Vesuvius At Home

Honey From My Failures

2012-03-02T09:26:00.008-07:00

At night I lie awake and think of the bees. I see them in my brain, in my belly, in my heart. Scurrying around and working their magic, gathering tiny bits of things we can't see, and together, working them over time into miraculous honey. I feel I am pregnant with bees. Like anyone on a new endeavor,a couple awaiting a baby, an artist collecting new inspiration, I am softer. Vulnerable in sweet places. I am brought easily to tears.

In November, I began to dream of the bees because they felt like a thing that could be done. Challenging, yes, but not an endeavor that relied on elusive approval. I was so frustrated, in November. So sure that all my work was for naught. I was made crazy by the nature of the publishing industry--that one may produce work, may even produce very good work for years and years, but all of that matters for nothing if you can't charm an agent. If you don't bewitch a publisher. If they don't look at you and see dollar signs, your work is rated not worthy.

I was drawn to the bees because they don't rate one's worth.

They don't question why, these girls. They emerge from their cells and minutes after their birth, get to work. They know exactly what to do, they never question their own instincts and in obeying them, accomplish marvelous feats. They labor tirelessly, these summer bees who will live just four weeks or so. They produce one-twelfth of one teaspoon of honey, and eventually they fly away to die. All of this to ensure the survival of future generations that they will never see.

I knew I had to help the bees. I knew somehow they would heal me.

And now this: after deciding to keep the bees, I realized that I could not place my happiness is other people's hands.

Nor stand around, hoping for approval. Toss my hair at agents, do my dance for publishers, no thank you. It made me miserable. It negated all the joy that came from the writing itself.

The delight at the prospect of keeping the bees showed me the delight in the possibility of self-publishing my book.

And so, I decided to do just that.

Because what matters is not approval, or attention, or money, or fame, but creating something and sharing it with others. What matters is connection.

Making this decision has set me free. I don't spend my days worrying what other people think. I let go of my ridiculous need to be the best at something, to prove myself to others. I sit down and write and it is what it was meant to be: a interaction between myself and a collective unconscious, a divine creator, a celebration of pure joy.

(You know, when writing goes well it goes very, very well and when it goes badly, we watch Oprah).

Life is sweet. The bees taught me this.

All I taste is honey.

***************

I have so many links to share today. Please take what you like and leave what you don't.

1)The title of this post was taken from the gorgeous poem by Antonio Machado.

2) Again, Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on creativity. I think this is invaluable to artists of any persuasion. And I cry every time I watch it.

3) Here is a link to the Beyond Pesticides website. These folks are working very hard to ban things that harm us and the bees. The U.S. still allows the use of many pesticides that have been banned in other countries (who have since seen their bee numbers increase). Some of these pesticides are even banned in the countries that make them and sell them to us. The pesticides still exist because corporations make billions off of them every year. Here you can sign a petition asking the EPA to ban the bee-killing clothiaidin.

4) This excerpt from Dan Savage on This American Life really moved me this week. In it, Dan describes being raised by his very Catholic mother, and his complex relationship with the church as an adult. The talk is very funny, and very touching. It was an excellent piece. (And it includes a good (and good natured)Lutheran joke, for all my Lutheran readers)

5) I am so excited about Miss Representation, a film that has finally taken all the frustrations with media representations of girls and women that I tend to grow inarticulate and frustrated over, and worked them eloquently into a movie that looks both educating and change-inspiring.

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

Sometimes Hermione Just Says, Look

2012-02-27T06:21:00.011-07:00

Vesuvius, the voice whispers. Post something happy on the blog today.

Happy? I say. I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.

You're not always so moody, says the voice. It's ok to write about those times too.

I don't get it, I say. You mean like cake pops? It's true that on Friday there were cake pops. But there was not Supernatural. . .

Vesuvius, the voice warns.

But just now, I answer. Just now, Ayla woke up and immediately began to cry because she couldn't watch her show. Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beatiful your child has thrown herself on the floor in the pre-dawn chill and is sobbing because she wants to watch Goosebumps, not Rugrats.

So what, says the voice. I mean really.

. . . . .I guess you have a point. . .

All right then. How about this:

On Valentine's day morning, the voice in my head WOULD NOT SHUT UP and so I woke up at a quarter to five am with a spring in my bleary-eyed step.

In the sweetest of silence, under yellow light in the dark kitchen, I brewed some Italian coffee in my magic silver coffee triangles (haha, hipsters!) and got some writing done. Alone with my thoughts, until the sky began to pinken and the birds began to sing. Writing: one of the greatest joys bestowed to my particular soul.

I love it more than money.

More than fame.

More than whatever satisfaction one might find in visiting a bookstore and seeing their own book there on the shelf--a million times greater than that is the dizzying joy of creating the work itself.

No amount of measurable success will every make me as happy as a pen and a page beginning to curl with ink.

I woke up, this pre-dawn V-Day to three bunches of flowers on the table. (Mr. V had departed at four am, you see.) For each of the daughters there were roses and a heart-shaped box of candy.

For the wife there were more roses, and a Bee Mine, and a bundle of money.

And next to the bundle, it was printed: For the Bees.

While the wife worried where she would get the money for the bees, the husband had been working extra shifts and saving money for that very thing.

Because I had woken so early and had a precious quiet hour to myself, I was a content mother. One who actually made heart-shaped pancakes for her daughters on Valentine's day.

Or tried to, anyway.

(I wonder when we learn how to actually fake a smile rather than to simply stretch back our lips and bare our teeth it what might as well be a show of dominance, were it not for the stricken look in the eyes. I almost wish we never learned; except then I would spend a lot of time grimacing oddly at acquaintances I'm not actually all that fond of. Which might bruise some egos, but would also save me a lot of time.)

Later, at Target, browsing the toys with a sparkly gift card, Indy would sigh and offer me this gem: "Mom, I kind of want all of this, but I actually want none of it."

Such wisdom, my girl.

There, I say to the voice. There is all that happiness in my life. Plus, soon there will be bees.

And cake pops, reminds the voice. She is just so gentle, sometimes.

And cake pops, I agree.

What We Don't Say

2012-02-23T09:17:00.010-07:00

What I didn't say was that Monday, I woke up in a black mood.

There was no reason for the mood. I went to bed feeling fine and woke up with an absence of any feel-good hormones. I was unloading dishes in the kitchen, my entire body feeling heavy and my heart unwell, when Mr. V got home from the gym. "Why don't you go out," he said almost immediately. I nodded. My mood was so dark, I could barely speak.

This doesn't happen often, these days.

I wrote for awhile, came home, and took the girls to Chick-Fil-A. I felt marginally better, but by the time I'd returned from fast food and a very crowded grocery store, the mood had crept back in, unwelcome visitor in the tender places. Mr. V made dinner while I folded laundry in the bedroom with the door closed, the girls perfectly content to watch some early evening Totoro. It had been a good weekend. We'd all gone to see "The Secret World of Arrietty", the new one from Studio Ghibli, an outing we don't take very often. Then a fun party, followed by a good meal. A night's sleep.

Black mood.

A nervous voice in the back of my brain feared that here it was: a late arriving plummet into seasonal depression. I didn't listen to that fear. I knew from my previous experience that the only way was to wait it out. Not to nurture the darkness--not to feed the bad wolf--but not to deny or repress it either. Just to lean in. To let it be. To observe it like from a distance whenever possible. I made it through the day, quietly, avoiding unnecessary interaction. I managed to tell my husband that I wasn't mad at him, this mood wasn't his fault. I just am out of happy today, I said. I know, he replied. It's ok.

I sang Indy to sleep and put myself to bed. In the morning, it was gone.

****

Headed out the door to school drop off, I texted my husband. "Indy is in the worst mood of her entire life," I said. Indy is rarely grumpy, and the culprit is almost always lack of sleep. She resolves this by asking me to put her to bed, and I do. She wakes up refreshed, her good-natured, buoyant self. This morning, I'd told her to put on her shoes. She'd squared her shoulders at me and said "NNNNNNO." Oh Indy. Indy's fate is that she's stubborn so seldom, it becomes comical when she is. I handed her her pink jacket. She took it and threw it on the ground.

I turned away and laughed. Indy angry is like a fierce beautiful pixie. She presents no real threat, can do no real harm.

The breeze changes.

So does Indy.

****

Ayla and I walk a delicate line together every morning.

My seven-year-old in her spirit is thirteen. Being asked to do something nicely annoys her. She drags her heels, not wanting to comply until the power of being told is worn off. She is reminded again. The reminder kicks her off the balance beam and lands her fully in outrage. If she has to be told a third time, things go irretrieveably down hill. She stomps, rolls her eyes, slams doors, calls names. Says, "I knnnoooooow," in her best teenage drawl. O-M-G. Whatever. You're ruining my life.

