiny Matchbox car, which accounted for its failure to dissolve when I hit it with life-threatening chemicals.

Bob took several whacks at it. His brother Joe did too. I borrowed tools, broke them, replaced them, bought new ones.

And this Saturday, the same day that My Psychic Friend declared the holidays officially frickin OVER, I came home from work to find the upstairs bathroom clean. Tranquil. Not even a plunger to be seen that might have hinted the filthy battle zone that bathroom has been for the past several weeks. All is well.

Hey Henrietta!

Do I rant? I try not to rant too much. But... I went to the mall today. Mmm-hmm. You smell what I'm sellin'.

It might not have been such a good idea to go to the mall... today. I have been battling our suckass Microsoft network server for a solid week - it is riddled with malicious, suppurating garbage processes spawned by a violent pederast of a Trojan introduced by, I suspect, some lice-ridden neighborhood wifi skeever with the handle "HAIDEEZ something something".

The novelty spelling of "Hades" just screams "thug" to me. I bet it's one of those young people at the church behind us. You can hide a lot under a choir robe. Trust me. Of course, if "HAIDEEZ whatever whatever" is you, and your computer appeared on my thinger just because you brought your laptop by one day to show me something or work at my house... well. Then I guess I would assume you were being all LOLcatty about your machine name. Uh, that's cute! Ahem.

So yeah, I've been in a somewhat combative mood. Also, I hadn't eaten. But I wanted to go to the Apple store, because I think I'm going to pitch that Microsoft piece of shit and plug in a Mac mini and a Mac router and sit back and let that proprietary software do the stuff it's supposed to do.

It's not my ideal solution. Ideally, I'd love to have an all-Linux house. I don't like the sort of... Masonic vibe of the Apple multiverse. And I've been very happy with my Ubuntu laptop. But I am forced to admit that I no longer have the mental flexibility to learn enough Linux to set all that up myself. For example, the laptop hasn't had sound for months, and I just can't figure out how to fix that. It's for the best, I tell myself. Keeps me from wasting time watching Woodentops videos on YouTube.

But back to the Apple store. Have you ever been to an Apple store? If what you need to do is to buy a lizard green iPod nano for The Best Babysitter Everr, their model of ACCOST UPON ENTRY SO THAT NOBODY WANDERS FREE works pretty well. You say, "Why yes, you can sell me a lizard green iPod nano," and that's just super. But if you just need to count the number of USB ports on the back of the Mac mini, you would like the tiny headsetted iDoorman with the skater boi haircut and the idiotic jeans to pretty much just BACK HIS SHIT UP.

And then when you DO have a question, and spot somebody in a shirt, and say, "Hey..?" you would not like that person to say, "Um? If you could just speak to Micah at the front? He's managing my floor today, and he'll set you up with someone." Because Um? I do not know about your floor. And I am not looking for a setup, I just want to know if there's a version of the one-terabyte router that doesn't crap out after 18 months.

I would like to make a comparison now. I walk up to perfect strangers and ask if I can help them probably 50 times during the course of a typical 4-hour shift at work, and I do not think I have ever once done it in such a way as to have made a person want to stab me. You never know, of course. Maybe that lady who said, "Found it myself, thanks!" was really fingering the icepick in her pocket and counting down from ten.

Have I avoided injury because I am unusually talented at public relations? Hm. According to every supervisor I have ever ever had? NO. Have I stayed safe because I do not automatically adopt a patronizing demeanor? MOTHERFUCKING BINGO.

So I learned the thing I needed to learn and then got the hell out of the Apple store before I kicked someone with my big boots. I saw The Gap and remembered that I need a long-sleeved striped t-shirt (because, er, there's one that I don't have?), and I figured it might calm me down to buy one. I swear, striped t-shirts are for me like Catcher in the Rye was for Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. I just have to buy them.

The Gap was packed with crap. I mean I have never seen a retail establishment so overloaded with stock. The regular fixtures were stacked to the ceiling. Wheeled scaffolds holding towers of t-shirts blocked the aisles. Even the mannequins were supersaturated, wearing four and five t-shirts under two sweaters and a jacket, with two scarves. But they had no heads. Maybe their heads boiled off from wearing all that overflow stock.

So I had a little trouble finding exactly the long-sleeved striped t-shirt I wanted, and I asked a perfectly nice, non-intrusive headsetted teen for assistance. She knew exactly where it was, and showed me. When people are impressed that librarians know the Dewey Decimal System, I kind of internally snort. It's not that much to remember: resumes always come after cookbooks. But have you ever worked retail? Knowing where this v-neck brown sweater is stocked, versus that v-neck brown sweater, that doesn't have the ribbing? Those kids are not just sweater-folders.

I rummaged on the shelf for a Medium - I'll say this about mall shopping, the inflated sizing does make me feel petite - and turned back, thanking her. And found I was thanking a headless mannequin. It sat there, severed neck gleaming, elbows resting jauntily on its thighs as I looked quickly around to see if anyone had heard my little shriek.

Completely unsettled, I abandoned the shirt and decided maybe I should eat something, pronto. Headed for the food court. But between me and it were the Level 3 kiosk ambush people. "Hey! I really like your hair!" "Can I show you something?"

GOD no.

Here is where I wished I'd taken my hallucinogens before coming to the mall. I am not too good at faking freakouts, and I've really really always wanted to respond to a kiosk ambush person by screaming, "WHAT??! OH MY GOD YOUR HEAD! SNAKES! GET YOUR DINGO AWAY FROM ME YOU COCKSUCKING ZOMBIE! NO! NOOOOOOO! DON'T LET HIM TOUCH ME! SNAAAAKES!!"

I made it to the food court though. And turned around and left it immediately. The noise, the smell, the garbage food, what the FUCK? But eventually I found myself in line at a nominally deli-themed food court tenant, where an energetic lady with orange-red hair gossiped with her sisters in an elaborately unintelligible language and made me a tuna on rye garnished with a handful of potato chips so broken as to suggest a profound, possibly culturally based, misunderstanding of how potato chips are meant to work. Paid seven bucks for that sandwich, too. I reflected that for the same seven dollars I could be trading terrible jokes and wistful anecdotes with the North Indian man at the sub shop down the street, and get an amazing 12" Italian cold cut sandwich (with extra hots) to boot, but I didn't have the time. You know, I think she was speaking Romany. That would be cool - gypsies at the mall!

