settling

So far, in my new role of household layabout, I have managed in less than a week to completely destroy my mother's house. Also, I don't know how to open the dishwasher.

The barge unit arrived, a van was rented, the inherited furniture was unloaded (these are my mother's, entrusted to me by a relative in California 4 years ago, which has taken this long to get home to her because of inter-island shenanigans), and in order to make room for the hutch, a desk had to be moved. This desk caused a shuffling of furniture which resulted in a wall-length mirror getting torn out. The adhesive on the mirror gouged giant holes in the wall. Which necessitated patching and painting, and meanwhile everything has been crammed with boxes of books which can't be unloaded without the shelves, which can't be mounted until the wall is repaired, and it is just a chain-reaction of logistical fuckery. The closets need to be arranged to accommodate trunks and a couple bins of quilts and holiday trappings, and I suck at Tetris. I have the spacial-arrangement skills of a thing that doesn't have any spacial-arrangement skills. Also no attention span for it. Guess what I am supposed to be doing right now?

Not this.

On top of moving hassles, a very distressed construction worker showed up at the house with a box full of baby birds he found while tearing out an attic, because my mom has a reputation for being some sort of wild bird rescue wizard. 

They are the most adorably horrifying things ever, and now my mom is in love with them. She carries them in a little box stuffed down her motorcycle jacket, keeps them under a warming light, and plugs them full of baby bird formula with a syringe every 30 minutes. They are supposed to turn into Java Sparrows.

I am not sure about this. They look more like Skeksis to me.

 Laundry to fold. Boxes to unpack. Furniture to shuffle. Dishwasher to take a crowbar to. I am doing it.

Halloween 2012

Rescue

While our friend Jeanie's house in Breezy Point burned to the ground, I was being retrieved from Maui in a permanent manner. Finding ourselves with three cats and two carriers, Mike and I cut peep holes in a cardboard box, stuffed the largest hamcat into it, and duct-taped it shut. 20 minutes into the 2-hour drive to town, Sookie pooped in the box. We pulled over the car and the moving van, ripped open the duct tape, laid down fresh piddle pads, stuck her back in, and weighed the top shut with my backpack.

40 minutes later, she pooped again.

And escaped out the top of the box.

And got poop all over my backpack.

There was wrestling and tape stuck to the cat and expletives and flailing with pee pads, then she was back in the box, box turned on its side to trap her in, seat belt around the box. The other cats gave her side-eye from their carriers.

Mike unloaded furniture from the van and packed a barge unit single-handedly (amazing) while I checked the car in for shipment. We rode the empty van to Walmart, got a large carrier for the enormous cat, and she trotted inside it with obvious relief. We have forever ruined her potential to be the next internet box cat.

All went well until the plane landed in Honolulu, and I paced the baggage claim, waiting for someone to come out with my hamcat. Finally, a guilty-looking employee emerged with the carrier, admitted that the clips had all burst open, the carrier had fallen apart, and that Sookie the hambeast had been loose in the cargo hold when they finally found and caught her behind some baggage. She looked as if she did not appreciate the adventure, huddled in the back of the carrier with saucer-eyes.

My mom fetched us from the airport; Gavin hugged me tightly while I kissed his hair, then crooned into the carriers at the angry cats.

When we stopped at the preschool to pick up Leif, he ran and tackled me, and we kissed each other until we cried. I missed my boys so much, it's still hard to believe that the difficulty of this past year is over, that we can relax as a family, and nobody has to leave again.

Halloween

The next morning, Sal was on Day 3 with no power in New York, Jeanie started her trip home to rescue her family, and Leif helped me hang up paper decorations to lure trick-or-treaters.

The pumpkin was adorable, the biggest one Leif could carry home from his preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch. Gavin designed, I carved. My kids are weenies about getting pumpkin goo on their hands, which I always thought was the best part.

The young cousins stormed the house, and Gavin had a great time terrorizing the picky eaters with my meal preparations - "Mom is making OCTOPUS for dinner!" These were wieners that were snipped at the ends so they curled into tentacles when you boiled them.

When I put their plates out they ate the poor creatures in a gruesome, ketchup-bloody manner. So that worked according to plan.

The valley swarms with tiny ghouls every year, and we had a mountain of candy to appease them. Fewer and fewer lights have been on in recent years, and small feet have to venture farther into the neighborhood to fill their buckets, but we found haunted houses, graveyards of zombies, and tents full of drunk Bob Marleys despite the flagging economy. 

