Part Three, and First Snow

I'm reading the most unexpectedly satisfying book. I think it's the first time I've read something that could be described as academic and heady that also left me with a palpable sense of optimism and, frankly, soulfulness. I don't even like to hear myself write things like that, but it's undeniable. It's Daniel Greenberg and Russell Ackoff's book about why schools and education aren't working. And what we're not thinking about when we try to make them better. Maybe it's just that I don't mind this kind of writing when it's about something I think about a lot, or maybe it's that a big part of what they're saying has to do with art, and how we've all got it in us even though we spend most of our time on other things. Either way, I can't believe I'm reading it so fast, and I very much enjoyed the combination of it and the little bit of snow we're getting this morning. I almost forgot to worry about how it took until December 7th for the white stuff to start falling.

Oh, and I was supposed to post this photo several days ago. Michele says it seems less believable because it's not taken at home, and it's even harder to believe that I'd iron in a public area than in the privacy of my own home, but this was before our performance in New Haven. I'm sure you'll find it easier to believe that I was ironing costumes than my own clothing.

Old Dogs and New Tricks, Part Two

I haven't been writing because my stupid fingers don't like typing and/or writing all the time and they've taken to swelling up and sending little zaps of pain up into my shoulders. Nice.

But oddly enough, they're not bothered by SEWING.

I know that sewing's not really a new trick. It's more of a new-to-me trick. And I definitely feel like something of an old dog. Be impressed. Be very impressed. Not only did I reattach the top button, I detached and reattached the other two as well....



Dude! Video! Two new tricks in one post!

Legos

Lied. Didn't write twice yesterday. And almost let it slip by again today. Just finished reacquainting myself with the Legos of my youth, literally. Mom dropped them off at my request. I built a houseboat. Mostly. Best part of the day. I'll post a photo when it's done.

Oops

I meant to write when we got home from the Bates fall dance show last night, but then it was morning before I remembered it again. I'll write twice today.

Yesterday was largely characterized by our visit to our friend Andrew's place, where he did the sound mixing (I think that's what it's called) we needed done for the piece we're performing next weekend. Trips to Andrew are always that - trips. It's always profoundly clear after a visit to Andrew that the "reality" in which I live day to day is a ridiculously small sliver of what's going on in the world. Not to mention what a narrow world view is represented in the course of my days. On this particular visit, there was a small crowd of other musicians around, who were intensely curious about what it's like to be serious about dance in a community like Portland where there isn't much of it. It always feels like we're supposed to think about art as a luxury, and I know I do, but being around these guys who live according to it rather than alongside it was refreshing and... alarming, actually. I feel a little more awake.

More soon.

Suspend Oral Hygiene

Dear Reader,

I'm writing to you today to brag about how much money I spent at the dentist this afternoon. I've done better, but given that I expected something just over $100, I think I fared pretty well with a final result of $230. I mean, I could have put more effort into it. I could have said something like "You must have at least one other piece of new technology that you're keeping from me though I absolutely need it if I'm to prevent the rapid and merciless onset of periodontic disease. COME ON." But I didn't. I left it at fluoride varnish and bitewings, which are certainly the most unpleasant experience available when it comes to dentistry that doesn't actually involve cutting of any kind.

But I digress. The funniest part of the visit was when the hygienist, whom I actually like very much, observed that on the packaging for the fluoride varnish it said both "Do not brush for 6 hours following the application of this product" and "Suspend oral hygiene for a full day following application of the product." I won't get into the niggly little details of whether or not they know how long a day is. I'm too tickled by the fact that they wrote "Suspend oral hygiene." Suspend oral hygiene? Really?

Sincerely,

Writer

Details

I remembered today that when I used to spend hours building little houses and other buildings out of Legos, the most important thing to me was making sure the blocks overlapped so that there weren't any seams running up the walls. I tried to find a Lego picture that shows what I mean but I couldn't, and I don't have any Legos in the house with which to stage a reenactment.

Anyway, I know I'm the only one who thinks that's interesting, but I couldn't think of anything to write about and that's what was in my brain. It was a long day.

I just like the moon, is all.

Amazon's Gallery of Wrap Rage

It's another part of their scheme to take over the world, but it's also funny film with funny music.

Filler

I couldn't find the flannel sheets, and then I remembered that I used them, along with several towels, to stuff the freezer back while we were still accumulating produce to put in there for the winter. They should be nice and warm.

Retro

This here's a photo from a week ago tomorrow. It seems like so long ago now, and I'm just getting it off the camera. It was taken after our trip to the O office downtown, where we stuck a cell phone to an ear each, held our breaths, and tried about 75 times each to become the last person someone talked to before they headed out to vote. It was awful, and I won't pretend otherwise. I still after all these years (the first one was 1979 or so) hate calling strangers on the telephone. This is how I know that there's something special about this particular candidate. For the possibility associated with not every candidate would I put myself through this kind of trial.

The photography here is subtle - the I Voted for Change sticker is obscured by the jean jacket, so you won't know who this voted chose, and the Vote Here sign obscured by its wearer. We also, of course, had voted many days before, but wanted to be sure we had a picture with the sign. The batteries died before we could get one with the whole sign. But it was a big day, it was.

More on Homebodity

I headed out this morning to the post office with a couple of important things to mail, not the least of which had to do with Cambridge Parking Permit Season. I spent the trip thinking about what it is that makes people so different - I know plenty of folks who speak of going crazy if they're "stuck" inside for too long. It's so isolating, they say.

I seem to get happier and more social when I stay home for long periods of time. This isn't news to me, really, but every once in a while it inspires me to imagine how the world might be if we found a way to have everyone operating optimally - with the outgoing types out there... going... and the less so less so, etc. By extension we'd probably have folks keeping busy at things that didn't make them want to lose their lunch with boredom or other distaste. I know Jonathan's thinking that none of the chores would ever get done that way - the dishes and the trash pick-up, etc. But I'm living proof to the contrary as far as the dishes are concerned, and I've seen guys hopping on and off of city trash trucks who are in much much much better moods than a lot of the artists I know, so I'm not so sure...

