Bathtub Adventurer

Hello, I Must Be Going

2009-05-29T01:53:00.001-07:00

So, Brian's set me up a brand new blog over at NoraSawyer.com. So, I guess I'll see you over there, huh?

Things I've Been Enjoying Lately

2009-05-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

1. Sugar snap peas with hummus from our favorite corner store.

2. Tom Clark's nature poems on Beyond the Pale.

3. Sara Larsen's Novus.

4. Watching sleeping dogs dream in tandem.

5. Reading Catullus in Esperanto.

Reading Recap

2009-05-17T13:54:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Brian and I cohosted, along with our friend Erik Noonan, the first of what we hope will be many outdoor pairings of poetry and visual art.

This first 'Reading in the Garden' featured two local poets, Sara Larsen and Jason Morris, reading alongside Brian's artwork. Jason and Sara were wonderful, and I couldn't be happier with how the first 'Reading in the Garden' played out.

Sara Larsen reads from 23 Chromosomes

Jason Morris, post reading

Gougeres

2009-05-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

So, as promised, I made gougeres for today's reading. "What's gougeres, precious?" you ask. Well!

Gougeres are a tasty French cheesy poufy thing. They look all sorts of fancy, with their puffed up and cheesy presentation, but really, they're as easy to throw together as your mama's biscuit recipe. Maybe easier, if your mama has a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be.*

Anyway. I take my gougere recipe pretty much verbatim from here (the July 1960 issue of Epicurious! How retro!).

There's only one adaptation I make: I never cook it as long as the recipe says -- they're usually done in about 25 min (and I've tried this in ovens across San Francisco, so it's not just my own oven's special quirk. Perhaps it's the altitude).

It's so easy. Simple choux** batter, plus cheese. It'll look really funny after you've added the first two eggs, but just keep stirring. It all works out in the end, I promise.

*Not my mama! You should see her biscuit recipe. Clip, clap, clop and you're done.

** Pronounced shoe***. Add sugar, you're making eclairs. Add cheese, gougeres. It's the worlds most perfect dough.

*** A man I spent time with my freshman year of college was fond of shouting "Shoes! Everybody needs shoes!" when he answered the phone. His motivations for doing so are lost to history, but perhaps he, older (slighly) and wiser (much) than I, had already discovered the transcendent adaptability of choux.

Brian's got a brand new blog

2009-05-12T20:31:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, my Brian, in addition to being as smart and as sweet as the day is long, is also a talented sculptor. And now he's a blogger, too. You should go check it out.

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

We have so much fun, my mother and I, that we are often blurry.

Mark Your Calendars

2009-05-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

Next Saturday, May 16th, we'll be hosting a reading in the garden behind Brian's studio at 2221 15th St in San Francisco. Come hear readings by Sara Larsen and Jason Morris, visit with Brian's art , and have some snacks (will I make gougeres? I just might!).

Eggs!

2009-04-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

or, reason # 125 not to perform culinary chores at 2 AM. You might wake up to discover you've made one half dozen hard boiled eggs that look like this:

Also, the container is labeled 'Hardy Boys,' which is apparently 2 AM for 'Hard Boiled.' At least I amuse myself.

Nasty, fat hobbit seeks same

2009-04-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for part time work for some time now, and recently ran across this ad:

Relationship Assistance - Part Time
Date: 2009-04-28, 7:43AM PDT

Super busy affluent SF Arts/ Entrepreneur who travels a lot for work needs part time help finding a girlfriend/LTR. I figured that someone out there must have the skills and time to do this for me, like hiring a recruiter to help find the right employee. This is a project that might take a month or two. The pay would be $30 an hour up to $5000 with a bonus if we succeed. I am a 50 something year old fit, smart, attractive, cultured, extrovert, humorous, white guy married once no kids. And I am a quasi high profile SF person with full a biography and photos online i.e. not some closet weirdo. I’m looking for a youthful super smart stylish creative urban woman who lives in SF for LTR. That seems pretty straightforward. The job would involve finding and interviewing 5- 10 women online and in person (I am picky visually). It would take a couple months I assume.

If you are interested in this job, please send me a note and let me know why you would be good at it, why I should trust you, and how you would go about it. Confidentiality and discretion on all levels is a priority. I’ve never done this before, and I am neither patient nor experienced with online dating. You need to be SF based, college educated, smart and street savvy, with a highly organized nature, great sense of humor, refined taste and an especially good eye. You can send me a resume if you want, but this is not essential.

Anyway, I thought it was a little funny and a little odd, but also I kind of like playing matchmaker and thought it might be interesting to try. So I sent the ad to Brian for his perspective. What follows is our skype chat, edited only slightly for length and clarity.

Brian Andrews
4:50 PM
I first read LTR as 'Lord of the Rings'

norasawyer
4:50 PM
LTR?

Brian Andrews
4:51 PM
"I’m looking for a youthful super smart stylish creative urban woman who lives in SF for Lord of the Rings."

norasawyer
4:51 PM

That would be a better job.

Brian Andrews
4:54 PM
"I am a 50 something year old fit, smart, attractive, cultured, extrovert, humorous, white hobbit looking for a way to get rid of this damn ring."

norasawyer
4:54 PM

"smoker preferred."

Brian Andrews
4:56 PM
i like um raw and wriggling

norasawyer
4:57 PM
Ew.

Brian Andrews
4:57 PM
with taters

norasawyer
4:58 PM
"Civil servant seeks frigid woman looking for someone to melt her mannish heart. Must like swordplay, nursing, and Númenóreans, but be willing to settle for me."

Brian Andrews
4:59 PM
ha

Edited to add: should you need a refresher on the plot of Lord of the Rings, here's some guys from New Zealand's take:

Dime Store Aesop

2009-04-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

Today, Bella, Shelby and I took our trice-weekly trip to our favorite park. As we made our way up the hill, Shelby disappeared into a thicket, following some scent or other, and emerged with a slight limp. A cursory examination revealed a thorn stuck in his front paw, which I removed. I can only hope that some day, when I am thrown into the arena to be devoured by small dogs, Shelby will remember this favor, and spare me.

Later, on our way down the hill, we ran into a boy who had gotten separated from his mother and couldn't find his way back to where he left her. After some consultation, we determined that he had two dogs at home, had been somewhere near the top of Corona Heights before he got lost, and had followed me in the hopes that I would know where to go. So, we decided we should walk back up the hill together to see if we could figure out where his people were. Then I remembered that I had my cellphone, and we called his mother and arranged for a rendezvous. And so everyone was happily reunited.

Then, when me and the dogs were making our way home, I stepped on Bella's paw, causing her to yelp like a harpooned seal. I will not be spared in the arena, after all.

Lemons into Lemony Things

2009-04-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

The past few days here in San Francisco, have been hot hot hot. Luckily, we had a surfeit of lemons about the house, making for all sorts of tasty ways to cool off:

1. Tasty lemon cocktail

My cousin, Molly, and her fiancee Steve got me a bottle of Creme de Violette as an early birthday present (I'd been searching for it ever since I read about it while looking for New Year's Eve cocktail recipes). So last night, with the temperature still havering around 80, we decided to give it a try:

Blue Moon

2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/2 ounce crème de violette

Shake in cocktail shaker with ice, strain into martini glass and garnish with two thin lemon slices left over from:

2. Lemon Pizza (from this month's Martha Stewart Living):

Makes one 12-inch pizza

* 1 round pizza dough
* 3 ounces Piave cheese, shaved (I substituted Parmesan, and it was tasty)
* 6 very thin slices lemon, seeds removed
* 1/4 red onion, very thinly sliced
* 1 tablespoon small sprigs fresh rosemary
* Freshly ground pepper
* Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling

Directions

1. Arrange cheese evenly over dough, leaving a 1-inch border. Top with the lemon and onion slices. Sprinkle with rosemary, and season with pepper. Drizzle with oil.
2. Bake pizza in 500 degree oven for 10 minutes or so.

Once we get this week's veggie box, I'm going to try this with orange slices instead of lemon and fennel instead of onions. And then I'm going to move to Italy and become a vagabond pizza chef.

Tricia Asks, I Comply

2009-04-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

In response to Tricia's challenge

But, really, "no touch-ups, no primping?" Hardly a challenge for grubby old me. You're lucky I remembered to brush my hair in recent memory. (And if you'd like a better look at the sculpture behind me, it's one of Brian's, and you can see it here).

Beware of little dogs

2009-04-09T12:58:00.001-07:00

So, yesterday, I was out walking two of my regular charges, Bella (aka Bella Z. Bub, aka Bella Boo, aka Queen B) and Shelby (aka Shelby Tiberius Buttlicker, aka Shelby Baloo, aka Thelonious Bucket). Here's a picture of the two:

I walk them three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), and over time we've developed a routine: I get them as wound up as I possibly can before we leave the house (not that hard), and then we race uphill for two blocks on our way to Corona Heights, where I let them off their leashes and we poke around on the trails and in the long grass and wildflowers.

Like so:

Anyway, when we left the house yesterday, Shelby started running for the hills, as is our custom, but Bella, for some reason, decided to do a funny little back and forth jig. Which sent me tumbling, yellow boots over ears, onto the pavement.

And here's my poor finger (I've included the other hand so you can compare the negligible bruise with my normal fingers). I've also got a goose egg on my knee.

Bella escaped unscathed.

You can find out more about inspiration at your local library

2009-04-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

"Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."

Steve Martin, from "Born Standing Up"

Liveblogging this little bit of nothing

2009-04-02T23:28:00.000-07:00

We're lying in bed and my small toe hurts. Brian is watching "Law and Order" on his laptop and I've put down my reading because there's something about lights and moving pictures that make it impossible to look away. Outside the door, Hope's cats are running up and down the hall, thumps and gallops and half-Siamese yowls. The yowls are all Phoenix. Theodore is the Harpo of the two.

"Am I in trouble?" a suspect asks, and the camera cuts to a technician taking fingerprints off a paper cup.

The flowers on my nightstand have wilted.

Gone Pup-Walking

2009-04-01T01:46:00.001-07:00

I'll be back soon.

Leto's Children

2009-03-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

So, last night, I participated in a reading at the Lutecium here in San Francisco. I read a piece that I've been working on for a while, inspired by the lives of siblings William and Caroline Herschel and their imagined similarity to the twin gods Apollo and Artemis. It's an odd little thing, one of those works-in-progress that never seems to get finished, but for some reason it's my favorite piece to read aloud.

This being the internet, I can't read it aloud to you. So the written version will have to do for now.

Leto’s Children

“We’ll live on the moon,” says William, “as soon as we’re able.”

He is holding on to grandmother’s front gate, his feet wedged against the base of the frame and his body bent and then straight like a windshield wiper as he pulls back then thrusts forward, making iron hinge music. It’s almost so dark that we’ll have to go in. William is thinking about this, too, because he says, “On the moon, it is never dark. The ground glows at night. During the day, too.”

From where I’m sitting, in the dark shadow of the hedges, William’s hair stands out against the darkening sky, like clouds in front of the moon. When the light shines pink through the clouds, we say that it’s the fruit trees blooming in heaven, and I wonder what makes William’s hair shine so coldly. Maybe it’s the bones in his skull.