I SAID HOLD STILL AND LOOK CUTE

man and spawn

 horribly unflattering picture of the women-folk and sprogs

My mom, Valhallarama, stayed behind with her sister, Betsy Ross, and handed out candy with Sweet Transvestite blaring on the stereo. The littles gave out before the big kids, so I brought them home to dump out their loot and took up my traditional duty as Beer Wench, keeping the adults watered.

The big kids staggered in not long after, and we raged with sugar until the last sorry teenagers straggled through at 9pm.

Success.

Tsunami

The warning sirens started going off at bedtime, and the phone started lighting up with texts. My home is on high ground, I could listen to the cops whipping by to round up the drunks at the beach, and tried to stay awake by watching Game of Thrones, but I fell asleep during the live-streaming webcam footage of the waves. One would think that, given all the tsunamis in recent years, the news stations would have a more sophisticated option for surveillance than hotel webcams. Nobody could see what happened to Kahului, and when I checked again this morning, the official word was, "It is dark out." Very helpful.

And of course I have to drive out today.

Will take pictures if there are sharks on the road.

time wasting through productivity

I have been completely failing at packing and donating and getting stuff ready to move. I have been succeeding wildly, though, at activities which keep my ass parked in front of Misfits.

The weekends are long and quiet. As an introverted-type who deals with the public all week, I like the alone time, although in general I feel comforted having someone like-minded around the house messing with their own projects. Especially if those projects result in beer or furniture or fancier backyard lounging.

On Canadian Thanksgiving  (I was born in Newfoundland) I used the excuse to put on almost-Christmassy classical music and fix a feast in miniature. The sweet potatoes were purple, and the Yorkshire pudding deflated a bit, and the wine was just root beer, but it felt homey for a few minutes. Until it just underscored how alone I was, and I cleaned it all up.

Finished the stocking. Haven't decided who's name to stitch onto the top. My mom told me to make a second one and she would wear them as socks under her motorcycle boots.



New Ancestral Stocking

In an attempt to clear out my yarn stash before tossing most of it at the thrift store, I got into some nubby black cotton and made up a little baby sweater. Immediately, every cat in the house had to find it and lay on it. Because cat hair shows on black, and they are still mad about the top-hat incident.

CO 56 stitches for front and back, 34 stitches for sleeves, and that's all the notes I took.

Failing at pattern-making.



While sorting all the crap in my sewing cupboard, I became sidetracked by some Anna Maria Horner fabric and an old Simplicity baby pattern.

So I still haven't hauled any shit to the thrift store or dump, but I have it all mentally arranged. And that counts for... very little, but still something.

speaking of hairy apples

No sooner had I said, "Those hairy apple things my janitor made me eat last year," than he turned up with a pile of hairy brown apple things. My coworkers eyeballed them and generously pushed them all toward me. Well guess who will be immortal when the right scary fruit thing comes along? This pie-making lady, that is who.

Definitely not an apple.

Recipe:

2 weird brown hairy fruit things

2 granny smith apples

spoonful of flour

1 handful of sugar, because there isn't much left and the brown sugar is missing

cinnamon

butter

lazy-ass pre-made pie crusts

Peel and chop up the fruits, toss them with flour, then mix in sugar and cinnamon, dump into pie crust, dollop with butter, pop top crust on and try to get fancy with it.

DONE. 

Actually, cook it for an hour at 350 first, and then for sure this time DONE.

P is for Pie.

The magic fruit cooked up just like apples, with a tart, perfumey, rose-like flavor. It is so amazing that after eating it, you may need this:

(I was very excited by this body fluid kit on the marine corps base bus. May petition the Friends of the Library to install them by our public computers. And flower pots. And trash cans. People are gross.)

Been trying to use this spare time to finish projects. I've started sketching out the next book project, but I can't find my fookin art box, which has all my paint brushes in it. So I'm finishing the Christmas stocking, which is roughly large enough to stuff an entire child into. The rule is that if it's bigger than my stocking, it's cheating. Not sure what to do about this.

Found my sketchbook from last year while hunting for my box (leave it) and found these cat gestures.

So, friends, WHERE IS MY BOX? It is blue, and well-used, and covered in splotches. It should be very hard to hide in a house with no closets. Internet, find it for me. I can't buy more brushes until Monday, and that is YEARS.

