It's 8:30 on Tuesday night, and I'm already in my pajamas, which is quite unusual for me. I'm sick. Nothing life-threatening, just an ugly cold, but I feel horrible.
I used to be able to say, truthfully, that I never got sick. Because I used to never get sick. My immune system was pure cast iron. Or titanium. Whatever is more impenetrable. But this is the fourth time I've been sick this year. Apparently, my immune system is now made of something squishy or porous or otherwise not akin to titanium. It's more like a sieve, or a butterfly net. I'm a runny-nose mouth-breathing mess. I think I'll go to bed (after Rachel Maddow.)
*****
So it's Friday night now. What with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes my life (not original--P.G. Wodehouse, I think), I don't even remember most of the rest of the week. I'm not as sick as I was, but not 100% yet either. One son is at a high school football game (his school is losing 49-6), and the other son and I are watching the Houston Astros beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series. We're rooting for Houston. We love Jose Altuve, and Houston needs a win.
My older son, now a junior in high school, is looking at colleges. He's never been a particularly good student, but he started to work harder last year, finishing the year with a 3.5 GPA, and he's working very hard this year, too, though his math and science grades are not good. He might start at the local community college, but he might start at a four-year university. Anyway, he's looking at possibilities. He's actually reading the letters he's starting to receive. We'll schedule visits next spring, because that's what people do.
A few weeks ago, I spent Sunday afternoon at a college admissions seminar for parents of students with learning disabilities. It was not especially helpful (apparently, grades are important; and colleges also consider extracurricular activities in admissions decisions). In my usual vague and scattered way of gathering information, I managed to learn that November through April of next year will be the critical window of time during which forms will be submitted, and checks will be written, and decisions will be made. That's plenty of time, so we'll figure it out.
*****
I joke sometimes about adult ADD, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's a real thing, because I do and it is and I have it. It's only through living with my son for 16 years that I was able to figure this out. He's lucky that it's a recognized thing now, and that he's been able to learn how to manage it when he's young. I manage it by doing 20 things at a time, and somehow getting them all done, eventually.
This doesn't always work. Yesterday, I sat with the art director at my company, watching video footage that we need to edit into a two-minute video (and don't get me started on how we're going to get that done on time, but that's a story for another day). I promised that I'd transcribe my notes and send them to him as soon as I got back to my desk.
It would be not quite accurate to say that I forgot all about it five minutes later, because I think that I forgot about it before the words were even out of my mouth. I went back to my desk and finished writing a newsletter, and then wrote some proposal stuff, and then skipped blithely home, without another thought about the video. Not another thought. It was as if the whole afternoon hadn't happened.
When I did finally remember the video, and the notes, it was about 4 o'clock this morning. I was going to get up and just write the notes right away, but I decided to go back to sleep and do in the morning (because 4 o'clock in the morning is the middle of the night). And I did. And that was the end of that.
But it doesn't always end well. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I was supposed to go to the doctor's last week, but I didn't write it down, and couldn't remember for sure if it was that week or the next (meaning the coming week) and no one called me, so I didn't go. I'll find out, I suppose. The forgetting of the things and the appointments is becoming more of a problem. I have to write things down, and set reminders on my phone for everything. And I often forget to do either. And so I forget to do the thing that I would have remembered had I written it down.
*****
Well, that could go on all day. It's Sunday now, and the pointless rambling has to come to an end at some point. Several weeks ago, I finally finished reading The Crisis Years, and I also read Martha Moody's Best Friends. I had never heard of her, but I liked the book. I don't have much other than that to say about it, other than than that the protagonist, a doctor (like Moody herself), realizes at some point during her mid 40s that she is just then beginning to understand life and how to live properly. As someone who finished college at age 48 (summa cum laude, but still), I found this idea very reassuring.
Right now, I'm reading This is NPR: The First Forty Years, which I'll finish in a day or so. Fortunately, I have lots of other things to read. I went to the library book sale (a semi-annual favorite thing to do) yesterday, and bought $5 worth of books, which in library book sale terms, is a shitload of books. List to follow.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Distraction
I have been following this week's political events more closely than I normally do. And I should have written things down as they occurred to me, because I can't for the life of me remember exactly what I wanted to say about McCain and Bush and Kelly and #metoo and all of the rest of it. I suppose that I'll just write through the weekend on and off, and I'll eventually get to a point. Or maybe I won't. You've been warned. Anyway, it's just been an interesting week, for lots of reasons. All of a sudden, I live in a world in which John McCain and George W. Bush are my heroes.
All day yesterday, I heard and read stories about John Kelly's "defense" of President Trump. And I suppose it was a defense, in the way that you might defend a friend who drunkenly drives onto someone's front lawn and takes out the mailbox and part of the porch, and you say "Hey, he didn't kill anyone!"
So anyway, I've been following the political news cycle this week. I even watched part of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night. And I can't stand Lawrence O'Donnell. And he did exactly what I'd have expected. He extracted the tiniest thread that could tie Kelly's speech to racism and sexism, and he pulled as hard as he could, claiming that "empty barrel," which was really just a garden variety insulting and demeaning and unworthy of a White House Chief of Staff way to describe a Congresswoman, however grandstanding and cynical she is (and she is both), as an explicitly racist and sexist slur. So now we're expected to accept that old-time Ross Perot-style down-home aphorisms like "The empty barrel makes the most noise" are always and everywhere sexist or racist when used by a man to insult a woman, or by a white person to insult a person of color.
Even O'Donnell knows that this isn't true. On the other hand, I agreed with him just a tiny bit when he said that he doesn't remember the world that Kelly recalled, a world in which women were "sacred," because I don't really remember that world either. Kelly and O'Donnell are a little older than I am, but not that much. And it's also worthwhile to point out that a world in which women are "sacred" excludes the possibility of a White House Chief of Staff insulting a Congresswoman during a press briefing. It also, of course, excludes the possibility of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.
Apparently, there's video now that backs the Congresswoman's claim that Kelly lied about her remarks at the FBI dedication in Florida. I'm not going to watch it, because I really hate watching videos online. I'm also not going to watch it because 1. It might show that she's telling the truth 2. It might show that he's telling the truth, and 3. It doesn't really matter. Or it does matter, I suppose, but the larger issue, which is the total domination of political debate by mean-spirited one-up-manship and disingenuous fake outrage and bad faith and flat-out dishonesty on both (all) sides will not change one bit if I force myself to watch the video to figure out the truth of this particular little he-said she-said. It doesn't matter.
(And on the subject of he-said she-said, I guess that we've finally reached critical mass. If the questions are "how long does it take before people will believe women who say that they have suffered sexual harassment or worse?" and "how many women have to accuse a man before people believe that he actually is a sexual predator?" then the answers usually are "years and years" and "a shitload." But I say "critical mass," because the Weinstein scandal might actually change things a little bit. The timing could have been better, of course. A year ago, maybe a #metoo hashtag campaign could have changed the election results.)
So yes, Kelly "defended" Trump. He also pointed out--indirectly, but clearly--that Trump has never sacrificed anything for anyone, has nothing but contempt for women, and isn't smart or sensitive enough to understand well-meaning advice on how to talk to a grieving military widow (Hint: Maybe don't repeat the "he knew what he was getting into" part verbatim, with no additional context). With friends like that, I suppose Trump doesn't need any (more) enemies.
Masha Gessen suggests (the essay as a whole is a little extreme, as might be expected of a person born in the Soviet Union) that Kelly seems to have little respect for the vast majority of Americans who have never served in the military. One one hand, I understand Kelly's anger. It's a problem that we have been at war for 16 years now, and most of us live life every day without even thinking about the war(s) or the people who are fighting them, or their families. On the other hand, it's just stupid to suggest that the military is the only place where people sacrifice and serve and even risk their lives for the benefit of others, and John Kelly doesn't seem stupid to me, so I wonder what else he was getting at.
It's almost 6:30 on Sunday night now, and I never did come to the point, because I never figured out what it is. My son went to his high school's homecoming game on Friday night. He and a group of classmates made t-shirts, each with a single letter painted on the front, and they sat together to form "Class of 2019." My son was inordinately pleased to be wearing the "F." In two years, most of them will be freshmen in college, but some of them--maybe even my son--will be in uniform. That has nothing to do with everything that happened last week, except that it does, somehow. We still don't really know what happened to those four soldiers in Niger, do we?
All day yesterday, I heard and read stories about John Kelly's "defense" of President Trump. And I suppose it was a defense, in the way that you might defend a friend who drunkenly drives onto someone's front lawn and takes out the mailbox and part of the porch, and you say "Hey, he didn't kill anyone!"
So anyway, I've been following the political news cycle this week. I even watched part of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night. And I can't stand Lawrence O'Donnell. And he did exactly what I'd have expected. He extracted the tiniest thread that could tie Kelly's speech to racism and sexism, and he pulled as hard as he could, claiming that "empty barrel," which was really just a garden variety insulting and demeaning and unworthy of a White House Chief of Staff way to describe a Congresswoman, however grandstanding and cynical she is (and she is both), as an explicitly racist and sexist slur. So now we're expected to accept that old-time Ross Perot-style down-home aphorisms like "The empty barrel makes the most noise" are always and everywhere sexist or racist when used by a man to insult a woman, or by a white person to insult a person of color.
Even O'Donnell knows that this isn't true. On the other hand, I agreed with him just a tiny bit when he said that he doesn't remember the world that Kelly recalled, a world in which women were "sacred," because I don't really remember that world either. Kelly and O'Donnell are a little older than I am, but not that much. And it's also worthwhile to point out that a world in which women are "sacred" excludes the possibility of a White House Chief of Staff insulting a Congresswoman during a press briefing. It also, of course, excludes the possibility of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.
