Free Advice

Yrmama's Trip to Super WalMart

2012-05-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

I swear, Bucksweet County is a county of supermodels. You will never see a homely person from Bucksweet County. It is a pristine, blessed gene pool. The gene pool of earthly angels. I like think I fit in just fine when I visit there. Others think I'm putting on airs.

I recently made a trip to the WalMart over there in Bumrush, the county seat. I was stocking up on pancake mix for the kids, onion sets, and S-hooks. Clive generally offers to do my trading there for me, gentleman that he is, but yrmama likes to get out of Dodge from time to time, see folks, you know. Depending on the folks...

So when I pulled into the lot there who did I see filling her basket with onion sets but Murlene Murch. With Murlene it is a matter of stretching my lips back from my teeth to be polite. I sat in the truck a minute and decided there was no avoiding her so I got out to do my business.

"Hey there Mama," she went.

And I went, "Hello Murlene!" all perky.

Then she went, "I like totally saw your daughter, #16, at the swimming dock the other day."

I was all like, "That weren't #16. That was me. She's aquaphobic."

Then Murlene was like, "No, it had to be #16 because who I saw was wearing a bikini."

So I went, "No, I did not let her up from down cellar but once last week and it was me. It was me. I always wear my bikini at the river. I waved when I saw you checking me out."

Despite my advanced age and frumpy everyday style I am quite buff. Exceptionally buff for 57. Murlene told me long ago she'd not be wearing any bikini suit because,"no one wants to see all this," gesturing downward. Well it should be no surprise that yrmama is dressing to please no one but herself and cold, clammy spandex on the belly is much less pleasing than warm sunshine. So there. Plus I'm way too buff to hide it all away all the time...

Don't let 'em curdle your toe jam. Swim in what you please.

More Free Dog Advice

2012-05-12T06:32:00.001-07:00

Dear yrmama,

My dog won't stop digging big holes in the yard. What should I do?

Exasperated on Crutches

Dear Exasperated,

Clearly your dog is emotionally attached to that pink shovel. It would be cruel to take it away from her. Plus, she is probably trying to catch the moles that I can't help but suspect are making mincemeat of your "lawn." she is just trying to help!

The best thing you can do is offer positive alternatives. Redirect her behavior. Sports, for example are really awesome. They will help her focus, learn teamwork and wear her out. They always say, "a tired puppy is a good puppy." I always recommend soccer for cases like this.

Another option is sign her up for some yoga classes. If she can learn to be truly still and patient, you will be able to train her to use her shovel in a way that makes you both happy! Here's how it works. Get her to sit quietly at the end of the mole tunnel with the shovel in her mouth. When the rascally rodent pops up - "Whack!" She'll love her new hobby.

Good Luck, yrmama

Wedding Bells in Gob Holler

2012-05-11T06:26:00.001-07:00

It was harder than usual to rouse Clive this morning. I rapped on the metal roof of the bunny hutch where he sleeps when I went to the outhouse, then had #17 do it again an hour later. I finally had to coax the dog to sit in front of it and bark incessantly. When Clive emerged he was a bit worse for wear, worse than usual anyway. He'd been up partying.

You might not have realized it, but Clive is gay. (As are #9, #11 and probably #23.) He's been wanting to get married for ages, and even though it is totally legal here, he said he'd rather wait until the President of the United States supports it. As you can see, he's a principled guy as well as a fine carpenter. I will not say he's upstanding though because he's not. He's bent nearly over from all his years of dedicated work in the crawl space of this mansion.

So come June, up in the ballroom, I am going to throw him and his sweetie one heck of a wedding. I am even going to let the kids up from the cellar all at once so they can be part of it. The widow's walk around the cupola will be bestrewn with roses, and the happy couple will ritually circumambulate it for neighbors from all directions to see. Even the tug boat captains out on the Mighty Mississippi will be able to witness it, if they look up the bluff at the right moment. We'll ring us some bells.

There are a lot of things you can say about Gob Holler, and some not so complimentary, but you can't say we ain't rich in Pragmatic Decency.

