I don’t sleep sometimes. Sometimes, I sleep almost through the night, for days at a time; and other times, I just don’t sleep. Or I sleep for a few hours, and then I’m awake at 2 and can’t fall back asleep.
Last night was one of those nights. It wasn’t so bad, really. I’d gone to bed early so I’d already slept for almost three hours. I read for a while, and I thought about nothing for a while, and I prayed for a while. I could have written, I suppose, but I was holding on to the hope that I’d fall back asleep, so I didn’t want to do anything that would keep my brain too active.
Like it takes an active brain to write about meatballs. I flatter myself.
*****
Forget about writing. Let’s talk about reading. I’m temporarily giving up on Postwar. It’s just so mercilessly long. It’s taking too long to finish and I have lots of other books to read. Maybe I’ll get back to it. I’m all the way to the late 1970s, a pretty dreary time in Europe, East and West. And everywhere else, really. In Eastern Europe, especially, people were weary and resigned, and too tired for despair. The gray, low-level terror and oppression was a morning-to-night fact of life and most people thought that their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren would live under the same oppression for their whole lives. No one saw the end coming, though it was just a few years away.
So far during my Postwar break, I’ve read Heather King’s Ravished: Notes on Womanhood, which was great, though not as great as Shirt of Flame. Now I’m reading Carlene Bauer’s Not That Kind of Girl. At least ten people have written memoirs with this title or a variation of it. Maybe I should write one and call it Exactly That Kind of Girl. Anyway, I like this book very much. She writes honestly and beautifully about what it’s like to be a girl who is both introspective and outspoken, who struggles with faith but wants to believe, who longs to be noticed and desired but doesn’t know how to deal with boys, who wants to be New York-cool but can’t hide her wide-open mind and heart. Yes, exactly that kind of girl. I know her.
But wasn’t I writing about insomnia? That’s what kind of girl I am--the kind who can’t string two thoughts together on her best day, never mind after a night of little or no sleep.
*****
Some people think that it’s better to stay up for the whole rest of the night than to fall asleep at dawn only to have to wake up again in an hour or half an hour. I could not disagree more. After several hours of walking around the house and reading and thinking and praying, I finally fell asleep, about 30 minutes before I had to get up for the day. And it was deep, hard sleep, like a whole night distilled into a concentrated half-hour. I felt fine when I woke up.
*****
At some point--during the early part of the night, or during the 30 minutes in the early morning-- I dreamed about lobster. Specifically, I dreamed about cooking and eating a lobster, by myself. I don’t like lobster that much, and I would never ever cook one. I don’t know what a dream about solo lobster cooking and eating should mean, if anything. The lobster had the texture of calamari. Vile. I’m glad it was only a dream.
I’m pretty tired now. I hope I’ll sleep tonight. I hope I’ll have more interesting dreams. If not, I have plenty of books to read.
*****
Monday, September 30, 2019
Monday, September 23, 2019
Note to self
Did you know that it’s really easy to make your own meatballs? You probably did know that. But I didn’t, until today. For some reason, I had always been afraid to make meatballs, so I just made sauce with meat in it, and that was what we had with our spaghetti. But today, I found a recipe, and decided to make meatballs. And it was astonishingly easy, and they were very good. The End.
Were you waiting for me to turn that into some kind of lesson about overcoming fears or leaving comfort zones or some shit? No, sorry. I have nothing for you but meatballs. Slightly too-spicy but very delicious meatballs.
*****
When I say that it was easy, I don’t mean that it was fun. Rolling meatballs is like making cookies, and I hate making cookies. And I’m terrible at quantities, too. I had two pounds of ground beef, because the recipe called for one pound, and I wanted to make enough to freeze, so I wouldn’t have to roll meatballs again. But then I looked at the two pounds of meat and I thought that it wouldn’t make nearly enough meatballs to serve everyone and then have enough left over to freeze. And I was wrong, because two pounds of ground beef turns into a quantity of meatballs best described by the measurement “shitload.” Look it up. It’s somewhere between a buttload and a shit-ton.
*****
That was yesterday. My kids are still talking about those meatballs. A culinary triumph. Today, I went to an after-work happy hour, and then to Barnes and Noble to pick up a birthday present for a three-year-old girl. I’m sure she’ll get lots of toys, so I bought her a lovely hardcover copy of Anne of Green Gables. It’s so pretty that I was tempted to buy a copy for myself.
I bought a notebook instead, because my current notebook is almost full. I’m picky about notebooks, and I usually like the selection at Barnes and Noble. But I skip the Moleskine section. Moleskine is full of itself. They lost me when they introduced the silly Evernote thing and the $179 pen. I do like their bright, hard-cover notebooks, though.
Barnes and Noble also carries Leuchturm1917 notebooks. These are like Moleskine notebooks for people who don’t think Moleskine is hard enough to pronounce. I liked their red cover color, too, but they only had the red one with graph paper. So no Leuchturm1917.
The clearance section had what appeared to be lots of options, but the selection narrowed after I ruled out the ones with the inspirational sayings on the covers, and the obviously ugly ones, and the ones with the hand-tooled leather covers, and the ones from the 300 Writing (Creative/Sketching/Drawing) Prompt series.
I mean, I’m writing about shopping for a notebook. Yesterday, I wrote about meatballs. I don’t need writing prompts.
