Ruffled Harpy

I'm not much of a scaredy-pants, by average standards. Bugs, snakes, rodents, and ethnic foods don't bother me, and as a librarian, my brushes with danger are mostly limited to scruffy hobos and snogging teenagers. But I've had a few real scares in my life; drunks with a rifle, a knife-wielding stalker, witness to a car accident, retrieving my blood-smeared dog from a pack of wild sheep-killing dogs before a shepherd could shoot him, violent pet deaths, spurned teenage boy with a blow torch, rescuing a drowning classmate, Gavin being hospitalized with pneumonia, Leif born with his cord twice around his neck... the threat of death marks everybody. Around here, I knew the most perilous thing besides my patrons would be the road to town, that famous 2-hour switchback drive with 300 bridges and cliff side drops into the ocean. This weekend the road finally got my hackles up.

Despite predictions of violent storms, it was sunny on Saturday when I needed to drive my mom and Gavin to the airport. After some deliberation, I took Leif along instead of leaving him home with his dad, uneasy with the distance between my bosom and my baby should anything delay me. It was a beautiful drive, the waterfalls swollen and roaring from a week of rain, and tourists clogging the narrow roads with rent-a-cars to stand on the stone bridges and take pictures. Safely packing the boy off with his grandmother for a vacation visit, I hit the mall with Leif dangling in his front carrier and spent a few hours enjoying leisurely girl-on-the-town time. In Sears I found a fancy new convertible car seat to replace the undersized baby bucket in the car, and asked a cashier if I could get help carrying the giant box, since I was already carrying an infant. After 5 pages on the overhead, nobody arrived, despite the salesmen I saw pacing the floor and averting eye contact whenever someone looked needy. Finally I knocked down the box and dragged it across the store, causing salesmen to scatter into the aisles to avoid helping. I asked the cashier if I could borrow a big man to help install it (really, it didn't need to be a man at all, let alone a big one, but it was worth a shot), and she cheerfully paged them another half a dozen times before I gave up and dragged it outside to the car myself. After a whole lot of juggling, cursing, banging, and wrestling, I finally succeeded in installing the beast myself, and did a little victory dance. Leif chortled from his new seat. The sky was grey, and mist spattered the parking lot. I wondered if I should head home before it got dark, or if visibility would be better once I could see headlights around corners. Since the baby was still wide awake and there were still provisions to be purchased, I opted for the latter.

It was dusk when I finished my sandwich and buckled the sleepy baby into the car for the drive home. Detecting this, he did his banana-baby flexing and started screaming. Hoping he would settle down, I headed out, and my heart sank when I entered the cane fields and saw what lie ahead; the mountains were black and crackling with lighting like the skies of Mordor. We drove into the rain, Leif wailing like the nazgul. I stopped to make sure he was dry and warm, but couldn't take him out to settle him or we would be drenched. I leaned over him and murmured into his ear until he quieted. He started up again as I drove on.

It was black outside, the rain barreling down on the car, drowning out the audio book I was trying to soothe the baby with. The police blocked the road while an electrician fixed a power line, standing in the rain in their uniforms without coats, soaked to the skin and resigned to it. After being waved through, the cars behind me began to disappear off side roads until I was alone on the road. Leif tired himself out and fell asleep, hitching in a sob periodically. I listened to the Kathy Reichs novel and wound slowly homeward through the rising waters on the road, grateful for the headlights that lit the way and promised passable roads ahead.

A truck passed me just before the corner up to the cliff side pass. As their tail lights receded, I drove onto the bridge, suddenly up to my wheel wells in flood water. For a horrifying moment, I thought the river had risen over the bridge, but a quick glance to the walls saw no overflow. The car slogged through, and I found myself driving uphill into white water rapids. Large rocks were scattered thickly over the road, water shooting up over them as it rushed down the road. A small tree was uprooted and lay across the right lane, so I veered cautiously into the left, dodging the rocks I could and rattling over the ones I couldn't, hoping my tires wouldn't pop. My headlights fell on the source of the flooding and landslide; a waterfall had opened up onto the road. As I neared it, it suddenly roared and doubled in size, threatening to engulf the car. My brain flared into one red thought, oh shit it's a flash flood and my car is on the edge of a cliff and my baby is in the car! I didn't have time to decide whether it was a bad idea to try to speed through and risk hydroplaning - I gunned it. The water pushed me, the wheels ground on the rocks for purchase, the waterfall splashed the car, and after 3 or 4 interminable seconds, we finally managed to clear the flood waters. I slowed at the top of the road and felt the adrenaline reach my fingers, wondered how I would taste if I were eaten by a monster at that moment. Gah. GAH.

We made it home - dry, warm, lovely home. And poor Leif is doomed to hear about this every time he tries to drive in the rain for the rest of his life.

Christmas 2008

A much better holiday than the previous two. 

On Christmas Eve I drove from work to the post office to pick up the library mail, and stopped to find a small parcel wedged in my box. Everything kind of went into slow motion when I pulled out a letter from my father. It's a strange and painful thing, caring so much about someone you've only been with a handful of times in your life. Along with the card came two enormous, long packages, which I fit into the back seat of the car on top of the library mail. 

At lunch I drove home in the rain and carried everything up the stairs to drop off milk and presents. 

Gavin said, "Look, I can fit into Granny's suitcase!" and he climbed into it, curling on his side. 

Mike zipped it and stood it upright. 

"You just turned him face-down," I said. 

"No I didn't, his back is on the bottom." 

"No it wasn't, he was curled the other way." 

The suitcase was giggling and wobbling and my mom said, "And the cat is in there with him." 

"What?" 

Mike ran, unzipped it, and Sookie came jetting out from beneath Gavin, who had been upended onto her. He poked his head out of the flap, and the suicase fell over before he could get his arms out to stop it. He was was not happy with the suitcase for nearly decapitating him, and with us for laughing instead of helping him, but we assured him that we were glad he had not died by suitcase on Christmas Eve. That would have been a real downer. 

Back at work, the afternoon dragged by, marked by a handful of sad tourists looking for wi-fi for their "lol I'm in Hawaii ur in snow" holiday emails. (Note to visitors: when you go to the farthest, most remote corner of the rainforest, don't be surprised that nobody has wi-fi. You're lucky the library doesn't have a tin roof.) At closing we scattered like rabbits to our homes for Christmas Eve dinner; a loaf of fluffy french bread and stinky french cheese waited for me, and as night fell and the lights of the tree winked on, a huge roast beast was pulled from the oven. We feasted, we nogged, we watched Ralphie shoot his eye out, plunked the kids in the bath like dumplings, and by 10pm everyone was in bed, listening for scruffling hooves and rustling bells. 

 I woke up at 5am, expecting to hear the sound of little boy feet, but there weren't any. By 5:30 I got impatient and snuck into Gavin's bedroom, where I heard heavy sleepy breathing in the darkness. My mother followed me out into the livingroom, where we turned on the tree and sat drinking tea and coffee. Mike carried Leif out a bit later, and finally the boy came staggering sleepily from bed to investigate the lights and voices. He rubbed his eyes, and frowned, "Why are you all out here?" "Because it's Christmas!" He froze, his eyes turned, followed by his head and body, and he jumped straight into the air when he saw the stockings and piles of Santa presents. He ran to the advent calendar, knocked down the toy soldiers he had put on duty, and we all grabbed our stockings. 