On my way back down and out, I came to central juncture: a staircase and an elevator linking Level Three and Level Four. I remember that elevator from my days as a stroller pilot. It's pretty small, and I always kind of resented the able-bodied non-strollered folk who used that elevator rather than taking the stairs. As I approached it today, I swerved toward the stairs, just behind a pregnant woman who did not give the elevator a second glance. And when I say pregnant, she was pregnant. PRAG. NUTT. As I descended, I caught up with her.

"Dude!" I said in a low voice. "You totally shamed all those people off the elevator!" It was true. We both glanced back at the five or six people who had abandoned their wait for the elevator in favor of the stairs after seeing Ms. LooksLikeTwins charge past them.

"Look at that - you're right!" she giggled. "But I'm just trying to get this baby to come!"

Used to be, trapped under the squirming beanbag weight of two children born twenty months apart, the mall was an attractive option every now and then. Smooth floors, no weather - the double stroller and I could windowshop and daydream our way to the kids' play area, where the boys could crawl on the play structures that today would be guaranteed to give them swine flu while I read Vanity Fair and drank a coffee. That's some potent relaxation for a stay-at-home mom with kids that young. Then we'd eat pizza in the food court.

But the state of having very small children is quite a bit like senility. You are underslept and understimulated, and probably unwashed. You spend quite a bit of time feeling pithed. Like a frog. In that state, the institutions of the mall can be soothing and safe.

But I think the rest of us should be careful to take our Xanax, as my friend Kristen recommends, first.

Oh, she can see the cars - she just can't get out of their way

Reach for the sky, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

We drove to the Eastern Shore of Maryland the other night to see Nick Lowe perform. It was a good show, Bill Kirchen opened, and both of those old men rocked, and crooned, and seemed to enjoy themselves. We did too, although it was a little weird to be the youngest people at a show. At our age.

The last time I saw Nick Lowe, I was in college in Cleveland. I borrowed a car to get there, pouring pouring pouring rain that night, but he played almost 3 hours for the 75 people who had struggled through the monsoon to get there. I say I borrowed a car. Well, I borrowed the keys. The guy who owned the car didn't know I was doing that. And actually, the girl to whom he'd lent a set of keys didn't know I was doing that either. And then I drove through a flooded intersection on the way back to the East Side and the car stalled out and wouldn't start, so I left it there and walked the rest of the way home.

So I guess technically I stole a car to get to that show. And I'm embarrassed about it.

I was thinking about that night on the way to see the show, and shaking my head trying to remember the train of thought that led to me committing basically a felony (Del Fuegos opened, did I mention? It really was one of the best shows I've ever seen.), when we passed onto Kent Island and I remembered another story.

Man, talk about BAD DECISIONS.

This is a story I call The Kent Island Massacre. It's a BAD STORY. I am using the pseudonyms from Reservoir Dogs, it's so bad. I was there. Here's what happened.

At 26 years of age, I had been promoted from tech support to Director of Marketing for that insurance company I worked for. Yeah how does that happen? The president of the company saw a flyer I'd made announcing an update to the software, and decided I was a "marketing person." Decided that, as an Anthropology major with zero marketing experience, I was cheap, and could be bullied. I hated that company. So I went from being on the IT team to the Sales team.

The IT team had been headed up by an old stoner, a tiny little Richard Thompson - loving hippie who liked to say he hadn't "sold out - I've bought in." That guy, I liked.

The Sales team was headed up by a willfully obnoxious, childishly overweight prick who seemed to think that he was entitled to... to make phone calls to employees while he was sitting on the toilet. To unbend a paperclip during a meeting and clean his ears with it. He would take your glasses off your face, saying, "You've got something on your glasses," lick the lenses, and give them back to you, and giggle. If you sat next to him on an airplane, he'd spill a drink in your lap while the seatbelt sign was lit, and laugh while he groped your ass under the pretext of helping to mop it up. During the course of his employ with that company, he was sued three times for sexual harassment.

You might think a corporate retreat with this guy was something to be avoided. YOU WOULD BE RIGHT.

One spring, the sales team, including myself, headed to a beautiful inn on Kent Island, just over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Most of us had worked for weeks on the presentations we were to give. As the resident graphics person, I had worked for weeks on EVERYONE's presentation. I hated that company.

The first night of the retreat, we all went to dinner somewhere. The boss - let's call him Mr. Brown, like Quentin Tarantino's character in Reservoir Dogs - was famous for running up giant dinner tabs. Many bottles of wine, several thousand dollars. So that happened. And then there was a bar.

At the bar, Mr. Brown started buying rounds of shots for the house. A couple hundred bucks a round - this was a semi-fancy sportsmen's bar, the kind of place with a fireplace. I remember the fireplace.

I don't drink shots, so I sat, one girl among a dozen men, drank a beer, was mortified and bored, and schemed how to get the car keys away from Brown, whom I knew would insist on driving back on the dark country roads to our inn.

Until. I don't know. I'm guessing they tried to cut him off, or he made one "redneck" comment too many, but all of a sudden, we were all leaving. There was some shoving, and one of the nicest guys in the group, we're calling him Mr. Orange, a civilized man with a nice wife and good suits, got knocked into the fireplace. Smacked his head on the marble mantel. Started to bleed.

I actually had the car keys at this moment, I'd snatched them off the bar. We were herding everyone out of the bar and packing into the car, when Brown demanded them back from me. He wouldn't get into the car without them, and kept threatening to go back into the bar, so I handed them over. There must have been at least six of us in that car, with Mr. Orange across our laps in the back, bleeding, when Mr. Brown started up the car, backed it up about six feet, then put it in drive and drove straight into the bar.

Rammed the building, yes he did. Backed up and did it again.

Now, I have done things out of spite. I once broke a bathroom fixture in a restaurant that I thought had treated my friends and I unfairly. I encouraged my friends to urinate on the lumber that was stacked in the yard of an allegedly corrupt Cleveland city councilman who was building an unsightly house right in the middle of our historic and picturesque campus. But I like to think that, had I been driving, and even had I been as drunk as Mr. Brown was on that night, I would not have attempted to punish the physical edifice of that bar for the perceived slights of its staff and/or patrons.

Moron.

The car is eventually piloted back to the inn, where there is discussion as to who will accompany the unfortunate Mr. Orange to the ER. Nobody thinks Mr. Brown should go. But he does, along with Mr. White and Mr. Blue, level-headed guys who are large enough to physically restrain him should he get stupid. -er. Again.

I stay at the inn. I want no more of this foolishness. When I wake up the next morning, to a dazzling Eastern Shore day, I quickly realize that our presentations are canceled. Cars are missing from the parking lot. Nobody is at breakfast. The only person around is Nice Guy Eddie, a Southerner who was a little older, a little more savvy, than the rest of us. He always knew when to keep his head down and when to take a pass, and he's packing to leave. He had NOT chosen to go to the bar the night before, naturally.