There are thirty-one bones in our heads, but they grow together, binding as we get older. I like to think about William and I, and how we might have super powers. Like maybe we’ll never get old, or if we do, our skulls will stay flexible. We could end up smarter than anyone.

I imagine our skulls opening like water lilies, turning like music boxes. I imagine our skulls flexing, gathering light. I imagine us dead, discovered by archeologists.

“They’re perfect,” they’ll whisper. “Each like the other, the pinnacle of their age.”

Sometimes I wonder if we were even born. Will says he remembers it, that mom cried like a wild thing while she had me, then laughed as he arrived. But I don’t believe him. We’ve been just like now forever.

“On the moon,” says William, “the language is music. This fence right now is speaking Moonish.” He pulls back with gusto. The gate sighs reluctantly.

Grandmother’s house is in the country. When it gets dark here, no streetlights come on. The stars are bright and clear and go on forever. I lie back onto the grass and it looks like they’re just above me, as if there is no sky. There are just lights, an arm’s length above me, set in dark blue corduroy. If I don’t move, they’ll be inches from my eyes forever. But soon it’s dinnertime, and when I get up the sky is far away again.

My bedroom is below William’s, and at night he drops notes and pictures through a hole in his floorboards. I can’t reply, because the knothole is too high for me to reach even if I stand on the dresser. After a while, I just watch out the window, listening to the whisper of papers dropping from the ceiling. There are deer in the meadow.
Just before midnight, I see a tree moving towards me, out of the forest. It’s massive, and moves deliberately, unhurriedly. Its branches are thick and ancient, hung with moss. I’m embarrassed. I don’t want to witness something so strange, so unique. I don’t want to be singled out by the gods, or by magic or whatever. When it pauses at the edge of the meadow, I realize that it was only a moose.

Climbing back into bed, I brush one of William’s letters to the floor. “The earth is round,” it says. “There are stars beneath us, too.”

One winter’s night, our father took me out into the street to show me the stars. The air was sharp and cold inside my nose, and the breath in my chest felt hollow and alive. He named the constellations as I watched, calling the sky into order.

“Our father was made of minerals in the darkness under the earth,” I write, alone in my bedroom, William awake above me. “He never lost his baby teeth. He was created whole.”

Because we are twins, William and I guard each other jealously. Once we had a birthday party, and a man had a balloon for William, but not for me. William handed it to me, and I drove my heel into it until it popped. “Helium,” William says, “was made by the sun god Helios. It wants to return to the sky.” I agree. There’s room enough in the sky, and no need to stay here without reason.

Our father’s father was made of stone, minerals forged deep down inside the earth. He could sand wood smooth against his cheeks. You couldn't get a straight answer out of him, and when he told you things there was a bit of sandpaper hidden inside or maybe a smooth bit of stone, so if you tried to eat it then you had rocks inside you, too.

In the afternoons, we tromp through the forest, setting traps. Once I caught a mink, and kept it as a pet. One morning William and I went to the river, and he dared me to shoot a duck that was far out on the water. I’m known for my sharp eyes, and had no trouble hitting it, even though it was little more than a dark shape. Later that night, my poor mink washed ashore.

Our grandmother is made of smallness. “Grandmother weighs less than nothing,” William says. “Literally.” Her house is in the country, and the sky is set in corduroy. At night, she looks out the window, and is she made of looking.

We play music every night after dinner. William conducts, and I sing, or he plays on the piano while I polish the mirrors that hang at the bottom of the stairs. “On the moon,” William calls to me, “beauty is prized above all things.” The piano soars up, up, up, like city lights on a hillside. I look in the mirror, and the sky falls open behind me.

Great God! I'd rather be a Pagan.

2009-03-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Twelve years ago, I was living in Santa Fe and learning Homeric Greek from Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners. It's funny what sticks with you. I can still recite the opening lines of the Iliad, and have used it to scare away telemarketers:

("Can I speak to the lady of the house?"

"Menin aeide, thea."

"Um... is Ms Sawyer there?"

"Peleiadeo Achileos/ oulomenen, he muri' Achaiois alge' etheken/ pollas d' iphthimous psuchas Aidi proiapsen/ heroon, autous de heloria teuche kunessin/ oionoisi te pasi, Dios d' eteleieto boule!"

"I'll call back").

But really, not all that much has survived the intervening decade plus. This morning, however, I was jolted by a comment on my last post into a half-remembered footnote in Pharr's Lesson XXIII (the subjunctive mode of verbs). The note refers to line 45 in Book One of the Iliad, in which Apollo strides down from mount Olympus, "and his coming was like the night." Pharr writes,

"It is none less than the mighty god himself who is now before us....like unto the night, both in swiftness of coming and in the awful gloom and dread which night brings to primitive peoples who have no adequate lighting facilities."

I'm not sure why I have to cross my fingers before I can fall asleep. Lying in bed at night, the shadow of a tree cast sharp against the wall by the neighbor's security lights, I know that I have nothing to fear from what little dark surrounds me. But something of that "awful gloom and dread" lingers in the real and irrational fears that crowd around my sleepless head.

Things I Might Never Tell You Otherwise

2009-03-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

1. I tend to move through the blogs I read regularly in alphabetical order. This means that Dykes to Watch Out For follows Dawn Eden in my daily cycle, and those odd companions are forever twinned in my mind.

2. Every night, I brush my teeth, wash my face, and murmur, "Well, that's something," at my reflection in the mirror.

3. Before I board a plane, I pull out a strand of hair to leave behind. I feel better knowing some piece of me is still on the ground.

4. I have to cross my fingers before I can fall asleep.

5. I love the smell of dirt, basements, and motor oil.

This I Believe

2009-03-06T16:11:00.000-08:00

1. You really should tip for take-out. I mean, sure, they don't have to clean up after you, but they went to the trouble of putting your food safely into a container and then maybe a plastic bag, didn't they? Never mind not losing your order in the first place.

2. Tips on beverages should be a dollar per. This is an extremely good deal for baristas, and a slightly less awesome one for bartenders. Which isn't really fair, come to think of it, because belligerent drunks are probably far more annoying than the insufficiently caffeinated. But drunks are also far more likely to be jolly, generous, and bad at math.

3. People who speak disparagingly of others in public should be subject to a mandatory time out, accompanied by a 'this is your life'-style montage hosted by Jon Stewart.

4. Only those who receive paid sick leave from their jobs should ever be subject to cold and flu viruses.

Thoughts While Listening to Hail Stones Falling on a Tin Roof

2009-03-03T16:49:00.000-08:00

When we first moved to San Francisco, six years ago this past Sunday, Brian and I were completely befuddled by how green it was, when it never seemed to rain. We'd come from just outside Boston, leaving behind two feet of snow and freezing rain that seemed to blow in horizontally from underneath the railroad bridge two blocks from our house. Green was a revelation. Sunny was another.

By the time we'd lived here a full year, we had figured out San Francisco's secret: nonstop rain from November to February, leaving green hills that slowly turn to gold as the summer extends dryly into fall once again. This year, the rain's been lingering into March, with blue-sky sunny days that suddenly turn into hailstorms, and long cold days like this one, when the sun only makes the briefest appearance.

I've been doing very little lately. Freelance work has dried up, and I've somehow forgotten how to do all the things I wanted to do back when I was working a job and a half while New College was crumbling around me. Every night I fall asleep with schedules running through my head: I'll get up at eight, start writing at nine, and not stop until I've found my groove. I'll walk to the library and research Turing, or Steinmetz, or some one else who will get me excited about ideas again, get me thinking and working and doing, and not just staring at puppies and daydreaming the day away.

It's been a year since I left my job. I've forgotten what it's like to be busy, to fall asleep with a head full of ideas and to wake up scrambling madly to get them all accomplished. Is this just a part of a natural cycle of fertility and fallow-ness? Or do I need to get off my ass and start getting shit done?

At the very least, I should probably clean my room.

Just Another Thursday With a Dog that Isn't Mine

2009-02-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

To do:

2009-02-06T13:34:00.000-08:00

1.
Nap with kittehs

2.
Huggle puppies

Kitty No-Ears

2009-02-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

Grace in Small Things #6 of 365

2009-01-28T23:28:00.001-08:00

1. I'm watching my friend Jason's cats while he's in Argentina for a month. Their names are Charlie and Chester, and they are the oddest little things. Chester likes to stare at the bedpost for hours. Charlie has a nobbly little mid-length tail (he's not a manx: it's half as long as a normal tail), and a perpetually grouchy loo.

2. Brian's laugh.

3. Argyle socks and moccasins.

4. Writing an angry letter to my calendar's manufacturer. I'll probably never send it, but seriously, the thing fell apart weeks ago and it's not even February. Anyway, the writing was cathartic.

5. Cats snoring and purring simultaneously.

Grace in Small Things #5 of 365

2009-01-27T11:42:00.000-08:00

1. Petra Haden's cover of "Don't Stop Believin'":

(She also covered the entirety of The Who Sell Out. And she's Charlie Haden's daughter. And I'm a little obsessed right now).

2. The black jeans I rediscovered in my closet while looking for my purple plaid short pants. New Pants!

3. R.W. Knudsen Spritzers (if you'd like to offer me sponsorship, Knudsen family, I'd be happy to oblige).

4. Cartoons.

5. Randomly running across a carbon copy of an 'Authorization for Surgery' form marking my place in a long-ago abandoned book of poetry, and realizing how lucky I am to be through with all that nonsense, and how lucky I was to go through it with the people I did.

Grace in Small Things #4 of 365

2009-01-26T22:12:00.000-08:00

1. Allowing myself a weekend off, even if it means that this Grace in Small Things thing is protracted over 365 weekdays.

2. Finding my other orange argyle sock in the dryer, after I'd given it up for lost.

3. The way that Shelby-dog clambers up onto my chest when I lean down to greet him.

4. Listening to sad songs with poet friends after a reading.

5. A cold night in San Francisco, with luminous clouds on the horizon

Deep Thoughts

2009-01-24T00:55:00.000-08:00

So Brian and I have started watching the American remake of the BBC programme 'Life on Mars'. In it, Lisa Bonet plays Maya Daniels, the modern-day girlfriend of Sam Tyler, a detective who has mysteriously traveled back in time to 1973.

So my question is: if Lisa Bonet is 'Maya Daniels' in Sam Tyler's world, does that mean he lives in an alternate dimension, where the Cosby Show never existed? And if so, does Obama still get to be president there?

Take that, Bishop Berkeley.