Gob Holler in Mid-May

2012-05-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

A car with seventeen upholders is more accurately blessed with seventeen baby garbage cans. A bit of hamburger stashed for later, a used kleenex, a melted chapstick, a wad of dog hair, a little mouse midden from when the bags of dog food were stored briefly in the garage. Dog food under the floor mats, dog food in the air filter. Sticky pennies. A grocery list from the last time granola bars were in fashion, "Three cases of high-fructose corn syrup chewy granola bars. Stat."

Which reminds me: Clive should just not always tell me when he finds a measurement an eighth of an inch off. Every time he does I make him move the tiny scaffolding into one of the farther reaches of the crawl space. I tell him to make it straighter, make it prettier. Fix the goobers, for pity's sake!

At least he cut his hair. It was glossy and luxuriant, but it was a little weird the way he kept his snacks tucked up in there, and flipped it out of his eyes Bieberishly. When he did the head flip sometimes his peanuts would come raining out and that drove the dogs NUTS. Get it? Nuts?

Walk or Bike to School Week

2012-05-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

This morning I drove my kids past the end of the driveway where the perfectly good school bus stops, and then a mile farther into town where there is a sidewalk and a street where I can park the silly minivan. Then we walked together the rest of the way to school.

They were deeply amused, and I'm not kidding. They do not suffer from smoldering cynicism. We are going to do this all week, except when Daughter #3 has an early morning dentist appointment, and not when #4 has orchestra rehearsal right after school across town. I think on Thursday we can bicycle all the way, because I am going to let them put their young innocent lives at stake on the narrow, winding curves of Linder Road.

Isn't this a funny world?

Read City Boy

2012-05-06T11:19:00.001-07:00

Magill Book Reviews on enotes.com starts it's review of City Boy by Jean Thompson with this: "Riveting characterization, a smoldering cynicism, penetrating insights into the human condition: these are the qualities readers expect in Jean Thompson’s writing." Oh my, I am unrepentant. I love smoldering cynicism and I love Jean Thompson.

(Daughter #1 did not write the review, but that is why I chose to read it.) Like Thompson's other books (The Year We Left Home, Wide Blue Yonder, Throw Like a Girl) it started out slow and almost boring, but like boiling a frog in a pot of cold water the delightful weirdness sneaks up on you until it is too late.

City Boy is about Jack, an unpublished novelist, and his wife Chloe, whom he may or may not love. They live in Chicago, in one of those four family flats like we had in St. Louis, where the renters are thrown together into their own little society. Ours had the gay preschool teacher who was my best friend for a while, the charmingly eccentric lesbians, and the rather alarmed African-American yuppie who tried to keep his distance, and us, a pair of unsuspecting hippies who were about to become kind of conservative and middle class.

Jack slowly becomes acquainted with various neighbors who proceed to blow each other up with fireworks, have strange sexual encounters, lurk, smirk, and watch each other cheat and die. It is so good. It gives nothing away to share the last paragraph, one of my favorites. Jack is sitting in his car with his elderly neighbor who does not speak English:

"Farther out, the lake had a gloss to it from the low winter sun, a path of watery shine. Mrs. Lacagnina settled herself into her fur collar, lifted her coffee to her lips but didn't drink. She seemed content to sit there in the small space of comfort that the car provided, and Jack thought they might stay there awhile longer. He would have liked to ask her about her husband. He would have liked to tell her about Chloe. It was the same story, really, for both of them. One day a boat went out on the water and never returned. And all you would have to do was write it down."

New Chaco Day

2012-04-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

The two things you should spend money on are your shoes and your roof. That's good advice.

not my actual feet, but they might as well be

Last summer I did the boring annoying part and got new shingles on most of the house and the barn. Today I got new Chacos. They are the most comfortable, rugged shoes ever invented and they have the bonus of giving you the highly coveted, unmistakable, Chaco tan lines.

I was raised learning the fine and honorable art of living well for cheap, out of necessity. (Thanks Mom!) I no longer have the same degree of necessity, but I still buy 98% of my clothes and my kid's clothes at Goodwill and off the Target clearance rack.

When it comes to shoes though, I go for the best. In the winter I wear Danskos (I've got clogs, dress shoes, dress boots, sandals... all Dansko) and whenever it is warm enough, at least seven months a year here in Iowa, Chacos. My last pair survived three years.

