Why Don't I Just Make Myself Scarce For Awhile

Four days until we abandon our home to go live in a van down by the river.

Perhaps we will become river people, with tambourines and seitan. Perhaps we will braid our hair and dance barefoot.

It was 106 degrees here today and we don't have air conditioning. It's 9:30 pm and I'm just now coming back to life after collapsing, lifeless, around four. Just when I thought I couldn't live another minute, Mr. V made me cold shrimp po'boys with mango-kiwi salad and I was like new for at least ten minutes.

Time for packing. Time for vodka slush puppies. Time for Firefly on Netflix.

Bear with me while I'm scarce for awhile. I might not have wi-fi again until mid July. If I go four days without tweeting about alcohol, Indy, or Supernatural, call the police. No wait, call Jensen Ackles.

That is of dire import.

xoxo
-V

(tell him river people live by a sacred code, and that these margaritas aren't going to mix themselves.)

Home Is Wherever I'm With Me

When it became clear that we were going to have nowhere to live for the month of July, the obvious choice was to take a vacation. Mr. V had been offered the use of his mother's camper to stay in, but what is left the daughters? Nothing but the darning, as usual.

When it became clear I was going to take a vacation, the natural thing to do was to name it Rainbow Tour. I planned to drive through Idaho all the way up to Portland to visit my sister-in-law, Mercy, who lives there in typical Portland fashion with her musician husband, both of them working at an organic bakery to make ends meet, maintain street cred, and eat croissants. The dream of the 90's, y'all. After a week there, I was going to travel south down the coast to visit Blood Sister A in Sacramento, where she works at the Capitol building for the Speaker of the Something and the Representative of the Other-what, dealing with a lot of you-know-what-shit while trying to improve people's lives. She watches C-Span all day and cares about it, it's hard to believe we're related. (What do you mean, "we're not"?)

Immediately I did what any self-respecting artist does to prepare for a tour--I started soliciting donations and letting my leg hair grow out. I began the process of choosing a tour t-shirt, and selected Rainbow Tour's official album. (It's magnificent). Excitement grew as I planned trips to the zoo, and Mt. Hood National Forest, and A's friend's houseboat in the Bay area (see how I talk just like a local, now?). Meanwhile Mr. V sent encouraging texts about how much he loves my spontaneous side, things like "This is awesome, I get to work all day and live in a trailer down by the river while you take off on a magical bus tour"*. It's a sacrifice, I know, but I'm willing to take vacations whenever necessary and it's what he admires most about me.

(Mr. V keeps saying we need to become less impulsive, and I agree, only it might be working very well but backwards because I just left to take my husband to pick up a trailer and returned with an antique victrola and a pair of antlers.)

In this frenzy of preparation, Blood Sister A wisely pointed out that the more excited I got about Rainbow Tour, the more likely we were to find a place to live.

And that's what happened.

Yay?

I'm just kidding. I knew this was a win-win situation all along. Either I take Rainbow Tour, or I get a home to live in, and we found a cute rental. It has hard wood floors, which is good, because I have sworn a blood oath against carpet and am honor bound to burn any the moment I lay eyes on it. I got to pick the bedroom paint colors, and it has a massive hulking lawn that I'm going to get to mow all by my lonesome, because guess what? The girls and I are moving out on July 12th, and Mr. V cannot join us until October. I told him I hoped he was feeling nice and sorry for me now, and that's when he said we could hire people to mow the  football field-sized lawn for me.

So you see, he's not heartless after all.

Right now Mr. V is out working in the hot sun--it's supposed to hit 102 degrees here today--moving things into storage, so I'd better get off my whimsical rainbow blog, which smells like tulips and rain and tastes like Bordeaux (or will, once technology catches up) and pack a couple boxes for the girls to add to their throne.

xoxo
-V


*actual text from Mr. V. You might have to be him or me to understand how jokingly he meant this and how hard we laughed over it. Or you might just have to be a sociopathic narcissist like I am.

Moving, Divorce, and Other Things That Take Two Hours

Mr. V asked me if I wanted to get ice cream for my birthday, but I said no because if there's one thing I hate more than your average theater-goer, it's people eating ice cream. If it is possible for an adult human to lick an ice cream cone without coming off as smug, I've never seen it. I take pride in the fact that I'm not superstitious, but I'm neurotic enough about ridiculous things to make up for it. When Mr. V eats bananas or crunchy food, I leave the room. If you think this is harsh, I ask you why do you want our marriage to fail? Heartless, really.

Here's a funny thing. When it shook down that we were going to be moving to a place fifteen-hundred miles away, I thought: maybe this will be the one time in our life when we'll get movers. You know, since OB is footing the bill. I didn't assume ,since my mother taught me that assumptions make the apocalypse occur. Well, Noah got the details of the offer and since no mention of movers was made, I forgot about it. No big deal. A week went by and I heard from a friend that the two other families who are moving with us are, in fact, expecting movers any day now. Immediately I texted this intel to Mr. V, but he didn't reply. He was righteously angry like I was, OR SO I ASSUMED. When I got home, I mentioned it again. "Harold and Donna are getting movers," I said pointedly. Mr. V's smile was sheepish bordering on panic. "I know," he said. "They offered to get us movers but I turned it down."

I brewed coffee. We're pretentious about our coffee so it took fifteen minutes. I poured a mug, stirred in cream, took a sip, and then spit it dramatically into the sink. "Very funny," I said after spectacular spray. (Mr.V was still there, he'd known what was coming)."When will the movers come?"

"Hahaha!" Mr V said stiffly. He didn't laugh, he actually spoke it. Ha ha ha. It's what he always does when he doesn't think I'm funny. I keep telling him this courtesy laugh is going to destroy our marriage. He just smiles and eats a banana."But seriously. We don't need movers. It takes two hours to move."

