Travels in Booland

Harvest

2010-08-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Here is my garden, as of about a month ago. The snap pea vines, which grew to over 6 feet, were gone by then, and so were the lettuces, but if you can imagine them in the middle there you'll have a pretty good idea of the whole shebang.

It's looking a little more ragged and empty these days. The sunflowers are all bloomed little blossoms are blossoming off the side of the stem while the big old droopy first growth sags over at the top. Most of the carrots are picked--turns out the Mermaid Girl loves them beyond all other vegetables, and, flattered, I've been packing them in her camp lunches all week. The zucchini doesn't seem to be amounting to much, despite everyone's dire predictions that I'd have more than I knew what to do with. It appears to have some kind of virus. And there's some corn, but I'm not sure if I planted enough for it to take. But there are still the tomatoes (most of them) to go. It's true, what they say about homegrown tomatoes. They are like a drug. Sometimes I just go out and stick my head in the plants and breathe in.

Then there were the potatoes. I hadn't even planned on planting potatoes; it seemed too mysterious and dirty. Not sexy dirty, but literally dirty. I mean, even when you buy potatoes in the store, they're often covered in dirt; how much yuckier would it be to actually grow them yourself? I think I've mentioned I don't even really like dirt that much. Plus there were all these warnings about where to plant them, and how to plant them, and weird diseases and such, and it all seemed like too much trouble.

But back in the spring, when I went to pick up the dirt from that woman at my synagogue, just as I was leaving she literally tossed a couple of little plants at me, saying, "Here, want to try a couple of potatoes?" So I shrugged and thanked her and took them, and when I shoveled all the dirt into my garden I stuck them in; why not? Then a few days later, I saw a potato I'd bought-- a supermarket one, not even organic--was too shriveled to eat and was sprouting like crazy, so I stuck it in the ground next to the other potato plants. Again: what the heck?

The plants grew and grew-- you can see them in the photo up there, up front, second from the right, just left of the zucchinis--but the thing about potatoes is that you never can tell what's happening underground, and if you dig around to try to find out, you could mess up the whole root structure. I had one false start when I dug a little and found what I at first thought was a real grown potato and then thought was maybe the seed potato, so after that I just left it alone.

Until one hot day late last month, when I was spraying the Mermaid Girl (who hasn't liked that name for years and now says she wishes she'd picked another one) and her friend on the trampoline, and I stepped backward onto a rock. Only it wasn't a rock; it was a HUGE purple potato. So once more I dug, filled with hope despite myself, and this is what I found:

That's my hand, over on the right: a grownup-size hand, about six or seven inches from fingertip to wrist. So: some substantial potatoes, there.

Gardening metaphors are so easy that they feel cheap, but it's true: you can never tell what's growing underground, out of sight. I've been out of sight of this blog all summer, and I wish I had something as substantial as these potatoes to show for it, but mostly I just have a summer. And a garden.

And a kid who turns ten years old tomorrow. Tomorrow!

A really statistically abnormal bunch of my friends have become dog-owners this year, and it's no coincidence that they all have kids my kid's age (or sometimes older). When I asked, rather plaintively, WHY, I got variations on the same answer: "So there will be SOMEONE who's happy to see me when I come home."

I'm a hard-core non-dog person, so maybe that's why I planted a garden this summer: somewhere on the grounds of this house, there is some living being that responds at least kind of predictably to the nurturing I put into it.

There's a song I've been singing to myself all summer, from a musical I love, "The Fantasticks". It starts out "Plant a radish, get a radish, never any doubt/ that's why I love vegetables, you know what you're about!" and goes on to complain that while vegetables are dependable, "With children/ It's bewilderin'/You don't know until the seed is nearly grown/Just what you've sown."

I love my kid to pieces, RW and I both do, and there are several signs that what we've sown is growing up into an excellent person. But at almost-ten, she's already moving into her own world. Less and less of who she is, who she will become, has to do with us, and what we do or don't do.

One thing is for sure, though: the person she is growing into, that person is an intensely private person. Not someone who would be happy to think of her life and times being splashed all over the Interwebs, even pseudonymously. That's the kind of characteristic that you can cutesify and more or less ignore in a four-year-old. In a ten-year-old? Not so much. I've seldom asked her permission to write about her in this space, partly, I'm ashamed to say, because especially as she got older I was generally sure the answer would be a resounding negative. So I'm thinking this is a pretty good time to close up shop, at least for now, on Booland, which hasn't really been Booland (as she hasn't been called Boo) for some years now. It's not the only reason, but it's a big one.

Like I said, gardening metaphors are easy; really, you can compare *anything* to planting a seed. When I started this blog, over six years ago, I didn't know what I was planting: just that I needed to write, and I needed community. And blogging has given me what I hoped for, and more. I've been writing for six years, more-or-less (less, these days...) regularly. And I have more friends in the computer than I can count. If you're reading this, you're probably one of them, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say.

That's really the end of this post. The rest of this is totally naval-gazey and skippable, unless you are deeply interested in other people's internal worriting:

As I write this post, I'm imagining the "oh-no-not-another-one" dread it's inspiring among the few readers still following. I've felt that same sinking feeling, reading the final posts of one favorite blogger after another, these past few years. So I have this urge to apologize: I'm sorry! I could well start blogging again, sometime! Maybe even soon! A relative recently observed that I'm other-directed: I need feedback, I need to share, I don't write (or live) well in isolation. And I think that's true. But I also think that the feedback, the praise, the comment-mongering, can be a drug, more addictive and yet less satisfying than the smell of tomato plants.

Here's what I mean: a week or two ago, I wrote a post, or I mean a "note," on Facebook. It was just something I wrote, and then I posted it. And some people commented to say they liked it. And the next day, when I sat down to write something else, there was a little imp, a very familiar little imp, in the back of my brain, chattering under the words I was trying to write: "Will they like this? Will they? Will they like it more than yesterday's? Maybe they won't like it as much. Maybe they'll like it more! Maybe they'll LOVE it! I wonder if they will. Maybe they'll hate it. Maybe no one will comment at all. I wonder if they'll like it?"

I know that little imp, way too well. I've fed her copiously for the past six years. And I think I need to give her a rest for a while. I need to figure out a way to balance the other-directedness, which is as much a part of me as my hair and eyes, with the praise-junkie-ness, which is a Problem. So it's really not just respecting my kid's privacy, and not just concerns about my own anonymity and privacy (which has also been compromised, probably inevitably after six years but still a cause for some alarm), and not just that the blog world has changed: it's not her, or them. It's me.

So, Booland is done, at least for now. But I'll be around: on Facebook, and following other blogs (because that's one addiction I just can't quit), and, you know, in the Real World too. So if you're a lurker, and you want to stay in touch, comment or email me: elswhere@gmail.com [careful of the spelling; there's no "e" in the middle.]

And I'll see you in the ether. Or, well, elsewhere.

Inch By Inch, Row By Row, Part II: In Which I Acquire Dirt

2010-05-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Oh, hi! Was I neglcting my blog? sorry, I didn't mean to. I've just been so busy. In my garden. Planting, and weeding, and watering, and generally being all farmer-y and whatnot.

How did it come to this pass, you might ask? How did a die-hard urbanite like me become a...gardener?

Well. When last we spoke, I was whining about dirt, and about the impasse that emerged when it became clear that I might need to suck it up and buy some. And that might have continued right up through planting season, had not a timely message come through on my synagogue listserv.

I get a lot of messages on my synagogue listserv. Mostly they're about rallies I can't go to, or political/spiritual debates I don't feel like joining. But this one jumped out at me, because the post-er was offering dirt! Free dirt! And she promised it was all organic and compost-rich and worm-casey and good! Someone had bought the land where her garden plot was, and was going to put a garage on it, and she didn't want all her soil to go to waste. All I had to do was reply, and come get it at the appointed time, and I could have all I wanted!

When I got to the garden the next Wednesday, it was so crowded I couldn't even find a parking spot. Gosh. I had no idea that dirt was so popular, though really I should've known if I'd thought about it. Not being entirely sure how I was going to contain or transport it, I'd brought a wheelbarrow, a shovel, a big tarp, our yard waste bin, and about 40 little plastic grocery bags. I shoveled a few shovelfuls of dirt into each bag, tied them closed, and put them on top of the tarp in the back of our van. As it turned out, I didn't need the yard waste bin at all. The bags were all snug and tidy piled up on each other in the van, sort of like the pellets of heroin that the heroine swallows in Maria Full of Grace. But much bigger. Like pellets that a huge heroin-smuggling giant would swallow. If dirt were heroin.

So. Then I had dirt!

By this point, I had weeded one section of my incipient garden patch--the section where RW had planced flowers the year before. The rest of it was so very, very weedy that I despaired. So I only had that one small patch of dirt on which to dump the new organic dirt.

But dirt does, in fact, take up space. So I had to shovel out some old dirt to make room for the new dirt. This I accomplished by putting the old, bad dirt into the wheelbarrow, and also dumping some on top of the weeds, and then emptying all the plastic bags into the cleared space in a big hill.

Already, gardening was turning out to be much more about logistics than I had bargained for. Also, my back was starting to hurt.

Inch By Inch, Row By Row. Part I

2010-04-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

I have never been much of a gardener. I don't love getting my hands into the dirt; actually, it feels all gritty and kind of squicks me out. I'm not big on nature; I've always been a city person, and my idea of getting outside is to walk several blocks while people-watching on a street like, say, Broadway in New York or Seattle, or Commercial Drive in Vancouver. I am just fine with buying my produce and flowers. I feel no need to be self-sufficient.

But. Two things happened. No, three. Well, maybe four.

First, we bought a house. Almost two years ago. I'd lived in a house with my spouse (and a mouse! and maybe a louse! and a blouse!) before that, but it was *her* house, and I didn't have the same feeling about the yard that I did when we moved and it was *our* house. Plus, the former owner was a devoted gardener and made a beautiful garden here, and I felt bad just letting it go to rack and ruin.

The second thing that happened was global warming. Well, sort of. The second thing that happened, really, was that, wanting to contribute less to global warming and landfills and the overall trashing of the planet, we got a compost bin from the city, and started putting our non-protein-based kitchen waste in it. And eventually it filled up, and I thought, gee, I should take some of that compost out of the bottom of the bin and put it in... the garden. Right. Garden. What garden?

The third thing that happened--okay, not the third thing, this is actually chronologically the FIRST thing, but I'm just going to leave it third in this list, okay? Anyway, what happened was, I moved to the Northwest. In the East, where I'm from, it's perfectly okay to spend a sunny afternoon curled up on the couch reading the New Yorker, if you are lucky enough to have the leisure, the couch, and the New Yorker enabling you to do so. If you feel like appreciating the weather, you can look out the window and maybe remark to the cat that it certainly is lovely out. But in Seattle, or Vancouver, or anyplace Seattle-or-Vancouver-like, there's this crazy moral imperative where in the unlikely event that the sun is shining and it's not pouring down miserable rain, really you need to be OUTSIDE! Enjoying It! As I mentioned earlier, my favored Outside activity is walking through a bustling cityscape. But I don't actually live right next to a bustling cityscape (I used to! long, long ago, in Seattle, in a lovely little studio apartment that was recently torn down to make a subway station. But that's another story.), there's no convenient way for me to Enjoy being outside when I have no bus to catch and it's not quite warm enough to sit on the porch reading the New Yorker. So what I mostly do, when it's nice out, is sit inside, not enjoying my New Yorker or whatever, but feeling guilty that I'm not outside and resentful that I feel guilty.

After twenty years of this, I got a little tired of it, and thought maybe I should try Enjoying the Outdoors like other people around here do. And I know from several years of Monday-morning staff-room conversations that the main way that people Enjoy the Outdoors, when such is possible, is to work in their gardens.

Okay! Compost moldering in the bin; cultural imperative to Enjoy the Outdoors, backyard all ready to garden in. This is what we call, in the literary analysis biz, overdetermined.

So. A garden, then.

A lot of our garden is already sort of...gardened. I mean, there are perennial plants planted, and they grow, and the weeds haven't gotten them yet. But there's this long, sunny patch of ground over by the garage, that was basically weeds. The former owner told us that the soil over there wasn't very good and if we wanted to do anything with it we should get new soil in. Last year RW bought some flowering plants at the school plant sale and put them in a patch of it, and they looked pretty, but I thought this year I would grow FOOD. Just like Alice Waters in the California elementary schools, and Michelle Obama at the White House, and all. Because I am the Zeitgeist Girl. With my ukulele and my brown hoodie and my little tiny iPod shuffle. Okay, I am the Zeitgeist-of-2-or-3-years-ago Girl. That works for this. Isn't reducing food-miles so 2008?

But first I needed good soil, and that was where I balked. It just didn't seem right to go to the store and BUY DIRT. Isn't the point--one of the points-- of gardening that it is frugal? That you plant seeds and grow your own food and keep at least some of your nutritional needs out of the capitalist stream? Isn't it defeating a purpose to haul a bunch of plastic bags filled with dirt--oh, sorry, soil--up to a cash register? A friend told me that you could mix compost (compost! I have compost! Okay, the grapefruit peels and eggshells are still pretty intact, but I'm sure there's some compost in there somewhere)--right, mix compost with sand from the beach and get usable dirt, but then she said you have to WASH the sand and I threw up my hands in despair.

[More coming. Because I can milk a saga out of ANYTHING. Stay tuned later on for my riveting series on vacuuming the couch.]

Things Past

2010-04-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

I actually remember the very last day that I bumped around the city aimlessly. It was in 1995, a few days before I started library school, and I was looking for some books downtown. "I wonder when I'll get to do this again?" I thought, idly. Then there was school, and then looking for a job and planning the commitment ceremony, then working, then we had the baby, then there was more work, then we moved, and now it's 15 years later and I think I might finally get to do it again sometime soon. Of course, it is a different city and a different world. But still.

I remember the tile patterns in various bathrooms I have frequented. At my dad's apartment, I think it was, and also my cousin's nearby, and maybe my grandparents', there were these little white hexagons that made pleasing arrangements when you looked at them for long enough. And it might have been my elementary school that had tiles in a repeating combination of squares and rectangles that fit together in an interesting way, that you could re-arrange into many different interlocking shapes. Bathrooms on the West Coast mostly don't have that kind of tile. I miss it. I'm sure all that time looking at those tiles contributed to my understanding of geometry, too.

I remember the first time I wrote a paper on the computer, which was also the first time I accidentally deleted a paper, which was also, fortunately, the first time I made use of the "Undo" command. I was up late, late at night, in my mother's home office, typing away in a happy daze, and when I was done I highlighted the whole thing and accidentally hit they backspace key instead of whatever other key I had meant to hit. I was a senior in high school and the paper was about Theodore Roethke's poetry. I might still have it in my boxes somewhere, safe and sound on paper still. But there was that terrible moment, the moment when everything disappeared: all my insightful conclusions, my illustrative quotes, those graceful paragraphs. All gone--poof! Like that! And me staring at the traitor screen in mute horror.

I remember being three or four years old, sitting on the bus, looking at the funny pointy knobby things you could use to open or shut the windows. I called them kitty-cat ears because that was how they looked to me.

The other day a college friend posted a photo of herself on Facebook. We weren't such good friends that we'd made an effort to keep in touch before Facebook put me in potential touch with almost everyone I ever knew. So in my mind she is still 20 years old, doing pasteup on the college newspaper, funny and witty and flirting, maybe without knowing it, with the editor. When I saw the photo of her last week I thought with great sadness: oh! That girl is gone!

I know that girl (we called ourselves women, but now I think of us back then, fondly, as girls) is still there, inside my friend, like 4-year-old me is still inside 43-year-old me, still marveling at the kitty-cat ears. And if you believe in certain theories of time, she is still there in the common room also, still 20, still cutting and pasting and laughing and flirting. But in the regular, everyday world that I live in, that girl is as gone as the Theodore Roethke paper on my screen, and instead there is a (perfectly happy, by all appearances, I should note) middle-aged woman out there on the other side of that photo, and there is no Undo key.

Why this should make me more melancholy than my own middle age, I do not know.

Random bullets of various ambivalences

2010-03-07T13:09:00.000-08:00

*Well, here we all are in the post-Olympic hangover, everyone wandering around saying to each other, "Well that was some party, huh. So, how d'you think it's gonna get paid for? Hmm. Huh. Well, some party, eh?"

*It was kind of wild to see how the local mood swung from wary cynicism to totally over-the-top "Go Canada!" madness. I was at our earthy-crunchy-lefty synagogue's rabbi's house for a hamentaschen-making party last Sunday when the Big Hockey Game was on. We all ended up in front of the TV--Vancouver natives, US expatriates, diehard Olympic protesters and the ambivalent middle (me) alike, cheering like crazy and jumping up and down at that last-minute overtime victory.

*It made me think-- this is how communities are formed, what makes community: shared experiences like this. These people will always be the people I witnessed this moment with, and that counts for something.

*Funny, too, how the hunger for Olympic swag came over me suddenly just in the last days of the games. I resisted for a while and then bought a few kids' things from the picked-over racks at the department store near work. I am kind of embarrassed about it

*A few nights ago there was a young teen in the library at closing time, who asked to use the phone. From the conversation he was having, it appeared that his parents had kicked him out and he was looking for a place to stay the night. I passed him the name & number of the local youth shelter, thought about encouraging him to stay and call him right then, but by the time I'd thought it through he was gone.

*I was kind of shaken and posted about it elsewhere, saying I was trying to wrap my head around what would lead parents to do that. Someone wrote me privately about a similar situation they knew of in their family, and told me not to judge too quickly. The thing is, I *had* been trying not to judge-- I'd just written what I was thinking, and had also written that I knew there was no way I could know the full story or even whether the kid had been totally telling the truth on the phone.

*But I figure there's no point in being defensive to my friend. Even though I feel defensive.

*I ended up just writing back a brief note saying I was sorry that had happened. I know that wasn't adequate, but am not sure what would be.

*A Facebook friend posted that Mary Oliver quote about What Will You Do With Your One Wild and Precious Life, and I just thought...crap, I don't know. What *will* I do with my one wild and precious life? Pull holds on beautiful Saturday afternoons at work? Fold laundry? Check Facebook? Remind the Mermaid Girl to brush her teeth? I love that quote, theoretically, but in real life every time I read it it makes me feel itchy all over and a little bit like screaming.

*The Mermaid Girl and I are going away this week, to see my baby nephew and his parents in the wilds of New England.

*It will be Mud Season, but also Sugaring Season. I guess they go together.

*I think that's where I am right now internally, too: Mud Season. Maybe it will be sugaring season, too.

*I wonder what I'm tapping, and what it will turn into.

Random Bullets of Men's Figure Skating Short Program

2010-02-16T22:37:00.001-08:00

Our seats were indeed way up high, but the stadium is so steeply raked that we still had a really good view. And we had a side view of the Kiss & Cry, the bench where the skaters and coaches wait to hear their scores. We could see them hanging out there putting on their jackets while the monitors replayed their best and worst moments. And we could see that there were boxes of tissues (green and blue Olympic logoed boxes) down on the floor. In case of crying, I guess.
There were a lot of empty seats, too--including some really choice ones lower down and across the stadium from us, and practically a whole section behind the press seats. The ones across from us were eventually filled by skaters and their families as they finished their routines, but the big blue section never did fill. At first I thought the seats belonged to bigwigs who were going to show up late and just catch the highest-ranked skaters, but then as the evening continued and the seats stayed empty, I started to get mad. Why not give those tickets to volunteers, at least? I couldn't believe there weren't a few hundred people around here who wouldn't be happy to see an Olympic event.
In spite of the threats from the official Olympics ticket people, there's obviously a huge scalped-ticket market. On our walk from the bus stop to the front gate we saw at least ten or twelve guys selling tickets, I met a woman sitting near us who had gotten her tickets free from her friend, a scalper who buys huge quantities of Olympics tickets every two years, flies to the host city, and scalps them.
Our favorite skater was the Swiss guy who danced to the William Tell Overture. And I also liked the guy from Japan who skated early on and was in 2nd place for a long time. They both had chops *and* musicality
I don't actually know that much about skating. I always thought that the audience at a big event like this would be made up of really dedicated fans, and there were a lot of those, but as we found out, mainly what you need is proximity and/or money and/or luck. So I felt like kind of a fraud and like I should have done more research beforehand to have really appreciated it.
Fortunately, Uncle Skaterboy was with us, and he's a real expert. He was so knowledgeable and opinionated that the people in front of us were turning around between skaters to ask him how he thought the next one would do. He took to calling each skater's rank after their program was done and before the judges announced the score. He was right more often than not, too.
And his commentary was a lot more colorful than you get on TV, too. When a skater who had been a major contender would blow a jump or fall down, Uncle Skaterboy would murmur "buh-bye," and I was know that was that.
Figure skaters simply should not wear white costumes: they become basically invisible against the ice. We noticed this in the couples skate on TV yesterday, and it was equally true tonight, though there was a lot less white.
No shortage of black and sequins, though.
We got to see a lot of the little girls who skate out to pick up the flowers and stuffed animals that fans throw onto the ice. Actually, they're not so little-- these girls were about 11 or 12. We could see them in their spot on the sidelines and they looked absolutely thrilled to be there.
It was interesting what happened to all those tributes, too, after the flower-sweepers picked them up from the ice: they'd bring them back to their home base and hand them to an adult volunteer, who'd drop them in a bin lined with layers of plastic bags pick up the innermost plastic bag, twist it closed, and remove the bag from the bin and spirit it further backstage to somewhere we couldn't see. Maybe they were donated to hospitals?
I seem to be a more patriotic Canadian than I was/am an American. It really was a thrill to see the sea of Canadian flags and the huge roar of cheers when both Patrick Chan and the other Canadian skater came on. I'm watching the broadcast on NBC right now as I type-- it's delayed by a few hours--and the cameras really don't capture either what it looked like or how it felt.
Wasn't that skeleton costume weird? Also, the farmer-boy one.
We had a great time. The Mermaid Girl especially. I can't think of a more interesting or eloquent way to say that, so I'll just leave it as it is.

Where My Job Went: Part II

2010-02-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

So, almost immediately after I'd remedied the hot dog situation and gotten back to my seat, the rehearsal began. First, a woman in a red toque came out and talked to us. We don't really know what she said because the acoustics in BC Place are terrible (RW: "The acoustics in here are awful!" MG: "What??") but she was projected on two big screens and between that and the few words we could catch here and there we figured out the gist of it:

Bienvenue, mesdames et messieurs, to the Opening Ceremonies of the 21st Winter Olympic Games! The 230 volunteer cheerleaders scattered around the stadium will now direct you in the use of your Audience Packets. (massive rustling as everyone looks for packets.) Okay, you don't actually have Audience Packets. The real audience will have them on Friday. For now, I'm going to pretend you do so that the cheerleaders and I can practice instructing. Everyone take out your (nonexistent) white ponchos and put them on. Watch the cheerleaders for cues on when to wave your (nonexistent) flashlights to create special effects. And also [Charlie-Brown-Grownup-like mwa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa.]

Then Fireworks! Ohboy!

Then, some singing performed by stand-ins. Note on screen says "Talent ID." RW: Do you think that's really their name? Or just a note for later?

Artistic Director comes out and begs us not to tell anything to anyone ahead of time. Oh, okay. If it's so important to you.

And now! The Opening Ceremonies!

The room darkens. The two screens show a montage of scenic Vancouver, ending with a guy standing on top of a snowy mountaintop. Way up high. Then he starts snowboarding down...down...down...all the way down the mountain!

Partway through, one of the screens goes dark. Oh well, minor glitch, I'll just watch the other one.

Down...down...down...

Then--

Real-life, non-film nowboarding guy bursting through paper wall below the screen and swoops down ski run and onto the floor! So cool! My favorite part!

[note from Friday-- did they cut this part after the Luge athlete died? Don't know, I didn't get to see the actual opening ceremonies except for little bits on break, since I was at work tonight]

First Nations! First the 4 local Nations welcome everyone in their languages, then four big totem poles rise up from the floor in provocative fashion & provoke me to low-minded choking hysterics, especially because there's this big concentric-ovals centerpiece thing hanging from the ceiling which suddenly looks very vulvic. But once they're standing upright they do look more like big white totem poles than like, um, anything else, and I'm able to pull myself together and stop snorking and gather the shreds of my dignity around me.

Then all the First Nations of Canada (well, representatives) come out and start dancing. My second-favorite part. My reaction: This is so cool. The US would never do this. RW's reaction: This is Canada showing off that they're cooler and more PC than the US. So irritating.

Flag of Canada raised, national anthem, sort of moving. Flag flapping in the breeze. How are they doing that? Is it coming from the big vulvic thing? No, maybe not.

Then representatives of the BC and Canadian government and IOC bigwigs are announced, but turn out to be actually Olympic volunteers standing in for the actual bigwigs.

Then! The parade of athletes (or, well, flag-bearing volunteers holding long ropes representing athletes) from all participating countries! This is pretty much endless, at least an hour. RW comments that the breakup of the USSR must have added several minutes to this segment all by itself. You can tell where the big waves of immigration to Vancouver have been from the volume of cheering for various contries: Italy, Iran, India, China. Great Britain. Australia. Jamaica, too, for some reason-- there isn't a big Jamaican-Canadian population in Vancouver that I know of, so it must have been on the strength of the famed Jamaican Bobsled Team from that "Cool Runnings" movie I've never seen. We cheered for Israel and Denmark and the U.S. I cheered for Ukraine and Russia and Poland, too, as I think that's where Vilna is these days. It's one of those cities that's hard to keep track of.

Then Canada came out last, and everyone stood up and cheered like crazy, and I got all choked up in spite of myself.

And the First Nations reps had to keep dancing through the whole damn thing. Though I noticed they spelled each other so that not everyone was dancing at once. And a lot of the dancing was just sort of place-holding jogging from one foot to the other. But still!

Then all the First Nations people dance off the stage, including one guy who seemed to really, really not want to leave.

Then the performances!

The room got dark and there was all this lighting effect and tissue-paper snow that everyone started grabbing for. And then some strange dancing in white costumes and a huge weird lit-up ice bear that rose up and then sank down below the floor. and then! Sarah Mclachlan singing "Ordinary Miracles!" and I think it was really her, not a stand-in. Excitement all around, and I forgave them for the ice bear.

Then all the white dancers finished and were replaced by a bunch of Riverdance dancers and a fiddler on a big platform in the middle, while tissue-paper maple leaves rain from the sky everywhere except our section. Is that Ashley MacIsaac? Maybe. Could it be? What do you think? I think so! Cool! Last time I saw him he was skulking around at the edge of a stage at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, performing semi-incognito with his cousin. He'd been wearing a big coat and looked sort of worn out. He seems to have pulled himself together since then.

OK, Riverdance off, next performance on. Now the big vulvic thing kind of droops and drops down four big fabric drapes and light projects onto them so they look like Emily Carr tree paintings. Cool. Actually that was my third-favorite part. More dancing in front of the trees, and people spinning around in the air on wires.

Then the trees are gone, and there's a big sun and a projected field, and a lone dancer running in place and the chords of the next song start and--oh wow--can it be? RW and I clasp hands in wonder and gasp--Joni! Singing her all-grown-up, jazz-inflected version of "Clouds!" But no, soon we realize it's just a recording. Though the dancing-- which soon turns to more swinging around in the air on wires--is gorgeous. And maybe it really will be Joni in person on Friday; we'll find out, I guess.

Then the centerpiece bulges and droops and transforms again, this time into a snowy mountain, and again we have performers on wires, though this time they're all wearing winter clothes and skis and snowboards and pretending to ski and such on the projected slopes. It's very good, but I can't help remembering this parody that one of MG's circus coaches did in a performance a couple years ago that was just like this, only funny. How did he know??

Then, with all the airborne skiiers still doing their thing, a whole fleet of rollerbladers zooms in! One of them is Uncle Skaterboy, but it's impossible to pick him out from the crowd, especially since they're all wearing red, pretending to be speed-skaters on ice. (Oh-- the floor is white, so everything looks kind of icy.) Yay, Uncle Skaterboy! Yay, athletes! Yay, performers! Okay, bye!

Then with great fanfare they announce that the Olympic Torch is coming in only 27 minutes (only it isn't really; it's still wending its way around the Lower Mainland this week). Photo montage of all the places it's been. More fanfare! Announcement that a big High Muckety-Muck will now speak!

Camera focuses on mild-mannered Olympic Volunteer, who steps up to podium and introduces himself, to huge enthusiastic cheers, as the stand-in for High Muckety-Muck. He explains that Muckety-Muck will be giving a four-and-a-half-minute speech, and proceeds to fill the next four minutes with a boring encyclopedia travelogue about the City of Vancouver, while MG and I dart forward and grab as many tissue-paper maple leaves as we can from the section in front of us.

Another speech from another stand-in, and then mounties march smartly out and raise the Olympic Flag beside the Canadian one. RW figures out that the wind machine is INSIDE THE FLAGPOLE, which we agree is very clever.

Now all please stand for the Official Olympic Song! (There's an Official Olympic Song?) Camera to young, slightly embarrassed stand-in, who holds a microphone to her face and grins while a recorded voice sings a very operatic anthem. Occasionally the volunteer mouths a particularly aria-like syllable, and sort of waves her arms around, and everyone cheers extra loud.

Somewhere in there there was another song, only we don't know what it was because it is A Secret. A stand-in stood on the platform for a few minutes while an instrumental version of "Hallelujah" played. We took bets on who the real performer will be: Shania Twain? Celine Dion? Leonard Cohen? Maybe Leonard Cohen. Wouldn't that be a kick? Or kd lang-- didn't she make a big splash at the last Canadian Olympics? Well, by the time you read this, everyone will know, but I don't yet. [Note from Friday: It was! It was kd! Looking quite stunningly butch and soignee, don't you think?]

And another song. Before that one, or after, I forget. But the lights went down and the cheerleaders did a lot of waving their lights around, and finally at the end several audience members got the bright idea to wave their cell-phones in the air. I did, too. It was fun, even though I don't have one of those fancy iPhones with a simulated lighter-waving app.

Was there more? I think there was more. Oh, there were all these white-clad Olympic handmaidens (and hand...men, I guess. Anyway, there were men and women) who just walked and stood around the edge of the stage in formation for the whole performance, off and on. They didn't dance, or anything. They were like snow nymphs. Sort of militarized snow nymphs.

They lined up to welcome the (imaginary) torch and light the (imaginary) Olympic Cauldron! Yay!