Among the remaining notebooks, at least half were bullet journals. Bullet journals are a big trend now. And because this trend combines technology rejection in the name of “authenticity” (use real notebooks with paper and real pens, not electronics!) and consumerism (not just any notebook and pen--THIS kind of notebook and THIS kind of pen!) and social media influencers (hundreds of Instagram-filtered notebook photos accompanied by multiple hashtags), it is an easy target for mockery.
Silly as it may be, though, I’m not going to make fun of bullet journaling, because if I’m being honest (and I’m always being honest), I really love the whole idea. Bullet journals are neat and pretty, two of my favorite characteristics of anything. Do a Google image search and see if you don’t want to stop what you’re doing right now and make a beautiful bullet journal. I do. I mean, what am I doing, anyway? Writing about meatballs? I could be bullet journaling.
But I know myself. My handwriting is appallingly bad, and I doodle, and I write in the margins, and I scribble. Notebooks, in fact, are my only refuge of untidiness. Notebooks and my sock drawers. Marie Kondo didn’t get to them yet. So my bullet journal wouldn't look anything like the ones that litter the Pinterest landscape. I'd feel like a failure.
Or worse. Because it's just as likely that I'd start bullet journaling and become compulsive about it, and then it would become another chore that I have to do every day. As I said, I know myself.
I saw one very nice-looking bullet journal notebook and was still tempted to buy it, bullet journal reservations notwithstanding. The notebook was covered with cellophane wrapping with a paper band for the price and brand name. "For the iist-makers and note-takers," it read. Well that's me, right? I spend a good part of my life taking notes and making lists so this notebook was obviously meant for me. But the back side of the wrapper also had a little illustration of the notebook pages and they were way too complicated. A dashboard for your notes. That’s too much to do. It’s too much work. It's the compulsivity again--give me a notebook page with seven different sections dedicated to specific content types, and I will feel compelled to use them appropriately.
Assuming you’re still reading this, at what point did you thank God you're not me? Was it the part about thinking that two pounds of meatballs wasn't enough to feed four people, or the 45 minutes of deliberation over a notebook?
And that's a slight exaggeration. Maybe 20 minutes, or 25 at the most. After no more than 25 or 30 minutes, I picked a "modular" notebook with a very lovely soft blue faux leather cover. It's modular because it comes with three interchangeable and refillable inserts, so you can have blank paper for drawing if you draw, and graph paper for graphing stuff if you do that, and lined paper for writing. I will use all three of the inserts for writing, with a few doodles here and there, and then I’ll get more inserts because the cover really is so pretty that I’ll want to keep using it. And it’s an unusual size, compact but much longer than wide than most notebooks. It’s very well suited to both lists and notes. It has a clear pocket in the front for business cards, and a clear zipper pocket in the back, where I can keep my little ruler (neat underlines under dates and list titles being my only concession to neatness in my notebooks).
*****
The notebook is just right, and my notes are very neat and well-organized, as they always are during the three- to four-day notebook honeymoon period. The inside of the notebook will soon be a jumble of scribble, comprehensible only to me. And that’s the way I like it. And now it’s time to cook dinner. I have a new perfect-for-weeknights chicken recipe that looks very promising. If it’s anywhere near as good as the meatballs, then maybe I’ll have to use one of the little notebook sections for recipes. Maybe I like to cook now. I have a new notebook, so anything is possible, anything at all.
Were you waiting for me to turn that into some kind of lesson about overcoming fears or leaving comfort zones or some shit? No, sorry. I have nothing for you but meatballs. Slightly too-spicy but very delicious meatballs.
*****
When I say that it was easy, I don’t mean that it was fun. Rolling meatballs is like making cookies, and I hate making cookies. And I’m terrible at quantities, too. I had two pounds of ground beef, because the recipe called for one pound, and I wanted to make enough to freeze, so I wouldn’t have to roll meatballs again. But then I looked at the two pounds of meat and I thought that it wouldn’t make nearly enough meatballs to serve everyone and then have enough left over to freeze. And I was wrong, because two pounds of ground beef turns into a quantity of meatballs best described by the measurement “shitload.” Look it up. It’s somewhere between a buttload and a shit-ton.
*****
That was yesterday. My kids are still talking about those meatballs. A culinary triumph. Today, I went to an after-work happy hour, and then to Barnes and Noble to pick up a birthday present for a three-year-old girl. I’m sure she’ll get lots of toys, so I bought her a lovely hardcover copy of Anne of Green Gables. It’s so pretty that I was tempted to buy a copy for myself.
I bought a notebook instead, because my current notebook is almost full. I’m picky about notebooks, and I usually like the selection at Barnes and Noble. But I skip the Moleskine section. Moleskine is full of itself. They lost me when they introduced the silly Evernote thing and the $179 pen. I do like their bright, hard-cover notebooks, though.
Barnes and Noble also carries Leuchturm1917 notebooks. These are like Moleskine notebooks for people who don’t think Moleskine is hard enough to pronounce. I liked their red cover color, too, but they only had the red one with graph paper. So no Leuchturm1917.
 |
| I was tempted. The red cover is very nice. |
The clearance section had what appeared to be lots of options, but the selection narrowed after I ruled out the ones with the inspirational sayings on the covers, and the obviously ugly ones, and the ones with the hand-tooled leather covers, and the ones from the 300 Writing (Creative/Sketching/Drawing) Prompt series.
 |
| No. |
I mean, I’m writing about shopping for a notebook. Yesterday, I wrote about meatballs. I don’t need writing prompts.
