Chronicles of the Ephemeral

2009-11-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I haven't kept up with this blog very well, now have I? For now, at least, I'm going to try to blog exclusively on my website: http://virginiaruth.com. 'Cause having so many places to write really isn't working out for me. See you over there!

beachbeachbeach!

2009-08-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've got just a few more hours to pack and clean for the trip. I did a thorough kitchen cleaning last night, and I've tidied the living room; I may or may not vacuum before I go. Cleaning out my room or my car will have to wait.

I've done all the important packing and gathering. Behold...

beach knitting:

beach reading:

and beach beer:

I guess I'll pack some clothes too.

Management

2009-07-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, upon walking into my house, I wailed to Philip: "My life is spiralling out of control!" He very patiently inquired why I felt this way, and after a few minutes we narrowed it down to two basic problems. First, my financial situation remains precarious: I make enough money to pay my bills, on a good week. On a very good week, I make enough money to also buy groceries instead of putting them on my credit card (which further increases the bills to be paid, sigh.) Second, my house and car are disastrously untidy. I haven't fully unpacked yet, and the accumulated detritus of about four long road trips, plus months of not-really-cleaning-out-much before that, makes the back seat of my car an exciting archaeological site. Dan and I both have a laid-back attitude toward dishwashing, and an apparent preference for washing heaps and heaps at a time rather than tidying up after every meal (or, er, every day.)

Wow, I am not making myself sound good here. Ahem. Anyway, after yesterday's mini-meltdown, I have developed a plan.

The problem, you see, is that both of these situations (messiness and financial precariousness) are accumulating evils. Laundry and dishes pile up with the same persistence as bills and debt, and have a tendency to snowball as they become more and more overwhelming. What I tend to look for is a single, large-scale fix: one huge deposit to make my account balances look prettier! One massive cleanup to make my whole space tidy again! Problem is, these things don't seem to be forthcoming. The job that I hoped would help beautify the bank account fell through, and the gumption for one massive cleanup is something I can rarely muster (and only with much prodding.)

So, we're trying a different approach. Baby steps. Just do enough to stay ahead of the pile and whittle away at it slowly. It's not the pleasantest approach for me, who likes to see big sweeping improvements, but it has the advantage of being practicable.

The new policy is as follows:
- Work at least 45 hours a week. Right now I have actual jobs totalling 24-32 hours a week. I have plans for bringing in extra money, to loosen the belt a little, but all of them depend on a fair bit of preliminary work without compensation. I am going to diligently log my hours at this work, and make sure I am putting in at least a regular week's total of working hours.

- Spend at least 30 minutes a day, five days a week, on cleaning and household chores. This is really not a lot. I just need to keep telling myself that. The good news is we have a teeny apartment and if I actually stick to this plan, even factoring in the recurring housework like laundry and dishes, I should make quite decent progress on the backlog.

- Write my work totals in my dayplanner. Accountability is a good thing.

- Post weekly updates to this blog. Public accountability is even better.

A good day

2009-07-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you about my job. About two months ago, when it became clear that hospital work was not forthcoming for me, I began obsessively searching craigslist and applying for any job that I thought could possibly work for me. You do these things when you have bills and no income (everybody else probably knew that; it was rather new to me. I've always been very selective about what jobs I took. I've always had that luxury.)

The job I actually got a response on was a part-time job teaching classes at Gymboree, where toddlers and their parents come to run around and climb all sort of neato, brightly colored and sturdy equipment. Now teaching is great for me, and toddlers are great for me, but the thing is, it's only partly a teaching job. It's at least as much an MC/entertainer job; if you've ever watched kids' shows like The Wiggles or The Doodlebops (the former of whom I like; the latter kinda creep me out), imagine trying to be one of them, only actually in the room with the kids. That's the part that I knew was going to be a stretch. I can be boisterous and energetic, but honestly those moods are rare. Even in my full-time childcare days, I was much more at home with the nurturing and supervision aspects than with the silly playtime (except tickling. Tickling little kids never gets old.) But there are worse things than having to stretch yourself to do a job, and there was a lot about it that I knew I'd enjoy and be great at, and anyway I wasn't in a position to be selective.

Let's fast-forward right through the training process, shall we, which was as much like boot camp as you could imagine it being, given that you're essentially training to be a hands-on Wiggle (Er. Let's just move right past any sketchy implications you could put to that phrase. Kthx.) Basically, what I heard EVERY day through the long, detailed, and unstinting feedback I got to listen to after each training session, was, "More energy! You need more energy!" Well, yes, I know this. I said to myself, and to both of the people who interviewed me, that that would be my struggle. It's not like I can just switch it on, it's a process. I'm working on it.

It turns out my self-esteem is not as robust as I have sometimes thought, and it's especially vulnerable to (justified) criticism from authority. Turns out, when I am in any sort of situation where my performance is being evaluated (school, work, life), I am capable of two and only two self-assessments. 1: I am AWESOME and THE BEST and everybody around is just so, so glad I am here doing what I'm doing. 2: I am HORRIBLE and INCOMPETENT and everybody is trying to figure out how they can remove me from this position as quickly as possible, because it's obvious I will never make the grade, and also I am too reserved and cold and I suck at communication and I still haven't learned to keep my room clean. (It's possible some outside, irrelevant factors creep into the second of my two self-assessments.)

So, for the last month and a half or so that I've been a full-fledged Gymboree teacher, I've battled more or less continually with feelings of inadequacy. The other teachers, the parents, the managers, I mostly figure they're just inwardly biting their tongues and hoping I get my act together soon or they're going to have to do something drastic like, you know, Speak to me about it. (Isn't that the worst?) And most of the time the area in which I feel inadequate is energy.

This is a very long lead-up to telling you about yesterday. Yesterday I was scheduled to lead a party at Gymboree-- not a birthday party, as we commonly do, but a big get-to-know-each-other party for a local community center. We were expecting a lot of people, and it was going to be my job to be the MC/entertainer/Greg Wiggle to all these folks, most of whom had never been to Gymboree before and would form their whole impression based on my performance. My manager was going to be there, running the admin-type stuff of the party, so it's not like nobody would know if I did badly. I was a wee bit nervous.

I spent an hour or so the night before coming up with as many activities as I could think of; activities to cover any possible age range (from 6 months to 4 years, which is a HUGE range) and any possible group size. Lots more activities than we could possibly need, because inevitably when you get out there and see the way your group is functioning, you look at your activity list and realize that at least a third of them will be a total bust. Once I'd come up with that list, I put it away and refused to think about the party any more, because any time I thought about it I felt convinced that I didn't have enough activities, or the right kind, and that even if I was okay on the activity front, there was no way I was going to muster enough energy and enthusiasm to make this thing fly. I went right on ahead not thinking about the party, right up until, well, the party.

To cut a too-long story short: I rocked it. Totally and completely. I was confident, I was loud (another struggle I had during training), I kept things moving. I had a number of parents say to me, "Wow, you've got so much energy!" which means I can apparently fake it. I had sort of a worst-of-both-worlds situation: the first group, with the younger kids, was HUGE, three times as big as any class we'd run, and the second group was tiny. Didn't matter. I had plenty of activities, and they were fun, and they worked, and kids were giggling and laughing and I'm not sure anyone cried. It was awesome. Everybody said so, including my manager.

So, yeah. That was really good. And made me feel so, so much better about my job, or rather about my ability to do my job well. I don't expect that I'll go into class next Wednesday and immediately have all the energy that I think they want from me, because that mass of people was a big part of where I drew it from, but I know I'm capable of it. So yay.

The rest of the day was likewise pretty great. After going home and showering, I went up to Philip's, to find him swearing at a sink. His own sink, to be precise; it was, at that moment, upturned atop his counter, while he was underneath embroiled in hoses and pipes (looking, I might add, much better than your stereotypical plumber from that position.)

Several minutes later, Dan arrived, and we extricated Philip from his sink and headed off toward Mellow Mushroom for beer and pizza, which was exactly what I wanted, and felt that I'd earned, after an afternoon of entertaining masses of children. Philip needed yet another part for his sink (I hear tell it was his fourth trip there that day), so we stopped at Lowe's, where we promptly turned into a pack of 11-year-olds, giggling over naughty interpretations of the names of tools. (In our defense: did they really have to put the nipples right across the aisle from the ballcocks?)

We obtained the right kind of nipple, as well as the right size of tongue groove pliers (stop that! it's what they're called!), and then had our beer and pizza. Lots of both. Somewhere along the way, we found ourselves quoting The Emperor's New Groove, so once we got home Philip put that on while he finished with the sink. Before the end of the movie, he had successfully re-installed the sink with its new faucet (which is what had started the whole trouble) and I had gotten to the heel of my sock.

It was a very good day.

fun with knitting designs

2009-07-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today I am going to channel my inner knitblogger (didn't know I had one? She's in there), so if you don't knit and are bored by discussions of crafts you don't engage in, this is probably a good time to look elsewhere.

I am having heaps of fun doing my first serious design work. I've adapted patterns and played with stitch dictionaries, and I've free-form knitted a number of hats, but this is the first project where I've had a clear vision and tried to figure out how to get there.

The vision is simple: Blue Ridge April. I was enchanted by the colors that my brother and I saw as we were driving through Kentucky and Tennessee this spring, and immediately decided that there must be a knitting project using these colors in my future. I pondered for several weeks, came up with a rough idea, and bought my yarn. Now the fun part begins. See here my first trial, capturing the basic idea and seeing how it might work:

The idea is to work in stripes of green and off-black, with splashes of the purple worked in in short rows to create some nice curving lines, and the yellow and pink as tiny accents. I worked off a very loose chart dictating the placement of the purple. Once I'd gotten to about this point, I had learned a number of things: first and most important, what my scheme looked like in the real world, and also some technical points surrounding short rows (I only found out about "wrap and turn" about halfway through, and I learned to knit backwards to avoid the bother of turning my work every two seconds). I decided it was time to rip the whole thing back, come up with a proper pattern, and then knit to that.

Behold: my first-ever written knitting pattern!

About 20 rows in, I am once again re-assessing. Is this what I want it to be? Does it look right? Even if I like the overall effect, am I prepared to live with certain little irregularities, or do I want to rip back and correct them? Is it all just completely wrong and I need to throw out all my ideas and start from scratch? Should I have waited to find a yarn that could give me the several shades of green I'd originally envisioned?

One of the many problems with this kind of dilemma is that, while knitting, one pretty much wants to keep on knitting. It's very easy to ignore suspicions of deep design flaws while you keep working stitch after stitch. I think there's a basic, engrained assumption that the more I knit, the closer I get to my goal: it's pretty hard to shake up this notion and remember that, if what I'm knitting doesn't look like what I want to end up with, working on it longer will not magically fix that.

So I've decided to put the shawl down for a while (did I mention it's going to be a shawl? I use the word loosely: more of a shrug or capelet-type thing, I'm still deciding what kind) and come back to it after a few days with some perspective.