Grace in Small Things #3 of 365

2009-01-23T20:55:00.001-08:00

1. Walking out of the Flood Building into the rain, feeling all film noir.

2. Letting people read my fiction, and hearing good things about it.

3. Watching my housemate's cat go absolutely nuts over one of my pony tail holders.

4. Wearing a jaunty white scarf, as if I were battling the red baron.

5. Reading Lacan, and feeling my brain at work again.

Puppies: Now Less Blurry

2009-01-22T20:16:00.001-08:00

Grace in Small Things #2 of 365

2009-01-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

1. The delicious fungal smell of Buena Vista Park on a foggy day.

2. Sliver gray blue gum branches standing out against the bright green leaves of the surrounding trees.

3. The normally stoic dog totally losing his mind in a pile of dirt.

4. A Christmas wreath hung from a tree beside said dirt pile.

5. Hearing a fog horn sounding from halfway across the city.

Grace in Small Things #1 of 365

2009-01-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

For the next 365 days, I'll be participating in Schmutzie's Grace in Small Things project, an project highlighting the small good things that happen everyday. As Schmutzie writes,

"The world we live in is loud and harsh and bright and demanding, and it is easy to slide into a less than thoughtful survival mode in which we do what we have to do to make it through the day with the least amount of strife possible. This robs us of the time and energy to be mindful of ourselves and those we love and to recognize the grace that exists in small things."

So here goes. Day one:

1. Felix Sockwell and Thomas Fuch's Deconstructing Dumbo, which satisfies some deep down humor/miniature image circuit in my brain.

2. My housemate's cat, Phoenix, who has taken to sleeping at my elbow during the day, and who has prominent fangs.

3. The sky outside, which is perfectly gray today.

4. Spelling gray with an 'a', which makes me think of my mother.

5. The jumbo box of goldfish crackers that Hope brought home from Costco the day after Nine died, just for me.

5a. Celebrating the life of a tremendously fat cat by consuming as much food as I possibly can.

Turns Out, Happiness is a Warm Puppy

2009-01-20T12:06:00.000-08:00

Meet Shelby. He's not ours -- he belongs to our friend Shelley, and lives above Brian's studio space. The only downside is I don't think I'll ever get any work done, ever again. Oh well.

Weird.

2009-01-17T00:04:00.000-08:00

Just a few minutes after our dinner guests left tonight, Brian and I heard what sounded like someone screaming. Brian ran outside, I called the police. When they arrived (4 cars!), no one was to be found. Brian says he heard someone yelling up the street from us, then nothing. We both heard them say, "Help." Brian heard them say, "Leave me alone."

Living in the city, you get used to hearing scraps of other people's lives, their drunken yells and their early morning car doors. But this cry was weird. It reminded me of the coyotes we used to hear some nights when we lived in Vermont. It was so distorted that we couldn't agree if it was a man or a woman.

The police didn't find anyone, though. Which makes me wonder if we made the whole thing up. Maybe it was someone who'd had too much to drink, and didn't want their friends to walk them home. Maybe it was a couple having a fight. But the weird thing is how strange it makes the nighttime street seem no longer like a friendly block of people and dogs and stained-glass makers, but instead a wall of houses, where every dark window could hide a secret danger.

Goodbye, Monster Cat.

2009-01-16T02:09:00.000-08:00

Late last night, 9 started acting strangely -- his back legs became very weak and he was obviously in distress. We rushed him to the animal emergency room, and it turned out to be an issue with his heart. He had an enlarged aorta, and a blood clot broken loose and cut off circulation to the lower half of his body. By the time we got to the vet, his back legs were completely paralyzed.
The vet advised us that treatment would be very painful, would have only a slim chance of working, and would not prevent sudden and serious relapses which in all probability would be fatal. After going over all the particulars, we decided that the kindest thing to do would be to let Nine go, and minimize the amount of pain he had to go through. It was a hard decision, but the vet agreed that, if it were his cat, he would do the same.
The good news is that it happened very fast, and that Nine didn't seem to have been in pain until the very end. He spent a good portion of the day on my lap, and the rest out in the yard lying in the sun and being mean to the other pets. He was happy, he seemed perfectly healthy. I don't think I could have planned a better day for the guy.

Loot!

2009-01-08T12:28:00.001-08:00

So I was in my kitchen this morning, making broth and drying sprouts in the convection oven (look at me! So domestic!), when I realized just how much Xmas loot I was sporting. This year's haul seriously upped my sartorial awesomeness. Let me show you!

First up, we have the gloves I got from my parents. Aren't they rad? And you can get your own through their church's website! Just click on the link for Miss Pam's Mittens. Yay church lady crafts!

Oh, and it's backwards because I took these photos on my computer, but you can see I'm wearing the t-shirt my darling seester sent to Brian. I stoled it. Too bad I didn't grab the other one before Brian toddled off to his studio with it on, cause then you could see that my kitchen now has wifi. Say hello, kitchen!

(What did my seester send her seester, you ask? Why the ever-awesome Star Wars cookbook, that's what! And soap. Why did everyone in my family send soap this year? Do I look that stinky?)

Speaking as we were of the Brian, want to see what he got me? Sure you do!

Moccasins! From an genuine 'Native Arts' store in Canadia! They're very warm. Which is good, since as you can see, I'm wearing winter outdoor wear in the house. And yes, I'm cooking in my pajima pants. So you can't see the lovely belt my cousin Claire sent. But rest assured it's very cute, and single handedly makes the jeans-and-sweater I throw on before leaving the house like deliberate components of a genuinely thought-out outfit.

Last but certainly not least comes the gift from my Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Bill. This gift is one of those gift that brings with it the warm fuzzy feeling of being understood absolutely. Can you guess what it is?

That's right: it is a fuzzy muppet-like faux mink. It is also a visible manifestation of my inner core. Paging Phillip Pullman!

And on the non-sartorial front, I'm currently listening to the Choir Practice CD that my Aunt Carol gave me for Xmas. I've been playing it constantly ever since I got back from Vancouver, which means I've pretty much had it on repeat ALL YEAR. Here's a taste:

Christmas: Awesome.

And now I'm worried that this is a tacky display, a philistine reveling in the material side of Christmas. But really (honestly!), this is just a post about moment in my kitchen when I looked at the world around me and realized how lucky I am to be surrounded by so much love. And loot.

Resolutions

2009-01-01T23:32:00.001-08:00

1. Take more walks.

2. Be a better friend.

I knew it.

2009-01-01T14:52:00.001-08:00

Highly Reccomended: Train Travel

2009-01-01T13:39:00.000-08:00

Blizzard optional.

I honestly don't know why I don't travel by train more often. Well, yes I do: it's not that much cheaper than flying, it takes a long time, and there's no direct route from San Francisco to any of the cities I visit with any regularity. But all that aside, it's just so much more civilized than flying. There are parlour cars and dining cars, dinner reservations and wine tastings, private rooms to lie down in (if you fork out enough cash), and an endless stream of vistas out the windows. I could totally see Brian and I becoming one of those train-nerd retired couples someday. Assuming there's such a thing as retirement when we get old.

Merry Christmas, Y'all

2008-12-23T16:03:00.000-08:00

I'm getting on a train tonight -- 22 hours in a teensey private room with Brian, then Christmas day up in Vancouver with my grandmother, assorted aunts and uncles, and my Thompson cousins. So, until blogging can resume, here's a little treat I found on Schmutzie's website:

Oh, Tannenbama (or, Yes, We Tannenbaum!)

2008-12-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

So we went and got our Christmas tree the other night.

When we got near the lot, I told Brian, "Stand here and go like this with your hands and I'll take a picture."

So he did.

I really wanted to get our tree here, because Obama looks so festive there with all the lights, and because it's in an abandoned lot that I used to walk by on my way home when I worked at New College.

The lot's next door to an abandoned house with painted landscapes in the boarded-up windows. I love abandoned things, and I've wanted to poke around in this lot for years. Thanks, President-elect Obama!

But trees there were like ten dollars more than the ones at the Delancey street lot (on Sanchez and Market), which is closer to our house. So we got a tree there.

Then we took it home and decorated it with popcorn and cranberries. There are actually a lot more strands on it now (a few with hot peppers on 'em, even!), but the camera's over at Brian's studio, so the pictures I took the other night will have to suffice. Sorry internet. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Then, while I was poking around in the chest where we keep things like ornaments and bits of clutter that need to disappear before guests arrive, I found this series of drawings I made a few years back when Brian and I were bingeing on classic Doctor Who. I think this was around the time we first made our acquaintance with the monster cat, as is evidenced by their subject matter. Apologies for the poor picture quality -- I'll scan these keepers someday.

(Oh! And in the interests of bringin' it all back home, have you seen the Dalek Christmas tree?)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! ... Oh. Nevermind

2008-12-16T16:19:00.001-08:00

So yesterday, I got a letter in the mail from my insurance company. The letter, which had looked so benign in it's bulk-rate envelope, contained the surprising news that my insurance had been canceled on September first of this past year.

Now, as all two and a half of you readers out there know, I've had a rather exciting few years, medical history wise. And it was absolutely not my intention to have canceled my health insurance. So, I was a bit surprised.

I called the 800 number listed on the letter, and spoke to a very nice woman who let me know that "all my policies" (dental and life) were current, and that nothing had been canceled "except for that old policy that was canceled earlier this year."

As the conversation unfolded it turned out that the health insurance policy had been evaporated due to lack of payment. Over the summer, you see, I had this whole snafu with my credit card involving weird charges and fraud and such and culminating with a new card being issued, and when I called the insurance folks to change my automatic billing information, they somehow had changed the billing information on only two out of my three policies.

"This is kind of frustrating," I told the nice woman on the phone who of course had had nothing to do with this course of events, "because the woman I spoke to this summer assured me that all three of my policies had been updated, and that everything was fine."

"I can send you an application if you'd like to re-apply for health insurance," she replied.

And then I had to get off the phone very quickly before I started sobbing and/or forgot the manners I learned on my mother's knee.

So I stayed up late last night, staring into the darkness and trying to figure out how I could get health insurance, when here I've had three surgeries in as many years and have handily used up my $3,500 annual deductible without even trying, and now I've got a note on my record stating that my previous insurance was canceled because I up and stopped paying for it and oh my god I'm going to end up paying an insane amount of money for even the eenseyest bit of coverage and die toothless and alone of, I don't know, consumption or something.

Finally, at about four in the morning, I decided that I wouldn't panic (any more) until I'd called again and tried a bit more forcefully to get the folks at the insurance company to see things from my perspective.

So I called again today and spoke with another nice lady. She offered to send me an application so I could re-up my policy, and I explained how that wouldn't really work for me, because of my medical history and the whole not-my-fault "non-payment" issue, and did I mention that it wasn't my fault? And she went and talked to her supervisor, who looked back at my file and saw that, oh, oops, there had been a computer foul-up that they'd discovered in a bunch of other people's accounts but had somehow missed in mine, and it never should have been canceled to begin with.

So I'm insured again. And the good news is, if I survived the past twenty-four hours, my heart must be pretty darn healthy.

Happy Birthday to my Mother

2008-12-04T19:50:00.000-08:00

For this extra-special Poetry Thursday, here's some Horace, by way of Ezra Pound.

This monument will outlast metal and I made it
More durable than the king's seat, higher than pyramids.
Gnaw of wind and rain?
Impotent
The flow of years to break it, however many.