Apparently,

I took the day off. Not only did I not read any work email or do anything else work-related, I managed to not set foot outside the house. I didn't really do it on purpose, but it was made easier by a late-night airport pick-up and subsequent late sleeping (8:42!), lengthy breakfast preparations (in honor of J.'s friend Meghan's visit), and rain. I never said I wasn't a homebody.

Hmmm...

Good thing I talked Lynn into playing, so I feel guilty enough to drum up something to write about today. Let's see. Nope, I really don't have anything to say. I'm extremely underwhelmed by the plethora of unnecessary muscle spasm I was expected to tolerate today. There's just no need for it and I find it downright unpatriotic, frankly. Here I am paying attention to politics for the first time in, well, life, and I'm getting zero support from my cells. I will start an organization called Citizens for More Patriotic Muscle Behavior. It will be a 501(c)(3) because red tape is always a good thing. I will find a way to be the whole board. Also I will start an auxiliary organization called Citizens for Fewer Superfluous and Extraneous Parentheses in IRS designations.

I told you I didn't have anything to write about. And now I'll see if I can find a picture of muscle spasm to accompany this fine post. Oh, my, goodness. Look at this. I swear this is what I found when I searched for images of muscle spasm. Are they allowed to show this sort of thing on the internet? I expect comments.

Phew

Posted for real on Lazy Green Commuter.

One. More. Day.

I really can't even think anymore. I managed to stare blankly at some afternoon TV when I got home this afternoon, rather than sit here at the computer trying not to read everything there is to read about the election. Otherwise I might likely have ceased breathing. I've never been particularly good at handling stress.

One more day. There's no question that there'll be lots and lots and lots of work to do after tomorrow regardless, but the possibility of having this country make a different kind of statement about what we'd like to stand for from now on is so wrenchingly promising I can barely stand it.

Distraction

I'm a total basketcase in these last hours before Tuesday. J.'s face falls every time someone brings up anything to do with it lately, because she knows she'll lose me for another hunk of time as I spin off into preoccupation and acute worry. But I managed to stay distracted for the better part of the day thanks to a visit from Michele, who made the trek up on the bus in the brilliant November sun. The novel is already lagging, but I'm about to peck out a few hundred words before we head off to my cousin's for dinner...

Actual November!!!

It's November, and that means novel writing and daily blogging. We're off to launch the grayest month at mom's, but I'll be back and blogging and chaptering away tomorrow. Happy November!

Longwinded Worm Tale

In Martha Beck's new book, she takes the reader through a process designed to show that most good things that have happened in life can be traced back to something bad that happened, or at least seemed bad at the time. OK, fine, Martha. I'm not crazy about it, but I see your point. I felt mildly bamboozled by the exercise, but it was then not lost on me today when, thanks indirectly to my landlord (oh, wait, I promised I'd just start calling him my slumlord, in order to expel some of the frustration I feel in all association with him), I got to have the experience of Christmas morning that I honestly can't remember having since I was about 8.

Here's how it went. Three years ago when I moved into my apartment, I asked the aforementioned slumlord if he'd consider getting a compost bin for the building. He nodded a lot, and expressed his enthusiasm for the idea. Apparently he and his wife (living then in the building as well) had been thinking about getting one for a while. I volunteered to do the research on which one would make the most sense for us. Wait, no, he asked me to, and I agreed.

So off I went to do my composter research. I sent him a list of possibilities, along with the pros and cons of each. You have to understand this is not the kind of thing I'd normally do, this pros and cons thing, but I really love the fact of composting. It's one of the most no-brainerish things I've ever encountered. Instead of stuffing your compostable waste in with the rest of the trash where it will fester and rot and take up space, you build a mound of it, flipping it periodically to help it break itself down, and when it's done with the process, you have soil that's really good for growing stuff in. It doesn't cost anything, financially or resourcially (that's pronounced reSORshuhlee). No brainer. Hence my willingness to research and pro and con.

A few weeks passed and I heard nothing. I inquired after the status. Yes, yes, he said, I'll order it soon. A few months. Yes, yes. Nothing. The season passed. The slumlord and his wife moved out of the building. Can I still have a composter? Yes, yes. September, October, November. Can we order it in time for spring? Yes, yes, just tell me which one to order.

You're wondering why I kept at him about it and didn't just, I don't know, get one myself or move. I wondered that too. I made an attempt to build my own composter out of a trash can. No luck. It didn't roll as well as I'd hoped.

After about 26 months, I gave up. All that time the compostable stuff got stored on the premises until a trip to mom's or dad's or, later, Janet and Pete's presented itself.

I'd heard that you could compost indoors with worms, but we don't have all that much space and I'd also heard that the worms were really picky about temperature and food and such. Last winter, though, we discovered that a couple of our friends were having some luck with a worm situation. They gave us some extras, and we started our first such situation in a small black file box in the back room.

We thought for sure we couldn't keep the little guys alive, but we've now done so for 8 months. At the fair this fall, we attended a workshop on worm composting, and decided it was time to expand. I arranged for a worm pick-up (you have to use a particular kind of worm) today at noon. I got their early. I don't usually get places early. I usually get there exactly on time, so that I haven't wasted any. (?!) I was so excited I kept thinking I was nervous. I do get nervous when I have to talk to someone I don't know, and when I'm afraid I might say something stupid. But it wasn't like that. I just wanted to meet the worms, and get them started in their new home.

We now have something of a worm high-rise in the back room. I split the new worm haul into two apartments, because we're to expect that the file boxes will fill up pretty fast, and we won't have anywhere to use the castings for a good many months. We also have the original box, which makes up the ground floor of the high rise.

There aren't very many things anymore that I get really bouncily excited about. I'm a little perplexed as to why the worms can do it, but I've decided to just take it. And if there's anything you really love, no matter how silly and strange it may be, please follow my lead and indulge yourself.



And yes, though I'm not sure I wouldn't have enjoyed the outdoor composting as much, I can't help but offer partial credit to the slumlord without whom the worms would not likely have materialized.

Occasional Art

One of my favorite things about Portland is First Friday Art Walk. My favorite thing about it is the walking, and how lots of people come out at the same time and mill around in the city. My least favorite thing about it is the art. I don't like most things offered up as "art." Not because I don't think they're art. I just don't like them.

