Burns Night 2017

For the past umpty-whatever years, we've been attending the Hawaii Scottish Association's annual Burns Night Dinner. When I was 23, I wore one-month-old Gavin to the dinner in a sling. At 24, I noticed the decorative 1-foot-wide cutouts all along the second story balcony right at crawling-baby height, and caught him before he tumbled through (we now refer to these as the 'murder holes'). I discovered that scotch is my natural enemy when I was 26, and confirmed it just to be sure when I was 27. We didn't even attempt to bring Leif the Destroyer to the dinner until he was 5, but baby Zenny came along the year I almost stabbed my cousin's horrible husband in the arm with a fork. 

This year, Gavin is a patiently bored teenager who is discovering that Scottish poetry is worth sitting through when there are plates of haggis*, a slab of prime rib, and slices of cake put down in front of you at regular intervals. Leif smuggled three mini whiskey bottles full of water in his sporran and drank out of them while posing casually, but if he was trying to get someone to call the authorities on us, he chose the wrong venue. These are the same people who told me I should dip his pacifier in scotch to get him to sleep at night. Zenny was so adorable in her formalwear that one of the tipsy old ladies in the restroom got down on her knees to touch the little shiny black shoes and reminisce about the buckle shoes she wore as a girl. Zenny rewarded her with an impromptu tap dance. When we got back to the table, Leif fell asleep and keeled over onto my lap. I checked his whiskey bottles. Still water.

It was a good year, even though I was reluctant to go to another late-night event after coming home from A Streetcar Named Desire the night before and almost getting killed by a stolen car speeding down the wrong side of the divided freeway into oncoming traffic. It missed me by a foot, and I was NOT HAPPY.

But I'm still here, and that is worth a toast.

the tights! the shoes! 

Leif feeling fancy and smuggling contraband.

Nice try, kid.

 golf course at the Oahu Country Club, dayum

waiting for the pipers to march across the golf course

not a fan of the bagpipes actually

AWA' YE DEVIL DRINK. Oh, just the one, then.

CHILD DOWN

* As much as we strive for authenticity, Hawaii haggis is basically just a meatloaf with oats, and is not full of mutton parts or cooked in a sheep's bladder. It's hit-or-miss, depending on the chef, which makes it more exciting, and the ode to the haggis has a lot of screaming and sword-waving, so it's always worth the gamble.

wherein I get a new book deal and talk trash about opera

I've received another manuscript from my editor, and I'm in the bushy-tailed happy sketching stage, certain that this one will be the BEST BOOK EVER. And then I look at my old work and bury my face in embarrassment because it's so awful and I have no idea how any of it got published. Why did I think walleyed children with fat heads were somehow cute? Wtf was I doing with my color? Some people can line up their old work with their new work and go, "Gee, it's so neat to see how much I've grown, lol look how bad I was", but I was not born with grace or confidence. I'm the sort of person who wants to bury my work in the woods and never speak of it again. I will try to be appear less mortified by myself. Maybe. Does it even matter, so long as I keep working? Probably just keeping my nose to the page will make up for being cripplingly self-conscious.

SPEAKING OF CRIPPLING SELF CONSCIOUSNESS. Last night, my grandfather came to visit and we went to the opera to see A Streetcar Named Desire. If you are thinking, isn't that a play, not an opera? you are correct. Is that the one with Marlon Brando or Ned Flanders? Both. Not at the same time, though. In this case, someone decided that the play would be better if the actors were made to discordantly wail all the lines without tune or melody, much in the same way I pretend to be a soprano while warbling out recipe instructions. Surprise. It was not better.

pretty close, Marlon

But at least this time I wasn't wearing granny loafers.

screenshot from instagram because I accidentally 

wiped the image off my phone after posting it

Everyone was trying to get dinner on the table as I was leaving, so my 3 year-old was the only person who would take a picture of me.

she needs some practice maybe

much fancy, very sitting

edited to add: aha! Found the missing photos on the big computer.

