Locker room confidential

Well, that was super fun.

The black, bleak, near-despair mood that dragged me toward the abyss last week is not a new thing for me.  In the past, these episodes were sporadic, and few enough and far-between enough that I could just live with them.  They were like pests, like annoying little mosquitoes that buzzed around every so often.  The bites were unpleasant, but the itching was only temporary.

Last week, however, was a whole 'nother thing.  It was darker and bleaker and lasted much longer than usual, until I thought that I'd fallen into a pit that would become my new home.  And then all of a sudden, it was over, and I'm pretty much myself again.

*****

So enough of that.

I can't vote for him, but now I quote him all the time.  I'm as appalled (though not surprised) as anyone about Donald Trump's now-infamous locker-room bus ride, but "move on (blank) like a bitch" has become my favorite new expression.  If there's a hamper full of dirty clothes, then I'm going to move on that laundry like a bitch.  If it's Monday morning and there's work piled up on my desk...well, you get the idea.  I can go all day.


*****

I just finished reading Domenica Ruta's With or Without You.  I love to read memoirs.  I'm not sure why, but other people's addictions or depression or suffering of any sort are riveting, even glamorous.  I couldn't write a memoir.  First of all, I'd lose interest in the subject no more than three paragraphs in; secondly, I just don't want to share so much of myself.  I like to think that this is because I don't want to hurt anyone, and I suppose that's partly true.  Really, though, I just don't have the nerve.  There are so many things that I just don't want to talk about, ever, and those are exactly the things that would make for interesting literary suffering.  I guess I'll stick to blogging.

*****

So, for example, if I were to write a memoir, I might want to include something that happened when I was ten. At that time, I lived with my family on a narrow one-sided street of brick rowhouses in Philadelphia.  One-sided, because the street was a cross street between two steep hills, and just below our street was a sheer drop to a parking lot on Terrace Street, a block away.  Our side of the street was separated from the drop to the parking lot by a high brick wall that ran almost the length of the other side of the street.  My aunts' and uncles' (yes, more than one aunt and uncle) house was the only house on that side of the street, at the end of the wall. The Polish Falcons (look it up) was at the other end of the brick wall.

One summer evening, I was at the Falcons' end of the street, hitting a tennis ball against the wall.  I was the only child in the neighborhood who liked tennis, and so I often played by myself, just lobbing the ball back and forth against the wall.  When a car would turn onto the street (a rare occurrence), I'd step on to the sidewalk to allow it to pass.  The driver of this particular car said "excuse me, Miss?" and when I turned around, he waved me toward him.  I was ten, and it wouldn't have occurred to me not to obey a grown-up's summons.  "Can you tell me where (a street, I think, but I can't remember.  I also can't remember what color or make the car was.  See?  I'd be terrible at memoir-writing) is?"

The man was naked from the waist down, and he began to masturbate as soon as he noticed my shocked reaction to the first adult penis I'd ever seen.  I looked away, and saw that my parents and my aunts and uncles were outside on the porch (theirs was the only house on the street that had a porch, and most of the neighborhood congregated there on nice summer nights), and all of them were looking down the street to see who I was talking to.  The man noticed them too; he threw the car into reverse and sped away, just as my parents and aunts and uncles started running down the street toward me.

I don't remember anyone asking me exactly what happened.  They all seemed to know.  They hustled me up the street to the house, and a few minutes later, a uniformed police officer was asking me what the man looked like, and what kind of shirt he was wearing, and what did I remember about his car.  No one asked me what he did or said; just as well, as I'd have been far too embarrassed to describe or repeat what I'd seen and heard.  I never saw the man again, and I never heard another word about it.

*****

Or, maybe I'd write about something else, much more frightening, that happened to me when I was 12.  I was walking home from somewhere (the library, maybe) with my sister, who was 11 at the time.  We heard running footsteps behind us, and although I heard running footsteps behind me and in front of me all the time, I was scared this time.  And rightly so, as it turned out.  A young man, or maybe just a teenage boy, grabbed me from behind, thrust his hand between my legs, and roughly fondled me.  "Hey," he whispered, licking my ear.  "Can I fuck you?"

I'd heard that word before, but not used as a verb.  After a minute (probably less), he shoved me away and ran off, almost as fast as he'd grabbed me in the first place. Maybe he hadn't noticed my sister at first, and then all of a sudden realized that he couldn't stop her from running for help while he raped me.  Or maybe he hadn't planned to rape me at all; maybe he just liked to scare little girls.  My sister and I ran home.  I didn't cry, and she didn't ask me if I was OK.  Not because she didn't care, but because neither of us were prepared to accept that what had just happened to me, and what she had just seen and heard, was actually real.  We never told anyone about it, and we have never spoken about it.