So I thought I better post because I found two arts in one month that I liked. Actually more than that, as there were multiple artists in the first case. Here is a link, in case you are interested in what kind of art I don't not like.

Then, we were at the farmer's market two weeks later and there was more art I didn't not like! A young woman from England had a couple of paintings and notecards on a small display at the edge of the market. We chatted with her a while and found, not much to our surprise, that we liked her as well as her art. I can't find her card just now, and she seems not to be the only one on the web with her name, so I'll have to add the link later.

Twice in one month!

Lessons from a Certain Kind of Landlord

You've gotta hand it to our landlord. He is so consistent. He consistently consistently consistently disagrees with me about what constitutes necessary maintenance.

Take, for example, the lock on the door to the front building, just inside of which our bikes are stored, and slightly farther inside of which, I might also add, three other tenants are stored. (Our apartment is accessed via a different door.)

The lock doesn't work. In other words (and I include these words because he actually said "what do you mean by 'doesn't work'?"), when you put the key in the lock and attempt to turn it, such that the bolt slides across into its little house, it doesn't turn. Thus, the door does not change in status from unlocked to locked. (sarcasm mine)

I've been telling him that it "doesn't work" for months. I started in May. It's now September. He sent out a reminder to the tenants that it's important to lock the doors for security.

But none of this is why I'm writing. I'm writing because I noticed, thanks to said landlord, that I'm getting used to muscling my bike in and out of my living room, through the narrow passageway/mudroom, and up and down our deck stairs (which are covered in plants and other hazards). When I started this madness - the third time I found the front door standing wide open, inviting all who were interested to help themselves to a bike or two - I thought for sure it was going to drastically alter my biking habits. I'd be way too lazy to contend with the entering and exiting, much less the tripping over the thing once it was stashed inside our tiny living room.

To get it back in, for example, once I've been out for a ride, I have to stand beside the bike, lean forward beyond the handlebars, and open the storm door with my right hand while steadying the bike with my left. Then I tip my helmeted head against the storm door to hold it open wide enough to thread the handlebars through and shove the front wheel through the doorway. Once the front wheel is in, I thrust my right hip repeatedly against the back of the seat without moving my head so as to rock the back wheel enough to hop the heavier back end of the bike over the threshold and into the mudroom. I almost take a chunk of skin off some part of my body in the process.

But my point is that when I took it out this morning I didn't even think about it as a thing at all, which leads me to the unpleasant possibility that there are other things I whine and carry on about which, were I to just go ahead and do them a few times, would become not only tolerable but even just part of the fabric of the day. Or, better still, material.

The Cilantro

I'm finding that there are at least some new tricks you can in fact teach an old dog.

Last fall, I waited until late October, early November even, to take apart our little deck garden. I say little because it generates such a tiny fraction of what I remember emerging from the gardens of my rural childhood. In the course of it, though, this little deck garden can feel rather sizeable. When we put in the seedlings in the spring, we start by herding the ragtag collection of pots from the basement and friends' garages and barns, lining the pots with rocks for drainage, hauling and heaving soil from elsewhere, and then proceed to the fun part of actually nestling the little guys into their new homes. We have quite a bit of sun to offer them, so they seem in general to like it here. As long as it's summer.

Taking the garden apart at the end of the season is a difficult task for me. The crowd of plants we keep is like the best kind of house guest to me - it just sits out there being charming, ready to keep me company at a moment's notice, but I get to choose when I hang out with it. I can barely wait to see what it's done overnight each morning when I wake up. This means that admitting - come late fall - that the tomatoes really aren't going to get any riper on their vines, the basil really can't handle the frost, and the morning glories are done with their daily performances, does not come easily to me. Hence, last year, I dragged my feet for weeks, and then found myself poking through pot after pot of freezing cold dirt plucking even colder drainage stones so I could rinse them off and store them for next year.

In my every day life I frequently find myself repeating this sort of mistake, where the lesson and its solution are crystal clear but my stubborn will causes me to refuse to learn it. But the prospect of icy fingers seems to have carried sufficient weight that I am this year slowly, methodically, taking apart the garden before winter descends. I think I also decided that it was more respectful to the plants themselves to do it this way - return them to the earth somehwere when they've done what they can rather than force them to go on battling gravity and elements so far beyond their respective primes. Further, I know in the back of my head and heart somewhere that the chances are good that this month and next will be our last in this home. I may not actually have the late days of October and early days of November in which to complete the project.

Which brings me to the cilantro. We are extremely lackluster cilantro farmers. Our tomatoes do well, our basil, all the flowers we've tried so far, and even the peppers and eggplant we introduced this year and had to fight some pests to protect. But cilantro, though we love to cook with it, repeatedly gets away from us. Once it gets started, it grows fast, and you have to keep using it and using it or it gets too tall and stringy. We can't seem to muster the diligence to keep up with it. Today - day two of my Take Apart the Garden on Time effort - I admitted that the cilantro was ready to be uprooted. I squatted beside it, apologizing quietly for our delinquence, and began to notice that the roots seemed especially abundant for a plant that hadn't been encouraged to do its best work. I was impressed that it had managed to commit itself so completely to its pot. I could relate. This tiny urban home we've made here is the first in my adult life in which I've bothered to really settle into. We've got so many good memories from our life here, and I have to keep reminding myself that we get to take them with us, and that their existence doesn't mean it won't work well to move on.

I think we'll have to try the cilantro again, a third time, in our new home, wherever it may be. It's possible I'll be outvoted, but I think I'll at least campaign for it. Seems like there may be more to be learned from this good committed sport of a plant. It's also of course possible that I won't be outvoted, and then I'll wish I had been, as it's entirely possible I won't yet have embraced competent cilantro farming as a new trick worth learning.

November, approaching

In my bookmarks, this blog is still called November. I noted this just now as I was logging in to comment on the day because November's now looming large not because I have plans to write another novel (though I wouldn't put it past me) but because it looks like we're going to move, come said month. We don't know where, except that it'll be within working distance of Portland.

I woke up, not surprisingly, earlier than necessary this morning. I tried a new experiment in which I didn't bother fighting it but instead tried to study the awakeness. I kept saying really profound things to myself like "This is interesting. I wonder what this is about."