They currently retail for about $100 a pair, and even on sale the price is kind of high. If I wear them 200 days out of the year for three years, though, and I do, that is 16 cents a day! I think I still get frugal Menno/Quaker points for that.

I was poor for enough years to still feel guilty about my new Chacos, but baby, they feel so good.

The Flying Squirrel

2012-04-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

I want to point out an important connection you might have missed. Yrmama flings dead squirrels, you already know that. But this weekend Iowa City is hosting the Olympic Wrestling trials. They've sold something like twelve thousand tickets so far - it's a big thing. One awesome small part of it is a wrestler named Ellis Coleman who is famous for a move called the Flying Squirrel. Watch it HERE. What's the high-brow, literary connection? Aren't a lot of John Irving's characters wrestlers?

See? I've said it before: No Coincidence, Only Convergence.

A Bucket of Dead Squirrels

2012-04-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

Today did not get funny until I was walking around the yard with a shovel in one hand and a bucket of dead squirrels in the other. The sun was shiny, the air soft and perfumed with blossoms. It felt good to be spiffing things up. Once I got the squirrels flung into the ravine I would be able to commence with mowing, my favorite chore.

Earlier I was bra shopping, and fielding emails from unhappy teens who'd forgotten to take pretty much everything they needed to school. Then I got a call or two from the attendance office at City High, wondering where various of my kids were and did I know about it. That's all in the dressing room at Kohl's, face to face with a series of ill-fitting bras that made my muscular torso look downright doughy.

Then I still had to go zipper shopping, which sounds easy, but I had to go to three stores before I found the purple, twelve inch zipper that a certain prom dress desperately needs. Several hours later I learned it was not only to be purple and twelve inches long but invisible to boot. Geez O Pete.

So now I have a lovely glass of wine under my belt, a bra that lifts the girls securely up under my collar bones where they belong, and the satisfaction of squirrels well-flung.

The advice: Hold out. It will get better.

Danish

2012-04-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

dainty baby Iris ~100 pounds

head like a cinder block wrapped in velvet

Seven year old Daughter #3 says, "Eyeballs are not usually my favorite body part, but hers are different."

An eleven month old Great Dane-ish puppy makes an excellent heated footstool. She will calmly clean off the counters for you if she knows there is only one person left in the house and she heard the bathroom door close. She has a impressive, rumbly bark that says, "Who Goes There!" and husky-esque vocalizations that say "I do, I want that, I want that from you," when she knows the conversation is being held in English. An old crib mattress wrapped in a blanket makes the best big-dog bed ever. You'll want to stick around while she naps because her sleep-woofing is extremely cute.

For walks she goes with yrmama and her grumpy uncle, Lupine. She wears her nifty Gentle Leader head collar:

and a split leash contraption, so really Lupine and I are walking her together, correcting her wandering from two angles simultaneously. Teamwork is great. Treats help too.

She's a bit of a handful, clumsy and impetuous, but the sweetest, gentlest most earnest girl you will ever meet. Being her mama is nice work work if you can get it.

Today's advice: Get a dog, as big as you can handle.

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

2012-04-13T12:49:00.001-07:00

Sound track of the day - open another window and listen to this while you read.

the impracticality to be alleviated by a truck

Cynicism? In check.

Anxiety level? Average.

Carfax report? Studied.

Blue Book Value? Considered.

Banter? Rehearsed in the mirror, repeatedly.

Undercover reporting from dealership sales floors? Read.

Bullshit meter? Calibrated, oiled and humming.

Eyeshadow? Orange.

Shoes? Shiny purple.

Heh heh heh. Who says a middle aged lady can't walk into a used car dealership by herself and get herself an adequate deal?

When I recently let my intention to buy myself a used pick up truck, by myself, be known, various friends labeled me Brave. Well thanks, but it's more that I weren't in no mood to sit there and let my stinkin' (and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible) husband do the talking. (He's the best kind of guy, but you know how it goes. In a guy situation, like the average car dealership, things can get pretty male-dominated pretty fast.)