*****

Or maybe I'd write about the time when someone actually did rape me.  In the middle of the night.  In my own apartment, where I'd been asleep at 3 in the morning, but then a man whom I'd never seen before was sitting on top of me, and one of his dirty hands was covering my mouth, and the other one was holding a knife that he'd taken out of my kitchen drawer against my throat, and then I wasn't asleep anymore.  This time, I had to tell lots of people what happened, in detail and at considerable length.  The man was arrested two days later.  He confessed, and so I didn't have to testify at a trial.  I went to his sentencing hearing and watched the bailiffs take him away in shackles to serve his 25-year prison sentence.  He has about 6 more years to go.  Time flies.

*****

These things all happened, but long ago.  If I were to tell about them now, how would people react?  Would my timing be considered suspicious?  Would people ask me why I'm coming out of the woodwork now, all of a sudden, after all this time?  Or would these stories only be suspect if the man who exposed himself to a child, or the one who grabbed a young girl and molested her on the street, or the one who violently raped a woman in the middle of the night, were later to become famous?  Would I be a victim still, or just another opportunist, another delusional woman seeking attention at the expense of a powerful man?

*****

I wonder sometimes if the depressive episodes (I wish I could find some memoir-like way to make them evocative or even funny) have anything to do with the sexual assaults.  Who knows?  I think that genetics are just as much to blame.  Meanwhile, I'll still joke about Donald Trump, but I believe every single one of the women who say that he touched them or grabbed them or kissed them when they didn't want to be kissed.  And absent a brilliant write-in idea, I'll probably end up reluctantly voting for Hillary Clinton, but I also believe all of the women who say that Bill Clinton raped them, or molested them, or harassed them.  They don't have to explain why they're telling their stories now, after all this time.  They don't need a reason.  If something happened to you, you can talk about it or not.  You can keep it to yourself if you want to. You can call the cops; or you can write about it in a beautiful, moving, hilarious memoir; or you can tell one friend and make her swear not to tell anyone; or you can call up CNN and get a fucking camera crew in your living room.  You can do any or all of that the next day, or a week later, or 18 years and some odd months later.

*****
It's Sunday night, and the usual post-dinner clean-up awaits.  I'm about to move on that kitchen like a bitch.

If you can't say anything nice, then get a blog

I can't do anything now.  I can't write, I can't think, I can't sleep.  Those are comma splices, and I just don't care.  What am I supposed to do, replace them with semicolons?  Add conjunctions?  No.  You're smart people, all three of you who read this drivel.  You'll figure out what I mean; and you'll know, of course, that I know that a comma splice is bad, because I just called myself out.  

*****

I have to cook dinner soon.  It feels like I just cleaned up from lunch.  I'll reread this post.  Maybe it will prompt an attitude adjustment.  

Didn't work.  I still don't want to cook.  I don't even want to eat. 

*****

This is temporary, right?  It always passes.  Today, it doesn't feel like it's going to pass. 

*****

I have a house full of people, just when I need a house full of no people, so that I can have five minutes of silence and privacy, so that I can just cry and get the hell over this.  Sometimes it's nice to have the house where all of the kids gather.  Today is not one of those days.  

*****

Well, that was a ray of sunshine, wasn't it?  Stop by again; I can tell you all about my second bout with PPD.  At least my punctuation is improving. 

Witness for the prosecution

As soon as someone says "Not to be rude, but...," then what follows is guaranteed to be rude. Likewise, someone who says "This is going to sound terrible, but..." is almost certainly going to say something terrible.

Newsflash to the European lady in the room full of Americans, who complained at length about Americans who don't travel, don't speak languages other than English, and don't seem interested in cultures other than their own: The "not to be rude" qualifier was wasted on us, because we still think you're rude.  Bonus irony points, considering the setting, which was a lecture on Anne Frank's legacy and the relevance of Holocaust literature in the world today, thus begging the question: "Holocaust--Did that happen THERE or HERE?"

*****

I was sitting in front of this computer on Sunday, thinking at least I’m typing something.  At least I opened the file.  I seem to have a little time on Sunday afternoons, so that will be writing time.  And maybe sometimes I can write for a little while on a weeknight, or on Saturday, though Saturdays are busy. 