I didn't get anywhere with that, but I did get a fair amount of work, and craigslist browsing, done. Unfortunately, I also watched a clip of Matt Damon commenting on the McCain/Palin ticket in which he described it as the likes of a really bad Disney movie. I hadn't heard anyone actually say "President Palin," as he did in referring to the obviously terrifying prospect of her stepping in should McCain not make it through the term if elected. I was already terrified, but hearing him say it that way sunk it deeper still. I'm having a hard time not giving money to the Obama campaign every other minute.

After it had been a few hours I thought to look outside to see if it was time to get up yet. This is what I saw, expressed in limited fashion by my camera.

Back to School...

Hi, friends. Following is an early version of the post that'll go up first on my new learning support site in a couple of weeks. I've been dreading figuring out what to say first, but I realized this morning that this is it. I'll obviously leave out most of the first paragraph. I'd appreciate any feedback you have about parts that are difficult to follow, etc.

The sunlight is doing its splashy thing on my desk, the one where it bobbles around on the surfaces once it's found its way through the leaves and window glass and early autumn air. I'm oddly aware of how much effort it took for me to make sure I had the right its/it'ses in that last sentence, much the way I noticed, playing high-speed card games this summer, that my noggin doesn't process as quickly as it once did. Perhaps that's why things that used to feel like everyday tasks sometimes now seem to take monumental effort. I hope it's that, and not that it's time for menopause already.

But back to this morning's solar behavior. I still forget at this time of year that I don't have to go back to school, so deeply set is the habit of dread. As the emails begin to appear signaling that parents' thoughts have shifted to school, tutoring, etc., I imagine their various children in this first week of September. A few will be relieved to have the days once again filled with reliable schedule, other kids, and new assignments, but will also grow frustrated that they can't go faster, learn more, stop reviewing. Others still give themselves to the trick of excitement in new clothes, notebooks, backpacks, only to realize after a few weeks, days, or even hours, that it wasn't worth it. They remember how poorly the hours in chairs suit them and begin, that early, to look forward to June.

Most would rather be somewhere else, I've found, and as a society we're so flummoxed by how to make it otherwise for them while still making sure they're ready and safe and growing and learning that we find it difficult to acknowledge it as so. They know it, too, that we don't know how to hear what they're saying, so many of them pretend it's OK. They make every effort to contort themselves such that they fit, survive, look happy.

It is no secret that I am in many cases an advocate of taking kids out of school when such an alternative would suit them and family/community circumstances allow it, but this is not actually about that. Where I want to start this year, throughout my work - here on this new site, sitting across from parents whose children are struggling, sitting also with the children themselves, and even in the rest of my days, where I'm not a professional helper but just a part of the human workings, is with the simple act of acknowledging how things are for people, creating an atmosphere in which the truth as it exists from any perspective (particularly that of a child or teen) can be told and heard in such a way that it is recognized as worth telling.

I asked Eric how things were going in class. "Fine," he said. There was enough reluctance in his tone that I waited, suspecting there was more, and he continued. "I mean, I think the teacher doesn't like me, because I raise my hand and she looks right at me and doesn't call on me." I waited again, and he looked over at me, waiting for me to respond.

"Sounds frustrating," I said. He nodded, taking a breath and looking down at the table. "I have a couple of ideas that might help," I continued. "Do you want to hear them?"

"Yup." He answered so quickly I suspected he hadn't actually considered whether or not he wanted to hear them. I thought I better check.

"Really?" His eyes snapped up at this question. I continued: "Because I don't really want to tell you my ideas unless you're interested in hearing them." He looked at me for another moment.

"No, I actually do," he said, as though a little surprised to find this out. I said first that he may indeed be right, that his teacher didn't like him, but that it was equally possible that it was something else entirely. We talked for a while about a few different possible explanations for what seemed to be happening, came up with a couple of ideas about how he might handle it, and then got going on the math he was actually there to work on.

This is the kind of conversation that's missing from the school and learning experience of many young people. The simple act of acknowledgment - whether of frustration, perceived injustice or exclusion, boredom, confusion - allows a young person to begin the process of managing a situation and working through it. When the experience doesn't get acknowledged, that process never gets off the ground. Eric's "Fine" was the way he, without knowing it, checked with adults to find out whether or not they really wanted to know the answer to their question. We roll past "Fine" more times than we realize, and never get to "I think my teacher doesn't like me," never mind all the way to what to do about it. And spending a year in the world of "my teacher doesn't like me" with no way to manage it can have an enormous impact on what gets learned that year.

So that's where I'm starting from. I'll help kids with math and spelling and reading, I'll read and recommend books and materials that make a difference, I'll work with parents to get things back on track with kids who are struggling, but first I'll remind myself to make room for the truth, to be ready for questions I can't answer for them, problems I may not be able to solve, insights that change my mind about things. And we'll take it from there.

Expansion

Thanks to the astronomicality of health insurance premiums in my fair state, I periodically browse the school and library job listings. It goes something like this: I write the giant check to Anthem, think to myself, "this is really not going to work, I won't ever have enough clients for this to work," and then I hit the two sites that list jobs the aforementioned fields. There aren't any openings that I can stomach/am qualified for/wouldn't interfere with sessions with current lients I really like, so I go back to working on the new website or answering email or looking for cool tote bags to carry my picture books around in.

Thing is, if I make it through another month of working for myself as a tutor/consultant/coach thing, I will have been at it for longer than I have stayed at anything else yet. It occurred to me a couple of months ago that it might be worth sticking with it just one more year, or even half-year, just to find out what it's like to be doing something for more than two years.

This afternoon I met with a tutor I found on craigslist. I get on there and look around every once in a while because I need people to refer the younger kiddos to. I realized in talking with this woman that it might actually be really cool to have someone to work with, particularly if, as in this case, the person had a lot of skills and training that I don't. It's hard for me to imagine that I might actually dip my toes into the world of employing (even if at first it's actually outsourcing), but I can't help thinking this might have been one of the things I was supposed to see, that couldn't come until I took a few more strides into my third year.