We made out well this year. The tiny sweater I had knit and laid out with Leif's stocking had been filled with a teddy bear overnight, and Santa gave the telling gift of a Nintendo DS game. Gavin does not have a DS, so he started scanning the pile of presents beneath the tree. The rest went very quickly. Light sabers! iPod! Sewing machine! Blueray! DS! Beer-making kit! Blinky baby toys! It was a huge mess. Mike and Gavin voooshed and crashed around with light sabers, we ate too many Shmidt truffles, and Leif wore himself out studying the mechanics of plastic duckies. 

In the evening we visited the landlord, pawned off the gross absinthe on his caretakers, then came home to eat Christmas meat pie and bread pudding. I even got some knitting in. The rain came down, smelling like snow. 

Today it was work again as usual, and I drove to the library in the early morning in the winter storm. I was soaked to the skin while unlocking the school gate, and blown sideways with slashing rain while running inside. It's a day for cuddling with mugs and admiring your presents, not being at work. Oh, well. 

Merry Christmas.

Christmas Eve

My Yogi tea bag says:
Love has no fear and no vengeance.

Haaahahaha.

Yesterday I was deposited at work without an escape vehicle as Mike packed up the kids and made the journey to the airport for grannie-retrieval. I worried about the low milk supply being sent along with the baby, knowing Mike would have to crack open our first can of formula and risk rejection and a 2-hour drive with a screaming starving baby. As it happens, he slugged down a bottle of the canned stuff like a frat boy with a bottle of beer. My breasts are mildly insulted.

I love having my mother in the house, loud and happy with coffee cup and grandson attached to her. It was announced by the governor last week that her school has been slated for closure due to the economic woes, and I am hoping this means she will transfer over here so we can have our family back together permanently. These intermittent visits over the last year have emphasized my mother's worsening cough. She's always had trouble with her lungs, but the occasional cough I was accustomed to as a kid has turned into chest-rattling fits every time she laughs. This time I notice that she coughs deeply whenever she uses breath to exclaim during conversation. She's still in her 40s. I'm worried about where this is going.

But Christmas eve is here! And I must go to work. Bah. This morning, Gavin unloaded and flipped the last box on the advent calendar, and my mother has her eyes on the enormous slab of beef in the fridge for roasting with yorkshire pudding. People in the library are flirting (although not with me), and the snow that melted on the way down is misting across the ocean onto the mountains. It's a lovely day for Christmas.

Bah

I dreamed I was screaming for help while being killed, and nobody came. In movies you trust that the hero will either rescue or be rescued in the nick of time, proof that wholehearted trust pays off. I remember when Christmas used to come with that feeling of real magic, as certain as stepping through a wardrobe into snow, and I remember finding and trusting my One True Love with every nugget of my heart. I miss that. Christmas and True Love are similar; they still exist after you find out about them, you can enjoy them and conjure up wisps of that old feeling, but it isn't all-encompassing, and it isn't here to stay.

Yes, it's official: I'm having the holiday blues. It's the feel-sorry-for-yourself time of the year, where despite all the cookies, music, hugs, and family, it's still easier to notice all the people who aren't writing or missing you, and to wish for month-long holiday vacations while working on Christmas Eve and scarfing down cheap chocolates in the staff room. I will not give in! I will fight, with rolling pin and candy thermometer and costco bag of cocktail weiners! I can do this.

x-mess

Little man turns 6

As usual, Gavin's birthday was kicked off by the hunt for Thai food, paying our respects to our dinner on the night I went into labor. This year I drove up and down the winding jungle roads, grumbling at both of the closed-up roadside Thai food stands and ending up at the farmer's market picking up basil and cilantro. After popping cake pans in the oven (with batter in them) I made a stir-fry that we called Thai, and Gavin ate canned ravioli. Not quite capturing the original moment, but the kid was pleased, and Leif got a handful of rice.

The advent calendar coughed up a 5 dollar bill on his birthday morning. In the afternoon, I carted up a couple boxes of chocolate pudding and a giant can of whipped cream up to his classroom for distribution. I peeled lids and swirled cream onto 24 cups for eager little kids who has no problem shoveling birthday pudding into their faces while snarking insults at Gavin for being too old for kindergarten. They paused to ask me if I would squirt cream into their mouths. Which I did not. After I had wired them up, they moved on to their favorite pastime; tease the redheaded girl. The little thing sat with her thin ankles crossed and ate her pudding on the sidewalk curb by herself. She got an extra swirl of cream.

The boy had requested an R2D2 cake, and so I channeled my inner Food TV cake decorator and had at it. Now I appreciate why everyone uses fondant; icing is stupid and stupid. I had used photographic reference, but when I finished Gavin said, "He needs lines across that button." I thought he was being artistic, but no, I saw today that R2 does have a grill across that button. I wonder about his use of brain powers sometimes.

My mom joined the party as a floating head on the laptop, and we stuck her on a table with a view of the present chaos. Gavin wastes no time anymore, ripping and flinging paper. Satisfied with his haul, he emptied about a billion Star Wars legos onto the floor while Mike stared at the two-book manual for assembly. I bounced the baby and was glad nobody expected me to do it.

This week gave us a Christmas program and parent/child gingerbread house event, both of which we barely managed to attend as first-time parents of a schoolkid. I sat with Gavin this morning in the school cafeteria, slopping frosting and graham crackers onto a milk carton with a hundred other kids and parents. The little redheaded girl sat alone two seats down, evidently the child of other first-timers who didn't get the memo, so our table pulled together to get her house built and picture taken. It was a nice morning.

In other news, I somehow lost 3 pound this week even though I have been living solely on birthday cake, chocolate biscuits, and mini liquor candies. It's easy; eat enough of candy and you don't have to worry about calories because you get too sick to hold any in. Broke into the 140's, only 10 lbs to go.

The presents have been bought, the liquor stocked, the baking started, the floors cleaned. I'm happy with life, if a bit spotty on the magic still.

Oh Tannenbaum

It's the small things

Yesterday I turned off the dvd player and sat back, feeling encouraged by the crime documentary I'd seen. It's not so odd, people get back with their old partners all the time! And hey, Mike didn't even blind me with acid. Bonus.

X-mess tree premature erection

December came barrelling in like a truck, and I barely dodged the wheels. The advent calendar was ready to go, the tree was purchased (dismembered and crammed into a cardboard box in the trunk), and the cat has been having a harder time wedging herself under the bed between the presents. On Monday, Gavin and I fluffed and mangled the plastic tree into as natural a shape as it could withstand, pulled the cat out of it, decorated it, pulled the cat out of it again, swept up the broken ornaments, let the cat have at it, and finally sat down to eat the ceremonial box of chocolates and listen to kitschy christmas tunes in its glow. Mike was happy that the tree was too small to fall on him this year, and frowned sadly into his absinthe, the Most Disgusting Drink Ever, which cost him $20 and was made worse by adding diet soda.

Oh no, is she blogging about her cat?