Right now, I don’t know what to do next with the novel that I've been pounding away at for almost a year.  I think that what I’ll do now is take all of the parts that I like best, and then resave them as something else.  Another novel maybe, or a story.  I feel sure that I shouldn’t give up, so I won’t, but it’s hard to keep going.  I guess it’s supposed to be hard.  If it wasn’t hard,  as Jimmy Dugan said, then everyone would do it. 

*****

I have mentioned before that I hate to abandon a book that I'm reading, even if I've lost interest in it.  And surprisingly enough, Rebecca West is the culprit again.  I'm reading A Train of Powder, which is, or I thought it was, a first-hand account of the Nuremberg Trials.  Actually, only the first chapter covered Nuremberg, and I was all agog as I read that chapter.  The part I'm reading now, though, covers a famous murder case of the early 1950s, and the exhaustive forensic detail is causing my eyes to glaze over.  I have no interest in true-crime stories, even as told by Rebecca West.

In a far more gripping earlier chapter, about the postwar Allied occupation of Germany and the Berlin Airlift, West sympathizes with the women of Berlin, many of whom were widowed or left behind by husbands who were still missing (or imprisoned in Russia.)   She describes the lot of women who are compelled to work all day in an office or a factory; and then to come home to clean, cook, and care for children, as "penal servitude."  Absurd hyperbole, I thought for a moment, or the hothouse flower perspective of the upper middle class daughter of intellectuals and artists. Then I thought about it a little more.

The women West was writing about were living and working in a war-ravaged city, with bombed-out streets and buildings, frequent blackouts, limited and erratic water supply, and shortages of everything, including food, clothing, and medicine.  They didn't have cars; and buses and trains, when they were running, were dirty and overcrowded.  Even walking the often long distances to their workplaces was made hard by bomb-damaged roadways and worn-out shoes.  Home wasn't much better.   Even under the best of circumstances, cleaning and cooking and caring for children can be hard. If you're trying to cook with practically no food or fuel, however; or you're trying to clean a partially bombed-out hovel without water or cleaning materials, then it's brutally hard.

But who cares, right? They got what they deserved, those Germans.  They started a war, causing untold suffering for millions of victims, so why should anyone worry about their suffering?  Rebecca West hated Soviet Communism, unlike many other writers and artists at the time, and she was often criticized for having what was perceived as a reactionary outlook.  I'm sure that this relatively sympathetic portrayal of postwar Germans didn't earn her any additional fans among the intelligentsia.  One part of me thinks that maybe they would have had a point.  As I read West's description of the brave and pragmatic German women of Berlin, I wondered why on earth her sympathy didn't seem to extend to the Germans' many victims, including the Soviets, who suffered badly at the hands of the Nazis.  

*****
Rebecca West never ceases to surprise me.  Just when I thought that I really couldn't stand to read one more word about the corpse of Mr. Setty, and whether or not Mr. Hume had murdered and dismembered him, the chapter opens way up and becomes an examination of life and death and truth and falsehood, and I'm all agog again.  Now we're back at Nuremberg. The Germans, apparently, were upset to learn that the Nuremberg defendants would be jailed for the duration of the trial.  Their judicial system, pre- and post-Nazi, of course, treated criminal defendants as truly innocent until convicted, which meant that they lived at home and enjoyed total freedom during their trials.  More irony. Germans, whose country had just emerged from the most lawless period of its history and all of European history, were now so attached to the rule of law and the rights of the accused, that they seemed more civilized than the Americans and English and French and Russians who sat in judgement.

*****

From Rebecca West, another note to the European lady: Europeans are extremely civilized, except when they're not--exactly like Americans.  Exactly like every other group of people, ever.

Aht for Aht's Sake

I'm not very good at mobile blogging,  so I don't do it very often. Chances are,  if you're reading something here,  I wrote it on a proper keyboard, on a real computer.

Another thing that I'm not especially good at is travel writing. Every time I leave town,   I start to write a travelogue, which I never finish. I think it was Flannery O'Connor who said that a talent for writing is not necessarily a talent for writing anything. Or maybe it wasn't Flannery O'Connor. Maybe it was everyone who ever picked up a pen or sat in front of a keyboard. Anyway, it's completely true.

So I'm no good at mobile blogging and I'm no good at travel writing, and I've also been in one of my periodic funks. I prayed for help with that last part, and then we spent part of our last day in Boston at the amazing Museum of Fine Arts, and the funk has lifted. We're driving home tomorrow. For now, enjoy some art, for its own sake.