Toast to Berries

Two weeks ago when I had my "annual" physical, the woman I saw took one look at my list of complaints, and my sample daily diet, and said, with palpable hesitation, "it might be worth doing a gluten-free trial." It was as though she knew me, though our relationship was at that point only five or six minutes old. But I'm so worn down by the parade of doctors I've seen in the last year that I just nodded calmly as I said "I honestly don't know if I can do that without starving." She, in her wisdom, nodded too, but said nothing. She knew I'd heard it, and decided to leave it alone.

So on Sunday I started. And it became clear very quickly that if we had not gone strawberry picking on Saturday morning, I'd NEVER have made it through the day. I'm a toast girl. I've been living on toast for as long as I can remember. I eat everything else I'm supposed to (!) and then when I need to stop being hungry an hour later, I have toast. All day long. There's apparently a significant amount of gluten in toast.

By the end of day two, I was in a heap on the floor wailing that I couldn't eat another bite of polenta and could I please have some of the leftover sesame noodles. We decided that perhaps it was wise to go ahead and have the sesame noodles, and pick up where we left off the next morning.

I keep wondering why I think all this is worth a blog entry, and that maybe by the time I get to the next paragraph it'll become clear. It hasn't yet, so I'm going to stop, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the strawberries. My life has become a little monotonous this past year, as I somehow get myself to keep putting a foot in front of another even though it doesn't feel like there's much waiting on the other end of the step. When we woke up at 6 on Saturday to be at the farm at 7 for picking berries, I remembered what it's like to be excited when you wake up. And then the berries kept me going for the first two days of this thing that honestly feels as though it might be impossible for me, even though I know perfectly well that it's not. That's all.

Launch

We got the plants in late this year, thanks to a very slow spring, not much luck with starting seeds, and apparently poor selection of plants from those they grew from seed at Mom's. Last year we got the morning glories in before the end of May; this year not until this past Tuesday. But it's looking good, and I'm going to try to post photos along the way this time. I forget to appreciate the deck until I remember each summer how much we really get to grow out there.

Will somebody please tell me how to use one of those photo album thingys so I don't have to keep stumbling about with photo-posting?

Friday afternoon

It's been more than two months since last I wrote, as lately I seem to have more to say about pedaling to work and back than anything else. But today I've seen a handful of my school-year kids for the last time, and the summer stretches out in front of me asking "what the heck are you going to do NOW for income?" Most days I'm overflowing with panic. Others, like today, somehow, perhaps thanks to a free and sunny Friday afternoon which seems to suggest that I've got plenty of time to figure it out, not so much. I could do anything, I think naively. I could write all summer and publish something in the fall! I could get an income-generating website going, finally. I could, for heaven's sake, advertise!

All that seems like a little much, though, and I just got an email from the local co-op folks that one of the farms is ready for pick-your-own strawberries. I'm even more excited than I might otherwise be for the picking because we've borrowed a chest freezer from mom to stow produce for the winter this year. Course, we have to keep it in the living room, and there's nowhere to put it except for in the corner where the TV sits, so we're about to have the whitest, tallest, fullest-of-produce entertainment center ever. I'm awfully grateful to have found a mate for whom such absurdities are not out of the question. I'll post photos once we get our new living room occupant settled in...

Sun Slack

Yes! It's spring! Yikes! I haven't been writing or reading as promised. I will get back on the horse today. Here follows a list of excuses (I just discovered that a neighbor/friend has a blog just for lists because she likes to make them, so I thought I'd borrow the idea for a minute):

Thing One: Yesterday we got given a pair of tickets to see Evidence perform at Merrill Auditorium (that picture was taken from inside the organ, cool). It's always a treat to go to the Merrill, not only because it's usually because someone gave us tickets, but because it's fun to see lots of people we know from dancing, working, and generally being in Portland. I skipped writers group to go.

Thing Two: Today it's sunny! That's a lousy excuse. What better weather for poetry? It literally makes me want to just jump around with delight that it's not freezing, though. I think I'm getting old...

OK, so I'm clearly an amateur when it comes to list-making. I'll work on that. Maybe. I think I like paragraphs better. I'm off to do some spring cleaning, because we only get the one day before it goes back to being rainy, cold, and yes, possibly even snowy on Sunday. Good thing we'll be in New Haven, dancing our feet off.

One more thing before I sign off and get writing (and cleaning). I realized today upon driving out to meet with a math teacher at one of the high schools "just" outside of Portland that I am more grateful that I live in Portland than I have been willing to admit, or even aware of. The traffic is SO bad once you hit the "city" limits, and the houses are just sort of dropped, without any apparent thought of design or position, about the landscape. And the strip malls. But you know what it's like. Anyway. I just wanted to say for the record ('cause god knows I complain enough about city life) that I'm glad I don't live out there.

Poetry Month, Day 2

I made several attempts this morning to write a little something about my annual exasperation with April in Maine ("spring," but without warmth, growth, or other indicators), but everything just kept coming out whiny.

So I moved on to listening to the Senate hearings. I have never listened to Senate hearings before, or any other hearings for that matter. I found them fascinating and terrifically educational (in particular on the topic of how senators, generals, and ambassadors speak to one another under one very specific set of circumstances, but also when it comes to the various disagreements as to what we oughtta be doing and/or not doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan).

The most interesting and, probably, useful, part of using the hearings as the soundtrack for my day about town, which included four short trips in the car over the course of the day, was the content whiplash that ensued as I switched back and forth from my everyday life to the hearings. In my days, I think about things like helping with triangle similarity, lower back pain, possible bike routes through town, the benefits of raw milk, and whether or not I'll ever earn and save enough money to buy a house. They're thinking and talking about how to pay back the gargantuan debt we're accumulating with our current actions, whether the living and governing conditions are actually improving in Iraq or not, and whether or not we have enough troops (with enough rest) to continue with the war and the rest of what fighting a war entails. Humbling, to say the least.