I drank coffee and spit it out again. Mr. V and I have moved so many times I have lost count. "We need to get you to the hospital," I said. "Clearly you are in shock. Otherwise you'd know good and well it takes two damn days to move. Not two damn hours."

"We can do it ourselves!" he said. "It's stupid to have movers when we can do it ourselves! It's a waste of money--"

"But Harold and Donna--and their kid gloves--"

"We're a profit-sharing company now, Brittany," said Mr. V, going all Pete Campbell on me. (Oh, he's gonna love that one.) "The cost of movers comes out of that. If I hire movers now, we'll all get a smaller bonus in March."

I tried to spit my coffee again, but honestly. His pragmatism just sucked all the heart right out of me. The one time in my life I could have had movers, I swear to god. Next time someone offers you  movers you damn well take them, I said, like Scarlet O'Hara with no makeup on. Turning down movers isn't a thing I can abide. I just hope someone at OB realizes that Mr.V is forgoing the assistance of brawny college guys on a cross-country move to save them money, I really do.

Later that day we got word our landlord needed to show the house again. Our lease is up in two weeks, they insist we leave, and they still haven't found a new tenant. Every other time, I've scrambled around cleaning the house, but now I cried giddily to Mr. V that I didn't give a damn anymore! The landlord insists on showing our house, let it be messy. "He's gotta understand," I said, doing a not bad Pete Campbell myself, "that not helping out a young family is bad karma."

"Damn straight!" said Mr. V, and dropped the spaghetti-sauce pot he was holding on to the floor with a dramatic flair I quite admired. The next morning I remembered I had my own karma to worry about and spent my birthday morning scrambling around the house hiding the underwear and tampons Mr. V and I had tossed out of our drawers in our "hell with 'em!" glee. When we returned to our house after the showing, I went into my bedroom and saw said tampons sitting in full view atop my dresser drawer. At least it wasn't the item I was once forced to tell Indy was a "pink cucumber that mommy's friends gave her for a big fat joke, I mean a regular joke, isn't it silly?"**

One of the best things that happened on my birthday was M from The M Half calling me "inimitable" on twitter. That is my second favorite thing I've ever been called, right behind "feminazi" in high school, which is damn near impossible to beat. (I can say this now after hundreds of dollars spent on self-help books.) In a flush of joy, I turned to Mr. V. We were sitting in the Mayan theater waiting for Moonrise Kingdom to start, drinking beer and wine, hipsters all around us crunching popcorn loudly. Apparently that is the hipster thing to do now, along with slurping soda for hours (it's gone, you bastards, or it wouldn't slurp) and honestly hipsters, I think we could do better. "I'm like Joss Whedon before The Avengers*," I told him, wine-flushed and happy. "My audience isn't big, but it's the best."

"What nonsense are you referring to this time?" he asked me. M called me inimitable, I told him, and Mr. V said, "What's that mean? Annoying?"

I laughed very hard and told him he loved me. Afterwards we drank mojitos and ate arepas and salmon rolls that were only so-so, but it didn't matter this time. This is how our marriage works. We reveled in that flush of each other, smug like bastards eating ice cream. It's true.

Mr. V's sister Lucy, Ayla--I thought it was Indy, too--(with a peanut can), Mr. V's sister Sophie, Mr. V's sister Mercy, me, and Suzy, the wife of Mr. V's brother at OB. Whew. I'm sharing this picture
here because of reasons.

*It's true that I swing wildly between sickening grandiosity and extreme self-loathing, but Mr. V wouldn't have me any other way. Or so I allow myself to believe.


**Still, neither of these moments count as the most awkward thing I have endured. That title goes to the time a satellite dish installer asked to use my bathroom, abandoned it twenty minutes later in an unfragrant state, and when I went back in I saw I'd left a pair of underwear on the floor. I'm pretty much shame-proof now.

In My Mind I'm Going To Carolina and Also Yes In Real Life

Yesterday when two different people asked me, "So are you moving across the country or what?" I remembered how I've never really had a head for details.

(One of them was my mother).

So here it is. Mr. V came home and said unto me that it was official: they'd offered him a position in Brevard, he'd accepted it, and then instead of signing dotted lines they'd all drunk a pilsner on it because that is the kind of establishment we run, here.

Awesome! said I. Let's start packing for Carolina! but Mr. V said, No, you fool! They have no use for me in dixie until October and I'm sure you haven't forgotten how our lease here is up in three weeks. We have no where to go!

That was when I was like, oh look, how lovely. Some thoughtful person has placed this washing machine here so that I might lean on it while I cry. And Mr. V was like, that is not the direction I was hoping you would take this.

(Note to self: buy cheap champagne.)

The short of it is, we have a lot to do between now and June 30th at noon, when our landlord insists we must leave this house or be doomed forever. (Thanks for working with a family with two young children who are moving across the country, here! I totally understand how giving us one extra month would have literally killed you or made your legs turn into scissors and snakes grow out your nostrils, so no biggie!) Nobody get the impression that I'm freaking out, because I'm not freaking out at all. I just happen to like sleeping in my bathtub with a tube running directly from a box of wine to my mouth and the door taped shut and episode 5.4 of Supernatural, "The End", playing on a constant loop. Also I no longer have eyebrows but that is just how I choose to live!

Side note: When she was in college, my mom and her roommates had a really evil landlord and when they moved out, they left a dead fish tucked inside the walls, where it would slowly rot and he wouldn't be able to find the source of the stench. I WOULD NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

I'm excited. I'm really excited, and really happy, and I really don't know what we're going to do.