Tomayto, tomahto

Maybe I've mentioned this once or twice.  I have a mild but pronounced case of adult ADD, and sometimes I have a hard time focusing and maintaining concentration.  I don't remember how I learned about it, but I just started using a time management system called Pomodoro (named, apparently, after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer that the method's inventor once used to time work sessions.)  It's very simple.  You set the Pomodoro timer (now a mobile app, of course, although Luddites can still purchase the tomato timer, assuming that a Luddite would use a mass-produced plastic mechanical timer), and you stay focused on your task until the timer runs out, in 25 minutes.  You then take a five-minute break, during which you can do anything you want.  Each 25-minute work period is called, of course, a Pomodoro.

It works pretty well.  The idea is that you can do anything, even if it's boring or tedious, for 25 minutes, especially when you know that there's an end in sight.  Sometimes, I find that I'm motivated to work faster to see how much I can accomplish during a single Pomodoro.  Other times, it's enough to just get through the Pomodoro without checking my phone, looking for something in my bag, getting up to get water, or whatever else I often do to avoid doing what I should be doing.  Either way, I'm more productive.

*****

I'm not running a Pomodoro now, so whatever I'm writing here will likely be written in 30-second increments, interrupted by phone checks, the laundry timer, or what-the-hell-is-that-on-the-floor.  I guess I should use Pomodoro for personal writing, too.  I'm still working on my novel, and it's not going well.  The less said the better.  Except that I'm this close to just throwing the whole thing away and starting over, but I'm determined to continue.  For what purpose and to what end, I have no idea.  Maybe I just want to finish what I started, but that's what sent me back to school after an over 20-year absence, and look how that turned out.

Well, it actually turned out pretty well, in that I graduated, and summa cum laude, but it was an ordeal that I wouldn't care to repeat. And yet, I appear to be doing exactly that.

*****

I can't decide which is less fun: writing the book that I'm writing, or reading the one that I'm reading.  I'm still slogging through the book about the Rothschilds, which has become considerably less interesting, but I feel compelled to finish it.  Between the in-progress writing and the in-progress reading, the party never stops.  It's like Purgatory for English majors.

*****

Another summer swim season is over, and the now-familiar paradox is in effect: That which I couldn't wait to come to an end has actually come to an end, and I miss it.  I love summer swim team, but it's overwhelming, especially if you have a full-time real job in addition to your 10 or so swim team mom jobs.  But it's so much fun, and I'm sad almost the minute it ends.  Except the 6:30 Saturday morning part, of course.  I won't miss that part at all.

*****

With summer swimming over,  the end of summer itself is, sadly, not far behind.  The weather has been shifting slightly.  The temperature has dropped just a little each day for the past few days, and the humidity, dense and heavy last week, has evaporated.  It's almost dark now, at 8:20 PM.  It's still quite warm and pleasant, but it's a September kind of warm and pleasant.

*****

I still haven't used my Pomodoro timer for personal writing.  And maybe that's why this post has taken three days to finish.  But the novel took a very slight turn for the better today, even without the aid of a tomato.  I'll take it, for now.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic: The Holy Roman Empire--Neither holy, nor Roman. Discuss.

I have reached a novel-writing impasse.  I had to skip a chapter and start an altogether-new one, completely out of sequence, because I just can't figure out what's supposed to happen at the end of the last one. I don't know what that means.  I'm going to just keep writing stuff.  It'll turn itself into a novel.  That happens all the time, I'm sure.

*****
Sometimes, you think you know who's calling, so you answer the phone with a funny greeting.  And sometimes, the person on the other end is not the person you expected.  And then you feel silly.

That was just a general observation about something that happens sometimes.  Not a dear-diary entry about something that I actually DID.

*****

Random questions, addressed to no one in particular, and certainly not to anyone in my household:

1. Is the concrete floor of the not air conditioned and not especially clean garage the best place to store a watermelon?  Or any other food?

2. When you cook something with a cookie sheet, should you then clean the cookie sheet, or return it quietly to the oven, crumby and just slightly crusty?

3. If you have an extra $5,000 hanging around, because the Brinks truck is always backing up to your house and dropping stacks of cash in the driveway, is expensive jewelry not just as good an investment as a 36-year-old Mercedes convertible with a rust spot on the hood?

Purely rhetorical questions.

