Hand me a fork

It's Friday night and the FAFSA is making me want to walk right into the ocean. God help me. God help us all. 

*****

Let's talk about books instead. So after I finished Lina and Serge, I visited the opposite end of the political spectrum, with The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss. Actually, I have no idea what Auchincloss’s politics were (though I’m pretty sure that he was on the not a Communist sympathizer like so many writers of the early to mid 20th century). But he came from and wrote about the very rarified and inbred society of 19th and 20th century New York City aristocracy, as far from revolutionary Russia as you can get.

I liked the stories, and I’d read more of Auchincloss. Almost every one of his characters is a New York lawyer, as was Auchincloss himself; and most of the stories are set in the 20th century, though he also set a couple of them during the mid 19th century. Those stories were almost as believable and effective as the contemporary (to Auchincloss) stories because he had a thorough understanding of the inner life of people such as his characters, and of human nature in general. I don’t think that his focus on a narrow stratum of society limits the artistic merit of his work; I think that he just recognized that a writer can’t write about everyone and everything. That made him a good writer, not a bad one.

Segueing from plutocracy into anarchy, I read To the Barricades, the Alix Kates Shulman biography of Emma Goldman. It was OK. I’m not an admirer of Emma Goldman (nor of Ms. Shulman) but she saw through Soviet Communism far sooner than most early 20th century radicals. Aside from the hagiographic tone of the book and the frank admiration of Goldman’s total commitment to politics at the expense of everything else, I completely reject Shulman’s premise that anarchy has been misunderstood and poorly executed and that true anarchy is the means to a just society. Humans have an innate need for leadership, and many (maybe even most) people need a structured and organized society, with recognizable authority. And defending the weak against the strong would seem to be impossible under anarchy. Though I have to admit that if I lived as a poor person in early 20th century America (or even in early 21st century America), I’d be hard-pressed to see the value of the state, which does an absolutely shitty job of defending the weak or reining in the strong. But just because no government can ever be truly just (because we live in a fallen world), it doesn’t follow that we shouldn’t try.

After Emma, I started on Savage Beauty, the Nancy Mitford biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. It's totally coincidental that I chose another biography of a famous woman written by a different famous woman. Of course, Emma Goldman was much more famous than her biographer, but Nancy Mitford was probably just as famous as Edna St. Vincent Millay. Anyway, I stopped after one page. I'm sure it's interesting, and I'll return to it eventually. But after Emma Goldman and Louis Auchincloss and the Prokofievs, I've had enough of the 20th century for now. We are hurtling toward a replay of the years 1929 through 1944, and I don't need to read the handbook.

*****

Speaking of handbooks. Hey FAFSA: What the fuck does this mean? 

How much did your Parent 1 (father/mother/stepparent) earn from working (wages, salaries, tips, etc.) in 2017? This amount is your Parent 1 (father's/mother's/stepparent's) portion of IRS Form 1040-lines 7+12+18 and Box 14 [Code A] of IRS Schedule K-1 (Form 1065).

Does that seem to you like a straightforward question? Well riddle me this: Why, first of all, do you need to see our two individual wage incomes when we filed jointly? And WHY do you ask for the EXACT SAME THING for Parent 2? Same lines: 7+12+18. There are only ONE OF EACH of lines 7+12+18 on the 1040, and WE ONLY FILED ONE. Again: Married, Filing Jointly. What. In the ACTUAL HELL. If I had a fork, I'd stick it in my fucking eye.

Son of a bitch. 

*****

So that's me, filling out forms. That's the real reason why I lie awake worrying about a return to Soviet-style totalitarianism. It's not because of the gulag or the interrogation cells. It's because I imagine that every task in life would be prefaced by a 47-page-long web form that demands administrative details from 11 years ago, secured by two-factor authentication, and designed to time out every time your session is inactive for over 7 minutes and I just can't.

*****
It's Sunday now. I just read this over, and it reads as a little crusty.

I'll adjust your gross income!

I think that a break from the early 20th century and a break from the FAFSA would seem to be in order. Additional book reviews and procedural notes to follow. Be afraid.

Downtime

Monday: Christopher Columbus was a terrible person, and Columbus Day is a stupid, stupid holiday. But after years of 1099 contracting, I am grateful for any paid day off. I didn't do any work today. This does not count. Nor does the laundry.

Some of my friends have been urging me and other friends to do less. Reject chronic busy-ness, reject overwork and overscheduling, and just be. "You're a human being, not a human doing," they say. "You're a person, not a productivity machine." "You're allowed to exist without having anything to show for it."  All true, I suppose, but that's not how I live my life. It's not how I roll. Like Toad, I'm a veritable slave to my to-do lists; and when I'm not doing something, I worry that I should be.

But I didn't do any work today. I went shopping and bought some new things. I went for a walk and waved to Running Lady. I took a nap while my kids watched "The Office" on Netflix. I did some housework. I read a book. It was delightful.

Tuesday: The best thing about an officially sanctioned weekday off is that no one else worked, either; so you're not behind. Everything was just as I left it on Friday. If not for the password reset debacle, it would have been a good day.

