I do all my own stunts

Break over!

2008-02-18T21:49:00.003-05:00

Six weeks is a long-enough break, don't you think? It's been wonderful, honestly, not to feel the pressure to blog when I just didn't want to. But I find myself wanting to again. So hurray! Break over.

But not here. This year, my word (finally!) is forward, despite what Ed said of the word making him think of fascist youth marches. Forward. Not looking back, not trying to be what I was, not trying to get back all the things I felt I was losing in the move, but going onwards, moving forwards and up and away. I might be about ready to do that.

And I'm going to do blog forward on a new and shiny blog I'm calling Making It Up and it's here, at Wordpress: http://extemporize.wordpress.com.

Please come over. It's probably going to be almost exactly the same as it was. After all, it's still me.

But not Stuntmother any more. She's lovely and I adore her, that cupcake making, baby-rocking, play-dough rolling, half-smiling, half-screaming diaper juggling piece of me. But she belongs to something that's receding into the past. And I'm going forward. Making it up as I go along.

Where I'm going is not where I've been

2008-01-06T17:39:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about what has changed for me about blogging. For two years, blogging here was something I did naturally, readily. It took no effort, gave me much pleasure. Here I thought things through, connected to others, made friends, shared stories and reached further into the virtual world than I ever had before. I loved that this was a diary I was keeping faithfully while I had failed at dozens of other diaries I had tried to keep throughout my life. I had always wanted to be a journaler -- like Madeleine L'Engle, like Anais Nin, like Boswell. For a while, here in this blog, I was. It was the most intensely satisfying activity. Then something changed.

For a long while I thought that the intense sadness I felt about leaving Philadelphia was interfering with my blogging mojo -- and all my other mojos for that matter. I tried to give myself space to be unhappy, to not blog if I couldn't manage to face yet another day of writing about the slough of despond I felt myself in. I tried not to mind that the magic was gone. But it was. And I began to feel like a liar, struggling to write what had once come so easily.

Recently I've had another thought. I have, all my life long, cared far far too much about what other people think of me. In fact, especially at times of great stress or unhappiness, there is a voice in my head which is something like the omniscient third-person narrator of a book. That voice is the voice of the "audience," the world out there watching me. It's no good telling me not to be so bloody self-centered. I'm not really, not that way. But I judge the value of what I do and who I am via the reactions of other people. Which is why, I think, blogging has been so successful for me while journaling was not. The audience made it real.

Well, it occurs to me that I am in the fix I am in (in short, that I am not sure where my life is in the midst of the lives around me) because I care more what and who are outside me, rather than what is inside. So I end up moving away from where I really wanted to be, because I had never managed to stand up and say -- not to myself, not to anyone -- this is what I want. Because I don't know what I want. I know far better what other people want from me.

So. As this new year comes and I emerge slowly from the cracking shell of unhappiness I have been in, I think it's time to try and change that. I will find out what I want. I will find out what my own voice says.

And to that end I have started keeping a journal. In a book. With a pen. I carry it around. I write weird things in it that I wouldn't write here. And things that I would. But then I can't check back to hear the love. To see my reflection in the mirror of this community. I have to be all right with there being no mirror. Only with myself. The book is quiet. It doesn't praise me, judge me, agree with me or pat my hand. It doesn't challenge me or push me. It waits for me to do all that for myself. Which considering how old I am, it's about time I did.

So I suppose what I'm saying is that, for now at least, I'm going away. I'd rather say that outright than just drift away. What I am going to regret most are the connections I have here. I will miss you very much. And you should email or, you know, visit! Or you can come over to the knitting blog (Two Sharp Sticks) which I share with a friend and which I have also been neglecting. I will be contributing over there a few times a week, because (I hope) that's a different type of blogging, one that won't twist its fingers into my hair and pull me away from what I need to be doing right now. I'm also Twittering every so often (link in the side bar: twitter. com and I'm stuntmother) which means if you're really keen to know where I'm at, you can check in on my 140 character summations of existence.

We'll see. I know other bloggers who have said sayonara and almost immediately come back. And I have this idea that maybe once a week I'll scan the weirdest page from my journal and post it here. Although isn't that frankly just the love-hungry faded star in me, longing for acknowledgment?

And since I don't exactly know how to close, I'm just going to fade to black.

She turns away from the camera (and now we can see she's wearing a snazzy new pink hat she just knitted because man, the house is cold). She opens a still new looking black book , thinks for a moment, then takes a pen and starts to write. The light fades.