Bits of me, many bits, will dodge all funeral,
O Libitina-Persephone and, after that,
Sprout new praise. As long as
Pontifex and the quiet girl pace the Capitol
I shall be spoken where the wild flood Aufidus
Lashes, and Danus ruled the parched farmland:

Power from lowliness: "First brought Aeolic song to Italian fashion"—
Wear pride, work's gain! O Muse Melpomene,
By your will bind the laurel.
My hair. Delphic laurel.

I Probably Don't Really Want to Do This

2008-11-29T23:04:00.000-08:00

But I kinda really do.

Just Because You're Paranoid, Doesn't Mean They Aren't Out to Get You.

2008-11-26T21:17:00.001-08:00

Brian and I had very half-assed plans for Thanksgiving, which fell through as such plans are often wont to do. This is actually kind of awesome. Even though we basically spend every waking moment together, we'd both been secretly harboring the desire for some quiet holiday alone time (with each other that is), away from the bustle of friends and family. So we've planned for a perfect him-and-me day, a day of Lord of The Rings movies topped off by far too much food for two reasonable people and some snuggling. I picked out some recipes, and tommorrow we'll enjoy our quiet and romantic holiday of dork movies and comfort food. Perfect.

So anyway, today I headed out to do my Thanksgiving shopping, figuring, it's just the two of us, how hard could it be to find and buy the ingredients for our simple yet Thanksgiving-y meal?

Answer: absurdly. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a cornish game hen in this town, the day before Thanksgiving? Five stores and a trip across town, that's how hard.

But that isn't what I wanted to tell you about. The most interesting part of my shopping excursion happened at the very beginning: I was walking down our street (in the direction of Bi Rite, my first fruitless foray). It was raining, so there I was, yellow boots and rainbow umbrelly, when I looked up and noticed a small group of French tourists ahead.

The reason I noticed them was that one of them seemed to be taking a picture. The reason I noticed that was because my nose was itchy, and just as I looked up and saw the camera, I was sort of schnirrfing it against my mitten. There was no penetration, mind you, it was a perfectly acceptable outside-the-nose schnirrf, but still: not the pose you'd like to be sporting in some random (French, no less) stranger's holiday photo.

Anyway, we passed one another, and after we passed, I wondered what had been so scenic that they'd decided to take a photograph in the first place. I walk down this particular street everyday -- it is, in fact, my street -- but I'd never noticed it as being particularly aesthetically pleasing, other than in your basic no-place-like-home kinda way. So I turned, thinking maybe this is my opportunity to see the street anew, as others see it: a scenic, quintessentially San Francisco, view.

I turned. And, Reader? They were taking a photograph again. Back the way they'd just come. Of me.

So it got me wondering: am I famous in France? I have no illusions about the readership of this here blog. If Maggie Mason is "famous among dozens," then me, well I'm famous among multiples of zero. My readership consists of close relatives and former college roommates on a good day. But could some small cadre of Gallic blog enthusiasts count me as their hero? Does my writing translate better somehow, into French? Or did they just like my umbrella?

P.S. I have invented the best pizza ever: roasted fennel and shallots, with sage pesto and apples. I am a genius. Notify the French.

Cameras Came Then to Replace Descriptive Paragraphs

2008-11-24T19:38:00.000-08:00

I took a class this weekend with Lynda Barry called "Writing the Unthinkable". In it we did lots of five-minute exercises designed to dredge up memories and excavate images. I'm going to try to keep doing these, and post the results every day. Sometimes I might draw pictures, too. Sometimes I might post the same thing as the day or even a week ago before, but with new bits added in. I really have no idea.

Oh, and I stole that title from a poem by Martha Ronk.

I am with Mary in our bedroom. We're sitting on the carpet, playing with the dolls we got as a hand-me-down from Mrs. Marshall's granddaughter. I'm holding Custer, Mary's is and Indian. Their legs are bowed, like they're riding horses, but we've already killed the horses.

"They bleed and bleed, until just water comes out. That's how you know they're dead," Mary says. Mary's always explaining things like that. Shes' two years older and has already started school. I'm scared, the way I always seem to get scared. How much do you have to bleed before water comes out? Are the horses dead forever? I don't remember ever playing with them again.

I can't remember ever playing with the indian again, either, or even what his name was, or if he had one. I think his horse did. And for years, bow-legged Custer haunted the bedroom, hiding beneath the bed, standing on top of the white plastic shelves, propped up against the wall, crashing barbie parties with his blonde mustache and his painted-on army clothes.

The top bunk was heaven. We took the horses up there, and the indian, and Custer, too. Mary's patchwork blankie was the clouds. The sun shone on the treetops outside while Mary and me hummed taps and Mary told me how the indians buried their dead in treetops so their souls would be closer to heaven. Later that day, I wondered how you'd recognize your family in heaven, if everyone were ghosts with the same big black eyes painted on their long white blankets.

New Shoes!

2008-11-19T16:04:00.001-08:00

The weather's gotten colder, bringing my lack-of-comfy-shoes-that-aren't-sandals into stark relief. And then today, as Brian and I were waiting for our sammitches, I saw them in a store window: a pair of clown-yellow Doc Martens, just my size:

My choice of socks this morning was just a happy accident.

Things I never knew about my (paternal) grandmother

2008-11-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

1. She got her BA in nutrition because she loves science.
2. She prefers clean-shaven men.
3. She's the one that gave my great-uncle Buzzy (nee Oskar) his nickname.
4. Her dad favored her younger sister. "That took a while to get over."
5. She still wonders if she could have saved my grandfather's life.

A reminder for my fellow Californians

2008-10-31T01:00:00.000-07:00

Now is the time to donate. Let your support be known.

It's Open Studio Weekend!

2008-10-18T12:18:00.001-07:00

In San Francisco? Come see the art!

2221 15th St., side door, 11-6 Saturday and Sunday. Hope to see you there.

Wherein we take the art for a walk

2008-09-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Brian's participating in ArtSpan's open studios again this year. This time, he'll also be in the group show at the SomArts Gallery (on Brannan St., right by the Trader Joe's). He finished his piece for the group show last night; this morning we brought it over to SomArts. Here it is in his studio this morning, right before we headed out. The show opens October 5th.

This is the smallest piece Brian's made in a while. We were both a little excited about how portable it is (that's not a portal into some woolen vortex, by the way. Just my sweater).

Here we are, waiting for the train.

This is the only picture in which Brian doesn't have the 'Woman, why do you insist on taking my photo?' look on is face.

See?

Up the escalator

Through the station,

And finally we were there.

"Are you taking pictures of my butt?" Brian asked. Yes, sweetie. Yes I am.

Brian's studio will be open the third weekend in October (the 18 & 19), from 11 AM to 6 PM. He's at 2221 15th St., through the side door by the garage. Hope to see you all there.

Want more photos of art, and less of my nonsense? Check out my flickr page

The only thing keeping me sane this election season

2008-09-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

Is this song on repeat.

(And as an aside, why isn't Sharon Jones ten times more famous?)

Hm.

2008-09-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

Back when I had an office job, I was often amused by the post-it notes that adorned my desk. Sure, I'd written them, but more often than not they seemed to have been left for me as signs by some alien intelligence intent upon making itself known. "Mailbox fix?" they asked. "Axial yoga?"

Now that I have neither a job nor post-its, my computer is left to carry on the task of confusing me with my own past ideas and inquiries. My google search window remembers past inquires and makes suggestions as I type, filling in what it thinks I might mean from just a few letters. So now I'm wondering, when did I google 'epic poem colma underworld'? And what on earth was I looking for?

A New-to-Me Meme in Honor of Sarah Palin

2008-09-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

So, after reading in the news this morning that Sarah Palin tried to force her town librarian to ban books that 'some voters might find objectionable, here's a list of books banned at one time or another in the US. (I originally wanted to list the ones Palin tried to ban, but couldn't find a list anywhere). Books I have read are bold. Books I have loved* are bold and italicized. Books I'm gonna run out and get from my library are just italicized.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio (I've read bits of this -- plus all of 'The Women's Decameron,' which is awesome.)
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell (wait, that's not by Judy Blume?? O! All my memories of fourth grade are cast into doubt.)
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (does it count if I just skimmed for dirty bits?)
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective (remind me to tell you my 'the first time I read the word anus' story).
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles (I might have loved it, but I took the line about 'sarcasm being the last refuge of the weak' a little personally).
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff (Despite jr high rumors to the contrary, I don't read dictionaries in their entirety just for fun -- though the occasional page or two can be an awesome way to dither away an hour. Also, this was banned? wtf?)
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

*My criteria for whether or not I've loved a book? If I automatically think, "Omigod yes" after reading the title, that's love. Anything less is a strong like.

So.

2008-08-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

I've been away for what feels like forever, but was in fact only eleven days. Brian and I went to visit my parents in Massachusetts for a week, then spent three days down in North Carolina visiting with my maternal grandmother. Do you want to see pictures? Of course you do.

Before we left, Brian and I talked about whether or not we should pack the camera. We went back and forth, and when we got to Massachusetts and the camera wasn't in my bag, I figured we'd decided against it, after all. Then, three days before we were set to go home, I found the camera in Brian's backpack. So this is the first picture I took of our trip, one week in. You'll just have to imagine all the fun that came before.

While we were in North Carolina, we visited Old Salem, a Moravian settlement that's been restored into a hybrid living museum/posh neighborhood.

It was one of my favorite places to visit as a kid.

The houses are all really cool and old, and you can still see the numbers that they carved into the beams as they were making the houses. It was kind of like a proto-Ikea: they assembled everything in one place, then put it together as a community, clip clap clop, just like that.

Anyway, it was fun, and a little humbling to simultaneously revisit my own past and that of this long ago community, to sit with their well made buildings and books and furniture, and think about my frivolous and largely idle life.

Plus, I saw a really cool bug. You can't really see it in that photo, but I promise that it's there.

Childrearing

2008-07-29T20:49:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I should myself as I would a wayward child: discipline, structure, and a generous application of dessert treats as rewards. Writing (for the fun of it, to remind myself it *is* fun) every day for at least a half an hour upon waking, enforced hygiene (brush your hair one hundred strokes and shower at least every other day). If I haven't grown up to be the adult I would have liked, then by golly I will raise her myself.

In other news, I may have finally gone insane.

Achilles came to Troyland

2008-07-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

The man on the right is my grandfather. The man on the left is, I'm guessing, someone he trained with at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. On the back of the photo, in my grandpa's messy handwriting, he's identified as "Lt Krause."

My grandfather took a fair number of photos of his days in the army. I can't help but wonder, looking at photos like this one and of smoke breaks and swimming holes and men and artillery, what happened to the other men. Did they make it home? Are they still alive today?

By the same token, I can't help but wonder about my grandfather. I know the basics, of course. I knew him, I remember him. I saw the man he grew up to be and I know how and when he died. But my grandfather -- who he was before I knew him, who he was when I knew him but never thought to wonder: who was he?

I guess the wondering is part of that bigger questioning: what makes us who we are?

If I had a day job, I'd keep it.

2008-07-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but I've been having trouble writing lately. It doesn't matter if it's for my own private paper diary, this here blog, paid web-work or just a grocery list. I'm just blocked.