But there was a password reset debacle, and I have only myself to blame for it. Last week, I had to reset my password for the timecard system. Yes, that timecard system. I was sad that I had to reset the password, because first of all I hate resetting a password like I hate rodents and invasive medical procedures. And because my old password was awesome, comprising a sharply worded insult to the company that invented the timecard system and the required capital letter, number, and special character. It made me laugh every time I logged in, and that's worth something.

But I had to change it. And I decided to outdo myself and make an even funnier password. And so I did. I created a funny funny password, and I confirmed the funny password, and I completed the captcha, chortling with glee the whole time. What could have gone wrong? What could I have possibly have forgotten?

Yes, the super-creative password is the Internet version of hiding something so well that you'll never ever find it. I played chicken with the log-in screen, refusing to click on the stupid stupid "forgot your password?" link, knowing all the time that it would lock me out after too many unsuccessful attempts. And I made too many unsuccessful attempts, and it locked me out. And that was the end of that.

So after the system administrator bailed me out of Internet jail, I created a new password. And I wrote it down.

Which is good. Because it's hilarious.

*****

Thursday: I didn't actually skip a day here; I just wrote something that is becoming a little too long to be just a daily journal entry, so I'll expand on it a bit and post it next week. I'm sure you're all agog waiting to read it.  

Several minutes of your life that you can never reclaim

Wednesday: Yesterday, I took my normal lunchtime walk through Twinbrook, and I fell down, hard. I really have no idea why. It wasn't wet or icy, and I didn't trip on anything, or step into any holes. I fell off my shoes. That's the best way I can describe what happened. One minute I was up, and the next minute I was down.

I don't generally wear high heels at all. Whenever the subject of shoes comes up, I always joke that I have to be able to run for my life in my shoes. Everyone laughs at that joke. Only I'm kind of serious. But I was wearing a kind of chunky-heeled sandal, and I guess I stepped the wrong way. I skinned my left knee pretty badly, and scraped my right hand, with which I partially broke my fall. I'm pretty sore today, but it could have been so much worse.

Like most adults who fall for no apparent reason, I immediately looked around to make sure that no one saw me fall. I'd just walked past several other people who were walking, and had passed a house where two people were sitting on the front porch. When no one ran to my aid, I couldn't decide if I should be relieved that no one had witnessed my embarrassing failure to remain upright, or outraged that witnesses who had likely seen me fall to my knees didn't rush immediately to my aid. But as I said, the damage was relatively minor, and so no aid was needed.

But still.

*****

Friday: I'm working from home again today, as I normally do on Friday, so I'm marinating in the blend of fake outrage and indignation that is emanating from MSNBC, which is on as background noise. How is it possible that McConnell and Feinstein and Grassley and Schumer can even maintain straight faces as they decry hyper-partisanship and lament the passing of civility and reason in politics?

*****

Saturday: Well.

*****

Sunday: I'm so cranky today. No, not because of that. That doesn't matter. It was all but inevitable.

Well, it does matter. But it's not why I'm cranky. I'm cranky because I'm in the middle of the FAFSA. Which I started right after I registered one kid for winter sports, which is a 40-step process that meanders along through 27 or so electronic pages. Then after the thousandth click, the long-awaited "submit" click, you see the dreaded red error message, and you carefully examine each page to find the one error that is preventing your exit from this hell. And you find that the error was your failure to answer one required question: In addition to the sport for which your child is registering (Boys' Swim and Dive) is he or she interested in participating in pompons?

This was a yes/no question, but perhaps they could just offer pompons as a sport for which to register, thereby obviating the need for this question. And what is a pompon? Why only one M? Everyone calls them "pom-poms."

According to Grammarist, the original word was pompon, but because most people misheard it as "pom-pom" (of COURSE they did), the two-M version has come into more common use, and now each version of the word is equally popular. Grammarist might be right about the origin part, but they're dead wrong about the relative popularity of "pompon" vs. the far more common (and rightly so) "pom-pom."

So that was fun.

Then I had to pay for a field trip for another kid, using another 40-page web form, which required me to first create a "profile" of my student, and then select that profile from a drop down.

And now I'm on the FAFSA.

And I'm a little stabby.

And my knee still hurts.

So that's all for now. I wrote about something real last week. This is the best I can do this week.

Pompons. 

Ridiculous.

Testimony

I was at work last Thursday, so I didn't get to watch most of the Kavanaugh testimony. I listened on the radio on my way home. I believed her. I didn't believe him. That's probably all I have to say about that.

Last year when #metoo started as a movement, I thought a little bit about the line between inappropriate but overlookable behavior and real sexual assault. #metoo was just the beginning, as all of the millions of women who spoke up then are now sharing what happened in the aftermath, or what didn't, if they chose not to report.

I graduated from high school in 1983, just like Brett Kavanaugh. And I had a bad experience at a party. And I didn't say a thing about it. It wasn't as bad as what happened to Dr. Ford. The boy was just being a jerk, and he stopped when I told him to stop. Well, he stopped after the second or third time I told him to stop. The point is that I was angry and upset, but at no point did I feel threatened. But if something worse had happened, I promise you that I wouldn't have said a thing about it. In 1983, it was always the girl's fault. Always.