When I say "the cat", I do, of course, mean Sookie. I've had a piercing infection from her slobbering into my ear and chewing on my studs. At night she oozes across my neck to suck on the baby. Last night she leaped into the bathtub onto Gavin. This morning she buried a poop nugget in his shaggy rug. The two other cats spend their days avoiding her; Maura hides in the basket of the stroller, and Po thinks nobody can see her behind the curtain in the bedroom window ("curtain" meaning the old head-shop tapestry that we hung up because curtains are too effing expensive and nobody bought me a sewing machine for my birthday). Twice a day, Po comes out to eat, gets run around the house by Maura, who is being run around the house by Sookie, and then they all scramble back to their hiding places. Both Maura and Po looked like cannonballs with legs after their quarantine periods, but the constant threat of Kitten has started to run the fat off, and their saggy bellies wag when they run about. Much like me.

Hint hint

I finally yanked apart the old jumpy baby seat some well-meaning patron gave me and stuffed it in the trunk so it would stop embarrassing my office. Despite our idealistic handmade-by-earth-mother notions about toys, Leif loves the oversized plastic bucket adorned with baby busy balls and boob-eyed kangaroos (one a large stand-up rattle thing which sets off a musical jingle that makes your ears cry). Loves it. Yesterday he went into fits of laughter every time Gavin slapped the kangaroo in the head. And so the jumpy seat stays, while I plot its retro-punk makeover with plastic sprays and vinyl fabric... if only I had a sewing machine.

Thanksgiving 2008

My birthday came with wind and rain. I heated the oven and got busy making pies for Thanksgiving, sneaking in some Christmas songs disguised as winter classical music. 

As the pies baked, I swept and mopped so the place would be ready for my mother's visit, and Mike watched me from where he stood bobbing the baby to the music. 

"I know I screwed up this week," he finally said, "But I'm really happy." He indicated the music, the house, the baking, our family. I walked over and hugged him. The sun suddenly beamed down through the skylight onto us, and he kissed my forehead with our baby pressed between us. Sookie stood on her hind legs on the table behind us and scratched at my back, so we stuck her between us, too. 

 Feeling like we had made up, we went about my birthday. Mike worked through the baby-napping hour while I went to pick up Gavin from school, we spent 2 hours in the car with Leif squawking, I got to see Twilight by myself and screamed a little when I saw myself in the restroom mirror afterward (120 minutes of airbrushed immortal teens + 29 year old with baby weight and spitup shirt = 1/3 life crisis) , we ran through the grocery store and paid too much for cranberry sauce, picked up my mom and Po at the airport, ate Thai food, and drove home with a crying baby and yowling cat. My mom gave me presents (a statue of La Danaide, nice), and we crashed into bed at 10:30. A day thoroughly spent. 

Thanksgiving

I baked, I mashed, I whisked, I grated. The family watched the parade, Gavin colored with grannie, Po went outside and got lost for 8 hours, Mike drank lots of eggnog, and Leif nailed himself in the face with a spoon. 

All in all, nice day. 

Pictures

I finished Leif's stocking (just have seaming left):

   

 

Fatty Fat Fat (tomato and cheese pie) was had:

   

 

Feasting was had, with more enthusiasm than we are showing here:

   

 

Sookie tried to eat my mother's face:

   

I am starting to forgive the past couple of years. I'm trying, anyway. 

Onward, to X-mess.

Holidays

This weekend the storm flooded the roads to town, so Thanksgiving will be a day-long Quickfire Challenge; make a holiday feast using only eggs, an uncarved jack-o-lantern, and a can of haggis - go!

I should be able to pick up food when I drive down to the airport to get my mom on my birthday. A good thing, if I want a birthday cake (read: box of Krispy Kremes).
 

diet talk -
Yesterday I dug around for the jeans I had stolen from my mom after my last visit, and when I pulled them on they fit a bit more snugly than I remembered. I had a moment of dismay (did I somehow gain 5 lbs in a week?!) but they did fit pretty well anyway, and my butt looked ok in them, so I made the best of it. Today I found out they were not the jeans I had stolen from my mom, they were Mike's - the same pair I couldn't button up a few weeks ago. I win! Unfortunately, when I told him, he told me he accidentally tried to put on my old jeans and couldn't get them over his legs. Damn. Still a ways to go.

The week in brief

Two books on my desk. From their descriptions:

"Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is."

and

"Little Joshua Barker is in desperate need of a holiday miracle. No, he's not on his death-bed; no, his dog hasn't run away from home. But Josh is sure that he saw Santa take a shovel to the head, and now the seven-year-old has only one prayer: Please, Santa, come back from the dead."

It's important to be balanced. Now, I tried reading Cormac McCarthy a few months ago, when forced myself through No Country For Old Men and finally tossed it aside two chapters from the end (they all died except the sheriff, right?) so I'm not sure about reading another one. The new trend in grim realistic fiction is to leave out punctuation and plow through the dialogue with no hints about who's speaking or distinctions between speech and thought. (how i live now is another example.) Yes, I understand why, yes, it's effective, and yes, it irritates the crap out of me. Same with post modernism. And scrapbooking. But hey, The Road won the Pulitzer, so let's give it a try.


Leify update:

Leif grabbed his first object on Halloween almost 3 weeks ago, and now manages to get things (toys, cats, etc) in his mouth with fairly consistent success. And on Sunday he rolled over! Yep, unassisted, from back to front and front to back. It's wobbly work, and those pesky arms keep getting stuck under him, but the boy has discovered mobility at just over 3 months. He also laughs now, at just about everything. He likes it when we pinch his legs and say "Who's got ham?" He sings when we play music. (He has my voice. Or possibly the cat's.) And the other day he sang, "Ohhh, yummm mom." I am yum!

Gavin update:

The kiddo turns 6 in a few weeks; he's reading, making elaborate Lego spacecraft, and sprouting ankles out the bottoms of his pants. Sometimes I try to cuddle him up on my lap like my baby again, and he's a lumpy knob of knees, elbows, and ribs. He's obsessed with Star Wars, and wants a Nintendo DS (wtf?). Santa's got the hook-ups on that one, and another one of our parenting ideals flutters away. Conversation from yesterday:
"Mom, when me and Leif grow up, could we marry the same girl? Then our kids can have two dads."
"Well, most people want a person of their own, they don't like sharing."
"But I aaaalways wanted two dads."
"Really? Should I marry someone else?"
"Yep."
"Got anyone in mind?"
"Mmm, no. You can pick."

(I didn't.)

Postpartum update:
 

I'm officially within the healthy weight range for my height again. On the more nuts-and-bolts side of things, I'm having trouble with numbness in my hands again, and my right shoulder has painful range-of-motion issues, but at least my knees are holding out this time. I think my hair has stopped falling out, and I'm not entirely bald, so now I can relax and wait for that attractive chia pet 'do as the new crop grows in. Halfway considering chopping my hair off and letting it grow out again; my mother did last week, and she is cute.

Holidays bearing down like a big scary thing, and I have barely bought anyone anything. My birthday is next week, and I got a present early; a box of broken glass which contained the remains of "ripped" and "frogged" pint glasses from Ravelry. One survived, at least, so I will have a toast to myself this weekend. With sad diet soda.