Nice Guy Eddie recommended a tactical retreat to Baltimore, maybe hitting the outlets on the way, and we made a pleasant day of it. I bought one of my favorite skirts of all time at the J. Crew outlet that day - a long, full, sweepy ivory-colored job that I still have in the closet.

A few weeks later, at work, I was asked into the Comptroller's office. She asked me a few VERY pointed questions about that night on Kent Island, and I BEGGED her to let me elaborate. I was absolutely sure Mr. Brown would fire me if he knew I'd told on him, but I thought if they fired him first I'd be ok.

They didn't fire him. Well, actually, they did eventually fire him. Not for that. And not for the multiple complaints and three successful lawsuits accusing him of fondling, groping, and making inappropriate comments to female employees. He was fired when the wife of one of his male employees called the company's HR guy. Told a story about Mr. Brown sort of maybe kinda making a pass at her husband. Mr. Brown was asked to pack his things, and he was escorted from the building. Within the hour.

God, I hated that company. No wonder Nice Guy Eddie kept his head down. You guys who think Mad Men is so much fun... I don't know, I don't think I would enjoy that show.

Years later, I found out the parts of the story I hadn't witnessed. Mr. White, who eventually found a successful career NOT selling insurance financing, told me that the reason so many people were missing the next morning was that, at the hospital, Mr. Brown had punched a cop.

That's right. Poor Mr. Orange is getting his wound stitched, and a cop asks our boys to move the company car parked haphazardly outside the ER entrance. Doesn't even ask about the damage - doesn't even start to accuse my boss of driving drunk - and Brown starts shouting and spitting and eventually somehow hits the cop. Short little pudgy Mr. Brown, who collected these good-looking, strapping men around him as if he were a big gay sultan.

The sultan goes to jail. Is given a sobriety test. The boys follow.

Mr. Blue spends the remainder of the night and much of the next morning driving around looking for an ATM that will spit out enough money to pay Mr. Brown's bail.

Mr. White is stuck at the police station babysitting Mr. Brown.

Mr. Orange is discharged from the hospital and walks out into that beautiful morning wondering where the fuck everyone went.

Hey, I bought a really nice skirt and had a lovely lunch with Nice Guy Eddie. Not a total loss.

Don't I know your name? - The Bob Story

Jungle gym, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

The Beautiful Miss Brown visited the library yesterday looking for a book on taxidermy. It happens. I'm not asking any questions.

Turns out, she and her boyfriend had seen a red fox dead in the road, and they scooped it up, put it in the trunk, and decided to skin it. I nodded. I used to do that.

Did I used to do that? Yes, yes I did.

There was a day, a rare, beautiful spring day in Cleveland, when I sat behind Clark Building on the CWRU campus with a hot plate and a big pot. Watching that pot. Watching the people come in and out of the student center next door. An acquaintance wandered over, curious.

"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Boiling an owl."
"No, you're not."
"Sure I am." I poked the sodden owl carcass with a stick.

I believe it was at that moment that that boy became irresistably drawn to me - decided I was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his, er, next couple of years with. I myself was thinking more about how much bleach to add to the water. You want enough that the cartilage dissolves, but not so much as to take all the coating off the beak.

There are a few things you can do if you intend for someone to fall in love with you. The most foolproof, of course, is to BE EIGHTEEN AND BE BOILING AN OWL IN PUBLIC. Second most foolproof, of course, is to be eighteen period. The worst thing you can do is to quote Elton John lyrics. Look how it worked for Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge. He ended up having to drag Nicole Kidman around the rest of the movie.

You could sing real awful but write great songs, like Nick Cave or Lou Reed. You can show up in majorette boots. Majorette boots are the most sexually potent objects in the universe. I have boots of almost every variety, from cowboy to pirate and back again, but I have never had the nerve to get myself a pair of majorette boots.

You can insult the object of your affection in such a way that it's really a compliment. This gives him or her the opportunity to act all affronted, but be secretly pleased. This is tricky, and should only be attempted if you are eighteen, or a genius.

The rest is all variations in tone and eye contact, and that I can't help you with. Really, the majorette boots are the way to go.

None of this explains my husband Bob. I was not wearing majorette boots when we first met - or even my glasses, so I was bat-blind. He was probably wearing Chucks. He did not insult me. I did not insult him, I don't think I spoke a word. I was twenty and he was twenty-one, so we were past our irresistable years, though admittedly not by much. We were sober, it was daytime, and he was wearing a tie over a white t-shirt. But it was love at first sight for both of us.

Yes, those of you who don't believe in love at first sight (Jaime) or who have heard this story before (Jaime) can tune out now. I'll tell you the rest of the owl story later. And I don't begrudge. If you had had to hear this ridiculous story as many times as Jaime has, you would roll your eyes too. Hell, even I resist telling it too much, and I know it to be true. This story inspires works of art (Sarah). It causes people to ask if the world spontaneously bursts into song around us (Brian) (smartass).

But here, by popular demand (Sandy, Melissa), is The Bob Story: a teen novel in the making if I ever read one, spanning continents and decades and leaving a trail of betrayals and broken hearts, but with, after all, a happy ending.

How we met

I think it was 1986. It was certainly summer. We were in college - he was at Columbia and I was at Case Western Reserve. I was spending the summer working in Provincetown, Mass, washing dishes and managing a kite store; he was in Cleveland canvassing door-to-door for some environmental organization. One weekend I came back to Cleveland to visit my boyfriend.

Let's call this boyfriend Blot on My Conscience Number One. No, that's far too long. Besides, we're cool now. He and his wife came to our wedding. Our kids play together as if they've known each other all their lives. Let's call him Pants.

Anyway, that weekend I got the flu. Miserable weekend. Hot and bored and feverish in the tract house Pants shared with his brother (whom we'll call Peel), I woke up one afternoon to voices in the living room.

I hate not being in on things. So I struggled out to the living room to sit on the floor and be with company. It was some friend of Peel. Bob. Peel was thinking about transferring to Columbia, and Bob was there to give him advice and drink cheap beer and make a lot of wisecracks.

From what I could tell with my glasses off, he was cute. He was very funny. I don't think I said a thing - I really was ill. And I have no idea what he remembers of that afternoon. I didn't even really catch his name.

But when Pants's brother Peel needed help moving his crap to NYC that fall, I hopped into the van so quick I'm sure I sprained something.