All right, just stop.

2007-12-13T08:46:00.000-05:00

So unfortunately feeding my sense of impending doom doom doom, with a capital D and a very loud OOOOOO, I've just learned that one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers. You can read his statement here, which, like so much of what he writes, is intelligent, phlegmatic, funny and cuttingly real.

I'm not sure how they diagnosed him, since a neurologist friend assures me that a true diagnosis for Alzheimers can only be done via autopsy, but still. And his optimism -- or determination -- to carry on for a long while yet exhorts me to adopt the same positive forward movement. And perhaps much of what could be hard and dooooom-riddled can be otherwise with a better attitude.

Still, I would really like the crap to stop and something very very nice and long-lasting to happen. Not just, you know, tickets to Spamalot or a nice sunny morning without too much work to do (although that would be nice too) but something big and nice. Daniel to stop fighting at school. Ed suddenly getting a to-die-for job in Philadelphia. My asthma improving. Friends moving in next door. An invitation to direct for the RSC.

My computer having not lost the last two days of work. Breakfast.

Only now

2007-12-11T22:19:00.001-05:00

Part of the power of NaBloPoMo ending was to send me shrieking from the computer. It's a truly odd juxtaposition to last year's early December posting when the month of posting so energized me that I wanted to carry on and on. And it's a good reminder in how things change, even the things you think will always be the same.

This too shall pass, my mother used to say. This too shall pass. Sunny weather and rain, good times and bad. At first I found it a sterile saying. A platitude. And then I realized its power for hope and held it to myself when I felt lost and afraid. Much later I learned that it also holds within it a warning not to rely on the good moments remaining forever. They too are fleeting. This thought holds within it both halves of all possibility. All this shall pass. Someday, it will be different. Not good, not bad. Not worse, not better. Just different.

Things are so different now then they have ever been before that I am truly, for the first time in my life, fearing the future. I never did. The future always held promise and potential. Now I am scared of it, fearing it holds sadness and loss. Part of this is the slow evaporation of my mother. To watch her dying by infinitely small degrees (because Alzheimer's is a disease -- and one that will kill her eventually) and to not yet be free to talk about it, to look ahead and know that before this mourning can possibly end there will be terrible, terrible times, makes the future seem bleak beyond all description.

Yet this too shall pass. All things will. And I am both hopeful and afraid.

Only now, at the end, do you understand the power of the Blog

2007-11-30T23:45:00.001-05:00

Another guest post from Stuntfather

Last day of the month of enforced daily posting. Since y'all (it would have been youse, but we left Philly and out here it's definitely y'all for the second person plural) gave me such good feedback on the last post, I've grabbed the wheel again and am steering this blog off down a different bumpy road.

November: one of the wackiest months in our married life, I'd say, certainly our parental life, with the hordes of visitors, me conferencing and burning non-existent candles at ends they didn't know they had to get the bloody dissertation revisions done, Stuntmother performing daily miracles and nightly collapses... I won't be sorry to see the back of this month. But it had its moments, and the struggle itself is worthwhile (insert Camus here? What? I have to do it for you? Eh bien, "La lutte elle-meme vers les sommets suffit a remplir un coeur d'homme" and if I've remembered that correctly at a distance of 20 years y'all owe me a beer). Thanksgiving brought happiness to our visitors, I think, and showed what this house can do when full. Christmas could be spectacular. Or just cozy. And either way it will be good.

Three generations of the family went to a planetarium show tonight and to look through a large telescope at a binary star system and massive globular cluster of 100,000 stars on the other side of the Milky Way. Daniel melted down when we had to leave, and that became the consuming thing in the moment. But I look back now at me, my parents, my children, and the big universe out there, and don't care whether it all makes sense or not. This messy November has been what it has been, every day is what it is, the world turns, and tomorrow there will be fresh coffee. And Stuntmother coming back to me from all youse guys in Philly who borrowed her for the evening.

Last year Stuntmother was musing on strategic undergarments for reptiles

Further aging

2007-11-29T13:24:00.000-05:00

Further to the aging theme, I was watching a BBC Lord Peter Wimsey mystery from 1973 and there was a party scene and do you know, everyone at the party was over forty. And they were all having fun! Looking pretty! Chatting and flirting and drinking champagne.

Then this popped up over my Gmail:

Pablo Picasso - "It takes a long time to become young."