When I was a kid, I loved drawing. "It makes my brain feel good," I'd tell my mother. And it did -- like nothing else ever. Drawing was the only thing that made me feel fully engaged, fully present in the moment. It was good, and I was good at it, the best in my class, except for that one new kid in third grade who drew really good spaceships. But he vanished the following year, so no harm done.

I wonder sometimes if I should have pursued art, gone to school and learned illustration, or just kept drawing until I figured out where it might take me. I think that's why 'personality type' tests depress me -- there's this feeling of inevitability to being a type: I could never have turned out any differently. This is the best of all possible worlds.

The other day, my cousin Molly and I visited the Lucas Arts office complex here in San Francisco (one of Brian's ju-jitsu buddies was doing some freelance work there and generously offered to squire us around). It awakened an odd mix of feelings, mostly frustration. Why didn't I ever think to go in to special effects, I wondered. Why don't I write rip-roaring adventures, the kind that burrow into the popular imagination? What's wrong with me, that I can't seem to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, when I've been grown up for some time now. Where's my freakin' Yoda? And why do I waste my time thinking thoughts like that, when it's the doers that I envy? Wouldn't doing be the best antidote for this paralitic broody melancholy?

So I'm drawing when I can't write. Then, if I feel ready to write all of a sudden, I'm already sitting there, pen in hand.

Anyway. In the meantime here's a picture I drew of our visit. No cameras allowed at Lucas Arts!

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

2008-07-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

Why do I find this result depressing?

Because I'm a Enneagram Type Four, and we're self absorbed, melancholy bastards, that's why.

Happy Birthday, Robert Graves

2008-07-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

I first read this poem in high school. I'd just devoured I, Claudius and Claudius the God, and I wanted to be Robert Graves when I grew up. It was, quite simply, the most shockingly sexy thing I'd ever read [and I'd read Clan of the Cave Bear!].

Higher Quality Memories

2008-07-11T14:04:00.001-07:00

My great grandfather Alfred Heininger
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer

I kind of like te effect I get from taking cellphone snapshots of old photos I like. But I have to say, there's something to be said for this scanning business. Here's that photo of my great-grandfather again (click the picture to see it larger).He's all dressed up for World War I. Luckily the war ended soon after this photo was taken.

Ghosts and Houses

2008-07-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

The last few nights, I've been spooked at bedtime, reluctant to sleep in my darkened room. I've been leaving the bedside lamp on. It bothers me and makes it hard to fall asleep, but without it I start to imagine all sorts of things, like torsos, headless and legless, crawling up onto the bed, or strange figures watching from the foot. I never see anything, mind you, but the thought alone is enough.

When I first got here, when grandma was still in the hospital, I slept the sleep of the unimaginative, knocking out as soon as my head hit the pillow and not stirring until late every morning. And for the longest time that held steady, even when dad was here and the sounds of him stirring about at night sent my imagination scurrying.

But now, I lie awake forever, alert to every sound, catching shapes and shadows from the corner of my eye. Maybe it's the steady dredging of family photos and memorabilia -- staring into the faces of long-dead ancestors, reading their letters and asking questions that my grandfather would know, but isn't here to answer.

For instance: Is that a parrot in the top right corner? Were we once a bird-owning family? And whose summer home is that, who's at the piano?

I find myself wondering, are we a happy family? It's a funny question, and not one I'm comfortable asking my grandmother. In fact, I'm not entirely comfortable asking myself.

The pastoral landscape of my childhood could and did conceal any number of long-dead battlegrounds. But whose life doesn't stand on foundations that shift and creak sometimes in the wind? Tolstoy said that happy families are all alike and unhappy families unique, but I wonder if happy families might not be just as complex and distinctive as unhappy ones, their unique troubles soothed into another narrative, their private struggles forming the hills and valleys upon which future generations stand.

Were they happy then? Are we happy now?

I think it depends on what story you decide to tell.

Losing and Forgetting

2008-07-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

My grandmother's always losing things. The first day I was back up here, it was her glasses; she and I were getting ready for a walk, and she materialized beside me in a pair of huge, circa nineteen-seventy-two frames. "My prescription needs changing," she said. "These are good for now."

"Ok," I said, and we went for a walk, her in her big frames and over sized angora coat with large ivory buttons, and me in a tee shirt and jeans, because it was in the high seventies and quite pleasant, really.

Later that night, when it was time for bed, I walked in to find grandma, half undressed, rooting through closets and drawers. "I can't find my glasses," she said.

"Are these them?" I asked, holding up the large frames she'd worn all evening.

"Those are my old ones. They're okay, but they make me dizzy after a bit."

She and I sorted and searched for a half an hour, finding more old glasses, some in cases marked with the address of her optometrist in Washington D.C (which makes them at least as old as me), and bits of African sculpture socked away in drawers, and various other bits of flotsam and treasure that come from living eighty siz years and never throwing things away.

Finally, I convinced her it was time for bed. "We'll look again in the morning," I said.

"Perhaps I left them in the backyard and the mower ran them over," she said, looking worriedly out the window.

"Maybe," I said, thinking she'd probably lost or broken her glasses weeks ago, that a new pair had been ordered and that this search was probably one of those futile echoes that tends to plague her now that she's grown old and prone to worry and forgetfulness.

The next morning, I had a hard time getting her out of bed. "Is it morning, or afternoon?" she asked at 9:30 when I opened her curtains to let the sunlight in.

"It's morning. You've slept late, but it's time for breakfast now."

I went downstairs, and listened to her stirring above me. She's gotten a lot more independent than when she was first out of the hospital, and I've been trying to give her privacy and room. She's used to doing things on her own, I figure, and probably doesn't want a great gallumphing granddaughter shadowing her every move. After a half hour had passed, I went upstairs again.

"I can't find my glasses."

"I know, we can look after breakfast."

"But haven't I had breakfast?"

"No, not yet. The table's set and ready to go." My stomach was rumbling. I'd been up since eight.

"I wonder if I left my glasses in the shower..."

Downstairs, I straightened the front room, listening to her footsteps as she searched from room to room and wondering how on earth I'd corral this woman, this unstoppable, independent mother who raised five children and cared for my grandfather when he had Alzheimer's and who hiked the length of Vermont when she was a teenager. How do you convince someone that they're no longer the authority on their own lives?

And then, under a sofa cushion, I found her glasses, the one's I'd nearly convinced myself didn't actually exist. "See there?" I said to myself. "Give grandma more credit. Grandma still knows what's what."

After a joyful reunion with the right glasses, my grandmother finally made her way down to breakfast.

"Are you sure it's not lunchtime?" she asked as I bustled around, getting tea and orange juice.

"It nearly is, grandma, but we haven't had breakfast yet."

"But your flight didn't get in until the afternoon."

"That was yesterday."

"Oh. Right."

And then we ate our breakfast, and then we went for a walk.

Poetry Thursday: Rupert Brooke

2008-06-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

Menelaus and Helen

I
Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.
High sat white Helen, lonely and serene.
He had not remembered that she was so fair,
And that her neck curved down in such a way;
And he felt tired. He flung the sword away,
And kissed her feet, and knelt before her there,
The perfect Knight before the perfect Queen.

II
So far the poet. How should he behold
That journey home, the long connubial years?
He does not tell you how white Helen bears
Child on legitimate child, becomes a scold,
Haggard with virtue. Menelaus bold
Waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys
'Twixt noon and supper. And her golden voice
Got shrill as he grew deafer. And both were old.
Often he wonders why on earth he went
Troyward, or why poor Paris ever came.
Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent;
Her dry shanks twitch at Paris' mumbled name.
So Menelaus nagged; and Helen cried;
And Paris slept on by Scamander side.

Ok, so I'm a bit obsessed with the Trojan War. Which translates ~~fairly naturally~~ rather roundaboutly into a mild obsession with Rupert Brooke. It lessens a bit, as I get older and my affinity for youth and tragedy and tragic beauty wanes, but there'll always be room in my heart (and my lectures) for ol' Rupert.

So, Brian and I are in the studio today, and, as usual, he has the TV on while he's working, while I, as usual, have my headphones on and the music turned up as far as I can so that I can write and ignore him.

Until M*A*S*H comes on, that is. M*A*S*H is a show I used to sneak off to watch in our all but TV-free household, a bit of childhood memory-ville I find particularly hard to tune out. Especially when it awakens my other obsessions. As with this particular episode, which opens with Klinger lying out in the Korean countryside, reading Rupert Brooke.

"I love Rupert Brooke," I said to Brian.

"Hm?"

"He's so tragic. He died on the way to the battle of Gallipoli, you know."

"How?"

".....Rhumatic fever? I think? Maybe?"

"Romantic fever?"

"That's more likely."

It was sepsis from an infected mosquito bite, actually.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2008-06-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

It's freezing. Brr.

I want my seasonably hot weather back.

Too darn

2008-06-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

It's hot. I always say that I miss the summer heat but really? Not so much. Not when it's actually here. The only times I like it are a: after dark, and b: when we're here in Brian's basement. Speaking of the Brian: how many times can he watch the same Sopranos episode? A: a lot.

This is becoming an annual tradition: the weather's hot for a few days, and I write a blog post about how we San Franciscans have a deal with the Powers That Be: a few earthquakes, the occasional heaping of scorn from the Bible Belt, and in return we get weather that hardly ever falls below 50 or rises above 70. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently.

Up in the air

2008-06-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

I'm at the airport, killing time before my flight home, which has been delayed two and a half hours. You'd think that would be a good time to catch up on work or personal writing, but instead it's mostly been spent trolling airport gift shops, fondling the smoked salmon and books of Northwest Coast art. And now blogging. Productivity: not my strong point.

We had a good visit. My grandmother seems better everyday, which makes for a funny combination of feelings -- relief, of course, that her health continues to improve, with a touch of awkwardness. What to do, when she needs me less? And how to know when to step in, and when to allow her privacy? It's an odd balancing act, and one that nothing in my life thus far has really prepared me for.

Anyway. Home again. I'll heading back to Vancouver in July, when my darling seester will be up from CT. If anyone actually stamped my passport at the border (why don't they?), it'd be looking pretty fancy.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'm gonna go try and find me some airport art to look at.

Even More Family Photos

2008-06-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

My grandfather, beatnik phase

My father, eccentric ~~phase~~.

More Family Photos

2008-06-08T10:25:00.001-07:00

My grandparents (and my grandfather's reflection) at their wedding.

Grandma, my dad and I found this in an album last night, after Grandma's birthday dinner.

"You look so young!" I said. "How old were you?"

"Twenty five?" said grandma.

"That is young."

"Twenty four? Twenty three? Twenty two?"

We all laughed. "Young!"

Family Secrets: More Prosaic Than You Might Expect

2008-06-08T08:30:00.000-07:00

It's 8:31, and Grandma should've been up about a half an hour ago (no reason, really. She just set her alarm for 8 AM last night when I was putting her to bed). About a minute ago, I heard her stirring upstairs, so I went up, glass of water in hand, to help her get dressed and ready to face the day. As I walked into her room, she shuffled out of the bathroom and crawled back into bed. "Could I get fifteen more minutes?"