Apparently, there's video now that backs the Congresswoman's claim that Kelly lied about her remarks at the FBI dedication in Florida. I'm not going to watch it, because I really hate watching videos online. I'm also not going to watch it because 1. It might show that she's telling the truth 2. It might show that he's telling the truth, and 3. It doesn't really matter. Or it does matter, I suppose, but the larger issue, which is the total domination of political debate by mean-spirited one-up-manship and disingenuous fake outrage and bad faith and flat-out dishonesty on both (all) sides will not change one bit if I force myself to watch the video to figure out the truth of this particular little he-said she-said. It doesn't matter.
(And on the subject of he-said she-said, I guess that we've finally reached critical mass. If the questions are "how long does it take before people will believe women who say that they have suffered sexual harassment or worse?" and "how many women have to accuse a man before people believe that he actually is a sexual predator?" then the answers usually are "years and years" and "a shitload." But I say "critical mass," because the Weinstein scandal might actually change things a little bit. The timing could have been better, of course. A year ago, maybe a #metoo hashtag campaign could have changed the election results.)
So yes, Kelly "defended" Trump. He also pointed out--indirectly, but clearly--that Trump has never sacrificed anything for anyone, has nothing but contempt for women, and isn't smart or sensitive enough to understand well-meaning advice on how to talk to a grieving military widow (Hint: Maybe don't repeat the "he knew what he was getting into" part verbatim, with no additional context). With friends like that, I suppose Trump doesn't need any (more) enemies.
Masha Gessen suggests (the essay as a whole is a little extreme, as might be expected of a person born in the Soviet Union) that Kelly seems to have little respect for the vast majority of Americans who have never served in the military. One one hand, I understand Kelly's anger. It's a problem that we have been at war for 16 years now, and most of us live life every day without even thinking about the war(s) or the people who are fighting them, or their families. On the other hand, it's just stupid to suggest that the military is the only place where people sacrifice and serve and even risk their lives for the benefit of others, and John Kelly doesn't seem stupid to me, so I wonder what else he was getting at.
It's almost 6:30 on Sunday night now, and I never did come to the point, because I never figured out what it is. My son went to his high school's homecoming game on Friday night. He and a group of classmates made t-shirts, each with a single letter painted on the front, and they sat together to form "Class of 2019." My son was inordinately pleased to be wearing the "F." In two years, most of them will be freshmen in college, but some of them--maybe even my son--will be in uniform. That has nothing to do with everything that happened last week, except that it does, somehow. We still don't really know what happened to those four soldiers in Niger, do we?
Sunday, October 15, 2017
KP
Last Saturday, I went to a family party in Philadelphia. It was the kind of party where you see people whom you haven't seen in many years, and everyone brings something, and there's far more food (both homemade and catered) and drink than anyone could ever consume.
The party was at the Philadelphia Canoe Club, a really lovely spot for a party. The building is over 100 years old, and the property, which includes an old stone building with porches and huge windows with deep windowsills, and grounds that slope gently down to the water, sits at the confluence of the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River.
When your cousin is the president of the club, then you can borrow a canoe or kayak. On a cold day, you can stay inside, where there's a huge fireplace, and walls decorated with antique paddles and photos of old club members, and high-water mark plaques commemorating the many times that the building has flooded during the last century or so.
So it was a nice party, but with a big mess to clean up at the end. The handful of us who remained got to work. It's kind of fun to clean up a big party mess. You start with the easy jobs; the low-hanging fruit--throw away half-eaten plates of food, collect empty cups and bottles, gather all of the decorations and centerpieces on to one table, so that you can clear the tablecloths and trash from the rest of the tables. You fold and stack the folding chairs. Then the real clean-up begins.
There were tons of dishes to wash and tons and tons of food to wrap and distribute. I really hate to wash dishes at home, but I don't mind it at someone else's house, or boathouse, as the case might be. And I really hate packing up leftover food. So I volunteered to wash the dishes.
The best thing about being the dishwasher in a large dinner cleanup operation is that the rest of the cleanup proceeds behind your back, and you have no idea what's going on. You stay focused on the dishes (and no one bothers you; if they do, you justly claim that your hands are full) and then when you turn around after 15 minutes or so, it's like the kitchen fairy has paid a visit. Platters full of half-eaten food have turned into tidy parcels of leftovers for people to take home; the dirty floor is neatly swept, and the counters are clean.
The party was a 30th birthday party, and the playlist was early 21st century nostalgia, chosen by people who have begun to realize that they are now old enough to reminisce about their youth. In between Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," and Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full of Sunshine," I washed and rinsed and piled dishes on the huge drainboard.
A friend once commented that plastic wineglasses depressed her. I'm not sure why. We could have recycled the wineglasses, but whoever cleared the table piled them into the sink, so we were clearly meant to wash them, and so I did. They were molded to look like lead crystal, and that made me happy for some odd reason. Someone tried to make something plain and ordinary a little bit nicer. The 500 or so plastic glasses (oxymoronic, no?) that I washed and rinsed probably ended up in the trash, but the boxed wine tasted just fine, and the party was fun, and we left the Canoe Club just as we found it.
The party was at the Philadelphia Canoe Club, a really lovely spot for a party. The building is over 100 years old, and the property, which includes an old stone building with porches and huge windows with deep windowsills, and grounds that slope gently down to the water, sits at the confluence of the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River.
 |
| I like deep windowsills. |
When your cousin is the president of the club, then you can borrow a canoe or kayak. On a cold day, you can stay inside, where there's a huge fireplace, and walls decorated with antique paddles and photos of old club members, and high-water mark plaques commemorating the many times that the building has flooded during the last century or so.
 |
| Is this a kayak or a canoe? I have no idea. My 16-year-old son got the hang of it pretty quickly, and enjoyed a solo paddle around the confluence. |
So it was a nice party, but with a big mess to clean up at the end. The handful of us who remained got to work. It's kind of fun to clean up a big party mess. You start with the easy jobs; the low-hanging fruit--throw away half-eaten plates of food, collect empty cups and bottles, gather all of the decorations and centerpieces on to one table, so that you can clear the tablecloths and trash from the rest of the tables. You fold and stack the folding chairs. Then the real clean-up begins.
There were tons of dishes to wash and tons and tons of food to wrap and distribute. I really hate to wash dishes at home, but I don't mind it at someone else's house, or boathouse, as the case might be. And I really hate packing up leftover food. So I volunteered to wash the dishes.
The best thing about being the dishwasher in a large dinner cleanup operation is that the rest of the cleanup proceeds behind your back, and you have no idea what's going on. You stay focused on the dishes (and no one bothers you; if they do, you justly claim that your hands are full) and then when you turn around after 15 minutes or so, it's like the kitchen fairy has paid a visit. Platters full of half-eaten food have turned into tidy parcels of leftovers for people to take home; the dirty floor is neatly swept, and the counters are clean.
The party was a 30th birthday party, and the playlist was early 21st century nostalgia, chosen by people who have begun to realize that they are now old enough to reminisce about their youth. In between Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," and Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full of Sunshine," I washed and rinsed and piled dishes on the huge drainboard.
A friend once commented that plastic wineglasses depressed her. I'm not sure why. We could have recycled the wineglasses, but whoever cleared the table piled them into the sink, so we were clearly meant to wash them, and so I did. They were molded to look like lead crystal, and that made me happy for some odd reason. Someone tried to make something plain and ordinary a little bit nicer. The 500 or so plastic glasses (oxymoronic, no?) that I washed and rinsed probably ended up in the trash, but the boxed wine tasted just fine, and the party was fun, and we left the Canoe Club just as we found it.
Monday, October 9, 2017
Goodbye, friend
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want. It's to never see, smell, or hear of pumpkin spice anything, ever again. The pumpkin spice trend should have been over two years ago, but it seems to emerge stronger than ever, every damn October. I was shopping at my beloved Aldi last week, and was horrified to see a shelf full of pumpkin chipotle salsa. This is nothing more than a hate crime against corn chips.
*****
*****
So that was the beginning of my post for the week, which I started on Friday night as I was baking brownies for a party. I mentioned once, to one of my neighborhood friends, that I hate pumpkin spice everything with the sort of hatred that should probably be reserved for ISIS or white collar crime.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
One of the ringleaders and instigators of this annual pumpkin spice gang warfare was a woman named Bernadette Bueno Minor. I first met Bern in 2010 or 2011 when she signed her kids up for our neighborhood swim team. The first thing I noticed about her was how beautiful she was, with shiny dark hair and a wide-open joyous smile that radiated fun and good humor. I liked her right away.
We were friends in the way that mothers become friends when their children are in sports or band or school together. We weren't really close but close enough that we cared about each other's kids and kept up with each other's family and personal news. And we just liked each other.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
Bernadette's first bout with breast cancer was in 2014. It was summer and swim season was in full swing. She didn't make it to many meets that year, but when she was around, she was unfailingly cheerful and brave and full of good humor. I know how hard it must have been for her to lose her beautiful, long, thick hair, but she joked about it, and about all of the other things that she had to endure. We were all delighted to hear, a few months later, that she'd had her last treatment, and that she was expected to make a full recovery. Her hair grew back, and by the next summer, she looked a lot like herself.
This past summer, she and I were sitting together at a swim meet. It was a very hot morning; so hot that stroke and turn judges were rotating so that no one had to stand in the sun the whole time, and I had just finished my shift. "I feel guilty," she said to me. "I was supposed to time, but I was just too tired this morning, so I had to make someone else do it. If it's not cancer, it's MS, you know?"
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
The Van Buren Boys
There was a lady who lived in a house around the corner from mine. A widow, she spent many hours in her garden, weeding and--well, I don't know what else. She always seemed to be weeding, crawling on her hands and knees inch by inch, finding weeds that were all but invisible to to everyone else. She had these trees--I'm not sure what kind they were (I'm terrible at identifying plants and trees), but she had them shaped, almost topiary-style, so that they resembled open umbrellas. She obviously loved those trees. Most of her weeding and manicuring was concentrated on the little beds at the base of the trees. She had a professional come to trim the trees themselves, so that they'd maintain their perfect umbrella shape.