In New York, after unloading, we got something to eat and then ended up at a bar. I nodded along with the conversation, thinking, "Boy, wouldn't it be great if that guy from this summer showed up!"

The guy from the summer showed up, made his way to our table with that bouncy walk some athletic boys can't help having.

I thought, "There's an empty seat next to me - wouldn't it be great if he sat next to me!"

He sat next to me.

I still don't think I had much to say. This guy, now that I had my glasses on, was even better looking than I had thought, and I had thought he was pretty cute. I was breathless, especially when his left thigh got closer and closer to my right, until our legs were pressed together with actual force. After everyone was drunk, we found a minute to speak privately. I don't know what we said. I may have proposed. Anyway, it wasn't that private - I kind of got busted for it. God knows Peel hated me from that moment forward. Guy works for the SEC now and I swear if I ever get investigated, I'll know it'll be because of that night at the Lion's Head.

The Next Time We Met

Had to be the next summer. Bob came home to Cleveland for a visit, and made the rounds. Pants and I were in the same social scene, so I saw him at a party or two. Stalked him. And then one night, Bob and I were among the last ones awake at Bob's friend Bob's house. Bob's friend Bob has a daughter named Paula - it's very confusing. Pants had fallen asleep in a chair. I think he was doing his med school internships that summer and he was always falling asleep over a plate of food or while trying to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation or once, memorably, while he was on his back under his VW bus fixing something. I thought he had died.

Bob and I were on Bob's friend Bob's porch talking about poetry or something smart that I know nothing about, and I couldn't stand it one more second. Without looking at him, I reached out my hand. He would either ignore it, and I had imagined any attraction he might have felt for me, or he would take it, and I would... I don't know. Attack him. Cry. Sit there until my hand fell off.

He took my hand. We stopped talking about poetry or politics or whatever. Explanations, assurances, gazing. He kissed me. Side B of Blood on the Tracks played over and over on Bob's friend Bob's stereo. At length, we took a walk. And on the walk, none of your business. Let's just say I never washed that U2 t-shirt again.

We got back to Bob's friend Bob's house and took up sleeping positions - he on the couch, me on a chair. Pants woke up and realized he needed to stop home at our house before going to the hospital the next day. I told him I'd catch a ride with someone else, and as he left, I crept onto the couch with Bob.

My memory's a little hazy at this point. It might have been the next day, the same week, the same summer, or it could have been the next summer, when I found myself in Bob's mom's car getting a ride home. Bob's mom, whom I was later to know as The Estimable Frannie. Sorry for boning your littlest lamb in the back seat of the Buick, Frances. Though after some of the drama Bob's brothers and sisters brought... no, yeah, let me just apologize. I miss you, Frannie.

A cop knocked on the steamed-up window that night, and I, all free white and twenty-one (probably) and full of bullshit entitled indignation, was like, "What?! Are we doing something illegal?" as Bob shoved my jeans at me and hissed, "Just say 'Yes, officer'!" The cop sighed. "First of all, the park's closed," he said, and I said, "Well. All right then."

That morning, Bob came up to the apartment I shared with Pants to say goodbye. He was going back to New York. Knowing now what was waiting for him at his mother's house - the dozens of brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, the lifelong better-than-brothers best friends, I am impressed and flattered that he spent so much time with me during his visit home. Although... I guess none of them were boning him in the back of Frannie's Buick, so I suppose that gave me an edge.

I found his wallet wedged in our couch a couple hours after he left. I had no phone number for him, and everything in his wallet had his New York info on it. I panicked a little, finally got ahold of him (I think by calling Pants and telling a preposterous lie about why I would need Bob's mom's phone number - Pants, brother, I do not deserve your forgiveness), and eventually settled on sending his wallet to him in New York.

So I sent it. Along with an eight-page letter handwritten on legal paper in my miniscule handwriting.

Did I do that? I may have edited it down to six pages before it hit the mails. On the list of how to not make a person fall in love with you, writing them a six-page handwritten letter after you've met three times is just below quoting Elton John lyrics.

But somehow...

We Meet Again

Later, I graduated. Pants and I broke up, over completely unrelated matters. I got a job with a software company. It failed. I moved home to Baltimore. Slept on the bunk bed that had been bought for me when I was six. Worked writing software manuals for an insurance company.

Kind of a low point.

One day, bringing in the mail at my parents' house, I noticed a newsletter from a Catholic charity in Seattle. Not the usual kind of thing you find in my parents' mail. Opening it, I found one line scrawled across the top: "How are you? How is Baltimore? Love, Bob."

Imagine walking along your street and a tiny meteorite falls to the sidewalk in front of you. Glowing and smoking and FROM SPACE.

I wrote back to the address on the newsletter, using my company's stationery. "Dear Bob - Seattle? and Catholic? and Yes."

In addition to writing manuals, I also handled tech support. I answered phones all day, walking people through the onscreen instructions, taking shit from redneck lady office managers who were fed up with this newfangled computer hoodoo. It was 1988. I sprained my hand doing that job, when I punched the handset of the phone I was speaking into. How stupid is that? Punching a phone.

So the day the phone rang at work and Bob said "Hello Paula. This is Bob." For the first time, exactly the same way he says it a dozen times a week to me. Imagine walking along your street and the CHRIST CHILD falls gently to the sidewalk in front of you. And you have your camera on you, and he asks if you would like him to grant you three wishes.

I got goosebumps so hard they hurt.

Bob was coming to the area for his cousin's wedding, and we made plans to extend his trip so that we could see the sights and be uncomfortable around each other and weld ourselves one to another for a few days. We went to Assateague, if I remember. Saw the ponies fucking in the parking lot. Not the aphrodisiac you might think, but we did not let that bother us.

And in spring he was visiting his brother in Washington D.C. I left work and drove down 95 like I was a paper airplane with jet engines. There was a party, I was wearing a blue dress, must have been fifty people on Joe's deck, and all I could see was him. That night I admitted I loved him and he laughed. "You may never meet anyone who... who worships you like I do."

Blot on My Conscience Number Two, Poe, was somewhat suspicious when I started making plans to 'visit my brother' in Seattle. My brother did, in fact, live in Seattle, and I did, in fact, plan on staying with him, since Bob was living with his girlfriend, The Completely Awesome Girlfriend, at the time. She came to our wedding. Her children play with our children like they have known each other all their lives. It's a theme.

Bob was working at a homeless shelter. I had his home address but I hadn't written or called (no, he and Completely Awesome had already broken up. It was a different girlfriend. Well anyway), so I staked out his place of work. Nothing like hanging out in the alley outside a homeless shelter dressed like a late-80's club kid. A very nice lady with very few teeth offered me an apple.