I was ready for this encounter, and fortuitously got a salesman who lives next door to people I know and who does not disdain unpublished novelists. Ka-ching. I also affected the perfect amount of disinterest in the truck of my dreams and let drop the fact that I was packing cash. The piece of paper he slid across the desk to me had $1,000 slashed from the asking price, bringing it right down to the blue book value. Yee haw.

I done it. I bought me a truck.

The advice - You can do it!

Just Tell Me What You Want Me To Say

2012-04-11T10:20:00.001-07:00

doin' yoga on the island again

I inadvertantly gave up cynicism for Lent and it has struck me dumb.

A while back I was at church, minding my own business, when I overheard the pastor praying for me. He said, "...and we pray for the cynical because they do not trust God's love."

So I was all like "What?!! Don't be praying for me!"

Sadly, a primary theme is my life seems to be mistrust and fear. Mostly fear. Wordnik includes 'jaded negativity' in their definitions of cynicism and jaded negativity is perhaps my favorite personal fault. But what to do? The damage was done. I'd been prayed for and within hours I felt key parts of my personality melting away. I knew he was right, but I was worried. If I couldn't be cynical, would I be funny anymore?

You might say, "But yrmama, you are still very, very cynical. I can tell."

To which I say, yeah, but listen to this: I have started saying "namaste"("Howdy" in Hindi) to my yoga teacher at the end of class. I swore I would never do that. I guess it is because I appreciate her hard work and her sincerity and if I don't do it I feel cynical and petty. See? I don't even want to be cynical anymore.

So what do you want from me? Should I crawl back into my blogless cave and be quiet? Give you bossy free advice like I set out to do originally? Tell you more lies about Gob Holler? Become earnest? Cultivate journalistic honesty and integrity?

Free advice: Be not afraid - harder than it sounds.

Gob Holler Communique

2012-03-12T13:12:00.002-07:00

I set Clive and Clove up in the crawl space this morning. They are going to reconstruct a little kitchen down there for the kids - a toaster, an electric frying pan, and ice box, and maybe one of those drop lights for high quality illumination.

The set right out constructing the tiny scaffolding they claim they HAVE to have to work in the crawl space. I don't ask questions. They are the professionals after all. We've got traps set at either end so coons and skunks and feral cats don't get the wrong idea. It is a pretty appealing space, I have to say. Once it's done and the scaffolding's down we'll do something with revolving doors, and maybe a sonic deterrent system to keep the critters out. For now it's gonna have to be trap and release, trap and release. It gives the boys something to do.

Otherwise it is business as usual around here. As is increasingly the norm, there is no school for the kids this week so they are thumbing away at their iPhones all the live long day. I can't let them up from down cellar just because there's no school, it would go straight to their heads.

It is one of yrmama's most effective parenting techniques - to cultivate one's own awareness about the inadvertent setting of precedents. Don't do anything once that you aren't willing to be badgered about the next fifty times you find yourself in the same set of circumstances. BE CONSERVATIVE or you'll be sorry.

Act yr Age, Would Ya?

2012-03-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

This week's manicure - newspaper nails. He heh heh.

Free advice roundup:

Just because you have a big gullet and can swallow it does not mean you should.

If you don't lick the staples holding your belly shut you won't have to wear a cone.

Ignore the knocking sound in the engine.

Wear more clothes with fringe and tassels.

Just finish whatever it is and get on to the next thing. Who cares?

Don't volunteer to sing the middle part.

Paint everything you can green.

Intend to do whatever you do, otherwise everything is an accident.

Sink your teeth in and give it a shake.

Baby Iris

2012-03-02T16:46:00.002-08:00

Truly still a baby

The fairy princess grabs a quick snack before trick or treating.

Fearsome beast wrastles her foe

Baby Iris is ten months old now, and weighs 95 pounds on a good day. Today was not a good day. She made an extremely poor ingestion choice and is at this moment undergoing multimillion dollar doggie surgery to remove whole black walnuts, in the shell and God knows what else, from where they are wedged in her small intestine. Without this she would die, and I am not kidding.

Everyone assures me that this does not mean I am a terrible dog parent, on the contrary, maybe I'm an indulgent one. But geez, the maternal guilt is pretty intense. Pray for my baby.