*****

But even rhetorical questions can be answered, right? In a purely rhetorical sense?

1. No.  Come on.
2. What the hell? I mean, COME ON.
3. Come on, man.

*****

I'm reading a book about the Rothschilds.  As much as I love history, I am terrible on details, especially details about European dynasties, and ESPECIALLY Hanoverian and Saxonian and Prussian kings and princes and electors and Thanes of Cawdor and whoever else ruled those itty-bitty Germanic roosts.  And there were a lot of Rothschilds, too, who were fond of a few family names that were handed down from generation to generation.  I'm going to keep reading, because it's interesting, but don't ask me details about which Rothschild advised which Wilhelm of Fill-in-the-Blank German hamlet, because it's all a little fuzzy.

*****
Sometimes, if you just stand in front of your computer and write about whatever pops into your mind, you'll clear all of the mental cobwebs,  and the resulting moment of crystal clarity will lead you to the solution to your writing problem.  And sometimes, you'll just end up with a pile of old cars, overripe fruit, inadvertent reverse prank calls, and Hohenzollerns.

Fireflies

I said that I'd write something this week, so here I am.  It's a so-much-to-do week, the kind that I can only manage with the aid of a list. And I know that the only way that I'll write anything is to make writing a to-do list item, that I can cross off my list with great satisfaction.  So there's the list, and here I am.

The fireflies are back. I walked through my neighborhood tonight, just a short time before twilight.  The sun had gone almost all the way down, and so it was hot, but not blazing hot without the sun overhead.  The air was heavy and close and humid, and there wasn't so much as a slight breeze.  I could hear everything; cars and lawnmowers and crickets and children shouting about fireflies.  We called them lightning bugs where I grew up, but here, they are fireflies.  The fireflies had disappeared for some time, or so I thought.  For 15 years, give or take, I didn't see any fireflies, nor did I hear a word about them.  Then suddenly, 10 years or so ago, they were back.  Had they really disappeared, or did I just not notice them until I had a five-year-old boy?  The five-year-old boy is 15 now, worried about his upcoming lifeguard's exam, and asking when he can get his learner's permit.  He probably won't notice a firefly again until he has his own five-year-old boy.

*****
So today was even hotter and more densely humid than yesterday.  After an interminably long evening swim meet, I made an ill-advised decision to allow a sleepover tonight.  Who knows what I was thinking.

No, really.  That was a question.  Who knows what I was thinking? Anyone? Anyone?

Fortunately, the sleepover includes only this boy, who is such a frequent guest that he might as well live here.  No special guest accommodations or preparations are necessary.  The boys are now cozily parked on the L-shaped sectional couch, which is covered with sheets and stacked with as many pillows and blankets as they can fit while still leaving room for their 11-year-old bodies.  Multiple swims today have left them tired enough to thwart their plans to stay up late to watch Batman vs. Superman.  I'm pretty sure that they'll be asleep no more than an hour into the movie.

*****

The boys fell asleep, as expected, about an hour into the movie, but then my son woke me up at 2:30, complaining that he couldn't sleep.  When I got up with him to see if it was too hot or cold or if any other adjustments to the sleeping arrangements would help, I found that the porch light shines so brightly in the family room that it was all but daylight in there.  A person with reasonably sharp vision could easily have read a book.  With the light out, he fell asleep again in no time. I left for work this morning as a sleeping pile of boys were just beginning to stir.  School is out, but morning swim practice is on.

*****

I'm married to a police officer, so it's been a difficult week.  Awakened by light, literal or figurative, I often wish that I could just go back to sleep.  Friends and others, well-meaning or otherwise, ask me how my husband is, what he's thinking, what I'm thinking.  What do I say? Black lives matter? Blue lives matter? All lives matter, during a week when it feels as if life itself is disposable, isn't valued, doesn't matter?  I don't know.  I just know that it's summer, and for only a short time.  Swim meets, and sleepovers, and fireflies, and movie-watching on the couch--who knows how much longer it will all last?

Boys of summer

I have a bunch of half-finished drafts about nothing in particular; whatever I happened to be thinking at the moment  ended up in writing, only to be abandoned in draft limbo.  Eventually, I'll finish and publish some of those half-finished posts, but the rest of them will languish, never to see the light of day.  Those that I actually publish will mystify my reading public, because by the time I get around to finishing them, they'll no longer be relevant.