Well, yes, Pablo, as it happens, I agree. But something happened between the early seventies and now, or between the 1920s and now, depending on how you look at it -- the triumph of youth culture. The pressure on us to remain young despite the natural, and in some ways, welcome process of aging, maturing, growing up, is immense. Lord Peter Wimsey today would at the very most be a lusciously ripe thirty something, not a greying man in his late forties or early fifties. It's a shame.

Except for a few aches, you couldn't pay me to be twenty again. But I would like there to be a space in the world for fun, glamour, romance, high-jinks and long parties for those of us leaving all vestiges of youth behind. The space that there is, is shrinking. And it is time to resurrect it.

Last year I was both mother and motherless.

Aging

2007-11-28T23:36:00.000-05:00

A while ago I went to the doctor because I thought my asthma was getting worse. And I had (or had just had) bursitis. What is wrong with me? I asked. The doctor shrugged. "You're just getting old," she said.

I have an aching wrist and a cut on my hand that is taking a long time to heal. I can no longer entwine my fingers and bend over and have my arms loop over my head. I used to be able to do that. I could do all sorts of things that I didn't think were hard at all that are now impossible. I can't hold my balance the way I once did. My neck gets sore. My eyes get tired. My lips crack.

I'm going to yoga and what I don't know is how much is recuperable. Can I reclaim the (limited by my basic structure) flexibility I tossed away through years of blind inactivity? Can I reclaim the lost lung power? Can I push away the pain in my wrists? Knit together the diastasis of my stomach muscles, long after birth? Or am I aging past these things?

Aging is not something I want to fear, but I want to balance what I should cling to with what I should gracefully surrender. What goes on each list? How can I decide? I suspect that the neck pain, a long term legacy of a car accident in my early twenties, is here to stay. Surrender headbanging gracefully. All right. The wrist pain is new, perhaps due to too much laptop use at a bad angle. Fight that! If I can choose well, I will have more energy to fight the good fight, rather than flinging myself against the brick wall of the inevitable.

But what about my dreams? Some dreams I think I do have to gracefully surrender. No chance I'll be in the RSC now. Nor will I dance. I am unlikely to live on a yacht or learn to speak fluent Dutch.

I can hear all your caring comments now, urging me to never give up on dreams, and you're quite right -- as far as it goes. But I think some must get cleared out of the way so that I can see the future spreading out before me, not cluttered with might-have-beens, but with maybes. If I can choose well, I will have more chance of fighting gracefully, rather than tripping over my somewhat wretched, aging feet.

Last year I was considering my place in the blogosphere.

Not exactly complaining

2007-11-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

Last night, I crept to bed with my goodies and then fell asleep, sitting up, with my tea in my hands and my knitting on my lap. Literally. When I woke up I had to mop up the cold tea that had spilled all over the duvet. This evening, I fell asleep in yoga class (during corpse pose, but even so). In the library, I faded out, staring at the bookshelves and came to in a panic when I realized I had only put 15 minutes on the meter.

So it's 8:30 and I decided I would not try and work, but would instead go off to bed. Then I realized that because of NaBloPoMo, I had to blog first. Oy.

So I'm not complaining, but nor am I doing more than this little sneeze at the computer. I'm going to make tea, drink it (standing up, perhaps?) and go to bed.

Last year, I was ranting at and on the radio.

What we must

2007-11-26T21:58:00.000-05:00

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
Being taken to bed: one hot water bottle, one heated rice pack, two heated foot warmers, one cup of Tension Tamer tea (love that stuff), one mini pumpkin pie I made with the leftover pastry and filling, one After Eight mint. And a book on tape. And knitting. And the heater hasn't set off the fire alarm for the first night since Ed and I started sleeping in the guest room (having vacated our own room for his parents) so the room will be WARM. And so will I.

Needs must.

Last year I was also eating a mini pumpkin pie. (I got the dates wrong yesterday.)

Oh, and send a psychic welcome to little John Phileas who was born early this morning to my dear friend. Welcome to the spinning world, little one. We're glad you've come.

Holidaaaay

2007-11-25T21:44:00.000-05:00

So, while the last few days didn't FEEL particularly like holidays, they clearly were, certainly compared to now when it's 9:45 at night and I'm trying to work when I'd like to have a drink, put on my headphones and go knit. Oy. Of course, I'm not working, but blogging. Still, the point stands that I'm not on a chaise longue with someone feeding me grapes while I listen to Dirk Gently on the Ipod. I'm sitting on a folding chair at the computer, feeling cold and crabby.