And here he comes, straight from his lunchtime basketball game, sweaty and still with that bounce in his step, carrying his ball. Walked right past me, his head swiveling on its stem. I have never surprised anyone that thoroughly - and let me tell you, children, I have pink hair. I can be a surprising person.

There were a few visits to Seattle. I stayed at his place when he was between girlfriends, at my brother's when he wasn't. There are one or two blots on my husband's conscience too. On one trip, I went out to dinner with my brother's girlfriend and we discovered roasted garlic for the first time. Ate an entire head of garlic, like four inches in diameter. The next day, Bob was due to meet me at my brother's place on his lunch break, but my body was busy converting all that garlic to THE most toxic gas. I raced around the apartment opening windows and finding fans, waving my arms around, desperately trying to chivvy those clouds of fart into the at-large atmosphere of Queen Anne's Hill.

Eventually, he wrote that he had been accepted to a program in Africa. In Zimbabwe. He'd be gone a year at least, and had no plan further than that. He was flying out of JFK, and suggested we meet in New York. And for once in my life, I refused him.

I used to write him letters that I couldn't send. I wrote lots of letters I did send, and he wrote me, less frequently, letters full of description that I scrutinized and re-read and parsed for hidden meaning, but in some ways, in those days, he was so unreal to me that I could use the idea of him like a movie. He was so handsome, and so romantic, and so very very intermittent. You can see how that is just not to be trusted. A humid afternoon here, a Pacific cliff there, plus all that sneaking around. How could you not be in love with that? And how could you imagine that to be anything remotely resembling real? I know a teen novel when I'm in one.

When he was in Africa, I went to Africa too. Now - Africa is big. But I knew he'd be traveling in the north while I was there, and I suggested we meet in Tunis. And for once in his life, he refused me.

Bob says that if he were writing this story as a teen novel, he'd change that. He'd have met me in Tunis. But in the novel, he'd find me just at the moment I was being menaced by a gang of bus drivers who were holding my backpack hostage, and then we'd run away, and then I'd turn to him and say, "Well. You got me back for that alley in Seattle," and then whatever whatever.

But instead we did our separate trips, and learned our separate things, and came back attached to yet another couple of Blots. He disembarked in Boston, where his girlfriend had been accepted to law school. I returned to Baltimore, took a secretarial job and ran a failing business. He got a job signing people in and out of another homeless shelter.

Ergo, grad school.

We grow up

I moved to New York to go to NYU. He stayed in Boston and went to MIT. I went on MIT's website one day and looked up his email address. It was 1995. I wanted to invite him to my wedding, but the groom (who is hopefully a Blot On His Own Damn Conscience) said, "No way."

One day, I got an email. "My girlfriend broke up with me. I am pretty depressed." Oddly enough, this email came exactly one day after my husband had left, apparently for good.

"I am 'pretty depressed' myself. I think my husband left me. What are you doing this weekend?"

I was single for exactly two days. When he showed up at the Port Authority Friday afternoon, I was so nervous. We hadn't seen each other in five years. He had grey in his hair. He was warm, and beautiful.

In New York that weekend, were we a little wounded? Maybe. Maybe that's why we were so un-selfconscious with each other. God, I always thought Bob was this brooding, serious guy. All that time doing social justice stuff - how could he not be angry all the time? And how could he not disdain me, with my hot pink suede ankle boots and head full of song lyrics? That weekend though, I just took him everywhere I liked, and everything I liked, he liked it too. We talked more. He turned out to be kind of a goof, which was a big relief. 

When I dropped him at the bus station Sunday night I asked if we were going to see each other again. "I mean, soon, not like usual. I know we always see each other again." He replied with something to the effect that I'd have to get a restraining order if I wanted it not to be so.

I got a divorce, he got a degree. He moved in, with his chair and his bottle capper and his forty-seven hats. I proposed one afternoon in a bar.

I said, "It's getting warmer. Time to wash the curtains in the living room."
He said, "Ah. Of course. Warmer weather: wash curtains."
I said, "Isn't it relaxing to know that one day you'll be married to a person who knows when it's time to wash the curtains?"
He smiled at me and said that yes, it was a weight off his mind.


You know, now that I'm thinking about it, it wasn't Pants who saw me boiling that owl. It was Pants's best friend, Mike, so he heard about it secondhand, which is probably even better. The reality of reducing an animal to bones is seldom as romantic as the concept. Probably why Mike never fell in love with me, plus he was already in love with someone else. What did she do? She was beautiful, and brilliant, and a free spirit. That works too.

That explains a lot.

Sleeping boys catch no fish

Sunrise, boat canal, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Today I found myself struggling to figure out how we were going to meet up with a friend at a large, crowded outdoor event. I racked my brain to remember who among our friends might own a large striped umbrella that we could borrow, or some kind of flag. I considered big weird hats. And then I remembered that we live in the future, and most of us carry handheld communication devices commonly known as PHONES, and I suggested that he CALL ME when he got there. "Welcome to 1998," he wrote back. Thanks. I hope I like it here.

I think this is my problem with half the vampire shit that goes down nowadays. Seriously. From Buffy on down, don't you think the vampires, who are like 250 years old, should spend less time getting all emo and experimenting with hair products, and more time going like, "Which one is the television again? The little one you talk through or the big one with the flat front?"

Now I understand that there are some new vampires, hot ones living in Louisiana and tying each other up for sex and shit. That is ok by me. It makes sense - sexy bondage has been around since the Pharaohs. I am guessing. I wasn't there. I must have read it in a book. Or... I bet there are frescoes - the frescoes that don't travel with the rest of the exhibition. I read so much kids nonfiction, sometimes I think I get a skewed view. 75 books about the Aztec, Inca, and Maya this summer and I found myself at one point saying, "You know, it's weird... most cultures have some kind of big iconographic deal around the phallus, but these are some of the least filthy ancient people I've ever read about," and then realizing well, yeah - you don't put pictures from the Villa of the Mysteries in a book for 8-year-olds.

Where was I? Oh yeah so ok I've just read that one of these vampires, one who looks especially nice with no shirt on, is Stellan Skarsgård's son. Making him Orlando Bloom's brother, yes? I would find if very difficult, if I were his co-worker, not to say, "Earth to Meekus!" every time he blew a line, regardless of his prodigious Scandihoovian hotness. Not that any son of Stellan Skarsgård blows his lines, ever. You get the impression that these Scandinavian motherfuckers are extremely professional. Stellan Skarsgård gave us convincing pathos and grim determination even with a starfish stapled to his face.