Anyway, it's been several weeks since I've posted anything, and I just felt like writing something other than my novel, which I'm still working on.  Since I can only work on it for a few minutes a day, it's going very slowly, but I haven't lost interest yet, so I suppose that's a sign that I should continue.  I have another fiction idea, but it will have to wait, likely for a long time.  I can read two books at once, but I can only write one at a time.

This was one of the weirdest springs ever, with March-like weather right through the third week of May.  And then, just like that, it was summer.  Saturday of Memorial Day weekend showed up bright and sunny and hot, and the pool opened, and everyone emerged from hibernation all at once.  It's really summer now, and it feels like it's always been summer and it always will be.

*****
When I run out of things to write about, I can always write about these two boys:

What up, ladies? 

Some backtracking is necessary.  A few days ago, my husband impulsively bought the car that's partially pictured here.  It's a 1980 Mercedes 450 SL convertible.  Apparently, money does grow on trees, and the mid-life crisis-driven purchase of red convertibles is a common real-world occurrence, and not just  a sitcom plot.  It could be worse, I suppose.  And I have to admit that the car is beautiful, even though I'm afraid to drive it.

But back to the boys.  They are my 11-year-old son, in the driver's seat, and his best friend.  They have been friends since they were four, and they never tire of each other, even during the summer, when most days they meet at 8:30 AM for swim practice, and then spend the entire day together, until well into the evening, and then  pick up where they left off at the next morning's swim practice.  When they're not driving without a license, they're making a commercial for a product they invented ("But it's a scam, Mom.  Because our product is terrible.") or making goalie pads out of foam rubber and cardboard, or waterskiing on land (boy on rollerblades attached via bungee cord to boy driving motorized electric scooter) or debating the relative merits of the Beastie Boys' discography.  I have little to offer that is as entertaining as a conversation between these two.  And listening to them makes me feel like it's always been summer, and it always will be.

Curiouser and curiouser

Do you get credit for courage if you bravely approach and walk past what you believe to be a snake, which then turns out not to be a snake?  I was walking this evening, and saw what looked very much like a snake, coiled up in the middle of the road.  I walked toward it, intending to pass it as widely as possible, but to pass it nonetheless. It turned out to be a pair of baseball or golf gloves.  Don't ask me why they looked like a snake; just trust me that they did.  Had they been a snake, they would have bitten me.

*****

Strange things happen sometimes.  Today, a coworker who almost always brings Starbucks to work was instead drinking a homemade smoothie from a reusable travel tumbler.  Another coworker, who usually drinks a homemade smoothie every morning, was instead drinking takeout coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.  The first coworker almost always wears pants; today, she wore a skirt.  I almost always wear skirts; today, I wore pants.  What kind of through-the-looking-glass rabbit hole did I fall into, I wondered.  The rest of the day proceeded without incident, however.  Until the snake.

*****

It's May 18; Memorial Day is just over a week away.  So right now, I'm sitting on my couch wearing a sweater, as a fire crackles away in the fireplace.  The weeks of cold and rain have affected more than my mood; I feel like I have lost track of time and seasons, and am permanently anchored in some London-like place where it's always cool and misty and gray.   People do things that are just slightly off, just slightly out of character.  Things look like other things.  I boldly approach a snake and walk right past it.  Yes, it was an imaginary snake, but I didn't know that at the time.

Cutting edge technology and young Luddites

Two 11-year-old boys are sitting on my family room floor; they have a card game spread out on a small, round, low-to-the-floor Japanese style wooden table.  The Capitals are playing, but the boys aren't paying attention to the game, although one of them is an avid fan—he’s even wearing an Ovechkin jersey.  The boys, best friends since they were 4, are convinced that something weird is happening, because they keep rolling dice in combinations that add up to six, or drawing combinations of cards that also add up to six.  I’m tempted to ask them if they know that President Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln and President Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, but that might be too much for them.  The Penguins just scored; cards and dice are forgotten for now.

*****

I can’t decide if I should buy a new phone or not.  My phone is fine.  But I want a new one.  I keep shopping for new phones; I’ve even had phones in my shopping cart, but I never actually complete the transaction.  Other things we need, I think; other things to spend money on.  Still, the phone keeps calling me (see what I did there?) 

*****

While I shop for the latest and presumably greatest mobile device, I spend Saturday evening with two young boys who love everything old.  They went through a typewriter phase a few years ago; now, they use giant garage sale purchased Clinton-era camcorders to document their adventures.  It's like Snapchat for the Stone Age. They disagree on which is the best Beastie Boys song; my son's friend favors "Fight for Your Right," while my son holds out for "Paul Revere."  Both of the boys agree that "Sabotage" is far inferior to their favorites.  "I liked their old stuff so much better," my son says.  

