Penis pillow

Every time I convince myself that this type of fiber is ok to work with, my kid's lungs go all to hell. It could be vog or gross kindergarteners or the multitude of animals - but it could be the wool, and I don't want to be the cause of it. So last week Leif came down with pneumonia*, and I buried the kilt hose in my knitting drawer, cursing.

My down time is interrupted every few minutes, which is why I have projects I can pick up and put down throughout the day. Since I can't knit until I get a budget for safe yarn, I decided to dig in my fabric drawer and give Hawaiian quilting a try, since I'm in Hawaii and all. But I wanted something fun, so I made a mushroom pattern instead of a floral one. I knew this could potentially look like a pile of dicks, but I went for it.

Oh no.

So I've got some wieners to prune. 

Mushrooms aside, I have discovered that this process is absolutely perfect for me. (I may change my mind about this after spending 80 hours stitching echo lines for a 2-foot square pillow.) It's inspiring, meditative, satisfying, portable. There is a world of possibility - anything that can be cut from paper like a snowflake can be used in Hawaiian quilting, and now I want pillows and blankets for all my favorite books - snitches, mandrakes, and hipogriffs; roses and gunslinger revolvers; standing stones, heather, and daggers. In better colors than the remnants in my stash. And less wieners. I'm learning here.

*characterized by a constant wet cough accompanied by skipping, singing, and stick swordplay. He is one of those sick people you have to tape to the couch to force them to heal.

Weekending

My latest interview was in an overlarge room, too far away from the panel of interviewers to charm or alienate them with my scary bug jewelry. I stopped at Walmart on the way home, and it was a good thing this happened after the interview, because it sucked my brain out my ears and replaced it with something like a bath loofah. When I was a kid, my mother and I once stopped in the aisle to listen closely to the Christmas muzak playing over the speakers, and stared at each other in horror when we heard the actual lyrics, "Walking in a Walmart wonderlaaaand." Now those words play in a distant, grainy loop in my head while I wander in unsettled confusion from section to section, unable to remember what it was I had hoped to find, and unable to articulate what is so very, very wrong with the way the light and space and bodies are both expanding and shrinking as I move through them.

Walking in a Walmart wonderlaaaaand.

Run. Run.

So that was a mistake I am already forgetting.

Birds again

Three of the chicks have been returned to their delinquent mother on the school grounds. One of them, however, was horrified to be left in the care of what was obviously a chicken, and ran into the fourth grade classroom looking for its people. It came home in a cat carrier, with a feather duster crammed alongside pretending to be a companion. 

The chick was not fooled.

So we've spent most of the weekend outside with a chicken.

The dove is not a fan of the chick, because it climbed her and rode her like a pony. She flounced off to sunbathe, which, on a bird, looks a lot like dying. They get out in the sun, and then suddenly keel over, go limp, and sprawl  with their wings out.

People do this, too, come to it. Evidence against UFOs is the fact that they are not trawling the beaches, sweeping up limp bodies in a panic to rescuscitate them.

While this was all happening, I sewed a couple more quilt blocks.

And then I pestered my mother into writing me another story to illustrate. With anthropomorphic animals in little outfits. "Power of the SEEECRET," I hollered from downstairs. "Power of the simple REQUEEEST," she called back.

So that is all happening. And beer brewing. And meatballs. I'm a fan of weekends.

MOAR CHICKENS

These things are multiplying.

There is an irresponsible teenage hen carousing with roosters and jettisoning chicks all over the school. My mother (the school librarian) is the official homeless bird caretaker, and in her absence, the kids pile lost chicks on Gavin. In the thirty seconds it took him to walk from his class to the car after school, classmates stuffed two more chicks into his hoodie. I peeled out, leaving a wake of children running and lobbing chickens at the car.

 I am locking up the grain and barring the storage compartments.

eleventy-first anniversary

When I met Mike 17 years ago, I was looking at his bare feet while he lay napping on a dorm room floor, and had a sudden, clear, weary thought:  That's the man I'm going to marry. It was like cresting a hill and seeing that the road you still have to walk stretches on for miles and contains a few arduous uphills and some crumbling footholds on the side of a cliff. Probably worth it for the scenic bits, but exhausting and scary. Some people say that trust is everything in a relationship, and this has not been true for me. I don't have any trust left in me, but I have faith. If I am lost, Mike will come find me. If I am angry, he will bear my wrath. If I've done something stupid and fallen on my face, he will haul me up again. He has remained stubbornly beside me for 17 years, and despite the terrible things, the majority of our daily life together has been just as filled with laughter and adventure and children as I imagined for us as a lovestruck teenager. My brain still sharpens its knives at 3am, and forgiveness isn't something you can just choose to feel, but the meat and bone and blood of me loves the meat and bone and blood of him. Half our lives have mashed together into this story, we know each other as well as two people can by now. 

