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Maybe I will end up back here, 8 10 years of broken pictures and all (damn, I've been talking a long time). Will inform.

Christmas 2014

Early morning. Coffee. Couch blanket. Boys tearing through stockings. Typically, all adults are on hand at this ungodly hour to witness the children’s excitement, but this year I was the only one who got out of bed. Santa ran out of candy and oranges on the last stocking, so mine was mostly empty and topped with a squishy bit of fruit from the back of the fridge. A cockroach ran out of my stocking when I looked into it. My days of holiday magic and delight appear to be at an intermission.

There were Skylanders and Legos and a wry stare-down over a package of underwear, but the runaway hit of the day was the electronic sound effects maker. Screams and farts and deep-voiced baby cries punctuated the early morning.

OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?

But it was a lovely day, with lovely booze, and a lovely meat pie to stuff into the cousins and a lovely plum pudding that caught the table on fire. I missed dessert, because of a dinner-time diaper blow-out and subsequent bath/trouser scrubbing, I did manage to watch the end of a Christmas Story and knit a couple of rows with a kitten down my shirt.

And then it was done, and it’s back to work again. I feel a bit sad and confused about it. I think the theme of 2015 will have to be “Redoubling my Efforts”. More running, more making, more cleaning, more cookie-baking, more feeling. I will make it happen.

“If you trust in yourself. . . and believe in your dreams. . . and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Merry Grinchmas

Guess who is working all day on Christmas Eve? It is me!

Less-than-gruntled librarian on morning break

But then I will drive home through the snowy rain, burst in to cheers and giddy children and roast beef with yorkshire pudding, seize a glass of porter, and celebrate until my antlers drop off.

terrible monster hunter

December 23, 2014tempestpilot

and fail to read Signs of Great Import.

In the darkest part of solstice, the power went out. Rain that had been lashing the house and toppling trees suddenly fell silent. The darkness and quiet woke me, and I stretched my arms up over my head, dangling my hand between the bed and the wall. Something touched my finger. Something which felt very much like someone else’s finger – firmly, right on the tip of mine, boop. I rolled over, tucked my hands under a pillow, and my foot disentangled from the blankets. There was a pause, and then something – something like a finger – carefully traced the top of my bare foot.

“Gawd, stop,” I said.

And I fell asleep again as the rain roared back into life.

So there we are. Worlds converge, darkness falls, a creature stirs, and I couldn’t be arsed to defend humanity. Sorry, everyone.

new kitten

KITTEH

December 20, 2014tempestpilot

Milo

oh no

December 18, 2014tempestpilot

So the boy turned 12. After a day crammed with breakfast cinnamon buns, mini cupcakes for his class, and irresponsible candy consumption, we geared up for a feast at our favorite Chinese restaurant. I scraped the struggling infink’s hair into pigtails, made the boys change clothes because they had decided to roll down a hill in the rain, and warmed up bird formula. As the baby dove chugged its bottle, I said, “Birds. All these birds. At least nobody has tried to give us kittens.” And I ducked as imaginary thunder clapped, and said, “I RETRACT THAT STATEMENT.” But it was said.

At the restaurant, the cousins were late. We ordered gau gee and spring rolls and drank pots of green tea before giving up and ordering dinner, and were halfway through the Mongolian beef when the boys crowded in. “WE SAVED A KITTEN.” Oh no. Gavin lit up like a shiny beamy thing. This is a boy who is cool just by sheer lack of self-consciousness. He wears Doctor Who shirts, has glittery kittens on his folders, and he ain’t give a damn. Kittens are his thing. “The kitten will be mine,” he said. “No.” I said. “Yes, it will,” he said. “Well, ok,” I said. Damn. Outwitted.

The cousins wanted to give it a go at kittymommyhood, since they had saved it from the slavering dogs. But the cousins swell up like puffer fish when they touch cats. “We will bathe it every day!” they said. “We will wash our hands so much!” they said. But then they woke up with boiled eggs for eyes, and my aunt was on the phone, arranging for transfer of custody.

So now we have another cat on the already-unwieldy pile of cats.

I think. It may be a mongoose. We will find out when it tries to eat our faces while we’re sleeping.