Wats That Hush, Santa Fe?

2012-03-01T06:38:00.002-08:00

Downtown Santa Fe is muffled, like living in one of those egg-carton covered music recording rooms. Not too many birds tweeting - you can hear cars drive by, but not a constant background hum. No beeping or honking or sirens. I guess there were musicians playing in the plaza but in my memory they were turned way down low too. We think it is all the rounded surfaces and low walls and courtyards absorbing the vibrations.

Maybe my fluctuating hearing loss (that's a real thing) was kicked in the whole time I was there.

The frontmost room at the Pink Adobe has just three tables squished into it and a self-serve fireplace. Charming, charming, very charming.

The nice men who took our after-dinner photo at the Pink Adobe could totally hear every word we were saying about them. We'd been speculating about them, just to entertain ourselves. Why were these four guys, two oldish and two youngish eating together? We eavesdropped and they only talked about the food, but not in an overly foodie way. They were not dressed for business, they were not couples. I said, "Maybe they are cousins."

As the oldishest one snapped this photo he said, "By the way, we aren't cousins." That's why yrMarla and I look so sheepish. We bumped into them again the next day outside the federal courthouse. We smiled at each other like people in a silent movie and went along our way.

Santa Fe Blues

2012-02-29T06:54:00.000-08:00

So you're strollin' along, perusin' antique Native American pottery jars that cost $95,000 apiece and you are not even kidding. They cost more than your first house did. Then there are miraculous stairways that the rumor suggests might have been built by Jesus himself. And super cute houses with little Virgin Marys thumbed right into the wet stucco. The Presbyterian Church looks like a fairy tale.

You are not in Iowa, obviously, but even in the movies everyone lives only in Los Angeles or Manhattan. What's the big secret? How many more little highly touristed pockets of cultural overlookedness are there in our vast nation? And for every one that that is heavily touristed, imagine how many that would just as soon yrmama and yrMarla don't drop in?

Next thing you know you are hungry and find yrself at a dime store lunch counter eating a Frito Pie. Yeah, yeah, I know you call it a walking taco where you come from, but this variation of a Frito bag filled with chili and cheese is super greasy, delightfully spicy and eaten with a plastic spork.

It's no accident that yrmama's fingernails are the same shade of blue that you see on the funky doorways and signs around town.

If You Go to Santa Fe

2012-02-28T20:02:00.000-08:00

Standard Diner, Albuquerque

If you go to Santa Fe you can stop in Albuquerque on the way for lunch. The Standard Diner used to be a gas station, but is now an upscale diner with a nice enough wine list. Eat a burger, or a big salad.

Old Santa Fe Inn, deceptively, deliriously simple

Once in Santa Fe, stay at the Old Santa Fe Inn, a renovated motor-court motel with cushy pillow-top mattresses, Starbucks coffee and warm homemade cookies in the lobby all afternoon, a charming kiva fireplace every time you turn around and the world's most enthusiastic desk clerk, Michael. You will never want to leave.

Seret and Sons

Up the street is Seret and Sons, which will blow your little mind. Thousands of carpets from India and Afghanistan, Tibetan furniture, architectural salvage from all over India, spectacular stone inlay tabletops that look like a chunks of the Taj Mahal that you can take home and eat off of, except they are even more beautiful.

Seret and Sons

Which brings me to the thing I said to Marla most frequently during our strolls about lovely Santa Fe, "OMG Marla, I can't believe how much this reminds me of northern India - the air, the light, the smell of woodsmoke, the adobe walls with raggedy blue doors and the walled in courtyards topped with flower pots and narrow winding streets and the empty ditches they call rivers, the snow-capped peaks in the distance." Just ask Marla. It got tedious.

See? Not at all unlike northern India, except for the obvious, "Where is everybody?" Stay tuned in coming days for more adventures of Marla and yrmama in New Mexico.

Santa Fe Suspense - A Travelogue Teaser

2012-02-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

The last time I went to Santa Fe my handsome, creative, verbose, curious, analytical, athletic, musical and above all desperately charming son was three years old. We went to visit the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and because he was on the tiny side, I carried him in my arms. That way he'd be up level with the paintings, plus I had physical control over him and we could be all cozy and bond looking at great art together.