In the meantime, I'm starting on my plan to use up some cotton/linen yarn that has been cluttering my stash for way too long. I bought it to make a tank top for which it was eminently unsuitable, tried it for a few other projects (none of them any better), and at last came to the realization that I don't even like the yarn. This is a problem, since I have more of it than I have of anything else (except some Patons Classic Merino, but I don't imagine I'll have any trouble coming up with a use for that). At last I have decided to make as many washcloths as I can stand. Having a quick, simple project, and the freedom to play with stitch patterns in the middle, should make it tolerable, even disliking the yarn as I do. And I do need more washcloths. Now I just have to decide what designs to put in the middle. Initials? Some kind of picture? Random geometry?

Baby names and popularity

2009-06-20T07:49:00.000-07:00

I've always liked the name Stella. To me it's pretty, unusual, but familiar and easy to spell and pronounce - pretty much the perfect name. In the last few years, though, I've seen signs that it's becoming more common, and lately it has moved to my "great name, but too fashionable" list (others to move over to that list in the last five years include Emma, Sophia, and especially Olivia, which I loved before anybody else did.) Stella is clearly not in the same league as those stars yet, but it is on the rise, and since names that I think are pretty and were unusual have a way of taking off and hitting the top ten, I will probably stay away from it.

(For those who don't know me as well: no, there is no actual baby anywhere on my horizon that needs to be given a name. That has never stopped me from analyzing these things down to a hair's breadth.)

Since I have now returned to the field of caring for and entertaining small children (which seems to be my ground state) I have a great opportunity to observe recent name trends in action. As expected, I've run into lots of Isabellas and Sophias, your standard run of semi-androgynous girls (Madison, Addison, Presley, Riley), and a whole slew of boys with names that rhyme with Aiden. I've also met exactly one Stella. This got me thinking. Stella, at the moment, is a different kind of name from Madison and Presley, from Isabella and Sophia. It's the kind of name that name-conscious parents will recognize as attractive and fashionable, but isn't ubiquitous. Now, as I mentioned before, names like this are in grave danger of becoming ubiquitous in another couple of years (others in this class, currently, are Amelia, Lila, Nora, and Violet) but surely they can't all go supernova, right? What happens to the names that stay in that golden ground? How are they perceived, as the children grow up?

I turned to the naming trends of my own generation, and tried to think of names that might fit that description: names that had fashionable flair, but didn't become the Next Big Thing. I had trouble thinking of any that might fit. Vanessa, maybe? I turned to the SSA name rankings, an ever-present help. Stella was ranked 186 this year; it jumped from the 600s into the 200s a few years ago (a warning sign that a name may go supernova.) What names were ranked around the high 100s in 1981, the year I was born?

Morgan. Bonnie. Priscilla. Marissa. I was surprised - for the most part, these were names that I'd encountered once at most among my peers. You do have to adjust for demographic... most of the kids I knew growing up were white, middle-to-upper-middle-class, and churchgoers. It's not surprising that I didn't know any Ebonys (#178) but knew a number of Hannahs (#190). Even taking that into consideration, though, I had expected the names at this rank level to be more common. My own name, Virginia, ranks 159, and I've only ever met two or three my age.

The good news is, this greatly expands the ranking range I'll allow myself to look in when it comes to naming my own children. I don't mind them encountering a handful of other kids with their name; what I want to avoid is, first, always knowing somebody else who has their name, and second, having a name that solidly dates them to their generation.

My strategies (because who doesn't like to strategize about challenges that are nowhere on the horizon yet?) are as follows:

- On principle, avoid names ranked in the top 75.

- Search alternate versions and spellings to get a name's "real" popularity (in my year, Kristin and Kristen ranked 31 and 38, but taken together their percentage would put them in the top 10; if you add in Christine, Christina, and Christy with all their variant spellings, they're right up there with Jennifer).

- Watch for leapfrogging popularity. Olivia went from 123 to 50 in three years. Emma went from 151 to 81 in four. Ava went from 180 to 82 in just two years. These popularity jumps do telegraph themselves.

- Stay away from names that have been a) used for a popular TV character; b) given by a celebrity to their child; c) used for the fictional child of a popular TV character.

- Be aware of the "flavor" of popular names in your own demographic. I peg Stella, Amelia, Lila, and Violet as rising stars in mine partly because they have popped up more and more on a very name-savvy message board I frequent, but also because they reflect the flavor of the current hot names: they're classic, feminine but not frilly, and before they became popular they struck people as very old-fashioned.

It's just occurred to me that I've used all girls' names in this discussion. The reason is simple: I like girls' names better. But if (by some odd chance) you're reading this hoping to glean some wisdom to use in naming your son, I have one crucial piece of advice: don't, please don't, name him anything that rhymes with Aiden. We've got enough.*

*Don't believe me? In the top 100 for 2008, there are more Aidens, Jaydens, Braydens, Kadens, and Haydens than there are of the top four boys' names combined. There are more -aydens now than there were Michaels in 1981. I agree it's a pleasant sound, masculine but not rough, fitting well with the strong but sensitive men we want our sons to be, but the market is now saturated. If we don't stop now, half of our sons' class lists are going to rhyme.

2009-06-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

I have observed a pattern. Any time I have some planned content for my next post, it takes approximately a year for me to write any post at all. When I do, it's usually a post apologizing for why I still haven't written on whatever I said I was going to write on. This is silly. I'm going to institute a new policy: the Ignore What I Just Said Policy. If I tell you that my next post will give you my thoughts on the morality of stealing herbs from neighbors' gardens, don't get your hopes up (or down, as it may be): the post is just as likely to be a rant on the library's penchant for taunting me with the sequel to the book I want to read, but not having the actual book. Henceforth, I absolve myself of all obligation to follow up on promises about post content. This is Chronicles of the Ephemeral, for crying out loud. Following a plan would go against the very spirit of the blog. (Plus, you know, I can't seem to do it.)

So! Today we have the exciting adventures of Ginny in housekeeping. Let me first stipulate that I am a very competent housekeeper. I can cook and bake things that turn out more or less the way I wanted them; I can clean thoroughly, especially if I have other work that needs to be done; I'm sure I'm capable of staying on top of laundry if I really wanted to. Since moving in, the housekeeping has been somewhat hit-or-miss. The steady influx of Stuff from all the different storage places I had it, the desperate scramble for a job sapping me of all energy to do other chores, and the delightful presence of a boyfriend in the same actual city as myself all contributed to this. Now that I have the job situation more or less under control, and since it appears to be giving me lots of free time during the day, I've resolved to get the house in order.

Today's projects included:
- Baking banana bread from the six or seven bananas that have been relegated to freezer-land
- Making croutons from the loaf of bread that's been rock-hard for about a week
- Doing laundry, for heaven's sake, at some point one does need clean underwear
- Finishing Jenn's wedding present so I can mail it to her before her first anniversary
- Hanging up my posters and such

I had mixed results.

I have a recipe for banana bread, given to me by Gretchen, which I'd never used before and was most excited about trying (it involves graham crackers and chocolate and is ever so yummy.) While I was calculating the sizes of bowls I'd need, I realized that the recipe did not call for flour. This didn't seem right, though I thought maybe the crushed graham crackers were substituting for it. I texted Gretchen to ask her, waited a bit, then decided to go ahead with the recipe as written.

Yep. I think there was supposed to be flour.

My crouton attempt went slightly better, though not without incident. Our stove and oven are both... overzealous. I burned them slightly, but they taste okay.

The plus to an overzealous oven is, it heats up your kitchen and dries your laundry really fast. One task-- accomplished! No, I haven't put away the clean clothes yet. What do you think I am, superwoman? The clothes are clean. That's an achievement.

Jenn's wedding present will be done tomorrow.

I did hang up my posters and such. The "and such" proved an exercise for my creativity. The two Mike photos I used to have in my room now live in the living room. I had a few poster, mostly literary-themed, and nothing else. Pondering my resources, I came up with this solution, which I find brilliant:

Can you see? Can you see? I know it's kinda small. I've hung up some of my prettiest skeins of yarn. It's stash management AND interior decoration! Tell me I'm not clever.
That was my day's work. My brilliant Philip came over this afternoon, took a look at and taste of the ruined banana bread, and contrived a butter-rum glaze to go over it. It is now banana-rum-chocolate cake, and it is delicious.

travelogue, part II

2009-05-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

I am sitting by my window in my papasan chair, listening to music and smelling the rain. It's only in the last few days that I've gotten this window and this chair, and the music and the rain came together only just now, so I'm feeling very blessed.

To continue where I left off last post: I got to Chicago on a very cold and rainy Sunday afternoon, exactly two weeks ago now. I got myself quite horribly lost, right after telling Philip how pleased I was that I knew Chicago well enough to pick an alternate route when the traffic on the highway became unbearable. So it goes. I made it to the house where Dan was staying eventually, and we decided the first order of business was figuring out how to get the bike racks on the car. That was a fun game: Dad had bought them with the car but never used them, and the previous owner didn't have the manual. We did a dry run in the house, then proceeded to Vladimir for what may very appropriately be called the wet run. Wet, and cold, but successful-- that is to say, we drove the bikes from Chicago to Atlanta and they didn't fly off of the roof, which is all the success you can ask for.

Dan wanted one last Chicago pizza, so we had a quick but delicious bite on the way to see the play he'd been directing. It was very good, two one-acts that, in different ways, looked at the way people try to project an ideal image of themselves, and the ways that image breaks down. I enjoyed it a lot: kudos to everybody involved.

After the play I headed back up to spend the night with my cousin Carrie, whom I haven't seen for a couple of years. We chatted on the couch until quite late, and in the morning she made pancakes (third great breakfast in a row! I was so spoiled.) I got to see her family and meet her youngest daughter, who hadn't been born yet last time we saw each other. They're absolutely precious and I hope it isn't so long again next time.

I went back to Dan's and we loaded his stuff into Vladimir. He wasn't expecting to be able to pack everything in, so he'd set out one suitcase to be shipped, but as we got farther along it looked like we might be able to fit everything.

Hum. I have just realized that there is no way to make the packing of a car exciting in prose. I'll skip the attempt: let me just say that it was an epic struggle, a progression of hope, anxiety, despair, resurging confidence, and ultimate triumph. We got everything into the car and gave each other high fives and slaps on the back for like five minutes. Then we packed ourselves into the car, and started down the long road.

We decided to start the trip off with some Barenaked Ladies, and in lieu of picking an album we just put my entire BNL collection on shuffle. Turns out I have five hours of Barenaked Ladies songs (and I got another CD for Christmas, so now I have six.) We listened through every single one, some of them twice because of the live album, and the only one we skipped was the second round of "Break Your Heart," because that one takes a lot of energy and we agreed it's too much to sing it twice in one road trip. By the time that was done we were driving through Kentucky, so we put on Blues Traveler; I hadn't heard much of them before, but I liked them.

It was a fun but long trip, and we both tried very hard not to think about the fact that we'd be doing the same thing again twice more next week.