Ed is also back at work, marking papers. In this fine neck of the woods, the children have tomorrow off. Because it's the first day of hunting season. Of course. Naturally. If I had wheels, you'd see rubber on the road and a receding figure in the distance. Instead, tomorrow Ed will be at work and I will be driving two children and two in laws to Hershey to see if we can tour the chocolate factory. It might be fun, of course.

It would also be fun to be in Bermuda, having a massage on the beach with a margarita near to hand.

Oh, don't mind me. I'm crabby about in-laws. Today, my MIL cooked a butternut squash up for lunch while we were all at meeting and then offered me ice-cream for dessert. My ice cream, dammit. My Stephen Colbert birthday ice cream. In my freezer, in my house.

Last year, I was escaping New York.

Today is your birthday!

2007-11-24T23:23:00.000-05:00

My birthday, in fact. 39. It's a good number. Much better than 38 which seems sort of aging and hunched. Smells of mothballs. Thinks about string beans. 39 sounds more like martinis, filterless cigarettes, sonatas and long chiffon scarves. I'm looking forward to it.

But while today is my birthday (evidenced by Helena calling me "the birthday woman" all day and Daniel working out that I'd be only about half a year old on Pluto) I'm not having any of it. I'm not celebrating my birthday when my parents decided to leave the day before because their first born's birthday wasn't a good enough reason to stay another day. I'm not celebrating my birthday with in-laws in the house. In-laws (well, the mother) who closed the aging and somewhat sticky shutters in the living room (open because I love light and couldn't care less about privacy) because "I think it's foolish to have them and not use them" and who supervised my reheating of the left-over T'giving meal, saying things like "Did you put the mashed potatoes in the oven like I told you to." Ah, yes. Good times. Although I should just add that the mashed potatoes were sublime three nights in a row, due entirely to this

an early birthday present from a lovely friend who clearly knew better than I did what cooking Thanksgiving for 14 would be like. It's silver! It's a gadget! It's a silver gadget! I love it! It completely riced those damn potatoes. And Daniel loved them.

Anyway, it's not really my birthday. Or perhaps it's half of it. There was breakfast in bed and BSG Razor on the tell tonight. But there might be a party later.

But writing this down, it occurs to me I do this--try and declare an "official" birthday--every year. Somehow I'm never quite on top of my birthday for the real day and feel the need to postpone some of it until another day when I might be ready to get down and boogie. Maybe it's more this pushmepullyou thing I do when I think that it's not that important really, I'm not that important really, and then halfway through think goddammit, I am that important really, where's my fireworks. I should just get on board and plan my own party because I clearly want one. Next year, I will.

Thus, I prove that 39 does not leave me without things to learn, either about molecular biology or my own warped psyche. And that's actually a good feeling. I'm not old. I'm just me. Just growing up, moving on, overcoming and looking up, same as always. Still moving uphill because there is no downhill on my road.

Last year, it was coincidentally also my birthday.

Gratitude

2007-11-23T19:23:00.000-05:00

Ed's right, that the post below embarrassed me. Perhaps it shouldn't. I mean, I did work hard to make my mother's first Thanksgiving away from home a nice one. And Ed's parents were sort of Thanksgiving tourists. I wanted to make the experience nice -- for everyone, kids included. Still, I think he might have had a little too much pie. Or wine. I'm not all that.

But I'm thankful for him too. And I'm really trying to accept compliments gracefully instead of folding up my face like one of these dogs and muttering.
It's honestly easier to be nice to people than to let them be nice to me. Even if I don't make that face, I feel all sort of wrinkly inside. But I am trying to be thankful, because a little gratitude would not go amiss right now.

I am grateful to all of you who hang out here. I am grateful for your comments, written or not. I am grateful for the opportunity to expand my own circle of connection through this space. I am thankful that recently, despite what I feel is spotty blogging and some less than stellar writing, some of you have offered me the huge lift and compliment of blogging awards. I have been remiss that I have not announced them here. But like that darn post below this one, I feel a wrinkly inside accepting the compliment. But I will:

A long while ago, a wonderful blogger, Nancy Bea, whom I admire very much, not least for the fact that she blogs a combination of beautiful words and beautiful images while parenting with such grace, offered me the Thinking Blogger Award. Nancy, thank you. I try to be a thinking blogger -- as well as a thinking and thoughtful person more generally. That this effort comes across to you means much to me.
Then, a little more recently Hope, of Hope Radio, gave me the Be The Blog award, and said some very nice things too. Hope, thank you. I've been enjoying getting to know you too:

Then most recently, NYJLM passed on a roar for powerful words, which also means a lot, since she's a powerful writer in her own right:

Some (all?) of these awards require that I pay them forward, which I will soon, but for today, I wanted to think quietly about being grateful, about being gracious and for saying thank you. (Also, Helena is in the bathtub roaring at me in her own brand of powerful words -- I'm camped just outside the bathroom door with the laptop -- so perhaps I'd better get this tired girl to bed.)