Coughsniff

The head cold that had been throbbing between my eyes for the past week moved down into my lungs overnight. Leif may be in store for his first illness. Up until now we have been blissfully basking in his night-long sleeping; two or three times he starts getting twitchy and I roll over and pop him on the boob, and we all snooze on. Last night, though, he started making snow angels in the sheets, and I opened my eyes at 4am to see a big gummy smile aimed at me in the moonlight. When I said "hi, there", my voice came out a wheeze and a croak, so Mike scooped him up to play in the livingroom for a bit. At this point I fell dead to the world, dreaming that I was a flying, time-traveling Buffy, kicking butt in leather pants in the future, when evidently all manner of chaos was erupting in the livingroom with a diaper blowout, cat running across the baby's head, and screaming that woke up Gavin. At 5:30 Mike deposited a sleeping infant beside me and staggered away to sleep with the kiddo. We snuggled down to snooze another hour, and the kitten curled up between our heads to join us. Sweet, right? Wrong. 5 minutes in, Sookie let off a cat fart so rank and thick that Leif started gagging and coughing and popped awake again. And so the day was begun.

Friday. Fridayfridayfriday.


Still trying to stuff self with holiday magic. Currently reading: The Stupidest Angel, a heartwarming tale of Christmas Terror, by Christopher Moore.

Also I am knitting a sweater for my tea pot.

Humbug

Dear son,
Please do not put cat toys in my knitting basket.

Dear cat,
If you're going to be in my knitting, at least finish the stocking for me. Also please stop crawling across my neck at night to suck on the baby's eyelids.

Dear stocking,
You suck. Fix your own damned stranding.

Dear work,
Not a fan right now.

Dear sink at work,
Exploding is not funny. Well, it kind of is, but not when the water is boiling hot and I have no witnesses. The grimy stuff I found in the bottom of my tea cup is especially not funny - that had better not have been lead in the water.

Dear Christmas,
Disenchanted with you since 2006.

Dear birthday,
You, too. You can go sit with Christmas in the corner and think about what you've done.

In fact, I can't think of a single holiday without bad feelings attached to it at this point. Except maybe Martin Luther King Jr. Day (because THAT'S a happy story /s). Should convert to something with different holidays.

Anyway -

Dear scale,
Out the window you go. You don't get to have 7 lb fluctuations unless it's lower.



Stupid week.

work trip

152 (-28, 17 to go)

Friday. Stranded at my mother's house. Looked for lunch, found leftover Halloween candy and cans of pork 'n beans. Ate my candy with the pork and beans before realizing what I had done.

Interesting week. Went for drug training, stayed for the weekend to attend a Friends of the Library meeting.

Spent almost 5 days out with the baby, with only 3 bottles and no breast pump, which made babysitting interesting for my mom.

Arrived at training and walked in on the burly middle-aged presenter topless, with a tank-top tan. He pulled on an aloha shirt and turned out to be an important Human Resources person. He used "I" instead of "you" while making up hypothetical scenarios: "So I use a lot of meth and decided to admit it, but that didn't get me out of the reasonable suspicion drug test." Bold move.

Saw gruesome drunk driving police scene photos. Wondered why they were all of South American accidents, according to the captions. Maybe so there's less of a chance they're using someone's family members over here. Also saw pictures of drugs but no explanation on how to use them. What kind of training is that?

Stole a nun.*

Got my leg stuck in the back seat of my mom's car.

Got sick.

Bought new pants in a size smaller.

Discovered a yarn I hate. Too bad I have 5 balls of it.

Leif hit 3 months old; rolled from back to front in his sleep, and has started having success getting his hands on his toys and the toys to his mouth.

Sat next to a dad with a baby the same size as Leif, but 3 months older and crawling. Leif is so big.

Failed to buy X-mess presents. I used to live for the holidays, but after the December divorce and then last year's holiday barfiness, my feelings for the winter months have ended. I'm trying, though.

All in all, exhausting but good trip. Capped it off by flying home with a stomach flu and an infant and driving home for 2 hours in the dark, which went as well as it could, with only a little crying (mostly from Leif).

Ready to hibernate until spring now.

* the nun was very interesting, a registered nurse practitioner from the leper colony on Molokai. I gave her a ride and she told me medical and supernatural horror stories. I had to give her back, though.

Halloween 2008

Last year we had 3 kids show up for trick-or-treating at the apartment complex, so it was nice to return to the huge crowds of kids at my mom's house. Gavin was 3 the last time we walked the neighborhood with cousin Chris, now he is nearly 6 (how? We were only gone one year!). It used to take 20 minutes to wear the kids out and come home with a half-full bucket of candy, but now the boys can power up and down the street for an hour. We saw a haunted miniature village, Gavin accidentally dumped his candy on the sidewalk, the boys squawked "pencils!?" at one house, and they both avoided the fog-machines and plastic corpses. I left Mike to finish trick-or-treating with the boys and went home after an hour, loaded down with sleeping infant and costume accessories that they didn't want to carry. Two Halloweens ago, in the middle of our divorce, Mike had decided to dress up as V. When you have just found out that your husband has been leading an adulterous double life, you do not want to see him in a stupid wig and creepy leering mask. I was dressed up as Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, and really wanted to kick him in the nuggets. Last year was a bit quiet and uncomfortable, and this year was mostly okay again. I still didn't feel like dressing up, though. My mom jammed Gavin's old mouse ears onto my head and stuck Mike in a novelty tattoo shirt, and that was it for us. Still, it was better than the last couple of Halloweens.

2 terrible hours

"He's done with the copy machine, but it still says he has .40 on it."
"Ok, I'll just push the return coin button..."
"Oh, you can do that?"
"Yeah, but it'll spit out the money whenever it feels like it." *push push push*
40 seconds later - *ching ching ching*
"Here you go sir, it even gave you an extra 5 cents."
"Whoa, girl, that's better than McDonalds!"

?


The Saturday that aged us 2 years.

In the mall bookstore, noon. 10 feet away from Gavin, spent one minute looking at books two shelves over. Turned to get Gavin from the children's section, found an empty seat and no child. Searched aisles, no child. Ran outside, scanned crowd, no child. Searched book store again, and again. Asked cashiers. Split up, Mike reporting to security and me running back into every store we had visited. Checked bathrooms. Asked cashiers. Ran to car. Ran to bus stops. No child. Ran back to security desk, Mike pacing with baby and no child. Described boy for tenth time; orange slippers, jean shorts, black shirt, shoulder-length brown hair, looks like a girl. Panic setting in, ran to play area, arcade, toy store, candy store, no child. Shuffling hobos and shifty-eyed men stood out in vision, families blurring into soundless colors, distant sirens causing visions of hit-and-runs. Time bent into endless loop of distress. Legs cramping, sweaty, I took the baby from Mike and stood vigil while he set off into the crowd. Security guard lifted radio to mouth and started running. Information woman appeared suddenly in front of me with walkie-talkie, "We may be on to something." Security guard appeared at upstairs railing and grinned, thumbs-up. Gavin stood by his side, nonchalant. Fear collapsed into relieved anger. "He was in Game Stop." "Mom, I saw a Lego Indiana Jones game! Can I -" "NO."

Yes, after all our talks about safety, kidnapping, and how to ask for help, Gavin had gotten up, wandered from the store, gone up the escalator, walked across the mall, and into the video game store (which we had never been in before). Trembling, we sat at the courtyard fountain and looked at the time. 2:22. Gah. More than 2 HOURS of horrors.