And then it was over! Good night, mesdames et messieurs! Twenty thousand people rushed for the exits. More blue-clad volunteers shepherded us out of the stadium and told us to go over the little bridge. And as we all surged for the bridge...fireworks! off the top of the stadium! Ooh! Pretty!

"That's where my job went," I said to RW, gesturing to the explosions behind us.

"Yep," she said. "Up in smoke. Well, you might as well enjoy it."

And I did, pretty much. Then we used our tickets to get a free ride home on the Skytrain, and that was the end of that.

One Day in Spring 1981

2010-01-29T10:57:00.000-08:00

I'd spent part of the day dragging out to the swim club with my mom to get my photo taken for a membership card for the upcoming summer. On the way back, I got her to drop me off at the used bookstore where my literary-magazine friend Dina, a few years older than me, worked part-time. I went home and lay around reading one of the books I'd bought there. Then, late in the evening, inspired by the book and procrastinating on the Hebrew-school homework that was due the next day (I was nearly fifteen, finishing 9th grade, almost two years past my bat mitzvah, but was going to Hebrew high school voluntarily because that's the kind of Jewish dork I was), I got out some lined notebook paper and wrote a letter to the author.

As far as I can remember, I wrote about what I'd done that day, with the swim club and the bookstore, and confessed that I should be doing my Hebrew homework, and enthused about how much I loved the book I'd just finished, and just generally yammered in the kind of artfully artless half-imitative way that a sticky-eared kid of literary inclination is wont to do, especially one who has just finished reading something by an author with a strong and distinctive and catchy style.

I addressed the letter to the publishing company listed on the inside front cover, and more or less forgot about it.

It couldn't have been more than a month later when the envelope came. At first glance, I thought it was junk mail, the kind of junk mail that pretends to be a real letter. The return address was a P.O. box, typewritten, as was my address, with my name spelled correctly, for once.

By the time I got to my room and opened it I could see that it wasn't junk mail. There was a 3-cent stamp stuck next to the 15-cent "America's Cup" pre-stamp printed on the small envelope. The typewriting showed unmistakable signs of being genuine: I'd learned to type on a manual typewriter, myself, and recognized the way the periods in the "N.J." of my address punched practically through the paper. And what kind of junk-mailer would be based in Vermont? I didn't even know anyone in Vermont. Who could...

The way I remember it, I knew before I drew out the single yellow sheet of folded, typewritten paper, before I read the opening lines diffidently expressing surprise that my letter had even reached him, before I saw that distinctive--and rare, even at 14 I had some idea how rare--signature. I swear it's not just hindsight that the buzz of knowing started in my hands, in my stomach, reached somewhere in the back of my brain, before I'd even finished ripping the envelope open (with my fingers, so that the top parted raggedly. Even then, I remember thinking maybe I should detour to the kitchen and get a knife. But I was too impatient.)

I'd be lying if I said I'd never thought about the money. But if I sold it, what would I have? A few thousand dollars, based on prices I've seen for similar items up at auction (and there are similar items; I was far from the only teenage girl who received such a letter. Joyce Maynard complained that when she lived with him he used to hole up in his cottage for hours, writing to adolescent fans. I was a little retrospectively creeped out, hearing that, years later, but the letter I got wasn't creepy at all in itself, certainly wasn't sexual) . And then I would no longer have a letter from Jerome David Salinger, thanking me for my fannish gushings about his last-published, least popular book, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction.

It's not that I'm so pure that I don't have a price: unlike Maynard, I didn’t have a personal relationship with the letter-writer to betray. But my price for not having that letter any more is a lot higher than the market will bear.

A former teacher who knew me then mentioned the letter in her Facebook status report yesterday, and one of her friends brushed it off as "shallow celebrity chasing." It wasn't. Or mostly not. The second letter –that I wrote a few months later, spurred by the P.O. address and the feeling that I might as well, and which, predictably, went unanswered--sort of was, though. I don’t tell people about that part; it’s too embarrassing, and I felt for a long time that my writing again diminished the meaning of the first letter. But it’s part of the story, too.

Which is what all Salinger's writing is about, really. The trying desperately, and mostly futile-ly, to be pure, to be GOOD, in all the meanings of that word. And the tendency, in people the age of his protagonists—and the age I was when I read those books, and the age of person he became famous for connecting with—to scorn all those who have given up the fight, to rail against the bitter compromises most of us make as adults. (Franny and Zooey Glass, and the unnamed narrator of “For Esme, with Love and Squalor” negotiate those compromises more or less successfully. Holden Caulfield and Seymour Glass never really do. )

I loved the books when I was fourteen. I still like the books a lot, not Catcher in the Rye so much, but the others. In Franny and Zooey, he wrote about things I was grappling with back then, even if I only partly recognized it: the feeling of wanting to be special, and despising oneself for wanting to be special; of grappling with one's own ego and fear of failure; of being a girl and an artist and a sexual being and a grownup and wanting to retreat to the couch in the apartment (I always superimposed the Upper West Side apartment my dad lived in with his girlfriend for a few years onto all those scenes in the Glass family home) even though the painters are coming and your mother keeps bringing soup, of being a smart kid who was going to have to grow out of being a prodigy, and damn soon.

Getting back to that second letter that I wrote, the letter I tell even fewer people about than the first one: I always, solipsistically, had the feeling that not getting an answer was a fair judgment of me, not of me personally so much, but of my growing up—just like Wendy gets too old to see Peter Pan, I was too old, by the time I wrote the second letter, to have that kind of purity that the characters in Salinger’s stories are always yearning after in themselves. For one thing, I had a boyfriend by then. I went to parties and rock concerts. I was consciously turning myself into as normal a teenager as I could manage. Salinger doesn’t have much use in his writing for grownup, sexualized women (Boo-Boo Glass aside), and I was doing my best to be one of those. His writing wasn’t the touchstone for me that it had been even a few months earlier.

So, why does that letter matter so much to me, even today? At the time, it felt like a sign: if I could write a letter good enough to coax a response out of that notoriously reclusive author, I must be A Real Writer. I held onto it as a talisman, and have managed not to lose it through all my moves. It still feels like that, with a bit of “if I’ve done nothing else…” tacked on to the front.

The funny thing is how receiving a gift like that—and it was a gift, sent, I’m sure, out of as muddled a cocktail of motives (kindness; genuine appreciation; desire for whatever reason to connect with youth; maybe some egoistic thrill at the thrill I’d get) as was the letter I sent him—threw me into a lifelong Salinger-worthy dilemma that started as soon as I opened it, and continues right up to the present. Every time I tell someone, it feels like a little bit of a betrayal of that desperately publicity-wary person, a little cashing in on a celebrity I have no real connection to at all. So I don’t tell people, much. (Of course, I’m writing this post for the whole Interweb to see. Pseudonymously, but still. So you can see how impure and compromised I am about that.)

Yesterday, when friends’ Facebook status updates were full of links to obituaries (this one is my favorite), people who knew about it remembered me and that letter. And I did, too. But mainly I thought about the writing. My favorite parts are the redemptive ones, like the end of “Zooey:” Zooey’s long lecture to his younger sister about the Fat Lady: about going forward into the crassness and imperfection of the world, and doing what you need to do—what you’re called to do, what you’re good at. At the end of “Seymour, an Introduction,” the last story in his last published book, Buddy Glass—that cynical struggler, that Zen-wrangling stand-in for the author—prepares to go teach an English class, reminding himself that “There isn’t one girl in there, including the Terrible Miss Zabel, who is not as much my sister as Boo Boo or Franny. They may shine with the misinformation of the ages, but they shine.”

That’s the double thread running through those books: not just that we’re all phonies, but that we shine anyway. You could say it’s a Christian message, or a Buddhist one, or just Salinger rowing hard at compassion against a constant inner storm of cynicism and curmudgeonliness. But it’s the one that’s stuck with me at forty-three, and the one I was so happy and grateful to read, at fourteen, that I wrote to thank the author.

Holiday Post-Mortem, Non-Gingerbread Edition

2009-12-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

So here's the Mermaid Girl, at our post-Jul lunch of leftover turkey and rice pudding yesterday:

MG: *surveying our present-strewn, candy-heavy, tree-and-light-ridden surroundings and lighting on the one missing element* We need a gingerbread house.

RW and me: We...need a gingerbread house?

MG: We NEED a gingerbread house!

Me: *Contemplating the much-discussed difference between "need" and "want"* What will happen if we don't get one?

MG: I'll cry! [NB: She is nine. NINE.]

Me: What will it look like when you cry?

MG: *with suspicious glare*: Why do you want to know?

Me: So I can prepare myself for the trauma.

MG: *extravagant eyeroll*

Our Lovely Houseguest: It is difficult to have a snarky parent, isn't it?

This was one of those exchanges that could have tipped in either direction, with MG either storming off in a huff or producing a magnificent pretend-crying session and laughing it up. She has a great sense of humor and is actually pretty good at laughing at herself, when the stars are aligned correctly. I could see from her face that she couldn't decide which way to go with it.

The thing is, my question, and my response, were mostly serious. I totally hate when she cries, and she recently confided to me, in an exceptionally cheerful moment, that she's been fake-crying on occasion for "the last few years;" it really seemed possible that she might come up with a pretend cry right then and there. Is it twisted to ask your kid to fake-cry on demand? Could be.

On the bright side: For the first time in years, she didn't whine and beg not to be Jewish this holiday season. Maybe it's the rousing Hanukkah song her choir sang in their performance. Maybe it's that RW finally let her hang up a stocking (stockings and Santa are not part of Danish Jul, but somehow she connected the lack of them with Jewishness rather than Danishness). Maybe it's the magnificent (if I do say so myself) haul of my old dollhouse furniture that she got for Hanukkah, which gift she pronounced "better than a hundred million Webkinz!"

Aw, heck. Maybe I'll buy the kid a gingerbread house.

Panto!

2009-11-26T12:02:00.000-08:00

[OK, it is obvious that I have completely blown NaBloPoMo, so I will now commence posting on my usual irregular schedule without further apologies. Onward!]

I was a big fan of E. Nesbit as a kid, but there were aspects of her turn-of-the-last-century British kids' lives that utterly mystified me. One of them was pantomime. At one point in The Treasure Seekers, the kids all get an offer from Albert-Next-Door's-Uncle to go to the pantomime. It seemed to have something to do with Christmas, and I knew what a mime was--those weird, black-clad clowns who could be seen blowing up invisible balloons outside the Metropolitan Museum--so I always envisioned this pantomime as some bizarre no-words performance of the Nativity story. I also thought of it as something that happened, a) only a long time ago, and b) only in England.

Well. Apparently, I was quite wrong on all these counts. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about pantomime. Basically, aside from being performed around Christmas, it has nothing to do with the holiday; it's a sort of broad farcical version of any one of a number of stock fairy-tale-based stories (Peter Pan started as British pantomime), though there are also original modern pantos--last year, I saw ads for "Panto of the Rings" on the community bulletin board at one library where I work. Which brings me to the other thing I was wrong about: Canada is one of several non-England-based panto strongholds. You hardly ever see it in the U.S., but apparently the area work, being a traditional dwelling for immigrants from the British Isles, is one of the best places in North America to see pantomime-- or, as it is charmingly nicknamed, panto. Just one of those things, like different-colored money and square-cut screwdrivers, that lets you know Canada actually is a different country from the U.S.

So last night, the Renaissance Woman and I pulled our our google-fu to find out how many pantos there are around here, and where they're playing. Turns out we have many choices: aside from old-school panto offerings like Snow White and Aladdin, there are newer adaptations, including The Wizard of Oz and (yes) Panto Wars. We opted for a traditional panto, Babes in the Wood, which promises drama, audience participation, drag (an essential panto element), plus Robin Hood and Maid Marian. As my non-panto-going grandparents might say, what's not to like?

I can't wait.

Where are the talking blankets of yesteryear?

2009-11-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

Here's another story from the vault of memory. I actually meant to blog this at the time, but never got around to it, and now, what do you know, it's two or three years later. (Actually, it must be more than two years, because this was in our old house in Seattle. How can that be? Three years? But I guess it must be so)

So, about three years ago, so that would've been when the Mermaid Girl was about six, we had this game we used to play. She'd lie on the couch, completely covered in a blanket, and talk. If I'd blogged this back then like I meant to, I'd remember what she used to say. But I think it was something like, "Hi, I'm a talking blanket. See? I'm talking! And I'm a blanket!"

Then I'd get all excited and go, "Wow, a talking blanket! Oh my gosh!"

And she'd say, "Yes! I'm the only one in the world!"

I'd say, "I can't believe it! I've never seen a talking blanket before. It's too bad my daughter isn't here-- she'd love this!"

And she'd go, "Yes, go get your daughter! I think she's in her room!"

So off I'd rush to MG's room, calling "MG! MG, come quick! You've gotta see this!" And then, since of course she wasn't there, I'd return to the living room, still calling, "MG! MG! MG, where are you?"

And then there she'd be in the living room, prim as you please, and she'd say, "Mommy? Mommy, I'm right here. What is it?"

"Oh!" I'd say. "Oh, you have to see this! MG, there's a talking blanket, right on our couch! See? See? There it is! Talk, blanket, talk!"

And she'd pick up the blanket and say kindly, "Mommy, there's no such thing as a talking blanket. See? It's just a blanket. It doesn't talk at all."

Then I'd get all red-faced and insistent and she'd shake her head pityingly at the depths of my delusion. Sometimes she'd say, "Mommy, I think you've been reading too many children's books."

We'd continue like this until I walked away, scratching my head and muttering, ""I'm SURE it talked! Maybe I was imagining things? ["You were imagining things, Mommy."] But it seemed so real!" etc. etc.

There is no real point to this story. Except that it was a really excellent game, and we haven't played it for a while. We still play the peas game sometime--and, astonishingly, she still delights in cheating me out of the peas--but we haven't played the Talking Blanket game for, oh, years and years. I wonder if she'd still want to play it, at the advanced age of nine?

My Ukulele: A Love Story

2009-11-17T23:33:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned the ukulele here and there in posts over the past year, but I don't think I've ever actually devoted a post to the topic. So here it is:

My family is full of musicians: both my parents play the piano, my dad professionally since his retirement, and my mom has sung in high-level choirs; my brother plays a bunch of instruments and sang professionally as a kid; my spouse was a music major in college and has a closet full of various instruments from recorder to viola da gamba. I'm the non-musician in both my adult family and my family of origin: I love to sing, and sing a lot, but I don't read music and I've never really mastered an instrument.

That's not to say that I've never tried, albeit halfheartedly. As a kid I played piano for a few years, but dropped it when the theory got too hard (which was very early). I played viola for a year or two in elementary school (we got to pick our instruments, and I picked viola because the name of the instrument sounded pretty and romantic) but never practiced. As a teenager, I tried to learn guitar, briefly, but the metal strings hurt my fingers and my hands were too small. When I first got together with the Renaissance Woman, back in the mid 1990's, I was inspired to teach myself recorder with her help and encouragement; I learned some notes and some tunes and then plateaued because there wasn't much I could do with it, and stopped playing. What I really wanted to do, after all, was sing and play, and you can't sing and play the recorder at the same time.

So, for a long time, that was that. I sang songs at library story times, and I sang to the Mermaid Girl at bedtime, and I sang for fun by myself and with friends, and I just figured I was the sort of person who was not going to play an instrument, either because I was too lazy to learn or because there was no instrument that was quite right for me.

Then, a little over a year ago, I went to a library storytime workshop. The format was very simple: each of us was to bring two songs or rhymes. We sat in a circle, and went around the room, each in turn teaching our songs and rhymes to all the other participants. About halfway through the workshop, a librarian stood up with a tiny little guitar-like instrument which was, she explained briefly, her ukulele. She taught us her two songs, accompanying herself on the ukulele, and sat down, and we moved on to the next presenter.

So, that was it. But it was...I don't know how to put this without being cliched and corny. It was like a lightning bolt had hit right in front of me! It was like a spiritual experience! It was like the proverbial light bulb went off! I stared and stared at that little ukulele and knew I had finally, after 42 years, found my instrument.

Well, not that particular one; that one was the other librarian's, and I resisted the urge to run across the room and wrest it out of her hands. But, you know.

So I went home and told RW that I had found my instrument and that it was the ukulele and that if, you know, anyone was trying to figure out what to give me for Chanukah, a ukulele would not go amiss. And, lo and behold, a ukulele was what I got. (Oh-- I did write about this part, I guess.)

So off I set to learn how to play it. I found a ukulele book in the library, and renewed it several times and then just let it go overdue because I needed the chord chart so that I could play songs I liked in Rise Up Singing with ukulele chords. I learned three chords, then four and five and six. I learned how to play "Clementine" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" which are very easy and have very few chords, and then "Angel from Montgomery" and "Desperado," which are more fun and sound more impressive and have more than three chords but are miraculously not actually that hard.

Then I really needed to return the ukulele book, so I turned to the Internet to print out a chord chart. And that was when I discovered that, once again, I had been an unwitting pawn of the zeitgeist. Because! Ukuleles are everywhere! Especially on the Internets! While I'd been blissfully bonding at home with my new little orange ukulele, believing that it was pure providential luck that I'd finally found my instrument, thousands and thousands of other people were simultaneously-- or actually a little ahead of me-- discovering that the ukulele was also THEIR instrument, and were busily posting Youtube videos of themselves in their room playing ukulele. There are online ukulele stores, and online video ukulele reviews (so you can see and hear what various models are like before ordering them online), and online video ukulele tutorials, and magazine articles heralding all the above and talking like the ukulele was the biggest thing to hit since grunge.

Just like when I'd suddenly inexplicably gotten the urge to buy a brown zip-up hoodie, I had once again stumbled blindly into trendiness. Dammit.

But by then, it was too late. I was bonded to my ukulele, and I was practicing, and I was getting better. I was even learning a little music theory-- first, I just played the chords the way the chord chart said. Then, RW taught me about the 1-4-5 chord progression and how you could apply it all up and down the scale. Then, this summer, I wanted to learn "Uncle John's Band" but the version I found was full of hard B chords (I hate B chords; they are devilish hard) and also the wrong key for me to sing, and I realized that I could transpose it-- if I changed the B's to G's, I could change the A's to F's, and etc. etc. And it worked!

I spent a lot of the summer playing, on our porch when we were home and at various campgrounds and in the passenger seat of the van when we were not. I learned more chords, and chord changes that seemed way too hard at the beginning of the summer were somehow not so hard by the end. When we met up with our friends on the Washington coast I got to play with other people, and that was fun and I didn't totally suck and drag them down.

By the time summer ended, I figured I was finally good enough to go out and play among strangers. So I started going to the monthly ukulele circle in the city. At first it was overwhelming: there were 40 or 50 people there, most of them better than me and with better, more expensive, better tuned ukuleles. For the first half of the meeting everyone played together out of a songbook, and even though I knew way more than three chords, I didn't know nearly enough to play along with most of the songs.

But everyone there was friendly and warm and encouraging, and told me to just play and not worry about getting it right, so I've kept going. Playing with the group has gotten me to finally tackle the B chord family, plus it is good for my soul. One thing about not reading music and not playing an instrument is that music for me has been mostly a solitary, or at most fleetingly social, experience. This is about the least original observation in the universe (aside from the one about time flying and babies getting older) but there really is something powerful about singing and playing music together with a group of people. The group meets on a weekday evening and every time I have to drag myself out the door rather than staying home and hanging out with MG and RW. And every time I am glad I went and feel lifted up and happy.

So, that is the story of a girl and her uke. I'm still not very good. But I can accompany myself on a bunch of my favorite songs, and I keep learning more. Even though I love my little orange ukulele, I can hear now that it's sort of a beginner one and I'm thinking about buying myself another one that has a richer tone and stays in tune better. When I start my new schedule in January, I might take some group lessons that someone from the ukulele circle runs. And these days, when I am feeling sad or low or frustrated or like the rain it raineth every day and it is dark all the time, I try to remember that the ukulele works better than Tetris or even the Internet for reminding me that there are good things and maybe even joy in the universe.

And if it's all trendy and whatnot, too-- oh, well; nothing's perfect.

Hear Me Complaining, Fates!

2009-11-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

Hello hello hello! It is the next day and I am blogging again!

Well. I will not make the mistake again of blogging about how non-depressed I am. Right after I wrote this fate-tempting post, things went all what the Brits call pear-shaped, and there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I will draw a veil over it.

Instead I will say: Today I got home from work at 2:30 (I work 9-2 on Mondays) and I was telling myself how I should be feeling lucky and grateful because back in my old life in Seattle I used to work 8-5 on Mondays, and then drive through horrendous traffic for another hour or two (Monday was our staff meeting day). But instead of feeling lucky I was feeling exhausted, due to a combination of hormonal cycle and the Beastly Rainy Weather and RW and me staying up too late talking the night before. So I went home and said hi to everyone--RW didn't have work today, and seems to be having a semi-relapse of exhaustion, and MG had concocted just enough sneeziness and stomachache-complaints that she got to stay home. Probably if we'd both been working we would've just made her go to school. But, you know.

So there they were, all cuddled up on the couch in their pajamas, and I went and collapsed on the bed and fell asleep. And next thing I knew, it was 5:00, it was dark, it was still raining, and MG and RW had made strawberry muffins while I'd been asleep and were about to start making pizza for dinner. So, that was really nice.

Of course, now it is past 10:30, they are both sound asleep, and I am bright-eyed and wakey with no one to talk to or watch DVDs with. And I know there is a big meteor shower tonight, but trust me, it is way too rainy to see anything in the sky.

So here I am! Complaining! About the rain! And the wakeful aloneness!

Not because I am ungrateful for loving family or strawberry muffins or pizza or 5-hour workdays. No. But because it will KEEP AWAY THE EVIL EYE.

Canada: A Few Tips

2009-11-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

oh, man, I can't even keep track on how behind I am on NaBlowhatever. But! Onward!

Someone emailed me a little bit ago to say they might be moving to Canada and did I have any advice? I started to compile a list and made myself stop after just a few items because I was having too much fun. So here is the rest of it:

1. Don't lose the piece of paper that comes with your stamped visa. They don't like that.
2. Spell everything with a "u".
3. Canadian drivers are not as polite as you might think.
4. Don't bother looking for a post office as such. Just go to the Shoppers Drug Mart. You will be amazed to find a complete post office in there.
4a. But don't buy anything else at Shoppers. They suck.
4b. Oh, and there is no Saturday postal delivery. The mail carrier didn't just skip you last weekend; s/he didn't come at all.
5. If you are a U.S. Citizen, and you have a child, don't open an RESP for them no matter how much your regular bank tells you it's a great deal. There are terrible tax implications that will hit either you or your child later. Plus you could be arrested or something for having a foreign trust. Rachel said something about this and I didn't quite believe it, but then the guy who did our taxes last year confirmed it.
5a. However, someone else who is not a U.S. citizen can open an RESP for your child, even if they're not related. Just saying. And if you were to quietly funnel them the money to do so, I wouldn't tell anyone.
6. And speaking of taxes: even if you have always prided yourself on doing them yourself, the first year you live in Canada might be a good time to pack it in and go to an accountant. After that, you can consider returning to your old self-sufficient ways.
7. Cream cheese costs $4.00 a package. You aren't reading the label wrong; it really does.
8. Be prepared for lots of Christmas. There is separation of Church and State in Canada, but it doesn't mean exactly the same thing that it does in the U.S.
9. Bring your own screws, or else just buy a new screwdriver. Seriously. The screw-heads are all different here and you won't be able to buy any new screws to fit your Phillips or flathead screwdriver.
10. If you are planning to apply for citizenship later, keep a record of all the time you spend outside Canada, including weekend trips down to the States; you'll need it for calculating your total residency. If you are like me, you will not think to do this for the first couple of years, and then you will wish that you had.
11. There are no public holidays (in BC, anyway) between New Year's and Easter. This makes for a long, dark, work-filled first few months of the year. It's a good time to plan for a short vacation. Or perhaps a short drunken spree.
12. When people ask you why you moved to Canada, don't say "For the health care" (even if it's true, or partly true).
12a. However, "It's just better here" is a perfectly acceptable response.

Murray, Who Invented Thumb-Twiddling

2009-11-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

Yeah, hmm, I really shouldn't have written that post yesterday. It was just tempting fate.

But this afternoon I was pulled out of my doldrums by this interview. I grew up listening to the 2,000 Year Old Man, so reading this was like old home week for me. Plus, I just get a kick out of how much Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner obviously enjoy each other's company after 60 years of friendship. I hope I have such good friends when I'm in my 80's.

Nothing to see here, Universe; just move along.

2009-11-12T19:05:00.000-08:00

You know, I don't want to jinx it....so I won't say it. I'll just say that we had an incredible summer, hot and sunny and full of leisure and song and water. And then we had a gorgeous, gorgeous October, without too much rain and with really truly glorious leaves all over the place.

And now it is true, the leaves are all falling, and the sun sets nearly at 4:00 exactly what I'm dreading, etc.

And RW was sick for a week, and that did kind of suck. (Though more for her than for me.)

But, well, if I said I was less knocked over than usual this year by Teh November Gloom, that would be just a great big engraved invitation to the universe to send me something truly rotten, wouldn't it? So I won't say that.

Instead, I will note that last week had several extremely crummy days in it. Remember that, Universe? Remember when I burned the corn muffins and messed something up at work? Huh?

Yep. Just keep that in mind, and we'll say no more.

An Amazing Drawing

2009-11-11T08:19:00.001-08:00

Right! So, then I folded some laundry, and then I went to work, and then I came back, and RW took MG to her piano lesson instead of me doing it so I could get something done from my list, and then I made dinner (roast vegetables, mmmm), and then things were better although really should I be this sleepy when I just slept 10 hours last night?

Well, tomorrow is a Day Off so we can Remember, and maybe in addition to remembering I will take a nap.

In the meantime, here is an amazing drawing from K. Beaton, who is the author/cartoonist behind Hark! A Vagrant. She was commissioned to create this huge picture of famous people in Canadian history. And I even know who a bunch--maybe a quarterof them--are! (There's a list underneath the picture if you want to match likenesses to names.) I am becoming more Canadian by the minute.

Okay, I only know about Louis Riel because kids keep coming to the library to ask for information on him for reports. Apparently he is a popular report topic. I'm not sure if he would've approved.

Towing, Bailing.

2009-11-10T08:40:00.001-08:00

I blew it! I blew NaBloPoMo! Rats. I fell into (well, onto) bed right after MG's bedtime last night and that was that. I was exhausted from picking the car up at the towing place and from bailing the water out of the trampoline, which we had covered with a tarp against winter and which then proceeded to fill up with water until there was a big heavy pool in the middle and we were worried it would stretch the trampoline out of shape.

So. Tired. Blew it. Will try to post twice today.

P.S. it rained last night and there is again water in the trampoline.

Love and Work. And food.

2009-11-08T22:04:00.000-08:00

Today someone called in sick at at Big City Library, Big Downtown Branch, so I went in and worked.

I helped kids find adventure books, mystery books, and books about Zimbabwe. I helped parents find counting books and books they could read aloud to their 5-year-olds that would not make them want to gouge their eyes out like the Rainbow Fairies (Here are a couple: Catwings; Pippi Longstocking). I more or less taught one mom all about early literacy and how to help her kindergartener get ready to read in a way that would be fun for both of them (Yes: reading together, rhyming, singing, finding books they both like, looking at signs and labels. No: memorizing vocabulary lists, formalized teaching of phonics) and she seemed to really get it and to be happy for the information. I showed a kid how to find information about prehistoric people on an online database, and how to e-mail the articles to himself to print out later, and his whole family gathered around the computer terminal to watch and encourage him.

I helped an older woman wearing a poppy find "The Story of Ferdinand" for her grandchildren. I tracked down a book about Remembrance Day at another branch for someone who wanted to read it in her class. I helped a parent find a DVD about how to talk to your kids about sex. I found a CD-ROM about dinosaurs that a kid remembered playing two or three years ago. I did not find the French Christmas books because they'd been moved, and the other librarian on duty didn't know where they were either, but the patron who was asking me eventually found them herself, and she showed me where they were. I retrieved many video game disks for kids who wanted to borrow video games. I told many, many people that the bathroom keys were right on the desk and they were welcome to use them. And right before we closed, as everyone was hurrying for the exits, I helped a woman find some books about origami and haiku.

I logged 86 questions in five hours. By the end of the afternoon I was a little twitchy. If someone-- like, say, one of my fellow librarians-- came into the corner of my field of vision, I would jump a little bit and reflexively say, "How can I help--" then laugh a little and say, "oh, hi." But it was fun. Well, mostly fun. I was doing the kind of reference I like most. It was fun to feel needed and knowledgeable and helpful.

Then I went out for an excellent dinner with friends and laughed and laughed. I'd started the day with good food and laughter too-- the Mermaid Girl woke up in fine form, wanting to cook popovers and fruit soup out of the book Pretend Soup, by Mollie Katzen, and it turned out to be a really scrumptious breakfast. The Renaissance Woman is still sick, but was well enough to sit up and eat and chat with us before I had to go to work.

I've had some tough days this week, but today was a really good day.

Surreality, 6 AM Edition

2009-11-07T08:21:00.000-08:00

Hellooo! I am awake, o yes I am! I would be awake by now, anyway, but I was first wakened in darkness by the Mermaid Girl who came in and lay down and said, "I think my head hurts, and my stomach hurts."

"Um," I said. "Maybe that's because it's, uh, 3:30 in the morning, bunny."

"Oh!" she said. "Never mind! Okay! Go back to sleep!" And she went away and I did.

I next awoke in darkness to the sound of someone talking in the other room, and a strange vibrant clinking ringing sound, like a glass harmonica. Or maybe two glass harmonicas bumping into each other.

MG was sitting bolt upright in the middle of her room with the light blazing bright, listening to Shannon Hale's Princess Academy on CD. The weird glass harmonica sound was coming from her ceramic tea set, which she had laid out on the floor. It was 6:00 in the morning.

"Look!" she said, climbing into the laundry hamper. "Turn off the light!" I obeyed. Blurry stars shone down on me from the ceiling. (I wasn't wearing my glasses.)

"Oh, honey, that's gorgeous," I said.

"Mama gave them to me," she said. "It was from a really old sheet. She said they probably wouldn't even work any more, but they DO. And some silly putty."

"Uh...sweetie? Do you think maybe you should lie down and try to rest for a while?"

"I can't, I have to CLEAN MY ROOM," she said. "I TRIED to sleep. But I can't. So now I'm cleaning my room."