The attendance was a bit sparser than normal, because a lot of people were maybe suspicious that an operatic Tennessee Williams play with a rape scene wasn't going to be a peak of cultural achievement, but we still managed to go through our sight-seeing checklist and punch each other each time we saw a guest wearing crocs. 

disclaimer: yes, the news is still terrible and I am not okay with a lot of it. I am okay with Richard Spencer getting punched in the face for a second time, though. Small joys, people.

Everything is on fire and now we have ghosts, too

Home for a few days while the babysitter takes a short vacation, I logged off to spend the morning working on my book and hanging out with the sprog. When I logged back on to check for messages from my other kid, the EPA and National Parks had been silenced, the pipelines are back on, the global gag rule had been reenacted, the White House is straight-up lying about things we saw on live television, the Pope is giving warnings on the rise of the next Hitler, and Oklahoma decided that oral sex is not rape if the victim is unconscious.

But then, March won 4 literary awards, so that stopped me from taking a hammer to my phone.

As I was sitting staring hollow-eyed at my news feed, I caught sight of something orange on the table in front of me and slammed my hand over it, "AHA. GOT YOU." It's a little plastic clapper toy, the sort that falls out of a piñata at a kid's birthday party. It's old and has been repaired with a little fraying rubber band where the hand fell off from overuse. And it's fucking haunted.

Last night, at 3:02 am, I woke up because the soft drips and patter of rain on the patio had changed. Above it was an erratic clatter, artificial-sounding and moving, like a person with a little plastic hand clapper. It was coming from the dining room. The cats were up on the dresser with their ears in varying angles of unhappiness. I got out of bed and tripped over a spilled lego bin, which had not been in the middle of the floor when I went to bed, but that is the nature of spilled lego bins. The clatter stopped when I crashed into the hallway. I walked through the house, looking out all the windows and straining my ears for the clattering sound. When I couldn't find it, I checked on the kids and went back to bed, and the moment my head hit the pillow the chatter of plastic started up again. The cats ran under the bed. I listened to it for a full minute - rattling carefully, slowing down, pausing, rattling frantically - and then I very quietly swung my legs out of bed and sneaked into the hallway. The rattle stopped. I breathed quietly and stood still, and after a few seconds it rattled tentatively. The cats panicked and charged out between my feet, skidding on the hall runner, and I ran through the kitchen and into the dining room under the cover of stampeding paws, but it was too late. The rattle stopped, and for the rest of the night I lay in bed half asleep, dreaming lucidly about defending the house against burglars with an enamel sink. (Not the most practical weapon, probably, but it swung really well.)

And then there it was this morning. The little orange plastic clapper, right there on the dining room table. The table had been cleared for dinner and the kids had been playing Jenga all evening, so how it got there I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

So. Ghost. I don't know what that was about, but you are welcome to sort the cutlery or straighten the book shelves if you are bored at 3am.

I'm going to leave the clapper and legos out again tonight to see if they act as a spectral lure, and then chuck cats at the ghost until they learn how to be better paranormal investigators. I've read that ghosts need high amounts of energy to manifest, and it seems to me that an angry cat should do the trick pretty neatly. 

Will report. If the internet is still up in the morning.

What did you do this weekend?

There is a lot to be said about the unqualified people heading government departments they plan to dismantle, and the friends I have who are in treatment for breast cancer and facing their deaths when they lose ACA coverage, and the outright lies about the education system being "flush with cash", and about environmental regulations being lifted so that we can drill and frack the country into ruin, and about bathroom bills and attacks on women's health services and threats against immigrants and SO MANY OTHER THINGS.

But.

I have a very clear duty and function as a children's librarian. I protect access to information. I teach children pre-reading skills. I read them stories that nurture curiosity and empathy. I organize programs and displays on civil rights, black history, women's history, censorship, other cultures. Only 4% of Hawaii is white, the rest are Pacific Islander or immigrants from the Philippines, Japan, and Southeast Asia. If I am asked as a "patriot" to report my storytime families as immigrants or muslims, I will not be doing that. I will not be providing information about the library books they read or the subjects they study. I will not be refusing service to people of particular descents or dress or gender. I will not stop buying books that depict marginalized people or scientific inquiry or "unpatriotic content". My lines in the sand are drawn. So if I don't say a lot about this mess as we head forward, it is not because I don't see it, but because I have my hands in it, and I want to keep them there as long as I can.