Edit: FOUND. Out in the open. Of course.

Oahu

I packed up three suitcases with clothes and toys, stuffed a cat in a carrier, and took the boys to Oahu. Cats can't be sent through the baggage x-rays, so they make you take them out and carry them through security while they try to claw out your hair and eyes (the cats, not security). The kids thought this was pretty fantastic. TSA thought it would be funny to make me hold my hands out for chemical swabbing even though I was holding a frantic cat, in case she was an elaborately disguised bomb. If I were going to disguise a bomb, I would knit it a bomb cozy and pretend it was ironic. And then get caught and go to prison, because I am terrible at subterfuge, and that hiding-in-the-open thing never works. That is how they got my keychain pepper spray and whiskey flask.

The Blue Angels were terrorizing Kaneohe in preparation for the air show. Driving back from the airport, traffic braked and swerved as the jets roared in overhead and buzzed the highway. We all flailed and yelled in excitement, and decided to take the kids to the show over the weekend.

Which we did.

I didn't get any shots of the show with my phone, as I am a fan of viewing things with my eyeballs. My favorite bit was when they burst out over the crowd from behind and made everyone scream. Stealth attack! I am not informed enough to be an enthusiast, but I appreciate a skillful display of weaponry and combat.

The kids appreciated flipping all the switches on the cargo plane and pretending to crash it. I banned them from flight school.



A hundred school buses glided up with military synchronization to carry the swarming masses back to their cars. I waited for them to execute precision barrel rolls while we rode through the base, and in general felt much better about our odds of surviving the zombie attacks. Leif was similarly at ease.

Back at my mom's house, Astrid was getting acquainted with the place. My two old cats from high school - now tottering around like 18-year old sacks of bone and fur and nubby teeth - almost keeled over from anxiety. Xebo started hissing at everything that moved, including the fan, and Hercules tried to hiss and went into an asthmatic coughing fit. Astrid galloped away, scrabbled down behind the washer, kicked out all the hoses, caused a flood, tried to escape through the bathroom window, and got caught between the screen and the closed louvers, smashed flat upside down like a trapped ferret.

Then she climbed the front screen and tried to walk across the curtain rod.

And traumatized the fish.

This was all very entertaining, but in the down time between forays to Target and visits to our favorite restaurants, we sat in the evenings watching Jeeves and Wooster and I knitted a tiny sweater, start-to-finish.



Vestee, my go-to pattern for folks with incoming offspring.

Made in washable Comfy.

I added cables up the sleeves, because I am fancy

and enjoy putting a lot of detail into something that will be barfed on.

I flew back alone on Tuesday. Three weeks to wrap things up and interview for transfer. A costco package of frozen burritos to sustain me. A new phone to pester the kids with via FaceTime. A bed to myself and the new J.K. Rowling book to take with me. The month will go by in no time.

DEATH MATCH - :Made up inside my head:

Working for the government is just a long slog through paperwork. Paperwork to do more paperwork. Waiting for the faxes of that paperwork to attach to other paperwork to submit with additional paperwork. There is paperwork to save other people from doing paperwork that no longer needs to be done, and paperwork to defend yourself when they panic and cc all your bosses because they don't know how to stop doing the paperwork you're trying to spare them.

 So yesterday I started devising a resignation speech in my head. It was in all-caps, and involved stapling things to people. I said as much to sarah, and she replied, "Do the resignation with a top hat and a cane."

This is excellent advice. And coincidentally, the Internet was in need of more pictures of cats in hats.

So here I present a DRAMATIC RE-ENACTMENT OF RESIGNATION WHICH HAS NOT YET OCCURRED.

Scene 1: soliloquy - "fucks I do not give." 

Scene - wait, oh no. Actor is drunk.

REENACTMENT CONTINUES WITH NEW ACTOR

Good day sir. I SAID GOOD DAY.

Much better. It really wasn't a complicated speech.

And all resignations are better when you end them with something random and confusing. ROBOT IN A TOP HAT.

the pigeon, the hobo, and the police

Hyperventilating hobo came into the library, upset about a pigeon that had been looking in the front windows for 3 days. He gestured wildly and claimed it was a pet dove, a very special and important pet dove, like a pirate's parrot. Probably a homing dove. No, a pigeon. Definitely Filipino. Filipinos like pigeons. You can tell by the bands on its legs, it's a highly trained animal, someone is desperate to have it back, it's very smart and very important. It probably rode here in a car. Someone needs to save the Filipino pirate pigeon!