Thank you, to all of you, and to Stuntfather, for being the strong voices, raised fists and good hugs in my corner. Your support soothes the varicose veins of my soul.

Stuffed! (A guest post)

2007-11-22T21:47:00.000-05:00

Today's post brought to you by Stuntfather.

She's a miracle. Seriously. The first Thanksgiving we've hosted since Cairo (and that was of necessity not the classic Thanksgiving), and the first major social event in the new house, and it all went as close to perfectly as anyone could imagine. Happy children, well-fed adults, the juiciest turkey in history, piles of all the good stuff on the side, many pies, some very drinkable wine... And in the middle of it all, Stuntmother doing all her own stunts in her own way, totally in charge, making it all happen. (Looking pretty hot, too)

It is really not easy to take a mix like we had here today - three generations, two national cultures, one stressful time of year - and produce so many happy people. There wasn't a whole lot of the official ideology going on - pilgrims, God and country, exploited natives - but insofar as this is a celebration of family and other good things in our lives, we gave thanks in style. And so do I, for the amazing woman who will be utterly embarrassed by this post. She'll just have to live with it.

Planning that turkey thing

2007-11-21T23:11:00.000-05:00

All right. This is rocket science, really. I'm working out the plan for what to cook when tomorrow because today I have had an entire day of "helpful" people (who are pretty helpful really) asking "What can I do? What can I do?"

I hate that question. I don't KNOW! If I knew what you could do I'd be DOING IT. Figure it out!

Still, lots got done. There is lots left to do. And now I need to drag my sorry self to bed.

If this weren't NaBlowhatsit, I wouldn't have inflicted this on you, but would have kept on planning in a obsessive sort of way. I'll thank me tomorrow.

Last year, I was practicing gratitude.

They're heeere

2007-11-20T20:12:00.001-05:00

Almost. They're coming. The latch is lifting. The door is creaking. The footsteps approach. The time is ...

actually, they're all late and I'm getting jittery. If yer inlaws are going to descend, at least they could descend on time!

(Fingers crossed. Details tomorrow.)

Last year, for some reason, I was getting all aerated about Tom and Katie.

Weaning

2007-11-19T21:36:00.000-05:00

When I first had Daniel, I couldn't remember how anything ever got done. Not laundry. Not cooking. Not reading, sleeping, showering, talking or thinking. Nothing. I just sat and fed him and walked him around and sometimes I ate a piece of bread or if a nice friend came over I ate lovely sandwiches and grapes. Right from the beginning I had to leave everything I couldn't cope with alone. Then I would sort of sneak up on it and reintroduce one thing at a time. Then when I had that in place, I could put the next piece back in. Like that game you do with your hands when you move one clockwise and one counterclockwise -- it's far easier if you get one hand going and then add the other in. I was still working things in one at a time when we were introducing solids. I found I could cope with breakfast, so we did that. Then when that was ticking along nicely, I worked up to making suppers. I didn't serve the child lunch until he was almost a year. It took me that long to sneak up on that meal, which for some reason completely overwhelmed me. How, I would think in astonished despair, how does ANYONE ever make lunch? I have no idea. Then (clearly) I managed it. And after a while, as parenting grew more familiar, that sense I had that I had to stalk the projects that daunted me, faded.

But now I'm doing it again, this time in my own life. You know that at the end of August, beginning of September, things got really bad. Really really bad. So I retrenched. I pulled back from every non-essential thing in my life. My goal was to make it through each day, to do what the children needed and then to go to bed so that I could try again the next day. That was it. Surviving the day was my only objective -- the only thing I had to do -- not returning phone calls, blogging, knitting, reading, making nice suppers, going for walks, finding happy little outings, eating enough green vegetables, gardening, cleaning the house past essentials or keeping up with the news. Nothing. I pared life down to what I could deal with and then I dealt.

Once things started to get better, I started reintroducing things. So I have recently been known to cook a meal with more than three ingredients in it. I am knitting again, reading the paper. I am keeping up a bit better with friends. I'm blogging. I've hung several dozen pictures. I bought a pair of pants. (Hey, do you know that at Ross, you really can dress for less? Who knew?) I'm managing to have days that are more than survival.