Speaking of professional, the picture I saw of Son of Skarsgård (no, not the shirt-off picture, another one) made it look like he shops at frickin Barneys. Now, leaving aside that there is no Barneys within 500 miles of anywhere in Louisiana, why is that man (the vampire character, not the Swedish scion - stay with me, here) shopping? Doesn't everything still fit from like 50 years ago, the last time that suit was in style? That always bothered me about Spike, too. Sure, they pinned him in time to 1978, but why? Guy lives a hundred years and then finds his fashion moment?

Bullshit. Let me tell you. I've lived about a hundred years now (ok, 45) and I found my fashion moment when I was FOURTEEN, when my grandfather died and I inherited all his tuxedo shirts. That's when everyone finds their fashion moment (in their teens, not when they discover that their grandfather had been bizarrely well-supplied with formalwear) (although, I gotta say, that was quite a watershed stylistic moment for little YNL. When I saw the top hats, the ruffles, the tuxes, I was suddenly like, "If happy little grandpas fly beyond the rainbow... why oh why can't I?" I wore that top hat until it fell apart ON MY HEAD. Married a man who called himself "Secretly Flamboyant Scott". Divorced him and married a man whose material possessions consisted of one chair, a diploma from MIT, and forty-seven hats. Thanks, Grandpa!).

Anyway. Like a lot of people, my idea of what's cool is still what was cool when I started high school. Which was 1979. Hm. And I was complaining about Spike because...

... wait a minute ...

Ok maybe the late '70's were, in fact, the coolest time ever and that's why Spike and I both like motorcycle boots. More likely, maybe Joss Whedon and I are exactly the same age. Hm. Joss Whedon and I are almost exactly the same age. What was my point again?

At the library the other day, I caught a look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and wondered for just a second why I had dressed for work as if I were David Johansen, post Dolls and pre Buster. Getting older is strange. Getting older without actually getting older is strange-er. The phrase "arrested development" comes to mind, but then we're back to the handcuffs, aren't we?

It eats you starting with your bottom

Jonathan: You learned the entire Klingon Dictionary in two and a half weeks.
Andrew: That had much clearer transitive and intransitive rules, OK?

I've been thinking about verbs today. Verbs. Sunday night I sat at the bar at the Hamilton Tavern and ate a pulled-duck barbecue sandwich, straight through, no stopping, because it was the most heartrendingly delicious thing, with the cole slaw and all? Oh. MAGAD. And after I did that, Bob asked me a few times whether I wanted dessert. The third time he asked, I bloatedly gasped, "I continue to be unable to think about eating another thing," meaning - if you offer me a wafer-thin mint, I will not be responsible for the offal dripping from the chandelier.

Also, geeking out a little bit lately, hence the Monty Python reference. The Buffy quotes, for me, don't even count as geeking out.

So. "Continue to be unable". That is the present perfect progressive negative infinitive of "can". In Greek, this would get its own word:

...

uh...

Trust me. It would. But I have lost my undergraduate Classics-major chops to such an extent that even Mr. Internet cannot help me discover what that word would be.

Here is where my friend Jaime The Former Linguistics Major leaps in and tells me that not only have I mis-labeled that verb tense up above, but that my usage was incorrect in the first place. To which I can only say - hey! today I looked up all the Tarzan movies from the 1930's and 1940's to see if a villain named something like 'Ratarak' was in one of them. Also, I came up with at least 4 works of historical fiction for young people dismayed at this particular summer reading assignment, and I kind of got those kids excited about those books. And I have two broken toes. I think it counts that I would even try to parse that verb phrase.

My point? My point is that I was safely writing a list of young adult audio books that would not make a grownup want to drive into a bridge abutment, and I was going to use "Paradise by the dashboard light" as a title, and I somehow didn't manage to save, and I continue to be chagrined at the shittiness of Blogger.

You know I'm retired from hero work.
As am I Robert... as am I. And yet - here we
are.

I'm Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle

Me by Sam, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Among the shit I ain't had time for lately (i.e. and to wit: blogging, grammar)... reading.

You should see the books stacked up on my read / review shelf. Now that I have one. Which - oh my god - so great! (Wow, I was just my friend Jaime there for a second. Hi James! See you in two weeks!) But setting up the office was not time doing work that might be done in the office. Also, planning the music for today's Circus Arts Club performance at school was not time doing work that might be done in the office. Although, I did do that in the office, because I did it in iTunes, and you know what? You'd think that after having listened to the Beastie Boys since like 1987, which is pretty much the year Adam Horowitz was BORN, I'd have a copy of "Sabotage" in my iTunes. But not.

Or, in fact, you'd think that I could walk my flat ass up the street and borrow it from a neighbor: I may not be absolutely sure that I have a neighbor who has a working hand mixer that I can borrow, but I AM absolutely sure that the combined music collection of Kyle and Gretchen, Matt and Chelsea, Stacy and Lui, Peter and Chris, and David and Chuck contains at least one copy of Ill Communication. (I LOVE MY STREET.) But I plunked down my $1.29 and now I have an iTunes copy of "Sabotage". I'll get the rest of the CD from Kyle.

But right, I am scraping ten minutes here between ordering bus tickets to NYC for Book Expo (HELLOOO, KidLit Drink Night!) and getting ready for this performance this afternoon, and I was going to talk about books.

Here's a book that showed up just yesterday:



Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea by Alice Waters

If you were a world-famous restauranteur and intiator of a food revolution, and wanted to take a middle school in hand, what could you do? Where would you start? Alice Waters convinced a MS principal to let her start a garden on school property, and several years later, the food garden was incorporated into the science, math, and even English curricula. You should see some of the stuff the kids wrote in their journals while sitting under the arbors in their school garden in Berkeley, CA.

GOD I would love to see this happen in Baltimore. I've been watching the Edible Schoolyard idea for 10 years - the Berkeley model has been repeated at a school in New Orleans - and it seems to me it addresses about a million ills. Innovative curriculum that thinks on its feet and adjusts to match the materials available; lessons about nutrition; better science instruction; getting kids outdoors; getting kids into a kitchen.

I didn't manage to do more than skim the book and look at the gorgeous photos (Prince Charles visited, not that he's gorgeous, but you know, when the Prince comes, so does a really good photographer). I did see enough to know: this is one orgasm of an education book. Would make a great end of year gift for the educator in your life. Just be sure when you give it, you specify that you're not saying, "HEY dammit - do this!" Not everybody has the resources of Alice Waters.