The lady was very reserved. I started to work part-time, often from home, when my son was in 2nd grade. So on nice days, my other son (who was four at the time) and I used to walk to Bel Pre Elementary School to pick my older boy up after school, and we'd all walk home together. We tried a few times to say hello to the lady, thinking that maybe we'd make friends, but she'd just nod politely and then return to her weeding. I didn't mind. Not everyone is outgoing, and not everyone likes little children.
The lady died a few years ago. I'd heard that she was sick and had gone into hospice care, and a few months later, I saw a For Sale sign on her front lawn. The trees are gone. They were kind of hideous, so I don't blame the new owner for taking them down. Even the beds are gone, replaced by what look like little rock gardens. I don't miss the silly-looking trees, but it seems sad that there's nothing left on the property to remind neighbors of the lady who used to live there. I never knew her name.
*****
I don't really know what made me think of that. I was thinking about something earlier today; something that I thought I should write about. Now it's gone, just that quickly.
*****
So here's a little known trick, which I learned from a cooking blog. Male bell peppers are different from female bell peppers: the male ones have just three bumps on the bottom, while the females have four. Male bell peppers are better cooked; and they're less messy when you cut them up, because they don't have very many seeds inside. Female bell peppers are sweeter, so they're good in salads and vegetable trays. I usually look for the male ones, because I make a lot of stir-fry dishes.
So I was in the grocery store, looking for boys among the peppers, and an older lady (even older than me, I mean) stopped and looked at me, looked at the peppers, nodded, and looked at me again, smiling. Then she walked away without a word.
She knew that I knew about the peppers, and she wanted me to know that she knew that I knew. It was like a shibboleth. It was like a secret handshake. I felt like Kramer, accidentally flashing the Van Buren Boys' secret sign.
*****
Another grocery store story, and another nice old lady: My children were pretty well-behaved when they were little (and lucky for me, they still are). I often used to get compliments from strangers about how good my children were. But even good children have bad days.
We were in the grocery store again (because that's where I hang out). My older son was not quite 4, and my younger son was about 7 months old. The not-quite-4-year-old asked for something (probably a car; they still sell little cars at the grocery store) and when I said no, he flung himself onto the floor and commenced his second-ever (and last; he never did it again) public temper tantrum. I had to abandon an almost-full cart of groceries to get him out of the store and into the car. He was asleep before we even got out of the parking lot.
Anyway, as the tantrum progressed, I saw an old lady shuffling toward me, and I braced for what I was sure would be a world of judgement raining down on me. Instead, she looked at me and said "Honey, the years go by really fast. But some of the days are reeeeallly long." We didn't have hashtags in 2005, but that was a #truth moment if I ever heard one.
*****
My youngest son is 13 today, which means that I don't have any little boys anymore (and it also means that I live in the same house with two teenage boys). I remember things that happened, and I'm astonished to realize that they happened 8 or 10 or 15 years ago. Blinding speed, even amid some long days.
While it's nice to have older children, it's all going way too fast now. We have only a few more years of band concerts and swim meets and track meets and baseball games. When my children were little, I'd listen to older friends, parents of teenagers, and wonder why they were nostalgic in advance. Now I know. Now I know that all of the old ladies--in the grocery store, and weeding their gardens--were changing diapers five minutes ago, and now their children are grandparents, too.
Sometimes, though, things slow down for a few minutes. Sometimes, two teenagers decide to build something, and then I don't even mind stepping on a pile of Legos in my bare feet. The years go by really fast, and some of the days go by even faster.
The lady was very reserved. I started to work part-time, often from home, when my son was in 2nd grade. So on nice days, my other son (who was four at the time) and I used to walk to Bel Pre Elementary School to pick my older boy up after school, and we'd all walk home together. We tried a few times to say hello to the lady, thinking that maybe we'd make friends, but she'd just nod politely and then return to her weeding. I didn't mind. Not everyone is outgoing, and not everyone likes little children.
The lady died a few years ago. I'd heard that she was sick and had gone into hospice care, and a few months later, I saw a For Sale sign on her front lawn. The trees are gone. They were kind of hideous, so I don't blame the new owner for taking them down. Even the beds are gone, replaced by what look like little rock gardens. I don't miss the silly-looking trees, but it seems sad that there's nothing left on the property to remind neighbors of the lady who used to live there. I never knew her name.
*****
I don't really know what made me think of that. I was thinking about something earlier today; something that I thought I should write about. Now it's gone, just that quickly.
*****
So here's a little known trick, which I learned from a cooking blog. Male bell peppers are different from female bell peppers: the male ones have just three bumps on the bottom, while the females have four. Male bell peppers are better cooked; and they're less messy when you cut them up, because they don't have very many seeds inside. Female bell peppers are sweeter, so they're good in salads and vegetable trays. I usually look for the male ones, because I make a lot of stir-fry dishes.
So I was in the grocery store, looking for boys among the peppers, and an older lady (even older than me, I mean) stopped and looked at me, looked at the peppers, nodded, and looked at me again, smiling. Then she walked away without a word.
She knew that I knew about the peppers, and she wanted me to know that she knew that I knew. It was like a shibboleth. It was like a secret handshake. I felt like Kramer, accidentally flashing the Van Buren Boys' secret sign.
 |
| "Martin Van Buren was the eighth President! That's their sign!" |
*****
Another grocery store story, and another nice old lady: My children were pretty well-behaved when they were little (and lucky for me, they still are). I often used to get compliments from strangers about how good my children were. But even good children have bad days.
We were in the grocery store again (because that's where I hang out). My older son was not quite 4, and my younger son was about 7 months old. The not-quite-4-year-old asked for something (probably a car; they still sell little cars at the grocery store) and when I said no, he flung himself onto the floor and commenced his second-ever (and last; he never did it again) public temper tantrum. I had to abandon an almost-full cart of groceries to get him out of the store and into the car. He was asleep before we even got out of the parking lot.
Anyway, as the tantrum progressed, I saw an old lady shuffling toward me, and I braced for what I was sure would be a world of judgement raining down on me. Instead, she looked at me and said "Honey, the years go by really fast. But some of the days are reeeeallly long." We didn't have hashtags in 2005, but that was a #truth moment if I ever heard one.
*****
My youngest son is 13 today, which means that I don't have any little boys anymore (and it also means that I live in the same house with two teenage boys). I remember things that happened, and I'm astonished to realize that they happened 8 or 10 or 15 years ago. Blinding speed, even amid some long days.
While it's nice to have older children, it's all going way too fast now. We have only a few more years of band concerts and swim meets and track meets and baseball games. When my children were little, I'd listen to older friends, parents of teenagers, and wonder why they were nostalgic in advance. Now I know. Now I know that all of the old ladies--in the grocery store, and weeding their gardens--were changing diapers five minutes ago, and now their children are grandparents, too.
Sometimes, though, things slow down for a few minutes. Sometimes, two teenagers decide to build something, and then I don't even mind stepping on a pile of Legos in my bare feet. The years go by really fast, and some of the days go by even faster.
Sunday, September 24, 2017
I think it's going to be a long long time
Monday: I'm watching hockey again. OMG! No, that doesn't mean that I'm reconciled to the end of summer. But hockey is back! As Alexander Ovechkin told a reporter, the Capitals are not going to be suck this year. His English is so much better than my Russian.
Tuesday: I made it almost to the end of the day without encountering a single pirate, until I was on my way home. I was sitting at a stoplight, looked to my left, and saw four pirates in an SUV. I was this close. Sigh.
Meanwhile, if I'm Kim Jong Un, right about now I'm thinking "Rocket Man. Rocket Man! Damn straight! I'm ROCKET MAN, motherfuckers!" North Korean state media has probably been ordered to henceforth refer to Kim as "Rocket Man." They've probably already recorded a cover of the song, with Hangul lyrics about Rocket Man's birth at the peak of Mount Paekdu.
Rocket Man. Really. If you're trying to mock and insult someone, then don't call them something so obviously awesome. Rocket Man. Sheesh.
Wednesday: I'm writing a white paper, on a subject that I know woefully little about. So I'm doing research, and talking to experts, and it's coming along, I guess, but very slowly. I hate not knowing what I'm talking--or writing--about.
Actually, the whole day was kind of an exercise in humility. My 7th grader needed help with Algebra, which is another subject about which I know woefully little. I took exactly as much math as I had to, and not one bit more.
I'm pretty good at calculations; it's how to figure out what to calculate that is beyond me. I also can't remember order of operations. I couldn't explain (or apply) the distributive property to save my soul from Hell. I can usually solve for the value of X. I just can't do it in any rational sequence, and I can't explain or write down the process by which I arrive at the answer. This didn't help my son at all. Algebra is about the journey and not the destination. Showing your work and all that. He's a smart boy, and he figured it out, no thanks to his mother.
Speaking of journeys and destinations, I would love to hear not only why Tom Price needs a private jet to travel around the country, but why he needs to travel around the country at all. What does an HHS Secretary do on the road, anyway? Is he on tour?
Friday: Good work, Mr. President! Focus on the important stuff. Rocket Man will come to his senses; and Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands will fix themselves. Or maybe Tom Price is working on that--THAT'S why he needs private jets! Of course! You just deal with anthem-kneeling NFL players (are any of them even doing that anymore? Is it still 2016?) and build a nice sliding glass patio door between here and Mexico.
I have friends who voted for Trump. Some of them have finally lost faith in him. Others are hanging on. They blame Twitter. "If only he'd stop tweeting," they say, "then he could make progress with his agenda." Eventually, I hope, more people will finally figure out that this is his agenda. Destroying everything good, and exacerbating everything bad, and sowing division and strife, and then sitting back and watching what happens--this is the WHOLE REASON for his existence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The off-the-wall inflammatory tweets, and campaign rally demagoguery: A feature, and not a bug.