We finally arrived in Atlanta around ten-thirty at night, and staggered gratefully into Philip's apartment. Neither of us could believe that we were really there or that this was where we lived now, but then that's not unexpected. Transitions always take some time to sink in. For me, it felt more or less exactly like the two or three other trips to Atlanta I'd taken since January: long drive, hey, it's Atlanta! hey, it's Philip! toss my stuff down on his floor and thank God I'm not in the car any more. The back of my brain was convinced that this was another weekend trip, and there wasn't really any way to convince it otherwise, so I just let it think what it wanted.

Next up: the interim week!

travelogue, part I

2009-04-23T18:12:00.001-07:00

Oh my goodness me. This time last week I was in Virginia, visiting with my roommates and looking ahead to my very last shift at the hospital. (Actually, I think at this precise time I was on the phone with my boyfriend, making plans for my birthday which we'll be celebrating this time next week, but that's neither here nor there.) I wanted to post pretty regular travel updates, but of course I lacked either time, internet connection, or both, and I'm really just now sitting down to take a breath for the first time in that week. So. Breathe. Recap.

Friday: Last day at work. I'm really gonna miss those guys. I brought in two boxes of cookies from Trader Joe's, which were very well received. My co-workers surprised me by ordering pizza, and one of them bought me a slice of my favorite cake from the cafeteria. I felt very loved. It was a busy but not crazy day, and I got to work as tech for eight hours then secretary for four, which is just how I like it. All in all, a pretty perfect Last Day. Then I drove to Mom and Dad's to spend the night, because I was taking Dad's car out to Chicago.

I'd better explain my itinerary a bit, because it's hardly straightforward (one of my co-workers, after I explained that I was driving to Atlanta via Chicago, offered to buy me a map.) The setup: Ginny in Virginia with two cars, Vladimir and Robin. Robin belongs to me, Vladimir belongs to Dad but is being rented to Dan, who is in Chicago with no cars. Stage One: Ginny drives Vladimir to Chicago, with one teeny backpack containing just enough to last her a week. Dan and Ginny drive Vladimir to Atlanta, with as much of Dan's stuff as they can cram. Stage Two: About a week later, Dan and Ginny drive Vladimir to Virginia, load up Ginny's stuff into Vladimir and Robin, and drive both cars back to Atlanta. They then breathe a tremendous sigh of relief and swear off long road trips and moving forever.

Saturday: Mums cooked up a big grand breakfast. I had intended to leave at ten, and I actually left at 11:20, which is par for me. Dad and I had a wee conflict before I left, which was part of the delay; nothing big or dramatic or even surprising, just one of the natural struggles that come when you have a parent and child that love each other. It still made me cry, though, which is not the best way to start a day of driving. For one thing, crying always makes me sleepy. So my first couple hours of driving were with heavy eyes. Ah well.

Actually the whole first half of the trip felt very odd. I think it was partly that I wasn't driving a familiar route; after spending so much time going to and from Atlanta, it felt weird to be going a different direction. Also, I hadn't yet managed to get in touch with Gretchen's grandparents, with whom I was staying that night. Gretchen had, and everything was worked out, but I hadn't talked to them directly. It's rather unsettling to be driving 500 miles away from home and not be completely assured that you have a place to land. I finally talked to them somewhere in Ohio, and immediately felt five times better.

Gretchen's grandparents are the dearest, sweetest people in the world. I've only met them once before, when I came home with her one spring break, but we adopted each other immediately and Gretch says they've been asking continually when I was going to see them. Originally my plan was to drive straight to Chicago on Saturday, but I decided to break the journey and take the opportunity to see them, and I'm so glad I did. They welcomed me with hugs and a ham sandwich, and we chatted a while before an early bedtime.

Sunday: I slept in, oh glory, and even got time to work on my sock a bit before Grandma and Grandpa got back from Mass. Then Grandma made me a lovely breakfast (my second in a row! keep counting) that was definitely not creamed eggs on toast, because Gretchen reads this blog, and they both told me repeatedly that if Gretchen were to hear that they'd served me creamed eggs on toast their lives would be forfeit, so it was a delicious breakfast but it was certainly not that. Then I bundled myself back into Vladimir and headed up to Chicago.

(Off for drinks and a movie with my boys. More to come.)

in which the author attempts to argue that buying yarn is an indispensable step in preparing to move

2009-03-25T09:54:00.001-07:00

It's like this. Almost exactly four years ago, my mother went to Aylin's Woolgatherer in search of a birthday present for me. She came back with two balls of a lovely orange wool, and a gift certificate for twice as many dollars as I had years. Aylin's being, as it is, in Northern VA, and I being, as I was, in Atlanta, I knew I wouldn't be able to use it right away, so I tucked it somewhere safe and planned to use it in a couple of months when I was back home.

Fast forward four years. That gift certificate has been rattling among my papers all this time. Many, many things have happened since then. I've bought two cars, moved five times, held two full-time jobs and two part-time, taken the LSAT, decided not to apply to law school, and had a handful each of religious and romantic crises. Oh, and shaved my head. With all this going on, is it any wonder I never found time to use that gift certificate?

Anyhow, now as my NoVA time is running out, I realized that I'd better spend that gift certificate now or it would forever be a reproachful paper in my file box. And since this was the week I had scheduled to pack up most of my crafty things, I decided this was a good week to buy more crafty things for me to pack up.

So I went down to Aylin's on Monday. This, I should mention, was my very first experience of the Local Yarn Store, an entity so well known among knitters that knitbloggers just use the acronym. It is a very, very different thing from your craft store that carries yarn. It is a lush haven of -- actually, I'm not going to do that, because I'm sure many, many people have already written up poetic descriptions of the Local Yarn Store and I don't feel like trying to match the eloquence I'm sure they attained. I wandered around the store with my inner monologue on a one-word loop: "pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty..."

One thing I wasn't prepared for was that none of the yarn was marked with a price. After browsing for a while, though, I understood the wisdom of this: how kind and thoughtful of them it was, because if I knew how much each skein cost I would have been plagued with tiresome thoughts like, "If I buy one of these I can only get one other small thing, and what should it be, but if I buy this instead I can get three, only I don't like any of the colors that much" (that would have been a lie, by the way: I liked ALL of the colors of EVERYTHING; it was only a question of which ones made me say "pretty-pretty-pretty" and which ones made me melt into a puddle of love and longing right there). Holy cow, can you believe that was all one sentence? Anyway, knitting is all about peace and calm and releasing nervous tension (except the week before Christmas), and putting price tags on the yarn would have totally gone against the spirit of the thing. (There was also a sign reading, Your husband called: he said buy whatever you want! which I thought was terribly cute and revealed in a new light how this and all my other hobbies might someday affect the poor bloke who ends up sharing a bank account with me.)

At long last, I went to the desk with three skeins of yarn and a set of needles, which I hoped would come out to more or less the amount of the gift certificate. I had also picked out in my head exactly which skeins I would dash back and grab in the event that I came out under-par. (Note the plural there: I can only describe this as "wishfully stupid.") Turns out I picked out yarn for the exact right amount: the total of the gift certificate plus nearly all my lunch money for the rest of the week.*

So now I have three skeins more to deal with than I had before, which is no problem at all when they're so pretty, and in fact I have another gift certificate that I got last Christmas, just to A. C. Moore this time, and I am totally going to buy more yarn there this very afternoon, because that way I'll have all the yarn I'm going to buy before moving, and I can organize my projects-to-keep-out and projects-to-pack later this very afternoon, and anyway I don't think there's an A. C. Moore in Atlanta so I need to use it before I move, and I have carefully avoided looking it up online to see if that's true.

*The cleverer of you may ask, "What if the yarn you picked had cost the total of your gift certificate plus your lunch money for the next two weeks? Would that have also been the exact right amount?" Yes, yes it would. Shut up.

News, excuses, and a tag

2009-02-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

Carrie tagged me, for which thank goodness, because I've been procrastinating something fierce on this blog. And then I procrastinated a while longer on responding to the tag, but oh well. The deal is, you go to the 6th picture folder on your computer, and select the 6th picture; post it, and say something about it. You're supposed to tag 6 people, but I'll skip that part since I only have about two friends who are still blogging.

Ooh, this is one of the many pictures I took as a clever Facebook profile attempt. I set up my desk the way it might typically look: index cards, fountain pen, coffee mug (from my alma mater!), and then put a picture of myself on my laptop, as a sneaky way of getting my picture in there. This was one of the rejected ones, but it's still got the basic idea.

AND NOW: For an all-new 2009 edition of I Have Not Updated In Forever And I'm Sorry And This Is Why.

Excuse #1: It was perhaps a bit stupid of me to start a "year-long" topical blog to be updated weekly at the exact same time I started an online serial fiction project, also to be updated weekly. I have been very faithful in updating the story. 'Nuff said.

Excuse #2: I started talking a lot to a friend of mine who has always, for the six years I've known him, made me feel beautiful and awesome. Not only did this absorb a fair amount of time and attention, but it left me in a mental state where the only tip I could really think of on the subject of "reclaiming beauty" was, "Find somebody who always makes you feel beautiful, and talk to that person a lot." Which may be good advice, but in this particular case I fear it might have quickly degenerated into slumber-party gushing, which was not really what this blog was intended for.

Excuse #3: I decided to stop waffling and move to Atlanta, which I've been talking about doing for the last year and a half at least. This may or may not be related to excuse #2 (did I mention he lives in Atlanta?), but regardless, it's been also quite time- and attention-consuming. And will continue to be for the next two months, as I'm moving at the end of April. Also, I've been trying to save money and to Not Accumulate Stuff, which cuts down on the "trying new beauty-product recipes" and such.

Excuse #4: Not an excuse per se, just a reason: I've been thinking about too many other things. Many times I've had the impulse to blog something, but didn't let myself because it wasn't topical. Which may be causing a sort of logjam of ideas, in which all my beauty-related thoughts are stuck behind all the non-topical thoughts and can't come forward on those rare occasions when I actually have sat down with the intention of writing something for this.

The upshot is, as with so many of my Grand Schemes, the year-long journey blah blah blah seems to have fizzled and died. I'm still interested in the subject, and I'm definitely going to be trying out more recipes and such, once I'm moved and settled and not thinking "I will have to pack this" every time I buy anything non-edible, but I don't think I will keep this blog exclusive to that subject, as I'd planned. Instead, I will post about Whatever The Heck I Feel Like, and perhaps I'll do it more than once every two months.

mmm smelly stuff

2009-01-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

It's fun to me how, when you want to tell the story of something, you usually have about half a dozen starting points to choose from. For this blog, for example, I could say, "It all started when a particular person said a particular thing that seriously undermined my self-image..." and that would be true. I could also say, "It all started when I went dancing this summer, and began to reassess the importance of integrating my physicality and femininity into my understanding of who I am..." and that would be true. I could also say, "It all started when I was standing in Joy's bathroom thinking how cute her short hair looked..." and that would be true.

But today, the story begins with: "It all started when I came across this sentence in an Archie Goodwin story." You don't need to know who Archie Goodwin is; they're detective stories from about half a century ago, and you get that New-York-in-the-'40s glamor popping in at moments. Anyway, Archie is standing around the living room where Lily Rowan, who's beautiful and rich and classy and difficult, is throwing a party. And he notices some scent drifting by, and is trying to decide what it is, and comments (to himself) that it can't be Lily's because "you have to be a lot closer than that to smell Lily's perfume." And I read that and thought, Well that's hot. And it immediately got me thinking about perfume (as I do every two or three years) and thinking it would be nice to have some particular scent that I wore, at least for special occasions.