Among the remaining notebooks, at least half were bullet journals. Bullet journals are a big trend now. And because this trend combines technology rejection in the name of “authenticity” (use real notebooks with paper and real pens, not electronics!) and consumerism (not just any notebook and pen--THIS kind of notebook and THIS kind of pen!) and social media influencers (hundreds of Instagram-filtered notebook photos accompanied by multiple hashtags), it is an easy target for mockery.
Silly as it may be, though, I’m not going to make fun of bullet journaling, because if I’m being honest (and I’m always being honest), I really love the whole idea. Bullet journals are neat and pretty, two of my favorite characteristics of anything. Do a Google image search and see if you don’t want to stop what you’re doing right now and make a beautiful bullet journal. I do. I mean, what am I doing, anyway? Writing about meatballs? I could be bullet journaling.
But I know myself. My handwriting is appallingly bad, and I doodle, and I write in the margins, and I scribble. Notebooks, in fact, are my only refuge of untidiness. Notebooks and my sock drawers. Marie Kondo didn’t get to them yet. So my bullet journal wouldn't look anything like the ones that litter the Pinterest landscape. I'd feel like a failure.
Or worse. Because it's just as likely that I'd start bullet journaling and become compulsive about it, and then it would become another chore that I have to do every day. As I said, I know myself.
I saw one very nice-looking bullet journal notebook and was still tempted to buy it, bullet journal reservations notwithstanding. The notebook was covered with cellophane wrapping with a paper band for the price and brand name. "For the iist-makers and note-takers," it read. Well that's me, right? I spend a good part of my life taking notes and making lists so this notebook was obviously meant for me. But the back side of the wrapper also had a little illustration of the notebook pages and they were way too complicated. A dashboard for your notes. That’s too much to do. It’s too much work. It's the compulsivity again--give me a notebook page with seven different sections dedicated to specific content types, and I will feel compelled to use them appropriately.
 |
| Simple on the outside, complicated on the inside. I'd have needed a training class to use this notebook effectively. Ain't nobody got time. |
Assuming you’re still reading this, at what point did you thank God you're not me? Was it the part about thinking that two pounds of meatballs wasn't enough to feed four people, or the 45 minutes of deliberation over a notebook?
And that's a slight exaggeration. Maybe 20 minutes, or 25 at the most. After no more than 25 or 30 minutes, I picked a "modular" notebook with a very lovely soft blue faux leather cover. It's modular because it comes with three interchangeable and refillable inserts, so you can have blank paper for drawing if you draw, and graph paper for graphing stuff if you do that, and lined paper for writing. I will use all three of the inserts for writing, with a few doodles here and there, and then I’ll get more inserts because the cover really is so pretty that I’ll want to keep using it. And it’s an unusual size, compact but much longer than wide than most notebooks. It’s very well suited to both lists and notes. It has a clear pocket in the front for business cards, and a clear zipper pocket in the back, where I can keep my little ruler (neat underlines under dates and list titles being my only concession to neatness in my notebooks).
*****
The notebook is just right, and my notes are very neat and well-organized, as they always are during the three- to four-day notebook honeymoon period. The inside of the notebook will soon be a jumble of scribble, comprehensible only to me. And that’s the way I like it. And now it’s time to cook dinner. I have a new perfect-for-weeknights chicken recipe that looks very promising. If it’s anywhere near as good as the meatballs, then maybe I’ll have to use one of the little notebook sections for recipes. Maybe I like to cook now. I have a new notebook, so anything is possible, anything at all.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Spectator
It's Friday night and I'm in Section 108 at Nationals Park, watching the Nats facing the Atlanta Braves. The Braves are running away with the National League East, but the Nats are playing really well, too. It should be a good game.
We're in almost the same section where we sat last time but it's 20 degrees cooler. In fact it's 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, too. I'm wearing long sleeves and I'm still a little cold. September. Go figure.
*****
It's the top of the third inning now, with no score. The Braves are a patient team. They know how to work a count. They're in no rush.
Baseball games are much more bright and colorful than they were when I was young. The Jumbotrons and scoreboards and advertisements are a visual riot, and the sensory overload doesn’t end there. Counting walk-up songs (Juan Soto’s are the best) and between-inning music and the national anthem, I've heard at least 30 different songs tonight. That doesn't include the organ music, which used to be the only music a person would hear at a baseball game. I like it. It's louder and more fun than it used to be.
It’s Saturday morning now, and the Braves beat the Nats 5-0. But the music was good, and after a cloudy day, the sky turned clear and inky dark blue with just a few clouds floating past the yellow-white harvest moon. And Teddy won the Presidents’ Race. He cheated, of course. Teddy only wins when he cheats. It was Friday the 13th, so Jason Voorhees joined the race, hockey mask and all, and dispatched George, Tom, and Abe, leaving Teddy the only contender. Teddy is my favorite. After the game, we walked along the Anacostia Riverwalk to our car, about ¾ of a mile from the ballpark. It was a good evening.
*****
I don’t spend many Saturday nights at the opera, but that’s what I did last night. With free tickets from a musician friend, I got to see the Maryland Lyric Opera perform Il Tabarro and Cavalleria Rusticana, two very different one-act Italian operas with a common ending--the husbands kill the men who slept with their wives.
The operas were performed concert-style, with the singers in recital dress rather than costumes, and no stage sets or props other than music stands (and very amusingly, a jacket used as a shroud--you had to be there).