"Oh." I said. Who am I to tell a kid to stop cleaning her room? Though frankly, it looked if anything more cluttered than last time I'd been in there. "Um. Okay." Still kind of dazed, I slumped down to the floor and picked up one of the many Dear America books that her grandmother gave her a couple of years ago. "Um, maybe you could read for a little? Here, you could read this book about a factory worker."

"No, Mommy," she said kindly. "Um, Mommy? You don't have to stay." Which is what she says when she is feeling diplomatic and wants us to GET OUT.

"Oh. Uh, okay."

"Mommy?"

"Uh huh?"

"Could you turn the light out on your way out? I'll turn it back on when I need it."

"Um, okay." And I turned out the light and stumbled back to bed, leaving her in the laundry hamper looking up at the stars on her ceiling.

So I listened to a podcast and tried to tune out the Princess Academy filtering through the heating vent, but no go. And now it is light and time for us to get up for real and go to synagogue, where we will, respectively, attend and teach religious school. Then she will go straight from there to a gymnastics birthday party all the way across town.

Anyone want to take bets on the likelihood of:

a) us making it to shul on time,
b) MG's room being cleaned for real by her deadline tonight, and/or
c) One or both of us having a total and utter meltdown by sunset ?

Let's just pretend I wrote a real post today.

2009-11-06T22:10:00.001-08:00

Well. I must admit to feeling completely uninspired today. It is the third of three pretty crappy days, and also the day on which we ascertained that the Renaissance Woman has H1N1, which is completely upending our plans for the next week. My cold appears to be better but now I have a cough. I wish I could think of something clever or funny to write--I had lots of ideas yesterday, but they seem to have fled right out of my head, which is why one should always keep a list of blog post ideas handy.

Anyway, maybe I can interest you in this post instead? It is pretty dang funny. And also its companion following post, this one.

Okay! Enjoy! See you tomorrow!

Bah Humbug, Yet Again: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love "The Holly and the Ivy"

2009-11-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

The annual "Bah, Humbug" post has become a holiday tradition here at the Booland, and far be it from me to mess with tradition. Tevye and I, we are ALL ABOUT teh tradition. (Here are all the old ones, if you'd like to bask in the past.)

What-- you say it's not even December yet? Tell that to all the local merchants. Because things are gearing up already.

Hence, forthwith, the FIFTH installment of our esteemed annual "Bah, Humbug" series. Said series aligning more or less-- no, wait, exactly!--with the number of years that the Mermaid Girl has been in public school in the Pacific Northwest/Western Canada/A Place Far From the Greater New York Metropolitan Area Where I Grew Up and Where School Staff Would Be Less Shocked At A Suggestion That They Teach The Flat-Earth Doctrine Than One That They Drag a Tree and Wreaths and Santa and Reindeer, Never Mind The Little Baby Jesus, Into the Public Schools In December. (At Least That's How I Remember It.)

Our story (this year) begins back in early October, when the Mermaid Girl's Special School Choir started its rehearsals. The official name of the Special School Choir is actually-- I finally learned last week when I saw the permission slip, which never made it home last year due to the mysterious paper-eating qualities of MG's backpack--"The Christmas Concert Choir."

I mean, I knew from MG's experience last year that that's what it actually is, but in my home country we don't say that. Even in Seattle they'd call it the "holiday choir" or some such.

MG was hot to be in the choir, and no way was I going to be the bad guy here. I asked her if she minded singing songs about baby Jesus, like she did last year. "No," she said, "As long as there aren't too many. And as long as I don't have to believe in him."

I asked her if she wanted me to talk to the choir teacher, as we'd talked about a little last year after the concert, and she did. What did she want me to say? She wasn't sure. Did she want me to ask if the choir could sing a couple of songs about Chanukah, or at least not about Jesus or Santa? Yes, that was what she wanted. And should I say that if they do a Chanukah song, she would rather it not be the Dreidel song? YES YES I HATE THE DREIDEL SONG MOM.

Okay! So, I went in to talk with the choir teacher. I'm always anxious about being an obnoxious demanding parent (having dealt with a few from the other side of the desk) so I practiced in the shower before I went, and even typed up talking points so that I could keep them in my pocket and refer to them if need be.

And it went...okay. I've learned from some of my previous experiences and finally understand that much as I am stunned at the Christmasmania in the public schools out here, the people running said public schools honestly don't see anything wrong with what they're doing and really aren't going to transform their December celebrations into a replica of those in public schools on the Upper West Side or Northern New Jersey just because I told them they should. "Park Slope wasn't built in a day" is my new mantra.

So I started by telling the choir teacher how much MG loves choir, which is true, and how excited she is to get to be in Special Choir, which is also true. Then I said, "Um...did you know that MG is Jewish?"

And, no, actually, the choir teacher hadn't known that!

So I talked a little about my surprise about the repertoire last year, and recounted much of my conversation with MG about it, and added my own observation that she actually seemed to be more affected by the Santa stuff than by little baby Jesus references, and the poignant (and true) detail that every year around Christmas she gets very upset and goes on and on to me about how she wishes she wasn't Jewish. And I do understand that Christmas is important to a lot of people at the school, but we are also a school and a community with a fair bit of cultural and religious diversity, did the choir teacher think she could maybe tone down the Santa and Jesus a bit? And maybe include a Chanukah song, or at least one that's not specifically about Christmas per se?

And the choir teacher was very nice and listened very well and wasn't defensive and then said, well, of course we have to do Christmas (which, why??? Everyone seems to think so, and I've finally learned not to argue, but I still don't truly understand why), and the choir does sing "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger" every year because they perform at Downtown Hotel and the old people there really like to hear it, and the choir is optional and is called the Christmas Concert Choir just so there won't be any confusion, and she's had concerns before from Jehovah's Witness families.

BUT she could certainly look into including a Chanukah song, especially as she'd also had a question from another parent (the other Jewish family!) about the repertoire.

And lo and behold, afer several weeks of rehearsal MG is going around warbling about "LIGHT the candles, SPIN the dreidel," and complaining genially that most of the kids don't know how to pronounce "Nes Gadol Haya Sham." Warms the cockles of my heart, it does.

And even the Christmassy songs seem less... Christmassy this year. She's been singing Jingle Bell Rock, which isn't actually about Christmas at all if you think about it, and The Holly and the Ivy, which is so old that it's practically pagan and which actually, according to RW, references paganism.

AND the for the Big Annual Christmas Show this year, they are doing NOT some made-up Santa-extravaganza, but an adaptation of "A Christmas Carol," which at least is, hey, Dickens! And as far as I can remember has no Santa in it! (Though Scrooge does I think dress up as Father Christmas at the end.)

So: I am happy.

On the one hand: It seems like such a pathetic incremental amount of change to be happy about.

On the other: I am happy. Pretty much. And Park Slope was not, after all, built in a day.

Grumpy little post

2009-11-04T07:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, first the bad news:

The slight sniffle and cough I had has metamporphosed overnight into a full-fledged and nasty cold.
Likewise, the slight lead for Yes on 1 in Maine last night has solidified into a loss for our side.
As one Facebook friend said this morning: "[My] humanity is not up for a vote, but thanks for your opinion, Maine."
I am running Book Club at work tonight, and so cannot call in sick.
The book we're discussing has lots of food in it, most of it totally impractical to serve at a book club meeting, so I will be making corn muffins this morning. Between coughing bouts. And trying not to infect the sweet old ladies who will be eating them.
There are Renovations happening at work, so the Book Club will be meeting not in our very own program room, but at the Community Centre across the way. On the second floor. Which means getting Circ to let me have a book cart (mostly requisitioned as part of the renovations) so I can cart all the Book Club stuff over.
RW and MG also have nasty coughs. We're just generally wrecks over here.

Now the good news:

Um...well, there's Washington State. I guess I should be happier about I-71 passing. Baby steps, right?
I guess I could skip making corn muffins and just buy them.
RW ordered me a new iPod last night.

Right! And you?

Requiem for Something the Size of a Quarter

2009-11-03T17:47:00.001-08:00

I regret to announce that after first going through the washer and dryer, and then cruelly raising my hopes two or three times in the past week by acting like it was working, my iPod Shuffle is now definitively dead.

I would just order another one exactly like it, except that I can't: it's a 2nd Generation one and they don't make them any more. I don't want a Nano because it's too big and doesn't have a clip, and I don't want a new Shuffle because all the controls are on the headphones, to which I object both philosophically and logistically. I can buy a refurbished one (for almost as much as the new one cost me a year and a half ago) but not in purple.

So farewell, little purple Shuffle: You held all my podcasts, and you never complained about being hooked up to a sub-standard 1.0 USB post to be recharged and reloaded. You fit snugly in my pocket (which turned out to be a liability, come to think of it). Thanks to you, I was able to stay connected with my old radio friends Ira Glass and Peter Sagal, and to make new ones, like Eleanor Wachtel and Terry O'Reilly. You helped me get to sleep on many a night, and you kept me company while doing household chores and on otherwise-boring bus trips. There may be other iPods in my life, but you were my first, and I will always remember you fondly.

(And not to be disrespectful to the dead or anything, but the big question now is: Pink or green? (Green, I think; less chance of the Mermaid Girl coveting it.)

Like rain on your wedding day. Halloween edition.

2009-11-02T15:10:00.000-08:00

Guess what came in the mail today?

The Mermaid Girl's Halloween costume!

The one I ordered from eBay because unlike our local stores , but they had a flapper dress in the right size *and* the right color (this one, but not at the site I just linked to, which why didn't I buy it from them? Because I am apparently dreanged, that's why) but then couldn't pay for because my old PayPal account wouldn't work because now I have a Canadian mailing address, and the eBay vendor kept not answering my frantic e-mails in which I tried to pay with a credit card, and the eBay help chat people were incredibly unhelpful (they were nice! but not helpful), so after a week of this I created an entirely new PayPal account, which somehow required me to create an entirely new e-mail address, and then I ordered the exact same costume again from a different vendor supposedly in plenty of time for MG's Costume Day at school last Friday,

[pause for breath]

and it didn't come and it didn't come and finally on Thursday night the Renaissance Woman took her to the Halloween store in Metrotown which by then was, as you can imagine, a complete zoo and also didn't have any flapper dresses except slutty ones for grownups so they picked out an awesome (and expensive) pirate costume and RW loaned MG her pirate hat and also the plastic sword (which she didn't take to school) and MG declared that pirates must wear black lipstick and black eyeliner and was perfectly happy and actually very sweet about it. ("Don't worry, Mommy. You tried," she said.)

So when I told her what the package was today after school, she opened it up and put it right on and it fits perfectly and just looks overall fabulous. She did a few Charleston moves in it and all the fringes flew around just like they should.

"Maybe I should go around trick-or-treating again today and tell everyone my costume didn't come in time," she said. (She was kidding. Fortunately.)

We agreed that we'll feel much better about it if we think of it as a Purim costume that we ordered EXTRA EARLY. Because we are meticulously organized like that.

NaBloWriMo #1: In Which I Bow to Peer Pressure

2009-11-01T17:29:00.001-08:00

The three or four of you still reading may have noticed that I have not been much for the blog writing lately. This is not deliberate, and not a sign of crisis-- just, you know, life. My apologies.

In any case, I said I wasn't going to do (Inter)National Blog Writing Month this year. But now a bunch of people whose blogs I read are doing it, and...well, maybe I will too. It worked out pretty well last year. So I'll try it.

So, herewith a short anecdote saved up from this summer. As we've done for the past five years now, we got together with three other families and camped in yurts and the camper van on the Washington Coast. There were seven kids all together: the Mermaid Girl and three other 9-year-old girls, and the 6-year-old little siblings of the other three older girls. These kids have known each other all their lives, and even though we live (2 girls and 1 boy) in another city now, and the other three families all go to different public schools, they still have a special feeling for each other.

One day I was sitting around the firepit with the two 6-year-old girls, Jemma and Triss, and Jemma asked me "Why do you have a moustache?" (Actually, she asked, "Why do you have a...beard?" but I knew what she meant.)

I said that lots of women have hair that grows above their lip, not as much as men but enough to show, but that in our culture most people are uncomfortable about that so most women get the hair removed or bleached. And that I usually bleach it, but I just haven't for a while, so it's showing.

"Ohhhh," said Jemma.

Then I thought to add, "But even though it's really normal for women to have this hair, lots of women are embarrassed about it. So it's probably not a good idea to ask them about it. I don't mind, but you might not want to ask people about it who you don't know."

Jemma thought about this for a moment. Then she broke into a grin, turned to Triss, and said, "When we're grown up, we can talk about our moustaches with each other, okay?"

"Yeah!" Triss nodded, beaming. "But we'll keep it quiet!"

Facebook Status Updates That Never Were

2009-09-25T08:58:00.001-07:00

Elswhere Booland...

Has not been on the actual Facebook for over a month, which leaves her wondering if all online addictions are so easily cracked. And let's not even get into the cobweb-strewn ruin that is her Twitter account.
Doesn't want to let the whole month of September go by without a single blog post.
Had a lovely time, really really wonderful, on her last vacation, but it was like four weeks ago and does anyone really still want to hear about it even if she could remember the details?
Now has a nine-year-old child, who is currently ensconced in her room dancing by herself to the latest Hannah Montana CD.
*sigh*
Went to her first Ukulele Crcle a couple weeks ago and had such a blast that it perhaps qualifies as a genuine spiritual experience.
Is now, however, kind of abashed about her extremely cute and much-beloved but admittedly bottom-of-the-line and nearly untuneable orange ukulele.
There's nothing quite like whanging out "Hey Good Lookin', What You Got Cookin" among 40-odd (and some of them were rather odd) ukulele...ists(?). It was pretty awesome.
Has noticed that the term "awesome" is now approaching critically-overused status among her cohort, but can't seem to stop saying or writing it anyway. What did we ever say before "awesome" came into currency?
Might perform at the next ukulll crcl event. If she can get up the nerve to go up in front of everyone with the orange uke in hand.
's aforementioned nine-year-old child is hitting milestones at a dizzying rate; she learned to ride a bike this week.
And now walks herself to school regularly, and sometimes home from school too.
And takes her own showers and gets the shampoo out of her own head.
Cue Malvina Reynold's unbearably maudlin "Turn Around, Turn Around" here.
*sniffle*
Right; moving right along:
Organized the childcare and led the children's Rosh Hashanah service at her tiny crunchy groovy shul last Saturday.
There were 12 kids, though not all at once, which we think is a record number for our congregation.
In the library, not the usual preschool room.
The library is pretty tiny.
Played the "Shofar Blast" song on the orange ukulele, but couldn't find the sheet music at the crucial moment and forgot the middle chords.
At one point a small child took it upon himself to re-tune her ukulele pretty drastically.
But one of the other parents is a musician and helped re-re-tune it.
Overall, it was a success.
Is, however, exhausted enough to have declined the chance (suggested only yesterday! Our shul is like that) to lead the childcare-organizing effort for Yom Kippur this coming Monday.
, Speaking of Jewish stuff, just yesterday met the (as far as we can tell) *one other* Jewish kid at her kid's school, who is new this year, and happens to be in her kid's classroom, and also happens to go to the same circus-arts class, and who her kid also appears to actually like.
And the kid's mom, who was wearing a Folk Music Festival Volunteer T-shirt.
The family also goes to the one other earthy-crunchy shul in town.
is even more thrilled about all this than she would have predicted, and thinks maybe being the only Jewish parent at the school was wearing on her more than she thought.
Now has ideas for more blog posts jumping around in her head and threatening to run off with her fingers.
But that's nothing new; it's been like that all month, hampered only first by crazy-busyness and then by resistance to getting back into things.
Is happy to be back here.

One Art, Redux

2009-08-21T14:23:00.001-07:00

I have 15 minutes to write one quick post before we head off on vacation one last time before the End of Summer. We've been frantically packing, washing, laundry-ing, and knocking stuff off our lists and now have to run out the door to pick up MG at camp and then hit the road!

I have been LOSING stuff all day-- or rather-discovering that stuff cannot be found. Most notably a Special Present that we secretly bought for MG and I then put in a Special Place, where it is not any more and neither of us knows where it is. I've been grieving over this all day.

I have to wonder about lost stuff-- I don't think it's just a function of our overstuffed lives and our overstuffed memories that we're constantly misplacing things. Surely this has been happening for centuries? I mean that Elizabeth Bishop poem, One Art-- one of my very favorite poems in the world-- was written several decades ago, and though it ends with an emotional one-two punch that hits hard, I can't help but think that part of her inspiration must have been that she was constantly losing actual, non-metaphorical stuff and it was driving her crazy.

And there's a notable incident in part of the Laura Ingalls Wilder story-- not the Little House books, but some later chronicle, when she's grown up and she and Rose are moving, maybe to Missouri, and she puts a $100 bill somewhere secret and then she and Rose look for it and it is just missing!

And Holden Caulfield leaving the fencing equipment on the subway...

I guess people have been losing stuff throughout history. And misplacing things. Especially when they're packing to travel. It makes you wonder about nomadic cultures. My sister-in-law and I had a fun time the other day when she was visiting, imagining the bickering between prehistoric couples: "Where's the pointy rock? The good one?" "I thought you brought it!" "No, I couldn't find it. You're always going on about how great it is for skinning and all, so I thought YOU already had it." "Why would I take it? Bringing the rocks is YOUR department! I have enough to do getting all the food together, not to mention the kids!"

Well. At least I can take some comfort in imagining that I'm part of a millenia-old tradition.

See you in September!

Back on the grid

2009-08-04T02:23:00.000-07:00

So, vacation was good. We slept in the camper van. We did not have campfires because there is a burn ban all over the area but that was okay partly because it was so hot. We ate very very well. We had ice cream in the afternoon most days, and most days I played the ukulele. The Renaissance Woman and I worked out--all on our own-- the ukulele and guitar chords to "Free Man in Paris". I read four books and started a fifth. The Mermaid Girl was bribed to wash all the day's dishes, twice.

We visited local craftspeople (guided by the helpful roadside "Artisan" signs), like the glassblower who sold hummingbird feeders, and the German (we think) toymaker who used to teach at a Waldorf school in Tel Aviv and who gave out impassioned printed screeds on the importance of children playing with natural materials and using their imaginations.

We didn't wear most of the clothes that we packed, because it was too hot. Actually, for the last several days of the vacation all I wore was, in various combinations, my bathing suit and/or a big pink sarong (which also served at various times as a picnic blanket, a shawl, a towel, and a blanket) and/or an increasingly filthy tie-dyed sundress.

We went to several beaches, one excellent pool with water slide, and one lovely river. We drank cider in the evenings. We met up with one old friend, and her daughter, who is rapidly becoming one of the Mermaid Girl's favorite people, but aside from that it was mostly just the three of us. We took a lot of ferries, to the Sunshine Coast (which I had not realize is actually more like an island because it is only reachable by ferry. Or helicopter, I guess) and Vancouver Island and Denman and Hornby and then Denman again and Vancouver Island again and then Galiano and then Vancouver Island *again*. And then, today, home.

For ten days I didn't look at a computer screen, and barely talked on a cell phone, or any kind of phone for that matter. After the second day my iPod batteries ran down and the setup I'd put together to recharge it didn't work and I went to sleep without any podcasts in my ear. And while we did eat out sometimes, and buy some things, and occasionally looked at a newspaper headline in some little general store where we were buying ice cream or milk or fresh shrimp for dinner, mostly it felt like we were living in our own dream world.

Tonight we drove off the ferry and back to our neighborhood. We stopped for sushi and then went home. We emptied the van's fridge and the cooler and washed all the food that had milk spilled on it, and threw a bunch of things out. RW was inspired to clean out the fridge while we were at it. I waded through screens of unread e-mail and found out that nothing much had happened while I was gone. I checked the physical mail and found my new New Yorker. I checked my podcasts and found that I'd missed a new This American Life episode. I checked Facebook and my friends' blogs and found out what's been up with everyone. MG logged onto Webkinz to register the new stuffed animal she'd bought with her trip money and the dishwashing money. We frantically aired out the hot, stuffy house, and contemplated sleeping in the van one more night, just because it was cooler. Instead, we sat on the porch for a while, enjoying the view and the cool air and the lack of bugs.

Today, when we made our ice cream stop, MG opted for sour candies instead: "We've had ice cream every day," she said wearily. RW and I figured this was a good sign that she was ready for our trip to be over. And, truth be told, we were ready, too. We were happy to see our home, our porch, our neighborhood, happy not to be eating out of a cranky camper-van fridge, happy to have our own spaces and to see our home and our cat again.

But I can't quite believe that I have to get up tomorrow morning and wear clothes and go to work. I can't quite assimilate all the media in front of and around me. I can't bring myself to still the message-blink of the phone by going through all our new messages. Not quite yet, anyway.

I miss hearing the river, and seeing all the trees around us. I miss jumping in the water every day, and packing up our house every couple of days and heading for a new island. I miss being able to focus because there were fewer things to focus on.

I like it here, on the grid, plugged in to everything that's going on near and far. But it can be bumpy, slotting myself back into it.

Do you ever wonder if the pre-vacation stress is worth it? yeah, me too.

2009-07-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

So much to do! We are going off the grid for ten-- ten! ten!!-- days tomorrow and I have so much to do! We have a ferry reservation and we have to leave by 9:30 AM to make the ferry or else sit around all day in Horseshoe Bay, and I know it will be all day because half of Metro Vancouver is going on vacation this week and I doubt any of them are heading East because there are fires all over the Okanagan. So they will all be trying to get on the ferry with us.

Fortunately one of the things on my List of Things to Do is "write Booland post." Much more fun than the other seventy bazillion things left.

Here are the crises we have endured this week:

1) On Monday, fortunately *after* I dropped off MG at camp, a tire blew out on the van, which is our only vehicle during the summer. Turns out that because our van is crazy old, replacement tires are very hard to find, so we've been driving all week without a spare, and phoning hither and yon trying to chase down suitable tires to replace our now-mismatched set. We finally located some an hour's drive away, and that is what RW did this morning.

2) On Wednesday, because her tooth was hurting and she didn't want to have to have emergency dental surgery on vacation, RW went to the dentist and ended up having half a root canal. Ever since then, her tooth has been hurting even more, which apparently means it's infected, so today she started antibiotics. She is miserable and sick and in pain and went to lie down for a power nap at 7:30 tonight and is still asleep.

3) Also on Wednesday, we had a childcare crisis when the person we'd lined up to pick up MG from her camp, which this week is not close to either our home or either of our workplaces, suddenly that morning remembered a conflicting appointment. RW heroically found alternate care via the cell phone on her way back from the dentist.

4) Last night, my elderly cat had another seizure. This is the third one he's had in the last few months. After the second one, I took him to the vet, who ordered a bunch of tests, which determined that there is nothing wrong with his kidneys or liver or brain. So, you know, that's good. But what it means is that he just has mysterious seizures every once in a while, which freak us all out and also necessitate some cleanup. Also afterwards I revised my detailed instructions to the cat-sitter to include directions on what to do if the cat has another seizure. Also, while I was at it, I wrote down what to do in case the cat dies while we're gone. Which is a sobering, if unlikely, prospect.

So we are all fairly strung out over here. MG is still awake, mushing clay around on her floor because she says it helps her feel better. Turns out she is extremely anxious about going on boats. Who knew? Not us! She always seems to enjoy being on ferries but she just told me she's worried because of the Titanic. I told her soothing things about lifeboat laws and never being more than an hour from shore and no icebergs here, etc., but she said she's just still anxious about boats. I said, well, I guess a cruise wouldn't be a relaxing vacation for you, then, and she looked horrified and said Absolutely NOT!

Oh, well. We'd been thinking about trying for an Alaska cruise with family members next summer, but maybe we will have to come up with an alternative plan. Or else maybe she'll be over the Titanic by then.

Okay. Here are the GOOD THINGS that happened in the past week:

1) Vancouver Folk Music Festival! It was last weekend. Little Latke, now 4, and her parents came up and stayed with us and we heard much music for two days solid.

2) MG's camp this week, which was The World's Smallest Performing Arts Camp. Six kids. One counselor. This afternoon they did their performance for the dozen or so parents and relatives who showed up: a ten-minute extremely abridged and adapted version of "Newsies." My kid has been singing the songs and practicing her lines all week, and telling us the back-story on her character and about the theatre games they've been playing and how nice the other kids are and like that. Also practicing her accent, which according to her is how orphaned newspaper sellers in New York during "the Depression" (actually the show is set in the 1890's, but well, you know...) talked, but sounds more like Dick van Dyke's Cockney accent. She's been in performances before, but this is the first time she's been in a musical (aside from the all-school "holiday" pageant) and as an old performing-arts camper I found it unexpectedly affecting.

3) I learned to play "Uncle John's Band" on the ukulele.

4) I keep getting these great e-mail notifications of comments on my last post. If you did comment, thank you so much and I hope you come back and see this. It's been so very heartening to read everyone's good wishes about MG's sleep issues and headaches. I will keep you posted.

Melatonin Melodrama

2009-07-16T12:24:00.001-07:00

A couple of months ago, the Mermaid Girl started complaining of headaches. Since these complaints mainly came when it was time for her to go to school, we pretty much blew them off, until one day school called and said MG had a bad headache that hadn't gone away even after she lay down for a while, and could we come pick her up?

So we made a doctor's appointment. Almost two years after our move, we have yet to find a pediatrician or primary-care doc who 1) we like AND 2) is taking new patients. I have a good dermatologist, but for most of our ad-hoc medical needs we go to the clinic down the road, where the bedside manner tends to be rather...brisk, and the quality of care varies wildly depending on who you get.

MG's doctor-of-the-day was predictably to-the-point. She asked a barrage of questions about the circumstances of both the headaches and MG's life in general: When do the headaches come on? Where in the head do they hurt? How much sleep does she usually get? What does she eat? etc. etc. I was bristling that she persisted in addressing me rather than MG herself, who was increasingly fidgety and monosyllabic: she didn't like the doctor, she was anxious about the outcome, she didn't like being pulled out of school where they were having a party. All in all, not the most auspicious of appointments.

I was fully prepared for--and halfway convinced myself of--a diagnosis of Dramatic Child Syndrome, but the doctor said she thought it was migraines, even though MG doesn't throw up or get dizzy and sometimes the headaches are only a few minutes in duration. She prescribed--rather scoldingly--more sleep and fewer additives and dyes in MG's diet. The main thing MG got out of this experience was that the mean doctor said she couldn't have any more chicken nuggets. I was similarly freaking out because even though the doctor seemed more concerned about orange dye than the cheese itself, cheddar cheese, a common migraine trigger, comprises about 90% of my child's protein intake.

We went home and calmed down a bit. The Renaissance Woman suggested that rather than dramatically changing MG's classic Picky Kid Eater diet, and putting the whole family through a morass of power struggles and behavioral and sensory challenges, we focus on cutting out dyes where we can (like, getting white cheddar rather than the orange variety) and on sleep.

Ah, sleep. Like her parents, MG is a night owl. She has had terrible insomnia for years, and it seems to be getting worse as she got older. I blogged a while ago about our decision to start giving her melatonin at bedtime, but I have to say now that this was pretty half-hearted and occasional, because we were afraid of her developing a tolerance and of unknown long-term effects. So it didn't make that much difference.

But in the face of possible migraines, and of the brusque chicken-nugget-hating doctor's assurance that MG would not develop a tolerance, we doubled her dose of melatonin--to 1 mg, still pretty low overall--and started dosing her religiously every night about an hour before bedtime. We figured if sleep deprivation was triggering the headaches (as well as the overall crabbiness, jumpiness, morning agonies, and circles under the eyes that we already knew it was causing) then that would be enough right there.

There followed a month of relative bliss. Every night, MG willingly popped two melatonin sometime between 8:30 and 9:30 PM, and, about half-hour later, fell over as if klonked on the head, begged to go to bed, and was asleep almost immediately. No more pleas for glasses of water and cold cloths on the head. No more plaintive calls from the bedroom at 10-:30, 11:00, 11:30, long after lights-out, asking for someone to change the disk on her nightly (and, theoretically, soporific) book-on-CD. No more irritable confrontations with a restless child who insists that she's TRYING to go to sleep, really TRYING, but her body just won't LET her.

And no more struggles in the morning with a pathetic lump who pulls the covers over her head and begs for just a few more minutes of sleep, just one more minute, she's so, so, so sleepy, she feels sick...Nope! Instead, we suddenly had a kid who popped out of bed at eight, often on her own without benefit of parental alarm clock. She was even on time to school sometimes.

The headaches didn't disappear entirely, but they lessened, in both duration and frequency. I started keeping a headache log, and determined that they mostly happened when MG was hungry (or at least when she hadn't eaten for a while-- she didn't always recognize it as hunger).

Then, suddenly, the night before last, just as RW and I were settling in to watch our nightly DVD episode of "Big Love"...we heard it. The dreaded cry. "Mommmmm! I can't sleeeeeep!" Despite the doctor's assucances, the melatonin had stopped working, just like that. In the morning, we had to drag MG out of bed, just like old times. Last night, since she was exhausted from the night before, she went to sleep easier, but this morning was just as hard.

I was surprised by how upset I was-- to the point of crying. We'd gotten so used to MG's struggles with sleep that they just seemed normal, until we didn't have them any more. Sure it's easier for us grownups when she goes to sleep quickly and easily and gets up on her own in the morning, but I also had a chance, in the last month, to see what MG was like with enough sleep, something she hasn't had on a regular basis for years. It wasn't a total personality transplant--she was still very much recognizeably herself-- but her temper was mellower, she was more willing to laugh at herself, she could deal with frustrations and challenges with more equanimity, and she seemed sunnier overall. Her life was better.

I'm not sure what to do now. Oviously we need to find another--better--doctor, to deal with both the headaches and the insomnia, and we're working on that. I also consulted Dr. Google (and his/her/its friend, Dr. Facebook) and determined that it's not unusual for melatonin to stop working after a few weeks, and that many (better!) doctors suggest running a schedule that's some variation of two weeks on, one week off. So we're stopping the melatonin for now, in hopes that it might be effective again for a while when school starts.

One of my favorite parenting bloggers, whose son has autism, used to have a tag line on her blog that read "Our special needs are just more obvious." And while I knew that was true, intellectually--everyone has quirks, needs, differences, no one is cookie-cutter "normal"--after the last few months I feel like I get it a little more.

MG needs enough sleep. I mean, she won't die without it, but for her intellectual and emotional and physical well-being-- and ours!-- she needs more sleep than she's been getting until this past month. We've been avoiding sleep specialists, partly because we've had the impression that the conventional medical wisdom holds that Bad Parenting (late bedtimes, lax routines, late TV-watching) is behind most childhood insomnia, even though that's not our experience, and we're not interested in being scolded or spending months on "solutions" that have nothing to do with whatever the causes really are. We'd been sort of limping along, figuring things would work out.