So. Back to it. I should warn you, though, I've also had Social Security on my mind lately. It's not that I pay more SS than anyone else, it's just that I don't ever get to forget about it because four times a year, I make the calculation and see just exactly how much of my money goes to paying benefits to current retirees that, under the current system, won't be there when I'm ready to retire. Maybe it's the perceived entitlement to "getting it back" that I should work on. I could just think of it as a generous contribution to the elderly. I have to say, though, that at this point I'm more inclined to find a way to give the money directly to my dad (retiree who works full time to pay his mortgage and health insurance) so that he can make improvements on the house that I'll eventually inherit.

But I wasn't going to talk about that. Yet.

2 read, 2 written

(See first "Poetry Month")

I borrowed from my friend Jon a book of poetry by Stephen Dunn, which I have now opened, three short months after the borrowing. (Actually, come to think of it, it was more like he borrowed it to me, in a sort of a transitive way, where I had little choice, fortunately, given that I am so particular about poetry that I forget that it's worth trying new.) I of course loved the first poem I came upon, and wondered before I'd made it to the third line how I had gone so many days without this latest promise of mine to read and write on every one. I could suddenly only barely stand all that I'd let go by without words, starting with, for some reason, this latest and oddest condition in which my right hand is decidedly colder than my left.

So it promises to be an interesting month. If you're near a library, the Stephen Dunn book is called Different Hours, and the poem is called the Last Hours.

2 read, 2 written

Poetry Month

Just realized April is poetry month, which is just the thing to inspire another monthlong writing blitz. The folks who put on the novel write in November also do a scriptfrenzy in April, but I don't have much interest in that. Instead I'll observe a little of both and read and write a poem a day for the rest of the month, plus, along the way, 7 extras to make up for lost first week. (It now being the 7th.) I shan't be posting them, likely, but I'll post about the writing and perhaps let you know if I run across any especially delicious ones in my reading. Off I go to catch up...

PS: I found myself tempted to entitle this post it "poitry," which is how my fifth grade teacher pronounced the word, and we her students then did for the next, I don't know, 17 years, any time it came up in conversation when we were together. Pity the teacher who says something a little off. Even once.

Yup.

I feel like there's lots to be optimistic about today, or maybe just plain happy. First of all, we got a free rotisserie chicken, compliments of the Sunrise Guide. Not only is it cool to get free chicken, especially when they seem to have at least tried to raise it without benefit of antibiotics, etc., but it reminds me of long ago late evening dinners at home, after school and practice, when Mom would come racing in from the grocery store with a Hannaford rotisserie chicken all ready to hit the table. My brother and I would breathe a sigh of relief that our hungry bellies wouldn't have to wait for her to create something from scratch.

Nowadays, when Mom serves chicken it's raised by my brother, across the street from the house in which she serves it. The same is true of the ham and bacon, not to mention the potatoes, greens, asparagus, carrots, beans, beets, eggplant, peppers, herbs, and apples. The meat is primarily my brother's domain, the produce a team effort with Mom, my stepfather, and the tiny efforts of those of us who live far away but make our vacations at the farm. Mom still makes sure there's food on the table, but life in and near her kitchen is a long way from where it was when I was a teenager.

We were planning to make yogurt today, a process I finally learned from Lily this past week. I'd been complaining for months about all the plastic we go through eating yogurt, when finally Lil said "it's really not that hard to make, you know." I spent an hour Monday in her kitchen watching her heat, cool, and stow the milk and culture, and today we bought the thermometer that'll help us try it ourselves. Of course, it's not quite the right thermometer, so it'll have to wait another few days, but I'm looking forward to it. Who knew?

On Friday I took the bus to work, in observance of Portland Green Streets, which my friend Sarah organizes. I hate taking any longer than necessary for most anything, so it's always a trick to talk myself into taking the bus when I could drive in about 1/5 of the time. OK, 1/3. Still. But on Friday, conveniently the last such day of the month, which is when Green Streets happens, I had fewer kids to see than usual, and thus a bit of extra time and no excuse to drive. The cool thing was that it was snowing - the kind of spring snow storm that leaves you no other choice than to laugh at it. It comes on strong in the cold early morning hours, wondering why it can't seem to stick to the pavement when everything else is turning white, then begins to struggle as the sun comes up, eventually being reduced to a sorry mess of slush and dripping trees. Spring snow. The perfect weather for an unusual commute.

The commute itself, incidentally, wasn't all that much fun, because I wore sneakers, perhaps a little too cocky, and it's a good five block walk to the bus stop, just far enough for even the most diligent of puddle-dodgers to fall victim to at least one shoe-soaking mishap. But it turned my routined world inside out a bit, starting with the woman who assured me kindly that I hadn't missed my bus yet when I arrived breathless a few minutes after it was scheduled to leave, and ending with the driver on the return trip who, as he watched me start digging for change with a precarious elbow hooked around the pole as he pulled into traffic, allowed as how it'd be fine if I paid my fare at the next stop.

And then last night we got to perform our spunky little dance piece on the sweet City Theater stage in Biddeford, for an energized crowd and among a whole slew of dedicated dancers. My fussy sacro-iliac joint decided to take the night off from wreaking muscular havoc on the rest of me, and we gave one of our best performances yet, in my opinion. In two weeks we take it on the road to the Rebound Dance Festival in New Haven, where we'll get to share the stage with a group of companies from even farther afield. The benefits of living and creating in a small pond...

Eclipse

I wasn't even sure how to spell it, but tonight dawned (can night dawn? I've decided so, I guess) with a brilliant orange moon hovering over the rooftops outside my desk window here, and I spent a bunch of time I could otherwise have spent otherwise taking pictures of it with each of the settings on my digital camera. I don't know what any of the settings are for, in spite of the little icons that accompany them on the dial. So I got an array of photos, some with a bit of blur to them, others with a bit of psychedelic to them, others that were just plain bad.

Then I went off to a writers group meeting, where I learned that we were to expect an eclipse tonight. When it started to happen, everyone scrambled for the couch to look out and up at it. I waited. Don't you care about the moon? they prodded. It's beautiful! I believe you, I said, nodding. I could of course see the eclipse just fine from the calm privacy of my own chair, and helped myself to the binoculars as they continued their loving quips about what a party pooper I was being. I couldn't help but laugh. But you guys, I said, still from my quiet corner chair, I spent like half an hour taking pointless pictures of that moon before we got here. And it wasn't even doing anything!