Now, during the intermission between the second and third periods of the game, the boys are watching old Harlem Globetrotters videos on an iPod, but they need a larger screen to see Meadowlark Lemon in his full glory.  They want to borrow this computer, so that's all for now.  Let's go Caps. 

Ain't nobody got time for that

I signed up with NaNoWriMo in November, because I wanted to really get started on my novel.  I knew that I didn't have the vaguest chance of actually finishing it in 30 days, and I didn't finish it in 30 days.  In fact, I just passed 50,000 words yesterday, and I think I have about 40,000 more before it will really be finished, which means that I'll have finished it in about a year.

Maybe a real writer can finish a novel faster than that, but I'm working full-time and up to my neck in lots of other projects, too, so I feel fine about that time frame.  I write for about 15 minutes a day, almost every single day (sometimes I take Sundays off.)  Every so often, I go back and revise. Sometimes, I cringe when I reread my own work, thinking "who would ever read this bilge?" Other times, I laugh out loud at my own funny funny dialogue, because no one laughs harder at my jokes than me.  It's not necessarily a humor novel, although there are funny parts.  At least I think they're funny, but I'm no judge, because I crack myself up.

*****

My husband wants me to go shopping with him to pick out tile and paint and fixtures for my bathroom, which is in dire need of repair, especially the floor, a horrid old stick-on vinyl hot mess that won't come clean no matter how hard I scrub it.  As badly as the bathroom needs attention, though, and as much as I want the project finished, I just can't bear the thought of spending hours in a home improvement warehouse picking out stuff.  Instead, I'm picking out tile and a vanity, etc., online, and we'll just pick it up at the store when it arrives. "But what if you don't like it?" my husband asks.  "Don't you want to see this stuff in person before you buy it?"  No.  No, I don't.  Even if the tile color is slightly off; even if the vanity doesn't look quite as nice IRL as it does online, it will be much better than what we have now, and that's all I need.

*****

When I was young and single, I read magazines.  Vanity Fair was my favorite; but I also loved Vogue, Mademoiselle, and Glamour.  I stopped reading magazines because the Web made them obsolete; and because I just didn't have time anymore.  Not only did I not have time to read the magazines; I didn't have time to live life the way the magazine writers said that I should.  If everyone did everything that magazine self-help articles advised--8 hours of sleep, daily structured workouts, organic paleo diet, the right clothes and hair and makeup--then no one would ever have time for anything other than self-care and maintenance.

I was busy before I started working full-time again, but now I'm ridiculously busy.  I can still accomplish things, though; I just have to set priorities and manage expectations.  I don't have time to shop and deliberate over fixtures, but I can still renovate my bathroom as long as I'm willing to live with whatever I can order sight unseen from the Internet.   I can write a novel as long as I don't need to act however a novelist is supposed to act.  I'm not sure how novelists are supposed to act, actually, but I'm pretty sure that they're not supposed to write two or three sentences at a time, for five or fifteen minutes at a time, while dinner is on the stove or coffee is brewing.  Eventually, I'll have a functioning bathroom and a book that might or might not be readable.  I'll also have 24 hours a day; same as everyone else.

Basic

Yesterday, we helped to make deliveries for the Rockville High School mulch sale, an annual booster club fundraiser.  Believe it or not, driving high school students around the suburbs and delivering mulch is not a bad way to spend an afternoon.  They all worked hard and stayed cheerful and polite, despite cold, wind, and intermittent hail.  I was proud of them.

I didn't mind driving, loading and unloading, or even the dirt, because my car was not involved in the delivery of mulch.  This is my car.

I love this car.  I didn't name it Brad or anything like that, but I LOVE this car.

My last car was a Honda Civic, which I bought new in 2001, when I was pregnant with my first child.  I drove it until he was in 7th grade. So obviously, I'm not much of a car person.  The Honda was actually the first brand-new car that I ever bought.  Every other car I'd ever owned was purchased used, with only two features in mind: Does it go when I apply the accelerator, and does it stop when I apply the brake?  Sold. This approach to car buying and car driving served me very well for many years, speed camera tickets notwithstanding.