I wasn't joking about the champagne.

I'm unable to form too many complete sentences at once today, so I'm just going to leave you with some pictures of Brevard and Asheville my love, and call it a day.

xoxo
-V

First view of Brevard.

They have chocolate there, so I may survive our first winter.

Remember how I kept saying, "White Squirrel

Music Fest", and you were all like, well shit! I 

didn't know squirrels could play guitar! And I was like,

they don't, you idiots. They play the hurdy gurdy.

This keytar-playing squirrel was a real bastard, I could

just tell. Sometimes you can just tell.

Remember how I saw Joaquin Phoenix at the Square Root?

That's "him". He was on the phone with his agent and kept

yelling, "I told you not to make us follow the

squirrels. How the hell are we supposed to

beat that?"

Leaving Brevard to drive to the Atlanta airport, we came around

a corner and found this fellow. So there you have it.

Button your boots, Brevard.

Everything Is Illuminated

Last week I went in to Bookstore to turn in an application. I went kicking and screaming, against my own will, because--spoiler alert!--I don't want to go back to work. (Work away from home, whatever, you get my drift). I happened to get the manager. I mentioned that I had worked at Other Bookstore before and we had a chat. We had common acquaintances and co-workers, all good omens and signs. He gave me a sort of impromptu interview. Hours later, I was summoned for a real interview. Everything was swimming along just swimmingly. They needed someone to shelve books--my favorite thing, no joke--during the exact hours I wanted to work. Let me say: I present well in interviews, or at least, I think I do. I've never gone to an interview and not been offered a job. At first, I didn't entirely want the job, but by the interview's end, I did. I started to want it very badly. I want Noah to not have to work weekends anymore. He often works twelve or fourteen days in a row with no day off, did you know? He's getting tired.

Then a week passed and I was not offered a job. Instead I got a postcard informing me thatunfortunately Bookstore does not have a position to meet my qualifications at this time. I would like to blame the fact that I asked for an hourly pay rate that was above minimum wage.We pay our employees seven-fifty* an hour, they informed me. If I'd had coffee in my mouth, I wouldn't have spit it at them. I'd have taken my mug, walked across the room, and poured it over their heads. Seven dollars and fifty cents an hour. I'm not in prison. I am not sixteen. Neither is anyone who works there, how the hell do they do it? Full disclosure: I told them I could not work for less than $8.50 (I shame myself. It's a low stress job, ok? I'd asked for $9.50 on my app and they'd offered me bird seed, I had to capitulate some). I like to think this is why they didn't hire me. That or they had some friend apply. I hope you enjoy your seven bucks an hour, supervisor's bestie. I am unemployed but if we meet for coffee, it'll be my treat.

This is Bookstore we're talking about, and I did describe a time when I provided excellent customer service, so that might be what did me in.

Anyway, we had, in our minds, counted tiny chickens before they were worth more per hour than a 30-year-old freelance writer with a Bachelor's Degree and a passion for the job. I was bummed, and Noah was disappointed though valiant about it, all Mr. Fitzwilliams or whatever, saying "now now" and "there there" and "hail-fellow-well-met" and all that.

But we were discussing it after dinner, putting away the dishes and drinking free company beer and wondering what we are going to do now. And I realized that I still have this stupid idea that one day everything is going to work out. I thought I had moved beyond this fantasy after my financially disastrous 20's, but no. Despite all insurmountable evidence to the contrary, some stupid bird in my heart keeps chirping that one day, it will all come together. One day good fortune will smile and everything will be illuminated and my life will shine like sunny spots and copper pennies.

And I wonder when I'm going to wise up.

I'm not speaking out of depression or bitterness here, I'm just starting to wonder when brainless optimism runs its course. The ship does not always come in. Most people work very hard all their lives and I don't know why I think so highly of myself. Why I think I'll be the one to sell the book, strike the gold, win the millions, so to speak. Why should my ship come in when so very many ships don't? I'm not talking about Bookstore job, that is not a ship, but these dreams I have of making money off my writing. Of the two of us somehow making enough money to maybe keep some chickens and travel to Europe without me having to sell my soul to an office job. There are so very many writers who don't make money, and I don't know but these days I feel silly and stupid and gauche, pressing on with these ridiculous delusions about myself, the dreams of Paris and Spain, of book deals and raises, this idea that if I keep following my dreams one day I will catch them.

Don't worry. This is just a place I land sometimes. I probably won't be here tomorrow, but here I am today.

*corrections made to reflect Bookstore's actual pay grade

That's Enough, Iris

I get very emotional in spring, which leads me to conclude that, basically, I am very emotional.

But Spring Me is much better than Winter Me, who is existential and occasionally morose. Winter Me belongs in a Parisian cafe, wearing a beret, smoking a cigarette and churlishly lowering my heavily-lined eyes before the camera. (Why is there always a camera on me in my fantasies? Probably because I was brought up by circus people theater people. See? If you try hard enough, you can blame your parents for EVERYTHING.)

Spring Me either belongs in an elaborate musical number, with parasols and chiffon, or in an asylum.

Spring Me (Spring I?) is apt to do things like drive to the grocery store, take one look around the parking lot, and steer two delighted children to the ice cream store instead. Spring Me (can we call her Iris?) also tends to get teary over the fact that a) buckwheat is good for your garden soil and that b) the bees love the buckwheat and c) the bees also help the gardens, so therefore d) Oh my god, Mr. V, do you see, it's the circle of life! It's so beautiful-hul-hul! (Disclaimer: the above statements should not be taken as confirmation that I did, in fact, weep those words to Mr. V over coffee and toast with honey).

Oh, shut up Iris.