Both of the operas are tragedies, but Il Tabarro has comedic elements and characters, including Tinca and Talpa the stevedores and Talpa’s wife, Frugola. Cavalleria Rusticana is more dramatic and intense; but Il Tabarro is ultimately sadder, because we know that Giorgetta’s infidelity is driven by grief at the loss of her baby. When her husband kills her lover, poor Giorgetta is left with nothing. A mother also loses her child in Cavelleria; in this case, he’s an adult child, murdered by his lover’s husband.
Super fun, right? But it really was. The English supertitles played on a screen high above the stage, so we could follow the story while listening to the glorious music; and the performances were amazing, both musically and dramatically. All of the singers were wonderful. Susan Bullock as Cavalleria’s Santuzza was heartbroken and desperate and when the beautiful Joowon Chae sang Lola’s first notes, it was all I could do not to shout “Whore! This is all your fault!” And when Il Tabarro’s Frugola, played by the amazing Allegra De Vita, sings that it’s better to be the boss in a hovel than a servant in a castle, it sounds like a happily defiant rallying cry.
*****
It’s Monday now, 8:30 PM. I worked a longer-than-usual day, then attended a meeting at Rockville High School, and then came home, five minutes ago. I wish sometimes that I was the kind of person who could walk in after a long day and just stop working, but I’m not that kind of person. So here I am.
And hockey starts tonight! Yes, it’s 90 degrees outside again after Friday’s short preview of fall, and I wish I was still swimming; and yes, it’s only pre-season, but it’s HOCKEY! And I’m not watching it. My husband and younger son are toggling between Nats baseball, about which I care to some extent; and NFL football, about which I care not one tiny little bit. Fortunately, I’m here to help them re-adjust their priorities. In five minutes or so, we’ll be swinging to the sweet sounds of Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin.
*****
Tuesday, 9:05 PM. I’m watching “To Sir With Love,” a movie that I first saw when I was 14 or so. I read the book, too. It’s astonishingly old-fashioned now, but I still love it. I love the scene when the class shows up at their classmate’s mother’s funeral, as the camera pans back on the coal-stained East End brick rowhouses and the pale gray sky. Now I’m going to watch to the end so I can watch Sidney Poitier dance with Judy Geeson, and hear Lulu sing the title song. And that is a wrap on a few days of fandom. I think it’s time to read a book.
We're in almost the same section where we sat last time but it's 20 degrees cooler. In fact it's 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, too. I'm wearing long sleeves and I'm still a little cold. September. Go figure.
*****
It's the top of the third inning now, with no score. The Braves are a patient team. They know how to work a count. They're in no rush.
Baseball games are much more bright and colorful than they were when I was young. The Jumbotrons and scoreboards and advertisements are a visual riot, and the sensory overload doesn’t end there. Counting walk-up songs (Juan Soto’s are the best) and between-inning music and the national anthem, I've heard at least 30 different songs tonight. That doesn't include the organ music, which used to be the only music a person would hear at a baseball game. I like it. It's louder and more fun than it used to be.
 |
| There are ten different design elements on that scoreboard, and that doesn't count the actual box score display, which is tracking more data than a NASA mission control center. |
It’s Saturday morning now, and the Braves beat the Nats 5-0. But the music was good, and after a cloudy day, the sky turned clear and inky dark blue with just a few clouds floating past the yellow-white harvest moon. And Teddy won the Presidents’ Race. He cheated, of course. Teddy only wins when he cheats. It was Friday the 13th, so Jason Voorhees joined the race, hockey mask and all, and dispatched George, Tom, and Abe, leaving Teddy the only contender. Teddy is my favorite. After the game, we walked along the Anacostia Riverwalk to our car, about ¾ of a mile from the ballpark. It was a good evening.
*****
I don’t spend many Saturday nights at the opera, but that’s what I did last night. With free tickets from a musician friend, I got to see the Maryland Lyric Opera perform Il Tabarro and Cavalleria Rusticana, two very different one-act Italian operas with a common ending--the husbands kill the men who slept with their wives.
The operas were performed concert-style, with the singers in recital dress rather than costumes, and no stage sets or props other than music stands (and very amusingly, a jacket used as a shroud--you had to be there).
Both of the operas are tragedies, but Il Tabarro has comedic elements and characters, including Tinca and Talpa the stevedores and Talpa’s wife, Frugola. Cavalleria Rusticana is more dramatic and intense; but Il Tabarro is ultimately sadder, because we know that Giorgetta’s infidelity is driven by grief at the loss of her baby. When her husband kills her lover, poor Giorgetta is left with nothing. A mother also loses her child in Cavelleria; in this case, he’s an adult child, murdered by his lover’s husband.
Super fun, right? But it really was. The English supertitles played on a screen high above the stage, so we could follow the story while listening to the glorious music; and the performances were amazing, both musically and dramatically. All of the singers were wonderful. Susan Bullock as Cavalleria’s Santuzza was heartbroken and desperate and when the beautiful Joowon Chae sang Lola’s first notes, it was all I could do not to shout “Whore! This is all your fault!” And when Il Tabarro’s Frugola, played by the amazing Allegra De Vita, sings that it’s better to be the boss in a hovel than a servant in a castle, it sounds like a happily defiant rallying cry.
*****
It’s Monday now, 8:30 PM. I worked a longer-than-usual day, then attended a meeting at Rockville High School, and then came home, five minutes ago. I wish sometimes that I was the kind of person who could walk in after a long day and just stop working, but I’m not that kind of person. So here I am.