So a few days later, I was idly googling kinds of perfumes and suchlike, and I found a few references to making perfume at home. I figured that must be a fiddly and expensive process, but being curious I clicked one of the links. Turns out it's ridiculously easy. Basically, you need essential oils and alcohol, neither of which are difficult to obtain in this Amazon age. The oils range from around $5 to around $30 for a half-ounce bottle... not cheap, but not bad for a new hobby.

I started collecting my oils, including lots at Christmas. There are still several that I want to get as soon as possible, but I have enough to begin playing. You can make perfumes with alcohol, in the normal liquid form, and you can also make them as solids, about the consistency of Vaseline. Solids don't carry the scent as far, keeping it mostly to your own skin, and I decided to play with those, both out of courtesy to others, and for the Lily Rowan effect. I've made exactly one so far, and it's... all right. It smells nice, but it definitely needs some tweaking, and I could use several more oils to complicate the scent a little bit.

Basically, though, it's so much fun! Even more fun than making my own shampoo, because it's frivolous and smells pretty. And there's that whole artistic component, and even though I'm just getting started I can sniff my mixture critically and think, Hm, perhaps a drop more Geranium. And I'm so looking forward to being able to design my own scents for all occasions, and some to give to friends, and all of that! My youngest brother, who's always had a sensitive nose, has already requested a cologne.

honey and rosewater, my new best friends

2008-12-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

There's plenty more to say about my hair, but since that's not the only thing I'm up to right now, I thought I'd talk about something else first. And today's "something else" is Homemade Beauty Products.

I should say, first, that for the last three or four years, the complete list of beauty products I've bought and used regularly is as follows:

-shampoo (usually Suave)
-bar soap (usually Dove)
-shaving gel (usually CVS brand, which is actually very good)
-razors (my one expensive item: I use Gillette's Venus Divine, because they really are better on my sensitive skin)
-a thick lotion (essential when you're constantly washing hands at work)

I have a small stash of makeup, which I put on maybe four or five times a year. I have a few tinted lip glosses which I sometimes wear in the summer. That's it. Before I gave up on attending to beauty, I would often put on eyeliner and lip gloss on my days off work, but I haven't done that for the last couple of years.

Part of this minimalism is due to economy. Part of it is due to never wanting to spend time on face creams and makeup and all that. Part of it is due to resentment of the vast beauty-product machine, its aggressive marketing and the subtle but persistent idea that these products will buy you love. (Maybe the message reaches other people differently, but for me, with my looong history of unrequited love interests, that's always been it: maybe if I use X, he will suddenly find me irresistible.)

And my gosh, what a sick message that is to have in your brain. It doesn't help that I had it reinforced by a very strong external voice, coming from a person I find it hard to doubt. It was the need to purge that message from my brain, more than anything else, that led me to give up on caring about my appearance. I don't have it all figured out, but I'm smart enough to know that those things we do in a desperate scramble to earn love need to be abandoned if we're going to grow.

This whole project is about moving past the need-driven pursuit of beauty, to some more healthy and fulfilling attitude. And as a second step (the first being the shaved head), I've started making my own beauty products.

The connection probably isn't obvious. In fact, there's no necessary connection at all. But for me, making my own products, at home, out of simple ingredients I understand, has been tremendously empowering. There are several reasons for this. The first is that I just love making things. Cooking, knitting, designing greeting cards, sculpting out of clay-- I'm a dabbler in all manner of crafts. The process of making something with my hands is deeply satisfying to me; the attention to detail and slow, fine-grained physicality of all these crafts complements the mental, imaginative buzzing that most of my life is made up of. So simply the process of making these mixtures is fun and rewarding for me. (Remember when you were a kid, and loved mixing things? I would use all my mom's discarded shampoo and lotion bottles, and make the most awful, messy, weird-smelling concoctions. Happy times.)

The second reason is that it makes me feel independent. Our lives these days are built on such long, long chains of cooperation (my daddy's phrase!) that we barely understand most of the things we use. We are so, so distant from the raw materials and simple concepts that all our products and systems are based on, and sometimes it gives me this very tense, out-of-control feeling. I wouldn't trade it-- the complexity of our socioeconomic order brings profound gifts to us-- but it's nice, sometimes, to go a little simpler. I still may not know where the honey and oats in my shampoo were harvested, but I understand what they are, and I have a theoretic knowledge of how to produce them. Unlike, for example, methylchloroisothiazolinone.

The third reason is that it makes me feel quirky and defiant and self-expressive. I just like swimming a little bit against the cultural stream. I'm not snooty and elitist about it, as I used to be, but I still prefer to keep to a lifestyle that's just... a little bit... different. Buying face cream at a department store does not accord with this preference. Making it out of olive oil and beeswax does.

So, for all these reasons, I immediately became enthusiastic about beauty supplies when I found out you could make your own. I have a big book of recipes-- I've tried about six of them so far, for everything from shampoo to mouthwash. And since using them I've found, what I didn't find before, that there is a satisfaction that comes from using them as well as from making them. Regardless of whether it makes my skin look or feel better (I haven't performed any scientific studies as yet), it feels good to anoint my face with cold cream and astringent. This is probably not news to most women, but it is to me. Before, any time I was engaged on any kind of complicated beauty ritual, it was all about how other people were going to respond to me; now it's about nurturing myself, cherishing my own skin. It's a lovely thing.

So, um, where did your hair go?

2008-12-07T15:09:00.001-08:00

Yes, friends, my first act in this exploration of beauty was shaving my head. In fact, the decision to shave my head came first; it was only as I was writing through my reasons for wanting to do it that I decided to embark on this more general quest to rediscover what it means to make myself beautiful.

The story is this: in the fall of 2006, I cut my hair short. It was a complicated but powerful impulse, and it had almost nothing to do with whether or not I'd like the way it looked. It was part of the greater movement toward eschewing both beauty and femininity; although when I first got it cut I paid a lot of money to get a "really good" cut, I quickly moved to trimming it myself, in the bathroom, with craft scissors. Now, I'm a pretty healthy, well-balanced, emotionally stable person, and even going through a personal crisis I seem to act in a healthy, well-balanced, emotionally stable way. So if I'm going to act in self-attacking ways, ultimately they're going to be very benign. Cutting my own hair became, at times, a kind of self-attack. I wasn't going to actually injure myself, but I was going to act aggressively against that part of myself that had been causing me pain: my femininity, that part of me that is on display for the world, symbolized by my hair. If it got longer than an inch and a half or so, I felt this powerful, visceral need to cut it back again. There was a certain vengeful pleasure in slicing and slicing until it was once again short enough that I could just run my fingers through it.

Well, I'm in a much better place now, and a few months ago I started to feel that something needed to be done with my hair. I considered several different ideas, but when the right one came to me I recognized it at once: "I'm going to grow my hair long again, but I'm going to shave it off first; start from zero."

I've always been curious about what it would be like to shave my head, and have been half-looking for an excuse for several years. Whether or not this could be considered an excuse, I don't know; I do know that it felt all wrong to consider growing my hair out from where it was. There was too much negativity tied up with my current haircut, too much anger and self-hatred. It would have felt like building on a bad foundation. I wanted a fresh start.

I thought it would be nice to time it with the liturgical calendar, so last Sunday (the first day of Advent, very appropriate) my dear roommates helped me raze the head. Coming up to it, I was increasingly nervous about how it would look, but I decided my goal would be to find ways to look beautiful with a bald head, and then later at every stage of hair growth. To this end I bought a few scarves which I could wrap about my head in interesting ways, and knitted several hats. I figured, if I could get started now, finding beauty in challenging circumstances, I'd be well set to find it later, once my hair was all grown out and easy to make pretty.

Of course, my plan backfired slightly, because I think my nearly-bald head looks AWESOME. But more about that next time, as I discuss... The Shaving of the Head: Aftermath.

and now for something completely different

2008-12-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

Up until this weekend, this blog has been Chronicles of the Ephemeral, where I write about whatever amusing and trivial things have been happening to me lately. Chronicles will be back again in 2010, but for this year I'm going to be doing something a little different.

It all started... no, I can't possibly trace this back to when it all started. I remember when I was a little girl, I went through a phase when I refused to wear dresses, and then another phase when I refused to wear pants. And whatever was behind both of those phases (I don't remember) is probably a part of what I'm doing now, and that's way too far for me to go back.

Let's just say this: the notion of personal beauty has always been a little bit problematic. I grew up wanting to be beautiful, and I don't think it was because my parents or society told me that a little girl has to be beautiful or she's worthless. I think there's something inherently soul-fulfilling in looking at yourself and being pleased; in knowing that others take pleasure in looking at you. A beautiful person has the same appeal a beautiful tree has, plus that poignant awareness of how close you are to that person, and how distant. When you meet someone, your physical appearances are the first mutual communication you make, and (all else being equal) it is natural and right to want your appearance to be pleasing.

But we all know to what extremes, and what evils, the desire to be beautiful can lead. I'm not going to talk about those generally; I am going to say that, for me, there came a point where I felt I had to eschew any desire to appear beautiful. Rightly or wrongly, in the emotional state I was in, I felt I had two choices: to abuse my body and mind in an effort to please others with my appearance, or to violently reject the notion that it mattered at all whether others found me attractive. I went with the latter course, not so far as to try to make myself ugly, but just to formally and decisively stop caring how I looked. I cared about decency and cleanliness, and that was all. I got to the point where I often felt uncomfortable if someone told me I looked nice.

All well and good, and maybe that's what needed to happen in order for a certain amount of healing to take place. But now it's time to move past that. Over the course of this year, I want to recreate my understanding of what it means to be beautiful. I want to learn how to render unto the body what is the body's, and unto spirit what is spirit's. I have some ideas of how to begin, and I'm looking forward to what I will learn. And I'm going to journal here, to keep a record for myself and to share with others, who may also be struggling with the tension between cherishing their appearance and loving themselves regardless of their appearance.

If you're reading this, I'd love for you to comment and introduce yourself. Whether you do or not, though, thanks for dropping by!

recipe for a perfect summer day

2008-08-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

Soon I'm going to have one of these for every season.

Ingredients:

- one merry, adventurous friend
- a small boat... a rowboat is ideal
- a jar of lemonade
- deviled eggs
- a largish river or lake... preferably containing numerous small islands, or best yet, a miniature archipelago of rocks, suitable for wading among
- a half gallon of coffee ice cream.

- optional, but recommended: sunscreen

Instructions:

Gather your friend, along with the lemonade and deviled eggs, and proceed to the boat. Cast off and row away. It is essential to have no set destination and a very generous time limit. Row upstream at a leisurely pace, finding humor in your attempts to battle the current and various small rocks that seem to follow you around. If you have both read Wind in the Willows, it is appropriate to discuss it at this time, and singing that song about ducks dabbling is encouraged.