Sunday: Enough about politics. I started with hockey, and I'll end it with hockey. We took my son and his friends to a Capitals pre-season game last night. Despite a 4-1 loss to Carolina, it was a good time. If what I saw on the ice is any indicator, then the Capitals sadly are going to be suck this year, but even Trump can't ruin hockey.
Tuesday: I made it almost to the end of the day without encountering a single pirate, until I was on my way home. I was sitting at a stoplight, looked to my left, and saw four pirates in an SUV. I was this close. Sigh.
Meanwhile, if I'm Kim Jong Un, right about now I'm thinking "Rocket Man. Rocket Man! Damn straight! I'm ROCKET MAN, motherfuckers!" North Korean state media has probably been ordered to henceforth refer to Kim as "Rocket Man." They've probably already recorded a cover of the song, with Hangul lyrics about Rocket Man's birth at the peak of Mount Paekdu.
Rocket Man. Really. If you're trying to mock and insult someone, then don't call them something so obviously awesome. Rocket Man. Sheesh.
 |
| All this science--I don't understand. |
Wednesday: I'm writing a white paper, on a subject that I know woefully little about. So I'm doing research, and talking to experts, and it's coming along, I guess, but very slowly. I hate not knowing what I'm talking--or writing--about.
Actually, the whole day was kind of an exercise in humility. My 7th grader needed help with Algebra, which is another subject about which I know woefully little. I took exactly as much math as I had to, and not one bit more.
I'm pretty good at calculations; it's how to figure out what to calculate that is beyond me. I also can't remember order of operations. I couldn't explain (or apply) the distributive property to save my soul from Hell. I can usually solve for the value of X. I just can't do it in any rational sequence, and I can't explain or write down the process by which I arrive at the answer. This didn't help my son at all. Algebra is about the journey and not the destination. Showing your work and all that. He's a smart boy, and he figured it out, no thanks to his mother.
Speaking of journeys and destinations, I would love to hear not only why Tom Price needs a private jet to travel around the country, but why he needs to travel around the country at all. What does an HHS Secretary do on the road, anyway? Is he on tour?
Friday: Good work, Mr. President! Focus on the important stuff. Rocket Man will come to his senses; and Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands will fix themselves. Or maybe Tom Price is working on that--THAT'S why he needs private jets! Of course! You just deal with anthem-kneeling NFL players (are any of them even doing that anymore? Is it still 2016?) and build a nice sliding glass patio door between here and Mexico.
I have friends who voted for Trump. Some of them have finally lost faith in him. Others are hanging on. They blame Twitter. "If only he'd stop tweeting," they say, "then he could make progress with his agenda." Eventually, I hope, more people will finally figure out that this is his agenda. Destroying everything good, and exacerbating everything bad, and sowing division and strife, and then sitting back and watching what happens--this is the WHOLE REASON for his existence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The off-the-wall inflammatory tweets, and campaign rally demagoguery: A feature, and not a bug.
Sunday: Enough about politics. I started with hockey, and I'll end it with hockey. We took my son and his friends to a Capitals pre-season game last night. Despite a 4-1 loss to Carolina, it was a good time. If what I saw on the ice is any indicator, then the Capitals sadly are going to be suck this year, but even Trump can't ruin hockey.
Sunday, September 17, 2017
That's not my name
I've written occasionally about my run-ins with wildlife. It's usually deer, with the occasional snake, real or imagined. And squirrels. And spiders. And a few birds here or there. That's usually as far as it goes. I live in the suburbs, after all.
Last Sunday, I went for a walk on the Matthew Henson Trail. There's a vernal pool on a little side trail that leads back to the street. The county parks department posts signs near vernal pools, urging passersby to avoid disturbing them. As if I'd touch a gigantic puddle of standing water encrusted with green scum. But the green scum isn't the grossest thing about this particular pond. The grossest thing is the frogs.
No, I'm not afraid of frogs. I'm not especially fond of them, but they don't bother me. Unless, of course, they launch themselves like missiles out of a scummy green pond and right toward my unsuspecting head. Picture frogs being shot out of cannons. Picture yourself at a sporting event, and it starts to rain frogs when you're expecting rolled-up t-shirts.
Yeah.
So, I made a mental note to give that little corner of nature the widest berth possible from now on, and I went on my way. And that's all there was to that.
Until Tuesday.
Which is when I went for another walk, at about 6:45 or so. It was still pretty much broad daylight at 6:45, but dusk falls earlier now. And dusk means one thing.
BATS.
I'm not afraid of frogs, or spiders, or most of the other creepier wildlife species, but I do not like rodents at all. I know that bats are generally harmless, and that they control the insect population, and blah, blah, blah. They're also flying rodents with fangs, and if I never see one again, it'll be too soon.
Bats are always out at night around here, and normally, they don't bother me, because I don't see them. The sky is dark, the bats are dark and they blend right in, and out of sight is out of mind (usually). But at dusk on Tuesday, the sky was a stunning shade of dark bluish gray, and the outline of the bats (hundreds of them!) was clear and visible against the blue-gray backdrop. They didn't dive-bomb me or anything, but they swirled and circled just a few yards overhead, and I pretty much ran the last few blocks home.
No run-ins with wild animals on Wednesday. Only a mysterious, one-word text message--STASI-- from an unknown number. Why Stasi? Who would text me this? I responded "Sorry, but who is this?" but whoever it was didn't reply. It was probably a person who doesn't know how to spell Stacy. Or Staci. Or Stacey. None of which are names that I answer to. Or maybe it really was the Stasi. After all, why would they identify themselves?
I'm still in the middle of The Crisis Years, which is taking entirely too long to finish; and I'm heartily sick of the Cold War, normally one of my favorite topics. I wonder what the members of Ex-Comm would have thought about smart phones. Or sonic attacks. Or projectile frogs, which could probably be weaponized. Or the fact that Castro outlived all of them.
I think I need to get out of my own head for a bit. I think I need to read something else.
BATS.
I'm not afraid of frogs, or spiders, or most of the other creepier wildlife species, but I do not like rodents at all. I know that bats are generally harmless, and that they control the insect population, and blah, blah, blah. They're also flying rodents with fangs, and if I never see one again, it'll be too soon.
Bats are always out at night around here, and normally, they don't bother me, because I don't see them. The sky is dark, the bats are dark and they blend right in, and out of sight is out of mind (usually). But at dusk on Tuesday, the sky was a stunning shade of dark bluish gray, and the outline of the bats (hundreds of them!) was clear and visible against the blue-gray backdrop. They didn't dive-bomb me or anything, but they swirled and circled just a few yards overhead, and I pretty much ran the last few blocks home.
No run-ins with wild animals on Wednesday. Only a mysterious, one-word text message--STASI-- from an unknown number. Why Stasi? Who would text me this? I responded "Sorry, but who is this?" but whoever it was didn't reply. It was probably a person who doesn't know how to spell Stacy. Or Staci. Or Stacey. None of which are names that I answer to. Or maybe it really was the Stasi. After all, why would they identify themselves?
I'm still in the middle of The Crisis Years, which is taking entirely too long to finish; and I'm heartily sick of the Cold War, normally one of my favorite topics. I wonder what the members of Ex-Comm would have thought about smart phones. Or sonic attacks. Or projectile frogs, which could probably be weaponized. Or the fact that Castro outlived all of them.
I think I need to get out of my own head for a bit. I think I need to read something else.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it
And just like that, it's all over, and it's all starting again. A week ago, it was still summer. Now I'm up to my neck in fantasy football (no, not me, because ain't nobody got time for that) and back-to-school nights, and fall sports, and weekend fire pits, and it's not so bad. Not summer, but it's OK.
*****
Saturday: Today is my birthday. And it's a beautiful day, but it's definitely a fall day. For lots of people, that's the ideal weather. "Crisp." I spend most of early October restraining the urge to punch people who go around rhapsodizing about the crispness of the weather, and the beauty of the changing leaves, and the pumpkin fucking spice. Yes, it's nice out and the leaves are beautiful (pumpkin, however, is fit for nothing but pie; and pumpkin spice latte is revolting) but fall is just a prelude to winter. And winter is dark and cold and interminably long.
But enough of that. Lots of people in Texas and the Caribbean and Florida would slap me for complaining about cold weather that's coming three months from now, and they'd be right.
*****
We went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum today, which I had never been to, and which I never realized was in the same building with the National Portrait Gallery. I love American art, and art museums in general, and 20th century history, so the place is a veritable gold mine.
The building itself is astonishingly beautiful, too. I wouldn't want to live in the 19th century, but they knew how to build public spaces then. If a building of similar beauty and durability were to be built today, it'd be a Silicon Valley corporate headquarters, or a country club where a PGA tour event would be held every year.
I didn't even know about the American Visionary: JFK's Life and Times exhibit (which ends next week) until we arrived. I'm still reading The Crisis Years, so this was good timing.
The National Portrait Gallery has a rotating exhibit of photographs and paintings and sculptures of 20th-century Americans, divided into eras (1900-1920, etc.)
It's Sunday now. I have work to do, though I'm not sure how much I'll actually accomplish, given that half of the neighborhood (the male half) is in my backyard.
Of the many things that send me into a tailspin of panic and anxiety, my least favorites are administrative and bureaucratic processes and proceedings, especially new ones that replace ones that I finally managed to master. For years, the Montgomery County Public Schools used an online grade tracking tool called Edline. After a few years, I had finally reached a point at which keeping on top of my sons' progress in school was an easy and routine task. And now Edline is gone, replaced by what appears to be a homegrown system, that I'll have to learn all over again. Edline allowed one log-in and password per parent, but the new system issues a new password and log-in for each child, meaning I'll have two accounts, not just one. Why?