All have crossed her lips.

Of course it is difficult. I take deep breaths. I imagine white or my preferred caramel-colored light. I try to send her calm energy, try to keep calm myself.

Often I fail.

*****

Driving the girls to school in the morning, I know that Ayla and I have the more difficult time because her moods hold up a mirror, reflect my own struggles back to me in harsh glinting blades. But in the strengthening February sunlight, I know that dealing with my black moods, the process of learning and struggling over time, is what has allowed me to become the person who can ride them out today. Ride them out without hurting others or sending hurtful thoughts at myself

I know that this angsty incarnation of Ayla has emerged early, the moods and anger and defiance rearing long before they were expected. But now, like waking up on a black day, I know there is another side. Sometimes Ayla seems a world-weary traveler, sent to show me how far I have to go. How easily my daughter can tug a thread and ravel me undone. I love this old soul that was sent to me. Who she is, and who she will become.

I know the person that emerges in the light is different from the one who first started out down that dark path, into the woods by chance or by choice. I know there are roads through the blackness and out. I know that I can tell her about them, but she'll have to find them for herself.

I trust the wisdom in this.

Ayla will become, like me, a person who knows that all things pass.

Over and over again, we will walk these roads.

Forever we will find the light.

We Are The Weirdos

2012-02-21T08:34:00.021-07:00

As a teenager, I spent most of my time driving all over Denver with my three best friends, in one old Honda or another, seeing movies and eating Italian food and daring each other to do things like go through the drive-thru backwards or take the forbidden bus exit off the highway, the one that goes underground and says BUSES ONLY(scandalous, I know). We called ourselves The Blood Sisters, and liked to pretend we were the girls from that 90's girl power gem, The Craft. We each had a direction. I was West (I lobbied hard for West) and when we needed a little magic, to make doors swing open at school or to become impervious to unrequited love and popular-girl disdain, we would chant "North, South, East, West, Craft, Craft, Craft!!"

So as you can see, we weren't going on a lot of dates. My friends did occasionally, but never me. I can say this now because of ~~years of therapy~~ high self-confidence. When we weren't out, awkwardly trying to make some coffee shop "our" place (like on 'Friends')by over-staying our welcome and over-tipping, or "crusing", in the technically illegal sense, around the Arvada mall or sitting in King Soopers eating Ben & Jerry's and browsing Teen Beat for pictures of boy bands, I was content to be at home with my family.

My family isn't exactly normal either. We sing in restaurants and talk to each other in accents and the first time I brought my now-husband home to meet them, we all thought it would be funny to pretend my parents were alcoholics and scare him. It made more sense at the time. But before that, back in high school, if I wasn't out dabbling in witch craft I was at home, where every Saturday smelled of barbecue and the soundtrack to every evening was Garrison Keillor. I was content at home, penning damply emotional poetry, or gleaning a rich sexual education from novels, or spending my requisite hours on the phone. My sister's room was right next to mine. "I can hear everything you're saying," she would taunt me. We got along, mostly, in high school, and if we weren't driving around together listening to Save Ferris and Aqua, my sister would sit in her room and make things. The first thing she made me was an Altoids tin covered in pictures of moons and stars that she'd gleaned mainly from the Delia's catalog. She didn't have modge-podge then, so she'd stuck the pictures to the tin with clear glittery nail polish and presented it to me. It was lovely. It was so me, back then. I still have it.

Now my sister has refined her artistic talent and uses it to run a small business and throw incredible parties. On Sunday she threw a Red Riding Hood themed party for her daughter Violet's very first birthday. Violet has red hair, and I am sick with envy. I wanted a little ginger kid, someone to smell like sunscreen and stay inside with me year 'round, in the dark, where it's safe. There, there now. Safe little ginger. Mommy's got you.

Anyway, my blonde sister got the red-headed child who earned the nickname (what else?) Little Red. And the red-headed child turned one. Below are the results.

Ayla, Cousin Eisley, and Owl Indy

Who doesn't love a craft? (Besides me.)

I make funny expressions when I talk to people:

Me with my lovely sis and the birthday girl, Viv. (Short for Violet).

(My style secrets, you ask? I have two hippie tunics and one hip-modest cardigan and I wear them to every single holiday, party, and wedding. Done.)

My mom, my grandma, my daughter

My mom and dad

Red Scares The Wolf

Look, I might spread Nutella on a Wal-Mart croissant and call it a work of art, but my sister is the real deal. You can visit her blog here, where I'm sure she'll have a party post up soon, with lovelier pictures. (Vintage photos are probably out now. I'll be the last to know it). Or you can visit her craft blog, Lark & Lola, where she does amazing things like turn tea towels into pillows I covet, and is kind enough to tell you how.

Now hipsters, please excuse me. I have to go pen some damp emotional poetry and steer backwards through the Wendy's drive-thru window.

XOXO
-V

It's All Over Now, Baby Blues

2012-02-16T12:58:00.002-07:00

Post-partum depression ravishes a mother's soul. I know, I struggled with it twice.

In the past I blogged about hallucinating my daughter was the Soprano's Uncle Junior (yes really), and today I am talking about my rough tussle with the baby blues again over at momology.

Click here, if you'd like to visit.

xoxo

-V

I Just Blogged To Say I Love You

2012-02-14T05:23:00.009-07:00

It seems like one is expected to have a position on Valentine's day.

And it seems like it is hip to hate it

or hip to embrace it with homemade Valentine's and fancy heart-shaped rice ball bento boxes

(Japanese parents do it better?)

(Please, you know I jest).

I decided last night that I have a position on Valentine's and it is this--

--don't worry, you're not about to get Kama Sutra'd--

I love you.

I really mean that.

I love those of you who come here and read my words.

Those of you I know, and those of you I don't.

Those of you who leave comments, and those of you who simply leave a notch on my page counter. (We all have different styles. I get that.)

When I started blogging I had no idea what I was doing

or what I was doing this for.

And most days, I still don't, but I want you to know

I can't express in words how much it means to me.

To have you read my blog.

To feel your encouragement, and your love.

I hope some days, when the blogging stars align

you feel that love come back to you.

Some days your comments shore me up.

Some days your comments remind me why.

And even those of you who don't comment, I feel your presence

and some days that presence is what remembers unto me

that the world is a beautiful and loving place.

So Happy Valentine's day, my blog readers.

I hope you know that you are not alone, never alone.

And that I love you, but

more importantly

I believe there is a divine and loving presence

whatever you want to call it

(some days I call it Hermione)

that loves you

and accepts you

no matter what

no matter anything

exactly as you are.

And you, I happen to know, are fabulous.

Now, here are some pictures of bento boxes

to shore you up.

images from here, here, here, and here.

Please, one last thing:

here is my one true love Amanda Palmer

wife of Neil Gaiman

singing her song that makes my soul say, yes.

Yes.

What Still Sleeps

2012-02-08T13:08:00.005-07:00

This morning Ayla woke me up with worry in her eyes. "Mom," she said, "Did we miss the field trip?"

It was too light outside and I let out a string of mental curses while fumbling for my phone. The alarm was still going off. Silently. It was 7:27, not 'miss the field trip' time but certainly 'big friggin hurry' time. We managed to get dressed and out the door by 7:55. Ayla was jumping-out-of-her-skin-excited to visit the Butterfly Pavillion and hold the tarantula. I was meant to go, but still feeling sick and thus let off the hook. So frustrated with this illness, this week of getting nothing done, that one happy day of tea and rest followed by six more filled with weariness of all I should be getting done, of all I've left undone.

But driving Ayla and Indy to school, I was filled with a subtle, quiet feeling of good. There was snow on the ground, the heater cranked high, the sounds of Ayla and Bejeweled on my iphone from the back, and a calm and quiet happiness settled content in my chest. A warm red valentine heart. Sun shining through.

I kissed the girls goodbye, Ayla mostly ok that I wasn't going to see the winter butterflies with her, and drove off to run errands, drop off movies, pick up a chai. I'd left my sunglasses at home, and then it hit me. Something had changed.

It was the light.

February 8th, 8:18 a.m., I drove around town feeling sick and tired but happy, happy still, because I realized the light had changed. It was brighter. It was warmer. It glanced gently off the snow and promised pollen, and rain fall, and buds, and bees.

I know that we still have Valentine's to get through, and St. Patrick's, and then Easter and it will snow, it always snows on Easter. But today was longer, did you notice? It was longer than the deep of January, and I remembered that there is time to achieve, but there is also time to rest. Those poor winter butterflies, like me, forget that January is for cocoons, for wrapping soft things around ourselves and letting the soil settle, letting it gather nourishment where it may and whispering to it only this: it is good, it is growing, it is wonderful.