But when I frame MG's sleep issues as a genuine Special Need, suddenly it looks different. I find myself geared up to advocate for her, to brave the lax clinic pediatricians and the imagined sleep specialists and the contradictory recommendations and whatever is out there.

I feel like I should have some rousing finish for this, but I don't. Just hope that we'll all get a good night's sleep tonight.

Random Somethings of Midsummer

2009-07-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

*Hello hello! Happy Bastille Day! I mean, happy, I guess happy, I always think of Bastille Day as more violent than happy, what with the extreme bloodiness of the French Revolution and all, though I guess the 5 or 6 guys who tottered out of the Bastille (did anyone else ever hear that? That there were actually only a few prisoners in there by 1789?) were pretty happy.

*Okay. Happy Tuesday, anyway.

*Tuesday is my short day at work: only 4 hours. Since Monday is 5 hours and also crazy busy lately, I always feel like a Lady of Leisure on Tuesdays.

*Especially since MG has started walking home from camp on her own.

*Camp--at least this week-- is at her school, with her last year's teacher, and runs from 9 AM to 3 PM. So basically, from a parent's perspective, it's JUST LIKE school.

*Except, no homework! Woo-hoo!

*And also, according to MG, it is actually TOTALLY DIFFERENT from school, because basically all they do is art and P.E.

*On the Growing Up front, MG is now taking showers instead of baths.

*Yesterday she finished her shower, turned off the water, and asked me to hand her a towel. I reached out and touched her hair, which made the fuzzy, bubbly sound of a head with a fair bit of shampoo on it.

*I guess taking showers is a skill not acquired all at once.

*Yesterday, when I was feeling crappy, MG made me a plate of cinnamon-sugar toast, and even cut it in half for me. I was very touched.

*Then she said, as she says after every action evidencing a modicum of self-sufficiency, "Is this getting me closer to earrings?"

* I was a little less touched after that.

*More news: MG now has a trampoline!

*It was an early birthday present, a joint effort between some grandparents (who provided the cash), RW and I (providing the legwork), and our neighbor, who came over and helped us put the thing together last week.

*I have been nonplussed at how many people, on reading/hearing this news, react by warning me or RW about the dangers of backyard trampolines

*So I have become kind of defensive about explaining that we know the dangers, there is a net enclosure, MG has learned trampoline safety for years in circus class, we have a number of rules in place, etc. etc.

*The Vancouver Folk Music Festival is this weekend!

*This will be the third year in a row that we're going as Vancouver-area residents, not tourists up from the States.

*It's wild to think how different our lives are than they were about two years ago at this time.

*Kind of puts my recent job complaints in perspective, doesn't it?

Free-Range Kid

2009-06-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

I picked the Mermaid Girl up from her first day of camp a couple of hours ago. She was chowing down on mango and complaining about how HUNGRY she was and how I didn't pack enough lunch and can I please pack more tomorrow because she was STARVING, when the phone rang.

"Hi," said a kid's voice. "This is Trillium. Does MG have plans for today?"

MG took the phone. "Sure." She said. "Okay. How about in fifteen minutes?"

I said I'd walk her, but before I even had my shoes on, she'd finished her mango and thrown a skirt over her leotard.

"I'm going now!" she called, and was out the door. By the time I had my keys, she was down our half-block hill and across the street.

I followed, far enough behind to see her, but too far to call out comfortably and be heard. She knows the way to Trillium's house; it's less than four blocks away, most of which is the same as her route to school. So I didn't try too hard to catch up, just kept an eye on her as she walked down the street, past the school, and through the schoolyard.

She passed out of sight as she rounded the corner to the next side street, but as I passed through the schoolyard gate I could see her standing on the corner of the semi-busy street that separates the school and Trillium's house.

That street makes me nervous, even more so than the Main Street a block away. Especially in the late-afternoon rush. There are no street lights on Semi-Busy Street, only four-way stops at every corner; commuters use it all the time as an alternative to Main Street, and they don't always stop.

MG stood on the corner for long enough that I had a chance to observe her observing the cars. She danced in impatience as one car zoomed past heedless of the stop sign; then I saw her take a step, and wave at something, and hesitate while looking purposefully to her right--and now I was close enough to see that she was looking at the next car to make sure it was definitively stopping for her. Then she run-skipped across the street and dashed the few short yards to Trillium's house.

She walked up the stairs to the front door, then turned around and walked back down--nobody had answered her knock, I figured--and went around to the back.

She was in the house and out of sight by the time I caught up. Trillium's mom was waiting in the doorway and waved at me. I waved back, said a few words of greeting, and turned around to walk back home.

Last week I read Leonore Skenazy's "Free-Range Kids", and was intrigued. I especially liked the card at the back, meant to be clipped out and carried around and shown to worried adults. "I am a free-range kid," it reads, and goes on to explain that the bearer knows how to cross the street safely, knows not to go anywhere with strangers, that the adults in his/her life know s/he is out and about and that this is okay with them, but if the reader is concerned, here are the parents' contact phone numbers, which they should feel free to call.

When I finished the book, I'd shown the card to MG, and asked what she thought about it. I wasn't sure she would approve; she has an ambivalent relationship with autonomy and independence, and often asks us to to do things for her that I think an almost-nine-year-old should be able to do for herself. She even likes us to pick out her clothes for her.

She read the card, and gave a wordless, eloquent thumbs-up.

I think she's just given it another one.

Facebook angst

2009-06-26T00:01:00.001-07:00

Until we moved two years ago, I worked at a private K-through-8th-grade school, as the librarian. I've written about it a fair bit so you probably know this. Anyway, I was there for nine years, so by the time I left I'd known virtually all the kids since they were in kindergarten.

I loved some things about being in a close-knit community, I really did. I loved getting to know all the kids over the years, I loved the village that was the staff room, where I learned almost everything I ever needed to know about being a spouse and a parent and a grownup. And I really enjoyed the company of many of the parents.

There were some things I didn't like, too: the close-knit community sometimes felt too boundary-less to me. The kids sometimes acted infuriatingly entitled. I didn't like all the parents, especially the ones who were also infuriatingly entitled, and didn't like how the structure and nature of the school sometimes left me unprotected from their (I'm pseudonymous here, and don't work there any more, so I'll just say it) craziness. When there was a solid and supportive administrator in charge, that craziness was generally buffered. But there were several years, including my last few, when such was not the case.

Anyway, then I left. Left that school, that metropolitan area, that country. I missed the kids, and many of my colleagues, and some of the parents, but, hey, whee! Clean break! I never have to see the ones I don't like again!

Except, not so much.

Because now we have Facebook. All of us. And our exes and elementary-school friends and high-school teachers and everyone else we thought was faded out of our lives forever, adrift in the world somewhere, well, they can all find us. And we can find them. And we can all be Facebook friends in the great big cafeteria/mall/staff room in the ether, forever.

I am Facebook friends with some of my old co-workers (a few of whom read this blog-- Hi! hi there!!), and that is swell and it makes me much less lonely to be in touch with them and hear how things are going. So that is really nice.

Then, a few months ago, one of my old students sent me a Facebook friend request, and I haven't replied yet. I like her a lot, but I know this student isn't fourteen, and I don't think she's even thirteen, and even though she's not my student any more I wasn't really comfortable with letting her into my grownup facebook life. Just tonight, I got another friend request from another former student. This one is a year older, and again, I like her a lot and would be happy to be in touch with her but just don't want her to see all my stuff. I figure there will be other friend requests from other former students--I wasn't a hugely popular figure, but some kids, the bookish, thoughtful ones, liked me and I liked them, and some more will probably friend me when they think about it or see me commenting on one of their teachers' Facebook pages. I need to figure out what to do about this.

Then there are the parents. I thought I had decided for myself, in my new, happily non-boundary-challenged life, that I would not friend parents from my old school (unless they were also former co-workers). But then I got a friend request from one of my very, very, very favorite parents ever, the mom of one of my very, very, very favorite students ever, and a woman I'd always liked and thought would be a good person to be friends with, but felt somewhat constrained by my professional role. So I accepted her friend request.

And now I see that of course she's friends with other parents, including a few I'd rather not have much to do with, and they will see my comments if I write on her page, and then they and I will no longer be forever out of each other's lives. They might friend me, and I don't want to friend them, but now that I've friended this parent will they be all upset if I don't friend them too?

I have to remind myself that it doesn't really matter, that they are no longer my employer or anything like it (some of them thought they were, which drove me nuts and made me very jumpy), they can't complain to the principal because I won't Facebook-friend them or because they don't like something I wrote on my page. I can friend who I want and not friend who I don't want. That I am a grownup and that--on Facebook and in real, non-Internet life--I don't have to like all my friends' friends.

I'm curious about other people, and would love to know if you want to write in comments: What do you do? If you work at a school or a church or some other similar institution, or are a parent, or just for one reason or another need to set boundaries about who you let into your Facebook-- how do you decide?

Sweet Tooth

2009-06-18T01:14:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it is true that no one cares what I had for lunch. But! I care! And I will tell you why.

I like many, many things about our life here in Vancouver better than back in Seattle. You know the drill: health care gay marriage skytrain ethnic neighborhoods spelling colour with a "u" blah de blah de blah. And I think I've even mentioned in braggish passing the wealth of ethnic and just generally wonderful food available just a hop skip and jump down the road here in our un-groovy Nearby Suburban neighborhood: Chinese, Italian, sushi sushi sushi, barbecue Vietnamese, Greek, middle Eastern, even Ethiopian. Yummy. Never more need I bemoan the dearth of cannoli in my life, for I can pick up a box of the stuff any time I like.

BUT. There has been one notable lack here in Vancouver. A flaw, a lacuna, a fly in the rainy ointment.

We have not been able to find any decent, cheap, convenient Thai food.

Now, Thai food in Seattle is like Chinese takeout in New York or sushi in Vancouver: ubiquitous. If there are two restaurants on a Seattle street, chances are that at least one of them is Thai. In our old neighborhood there were, at one point, six--SIX!--Thai restaurants within a five-block radius of our house. The owner of our favorite restaurant knew us and always gave MG special treats when we came in. There were times when we ate Thai food every week, and we always got Tom Kha Gai, the miraculous Thai chicken soup, when we were sick. Even the Mermaid Girl, notorious in our family for her food pickiness and not generally fond of anything without orange cheese or nitrates in it, had two or three Thai dishes that she reliably liked.

Not only that, but at almost every Thai restaurant I ever ate in in Seattle (and I ate in many over the years), the service was quick and unobtrusive, the menu was cheap, and the food was reliably at least decent and often transcendent. Thai food was a staple of my routine. It was hard to imagine life without it.

Then we moved to Vancouver, for a better life. But can a life really be considered better if it doesn't include regular doses of satay and rard nah? We stepped gingerly around that question.

Oh, sure, there were Thai restaurants. In our new neighborhood, even. We tried them. They were...underwhelming. And the service was uneven. And they were expensive. It was hard to get used to Thai meals not being among the cheapest restaurant food going.

So, in the manner of immigrants everywhere, we adapted. We learned to eat the local cuisine (which, luckily for us, encompassed a dozen or more other local cuisines.) We tried to forget about Thai food. And, aside from a few wistful sighs over the bathing rama of yesteryear, we almost succeeded.

Then, today, I stopped at the Sweet Tooth Cafe for lunch.

I've passed by the big blue Sweet Tooth awning dozens of times in the past couple of years. It's right on Hastings, a couple blocks East of Commercial, right on my way from Nearby Suburb to almost everything I need to get to in Vancouver proper. I always wondered about it, and thought I should really go in sometime to see what kind of cookies or pastries they had in store. With a name like the Sweet Tooth, that would be what they had, right? Desserts?

But I was always too busy. Until today.

Today I had a half-hour to spare between one errand in Vancouver and another in the Northern suburbs, and the Sweet Tooth was exactly on the way. So I pulled up the van and approached.

I thought they'd serve, maybe, some sandwiches or something to accompany all the sugary things that must surely lurk within. Imagine my shock to see, prominently listed in the window, "Soups, Salads, Desserts, Sandwiches, THAI FOOD."

Inside, it looked like a bare-bones cafe, not a Thai restaurant. No travel posters, no purple wallpaper, no bronze statues. No ambiance whatsoever, in fact. I demanded of the middle-aged woman behind the counter: "Do you really have Thai food?"

"Oh, sure, we have Thai food," she said, bemused. She pointed to the menu on the wall, where four or five Thai dishes were listed along with some soups and sandwiches. "What do you want? Do you want Pad Thai? I make the best Pad Thai in the city."

Pad Thai is the basic, signature Thai dish, the roast chicken or macaroni and cheese of Thai food, but it is easy to mess up. Even in Seattle, there were places that made amazing fancy Thai food but flubbed the Pad Thai. Here in Vancouver, we'd ordered it at every Thai restaurant we tried, and I'd been disappointed every time.

I ordered the Pad Thai. And a lemonade.

The food cost $7.95, which is about what a Seattle Thai joint would charge for Pad Thai.

She brought it over about five minutes later.

It was...it was...it was fucking fantastic. Not too sweet, not vinegary, not gluey or mushy. The noodles were distinct and the vegetables were crisp and there was a liberal dusting of chopped peanuts and it had a hint of that limey, fishy taste that makes it special. And there was plenty of it. If it hadn't been so incredibly good that I couldn't stop eating, there would've been enough to save a nice bit for leftovers.

I took the empty plate back to the counter. "You're right," I said. "That was amazing Pad Thai."

She nodded, pleased but not surprised. "I learned how to make it from my mom's friend. She'd been making Pad Thai for thirty years, and hers was the best in town. She sold it at a stall, in the market, and then she stopped and only cooked at her house, and people followed her there and came to her house for her Pad Thai.

"Even in Thailand, you know, you can't always find Pad Thai. It's street food. You can't get it at a fancy restaurant. And everyone makes it differently. But her Pad Thai was the best, and I learned from her."

I thanked her again, and promised to be back. And I will be.

This isn't normally a food blog, or a review blog. And I don't usually name specific businesses here, at least not with their real names. But I will today: The Sweet Tooth Cafe. 2404 Hastings East, on the corner of Nanaimo. For Pad Thai like they make it in Seattle, and maybe even better.

Oh, and the lemonade was pretty amazing, too.

Random asterisks of time keeps on ticking ticking ticking

2009-06-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

*MG cut her hair. Well, unlike when she was 3, she went to a haircutting place and someone else cut her hair. I'd made a reservation for her at the cutesy little kids' salon at the mall, but when she and RW got there, they realized she was way too old to squeeze into the little cars and watch a Dora video, so they cancelled the appointment and went upstairs to the grownup hair salon, which was so much cheaper that RW bought her a Webkinz with the difference.

*Now my daughter's hair is only about down to her shoulder blades and she looks around two years older than she did.

*She is on a campaign to get her ears pierced for her ninth birthday. We told her we'd consider it if she demonstrates some self-sufficiency in other areas of personal hygiene, since care for newly-pierced ears is no joke. So now she is a fiend for tooth-brushing and face-washing and even did her own bath and shampoo by herself the other day. This might not seem notable for most kids, but it is for her.

*Every time she brushes her teeth or hair or washes her face or performs some other evidence of competence in the taking-care-of-her-own-needs area, she says, "Am I getting closer to being ready for pierced ears? Am I?"

*Did I mention: NINTH BIRTHDAY!?

*Oy.

*RW got her a CD-ROM keyboarding tutorial out of the library, and now she is learning to type. Which is good because handwriting is an agony for her.

*We are trying to figure out how to rig up an old computer so that she can type at will, but doesn't have Internet access.

*The laptop on which I am writing this very post is a prime candidate.

*The other day we were driving around, and she was pretending to talk on her pretend cell phone (which is really an eraser). She informed me that the ringtone was "Money Money Money" and then proceeded to sing it in an undertone for a few seconds before pretending to pick up each call. It went like this: "Money money money, always funny, in a rich man's world...Hello? Oh, hi! Yes, a party, can you come? We're going to have sushi, and pizza, and ice cream...yes, on the beach! Okay, bye! [beat] Money money money, always funny, in a rich man's-- Hello?"

*Etc.

*I asked how she knew about ringtones, since RW and I both have cheap cell phones with just regular old rings. "I just do," she said.

*Then she asked if she can have a cell phone when she's a little older. "Maybe in a few years," I said. "When you're old enough to go places by yourself. But we might get you a cheap one with no ringtone too."

*"Don't worry," she said loftily. "When I'm older I'll get my own cell phone. And it will have a cool ringtone."

Find a Window

2009-06-03T09:46:00.001-07:00

There is, as usual, a bunch of stuff that I need to do that I've been avoiding. Some of it is at the point where further avoidance will have actual notable consequences, and yet, of course, the longer I've put it off the more I don't want to do it.

I was talking about all this at breakfast this morning, mostly to the Renaissance Woman but the Mermaid Girl was there too, picking at her cereal in her usual morning fog.

"It's like all my fear and resistance is this great big WALL," I said miserably. "And I have to BLAST THROUGH that wall to get anything done."

RW, sensibly, suggested that rather than think about blasting through the wall, I just let the wall stay there and sort of do a few things around it.

And then MG looked up from her cereal and said, "Find a window."

I blinked at her. Sometimes she says things that don't seem to make sense, because she's following her own train of thought and not whatever the grownup conversation is, and I was thinking maybe this was one of those times. We'd been talking a lot about windows lately, what with all this heat.

"You don't need to break down the wall," she explained patiently. "Just find a window. Or make a window."

"Oh!" I said, and "Thank you!" and "That's just exactly it! Wow! Thank you!" It was like the Buddha had airlifted down to our breakfast table in the guise of an eight-and-three-quarters-year-old girl whose hair was dipping into her cereal milk at that very moment.

She was still late to school. Probably to throw us off the track so we don't figure out that the Enlightened One lives among us.

Off to find a window, now.

Employment Drama, Part II

2009-05-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

Part I is here.

So, there I was, in my temporary decent hours although feeling somewhat underemployed at my perfectly nice although job-posting-challenged Suburban Library System, and buckling down for at least the medium haul there since the coveted Big City Library System had announced a hiring freeze this January, when...

Big City Library System posted a job.

And not just any job. A cool, interesting, challenging, unusual job, working not at a reference desk but out and about with members of marginalized communities, especially those who might not ordinarily be inclined to come to the library. That kind of job could be really bad news if if's not well-thought-out, and/or if the Powers that Be aren't supportive and expect the moon and let librarians burn themselves out. But I didn't get that sense in this case. Just before the job was posted, in fact, I'd been to a workshop presented by members of the team doing this job, in which they'd talked candidly about the difficulties and frustrations as well as the rewards. I came out of it excited and energized and inspired and wishing like hell my job was more like that.

Then, the next week, the posting went up, an exception to the hiring freeze because this area is a high priority for the city.

I pulled out all my notes from my last debriefing and applied them: added more items to my resume; went over the posting and highlighted the important buzzwords; pounded out the most impassioned cover letter I've ever written, without even bullshitting.

The next week I got an email asking to schedule an interview for barely a week later.

I went into a flurry of preparation. I'd started a temporary once-a-week gig at BCLS for a month or so, filling in for another librarian who hadn't started yet. So the week before I had the interview, I spent some time at the end of the shift talking with the person in charge of the program, who confirmed my sense that it was well-administered, that the supervisors had a clear idea of the potential toll and issues and worries people might have about it. I left her office feeling even more sure that not only did I want this position, but I could do a good job at it.

The weekend before the interview, I spent a day putting together and practicing my assigned presentation, running questions with RW, and henna-ing my hair.

And the interview was great. I knew and liked the interviewers, and I felt prepared to answer the questions. They kept nodding and scribbling things down, and they were engaged during my presentation. The written question was on a totally unexpected topic, but once I took a few minutes to absorb it, I wrote like crazy and pulled up ideas I hadn't even known I had. I didn't come out of it feeling like I'd nailed it, but I felt like I'd done pretty well and even sort of had fun.

I didn't think I would necessarily get the job, though. Since seniority goes by hours worked at that library system and not by months worked, or by years of overall professional experience, even a new graduate who'd worked at BCLS as a student could leap right over me with the 10% seniority boost.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what happened.

It was close enough that just a day before the "you were not the successful candidate" call, Human Resources phoned me to get information about more references, and close enough that both my interviewers went out of their way in the following week, both during the debriefing and at other times, to tell me how well I'd done and what a good addition I'd be to the library staff, and to urge me to hang in there and wait for the end of the hiring freeze, probably in the next year. HR even offered me an eight-month full-time position , which I turned down after agonizing about it for a few days, since the end of that temporary term could leave me without steady employment at all if the freeze didn't lift.

All of which was reassuring, and lovely for my ego, , but somehow I've taken this whole process harder than any of the others. Maybe because the job was so unusual and exciting, or maybe because the interview-preparation process was so particularly demanding that I got even more invested than usual. The fact that I've been working regularly at the library during the whole process, and getting to work with some of the players in a regular day-to-day way, might have something to do with it, too. Or maybe it was just that it was so very very close.

Anyway, it's not such an exciting story to anyone else: I applied for a job, I didn't get the job. But I feel almost like I did at the end of summer camp or the high school play or even a crush. It was an intimate experience. Even though I didn't talk at all about my personal life during the application process, what I said during the interview and wrote on my cover letter and in the interview written portion tapped into some of my deepest passions. I barely know them, but the people who read my application and saw my interview got to hear and know me in ways that not a lot of people do, and that was fulfilling all on its own; who doesn't want to be heard, known, appreciated?

And now, you know, that's over. The show closes, and you go back to barely saying hi to people in the halls. Camp ends, and maybe you write to a couple bunkmates every once in a while. And now that someone has been chosen for the posting, the job of the administration at BCLS is no longer, for the time being, to hear and know and appreciate me; they have lots of other work to do.

So, things go on. Eventually, the hiring freeze will lift. Eventually, I'll accumulate enough on-call hours at BCLS to have some chance of having seniority on my side, though at the rate I'm going, it will take a long time. Or maybe eventually the other finalists will blow their interviews enough that if I do really well I can beat the seniority advantage. Or someone at Suburban Library System will retire, or move, or maybe even another job will be created there, and I'll have a good chance at it. Whichever system finally does offer me a permanent job in my specialty, that's probably where I'll be for a good long while.

Today was the last of my weekly fill-in sessions at BCLS, though I'm still on their on-call list. The person who got the job started this week, so she was there, and I congratulated her, because it's the grownup thing to do, to pull it together to be warm and gracious to someone who beat you out for a job, because, you know, the professional world is small, and what else can you do? She seemed nice and smart and enthusiastic and I'm sure will do a great job. Really.

But still, I found myself unusually tired today.

Employment Drama, Part I

2009-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

So. It's been an emotional couple of weeks, employment-wise. Facebook friends have already heard most of this, but just so it's all in one place, and for my own narrative satisfaction, here it is:

I have a part-time job at a Suburban Library System. It's not exactly what I want. For one thing, the hours suck. For another, it's not in the area (children's/teen svcs) that I love and am best at. And sometimes it's a bit quiet for my tastes.

But other than that, it's pretty good. The people are friendly and supportive and smart. The work is pleasant and not too hard. And, you know, it's a job. These days, a good job is nothing at which to turn up one's nose. It has benefits, and vacation, and they pay me and all. And until January, because I have a temporary appointment filling in for someone who's filling in for someone who's on maternity leave, I actually have a decent schedule rather than the crappy-shifts-no-one-else-wants hours that I will probably return to when the maternity leave posting ends.

So. That's the job I have.

Suburban Library System is pretty small, and because it's a nice place to work, people don't leave there much. There is a small number of youth lib. jobs in the system, and the librarians working in them seem quite happy and disinclined to go anywhere. Chances are, unless the Powers that Be create a brand-new position, it will be a matter of some years before I get a shot at a job I really want in Suburban Library System. I could be working my crappy-hours job there for quite a while.

So I've been applying for anything else that comes open, especially a children's or teen job. In the last year or so, I think I've applied for a dozen jobs, interviewed for most of them, and gotten two of them. Well, two-and-a-half: first the crappy-hours permanent job at SLS; then the better temporary posting I have now at SLS; and along the way I picked up an on-call substitute librarian position at Big City Library System.

Big City Library System is where, all things being equal, I would most like to work. And, until recently, it seemed like the place where I was most likely to get a job in my specialty. It has a lot of branches, a lot of staff movement, and a lot of funding for various initiatives.

As in Suburban Library System, almost all the postings at Big City Library are internal-- you have to work there already in some capacity to qualify. I applied a little over a year ago for a rare externally-posted position. I didn't get the job, but they hired me on as an on-call then, and I've been working there sporadically ever since.

In that time, I've applied for four other BCLS positions, interviewed for all of them, and gotten none of them. The rules at BCLS tilt the playing field heavily in favor of the applicant with the most seniority. Everything--resume, each interview question, the written portion (and there is always a written part of the interview, administered after the oral section)--has a certain point value, and the most senior finalist is given a 10% point advantage--a hard one to beat, considering that all the finalists are generally pretty good or they wouldn't be finalists.

Preparing for an interview for this library system is no small thing: the applicant is expected to hunt down their future supervisor and learn more about the position (unlike in most library systems, where applicants are discouraged from talking to anyone or trying to get an edge before the interview); there's always a "practical" or presentation component, which involves preparing part of a story time or other presentation, performing a portion it at the interview, and handing in an outline of the whole thing; and the questions are varied, unpredictable, and often seem to have little directly to do with the job in question. Between the unusual criteria--which screen for workplace-politics savvy and for knowledge of the system and its quirks as much as for more standard librarian skills--and the seniority advantage, it's not uncommon for librarians to interview three or four times at BCLS before landing a permanent job there, so my experience hasn't been totally out of line.

After my first failed internal application, and every subsequent one, I was offered a debriefing of the interview. This is as scary a prospect as you'd expect, but every time the debriefers have been practical, kind, and strategic in their advice, down to advising me of what buzzwords are important to refer to next time--and it's generally assumed that there will be a next time.

Back in January, I had an interview that was particlarly close, and my debriefer was very encouraging. I should definitely try again, she said, but might have to dig in and wait, as--due to the economy and the costs of preparing for an International Athletic Event in our region--the city had just imposed a hiring freeze.

So, oh, well. Such are the vagaries of public employment. I resigned myself to working Saturdays and weeding nonfiction at Suburban for the forseeable future, and trying again at Big City when the freeze lifted, probably sometime next year.

To be continued.

MG Speaks: Three Stories

2009-05-14T23:44:00.000-07:00

1.
The Mermaid Girl has been talking fluently for almost seven of her almost nine years now, and for that entire time it has been like pulling the proverbial teeth to get her to spill more than a monosyllable or two about what happens during the day while she is away from us. Back when she was in preschool, sometimes her teachers would give us some good dirt, but these days we have to resort to sidling up to her friends, on playdates, and asking them what they did today, hoping they come up with a couple good nuggets of info before MG shuts them up.

Well. Today, I finally figured out how to get her to sing like a canary: Two Truths and a Lie About Your Day. We went around the table at dinner. When it was her turn, she put on her best poker face and said, "I watched TV at Rosita's, I got two new pencils at the book fair, and we had a substitute teacher." The watching TV was the lie. It was a very good one, since she knows we know that TV is the thing she usually loves most at her babysitter's.

She turns out to be extraordinarily talented at coming up with lies that sounded ordinary and likely, and weird truthful occurrences that sounded made up. And I now know more about what she did today than I know about any school day of hers in the past four years, at least. Like: She and her friend found an old rusty penny and worked on the "poison" they're developing to kill dandelions (we agreed that since it is made out of flowers and bark and dirt it is probably exempt from our town's new ban on pesticides); they had gym indoors and had to ride on weird scooters and play badminton, which she hates; her class did a reprise performance of one of their Reader's Theater plays from the Open House last night. There's even more, but I can't remember it; in fact, she insisted that we go on playing Two Truths and a Lie until RW and I begged off, insisting that we simply couldn't come up with one more thing that had happened to us today, never mind concocting more lies.

MG is just the way she is: she hates, hates, hates being coaxed or interrogated or pressed for information; but she loves the chance to trick us and make things up. I wish I'd thought of this years ago.

2. [swiped from Facebook update of a few days ago]

Me: "You just don't care about the dishwasher getting fixed because you aren't the one who washes the dishes."

MG: "I care as much about the dishwasher getting fixed as a potato cares about an onion getting sliced."

Right then. That would be a D for household responsibility, and an A for similes. I'm not sure if this says more about MG's own proclivities or the values we've transmitted to her.

3.
Last night we rolled MG into bed early, after an eventful and meltdown-laden School Open House (two out of the three members of our family had meltdowns, in fact, so it was even more exciting than such events usually are.) Then in the middle of the night I was resting and reading and getting over myself when I heard her cry out loudly "Mama! Mama!" the Renaissance Woman, a/k/a Mama, was sound asleep, so I ran in to MG. Her eyes were closed, and she was lying down in bed, but her face was mobile and she was talking. "Mommy," she said, sounding frustrated, "I can't, I can't get the white to...it won't...would you please just..."

"Sure," I said. "Sure I can. Don't you worry about it." I kissed her on her creased little forehead and she seemed to relax a bit. "Is it okay now?"

"Mmm-hmm." She nodded in her sleep.

"Okay. Goodnight, bun."

If only everything were so easy to fix. I wonder what she was talking about. She had no idea today, when I asked her.

More Village: First Communion Edition

2009-05-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

This afternoon the Mermaid Girl went out to the back yard to lean over the fence and heckle the little boys next door, as is her wont. (They have a thing going: she heckles them, they adore her, especially the older one. When I go outside without her, he's always asking me: "Where's MG? Is she coming home soon? Will she be home tomorrow? She can come over, if she wants..." it is somewhat inexplicable as she is quite bossy to them, but maybe they like that.)

Anyway, I went out to look for her so we could go out to dinner, and saw both boys outside in their yard, both looking quite spiffy in button-down shirts and ties. I complimented them on their outfits, and the older one said, "Thanks. It was my first communion today. The guests are coming over soon. This is a golf set. Want to see? Playing golf is really fun!" I congratulated him and he did a line drive onto his dad's shoes.

I rounded MG up and we left, with Chasmyn and her lovely family. "Where are you all going?" Older Next Door Kid called after us.

"To the Main Street!" I answered.

"Why?" he persisted.

"For food," I said.