And now that I've become almost totally dependent on Google Drive and Google Photos, they're going away, too, to be replaced by something whose name I could easily look up (on Google), but I won't. And my son is a junior, which means that I have to learn how to get a kid into college. Apparently, the process has changed since the 1980s. The Internet and all.
Oh my gosh, I'm the worst. It's a beautiful day, and I don't have a single real problem in the world, and I don't even mind spending the afternoon copy editing. At least I don't have to pay attention to the football game. I mean, I want the Redskins to win and everything, but you'll never convince me that one football game isn't exactly like every other football game, ever. I've seen one; ergo, I've seen them all. I hope that Florida is spared. Meanwhile, HTTR, I guess.
*****
Saturday: Today is my birthday. And it's a beautiful day, but it's definitely a fall day. For lots of people, that's the ideal weather. "Crisp." I spend most of early October restraining the urge to punch people who go around rhapsodizing about the crispness of the weather, and the beauty of the changing leaves, and the pumpkin fucking spice. Yes, it's nice out and the leaves are beautiful (pumpkin, however, is fit for nothing but pie; and pumpkin spice latte is revolting) but fall is just a prelude to winter. And winter is dark and cold and interminably long.
But enough of that. Lots of people in Texas and the Caribbean and Florida would slap me for complaining about cold weather that's coming three months from now, and they'd be right.
*****
We went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum today, which I had never been to, and which I never realized was in the same building with the National Portrait Gallery. I love American art, and art museums in general, and 20th century history, so the place is a veritable gold mine.
The building itself is astonishingly beautiful, too. I wouldn't want to live in the 19th century, but they knew how to build public spaces then. If a building of similar beauty and durability were to be built today, it'd be a Silicon Valley corporate headquarters, or a country club where a PGA tour event would be held every year.
I didn't even know about the American Visionary: JFK's Life and Times exhibit (which ends next week) until we arrived. I'm still reading The Crisis Years, so this was good timing.
 |
| Kennedy and Khrushchev met for the first time in 1961. The meeting didn't go very well, but Jackie seemed to have had a good time. |
 |
| Gertrude Stein and my younger son. It looks like they're gossiping about Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound. Pound would probably have voted for Trump. |
It's Sunday now. I have work to do, though I'm not sure how much I'll actually accomplish, given that half of the neighborhood (the male half) is in my backyard.
Of the many things that send me into a tailspin of panic and anxiety, my least favorites are administrative and bureaucratic processes and proceedings, especially new ones that replace ones that I finally managed to master. For years, the Montgomery County Public Schools used an online grade tracking tool called Edline. After a few years, I had finally reached a point at which keeping on top of my sons' progress in school was an easy and routine task. And now Edline is gone, replaced by what appears to be a homegrown system, that I'll have to learn all over again. Edline allowed one log-in and password per parent, but the new system issues a new password and log-in for each child, meaning I'll have two accounts, not just one. Why?
And now that I've become almost totally dependent on Google Drive and Google Photos, they're going away, too, to be replaced by something whose name I could easily look up (on Google), but I won't. And my son is a junior, which means that I have to learn how to get a kid into college. Apparently, the process has changed since the 1980s. The Internet and all.
Oh my gosh, I'm the worst. It's a beautiful day, and I don't have a single real problem in the world, and I don't even mind spending the afternoon copy editing. At least I don't have to pay attention to the football game. I mean, I want the Redskins to win and everything, but you'll never convince me that one football game isn't exactly like every other football game, ever. I've seen one; ergo, I've seen them all. I hope that Florida is spared. Meanwhile, HTTR, I guess.
Monday, September 4, 2017
Oh, so I amuse you? So I'm a clown?
I was thinking about stopping this for a while; "this" meaning weekly posting on this blog. Like lots of other things I do, it's become a compulsion-driven source of unnecessary anxiety. But then I think of things and see things, and want to write about them. Maybe I need to just write when I feel like writing. Just like maybe I need to clean the house only when it's dirty.
That last part is crazy talk, of course.
*****
I read something today, which I won't link to. Let's just say that the name "Becky" has two entirely new and unexpected meanings. Clueless, slightly overprivileged white girls are now the bete noire of society, apparently. That's a word that I overuse. "Apparently," that is, not "bete noire." I should use that one more often. Anyway, I suppose it was our turn. Clueless white girls, that is; not people who overuse "apparently," or even "bete noire."
And that's all I have to say about that, because I can never seem to summon any emotion other than slack-jawed eye-rolling boredom for identity politics in any form. That's the privilege talking, I guess. I get that there are still such things as racism and white privilege. I just don't see how dehumanizing yet another group of people helps to end either of those things.
*****
I'm reading, and have been reading for some time, Michael Beschloss's The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev 1960-1963. It's long, and pretty exhaustively detailed, and will probably take me three more weeks to finish, at my current pace, which is slow, because I'm busy.
The book takes lots of side trips, much like that last sentence (and this entire blog, if it comes down to that). I love 20th-century American history, and presidential history (should that be capitalized?) and of course, I love reading about the Soviet Union (not a nice place to visit, and you also wouldn't want to live there), so this is a feature and not a bug. Still, I usually only have a few minutes a day to read (because after all, I do have to write about having only a few minutes a day to read, and that takes time; not to mention that the house isn't going to compulsively clean itself), so it's going to be a while before I can offer a full report. Stay tuned.
Andrei Gromyko, who was the Soviet Foreign Minister during the Kennedy years (and for a long time after), figures prominently in the book, but unlike most of the others (Kennedy, Khrushchev, Dean Rusk, Dean Acheson, Willy Brandt, Konrad Adenauer), his personality doesn't register with the reader. Gromyko was apparently (there it is again) extremely reserved, and is said to have said that he was uninterested in his own personality. He might have been the only real Communist among them. Meanwhile, I can't imagine anything better than to be uninterested in oneself and one's own personality. Something to aspire to.
*****
"Right after I got here, I ordered linguine with marinara, and I got egg noodles with ketchup."
That's the almost-last line of "Goodfellas," which I'm watching on TV. If you're from New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, or Boston (or New Haven or Providence, I guess), and you go anywhere else, food is a big adjustment. Washington, DC is only 3 hours away from Philadelphia, but it's a million culinary miles. When I was pregnant with my first child, I had an overwhelming craving for a tuna hoagie. My husband went out to get me what was supposed to be a tuna hoagie, but which turned out to be Little Friskies on a hot dog bun. I felt Ray Liotta's pain.
It's the day before Labor Day, always one of the saddest times of the year for me. I love summer, and I'm never ready to see it go. I went swimming on Thursday night, and the water was about as cold as I could stand. Then after two days of mid-October chill and rain, it was even colder today. I barely dipped a toe in. One more day, and then the pool is closed, and the school year starts, and the summer is over, just like that.
*****
Labor Day.
Although my kids love summer as much as I do, they're quite upbeat and enthusiastic about the new school year. Armed with a few new clothes and school supplies, ready to see their friends and to see what their schedules will look like, they're filled with the excitement of newness. So I'm going to adjust my attitude, right now. We're already buying pre-season hockey tickets, which means that fall can't be all bad. It'll be fine, as long as I don't ever have to drink, smell, or even look at a pumpkin spice latte. There are depths to which even a white girl won't sink.
That last part is crazy talk, of course.
*****
I read something today, which I won't link to. Let's just say that the name "Becky" has two entirely new and unexpected meanings. Clueless, slightly overprivileged white girls are now the bete noire of society, apparently. That's a word that I overuse. "Apparently," that is, not "bete noire." I should use that one more often. Anyway, I suppose it was our turn. Clueless white girls, that is; not people who overuse "apparently," or even "bete noire."
And that's all I have to say about that, because I can never seem to summon any emotion other than slack-jawed eye-rolling boredom for identity politics in any form. That's the privilege talking, I guess. I get that there are still such things as racism and white privilege. I just don't see how dehumanizing yet another group of people helps to end either of those things.
*****
I'm reading, and have been reading for some time, Michael Beschloss's The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev 1960-1963. It's long, and pretty exhaustively detailed, and will probably take me three more weeks to finish, at my current pace, which is slow, because I'm busy.
The book takes lots of side trips, much like that last sentence (and this entire blog, if it comes down to that). I love 20th-century American history, and presidential history (should that be capitalized?) and of course, I love reading about the Soviet Union (not a nice place to visit, and you also wouldn't want to live there), so this is a feature and not a bug. Still, I usually only have a few minutes a day to read (because after all, I do have to write about having only a few minutes a day to read, and that takes time; not to mention that the house isn't going to compulsively clean itself), so it's going to be a while before I can offer a full report. Stay tuned.
Andrei Gromyko, who was the Soviet Foreign Minister during the Kennedy years (and for a long time after), figures prominently in the book, but unlike most of the others (Kennedy, Khrushchev, Dean Rusk, Dean Acheson, Willy Brandt, Konrad Adenauer), his personality doesn't register with the reader. Gromyko was apparently (there it is again) extremely reserved, and is said to have said that he was uninterested in his own personality. He might have been the only real Communist among them. Meanwhile, I can't imagine anything better than to be uninterested in oneself and one's own personality. Something to aspire to.
*****
"Right after I got here, I ordered linguine with marinara, and I got egg noodles with ketchup."
That's the almost-last line of "Goodfellas," which I'm watching on TV. If you're from New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, or Boston (or New Haven or Providence, I guess), and you go anywhere else, food is a big adjustment. Washington, DC is only 3 hours away from Philadelphia, but it's a million culinary miles. When I was pregnant with my first child, I had an overwhelming craving for a tuna hoagie. My husband went out to get me what was supposed to be a tuna hoagie, but which turned out to be Little Friskies on a hot dog bun. I felt Ray Liotta's pain.
