graff

Sunday was bottling day, and I was reverently presented with a towering beaker of amber liquid. Normally, I sniff the stuff thoughtfully, take a delicate sip, and roll the flavors around my mouth for a moment before pronouncing it a success. But this was not beer. This was hard cider, and it was so crisp and tart that I took a mouthful, stared at the beaker, cursed, and then drank the entire thing. The man was happy and started preparing the bottles for capping and carbonation. 

I took the picture and frowned at the camera. "Geez. Come take a flattering picture of me bending over my quilt blocks, or I'll look ridiculous on the same page as you." 

Very natural. 

Leif likes the lines on the batting. 

Our House played in the livingroom, the boys messed with play doh and lego, the cats sat like meatloafs, we went about our quiet industry, and everything was kind of perfect. My skinless hand is recovering, although the life line has tried to fuse over. Gypsies will scrutinize my palm and inform me of my impending death and resurrection, then go check the ammo in their zombie kits.

look what I got today

Look at the books. Look at your bookshelf. Look back at the books. I'm in a font. 

Look at my chickens! They are so glossy! 

Looks like quality literature to me. 

This one looks nice, too. More on availability soon. Natural food plan will have to pause today, as my liver demands a margarita.

Two

Two years ago this morning, I was standing in a waiting room with my butt hanging out of a hospital gown, scarfing down a take-out box of scrambled eggs and bacon before the wrist-flapping nurses could catch me, push me back into L&D, and strap me into bed again. I fell asleep between contractions, and they slowed enough to send my doctor tutting in to inform me that I was not in labor and my baby was going to get an infection and DIE if I didn't start on pitocen.  A) I was, too, in labor. I kind of noticed. B) I had only been in active labor for 6 hours. C) asshole. Three hours later, Leif was clipped free of the cords around his neck and dropped onto me, limp and blue and unmoving. The nurse whisked him to the oxygen mask above the examination basinet, and the room was silent for long seconds while my arms hung outstretched in the air, waiting urgently. He solidified, screamed, flushed pink. Mike cried. Happy Birthday, Leif, my viking baby. I love you so much it hurts. 

buff bods and poo of all sorts

After four days of hauling boxes, walking up and down stairs, dragging ankle-children, and moving furniture, I felt as if I had been beaten head-to-toe with The Big Book of Beating. Got on the scale, and cheered a bit. "I lost a pound!" Mike pulled off his shirt. "Oh, look at that, I'm buff again." Jerk. The hamcat returned, appearing suddenly behind me as I was flexing in the closet mirror and making me jump out of pose with her pissy "RAWR". Then she went and pooped in the tub. Gee, I am so glad she is back. 

It has been determined that our porch is just about the greatest hang-out place in the world. The view at night The view at dawn I keep making heavenly-chorus "Aahhhhh!" noises whenever I see that. (The sunrise)  

 

Have decided not to do the Master Cleanse. Mostly because you have to drink about a gallon of salt water and spend 4-6 hours pooping, and I would end up having to do it with an audience of cats and a toddler - all of whom think it is their directive in life to pry me off the toilet and see what's going on in there. While having a cat's head suddenly jam down between your butt and the toilet seat is kind of funny at first, it is also alarming and absolutely horrifying. But then you can lean backward and pin their head in the toilet, and it is funny again - until it is scratchy and painful. So instead of purging the toxins with foul liquids, I will attempt something much more difficult: real food. No artificial color, sweetener, corn syrup, refined sugar, bleached flour, red meat, booze, caffeine, or massive quantities of salt. For, say, 2 weeks. You'd think this would be easy, living somewhere with no fast food or grocery stores. No, it is not. So far today: coffee with agave and milk (good. Except for, you know, the caffeine) hash browns and scrambled eggs (good) 2 sour cream and onion Ritz pretzel-crackers (fail) Kashi natural-whatsit snack bar (good) black tea with splenda and old milkshake as creamer (fail) Anticipating higher success rate after buying groceries/banning forced cracker feedings by co-worker. (Forced!) Also there is this: 

Dubbed the Invisibility Cloak, owing to its complete lack of color and therefore INVISIBILITY. No more getting caught by co-workers and being forced to do paperwork for me!

notes from the house of emptiness

Moving is nearly done. We are rippling with mover-type muscles, living like pioneer people up in the cottage with no internets or phone.

The old house is a mess of rolling dust balls, single shoes, broken lego, and to-be-donated junk (including the beer checkers. It is terrible to get tipsy and then find yourself with 26 shot glasses to wash).