Could it be she's not really a morning person? Apparently, my up-at-six-and-off-to-exercise grandma and sluggabed me have more in common than previously suspected.

In other news, I've started moving like my grandmother. Last night, as I straightened the kitchen and again this morning, as I opened the blinds and made coffee, I found myself moving slowly, placing my feet precisely as if I were a much smaller and more fragile than I actually am.

I need to go out someplace and dance around like a clumsy maniac.

I've been trying to casually work this into a blog post, but it just won't cooperate.

2008-06-04T11:36:00.000-07:00

So there's this urban legend I heard once, about this woman who's in an ice cream shop when she notices Jack Nicholson is standing next to her. She plays it cool, completes the ice-cream-for-money exchange, and heads outside -- only to discover that she no longer has her ice cream with her. As she's standing there trying to figure out what on earth has happened, Jack Nicholson walks out of the shop, sidles up to her and whispers, "It's in your purse."

So anyway, last Tuesday found me in the airport, passport and boarding pass in hand, waiting for my delayed flight to Vancouver. I'd just left an embarrasingly smooshy face message on Brian's voicemail when I truned around to discover myself right next to a small family who'd just disesmbarked from the plane I was going to take up to Canada & were sorting out their strollers and such. The mother looked familiar. I checked out the baby. Familiar. I checked out the dad. Familiar.

Ohmigod, y'all. It was Maggie Mason.

I stood there, openmouthed for a moment or so, then rushed away, all star struck and much too shy to say "helloIhaveyourbookandwowyouguysarecuteinreallife." And then I spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out what on earth I'd done with my passport (I'd stuck it between the pages of my book in all the excitement).

In other news, The Ice Cream for Money Exchange is totally the name of my new band.

Some family photos

2008-05-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

My grandmother and my aunt Carol, hiding behind the rhubarb leaves

One thing I always do when visiting my grandparents is pore through all the family albums. It's just a more elaborate kind of narcissism, I suppose, but I've always been somewhat soothed by looking at these sort of reflections out into the past.

It seems to soothe my grandma, too. She's in the early stages of dementia, and is often scared or sad, but I brought in some albums yesterday, and she and I had a lot of fun talking about her mom and dad, and her uncle Bruno (a dentist who made a set of bridgework for his elderly beagle), and the long hair my uncle Brian sported for "just a short while" in the 1970's, and how my dad's bedroom was filled with so many gadgets that it was hard to find the bed (note to grandma: nothing's changed on that front).

I've been taking pictures of some of the photos I especially like with my cell phone camera. I feel like a bit of a sneak thief, but I actually really like the look of these snapshots-of-snapshots.

Grandma in hat, on boat. My aunt Carol's there in the background.

My grandparents on the steps at camp, sometime in the late 60's. My great grandmother Erna Heininger next to my grandma. That's the top of my great-uncle Clem's head there in front of my grandpa.

Me and my dad, circa 1982 (ish?).

My sister and me. Mary's on the porch at camp. I'm smack dab in the middle of the awkward stage.

My grandma with her mother.

Smallness and Bigness

2008-05-29T23:26:00.000-07:00

I'm in Vancouver, visiting my grandmother, who's in the hospital. It's been making for strange, tiring days that I'm going to have to sit on for a bit before I try to write for public consumption. This is a piece about my grandma that I wrote for her birthday last year. I found it tonight whilst rooting around in my grandmother's mementos looking for things to bring in to the hospital with me tomorrow.

“Grandmama Erika weighs less than nothing,” my sister told me once when we were little. “Literally.” And while that’s not entirely accurate, one could be forgiven for thinking it’s true. Granddaddy Alan once told me she that the only way that Grandmama could top one hundred pounds would be for her to put on all her winter clothes at once and dunk herself in the lake. I’ve been taller than she is forever now -- a giantess enfolding her small shoulders in my large and unwieldy arms every time we meet. My grandmother seems made of smallness.

You’d be wrong, however, to assume a corresponding fragility. Soon after Brian and I first moved to San Francisco, we headed up to Vancouver for an American Thanksgiving in Canada. Grandmama Erika had just entered her eighties, older than she’d ever been before (which is the way that these things work, I suppose), and on the flight up I was afraid that she’d be ancient. I was afraid I’d find her reduced somehow.

I needn’t have worried. Grandmama was the same as ever, guiding us on walks through the neighborhood and rooting out family photos and other artifacts for me to examine. By the time Brian and I tottered down to breakfast in the mornings, she would have already attended an exercise class, or met with some social group or other. Coffee would be percolating on the stove, and bowls with whole grain cereal and a banana on the side would be set out on the table.

Many of my memories of Grandmama’s house involve food: sitting in the morning sun at breakfast; lunches of walnut bread and soup and tofu; the three of us – Grandmama, Brian and I -- watching a coyote poke through the backyard as we clear up our dishes.

Grandmama’s kitchen is a warm room, built to suit its cook perfectly, with workspaces and cabinets and sinks exactly where you’d want them. There’s an appreciation for food here, both for the way it tastes and the nutrients it contains. Meals with Grandmama incorporate every food group, and ingredients in their most natural state, unprocessed feasts imparting energy rather than lassitude.

And so we were perpetually up for adventure, for walks in the park and all around Vancouver. At the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, she entertained Brian and me with anecdotes about the construction of the museum and the artists that she and granddaddy had known. Outside, she blazed trails through overgrowth and up hillsides as we investigated the Haida House complex. Standing by an eroded memorial pole, I turned to watch Brian and Grandmama as they walked around a large structure. Eagles were circling overhead in the large overcast sky, and Grandmama’s red coat stood out sharply against the gray clouds, small but bright.

Toons for Tuesday

2008-05-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's not exactly Tuesday. And this isn't exactly a cartoon. And I haven't exactly been regular about posting cartoons, either. But look! I made this! On me tablet.

I'm glad to be using the tablet again. Because it was my last big purchase before New College stopped paying me, my relationship with it has been a little fraught these past few months: a constant cycle of guilt-and-non-use. Luckily, it's a fun toy, and now that we've broken that cycle, I forsee many happily wasted hours spent doodling on the laptop. Hurrah!

Obama: For the Birds

2008-05-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

Or rather, the birds are for Obama.

Fasting

2008-05-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of talking about myself. That's the hazard of freelancing: I sit around all day in my own company, then go out into the world armed with nothing but anecdotes about myself and my own little adventures. I am my own crazy co-worker, my own flaky boss. I find myself wondering: could I give up the first-person pronoun for a week, converse soley about other people's thoughts and the world of abstract ideas?

Would it be really annoying if I tried? Or would it be the best thing, ever?

Cream of Asparagus Soup, used three ways

2008-05-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

Even though I'm a vegetarian, I've always liked the idea of using the whole buffalo. So I'm always inordinately proud when I manage to use something in it's entirety, or make something from scratch, using only the materials at hand. And both, well, both is the coup de gras.

So, last night, Brian and I had been working in his studio all day, which means that I'd had Brian's special lunch for lunch: to wit, pasta and red sauce, served in a tupperware bucket. Seriously, he makes up a batch a week.

Anyway, so I wanted something veggie heavy to go with our regular Thursday night viewing schedule (Supernatural and Lost). My body was craving the vitamins, and besides, the use-it-or-lose-it drawer* in the fridge was close to overflowing.

In the freezer, I had a some frozen leftovers from a batch of cream of asparagus soup I made earlier in the week (substitute veggie broth for chicken and leave out the melon balls and you've got my recipe).

In need of some heartier veggie fare than just some more soup, I threw together some mushrooms, root veggies and greens in a pot, cooked them with a bit of flour and leftover creamy soup, then plopped an undifferentiated mass of biscuit dough on top and baked it in the oven, making a sort of vegetable pot pie. It was yum.

*< heloise > Readers: Have you ever had this happen? Your CSA sends kale three weeks running, and now your refrigerator's got more greens than the Ralph Nader fan club. Next thing you know, the veggie bin's packed, and there's three-week old kale rotting at the bottom. What to do?

One solution is to designate one crisper drawer for 'this weeks delivery.' Ours is the one on the left. Each week, new veggies go in the 'this week' bin, and leftovers from the previous week are moved over into the 'lose it or lose it' drawer. Make an effort to use the older veggies first, composting or freezing veggies that are at or close to expiring. < /heloise >

It's My Birthday Too, Yeah

2008-04-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

When we took the cat to the vet earlier this year, we discovered that his estimated date of birth was in April, 1997. So of course, for simplicity's sake if nothing else, we decided he'd share April 23rd with me.

911 is known for his vicious nature. When we first met him, at his old house over on 19th street, the many contractors working next door studiously avoided him. Neighborhood children learned the hard way that not every cat in a sunbeam wants to be petted. Brian and I sported long scratches down our arms for months on end (that's my arm he's mauling in the above photo).

At first I worried, given his Monster Cat reputation, that I'd never come to like 9. When we first moved in, he was almost feral, spending most of his days and all his nights outside in the neighboring yards. I'd sit on the back porch at sunset, and he'd sometimes come and sit next to me. If I was still and quiet, he'd even curl up beside me, his body barely touching mine.

I joked with Brian that it was like parenting a teenager: every show of affection was on 9's terms. If he deigned to sit beside me, I'd better not acknowledge him, lest he hiss and scratch and run away. He'd talk to me when he was hungry, grunting in satisfaction when I put food in his bowl. And he liked to know we were around. As he grew accustomed to our presence, he'd follow us from room to room, not going so far as to hang out with us, but seeking out our company nonetheless. The first time he sat on my lap, I didn't move for hours, for fear of breaking the spell.

He's a mischief maker, a rough-and-tumble puss, the kind of cat that prickles and scratches his way into people's affections. He bites when he's happy, not hard enough to break the skin, just enough to let you know he's there.

Since we moved in with Hope last September, he's formed an uneasy bond with the other animals in the house. They squabble and fight, and Nine chases the dog down the hall sometimes, particularly when Re Dag's been trying to sneak his food. Sometimes Nine disappears for days, and I worry that we did the wrong thing bringing him here, that our prickly solo cat's not suited for communal pet-hood.

But the front window's where truces are made. There's only so much sunbeam, and the pets will go to great lengths to pretend one another aren't there. When I came home today, there were three beasts in the window: Phoenix, Nine, and the dog.

This is unprecedented. I've seen Nine share the space with one other cat before, but never the dog. I guess our little rapscallion is growing up.

Happy birthday kitten. We're so happy you're here.

And by 'we,' I mean Brian and I. The dog ain't signing your birthday card just yet.

Hello, hello

2008-04-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

So, I've been cooking a lot lately, that self-indulgent sort of cooking that's all about smells and tastes and process. Today, for example, I made a huge pot of stock with my CSA box scraps. Then I used five cups of that to make a cream of asparagus soup (with tarragon, which was yummmy).