So last year, on the 10th anniversary of our first marriage, we went and got married again. It wasn't documented, just done quietly under a plastic trellis in front of a judge. "We had our divorce annulled," he told his mother afterward over the phone. 

This year makes 11 and 1, in government document years. So here are some things that I think of when considering my husband. 

This poem, by Ogden Nash, which makes me laugh:

Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of a marriage conducted with economy
In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.
We’ll live in a dear little walk-up flat
With practically room to swing a cat
And a potted cactus to give it hauteur
And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.
We’ll eat, without undue discouragement,
Foods low in cost but high in nouragement
And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,
The peculiar wine of Little Italy.
We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.
We’ll bus for miles on holidays
For seats at depressing matinees,
And every Sunday we’ll have a lark
And take a walk in Central Park.
And one of these days not too remote
You’ll probably up and cut my throat.

Some romances are played out in song, but ours isn't. I keep my music to myself. If I had to pick a song about us, this one comes to mind:

You just have to plunge ahead in life and hang on to who's on the other end of your arm.

Power of the SEEECRET

I start making quilts when I'm having feelings. 

When I was 10, I made friendship bracelets for the same reason. More accurately, I used friendship bracelet techniques to make rope out of thread, which my barbies then used to rappel down cliffs and truss up Jem and the Holograms. I could have just used kitchen twine, but my characters had survival skills to hone, and all they could scavenge in my bedroom were spools of thread. Yesterday, I taught Gavin how to make bracelets, and he's been walking around with floss pinned to his jeans, weaving maniacally and tying colorful ropes around everyone. It warms my cockles.

Then I went to two more interviews. I tossed the fancy black pencil skirt over my shoulder (at home, not during the meeting) and wore my own jeans skirt, put on a scary bug necklace, drank a cup of fully leaded coffee, and told gross hobo stories. These interviews were much better. Feeling marginally more like myself.

Came home and discovered that we had acquired ANOTHER BIRD OH YAY.

And then I fell in love with it. Stupid adorable fluffy chickens.

Three more interviews, then tenterhooks while I wait to find out if any of them took.

sweaters made and destroyed

I'll just pile these all up right here.

Nothing makes a winter chill feel chillier than a fever. Except a sub-zero ice storm, maybe. We only have the viruses, though, so it's sweater season.

I have been opting out of pink as a general principal, but this first project doesn't count because I made it out of materials on hand. Pink isn't the problem, as I have said - pink is just a color, and plenty of kids like pink, and that's great. The problem is not being given any other goddamn options, and drawing a deep, treacherous line between boys and girls. Every girls' clothing and toy section is a sea of pink and trademarked characters. At my kids' school, every girl marches to the lunch line in their uniform of pink top, pink leggings, pink shoes, punctuated by Dora purple. All of them. I count. When the history books illustrate children's fashions of the early 21st century, it will be head-to-toe Princess Pink stretch cotton for the lower classes. The children who's parents can afford it can wear fancy brands in designer palettes; the crafty backlash has people buying vintage patterns and sewing clothes in earthy hues and vibrant fabrics. But if you shop at a mall or a box store, our culture is clear on this: Girls Wear Pink, Tough Shit. 

I have some feelings on this matter.

So here is the pink cardigan I knitted. I made up the pattern and didn't make a chart, so that's lost to posterity. Sorry, posterity.

And then there is this, in dishwater beige. I didn't even sew buttons on it, because I can't decide how I feel about it.

In a feat of spectacularly shitty sewing, I carved up one of my old moth-eaten slub-knit cardigans and made a little shirt for Zenny. The original cardigan had raw edges, so I left the hems unfinished. It's comfortable and airy, even if it looks like it was sewn together by a drunk person on the inside. Stretchy knit is really hard to handle, and I was just cutting the pieces as I went, with no pattern. She's not naked. I win.

Now, one might look at that last picture and ask, after all my ranting, PINK VALENTINES? And yes, they are kitten tattoo cards, which my 11 year-old son chose. My kids are into Legos, Minecraft, Invader Zim, and KITTENS OMG. Pink isn't the problem. It's choice.

Interview with the porcelain

My first interview went about as well as could be expected. I arrived too early, got wrinkled and covered in crumbs while waiting in the car, said some words backwards, and realized afterward that my skirt still had red thread holding the back shut. Then, as soon as I got home to mentally anguish over all the answers I could have answered more intelligently, my insides suddenly wadded up and I spent the entire night barfing. Mostly into the bathtub. Which I then had to wash at 2am.

So that is not how I would like my next interviews to go. Luckily, one of the librarians asked me to bring a kiddie book to read from. I should be able to manage that without major mishap.