*****
So I believe her. And I don't believe him, not just because I believe her, but because it also appears that he lied about his college drinking, which was apparently anything but moderate according to classmates who have come forward since last Thursday. Even if you believe that Dr. Ford might have mistaken the identity of her attacker (and I don't; I believe that she's quite clear about who held her down and covered her mouth when she tried to scream), then it's still likely that he committed perjury.

There's no good ending to this, sadly. My guess (if I were a betting person, it would be my bet) is that he will be confirmed after a hasty and very limited FBI investigation that will unsurprisingly reveal absolutely nothing. This will be a bad outcome for everyone; for every woman who is convinced that women are systematically devalued, for the Senate as an institution, for the Supreme Court; and even for Judge Kavanaugh, who will serve his lifetime appointment with the proverbial asterisk next to his name.

*****
I was working from home on Friday, and I was watching as Senator Flake got up from his seat on the Republican side of the room, walked over to the Democratic side, and tapped Senator Coons on the shoulder. Later, I saw the video of his elevator confrontation with those two anguished women. And I looked at his face, and I saw real compassion, and something else, too--he seemed genuinely unsure how to proceed. He had already declared that he would vote to support Kavanaugh, and I think that those women gave him pause.

Yes, I know that it's not enough. I know that the White House has already placed constraints on the FBI investigation that will make it all but a waste of time. And I know that unless another bombshell drops this week, Flake will be among the Republicans voting to confirm. And I know that the Republican leadership under Mitch McConnell doesn't care--AT ALL--about doing what is right for the country, or even what is right for their own stupid party. They only care about winning each stupid street fight as it breaks out, and doing as much damage as possible in the process. But it still makes a difference to me that a Republican Senator listened to those two women instead of closing the elevator door. It makes a difference that he listened to them as if they mattered, and then tried to do something, however little. It's not enough, but it's something. I'll take something.

Carry on

As a child, I used to feel ever so sorry for my mother and her friends and my aunts and my grandmother, all of whom carried handbags that they called "pocketbooks." My mother's pocketbook was a shoulder bag, but older women  still carried satchel-style bags that they carried by their short little handles, or hung on their forearms. Like all children, I hated to carry anything, and I thought that having to carry a thing full of other things, every day, even on the weekend, would be an intolerable burden on my life.

I gave this considerable thought, in fact. I planned to get around the pocketbook thing the same way men seemed to: with pockets. If every single article of clothing I ever bought and wore had pockets, then I'd never need a pocketbook. One pocket for my money, one pocket for the keys that were the one thing that I envied adults, and maybe one more pocket for random small items. I was also certain that I would never ever wear makeup; and I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't continue to wear a ponytail every single day, which would obviate the need to carry a comb, and so voila! Problem solved.

*****

So last week, I finally finished reading Lina and Serge. I learned a lot about artists and musicians in the early Soviet Union. For example, I learned that Serge Prokofiev was a jerk. I also learned that in the most dire of circumstances, a woman needs a handbag more than almost anything else. Lina was a musician, too; a singer, though not a very successful one. When she was shipped off to the gulag, she carried some sheet music with her. During her eight-year-long imprisonment, she managed to piece together a tote bag and to embroider it with her own designs, all using whatever scraps of fabric or thread she could scrounge up. Of all of the things that she could have used her limited energy and resources toward, she chose a handbag. And of all of the things that might have survived her trip to and from the gulag, and then her later travels around the Soviet Union and abroad, the tote bag survived. No recordings of her singing are known to exist, but the tote bag remained with her until she died and was preserved by one of her sons for years afterward.

*****

I'm not a fan of the NFL. I think that football is boring, and not just boring compared to a real sport like hockey, but super-long meeting with a monotone presenter kill-me-now BORING. I think that NFL cheerleading degrades women (not that anyone cares about that). I think that NFL owners are either greedy cowards or cowardly greedy people (noun for greedy person--anyone?) for failing to stand up to our ridiculous President on the anthem-kneeling why-is-this-even-an-issue issue. But my biggest objection to the NFL and all its works and pomps is the clear handbag rule, about which I haven't decided yet which is more astonishing:

• That the NFL has the nerve to demand that women expose the contents of their handbags not just to security screening (a necessary evil, I suppose) but to public scrutiny.  Not even scrutiny, because to scrutinize is to examine carefully, and you don't have to look that carefully to see through a damn plastic bag. 
• OR that so many women still attend games, carrying their clear plastic NFL-branded handbags, paying for the privilege of being insulted by the National Football League.

Men and women are different. I'm perfectly fine with according men their privileges (no, not THAT kind of privilege), as long as women can have theirs. My privileges are few but treasured: I park my car in the garage, and not in the driveway. I'm not responsible for pest control. And my handbag is sacred.

*****

The Kate Spade bag arrived, and I've been carrying it for a few weeks now. And because I couldn't get it out of my mind, I also bought the little Coach bag. The Kate Spade is a little nicer, and it's a light color, so I don't carry it when it rains. And it rains all the time. So it's not quite true to say that I've been carrying it for a few weeks; more like I've carried it two or three times during the last few weeks. But they're both beautiful and practical bags that accommodate everything I need for any day not spent in Siberia or Kolyma.