Once you have each gotten a handle on rowing individually, you may suppose that you would proceed faster if you each took an oar and rowed together. Feel free to try the experiment, if you are both good-natured and apt to laugh at frustrations. It may be helpful if one of you has some experience with sailing, and can assert that, while it may look as though you are zig-zagging chaotically, you are, in fact, "tacking." Choose a goal: one of those pesky rocks that has been two feet away for the last fifteen minutes will do nicely. You can put all your combined effort into passing this rock, and feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment when you have succeeded.

After the goal is attained, it's a good time to head for one of those islands or archipelagoes. I cannot urge the archipelago strongly enough, especially if you are of an imaginative disposition. With your skirt hiked up or your pants rolled to your knees, you can wade between the rocks, and secretly imagine that you are a tropical explorer. Your choice of footwear becomes important at this point. Secure, water-friendly shoes will allow you to wade with the greatest ease and comfort; on the other hand, flip-flops provide that element of danger and difficulty which every tropical explorer ought to encounter. They are prone to slipping off your feet, or if they stay on your feet, slipping off the rocks beneath your feet. They provide the toes and heels little protection against stubs and scrapes, and they will cause significant drag through the water, preventing you from skipping between secure perches as you might otherwise do. The choice is yours, but for my part, I think the flip-flops enhance the experience tremendously.

Identify a good place to sit and rest -- shade is beneficial, especially if you have omitted the sunscreen. Return to the boat to gather your provisions, and sit in the shade, eating your deviled eggs and drinking your lemonade and commenting on such small delights of Nature as present themselves to your eye. When you are both well-rested, return along your perilous path to the boat.

Now you see the tremendous advantages of rowing upstream at the start of your journey. Your return voyage will take less than half the time, and all you will have to worry about is steering around obstacles. Now is the time for rest and reverie and enjoying the beauties around you: the bright wildflowers on the small rocky islands you pass; the damselflies courting; the lazy beats of a heron's wings, with its wingtips just touching their reflection in the water's surface. Gather in these things and save them; you may need them someday, in some darker time.

Land your boat; return to your home; change into cooler, drier clothes. I hope you have not forgotten the coffee ice cream. This is the time for it. Serve yourselves two generous bowls, and enjoy.

notes from the forest-dweller

2008-07-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

Heya kids. I know it's been an age since I wrote any kind of update. Here are the latest news bulletins, ponderings, and other stuff:

- I've finally begun working on a detective story. A post-apocalyptic detective story, to be precise. No, you can't read it yet. But I thought I'd announce it, so if you're ever hanging out with me and I get this vague distant look in my eyes, you'll know I'm probably plotting murder.

- One of my oldest friends is getting married today! I'm so excited for her.

- I've started working as a tech at the hospital. This means several things:

a) I get a small raise, in theory at least
b) my feet hurt when I get off work
c) to trade-off for the feet hurting, I get a lot more introvert time in a workday
d) (best for last) every day, I get to see the weird, messy, and thrilling event that is a birth.

- We're almost through the fourth season of Doctor Who. In spite of a terrific companion (I'd never have guessed I'd become such a Donna fan) it's indisputably the weakest season of the new series so far. But hey, it's Doctor Who -- even when it's bad, it's good. And I hear Steven Moffat is taking over the reins, which can only lead to good things.

- Amazon.com gets major kudos for doing the right thing. I (stupidly) signed up for one of those "free one-month trial, we'll renew you automatically at full price unless you remember to cancel" deals, just so I could get my dad's Father's Day present on time. And of course, I did what everybody does on these deals, and forgot to cancel, and wailed in horror when I saw eighty dollars suddenly subtracted from my account. But Amazon, may a thousand blessings rain upon their heads, has a policy whereby if you cancel before you ever use their service, they'll refund your money. And they stick to it! So kudos to Amazon, who only takes advantage of suckers a little bit.

And to wind up quickly (because I have to go get ready for the wedding now... oh by the way, another person who did the right thing is Jenn, the aforementioned old friend who's getting married today: she picked a very pretty bridesmaids' dress, which I will be able to wear, happily, on many other occasions. Yay Jenn! And congratulations! And have an awesome time in Ireland!)

AHEM. To wind up quickly, despite my tendency to digression and rambling:

- I have rejoined the Jesus club. What? Yes. I know that's an absurdly big announcement to make at the end of a rapid-fire news bulletin, but I want folks to know, and I don't feel like writing a big long blog about it. At least not right now. I'd rather just talk to people about it individually... so if you want to hear more, holler at me and we'll have coffee or I'll write you a letter.

DEATH and DOOM and DISASTER

2008-02-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

There are some bad things that can happen to a person in this world. One of the worst ones is to have written a long piece of work that you kind of liked and had high hopes for, only to discover that your computer has erased it or your little sister has burnt it or some such. That is a calamity that can undo the strongest of souls, and I don't really like even thinking about it. But let me tell you about another thing that can happen, that's not quite as bad but still pretty devastating.

Suppose there's this puzzle, right? On this website, maybe? And suppose you discovered it a while ago and thought it looked cool, and sat down and tried working it out, and quickly discovered that it was going to be a bigger task than you thought, but also a pretty interesting one? And suppose you had spent the last several days going back to it and trying new ways of working it out, and had many times been tempted just to look at the answer because you really wanted to see the solution? But you always resisted because you knew it would be ten times more satisfying if you managed to solve it yourself?

And then suppose, on your fourth or fifth day of looking at this puzzle, you went back to the website with a fresh new way of working it out all lined up. And then you discovered that it was gone. GONE. Replaced by a totally different puzzle, about some stupid cities in Europe or something. No trace of it remaining anywhere. And no way of finding out what the solution was.

I think that would be a pretty horrible thing to happen, and could sap a person's will to live, at least for a couple of hours.

In other news, the International High IQ Society is henceforth my mortal enemy for life. You will RUE THE DAY, International High IQ Society! You will RUE THE DAY.

top ten, on the evidence

2008-02-16T16:03:00.001-08:00

Yesterday it occurred to me to sort my entire iTunes playlist by play count. (That makes it sound as if I went through them one by one and ordered them myself... not entirely out of character, I grant you, but happily iTunes does it for me with the click of a button.) The top ten are as follows:

10: Greensleeves - The King's Singers
9: Libera Me, from Faure's Requiem
8: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky - (main theme from the soundtrack to Castle in the Sky)
7: First Impressions - Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor
6: Born - Over the Rhine
5: The Destruction of Laputa - (a choral version of the main theme from Castle in the Sky)
4: Sister - Sufjan Stevens
3: Corpus Christi Carol - Jeff Buckley
2: Agnus Dei, from Faure's Requiem
1: Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair - Nina Simone

Interesting that none of the songs I call my top three (Hallelujah, The Boxer, and Isis) are on the list. I think this is mainly because I mostly listen to those songs on CD. But it's a pretty good sampling anyway. Evidently I listen to songs on my computer a lot when I need soothing-- a lot of those are high on my "songs to calm the troubled spirit" list (particularly "First Impressions" and "Agnus Dei.")

Well, anyway. I thought that was mildly interesting and wanted to share. Y'all should post yours as comments. Come on, it'll be fun!

the second thing that made me grin like an idiot today

2008-02-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

I was going to write a breezy post all about what I did on Valentine's Day, but then I started reading Rinkworks' I Think feature. It's been a while, and I'd forgotten how brilliant it is. So here is my Valentine to you, and to Sam Stoddard as well (he deserves one from me, after all the years of enjoyment and thought-provocation his website has given me): click this link. Read. Refresh. Repeat.

http://www.rinkworks.com/ithink/

It's good stuff.

a small pedantic rant

2007-10-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

Prophecy. Prophesy. Prophesied. Prophesized.

Prophecy, NOUN. A prediction or interpretation inspired by some divine force. The last syllable rhymes with "tree."

Prophesy, VERB. The act of making a prophecy. The last syllable rhymes with "fly."

Prophesied, VERB. The past tense of "prophesy." The last syllable rhymes with "cried."

Prophesized, HIDEOUS MALFORMATION. Often mistakenly used as the past tense of "prophesy," giving Ginny a toothache. The last syllable rhymes with death.

That is all.

the correct way to spend an early autumn evening

2007-10-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

First, go out on the patio and smoke your brand-new hookah, while pondering the characteristics of fairies in the story you'll be writing this November. Occasionally recite parts of Ash Wednesday, just to make sure you still can. Watch the alternation of clouds and stars overhead, and enjoy the shapes your smoke makes against them.

When you are good and chilly and your coal has nearly gone out, pack up and return indoors. Heat up some mushroom-parmesan pasta you made the other night, and cook and butter a sweet potato. Eat these with a bottle of Dogfish Head's pumpkin ale. Along with these, read or watch something fun and comfortable (I chose Remembrance of the Daleks, my first Seventh Doctor episode, but I understand that may not be for everyone. Rex Stout would be another excellent choice.)

Play a game of go online (optional.)

Finally, bake a few chocolate chip cookies and eat them with a glass of milk. Trader Joe's makes a great chocolate chip cookie dough that they sell frozen. Stickler as I am for homemade, I love these because you can keep them in the freezer and bake them a few at a time, so your chocolate chip cookies are always fresh from the oven. (Note to self: see if this can be done with homemade cookie dough.)

Go to bed, warm and well-fed and full of a sense of cozy autumnal well-being.

an evening with Joy

2007-10-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

I bought a hookah on East Carson Street.

Also a couple of records. The fact that I don't have a record player seemed strangely insignificant while I was looking at Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington.

When Joy blows smoke she looks like she's singing. Dr. Ray would be so proud. Probably.

Charlotte was not at all sure about this hookah-smoking thing.

Her feelings on spinning records, however, are well documented.