Names are being debated. The kids want to name it Zhu Li, so they can yell, “Do the thing!” at it.

I am lobbying for Our Lord Sandra, because this is the time of year that baby Jesus may come a-visiting, and nobody is to say that Jesus won’t come as a little ginger cat just to keep us on our toes, and in my favorite YA series, Georgia Nicolson’s little sister gets hold of the Jesus figurine and dresses it up and names it Sandra, so there you go. Literary and seasonal.

Gavin turns 12

This boy

December 16, 2014tempestpilot

He is twelve. TWELVE.

Celebration picture dump:

commute

December 12, 2014tempestpilot

I am between audio books again, and so I have been listening to music, which is basically just me sitting with my ipod in my hand and clicking through songs every .5 seconds.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Ok.

I tried howling along to a sappy ballad, but my voice came out like a wheezy gasping thing. The vog is billowing in lovely misty masses between the mountains, strangling us all. Am probably slowly expiring from walking pneumonia. Began mentally formulating my final emails to loved ones. It is possible, I thought, that if I want to impart my beloveds with a sweet, sad remembrance of my life, I might want to use the word “bonk” a bit less. And anyway, email might not be the way to go for final correspondence. There is always the chance that you will shoot off your last words and then fail to die properly, and then be faced with awkward reconciliation – but with a paper letter in the mail, in the event of miraculous recovery, you still have the chance to kill yourself before it gets there. That is definitely the way to go, death-bed-wise.

I started looking for the idiot in the grey Charger who passes me every morning. He has a bumper sticker that says “Honk for Impeachment”, which must have been a handy solution to his always being honked at for driving like an asshole, and a sticker that says, “Spay and Neuter Liberals”. I have been tossing my hair and winking at him every morning, so that he will begin looking for me and bobbing his eyebrows, not suspecting that I am just luring him closer so I can punch him in the junk. It will be a complicated maneuver, with the highway and vehicles involved, but a person needs a cause to commit themselves to.

cookies

December 11, 2014tempestpilot

It is a well-established fact that I make big decisions by crying next to the litter box, and I tell the future by baking cookies. Christmas, I thought. Meeeeh, I thought. I will make sugar cookies shaped like whimsical cats and children, and decorate them with colored icing and mini M&Ms, and the children will rejoice in holiday magic, I thought.

Except I don’t like sugar cookies, so I used a mix instead of a recipe.

And my cut-outs ballooned into hideous creatures.

And I couldn’t find the food coloring, except for the dregs of some old yellow and blue.

And I used a sandwich baggie to pipe it on, and it splorted out.

And someone ate the mini M&Ms.

It did not take much rumination to read these ones.

Grinch cookies

Redoubling efforts. Will summon magical spirit of the season or grind my fingers into the biscotti trying.

to face, unafraid, the plans that we made

December 4, 2014tempestpilot

Things are pottering along. Mostly things around me. The real estate process threw up a sudden hurdle, and even though I knew something would happen and I was watching for something to happen, I still failed to vault the thing and ended up on my face, where I am now laying, dejected, despite the fact that the realtor came and disentangled the hurdle and assured me that it is safe to get up now. No. Just give me the things to sign and I will wallow here until everything is done. Safe, lovely wallowing.

Home-ownership.

In the meantime, it suddenly became December. The boy’s birthday is just before Christmas, and we realized years ago that once we pull his birthday presents out from under the tree, we all become immediately depressed by how much shopping we actually still have to do, so we bought him a mini tree of his own, to keep his impersonating-a-christmas-present presents under. He asked me to knit a tree skirt for it, which I immediately set to doing – because even though I hissed at the lady at the grocery store who asked if I could knit her a sweater, I am still mostly a giant sucker when faced with direct requests.

Also happening: the hairy baby bird is becoming an actual birdy bird. A zebra dove, specifically.

A similar thing is happening to the human baby – in that she is starting to look like a child version of her eventual adult self. And talking. It is weird.

And my mother is trying to die of diverticulitis, which I have told her not to do. December is off to a dicey start, health- and real-estate-wise, so this weekend I am going to shovel tree decorating, chocolates, and rummy eggnog on top of it and see if that helps at all.

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.