A rotten booger of a security guard zoomed over to us and told me we had to stand at least three feet back from the wall and that we could not point, as our hands would then be too close. Fine. We stood back and pointed with our expressive chins.

Rotten Booger though kept following me and badgering me. He would not shut up. I am well known for having impeccable art museum behavior, so that was kind of weird. My handsome son was clearly the problem, he was just too dark and handsome for Rotten Booger. Seriously, he was racially profiling a three year old in yrmama, his mama's, arms. I got extremely annoyed with Rotten Booger and it ended with him expelling us from the premises or maybe I left in a huff after filling out a complaint form, I can't remember. It was bad though. I remember too that a really kind young security guard of color sidled up to me and shyly apologized for the rotten boogery behavior of his colleague. That was nice.

Anyway, I know I live in a happy bubble here and overt racial incidents for us are rarer than rare. I know it may not always be that way. But I want to give a great big THANK YOU to society that has progressed to the point where people at least know to keep their racist, boogery ideas to themselves.

Maybe they are just afraid of me, but that works too.

So, when Marla and I are at the Georgia O'Keefe museum this weekend I will be on the lookout for my old friend. Will I squint my eyes at him? Will I inch in past the three foot zone and see what he says? Will I pull out a dollar bill and ask him to autograph it? Cause yrmama is taking names, she's feeling pretty sure of herself.

Free Advice From Gob Holler

2012-02-17T05:17:00.000-08:00

ours is more rustic, more weathered, homier all in all

So this morning I had to rap pretty hard on the roof of the bunny hutch to rouse Clive and Clove and get them up for work.

Remember I said they took off that time, for six months and just left the project hanging? Well this here that follows doubles as some free advice on how to manage your staff.

I am not an unreasonable woman. I know these guys do not have the same options in life with which I have been so blessed. Therefore I decided to give them a place to live and rations in addition to the generous, but fair, wage I provide. We had a perfectly good, roomy bunny hutch out behind the smokehouse that was not being put to any use whatsoever so I asked the boys to sweep in out. We lined it real good with old wool blankets, rigged up a bulb on a wire so's they can read in bed and better themselves and VOILA. Quarters for my staff and they are not now inclined to wander off.

You wouldn't even have to possess a bunny hutch to do this. Do you have a dry back stair with a landing big enough for a bedroll? Voila. Staff quarters. Maybe there's an old canvas army tent moldering in your shed. Put it up behind the lilac bush, air it out a bit and? Voila. Staff quarters.

I already told you they like to eat peanuts and bananas. Would it kill you to buy some extra peanuts and bananas for them? I tell you, it is the little kindnesses you pay, the way you acknowledge their humanity, the way you send home your worn out socks for their children when you let them take a weekend off now and then.

Follow these precepts and you will have a loyal staff, forever.

Gob Holler Advisory

2012-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

*Seriously kids, if you are looking for anything like consistency or transparency or journalism you are barking up the wrong blog. What do you mean, I'm lying? Of course I am. Where I have fallen down on the job though is in my commitment to bring you sound advice. I promise to get back on it.

Years ago Daughter #2 said, "yrmama! Are you being sarcastic or not? I never can tell if you mean what you are saying."

You might say, "yrmama, that is some mighty bad parenting there, messing with your kid's head."

In my defense I refer you to Steve Martin, who once advised that as a prank we routinely teach our kids the wrong names for things. He's famous, and a good banjo player too.

I think repeatedly suggesting to my younguns that the word in the Christmas songs is "All-ay-hule-ya"instead of "hall-ay-loo-ya," just toughened them up mentally and turned them into the precocious Princeton-bounds that they is.

Don't be such a stickler.

Gob Holler Remodelling Part 5

2012-02-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Seems to me if it takes four guys six and a half months to put on two stair treads and sand them down...maybe they'd have a cup of coffee and sand'em faster. Don't they have anything else to get to? Aren't the beards going to be woefully neglected? We have a freaking COTILLION to hold in that ballroom once the ice breaks up.

I say saddle up the war dog once and for all. Speed the plow. Get r done, boys. Yrmama is discouraged. Her neck hurts. Her novel languishes despite the white noise generator that masks the intermittent hammering and cussing.