"We have food!" he cajoled, but I said his guests would probably want the food, and off we went, first dropping MG off at the library to meet the Renaissance Woman, and then on to the restaurant.

After dinner, we walked back up the Main Street, and there in front of the fancy Italian restaurant up the hill was Ofelia, one of MG's school friends. I almost didn't recognize her; she looked like a flower girl, or even a bridesmaid, in a gorgeous, classy white dress and her hair all done up in ringlets. She was surrounded by friends and relatives.

The penny dropped. "Hi, Ofelia," I said. "You look so nice! Was it your first communion today?" She nodded happily, and I congratulated her, and we headed the few blocks back to my house to divide up the leftover Ethiopian food.

A village. It takes one.

2009-04-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

So, two stories:

1.
The Renaissance Woman was on her lunch break the other day and walking out on the Big Main Street. (She works a few blocks from our house and from MG's school.) She was stopped at a street light and happened to see a bunch of kids with their teacher, out on a walk or outing from the local high school, the one that mysteriously has a terrible reputation as the place for Bad Kids even though it is in this relatively ritzy corner of Nearby Suburb.

Anyway, she knew these kids were from the Bad Kid High School because she recognized one of them from last year, when he had been in the oldest grade at MG's elementary school (which goes up to Grade 7), and had starred in the Christmas Play. He's very memorable: charismatic, a good actor. Also he looks a little like Barack Obama.

So while she's watching, and while the teacher is focused on a few of the kids in her charge, a loud car playing loud music pulls up with a bunch of guys in it, and Tall Charismatic Kid, assuming that no one's watching him, saunters over and gets right into the loud car, which zooms off into the distance.

The teacher emerges from her discussion and, perhaps feeling a bit defensive on account of Bad Kid High School's reputation, catches RW's eye, nods after the disappeared loud car, and says, "Those aren't our kids."

"Well," says RW, "one of them was."

"What?!?" says the teacher.

RW explains how she'd seen this kid get into the car, and how she'd known who he was from last year's Christmas play at Neighborhood Elementary, and describes him: "Tall, looks kind of like Barack Obama?"

"Oh! Robert*?" The teacher says, and RW, recognizing the name from the play program, confirms it.

"Thank you!!" the teacher says fervently. And off she goes, with what's left of her class, preparing no doubt to make a report to whoever needs reporting to. RW was pretty amused to think about how surprised ObamaBoy would be, to be busted by someone he didn't even know but who remembered him from last December when he played The Santa Show's MC.

2.
I was sitting in on a volunteer training for some teens this afternoon at the suburban library where I work (a different one from the one where RW works), and on the short break, one of them--a very charming kid who showed up on a scooter--whipped out her cell phone and then said, "Oh! Rats!" and then explained: "I couldn't find my key this morning, so I borrowed my brother's key, but then I remembered I had to go to this training and he wasn't home yet, so I left the key in the mailbox with a note with his name on it, PETER* in big letters in bright orange highlighter, to make sure he'd be able to find it, but just now I got a text message that he's coming over here to get his key so he won't be late for his violin lesson!"

Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later, a kid shows up in the computer area, an amiable-looking boy, about ten years old; he hones in on the volunteer in question, and starts right in with, "and you took my scooter, too?!?"

"Hi, Peter," said the library student doing the training.

"And where's my key?!?" Peter demanded of his sister.

"I left it right in the mailbox!" she said. "With your name on it!"

"In orange highlighter," I added.

"Great," he said. "Okay, fine," and he turned for the stairs.

"Better get going," said the other librarian observing the training. "You don't want to be late for your violin lesson."

Peter turned around and gave his sister one last glare and said, "so did you just tell everyone about my WHOLE LIFE?"

Yep. Life in the village. It has its points.

Iolanthe, with Various Digressions

2009-04-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

There is no good word for a cousin by marriage--that is, one's cousin's spouse or spouse's cousin--and there really should be. If my brother's wife is my sister-in-law, I guess my cousin's wife is my cousin-in-law, but that doesn't sound right somehow. Well, I'm declaring it a word anyway. So there.

Which is not what this post meant to be about. Here, let me start again:

My cousin-in-law, Delia, has been posting on her livejournal personal reviews of various performances she's seen, and they're wonderful reading, not least because Delia lives in Manhattan and has an array of exciting and buzz-generating shows from which to choose. (Also she is a fantastic writer.) It was on the strength of one of these reviews--and the enthusiastic comments it prompted--that I went to see Next to Normal when I was in New York a couple weeks ago, and was blown away, and look! so was the New York Times, when it opened a few days ago!

But that's not what I started out wanting to write about either, exactly. What I wanted to say was that, inspired by Delia, I thought I'd write about a performance I saw last night, Iolanthe, put on by the North Shore Light Opera Society. Not a review, exactly, or not a formal one; just some stuff about it.

I like Gilbert and Sullivan well enough, but I'm not an obsessive fan, so I'd never seen Iolanthe or even heard most of the songs. I went with RW and MG and RW's mom, and all of us enjoyed ourselves mightily. The fairies were a kick, Iolanthe was suitably dippy, there was lots of very funny mugging and very game dancing, and the story! So excellent! So silly! What's not to like about a show about fairies and politics? It was hard to wrap my mind around the indisputible fact that this show was written over 120 years ago. It seemed so contemporary.

This could have been partly because this production is set in the present, with female Peers as well as males (filched from the cast of fairies, with different costumes) all dressed in suits and looking suitably stuffy. When the young hero, Strephon, becomes a Member of Parliament, he is symbolically awarded a jacket, a tie, and a BlackBerry, and he and his girlfriend (who is all pissed off at him because she saw him hugging and kissing his mother, Iolanthe, who looks like a 17-year-old on account of her being a fairy) immediately commence to frantic texting as the rest of the cast sings the first-act finale.

Another update: Private Willis, a Guard/soldier in the original is, in this production, Brock Willis, a journalist for BBC-TV, and there's some very nice business with a live video feed and a burly bald cameraman. When the Lord High Chancellor sings his patter song about lying awake with a dismal headache (a song I knew already. How did I know it?? No idea), he's standing in front of the plain wooden backdrop that serves as the screen, and the camera, filming him, projects his image and then the projected image and then the image of the projected image, etc. and it's very appropriately surreal and nightmarish.

It was community theater, and RW says the musicians were having some problems with pitch and timing, and even I noticed that sometimes the singers got ahead of the instruments. But all the cast members were charming and funny and excellent singers, and the staging was very clever, and overall, it was swell. Also, we had great seats, right up front. And MG was totally starstruck by the fairies in particular and waited around in the lobby afterward to get a few autographs, which they were happy to provide.

I've been turning it over in my mind, and thinking about the advantages of seeing something Big and new and buzzy like Next to Normal, and something small and charming and local and off the map like this performance. RW used to do sound design for theater companies in Seattle, and I saw a lot of mediocre and even bad performances of local theater there. But I also saw some that knocked my socks off, one or two in particular by a playwright/songwriter named
Chris Jeffries who is a real, true genius, and who I can only imagine decided for reasons of his own to express himself through small local venues rather than taking his brilliance Eastward. Because really, he is that good.

And on the one hand, it's kind of cool and exciting and club-like that his shows "The Glory Booty Club" and "I See London, I See France," will never be reviewed in the New York Times, and most people will never hear of them, and I got to see them; but then, it's also sad. Because they were freaking incredible shows, and live performance lives in the moment. (We actually do have VHS tapes of those two, but it's not the same.) Selfishly, I'd like to see them sometime in revival, when they've been reviewed and produced to death and RW has read the scripts in her drama class in college, and some director who's now in elementary school has the challenge of making them fresh again. But of course that's not going to happen.

Hmm. How did I get here? All I wanted to write about was Iolanthe from last night, and how cute the title character looked in the big dorky glasses she wore to "disguise" herself, and the ingenious use of rubber duckies on the set, and how MG, clever child, figured out even before the second act who Strephon's father was. And just how excellent it is to see live theater, wherever it is, when it's done well and passionately.

There Followed a Dark and Gloomy Time

2009-04-17T20:53:00.001-07:00

No, well, first there followed the rest of the trip. Which was really, truly, excellent beyond excellent, aside from a cold which sidelined me for a day or two. And the need to keep harping about MG about math homework.

But really! We racked up three seders, many subway and taxi rides, much yummy street food, a circus show (not Barnum & Bailey but a lovely gentle European family circus which was just the right speed for someone recovering from a cold), a stop at Central Park, and visits of varying lengths with three different sets of relatives besides my dad & stepmom. The sun didn't shine every day, but it shone enough. I had some wonderful, sustaining conversations about books and life, and MG enjoyed herself mightily.

But beyond that, every time I got off the subway and came up onto Broadway and Somewhere Above 86th Street, I was happy like a kid holding their baby blanket: that's the neighborhood I was born into and lived in for my first five years, and it feels like home the way no place else in the world does. Every time the #7 train rose up from underground and took that swerve around the corner to reveal a shining view of the skyline across the East River, I felt like I could reach across the past few decades and wave to 17-year-old me, riding home of an evening from her summer job before college, and all the versions of me between then and now who have ridden that train and watched for that view. Heck, every time I visited the basement toilet at my dad's house, I got a hit off all the accumulated family history that old row house holds, right down to the Doonesbury and Sylvia and Kliban cartoon books that have been sitting in that exact spot ever since someone--maybe me--left them there sometime back in the '80's.

So the dark time was after I came back. For a few days. It's better now, though, and I remember again why I like it here too.

Remind me to tell you about the Amerikan Grrl store. It was a story in itself.

Dinner and a Show

2009-04-08T05:21:00.000-07:00

Two days back in New York (and it will always be BACK in New York, to me), and I've done six iconic things. I guess I really am a tourist in the city now. Tourism is exhausting! I am wiped & ready for a home day, which is what today will be.

Last night I went to a Broadway show. But not a feel-good, oh-I'll-take-something-in-while-I'm-in-the-city show. I saw Next to Normal, which is still in previews, but based on last night I'd say they're ready for opening. My theatregoing companion, a friend from college, called it "a smart-choice sandwich"--smart choices on top of smart choices. It was also disturbing and sad and emotionally rocking, and resistant of easy pat resolution. But not depressing, partly because it was thrilling to see something SO GOOD. Wow. Week after week I read theatre reviews in the New Yorker and think, oh, well, maybe it'll go on tour. But this one I got to see.

I want to write about it, but Delia covered much of what I'd say, and the rest is spoilers. But if you can see it, I'd recommend this (for grownups, not kids) over a big snazzy revival any day.

And for me it was all the more vivid because I got to go with this particular college friend, who was one of my two or three friends in the city the year I lived in Brooklyn after graduation. (Two or three friends wasn't nearly enough for me back then, which is one reason I left. But she was a good one to have.) We walked to the subway together after the show, talking and talking about what we'd just seen. We spent so many evenings walking back to the subway after seeing things. I don't want to say it was like the last nineteen years never happened--part of what we talked about, and some of what the show was about, was this strange phenomenon of being middle-aged. We hadn't seen each other for some years, and it was nice to be grownups together, to compare the somewhat-parallel tracks our lives have taken. So no, not like the years never happened, but familiar, a touchstone to my past self, and to that alternate ghost self who stayed in the city instead of lighting out for the west coast almost twenty years ago. Chances are, that self would also be meeting up with this friend every once in a while to go see some show or other, and walking through the dark to the subway together, talking and talking, and then swiping our MetroCards and going to wait on our separate platforms.

I meant to write about all six things: that show, plus the Chinese sesame noodles and the Empire State Building and Katz's and the central library and the Amerikan Grrl store. Oh, and the hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut, which makes seven. But this seems like enough for now, I think.

In Which I Reappear, Briefly

2009-04-05T12:05:00.001-07:00

I didn't mean to be gone so long. I NEVER mean to be gone so long. But jeez, March was nuts. I figure if you average out November and March it combines to make a decent average rate of posts, but for those two or three people out there clicking forlornly (or am I the only person who hasn't gone to a feed-reader?) that doesn't really help, does it.

In any case: Back now! With the birds and the sunshine! My job today is to pack, get the Mermaid Girl packed, do some work (yes! on a Sunday, right before I get on a red-eye! see above re: March, nuts), find several mysterious tax documents so RW can work on taxes while we are away (just the thing for those relaxing evenings alone), and then get on a plane.

Has anyone else besides me become more plane-claustrophobic with age? No? Maybe? Maybe it's just those teeny tiny seats we get now.

Also, MG has to do homework. Either today, or on the trip, or both. She is not thrilled at the prospect and I don't blame her. On the other hand, she's missing a week of school in order to do command performances of the Four Questions and eat street-vendor hot dogs, so I'd say she's coming out ahead.

Mainly, she has to do some math and build a simple machine. I know nothing about simple machines but apparently it is standard Grade 3 curriculum all over Canada. So chances are the average Canadian 9-year-old is much more knowledgeable about the ways of levers, pulleys, and springs than I am. Maybe I should find one and ask her over for the afternoon to help MG with her project.

Here are some haiku, generated by this application from previous blog entries:

when people of our
age and class were living and
studying in a few

x tulchinsky book
for example the one who
looked over at

want my maaaamaaaa me
yeah i know but i'm the one
who's here so there we

career paths i could
sing the songs by heart even
the sevens even

one that's very
different from what i've been
doing they'd have charts

productive in the
last two days last week at a
gas station tried to

we know what to say
that the car guys that and they
said it was moisture

from india to
canada where she continues
to feel baffled by

and would be so much
they asked her to change the
songs by heart even

But this one is my very favorite:

so what do you need
to eat something and maybe
even a bonus

Yes, indeed.
More from Old Country. I'll eat a knish for you.

Flashback

2009-02-28T08:25:00.000-08:00

I spent two days last week at a professional training, becoming officially certified to lead a special, intensive song-and-story based program for infants and parents. Yesterday, the trainer talked about how this program was originally designed for parents who were at risk, who'd been referred by Child Protective Services, but that eventually it was decided that all new parents needed and could benefit from this kind of support.

At the lunch break, I was talking with a few other librarians, all childless and younger than me.

"When I have a baby and I'm on mat leave, I'm going to go to all the baby storytimes all over town!" one of them said.

"Yeah! Yeah! Me too! That'll be so great!" the others echoed.

"Yeah, I thought we'd go out and do lots of stuff too," I said. "But what happens is, first the baby needs a diaper change. Then you need to gather up all your stuff to go out, and that takes a while. Then she's hungry and you need to feed her. Then she falls asleep. Then you need to eat something and maybe go to the bathroom. Then she wakes up and her diaper needs changing again. And by then she's hungry again, and then it's dinner time, and then...time for bed!"

They stared at me as if I'd just recited a dirty poem in fluent ancient Greek. Because I am psychic, or maybe because I used to not have a child, I know what these extremely nice, smart, energetic young women were thinking: they were thinking that I was insane, or at the very least that as a baby-parent I had been criminally disorganized. They would not be like that, slaves to routine, housebound and scattered! They would sling those babies on their hips and get out into the world!

Well. Maybe they will. Truth is, eight years later, I can't exactly remember why I didn't, just that I, too, had thought I would be out and about all the time with the baby, but that when it came down to it, it all seemed incredibly, weepingly, Sysiphianically hard.

And I wasn't even (mostly) the at-home parent, except for the first three weeks and then Tuesday afternoons for a few months after that. (And Jewish holidays.) It was at least as hard for the Renaissance Woman, though if I remember right, she did a spectacular job of getting the two of them out of the house on a regular basis.

This training brought it all back for me, though in a hazy, faraway kind of way, like the memory of a fire alarm in the middle of the night. Which was what a lot of it was like, come to think of it: staggering around sleepily, aware that something urgently important was happening, but unable to wake up enough to grasp its exact significance.

I have to remind myself of this when MG is having one of her full-on earthshattering meltdowns (as has happened twice this evening): it's easier now. And God knows, I was one of those nodding fervently and knowingly at that training last week, when the trainer said that in her opinion all new parents are in need of extra support, and that in this culture having a baby increases a family's isolation profoundly, and that just getting to a library program can be incredibly difficult.

Yep. Yep. Yep. I may not remember it well, but I remember it, all right.

Katie wrote back!

2009-02-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

I was right-- it was her.

Now I'm totally stumped for what to write back in return. She asked how I am, so there's the whole Vancouver thing. Plus the previous 35 years.

Also: As of mid-April, I will be off Saturdays! So I can take a protesting MG to shul and kids club a few times a month! Hmm. Maybe not such a good deal after all.

Lost and Found

2009-02-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

For one year of preschool and my first few months of kindergarten, I went to a small private school on the Upper West Side. It wasn't one of the fancy famous ones--in fact, it doesn't even exist any more--but it was fancy enough that I remember a formal lesson in how to hold a fork.

My best friend there--my very first real best friend, period--was a girl I'll call Katie. We met during naptime: we were supposed to be sleeping, but we each looked sideways and discovered each other, and were racked by fits of giggles. The teacher scolded us, but I didn't care: for the first time, I'd found something at school that I cared about more than I cared about Being Good.

The Mermaid Girl used to love to hear stories about me and Katie: how I went over to Katie's house and bounced on her bed and we listened to the "Cinderella" soundtrack and screeched "bippety bobbety boo!" over and over; how we were supposed to hold hands and walk across the street to the park for our daily playtime, but Katie ran, and I ran with her, and we both had to spend playtime sitting on the picnic bench, and Katie said loudly that she didn't care, she didn't want to play anyway, and I marveled at that because I did care and desperately hated being in trouble; how once I went over to Katie's house, all excited to spend the afternoon with her, and her mother came over and gently explained that Katie wouldn't be able to play after all, because her father had come to see her, and how I was so confused about that, because I'd thought I knew her father, the man who lived with her and her mother and her little brother in their exciting long-staircased brownstone, but he was her stepfather, as it turned out.

I didn't tell MG about how once there was another girl I was friendly with, until Katie said that she guessed if I wanted to be friends with that girl then I didn't want to be friends with her. So I started avoiding the other girl, and everything was okay after that. Even at the time, I knew there was something wrong with that kind of threat, but I shrugged it aside because Katie was so magical, so exciting, so special; it seemed worth everything, to go on getting to be her friend; even better, her *best* friend.

In the middle of my kindergarten year, my family moved to the suburbs. My parents and Katie's parents weren't friends, particularly, and long distance phone calls (even from New York to New Jersey) were expensive, and Katie and I were only just barely literate and certainly couldn't send letters independently, and so after a short while we lost touch. She did come to visit, once--maybe for my sixth birthday party--and I remember being excited but also feeling like it was strange somehow, off somehow, for my old preschool city friend to be appearing here, on my suburban street. And I remember talking on the phone with her once, in first or second grade, but it was strange and we didn't know what to say to each other.

After that, I never saw or heard from Katie again.

I've wondered about her, off and on, ever since then. In college, I thought about her a lot, maybe because I was spending a lot of time in exalted, obsessive love/crushed-out-ness, and my friendship with Katie was the first time I remember feeling something like that, or its preschool version, for someone my age. College would have been a good time to look for her--most people of my age and class were living and studying in a few dozen well-defined institutions, and even if she hadn't been at one of them she certainly would have had a close friend or relative who was--but somehow, I didn't. I think I was a little scared; Katie had always been a force of nature, and I was such a nerd--and, then, a newly-out lesbian to boot--that I was afraid she'd snub me, her old best friend, as not worthy of her time and reunion. I'd have rather not found her than that.

About ten or fifteen years ago, when the Internet made it easier, I started looking again, but without much hope: the name I knew her by isn't uncommon, and she'd had a different last name from her mother and might have changed it to match her mother rather than her mostly-absent father, and then we were getting to the age when people of our age and class were getting married, and many women do still take their husbands' names. Over the years, I found people with her name several times, but none of them seemed to be her, and after a while I gave it up as one of life's mysteries.

Last night, in one search that took all of ten seconds, I found her on Facebook.

At least I'm, say, 95% sure it's her. There were half a dozen women with the same name, and I sent messages to all of them, just in case. Most of them have written back by now and said sorry, it's not me, but good luck finding your friend.

The one who hasn't written back? I think that one is her.

She did indeed change her last name when she got married, but included her maiden name as part of her middle name on her Facebook profile. Her sampling of friends, which includes a few celebrities, was impressive enough to send me Google-stalking around to find out more.

Here is most of what I found out, which is general enough so that anyone who doesn't know her name won't be able to identify her: she's married to a lawyer a few years older than us, and they have two children and live on the Upper East Side. She donates to and volunteers for various worthy and vaguely-progressive causes. She has a law degree herself, but seems to have retired to stay home and take care of the kids. She goes to charity fundraisers.

Those facts are the bare outline of a certain kind of life, a life I know about from friends of friends, from books and movies, one that's very different from mine; though, except for the geography, it's not so very different from the lives of my students' parents, at my old workplace. I can guess some things about her, just from that outline: that she went to private school through high school, and then to a good college; that somewhere in there she travelled, probably in Europe; that she met her husband in law school or at work; that her kids go to private school, too; that they have household help; that their building has an elevator and a shiny lobby; that they have a summer home in driving distance of the city.

In other ways, I know nothing at all. I don't know anything about her that I know about my old high school and college friends, or even my invisible blogging friends. I don't know where she went to college, what she majored in, whether she passionately wanted to be a lawyer or just kind of fell into it. I don't know whether she ever lived outside New York. I don't know what her favorite books are (though I know that one of her favorite TV series is one that I like, too). I don't know if she kept on holding her friends so tightly, whether she had a lot of friends, whether she was wild in high school. I don't know if it was hard for her to give up work, and if she plans to go back to it when the kids are older. I don't know if she gets along with her mom, or her dad, or her stepfather. I don't know what happened to her little brother, who we used to tease. I don't know what about her kids worries her, if their births were hard, what she's proud of in them. I don't know anything about her grownup self, really.

But I knew her right away, when I saw her Facebook picture, even though I haven't seen her for thirty-five years. She has the same dark hair, the same piercing, forthright eyes. She still looks like a force of nature.

From that, and from the causes she supports and the things she's listed as doing, I know she's the same girl who ran across the street to the playground, and then said she didn't care. The same one who did care, passionately, enough to get people--me--to do what she wanted; the same one who looked over at naptime, giggling and transgressive. She doesn't live a transgressive life now, for sure. The outline of her life is different from when we were four, but the core is the same.

I have a feeling she's not going to write back; it could be that she doesn't even remember us being friends. But it almost doesn't matter: I think I'm finally old enough to not care if she thinks I'm a dork, to not measure us against each other, to not worry, after all these decades, if she thinks I'm worth being friends with. I'm just happy to know what happened to her.

And we're only about halfway through our lives; if she wants to get in touch, she knows how to find me.

Some Perspective

2009-02-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

It is Multiple Deadline Time again at That Job, and so I am sitting here freaking out. Every once in a while I slink over to my email and send something job-related, which relieves my anxiety just enough that I can return to surfing the whitehouse.gov website and reading the press briefings.

Yes, it's come to that. I can't tell if that's because I'm that desperate to procrastinate or the workings of the Obama Administration are that fascinating, or both.

It does, however, make me exceedingly grateful that of all the career paths I could have chosen, I did not pick the one(s) that might have led to me becoming the White House Press Secretary. Just the job I would least like in the world: to stand up every afternoon at 2:00 and have a mob of people yell and harangue me for information that I either don't know or am not supposed to give out.

Yup. It makes That Job seem not so bad.

Two Short Stories About the Mermaid Girl

2009-01-30T00:06:00.000-08:00

1. She had this "All About Me" project for school, in which she had to collect a bunch of things that "symbolized" her as a person and explain her connection to them in detail on index cards. This took days and days and occasioned much drama, of the "I don't knooooow what to doooooo, it's too haaaard" variety. And she only wrote like one brief sentence on each card. Some of them were pretty...enigmatic. So I was going over it with her and trying VERY VERY HARD (and with only moderate success) not to be a helicopter parent and tell her what to write.

One item she included was a beloved sparkly sequinny too-small shirt, along with a card that read, in its entirety, "I chose this shirt because it reminds me of my old school and of my Uncle Skaterboy."

Me: So...the shirt reminds you of your old school?

MG: Yes. Because one time I was wearing it and I bit one of the sequins right off. And that was at my old school. So every time I look at it, I think of my old school.

Me: That's a great story! I bet the kids in your class would love to hear that story!

MG: And you know why it reminds me of Uncle Skaterboy. [He gave it to her.]

Me: Sure. But your classmates won't.

*pause*

Me: Don't you want to write on your card that...

MG: NO.

2. MG was having her bath, and I was rinsing off her hair, and she was not happy.

MG: *whining like a kid much younger than 8* I want my maaaamaaaa!

Me: Yeah, I know. But I'm the one who's here, so there we are.

*pause*

Me: So...what do you say when you're with Mama, and she does something you don't like?

MG: *with matter-of-fact equanimity* I say, I want my mommy!

Me: Huh. So, what do you say when we're both there and do something that makes you mad?

MG: *quite cheerful now* I say, I wish I didn't have any parents!

Me: And what about when you're with someone else, and we're not around?

MG: *positively chipper* Then I say, I want my moms! I want my Mommy, or I want my Mama. Whichever I think of first.

Equation for a New Day

2009-01-25T14:02:00.000-08:00

What do you get when you combine

The Mermaid Girl's newfound obsession with the movie Mad Hot Ballroom and all related dances, especially swing, merengue, and rhumba

+

The adorable orange ukelele that the Renaissance Woman gave me for Jul, after I saw another librarian singing and playing one to excellent effect at a storytime workshop and became convinced that I Must Have one

+

A happy sunny relaxed Sunday morning when none of us had to go to school or work

+

This priceless typo-d headline, and the inspired comments below the post?

Well, I'll tell you what you get. You get RW and MG dancing a ~~box step~~ rhumba around the living room, while I strum along to accompany them (F chord, G chord, C chord, F chord) and we all sing, to the tune of "Guantanamera":

"GUAN-tan-na-mo Bay,
I'm closing GUAN-tan-na-mo Bay,
GUAN-tan-na-mo-o-o-o Bay,
I'm closing GUAN-tan-na-mo-o-o-o Bay!"

[pause for giddy peals of laughter, and repeat]

Not dead!

2009-01-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

You know it's been too long since you've posted when you start getting concerned e-mails from friends asking if you're dead.

I'm not dead! Not yet! I feel happy! Think I'll go for a walk! [<--Geek alert: note gratuitous Monty Python reference.]

Nope, nope, not dead this past month, just crazy what with the snow and the holidays and the running off to Florida to visit my brother, barely getting to the airport in what was I swear the very last taxi in town the morning of January 5th, and there was a REASON it was the last taxi, the driver was busily day-trading on his handheld computer as we slid through the snowy clogged streets until RW and I put on our I-Mean-It voices and made him stop. Still harrowing, though, and traffic was so nasty it took over an hour to get there and we barely made it onto our plane...

Well, anyway, we did make it to the plane, and got to Florida, and came back, and have been catching up ever since. It's almost like those lovely ten days were just a beautiful faraway dream, now it's all homework and laundry and dishes and frantic hunching over the computer on That Job. And the fog rolls in every night and sometimes during the day, so that we can't see the street corner, even, and I start to have near panic-attacks about being surrounded by haze forever.

But the snow is slowly, slowly melting, even though there are big dirty gray chunks of it still hanging around on the edges of the streets.

And this morning we gathered 'round the computer and watched as the 44th President of our home country was sworn in. For eloquence about that, I'll just point you here and here and...well...just about everywhere, today. If I try to do justice to how it feels, I might just give up altogether and then someone will have to send out a searching party to verify my continued existence. So I'll just say...it was good to see it, even on jerky live-streaming in a tiny window on the screen. It was really, really good.

Sumas, Ho!

2008-12-22T18:10:00.001-08:00

OK I think the Dudes on the Crane have had more than enough time above the fold. The memory of that waving leg still freaks me out, though as far as I could tell they were fine. (Really. Really. They were fine.)

I was going to tell the story of My Harrowing Second Annual Holiday-Mailing Trip Down to Sumas In teh Snow last Thursday, in four-part harmony, with feeling, but now it's been a few days and I'm afraid much of the narrative juice has leached out of it. Suffice it to say that the car started lurching and slowing down alarmingly a few miles down the highway, I pulled off at the first exit and drove around frantically (and ever more slowly) looking for a place to pull over, finally found a parking lot that belonged--joy of joys-- to an auto-supply shop! just as the car seemed to be getting over its ailment and speeding up again, pulled over, the guys inside spent a good amount of time brainstorming about my problem (and intermittently dissing VWs), they said it was probably not a crisis situation and gave me the name of a good VW mechanic.

On my way back out to the car I called RW, who said oh, yeah, she knew that mechanic, and also she knew that car problem, it had happened with her last year and the mechanic said it was moisture in the gas tank and put something in it to dry it up. I turned around & went back in & told the car guys that, and they said, Oh, We Know what he put in there, here, we'll sell you a bottle of it, pour half the bottle in the gas tank and then fill up with premium when you get down to the States (it's cheaper there), and sold me a bottle of something for $3.99.

So then all was well until I thought I missed my exit and got off at the next exit and then had to figure out where I was while also not getting stuck on a snowy side road (by the time you get that far East, all the cars have snow tires if they're driving off the highway. Except not me), somehow managed to find a gas station with only a little skidding around, got directions, got back on the highway, and then the car started lurching & slowing down just as I got off at the right exit.

So I lurched the few miles down to the border, whereupon I was hassled by the requisite A**hole Border Guy--they appear at random intervals and never when you expect them--who chided me for sealing the packages so he couldn't easily get a good look at them, but fortunately (for time's sake, not for what was in them, which was exactly what I said was in them) didn't insist on opening them then and there.

The post office itself was pretty straightforward, and everything got mailed, and then I stopped at a gas station & tried to fill up with premium, only the premium gas pump was frozen shut. So I drove home without even stopping for cheap cheese, or actually back to work because by then I was late for my 1:00 shift. It should've only taken two or three hours but it took four and a half. And I was very very cold.

Well. It felt heroic at the time. But it's hard to capture the magnitude of it. Because when you come down to it, I drove an hour on the highway, mailed some letters, and drove back.

In other news, today I feel like Norma Frickin Rae, in a similar spirit of exaggeration to that of the heroic epic above. If you ask me I will tell you about it.

And two people at work spontaneously wished me Happy Chanukah, which was pretty nice.

It's all lighter from here on out!

The Dudes on the Crane

2008-12-17T23:41:00.000-08:00

This morning I went to a meeting for That Job. I had to wait in the snow and take the bus downtown, but I didn't mind. These meetings are generally pretty fun; I don't get to do much creative stuff myself, but I get to work with creative people and artists, and we spend a lot of time brainstorming and tossing around ideas and folding up pieces of paper and scribbling on them and such.