It's the day before Labor Day, always one of the saddest times of the year for me. I love summer, and I'm never ready to see it go. I went swimming on Thursday night, and the water was about as cold as I could stand. Then after two days of mid-October chill and rain, it was even colder today. I barely dipped a toe in. One more day, and then the pool is closed, and the school year starts, and the summer is over, just like that.
*****
Labor Day.
Although my kids love summer as much as I do, they're quite upbeat and enthusiastic about the new school year. Armed with a few new clothes and school supplies, ready to see their friends and to see what their schedules will look like, they're filled with the excitement of newness. So I'm going to adjust my attitude, right now. We're already buying pre-season hockey tickets, which means that fall can't be all bad. It'll be fine, as long as I don't ever have to drink, smell, or even look at a pumpkin spice latte. There are depths to which even a white girl won't sink.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
The end of summer
Monday night: I'm done for the day, at the delightfully early hour of 8:45 PM. Maybe I'll sleep tonight. Meanwhile, I have a ton of things that I could do, but I think I'll hang around on the couch and watch "King of the Hill" with my kids, dang it.
Tuesday night: I should be working right now, and I will in a minute, but here I am, blogging instead.
I'm compulsive about a lot of things, including reading. I've managed to fool a lot of people into thinking that I'm a lot smarter than I really am, and that's because I will read almost anything. And when you read a lot of stuff, you learn a lot of stuff. Facts, and details, and historical dates, sports trivia, the actor who starred in that one episode of that show--I know pretty much all of that.
When I say that I'll read almost anything, I mean almost anything, including the directions on a container of hand soap at Aldi. Dispensing with the obvious question (no, not why would I read hand soap instructions, but why such instructions exist in the first place), the instructions were written as though the writer could barely suppress her disdain at whatever idiot needs written instructions to wash her hands: "Use as you normally would use hand soap to wash your hands." The ", dumbass!" was understood, I suppose.
*****
Saturday: Even at my age, it's a shock to hear that someone you grew up with has died. My mom is here this weekend, and even though I can't remember how we ended up on the subject, I asked her if she had heard from the twins who lived next door to us when I was growing up, and was stunned to hear that they're dead.
Matt and Jimmy (not their real names) were the youngest of a family of five boys and a widowed mother. Their mother (who died several years ago and was thus spared experiencing the loss of her two youngest sons) was even stricter than my mother. We met the family when we moved into the house where my mother still lives, which was when I was 13. My sister was 12, and my brother was 9. Matt and Jimmy were 11. Their older brothers were a bit older--the closest to them in age was five or six years older, and the oldest two, who still lived at home, were out of high school, working and taking classes at Community College of Philadelphia.
My sister and I and the twins went to different schools, and had different groups of neighborhood friends, but our houses were semi-detached, so we could literally step over our porch fence and be on the twins' porch; and vice versa. So we were all in and out of each others' houses constantly, especially during the summer.
When I was growing up, working mothers didn't worry about summer camp or programs for kids, unless they were too young to stay home alone. My brother and sister and I were alone after school and during the summer from the time I was 10 or so. Matt and Jimmy and their brothers also spent their summers unsupervised. Who knows how we didn't end up in serious trouble during those summers, because despite their mother's best efforts to control her boys, they were wild, and none more than the twins.
Actually, I know why my sister and I didn't end up in trouble. I was a goody two-shoes, and even the older boys were afraid to drink or smoke pot when I was around, because they thought I'd tell on them. My sister was not as much of a rule-follower as I was, but she was popular and pretty and I think that the boys tried to be on their best (or at least better) behavior when they were around her. Matt and Jimmy were fraternal twins, though they looked nearly identical. The neighborhood adults used to call them things like "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum," or "Frick and Frack." No adults other than their mother and older brothers could tell them apart, but my siblings and I knew them so well that we could easily distinguish them. We were unlikely but close friends.
The twins were probably the least motivated, least ambitious people I knew. They discovered beer and pot very early, and after that, they spent most of their free time drinking and partying. But although they weren't ambitious, they also weren't lazy. They went to work right after high school (who knows how they managed to graduate) and went right to work, and they showed up at their jobs every day. When they were 19 or so, they bought a car that they shared, and they always seemed to have money. In between work, porch-sitting, and drinking, they also helped their mother to maintain her spotless house and garden.
We lost touch eventually. I moved away from Philadelphia altogether, and my sister and brother moved to the suburbs, while Matt and Jimmy remained at home, working all week, and drinking all weekend. We'd talk at holidays and when I came to visit, but that was all. Then the boys were left a pretty substantial sum of money by a relative (maybe their late father's parents--I can't remember) and they quit their jobs and moved to Florida.
I wasn't really close with the twins anymore, nor with the rest of their family, but I heard that without the their mother around, they fell into a routine that included a lot of drinking, a lot of drug use, and a lot of hanging around with the local party crowd. My mom kept in touch with them. They sent me a card when I had my first child, and we sent greetings back and forth through my mom, but I never actually spoke to them. About 10 years or so ago, according to my mom, they entered rehab and got sober. But apparently they fell back into old habits a few years later. They died within months of each other, of alcohol-related complications. They were 49.
As adults, we had only the most infrequent contact, and really none at all in the past 10 years. But despite their flaws, they were possibly the two funniest people I ever knew. Even as my sister and I realized that the twins would probably spend most of their lives drunk or high or both (as in fact they did), they always had a spark and a sweetness that made it easy for them to make friends and keep them. Sad and wasteful as their lives were, they still left some good in the world. God rest their souls.
*****
Sunday: Normally, this would be the night before school starts. But this year, we have a one-week reprieve, thanks to an executive order from the governor of Maryland. Rumor has it that school will start in August again next year, but for now, we have one more week.
It already feels like summer is over, though. It's unseasonably cool, and it's almost dark just before 8 PM, and the water was freezing today. It's like a corner has been turned. I was planning to try to swim every night this week, the last week that the pool will be open, but I don't know if I can. It's too dang cold.
I'm compulsive about a lot of things, including reading. I've managed to fool a lot of people into thinking that I'm a lot smarter than I really am, and that's because I will read almost anything. And when you read a lot of stuff, you learn a lot of stuff. Facts, and details, and historical dates, sports trivia, the actor who starred in that one episode of that show--I know pretty much all of that.
When I say that I'll read almost anything, I mean almost anything, including the directions on a container of hand soap at Aldi. Dispensing with the obvious question (no, not why would I read hand soap instructions, but why such instructions exist in the first place), the instructions were written as though the writer could barely suppress her disdain at whatever idiot needs written instructions to wash her hands: "Use as you normally would use hand soap to wash your hands." The ", dumbass!" was understood, I suppose.
 |
| "You need directions to wash your hands? That's asinine." |
*****
Saturday: Even at my age, it's a shock to hear that someone you grew up with has died. My mom is here this weekend, and even though I can't remember how we ended up on the subject, I asked her if she had heard from the twins who lived next door to us when I was growing up, and was stunned to hear that they're dead.
Matt and Jimmy (not their real names) were the youngest of a family of five boys and a widowed mother. Their mother (who died several years ago and was thus spared experiencing the loss of her two youngest sons) was even stricter than my mother. We met the family when we moved into the house where my mother still lives, which was when I was 13. My sister was 12, and my brother was 9. Matt and Jimmy were 11. Their older brothers were a bit older--the closest to them in age was five or six years older, and the oldest two, who still lived at home, were out of high school, working and taking classes at Community College of Philadelphia.
My sister and I and the twins went to different schools, and had different groups of neighborhood friends, but our houses were semi-detached, so we could literally step over our porch fence and be on the twins' porch; and vice versa. So we were all in and out of each others' houses constantly, especially during the summer.
When I was growing up, working mothers didn't worry about summer camp or programs for kids, unless they were too young to stay home alone. My brother and sister and I were alone after school and during the summer from the time I was 10 or so. Matt and Jimmy and their brothers also spent their summers unsupervised. Who knows how we didn't end up in serious trouble during those summers, because despite their mother's best efforts to control her boys, they were wild, and none more than the twins.
Actually, I know why my sister and I didn't end up in trouble. I was a goody two-shoes, and even the older boys were afraid to drink or smoke pot when I was around, because they thought I'd tell on them. My sister was not as much of a rule-follower as I was, but she was popular and pretty and I think that the boys tried to be on their best (or at least better) behavior when they were around her. Matt and Jimmy were fraternal twins, though they looked nearly identical. The neighborhood adults used to call them things like "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum," or "Frick and Frack." No adults other than their mother and older brothers could tell them apart, but my siblings and I knew them so well that we could easily distinguish them. We were unlikely but close friends.
The twins were probably the least motivated, least ambitious people I knew. They discovered beer and pot very early, and after that, they spent most of their free time drinking and partying. But although they weren't ambitious, they also weren't lazy. They went to work right after high school (who knows how they managed to graduate) and went right to work, and they showed up at their jobs every day. When they were 19 or so, they bought a car that they shared, and they always seemed to have money. In between work, porch-sitting, and drinking, they also helped their mother to maintain her spotless house and garden.
We lost touch eventually. I moved away from Philadelphia altogether, and my sister and brother moved to the suburbs, while Matt and Jimmy remained at home, working all week, and drinking all weekend. We'd talk at holidays and when I came to visit, but that was all. Then the boys were left a pretty substantial sum of money by a relative (maybe their late father's parents--I can't remember) and they quit their jobs and moved to Florida.
I wasn't really close with the twins anymore, nor with the rest of their family, but I heard that without the their mother around, they fell into a routine that included a lot of drinking, a lot of drug use, and a lot of hanging around with the local party crowd. My mom kept in touch with them. They sent me a card when I had my first child, and we sent greetings back and forth through my mom, but I never actually spoke to them. About 10 years or so ago, according to my mom, they entered rehab and got sober. But apparently they fell back into old habits a few years later. They died within months of each other, of alcohol-related complications. They were 49.