So today I will rest, and maybe tomorrow, because it is time for that. The days will grow longer, the light will come full, and I will gather my strength. My soul has whispered to me promise of August, and I won't harvest now what yet is waiting, what still sleeps.

Snow, Secrets

2012-02-03T14:16:00.008-07:00

Last night we put two sick kids to bed early and watched Moneyball. We'd watched Drive the night before, and I'd spent the evening walking around the house listening to the song on my ipod and had even played it in the car en route to the library, driving purposefully but with my face all emotionless and blank. I like to pretend I'm in the movies whenever I'm alone. I've never been caught.

It's important you know we'd watched Drive because it's possible what happened next can be solely chalked up to SRGD (Sudden Ryan Gosling Deprivation). My husband was trying to enjoy the movie and I start tossing out comments like "Could we take baseball any more seriously?" and, "Could this movie be any more like The Social Network?" with a vaguely Chandler Bingish inflection. I don't know why I decided to become the movie's heckler, it was after all an innocent little movie, sweet and well-intentioned. I swear I didn't know until the credits rolled that Aaron Sorkin had written this, too. Like I said, it wasn't Drive, there was no Ryan Gosling or sweet-ass synthesizer music, or hot pink fonts. Billy Beane seemed determined to be unhappy and the scene--MILD SPOILER HERE--where the clouds roll in during the game and you-know-what happened really bothered me. It made me itchy. I get that we are trying to be romantic about baseball here, but come on. I just don't have it in me. You can't play "Kittens are being forced to fight each other to the death" music during baseball. Hath Jimmy Duggan taught us nothing? Also I was annoyed that I was born in 1981, I'm 30-years-old, and the vast majority of movies are still made about men. Yes, I know we had The Help and Bridesmaids this year, but Kristen Wiig and Skeeter Phelan can't single-handedly save Hollywood and can someone call Steven Spielberg and check if he's even aware that women exist? The last time I saw a female in a movie of his, Drew Barrymore was in pigtails and screaming.

We turned off Moneyball and I listened to the song again to comfort myself. Mr.V went to bed and I made a cup of tea and settled down with a Jacqueline Carey novel. It was close to ten and the house was dark. The snow had started outside. Mr. V had baked bread and I had a thick, warm slab of it drenched with butter and honey. It was a real cozy moment, where your bones just say "ah". From down the hall, I heard a small coo. I set down my tea. In her bed, Indy was crying.

Baby, I whispered. What's wrong?

She had an earache. Medicine and warm washcloths were given. Look, I said, pointing to her window. It's snowing. We snuggled up tight together. How sweet a mother I will be right now, I thought. We will just cuddle here until she is back to sleep. Indy sat up. "I'm just going to go lie down on the couch and watch Rugrats," she said. "Because I feel like I want to."

It was ten o'clock and she'd in bed for three hours. I am powerless to Indy. I settled her on the couch and turned Rugrats down low. Outside the window behind her the snow was thick like marshmallow cream. I felt my flirting illness settling deeper into my bones. Baby, I said. I'm going to go to sleep now.

Ok, she said. I'm just going to watch this for a few more minutes and go back to bed.

Yeah right, I thought, kissing her forehead and padding down the hall. In the morning I knew I'd find her there, the tv still on, my Indy dreaming away under quilts on my sofa. But I was wrong. A short while later a noise opened my eyes, and there she was in her room. My door faces hers directly, her nightlight was on, and I watched my Indy in her private world, in her owl pajamas, five-years-old and so good natured, whenever I tell her I forgot to put dessert in her lunch or the birthday party is canceled, she shrugs and smiles and says "Oh, that's ok!" I watched her climb up on her bed, on the flannel sheets, and pause to rest her elbows on the sill and peer out the window. She muttered something, soft as snow, some private world or language I could see only the fringes of, the essence like Avalon, shimmering in the mist. She blew on the glass and squeaked her finger through the fog.

Memorize this moment, my spirit said to me. So very seldom am I present enough to memorize. Brief flashes, laughter on a beach, my daughters in the spring, pink cherry blossoms falling in the breeze, landing in their hair, and they are holding hands. But now I have it, this memory, forever. Indy, five-years-old, pausing at her window to think thoughts I will never imagine, to spin dreams to be forgotten, to tread in worlds that I will never see.

The Day We Didn't Move To L.A.

2012-01-26T09:07:00.009-07:00

Yesterday my husband was all like, "Look, you have to decide if you really want to move to L.A or not".

To which I was like, "Stop judging me, bro! Why you always gotta be telling me to decide about L.A. when all I want is to enjoy this delicious panini?"

Then he was like, "No, seriously. Someone out there wants to interview me. In a job-type manner." I went all slack-jawed and then he said, "Now give me half of your panini".

This really interfered with my plans for the morning, which had been to write a blog and to read some Supernatural fan fiction (is there any other kind?). Who can enjoy a panini and fan fiction when you are contemplating your fate? To make matters worse, this morning I woke up to a house smelling of fish. This is what you get for eating healthy. You wake up and your kitchen thinks it's a brothel by the sea. "Houses never smell like fish in L.A," I told my husband. "Damnit, you used up all the stuff for paninis".

The problem is, what I really want is to move to Taos, live quiet, have a blue door, keep bees. No, wait. What I really want is to move to Paris, pay exorbitant amounts of money for a shabby apartment, buy dinner fresh from the market every day, stroll in the gardens, write in the cafes. BUT NO WAIT. What I really want is to follow the sun, take my girls to the beach, write scripts, try to sell them.

And also what I want is to stay here in Longmont, where it is cozy and safe.

You see? No wonder I am eating paninis at six in the morning, crying in my robe, asking my five-year-old "but why does the fish have to smell so fishy?". No wonder I do things like swear at librarians and google "Dean crying" online. (Try it)(The googling, not the swearing).

Here is what happened: I spent the morning reading Martha Beck and trying not to think about Los Angeles. I needed space to process. Meanwhile, my husband texted me every five minutes about Los Angeles. "Houses do to smell like fish in L.A," he said. "If you cook it right". We are different in this way. He is all like "Pros and Cons" and "To live in L.A., you might have to get the kind of job that pays money". Meanwhile I'm drinking tea and intoning, "My spirit guide is pretty quiet this morning". Just last week I told my sister that Britney Spears was my spirit animal. I don't think she believed me.

After a morning of panic, banana bread, Dean slash I'M NOT TELLING stories, more banana bread, it came down to this: the job didn't pay enough to live off of, not in the City of Dreams. "I have no intention of moving to L.A. and wearing Sam's Choice denim," I say, which isn't exactly true. Just yesterday I bought a Mossimo peasant blouse at Goodwill and didn't think twice. But you do get my drift.

Here's what I think. You can try to live your life like an arrow. One direction, one ultimate goal, your every movement focused and strong. I don't know where that gets you, but if Robin Hood: Prince of Theives is any indicator, it gets you stuck in a tree trunk or some woodsman's poxy shoulder. Me, I live my life like a peasant blouse at Goodwill.

Blowin' in the wind.

I am Vesuvius and this is the most ridiculous blog I have ever written.

Wintering

2012-01-18T11:18:00.006-07:00

I saw a book, resting on a nightstand in another blogger's photograph, and I bought it immediately, that day, on the spot. I knew I had to have it.

And on Sunday morning, lying in bed, I discovered that Sylvia Plath kept bees over the summer and winter before she died. She wrote five poems about them. I discovered this while my husband sat in the white light of the morning kitchen, drinking coffee and reading about the things he reads about. Sports I suspect, though I know he likes world news and movie blogs too. Please don't mistake them with celebrity blogs, which he cares nothing for and neither, much, do I.

Last week in bee class the instructor showed us picture after picture of the process of setting up her first hive, harvesting her first honey. Pictures of herself, her husband, her fellow beekeeper friend holding up comb frames and smokers and golden jars of honey, and in every frame every person had Elphaba-green skin. The bees were yellow and black, the hives were white, the honey was gold, and the people were green. The first shot was of the friend only, smiling her in her bee suit but afflicted by a terrible verdigris. I waited for the instructor to explain, but she did not, and I thought maybe her friend's skin really was quite kelly, and it was therefore impolite to talk about it. She clicked through then, the power point, photo after photo of Wicked Beekeepers of the West, green hands on hives and forest-smiling faces and nobody said a thing about it. But of course, neither did I.

