The littlest turkey

November 28, 2014tempestpilot

A couple of years ago, I found myself scrabbling around in the bottom of the grocery store freezer on the day before Thanksgiving, trying to find the biggest of the runty little butterballs and wondering if I could graft two together into a sort of monster bird. On the big day, our roast turkey fit on a chicken platter, and was smaller than the cat. There were no leftovers. And so a nugget of stubbornness took form, and The Turkey Must Be Larger Than the Cat was henceforth inscribed in the family rule book, just under Would You Let Grandma Out of the House in That?(for dressing a baby) and I Can’t, The Cat is On Me (get me more coffee).

We have an assortment of cats – a rascal cat, a hell-beast cat, a pee cat, a ham cat – but the cat by which all turkeys are measured is, of course, the one that weighs 19 pounds. Last weekend, when my mother hoisted a little frozen turkey and held it up for approval, I squinted disapprovingly and said, “Cat.”

“But your aunt is making the turkey. This one is just so we can have smells and leftovers if we want them.”

“That is a 12 lb turkey. The cat is 19 lbs.”

So she bought the unnecessarily giant turkey.

I was feeling a bit wasteful and guilty about this at work the next day, when a couple of the library kids appeared at my desk, looking anxious. “We found a baby bird and we don’t know what to do with it.” They put a pin-feathered 3 day-old dove into my hands. I told them they did a good thing, showed them the emergency hand-warmer I keep in my office, went next door to the feed store to buy baby bird formula, and the boys went home, relieved. When they were gone I held up the bird and looked at it sternly. “You are penance,” I told it. So I took it home and immediately passed it off to my mother.

So while my mother was stuck carrying another bird around like a baby in a snugli, I ran off to celebrate my 35th birthday by taking a vacation day, having a drink at the burn-your-own-bbq restaurant at the mall, and giggling up to the theater to watch Mockingjay.

official birthday portrait

I should have feelings about turning 35, but I don’t. Maybe I am saving all my panic for 40. Will have to make “spectacular meltdown” the party theme. Everyone can ride around on motorcycles while wearing pajama jeans.

Thanksgiving pictures did not turn out great, and there were not so many funny bits. Mostly I was clutching the couch in anxiety because my aunt’s apartment is in a high-rise with windows that open out onto a sheer drop, with no screens or balconies or anything – just terror, straight down. I would have had the kids on leashes, even with the windows closed. Ugh.

wonderment and dismay

November 25, 2014tempestpilot

My mother and my aunt decided it was time to see the house we are trying to buy. I stood back and watched with trepidation as they picked their way over the crumbling driveway and up to the front door. The house was once a wonderful structure, built by an inventive and skilled mason, but his descendants went on to paint everything sloppily, tack cheap material over the paneling, and lay down the worst carpet that not a lot of money could buy over the hardwood floors. So walking through the house is an emotional experience, one which takes you from “eew” to “oh, neat” in a short time, if you’re looking closely.

The most notable thing about the house becomes immediately apparent when you open the back door. It is a moment that reveals your character; either as fantasy adventurer or hardened pragmatist. In the yard lies the sprawling remains of a massive, multi-leveled crumbling koi pond. Where there were once glittering tiles and mini waterfalls, there are now mossy ruins of stone and veins of rusting pipe. Saplings are growing up through the cracks in the basin, shaded by the heavy branches of an old lychee tree, so the yard is dark and cool and eldritch.

What my mother saw was this:

What my aunt saw was this:

“It’s the fairy underworld!” said my mother.

“It needs a jackhammer,” said my aunt.

Gavin and the cousins discovered an iron skeleton key and tore away like a pack of chickens to test it in all the locks. It was revealed to fit in the hobbit-sized basement door, which had a letter slot and a box affixed to the inside for collecting secret notes. They were transported.

“It’s a fixer-upper in the best kind of way!” said my mother.

“It is technically liveable,” said my aunt.

There was a similar disparity between the realtor and the building inspector, on a previous visit. Our realtor stood politely to the side, trying not to look at the yard, while the builder lit up and said, “I think it might be haunted!”

And all of these reactions are correct. It is intriguing, and it is a mess, and it has so much potential, and it will be so much work. But I am as intrepid as any Weasley, and this Burrow will be mine.

magic mondays

November 18, 2014tempestpilot

Having my Sundays on a Monday pays off for everyone.

Mondays are cookie day. This is a holdover from the days in Newfoundland, when the mornings were cold and dark and the house was full of dragging, moaning teenage girls who hated waking up for school. “There is literally nothing good about Mondays,” my youngest aunt complained. So my mother started baking chocolate chip cookies every Monday before her university classes, to give the high schoolers something to look forward to. This was wonderful, and immediately taken for granted, and she quit baking the first time she was late making them and someone got pissed and demanded to know where the cookies were. But I have reinstated the tradition for the ungrateful youth, because familiarity might breed contempt, but nobody remembers that bit when they’re reminiscing about cookies as an adult. I’m in for the long payoff. And for the cookies.