Joy and Marvin Gaye. A love that knows no bounds.

a story-bit from long ago

2007-09-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

Sara watched her father as he put on his court robes. He turned and smiled at her as he buckled his tunic, then went and kissed her forehead.
“Are you ready?” he asked quietly. She bit her lip, and nodded. “All right, then.” He took her hand, and together they stepped into the capsule. Sara tried as usual to stand without support during the take-off, but she was forced to grab her father’s arm as the capsule jerked and plummeted. She looked up and forced out a sickly, nervous smile.
“Before I leave you, my dear, I have a few words. I’ve taught you all I could, you’ve learned well. I could not leave my world in the hands of anyone else who I’d feel more sure of. I know you will learn quickly.
“There are two people to whom I commend you, for help and advice. The first is Darien. I know you will go to him if you need help, I do not need to tell you. What I want to tell you is, remember who is Guardian. My one worry is that you will let your respect for Darien prevent you from making your own decisions. He is wise and experienced, but he does not know everything. No one knows everything. Take his advice, but trust your own judgement as well. He is your advisor, not your superior. Do you understand?” She nodded silently, and he continued.
“There is another, an old friend of mine. He is an outcast, a renegade. But he is honest, and I have asked him to be to you what he was to me– another advisor, helper, and friend. Many times there has been a situation in which his help saved our world. He will contact you, probably, soon after you come home. It is for you to decide whether or not you will accept his help; I can only tell you that he has proved for me to be trustworthy, brave, and loyal. Needless to say, I went behind consular law in meeting with him. Again, remember, no one knows everything, not even the council. You are responsible for your own decisions.”
Just then the capsule arrived at the chamber, and they stepped out. All the councillors were gathered, and bowed as Sara and her father stepped out. They went to the President and stood before him. He stepped forward and took Sara’s hand.
“Greetings, Sara. We are glad that you can join us.”
“The honour is mine,” she replied quietly, at the same time dipping low and bowing her head.
“Do you swear to uphold the laws of this council, the safety of your people, and the honour of this nation, for as long as you hold your post?”
“I do.”
“Good.” He turned to her father. “You have been a faithful and worthy Guardian of your people. Go now, into the rest you have earned.” Then he smiled, and his tone became warmer and less ceremonial. “Peace be with you, my friend. You will be missed.”
Sara’s father bowed low. “I thank you, my president and council, for the honour of serving the nation, and I go with grief to leave and joy to come.”
Then Sara and her father turned and walked to the center of the room, to the great circle in the middle of the floor. They faced each other, and slowly her father put his hands to his neck. She stood, heart beating fast, and as he hesitated, fear rose in her heart. It had happened before, that at the vital moment a Guardian was unable to surrender the medallion that symbolised everything he lived for. But after a moment of struggle, a smile passed over her father’s face, he lifted the leather strap, and placed it around her neck.
Instantly the world became heavier for Sara. She forgot the Council-chamber, the assembled councillors, even her own father standing before her, and her mind flew back to her home– now more– now her world, her planet, her people. She remembered, just that morning, the chambermaid bowing as she passed Sara in the hall– an ordinary event, but suddenly somehow transformed. Why had she not noticed, then, the shadow of a bruise on the chambermaid’s chin? Why had she not stopped to ask after the villagers? Why had she not even glanced at the viewer before leaving, to see that there was no trouble? Anything might have happened since the night... raiders, or a murder, or a flood in the valley... As panic filled her, her father’s hand fell on her shoulder, and she looked in his face. It was old, somehow older than she had ever seen it, but also younger. A few of the lines had lifted, and his smile had a lightness which she had never seen before. “Bear it well, daughter,” he said softly, and his voice held both pity and envy. Then, with a light kiss on her cheek, he stepped into the capsule that waited at the other end of the chamber. One final salute, both merry and sad, and the doors closed, and he was gone.

an unusually good day in the life

2007-09-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

Every so often you get a day, or a portion of the day, which is just perfectly satisfying. Here's mine.

I decided I wanted something special for dinner. I'd had the foresight to marinate some chicken, in a champagne-pear salad dressing (I had bought the dressing from Trader Joe's on Mom's recommendation, found it was too sweet for me as a salad dressing, but makes a great marinade), so now I just had to decide how to cook it. Usually when I do chicken and pasta I make a traditional white sauce, but this time I wanted something not quite as thick. A dip into Joy of Cooking gave me the needed inspiration, and I went off to Trader Joe's for my ingredients.

I'd thought I might wait a while before starting to cook, but I was already hungry by the time I got home so I got straight to work. Followed much sizzling of olive oil, chopping of onions and garlic and mushrooms, simmering of chicken broth, mincing of fresh thyme. I had about a shot's worth of cognac left-- half of it went in the sauce, half of it went in the baby snifter I got at Oglethorpe's homecoming one year. Also some heavy cream, and of course salt and pepper. The result? A very thin, slightly creamy sauce, laden with chopped-up onions and mushrooms, and smelling heavenly.

I had intended to eat my dinner while watching the first of the two-part Dr Who, the conclusion of which was airing and being recorded as I finished my cooking. When you have a really lovely meal, though, it's an insult to eat it in front of the television,* so instead I got my Andrew Lang and read all about how Petru, the youngest of three princes, fought three Welwas and met three goddesses and came home to rule the kingdom. It's funny, I don't remember the story at all, but I recognized the picture of the Welwa the minute I saw it.

*(This rule is inviolable. The best accompaniment to an excellent meal is of course good company and conversation. Lacking this, a book is acceptable, but it must be both well-written and entertaining. Pulpy paperbacks are disallowed, as are textbooks. Under no circumstances may the meal, if the food be really of top quality, be accompanied by anything on a screen: television or computer. This rule, however, only applies to freshly prepared food. Carryout and leftovers are exempt.)

And it really was an excellent meal. Not only that, but it was exactly what I'd been wanting. Come over some time and I'll make it for you.

And then-- ah then-- came time to watch that Dr Who. Some of you were privileged (ay, privileged) to hear my wailing and gnashing of teeth two weeks ago, when I found that not only was the current episode ending on a cliffhanger, but the continuation wouldn't air till two weeks hence. It was, as I commented at the time, the first time I have ever had to wait on a cliffhanger for this best-loved of all shows. Oh sweet torment... anyway, I weathered the interim weeks surprisingly well, though I was obliged to watch the entirety of the 9th Doctor season on DVD to fill the void. But at last, the day was come. Having had the supreme satisfaction of eating an excellent meal of my own cooking, and finishing the last of my cognac, I was now to see the much-waited resolution.

This is usually the point in the evening where something goes wrong: the recording misfires, the roommate comes down and turns on the television before I have time to dibs it, something like that. If we were permitted moments of perfect satisfaction very often, they wouldn't be notable enough to write blog entries about. On this occasion, nothing went wrong.

It was really a very good episode. I have been unusually impressed by a few of the third season episodes (Gridlock springs to mind) and this one stands with them. The acting and direction were beautiful and intriguing in a number of instances (the human forms of the blood hunters, for example, managing to be what so few Dr Who villains are: weird but not comical.) And of course the remarkable Thomas Sangster, with his ten-year-old face and fifty-year-old eyes. And the story had two infallible sources of fascination for me. First there's the merciless digging into what it means and what it costs to be the Doctor (a popular theme in the new series; I'm philosophically ambivalent about its continued use, but I always enjoy seeing it). Then there's the World War I melancholy, which has enthralled me since I first read Rilla of Ingleside.

So now my stomach is filled with lovely food and my mind is filled with lovely Doctor, and just at this moment I really couldn't ask for more. This is what a great day is like: not thrilling happenings or lifechanging news, but simple, peaceful pleasures, enjoyed to the full.

And now to finish up, I think I will listen to some Nina Simone, write the second half of that fairy tale I started, and drink the 90-minute IPA that I've been saving for a month. And it will be good.

***
Post Scriptum: If you ever have the impulse to listen to Nina Simone with your eyes closed, go ahead and do it, but be careful. I think one could die of it.

hijacked by Andrew Lang

2007-09-06T00:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what just happened.

Earlier today, facing the imminent need to write a couple of short fairy tales as part of my novel, I went to the library and checked out a few of the Andrew Lang fairy books. You know the ones: The Blue Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book... okay, probably you don't know them. Probably you didn't spend your childhood in the JFIC folktale section of the library. But I did, and I must have read through the entire rainbow collection (though I think I snubbed the more basic colors like red and yellow, in favor of The Crimson and The Lilac and such... The Brown was always my favorite.) Anyway, they're great collections of fairy tales from a wide variety of sources, and I decided to return to this fountain from my youth and drink deep, in hopes of soaking up inspiration for my own writing.

Drink I did, for three hours at Jamie's. I'd forgotten how great the stories are, weird some of them, funny some of them, often conforming to very familiar patterns but every so often popping up with something quite unexpected. Several struck me as stories I'd like to adapt or retell in novel form, and one in particular I thought I might do for my Nano project this year. (I'm still planning to do Nano, though I'm in full swing with the novel... by November I'll probably be ready for a little break from Lila & Co.)

Having downed three cups of coffee, a fat slice of chocolate cake, and more fairy tales than I can count, I set off home, musing on the way about how I might construct that retelling for Nano. I took the long way home. An hour long, as it happens-- I just didn't feel like stopping once I'd gotten to my house, so I kept driving. And thinking. And driving. It was a beautiful night to be rolling down back roads with the windows open, insects chirping like they owned the woods, which in a way they probably do. And there came one moment, as I was composing the first few sentences of the retelling in my head, when I felt that sudden thrilling urge of creation, prompting me to get home and write it, now.

Well, one thing I've learned is that these urges don't keep. I may be all on fire with the excitement of a new idea, but if I put it off, sometimes even for as little as a day, I will sit down to my keyboard to find that the thrill is gone. I will discover that the idea, so brilliant in that moment, is dull now and full of difficulties, and if I ever actually write it it will be after hours and weeks of dogged plot-work. But in that initial moment of inspiration there is an energy and a passion, which I far too often fail to take advantage of.

Tonight I did not fail. I came home by the quickest route, opened my computer, and began typing. Initially my thought was to a two- or three-page sketch, using a storytelling voice, but telling it in abbreviated form, something for me to flesh out at novel-depth when November came around. But as I wrote the details kept creeping in, and by the third page I had barely begun to tell the story. I wondered if I was going to eat ever, or watch a Dr. Who as I had planned, but I was enjoying myself, so I kept going.

Seven thousand words later, here I am. Seven thousand-- I'm fairly certain I've never written that much at a sitting before. Ever. If I kept to a pace like that during Nano, I'd be done in a week. I am mind-boggled... and it went so quickly and easily, and nothing could have been more delightful than to watch the story rolling out in front of me as I typed. I stopped, in the end, only halfway through the story I planned to tell. I felt I could have gone on, but my energy was flagging a bit, and I know I'd have skipped some enjoyable details.

As I said, I don't really know what happened. Nor do I know what I plan to do with this story. At this rate, it looks like it will wrap up around 15,000 words, which is a strange and awkward length for a story. I have a few ideas. We'll see.

Anyway, that was not at all how I planned to spend my evening. But it sure was fun.

What I learned on my summer vacation

2007-08-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

That would be the beach vacation, not any of the other three I took this summer.

- A walk along the beach provides absolutely the best environment for meditating on your next story developments.

- Grease burns hurt like the devil. But they're a great way to take your mind off the minor sunburn on your shins.

- I need to learn to sail.

- If you must put pieces from two different puzzles in the same box, due to box shortage and complete absence of ziploc bags, you really ought to make them puzzles with notably different-sized pieces (really I think I could have worked this one out via common sense. So perhaps the real lesson here is that the owners of our beach house lack common sense in the area of puzzles.)

- My family has higher standards in the way of kitchens and kitchen appliances than just about anybody I know. Much, much higher than those of aforementioned beach house owners.

- The Outer Banks wireless network is kind of a ripoff. Nick the tech support guy is very nice though. Spent lots of quality time talking to Nick.

- Excellent summer beers include: Dogfish Head's Aprihop, Delirium Tremens, and Unibroue's Ephemere.