And hockey starts tonight! Yes, it’s 90 degrees outside again after Friday’s short preview of fall, and I wish I was still swimming; and yes, it’s only pre-season, but it’s HOCKEY! And I’m not watching it. My husband and younger son are toggling between Nats baseball, about which I care to some extent; and NFL football, about which I care not one tiny little bit. Fortunately, I’m here to help them re-adjust their priorities. In five minutes or so, we’ll be swinging to the sweet sounds of Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin.
*****
Tuesday, 9:05 PM. I’m watching “To Sir With Love,” a movie that I first saw when I was 14 or so. I read the book, too. It’s astonishingly old-fashioned now, but I still love it. I love the scene when the class shows up at their classmate’s mother’s funeral, as the camera pans back on the coal-stained East End brick rowhouses and the pale gray sky. Now I’m going to watch to the end so I can watch Sidney Poitier dance with Judy Geeson, and hear Lulu sing the title song. And that is a wrap on a few days of fandom. I think it’s time to read a book.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Shopping
We’re buying a car for my son today. His very old car’s last legs are wearing out, and it’s probably better for us to bite the bullet and hand over our savings for a new car than to keep sinking money into the old one.
My son is very excited, as well he should be. My husband and I grew up poor and I don't know what we find most amazing: that an 18-year-old will be pretty much handed a new(ish) car (he's contributing $1000), or that we are now the kind of people who can go out on a Sunday afternoon and buy our child a car. Amazing.
*****
Now we're test-driving; rather, he is test-driving, and I’m sitting in the back. He's a good driver, enough that the salesman complimented him. Getting into cars with strangers all day long must be the hardest thing about selling cars for a living.
*****
Car buying is much faster than it used to be. We walked in to Carmax about 2.5 hours ago, and now we have paperwork in hand, and we're just waiting for the staff to put the tags on the new car and to make it even cleaner than it already was. We bought a 2016 Nissan Rogue, black exterior and interior. It's very nice looking. My son loves it and if he's happy, then I'm happy.
*****
That was Sunday, and today is Monday. It’s actually my birthday. It feels like a slightly more festive than normal regular day. And that’s pretty good.
I went clothes-shopping on Saturday, and I bought some things. There are fashion moments when the prevailing look matches my aesthetic and my body type and my idea of how to live in clothes, and when those moments arise, I stock up. It might be too soon to tell, though, if this is really one of those moments. Because I’m going out to dinner soon, as nice middle-aged ladies tend to do on their birthdays; and I just perused my very well-stocked closet, but I can’t find anything to wear. It’s partly a weather thing. I’m terrible at the dreaded “transitional” seasons, when you have to balance the appropriate seasonal mood with the actual temperature. But it’s partly because I’m very bad at shopping and I keep buying the wrong things. I should stick with handbags.
Most of my clothes come from one store. I had a bad experience there on Saturday and instead of just letting it go, I told the company’s customer service department that I’d never shop there again. I know. I’m ridiculous. In my defense, it was a really bad experience and it’s their fault and they were utterly indifferent to my very valid concerns. But now I’m committed to this thing and I have to either find a new store, or find a way to shop there without them ever finding out. All cash, I suppose. Completely ridiculous, that's what I am. Fortunately, I have lots of company in the rest of the entire human race.
*****
It was a good birthday. I'm a year older. That’s better, as they say, than the alternative
Meanwhile it's going to be hot for another week or so, and the transitional clothing dilemma persists. The store that so upset me has my favorite kind of mid-calf length print rayon skirts because it’s apparently 1995 again. Those skirts will be just the thing to carry me through the warm days of the final transition from summer to fall. So I borrowed my husband’s Visa, set up a new online account with the store, and had the skirts shipped to my mother-in-law’s house. I get my skirts, and my boycott continues, as far as they know. Everyone wins.
I used to think that car-shopping was difficult, It’s nothing compared to buying a skirt.
My son is very excited, as well he should be. My husband and I grew up poor and I don't know what we find most amazing: that an 18-year-old will be pretty much handed a new(ish) car (he's contributing $1000), or that we are now the kind of people who can go out on a Sunday afternoon and buy our child a car. Amazing.
*****
Now we're test-driving; rather, he is test-driving, and I’m sitting in the back. He's a good driver, enough that the salesman complimented him. Getting into cars with strangers all day long must be the hardest thing about selling cars for a living.
*****
Car buying is much faster than it used to be. We walked in to Carmax about 2.5 hours ago, and now we have paperwork in hand, and we're just waiting for the staff to put the tags on the new car and to make it even cleaner than it already was. We bought a 2016 Nissan Rogue, black exterior and interior. It's very nice looking. My son loves it and if he's happy, then I'm happy.
 |
| He looks happy, doesn't he? |
*****
That was Sunday, and today is Monday. It’s actually my birthday. It feels like a slightly more festive than normal regular day. And that’s pretty good.
I went clothes-shopping on Saturday, and I bought some things. There are fashion moments when the prevailing look matches my aesthetic and my body type and my idea of how to live in clothes, and when those moments arise, I stock up. It might be too soon to tell, though, if this is really one of those moments. Because I’m going out to dinner soon, as nice middle-aged ladies tend to do on their birthdays; and I just perused my very well-stocked closet, but I can’t find anything to wear. It’s partly a weather thing. I’m terrible at the dreaded “transitional” seasons, when you have to balance the appropriate seasonal mood with the actual temperature. But it’s partly because I’m very bad at shopping and I keep buying the wrong things. I should stick with handbags.