Just take a look.

What we did:

I cleaned their rooms for them, which lead to this magic moment:

A not-great picture of my beautiful top bar hive, made by a man in Boulder. The bees will draw their comb down from those top bars. The entrance is at the bottom. It's very small.

What we ate:

(Yup, again.)

What we watched:

A South Korean film directed by Joon-Ho Bong. It's won a ton of awards. It's streaming on Netflix. It was pretty amazing.

What I read:

My introduction to Jeanette Winterson. I've only just started it. I reserve judgement.

Signing out with this picture of Indy, who cut the tops and tips off old stockings to make arm warmers for Dr. Seuss Day, and felt all awesome about it:

xoxo

Iris V

Dear Elway: Tebow Goes Or I Do

Lately I have been enjoying myself by teasing Mr.V, stating frequently that I'm going to change teams.

(I don't know if that just made you think, Lesbian!, but that's not what I mean).

What I mean is that I dislike Tim Tebow. I don't like his politics, and I don't like his over-the-top and gaudy displays of devotion, but put those aside and what we have left is an Evangelical who can't play football. I understand there were a few games where Tebow ran it in at the last second and the Broncos won, but those games weren't won by Teeb Teebow. They were won in spite of the Teebs; they were won by our defense, by Matt Prater, by Marion Barber, by luck or chance, certainly not by Jesus, (ok, maybe by Jesus), and not by Tim Tebow. You know what else is that unlike, apparently, most of Denver, I watched the first three quarters of those games and Tebow can't complete passes. Yes, Virginia, there is a Jesus and maybe he cares about football in America, where we have nothing much to worry about other than who wins on Sunday night. But I can't think of any other profession in which a person would be allowed to perform a clown show their entire shift, do some spectacular pirouette (which was not, by the way, in the job description) in their last three minutes, and prance out on fancy feet and prayerful hands to great applause.

My point is that Tebow is ruining my Broncos for me, and so frequently these days I tell the Mr. V that I'm switching teams. "You can't just switch teams," he says, embarrassed and chagrined by what he views, I suspect, as my uniquely feminine irresolution, to which I just smile inwardly and reply, "Of course I can". I can do whatever I want, including declaring, "I'm a Vikings fan now," right after kickoff when Mr. V has just taken a bite of loaded nacho and watching him choke on his pinto beans. "You can't do that," he splutters, my earnest husband, who converted to the Broncos himself when he moved here from Raider Nation and met moi. "It doesn't work that way".

"It does now," I say, which makes me feel powerful and impervious to things like Conservatives and people who use the term "Tebow Time".

I lean toward the Vikings because, why not? Because I think they were my Uncle's team and that seems a place to start. Although sometimes I declare myself a Green Bay fan just to see how far Mr. V can sputter pilsner across the room. "Oh my god," he shouts, like Will Ferrell doing "angry", except he's dead sincere. "Oh god, why?"

I don't know, I admire the tradition: Lambeau field, the Lambeau Leap, the Chedder Headers, or whatever. Brett Favre was cute until he turned into Kim Kardashian, or not even her but one of the lesser, whinier K's, Khloe maybe, or Konstance or Kontinence, but he's gone so I don't have to worry anymore. I'll never be a Jets fan; they treat their female fans horribly, and although Pittsburgh has the highest percentage of female fans in the nation, their tradition, to me, reeks of poverty and despair. I mean, why else would you let rapists play for your team? That cold, industrial climate, it changes a person. I'll never go to another team in the AFC West, why would I want to? (I WOULD DIE FIRST). So Vikings or Packers it is; tell me, do I look better in purple or green?

"Here's what else," I say to my husband; it's almost coy, this dance we do. "I'm a Lakers fan now."

"No," he gasps, truly dismayed this time.

"Yes," I say. "It's my new thing."

"You can't do this. That's what all those stupid famous people do. They move to L.A and become Lakers fans just because it's cool, to have your picture taken courtside. Leonardo Dicaprio. You can only be a Lakers fan if you're actually from L.A."

"Nobody is actually from L.A.," I reply. "L.A. is a city you choose. Anyone who was actually born there has moved away." I know this to be true somehow without actually knowing it. "Also, I want a USC shirt."

At this point my husband just looks at the ground and shakes his head. His spirit leeches out of him while I hide my grin and fold the laundry. "That's not how it works. You went to CSU, you're a CSU fan."

"God no," I say, shuddering. "Green and gold?" Gag me.

"You don't have any connections to USC."

"Your grandpa went there," I say. "And it doesn't matter, anyway. I'm transforming myself. I'm like Madonna now. I can wear a USC shirt if I want. And I am a Lakers fan, so you'd better fucking like it."

It feels important. To celebrate myself and sing myself with the NFL Licensed Gear of my choosing. Fake it til you make it, and so, though right now I'm here, in the cold with Terb Rebow taking us to the playoffs, in my heart I'm in a city where it is warm, where the people are plastic, where team loyalty is a feeling you chose and where people reinvent themselves every day, every evening, every sunrise.

And so can I.

On The Road Part I: Holy Something

"What if all the girls on the whole earth said 'CHUM-chum. CHUM-chum. CHUM-chum,'" Indy intoned like a chant as we zipped through the endless Mojave desert, brown mile after brown flat mile. "And all the boys said 'Rocka-rocka. Rocka-rocka. Rocka-rocka'."

That's pretty much how the day went.

Mr. V woke me at at 2:30 am and we hit the road. I wished for a valium because few terrors match that of barrelling down out of the Eisehhower Tunnel in the pitch black, in the dead of night.