- The ocean is happiness. But I knew that already.

fading everything

2007-07-12T22:07:00.000-07:00

it's been a long December

Oh I am in a college mood. It's glorious fun. It's been a while since I had one. College mood means I listen to Counting Crows and sip my drink (it used to be wine but these days it's beer... Old Rasputin tonight, and if you've never tried Old Rasputin with fresh avocado then your life is incomplete, as mine was until about twenty minutes ago) and I think about love and loneliness. I do not cry, in college moods, that's reserved for nights when I have a specific reason for meditation or discontent. I just sit here and sip my drink and listen to music that reminds me of all these times in my not-so-distant-past (remember when we met Jacob's new friend, I don't even remember his name, but we knew he was cool because he could sing along with all the words to all the songs on August and Everything After? Remember when we listened to Long December and thought, yeah, man, this yearwill be better than the last, and we were completely, utterly, impossibly wrong? Remember when we were walking back from the Counting Crows concert, where Adam Duritz wore a pink bunny suit 'cause it was Halloween, and I called you "Ginny" by mistake?)

step out the front door like a ghost into the fog

And we would sit around then and talk about love and loneliness, and it was basically the same thing then as now because neither of us knew anything about love, and both of us were lonely, except not really that lonely because here we were together talking about it. And we talked about lots of other things too, philosophies of life and lots and lots of decisions about our futures, and you switched from business to philosophy and I committed to English because reading stories is what I love to do most in the whole entire world... and papers and problems and people spun through our conversations always, never concluded, never old.

It is impossible to go back, and I know that. And I like to think that if I come again to live with you it will not be because I'm trying to go back, to recapture this time. Anyway I don't want to recapture it, because I know what comes next: I know how bitter, bitter, those conversations will become, all filled with the darkness and futility of existence, all driven by a demon neither of us yet understand... and that one night where I honestly believe that I will never, ever be happy again.

I bought myself a grey guitar

And while I would never for even a second want to relive all that, I am so so glad it happened, because now sometimes I am driving down the road and I remember that once I thought I would never ever be happy again, and if I was wrong about that I am probably wrong about so many other things too, and this is good.

And so I am not trying to recapture the past, but I am absolutely trying to recover a bit of it, a piece of it at least, because in the years between I have thought I am too adult, too mature, too conscious to engage in this kind of ridiculous omphaloskeptic brooding, and this self-indulgent writing about my transient little moods. And I was emotionally superior to it all, and much much too wise to hope for anything worthwhile to come out of falling in love. And yet what did I do, not even twelve months ago, but drive five hours at dawn and plop myself on your floor and pour out all my thoughts and confusions and frustrations about-- what else?-- a boy.

lay me down in a field of flame and heather...

And you of course listened well, and because you have known me for six terrible and wonderful years, you could say things that made perfect sense and that helped me to understand why I thought what I thought and felt what I felt. And on that day, without at all trying, you gave me back to myself, and all my confusion was -- not resolved -- but for the first time it made sense, and I knew how to fit it into the rest of my world. And I received it, as a repayment I never expected for a trial I never resented, grace upon grace coming back in return for a pain I took on gladly in the first place. Astonishing.

and when you wake the morning covers you with light

Anyway what I guess I'm trying to say is that it is time for me to re-enter the world of love and loneliness and meditative late-night drinking while listening to Adam Duritz, and to shake off the frozen paralysis that has been partly pride and mostly fear.

surprise surprise another pair of lips and eyes

And perhaps there will be other nights when I honestly believe I will never be happy again, though probably for different reasons, and all that is okay because these nights become a part of your history, become something you meditate on on other nights, nights mellow with the taste of avocado and Old Rasputin (no really... you must try it) and dulled for a minute from fear because you remember how rich it was to feel so many things at once.

And what I really want to say, with all this rambling that I normally do not permit myself, is that as I move back into the world of feeling and foolishness, with fear and trembling and also hope, there is no one I would rather have at my side than you.

a small taste of victory

2007-06-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

I took two weeks off work and drove to Chicago. The freedom therein is glorious: I have two weeks that are my own, entirely, to spend however I want, money being the only limitation. I have planned to go to Chicago, and I want to go to Chicago, but if I feel like it I can change my mind at the last minute and drive instead to Mexico or Oregon or anywhere on the continent, actually. My decisions are just about as unconstrained as they get for a single woman in her mid-twenties who pulls down a smallish salary (and that, let's face it, is pretty unconstrained.)

What did I do with all this riotous freedom? I drove, as stated, to Chicago. I ensconced myself firmly on the couch in my brother's living room. I found a coffee shop that I could walk to from my brother's house. And for ten out of the fourteen days I was there I wrote, usually at the coffee shop, for three or four or five hours on end. I went to the beach once, I hung out in the evenings with friends, but mostly I wrote.

And this is the best part, this is the victory: my brother has also been writing. His kitchen is littered with scripts from the sketch show he and his roommates are writing, for which they've already booked a theater. He's acting, too, I got to see his play twice. So as I sit here, having finished the opening act of my novel, making plans to return to Chicago to see the show my brother has written and is acting in and directing... I'm just so freakin proud. Of both of us. Because we're doing what we wanted to do, what we said we wanted to do back when we were in high school. Because we haven't gotten pulled under by the necessity of supporting ourselves in the "real world." Sure we both have jobs, which means we have less time for writing than we'd like, and sure we both have fairly minimal jobs, which means we have less money for beer than we'd like, but we're making it work.

Take that, naysayers.

a small piece of perfection

2007-06-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

I think even a lot of friends who know me well don't know that the Barenaked Ladies is my favorite band (is? are? is? most band names are treated as a singular entity, and a plural element in the name shouldn't change that... but I don't know what the article does to it, nor do I know whether it ought to be capitalized. "Are" sounds better but I feel like "is" should be correct.) There are so many bands that I like that are hipper or edgier or what-have-you. As evidenced by the crowd that showed up to the concert last night, BNL fans tend to be over 30, or under 16, and nerdy but not even real hard-core geeky quasi-hip kind of nerdy... just nerdy. There was a distinct lack of image-consciousness in the crowd. There were a lot of families, suggesting that parents consider BNL to be acceptable fun music to expose their children to. Nobody won coolness points by showing up to this concert.

But anyway, they're my favorite band, and I'll tell you why. It's because they think like me. Take their whole decade-spanning album collection, and you have a fairly good picture of my usual mental landscape. You have plenty of whimsy and goofballing, plenty of randomness and look-how-clever-I-am wordplay. You also have plenty of reflectiveness, brooding self-doubt, bitterness of futility, and the occasional raw outcry of pain. There's a dark side to BNL to be sure... but it doesn't overwhelm the landscape, it's just there. And if you pay attention you'll notice that the dark side and the goofball side are fueled by the same force: a persistently ironic view of life, a self-awareness that refuses for a minute to release its grip, and the consequent mistrust of every self-representation you make.

I am not, by and large, a happy person. Nor am I a moody or angry or bitter person. I am not capable of the single-minded passion of Nina Simone; I am hardly ever buried enough in my own emotional state to honestly produce a work of pure emotional force. My moods are always mixed; there is always another self, watching the part of me that is feeling, commenting on it. Mostly, mostly, I am an observing person. The closest I come to being single-minded, to being non-reflective, is when I am not doing anything, just watching other people do. As soon as I become a participant in a scene, I start observing myself, which means I am observing myself observing myself, and... well... if you've seen a chamber of mirrors you know what it's like.

Anyway, I love BNL because their music is like this. Being an ironist in this way seems to prevent you from being ever really depressed, or ever really elated. It's not that your emotions are shallow; it's just that they're always counterbalanced. This tends to make a person, or a band, hard to grasp. You think you know their general mood as happy or fun or easygoing or mild or sarcastic or cynical. And we the ironists have a hard time convincing you that it goes deeper than that, because to honestly express our feelings we have to also express our questioning of those feelings, and our frustration at our questioning, and our amusement at our frustration... and by this time you've forgotten what feeling it was we were originally expressing.

Ah yes, that amusement... elation and depression and rage might be rare and fleeting for us, but one thing we've got in bucketfuls is laughter. We laugh at everything. We laugh at inappropriate times. We laugh because we keep seeing where all this stuff came from and where it's going. We laugh because we're having so much fun watching this bizarre game play itself out. We laugh because we keep seeing our own consciousness rising in a recursive tower, that we can't even stop because as soon as we try to stop ourselves we see ourselves trying to stop ourselves...

You'd laugh too.

rest

2007-05-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

Lloyd Alexander died on Thursday.

Molly I know will join with me... as will Libby... as would Megwin if she had any idea where I am. What the emotion is I'm not sure. There is not grief or loss, since I didn't know him, nor can there really be much sadness, since he was 83 and (I think) had had cancer for some time. Also, his wife died just two weeks earlier. They were married for sixty-one years, and I can only imagine that, like my grandmother, he wanted little more than to follow his partner through that darkest of doors.

So I cannot be sad for him. And I cannot feel mournful when the only thing I ever knew of him, his writing, is as accessible to me as ever. I do not even feel sad that he won't write any more books, since his recent writing has grown dramatically weaker.

All the same, it was a physical shock when I saw his name in the obituary column. This man was important to me. This man created worlds I loved to live in and people I love to know. He was arguably the foremost living writer in the genre I love best, the genre I will probably do much of my writing in. Stories, like Olympian gods, are strangely begotten, breeding and interbreeding over decades, centuries, and millenia. We writers and passionate readers are also part of this tangled genealogy, and we can trace out many forebears.

In real-time, flesh-and-blood life, I have lost both my grandparents this year. In the world of stories, I have just lost another.

the man I love

2007-05-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Really I just put this here to practice my html mojo. But now that he's here, I find I can't take him down.

9 and 10 may be hotter, 4 may be funnier, but 5 will always have a special place in my heart.

I was going to post a deep and reflective birthday post, but this is much more urgent

2007-04-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

Can you drink Attic milk?

This question drifted up from the nether reaches of consciousness, as I was trying to convince my brain that it really did want another hour or two of sleep, despite the bright sun and the sticky green leaves outside my window and the kids hollering at each other from the sidewalk. I was quite lucid for most of the time surrounding this question, thinking more or less alternately about my in-progress assessment of pragmatism and objectivism and about love. But in the midst of this, the question was asked: Can you drink Attic milk?

I don't remember who was asking; it was definitely another voice, not native to my identity. It followed naturally enough from the conversation which preceded it (of which I can't remember a word), but I felt, a minute after it had been asked, that there was more to it than appeared on the surface. It was a test, of sorts; much was expected from my answer. No mundane "yes" or "no" would do, I must try if I could to be witty, or insightful, or encyclopedic.

This posed a problem because I had no idea what the question meant. Attic milk? What is Attic milk? If, as I first guessed, it was milk left over from the time of Attic Greek, my answer was easy: a dryish, deadpan response about the milk's probably having spoiled by now. But even that was problematic. Surely milk from the 5th century BC would have long ago not only spoiled but hardened, crusted, turned black and finally discomposed entirely. My answer contained its modicum of wit, but it left an opening for my interrogator to up the ante, to come back with a correction which, if also phrased wittily, would leave him or her indisputably victorious in the conversation.