Most of my clothes come from one store. I had a bad experience there on Saturday and instead of just letting it go, I told the company’s customer service department that I’d never shop there again. I know. I’m ridiculous. In my defense, it was a really bad experience and it’s their fault and they were utterly indifferent to my very valid concerns. But now I’m committed to this thing and I have to either find a new store, or find a way to shop there without them ever finding out. All cash, I suppose. Completely ridiculous, that's what I am. Fortunately, I have lots of company in the rest of the entire human race.
*****
It was a good birthday. I'm a year older. That’s better, as they say, than the alternative
Meanwhile it's going to be hot for another week or so, and the transitional clothing dilemma persists. The store that so upset me has my favorite kind of mid-calf length print rayon skirts because it’s apparently 1995 again. Those skirts will be just the thing to carry me through the warm days of the final transition from summer to fall. So I borrowed my husband’s Visa, set up a new online account with the store, and had the skirts shipped to my mother-in-law’s house. I get my skirts, and my boycott continues, as far as they know. Everyone wins.
I used to think that car-shopping was difficult, It’s nothing compared to buying a skirt.
Thursday, September 5, 2019
Senioritis
If you're a person who has a hard time accepting that summer is over, then one Montgomery County Public Schools Back to School Night will yank you right back to reality. Kick and scream if you want to but you are strapped onto a freight train of lunches and homework and sports and concerts and meetings, and there are no stops between here and June.
Yes, it's BTS night at Rockville High School and I'm sitting in a stairwell waiting for the festivities to begin. Four years of Rockville BTS nights taught me that arriving early enough to get a parking spot near the exit is key, so I arrived at 6. I joined the Booster Club and the PTSA, so I'm $60 poorer but rich in the knowledge that I am a responsible member of the Rockville High School community.
It's 6:30 now so class rotations will begin soon. I don't need a map and I don't need directions from the student guides and I don't need to visit the counseling office. I'm an alumni parent so I know these ropes. I'll walk the halls when the bell rings, adding considerably to my step count for today; and I'll meet my son's teachers (several of whom I already know). Then I will skip out midway through 8th period and run to my car, and I'll be on Baltimore Road before the rest of the suckers even get out of the building. Freshmen. SMH.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Uptown problems
It’s the next-to-last Friday in August and autumn is coming, whether I want it or not, and I don’t. I worked from home today, the first day in a week that the daytime temperatures fell below 90, and I listened as the rain pounded my roof, drops falling faster than my hands move on the keyboard (and they move pretty fast). My younger son’s high school orientation is next Thursday and then school starts on the day after Labor Day. We still have a few days of summer to cling to but it’s slipping away.
*****
I try to swim almost every day in the summer, but during the last few days of August, swimming becomes an act driven by desperation. If it’s August 23, as it is today; and I have a choice between swimming and almost anything else in life, then I will swim because time is running out. Yes, I can swim indoors all year round if I want to, but it’s not the same. It’s not even close.
It rained all day so I never did get a chance to swim, but tomorrow is another day.
*****
I was right about tomorrow, which is now today and is in fact another day, but completely different from yesterday. It’s Saturday, bright and sunny and at least 20 degrees cooler than it was two days ago. I’m still going to swim, because the water will still be warm and because I’d swim even if it wasn’t.
It’s Saturday, so I really have no idea what’s going on in the world. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that there’s no way to consult any news source without violating my weekend Trump embargo, so whatever is happening on the world stage right now will have to wait until Monday.
WIth current events off limits for now, I’m continuing to read Postwar. Normally, I finish a book in a few days, but this one is quite long. One of the things that this book has made me think about is how many of the things that we think of as history or tradition or culture are incredibly fleeting and short-lived. Things change so much in the course of a hundred years; and while a hundred years is a long time in one sense, it’s just a single human lifespan, give or take. My great-grandmother lived to age 106. My grandmother will be 96 in December. American constitutional democracy has been around for over 200 years, but what we think of as the American way of life is a product of the last 70 years. Almost everything is temporary. Practically nothing lasts forever.
*****
Except winter. Winter lasts forever. Is it too early to start complaining about winter when it’s still August (Sunday, August 25 to be exact) and it’s sunny and bright with temperatures in the low 70s?
No. It is not too early at all. August high temperatures in the low 70s are the slippery slope (Trump didn’t invent that expression) to autumn, which is the even steeper slippery slope to six months of winter. Yesterday, the pool water was still almost warm and I had a lovely swim with a short sharp shock of cold air at the end. Last night the temperatures dropped
into the 50s, and today is the kind of day that pumpkin spice latte drinkers dream about all summer long: cool, breezy, with low humidity--the worst kind of day for outdoor swimming.
You know what? It’ll be bracing.
*****
I’ll get there eventually. Meanwhile, my son and I are watching “Any Given Sunday,” a movie that I haven’t seen or thought about for a long time. I like this movie, probably more than any other Oliver Stone movie. My husband disliked it because of the fictionalized football league and teams--he thought that Stone should have paid for licensing rights to use real NFL teams. I disagree. I think that the stylized versions of NFL uniforms and the predator team names lay bare what professional football really is, without the veneer of family and inclusiveness that the NFL is always trying to impose on it. Professional football and the whole one-percent corporate edifice that supports it is a simple matter of strong vs. weak; and strong always wins.