Let Me Eat Cake: a celebration of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, and a pinch of salt by Leslie Miller

Ok now THIS one I am seriously a delinquent for not reading. Leslie lives right around the corner, and got me an advance copy for FREE, and what did I do? I read the part she said she was worried about, and then I put it on the shelf and unpacked another dozen boxes of filthy OLD books.

But in the bits I read (I also read the last chapter, and the first part), I found that I thought I knew Leslie, because Leslie has a blog, and is my friend on Facebook, and posts her beautiful photos to Flickr, not to mention I see her at parties and shit, but I did not quite know how good Leslie writes. Leslie writes GOOD.

That alone should convince you to pick up Let Me Eat Cake, but I will also say that Leslie is FUNNY. Funny + Good = Read it. Not that anyone needs me to tell them, apparently: the 19 copies in my library system have been more or less entirely checked out ever since their arrival.

And look at that pretty cake on the cover - MMM!

I was sent this Huffington Post article on the Love as the Practice of Freedom conference at Princeton by my old friend (library cataloger supreme and romance novelist) Ann Herendeen. Ann self-published her first book, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, a gay Regency romance novel (yeah I told her I was never gonna read it, I barely read adult fiction as it is, and romance? and Regency? although gay? interesting!) and it was so popular that Harper picked it up. Harper! Nice!

The article is the most thought-provoking thing I've read in a while. It presents romance as a "fundamentally progressive activity", breaking down boundaries, transgressing mores, challenging the status quo. And I buy that. What is more, the romance novel is "an important transmitter of values," says the article's author, Hillary Rettig. I like thinking of that: the ladies who read romance novels are - I don't want to generalize here - in some cases not young, not NPR listeners, not people who live and think on the edge. Other romance novel readers ARE. (Ok, Left Brainiac the Baking Librarian, I know I'm a snob (and you know I'm a snob), and I'm trying to get over it!) I love the idea of these nice romance-reading ladies maybe rooting for a protagonist (and a protagonista) who are non-white, or not completely heterosexual, or whatever.

To that end, I thought I'd give romance one more try. Left Brainiac recommended Jayne Castle (one of Jayne Krentz's brands), who writes strong women and strong men in a sci-fi setting. I checked out Ghost Hunter, and I read the first chapter in the parking lot waiting to pick up the kids. Hm. Awfully heavy on dialogue. Long scenes. Lots of simmering. Not for me. I may try Ann's book after all.




Then there are the impulse books I've been snatching up while shelving new books at the library. Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection attracted me first with its steampunky green and gold and black cover, then with the inside cover blurb which made it sound meta without being tedious, like Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. I may have to force my friend Melissa to read this book and tell me about it.

I also grabbed up The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet because of its cover: an engraving of a bird skeleton nestled in a flat box with a pair of dividers and an old-style museum specimen label. Boy am I a sucker for that style. But leafing through: neato! Tricks and illustrations and marginalia - I love that stuff in kids' books, and it's about time somebody (other than Mark Z. Danielewski, man I can't handle those books) served some of that fun up for grownups. Plus, blurbs by Gary Shteyngart and Stephen King, kind of an interesting combo).

I also picked up Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery by Jason Buhrmester, because a) it looked funny b) it looked cool and c) it was about crime. Also, the word "Baltimore" appears in the back-cover summary.

Bruce Sterling has a new book which I am sure to like. When I can read it.

And the latest YA book that everyone seems to be recommending for adults too is The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. There are zombies. I want to read this book. I may have to just rely on Eerily Similar Paula's assessment - she was probably the one who recommended it in the first place.


All this is not to mention the VERY nice books the journal I review for has been sending me lately - thanks for easing up on the nonfiction about China! sorry all my reviews have been late this entire calendar year! Does "sheepish" come across on the Internet? I am sheepish.

AND not to mention the stacks and stacks of picture books that I have actually READ in the past few months, and just not been able to review. Orangutan Tongs: Poems to Tangle Your Tongue? YES! When the Moon Forgot? A little weird, but extremely lovely. Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea? You don't need ME to tell you anything Steve Jenkins is involved with is awesome.

THERE. It's FRIDAY. I spent some time doing something that was not work, not school, and not house (although I have killed several ants while working here at the kitchen counter, so I guess that counts as a little house stuff. There goes another one - SMISH, you little sugar-addicted motherfucker!). You know what? I should just break out the leftover rum-soaked pineapple and give up on the day! Wouldn't that fucking rock? It's ten a.m. Who's with me?

"As the basal ganglia take up their power tools, what started as an ordinary headache is turning into something much, much worse" - Clive Owen

I have been having a headache. If that seems like an odd deployment of the past perfect (I think) tense, consider that I woke up with this headache early last week, spent two days and several evenings in bed with it, and was almost rid of it this morning, only to have it reprise early this afternoon, this time with full chorus and strolling musicians.

It's kind of evolving. It makes me nauseous. It reverberates through my joints and in my back. It is affected by light. As of Sunday, it began to notice sound. And yesterday, it caused my hands to shake. Maybe we should make a Discovery Channel documentary out of it. Can Clive Owen narrate? He'd make it sound ominous and sexy.

Anyway, after trying multiple combinations of Advil, Aleve, Excedrin, hydrating like a motherfucker, abstaining from caffeine, taking extra caffeine, etc., my generous and caring cousin spanked me some Imitrex. Oh, she is one talented cousin, that cousin!

I took my friend Loren's advice, and waited to take it until I knew I didn't have anything to do for the next few hours. I'm terrible at drugs anyway. My first labor was hell, you should have been there. No you shouldn't have. So tonight around 6pm I took the Imitrex and got in a bubble bath. These headaches also make me cold, very cold, unwarmably cold.

The headache wasn't going anywhere, but I did get nice and warm. I had brought a book into the bathroom, but I forgot about it while I watched the patterns in the bubbles. I saw a lioness, a cream pie (one of those tall ones like you see in diners), Grover from Sesame Street (twice), a proboscis monkey, the state of Georgia - wait no that was South Carolina, Chester Cheetah, a polar bear, and the silhouette of a cruise ship.

So I decided to get out of the bath.

I feed my horse on corn and beans

This used to be my playground

The cat is sitting in a puddle of sunshine mewing miserably. She just HATES all the construction going on in our house - the power tools, the sawdust, and, apparently, the fact that her litter box is not where she expects it to be. I can smell it, you stupid little mammal, and when I find it, if it's one of our beds, I will be ANGRY. I don't care how traumatized you are. You should fear nothing more than you fear me.