Never say never; that's what I always say. Or almost always, because I guess you should never say always either. My ten-year-old self would never have believed me if I'd gone back 40 years to tell her that when she grew up, she'd not only carry a handbag every day, but that handbags would be among her favorite things. I still wish I had more pockets, but I'll always have a pocketbook.

American Tune

I was born in Connecticut, in a small town near New Haven, and I lived there until I was six. We lived in an apartment; in the converted second floor of an old house, not in an apartment building. My parents didn't like the landlord. In fact, it wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized that "landlord" wasn't an insult.

*****
My memories of that place are of course very vague, but I do remember a few things. The house had a big yard, with trees and a stone wall that was covered with ivy and moss or something. We played out there every day. My sister and I liked the fuzzy caterpillars that hung out on the stone wall.

I got pneumonia the winter that I was in kindergarten, and I remember spending all day, for several days, in my mother's bed. Like most parents at that time, my parents didn't allow the children to play in their bedroom, so I remember feeling very privileged to be allowed in there, especially in the giant bed.

My mom had a radio in the bedroom, and I remember hearing "Sounds of Silence" over and over again as I slept and woke. "Sounds of Silence" was released in 1965, so I don't know why the radio station was playing it so frequently in 1970. Maybe it was about Vietnam. I don't remember that I understood anything about Vietnam when I was five; I just remember that I knew that Vietnam was something that grownups talked about. Or maybe I only heard the song once and remember hearing it over and over. I was five.

My parents' marriage was troubled, and they divorced. I barely remember my father. He left and I never saw or heard from him again. We moved to Philadelphia, my mother's hometown, when I was six. My mother used to take us there to visit her family; we took the train from New Haven, because my parents had only one car. On one of these trips, my mother had the three of us children and herself in two seats. My brother, a baby at the time, was on her lap; and my sister and I, who were probably five and four, shared a seat. The train was full of mostly young people. I remember the train ride.

Apparently (this part I don't really remember), I asked my mother if the young people across the aisle from us were hippies. And apparently, the hippies heard me, and thought I was hilarious, and they entertained my sister and me for the rest of the trip. One of the boys had a guitar--that part, I do remember. I don't remember what songs he played, but I think of the train ride every time I hear "Scarborough Fair (Canticle)," so maybe he played that. Or maybe that song is just another hard-wired memory of my early childhood during the Vietnam War, riding trains to the city that would become my home.

Our first few months in Philadelphia were confusing. We lived with my grandparents, whose tiny three-bedroom rowhouse barely accommodated them, my youngest aunt (who was 8 at the time), and their German schnauzer, Toby. I slept on a cot in my aunt's bedroom. My mother, sister, and brother slept in the spare bedroom, which had a trundle bed. My mother worked during the day and was unhappy when she was home, and my grandmother was overwhelmed, having quadrupled the number of young children in her house.

*****
I'm watching old episodes of "The Office" as I'm writing this. Two separate Chewy.com commercials feature two different white women of about my age. Both women have shoulder-length wavy blondish hair and they both wear stretch jeans and long open cardigans. It's like they screen-tested two different actresses and then just decided, "what the hell, we like both of them."

*****
Soon enough, my mother found us a place to live--another rowhouse less than a mile from my grandparents' house. She got a car, and I started school at St. John the Baptist, where she had also gone to school, and we settled in to life in Philadelphia, and I grew up there.

Before the days of Apple Music and Pandora, kids listened to the radio. Kids still listen to the radio, because there's nothing like the random serendipity of just hearing your favorite song while you're driving along. It's even better when you're in a car full of people who love the same song, and you can all sing along together. In 1973, "Kodachrome" was one of those songs, and not just because we got a bad word pass on the word "crap" when we sang along with Paul Simon. I loved "Loves Me Like a Rock" even more than "Kodachrome," but "Kodachrome" is the song that recalls my childhood, like a photograph, like my mother's Instamatic, like the Fotomats that occupied every other street corner in Philadelphia.

I didn't think much about Paul Simon after 1973 or so, until 1979, when we sang "Sounds of Silence" at my first high school choir concert. I remembered it, and I dug out my mother's old Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel records, and then I was a fan all over again.

A few years later, I was out of college (not finished, but out) and working as a proofreader for an old-fashioned offset printing company. I was 21, with the wrong job and the wrong man and the wrong apartment in a very wrong neighborhood. Not gonna lie, as they say on the Internet: My life was a bit of a mess.

I was at a party one night, and the TV was on, tuned to "Saturday Night Live." Paul Simon was the musical guest (and maybe he was the host, too).  I went out and bought "Graceland" the next day, just so I could listen to "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" a  hundred more times. There are lots of albums that I really love, but "Graceland" is the one that I know best. I could sing every single word of that album. That's not a threat, just a statement of fact.

*****
In another of my favorite songs, "The Cool Cool River," from the 1991 "Rhythm of the Saints," Paul Simon sings "Sometimes, even music cannot substitute for tears."

But sometimes, it can. Music has substituted for tears for me more times than I can count, and no one's music more than Paul Simon's, which I have listened to for literally as long as I can remember and even longer. I probably heard it "Wednesday Morning 3 AM" in the womb.