But the yummiest, most self indulgent thing I've made recently was last Saturday. Hope went to the farmer's market, and discovered some early strawberries at Eatwell Farm's booth (they haven't made it to the weekly box yet). When she got home, I had a sudden strong sense-memory of the strawberry omelets they used to serve upstairs at Grendel's Den, back when Grendel's had an upstairs. So I set out to make one for Brian and my lunch, except that I have no patience for omelets and opted for a scramble. Here's what I came up with:

Ingredients:

one small shallot, chopped
a handfull of spinach, roughly chopped
1/2 cup or so sliced strawberries
4 eggs
grated gouda cheese (a half cup? Less? I don't know)
2 tbs or so of butter
water or milk
a few sprigs of mint
salt & pepper

Beat the eggs in a small bowl, and add about a cupped palm full of water or milk. Add salt if you like.

Melt one and a half tbs butter in a medium pan over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook, stirring, until it's fairly soft. Add the spinach, and cook until the spinach is wilty and very nearly done.

Add the strawberries and cook until they're sort of jammy (it won't take long). Add mint. Transfer the strawberry/shallot/spinach mixture to a bowl and cover it to keep it warm.

Add more butter, let it melt, and then add the eggs. Count to 30 slowly (I use the ol' "one chimpanzee, two chimpanzee" method). Push the edges of the eggs toward the center of the pan, letting the eggs fill in and cook along the edges. Give up all pretense that you're going to make an omelet and push the eggs around willy-nilly until they've almost set. Add grated gouda.

Throw in the berry mixture, and add salt and pepper to taste. Serves two.

And now for something completely different

2008-04-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

A cat playing the theramin

via gawker

Oh dear. Now she's a hat blogger.

2008-03-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

So, despite the steady and studious application of conditioner, my hat barely grew.

It might fit somebody's young'un, but it certainly won't fit my meganoggin.

But then, just as I was fixing to go out and buy some borax, Brian came home with an Easter present:

And all was right in the world.

Grr

2008-03-21T13:08:00.001-07:00

Two days ago, I bought a hat. It was kind of a frivolous purchase, but I'd just been paid a few bucks for watching a neighbor's cat over Easter weekend, and I'd wanted this hat since I first saw it in the shop window last September. So when I walked by the store and noticed it was on sale, I figured what the heck -- if you want something for 7 months straight, it's obviously not an impulse buy, right? And knit hats can be worn year round in our chilly little city.

Anyway, cute hat, right?

That is, it was until I accidentally put it through the laundry:

For Lack of a Better Idea

2008-03-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

The Men in My Life
In no particular order, save, perhaps, order of appearance. Or maybe height. I don't know.

1.
2.
3.
4.

Recipes Have Lists

2008-03-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty damn proud of my cookie recipe. It's adapted from Rodale's Naturally Great Foods Cookbook, by Nancy Albright, which I picked up for seven dollars at the Briarwod Bookshop in Annapolis my freshman year of college. I bought the book at 2:53 Pm on October 15th, 1995. How do know? Because the receipt is still marking the page of the first recipe I ever made from it (Tomato Quiche, p 207).

Anyway, here goes. These days I almost always double this recipe (or, as Brian puts it, "make enough"):

Ingredients:
2 eggs, beaten (we've started getting eggs with our weekly veggie delivery. Frakkin' awesome).
1/2 cup oil (when I double the recipe, I use a 1/2 cup oil and a stick of butter)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup milk
1 3/4 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (lately, I've been adding a 1/2 cup sunflower seeds and a 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds to the doubled recipe).
1/2 cup peanut butter

In a bowl combine the wet ingredients. In another bowl, combine dry ingredients. Stir wet mixture into dry mixture. Let dog lick out the bowl you mixed the wet ingredients in. Allow to stand for 30 minutes until the oatmeal has absorbed some of the liquid. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Drop spoonfulls of the mixture onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for about 12 minutes.

Curve

2008-03-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

Things I Made Today

1. Broth. Also known as 'cleaning out the veggie bin.'
2. Potato salad.
3. Cookies.
4. A funny little sign to go on the dishwasher so that we can tell by looking whether the dishes are clean or dirty. I used magnets!

Things I Learned Today:

1. The dishwasher door is plastic.

And He's Back!

2008-03-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

The cat just wandered in and demanded food. Where did he go? What did he do? Whatever it was, he doesn't want me out of his sight. The feeling is mutual.

Things I Don't Want to Do Today, Part 2

2008-03-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

1. Blog

But that just seems unfriendly. So here's what we had for dinner tonight. Elaine and Nona, a couple from across the street, came over. Brian and I want to be them when we grow up (not that they're any older than us, really).

From WildHarvest.com:

Spring Wild Harvest Ragout With Fiddlehead Greens & Morels

Ingredients:

* 1/2 pound fiddleheads, cleaned (link)
* 1/2 pound "baby" pattypan squash, trimmed
* 1/2 pound baby carrots, trimmed
* 3/4 cup shelled fresh peas
* 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
* 1/2 pound pearl onions, blanched in boiling water for 1 minute, peeled, and trimmed
* 2 thyme sprigs
* 1 bay leaf
* 1 cup chicken broth
* 1/4 pound fresh morels, cleaned and trimmed and sliced
* 3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
* 1 large garlic clove, minced

Boil the fiddleheads in salted water for 4 minutes, or until they are crisp-tender. Drain and plunge in ice water to stop the cooking. When cool, drain in a colander. Repeat the process of boiling and cooling with the squash and the carrots. Boil the peas for 2 to 3 minutes, or until they are just tender, and drain them.

In a large heavy skillet combine 2 tablespoons of the butter, the onions, the thyme, the bay leaf and 1/4 cup of the broth and simmer the mixture, covered, for 5 minutes. Add the morels and 1/2 cup of the remaining broth and simmer the mixture, covered, for 10 minutes, or until the morels are tender.

Add the fiddleheads, the squash, the carrots, and the remaining 1/4 cup broth and simmer the mixture, covered, for 1 minute. Add the peas, the parsley, the mint, and the garlic and simmer, covered, for 1 minute.

Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, stirring until the butter is just melted. Discard the bay leaf and season with salt and pepper.

Serves 6

I left out the onions and garlic (Hope can't have 'em), and used dried mushrooms, with the soaking liquid from the mushrooms (plus some diced tomatoes) in lieu of broth. It was yummy, and very spring.

I also made a beet salad with creme fraiche and mustard dressing from a recipe that I cut out of the San Francisco Chronicle shortly after we moved here. If you're good, I'll type that out & post it. Someday.

The cat still hasn't come home. Come home, kitten. We miss you.

List

2008-03-08T15:05:00.000-08:00

1. Grapefruit: I don't like it, but I like the juice.
2. Pickwick Papers: a book that should be enjoyed someplace cozy, with a ready supply of tea and treats.
3. Bears: furry.
4. Weather: sunny but chilly
5. Sleep: sleepy.
7. Hats: Only extra large hats fit me. I'm mildly concerned that if I go in for steriod injections, my head will grow even larger, like that baseball guy.
8. Anne of the Island: In audio-book form, the best thing ever.
9. Beets: delicious.

Things I Don't Want to Do Today

2008-03-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

The cat's still missing, and I really just don't feel like doing anything today, except sitting in the backyard, mournfully waiting. But time and tide, blah blah blah. Plus the whole NaBloPoMo thing. So, here goes:

1. Blog: I really don't like blogging just for the sake of blogging. And yet I sign up for every 'blog daily' challenge that comes my way. Hm.

2. Go to the zoo: This is how the American empire falls: soft, decadent middle-class white women living on unemployment, complaining about their leisure activities. Oh woe. What loathsome exertion will I be forced into next? Croquet?

3. Go to my writer's group: Yet again, what a whiny toad I am! Oh woe, I shall be forced to drink wine, eat soup, and talk shop. The indignity!

A List of Books Within Arms Reach, and Their Locations

2008-03-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

1. Storyteller, by Kate Wilhelm: to my right, near my elbow. I'm wishing I'd reread it before submitting my application to Clarion. I'm worried I didn't make it absolutely clear how much I need me some writing instruction right now -- I'm all atmosphere and no plot these days.

2. Getting Started as a Freelance Writer, by Robert W. Bly: On the floor by the bed. I should pick that up and get crackn'. Yup.

3. The Testament of Gideon Mackm by James Robertson: On the floor, too, where I dropped it after finishing it two nights go. That's a damn good book, y'all. (No pun intended. It's about the devil).

4. Achilles, by Elizabeth Cook: A little further along the floor, having slid off the Testament of Gideon Mack to make a break for the bookshelf. Not so fast, Achilles. I ain't through with you.

5. Freddy and Fredericka, by Mark Helpern: On my nightstand. I wondered where that had gotten to. My mother called me in the middle of the night two weeks ago, adamant that I should go out and buy this book at my earliest convenience. I meant to read it after my surgery, but confused myself by putting it in a spot where a sane person might keep books she intended to read in bed. I don't know what I was thinking.

6. Salome, by Oscar Wilde: under Freddy and Frederika. Well, I hope they got along ok.

7. Proust and the Squidby Maryanne Wolf. On the nightstand, too. There are at least four books in our house right now that namecheck Proust in the title. When did Proust become shorthand, and what is he shorthand for?

8. The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, by Margaret Lobenstein: On the nightstand, wedged under the lamp. I should really pick that up, already.

9. A two-year-old copy of Tin House: that's a great magazine, but I wish I could find the uncanny women issue.

A trip through the archives

2008-03-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like a long to-do list for stirring up the ol' busywork. So, I just went through my November 2006 archive and added the "Nablopomo" tag, just in case the cyber archaeologists of the future need help sorting out which months I blogged every day, and why. I don't usually like reading through things I've written here (so self-absorbed! So poorly proofread!), but in this case, it was kinda fun.

One entry was oddly timely, as I've just discovered this video on youtube, answering the age old question, "Is that something I saw as a kid, or did I make it up?"

I also added tags so that you can track entries on the cat or my neck lump surgery. Oh, and here's a bonus, of sorts: I also tracked down this old secret blog that I'd nearly forgotten about, which I started before I told my parents about the mysterious lump in my neck (I didn't want to worry them, see?). You can witness my thinly disguised panic here: NoraBora.vox.com

Things I'm Not Freaking Out About Today

2008-03-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

1. The cat's gone missing again, the first time he's ever pulled off this dissapearing act twice in as many weeks (usually he waits a good year or so between Greta Garbo impersonations). Whatever, kitten, I'm over it.

2. The weird itchy-pully feeling along the edges of my new scar. Whatever. It does this every time.

3. The nagging feeling that I have plans tonight. If I'm supposed to do something with you, please call me?

Medical Tourism

2008-03-04T13:58:00.000-08:00

I got my stitches out today, and made an appointment to get steroid injections which will hopefully minimize my scarring this time around (and maybe improve my baseball game!). The appointment is with a dermatologist, which got me thinking about the wide variety of doctors this lump (and this now post lump collarbone) has seen.

Types of Doctors I Have Seen for One Little Body Part

1. Dr. N: My primary care physician many moons ago, who told me that the chronic pain in my hand and arm was, "probably nothing," and that I was "so young, what could be wrong with you?" Then she advised me to get manicures with hand massages.