I'm weaning myself back onto my own life. It feels good.

Marathon

2007-11-18T20:57:00.000-05:00

So when we left for Philly, I forgot my medicine at home so by this morning, I wasn't breathing all that well. Even so, when we got to the marathon, I felt the sudden urge to run long distances in cute hats that always comes over me watching the runners approaching the finish line. The marathon (although in some ways, a bad bad thing to do to your body) is such an amazing spectacle of the triumph of the human spirit over the limitations of our bodies. My asthmatic self spends the entire time imagining that I could train for it, make it past the limitation of my malfunctioning airways and soar through twenty-six point two miles, thumbing my nose at the asthma that has always dominated my physical life. Then I come to my senses, as I get out of breath walking to the car.

Still. Maybe someday I will do something that mad. This year, a very wonderful --and heretofore non-running -- friend trained for and ran the marathon. So amazing. What we can do when we decide to. Even all those people who should be home in arm chairs with lap rugs on. Who hobble rather than run across the finish line. The absolute triumph of the will. What we will do, we do.

Last year, I wanted to believe.

Among friends

2007-11-17T21:13:00.000-05:00

Thank you for your solidarity -- and words of support. Today is much better and I am happily ensconced on my friends' couch using their computer. But, like all computers that aren't your own, I keep hitting all the wrong keys which is making blogging rather more treacherous than usual.

I am trying to train the children up to be mobile, weekend away type children. It's working all right although Daniel was hard work this afternoon, like a feral cat trying to mark his emotional territory. I'm wiped out. Somewhere in his genome is a little bit of DNA that suggests a tendency to overreact to every cotton pickin' thing.

So I'm going to knit. Perhaps there will be large thoughts tomorrow. Tonight I'm thinking about tea and wool and soft couches, and three children sharing a room, whispering themselves to sleep.

Last year, I was having much bigger thoughts (and better posts -- so go read them instead of this one). Earlier in the day, I was musing about the line between protecting and overprotecting your children. Then later, I was hoping I might learn to be kinder.

Not ready

2007-11-16T17:32:00.000-05:00

Ed's gone. I'm not ready to be by myself with the children in this big new house in the strange place yet. Don't get me wrong -- they'll get fed, and bathed (maybe) and put to bed and we went to the library for a video for a Movie Night but there will be more yelling than normal. There will be me, right on the edge of everything falling apart. The crust is thinner than I thought. I am only just holding it all together right now.

And tomorrow I will leave, and go where I know people. You do what you have to.

Last year I was living the dream.

This year? Goddammitalltosevenblastedcirclesofflamingfrackinhell.

Leaves; and comes back

2007-11-15T20:42:00.000-05:00

The garden is covered in leaves. Covered. I need to get out there and rake them, but have not adjusted to that responsibility and it's been raining the last few days. I'm not supposed to rake wet leaves, right? Ed was out in the garden at dusk and was surprised that it was positively raining leaves upon him. All around, like large yellow and orange rain drops. Suddenly, he said, I understand why someone might call it "fall."

The leaves are falling. And Ed is leaving. He's on his way to Montreal for a conference. When he returns, he will have his parents with him. There's some grand plan of meeting them at the airport when he flies in and they fly in so that they can come here together.

I'm planning menus and yawning. I'm not really a plan ahead kinda gal, on the whole. As I said once to a friend, I do not read ahead in the knitting pattern of life. Which sometimes throws a large wrench into the works. But this time, there will be five adults all over 65 in the house as of Wednesday (my parents, arriving Sunday; Ed's parents, arriving Tuesday; my aunt, arriving Wednesday lunchtime) all of whom need to be fed. And who will not be happy if I offer them cold cereal and beer. And Ed's going away. So tomorrow constitutes the last few free hours I have. I'm thinking I have to go to the supermarket and make it count! Thus menus. I'm thinking of making lots of soup and freezing it.

I also think I'm planning because I'm scared. These visits are hard, and I'm not really that robust. There is only a thin crust over the seething lava of my upheaval. It's getting thicker, but it's not there yet. Ah, well. It will all be fine, no doubt. Mostly because no matter what days are like, they end. And then there are new days.

Still, time to get in more wine.

Last year, oddly enough, I was also thinking about wine. Mulled wine.

I'm it, I think

2007-11-14T21:12:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged twice for the same meme, once by Radical Mama and once by a NaBloPoMo newcomer Thespac. Hi there, young actor dude! Well, twice makes it a pattern, so I thought I'd better comply.