The meeting took place in a conference room in a big building. The room has one of those panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows, and across the street was a squared-out, sort of hollow construction crane at the same level as our floor-- that is, 9 stories up--and angled straight at us. At one point we were deep in discussion about some item we were trying to figure out how to make, when I looked out the window and saw that there was a leg sticking out of the bottom of the crane, sort of waving around, like maybe the guy crawling around in the crane had lost his footing on the snowy metal.

I must've gasped, because everyone else looked out the window too. The mood, which had been in turns raucous and purposeful, became charged--here we were, all together, a bunch of people who really didn't know each other that well, witnessing something that was either horrific--if the guy was in danger--or funny--if he wasn't--and it was obvious that in either case there was nothing we could do about it.

I covered my eyes. "I can't look, I can't look!" I cried. "I'm scared of heights! I can't even look!"

I looked again anyway. The leg was gone, pulled back into the boxy part of the crane, and then there it was waving out the bottom again. Then we saw another guy, crawling around inside the crane.

"There are two of them!" another administrator gasped.

"I'm pretty sure they wear harnesses," one guy said.

"They're fine," said someone. By then it seemed pretty clear that they were actually fine, or at least we decided that they must be, and we were overtaken by a wave of giddiness and black humor.

"And we wouldn't be able to see them hit if they fell, anyway," said someone else.

"I'm sure there's a trampoline down there," an artist reassured me. "They'd just bounce right back up."

"Maybe we should put up a sign in the window," the graphic artist suggested. "Like, DO YOU NEED HELP?"

Things went on in this vein for a few minutes, along with some discussions of equations regarding terminal velocity that seemed perfectly appropriate and hysterically funny at the time and now seem callous and horrifying. And then we went back to planning.

Tonight, one of the administrators emailed me some meeting notes that she's sending to our boss. I wrote back with a few of my own notes, and added that it was probably just as well that she hadn't included the part about the guys on the crane.

She wrote back to me: "I didn't include the part about the dudes on the crane because I never ever want to think about that again. :)"

And I know just what she means.

Checklist

2008-12-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

Cards: Almost all done, except for a couple people whose addresses I have to get (and if you want one, and didn't get one last year, let me know-- we have lots!) Still need to be mailed, mostly in one big batch South of the border later this week.

Shopping: Done, mostly online. Except for RW. She is the toughest.

Packages: A couple of small ones still to go out. Need cardboard for mailing photos.

MG's photos: Wallet-sizes cut up, bigger photos allocated. Not all sent yet (see "Packages", above).

Menorahs and Hanukkah candles: unearthed.

Party this weekend, preparation for: Oh, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, right.

However, the art is all hanged! Hung? Hanged? Well, it's up, anyway.

Question of the Day

2008-12-14T17:33:00.001-08:00

WHY is hanging pictures such a miserable thing?

I don't think even moving put this much strain on me and RW. Feh.

In Which I Rant About the Fiction of an Entire Country

2008-12-13T20:35:00.001-08:00

I apologize in advance to all Canadian readers and writers. But I don't often feel inspired to produce a big literary rant, and so I thought I'd better get this one down before I forget.

The Renaissance Woman and I have been interviewing for lots of library jobs. Sometimes, during these interviews, we're asked to talk about something we've read lately. Sometimes, since we're in Canada, our interlocutors want to know about a Canadian book we know well enough to talk up.

Here's my problem: I find much mainstream critically acclaimed Canadian grownup literature to be...depressing.

I know, I know, it's not fair to generalize about a whole country's literature. But, here, here are some prominent, bestselling and/or award-bedecked Canadian authors/books, and quick summaries therof. Draw your own conclusions:

Miriam Toews, A Complicated Kindness: Depressed and miserable Mennonite family, struggling to communicate with each other and in constant fear being shunned by their stultifying community. And RW says her new book is even sadder.

Douglas Coupland, Generation X and other works: Alienated professionals in their twenties and thirties, living in anomie and isolation, working in cubicles.

Heather O'Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals: Alienated and miserable young girl whose parents are heroin addicts.

Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries. I'll just give you the Wikipedia summary: "The fictional autobiography about the life of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is marked by death and loss from the beginning, when her mother dies during childbirth. Through marriage and motherhood, Daisy struggles to find contentment, never truly understanding her life's true purpose."

Alice Munro, virtually the entire oevre of: Short stories about miserable women, often unhappy in their marriages and/or living in isolation in the countryside or in stultifying small towns. Sometimes, for variety, their children run away and the protagonists never see or hear from them again.

Margaret Laurence, virtually the entire oevre of: Novels, similarly depressing to the above.

Ann-Marie Macdonald, Fall on Your Knees. God, I loved this book. But it's incredibly bleak. Spoiler alert: early on, a woman dies while giving birth to premature twins. As the family reels in grief, the twins' older sister takes one of the babies out to the river, believing it must be baptized to be saved. Of course, the baby dies of exposure. The rest pretty much follows from there as everyone is overwhelmed with grief and guilt for hundreds of pages.

Anita Rau Badami, Tamrind Mem: Actually, not quite as depressing as the others. But still: nobody knows how to talk to each other, nobody understands each other, the whole family is basically mired in mutual recriminations and incomprehension. Our heroine eventually decamps from India to Canada, where she continues to feel baffled by and isolated from her mother and sister.

Okay, I will give you Margaret Atwood and Robertson Davies. They are not depressing, or not as much. Yes, terrible things happen in their books: people die, people betray each other; in one recent Atwood the entire human race basically goes extinct and comes close to taking all the other species with it. But still, there is a certain spark and irony which lively things up a bit.

It's true that bad things happen in ALL literature, all over the world. Or we would not have plot. And I do understand that without the mandatory happy endings and/or hopeful coming-of-age themes of children's and YA fiction, things can get kind of bummed out in general, and that this is not specific to Canadian literature.

Truth is, I can't claim anything like a comprehensive knowledge of CanLit, so maybe it's rash to draw conclusions. I have not yet read the new Karen X. Tulchinsky book, for example, the one all of Vancouver is reading this winter. And I hear Ivan Coyote's stories are good, and funny. And from the little I've read of Nalo Hopkinson, she's terrific and not at all depressing.

But I don't think it's a coincidence that the three authors I just mentioned are each non-mainstream in at least one big way: lesbian, transgender, African-Canadian, genre ghetto (science fiction).

Nor is it coincidence that I kept wanting to use the same words when describing the books above: Anomie, isolation, bleak, hopeless. Over and over, Canadian literary heroes and heroines live their lives in despair of ever truly connecting with the people they are supposedly closest to. Over and over, they face lives of isolation and loneliness, often in inhospitable environments.

I mean, even the Brits aren't as depressed as this in their literature, and they've had it way worse, what with the Blitz and the lack of central heating and the brutalizing boarding schools and all.

(Oh and then there's Stuart Maclean, who is funny and un-depressing (mostly). But his stories are really humorous radio pieces, written for the ear, not the page. It's a different kind of writing.)

But be that as it may...what gives, Canada? Why so blue?

Wonderland

2008-12-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

We interrupt this blog to bring you the following breaking news:

SNOW! SNOW! IT'S SNOWING! IT'S BEAUTIFUL! IT'S PERFECT! IT'S REALLY SNOWING! NOW IT'S COMING DOWN HARDER! IT'S LIKE A WATERFALL OF SNOW, AND NOT A SLOW WATERFALL, A FAST WATERFALL! I THINK IT'S STICKING! MOMMY, LOOK, IT'S STICKING TO THE ROOF A LITTLE BIT OVER THERE! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! SNOW! AREN'T YOU HAPPY, MOMMY? SNOW!!!

OMG!

2008-12-11T00:06:00.000-08:00

We have Olympics figure skating tickets!!

(Well, not the actual tickets yet, they'll be mailed later.)

We put in for men's, women's, and pairs figure skating, figuring we might get one of them if we were lucky. And we got men's short program.

Considering the overwhelming demand for tickets, it feels like we won the lottery. I guess we did, though we're paying them rather than the other way around. (The VanOc email was somewhat confusing, so I confirmed that we did actually get tickets by checking our Visa account, and, yep, there's a big new charge there, so I guess we really bought them.)

Her Voice is the Loudest (in our house, at least)

2008-12-10T21:40:00.001-08:00

So, the Annual Santastravaganza Performance at the Mermaid Girl's school was today. I went to both shows: the afternoon one full of little siblings and grandparents, and the packed-to-the-gills evening one, and both were very good, and MG's class did a nice job with their dance.

Just like last year, the theme was all about how wonderful Santa is and how all the little children are waiting breathless for his arrival. At least this year there was a literary tie-in; it was based on The Polar Express. I felt for MG, though, especially at the end where the protagonist has a little speech about how the silver bells will always ring for all who truly believe. Aside from the Jewish thing, RW doesn't believe in encouraging kids to believe in Santa, and so MG has never believed although at times I know she has wanted to, and has wanted Santa to come. She believes in Nisse (still), and the Tooth Fairy (sort of), but, as she said to me somewhat wistfully the other night, "I know Santa can't be real, because if he was, he would come to everyone, right?"

So I felt for her, being inundated with all that singing and dancing and pontificating about Santa and Presents and Sleigh Bells and Belief. Afterwards, when we were home eating our macaroni and cheese and she'd graciously received congratulations and we'd talked about which parts we liked the most, I asked her which was harder for her at school, the stuff about Santa or the stuff about Jesus.

"The Jesus stuff," she said. "But don't tell Rona." (Her very kind, very Catholic after-school caregiver and surrogate grandma.)

I was surprised; I'd been sure she'd say Santa, and that my frothing at the mouth about those religious songs she's singing in choir was just my own baggage.

"You know," I said, "I decided not to make a fuss about you singing those songs about Jesus, because I didn't think you'd like it if I did. Was that right?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Were you worried I might?"

"Yeah!" She looked relieved.

"I also didn't think it would be fair to Mrs. Ito [the choir director], especially since you started in the choir so late in the year. I thought she might be kind of upset if I asked her to change the songs in November."

"Yeah!" MG said. "She'd be going crazy! And then she'd be like, [pompous voice that's not like the fabulous Mrs. Ito at all] 'Children, we have to learn ALL NEW SONGS, because MG is a Jew!'"

She put this lovely fruity funny curlicue on the word "Jew". Then she did a handstand. I cracked up, in amazement as much as anything. I hadn't realized she'd thought the whole thing through with such insight.

"And that would be so much fun for you!" I said. She cracked up.

Then I told her I had been thinking about going to talk (nicely and kindly) with Mrs. Ito in January, and asking if, since they're singing religious songs in choir, they could include a song or two about Hanukkah next year, and would that be okay with her? I was surprised at how enthusiastic she was about that prospect, so I guess I really will do it.

Then she sang me the offending songs, "Away in a Manger" and "Silent Night." I refrained from correcting her pitch.

You know, I think she's old enough now to take part in our annual reading of Grace Paley's "The Loudest Voice."

Standing on a Table

2008-12-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

This is for people everywhere who are facing the prospect of doing something they are scared of. (You know who you are.)

Let YA author John Green inspire you!

Job Updates

2008-12-08T19:02:00.001-08:00

So, I interviewed for a job today. It's a job in a system I'd very much like to work in, doing something I'd very much like to do.

I probably won't get it, since hiring is determined about 90% by seniority. Still, I think I did all right at the interview.

It helped that last week I phoned someone I knew was on the hiring committee, to ask about the job and what they were looking for. It never would have occurred to me to do this-- in fact, I was under the distinct impression that calling ahead to ask questions of someone on the inside was sort of cheating. Wouldn't you think? But a friend and mentor who's been in the system for a long time urged me to do it, and said it was important and expected. And indeed, the hiring person seemed fine with it, there were several interview questions that I wouldn't have known how to answer if I hadn't talked with her beforehand.

On the other hand, in this system you're not allowed to use any notes during your interview. I couldn't refer to my resume or break out my hand-written book log to jog my memory about my favorite titles.

It all seems kind of arbitrary: why allow someone to call ahead and get tips? Why not allow someone to use notes? At other systems, it's the exact opposite.

In other news: RW has been Abroad, on a business trip, for the last two days. Isn't that glamorous? She had to do a presentation and was all worried about it, but yesterday she sent an email saying they'd liked it so much they asked her to present it again that afternoon!

She comes home tomorrow. MG and I can't wait.

Bechdel Victorious

2008-12-07T22:48:00.001-08:00

I'm a fan of Alison Bechdel from way way back. I remember reading early Dykes to Watch Out for strips--before it became a serial featuring Mo and the gang, even; when it was just a series of observations on lesbian life--in the dinky little NYC queer paper, when I was just out of college, just out as a lesbian, and floundering around in a post-college haze in the big city. I felt like Bechdel was my companion in the bewildering maze of grownup lesbian life, and I went on feeling like that for a good decade or more. Her characters are mostly five or ten years older than me, and their lives and problems aren't too far off from mine and my friends' a lot of the time.

When her graphic novel Fun Home came out a couple of years ago, I was as wowed as anyone else, but was...bemused to see Alison Bechdel hailed as if she'd come out of nowhere, when she's had a passionately devoted fan base for lo these twenty years. I bet I'm not the only one who still has a DTWOF T-shirt tucked away, and one or two greeting cards from back in the 90's, when she was still selling novelties.

And now the great Gray Lady has noticed that she was here all along.

Wow.

I feel really happy, but...old.

I stand defeated at 20 Questions

2008-12-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

Things the Mermaid Girl made us guess at Twenty Questions tonight:

Roller coaster
Armadillo
Sea anemone
For Sale sign
Hellevator ride at the PNE

Uncle Skaterboy, his spouse, the Union King, and I were able to guess the first two, though it took us a while. The last three were me alone in the car, and they were hard!

Thoughts on Reading (Well, Skimming) This Week's New Yorker

2008-12-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or does Naomi Klein sound like a truly irritating person? I can tell Larissa McFarquahar thinks she is, but is she really?

On the other hand, I am less irritated by Tracy Morgan's character on 30 Rock than Nancy Franklin is.

Articles by Ian Frazier and Adam Gopnik. Bonanza! If only Malcolm Gladwell had one, too, the Trifecta of New Yorker Awesomeness would be complete.

This whole issue gives the impression that the entire New York Metropolitan Area is battening down the economic hatches in a big way. But for most people I know, things are not so different than they were a few months ago. Maybe the economic crisis is less severe here in Vancouver. Or maybe the New Yorker people are looking more at the high fliers, who are bound to be more affected. Or maybe I just live under a rock.

Apropos of nothing, except maybe the Naomi Klein article: Could someone remind me what is the matter with liberalism? From the left, I mean, not the right. It came up in an online discussion a few weeks ago and has been nagging at me ever since.

I'm embarrassed to ask, because this is one of those things I should know already. But either I never did really know and only pretended to, or I once knew and have forgotten in the vagaries of middle age.

I asked RW, daughter of old lefties, and she started singing the old Phil Ochs song, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." She then glossed it, explaining that liberals are reputed to be hypocrites who only care about being liked.

And, okay, but I mean aside from that.

Skip This One if you Hate Lists

2008-12-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

Today, I am going to brag. And also to descend into listiness. Because I have been very very productive in the last two days.

Here's what I did yesterday:

--Had the Energy Evaluation people here for two hours while they tested our house
--Went over their report and made my own list of improvements we can do which might earn us a rebate from the govt. and maybe even a bonus if we do enough stuff.
--Worked on That Job for an hour
--Billed my freelance blogging job
--Compiled all our Extended Medical receipts and filled out the reimbursement form. (This was major. It took two hours, and required two different phone calls to various entities.)
--Picked up the Mermaid Girl from school, and while on the playground asked her friend's mom for a childcare favor for next week
--Drove MG to circus
--Bought groceries
--Did dishes
--Arranged for a friend to come over & play with MG for this afternoon
--Made my super-special Deviled Eggs for RW to take to her library's xmas lunch party this afternoon
--Reviewed and signed MG's report card (she's doing very well in everything except time management and speaking up in class. And her attendance record bizarrely lists eight absences for the month of October, which I think may have been a mistaken recording of some of her many late arrivals).

And today!

--Worked on That Job for two hours, and got things moving at long last
--Had a pre-interview interview on the phone with someone who's going to interview me for a job next week
--Worked at my regular job for seven hours
--Photocopied all the Extended Medical receipts before I send them in
--Encouraged RW, who is having her own contract job anxieties

Of course the bad news is that there is still incomprehensibly more to do than can be done in the time we have to do it. But still, it always surprises me when I get into a productivity jag like this, how getting things done makes me want to get more things done and it all makes me unexpectedly happy and cheerful. I think it's like stasis and momentum, where once a thing gets moving it wants to keep moving, and once it stops in front of the computer and sluggishly surfs the Internet that is all it wants to keep doing, forever and ever, unless jolted out of its static state.

More on That Job

2008-12-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

It is SO HELPFUL to have the company of my invisible friends inside the computer. Thank you. The suggestions helped, and also made me laugh, especially Phantom's which is a trick I definitely use sometimes-- in fact, the spectre of the Freelance Job is probably responsible for more of my productivity in the rest of my life than anything else. Frequent rewards are good, too. I got a bit done yesterday, and will be talking on the phone with my boss today and then doing a bit more.

But ah, if only I could print the whole thing out and look at it! Or just buckle down and get it finished! I feel compelled to explain that this is a complex, year-long project, with many different aspects and plates to keep spinning, each dependent on one or more previous aspects and each with its own deadline, and involves coordinating disparate people (and sometimes groups of people) and also reporting to multiple people and entities, and scheduling meetings, and sometimes not knowing how much I'm supposed to be doing on my own and what I need my boss's okay for and what I can just decide independently, and sometimes something I thought was no biggie will in fact be an Issue that not only do I need my boss's okay for, but she has to take up to her bosses, who dither and make us all wait while meanwhile people are waiting on my okay and wondering when they'll be able to get going with the next piece.

Hmm. When I put it that way, it's no wonder I get scared and procrastinate.

The thing is, this is my second year doing this job (which is probably better described as "contract" than "freelance," now that I think of it), and last year felt perfectly justified in calling my boss every few weeks and saying "okay, what do I do now?", but since I've DONE it once already I feel like I should be able to just get down to it this time around, and yet I find myself paralyzed. Sometimes, like Rachel, I do procrastinate because I'm bored, but in this case--and this is what happens to me more often when it's work-related and not, say, housework--I procrastinate because I'm uncertain and scared and feel like I should know what I'm doing and yet I somehow don't.

It's a lot like what Baggage is writing about in this post: despite myself, I have the sense that someone else out there would really know how to do this job, while I'm just muddling along. Intellectually, I know that not only did I get hired, which means that as far as the Powers that Be are concerned I'm the best person to do it, but my boss specifically asked me to do it again this year and (despite what I felt like were all my mess-ups last year) that I did a really good job. But I can imagine what someone who was actually doing a good job would be doing, and it's a lot different from what I've been doing: they'd have charts and printed lists and sacrosanct weekly chunks of time set aside for this project, and would be unafraid and be constantly working backwards from the final deadline and keeping people in the loop and organizing meetings and phone conferences and, and, and...

I am not doing all that, or at least not in the manner of the Ideal Person. But I did somehow manage (with a lot of help) to get the project out the door in time for the final deadline last year, and it seemed to work okay, so I guess I can do it this year. And it's probably okay to keep asking my boss for help and feedback. It's different every year, after all.

Okay! Onward!

Because Working On My Own At Home Is Truly Not My Forte

2008-12-02T13:13:00.001-08:00

...and also because I apparently have no self-discipline whatsoever and am freaking myself out about that,

would someone please, please tell me that:

a) I really need to get to work on my freelance library/project manager job, just focus for an hour or so, because there is stuff that needs to get done, and

b) I really need to not panic, because it is not Too Late Already and everything can indeed get done?

The challenges of keeping both (a) and (b) in mind simultaneously are causing me to hyperventilate and guiltily procrastinate such that I am neither having any fun goofing off nor getting anything accomplished. So if you have a blog and have noticed a disproportionate number of return hits coming in rapid succession from my part of the world (and you are not Andrew Sullivan, who actually posts every hour so, so that checking compulsively actually makes some kind of sense, though it is starting to freak me out and make me wonder if Andrew Sullivan is some kind of blogging robot or maybe a conglomerate), that may be part of the reason.

Turn It On Its Side and It's a Figure Meaning Infinity

2008-12-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

Well, heck, let's see how long I can keep this daily-posting streak going.

One day in fourth grade, my teacher, Ms. Cantelmo, had a fit--remember teachers having fits?--she just lost it and started yelling at the whole class that we needed to get our acts together, buckle down and LEARN THE FRICKING MULTIPLICATION TABLES. Well, she didn't say fricking, but you get the idea. And that we'd better stop goofing off and go home and memorize those tables and have them learned by Monday.

I skittered off home in a panic. Of course it wasn't anything I'd done that had set her off, but I was sure we were going to have a big test on them on Monday and that I was going to FAIL because I did know some of the multiplication tables but I was a long ways from having them down, especially the 6's and 7's.

So I sat down in my room that night, on a chair in front of my little orange suitcase record player, and I listened to the Multiplication Rock album over and over and over until I could sing the songs by heart. Even the sevens, even though I didn't like Lucky Seven that much, I thought that rabbit was kind of irritating.

By Monday of course Ms. Cantelmo had forgotten all about it, but it didn't matter: I knew those tables backwards and forwards and up and down and sideways. Even today sometimes when I'm trying to remember, say, what twelve times eight is, I'll hear Blossom Dearie's voice in my head reminding me that it's the same as ten times eight plus two times eight: "80 plus 16...96!"

The Mermaid Girl is working on her multiplication tables now; apparently we've advanced mathematically here in North America and third grade is now the standard age for multiplication-table learning. Tonight I brought home Schoolhouse Rock on DVD from work, and we watched a scattering of songs--two or three as a reward after each step towards bedtime. By the time she'd done her homework, practiced the piano, put on her pajamas, fed the fish, and brushed her teeth, we'd run through most of Multiplication Rock and a fair bit of Grammar Rock. She got as big a kick out of the videos as I did--I'd forgotten how funny and clever the animation is--but I also saw her focusing during the math ones, mouthing the words to herself.

So now my kid will be taking up the fine old tradition of learning math facts from Multiplication Rock. Thank you, Bob Dorough. And thank you, Ms. Cantelmo, too, wherever you are.

I Am a Toilet Hero!

2008-11-30T11:05:00.001-08:00

And so we have come nearly full-circle here in NaBloPoSloland, from a post about poop and pee early on, to high-minded political outrage and analysis, to seasonal grouching, to linguistic pedantry, and now, on the final day of November, we're back to the poop.

If you are very squeamish, you should probably just stop here.

I think I have mentioned our mono-toilet (uni-toilet?) state. That one toilet became clogged this morning. It was flushed, and the flushing was counterproductive to the point of almost--but not quite--overflowing and breaching the carefully-tended divide that we maintain in our culture between The Toilet and Everything Else Except Possibly a Baby's Diaper. It was perilously close, but it didn't quite go there.

Plunging was not productive, and just made everything more disgusting.

I waited. It drained, but slowly.

I flushed again. Oh--mistake.

So, I turned to the Internet, and found this handy link, which included a very helpful video. What I especially like about the video is that the voiceover has a British accent and at the end, after the person in the video has successfully unclogged the toilet (with appropriate discouraged and disgusted facial expressions), the voiceover voice says, in a brisk and cheerful and yet matter-of-fact manner, "Well done. You've been very brave."

Somehow this gave me the courage to go on, and I gathered the recommended supplies: rubber gloves, newspapers, bucket, and wire hanger, and ventured once more into the breach.

Where I proceeded to try everything recommended in the video, in rapid succession. At first, none of it worked, and I was about to send the Renaissance Woman out to Home Depot for a toilet snake.

But then! I tried letting it drain down again, and plunging again, and I thought I heard signs of progress in the pipes. So I dumped in a big bucket of cold water, and it flushed! And I dumped in another bucket, and it flushed again!

And then I washed and disinfected everything, including my hands, and went out to the kitchen and announced the toilet fixed. Which was good, because by then everyone else had to use it.

The End!

In Which I Nit-Pick

2008-11-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

Everyone has their own personal word-usage pet peeves (well, don't they?) (and probably someone's is people using "their" as a singular. Sorry, it's common gender-neutral usage now; I'm claiming it.) (and probably someone else's peeve is overuse of parentheses, for which I have no defense.)

Ahem. Where was I?

Right. Herewith, some word-usage things that drive me bananas. I mean no offense to you if you are a perpetrator of any of these; it is your perfect right, just as it is mine to use the word "parent" as a verb even though to many people that particular usage is, lo, as to the sound of fingernails upon a chalkboard. As are these to me:

1. Unique. According to Dictionary.com, the first two definitions of "Unique" are "existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary" and "having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable". Got that? Incomparable. That means: You cannot qualify the word "unique." Something cannot be "more unique" than something else," or "sort of unique," or even "really unique." Either something is unique, like New York City, or it is not, like the legions of Harry Potter knockoffs crowding the children's fiction shelves of a library near you.

2. Nonplussed. Again, Dictionary.com: "filled with bewilderment"; the adjectival form of the verb "nonplus," which means "To put at a loss as to what to think, say, or do; bewilder. " Basically, if you are nonplussed you are taken aback, thrown, knocked for a loop, etc. Which is the opposite of how I've often heard/read it employed. I think that "non" at the beginning throws people off, and they think it means something similar to "nonchalant." But no, no, no: If I say, say, "When he broke the news to her, she was nonplussed" it means "She had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA he was gay/a Republican/a Vulcan, and was totally freaked out, even though she was trying gamely to be polite," not "She'd known for ages and wondered why he even bothered to make a big deal out of it."

3. Gift, or Gifted. These are, respectively, a noun meaning "a present someone gives you" and an adjective meaning "what your brilliant child, who reads at a college level and can do long division in her head, is". THEY ARE NOT VERBS. There is no good reason for them to be verbs. There is a perfectly good verb that means the same thing that people mean who are going around saying "My great-uncle gifted me with this lovely and yet gigantic urn, but it doesn't fit in my living room so I am going to gift it to my little cousin", and that verb is the verb TO GIVE. As in "My great-uncle gave me this strangely hideous urn." Or "I am going to give it to my very goth little cousin, who might appreciate it better," or, if you must employ the passive voice, "I was given this weird vase by some relative who thinks I like anything black; want to help me smash it up for mosaic pieces?"

I will make an exception for the term "re-gift," on the highly scientific grounds that "re-give" just doesn't sound right.

4. Disagree with. I didn't notice this one much until I became obsessed with the controversy over same-sex marriage in the wake of this year's election. I read a lot, a lot, a lot of blogs and comments and websites and articles, and then I remembered why I am not usually more political: because it makes me tired and cranky and angry and upset to read the opinions of people who seem to me to be so manifestly wrong, and not just wrong about anything but about me and people like me (in one major aspect, anyway). I know if I were a better person, a more political person, I would reach out to and engage with these people and either try to convince them of my rightness, or, even better, to find common ground with them, and thus work to make the world a better place, but I am not a better person and after a while I just stopped reading all those sites.

But not before I had noted one very disturbing trend, and that was the tendency of many participants in various debates to start their comments with the phrase "I disagree with gay/same-sex marriage, and..." or even "I disagree with gay/same-sex marriage, but..." This phrase just seemed wrong to me. Not ethically or morally wrong, but wrong in relation to the English language.

I mean, you can disagree with another person ("I disagree with the previous commenter, who wants to destroy traditional marriage") and you can disagree with an idea or philosophy ("I disagree with the notion that church and state should be separate entities") but two people marrying each other is an action, and marriage is a state of being, and you can't disagree with an action or a state or with any non-personified being, for that matter. It would be like me saying "I disagree with exercise," or "I disagree with Mount Vesuvius" which are both meaningless statements. However, I could say "Exercise disagrees with me," or "Volcanic eruptions disagree with me" which are both proper word usage and factually true, although they employ a tertiary meaning of the word "disagree".

Or, if I were to mean what I think most of those commenters mean, I could say "I disapprove of exercise/volcanic eruptions." However, my disapproval is not going to stop other people from going to gyms, or volcanoes from erupting. Nor should it. And I look forward to the day when other people's disapproval of (not disagreement with) same-sex marriage similarly matters not a whit to me and mine.

And in that, I believe I am not unique.

Now you have been given all the English-language curmudgeonliness, and all the political commentary, that I have in me to rant.

I hope it didn't nonplus you.

Proof of actual illness: forgot to title this post the first time around

2008-11-28T09:01:00.000-08:00

Bad news: Sick.

Good news: Not THAT sick, no fever, but sick enough that I have a headache and occasional chills and my eyes hurt and the muscles between my nose and mouth hurt (what's up with that? I've never noticed that before) and the thought of trying to do anything or solve any problems makes me want to weep.

Bad news: Had to CALL IN. I HATE calling in. Why is it that I always feel like I'm lying when I call in sick, even when I actually AM sick?

Good news: Get to stay HOME and lie in bed and nap and drink tea, which is just exactly all I feel like doing.

Bad news: If I'm not better by 4:00 or so, I will have to CALL IN for tomorrow, too. To a different supervisor, who is not as sympathetic and makes people call their own subs, even sick.

Good news: Benefits! So, sick pay!

Dilemma: Is the sick pay worth the guilt? I think so. Will sleep on it.

Love Thursday: Say Cheese Edition

2008-11-27T10:52:00.000-08:00

Family photo sessions can be stressful for kids. There's something about being coaxed to smile on command, about the pressure of being recorded for posterity, about the focused attention that you have no control over, that can make a kid really crabby and embarrassed and unhappy.

I speak from experience; one of my earliest memories is of an extended-family photo session that took place in my family's apartment when I was about three years old. The vague memory I have of crying and feeling miserable and guilty and out of control is corroborated by the photo itself, which features over a dozen gamely smiling parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, plus my oblivious and photogenic then-baby brother, and me, the outlier, pouting in the edge of the frame in my fancy dress.

The Mermaid Girl, alas, is of a similar opinion. And it's just her misfortune to live in an era of ubiquitous digital cameras, and to have not only two (or three, or four, depending on how you're counting) adoring parents, but also more than the usual complement of grandparents and other grownup relatives, all of whom want to snap photos of her, or look at photos of her, or both.