On the other hand, the "attic" could mean the upper storage area of a house. If so, did that mean milk that is stored in an attic? What special properties would such milk have? Intuitively I imagined it being very cold, and therefore couldn't see how it would be different from regular old refrigerator milk. On reflection, though, I'm recalling that most of the attics I've been in were oppressively hot. In this case the milk would probably be well on its way to following the other kind of Attic milk, and also the attic would smell horrible. But even so I feel there must be more to it than this. If attic milk is a substance distinctive enough to have its own name, there must be something particular about it, beyond its storage temperature. Only I can't imagine what.

Wikipedia's disambiguation page lists, apart from these two usages, only the names of three companies: the US and Canadian branches of a record label, and a German computer game developer. I can't make any sense of milk in either of these contexts.

The interrogator is gone, of course... disappeared almost immediately after posing the question. I haven't even had an opportunity to pass or fail the test contained in it. I suppose this is a good thing, since I'm pretty much at a loss. Can you drink Attic milk? Can you drink attic milk? Attic milk...

Well? Can you?

one tuesday evening...

2007-03-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

I think it's amusing the things that happen when I don't eat consistently.

Act I
Here's the story of my day: I get home from work at 7:30 am, as usual. I go to sleep, as usual when I've just gotten home from work at 7:30 am. I wake up around 3 pm, as usual.

I shower, blah-de-blah, I marvel again at how easy my hair is now that I've removed most of it. I decide against eating anything. I'm not hungry, and I'd rather get to Jamie's soon. So I drink a glass of juice and count that as breakfast.

Mike drops by, which is awesome and UNusual (although he said he was coming, so it isn't a surprise or anything.) By the bye, I think it's grand that when people drop by to see me, usually they're dropping by Jamie's rather than my house. No one even asks if I'm at home anymore. Why would I be?

Anyway, Kurt comes in a little later to finish the game we began yesterday. By now it's getting onto 7 pm, which means I haven't eaten a meal or anything decent, really, for about 16 hours. Just the juice, and some coffee... oh, and two cookies that I got because they were fresh-baked. One reason I like hanging out at Jamie's better than at home is they bake cookies and make sure to tell me about it, if I haven't noticed, so I can have some while they're still hot.

It's about halfway through the game that my mood starts to drop. Kurt says a few irritating things, as usual, and I know I'm in trouble when, instead of rolling my eyes and laughing at him, I look at him blankly, or maybe with a tolerant half-smile, I'm not sure, because I have the distinct sensation of some hot and slightly acidic liquid sloshing around in my stomach. This sensation I have come to recognize as a particular type of anger, only as it happens nothing in Kurt's remarks has merited this strong a reaction. About ten minutes later it dawns on me that I am food-deprived, and therefore moody. Very well.

After this my play becomes slow... I am quite chilly but my skin feels hot. The beginnings of a headache are developing directly behind the bridge of my nose. No one is paying attention to me... in fact no one seems to have the least bit of interest in me, except Kurt, and that's only as an opponent who's taking way too much time to play moves in a game which she is, anyway, losing. Meanwhile, the part of my brain that doesn't lose its grip on reality no matter what mood-factors are in play is telling me to hurry up and finish the game so I can go home and eat some food.

I finish the game; I lose by 18 points. Respectable. My post-game banter is lackluster, however, though he tries hard to get me riled into saying that next game I will beat him with just a six-stone handicap and one eye blindfolded, or some such ridiculous claim. I recognize that my ability to socialize is severely impaired, that any form of interaction will only depress me acutely, and that the best thing I can do is keep my words short and get out of there with as much grace as possible.

Act II
Trader Joe's makes a terrific Portugese bean & sausage soup. This is my dinner, along with some good thick slices of double Gloucester with Stilton. I love the way Stilton just sort of melts if you let it sit on your tongue, and I love the way the white bean in the soup mush against the roof of your mouth. It is an immensely satisfying meal. Meanwhile I have been flipping through the TV channel menu (these late nights are starting to bring back my TV-watching habit), and found that TCM is airing The Thin Man. I feel like I've seen this before, but I must not have, because none of it was familiar.

Five minutes in I have decided that I want to be Nick and Nora Charles. Or one of them, at least, with a suitable partner to make up the other half. They're more or less a wealthy, American, alcoholic version of Tommy and Tuppence, and we all know how I feel about Tommy and Tuppence. (Well, Molly does anyway.) This is a very funny movie, but I find that I am laughing aloud a good deal more than I normally do when watching a movie by myself. I note this casually but don't fret about it, only wishing that there were someone else here who would appreciate it as much as I do.

About ten minutes later I remember that eating after a too-long fast tends to cause a brief spike of euphoria. That's probably why I'm laughing so hard. No doubt this is my body's way of reminding me that yes, food is good and yes, we would appreciate being regularly supplied with it, thank you very much. I wonder if it works, though... rather like when we used to give our dog a treat after she would run away and come back. It's supposed to reward her for coming back, but doesn't it simply encourage her to run away more often, so that she can enjoy the treat upon returning?

No, I'm not going to start starving myself as a way of inducing a cheap high. It wreaks havoc on my go game, anyway.

The Thin Man is a grand movie. It sparks a number of reflections, one of which being that there's something sexy about married people sleeping in separate beds, whether in the same room or a door apart. I wonder why it's so not-done in modern American culture?

Act III
The movie is over, and it's only 11. I won't be ready for bed for hours. What am I to do? That was such a fun movie... why oh why was there no one here to enjoy it with me?

This last reflection is the subject of many minutes' ruminating, mostly in circles. My social circle is too small. I shouldn't have left Atlanta. I should move to Chicago. I'm too stuck in my routine, I need to break out. I begin to understand, for the first time in many a year, the appeal of dating... spending time doing something enjoyable with a new person, with all the curiosity and brimming possibilities. The idea of meeting and interacting with new people is so much less wearying with all my newfound honesty...

But anyway I'm lonely now, and no future break in routine, even if it happened tomorrow (which it won't, because I work tomorrow, and this thought, too, depresses me), will fix that. I flip to other stations; Frasier distracts me for a while. This seems to happen every so often, that I find myself suddenly with great stretches of empty time, and fall into a well of loneliness until I develop a new and satisfying routine. All last fall and winter Kurt and James and I went out nearly every night that I wasn't working, so I didn't have any of those sitting-at-home-looking-for-things-to-watch-to-distract-myself nights (and when I did, it was a treat.) Now everybody's taken up other activities. And I, as usual, am the last one to recognize this, so I don't keep pace with them and find new activities of my own, at least not until after several weeks of these sitting-at-home-depressed nights. And anyway it's not that easy to find new activities. Especially not for someone who's more or less nocturnal. I could go to the iHop and stay there for hours, but am I likely to meet people there, people I want to spend time with? And it's people I need. If only it was NaNo month... I could go online and talk with all kinds of crazy aspiring novelists, and meet a bunch of the local ones. Next November is too far away to wait for, though.

I read blogs. I download five more songs by the King's Singers, mostly madrigals. I cry while listening to If Music Be the Food of Love. That's the low point... after that, I start to pick up again. I begin to see my loneliness as an experience, to be absorbed, relished, but most of all used. How to use it? Why, of course, to write. And write I do. Thanks for reading.

an evening with Emily

2007-01-29T23:35:00.000-08:00

Togetherness does not necessitate conversation...

...although if you laugh aloud at something you are reading, you will probably be asked to share it.

If you can possibly manage to eat your hummus with raw garlic and olive oil, it is highly recommended that you do so.

And let it be known that if Emily ever meets Colonel Brandon, she will marry him on the spot.

The Wrapper

2007-01-15T11:52:00.000-08:00

There is a yellow bubble gum wrapper on the floor, lying just beside the crack where two slabs of cement meet. The girl in the pink glasses has passed by it three times today, and this is her fourth. The first time she was in a hurry, late for the second day in a row, and so she didn't really notice it, didn't even know she had seen it until the second time, when she saw it on her way to a meeting and realized she was seeing it again. The third time she saw it (though she must have passed by it once more, coming back from the meeting, but was talking to someone and didn't see it then), it occurred to her that she might pick it up. But she was on her way to lunch, and had a crossword puzzle she wanted to finish, so time was precious.

Now, however, lunch is done, and so is the crossword puzzle, except for one square in the lower right corner, where either an 'a' or a 'u' might go, and she doesn't know enough about astrophysics to get the cross-clue (she could look it up, of course, but then she will have already lost.) And she is about forty-five seconds ahead of schedule, which is of course ample time to pick up a bubble gum wrapper and throw it in the trash, and so there is no earthly reason why she shouldn't. And in fact her step falters for just a minute as she passes it by, but she keeps walking toward her office. She is surprised that it's still there, that in all the hundreds of people who have passed by that day not one of them has picked it up... but then, neither has she, and then wonders how many of them have thought this same thing, passing by, have noted it each time (except that once when she was talking to someone) and wondered who was going to pick it up. And out of all these people who might have picked it up, how strange if she should be the one to actually do it-- and how many of them, passing once again by the spot where it had been, would think of her, though of course not knowing that it was her, wondering who had finally picked up the wrapper, just as she would be wondering, now, if she had passed by this fourth time and found it gone.

At this thought she nearly turns around to pick it up, but by now it is several yards behind her, and she can no longer spare the time. It has seized hold of her thoughts by now, and she keeps thinking of it through the afternoon, as she sorts papers and transcribes recordings. Will it still be there when she leaves? That is the great question. It is almost unfathomable to think that, out of hundreds, not one would pick it up... unless (and this possibility has not escaped her) no one else has noticed it at all. If it is still there, then either no one but her has noticed it, or they have noticed it and have all failed to pick it up for reasons similar to hers. If it is not there, then at least one other person has noticed it, and more, has stooped to do the extraordinary. It is chiefly on this possibility that she dwells, and thinking of this person she is both a little jealous and a little in love.

Leaving the office, she fixes her eyes eagerly on the ground. It is possible, likely even, that in the back-and-forth motion of the day it has been kicked one way or the other, so she begins looking before she reaches the spot by the crack where it was lying before. It is not in any of the corners leading up to the spot, or under the doors where a stray bubble gum wrapper might be likely to lodge. She comes up to the right crack on the floor-- no wrapper. She looks to the left, to the right, down the hall-- not there. She goes on a few more steps to see if it has been kicked further in this direction. Her heartbeat has actually quickened. She must drink less coffee.

No. It's not there. Someone has, really has, picked it up. And what does this mean? She finds, now it comes to the point, that she's forgotten what significance this is supposed to have. Feeling suddenly deflated, she continues down the hall. She can't keep herself from sweeping the floor with her eyes, just to be sure. But it is not to be found. So someone has picked it up... or it's been kicked through a doorway, or stuck to someone's shoe walking by. That extraordinary person whom she envisioned, that one of a hundred who actually bent to pick up the wrapper, is no more real and substantiated than he was before.

Never mind. She shakes her shoulders a little, impatiently, trying to dispel the absurd depression which has settled over her. She takes a deep breath. And, to prove that she is all right, that it doesn't matter in the slightest, that she is in fact quite happy (after all, the workday is over and tomorrow is Friday), she smiles brightly at the janitor who is sweeping the hall.