I went outside and had a look at the bird. It was fat and white and had colored, numbered bands around its legs. I promised to stop by the police station and ask them for animal control's number while I was on the way to pick up the library mail, and closed the door on the hobo mid-rant. Drove to the station. Officer blinked at me. A pigeon. Yes, a rogue pigeon. One of our hobos is freaking out because it is looking in the windows. He says it's Filipino. Fili- what?! That's racist. I know, right? You can't just ask a pigeon if it's Filipino! Here comes Ofc. A, tell him! It's on the campus, that's his area. Ofc. A! There is a pigeon menacing the library. Go arrest it. Not again.

I got back to the library, tossed the pigeon part of a hot dog, called animal control, and was told it was a racing pigeon, probably blown off course and resting, and please don't make them send someone all the way out there to chase it around. Went outside and stared at the pigeon with my janitor, discussing the likelihood of it being used as a football by asshole middle-schoolers when the bell rang. Pigeon looked affronted, made a big show of stretching its hamstrings, and flew away.

And that was the thing about the pigeon.


In other news

I'm keeping my hands busy again. Like someone treading water. Not like a serial strangler.

Picked a bag of guavas from my friend's tree, and made a small batch of luminous jelly. No ants were murdered this time.

Working on a Christmas stocking (the argyle stripes and name go on afterward).

And because I just had to make sure sheep are out to kill me, it is made of wool. We all went into fits of asthmatic death-coughing. I had to put Leif's head in the freezer again - which is difficult, because I only have a deep-freeze, and had to hold him upside-down. Have packed the stocking off to work, where I am continuing to kill myself discreetly over lunch breaks.

Trimmed Leif's quilt for binding. Finally.

Worked on the most boring blanket ever. Am going to snap and go wild with the stripes soon. WILD.

Made a head out of sculpey for next illustration project.

Have been entertaining fantasies of quitting my job, getting an agent, finding a mainland publisher, and going full-time with it.

Hmm.

Book #6

It is out! Copy arrived in the mail. It was a bit of a rush job, but I didn't mangle it too badly. 

The kids liked the derpy pig.

And this one has a CD included! I have not listened to it yet, because that would involve prying it out of its pristine packaging, but I will.

Unrelated: these things for snack today.

I am told they are called "Dragon's Eyes", and this time I am almost certain they have magical properties. Not like those hairy apple things my janitor made me eat last year.

break

In some failed relationships, there is a moment when the circling and waiting finally swerves and crashes, tearing apart into a debris field of separated belongings, removed photos, deleted computer files, empty liquor bottles, spatters of mental anguish, and glossy chunks of heart tissue.

The emotional shrapnel isn't mine this time, I am just ducking and cussing to myself. This is a lot of fallout for a 4-month relationship.

But before I finally said the words, "You need to leave," there was a perfect Labor Day weekend with my kids and their dad. He wrote about it here.

Whatever problems Mike and I have had, getting along has never been one of them. For three days, we laid around the hotel pool, visited the aquarium, played mini-putt, ate ridiculous quantities of good food, harassed parrots, and watched movies in our jammies. And every time we got into the car, this song played, until we were smacking each other and making accusing eyebrows as to who's karma was trying to make amends with who's:

As soon as the plane left with the man on it, Black Parade started playing. I laughed helplessly. The radio is possessed. Or the car.

Notable vacation moments:

Thai food - eaten on the hotel coffee table, as if by ravenous wolves.

The aquarium shark tunnel, filled with small children holding their parents' iPhones, running in schools to capture every sea creature that swam by the window.

Leif slipping off the pool steps and tried to drown, necessitating a leap into the water while fully dressed by his heroic mother. "I sinked. I was skeered," said the shivering boy afterward. We went back to the hotel room and played with the Playstation.

Mini-putt, under an enormous fake volcano with cascading waterfalls.

Bumper-boats. Everyone rammed each other and the kids assaulted us with water cannons.  Not a good time to wear a skirt.

A dubious encounter with "Green Burrito". With cardboard pornstaches in the kiddie meals.

Use of age-old traveler's trick for finding good breakfast joints: drive around and look for crowds in some hole-in-the-wall cafe. We scored fantastic biscuits and gravy, with cinnamon buns the size of a baby's head.



It was good. We needed it.