As a result, she spends a lot of her life ducking and scowling as cameras are pointed at her. Mostly--o irony of ironies--pointed by me, the former photo-hating child.

When my mom offered to hire a professional photographer during the time when she and my brother and his family were all visiting here last month, I had mixed feelings: I thought it would be nice to have a picture of all of us together, but I didn't think MG would be happy about it.

And, indeed, she was not: the photo session was supposed to take place in the park, but it was pouring rain on the appointed day and so we had to relocate to our hastily-cleaned living room. The session time was 2:00-4:00 PM, so MG came home from school that day to a house full of people in mid-photo-shoot, including her happy and photogenic little cousin, who was having a swell time and chatting up a storm with the photographer. MG was hungry and tired and wanted to unwind, but we didn't have time for that. The photographer was only there for another 45 minutes, and she had to go pose right away: first by herself, then with us.

Of course, she'd been prepared ahead of time and knew this was going to happen. And of course, we knew the timing and circumstances weren't ideal. But it was the only way we could make the session work at all, so we'd just scheduled it when we could and hoped for the best.

I will not go into detail about how that worked out. Suffice it to say, none of us--including MG--were very happy with our kid by the end of the photo shoot.

Just before my mom left a few weeks later, the photographer sent her an email with a link to the photo proof page. I was afraid to look at them, sure that MG's crabbiness and our frustration would be evident in each shot, and that we'd have nothing usable at all to send to the many friends and relations who'd be waiting for pictures.

And then I looked at the page, and was astonished.

Somehow, in the midst of that far-from-ideal afternoon, the photographer had managed to take several shots of our child that managed to actually make it appear that she was having a good time, and even caught one (only one) of the three of us where RW and I don't look like we want to strangle her. There were also happy, friendly photos of my brother and me together, and of my brother's family, including their gorgeous daughter, and a few of all seven of us, miraculously all smiling at the same time.

It was as if the photographer had strained this messy, sometimes-squabbling, sometimes-grouchy imperfect group of people through her lens and found the family we are at our best: happy, convivial, relaxed--ourselves, our real selves, our real family, but better.

I'm sure that many dozens of shots were discarded in the midst of those few good ones. But the good ones were there. It's good to remember that.

Even MG liked them when she saw them. My favorite, though, which is also my mom's favorite, is one that the Mermaid Girl hated on sight. So, relatives, please forgive us if we don't send it out-- you'll be getting one of the happy ones, which is also what we'll have on our mantelpiece. But just as I love that she could catch our best selves in the midst of that rainy afternoon, I love what this photographer could see in a sulky, angry kid who was looking her straight in the eye and refusing to smile.

Because I love this kid, too, as well as the cheerful, compliant one.

Happy Love Thursday. And may those of you who are spending this weekend with family be able to find beauty in the ordinary happy moments and maybe even in the unsmiling ones, too.

How I Know It's Time to Go to Bed

2008-11-26T23:12:00.000-08:00

I just misread "Google" in my tab header as "Giggle."

All right, then. Closing the laptop. Closssssiiinggg....

Fishy Newsflash

2008-11-26T09:02:00.001-08:00

This morning, one of the tetras was gone. Not in the castle, not behind the filter, not in any of the shells. No splashes outside the tank.

The other tetra isn't saying anything, but is suspiciously pale.

The Mermaid Girl is upset. So am I, to tell the truth. RW is going to call the fish store when they open at 10 so we can try to at least figure out what happened.

Update: Still no sign of the missing fish, even after a thorough cleaning of the tank. RW even called the Tetra HelpLine, but they had no suggestions. The fish store says it must be in there, but it's looking more and more like the other fish ate it, however unlikely--and creepy--that seems.

On the plus side, MG seems totally over it and is just thrilled that she won a little bobblehead cat at school. I, on the other hand, am still shuddering at the thought of little fishie being eaten, skeleton and all, by the other little fishie. Blrgh.

Circus Update, With Thanks

2008-11-25T22:38:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me the other day how long the Mermaid Girl has been doing circus and I added it up and realized it's been almost four years, so that would be nearly half her life. She probably doesn't remember a time before circus class, but I do, and I remember the feeling of, oh! this is the right thing for her! when she started. She'd always been limber and athletic, from a baby, and it was evident early on that she'd be happiest if she did something with all that physicality, and she liked ballet and gymnastics okay, but not especially much, and plus with both of them there's the long-term worry about body image.

But circus, for her, has been very close to juuust right: the right mix of discipline and fun, of performance and athleticism, of things she's good at and things that are a challenge for her. One of the nice aspects of my schedule this year has been that I've been able to take her to her circus class every week. It's three hours long, so I usually spend some of the time on errands, but I often stay around for the first hour or so and I've gotten to see her do just about all the stations at some point.

I've seen her climb high up the rope, as she's been able to do for years now, but then let herself down hand-under-hand with a flingy showy flourish of each arm that was new and very showmanlike, and I've seen her wrap herself up in a complicated pattern on the tissu, and then let herself down so that she flips and flops like a Chinese yo-yo and lands safely on the mat. I've seen her bend herself into an upside-down U shape to form the corner of a pyramid, with other kids leaning on her, and I've seen her work on an act on the triple trapeze with a girl in her group, the two of them swinging and hanging from their knees and pulling themselves up in unison. I've seen her do tumbles and flips and get praised for them, and have realized in a flash that the jumping and flipping she does on the couch and on our bed isn't just goofing off, but real practice, that she's practicing actual moves and techniques towards a goal, and that her coaches can see it pay off.

And I've seen her struggle, too. Some kids come to class on their own unicycles, their parents holding the door for them as they wheel themselves in, but unicycling isn't MG's thing; given the choice, she'd be happy to drop that part of class. But because it's part of the core program, she doggedly works on it every week, and is starting to get to the point where she doesn't have to hug a wall or railing every second. Juggling is hard for her too, but she had a breakthrough last week, and I was there to see it happen: she was tossing three scarves, and suddenly got the hang of the rhythm she needed to use to keep them all in the air, one after another, and she kept them going for six juggles in a row. Her juggling coach, a big gruff guy who's the boss of the whole class and one of the head coaches of the school, and who she was scared of until recently, got really excited about it, and at the end of class, when all the small groups gather on the mat together for one last wrap-up, he announced her accomplishment and everyone applauded.

That wrap-up at the end of each class is one of my favorite things about circus. One of the coaches always thanks the students for their hard work, and then asks them to stop and think for a minute and remember to be thankful: for their families, and for this wonderful space that they have to work in.

She's an exceptional teacher, that coach; she's known MG since the circus camp she did back when we first moved, the summer before last, and a couple of days ago the Renaissance Woman e-mailed her to ask about leotard suppliers. She wrote back with the information and with some unexpected, complimentary, thoughtful observations of the Mermaid Girl: her sense of purpose, her intellect, and her kindness to other students. That meant a lot to us.

Anyway, I'm not celebrating Thanksgiving this week, but every week when the coach does that ritual at the end of class, I'm thankful, too: that the Mermaid Girl has this class, and that she has these teachers who appreciate and push and know her.

How Green Was My Hair

2008-11-24T17:38:00.001-08:00

What I learned yesterday:

1. You should always read the directions on the black henna package, because sometimes the directions say things like "Do Not Use on Gray Hair." [nb: I have a lot of gray hair.]

2. If you put on black henna first, and it turns all your gray hair green, you can fix it by doing the whole thing again but with red henna, which will neutralize the green and turn it all something close to the lovely shiny auburn you were imagining. Actually, the relevant websites suggest doing something very much like this ad-hoc experimental solution for gray hair, only with the red henna first and the black henna as a 2nd step.

3. But if you try to use ONLY red henna, it will turn your gray hair bright, clown-like orange. [n.b.: actually I learned this part a couple of years ago. Hence the attempt at black henna.]

4. If you go in to work with hair that is partly regular brown, partly shiny auburn, and partly bright orange, only a few people will notice, or at least only a few people will say anything. [But I bet more people would've noticed if I'd had green hair!]

I just wish I'd taken a picture of the green part. It was kind of amazingly green. Maybe next time!

Working along Maslow's Hierarchy from the Bottom Up

2008-11-23T14:24:00.000-08:00

Thanks, all, for the most excellent winter jacket suggestions. I looked at MEC, but the coat I want they only have in Violet, and despite Rachel's excellent point I'd like to get something that will allow me to blend more unobtrusively into the urban undergrowth. I think I'm going to go with this, in brown.

Since we're on the subject of basic human needs, though, I have another question, this one about Food.

I love food. No, I REALLY love food. I'm not a foodie, exactly, or a food snob--more of a gourmand in the Calvin Trillin mold. The food of my childhood and adolescence was decent and edible but not particularly notable one way or another, and I don't remember any particular importance or attitudes about food being imparted to me as a kid. I've always eaten pretty much exactly what I like, and I like just about everything, except lima beans. (Not really germane to where I'm going with this, but possibly of interest: with no eating restrictions or dieting or attention paid to food at all except for taste and basic nutritional issues, my weight was just about normal and very stable from childhood until I hit my thirties, at which point I started putting on a couple of pounds a year. Now, at 42, I'm somewhere between 10 and 25 pounds overweight, and probably should do something about it at some point, if only exercising more, but it's not my top priority and hasn't affected my eating habits.)

Anyway, the point is that I am a true omnivore. Though I learned to cook out of the vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook, and in my crunchy granola youth was often mistaken for a vegetarian, I have never been a vegetarian of any kind. I don't keep kosher, not even a little (though for a while I tried not to serve treyf at the actual Shabbat dinner table). I have no food allergies or sensitivies that I know of, and I'm not squeamish.

The Renaissance Woman, on the other hand, does have food restrictions: she's allergic to red fruit, including cherries, as well as several kinds of nuts. She used to be a vegetarian, and though she now eats chicken, she can no longer metabolize red meat or pork. Also, there are several foods, including rice, lentils, and other grainy things, that she simply doesn't like.

Then we have the Mermaid Girl. Back when she was a baby, this child would eat anything, including duck and couscous, but those days are long gone and she has become a classic Picky Eater. She does like vegetables, but for several years the list of proteins that she would eat was about six items long, with three of them being various forms of cheese (string, grilled, and macaroni-and-). Also, like RW (and very much unlike me), she often doesn't notice when she's hungry, and rather than asking for food will deny that she wants to eat at all, all the while becoming crankier and crankier until we insist that she put a piece of cheese (or whatever) into her mouth, at which point more often than not she snaps out of it and wolfs down whatever's in front of her.

I know there are various schools of thought about how much to insist on kids trying unfamiliar or un-favorite foods; since with MG, food soon became an issue of control as well as one of taste preference, and since she's an only child and we don't have to cater to anyone else, we've generally opted for the path of least resistance, and pretty much have let her eat whatever she wanted as long as she gets some protein and a vegetable in there at dinner. I'd leave out some plain tofu or chicken or fish if I was making something with a sauce, and she'd either eat it or mix herself some peanut butter and jelly in a bowl.

This worked reasonably well until last spring, when MG suddenly announced that she was now a vegetarian, and that she did not believe in eating either animals or fish.

This cut down considerably on the short list of protein sources, but we didn't object; first, because vegetarianism has always seemed like an admirable principle to me, and second, because what would be the point? If we told her she wasn't allowed to be a vegetarian, she would just refuse chicken and fish (the only dead-animal food at our house) anyway, and what could we do? She'd just eat cheddar cheese and peanut butter, the way she always does.

In the ensuing months, though, some complicating factors have emerged. For one thing, MG's definition of vegetarianism is somewhat flexible; turns out that it includes meat hot dogs bought at the beach or the mall, (even if vegetarian hot dogs--which she doesn't like--are available), fake crab, and shrimp in any form. But if we offer her any other kind of meat or fish, she will look sad and pained and principled and say, "I'm sorry, but I can't. Don't you remember?" When we ask her about the apparent contradiction, she'll explain either that this is just an exception, or that "it's different. I really like [shrimp, or hot dogs, or whatever]."

So, this inconsistency leads us to be not quite so respectful of her principled stand as we might otherwise be. What I can't figure out is what kind of line to take on this. Do we forbid her to eat shrimp or hot dogs, even though we eat them ourselves? Do we refuse to continue recognizing her as a vegetarian by offering alternatives to our meat meals? Or do we just, as one person suggested, honor that she's attempting to act on principle at all, however imperfectly?

I welcome any suggestions from vegetarians, meat-eaters, picky eaters, and parents of any of the above, as well as people who are none of the above but just have an opinion, as long as you state it kindly.

A Time-Sensitive Question

2008-11-22T20:01:00.000-08:00

I can't find my winter jacket. It was a good jacket, sturdy and warm and hooded and waterproof, if not exactly fashion-forward; a couple of years ago the zipper pull fell off, so I replaced it with a paper clip, and also the coat itself is a sort of early-'90's shade of turquoise which I have since come to regard as unfortunate.

But. It was MY jacket. It was, as I said, a good jacket. Every spring I washed it and put it away, and every fall I took it back out. And now it is nowhere to be found. Probably I left it in the closet of one of the numerous libraries where I work, and then forgot about it.

So. If I don't find it soon, I need to buy a new jacket.

This isn't really, in itself, a problem. We are not rolling in cash but we have enough for me to buy a jacket. I bought this jacket in 1995, and it's had a good run. Really it is okay to get another jacket.

The problem is that what I really want is the EXACT SAME jacket, only in black. But,

a) I'm not sure where to get the exact same jacket, other than in Fred Meyer's in 1995,
and,
b) RW already has a very similar black jacket, and we already have very similar hoodies and very similar jeans and interchangeable socks and identical (except for the size) shoes, and I just do not want to have another important-frequently-worn item of clothing that is so similar to hers, for emotional as well as practical reasons--it would be a pain to get to work and find I'd taken her jacket instead of mine, especially given my propensity for leaving my cell phone in my jacket pocket. Plus, most of my winter clothes are black, which means that I can never find the item I want in a pile, which is where my clothes are frequently to be found.

SO, I ask you, gentle readers:

--What is a good color for a jacket, these days?
and,
--Is there a particular kind you recommend?
and,
--If so, where can I find it?

I thank you in advance for your timely suggestions. Last year it snowed in the first week of December.

Greetings from the Exact Middle of my Work Week

2008-11-21T21:56:00.000-08:00

Here is the schedule for my main job:

Thursday 1-9
Friday 1-9
Saturday 9-5
Monday 9-5

This has advantages and disadvantages. It's nice to have time off in the middle of the week to go to doctor's appointments and hassle electricians. And sometimes, since the Mermaid Girl's school is so close, she even comes home for lunch. The Renaissance Woman has a funky schedule too, so occasionally we all three sit down to a hot lunch together. It's very cozy and European.

On the other hand, I am only now, six months in, starting to get over the urge to growl and bite my co-workers' heads off when they wish me a cheery "have a great weekend!" as they head out the door at 5:00 on Fridays. Friday night to Saturday morning is the nastiest transition: two shifts that no one else wants, with a bare twelve hours (minus commuting time) in between. Because RW also has a funky schedule and works nights, more often than not we don't get to eat dinner together. And unless I take almost half a week's work time off, we never get to go away for the weekend.

And the two days I supposedly have off midweek, Tuesday and Wednesday, never really feel like days off, because I have freelance work I should be doing, and MG has to be gotten up for school anyway, and RW often works at home and the house is pervaded with anxious and getting-things-done energy. And then, just as I'm getting into the groove of things, Thursday comes around again and klonks me on the forehead and I'm back on the reference desk.

So. This may be Friday night to all of you, but it's something like around Tuesday night to me. And because I am filled up with my Friday-night-to-Saturday-morning grumpiness with not much room for creativity, I give you instead this joke that MG just tried to tell us as part of her bedtime stalling technique:

MG: What goes, ha, ha, ha, clunk?

RW: You!

MG: No! A man laughing his head off!

Happy Tuesday! Or Friday, whichever!

p.s. I promise that soon, in the near future, there will be posts about MG's circus class. And vegetarianism. And maybe even health insurance. But not tonight because I think my head is about to fall off.

In Which I am Dissed by Tropical Fish

2008-11-20T22:48:00.001-08:00

For the Mermaid Girl's birthday, the Renaissance Woman bought her a pair of fish. Black-skirted tetras, to be specific. About the size of goldfish, but slightly more exciting-looking. And they've sat on her desk ever since, in their small pink terrarium, swimming around in circles around their little pink castle, and occasionally hiding behind the heater.

They're pretty low-maintenance, as pets go. Every couple of weeks MG and RW scoop out half the water and clean the tank, and twice a day MG feeds them, flipping open the little trapdoor at the top of their tank and carefully sprinkling in just a few flakes of the green flaky fish stuff. They've learned that the trapdoor flipping means food's coming, so they always dart right up when she opens it and suck up the food and then swim around excitedly.

But here's the thing: every once in a while, MG asks if I'll feed the fish for her. And when I feed them, they never jump right up. Even when I make a big deal out of flipping open the little door, and even when I crumple up the flakes especially enticingly, they just swim around lazily, sort of like, "meh, well, whatever, I might grab a bite later..."and then maybe after a few seconds they'll drift up and take a nip or two of food, just to be polite, I guess.

So my question is: can it possibly be that they can tell the difference between me and MG, and that they like her better? I mean, aren't we all just big blurs to them? And, if they like her better...WHY??

Return of the Spawn of the Revenge of Bah Humbug!

2008-11-19T20:44:00.000-08:00

Ah, 'tis the season, once again. Carollers caroling, lights twinkling, sleighbells ringing. Me grousing. Gah.

I know, I know, for the last three years I've been through various permutations of this one. And this year I was really, truly going to give it a rest. And I may yet, in real life. The Mermaid Girl is old enough that I'm not so worried about her fragile little identity (hah! like her identity could ever have been called fragile in any way, even when she was an infant! But you know what I mean), and me being upset about it seems to distress her way more than whatever Christmas-related outreach prompts the upset in the first place, and her teacher's so low-key that I wasn't too worked up about a big Santastravaganza in the classroom this year.

Actually, I brought up the whole December Dilemma at the parent meeting at the beginning of the year, and the teacher was like, Meh, I don't do too much fuss about any of the holidays, they get enough of that crap everywhere else and we have a lot of work to do. So, hey, fine, works for me!

And as for the Christmas Music Everywhere Already and things like the Holiday Party at Work Being Called Just a Christmas Party, No Bones About It-- meh. Again, hard to get worked up. I had really decided to just go with the flow this time around, not get all pissed off, it drives MG and the Renaissance Woman nuts when I do, anyway.

My only dilemma as of this morning--I was going to post about it, actually--was whether it's worth it to put together some kind of song and dance about Chanukah for MG's class. As she and her classmates get older-- she's in a Grade 3/Grade 4 split this year--it feels less relevant, and harder to put together something interesting and age-appropriate. I asked MG what she thought, and she said, kind of wearily, "Well, you can if you want to." So, I don't know.

But! Then MG had to go and get herself accepted into the Special Choir at the very last cutoff before it was too late (apparently she was absent during the first announcement of the choir, back in October or so, so she never signed up till now). Oh boy! The Special Choir is going to do Special Songs at the Christmas (I know, I know) Show! And they're going to sing at the mall! And she really, really wanted to do it! And so RW wrote a note begging the music and dance teacher to let her in late, and the teacher did, and now MG is part of the choir, and her first rehearsal was today, and she brought home the song sheets so she can practice lots and make up for starting late.

So, hey! Fine! Jingle Bells, whatever! Deck the Halls! You're a Mean One, Mr, Grinch, swell!

But...and probably you saw this coming...what's with "Silent Night"? With the second verse, and everything, about how Christ Our Savior is Born? And "Away in a Manger"?!?

Crap.

I know MG will HATE it if I make a fuss, or even if I talk about it with her. She hates to be different, she would hate to not sing the songs. And it doesn't seem like the height of tact or consideration to ask special permission for our kid to join the choir late and then turn around and object to the set list the next day. And I get that this choir is an optional activity, not a required part of the school curriculum But I hate, hate, hate that they're singing unabashedly religious hymns as part of a school program.

Also, it's stupid. MG might be the only Jewish kid at the school, but she's far from the only non-Christian.

I'm even ambivalent about blogging this. In the past, when I've complained to friends and even some family about Christmas celebrations at MG's school, I've encountered blank looks of incomprehension and also well-meaning but often patronizing explanations on why I really shouldn't be upset about it, from surprising quarters.

I mean, I guess people really, really, really love their Christmas, and it Upsets them when someone questions any aspect of it. Okay. Fine. What the fuck ever.

It just makes me tired. I don't even want to talk about it with anyone, and I really don't want to argue about it with anyone or pull it together to explain myself.

So I am going to let her sing the fricking songs, and I am not going to make a big deal out of it, and I am not going to complain to the music teacher or the principal or even to RW. I've complained here, and that's it. I'm done. The end.

On the bright side:

Blog fodder!

Better.

2008-11-18T20:22:00.000-08:00

Oh, my, look at the time! the Mermaid Girl's in the bathtub so will make this quick.

1. Thank you all for the music advice! Now I have lots of non-wrist-slitty artists to check out. Also my brother sent me an MP3 file that was very cheery.

2. I helped set up the book fair at MG's school this afternoon. In my past life as a school librarian, I spent so many years FREAKING THE FRICK OUT right around this time as the book fair took over the library. Now that that chapter of my life is over, I can reveal that I always hated the book fair, and I'm wondering now if a lot of that wasn't because it always happened in NOVEMBER. (Hmm... and March. So, maybe it wasn't seasonal after all.) Anyway it was lovely to just be a parent helper and spread out the tablecloths and arrange the displays and things, and then go HOME.

3. Actually, after the book fair setup I stood outside in the lovely sunshine with the fallen leaves all around me while MG played on the school playground and everyone else chatted. I never do have much to say to the other parents/grandparents, but I didn't mind. It was just so restful and idyllic.

4. I had this strange feeling about it, though, and kept wondering why it felt like it had been so long since I'd picked MG up at school. Then I remembered: It has been a long time! It's been over a month! Because while my mom was here, she did pickup almost every day, while I worked or napped or blogged or freaked out over my to-do lists or whatever else I did. Thanks, Mom!

5. MG got 23 out of 23 on her geography test. So I guess all that singing was not in vain.

OK now off to scrape my prune of a girl out of the tub.

Teh Gloom

2008-11-17T19:22:00.001-08:00

I managed to stave it off for a couple of weeks what with the election and then with getting riled up about Prop. 8, but it will be held back no longer:

The November Gloom has arrived.

I felt it descend upon me this afternoon while I was on the reference desk, and it was all I could do not to lie down in a fetal position right then and there in front of the online catalog terminals.

"Music!" I thought. "I need music!" So I went to pull CD holds.

And I saw: Cat Power, the Be Good Tanyas, the Smiths, the Cowboy Junkies.

I revised my thought: "I need music that will not make me want to slit my wrists!"

I looked up "Laura Love" in the catalog: Nothing. I looked up "Dar Williams" in the catalog: Nothing except a guest spot on a Dan Zanes CD, and a couple of children's novels that she wrote, one of which I read a few years ago and by which I was, alas, disappointed. She's better at songs, I think.

There is no real conclusion to this post. Except that the archives reveal that I was hit with a similar gloom about this time last year, which reminds me that my friend Jody made me a set of three painstakingly-compiled CDs at arout that time, which might do the trick if I can find them.

Also, that this morning, before Teh Gloom hit, the song that was running through my head was "Something to Sing About," courtesy of the Mermaid Girl and the Canadian Geography test that she was last-minute cramming for this morning. I don't know how she did on the test, but she sure has memorized the heck out of that song.

All together now!

"From the Vancouver island to the [clap!] Alberta highland
Cross the prairies, the lakes, to Ontario's towers
From the sound of Mount Royal's chimes,
Up to the Maritimes,
Something to sing about,
This land of ours."

Oh! there's a parody on YouTube! It should give you a rough idea of the tune, too. Though MG sings it a bit faster, with more verve.

Actually, that parody was pretty cheering on its own.

All right, then! Carry on!

Random Bullets of Sunday Puttering

2008-11-16T19:23:00.000-08:00

*I've been reading all the updates and posts and photo streams from all over I can find about yesterday's protests and wishing I'd been there, but being glad that there's so much information available. The last political action or movement that I remember feeling anything like so energized about was the anti-WTO protest back in 1999, and the Internet was much less developed back then.

*Also I find myself feeling much more relaxed about all the brouhaha and infighting since I thought of that analogy to the women's suffrage movement. I guess nothing makes an old English major happy like an analogy.

*The Renaissance Woman has been putting up hooks and coat racks all over the place, so our house is no longer dotted with random piles of clothes. It's looking better.

*Did you know that the Heimleich Maneuver is no longer called the Heimleich Maneuver? According to our CPR/First Aid instructor yesterday, Mr. Heimleich wanted money for it, so now it's called the J-Thrust.

*The First Aid guy was a fireman, and he was full of offhand sarcastic quips and stories. He also made fun of the library's First Aid kit. And he encouraged us to make fun of our (absent) boss, and swore a lot in a genial way, which always goes over well.

*After the class, I was helping one of my co-workers with her Facebook page, and noticed that she'd put in her status update that she was taking a First Aid class and it wasn't bad and "the instructor is a fireman!" I guess he was pretty easy on the eyes.

*He also made us practice everything over and over, on each other and on those weird limbless rubber dolls. I think I finally basically know what to do if someone should keel over in front of me. I had a similar class every two years at my old job but never really felt like I would know how to handle it in real life.

*The possibility of someone keeling over in front of me feels much less remote ever since a few months ago, when a guy had a heart attack at a small library branch where RW was the Librarian in Charge for the evening.

*She called 911, and found a patron who knew CPR, and the guy lived.

*But she said the ten minutes while she was waiting for the ambulance were the longest ten minutes of her life.

*The Mermaid Girl made chocolate chip pancakes this morning, mostly on her own, with only logistical and moral support and the smallest bit of just-to-make-sure stirring from me.

*It did take about an hour and a half, because she kept getting distracted by various things, at which point I'd go off and work on the computer, but it was her thing and she took charge of it and she did a good job.

*She even remembered to substitute protein powder for some of the flour, and did the math for that so it worked out.

*And the pancakes were yummy, too.

*MG has a test tomorrow, on all the provinces and territories and Great Lakes of Canada. She knows them all, which is more than I can say.

*She is growing up in a different time and circumstance from how I did, all right.

*Me, to my brother on the phone today: "Whenever I feel low, or sloggy, you know, November is so depressing and dark up here, I just think about Barack Obama, and I feel better. It's like...he's like the Bunny Planet of Presidents."

After Reading Way Too Many Political Blogs

2008-11-15T19:53:00.000-08:00

...which I am too lazy and short on time to link to here and now, though I might do so later:

The more I think about it, the more I think that same-sex marriage has more in common with the U.S. women's suffrage movement than with the Black Civil Rights movement.

Like women's suffrage, it seeks to remedy not a whole set of discriminatory laws and conditions, but one very specific law that, though it affects an entire class of people, doesn't affect everyone in that class equally. There are many queers who have absolutely no interest in getting married, and don't need to. Same-sex marriage won't help them at all, and might in fact make things harder for them in some ways by covering them with the blanket imperative to marry that has been standard for so long in the heterosexual world (hey, I read "Cathy"!). And the right to vote was in no way a panacaea for sexism, and didn't do much immediate good for the women who were mainly worried about, say, poverty, or an abusive spouse, or lack of decent legal birth control options.

Like women's suffrage, same-sex marriage is an issue that can be--and was, and is--hijacked for racist purposes (one argument for women's suffrage was that giving the vote to the flower of lily-white womanhood was going to cancel out the dangerous and scary votes of newly-enfranchised black men). Like women's suffrage, it's a progressive cause that can benefit or make more viable other decidedly non-progressive (Prohibition, anyone? Or, how about health care benefits that are tied to employment and/or marriage to someone with benefits?) causes.

Like women's suffrage, it can be easily attacked from the left, for being too bourgeois and having leaders who appear to be coming from relative privilege (remember the "Sister Suffragette" scene in Mary Poppins?), and, at the same time, attacked from the right for being too radical and subverting the way God wants things to be and the way things have always been. Like women's suffrage, it is occasioning dire predictions about how society as we know it will never be the same if it succeeds and will, in fact, go to hell in a handbasket.

And like women's suffrage, despite all the messiness, despite all of the imperfections encompassed within the proposed changes, despite its incompleteness and its inadequacies to address so many other injustices, it is the right thing to do.

It's not the only fight or maybe even the most important fight in the greater scheme of things. But it is the fight that is in front of American queers and their/our allies right now.

It won't do everything. It won't solve racism, institutionally or in the individual attitudes of way too many people, queer and straight. It won't do away with poverty and the evils of rampant capitalism. It won't even elimininate homophobia, for that matter.

That just means that after same-sex marriage is enshrined in law all over the United States, there will still be much, much more work to do.

And now I have to go finish cleaning the kitchen floor; the cat just snuck behind the stove again, got his claw caught on a metal edge, and peed all over the floor and himself in his panic.

And legally married or not, it is no fun to cook on a stove that smells like cat pee.

The Day After Love Thursday

2008-11-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

I resisted getting all political on my last post, mainly because I posted a link to it at the Love Thursday clearinghouse and it was my very first L. T. post and I didn't want to be a carpetbagger over there.

But now it is Mobilization Friday. So if you want people like me and RW to be able to express their/our love by getting married, and if the passage of Proposition 8 pissed you off or upset you or even unnerved you, and if you have an hour or two free tomorrow, please consider spending some time at one of these rallies. They're happening in all 50 states and many provinces of Canada and in lots of other countries as well.

There's one in downtown Vancouver, but I'll be in a first aid class for work, so I can't go. And, like Crunchy Granola, I'm not totally clear on exactly what the rallies outside of California (and maybe Utah) are aiming for. But it sure feels good to think of thousands and thousands and thousands of people all over the world, making our voices heard.

Love Thursday: 56 Reasons Why

2008-11-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

With all the talk around the Internets about love and marriage, it seems appropriate, after lo these many years of reading Love Thursday posts at Woulda Coulda Shoulda and elsewhere, to write one of my own. I thought about saving this post for Valentine's Day or a birthday or anniversary, but today just seemed to call out for it.