Ok, yes, I also am sitting in a puddle of sunshine mewing miserably. I have a head cold and no cable, and I can't even watch old episodes of Cagney and Lacey on Netflix Instant because the Netflix player plus my Linux laptop equal HATE and ERROR and 404 HA HA YOU THINK YOU'RE SO SMART, YOU REJECTOR OF PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE YOU and THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY.

AND I am miserable because we have been unable to use our kitchen, dining room, basement, or living room since mid-January, and we're hiding out upstairs, in three little rooms plus a bathroom. Also, we've been staying at my parents' house a lot. Which - wait, no, that part is great. Really! They have cable and wifi and electric blankets and they keep the heat up nice and comfy high and we don't even have to feel crappy about not pitching in on the cleaning because they use a housecleaning service! The kids are happy to see so much of their grandparents - Mao has become devoted to Alton Brown, whom he watches with his grandfather, and about whom I cannot figure what is all the fuss. Guy's not THAT funny, or THAT original - and yesterday when I really needed to sleep all day with this cold, I slept all day without being awakened by power tools or cursing or Contractor Jake who whistles ALL THE TIME.

I've also been spending a LOT of time in the car. Mom & Dad's house is clear across town, plus I'm running around looking at flooring and countertops and tile - Christ, I think that part's done and I could not be happier - and, let's face it, our house is just not that pleasant during the day.

As a result, when I was going to pick up Bob today to make a final countertop decision, I glanced over at the passenger side of the minivan, and suggested we just meet at Home Depot.

Check this out:



That is my front passenger seat. I had a couple minutes in the Home Depot parking lot, so I picked the pile apart a little (like Alton Brown examining the components of pad thai).



Nori crackers, because I have a bad habit of skipping meals, and then getting so hypoglycemic that I think I don't need to eat, and then getting homicidal when... well, just getting homicidal.




Walter Dean Myers, Sunrise Over Fallujah. Reading for Great Books for Kids.



Christopher Moore, Coyote Blue. My reward for reading Sunrise Over Fallujah.



Curtains for the sliding door in the dining room. Measured, pinned, and ironed, waiting for me to find a sewing machine that I can figure out how to use. There's also a bag of grommets in the car associated with this project, but I did not take a picture of the bag of grommets. But I think I will look for excuses to say or type "bag of grommets" for the rest of the day.




Miscellaneous chocolate from a checkout line. Usually I can resist the checkout line chocolate, but I am feeling weak.




An extremely large fungus the kids found in the woods with Grandma.




Lunch to take to work on Saturday.




Laptop case / briefcase. Has the Project Folder in it. The Project Folder has every receipt, every measurement, every paint color, surface, plan, drawing, specs for every appliance, pages torn out of catalogs to remind me what I'm going for here, and tickets to Aruba in case I really have to bail on this renovation.




My camera bag. Eleanor From High School recently reminded me that I used to have a red shoulder bag that I carried with me everywhere and that I called The Red Bag Of Courage. I think this is the new Red Bag Of Courage. I love this camera bag.




Not a comment on our renovation - it's where we are in the Little House books. But it could also be a comment on our renovation. Cabinets are going in today - maybe we only have three more weeks to go. If it goes longer than that I think I'll start peeing in the corners too.

I like fish and mango pickle

Stocking loot, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Man, I know Christmas Is For The Kids and all that, but I have had one kick-ass fucking holiday season so far.

Gold
My husband bought me the lens I had decided I would buy in a year or so - a so-called macro lens, it will focus very very close, and, as it turns out, it just loves light. I do not deserve that lens. Let's be frank - I do not deserve that husband.

Frankincense
Also. I received an email on Christmas Eve from the review editor at School Library Journal. I am one of their volunteer reviewers, I get paid in books. But SLJ is doing a supplement, and they'd like me to do a compare-and-contrast of several nonfiction series, and they are going to PAY ME. MONEY. A paid writing job!

It might seem odd for me to be jumping up and down about it, because, well sure, I write all the time, and most jobs I've ever had have been jobs full of writing... but I got this assignment purely on the basis of me fucking around on the Internet, so it's kind of like making money off a hobby.

Plus it finishes paying for my laptop.




Myrrh
AND, after eight years of searching, I found a mariachi suit on eBay. A traje de charro, black, with metal botonaduras down each leg and at each wrist. Yes, basically what Antonio Banderas wears in Desperado. Make of that what you will, and then keep it to yourself.

I fully expected this thing to come in huge and short and beat-up and stinking of, let's face it, a mariachi, and I figured I'd only end up being able to wear the jacket, but after eight years of searching, oh I just wanted to put this whim to bed.

Imagine my delight when the pants fit like they'd been MADE FOR ME, and the whole thing is spotless and new. El Charro, the company that makes these things, only does custom, and somebody just my size must have ordered this suit, worn it once if at all, and decided - what? the mariachi lifestyle was not for them? That's a three-hundred-dollar custom-made suit that some tall, narrow man discarded without a backward glance.

I am grateful though - it means my botonaduras are untarnished.

I can only wish the same for you, amigo.

You don't know me

and why not?, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Comments perfect strangers have made about my personal appearance in the last 48 hours:

• "What you need are a few more rings."
• "Your hair doesn't scare me."
• "I have to ask." (and then he didn't, just looked at me expectantly)

You know what, folks? I don't look like that young man who worked the entrance desk at the Whitney 13 years ago - the one with 8 piercings in each eyebrow and several in the lip? you know, the one with the large black tribal tattoos crawling up his neck and threatening to pull his ears down into his artfully ripped shirt? All I have is pink hair. But somehow... I just don't bet random visitors to the Whitney Museum of American Art made comments about that guy's appearance. Maybe that's what I need - I just need to look more scary.

I think I'll have horns implanted. You can do that now, I think. That would actually totally rock.

Also. Cleaning up after a few hours on the desk, here are some things I found scribbled on scrap paper:

• American Red Cross
• Doris Lessing
• jaundice
• origins of yoga
• taste buds gender difference
• Movies Christian
• Ragnarok
• Essential tremor vs. action tremor
• painter School of Athens
• Naked Ape

It's not poetry. But the mere mention of Ragnarok puts it maybe in the category of 'things that might be found lining the pockets of a man currently residing under a bridge.'

Also. Token Boy Librarian has observed that most pictures of my older son are perfectly reasonable until you take a closer look. He is right, in many cases: there are mismatched gloves, books being read upside down, Care Bears being decapitated, Danny Torrance hair. That's why I like this picture: the crazy is right there before your eyes. This weekend he was so stir-crazy, milling around like BBs in a blender, chattering nonsense syllables... I finally told him if he couldn't cool it or go outside I was going to have him tested.