This is supposed to be seven weird or random things about me.

1. I used to tell taxi drivers in Manhattan complete lies about who I was and what I was doing in NYC and do it in a variety of accents. So once I was a French girl visiting an old American man I had met in Paris, and once I was a Russian emigree who had been kicked out of her apartment and once -- well, you get the idea.

2. Despite the fact that I'm short, I spent years training to be a ballet dancer with a teacher who had escaped from Russia who used to yell at us about our "spaghetti legs", only to have it all go kerflop when by 16 it was pretty clear that I was not going to grow any taller.

3. I used to believe (I think I still do) that if there is a heaven, it will be a place that we can meet and be with all the people we have ever loved, whether or not they are actually real. So I will finally be able to meet Lucy Pevensie, Ozma of Oz, Lyra, Will Stanton and Great Uncle Merry, Jo March, Commander Vimes and all the characters I have loved in all the books I've ever read. I also think that heaven will be all the marvellous places we have ever been or ever wanted to be.

4. I taught English and Drama for two years at the boarding school where Diana Spencer had gone. Also Tilda Swinton. I also taught theater to Tish Potter there, who has gone on to become a successful actress and who is a wonderful woman.

5. I have an uncanny and useful knack for forgetting the endings of books, which allows me to read my favorites over and over again.

6. I walk a very very thin line between tossing two fingers up at the world (or one finger in the US) because I'm gonna do it MY way, walk MY road and to hell with everyone else and wanting desperately to be loved, admired and a functioning member of society who is helpful, friendly and makes nice quilts. It's an uneasy combination that I have grown easier with.

7. I passionately love putting together IKEA furniture.

Consider yourself tagged, if you like. I don't like tagging people lest they feel obligated and I am probably the last folk on blogearth to do this meme, but if you need fodder, please do it. I like to know weird things about other people. And let me know in the comments if you've done it!

Last year I was being grossed out by children brushing their teeth.

Solidarity!

2007-11-13T13:28:00.000-05:00

Ha! Who knew my laundry sluttishness was in such good company! Go laundry sleepers! I do confess once, in college, to slumping ON TOP of the clean laundry for a midnight nap. I was writing a paper and just fell backwards like thiiiiiiis, well, you know.

Today has been a rare day, a day with no work. Of course, that also means no money and I don't care! A free day! Hooray! I'm building a bed and planning menus for the long long inlaw visit. (Hey Charlotte! I don't know what it is with in-laws and meals either. My mother would also be happy with toast and my father brings his own roast beef.)

I accidentally have this subscription now to the Cooks Illustrated website. (The accident is that I took advantage of their free trial and forgot to cancel before the fourteen days were up. Hmph. Now I am going to cook every damn recipe on the site to make it seem worthwhile.) So I've been trawling it not simply for Thanksgiving recipes, but also for recipes for every single day they're here. If I can actually plan a menu (and a shopping list) I might make it through the next few weeks sane.

Of course, I also have to do something about the huge wet blanket of leaves all over the back yard. I'm thinking my next place will be an apartment. And now I'm going to the library! Every day should be like this! Lots of coffee! And exclamation points! Books! Knitting! Blogging! Assembling furniture! Sunshine! And no damn work!

In a lovely juxtaposition with yesterday, last year at this time, Daniel was planning to start his own brewery and had developed a menu of beers. None of which, I promise you, had more than say 5% alcohol in them.

Ed's writing. I'm quiet

2007-11-12T22:26:00.000-05:00

Ed is downstairs writing. The children are abed. I met my deadline (mostly) today and now have to fold four loads of laundry before sleeping because I've done my trick of dumping all the clean clothes on the bed so that I must fold them before I can get into bed. While I sometimes think that I should just crawl into bed anyway (hey! all those clothes will keep me warm) I don't think that Ed would be too thrilled to come upstairs and find an enormous heap of clean clothing on the bed and me, mole like, burrowing beneath them.

Perhaps a small glass of something will make the time fly. And the clothes fold themselves.

Speaking of which, absinthe is all legal now, you know. (I'm not going downstairs to pour absinthe, though. Probably ginger wine or port. Anyway.) A writer in today's NYTimes came over all lyrical about it, in an amusingly un-Timesy sort of way. So many writers, poets and artists have fallen under its thrall that the drink suggests mad genius. It does seem a wonderfully romantic thing to drink and I'd be more inclined if it didn't taste of aniseed. Although if it makes the clothes fold themselves, I'll drink it happily.