Here are some reasons I love the Renaissance Woman and am grateful to be married to her:

She's wicked smart.
When you go to a show with her, she mutters under her breath about the sound cues.
When you watch a period movie with her, she can (and does) point out all the out-of-period instruments being shown or played.
She has really gorgeous hair.
She can get more done than anyone else I know.
Even when we lived in the States, she spelled words like colour and valour in the Canadian way, and also pronounced "project" "proe-ject".
She makes book indexing sound hot.
She's read children's books that I haven't read.
She is always up for an adventure, especially if it involves a boat or a camper van.
She is indefatigably optimistic when planning vacations and excursions and always thinks we can do about twice as much as it would ever occur to me to do. I probably never would've done or experienced half the things I have if she hadn't been enthusing and planning and nudging me along.
She has a true appreciation of ice cream.
She never uses electric lights on the Jul tree, only candles.
She has introduced me to wonderful things like the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, tall ships, the Baltimore Consort's raunchy Renaissance songs, and scrambled eggs with cream cheese in them.
Even though she'd never done library story times before we moved, she is now much in demand for her storytelling skills--she can even tell a felt board story/song while playing the guitar at the same time, a feat I've never heard tell of before.
Weird and obscure reference questions make her really happy.
Even when she was a kid, she never wanted to be "normal."
She doesn't care how they do it in New York.
She has a lovely singing voice.
For her best college friend's wedding, she composed a song and wrote out the music on special paper.
She composed a song for our wedding, too. A waltz.
But she made sure that the first dance we danced that day was to an old Danish waltz, that made her extremely unsentimental grandmother cry.
She encourages me to do things when I don't think I can do them.
When she's procrastinating, she vacuums.
She loves the Mermaid Girl with all her heart and soul.
She is always learning, and I learn from watching her live in the world with her open and curious mind.
She keeps her friends for a long time.
She volunteers.
She has an excellent sense of direction, except in New York City.
She is a great bluffer.
She replaced all the crappy doors in our old house with gorgeous old doors, mostly scavenged from various places like junkyards and hotels that were being torn down.
She has the spirit of a freelancer, which means she's always coming up with ideas and figuring that one out of four or five will actually happen.
And when it does happen, it can be amazing.
Without being an ostentatiously political person, she can toss off an incisive political analysis of everything from office power dynamics to health care to the lesbian s3x wars of the 1980's.
She's a little unclear on some aspects of American history, on account of growing up in Canada, but she can tell you all about the Pig War and the Plains of Abraham.
And she can identify more British monarchs than anyone else in a room, even a room full of Canadian librarians.
My favorite picture of her from our (first) wedding is actually from the wedding rehearsal: she has a fancy clip in her hair, and she's wearing a beautiful purple dress, and she's leaning intently over some meticulously drafted diagrams, one hand pointing to an exact spot on the paper, as she explains to all the gathered spouses of the Wedding Party exactly what they have to do in order to quickly and efficiently turn the room and set up the tables between the ceremony and the reception.
She and the Mermaid Girl have the exact same pointy chin.
Even when she is scared of things, like job interviews and dentists and the mess in the basement, she overcomes her fear and does them.
She invents words, like "outcluded" (when you are left out of something) and "vulch" (that thing some people do when they watch the food on your plate and then ask if you're done with it so they can have it. Also can apply to following people in parking lots so you can have their spot).
She loves diners, especially old-fashioned ones with all-day breakfast.
And she loves surprises.
She picks people up at the airport.
When, very very early in our relationship, I woke her up in the middle of the night because I couldn't figure out how the state of Oregon could maintain its infrastructure and services if it didn't have a sales tax, she did not break up with me or clomp me on the head but instead muttered helpfully, "property tax," and went back to sleep.
She understands the language of cats.
And also the language of insurance forms.
She appreciates talents in me that I didn't know were anything special, like the ability to assemble Ikea furniture.
She likes to do something different for every birthday so that she'll be sure to remember it. Once she went up in a hot-air balloon. Another time she had a croquet party. Another time she made a bunch of her friends hike through the rain and mud to a hot spring she'd read about.
She taught me how to henna my hair.
She has a deep appreciation of a lot of things about Judaism, but she doesn't want to be Jewish herself, partly because she prefers disorganized religion to organized religion.
She likes and appreciates my family.
For fun, she organizes singing groups.
She likes to take the Mermaid Girl on bike rides.
She believes that many different times are happening all at once, right now.
She knows how to install flooring, how to create sound effects for a storm or a subway, and how to construct a Boolean search to find anything that anyone in the whole universe might want to know.
She was nerdy before nerdy was cool.
She has beautiful eyes.
She makes me laugh.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone.

Why We Keep Her Around

2008-11-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

Quick note: while I was out last night happily eating barbecue (second time in two weeks!) the comment spammers returned, and so I have reinstituted the captchas. Sorry.

So, last night we were playing Carcassonne. This is a game that all three of us love, but MG said she didn't want to play this time, she'd just sit on the couch and knit. (My mom just taught her to knit and she's working on it but I think is finding it hard going, and neither RW nor I have the expertise to help her.)

Doesn't that sound cozy? Well. Not so much.

Because she proceeded to perch herself on the couch and KIBITZ in the most irritating way possible. I should move here. The Renaissance Woman should move there. I SHOULDN'T make that move because it was MEAN to RW. And in between she would start up conversations, mostly with RW, that were totally distracting me while I was trying to think about my move. It's not like I want total silence, but...isn't there something between total silence and a big conversation-fest while two of the three people in the room are playing a game of strategy?

Very soon she had slid off the couch altogether, and was just sitting on the floor next to us, watching. But not playing. And CLICKING with her mouth, into the silence while we contemplated our moves.

Click...click...click...

"Is this driving you crazy, Mommy?" (Cheerfully, amiably.)

I allowed as how it was, but that I'd been trying not to say anything about it until I just couldn't stand it any more.

"Well, tell me when you can't stand it any more, okay?"

Click...click...click...

I cracked and admitted I couldn't stand it any more.

"Okay!" the clicking stopped, but was replaced by tapping on the floor.

Tap...tap...tap...

Then she volunteered to move our markers for us after each move. Which would've been fine, except that she'd pick up a marker and promptly forget what number it had been on, and how many points forward she was supposed to move it, so that it quickly became unclear who had how many points.

By then, she was getting pretty physically wild, her feet nudging at the game pieces so that we couldn't tell where our cities were supposed to be or whose markers were on which city.

Finally, I snapped at her, and she snapped at me, and RW snapped at both of us to COOL DOWN ALREADY.

After which MG flounced out of the room, announcing, "I'm LEAVING, Mommy. Are you HAPPY?!?"

Truth is, I was. Though it's also true that the game just wasn't as much fun without MG there. Or without the cheerful, interested, non-obnoxious version of MG who COULD have been there, and who was, sometimes, intermittently with the Button-Pushing Express.

On the other hand: this morning, her hair was getting in the oatmeal again, so I volunteered to get her a barette. When she saw the green flowered plastic one, she said, "Oh! I thought it might look like this! Except I was expecting you would bring the blue one with the teddy bear playing a fiddle on the roof."

A teddy bear? On the roof? She had a barette with a teddy bear on a roof? There was once a cat with a fiddle, but a bear?

"Yes!" she nodded. "There was! A teddy bear on the roof."

And she burst into song, to something like the tune of "Knees Up Mother Brown": "Teddy bear on the roof! Teddy bear on the roof! Teddy bear, teddy bear, teddy bear, teddy bear, Teddy bear on the roof!"

And she sidled off to feed her fish and get dressed, a happy chorus of "Teddy bear on the roof!" wafting down the hall to us as she went.

It's a good thing she's entertaining, is all I can say.

On the other hand: if it's like this when she's eight, how on earth are we going to make it through adolescence?

Can't. Stop. Posting.

2008-11-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

Protect real traditional marriage in California! Sign this petition! [as seen in the comments at Shannon Cate's Babble post.]

Srsly. Wouldn't it be swell if it got on the ballot? Ah, hypocricy, thy name is 8.
ETA: Oh. It's just an unofficial petition site, not, like, an actual petition that could work towards getting it on the ballot.
And someone in a comment below just complimenting me for being non-ranty, and now I just went and ranted. Ah, well. Sorry.

Also: people in the States, do you have the feeling that this is so? Because, that would be so, so, so great.

Aw, thanks!

2008-11-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

I've been having a very merry time reading all the comments on my De-Lurking post. I had no idea so many people have been stopping by here, or that a bunch of you have been quietly following this blog for so long. It's a really nice feeling. Actually, it's such a nice feeling that I'm going to just keep comment verification off for a while, at least until the spammers come back.

Thanks for commenting, and (whether you comment or not) for reading.

Confidential to Amy: check yr Facebook ;-)

Confidential to Rachel: Yes, you are more popular than Andrew Sullivan. Cuter, too.

non-random bullets of reflection, mostly about my own bellybutton

2008-11-10T14:33:00.000-08:00

*The swirling thoughts I have about the Proposition 8 aftermath in California are refusing to resolve themselves into a coherent train of thought, so I'm just going to go with ye olde Random Bullets. Even though this isn't really random.

*As you may have heard, there's lots of talk about the high proportion of African-American voters in California who voted to ban same-sex marriage, and what this means about the mainstream gay movement's failures in outreach, and the African-American community's (insofar as there is one monolithic "community", which--hello?-- there is not) attitudes about queers, and etc. etc. blah blah blah divide-and-conquer-the-oppressedcakes.

*Shannon at Peter's Cross Station has some very excellent things to say about this. So does Pam at Pam's House Blend. So: what they said.

*Especially Shannon's Point #1: "Race-baiting was a huge weapon in this campaign from the primaries to the general election. The media loves it and is looking to divide us into neat segments: the Blacks versus the Gays. Resist this." [emphases mine]

*I've also been thinking very, very hard about Shannon's point #4, in which she calls out the queer community for co-opting the language and imagery of the African-American Civil Rights struggle when talking/writing about the fight for same-sex marriage rights.

*My very very hard thinking is not unrelated to the fact that I wrote a rather impassioned and highflown post just after the election in which I quoted Martin Luther King about the arc of the moral universe, etc.

*And now, even though nobody said anything to me about it, I feel sort of embarrassed after reading Shannon's post.

*Also, conflicted.

*Because, on the one hand, political movements are inspired by and learn from and borrow from each other all the time:

*The abolitionist movement used the imagery of the (apocryphal) Hebrew Exodus from Egypt. The Civil Rights movement's tactics and language were inspired in part by Gandhi's activism in the cause of India's independence. The feminist and gay rights movements in the 1970's owed much of their strategy and imagery to the Berkeley Free Speech movement, the anti-Vietnam movement, and, yes, the Civil Rights movement.

*Also, MLK was just such an incredible speaker, people always want to quote him. Me, too.

*But on the other hand, Shannon's absolutely right. It's the worst kind of disrespect to grab up the example of one people's misfortune or struggle and use it to ennoble one's own cause or to make some vague point about the "universality" of suffering or evil or whatever. It's just yucky.

*For a literary example of this, cf. The Boy With the Striped Pyjamas.

*Or almost all children's fiction about Native Americans.

*Also cf. the way--Sarah Vowell did an excellent piece on this in This American Life and in Time Magazine a few years ago--every time you turn around, some rock star or mime is comparing him or herself to Rosa Parks. No one is the Rosa Parks of queer rights or dairy pricing or whatever. Rosa Parks was Rosa Parks. Period. It's creepy to claim that mantle when you didn't earn it.

*Because it's true that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (MLK, again.)

*But not all injustice is the same, or looks the same, or has the same effects. Nonrecognition of same-sex marriage is not the same as Jim Crow. Jim Crow was not the same as Apartheid in South Africa. etc. They're all bad, but they're different.

*So it's a thin and blurry line, the line between legitimate inspiration and offensive co-optation.

*Truth is, if I'd known there was going to be the big kerfluffle there's been regarding race, I might not have put what I said quite the way I said it, at least not on a public blog.

*Instead, I might have quoted Harvey Milk, who said "Hope will never be silent."

*It doesn't have quite the same ring to it, though.

*Or even, simply, "Love always wins."

*Which is pretty inspiring to think about.

*Even though it's a quote from Tuesdays with Morrie, which is a perfectly nice book but doesn't quite have the same gravitas as a source.

*I guess someone in this struggle will just have to come up with something good.

*But it won't be me, tonight.

*Because now it is late and I must go to sleep.

Day 8: A Cautionary Tale

2008-11-09T17:49:00.000-08:00

There are Big Things I've been turning over in my mind, fallout from the election and suchlike, and also war. Stuff that I haven't figured out myself yet, so you will probably soon be subjected to one or maybe more of those long tortured posts wherein the writer works out her ideas even as she is composing, so that it scatters all over the place and ends up contradicting itself three or four times.

But for now: nothing to do with politics, but a story I've been saving so here it is:

Some years ago, I went to visit some relatives who shall remain nameless. Suffice it to say that they were, and are, highly responsible and conscientious people.

I slept on a bed in the spare room which doubled as the TV room. At one point, the book I was reading fell down between the bed and the wall, and when I reached down to retrieve it, I also found a Blockbuster videocassette (this was before DVDs and Netflix) that looked like it had been lost down there for a while.

I presented it to my hosts, expecting them to be pleased. Imagine my surprise when, instead, I confronted a pair of ashen visages, fixated in horror on the video in my hands.

"We thought we'd brought that back," one of them finally stammered. "Months ago. The store said we hadn't, and wanted to charge us, so we gave them such a hard time. We argued, and insisted, and finally they backed off. And now..."

My host trailed off in silence, as we all stared at the video, erupting finally in a wave of bleak laughter suitable for the end of an O. Henry story.

As a librarian, I don't often have to deal with insistent patrons who don't think they should be charged for a lost item (that unhappy task falls to the circulation staff). But when I do--and sometimes they're right, and sometimes not--I always think of this story.

A Little Bit of Meta for the Weekend

2008-11-08T10:49:00.001-08:00

When I started this blog I wanted to write regularly, and I wanted to make friends, and I did both those things. Of course, I noticed that other people were doing more than that: getting their name out there, doing professional networking, even making real money. I've actually done a very small tiny bit of that, under my real name [and if you don't know about my other sites and want to, email me & I'll send you the links], and a couple of years ago, in anticipation of moving and maybe having more writing time and less regular income, I put up a BlogHerAds link on this site (over to the left, there).

The ad's still there, and the BlogHerAds money, in the low two digits and mostly donated back out to whatever cause seems to need it, comes in a couple times a year. But this personal blog has never really hit the big time (partly due to my own lack of focused attention), and over the years it's become a quiet little backwater populated--as far as I can tell--by my friends and family and maybe a few serendipitous lurkers.

Actually I'm not entirely sure who reads, unless they tell me, because until last week I hadn't checked my statcounter for months.

Then, last Monday, a couple of major players linked to a post I wrote on this site, just as I was dusting off the keyboard to post every day in November for NoBloPoMo, and at a time when virtually everyone in the blogosphere was reading and surfing around online even more than usual. And in one day, more people viewed this site than in all of September and October added up together, maybe longer. The most readers I've ever had in one day, by a long ways.

I know because I couldn't resist checking my stats after the comments started coming in (and after I'd remembered my statcounter password). And while readership has dropped way off from the level of that one staggering day, some people have been coming back to check in, and new readers are still trickling in from the Daily Dish and Cosmic Variance.

So, this post is all by way of a very long-winded prologue to my own one-site De-Lurking Day request: Who are you, and where did you come from?

You can be anonymous if you want, and I've turned off comment verification captchas for today so as to minimize the hassle. But I'd love it if you'd comment and let me know.

Random Bullets of Other News

2008-11-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

*I just ordered Olympics tickets for us for February 2010. All we want to see is figure skating, so I ordered three sets of figure skating tickets. Our request will go into a lottery of all the early-requesting Canadian residents, so we could end up with no tickets at all, or with tickets to three insanely high-profile figure-skating events, or something in between.

*Speaking of which: today, Friday November 7, is the last day for Canadian residents to get first crack at Olympics tickets. So order by midnight if you want 'em!

*Having written the above, I'm embarrassed to admit to being psyched about this at all, or to having ordered tickets, because so many of my fellow Vancouver-area-ites are--rightly--embittered and pissed off about all the money and resources being siphoned into Olympic preparations. But, well, I still remember watching Sarah Hughes skate for the gold back in 2002, and how amazing and what a high it was to see her, and it would be SO FRICKIN COOL to be there in person for something like that. So we're giving it a shot.

*A few weeks ago I interviewed for a job I really wanted. Tuesday morning I got the call telling me I was, as they kindly put it around here, "not the successful candidate." I was so wrapped up in the election that I basically forgot about it for a day or two, but now I've remembered and I'm bummed.

*Halloween! It happened, last week! the Mermaid Girl was--get this--Anne of Green Gables. I bought some spray-on-wash-out hair dye for her. Our bathtub is still pink from the washing out part.

*Her school librarian dressed as Babymouse. How cool is that??

*Once again, despite my fond hopes for this new location, we got virtually no trick-or-treaters.

*On the plus side: lots of leftover fun-size chocolate bars.

*Though we gave some of them to the tenants downstairs.

*The tenants continue to be amazingly sweet, endearing, and responsible, but I think they have discovered controlled substances.

*And girls.

*My mom took me out for barbecue last night, with cornbread and potato salad and beans and the works.

*I LOVE BARBECUE!

*She's been taking us out a lot, and cooking a lot. I'm not sure how we will feed ourselves when she leaves next week; I think I have forgotten where my stove is.

*And my dishwasher.

*She's been looking after the Mermaid Girl a lot, too. She's teaching her to knit.

*They knitted legwarmers for MG's Amurkan Girl dolls. And a skirt, and a hat.

*MG's friend Noella came over this morning before school, due to her parents' complex work schedule.

*MG had NO TROUBLE getting to school on time today.

*I wonder if we could have Noella come over every morning?

*When I called home on my break this evening, my mom reported that MG was deep in a book. And not a Rainbow Magic book, either; something by Roald Dahl.

*When I came home at 9:30, I found my child in bed, curled up with The BFG, which she had almost finished.

*She didn't object when I took it away, though.

*And she grinned sleepily when I promised she could read some more in the morning if she got ready for school early.

*The leaves are still falling.

*And it's dark much of the day and the rain is falling down in torrents.

*And I didn't get that job.

*But even aside from Recent World Events,

*(And not to bring down the evil eye or anything,)

*Things are...pretty okay.

Penn Station, or the Center of the Universe

2008-11-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

I grew up within the orbit of New York City, and to me New York City was the center of the universe. I'd always assumed--without really thinking about it--that my own home city simply was the center of the universe, until something that happened when I was seventeen.

I'd spent three weeks at a summer program in rural Pennsylvania, and was making my own way home. I'd been dropped at the local train station and, dragging my duffel bag behind me, approached the ticket counter and asked for a one-way ticket to Penn Station, in The City.

"Which city did you want?" the ticket agent quite reasonably asked.

I boggled. I literally couldn't understand what he meant. Which city?

"The CITY," I repeated testily, thinking that maybe this guy was a bit slow. "Penn STATION."

"Right," he said, no doubt thinking the same about me. "Which. City?? Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh, or where?"

Now, I had heard of these cities. I'd even visited Philadelphia. But despite my purported giftedness, the idea that, to someone within driving distance of New York City, anyplace else could be referred to as THE city--and that those places might have their own Penn Stations--was something that had never occurred to me.

New York wasn't even on this guy's list, though.

I suddenly felt very, very young, and very stupid, and very provincial.

I covered my embarrassment with bluster and said--like the very stereotype of an obnoxious New Yorker, I'm sure--"New York City. Penn Station, in New York City."--and he sold me my ticket, and I went home.

But I didn't go home the same; for the very first time in my life I began to have a glimmer of understanding that not everyone did, in fact, look at the world from the same perch as me. Literature is supposed to give a person that understanding, and I certainly read enough, but sometimes there's nothing like a good in-person clomp on the head to really bring it home. That one encounter did a lot more to permanently open my worldview than the supposedly educational three weeks I'd just had at camp.

It's not a uniquely New York experience to assume, as a kid, that everyone lives and thinks the same way you do-- my dad likes to tell the story of my midwestern suburban cousins' visit to New York, during which one of them, seeing kids tossing a ball on the streets, asked, "Why don't they just play in their yards?"--but I think the sense that no place outside your own home is really real is heightened when you live in an all-encompassing, 800-pound gorilla of a place. Like New York City. Or the United States.

It's weird to be living outside my home country during a huge, historic event like this election. On the one hand, I'm truly understanding for the first time that the United States isn't just another country, that it really is--as my mom put it yesterday when we were taking about this--the other country, for so many people outside its borders. Because it's a world power in politics and culture, and because it's a nation of immigrants--citizens of every country (and this is particularly true in Canada) have friends and relatives there. Everyone has a stake in America, and what transpires there feels very personal to more people than I really got before we moved.

My cousin captured this in a couple of posts about her recent travels in France. And I felt it too, on Tuesday, when, after a morning spent glued to the Internets, I tore myself away for a doctor's appointment and, I thought, away from thoughts of the election for an hour or two. Only when I got in the van and turned on the radio, what should be playing on the CBC but a jumpin' song from a Quebequois band, whose chorus was a French translation of "Yes We Can" ("Si Nous Peux," I think). They followed up with an interview with a woman in Montreal, a recent Haitian immigrant who said she'd been calling all her relatives in the U.S. and reminding them to vote.

On Wednesday, at the end of a work-related phone chat, my boss said, "Now, please tell me you voted! You voted, right?" And the first excited phone call I got on Tuesday night just after the election was called wasn't from a friend in the States but from Uncle Skaterboy, calling from the West End of Vancouver.

On the other hand, in some ways the United States is just another country, really, and not everybody's daily life and emotional state hinges on what happens there. When the mom of one of MG's friends called on Tuesday to arrange a childcare exchange, she asked in a perfectly ordinary way how things were going, and seemed taken aback when I babbled something about being excited about the election. "Oh, right," she said, and I could almost hear her shrug as she said, "The States."

It reminded me of the shock I felt--still, even after that world-cracking experience at the train station--five or six years later in Seattle when I saw someone (the Renaissance Woman, as it happens) proudly displaying a button that read "We don't care how they do it in New York."

I remember, I bristled when I first read it. Then I thought: oh! right! I guess not everyone has to care. And maybe, yeah, it could be irritating for people from one particular place to think that their place is the only one that matters. After all, I'd just moved all the way across the country, in large part because I'd had enough of living in New York. Maybe it was even a Good Thing, that there were different places, and different things to care about.

And lo, I did learn, and became less provincial. Even so, I'm still happy and proud, even after all these years, to be from New York City.

And these past few days, I've been happy and proud to be from, and still be a citizen of, that other 800-pound gorilla, the United States of America.

Two Prayers

2008-11-05T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last night, sitting between me and my mom in the darkened living room to watch Obama's speech to the nation and the world from Grant Park, MG was quiet. She was so, so zonked--it had been a long and exciting evening--but she didn't interrupt or ask zillions of questions about every unfamiliar word, as she sometimes does when she's tired. I think she understood what an important moment it was.

Though she did keep murmuring, "Imagine, if your dad was about to be president!" and, "They're going to get a puppy!"

Just before bedtime, inspired by a commenter on the political polling site FiveThirtyEight.com, I said a Shehecheyanu with the Mermaid Girl for Obama's election. The Shehecheyanu is the prayer you say on the first day of a holiday, or for any new event. In our household, we've said it when MG lost a tooth, when she put her head underwater for the first time, when we had our first Shabbat in our new house. We said it when we moved up to Canada. We said it at our first wedding. Whenever something new and good and special happens, it's a Shehecheyanu Moment.

Its literal translation is "Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe [the standard opener for a Hebrew blessing] who has given us life, sustained us, and brought us to this day."

Like so many other people, I'm heartsick about the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Andrew Sullivan wrote a post about it this morning that choked me up and bouyed me up at the same time. He uses a phrase, "the long arc of inclusion," that harkens back to a quote from Martin Luther King's speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967:

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

I'd heard it cited often, but had to look it up this morning to get the exact phrasing right. I'd always thought it was "The arc of history is long." Close, but not exactly the same meaning.

From some lights, it seems true today, and something to celebrate with a world full of Shehecheyanus. Looking at California, I can only hope that the arc is still bending. Based on the proportion of young people opposed to restricting same-sex marriage, it seems to be so.

The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. Like Anne Frank's quote about people being basically good at heart, I'm not even sure if that's true. But I can only hope so. It makes a good prayer, anyway, if one were a praying person: Please, Spirit of the Universe, if there is such a thing, or if not, then combined spirits of all of us together: Make the arc of history match that of the moral universe, and bend towards justice.

And bend it as soon as you, or we, can.

Eleven Election Memories

2008-11-04T07:29:00.000-08:00

1. 1972: Taking a walk around the block shortly after we moved to New Jersey, when I was five or six. A kid from around the corner stood in my way on the sidewalk and demanded "Who are your parents voting for? We're voting for Nixon." I wasn't sure what to say; I was pretty sure we were voting for McGovern, but I didn't want to get into a big fight. (In retrospect, that kid's parents must have been among the very few Nixon voters in our suburb, which might have been better described as an annex of the Upper West Side, but with lawns.)

2. Maybe the same year, or if later, not much later; or maybe even earlier, before we left New York: my mom taking me to vote with her, in an elementary school gym. I remember the crowds of people; the repurposing, for an important grownup purpose, of a place that was normally for kids; the dark privacy of the voting booth, with its half-curtain that my mom let me pull shut, and the mysterious and very very cool levers.

3. Summer, 1980, In the back seat of the car, driving home from a family vacation with my dad, his girlfriend, and her kids (I think my brother was at camp), listening to Reagan accepting the Republican nomination on the car radio. "He's going to win," my dad's girlfriend declared, in the definitive way she said a lot of things, and me feeling like that couldn't be true, he couldn't win, because he was wrong; everyone I knew hated him, so how could he win?

4. 1984: My first election, by absentee ballot, from college. I filled out the ballot in the third floor common room: filled in the little oval for Mondale and Ferraro, slipped it in the envelope, and thought that it should feel more momentous somehow, not so prosaic.

5. 1988: I'd moved to Brooklyn, but my registration was still on the Upper West Side where I'd lived in my cousin's apartment for the summer right after graduation, so I took the subway up to vote. When I signed the voting rolls, I saw my cousin's name, listed just above mine though she was in Boston by then. Finally, I got to vote in the way I thought of as real: the lines, the booth, the curtain, the levers. If you wanted, you could pull one big lever at the top to vote the straight Democratic line, but I voted each position separately, just to hear that satisfying thunk.

6. 1990-1991 or so: Once again, I registered to vote right after moving (to Seattle, this time) and then moved to a different neighborhood shortly afterwards. It took me a year or two to change my registration, so in the meantime I went back to vote with the friend from whom I'd sublet when I first moved, and at whose address I'd registered. We usually made an evening of it; I'd go over to her house for dinner, and then we'd walk over to the local elementary school. I was disappointed that out on the West Coast there were no levers or curtained booths: just flimsy little structures like at the DMV, and paper ballots with ovals to fill in, like a standardized test.

Later, the friend and I fell in love and got married. So you could say, I guess, that those voting dinners were among the Renaissance Woman's and my first dates. Though we didn't think of it that way at the time.

7. 1992: Walking bach from the voting booth to my apartment, buzzing with it, all around me the excitement and buzz that maybe, finally, somebody good was going to win. Everybody: us young hipster types, scraggly old guys on the street, waiting and watching TV and listening to the radio and asking each other if we'd voted. My friend in San Francisco said there was partying in the street that night.

8. 1992, just after the election, going over to a friend's group house and seeing in the hallway a cut-out article from the New York Times: a checklist of Clinton's campaign promises, so readers at home could keep track of whether and how he fulfilled them during his presidency. I still think of that article, and wonder how it scored out in the end. I wasn't keeping track, by then.

9. 2000: I was taking Tuesday afternoons off that fall to cover at home while RW taught an indexing class. So I was home the afternoon of Election Day, just me and the baby Mermaid Girl, hanging out in the living room and listening to NPR. When they announced that Gore had taken Florida, I clapped her little hands together for her, chanting "Gore won Florida! Gore won Florida!" I felt like I could see it all laid out ahead of me: this baby's future, her early childhood, the start of her school years, all with a President who'd be looking out for her and for us and for the things we believe in. It sounds corny, but that's how I felt.

Well, we all know how that turned out.

10. 2004: After we dragged ourselves and four-year-old MG to a MoveOn meeting wherein our child was inadvertently introduced to the concept of American Girl dolls, RW somehow blinked at the wrong time and ended up a Precinct Leader, and we spent several days just before the election doorbelling our neighbors. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, just the act of doing something made me feel a little better about the impending election: crunching through the autumn leaves, talking to people, getting out the vote. On the day itself, I tried to be optimistic, but in hindsight the main thing I remember is a pervasive feeling of gloom and despair. Like we'd done all we could, and that was something, but there was no way this could end well.

11. Today. When I woke MG up I couldn't resist a little plug: "This is a very important day!" I tweedled, while she groaned and pulled the covers back over her head. She dawdled, as usual, and then tried to convince me that she didn't have time to brush her teeth-- did I want her to be late?? Then she insisted that the tag on the back of her jeans was bothering her, and I had to cut it off right away, yes, while she was brushing. When--predictably-- the scissors poked her during that attempt, she burst into tears, her mouth full of toothpaste. "This is going to be a bad day," she sobbed. "I can just tell. Already."

It was all I could do not to yell, You take that back! But I just said, "You don't know that for sure," and handed her her backpack and shoved her out the door. Her mind isn't really on the election; it's here, on the here and now, her breakfast and the homework in her backpack and whether she has gym today. I wish I could take her to see me vote like some of my invisible friends are doing. I wish I could even take her to the Democrats Abroad party this evening, but it's at a pub and kids aren't allowed.

So we'll be here, tonight, me and my daughter and my mother (RW will be at work), watching the news feeds and listening to the radio, and waiting. And hoping MG's words this morning weren't prophetic, but rather a sop to the Evil Eye. And hoping she remembers today.

As I hastily shove the metaphorical dirty dishes into the dishwasher

2008-11-03T14:10:00.000-08:00

I snuck onto my email from work and found that lo and behold I'd been linked to by Andrew Sullivan. So, welcome, Daily Dish readers! Hi! Come on in! Don't mind the mess! Or the kid clutching the weird pink beeping electro-pet and doing cartwheels in the corner!

ETA: Turns out the same post was also linked by Cosmic Variance. (thanks for the tip, Rachel!). So welcome also Cosmic Variance readers! I don't think there have ever been so many physicists and politicos over here, separately or combined. Here, have some leftover Halloween candy!

Also, if you've a mind to, it's not too late to donate to the efforts to defeat Proposition 8. It's really important. Thanks.