Mondays are also beach day. This is just because it’s my day to pick up the kids, and their school is on a beach. The baby will not touch the sand, but she will consent to being dandled in the water. I need to get her a swimsuit, though, because naked babies become greased piglets the moment they get wet. Something with handles.

Mondays are also salmon night. This is due to the fish-hating man’s bi-monthly meetings that keep him out of the house at dinnertime while we hork down buttered fillets. We will all be brilliantly brain-lubricated while he descends into premature dementia and madness. That is nature in action.

So all in all, Mondays are pretty great. Befuddled by general goodwill, I plopped the baby into her stroller and walked up to the grocery store to buy her a new coloring book. I am not a princess enthusiast, and I am grumpy about the pervasive pinkness marketed to girls, so it took some digging to find a coloring book in an acceptable color scheme. This turned out to be the Frozen coloring book. Fine, it’s princesses, but it’s seasonal, and the movie passed the Bechdel test. We haven’t watched Frozen since it came out in theaters, so I loaded up the music video on my phone, just to give the child some context. Zenny examined it for a moment, then stood up, flung her arms out, and belted out a Tarzan version of Let it Go. LE-I-OOOOOH LE-I-OOOOOH! IYAN OWANANANAMOOOOOO.

WHAT. BABYSITTER. I AM ON TO YOU. Unless the salmon oil has imbued her with some sort of precognition, which would be too horrible to consider. But which I will now be testing with flash cards.

feelings, ugh

November 13, 2014tempestpilot

My mother’s VW died and was hauled to the shop for a few days of rejuvenation, so I’ve been packing the hordes off to their morning destinations. This means I’ve been getting to work via the coastal route instead of the speedy-maniac highway route, and it is just the worst.

I’ve driven the road dozens of times, but the trip that always comes to mind is the one that happened around the event of my sad little wedding, a dozen years ago. The winter I was 23, I stood on the beach with my new baby sleeping on my chest, shielding him from the sandy wind and watching the young men I loved play in the freezing surf, feeling faintly amused and completely bereft. I was fat and tired from pregnancy, aimless in my career search, having misgivings about my marriage, and feeling unworthy to join my own festivities. I wanted. I still do.

I try to blot it out with audio books, but then the shrimp farms fly past and the bay comes into view and my stomach suddenly cramps and tries to crawl up my neck. Some feelings rise and fall and dissipate in the safety of the chest, and some are heaving physical reactions that are impervious to the years and distance and change which are supposed to stop them. Gross.

Pretty place for it, though.

The new house is safely situated in a new town, with no memory ghosts to make me feel like barfing. HA. I win.

distracted

November 12, 2014tempestpilot

Am trying to buy a house. This is a process that is both completely, obsessively all-consuming, and completely, utterly uninteresting. More on that later. Hint: it was not the house with the broken crack pipes and empty meth baggies, and it was not the one with holes punched in the walls and blood on the carpet. Because I am fancy like that.

So while I am loading up my tote bag with enough home renovation books to break my own spine, the knitting has slowed, the sewing has stalled, and pretty much the only thing I have accomplished has been the establishment of Buffy-and-Mug-Cake Wednesdays. On my nights alone with the kids, I consider it my duty to do as little as possible while also teaching them to appreciate Joss Whedon and make their own microwavable cakes. Life skills.

WEATHER BULLETIN. The coconut oil solidified. Socks were worn. It is now winter.

my knitting

November 7, 2014tempestpilot

It looks like afterbirth. 

It is supposed to look like this:

Malgven

But it doesn’t yet. I have heard that circular projects look terrible while wadded up on the needles, and that they blossom into beautiful works of art once bound off and blocked flat.

We will see. Maybe.

bronze mercat

November 5, 2014tempestpilot

I am going to start a swear jar, and make my mother put a quarter in it every time she says the word “ridonkulous”. No, mom. I don’t care how many toothbrushes are balanced precariously in the cup over the sink, that type of language is unacceptable. It’s going in the corner with “über”.

But she did stay up all night casting bronze at the university again, and stuck my dumb little mermaid-cat thing on her gating. It’s a bit mangy and bent right now, but nothing a few power tools and a sand blaster can’t resolve.

Halloween 2014

November 1, 2014tempestpilot

It is that time again. Picture dump.

Favorite bit of the evening: youngest cousin ran from door to door, stating, “I can’t EAT peanuts,” then came home, ate 9 boxes of Nerds, threw up, and said, “It must have beencontaminated. With peanuts.” He is not deathly allergic to peanuts.

The man and I went as Jamie and Claire, from Outlander, but the kids only took derpy pictures of us. There is the mid-thirties for you. My hair isn’t right, but that’s the least of it, since Claire probably didn’t wear a fitbit in the 1780s.