I don’t even know what I’m talking about right now. I feel for John C. McGinley’s character, the blowhard broadcaster. There’s a lot of pressure in talking or writing for a living. You have to churn out a lot of words in a day, and not all of them are going to be good. Not all of them are even going to make any sense.
*****
It’s Monday now and I’m all caught up on current events. And even though it’s still August, it stayed in the 60s all day today. It was cloudy when I got home, with a breeze that made it downright chilly. The water was cold yesterday (I did finally swim) and I knew it would be much worse today and I didn’t have the heart to get into a cold dank pool on an October-looking night. It feels like summer is a rug that’s been yanked out from under me without so much as a by-your-leave. I went for a walk instead. It was fine.
*****
It’s Tuesday, so there's less than a week left of real summer. It was a few degrees warmer outside today; still unseasonably cool and overcast, but the air was still and soft and humid and the sun was trying to break through the heavy cloud cover. I came home from work and grocery shopping, and my whole body yearned for a swim. The air was just warm enough and really, i thought, how cold can the water have gotten in just two days.
It was freezing cold and glorious. I swam laps and wrapped myself in a towel and went on my way rejoicing, having snatched summer from the jaws of winter. It’s not over yet.
*****
OK, so maybe it’s over. It’s Wednesday night, 8 PM, and I’m working on a proposal (well, I was until a minute ago, and I will again in another minute) and tomorrow morning, I’ll take my younger son to his high school orientation. It’s a half-day, and then he’s off on Friday and for the rest of the weekend until school starts in earnest next Tuesday. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again--the moment I have to drop a child off in front of a school building in the morning, and then wade through the pile of paperwork that will come home with him in the afternoon is the moment that summer is pretty much over.
I almost forgot to write something today because proposal deadlines wait for no one. This probably isn’t how I should be spending my time right now, but writing (like swimming) is one of only many things that I’m compulsive about. A 4 pm thunderstorm curtailed my swimming plans, which is just as well because I have a proposal to write. Hasta manana.
*****
And now it’s manana, meaning Thursday. I’m knee-deep in proposals, but that’s a big improvement over yesterday, when I was neck-deep. And speaking of deep, I also got to swim again today. The pool was even colder than it was on Tuesday, and I impressed myself by slipping right into the water without a moment’s hesitation. I didn’t have much time, and every minute I spent trying to steel myself to the cold was a minute that I wouldn’t have have been swimming, on one of the very last swimming days of the summer. Four days to go and I plan to immerse myself in that icy water on every single one of them.
*****
“I got uptown problems, and they’re not really problems at all.”
Brad Pitt’s character says this to his daughter in “Moneyball,” a movie that my 14-year-old son and I will watch any time it’s on. It was on last night, so of course, we watched part of it. It’s Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, and I’m almost finished working, and I’m gearing up for the three-day celebration (for other people) and period of mourning (for me) that is the official end of summer. Yes, I know that summer doesn’t really end for three weeks, but Labor Day is the end of summer for those of us who define summer as no school, no bedtime, and no day complete without at least a short swim. It’s my least favorite weekend of the year, but that’s an uptown problem, isn’t it? There are lots of good things about fall if you don’t count pumpkin spice latte, and as soon as I finish complaining about the end of summer, I’ll figure out what those good things might be.
*****
It’s Labor Day now. I’m writing something else so I worked on that on Saturday and Sunday. And now I’m back to lamenting the end of summer. And I’m doing other things, too. I mean, I don’t sit around and bitch all day long. That you know of.
Labor Day is a combination holiday and prep day. Now that everyone is back to school again, I need to get things ready. Lunches and breakfast and dinner and clothes and supplies and stuff. They’re actually old enough to do all of that themselves. And they do all of it themselves. It’s just that I feel that I still need to oversee and supervise and coordinate. I like being needed.
It’s 11:50 AM now. The pool opens in ten minutes, so I’m going to do some stuff, and then I’m going to do some more stuff, and then I”m going to get out of the house and stay out of the house until 9 PM. And then tomorrow, it’s officially fall. And that’s not the best thing, but it’s not the worst thing. It’s an uptown problem, and that’s not a problem at all.
*****
I try to swim almost every day in the summer, but during the last few days of August, swimming becomes an act driven by desperation. If it’s August 23, as it is today; and I have a choice between swimming and almost anything else in life, then I will swim because time is running out. Yes, I can swim indoors all year round if I want to, but it’s not the same. It’s not even close.
It rained all day so I never did get a chance to swim, but tomorrow is another day.
*****
I was right about tomorrow, which is now today and is in fact another day, but completely different from yesterday. It’s Saturday, bright and sunny and at least 20 degrees cooler than it was two days ago. I’m still going to swim, because the water will still be warm and because I’d swim even if it wasn’t.
It’s Saturday, so I really have no idea what’s going on in the world. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that there’s no way to consult any news source without violating my weekend Trump embargo, so whatever is happening on the world stage right now will have to wait until Monday.
WIth current events off limits for now, I’m continuing to read Postwar. Normally, I finish a book in a few days, but this one is quite long. One of the things that this book has made me think about is how many of the things that we think of as history or tradition or culture are incredibly fleeting and short-lived. Things change so much in the course of a hundred years; and while a hundred years is a long time in one sense, it’s just a single human lifespan, give or take. My great-grandmother lived to age 106. My grandmother will be 96 in December. American constitutional democracy has been around for over 200 years, but what we think of as the American way of life is a product of the last 70 years. Almost everything is temporary. Practically nothing lasts forever.