I drive my husband crazy, I forget everything. He tolerates my forgetfulness teasingly, or bemusedly, or distractedly. I lose the keys, I lose the forms, I lose my cell phone, the remote, the scissors, the tape, the earrings, the shoes, I even lose the coffee pot. (We found it in the fridge. We found the milk in the pantry). It's like I'm a romantic comedy heroine, except forgetful rather than clumsy and I don't wear high heels. "You are out of control," he says teasingly. "You are stressing me out." And I tell him, imagine what it's like to BE me, rather than simply be fated to put up with me.

Here is what it's like to be me: I am not like this in real life. I am not shy, exactly, but I am reserved. I despise small talk and ask questions that are too personal, too soon. I forget everything, including the story you told me, unless I wrote it down, which I probably did. I am easily overwhelmed. I make social appointments and dread honoring them. I'm not funny until you've known me a really long time. I get exhausted and pass out after half a glass of wine, I am therefore a failure at parties. I dread loud environments, I can't raise my voice, unless at my children. I am distracted. When you pause and search for a word I provide it for you, which annoys you and I try to stop, but I can't. Often I know where the story is going after the first sentence, and by the time you've finished it I've lost my energy to give the proper reaction. I can't admit when I'm wrong.

I am sorry.

I want to live everywhere, all at once. Los Angeles, Taos, and Paris currently highest on my list. This sends my husband looking for jobs in each city, except Paris, to which he replies that I must be the one to get a job in Paris. He does not like the French (he does not know the French).But like Sylvia, I am wintering. Winter is for women, Sylvia writes. She is talking about the bees; in the winter they seal out the males, the drones, who don't make honey but consume great amounts of it, who would eat them out of house and home.

Winter is a thing to be survived, it demands female energy, quietude, patience, and peace. So says Sylvia, or so say I. Here I am, dear January, I am fallow. O'Keefe spent long periods fallow, so I read, long periods of gathering, of stillness, of waiting, and so do I. The muse, like spring, like honey and hurry and drone cells, drowsy cells, green grass, vital energies, always return.

What is it Oprah says? This I know for sure.

Keep The Bees

2012-01-12T19:42:00.007-07:00

I haven't blogged in a week because I've been too busy eating pizza. Potato-kale-gruyere pizza. Oyster mushroom pizza. Chorizo and roasted red pepper pizza. Clam, garlic, and pecorino pizza. My husband became a brewer and brews me lovely beers, but it's his pizza dough that has wooed me true.

Mr. V had the week off, so we fixed up around the house and spent mornings with our coffee and old movies. (The kids, they go to school, it's a major miracle.) Later, I took him on our first trip (together) to Ikea. I felt personally responsible for the fact that it was crowded. It wasn't crowded the first time I went. I didn't like the ladies in their high boots and blow-outs trailing me too closely behind. I felt like a younger version of ourselves, making up a registry and discussing drawers and brackets, and then Mr. V got impatient toward the end and started following me around too closely, watching me while I looked at prints.

But I didn't mind, because he came home and spent two hours putting together a new tv stand.

We took the girls for ice cream, and to play in the low-hanging sun the day before the snow came. Then the snow came, and we drank more coffee, and bundled under blankets, and stayed warm.

And ate cookies.

I guess It was a week of dreams, and (miracle!) there was also time to attend the bee class. Where I learn about bees, and they are so beautiful. (Two things that make me cry: the "Mama Mia!" number in the "Mama Mia!" movie, and the sight of honeycomb). I came home and Mr. V and I, together, schemed about sweet yellow clover and hive tools and honey supers.

I am drunk with love for the bees.

So, Vesuvius, how do you do? You might ask me this.

And I would tell you, here?

We're doing just fine.

I am Vesuvius and I cry when the peasant woman throws the sticks off her back and joins the dancing.

Dear Elway: Tebow Goes Or I Do

2012-01-04T08:51:00.006-07:00

Lately I have been enjoying myself by teasing Mr.V, stating frequently that I'm going to change teams.

(I don't know if that just made you think, Lesbian!, but that's not what I mean).

What I mean is that I dislike Tim Tebow. I don't like his politics, and I don't like his over-the-top and gaudy displays of devotion, but put those aside and what we have left is an Evangelical who can't play football. I understand there were a few games where Tebow ran it in at the last second and the Broncos won, but those games weren't won by Teeb Teebow. They were won in spite of the Teebs; they were won by our defense, by Matt Prater, by Marion Barber, by luck or chance, certainly not by Jesus, (ok, maybe by Jesus), and not by Tim Tebow. You know what else is that unlike, apparently, most of Denver, I watched the first three quarters of those games and Tebow can't complete passes. Yes, Virginia, there is a Jesus and maybe he cares about football in America, where we have nothing much to worry about other than who wins on Sunday night. But I can't think of any other profession in which a person would be allowed to perform a clown show their entire shift, do some spectacular pirouette (which was not, by the way, in the job description) in their last three minutes, and prance out on fancy feet and prayerful hands to great applause.

My point is that Tebow is ruining my Broncos for me, and so frequently these days I tell the Mr. V that I'm switching teams. "You can't just switch teams," he says, embarrassed and chagrined by what he views, I suspect, as my uniquely feminine irresolution, to which I just smile inwardly and reply, "Of course I can". I can do whatever I want, including declaring, "I'm a Vikings fan now," right after kickoff when Mr. V has just taken a bite of loaded nacho and watching him choke on his pinto beans. "You can't do that," he splutters, my earnest husband, who converted to the Broncos himself when he moved here from Raider Nation and met moi. "It doesn't work that way".

"It does now," I say, which makes me feel powerful and impervious to things like Conservatives and people who use the term "Tebow Time".

I lean toward the Vikings because, why not? Because I think they were my Uncle's team and that seems a place to start. Although sometimes I declare myself a Green Bay fan just to see how far Mr. V can sputter pilsner across the room. "Oh my god," he shouts, like Will Ferrell doing "angry", except he's dead sincere. "Oh god, why?"

I don't know, I admire the tradition: Lambeau field, the Lambeau Leap, the Chedder Headers, or whatever. Brett Favre was cute until he turned into Kim Kardashian, or not even her but one of the lesser, whinier K's, Khloe maybe, or Konstance or Kontinence, but he's gone so I don't have to worry anymore. I'll never be a Jets fan; they treat their female fans horribly, and although Pittsburgh has the highest percentage of female fans in the nation, their tradition, to me, reeks of poverty and despair. I mean, why else would you let rapists play for your team? That cold, industrial climate, it changes a person. I'll never go to another team in the AFC West, why would I want to? (I WOULD DIE FIRST). So Vikings or Packers it is; tell me, do I look better in purple or green?

"Here's what else," I say to my husband; it's almost coy, this dance we do. "I'm a Lakers fan now."

"No," he gasps, truly dismayed this time.

"Yes," I say. "It's my new thing."

"You can't do this. That's what all those stupid famous people do. They move to L.A and become Lakers fans just because it's cool, to have your picture taken courtside. Leonardo Dicaprio. You can only be a Lakers fan if you're actually from L.A."

"Nobody is actually from L.A.," I reply. "L.A. is a city you choose. Anyone who was actually born there has moved away." I know this to be true somehow without actually knowing it. "Also, I want a USC shirt."

At this point my husband just looks at the ground and shakes his head. His spirit leeches out of him while I hide my grin and fold the laundry. "That's not how it works. You went to CSU, you're a CSU fan."

"God no," I say, shuddering. "Green and gold?" Gag me.

"You don't have any connections to USC."

"Your grandpa went there," I say. "And it doesn't matter, anyway. I'm transforming myself. I'm like Madonna now. I can wear a USC shirt if I want. And I am a Lakers fan, so you'd better fucking like it."

It feels important. To celebrate myself and sing myself with the NFL Licensed Gear of my choosing. Fake it til you make it, and so, though right now I'm here, in the cold with Terb Rebow taking us to the playoffs, in my heart I'm in a city where it is warm, where the people are plastic, where team loyalty is a feeling you chose and where people reinvent themselves every day, every evening, every sunrise.

And so can I.

Be Forgot

2012-01-02T10:48:00.007-07:00

I have no sentiment to write a sentimental post this New Year's.

In general, the New Year's makes me contemplative but this year, I don't know.

I'm still recovering from California Christmas, which we are never going to do again.

Don't get me wrong, it was lovely. So lovely I spent a lot of it crying--

the Shamu show made me cry

the Disney Princesses made me cry

riding the rides with my family made me cry.

So it turns out I might be a cryer.

We ate strange and delicious food (spicy chicken skin, chicken heart, octopus, chicken butt), and best of all, we ate my brother-in-law Z's miraculous pizza.