The hamcat tore out a hamcat-shaped hole in the screen and ran away. Leif has been helping by working my cardio as an ankle-weight. Gavin has been helping by sneaking things out of the garbage piles and into his toy bins. Mike nearly fell out of the storage loft under a 50 lb trunk. But then the rain swept over the fields behind the house, the sun rose out of the ocean like a fiery plum, and our friends lent us their truck-packing services and eased our aching shoulders with a night of cards and homemade pizza and the new mango homebrew. Everything is kind of good.

DO NOT WANT

TMI. Men and grandparents should skip ahead.

Sometimes I don't feel like writing because I am tired out from hauling shipment boxes or writing reports or arguing with hobos. Sometimes I am too sad to post anything except song lyrics and poetry about what an asshole the moon is. And sometimes it's because I get back to work after a root canal and flip open my desk calendar and discover that my period is a week late. Then I can't write anything, because it all comes out like, "AAUUGH! AUUGHH! AUUGHHH!" which nobody wants to read unless there are illustrations and someone is getting eaten by something. So I end up driving all over town before work the next day, and neither of the general stores have pregnancy tests because the teenagers keep stealing them, so I buy a chocolate bar instead and eat it all as I am pulling into the health center, where I walk past a bunch of patrons I know, who wave and say, "Hey, Miss Librarian!" and then pretend to be furiously reading magazines while I am forced to yell over the air conditioning to the cute receptionists about my need for a stick to pee on. They give me an appointment for next week, instead. Then I drive back home, anguishing over how I just bought smaller jeans, and how I just had a month filled with enough booze and x-rays and face-numbing drugs and prescription medication to grow a baby with legs instead of arms. Shut self in bathroom and discovered that the public humiliation had been enough to remind my body what it was supposed to be doing. FALSE ALARM. Felt a rush of enchiladas - ok, I was writing 'exhilaration' and that is what came out, so I am leaving it - and vague disappointment as my hypothetical girl-baby disappeared in a wisp. Looked at myself in the mirror, head tilting a bit. Like a dog thinking, "Enchiladas?" I am done thinking for the day. And feeling. And yearning. No more anything. I'm going to play Sea Wolf and go do some mindless barcode beeping for - oh - the next 15 years or so.


Sooo, aside from all that, my normal post for this week should have looked like this:


* Did not get a tooth pulled, as oral surgeon was revealed to be a new-agey tooth-extraction-cures-all man, and root canal dentist was revealed to be an eye-rolling drill-and-ridiculous-goggles man. Man with the drill won.

* Started knitting a child-sized version of the Modern Garden for the girlie on smaller needles.




* Put the girl-child on a plane and returned her to her family, who would poke through her suitcase full of nori snacks and Japanese candies as if she were bringing home a bag of witchetti grubs. Kiddo cried to see her go, while I patted him and chatted with the airport security goon I went to the prom with.

* Bought a nice new pair of boyfriend-cut jeans in a comfy size 8 (cut from real boyfriends, I am assuming).



They look slightly better when I don't have my shirt accidentally tucked into them.

* Got home, took my antibiotics and vicoden, thought grumpy thoughts about the 5 x-rays I've had in the past few weeks. Was feeling like a toxic barrel of toxicness. Made plans to go on a Master Cleanse (for real this time, not substituting Crystal Light and pop tarts for the lemon-cayenne-maple drink).

countdown: 7 days until the big move. Off to find some enchiladas.

still lingers here

Woke up with tear tracks and tiny mouse eyes. Bad dreams, two nights running. The dark things are starting to circle overhead again, time to armor up. Yesterday was a day of shopping and ice cream and organic pizza in Paia, but this morning the children gnashed against each other, until the man stuffed them (along with the kiddo's peace-making best friend) into the car for the beach, and left me with my thoughts. I bent over the sewing machine in the quiet house, combating the mindghosts until I was trembling and sweaty. I'm a person poisoned, and I have put my running shoes by the door in anticipation of my miraculous rejuvenation after the upcoming onslaught of drills and antibiotics.

Angst works for me, productivity-wise:



Ignore that loose thread from when I accidentally stitched the backing to itself.



Ooh, look, I'm so angsty and pale. Sign me up for a case of black eye-liner and a Stephenie Meyer tattoo.



The other thing that helps: happy family; hand-smashed burgers grilled with blue cheese, fresh basil, and tomatoes; mounds of potato salad; music with a good beat; a cold pint. I'm still a fan of summer.