I woke up in the middle of nowhere, Utah. Black Horse or Black Rock or Black Devil. So beautiful it breaks my heart, I'll say it twice. The rocks are draped like velvet curtains, lit up the colors of sunset. All through Utah, across the stretch of salt flats there was light, powdered sugar snow.

We stopped in Vegas, where the Goblins were finally baptized. By that I mean they had their first In 'n Out. I tend to think of everyone that lives in Vegas as a compulsive gambler. My only evidence this isn't true is that godawful movie, Pay It Forward. I'm pretty sure Haley Joel and Helen Hunt weren't compulsive gamblers, although now I wonder how a single mother got the money for all those lanterns? But look, I've been in the car for seventeen hours, you shouldn't listen to a thing I say.

"I'm smaller than God," says Indy. "But not smaller than baby God."

I think she's a genius.

In San Diego, this: billboards advertising "EZ-Baccarat: Tableside Dim Sum." From this I gather that Burt Baccarat wants to attend at my table and serve me steamed buns, and that he will be sexually promiscuous. We've been driving for fifteen hours and I can't tell if this is a good thing.

I think it might be.

I am disappointed with the number of light-strung palm trees in Southern California. I think my idea of California Christmas was irrevocably formed by my first Sunshine State Christmas in Palm Desert. In that land of milk and money, there is a silver dollar for every retired crevice and a light for every palm tree. Not true in Riverside or San Bernadino. God help me, listen to what I'm saying. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be writing this. I have been in a car for seventeen hours and I think I encountered the real Jesus--you know, not the flaxen haired, but the Middle Eastern one. He told me he is as indifferent to Tim Tebow as he is to sexual orientation. Then he shared our plan for taking Tebow down, but I can't tell you about that now.

Indy calls them Pom-Pom trees and you know:

She's right.

xoxo

No More Driving Ever

-V

Day After

Thanksgiving was almost ruined by:
-Everyone called my side dish "a dessert" and I pouted
-the talent. The talent was being difficult for a moment there (but who can blame her little turkey-stuffed heart?)

Thanksgiving was saved by:
-my sister's homemade pecan pie (Who knew I liked pecan pie?)
-my brother-in-law's prime rib or whatever. (He kept calling it that)
-my mom's corn casserole (Please don't tell anyone I enjoyed a casserole)
-my dad's Ikea song
-my husband's delicious roasty pumpkin beer
-everyone loving my side dish too much to care if it was a dessert (IT WASN'T)
-my daughters and my niece Eisley running a wild rumpus through. . .
-my sister's gorgeous and catalog-ready home (thrift stores and Ikea are her secrets)
-A Very Gaga Thanksgiving tv special

Happy Day after Thanksgiving. I'm not out shopping, but I kind of wish I was.

xoxo
-V

Hey Pumpkin

Right now it's quiet in all my house, which you won't be surprised to hear is how I like it. I just put a loaf of pumpkin bread in the oven and it smells so good already. Sometimes I do domestic things without feeling the need to apologize for them.

I never did bake that apple pie. Pumpkin bread was far more achievable.

Today I gave up on my plans to make this delicious recipe for Thanksgiving. I really wanted to bring it to my sister's house, present it with an apron-at-the-waist flourish and impress everybody. It probably wouldn't have worked anyway. In general, I find people are far less impressed with me than I'd hoped. Turns out you can't buy pie pumpkins after Halloween, and I know from experience you can't but Emmentaler cheese in Longmont. Which isn't exactly true, you can probably find it at the imported cheese emporium in that office park under the bridge, but I never remember to go there.

Instead we're bringing cheesy apple bake. It's this god-awful unhealthy dish that my mother-in-law made every Thanksgiving. This is difficult to admit: you pour canned apple pie filling into your casserole dish and then you blend Velveeta with white sugar (I died a little, just typing that) and you pour it over the apples and bake. The top gets slightly burnt and crusty and then beneath it is cheesy apple goodness. You have to eat it early if you're dining with my husband's family because the kids eat all the cheese topping off and then you're just left with sad canned apples. To sell this dish to my sister, I called it "Apple Cheese Southern Souffle". If I told her I was bringing sugared-up Velveeta over canned apples she probably would have hung up the phone in order to drive straight to Longmont and slap me. Crisis averred. You gotta know how to work these things.

Today I met up with an old friend from high school. There is nothing like an old friend from high school or a drinking buddy from college. Some bonds are forever, this is why whenever I met a new person I try to get sloppily drunk as quickly as possible.Instant friend for life. (Contrary to what my husband says, crippling social anxiety has nothing to do with it. Who has the psychology degree, Mr. V? NEITHER OF US.) For instance, I hadn't talked to this particular friend in a few months when I sent her this email: "I'm moving to Taos to keep bees. Wanna come?"

"That sounds awesome," she replied. "I'm there."

This is a comfort to me. I can't tell most people when I want to move to Taos, or Paris, or the other day, oddly, Nashville. They start to do calculations and ask me about my life goals and say things like "You don't speak French" or "Do you know how hard it is to get a Visa in a socialist country?" or "It snows in Taos".

Our other plans include moving to Vietnam, wearing the funny hats, and planting flowers/ holding babies in orphanages, as well as spending our golden years traveling the world until we finally go down together in a plane crash.

Maybe because it's Monday, or maybe I'm drunk on the scents of warming nutmeg and cinnamon, or maybe because I'm bringing glucosey plastic cheese to Thanksgiving, but right now, those seem like worthy goals.

But no, I'm not actually moving to Taos.

Not yet.

Comfort Me With Apples

image from here

You get to a point where you find yourself thinking, "Maybe I should make a roast". It's not that you care about the roast, it's just that you'd like to do something, any one thing, that you can see through from start to finish and plus, making roasts comes with a shiny foil sticker on it, the sticker of a good homemaker, the dinner offerings of a Good Mom.