So today, we marched.

Three EIGHT thousand people - laughing and chanting and cheering as passersby honked their horns and waved from car windows. The crowd stretched around three blocks, even in the slashing rain and wind. It was really beautiful.

And then we went to Gordon Biersch and had a beer, because it's important to appreciate the good things while you have them. Like healthcare, and a paycheck, and microbrew beer overlooking the ocean.

And look what arrived today! So perfect. 

Figuring out how to upload drawing videos

Except not onto blogger. I'm giving this a shot, but the good videos are over on my website.

The view from my shower in the mornings. The sun cuts through the steam and you can pretend you are playing one of those air harps at Sharper Image.

here is the drawing

there should be a video here but the preview screen is giving me a pixelated arrow instead

And the mountain is visible again! I can breathe!

finished image

Aaand there is supposed to be a 20 second video here but it loaded

a blue box, instead. Thanks, blogger.

I don't think that worked. Sorry. Or  TA DAAAA.

So. I have been accused of being dead by online persons (well, just Heather), but I am not. I have been busy preparing for the launch of my comic, since I've decided I am too much of a weenie to keep getting rejected by agents, and it's not like I don't have a job with a decent salary anyway, so I'm just going to upload it as a web comic and if the publication truck wants to hit me on its own, that's fine. The point is to do the thing and finish the thing, and uploading as I go has been working for my momentum on the Muu project. So. That.

Also, I totally have not lifted any of those weights. I painted the linen closet, though, and that is almost like lifting weights, in that my arms moved up and down. I will lift them. I'm just not feeling well. The vog has been thick and Bakersfieldian. I might not have gotten sick if I hadn't been sucking in giant lungfuls of air to belt out songs beyond my vocal capacity while driving to a librarian meeting (ayyyayyyy NEEEEEED YOUNG LUNGS). But I did. And I'm sick now. Which is good for my laying-around-drawing-in-front-of-Sherlock-ness, at least.

Here are things:

* Almost accidentally flew to Oregon with my mother this week because of a facebook dispute (“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it,” said Sir Terry Pratchett) but decided to pool our dollars and take the kids to Harry Potter Land over spring break, instead. Assuming, you know, nothing major breaks or springs a leak or needs emergency dental attention and OH NO I HAVE JUST BROUGHT RUIN UPON THE PLAN**.

* Been really into Johnny Cash this week. Well. One song, really. But I mentioned it and now husbandface is being supportive and playing every album Johnny ever made. I don't want to be an asshole but I really want it to stop. 

* Leif has rediscovered Jolene and has been alternating between Miley and Dolly's versions on infinite repeat. Between that and the Johnny Cash now I don't know what's happening in my home, music-wise. Help.

* Last week someone gave me a bag of tangerines from their tree and I was going to make marmalade but now all I've got are some videos of me drawing my shower and a bag of rotted tangerines.

* A colleague I respect said something very nice to me as I was walking away and I wasn't prepared. 

This week: weights. Yes. Weights, and probably also ibuprofen.

**the plan knows I haven't felt like getting on a plane in years, so it will probably be more difficult to thwart than this. 

Did someone say "oiled bikini-clad bodybuilder"?

Yesterday I went to the store for brads and came back with a weight bench and free weights. I was not looking for a weight bench. I was looking for brass fasteners, which are such an outdated office supply item that NOBODY stocks them anymore.  After gesturing in exasperation at all the bradless shelves in FIVE stores, I finally ended up at the thrift store, rummaging fruitlessly through miscellaneous bags of office garbage, and ran right into someone's New Year resolution from last year - fresh and never used and all for the price of just one of the giant free weights it came with.

POWER OF THE SEEEEECRET.

So I came home with the weight bench. And no brads.

Goddamn it. Now I need to use them. I will take a "before" shot. As soon as I find my jar of coconut oil.

The reason I am not using them right this second, and am instead sitting on my butt writing about it, is because I am pretty sure that being home alone, drinking a beer, and getting covered in coconut oil is the best way to murder yourself with a set of free weights. I am not an expert, though. But I will use them. SOON. TOMORROW.