Tonight is the last date on the "Homeward Bound" farewell tour. Who knows what "farewell" really means--lots of artists and athletes "retire" only to return a month or a year later. And last Friday night, when I finally got to see him live for the very first time, he sounded great. So maybe he'll perform live again--maybe he'll even tour again. But I'm glad I was there, last tour or not. I'm glad I got to share over 50 years of music with 40,000 or so of my closest friends, many of whom weren't even alive when even "Graceland" or "The Rhythm of the Saints" were first released, let alone "The Sounds of Silence" or "There Goes Rhymin' Simon." I bought a t-shirt, and then I bought another one. I can still hear the music, a week later. I've been hearing it for my entire life.

On the daily

Monday: Dreary, for the third straight day. Gray, wet, bedraggled, and droopy; that's how everything looks right now and that's how I felt when I came home from work. Dreary.

A walk almost always helps, especially a walk with music. It was still raining, but only a little bit, so I started rice for dinner, changed my clothes, put my iPod on shuffle, and went. I skipped a few songs, and then landed on Erasure's "Heart of Stone," which never fails to cheer me up.  How could it not:

I cry for your heart of stone

I´m gonna wait until you come home
Oh why am I all alone?
I´m as good as dead yet

I know. But it's upbeat, as songs about despair go. And it's not real despair, anyway. It's pop music heartbreak despair. Not the same thing at all. 

Last week, I wrote that I had finally tackled the back-to-school pile of paper, and I did, but I didn't finish, so I'm trying to do that now. I have to set up an account on a new website, because of course there's a new website. There's always a new website. More tomorrow. 

Tuesday: See yesterday if you're looking for the weather report, because today was nearly identical to yesterday, and we have days more of this to come. Considering what's bearing down on North Carolina right now, I shouldn't complain.

I was planning to write a newsletter article today, but I didn't quite get to the writing part. I thought about it, and made mental notes, and then planned to set aside time to actually write it. It's a multi-step process. I should have a newsletter article ready to go by December or so. Give or take.

Wednesday: We live in the Old Testament now.

Thursday: Eighth grade back-to-school night. My sister-in-law, now mother of a kindergartner, texted me from her first back-to-school night:

Back-to-school night is BRUTAL.

She's not exaggerating. Kindergarten BTS night is when you learn the hard way that Montgomery County Public Schools owns your sorry ass for the next 13 years. If you've never considered homeschooling, then one MCPS back-to-school night might drive you right off the grid.

Friday: We're pretty far from Florence's path, but we're also on day 7 of gloom, with no end in sight. I won't complain, though. I have been selfishly monitoring Florence's route landward, because we have tickets to Paul Simon tonight and I didn't want to miss the show. And now, it's not even going to rain tonight.

Saturday: I finally turned in my newsletter article. Paul Simon will require an entirely separate post, which I'll write next week. The sun might come out on Wednesday. 

Annual complaint

Every time I look to see where my huge number of readers come from, I find one visitor from Portugal. It's probably Madonna.

*****
It's 12:15 on Sunday, Labor Day weekend. This is my least favorite time of the year, because summer is almost over. The pumpkin spice trolling has already begun. But there's still a day and a half of pool time left. A day and a half of pool time, but also a day and a half before school starts. I just realized that I probably need to buy school lunch food, and school supplies. I assume that people have backpacks, or that they would have said something by now if they don't. I assume that their summer reading is done. When it comes to school preparation, I'm less hands-on than I used to be. It's only a year before at least one of them will have to take care of all of this on his own, so it's probably good for him to get some practice now.

*****

I don't want to think or write any more about this guy; and with this guy, I can't even begin. It's all too much and my mental and emotional resources are limited. Maybe later. For now, I will write about handbags.

I'm pretty relentlessly practical, in most matters. I have far too many handbags, because I love them, but even my too many handbags are very practical. They're almost all nylon of some sort, with lots of pockets and organizational features, and 2-inch-wide seatbelt webbing crossbody straps that never wear out and that allow me to carry everything that I or anyone near me could possibly ever need. That's the way I have always liked it. And then a few weeks ago, I felt like I wanted to stop carrying 40 pounds of stuff with me, everywhere I go. All of a sudden, I wanted to carry a bag that is small and elegant and stylish and expensive-looking and incapable of accommodating more than a wallet and keys and a phone and maybe a lipstick or something.  I don't want to be a pack mule. I don't want to wear a seatbelt unless I'm driving a car.

When I was in Montreal, I almost bought a little Coach bag that I saw someone carrying. I looked at it at the Hudson Bay store, and then visited it online a few times, but decided against it. Too busy a pattern. It wouldn't go with everything. I have to be at least somewhat practical. Then, when I returned to work, I admired a new coworker's Kate Spade bag. It wasn't exactly the right bag for me (I want small, but not too small) but it made me want to own a Kate Spade bag again.

Did you know that Costco carries Kate Spade bags? I didn't either, but I checked online, because I love Costco. I'd rather shop at Costco than Neiman Marcus. Again, I'm very practical. The selection was very small, which is a good thing in my case, because I'd rather not have too many options. Of the four or five Kate Spades that Costco was offering, one looked like just the thing, so I ordered it. It should arrive this week. I'll share a full report.