As adults, we had only the most infrequent contact, and really none at all in the past 10 years. But despite their flaws, they were possibly the two funniest people I ever knew. Even as my sister and I realized that the twins would probably spend most of their lives drunk or high or both (as in fact they did), they always had a spark and a sweetness that made it easy for them to make friends and keep them. Sad and wasteful as their lives were, they still left some good in the world. God rest their souls.
*****
Sunday: Normally, this would be the night before school starts. But this year, we have a one-week reprieve, thanks to an executive order from the governor of Maryland. Rumor has it that school will start in August again next year, but for now, we have one more week.
It already feels like summer is over, though. It's unseasonably cool, and it's almost dark just before 8 PM, and the water was freezing today. It's like a corner has been turned. I was planning to try to swim every night this week, the last week that the pool will be open, but I don't know if I can. It's too dang cold.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
What are you talking about? I'm in a great mood.
Monday: As I wrote here, just over two years ago, it's only a matter of time before the deer turn predator, and I think that time is running out. I took a walk around my neighborhood tonight, and I'm pretty sure that the two deer on my neighbor's lawn, who stared at me, holding their ground, would have attacked me if I hadn't crossed the street. Minutes later, I saw a to-the-death battle between two angry squirrels, and then a stray cat squared off at me as if to warn me off its turf, which apparently consists of the whole neighborhood.
It's so rare to see a cat at large anymore. When I was growing up in Philadelphia, people let their cats out during the day. The cats would wander the neighborhood freely until sundown, and then return home. Occasionally, someone would have to go out and hunt for their cat, but most of the neighborhood cats seemed to have unerring homing instincts, and they'd just show up for dinner. People don't let their cats out anymore. And I guess I don't blame them, what with the predatory deer.
Anyway, what is this? Wild Kingdom? Sheesh.
Tuesday: It's fine once you get in. That's what people always say as you dip one tentative toe into the icy cold swimming pool. They won't shut up about it, in fact. "Really. I was really cold at first, but now it feels great. My lips are always blue. It's a medical thing. It's fine, I swear. Get in." So I got in, and swam for a while. And I got used to it. And it was still freezing damn cold, but it didn't matter after I had relinquished my will to live.
Thursday: Is there any possible excuse for any person younger than 85 to hold up the line at the Safeway by WRITING A CHECK OMG for groceries? That was a rhetorical question, of course, but there's nothing stopping you from answering it, as long as your answer is NO, NO, A HUNDRED TIMES NO, FOR GOD'S SAKE.
Standing behind someone writing a check ("What's today's date? What was the amount again? Who do I make it out to? Can I write it for $30 extra? No, wait--maybe $40 extra...") is bad enough. What's worse is standing behind the check-writer in the line manned by the super-friendly, super-entertaining cashier with the running commentary on every facet of life. I must be a misanthrope of the highest order, because every time I end up in his line, the person in front of me never fails to tell him how wonderful he is and how great it is that he's so upbeat and cheerful. And all I want to do is beat him over the head. As I restrained the head-beating urge and willed the check-writing slowpoke to hurry the holy heck up, I noticed a leaflet at the bottom of my cart. "WHERE DO YOU WANT TO SPEND ETERNITY?" was printed in fiery orange and red tones on its glossy black cover.
"Here," I thought. "Right here. I want to spend eternity in the gosh-darn checkout line at the Norbeck Fucking Road Safeway, so aren't I lucky? Because I've been here since the dawn of time and it appears that I'll be here until the sun burns out, and beyond." On my best day, I might have taken that leaflet as a reminder that I do have an immortal soul and that I should maybe take better care of it. But it wasn't my best day.
Saturday: Why did you fail me, Google Drive? Why can't I find the work that I most assuredly finished and saved in the folder where I know I saved it? Please tell me that I don't have to:
A. Rewrite what I already wrote or
B. Lug my 40-pound computer to and from work every day.
I'm normally a good-tempered and mild-mannered person, but technical failures and things not working in general turn me into a flaming torch of rage. I was trying to tear off a sheet of aluminum foil to cover the baking pan of chicken cacciatore that I was about to put in the oven, and the foil tore off in an ever-narrowing spiral, as an ever-widening spiral clung to the roll. I couldn't even. I handed the roll to my husband and said "Fix this please, before I put it through a window." He fixed it, because he knew that I wasn't kidding and that it's easier to stop watching the Redskins and get me some damn aluminum foil than to get a window repaired on a Saturday night.
Computer issues are even worse. I have more than once carried my computer toward the garage, loudly threatening to place it under a rear tire of my car, and then run over it. Someone usually rescues the computer, but one day, it'll be just me and the computer, with no reasonable people between it and the rear tire. Like the predatory deer, it's only a matter of time.
Sunday: So I just read this over, and I think I'm coming across as the tiniest bit irritable and grouchy. Plankton could take my correspondence course. The panic attacks are back and I'm running on about 12 hours sleep over the past five days, so maybe I'm a little punchy. It'll pass, like everything else does. I think I'll go swimming. It's fine, once you get in.
It's so rare to see a cat at large anymore. When I was growing up in Philadelphia, people let their cats out during the day. The cats would wander the neighborhood freely until sundown, and then return home. Occasionally, someone would have to go out and hunt for their cat, but most of the neighborhood cats seemed to have unerring homing instincts, and they'd just show up for dinner. People don't let their cats out anymore. And I guess I don't blame them, what with the predatory deer.
Anyway, what is this? Wild Kingdom? Sheesh.
Tuesday: It's fine once you get in. That's what people always say as you dip one tentative toe into the icy cold swimming pool. They won't shut up about it, in fact. "Really. I was really cold at first, but now it feels great. My lips are always blue. It's a medical thing. It's fine, I swear. Get in." So I got in, and swam for a while. And I got used to it. And it was still freezing damn cold, but it didn't matter after I had relinquished my will to live.
Thursday: Is there any possible excuse for any person younger than 85 to hold up the line at the Safeway by WRITING A CHECK OMG for groceries? That was a rhetorical question, of course, but there's nothing stopping you from answering it, as long as your answer is NO, NO, A HUNDRED TIMES NO, FOR GOD'S SAKE.
Standing behind someone writing a check ("What's today's date? What was the amount again? Who do I make it out to? Can I write it for $30 extra? No, wait--maybe $40 extra...") is bad enough. What's worse is standing behind the check-writer in the line manned by the super-friendly, super-entertaining cashier with the running commentary on every facet of life. I must be a misanthrope of the highest order, because every time I end up in his line, the person in front of me never fails to tell him how wonderful he is and how great it is that he's so upbeat and cheerful. And all I want to do is beat him over the head. As I restrained the head-beating urge and willed the check-writing slowpoke to hurry the holy heck up, I noticed a leaflet at the bottom of my cart. "WHERE DO YOU WANT TO SPEND ETERNITY?" was printed in fiery orange and red tones on its glossy black cover.
"Here," I thought. "Right here. I want to spend eternity in the gosh-darn checkout line at the Norbeck Fucking Road Safeway, so aren't I lucky? Because I've been here since the dawn of time and it appears that I'll be here until the sun burns out, and beyond." On my best day, I might have taken that leaflet as a reminder that I do have an immortal soul and that I should maybe take better care of it. But it wasn't my best day.
Saturday: Why did you fail me, Google Drive? Why can't I find the work that I most assuredly finished and saved in the folder where I know I saved it? Please tell me that I don't have to:
A. Rewrite what I already wrote or
B. Lug my 40-pound computer to and from work every day.
I'm normally a good-tempered and mild-mannered person, but technical failures and things not working in general turn me into a flaming torch of rage. I was trying to tear off a sheet of aluminum foil to cover the baking pan of chicken cacciatore that I was about to put in the oven, and the foil tore off in an ever-narrowing spiral, as an ever-widening spiral clung to the roll. I couldn't even. I handed the roll to my husband and said "Fix this please, before I put it through a window." He fixed it, because he knew that I wasn't kidding and that it's easier to stop watching the Redskins and get me some damn aluminum foil than to get a window repaired on a Saturday night.
Computer issues are even worse. I have more than once carried my computer toward the garage, loudly threatening to place it under a rear tire of my car, and then run over it. Someone usually rescues the computer, but one day, it'll be just me and the computer, with no reasonable people between it and the rear tire. Like the predatory deer, it's only a matter of time.
 |
| "I'll run it over! I swear I will!" |
Sunday: So I just read this over, and I think I'm coming across as the tiniest bit irritable and grouchy. Plankton could take my correspondence course. The panic attacks are back and I'm running on about 12 hours sleep over the past five days, so maybe I'm a little punchy. It'll pass, like everything else does. I think I'll go swimming. It's fine, once you get in.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Pax in terra
I'm mobile blogging right now, southbound on I-95. No, I'm not driving. Punctuation is the hardest thing about writing on a phone. Punctuation and sudden stops.
*****
We're listening to a road trip mix now. I should probably turn on the radio to see if we've bombed Pyongyang yet, or if North Korean missiles are en route to Seattle, or if the Klan has descended on Silver Spring. But I'd rather listen to Erasure.
"Weight of the World." How appropriate.
*****
We're about 45 minutes away from home now. It's hard to believe that I woke up at the beach this morning.
*****
It's Sunday morning , and we're home, so I'm writing on a real keyboard. Anyway, about the beach. We alternate vacations--we visit a new city one year, and then spend a week at the beach the next. It would be nice to do both every year, of course, but we're lucky that we can go away every year, no matter where it is.
A city vacation is different from a beach vacation because you don't really fall into a routine in a new city. At least, we don't. We fill up every day and night, determined to see as much of our new city as possible. At the beach, though, we establish a routine on day 1, and by day 3, it's like we've always lived in Avalon, and always will.