I cause an accident and have exploding teeth

My doctor, in order to figure out my fatigue and mutinous joints, sent me to a dentist. No, not a dentist - an oral surgeon. Way scarier, and sure to validate my insistance that all my problems are NOT due to Splenda. So yesterday I headed to town, playing loud music and weaving along the narrow highway, until suddenly I spotted a big utility truck lumbering toward me and punched the brakes, pulling over until my right wheels were off the road. The truck paused, then slowly eased past, the driver waving. BANGSMASH. Looked back to see that the truck had sideswiped an outcropping of rock while heading into the curve, its brake-lights blaring as it lurched to a stop. Was I supposed to get out? Was this my fault somehow? Do rocks require witnesses? Um... bye, truck driver. I fwooshed away, waving guiltily at two more utility trucks as they scooted past, and gunning it when I saw them brake in my rear-view. The road switched-back, and I averted my eyes, certain they were all lined up on the cliff, pointing accusingly at the car, "Hey, that's her right there! Stop her!" Voom.

Well, if that wasn't wrong, I'm pretty sure driving the wrong way up a one-way street probably is. But I did, and still got to my appointment with time to spare. They put my whole head in a spinning x-ray, like a rotisserie chicken. The dentist, a distinguished man of about 60, ran his pen down my chart, murmuring to himself. "30? She doesn't look 30 yet..." I beamed. "Where did you grow up? These fillings are things I usually only see on people from my generation." I wilted.



So, the long and short of it is that, although I don't have a cavity, there is some painless-yet-horrifying badness going on in my jaw, and it is leeching into my bloodstream and causing me to feel like walking death. To fix this, I get to have a root-canal and a FUCKING TOOTH PULLED OUT. As soon as possible, because, "These are time-bombs. Especially with you out there in Hana, they could blow up in a matter of hours and you'd be in some serious trouble." Well, shit. Took me and my amazing exploding mandible to the mall to buy pants that make my butt look like a cupcake. Work with what you have. Which is not, evidently, teeth. Bright side: this is all the fault of 1980s socialized dentistry - not Splenda! Will carry on shoveling down horse-doses of the sweet stuff.

In the end, there is still a chance I may need that shirtless-man-sedan, but it isn't looking so good. As I was driving home, I crested the cliffs and drove past the Keanae lookout, where a jeep was stopped in the road. I passed it with a wave, rounded the corner, and saw the most extraordinary thing; a shirtless man, running to catch up with his ride, broad-shouldered and cropped-haired and completely covered in tattoos. My shirtless man! And he was getting away! He saw me and grinned as I nearly took off the side mirror. Damn.

I meet Pauly Shore and eat a maggoty corpse

"Look at this asshat." A silver mustang rent-a-car was charging across the new one-lane bridge, despite the fact that we were already on it. Mike stopped, but did not reverse immediately. When the oncoming car irched satisfyingly to a stop, he eased backward to make room for it. The other driver rolled his wrist for us to put down our window, like someone calling for their check by pantomiming a signature. "How far is it to the park?" That poor man looks like Pauly Shore, I thought. The blonde in the passenger seat was shrinking down and looking embarrassed. "About 5 minutes." "Kay, thanks," he drove on, covering his face a bit with a hand. "That was Pauly Shore, you know," Mike said. "What."

motherfucking Pauly Shore!

It was a holiday campout weekend, in celebration of a young friend's birthday. Rampant children, frisbee, volleyball, hiking, fireworks, card-playing! Also rain.

When the sun emerged, we threw the children into the water, to distract them from trying to rescue all the forest critters from themselves and take them home trapped in plastic cups.

motherfucking waterfall!

Not so fun: I plucked a piece of meat out of the serving pan and discovered, on the way to my mouth, that it was covered in spiky little fly eggs. And that all the other pieces of meat were studded with little white clusters, too. And that I had just swallowed a big mouthful of them. Am off meat for the foreseeable future, and surviving on no-bake oreo pie, which I am about to make.

edited to add: I grabbed a spatula from the jar-o-utensils on the counter, and discovered that it was covered in baby cockroaches - just in time for them all to bail onto the pie and blend in with the cookie bits. Am off oreo pie, and now surviving on gummy vitamins.

kam kam

The spare child has arrived. The last time we took care of this kid, we got in trouble for taking her out of her baby bucket and carrying her around, which, as everyone knows, is the quickest way to spoil 6-week-old babies. We won't be doing that again, I tell you what. 

Nope. This time we'll stuff her with coconut candy, throw her in the ocean, and play in waterfalls - but will definitely not be bouncing her on our knees and counting her little toeses. No more coddling for you, girlie. Day 1: a tour of the neighborhood. "EEUURG! BIG FURRY TREE FERRET THING!" "No, no, no, don't worry. It's just a rat." 

We said hi to the neighbor's horse. He wanted treats. We didn't have any. He pooed at us. Day 2: charmed by the local wildlife, the child tried out the beach. Yes, it's shaping up to be a trip she'll never forget.