My 95 pound baby war dog curled up like a super-shiny kitten.

Twelve out of my fourteen children have been home sick as well, trying to not succumb to the long-term barfs or to the whooping cough. I keep em doped up on tea and Spaghettios. When the fever roils I send em out to the back porch to sit with Aunt Cora. Kind of on Aunt Cora. It's peaceful out there, and cool

we do miss Cora

So really, all is not woe. There are glimpses of beauty, in my children's sticky little eyes, for example. And the ringworm on the war dog's muzzle is so geometrically perfect I could almost cry. It takes an artist to see these things I guess, and that is my chosen role in life, to point out those little bits of harmony that make Livin' the Life here on Gob Holler worth while.

Be well.

Gob Holler Remodelling Update Part 4

2012-02-14T18:32:00.000-08:00

Clive and Clove are still at it. All day long they saw and cuss and nail a little. They eat nothing but bananas and peanuts. Once they left and didn't come back for six whole months, a gaping hole blasted in the ballroom wall covered with a flimsy sheet of plastic.

With winter coming on I threatened to sue them and they slunk back. Their beards were immaculate.

I can't remember anymore what the point even was. I mean, what is the big deal with people over five feet tall having to duck when they use the main staircase? How many people are that tall anyhow? I can duck. I've been doing it for years. It keeps me supple.

I went down tonight after they'd left for the day. Squinting through the clouds of sawdust I saw some mighty fine craftsmanshit. I mean ship. They have been cutting some tiny pieces of wood and making them flat and fitting them together so the whole thing, the new staircase, curves like a song.

Beauty is nothing but harmony, and harmony is the whole point of the universe, right?

this is at Harvard - not my actual ballroom

My Beautiful House

2012-02-08T09:19:00.000-08:00

Clive and Clove are the nearly identical, NPR-listening be-bearded bros who once invited to your house, will not leave. Along with their sidekick, Curt, they not only have completely taken over my house. They are ripping it to shreds. And so I smile at them (shallowly, insincerely) and pay them money for it. Look what they have done so far:

This is the connection between the first floor and second floor of my house. If you want to go from one level to another you can use the ladder or go outside and come in a different door. In your pajamas. Your bedroom is down there.

This is daylight from the attic, shining where a perfectly good wall once was. This slot is where they put in the new beam that currently keeps the third floor from falling onto the second.

This is wallpaper from the days of Linder yore, hidden between layers of old plaster wall.

This is a plastic curtain, where the perfectly good wall used to be between the dining room and the sunroom. It drives baby Iris crazy. We say, "Iris, pay no attention to the men behind the curtain," but she just can't help it.

Namaste and All That Jazz: A Iowenian Yoga Update

2012-02-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

I can lower into this crocodile thing reliably, and hold it for a while, but there's no pushing back up yet.

I'm just not going to bow and intone "namaste" auspiciously at the end of my yoga class. It's not going to happen. "Namaste" means "hi," and when paired with folded hands at the chest is sweet and respectful, but that's as far as I'll go. I know that the idea of India, and especially of yoga, is a spiritual oasis in the American imagination. But I don't see any reason to say "namaste" except in context, like to a cute school kid on the street in Delhi, or to a shopkeeper. That ooky moment at the end of a nice workout just rubs me way the wrong way. But despite that momentary rub at the end of each class, my daily yoga project is going well.

I'm pretty sure normal Indian people don't go around doing poses and then saying "hi" to each other all the time. I think middle and upper middle class people do yoga like westerners do - as exercise. Serious teachers run ashrams for westerners to visit and I'm sure they are using all kinds of yoga lingo. I am qualified say this too, because out of all the middle aged white ladies on Linder Road, I think I am the Most Expert on India. So there.

I'll be 48 in fifteen days. I am feeling stronger and bendier, and I really enjoy the mental focus required.

I really cannot do this. But while I'm trying I feel compassion for myself, so that's good. (Plus, it is soooo small.)

I can totally do this for realz. I think about bald eagles when I do it.

I can actually kind of do this now without falling in a heap right away, which is a big improvement.