Frazzled, we set off to finish our errands; were stranded in Walmart while the car got new tires. Ate at the in-store McDonalds, a very sad thing. Crowd was stressful. Went to Krispy Kreme to alleviate stress before 2-hour drive home in the dark. Leif's diaper sprung a leak and pee ran down my arm and onto the floor. Wiped the floor with napkins while Mike changed the baby. Bought donut holes and a KK shirt for Gavin and tried to relax by the donut conveyor belt. Admired my happy baby, accidentally poked him in the eye, left store with screaming infant. Feeling terrible about hurting my baby, tried to kiss him and accidentally knocked his head off my tooth. Joined baby in crying. Mike took infant and pressed my head to his shoulder. Gavin hugged my legs.

What a terrible day.

Sunday was a day of healing; called mom, cleaned house to celtic music, baked cookies, drank tea, knitted with baby sleeping on chest, made chicken francais, poured a bottle of moscato into Mike, bathed and got the kids to bed early, watched Bones, went to bed.

Dreamed of people long gone.

And on the plus side, I lost 3 pounds over the weekend. That's for 2 hours of running laps in the mall.

Monday. Drinking fennel tea to boost milks. Sleepy.

Knitting notes

Plea for reason: people, I beg you - do not model knitted hats on doll heads. It is very creepy and does not count as an "action shot". Unless the doll is being thrown from a window. Which it should be.

Drinking game: watch all 7 seasons of Buffy and have a beer every time a character wears a hand-knitted sweater. Extra points for spotting the background extras in the previous season's garments (yeah, I noticed when Anya was wearing that beige turtleneck in season 4 that Buffy wore in season 3). Someone had a sweet commission as knitter to the Slayer.


Reading: Handknit Holidays, Stop in the Name of Pants, and some reference books about chickens and pug dogs for illustrations. Halfway considering getting a pug dog just because they are so funny and ugly. That used to be how I bought shoes, though, and that resulted in the green-tennis-ball-fuzz-shoe incident of 1998. So maybe not.


Oh, and unrelated to anything - this morning I pulled on a pair of jeans and couldn't get them buttoned before realizing they were Mike's. This might not sound like a good thing, but it is; Mike is a slender guy, so the fact that I could fit my legs and butt into them is amazing. I might not be losing weight as fast as I'd like, but my body is still changing back into a normal shape. Still, it's damn annoying to weigh the same as him and be pudgy while he can be all slim.

rainy October

5 days on Oahu. Drove car onto ferry, ate nachos, did not see any whales. Gavin spent the ride pretending to be a zombie and getting shot by another child. Went to street fair, watched fire thrower twirl burning batons and then burn himself laying on hot pavement in cruel bit of irony. Was ungraciously greeted by RSCDS after more than a year away; "You're late! Where's your mother?" Knitted half a cardigan while listening to my mom's stories and drinking tea. Yelled at Mike for staying out late drinking at a 4-year-old's birthday party. Bought green girly shoes that match everything and nothing. Was defeated in Battle of the Overalls; spent years sneaky-like throwing out my mom's overalls. Mom spent years sneaky-like hiding her overalls from me. This time she found the only size 6 overalls on the island, bought them for Gavin, and dressed him as her twin. Giant toddler twins. I quit. Discovered that our return ferry home didn't sail when we thought it did - stranded extra day. Was yelled at by Superferry manager and stranded another day. (paperwork problem = their error. Am mentally writing complaint letter against manager, wondering if "ham beast" would work as identification in lieu of name.) Mike used logic to deduce that stranded-ness meant he needed to purchase a flat-screen tv. Left a sausage on the Pali lookout. Hunted for wine based on very fuzzy recollections of a sympathy bottle given to me and consumed in one sitting during the peak of my pain and heartbreak in November '06; it was red, in a dark bottle, with a low-sitting beige label with no fancy logo/name. Surprising how few wines actually meet all those criteria. We speculated that the friends who gave it to me probably shopped at Costco, and ha - it was found! Then we left it at my mom's, so we still don't know what it was. But it's at Costco, in the aforementioned bottle, costs $9.99, and is nice. Woke up at 4am for the second day in a row, stuffed obese cat in carrier, left eldest child with grandmother, drove across Oahu, rode on boat for 3 hours, drove 2 hours home with screaming infant, and went straight to work until 7pm. Not recommended. Gained 4 pounds. Lost 2 pounds.  

Death by Cute Mother dropped off child and superfluous kitten in Kahului yesterday. While the man went to pick them up, I stayed home and spent the day knitting with a baby sleeping on my chest and watching Carnivale with a cup of tea and the cat snoozing in a patch of sunlight. Mike arrived home with half the meat department of Costco. Gavin ran for his computer games, the kitten streaked through the house like she had on a jet pack. After hours of her savaging my ankles, I put away the dinner leftovers and suddenly found the house peaceful. Ah, she must have finally found a place to nap! I thought. No, she did not. Detecting a faint wail, I ran into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and out she popped. Fantastic, one day with the kitten and I've already closed her into the fridge. She thought that was the greatest thing in the world, and now I have to wrestle her out of the fruit drawers every time I get something from the fridge. By bedtime, the kitten (originally named Cece, then Zeze, then Intarsia, and now Sookie) was ready to curl up and suck on my earlobes  (gross) while I nursed Leif to sleep. Somewhere around 3am I woke with the alarmed notion that something was terribly wrong with the baby, and looked down to see that, no, he had not transformed into a fanged demon child; Sookie was trying to worm her way between Leif's mouth and my breast, and was flipping back and forth, chewing on my boob and using the baby's head as a scratching post. I tossed her onto Mike and we went back to sleep. About an hour later, in a sort of zombie half-sleep, I distinctly heard someone calling my name, twice, in a "wake up and come here" tone, and I jerked awake to discover that the house was quiet and dark and asleep. I later asked Mike if that had ever happened to him, and he said no, but I said that it happened to Kermit the Frog, and he did not seem to think this made things better. Finally, too early, the kitten and the baby woke up for the day and were adorable. I explained that 5:30am was no time for cute, but they did not listen.

   

Tired.

Calico crisis

My mom is one of those people that others turn to when something horrible happens. My whole life, I've watched people come running when the car catches fire, when the dog's been quilled by a porcupine, when someone has been shot in the leg or has suffered a head wound, or when there's a rattlesnake outside the 4th grade classroom. After one of her students got sick at school, she painstakingly cleaned the shit out of his boots because she knew they were his only pair of shoes.

So this weekend I wasn't entirely surprised to see that it had happened again. A good-intentioned co-worker adopted two newborn kittens, nursed them through infancy, and fell in love with them - despite the fact that her large dog had killed the last kitten she tried to adopt. Last week the kittens started walking, one toddled too near the dog's dinner bowl, and my mom unexpectedly found herself running from the school (where her co-worker rushed to hand it off) to the vet with a dying kitten. Her friend cried as she handed over the second kitten, and now my mom has a new kitty in the house. Xebo and Hurcules, tottering into their 15th year, are pretty pissed about it, and Gavin can't stop talking about the tiny calico, so it looks like we'll be bringing the kitten home when the boys go to Oahu to pick up our quarantined cats. Three young cats and a baby. We are in the heyday of our young adult lives, framing the childhood memories of our sons. The days you look back on later with nostalgia - and hey, here we are, and we get to be here all day.

The only event of the week

ring ring
"Hello, tiny rural Hawaiian library, this is Harpy speaking."
"Hi, do you have a laminator I can use?"
"Sorry, we don't have one for public use."
"Would it help if I said I was a cop?"
"Are you a cop?"
"Yeah."
"Well then, yeah."