I'll always push to be different, no matter what it costs me. This eclipse comes at a good time. My work is taking me in directions that could have me different, separate, known, in a way that may not always, will probably not always, be comfortable. I'm not sure I'm up for it, and yet, as this evening unfolds, and the moon does its disappearing act against the freezing February sky, I can help but decide that disappearing's not the way to go; not the way to keep safe, not the way to get home. We'll see what happens, but in the meantime, here's the view from my desk, blurred by the screen, framed by the reflection of the computer. This moon just might be reason enough to learn how to use a camera...

Dumb Girl Hates Babysitting

There's just no explaining it.  What possible reason could there be for my now longstanding distaste for this cushy job?  I mean, it'd be one thing if I didn't like kids, right?  There are plenty of people who don't like babysitting.  Those people also wouldn't like, I don't know, say, hanging out with kids who hate reading trying to figure out how to get them to like it.  You see where I'm going with this? 

I have felt this way about babysitting for as long as I can remember, and "as long as I can remember" dates back to when I was about 12 and began my now very long babysitting career. (Though I will say this about career length: The "long" refers in this case as it does to my lackluster grocery-bagging career which is to measure not the quantity of work but rather the time elapsed between the first incidence and the most recent.  In the case of the grocery-bagging, the career lasted seventeen days, four of which I actually reported for duty. The babysitting career began 22 years ago, but I started resisting pretty much immediately, so I haven't actually done it that much.  Just to give you a little perspective.)

[I feel I'd be remiss at this point if I weren't to apologize for the sentence structure in my last paragraph, if you could call it a paragraph.  I used to do battle almost daily with my 11th grade American literature teacher so exasperated was I by the carryings on of Henry James.  Only recently has it occurred to me that perhaps H. James inspired such volatility in my 15 year-old self not because I was irritated by how all we ever got to talk about when we read him was sex but rather because I thought it wasn't fair that he could write a sentence as long as he ever pleased and I didn't get such license. OK, actually it was probably both.  In any case, though, I may be taking it out on you, patient reader.]

In the beginning, it was the scary creaky old New England houses that turned me off to the occupation.  I'd tuck children into their little rooms under the eaves and creep reluctantly downstairs, trying not to look out the windows for fear there'd be something lurking, find the room with the most curtains and the couch against the wall, and make myself as small as I could for the long hours ahead.  Of course, I wasn't blessed with the kind of inner peace that might have allowed me to assume that unless I had reason to believe otherwise, things were OK with my upstairs charges, so every so often I'd gather up the courage to make the trip back up to make sure they were still a) there, b) in one piece, and c) breathing, if they happened to be of the age at which I had to worry about that.  Because I assure you, worry I did.

But what about later, once I was no longer terrified of everything that moved in the dark?  Why can't I be like my friends who not only love children but also love the downright racket of spending an hour or two with a child, playing and reading and singing and watching them make a mess you aren't really responsible for cleaning up, putting said child to bed, and then having a few more PAID hours to just hang out and watch TV or read or do NOTHING without the chores and other distracting responsibilities of home?  It's like free freaking money!

I've been reading in the past day or two about the potential physical, spiritual, and emotional costs of forcing yourself to do things that suck the life out of you, which I suppose is why I'm carrying on so about this.  It's just that it doesn't baffle me so when I find that I hate things like going to bars, sitting in cubicles without windows, or, I don't know, cooking.  It's just this one that doesn't seem to make sense, given the way I enthusiastically spend the rest of my time.  

But still, you're probably wondering.  Why bother to even think about it?  There are plenty of babysitters out there who'd love to take advantage of the opportunity.  Well, the thing is, we've got this new family member, my cousin's daughter, and in just a few months, 8 or 10 I'm told, they'll be moving very very very far away, and I don't want to miss her while she's here.  So here I am, on a Thursday night, having survived the mere 60 minutes of kid time that felt more like 4 hours, getting paid to sit here by myself at the computer, which we all know is one of my favorite places to be, and resenting the hell out of it.  What on earth is WRONG with me?

The Meeting, Part Two

Oddly enough, I don't know that I have much to say about the meeting itself, other than that I went, and that I had the unusual experience of being interested in helping, even though I could see that participation would likely be something other than fun for much of the time. For one thing, I'm not patient, and food co-ops tend to take years to launch. No instant or even foreseeable gratification, really. For another, I'm not that good with being behind the scenes with things. I like lots of attention. And I don't like to do much work. Those can truly a tricky combo make.

The thing was, I quickly got the sense that this start-up effort had an unusual kind of spirit to it - the kind that could not only readily inspire the people around it, but also figure out how to make use of those people in a way that really sang with who they all were. In other words, I could be the cranky lazy pessimistic exhausted resigned person I am and this movement, these people, would find a way to coax contribution out of me without even really having to ask.

Or maybe it was just that they had the good sense to have a facilitator for the meeting. Either way, I trudged myself over to the meeting, and when we get back from my grandfather's memorial service this weekend, I'll spend Sunday evening at the Portland Food Co-op steering committee meeting. It won't be my first choice of pastimes - we've got several more episodes' worth of Prison Break to get through, and I'm just about to figure out the trick to the Sudoku puzzles with the level five difficulty rating - but I'll be there. And it'll be right where I belong.

The Meeting, Part One

On Friday the Portland Wild Oats is closing. I don't know whether all of the Wild Oatses are closing on the same day, but that's when it's happening here. The most careful of the shop-local-and-independenters probably never had anything to do with Wild Oats, but those of us who used the farmers' market and other local food sellers a lot but not exclusively will miss it. In spite of its corporate self, it's been small enough for us to recognize employees, friendly enough for us to like them, and designed in such a way that grocery shopping can be enjoyed, even by the cranky likes of me.

We went for the last time two Saturdays ago, when they'd just announced the closing and everything was 20% off. We decided halfway down the meat aisle that it would be our last visit, when the empty meat case actually made me cry. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I'm just not good with change. And the chicken apple sausage at Whole Foods bites. It tastes just like chicken. If I wanted chicken, I'd eat chicken.