*****

It's Tuesday now. School is back in session, and the pool is closed, and the easy rhythm of August has to yield to conflicting schedules and overlapping activities and Halloween displays that will disappear weeks before Halloween to make way for Christmas decorations. Night will come a little earlier every day. And of course, the pool is closed, and that means that summer is officially over, meteorological calendar notwithstanding.

As much as I love to swim, I didn't really hang out at the pool very much this summer. I swam almost every day, but that's all I did--I would swim laps for 30 minutes or so, and then go home. Yesterday, I stayed at the pool all afternoon, and was in the water for over three hours, swimming and floating and talking to my friends and watching the neighborhood kids frantically wringing every drop of chlorine-soaked fun out of the last day of summer. As the darkness fell and the air grew a little cooler, I realized that I was too tired to continue, so I finally had to get out of the water. The last whistle blew  a few minutes later, and it was over again, just like that.

*****
Curse you, pumpkin spice. Curse you. This last weekend was nearly perfect, and I'll be sad for a few days now that it, and summer, are over. Maybe a new handbag will cheer me up.

Let it snow

It's the last week of summer, at least for all practical purposes. I know that summer doesn't officially end in a meteorological sense until later in September, but when the pool closes and kids are back in school, then summer is over as far as I'm concerned. And I hate when summer is over. 

But I still have a week, so it's not over yet. There's a week left to swim, and to eat dinner at 9:30 PM, and to sleep a little later in the morning because I don't have to wake teenagers up. And summer reading--there's a week left of that, too. I read all the time, all year round, but I do tend to read more than usual in the summer. 

I finally finished Entering Ephesus. I hated the ending almost as much as I hated the ending of Atonement, for which I believe Ian McEwan still owes me an apology, so I'm happy to have it out of my hair. Now I'm reading Lina and Serge, a biography of Lina Prokofiev. Lina was married to Serge Prokofiev, the great Russian composer. Like so many other Russians of the early 20th century, she ran afoul of the Soviet police state and spent years in the gulag. So this one is right up my alley, obviously. 

Last night, I recommended that a friend read A Gentleman in Moscow, which another friend had recommended to me. Lina Prokofiev's story made me think of the Count, thought the books are completely different. A Gentleman is a novel, and the reader comes to know the protagonist very well. I'm only a few chapters into Lina's story, but it's already clear that I won't get to know her as well as I got to know the Count.  Coincidentally, both of these characters, one historical and one fictional, passed through the Metropol Hotel. Lina had a chance meeting there that would later lead to her imprisonment, while the Count's entire story takes place there. The Count's story ends happily. I hope that Lina's does, too. 

*****

The word "narrative" is an interesting one, isn't it? In the strictly literal sense, it just means story. And I love stories, true or fictional.  But like so many other words, "narrative" has more than one meaning, not to mention lots of icky political overtones. Just to be helpful, because I'm nothing if not helpful, I'm going to try to explain how to use this word, and how not to use it. 

Let's say that you're Kelli Ward, and you say something idiotic and indefensible. And reporters report what you said. Here's a helpful hint, Kelli Ward--the suffix "er" is often appended to the end of a verb, like "report," which then becomes a noun that describes the occupation of the person who performs the activity described by that verb. It's a lot to take in, I know. Long story short, reporters report. That's their job. 

When that reporter reports (again--that's her job!) on the terrible and inexcusable and whiny and sniveling thing that you said, that reporter is NOT "creating a narrative." She's reporting a story. Even when you say something stupid and ridiculous--ESPECIALLY when you say something stupid and ridiculous--it's newsworthy when you are running for Senate. So instead of being a crybaby little snowflake* bitch and whining about "the media" and "the left," you could (crazy, I know!) just APOLOGIZEand move the hell on.  By the way, saying that you're sorry that other people "might have misconstrued" your remarks isn't REALLY apologizing, but it's a step in the right direction. 

I hope that was helpful. And I wish you well in life, Dr. Ward, but I also sincerely hope that you lose today.

*****

Summer and winter, and politics and literature, and truth and fiction. That's a lot in one blog post! Until next week...

*****

*Another word note. I hate the word "snowflake" to describe anything other than the cold white product of December storm clouds. But it's worth pointing out that it's not only over-sensitive college students who might need a "safe space." 

Something strange in the neighborhood

It's Saturday night, and I'm the only person home. My husband and younger son are at a baseball game, and my older son is at work. I'm unusually tired, so I'm in for the night at 8 PM. I'm going to watch the "Ghostbusters" remake with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon. I'm sitting on my couch with my computer on my lap, and without a thought in my head.

After I finished Lynn Freed's Leaving Home, I returned very briefly to Alison Lurie's Imaginary Friends. I'd intended to finish it, in fits and starts, in between reading other books, but I find that I can't make myself care about what happens to the Seekers. Right now, I'm reading Entering Ephesus, by Daphne Athas, an author I'd never heard of before I found this book. Entering Ephesus is a novel about three sisters whose family loses its fortune during the Great Depression and is forced to move from an unnamed New England beach town to Ephesus, a fictional southern college town. Apparently, the novel is somewhat autobiographical, and Ephesus is loosely based on Chapel Hill.