*****
Except winter. Winter lasts forever. Is it too early to start complaining about winter when it’s still August (Sunday, August 25 to be exact) and it’s sunny and bright with temperatures in the low 70s?
No. It is not too early at all. August high temperatures in the low 70s are the slippery slope (Trump didn’t invent that expression) to autumn, which is the even steeper slippery slope to six months of winter. Yesterday, the pool water was still almost warm and I had a lovely swim with a short sharp shock of cold air at the end. Last night the temperatures dropped
into the 50s, and today is the kind of day that pumpkin spice latte drinkers dream about all summer long: cool, breezy, with low humidity--the worst kind of day for outdoor swimming.
You know what? It’ll be bracing.
*****
I’ll get there eventually. Meanwhile, my son and I are watching “Any Given Sunday,” a movie that I haven’t seen or thought about for a long time. I like this movie, probably more than any other Oliver Stone movie. My husband disliked it because of the fictionalized football league and teams--he thought that Stone should have paid for licensing rights to use real NFL teams. I disagree. I think that the stylized versions of NFL uniforms and the predator team names lay bare what professional football really is, without the veneer of family and inclusiveness that the NFL is always trying to impose on it. Professional football and the whole one-percent corporate edifice that supports it is a simple matter of strong vs. weak; and strong always wins.
I don’t even know what I’m talking about right now. I feel for John C. McGinley’s character, the blowhard broadcaster. There’s a lot of pressure in talking or writing for a living. You have to churn out a lot of words in a day, and not all of them are going to be good. Not all of them are even going to make any sense.
*****
It’s Monday now and I’m all caught up on current events. And even though it’s still August, it stayed in the 60s all day today. It was cloudy when I got home, with a breeze that made it downright chilly. The water was cold yesterday (I did finally swim) and I knew it would be much worse today and I didn’t have the heart to get into a cold dank pool on an October-looking night. It feels like summer is a rug that’s been yanked out from under me without so much as a by-your-leave. I went for a walk instead. It was fine.
*****
It’s Tuesday, so there's less than a week left of real summer. It was a few degrees warmer outside today; still unseasonably cool and overcast, but the air was still and soft and humid and the sun was trying to break through the heavy cloud cover. I came home from work and grocery shopping, and my whole body yearned for a swim. The air was just warm enough and really, i thought, how cold can the water have gotten in just two days.
It was freezing cold and glorious. I swam laps and wrapped myself in a towel and went on my way rejoicing, having snatched summer from the jaws of winter. It’s not over yet.
*****
OK, so maybe it’s over. It’s Wednesday night, 8 PM, and I’m working on a proposal (well, I was until a minute ago, and I will again in another minute) and tomorrow morning, I’ll take my younger son to his high school orientation. It’s a half-day, and then he’s off on Friday and for the rest of the weekend until school starts in earnest next Tuesday. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again--the moment I have to drop a child off in front of a school building in the morning, and then wade through the pile of paperwork that will come home with him in the afternoon is the moment that summer is pretty much over.
I almost forgot to write something today because proposal deadlines wait for no one. This probably isn’t how I should be spending my time right now, but writing (like swimming) is one of only many things that I’m compulsive about. A 4 pm thunderstorm curtailed my swimming plans, which is just as well because I have a proposal to write. Hasta manana.
*****
And now it’s manana, meaning Thursday. I’m knee-deep in proposals, but that’s a big improvement over yesterday, when I was neck-deep. And speaking of deep, I also got to swim again today. The pool was even colder than it was on Tuesday, and I impressed myself by slipping right into the water without a moment’s hesitation. I didn’t have much time, and every minute I spent trying to steel myself to the cold was a minute that I wouldn’t have have been swimming, on one of the very last swimming days of the summer. Four days to go and I plan to immerse myself in that icy water on every single one of them.
*****
“I got uptown problems, and they’re not really problems at all.”
Brad Pitt’s character says this to his daughter in “Moneyball,” a movie that my 14-year-old son and I will watch any time it’s on. It was on last night, so of course, we watched part of it. It’s Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, and I’m almost finished working, and I’m gearing up for the three-day celebration (for other people) and period of mourning (for me) that is the official end of summer. Yes, I know that summer doesn’t really end for three weeks, but Labor Day is the end of summer for those of us who define summer as no school, no bedtime, and no day complete without at least a short swim. It’s my least favorite weekend of the year, but that’s an uptown problem, isn’t it? There are lots of good things about fall if you don’t count pumpkin spice latte, and as soon as I finish complaining about the end of summer, I’ll figure out what those good things might be.
*****
It’s Labor Day now. I’m writing something else so I worked on that on Saturday and Sunday. And now I’m back to lamenting the end of summer. And I’m doing other things, too. I mean, I don’t sit around and bitch all day long. That you know of.
Labor Day is a combination holiday and prep day. Now that everyone is back to school again, I need to get things ready. Lunches and breakfast and dinner and clothes and supplies and stuff. They’re actually old enough to do all of that themselves. And they do all of it themselves. It’s just that I feel that I still need to oversee and supervise and coordinate. I like being needed.
It’s 11:50 AM now. The pool opens in ten minutes, so I’m going to do some stuff, and then I’m going to do some more stuff, and then I”m going to get out of the house and stay out of the house until 9 PM. And then tomorrow, it’s officially fall. And that’s not the best thing, but it’s not the worst thing. It’s an uptown problem, and that’s not a problem at all.
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