The pizza so good you feel you ought to preform ablutions before consuming it.

There was Trader Joe's champagne, which just goes to show you what a wonder--

there was Trader Joe's.

Coronado island shone in the sunlight and my memory, a crown jewel. An unplanned, accidental visit. Blue light, blue city, sweet blue sea.

And that enormous, wise killer whale interacting with its human trainer moved me so.

Mr. V's five siblings and two of their spouses pitched in and gave us a wonderful and unexpected gift.

And I spent most of Christmas day watching my daughters play by the ocean. They run so fearless into the waves. They tire and pause to dig in the sand. The tide was so low it made us talk of tidal waves, but Poseidon that day swept up treasures, whole sand dollars one after another, perfect and unbroken, onto our shore.

What a gift from the sea gods. My daughters screamed with joy. We found a grassy sea anemone and before a towering wave crashed, we stroked its purple tongue.

It was beautiful in every way, but we have resolved this year to spend Christmas home with our children.

And I hear Disneyland is less crowded in May.

So New Years, I find myself somewhat blanched.

Like I've been plunged in to boil and left out to dry.

I'm not a big resolution maker because for me, real change comes slowly and cannot be decided and done overnight.

But I have committed to consider how it would feel to release beliefs that no longer serve me.

Beliefs that are harmful.

(I read that this is how it's done. I can't force myself to let go. I can only open myself up to the possibility of doing so).

So January second, too late for it to be a real resolution

I consider letting go of two beliefs:

the belief that some dreams are too big for me,

and the belief that I

am not enough.

2012, I am going to let you change me.

What To Do

2011-12-27T21:19:00.015-07:00

I texted Blood Sister A.

"Do you ever wish some wise being would just drop into your life and tell you what to do?", I texted.

"All the time," she texted back.

I can't claim to be a wise being.

And I can't weigh in on life's mysteries.

But in the mean time, it's the week between Christmas and New Year's.

I plan to write about our trip once I am recovered from it, but I thought that maybe

just maybe

until then

you would let me tell you

what to do.

1) Rent Hanna.

It was fantastic. So unexpectedly delightful. So fully entertaining. This movie had it all--script, cinematography, set design. Hanna is a young girl who has been trained as an assassin by her father. If that doesn't hook you, I don't know if we can be friends. I don't want to give away too much, I'll just say the movie was more than I thought. It had both more depth and more levity than I anticipated. Saorsie Ronan is one hell of an actress. Just watch it. It's one of my favorite movies I've seen in a long time. This is the kind of thing you wish you had written. Or at least, I do.

2) Rent Midnight in Paris.

What? It's cold outside. You're tired. You're recovering from too much food, too much drink, too much socializing and elbowing with the relatives. You deserve to sit in front of the tv for five evenings straight, might as well have fun while you're at it. While you're having fun, you might as well escape to the City of Light. Mr. V and I just finished this one moments ago. It had me at hello--opening with a long montage of shot after shot of Paris, City of my Heart. I could watch this all night, I thought to myself. Pleasant music, pleasant Seine's (get it?) So clever. So delightful. Ten minutes in, I'm thinking to meself, "I am in love with this movie". The glow didn't fade. (Don't worry, I didn't get all the literary/artistic/cinematic references. Just gives you something to google later).

3) Rent Far North.

Ok, seriously? Yes. It's unlike anything you've ever seen. The story felt different, off somehow, until I realized it wasn't modern cinema. It's a fairy tale. A grim fairy tale (pun intended). Not for the faint of heart. Not for the squeamish. It takes its time, don't go in expecting 27 Dresses or whatever the hell the masses are watching these days. Oh boy. Just rent it.

4) If you haven't seen any of these, see them: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (watch Heath Ledger act the pants off Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell), Let The Right One In (do not, under any circumstances, watch the American version), and the Swedish version of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Swedish Title? Men Who Hate Women. Awesome. Let us always call a spade a spade, dear Swedish ancestors).

5) Read The Hunger Games.

It's possible you haven't already, and you know what? It's time.

It. Is. Time.

What the world needs now, is Katniss, sweet Katniss.

I'm for real, guys. You won't regret.

When you're done, go watch the trailer for the movie and see if it makes you cry like I did.

6) Read Mindy Kaling and Tina Fey's books.

Again, if you haven't?

It's time.

Bossypants made me laugh so hard I nearly peed my pants. I only read a few pages of Kaling's before I had to return it back to the library, but I'd bet on it being every bit as good. I read an article of her's in the New Yorker that still makes me chuckle, sitting here in my cold, cold house, dark and all alone. (Strep vs Yeast Infection. Ha!)

7) Prepare yourself to watch Supernatural on Netflix instant queue.

It hits instant watch in January. You're going to need these few days to prepare. Act like you're having a baby, and don't pinch me, I ain't jokin'. Clean your house. Make and freeze plenty of casseroles, cookies, and soups. You might even consider asking friends to drop off meals and neighbors to pick up your mail and shovel your sidewalks. We are talking 126 hours here of pure silver screen bliss. I am telling you to prepare for this 126 hour marathon (once you start, you will not stop) like it's one of the biggest events in your life because IT'S GOING TO BE. Stock up on cozy socks and hot cocoa, and get ready to have your world rocked.

You know why Dean fell out of bed? He just watched the first episode of his own show.

8) Make this flourless orange almond cake.

Someone served this at a dinner party we went to. She was off gluten for her nursing baby and boy am I glad that sweet baby was having gastro-intestinal upset! Otherwise I might never have had this cake. Incredibly moist and flavorful, it was served to us with big spoonfuls of vanilla yogurt on top. Yum. Yum.

Now things are gonna get weird. Numbers 9 and 10 are going to be items that I haven't actually read or seen myself but I'm hearing really good things about. So procede, but procede with caution, you feel me?

9) Introduce yourself to something new and read Habibi.

It's a graphic novel. I checked it out from the library before Christmas, sat down with it for about ten minutes today, and my gosh, is it beautiful. The art work and the story are so splendidly suited for one another. I'ma borrow amazon's review here: "Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the tale of Dodola and Zam, refugee child slaves bound to each other by chance, by circumstance, and by the love that grows between them". There you have it.

10) Watch Shameless.

I stole this recommend from Mindy Kaling's blog, which is fabulous. She loved it and I can't wait to check it out. What I'm saying is if you don't like it, blame Kaling. Apparently the show is about a widowed father and lots of siblings? And the oldest sister, at only 19, has become the family matriarch? I don't know. The Brits did it first. Don't get all a flutter, it's happened before.

Got something for me to do? Post your recommends in the comments.

That is all, and

I love you.

Christmas Eve Eve

2011-12-23T09:57:00.003-07:00

A warm, windy day, we walked to the beach.

The girls run toward the waves and splash in the sand like life is a brand new joy.

To them it is, every day.

I hear in Denver there was a snowstorm.

I'm glad I missed it.

Snow or sun, life is beautiful.

I hope wherever you are, life is merry and bright.

Merry Christmas, baby.

On The Road Part I: Holy Something

2011-12-19T20:20:00.009-07:00

"What if all the girls on the whole earth said 'CHUM-chum. CHUM-chum. CHUM-chum,'" Indy intoned like a chant as we zipped through the endless Mojave desert, brown mile after brown flat mile. "And all the boys said 'Rocka-rocka. Rocka-rocka. Rocka-rocka'."

That's pretty much how the day went.

Mr. V woke me at at 2:30 am and we hit the road. I wished for a valium because few terrors match that of barrelling down out of the Eisehhower Tunnel in the pitch black, in the dead of night.

I woke up in the middle of nowhere, Utah. Black Horse or Black Rock or Black Devil. So beautiful it breaks my heart, I'll say it twice. The rocks are draped like velvet curtains, lit up the colors of sunset. All through Utah, across the stretch of salt flats there was light, powdered sugar snow.

We stopped in Vegas, where the Goblins were finally baptized. By that I mean they had their first In 'n Out. I tend to think of everyone that lives in Vegas as a compulsive gambler. My only evidence this isn't true is that godawful movie, Pay It Forward. I'm pretty sure Haley Joel and Helen Hunt weren't compulsive gamblers, although now I wonder how a single mother got the money for all those lanterns? But look, I've been in the car for seventeen hours, you shouldn't listen to a thing I say.

"I'm smaller than God," says Indy. "But not smaller than baby God."

I think she's a genius.

In San Diego, this: billboards advertising "EZ-Baccarat: Tableside Dim Sum." From this I gather that Burt Baccarat wants to attend at my table and serve me steamed buns, and that he will be sexually promiscuous. We've been driving for fifteen hours and I can't tell if this is a good thing.