For some reason, though, sometime in 2012, I started to notice Subarus, and I decided that I wanted one.  My husband wasn't impressed. His approach to car buying is completely different from mine.  He has never bought a used car, and he swears that he never will.  Even at 18, in college and working three jobs, he bought a brand-new car (a Nissan Maxima.) He wanted me to get something flashier and more luxurious, but I'm not very flashy or luxurious, and I'd just feel like an idiot driving around in a car that's more stylish than I am.  The Subaru is not beautiful, but it's good-natured and dependable, and I can think of worse things to be.

But just because my car isn't flashy, that doesn't mean that I'm not fussy about it.  I'm VERY fussy about my car.  My husband is particular about styling and horsepower and make, but the inside of his car is a damn free-for-all.  When they're in his car, my kids and their friends eat snacks, throw their muddy cleats and gear everywhere, and fling straw wrappers and empty chip bags all over the place.  A family of rodents could take up residence in there, and it wouldn't look any worse than it does now.

We took my husband's old Isuzu Axiom for the mulch deliveries, which, if possible, looks even worse than his other car, and the dirt is the least of its problems.  It doesn't matter where you drive in that car; it feels like you're driving an East German-made flatbed truck down an unpaved mountain road somewhere in the Caucasus.  Fifteen bags of mulch stuffed into the cargo hold actually improve the ride noticeably; I considered buying a few extra bags, just as ballast.

My son was quick to explain to his friends that his mom's other car is much cleaner than the one we were driving in, and one of the boys claimed that his father has a truck that is much dirtier than ours. Maybe it is, but his father wasn't delivering mulch, either.  He probably just has an average everyday dirty truck, but not so dirty that he can haul 15 bags of mulch at a time, for multiple deliveries, and then still not feel particularly compelled to clean up afterward.  Our truck didn't look any worse post-mulch than pre-mulch.  If you're going to claim that you have a dirty truck, then that's the standard that you need to live up to.  Or down to.  If there are raccoons or squirrels in that car, then they probably have plenty of shredded hardwood with which to feather their little nests.  My car is still nice and clean.

They're on your head, Mom.

So many things to write about; if only I could overcome this apparently chronic case of fuzzy brain.  Well, "fuzzy" is descriptive, but maybe not entirely accurate.  Sometimes, I'm as sharp as the proverbial X-acto knife, but  then whatever brilliant and sparkling clear insight happens to occur during those moments disappears as quickly as it arrives, leaving me thinking "What was that thing? About the guy, and the Potsdam Conference?  Or was it the Yalta Agreement?  Damn it, I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer.  What time is it? Where are my sunglasses, damn it! And did I pay the phone bill?"

*****

Aside from January's monster snowstorm, we've had a relatively mild winter, but winter is winter and by the end of February, I'm always ready for it to be over.  That's why I'm downright offended by the sight of snow on March Bloody 19th.  What's that saying again?  March: In like a bitch, out like a damn whore. Thankfully, we didn't have any sports or other outdoor activities today.  Instead, we went to one of my very favorite annual events: The Friends of the Library used book sale at the Aspen Hill Library.  I spent $5.70, and got the following:

The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald.  I love Penelope Fitzgerald so much that I bought this even though I already had a copy.  This one has a prettier cover.  Now I can lend the other one and not worry about whether or not I get it back.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr.  Another one that I already have.  This was a 35-cent Crest Books edition from 1959.  Click here if you want to read what I wrote about this book.

A Woman in Jerusalem, A.B. Yehoshua. I have no idea, but I liked the cover blurbs.

Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris.  I still laugh my head off at "You Can't Kill the Rooster."

The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash.  I love old Pocket Books.  This one is from 1962, so it was already old when a previous owner used a dentist's appointment reminder card from 1997 as a bookmark.

With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties, Calvin Trillin.

If You Lived Here, You'd be Home by Now, Claire LaZebnik.  She seems delightful.  Maybe I'll send for a signed bookplate.

The Americans: The National Experience, Daniel Boorstin.  I'm reading The Democratic Experience now.

Life and Death in Shanghai, Nien Cheng.  Sometimes I read about the Cultural Revolution, when I need a break from the gulag.

More Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin.

Away, Amy Bloom.  No idea about this one, either.  I'll find out soon enough.

*****

The $5.70 that I spent also included a few books about Navy ships and magic tricks, selected by my 11-year-old son, who is now sitting on my couch with his best friend, singing "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party.)"  Apparently, you don't, though.  I'm sitting on my couch at 8:15 on a Saturday night writing about used books and memory loss, and if that's not a party, then I don't know what is.