2. Dr. B: A Chiropractor, several years later. I got a free consultation with my gym membership, and ended up seeing him for a few months in an attempt to eradicate the arm pain. When it just wouldn't go away, he discovered the lump poking up from beneath my clavicle. He determined that the lump wasn't a swollen muscle, and advised me to get some sort of follow-up. The day he discovered the lump, he let me stay on the water massage table longer than usual, and I was afraid he suspected something terrible was wrong with me. Later I found out he thought it might be the edge of a lung tumor, poking out by my neck. I guess that happens sometimes.

3. Various Residents at the sliding scale clinic at St. Mary's: The one I saw most often was convinced it was nothing but a sprained muscle at first, and got progressively more worried as more and more results came back inconclusive. They knew I had a tumor, but couldn't figure out what it was.

4. The guy down in radiology who did a needle biopsy: The needle was huge, and it hurt more than I could have ever expected (which makes sense when your realize the tumor was made up of nerve cells). He was the first person to tell me, "This thing's going to have to come out, no matter what." I was so scared, I cried the whole walk home.

5. Dr. P: A Vascular Surgeon who reminded me of my cousin Claire. It turned out that she had grown up in Massachusetts (like me!), and had attended Tufts medical school, right by where Brian and I used to live. She went in to take out my tumor, but realized that it was part of the nerve and that I'd need to see a specialist to get it out. She was really nice.

6. Dr B: The Peripheral Neurologist who took out the tumor, finally. He's one of the best in the business for the strange little tumor I had. People come from all over the world to see him, but I only needed to go 3 stops on the N train. His waiting room has the most amazing view of San Francisco I've ever seen. The surgery took nine hours. He's got a great bedside manner.

7. Dr L: An Orthopedic Surgeon who was part of the team doing the 9 hour surgery. She's the one who repaired my collarbone (which had to be broken to get the tumor out), and who put in the plate that held it together when they were done. She's also the one who took the plate out again last week. It seems like she's got a good sense of humor. Or at least she laughs at my dumb jokes, which makes me feel better about things.

8. Various medical students who assisted in the de-tumoring. When I woke up after the surgery, all these young medical students kept coming to check on me, each of them saying they'd been there for the surgery. They were all really excited with every little move I made in the recovery room, and twittered appreciatively at my lame jokes. Huh, I thought, my brain still foggy from the drugs, I must have looked really cute in there. Later, I realized that I'd just had a really cool, rare tumor, and that my rock star surgeons had done a great job at not damaging any of the nerves going to my arm. I could've lost the use of my thumb or pinky. As it was, my hand was alternately numb and painful for months, like it was constantly waking up from having been slept on.

9. The Physical Therapists at the Hand Clinic: Dr. B referred me to a hand clinic run by Dr. L at the hospital down the street from us. At the end of each session, I got to stick my hand in a machine full of corn husks with hot air that blew the husks around. The nerves in my hand were still waking up, and the hot air and husks felt indescribably good. The therapist I saw most was named Olga, and told me a funny story about holding a baby crocodile on a trip to Africa. After my last appointment she said, "Go ahead! Just live your life, you'll be fine."

10. A Dermatologist, and maybe a plastic surgeon for the scars: and that should be it. As I said to Brian today, if we could get Proctologist involved somehow, that would be impressive.

Signs That I May Have Been Unemployed for Too Long

2008-03-03T22:27:00.000-08:00

1. I've find myself thinking that I should embroider me, Hope and Brian's names onto napkins, each in colors appropriate to our personalities.

2. Days of the week have no meaning to me. I find myself wondering, why are people working today?? It's Wednesday, for God's sake.

2a. Oh, wait, it's Monday. My bad.

3. Three bottles of wine seems like a decent amount for four people to drink with their dinner. On Monday.

4. How people have any money whatsoever is an absolute mystery,

5. A stranger starts a conversation on the street, and I am completely unable to string words together into a sentence.

6. Our freezer is full of soups, each recipe having required several hours' preparation. Somehow, the day that we find ourselves in need of a quick, no-prep dinner never comes.

7. Planning a trip to the desert for my birthday, I momentarily have trouble understanding why Wednesday is a difficult day for people to make a ten hour drive.

8. This has nothing to do with the list, but there's a meteor shower the night before my birthday this year. Y'all should totally check it out.

Kepler!

2008-03-02T18:15:00.001-08:00

Johannes Kepler is one of my favorite scientists. I'm writing a story right now wherein one of the characters is named John Kepler, and even though the character's not entirely based on the original J.K., I've been having fun researching biographical information to work in here and there. So, since it's March, here's a list:

Some Interesting Stuff About Johannes Kepler, Plus Random Facts You May Find Useful

1. He was born on December 27th, the feast day of St. John the Apostle.

1a. In Dante's Paradiso, St. John explains to Dante that he (St. J to the A, that is), like all the saints, ascended into heaven in his spiritual form. The only two to ever ascend corporeally (that is, body and soul together), John reveals, were Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

2. In the early 1600s, Johannes Kepler wrote a manuscript that was later published under the title Somnium, or The Dream. In it, he explored what astronomical observations would be like from another planet, hypothesizing that, from the moon, one could observe the movements of the earth in the same manner as the Earth's inhabitants can track the moon's.

2a. Somnium is sometimes described as the first work of science fiction. It tells the story of a journey to the moon, accomplished after the mother of the narrator consults a demon and learns the secret of space travel. It also incorporates autobiographical elements from Kepler's own life, such as his apprenticeship with Tycho Brahe.

2b. Some years later, Kepler's mother was put on trial for witchcraft, perhaps in part due to the events described in Somnium. After successfully defending her, Kepler added 223 footnotes to the story (which go on several pages longer than the story itself), which explain the story's allegorical and scientific elements. He also made the trip to the moon take place inside a dream.

I just might do this every day

2008-03-01T16:58:00.000-08:00

So, in case you haven't heard, every Month is National Blog Posting Month nowadays. I haven't decided if I'm really doing it this month for sure, but until I do, I better pretend I am. If that makes sense.

So anyway, March's theme is lists. Here goes:

Reasons I can't get a job just yet, as there's so much more still need to accomplish during my unemployment. Such as:

1. Joining the Craft Gym and learning a trade (with God as my witness, I'll never manage offices again!).

2. Rediscovering the joy of reading (believe it or not, I developed a certain anxiety around the activity when I was teaching and working full time this past semester. I can't enjoy a book without the nagging feeling that there's some real work I'm neglecting somewhere).

3. Walking more. Particularly in places where there are ruins, views, and/or sea breezes.

4. Catching up on my correspondence.

5. Cleaning the goddamn bedroom already (there's nothing like worrying that your missing cat has been smothered under a pile of dirty laundry).

6. Writing the great American novel, or at least finishing a short story for once, rather than freezing halfway through, unable to edit or move forward.

7. Cleaning the damn dog doo from the back yard so that I can enjoy the afternoon sun.

8. Exploring the still shockingly plentiful San Francisco neighborhoods, museums, and scenic spots that I have yet to visit, plumb for riches, and adore.

I think this is better than actually I did at 8th grade science

2008-03-01T15:30:00.001-08:00

Thank God no one asked me to do a graph!

via Trixie-lou's blog.

The Cat Came Back, the Very Next Day

2008-03-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

Well, the cat came home finally at 6:45 this morning, swaggering casually into the kitchen while Hope was feeding the other animals breakfast.

I tend to read into things too much. I remember when I was eight or so, on a church trip to Cape Cod, asking the minister why God created mosquitoes. He said, in his sonorous preacher voice,"To teach us patience," and all the grown-ups laughed. But I immediately started crafting different, more nuanced answers, whole sermons about how the lowly mosquito should make us examine the nature of our our own relationships, how our desires & appetites affect the world around us and blah blah. We are never so well-assured that we speak the truth of the universe as when we are eight.

Which is basically a longer-winded way of saying what I said before: I overthink things. So when the cat was still missing at bedtime, I wondered: do I take things too much for granted? Should I be happy with what I've got, and not sweat the slings and arrows, just so long as my sweet happy life with Brian and the cat stays intact? Or do cats just sometimes need to take a day, to celebrate leap year and do whatever it is they do when we're not watching?

Anyway. I'm just glad he's home.

Worry

2008-02-29T12:47:00.000-08:00

Once every year or so, the cat goes missing for the better part of a day. Because he does it so rarely, it always throws me; I just expect him to be shadowing my every move, sleeping just near enough but not touching while I read or write, yowling and biting if my arm strays to close.

This morning, Brian washed my hair for me in the sink. I've got stitches on my shoulder that mustn't get wet, so I put on my raincoat and wrapped a dishtowel around my neck. The warm water felt so delightful on my filthy little head, warm and soft and full of memories of how my mom used to wash my hair when I was little, with warm water in a tin pitcher. We had a picture book that showed vikings bathing the same way.

Anyway. I'm sure the cat will be home soon. In fact, I keep expecting him to walk in as I type this, a swaggering, bald-ass* cat conjured by my deliberate busywork.

It's been a long week, kitten. Won't you please come home?

* I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but the cat's butt was half shaved for his surgery last month. It's just starting to grow back, and its all soft and downy like a baby chicken. A baby chicken attached to the posterior of a very crabby cat.

And I'm still on the Vicodin, so this may not be all that cogent

2008-02-27T22:24:00.000-08:00

So. This past Tuesday, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges announced that it was terminating New College of California's accreditation. As most (if not all) of you are aware, New College is where I earned both my masters degrees, where I finished my bachelors, and where I taught as an adjunct from the fall trimester 2006 to fall 2007.

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this. No, wait, scratch that; I have plenty of feelings on the subject -- they just don't sort out well.

A big part of me is just crushingy embarrassed. In this thoroughly modern age, when we all get our news of the internets and it's just as easy for people to make their opinions known in the comments section of the San Francisco Chronicle as it is on this lovely little blog o' mine, I can't help but be aware of how stupid we all look. And I can see how tempting a target it is: the hubris of it all! The stupid, willfully wide-eyed optimism of running a school as if ideals were all that mattered! As if all you needed were a building and a bunch of good intentions.

But the truth of the matter is, the ideals weren't what did the place in. Neither were the smart, starry-eyed utopians who were fool enough to learn and teach there over the years. It was just poorly run, poorly overseen, and didn't have the time or money to right itself before the end came.

One of the things I keep coming back to, though, is how happy I am with the education I got there. New College was the third school I attended full-time (the fifth I attended for any time at all), and, with its strong social justice angle, was the perfect top-off to my more previously literature-and-tweed-heavy academic career. I really did learn a lot there, as both a student and a teacher. And isn't that the true worth of my degrees? The effect upon my noggin?

Still, though, it's sad, and shaming, and just... yeah. Sad.

In other but not unrelated news, I ran an errand recently for an old poetry prof of mine (also recently cast adrift by New College). He gave me this poem as a thank-you.

Just in case you can't read it:

After Wang Wei

Chilling down by the water
stopped to watch clouds drift
clouds drift clouds drift
bumped into mr. green
talked laughed forgot
it was time to go