I think it might be.

I am disappointed with the number of light-strung palm trees in Southern California. I think my idea of California Christmas was irrevocably formed by my first Sunshine State Christmas in Palm Desert. In that land of milk and money, there is a silver dollar for every retired crevice and a light for every palm tree. Not true in Riverside or San Bernadino. God help me, listen to what I'm saying. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be writing this. I have been in a car for seventeen hours and I think I encountered the real Jesus--you know, not the flaxen haired, but the Middle Eastern one. He told me he is as indifferent to Tim Tebow as he is to sexual orientation. Then he shared our plan for taking Tebow down, but I can't tell you about that now.

Indy calls them Pom-Pom trees and you know:

She's right.

xoxo

No More Driving Ever

-V

L.A. Lady

2011-12-16T13:53:00.011-07:00

(Please forgive the image issues in this post. The HTC EVO phone I had on the trip makes everything--everything--impossible. This was the best I could do, let's just leave it at that.)

You know last time I flew some where it was kind of an ordeal.

But not this time. I Mele Kalikimake'd myself into a state of aviation bliss. By that I mean that I played the Bing Crosby song on repeat for almost the duration of the flight, easing myself into a Paradise State of Mind. I also ordered a glass of wine on the plane.

Best five bucks I've ever spent in my life.

I arrived at LAX and spent the next four hours there. I didn't mind, honestly. I had a new smart phone that hadn't yet proven itself to be an epic and grotesque technological failure. Southwest had lost my bag, my girlfriend's flight arrived an hour late. Whatever. I had things to tweet. If the tweeting didn't get done, who knows what might occur?

Long story short: we rode a shuttle bus to pick up a car, and while we were on the bus my girlfriend showed me Facebook's "check-in" feature. But why would I want to check-in where I actually was? That's boring, and it's not like LAX is giving you free drinks for it. So we checked in at Nudes, Nudes!! and later, at the Grilled Cheese invitational. I don't know. It seemed the thing to do. We drove the rental car twice around the LAX terminal before finding Southwest and my bag.

We drove to downtown Los Angeles.

It was lit up like El Dorado. The high rises and searchlights glittering in the night. Lights on palm trees, lights on Christmas trees.

I was in love.

There were homeless people sleeping in tents on the streets.

There were parking lots advertising cheaper rates for film crews.

There were stretch limos and doormen wearing long jackets and hats.

There were posters at the hotel displaying the movies filmed there.

We stayed at the Westin Bonaventure. Like "good adventure", I guess. All I know is that it decidedly was not named the "Westin Bonavart"--like, Bone of Art--as I told everyone ahead of time.

The lobby was a zen paradise. The beds were a dream, heavy white comforters, everything clean as a whistle. The views were stunning. The guts of the hotel were bare concrete and full of sad little "Japanese Steakhouses" and "Korean BBQ". The guts felt like someone had set up ethnic fast food in a parking garage and abandoned it.

We ordered mimosas in bed. We watched L.A working twenty stories below us, people draped in hats and scarves and thick coats for the 55 degree weather.

We ventured out late for lunch. It was L.A, it seemed the thing to do. People strutted past us in only the finest business wear, perfectly cut jackets and pressed, tailored pants. The homeless circled among them in strange harmony. It looked like a movie set. It felt like a movie set. The streets were clean. Everything was black and bare and glinting in the sun.

Our waitress was getting in to fashion design.

Two fish tacos were fourteen dollars. The burgers were sixteen. We drank Bloody Marys. We ordered off the "600 calories or less" menu.

A set bus drove by our window. Town cars in front of it. Lights and cameras mounted to the outside, facing in. Police cars behind.

"There went Nathan Fillion", I said.

Mark my words.

Hotel. Change clothes. Cocktail hour. Change again.

The doorman hails a cab. Asks us if we want to share with two gentlemen.

My Blood Sister A flirts smoothly the entire six minute trip to the Staples Center.

The gentlemen pick up the tab.

In through the VIP entrance (Thanks Blood Sister A).

How to fit this all in?

We sit at the bar, where we're told Jay-Z and Kanye won't be going on for at least two more hours. We open a tab. Eventually the crowd begins to surge behind us, elbowing for room at the bar, for the bartender's attention. My Blood Sister A chats everyone up. A girl in a fuzzy red vest who looks like a model turns out to actually be one. She was there to shoot the video for "You Know Who In Paris" that afternoon. She lets me snap her picture. We meet a man--"Are you gay?" says my Blood Sister. "Are you Latino?" Wrong on both counts.

He's Greek,I say.

He is. Persian-Greek. Scoffs when asked if he too is a model. He is an entrepreneur. We meet an aspiring web designer, see fashion disasters, stress out the barkeep.

I love L.A.

Everyone here has a dream.

I feel like I fit in. No need to apologize for trying to be something.

Everyone here is trying to be.

In Colorado, they are aspiring to have lovely homes and happy families and good recipes. So often, I feel foolish. Aspiring to be other.

I don't feel foolish in the City of Dreams.

The bar tab is outrageous. We can only laugh.

Jay-Z and Kanye take the stage. It is a spiritual experience. I believe there are many facets of the divine. I believe that a performer can become a vessel. Challenge a divine energy, make an entire venue--the massive Staples Center--thrum and pulse with it. With an energy that goes beyond the day-to-day range of human experience. This is why some rock stars burn out, overdose, fall to pieces. Die. They don't know what they're channeling. They think it's them. This is what I'm talking about when I say that a Tori Amos concert was the most spiritual experience of my life.

Tori knows what she's channeling.

So, it appears, do Jay-Z and Kanye.

They do the encore ten times. The audience is sweating, exhausted. The energy shifts, becomes bacchanal. Orgiastic without the sex. It is an out of body experience.

I love the City of Dreams.

After the show, I am completely wrung out. Empty. I collapse in bed.

The next day there is only time for coffee and curried chicken salad at Cafe Primo, which is bustling and full of sleek business people on lunch hour. A young woman--blonde, exquisite dress suit, beautiful--whom I fully expect to be a complete bitch, offers to share her table with us. She hates L.A, she says. She says, nobody talks to you.

But all we've done is talk to people, everywhere we go.

Even the girl running the counter casually chats me up.

She's saving up for film school.

The taciturn brown-skinned barista makes art in my coffee.

The dreams are hanging heavily in the air.

I can feel them. If I had a butterfly net, one swoop would capture hundreds. Thousands.

The city is alive with wish.

In Denver, people ask me what I do, and I stammer. The baristas at Starbucks want to know if I'm studying or working, and I, nervous and uncomfortable, quietly confess I am writing a book.

In L.A, I feel I could say it.

I'm trying to be a writer.

I'm trying to get into writing.

Like everyone in this cafe, I have a manuscript.

Like the doorman at my hotel, I have a screenplay.

Like everyone in this city, I have a dream.

Mele Kaliki-whatever

2011-12-12T13:38:00.003-07:00

I procrastinated (read: walked around in my undies dyeing my hair) all morning and have spent the last hour rushing around throwing clothes at random into a bag and then pulling them out again to fit in the red cowboy boots.

Because you don't go see Jay-Z in your Tom's. I know you feel me.

Tonight I am flying off to the land where the palm trees sway. No, not that land. To L.A., where apparently it is raining.

I don't care because I just know I'm going to see Jensen Ackles. Or Nathan Fillion. Or both, probably both. And they're gonna be all like, "Here, lady Vesuvius, let us purchase you that massive corned beef sandwich and mocha with whip on our fancy black credit cards. Perchance would you like to consume it in our limousine?"

Speaking of Mr.'s Ackles and Fillion, I'm working on a post of Seven for Thursday.

Thanks to The M Half for tagging me for said post.

I think there is a highly domestic ghost in my house who keeps opening the dishwasher and changing the thermostat, but that is a matter for another time.

Au revoir, mon cheries. See you Thursday. Until then--

Keep it real.

99 Problems But A Burger Ain't One

2011-12-08T13:40:00.008-07:00

Today I needed a cheeseburger and a coke.

Not to worry, sometimes I just do.

I've been busy this week. I have mourned the lack of a flocked or white tree in my home anew, and I have kicked myself in the pants and told myself to get over it. I have bought and returned Christmas gifts (already). I have cleaned the house spiffy while listening to Ira Glass only to watch it be decidedly un-spiffed within scant minutes of my daughters arriving home.

I have downgraded to basic cable. Life without a DVR is hairy.

You heard it from me.

I have written no less than four blog posts this week and not posted any of them.

Because my spirit was restive and my heart

wasn't in the right place.