And while we're (I'm) ranting about alcohol, what's with the 12% alcohol beers? I've been to nice local people's houses twice in central PA now and both times they could not offer me a normal beer. Either sparkling beer water or Mad Elf. Seriously. What is with that? 12% is wine, people. Malt liquor. Mad Dog. It's not beer. If you want to drink for the drunk, go ahead but do it on something that's supposed to have heapo alcohol in it, like moonshine. Or gin.

Last year, Ed was just leaving on the interview that eventually brought us here. I can hear my apprehension in that post. It's deeply unsettling to read it and then to look around me. But I'm getting used to that feeling by now.

Gearing up

2007-11-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

Ed's parents are coming from England in about a week and a half. My parents will be here at the same time and my Aunt Maureen will join us as well. Which leaves us rather short of beds. We've also been short of bookshelves to the tune of six large boxes full of books lurking with increasing menace. I had been hoping and planning to use other people's trash to fill some of our furniture needs but there have been two problems with that -- one, unlike Philly, people don't throw out good stuff around here because the garbage trucks won't pick up big stuff and two, time is marching on and we can't ask Ed's parents to sleep on the floor. So yesterday, we took a little trip to the Swedish Mecca of Flatpack.

All right, it wasn't a little trip. It turned out to be a whole day long lollapalooza, with a mission to Trader Joes thrown in. And we returned with bookcases (2); beds (2); mattresses (2); tiny doodads that will miraculously make our house and stuff so insanely tidy and groovy that nothing will ever get messy again (10,000,000).

That's what I love and loathe about IKEA. You go for bookcases and suddenly you're holding a mug, three magnetic dog tails, an umbrella stand, two plastic boxes with wheels and matching lids, a small lamp shaped like a mushroom, four picture frames, an embroidered pillow, a plant, something made out of wicker and a silver something you're holding because you don't know what it is or what it does but it's so shiiiiiiny.

Some of that stuff has turned out, over the years, to be the most useful stuff in our panoply of stuff. Like the snowflake-esque card holder which we use to display any pretty cards that people send us, photographs, to-do lists, inspirational quotes, invitations and bills. Or the long baskets which we've had for ten years which have held (in turn -- not at the same time) groceries, magazines, toilet paper, hats and gloves and bicycle helmets). And I love the feeling when you return from IKEA that NOW that pile of magazines has its own happy home and they will live in it stylishly, subtly, instead of slippery sliding all over the floor. I know it's an illusion of order, but it's an illusion I embrace. I want that moment of glorious tidiness. I love that moment.

I need a lot of those moments as I prepare for the invasion of the in laws. In the many years since we first met and they loathed me, things have eased up a great deal, but these visits are never easy. Ed's mum will find fault with things, because that's what she does. And there will be proper meals to prepare all the time. A house to keep tidy. Children to keep orderly. Visitors to entertain with visits to local attractions that I don't know what they are yet.

And Thanksgiving dinner to cook. For the first time since 1998. Hoo boy. I might need another trip to IKEA before then for more magic organizing chatchka. I need all the help I can get.

Ooh, I've been forgetting to link you to last year. Damn. All right. This time last year I was reveling in how close NYC was to Philadelphia. Now I'm going back to fix the other posts.

Daniel takes over

2007-11-10T23:17:00.000-05:00

You know Daniel's obsessed with the solar system, right? Did I tell you about our mad weekend trip to Boston to see the scale model of the solar system up there? Would you like photos?

Daniel decided that what this small town needs is its own scale model of the solar system. So he wrote a letter to the president of Ed's new college and explained his idea. He included diagrams. References to other scale models. Possible scales the college would like to use. And he explained that it would be a good way for the college to do something for the town. He said that local stores might get more customers from all the people who would come to see the solar system. Then he sent it off. We tried to prepare him for polite refusal, possibly a letter explaining why this couldn't happen but thanking him for his idea.

Instead, the president invited him for a meeting and said that Ed could come too. So the pres and Daniel jawed about solar system models and now the president is sending the project proposal over to the physics and astronomy departments. He thinks they should make a model of the model and see what they think. Daniel is already imagining a medal. A plaque. Perhaps, he thinks, his picture in the paper.

I'm pretty proud, truth be told. Only I'm scared too. It still might all go kablooie and Daniel doesn't deal well with kablooie. (Still. It's all kinda cool, right?)

Last year I was celebrating the fact that blogging is my muse.