And so I spent a nice half an hour in the dank production room getting to know Officer Skippy*. We poked at the ancient behemoth of a laminator, rattled the knobs, jabbed the buttons, managed not to catch it on fire, and got the guy's permit thing plasticized all nice and pretty. While waiting for the machine to heat up, I learned: we have 8 cops, and no dogs. The police firing range is up the road from my house (suspicious that this is just a pasture with paper targets tacked to hay bales - hopefully not cows). And the firemen use the jet skis to go fishing and drinking. (Which is to say, my guess that the firemen use the jet skis to go fishing and drinking was not denied.)

After shutting down Bessie the Laminator and waving goodbye to Skippy, my co-worker came back from break, listened to my retelling, smiled, and pulled out a tiny, cute little card laminator from our supply shelf. "Next time you can just use this one." Damn it.


In other news, I finally finished my dummy book. Scribbled the last thumbnail this morning.


In other other news, I finally read the credits on Bones, figured out that the show is based on a book series by Kathy Reichs, discovered that we had 13 of them at work, and yanked them all off the shelf like Christmas presents. This will keep me busy until I figure out how to pirate episodes of Trueblood.

Am currently reading: Grave Secrets, by Kathy Reichs, and Fray, by Joss Whedon.

*name changed to protect dignity

spreading out

Our belongings finally arrived via a hugely oversized Matson freight container and slightly frazzled semi-trick driver. After negotiating the narrow gulch bridges and cliffside curves, he had no problem crashing through the foliage up our driveway to dump everything in front of the house. Our lanai is clogged with boxes, and it is exciting cutting them open to discover what the movers did to our things. Unloading a box of my clothes, I picked up a gauzy white skirt and held it to my waist - it looked like I had laid a tea towel on my stomach. My running shoes are waiting for me in the closet. I will reclaim my former athletic whatsits as soon as my vacancy sign goes back on. 

We stuffed the car with just-in-case hospital junk and went into town yesterday to meet Dr. Z (for real, that is his name - he is a rock star in a tiny preoccupied middle-aged Japanese body), then spent the day exhausting ourselves in the organizational departments of Home Depot and Walmart. Having all our crap means we need a bunch of additional crap to keep it tidy. Gavin and I hung on the overloaded cart as we waited in line. "Mom, you make my heart sing. It's singing, 'Moooom, I loooove you! Tummy tummy baaaaaby!' What do I make your heart sing?" I sang a bit of Wild Thing. He grinned and bounced a bit, "What does Dad make your heart do?" I snorted, but was spared from answering when he suddenly bounced up and landed on the mirror stuck under our cart, shattering it into pieces. We stared at it, particle board frame cracked in two and shards of mirror reflecting a hundred of our saucered eyes. A bored cashier dragged it off and dumped it at an empty register without making us pay for it. Sign of pride in quality merchandise. I was impressed it had actually been made of glass. 

It was dark when we finally arrived home. Gavin was slumped sleeping against the foam cooler in the back seat, so for a moment we let him sit and got out to stare up at the clear night sky. Even at the lake there were never this many stars. "There's the milky way," I said, pointing. Mike made a wry noise and touched my arm. We stood for a moment, leaned against each other, nodded, and popped the trunk to unload. Today I am up and eating cereal in a real bowl, sitting at my own table, and feeling ready to slice open some boxes and get my nest on. I have a new toy; a gleaming blue label maker. Nothing will escape my librarianly wrath.

If you don't shine

The stars are blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun

The full moon passed over us again, a blood-tinged yellow over the rainforest. Mike watched it wane with grim satisfaction. "Got away from it this time." For 2 years now, I've looked up at the sky during nights of pivotal change - love, grief, loss, discovery, travel - and found myself staring into the eye of the full moon. I said as much, Mike now distrusts it. The moon is wily.

My mother brought the boy home this weekend. We waited for the Superferry to arrive in a dirt lot with PROHIBITED signs posted along it, listening to a Charlaine Harris audiobook. Windows open, I tucked my shirt up to let my belly cool in the evening air and took out my knitting. The prim voice of the narrator took a break from the murderous plot to give a detailed description of the characters' snow-bound sexual exploits just as a burly man with an old poodle pulled up alongside our open window. They looked at the car for a moment; knitting pregnant woman with huge bare belly listening to cock talk. Lovely. Mike stared down the poodle.

Gavin ran to the car when he saw us driving slowly through the disoriented moo-ing ferry-goers. I hopped out and pulled him away from the road in a shower of kisses as my mother hurried up behind us. My family! We drove home in the dark and watched Gavin breathe as he slept beside us on the air bed, perfect and small and safe.

My mother smiled like a cat into the wind while we drove into Hana, agreeing that it feels right out here. "It's like a cross between Molokai and the res, with a bit of Bloomington." Sleepy small town, horses and cows grazing, barefoot children, tattooed locals and tye-dyed hippies kicking around the general store. I relaxed against her approval. We may have found our way home at last.

itchy britches

We sat under the trees in Kapiolani, admiring the ocean waves from the banana hammock section of the beach park; aging leathery men in tiny colorful thongs were laying all over the grass. We ate lunch with a handful of other new LIS grads. One of the SOs jumped up to play football with Gavin. When he plopped back down with us, he looked at my belly, declared he wanted a son, and his girlfriend sipped her drink pointedly.

I covered Gavin in SPF 50 and followed him down to the water. Gavin ran back and forth from the crashing waves until it was time to head back to the car to over to quarantine to spend some time with the cat. Back home, Gavin peeled off his swim trunks and realized he was wearing a second pair of shorts made completely out of sand. He laughed and turned around to show me, and just then, a small face appeared at the window and the girl next door yelled, "Can Gavin come out to PLAY?" Gavin yanked down his shirt and ran into the bathroom, raining sand. I was a terrible mom and laughed. Age 5, Gavin discovers modesty.

Saturation

1) There is a Hawaiiana cover of Cat Steven's 'Wild World'.
2) They play it at the DMV.
3) This is no good for me

Sitting in a hard plastic school desk with the tinny warble of ukulele on the overhead speaker, I white-knuckled the pencil through the driver's test in a state of distraction. Evidently this is the key to DMV success; I slapped the finished test up on the desk, did a little happy dance at my best score ever, made a lemur face for the camera, and 30 seconds later I was walking home with a shiny new Hawaii license. The sky was blue, the trees were green and red and yellow, and the world is no longer monochromatic California brown.

Gavin has been spending his days playing with the girl next door, a nice kid with a swingy cropped haircut and big dilated anime eyes. We extracted him from her house and headed to the hardware store in the afternoon. I spent $7 on specialty dish soap and bought Gavin a twisty popsicle. Halfway to the gas station, he began making distressed noises, and I looked back to see his popsicle streaming like a fountain down onto his lap, the twists acting as irrigation troughs. "Disaster!" he wailed, licking frantically. "Let me show you how to do that," I said, then half the popsicle broke off and I accidentally inhaled it. We disposed of the popsicle at 7-11 and got a Slurpee instead.

We drove over H-3, happy to see the mountains, and spent a while lying in Maura's quarantine cell during visitor's hours. The animal quarantine units look like a cross between chicken coops and an internment camp; rows of large outdoor sheds partially walled with chain-link fence. Not so bad, really - I had been envisioning something like a Japanese capsule hotel.