But then you begin to think, not a roast, perhaps. Maybe an apple pie. You're pretty sure no one born after 1981 actually knows what a roast is. Your husband might take a bite, say "Mmm, good steak, honey," and then where would you be? You'd be a stupid woman with curled hair in an overly cheery vintage apron, something with cherries on it or fawns, still on your feet pulling potatoes and onions out of the oven and there, at the table, sits your husband in his work socks, distracted by sports blogs and calling your roast a steak. You don't know what this means, exactly, or signifies--a suburban complacency, a homey resignation that you never even wished for--you just know it isn't good. Plus, chefs make good roasts, and you're not going for "good chef". What you're looking for is something homier, something coated in tinsel and more difficult to describe.

So an apple pie, you think. That. Surely if something can be accomplished, it is a symphony of cinnamon and apples. A love letter wrapped in dough and painted in egg wash. Because there was so much that should have been done, and wasn't. The house that should have been decorated by now. The furniture you should have been able to buy. The dance and piano lessons, all the meals you should have cooked over the stove, working for hours and finished by five, instead of darting back and forth between boiling pasta and your computer, between bits of dialogue and gummy canned sauce. The stories were never the thing to trust. They can be finished, but not achieved.

How do you measure the success of a story? You sell it. It is read and admired, or misunderstood and ignored. Either way, it sits on a shelf, tangible evidence that you have done something, that all these hours haven't been for naught, that something that once did not exist now does and you are responsible for that. But none of that is up to you. None of that a thing you can control. You measure the success of a story by waiting for others to nod, to sneeze, to bless their agreement: here is a thing, and it is done.

How do you measure the success an apple pie? You finish it. You might burn the top. You might over sweeten the apples. It doesn't matter because in the end, a timer goes off--a buzzer, alas, and not a decision in your head, murky and intangible. Something that is up to minutes, clocks, to the ticking of the sun and not, for once, up to your own instinct and intuition. You cannot trust yourself, but a kitchen timer is a thing you can live by. The end of the path is clear, it is fragrant with the fruits of the earth and the bounties of your labor. Unlike stories, unlike wishes, the end here is succulent, toothsome, complete. The timer buzzes, it declares for you: you have formed a thing with your own hands. Your work is good.

Your work is done.

*The title of this post was taken from the book by Ruth Reichel.

Lost At Sea

I don't know what day it is.

To prove this to you, I would ask you to please go back and look through the archives--yes, all of them, you want to make the greatest fan show someday, don't you?--and count the number of times I have blogged on a Sunday.

See?

Totally don't know what day this is.

Summer was awesome! Amazing! We read books, went to the pool, had a picnic at the park, slept late, and ate a ton of popsicles. Blessing bless bless blessedy blessed blessings! So, now that we've established how blessed I am and all, I ask you: My kids can go back to school now, right?

I mean, if I woke up tomorrow, drove them to school, ushered them into the building and acted all natural about it, do you think anyone would notice?

I am trapped here somewhere between "Mr.V has left for work" and "Mr. V is still working", throw in a "Mr. V is not home yet."

I feel like I've been home alone with the kids for weeks, months, like we are lost at sea here, solitary sojourners, swooping up into libraries and down into 9 pm bedtimes. Which leave me up until 12 am, watching Supernatural and Downton Abbey and not reading as much as I like to. Asking my brain to do anything lately is like asking me to solve algebra after drinking margaritas and then going to the dentist. And the dentist is Jensen Ackles. But at least we know I haven't lost my knack for drama, because I think I may have been out all day Friday, without the kids, doing my thing. And Friday was approximately two days ago, not forty-seven?

I honestly don't remember.

What I know for sure is that I found Campfire Marshmallows at the War-mart, and if I'm ever in my life going to use the word jazzed, it's about that. BUT I AM USING IT IRONICALLY.

What I know for sure is that I slept until 10 am today and I hate myself.

I think we're going to venture out of the boat to our one safe harbor and see if we can't find us some iced Amanda Palmers.

Look, that joke made a lot of sense. To Amanda Palmer.

I am Vesuvius and where am I? Who are you? Somebody call Marcus with the hovercraft. Marcus will bring the hovercraft. He always did.

PS: Please don't ask me why I'm blogging on my hiatus, or be all like, "I told you so!" (MOM.) I already have enough issues as it is, can't you see? Why else would I be rebelling against myself in this grotesque and unseemly manner? I am basically telling myself to screw myself, and we're not going to wonder why I do that. Why not? Because the computer says it's Sunday, although I HAVE MY DOUBTS.

In Which I Develop Inexplicable Anger Toward A Dead American Icon

"Roses are red, violets are orange," said Indy. "That can't be true."

That's how I feel, Indy. None of this can be true.

I haven't managed to wake up on time once since the time change.

I hate this time change so hard. This time change is worse than the whole "Kara Thrace is really an angel" thing. That's how hard I hate it. I don't care what Benjamin Franklin said. I don't like his willfully oblivious, optimistic chirpings and I don't like his time change. Why are we all still doing what Benjamin told us to? He got our hundred dollar bills, isn't that enough? He even has a rap song about him. Now we have to let him in to our sleep schedules? Into our bedrooms? Isn't this one step away from Benjamin Franklin telling us how to have sex? Did Benjamin Franklin ever have sex? Listen, I wouldn't take his advice on 'bedroom stuff', and I don't like taking it on my beta rhythms either.