One common element of the beach and the city vacations is the early-morning outings with my now 12-year-old son. He and I are both naturally early risers, and we like to go out and do things while the rest of the family sleeps. In the city, this usually means exploratory walks around whatever neighborhood we happen to be staying in, with a stop for coffee and breakfast, which we deliver to my husband and older son just as they're waking up. At the beach, it means morning bike rides.
 |
| Taken on Tuesday morning. It rained all day on Monday and rain seemed likely on Tuesday, too. But it turned out to be a sunny day. |
We usually ride for a few miles; sometimes south to Stone Harbor and the shops on 96th Street; and sometimes north to the center of town in Avalon. Sometimes we go farther--to 122nd Street, and Stone Harbor Point; or to Townsend's Inlet, across the bridge from Sea Isle City. Seven Mile Island is as flat as a prairie, so even with wind resistance, a long ride is pretty easy and pleasant, if you like to ride. Not everyone does. My whole family goes to the beach (we stay in separate places) and my sister suggested to my nephew, also an early riser, that he should join us one morning. He scoffed. "What am I, Lance Armstrong? Do you know how far they go?" Not that far if you're a serious rider, but I guess pretty far on a beach cruiser in August.
The water was perfect last week. Slightly rough surf and a bit of an undertow, but so warm that you could just walk in, and no jellyfish at all. I've never been to the Caribbean, but everyone who has been complains that it ruins them for the Atlantic Ocean on the northeastern coast of the United States. This means that I should never go to the Caribbean, because I never want to not want to swim in the Atlantic Ocean.
This boy was exactly as I'd have expected him to be in the surf. Knocked down by a wave and scooped up by his father before the current could pull him under, he spluttered and struggled and yelled "Put me down! There's another one coming!" Surrounded by a gang of 9- or 10-year old boogie boarders, he stood his ground, yelling "You guys gotta get outta my way!" And they did, shaking their heads and wondering who the crazy little kid was.
*****
During city vacations, it seems like the world continues to do what it does, and I'm just as attuned to current events as I am at home. I followed election and Olympics coverage in Chicago in 2012 and Boston in 2016; and in 2014, even South Korean news media was covering the events in Ferguson, MO. ("What's happening in your country?" our tour guide asked us.) At the beach, though, the only news I seem to hear concerns the weather and the water temperature and the movement of the tides. Somewhere around Wednesday or Thursday, it started to emerge that war with North Korea might be a real and actual threat; and then on Saturday, we watched "white nationalists" and Klansmen and neo-Nazis converge on normally peaceful Charlottesville.
And so, as we drove further south, over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, into Maryland, toward Baltimore and finally nearing the Capital Beltway, the world once again continued to do what it does, and it felt less like a day that had started at the beach. There's only one kind of peace that matters, anyway, and it doesn't come from the ocean. Not even from the ocean. It's Sunday afternoon now.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Tied up with string
You know what I love? The word "actually," when little kids say it. Sometime around age 3 3/4 to 4 1/4, little kids tend to start prefacing their explanations with "actually." This is funny enough on its own, but it's even better when they pronounce it "ackchully."
*****
You know what I don't love? The nightly thunderstorms this week, which are seriously affecting my swimming schedule.
*****
I feel like I should try to dress better. I mean, I try to look neat and appropriate for the occasion, but that's as far as it goes. But then I see someone who has taken extra care with their appearance, and they* look so nice, that I think that I should make the extra effort and take the extra time to make a better impression.
As with everything, it comes down to time. I have all the time in the world to pound out utter drivel on this blog, but not enough time, apparently, to take a few extra minutes to find some jewelry or an accessory, or something that would make me look more stylish and pulled-together.
And there's money, too. Clothes and shoes and accessories cost money, and I find that I'm willing to spend money on almost anything else. Like my 20-year-old couch, for example. It's a very comfortable, hardwood-frame couch that will probably outlast humankind, only the cushions and slipcover need to be replaced. So that's where my clothing budget for the next few months will be spent. The couch will be better dressed than me. On the other hand, it will have to wear the same outfit, every day, likely for the rest of its life.
*I have revised my position on use of the singular "they," which I hereby deem acceptable.
*****
I'm not sure how robust my annual reading list will be this year. I'm quite a bit behind last year's pace, and I don't see myself catching up any time soon. I just finished Beryl Bainbridge's A Quiet Life. It's apparently based loosely on her own life in postwar Britain. The story is told from the point of view of the older brother of a wild teenage girl who is having a secret affair with a German POW. The boy's family is miserably unhappy, and although the book is beautifully written, and short, it still took me ten days to slog through it. Well, I'm also reading another book at the same time, but a short novel is usually a faster read for me. I had never read Beryl Bainbridge before, and probably won't read any more of her work. Too depressing. She is almost as misanthropic as Evelyn Waugh, and not nearly as funny.
*****
And why am I even worried about maintaining last year's reading pace anyway? I'm not that competitive, but I am goal-oriented. And I'm competitive sometimes, too. Swimming again, for example. I'm not very fast at all, but I can go all day. Just the opposite of running, for which I have near-zero endurance (and I'm also a slow runner, so maybe "just the opposite" isn't quite right. Maybe "somewhat the opposite" would be somewhat more accurate). I was swimming laps one night last week, and a neighborhood man, who is older than me, but fit--I see him running all the time--started to swim laps in the lane next to me. He had to stop to rest after every length of the pool, and he complimented my endurance. I modestly dismissed his praise; after all, as I explained, I'm a truly terrible runner who can barely cover a block without stopping to rest. But I was secretly pleased that I was better than someone--anyone--at something athletic.
The man got out of the pool after 5 or 6 laps, and I kept going. Another older person, a Russian lady who reminds me of Raisa Gorbachev, took his place. She and her husband, whose names I don't know, are frequent swimmers. We say hello and smile at one another, but I've never really spoken to them. Her endurance is better than the running man's, but I'm faster than she is. A lot faster. So even though she's at least 10 years my senior, I can't help but enjoy beating her pace and swimming past her, and turning before she's even 5 meters from the wall. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Eat my bubbles, Mrs. Gorbachev.
*****
As usual, I have no idea how I ended up getting from there to here. I started by writing about some of my favorite things, and "actually" was first on my list. Then I got distracted.
But this post is kind of about some of my favorite things. Like swimming. And books. And grammar. And trash talking about old people. OK, not the last one. But the other three, for sure. Books, swimming, and grammar really are some of my favorite things, actually.
*****
You know what I don't love? The nightly thunderstorms this week, which are seriously affecting my swimming schedule.
*****
I feel like I should try to dress better. I mean, I try to look neat and appropriate for the occasion, but that's as far as it goes. But then I see someone who has taken extra care with their appearance, and they* look so nice, that I think that I should make the extra effort and take the extra time to make a better impression.
As with everything, it comes down to time. I have all the time in the world to pound out utter drivel on this blog, but not enough time, apparently, to take a few extra minutes to find some jewelry or an accessory, or something that would make me look more stylish and pulled-together.
And there's money, too. Clothes and shoes and accessories cost money, and I find that I'm willing to spend money on almost anything else. Like my 20-year-old couch, for example. It's a very comfortable, hardwood-frame couch that will probably outlast humankind, only the cushions and slipcover need to be replaced. So that's where my clothing budget for the next few months will be spent. The couch will be better dressed than me. On the other hand, it will have to wear the same outfit, every day, likely for the rest of its life.
*I have revised my position on use of the singular "they," which I hereby deem acceptable.
*****
I'm not sure how robust my annual reading list will be this year. I'm quite a bit behind last year's pace, and I don't see myself catching up any time soon. I just finished Beryl Bainbridge's A Quiet Life. It's apparently based loosely on her own life in postwar Britain. The story is told from the point of view of the older brother of a wild teenage girl who is having a secret affair with a German POW. The boy's family is miserably unhappy, and although the book is beautifully written, and short, it still took me ten days to slog through it. Well, I'm also reading another book at the same time, but a short novel is usually a faster read for me. I had never read Beryl Bainbridge before, and probably won't read any more of her work. Too depressing. She is almost as misanthropic as Evelyn Waugh, and not nearly as funny.
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And why am I even worried about maintaining last year's reading pace anyway? I'm not that competitive, but I am goal-oriented. And I'm competitive sometimes, too. Swimming again, for example. I'm not very fast at all, but I can go all day. Just the opposite of running, for which I have near-zero endurance (and I'm also a slow runner, so maybe "just the opposite" isn't quite right. Maybe "somewhat the opposite" would be somewhat more accurate). I was swimming laps one night last week, and a neighborhood man, who is older than me, but fit--I see him running all the time--started to swim laps in the lane next to me. He had to stop to rest after every length of the pool, and he complimented my endurance. I modestly dismissed his praise; after all, as I explained, I'm a truly terrible runner who can barely cover a block without stopping to rest. But I was secretly pleased that I was better than someone--anyone--at something athletic.
The man got out of the pool after 5 or 6 laps, and I kept going. Another older person, a Russian lady who reminds me of Raisa Gorbachev, took his place. She and her husband, whose names I don't know, are frequent swimmers. We say hello and smile at one another, but I've never really spoken to them. Her endurance is better than the running man's, but I'm faster than she is. A lot faster. So even though she's at least 10 years my senior, I can't help but enjoy beating her pace and swimming past her, and turning before she's even 5 meters from the wall. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Eat my bubbles, Mrs. Gorbachev.
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As usual, I have no idea how I ended up getting from there to here. I started by writing about some of my favorite things, and "actually" was first on my list. Then I got distracted.
But this post is kind of about some of my favorite things. Like swimming. And books. And grammar. And trash talking about old people. OK, not the last one. But the other three, for sure. Books, swimming, and grammar really are some of my favorite things, actually.
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