So, not this:

through a day, and in and out of weeks...

It is our last week in Bakersfield. Instead of packing up our suitcases for a summer vacation in upstate New York, we are packing ourselves permanently back to the Pacific. Despite the excitement of going home and settling our family, I've found time to be wistful and sad about missing our trip to the lake this year. In planning next year's trip, we've had to accommodate the fact that Mike's father has moved down to North Carolina, and our promises to visit him are met with wary stares across each other. Which of us would be more likely to crack, with only a short car ride and a midnight Lifetime moment between us and certain disgrace? I assured Mike that I would keep him staked in the yard on a chain, so not to worry. I think he plans to lock me in his dad's basement.

One day of work left, one day before the movers take all our worldly belongings and leave us in an empty apartment with a litter box and a fridge full of half-empty condiments. I've enjoyed it here; though the first months were slow and sad, my job and co-workers were brilliant. My first apartment, failed romance, nightlife disasters, misty days in the mountain redwoods, the city lights and fragrant foods of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle... it's been a good place to tend wounds and wait for everything to clear around us.

At work, it's business as usual; pulling toddlers out of the shelves, helping old ladies decipher the handwriting on their book club reading lists, leading preschoolers in choruses of quacking, and shushing myspace teens. My best query recently was, "I need to know what temperature I need to incubate peacock eggs", and the worst was, "If it's 11:59am... and it turns 12:00... is it pm at 12:01... or at 12:00?" The most disconcerting was, from a breathless-sounding elderly person on the phone, "I need to know more about TIA... [insert my long researched explanation of symptoms] oh, it's a small stroke? Ah... I've gotta go." o_0

I'll miss my library.

DV at TJs

Tuesdays. Payday, and no work until 12pm. As I dropped off Gavin at preschool, I asked him if had any requests from the store while I was out. "Oh yeah," he said, gripping his pants, "I was wondering if you could buy me more shorts that are easy to close, like these." He showed me the clasp at the front, a departure from the standard snap or button closures he struggles with every day in the bathroom. "Ok, I'll try," I promised. Of the three things on my list - cat carrier, jewelry box, and alternative-clasp size 6 shorts - I thought the last would be the hardest to find. Wrong! After two hours wandering around Target, I ended up at the checkout with several pairs of the easy-clasp pants (also various underpants - boys might have no clothes selection compared to girls, but girls don't get glow-in-the-dark underwear) and no pet/jewelry isolation units.

"Find everything you need?" the cashier asked, looking through my head.
"Well, I couldn't find a jewelry box."
"A large one or a small one?"
"Either. Any."
"We only carry jewelry boxes at Christmas."

I shrugged and paid and huffed back to the car. If I had more time and endurance, I might have tried all the nearby stores for the unattainable boxes, but I decided to just stop by Trader Joes for food.

My TJs shopping strategy has always been very simple; if it looks good, throw it in the cart. TJs is no place for lists and budgets and practicality. I had just thrown frozen creme brulees into my basket and decided my stamina could hold out long enough to get me past the cupcakes when I suddenly made a complete ass of myself. An employee was standing attentively by the freezers, looking behind him and calling to someone. I glanced in the direction he was calling, and became the very thing he was standing guard for; the idiot who might run through a melted puddle of ice cream before the mop arrived. My slipper hit the puddle, my foot flew out, the basket clattered to the floor, and I fell down gracelessly on knees and elbows. The clerk looked horrified as he helped me sit up and realized I was pregnant, and I huffed for a moment to collect the damage report before letting him pull me to my feet. Normally, I would laugh in embarrassment and keep going, but this did not happen. As I gathered my basket, people were yelling across the store to ask if I was okay, and I realized that I was about to start crying, even though I was not particularly upset. I needed to make a run for it. I took one step when an old man said, "There's still ice cream on your shoe! Wait!" and the employee ran off to get a paper towel. "No, that's ok, I'm fine -" I tried to move again, and the old man put his hands up, "You'll slip! Wait, there's ice cream on your shoe!" Shut up, shut up, stupid concerned nice old man! My eyes started burning. The employee skidded back in with paper towels and went at my shoe, so I kicked it off and let him wipe it, then thanked him hurriedly and skittered around the corner. Cupcakes be damned, I needed to get out of the store. I got halfway through the register, wiping at my leaky eyes as if I were just working out a speck of dust, when the manager popped up at my elbow. This was too much, and I started really crying. "It's ok!" I croaked at him as word spread from the frozen aisle and people began yelling Is she ok!? across the checkout stands, "It's just hormones, I can't help it!" They offered to carry my bags, to sit me down and serve me water, to take my phone number, and I waved them away as I frantically punched in my pin number and took my receipt from the confused cashier. The clerk who had witnessed my fall pressed an open box of kleenex at me, so I pulled one out. "Take the whole box!" he said, which made me laugh. I waved the tissue over my head and ran for it with my bags.

Sitting in the car, I saw shreds of skin hanging off my knees and started sobbing. Sobbing with deep, gasping hitches like hadn't done since last summer. At least that time I had been properly upset. Irritated, I started the car and the radio blared to life.

And the daaays come and gooo but my feelings for you are foreeeeever!

"I'm FINE!" I yelled at the car.

Fine or not, I drove home crying, walked in crying, put down my bags crying, tried to explain to Mike why I was crying while crying, and finally laid down on the couch and let it putter out on its own. We watched Beowulf (blaarg) and counted off my contractions until it was safe to say we would not have to name the baby "TJ" or "Organic Rice Cream".

And so Tuesday became Holly vs. Hormones, and I lost. Stupid Tuesday.

Self destruct activated

2 weeks and counting. We decided to ship the car back home, and then waited to see if it would spontaneously explode as a result. Indeed; no sooner had we arranged the loading date and paid the deposit than the driver's side window fell thunk! into the inner workings of the door. Great.

 Mike tore off layers of door, located the snapped pieces of window guts, drove across town to get the replacement part, spent all day drilling it in, discovered it was the wrong part, couldn't get the right one from any of the auto stores in town, ordered one online, and we resigned ourselves to a few weeks of tempting thieves with our open window. All of this distracted us from noticing that the car was up to something worse; when she ran out of gas in record time we chalked it up to the auto parts scavenger hunt, when she took longer starting on ignition we were too busy talking about the window to really notice. Just as we ordered the part and settled into the wait (a time we might have then noticed these underlying developments), Gavin began vomiting and running a fever, I began having contractions 15 minutes apart, and Mike got a cold. No problem; we smothered the ailments with fresh cookies, laid up in front of crap movies, and were back up and running the next day. As I returned to work and Mike took the still-recovering child on errands with him to mail the prodigal guitar (an ebay fiasco unto itself), the car seized its moment. With a farewell bing of the fuel light, it died in mid-intersection. Mike, while graced with physical dexterity and manly fix-it-ness, is not so skilled in crisis management. Although I sent in reinforcements and issued motherly decrees on negotiating the situation with a sick child, he showed up almost an hour later with none other than Dance Class Girl. I had a dog once who made little squeak-growfing noises when she was unhappy (say, after a 5 year old had trussed her up in play doctor bandages or she had eaten all the chocolate bunnies from the easter baskets). This is the same noise I make whenever Dance Class Girl appears. She is a sweet, good-hearted, pretty girl. The kind of girl you want to push off a ledge. Mike looked like I had his balls in my fist the whole way home, although truth be told I am too fat and sleepy these days to be fussed much with any of this. Cascading disasters are entertainment unto themselves. It's nothing if not a sign that change is truly underway, at last!