I'm almost finished with Entering Ephesus, and I don't know what to make of it. The racist language on almost every page is shocking, even considering the context of 1971, when it was published; and 1939, when the story begins. And the characters are mostly unsympathetic and unlikable; even borderline evil. On the other hand, it's hard to completely hate a book that includes passages like this:

"The linoleum rugs could not be taken up because the house was riddled with termites. In the middle of the night they could hear tiny, intermittent chain-saw noises as the termites worked, laborious as Communists digging the Moscow subway." This is part of a description of the broken-down house that the family rents when they arrive in Ephesus, having finally lost their beautiful 15-room mansion overlooking the sea.

In a later scene, the girls have entered the local school, where the youngest is instantly the most popular child in her class. Asked by the teacher to comment on an oral report presented by the  poorest, least fortunate child in the class, she praises the boy sincerely and winningly, causing his classmates to see him with new respect: "Even Miss Bogue felt a lump in her throat. There was a victorious feeling in the depths of her being, that feeling that arises when it is manifest that the underdog has won."

So I don't completely hate it. But I don't love it either, and I won't be sorry to finish it. I can overlook the racism, given the historical context. And unsympathetic or evil characters can make great novels, even if they win in the end. But I have an old-fashioned need for redeeming value in a novel; evil characters must be evil for a reason and must more importantly be opposed by good characters. And that's the deepest textual analysis and most insightful literary criticism you'll get around here. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 5, and three of those five points are conferred on the linoleum passage.


*****
Now it's 8:10 PM on Monday night, and I'm taking a break from work to write about work. I work too much. And that's all I have to say about that. 

*****
Tuesday. Once again, it's 8 PM; and once again, I still have work to do. And once again, I'm writing about it rather than doing it. It's a pattern.

I took a break for 30 minutes, to swim in a pool that was a tropical haven of rest yesterday and an icy Norwegian fjord today. OK, so I'm exaggerating. But it was cold. And it occurred to me, as I swam one chilly lap after another, with the sky gray and lowering, that yesterday might have been the turning point. It might have been the last day of warm-water swimming for 2018. Two weeks from today, the pool will be closed. I kept swimming as a few raindrops fell.

If you have ever worked on a huge proposal, then you know that some proposal tasks are worse than others. If a proposal is an aircraft carrier, then resumes and letters of commitment are KP. Do they have that in the Navy? Whatever the kitchen duty is called. I guess on a ship, it's a galley.  But it could be worse. I could be writing a compliance matrix. That's latrine duty.

I turned on some music a little while ago, because I needed an energy boost.

• "Mr. Blue Sky," Electric Light Orchestra. It's not possible to sustain a bad mood through this song.
• "Cheap Thrills," Sia. This song appeared on at least five "Worst Songs of 2016 According to Snotty Hipster Critics" lists. Morons. This is one of the greatest songs ever.
• "Forever," Chris Brown. Yeah, I know. Me too. But no one can be all bad who can make people so happy with just one song. 
• "Party in the USA," Miley Cyrus. Shut up. 
• "(Lay Down) Candles in the Wind," Melanie. My mom had the album, and we played it all the time. I could listen to this song a hundred times and never tire of it. I sing along like a six-year-old holding her mother's hairbrush like a microphone. 

*****

It's Wednesday now, and I have work to do, so of course I need to write about having work to do before I can actually do the work. The whole house of cards might be about to come down now, but I can't worry about history in the making. I have a proposal to write. 

Let's go back

It's Sunday morning. Normally, I write for a little while on Sunday morning, but I haven't left myself much time. When we return from a trip, the unpacking and laundry will often provoke a too-much-stuff-driven anxiety attack, and last night was no exception. Because we really do have too much stuff. So this morning, I cleaned rather than wrote.

I clean all the time, but routine everyday cleaning is different from turn-this-mother-out CLEANING. I'm organizing closets. I'm cleaning under things, and behind things, and on top of things. I'm purging.

But that's enough of that. What is this, HGTV?

*****
Memory is tricky, isn't it? You can be quite sure that something happened in a certain way, at a certain time. You might even be sure that you remember exactly what you were wearing, or what song was playing on the radio. And you can be wrong, even in your certainty that you remember every detail.

We went to Canada in 2010. We got passports for our children, who were 9 and 5 at the time, and renewed our own passports. I remember sitting at the Aspen Hill Post Office, waiting for our names to be called; and I remember completing the paperwork, and receiving all of our passports a few weeks later. My husband remembers the same appointment. And we did all go together, and we did sit and wait to hear our name called, and we did get our children's first passports.

Last Saturday night, we returned to the U.S. from Canada, via the same border crossing at Champlain--St. Bernard de Lacolle from which we'd entered Canada the previous Saturday. The very friendly U.S. Border Patrol agent chatted with us for a few minutes, asked us a few pro forma questions about why we'd been in Canada, and what we had purchased, and where else in the country we'd traveled. We answered, and then handed over our passports.

The border guard looked at our passports, and then looked closely at my husband. "Did you know that your passport is expired?" he asked.