I used to wake up two hours before the Bird was due at school and now I wake up one. And can I just say that getting up at 5:30 am and going to work was a lot easier than getting up at 6:15 and getting the Bird ready for school? This is the Faustian I have made. In exchange for being a Kept Woman, one who works at coffee shops, confounding and annoying baristas all over Longmont, and not for pay, I am in charge of off to school duties. At Operation: Bookstore, you know what I did? I got up. Saw to my own needs which are infinitesimal in comparison to the needs of a 6 and 4-year-old. I drank my coffee while reading my blogs. Then I drove to work where I generally drank a lot more coffee, bought with my sweet discount thank you, listened to my ipod, and played with books by myself for three hours. Sort the books, alphabetize the books, put back the books. When that was done I would chat with my co-workers about Buffy and Mad Men and hate on Twilight. It was a sweet job. Why did I leave this job????

I miss you, Ira Glass. And I'm sorry.

Now I get up and immediately the goblins are haunting. They have needs they can't see to. They need juice, they need milk, but their cups are dirty, they can't find their cups. They need cereal, or bread toasted and buttered and jellied, they need lunches made. They need to fight over the tv, the remote, the blanket, the pillows, the names of the characters, the name of the show, who is Angelica and who is Sarah, what is the nature of the soul, can humankind ever really do 'good'? They need to cry over having their hair brushed, fuss over the toothpaste. They don't want to get dressed, getting dressed is for suckers, why can't we wear our underwear and cowgirl boots to school?

Did I mention that during all this I am trying to conceal my true nature as a Daywalker? I am sloughing off my identity as Mistress of the Night, and it's not easy nor pretty. I'm in a between state, my shape not fully shifted, and my 'Medusa is hungry for the life blood of children' voice is a lot more likely to slip out.

Listen, I just looked it up and you know what I read? Benjamin Franklin didn't "invent" daylight savings. Apparently, out of typical early American petty jealousy of the French, he satirically suggested waking Parisians up with cannons an hour earlier to conserve Parisian candle wax.

Seriously, what a cad.

What an enormous douche. Can't Benjamin Franklin keep his nose in his own candle wax? What's it to him, what the Parisians do with their candles? As long as they keep making chocolat escargot, they can do whatever the hell they want. Have you ever tasted the Parisian version of hot chocolate? I believe in God only because I have. These people know their shit. Benjamin Franklin was like the eariliest Felicity. Always sticking his nose in other people's business. Always making bad decisions with the hair. I don't care if he said something cute once about beer. He probably said it right before he turned around and told everyone else that they should really cut back on their consumption, they were getting a little fat.

Have you looked in the mirror, Benjamin?

I am Vesuvius and I satirically suggest that Benjamin Franklin can suck it.

I am Vesuvius and chocolat escargot is not chocolate snails. It is this:



I am Vesuvius and chocolat chaud is not something you give as a joke at a bachelorette party. It is this:

International Guilt Trip Day

It's International Women's Day and I, appropriately, am celebrating it by feeling guilty.

I mean, I should be spending this day doing one of the "Meet me on the bridge" events for Women For Women International, a cause I believe in. And instead I spent it at the dentist, trying like hell not to terrify her with my mouth full of old silver-plated horrors. Luckily she was strong of stomach. Then I spent an hour running around town paying our car registration late, and paying the ticket we got for the late registration, also late, both with added fees. Bill it to my guilty conscience. After that I wasted a good 45 minutes mentally ripping my hair out fretting over what to do for the girls for school next year. I went to a coffee shop to work on my book, where I sat feeling guilty about spending money on coffee, for working on something I enjoy when I also have things I need to do that I don't enjoy clogged up in the queue from here to the moon, and feeling bad about my writing, which seems downright Dickensianly-wordy, and my plot, which seems Interceptionally missing.

I came home where I felt guilty for not keeping my kids' room cleaner, for buying stuff to make sloppy joe's at the store yesterday (what the hell was I thinking? I feel sick just writing about eating sloppy joe's), and for the window and the oven door, both broken by my husband, both seen by the new owner of our rental property today. On a pop-quiz visit. I read an article on the internet that managed to make me feel guilty for feeding my kids apples and salmon. APPLES AND SALMON.

All this when what I should be doing is standing out on a bridge somewhere with my fellow sisters, raising money I guess or hope or attention for a cause that I actually, truly, really do believe in.

Or couldn't I at least muster an angry feminist rant? I muster them daily just overhearing Max and Ruby, yet for IWD I got nothing?

I say it like it's all just Twister and Puppy-Chow, but seriously guys: can you think of a better way to commemorate female-ness than by giving yourself a massive guilt trip? Isn't this the very essence of femaleness? Feeling bad about stuff that isn't our fault? Can we all just blame our mothers? Or can we subvert the gender binary by blaming our fathers? Their paternalistic, disapproving grumblings over late night Budweiser and David Letterman?

I'm just kidding. My dad fell asleep on the couch reading Updike. He also only drank Coors. My mother never makes me feel guilty except when I don't call or when I get tipsy and refer to Martin Luther as "The German Merman". (It doesn't make sense when I'm tipsy either).

Listen: It's International Women's Day and I'm going to celebrate it the only way I have left: by putting the kids to bed early, drinking a cheap boxed Malbec and eating chocolate ice cream and M & M's for dinner, and spending the dark hours with my BFF laptop reading Supernatural fanfiction.

And no I won't tell you who I slash.

Vive la femme.

I am Vesuvius and I feel guilty about this blog.

Meta Blog

I am really sorry about this blog.

Inspired by the meta-meta episode (look, I don't know if it was actually meta-meta. The show was aware it was a show, but was the show within the show aware that it was a show within. . . yeah, I don't like where this is going) of Supernatural, I thought I would do a meta blog.