You know what my mom taught me: if you don't have anything nice to say, get on the internet.

(One of those blogs was about my mother-flocking unflocked tree. I wrote about how I sent Mr. V out alone and he came home with something that looked less like a tree and more like a well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous craft of mine. I wrote about how I decided to ignore the tree's patchy crooked visage and be grateful for my Mr. V.

Then I wrote how I call him Mr.V because it unsettles him to read his own name on the blog. I want you to know that so you don't go thinking I'm some hairy-legged feminist, even though right now THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM).

On Monday I instant messaged my sister.

"Do you want to meet me at Ikea?" I said.

"I am actually at Ikea now," she replied. "But yes."

She drove home, put her kids down for naps, and drove me back to Socialist Paradise.

(I call it that because I don't want you to think I'm a socialist even thought right now THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM.)

At Ikea I fulfilled Indy's wish for a box of puppies and our own wish for a topper of tree.

(Red. Felt. Star. 99 cents, thanks for asking)

Over free coffee and Swedish meatballs we discussed the important things like religious leanings and should I buy white frames and leave them white or paint them color.

It should come as no surprise to you that my sister is a Lutheran and I remain unaffiliated.

We like it that way. And that's ok.

She took the above picture of me and I like it so much I'm going to frame it and put it on my wall next to my bed. So every day I can arise and see myself being a nihilist. Don't ask me to explain why, I can't say why.

In a move calculated by my publicist to exponentially increase my street cred, I get to fly solo to the City of Angels on Monday night to attend the Jay-Z/Kanye West concert. (Solo flight. Concert with friend. She got the tickets free. She has connections. I can't say who.)

(She used to work for the Governator. That's all I'm saying)

What, you didn't know I was hard core?

Before that, I have to face a potluck.

Potluck, flight, concert, flight, drive, Disneyland, beach, Christmas.

Home.

That is all--wait.

I love you.

Over and out.

P.S: NO WAIT.

The blog address has changed. You can find me now at www.vesuviusathome.com .

This makes me inordinately pleased.

Please change your bookmarks and your links, but: not to worry.

tuttlebrewd.blogspot.com should still direct you back here.

P.P.S but seriously, change your bookmarks and your links. Wouldn't you rather see vesuviusathome.com up there in your address bar?

I sure would.

Winter Fruit

2011-12-01T11:43:00.007-07:00

December first. I wake to snow. I crave hot drink and solitude by a window where I can see the falling white and listen to my soul. Like a Christmas miracle, I am granted exactly that. I sit inside a warm, bright place and watch the barren earth drape itself in purity. Ridiculous, I think of Queen Elizabeth. Barren. White and bare.

I have pregnancy on the brain.

A misplaced desire, I tell my husband. Tell myself. Like the timing of everything in my life, the arrival of this strange want confounds me. I don't think I actually crave a baby. I think I crave the things it represents: joyful anticipation. A cherished arrival. A soft and holy hush. The earth appears unfruitful, but in this time it is waiting. In the cold, life is being knit together underneath. Too deep to see, too subtle yet to feel. Like an artist not deep in the work, but deep in the waiting. Gathering inspiration. Anticipating joy.

Everything appears dormant. One day it finally blooms.

All creation works like this.

What I crave is not a baby, but fruition. A fruit of my efforts, and peace. A soft and settled place. Not the frightful winds of autumn, not the rushed daze of spring. Like a child given a paper bird on a string, I twirl these two things between cold fingers. On one side, waiting. On the other side, harvest. I wait and know together, they can fly.

The miracle is, I feel it all. I can hold all this, and it is all right.

It is good.

A confused desire, I tell my husband, because my spirit likens my creative work to fertility. A book, like a baby, waits to be born. On the first of December, my creativity feels barren.

But all is not as it appears.

What I know is there is value in both these things: the quiet and the coming. One the comfort, the other joy.

Here is the promise in the depths of the dirt, beneath the earth frozen, beneath the solid snow: in the blackest, twisted forest, still things grow.

The barren world slow turns to blooming.

Out of darkness, light.

Fever Dreams and Other Things

2011-11-29T22:25:00.008-07:00

(That is not a flesh-eating plant trying to devour my husband THAT IS ME)

This morning I did something I have never done before. I dropped my daughters off at school without first showering and combing my hair. (I should add that I'm required to sign my daughters in, which means entering the building and interacting with at least 300 well-groomed adults).

It's not that I'm a prissy-face, it's just that I don't want anyone to see what I actually look like.

Trust me, it startles people. They pretend it doesn't; they're not fooling anyone. "It's ok," said one guy in college. "Your skin just isn't used to not having makeup on it. It's just. . . freaking out. Once it gets used to it, it'll be fine."

You see?

Even the husband, who pretends to think I am lovely at all moments, once saw me fresh out of the shower and gingerly asked, "Um, so what is the process here? Why do you look so different now than when you go to bed?"

(Don't worry about my ego. It's enormous. Nothing can take this baby down. Seriously, my ego is like a balloon at Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Sky-scraper sized and full of hot air, propped up by lesser people dressed like elven slaves.)

I will forever remember the terrible movie Elizabethtown for one reason only: the scene where Kirsten Dunst stays up all night talking on the phone and come dawn, her fair skin doesn't show a thing. Here's a sorry truth for you: fair skin shows EVERYTHING. My fair skin betrays me if I have a drink. It betrays me if I consume dairy. The few times I smoked a cigarette, it was written all over my face. And you bet your bippy that if a fair maiden stays up into the wee hours of the night, her skin screams her distress. We get all blotchy around the nose and the eyes. Often the lips. We do not go to prom and after-prom and finish the night milk-skinned. We got to prom and get left there because our date mistook us for the Swamp Thing during a flare up of psoriasis. I don't blame the husband for delicately asking "what is the process?" because if you went to bed with Anne of Green Gables, albeit on a bloaty day, and woke up next to Feed Me Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors, you'd be wondering what the hell, too.

I went to school drop-off without a shower because I overslept. I overslept because of a dream. I am going to sum up the dream now. Please, I promise to do it fast.

In the dream, Indy was a shape-shifter. She had been stolen away from me and, when I found her, had shifted-shape into a little Asian girl. Now no one was going to believe that freckles and the cutest little thing in black pigtails actually belonged together. I was growing quite panicked in the dream, not unlike people who wake up next to me, until dream-me remembered: I had seen every episode in six and a half seasons of Supernatural.

I knew how to handle this.

DREAM SEQUENCE OVER.

This is what I keep coming back to. I've been feeling unequipped. I've been telling myself I don't know what to do. When I calm down and listen, I remember: it isn't true.

I have seen six and a half seasons of Supernatural. Obviously there is a wisdom in me that surpasses all understanding.

And anyway, I know how to handle this.

Day After

2011-11-25T09:05:00.005-07:00

Thanksgiving was almost ruined by:
-Everyone called my side dish "a dessert" and I pouted
-the talent. The talent was being difficult for a moment there (but who can blame her little turkey-stuffed heart?)

Thanksgiving was saved by:
-my sister's homemade pecan pie (Who knew I liked pecan pie?)
-my brother-in-law's prime rib or whatever. (He kept calling it that)
-my mom's corn casserole (Please don't tell anyone I enjoyed a casserole)
-my dad's Ikea song
-my husband's delicious roasty pumpkin beer
-everyone loving my side dish too much to care if it was a dessert (IT WASN'T)
-my daughters and my niece Eisley running a wild rumpus through. . .
-my sister's gorgeous and catalog-ready home (thrift stores and Ikea are her secrets)
-A Very Gaga Thanksgiving tv special

Happy Day after Thanksgiving. I'm not out shopping, but I kind of wish I was.

xoxo
-V

Hunted

2011-11-22T22:27:00.006-07:00

A lot of stuff went down today.

I guess that should be expected when you get up to have a pee in the dead of night and in mid-act hear your husband's alarm going off. Because it's 2:30 a.m. and time for him to head to work.

Some days, I don't know. Life hunts you down. "Oprah says you can't solve emotional problems geographically," I tell the husband, but sometimes the urge to flee is so strong. Sometimes you want to feel safe in your world, even though you know that doesn't exist. We rushed over to Oskar Blues Homemade Liquid and Solids because that's what the male V and I do when we're feeling hunted. We eat and drink, the girls blow up Death Stars and, as I would come to find out hours later while in emergency room triage, stuff sand down their pants.

Don't judge their sandy-bottomed joy.

