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.

Christmas 2007

My mother arrived for the holidays.

On Christmas morning, Gavin was excited by the stockings when I turned on the tree. He had to pull up the feet on his slightly too-big Christmas footie pajamas so he could get to them. We tore open our gifts, we made a huge mess, we put on fancy aprons and made eggs Benedict, we piled on the couch and cheered for Gavin while he attacked virtual bad guys with his electronic light saber. The man brought over his cat to terrorize Po the Porkchop. Neither of the cats appreciated the stinky dehydrated shrimp treats Santa brought them. In the evening we ate roast beef, lamb, Yorkshire pudding, artichokes, carrots and potatoes, baked apples and rhubarb pie. We toasted with wine and sparkling blueberry juice, clinking each time Gavin cried, "To Santa! To Christmas! Cheers!"

Good holiday. Made it through another one.

2007 fades out

Another year. I've been looking back at my pictures since last November and realized that my smile doesn't reach my eyes in any of them. I spent a lot of time this year keeping busy, trying not to be alone in my head, trying not to look sad. As a kid, when I imagined this sort of thing, I thought it would be like a sad romantic movie, where the heartbroken woman stares out windows and withdraws from everyone. It didn't happen that way. I turned into a live nerve ending, instead. I tried to escape myself, grasping at anything to make it stop. I kept myself distracted enough that it only caught up with me in the moments I was alone; driving in the car, late after bedtime, the long nights Gavin was away. Eventually I got tired and gave up, let it catch me, and that's when I finally went numb, grieving the wasted years and the lies and love I thought I had. Day to day life is okay, I work with wonderful people. But I'm just moving on, going through the motions of the Rest of my Life and hoping I feel it again someday. I need to, considering where things are headed these days.

Time wounds all heels.

Five

Gavin walked out of the bedroom and went sleepily to the advent calendar to pull out the candy for number 16. "Happy Birthday, baby boy!" I yelled, putting down my book. He climbed under the couch blanket with me to lay beside the Christmas tree. "I'm FIVE, mom!" "I know! You're huge! What do you want to do today?" "Umm... you know, I always play on the computer when I turn five."

And so the boy played Lego Star Wars while I made banana pancakes shaped like teddy bears. When the sun was up, we stuffed into the car with his dad and went to the toy store for toppers for his cake, then took in a matinee of Alvin and the Chipmunks before returning home for foods and presents. Mike and I ate the leftovers of our traditional pre-birthday Thai takeout while Gavin ate pizza. I jammed Luke Skywalker up to his knees in the top of Gavin's cake, set R-2 by his side, and lit five candles around them. Gavin blew them out and opened his presents, carefully pulling off bows and trying not to tear the paper. He thanked the people who weren't there for his presents.

Love him.

Conquering Heroes

The garden center at Target was close to closing when we showed up looking for a tree last night. Our Christmas boxes disappeared in the move, resting somewhere in the Land of Things Put in Safe Places, so we picked up a few boxes of ornaments and lights. I gravitated toward the smaller trees. Mike made a sad face.  "Okay," I compromised, "How about one my height, then?" "How about one my height?" he said. "It would be your height once it was in the stand," I said. He shook a big tree gently by the trunk, waving the branches to tempt me. It worked on Gavin. "Mom, can we get one that goes all the way up to the ceiling?" I was outnumbered.

And so an hour later we were home, Mike's legs sticking out from beneath a huge tree that swallowed up my entire living room. The top bobbled while he wrestled it onto the stand. The cat ran under the bed. Gavin watched. "Is it supposed to be crooked, dad?" "No." "Well it is." "Thank you." "You're welcome." By the time the tree was up it was past 10pm, so we left it naked, brushed our teeth, read a book, and said goodbye to dad for the night.

In the morning I sat knitting, listening to A Breath of Snow and Ashes on cd, when Gavin stumbled out of the bedroom. Po (now dubbed "Fat Fat Porkchop") meowed for treats, and he gave her some in the kitchen. "Wow, mom," he said, climbing onto my lap atop my knitting, "I was listening all night for the tree to fall over, and it's still up!" "Amazing!"

Gavin helped me string lights until his dad arrived, shivering from the cold. We ripped open our packages of new ornaments like early presents and covered the poor tree in sugared pine cones, snowflakes, and plastic icicles. We patted ourselves on the back for general fantasticness and opened the traditional box of tree chocolates while Gavin pulled out the first day of his advent calendar.

And after all this - do I get to stay at home baking cookies and listening to sappy holiday music with the boys? No. I am at work, typing on my lunch break with a cup of decaf tea, after dealing with grouchy patrons all morning. The Christmas Spirit is upon us again, like wolves at our throats.

But the tree is up, the presents are stashed, the cocoa is well stocked, and I am feeling kind of happy.