So here is a blog about blogging. OR IS IT?????

Uh-oh!You've been Incepted!


First of all, blogging is very hard work and I take it very seriously. Usually before I blog I brew a cup of fair-trade, shade grown coffee and light a candle to invite the muse. I might do some deep breathing or repeat a mantra. I've been working with an expert--someone who also watches Oprah--and together we have lined up my chakras with the perfect mantra for my energy, which is: "Best Blogger Alive!!! Now Tunin' in to the Muthaf@&%g Greatest!!!!".

Yes my guru is Jay-Z.

Seriously though, after I light my candles and do some deep breathing to center myself, I am now ready to blog. I enter in by the Way of Peace:




Personally I think I am at my best when I'm being religiously irreverent (yeah, just forget all that stuff from the first paragraph. I like to be irreverent about other people's religions, not my own). Being irreverent makes me feel like a naughty school child. Here's how I looked forming that joke about how drums don't belong in MY praise music! Oh no I didn't!



Edgy ex-Lutheran girl who wore a promise ring in da house!

(You might not think the drum thing is funny, but I saw someone wearing a shirt that said that once and that is really not funny-er).

Sometimes I take a break during writing to peruse my comments. Now the thing about you poor saps who read my blog is that you are all really mean. I'm not going to name names here, but you guys keep coming round and saying things like "This was a really good one!" or, "haha!lol! *I* *TOTALLY* *KNOW* **WHAT** YOU** **MEAN**!", or even, I'm not making this up, "this blog was really touching today". (I'm looking at you Dalley G.) I am a very evolved being but it's still hard not to let these things get under my skin. So when I'm reading a comment from Dalley G, or any of the rest of you bastards, I generally look like this:



Another thing I do on this blog, because the Muse told me to, is always make a startling revelation. Something that really cuts to the quick of the human experience, like "Mothering is hard!" or "Wine". If nothing deep has happened to me that week, I totally just make stuff up.



"This stuff about humanity being like a bunch of fluffy kittens with snowflake-shaped hearts who need to make their own love music is STELLAR!"

I'm also really fond of doing this--here's a blogging tip from me to you: You say "The Truth Is" and then you make up some sad story with a happy ending or just plagiarize directly from O magazine. For instance (plagiarized parts in bold): "The Truth Is, I Martha Beck am Getting Fatter And Shoes for a New Year New You and Nate Berkus is Coming To Your House to Make Sustainable Banana Bread and Criticize Your Wardrobe! Every Buddha Gets An OWN Network!".

I mean, were you not just reeled in?

When I say "The Truth Is X" I'm usually feeling really self-satisfied I mean very deep and connected and not at all self-satisfied and so of course I look like this:


"What can I say? It's the truth."


So you can see here, guys, that blogging is a lot of hard work. It's a calling, really, and when I'm sitting at Starbucks drinking an iced mocha and totally not flirting with that barista who I thought was really in to me cause he kept complementing my purse but turned out to be trying to convert me to Mormonism, I'm not having any kind of 'fun' or 'relaxing'. I am slaving away here. (And really "Mom", I don't appreciate your cruel remarks, bloggers have feelings too). So, at the end of a hard day of slaving over my keyboard and chugging organic fair-trade shade-grown bird-of-paradise friendly coffee, I like to sit back and reflect on all the deeply meaningful, insightful, revelatory, straight up Great American Blog blogging I have done here.




Like that time I wrote about a mint plant.


I am Vesuvius and Now You Can have Dr. Oz's Ideal Body with Hasidic Jewish Yoga and Fashionable Winter Boots!

**mint plant post here, in case you don't believe me.

Acedia and Vesuvius. Or Not.

//Acedia//: a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression.[1] Acedia was originally noted as a problem among monks and other ascetics who maintained a solitary life. http://en.wikipedia.org.

I think it's what they call the doldrums. Stupefying my brain, sucking up all my energy. Or maybe I just feel overwhelmed by life, like I do by cleaning. When the house is a mess, I tend to walk helplessly in circles. I mean this literally. I shuffle from the kitchen to my room to the girls room to the bathroom, noting everything and doing nothing.

I want my life to be so vastly different from the way it is. There are so many things I want to change but they feel scary or impossible or just flat out boring (organizing closets? I'd rather take a bullet to the bicep.) There's so much ground to be covered. I become unable to take a single step.

This post was going to be about acedia--about the fact that I can't finish reading a book or work on my writing or enjoy anything right now--not even chocolate, not even Firefly, not even shopping---because inside I am listless. But forget acedia, acedia was five minutes ago. Now my post is about this: I know that part of (all of?) happiness means embracing what you have. Fully. And loving and being grateful for what you've been given. I get that philosophy, you find it in basically every religion and I'm behind that. I've got it's back.

But isn't there also a point where you say, enough is enough? I mean, if everybody throughout time had just embraced what was instead of working for what might be, wouldn't we still be, like, wearing deer skin and sacrificing first sons and claiming primae noctis and all that? All the good changes, all the progress, that didn't come from accepting what was. Right?


Or maybe both are true? Maybe the key is to hold a space for loving what is and working toward what could be, both at the same time?

It's this that keeps me up at night: I want things to be different. I don't know if I can make them so. I will not be comforted by pithy sayings nor out-of-context bible verses because I know that some people go all their lives struggling for a thing they never get. I question my own ability to tell the difference between goals that should be worked toward and delusional, insane fantasies.

So there it is. If you find my pluck,or my compass, would you call me? I miss them, and I've got this big lily liver clouding all my vision.

Suddenly it seems to me that pluck and direction go hand in hand.

I am Vesuvius and I have acedia and I don't care. Get it?

More on acedia here.