After that we had no strength to venture out in the cold. We headed for Barnes and Noble in Boulder. Within five minutes I realized our mistake and we left. Ayla asks for everything. Her requests the white rabbit, I leap down my black hole. I'm getting better at what my Blood Sister A calls "thought-stopping". When my brain starts to launch me into my old "universe is out to get me" or "good things don't come my way" soliloquies, I can usually tell her just to knock it off. Depression is a wolf howling at the door, who says you have to open it? But when she knocks in the form of my children having desires, I spiral downhill fast. "I want to ask Santa to bring me Legos for Christmas," says Daughter A and seconds later I'm shivering in the corner, mind whirling with every sparkly gift I can't afford to buy them. Christmas is coming. Get the hell out of the retail stores.

Fortified now with hot beverage, we drove to the park. My husband tossed my daughters around in the leaves to their everlasting delight. The dog stalked squirrels.

Somewhere in all this I canceled our cable, found a rejection letter in my email, and decided to dye my hair brown. The day grows dark. We buy produce for a vegetarian dinner, healthy. Just what we need.

Everything happens when mom goes to the bathroom. From my moment's peace, I hear a yelp. A yowl. I open the door and my Indy is crying. I rush to her and grab her little face, which is smeared in blood. She had been resting her head on the dog. The dog has nipped her. One cut on her lip is very small but deep enough that I bundle her back into boots and drive her to the emergency room. Ayla is sobbing, she stays home with dad.

In the Emergency Room a couple checks in. She's twelve weeks pregnant. I assume she's had bleeding but later I hear whispered 'throwing up'. I don't know. I count my blessings. My baby is shaken, but she's here on my lap.

In the emergency room, we discover the sand in her britches.

No stitches required. They say she won't have a scar.

I email Blood Sister A. I tell her I wish a wise person would swoop into my life and tell me what to do.

Then I figure, maybe that wisdom's just waiting here.

Within me.

(This picture is of Indy feeling better and playing with the syringe they gave her. I love the fierce concentration on her face. She was plotting about how she was going to come home and squirt Ayla. Like that.)

Hey Pumpkin

2011-11-21T20:08:00.005-07:00

Right now it's quiet in all my house, which you won't be surprised to hear is how I like it. I just put a loaf of pumpkin bread in the oven and it smells so good already. Sometimes I do domestic things without feeling the need to apologize for them.

I never did bake that apple pie. Pumpkin bread was far more achievable.

Today I gave up on my plans to make this delicious recipe for Thanksgiving. I really wanted to bring it to my sister's house, present it with an apron-at-the-waist flourish and impress everybody. It probably wouldn't have worked anyway. In general, I find people are far less impressed with me than I'd hoped. Turns out you can't buy pie pumpkins after Halloween, and I know from experience you can't but Emmentaler cheese in Longmont. Which isn't exactly true, you can probably find it at the imported cheese emporium in that office park under the bridge, but I never remember to go there.

Instead we're bringing cheesy apple bake. It's this god-awful unhealthy dish that my mother-in-law made every Thanksgiving. This is difficult to admit: you pour canned apple pie filling into your casserole dish and then you blend Velveeta with white sugar (I died a little, just typing that) and you pour it over the apples and bake. The top gets slightly burnt and crusty and then beneath it is cheesy apple goodness. You have to eat it early if you're dining with my husband's family because the kids eat all the cheese topping off and then you're just left with sad canned apples. To sell this dish to my sister, I called it "Apple Cheese Southern Souffle". If I told her I was bringing sugared-up Velveeta over canned apples she probably would have hung up the phone in order to drive straight to Longmont and slap me. Crisis averred. You gotta know how to work these things.

Today I met up with an old friend from high school. There is nothing like an old friend from high school or a drinking buddy from college. Some bonds are forever, this is why whenever I met a new person I try to get sloppily drunk as quickly as possible.Instant friend for life. (Contrary to what my husband says, crippling social anxiety has nothing to do with it. Who has the psychology degree, Mr. V? NEITHER OF US.) For instance, I hadn't talked to this particular friend in a few months when I sent her this email: "I'm moving to Taos to keep bees. Wanna come?"

"That sounds awesome," she replied. "I'm there."

This is a comfort to me. I can't tell most people when I want to move to Taos, or Paris, or the other day, oddly, Nashville. They start to do calculations and ask me about my life goals and say things like "You don't speak French" or "Do you know how hard it is to get a Visa in a socialist country?" or "It snows in Taos".

Our other plans include moving to Vietnam, wearing the funny hats, and planting flowers/ holding babies in orphanages, as well as spending our golden years traveling the world until we finally go down together in a plane crash.

Maybe because it's Monday, or maybe I'm drunk on the scents of warming nutmeg and cinnamon, or maybe because I'm bringing glucosey plastic cheese to Thanksgiving, but right now, those seem like worthy goals.

But no, I'm not actually moving to Taos.

Not yet.

Deck Me

2011-11-18T13:40:00.008-07:00

Ayla and Mr. V, November 2006

It's true: I used to swear off Christmas music until December 1st.

My ghosts of Christmas past cringed at red Starbucks cups in November. I worked in retail and bemoaned the arrival of Christmas merchandise in August and September. The one year I sent out Christmas cards, I think I mailed them on December 21st. And felt good about that.

But come on: I also used to wear Old Navy logo tees and get Brazilian waxes. I used to listen to Nelly and buy thongs.

You see why I'm not given to nostalgia.

As I got older, time got shorter. Each day a smaller portion of the whole than it once was. This year I watched the Fourth of July fireworks and told myself Christmas was just around the corner. "Stop worrying about Christmas money," the husband said. "It's a long time a way."

But now you see: it wasn't.

It was easy for me to decry the Early Onset of Christmas when I wasn't actually responsible for making Christmas. Back in college, December 1st hit and I had four languorous weeks to sit around the house and wait for my mom to deliver Christmas to my doorstop. Gradually the house would plump, with cookies and sleigh bells, fat pine limbs and twinkling lights, and I, with my unadulterated hours and hours to sit by the tree reading The Mists of Avalon, wondered what the heck my mom's problem was and what everyone was so stressed about.

Our first Christmas, Mr. V and I didn't even get a tree. (We couldn't afford one). We hopped a plane and arrived in Palm Desert, where Christmas was waiting for us, balmy and palm-decked. Mele Kalikimaka. No stress in that.

Now, however, it's up to me to do Christmas. It is up to me to gather lights and food coloring, presents and sugar plums. It is up to my husband to hunt down the money, the recipes, the ligonberries and horseradish. I have a dream of Christmas, one that includes a feathery flocked tree and fat cermanic bulbs strung up on my rooftop, click click click. Now, I think: of course I am listening to Christmas music the day after Halloween. Of course my children have written their Christmas lists, and you bet your bottom stocking I'm sipping Gingerbread Lattes and delighting in my red cups. I have a magic show to produce. I have two children who still believe in Santa Claus. Great things take time, you know?

Let no one judge you. Especially none of my ghosts, 22 and self-assured, rolling my eyes and silently judging all merry making in the month of November. Listen to your music. Do your Black Friday strategizing. Drink your Peppermint Mocha's and string up your lights, because there is ancient wisdom in these traditions.

This time of year, we all need the light.

Welcome, Yule.

(And if you see any live Christmas trees, let me know. I AM READY.)

Because I would like to aid in your merriment, here are my favorite Christmas albums.

Noels Celtiques: Celtic Christmas Music From Brittany. (Not that I'm partial). Gorgeous music. "Christmas at Sea" is so evocative. I can feel the old ship beneath me. The sea and the snow. The smell of pipe smoke. People dancing on the deck. Perhaps I've shared too much.

The Christmas Revels: In Celebration of the Winter Solstice. The sound of this album is one of my earliest memories. It wouldn't be Christmas without it.

Medieval Baebes: Mistletoe and Wine. Look, you're not going to find "Deck The Halls" or "Jingle Bells" here. It's old world solstice music, some of which was eventually changed into old world Christmas music. I love it deeply.

The Victorian Christmas Revels. This is one of the Mister's favorites. Long into February, I catch him singing "Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat" in a British accent. It's awesome. Every time I put this cd on, I feel like I'm standing on the streets of Victorian London. There's snow on the ground, nutmeg and cinnamon in the air. The street is bustling with fellows selling roasted almonds and hot honeyed buns. Across the way a group of pink-cheeked children are warming their hands over a fire and now, for some reason, everyone has begun to sing together. It's wonderful.

A Very She & Him Christmas. This is a new favorite. It's vintagey and, just around the edges, a little melancholy. I dig it.

Wassail! Wassail! Early American Christmas Music. Another by the Revels. A woman reads a story recounting a long ago prairie Christmas, a Laura Ingalls type family, a hunt in the snow. It makes me cry. Every time. In a warm and grateful way.