I wrangled a ride to work today, only to realize I had not brought any lunch. Boss offered use of car, which I am too stupids to drive because it is stick (in the zombie apocalypse I am sure I could dig up my high school stick skills and make a run for it, but I'd rather not practice on my boss's car in lunch traffic, however similar to zombies the doctors milling around Starbucks may be) so I found myself waddling to the Marketplace in the 98 degree afternoon, sticking to the shady side of the street and admiring the glimpses of red craggy mountain in the distance. Applebees was the closest food source, so I decided to luxuriate in the a/c with my book and an overpriced Weight Watcher entree. The waiters seemed stumped by my presence, staring first at my stomach, then at my book, and repeating, "One?" long enough that I had to laugh. The singleton restaurant experience isn't the mythical movie moment I supposed it to be. I sent Mike a message to assure him I had survived the walk. A bit later I was enjoying the murmur of afternoon lunch chatter (relationships, money, food) and finishing off the tilapia, when a familiar voice made me look up from my book. Gavin stood in front of me, and for a minute I couldn't understand what I was seeing. Mike grinned behind him, catching my knee-jerk expression of guilt as I determined whether or not I had been caught doing something bad. (I had not.) "We fixed the car!" Gavin exclaimed; climbing into the seat next to me, accepting a piece of broccoli, and ordering apple juice from the startled waitress. "It was a fooooose. Fa-yoose." "Fuse?" "Yep." Brilliant! Very pleased with Mike, and with $40 fuse, and with happily heat-flushed little boy with apple juice. They dropped me back off at work, and now we have just to cruise into the weekend - to poolside barbeques, Battlestar, and lazy knitting (am presently mangling a stuffed snail).

Eye of the storm? Who cares! We have ribs!

Questions du Jour

 "I need a wordless picture book... in Spanish." 

 "Do you have an English-to-English dictionary?" 

 "Do you have Like Water for Elephants?" 

 "How long is a sentence?" 

"I know I can't check out this reference book, but can I print it? Do you have all your books online?" 

[VERY non-excited voice] "Do you have any biographies of famous accountants?" 

"I don't know the title or author or what it's about, but what's that book written by that guy that was on oprah? It had something to do with Anne Frank or something." [Night, by Eli Wiesel] 

"Does the library have an email address? I want to order some catalogs and stuff online." 

"Do you have a printed list I could have of all your nonfiction books? could you make one?" 

"What's that poem about mothers and tea bags?" 

"Who is a person who changed the world in some way? I have to dress up as them." [... me?] 

"Where are the fucking books on fucking spain, spanish, like, fucking history and shit?" 

 "Where are the books about ligers?" 

"My son needs five books about the lady who invented washing machines." 

 "I need a book, I can't remember the name or who wrote it... it had "the" in it." 

"I want a book with lots of photos of STDs. I'm doing a unit and want to scare the bejeebers out of my students."

no showers for April

All the cars are brown. There is no rain, no wind, just layers of dust that settle in dime-sized blotches over every surface. My belly rubbed a clean spot on the back of the car as I squeegied off the rear window at the gas station this morning, a bright green splotch in a sepia world.
 

The days get longer and the nights smell green.
I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave.

Oh no, even Modest Mouse has turned against me. I need to bring home the stack of Hap Palmer discs that are sitting beside my work computer and spend my time listening to jangling banjo music instead of wringing the juice out of my steering wheel every morning.


Friday

Our small group of children's librarians shivered around a county van outside headquarters before the sun came up, waiting for our coordinator to drive us up to Fresno for the day. I huddled in the middle. When the van door swung open everyone suddenly stepped to the sides, leaving me alone in front of the empty vehicle. This is the same thing that happens at buffets. I took the back corner, leaving everyone else to climb into place according to their window and legroom preference. We drove silently for two hours as the sky brightened, heads lolling sleepily. There was nothing to see. The wind had died down and the smog was a thick streak of yellow across the horizon from one end of the valley to the other. Fresno looked like New Jersey, rows and rows of brick buildings with huge yards of shipping containers and trucks, dotted with scrawny trees and the odd attempt at modern architecture. The GPS gave directions in an Australian accent, eventually devolving into a chant of "recalibrating... recalibrating..." as we turned randomly down side streets toward the library. We filed out in the parking lot, slapped our name stickers on in the meeting room, and went in for lessons on infant story times.

At break I hopped a wall with one of my colleagues and headed for the much-praised corner bakery. We stared at the $6.50 loaves of bread before buying an overpriced cinnamon bun and a scone. Two of our party fell asleep in the second half of the morning session, making a great impression on the sniggering Fresno librarians. At lunch we went out as a group into a nearby Mexican restaurant, where we all agreed that the enchiladas tasted liked burning tires, which took some kind of skill. On the way back I was excited to buy a fancy candle in the stationary store that was labeled "DIRT" and stank like potting soil.

We spent the afternoon wagging puppets at each other and squealing nursery rhymes, then climbed back into the van, angered the Australian GPS, got lost heading toward Oregon, turned around to ask for directions from a startled (and suspiciously guilty-looking and sailor-hatted) man on a dirt road, and managed to get 20 minutes in the correct direction before I made them pull over to use the bathroom. We finally got home just before dark. All in all, not a terrible adventure. The boys were happy with their souvenirs (floppy frisbees and lip balm) and I dropped like a rock into bed, cursing my twitchy limbs. Why can't I develop Restless Leg Syndrome in the middle of the work day, when it might kick me into action instead of falling asleep over my summer reading press releases? Bananas and milk have failed me.

 
Not a lot of  adventures these days, except for moving plans and taxes. I am a bit sad as the summer comes around again. Raise your drinking glass, here's to yesterday.

Bubble

Another ride down to Headquarters. Like many libraries, it is seated on government property next to the court house and police station. As I pulled up to a red light, four motorcycle cops stopped alongside me, identical in their white helmets, bulky blue jackets, and knee-high boots. As their bikes rocked gently to a stop, they all stuck out their right legs and shook their feet in perfect unison, then tucked them back in and drove away with the green light. A boot ballet.

The meeting was a demonstration of cheap bug crafts presented in monotone, causing us all to sag into our donuts and hunch up self-consciously when a video camera swung at us. At lunch, I ate a manapua and napped across the chairs in the staff lounge. The afternoon was better, with sing-alongs, magicians, puppeteers, live reptiles, and 6-foot bubbles. At 4pm, I walked across the cold, grey parking lot and drove back toward the library. High, feathered clouds broke up the orange light into thin beams above the distant purple mountains. This time my feelings of affection were matched by feelings of homesickness.

Mike surprised me by popping into the staff lounge as I was stuffing broccoli into my mouth. "You need to check your phone, and your email," he said, shoving my phone into my hand. "Hawaii called and you forgot your phone at home, I told them you'd call back." I threw him out the door and slammed myself into my office to make the call.

Next week things will be decided. Maui! Kauai! Waterfalls and sticky rice! It's all so close.
 

Coming home.