So we made our way through the aisles just that last time, stocking up on sweet rice, oats, and other things we know to be even more overpriced at Whole Foods and not always available at other places. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure they have sweet rice in bulk at Whole Foods. Bulk at the Portland Whole Foods means, for the most part, nuts in plastic. Anyway. We had to go back to Wild Oats for a dozen eggs and some polenta the following week, but I wasn't allowed in for fear of further tears.

But I digress. The point is that it reminded us enough of how much we need a good place to buy food around here, a place that is willing to figure out how to make a profit and still support small local organic farmers. So when I got an email from a fellow writers group member inviting me to a forum about the formation of a food co-op in town, I was ripe for the picking, as they say. I don't normally like to help with things, frankly. I would, pretty much as a rule, prefer staying home to... well, most anything that requires going out.

And on a Tuesday night. Tuesday night is bachelor night at our house, when I get the whole evening to do with what I please, which usually consists of writing irrelevant blog postings, watching reruns of Dharma and Greg, and getting way ahead in the Sudoku calendar. It was going to be a lot to sacrifice, especially given how much I hate meetings, which is a lot, because there are usually people at them, and whenever and wherever there are people, there are things to be annoyed about. And at this kind of meeting, I can also count on the mother of all annoyances: the stark relief into which my own general apathy and laziness is brought, as soon as I hear people talking about something they care about and have been working hard at. So you understand it was going to be something of a stretch for me to get myself there. Plus it was going to be like a two block walk.

Floor Mats (Don't Say I Didn't Warn You)

Truth in advertising is the reason for the title of this post. I spent today immersed in the following activities: attempting to locate a funeral home in a town in which I do not live, virtually without directions, or sense of direction, for that matter; attempting to coax an 8 year-old child to sit still for the sake of sounding shit out (reading) at 1:00 on Friday afternoon following indoor recess; attempting to be a good sport about how the only place to stop and get organic lettuce on the way home around here anymore is the Whole Foods which I swear has become even more difficult to find stuff in since the Wild Oats closed and therefore the former became my only "option"; dealing with the car mats. You can see why I chose the car mats on which to post. Lucky for you, I warned you, and so we can hope that you had the good sense to go read something else instead. In the spirit of Jonathan's recent cautionary tales about various things, I bring you Why It's Better to Go Ahead and Pay the Extra 96 Dollars So That Your Car Comes With Floor Mats in the First Place, You Cheapass.

You're probably thinking I should be careful about calling my friends cheap, but I shouldn't, because I'm the only ones among my friends who's that cheap.

So for the first 2 or 3 years I had my trusty little Civic, the carpets were protected by a bunch of pink lemonade colored carpet chunks that someone in my Belmont neighborhood left on the sidewalk one week. I was awfully proud of them, and how I'd saved 96 bucks. (I just typed Buicks by accident. I also saved those, come to think of it, or at least, saved myself of them.) But fairly quickly they became well, disgusting, and they shed EVerywhere, so at some point (I'm sure it was Meg's idea) I decided that I was probably making enough to make it OK to spring for the factory-issue floor mats. What I didn't know was that they actually require installation. I took one look at the little plastic peg set and diagram for how to take the utility knife to the expensive fabric and decided something along the lines of Maybe Some Other Time. The mats would still work, they just wouldn't so much stay in place.

So every couple of days I reach down below the driver's seat and give the floor mat a good yank to extract it from beneath the accelerator such that it doesn't cause any, I don't know, accidents. It works fine. I can even take the thing out and shake it from time to time when it starts to seem more like a beach than a floor.

But lately, with all this snow and ice and melt, it's been smelling like wet dog in my car, thanks, I figure, to the fact that the floor mat, which is a lot like a dog and is always wet, what with the virtually zero circulation situation. It's been sunny and balmy (see previous post) for days, so I had this brilliant idea yesterday. Why don't I just take it OUT of the car and give it some AIR? The driveway's not wet anymore, thanks to all this sun, so my feet won't get the carpet dirty for the rest of the day and tomorrow morning until I get the floor mat re"installed", and then it'll be fresh and dry in the cabin until it snows and melts and carries on again!

But I got cocky, and left it out overnight, and overnight was when it decided we'd had enough of dry and sunny and 50 degrees, so now the floor mat is a sopping mess slung over the deck railing and the carpet of my car is caked with the mud and dirt and pebbles that became lodged in my shoes as I got in and out of the car trying to find the funeral home, dash in and out of the school, and pick up the lettuce. Lovely.

54 Degrees and Sunny, note date

Well, it doesn't get much uglier than this. Most of the snow has melted, which leaves only that which is encrusted with dirt and other junk the plows were able to gather up. There aren't any leaves on the trees, except for the ones that kept waiting in vain for the end of autumn and then froze to their tree limbs when suddenly it was below zero. Those are brown, of course. And then there's the driveway markers, strewn about like a giant game of pick up sticks gone terribly wrong. Plus it's trash day which means that the front yard is littered with building neighbor trash cans, and the back yard is littered with the trash the next door neighbors can't be bothered to set out, in favor of waiting until it looks like an actual dump out there and they can justify calling in an actual dump truck to cart it all away. With the sun to illuminate it all and temperatures that make you want to go out in it. It's cruel, really. Among other things.

Please Participate

...in the blog name-choosing game. I'm leaning toward something that found its origins in Jonathan's recent suggestion that the contents of my head are odd. I didn't think there'd be any better way to commit than that, because while I'm likely to shift, change, transform, quit, recommit, evolve, etc., there is absolutely no chance that my head will stop being odd. So the only question now, really, is whether it should be one word or two. That is, Odd Head, or the current frontrunner (given that I'm in favor of it), Oddhead.

But scratch that. I just tossed Oddhead in the Google search window, and there's already an oddhead blog, so that won't do. I don't like sharing. No matter that it's about gambling and such. Hmmm...

More to come.

Fair Enough

Jonathan seems to think (see comments on previous post) that I need to come up with a name that last longer than a month. Indeed. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything yet, and for some reason when I type on blogger from the office, the cursor has trouble keeping up with my typing. This, you can probably imagine, is enough to drive even the likes of me to drink. So I'll stop here, and if anyone's got any suggestions, feel free to toss them out.