"What?" we both exclaimed in unison. "No, that can't be," my husband said. "I renewed it in 2010, so it expires in 2020."

"No," said the border guard, "your wife's expires in 2020, but yours expired in June of this year. Didn't the Canadian border guards check it when you came into Canada?"

We looked at the passport, and realized that the man was 100% right. In 2008, my husband made his first return trip to Korea, the land of his birth (any excuse to write "the land of his birth"). He had renewed his passport earlier that year, and was only along for the ride when the boys and I got our passports in 2010. We had completely forgotten that small, but critical detail. Je ne me souviens pas. 

And the Canadian border guard? He had one job, as the hashtag goes. #RocketScience.

*****

Let's go back let's go back 
Let's go way on way back when
I didn't even know you, you couldn't have been too much more than ten
I ain't no psychiatrist, ain't no doctor with degrees
But it don't take too much high IQs to see what you're doing to me

I never used to cry at celebrity deaths, but as I've gotten older, I've come to understand the relationship between ordinary people and their favorite celebrities. They speak for us, or express something for us that we can't. And we don't have to know them personally, or to even meet them for a moment, to feel love and kinship with them, and gratitude for the gifts that they share. That's how I felt about Mary Tyler Moore, and Carrie Fisher, and Kate Spade. And Aretha Franklin. "Think," one of Aretha's own songs, was the one that I couldn't get out of my head today. You have to watch her perform that song, not just listen to it, because she used her whole body when she sang, with a combination of freedom and abandon, but total control, that was unique to her. I kept singing "Think" to myself, but I didn't cry until I saw a later performance of "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman," a song written by Carole King but owned by Aretha.

We can listen to Aretha forever; but it won't be the same, knowing that she's gone and that there won't be any new Aretha performances.

People walking around everyday
Playing games, taking score
Trying to make other people lose their minds
Ah, be careful you don't lose yours

I'll be careful I don't lose mine. Aretha Franklin, rest in peace. 

Il est temps de rentrer a la maison

It always happens this way. When I come to a new city, I'm homesick for the first day or so (I get homesick when I'm 30 minutes from home) and then I get my bearings. When I finally feel completely at home, it's time to leave.

It's our last night in Montreal. I'm ready to return home, but I'll miss it here. I'll miss hearing French spoken everywhere. I'll miss seeing cathedrals on every corner, and smelling crepes cooking, and drinking Tim Hortons coffee every morning (we bought a can to take home, but it's not the same as buying it in a paper cup). I'll miss chatting in French with store clerks and hotel employees until they say something that I don't understand, and see my blank look of incomprehension and then switch effortlessly to English. And then they say "thank you," while I say "merci beaucoup." And they say "have a good day!" And I say "Au revoir, bonne journee!"

One more, from the overlook at Chalet du Mont Royal

Au revoir, Montreal. Bonne journee, and many more. 

Picture yourself in a boat on a river

It's Thursday, our next-to-last day in Montreal. We haven't decided what to do tomorrow. My vote is for one more climb up Mont Royal, but we'll see.

We visited VIeux Montreal again today, after a stop at the Bell Center, because hockey. I watched another family as we waited to board the Bateau Mouche for a cruise on the St. Lawrence River. A father, a mother, and three children--a boy of 12 or so, and two girls, maybe 10 and 14. The older girl leaned on her father, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The younger boy talked and joked with his mother, while the younger girl hopped around, singing, making faces, and generally competing for attention as best she could. Later, I saw that the older girl had fallen asleep on the boat, as the younger girl leaned on her father, basking in a few minutes of attention focused only on her. 

Back on the lower deck, a young mother worked to calm and comfort a fussy baby girl, eight months old or so. The baby flailed and howled, but the mother remained completely calm, bouncing and rocking the baby, and doing her best to soothe her. First, she tried to nurse the baby, who refused to participate. Then she offered toys, sang songs, and made silly faces. The mother seemed to be enjoying the challenge of finding and solving the baby's problem. Finally, she pulled a teething biscuit out of her bag, and the baby grabbed it eagerly, shaking it and munching on it happily. A snack and something to do with her hands--problem solved. The baby was also asleep as the boat returned to the dock. 

*****

Later, my husband and sons went ziplining. My older son was hesitant, and I urged him to try it, thinking that he'd later regret not having gone. I didn't zipline, because I was wearing a dress; and even though the ticket seller assured me that the harness would "close that right up," (what?) I knew that I'd feel ridiculous on a zipline in a dress. 

My husband told me that my son had a panic attack at the take-off point, and then he took a deep breath and jumped. He was happy to have done it, but I shouldn't have pushed him. And who am I to tell anyone to try to conquer their fears when I can't even conquer my fear of looking silly? 

On the boat, before the zipline incident.
My arm wasn't long enough to get a good selfie of both of us.
Plus I'm inept with a camera. 

*****

I'm in the midst of a crisis, and am not sure how to solve it, other than to suffer through it and wait it out. That approach usually works. It's harder this time; I'm not sure why. And now I'm rereading this and realizing that it's even worse than I thought, because I just wrote a sentence that includes the word "midst." "Amongst" can't be far behind; that's when I'll know that it's serious. Bonne nuit pour l'instant.