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

Wintering

I saw a book, resting on a nightstand in another blogger's photograph, and I bought it immediately, that day, on the spot. I knew I had to have it.

And on Sunday morning, lying in bed, I discovered that Sylvia Plath kept bees over the summer and winter before she died. She wrote five poems about them. I discovered this while my husband sat in the white light of the morning kitchen, drinking coffee and reading about the things he reads about. Sports I suspect, though I know he likes world news and movie blogs too. Please don't mistake them with celebrity blogs, which he cares nothing for and neither, much, do I.

Last week in bee class the instructor showed us picture after picture of the process of setting up her first hive, harvesting her first honey. Pictures of herself, her husband, her fellow beekeeper friend holding up comb frames and smokers and golden jars of honey, and in every frame every person had Elphaba-green skin. The bees were yellow and black, the hives were white, the honey was gold, and the people were green. The first shot was of the friend only, smiling her in her bee suit but afflicted by a terrible verdigris. I waited for the instructor to explain, but she did not, and I thought maybe her friend's skin really was quite kelly, and it was therefore impolite to talk about it. She clicked through then, the power point, photo after photo of Wicked Beekeepers of the West, green hands on hives and forest-smiling faces and nobody said a thing about it. But of course, neither did I.

I drive my husband crazy, I forget everything. He tolerates my forgetfulness teasingly, or bemusedly, or distractedly. I lose the keys, I lose the forms, I lose my cell phone, the remote, the scissors, the tape, the earrings, the shoes, I even lose the coffee pot. (We found it in the fridge. We found the milk in the pantry). It's like I'm a romantic comedy heroine, except forgetful rather than clumsy and I don't wear high heels. "You are out of control," he says teasingly. "You are stressing me out." And I tell him, imagine what it's like to BE me, rather than simply be fated to put up with me.

Here is what it's like to be me: I am not like this in real life. I am not shy, exactly, but I am reserved. I despise small talk and ask questions that are too personal, too soon. I forget everything, including the story you told me, unless I wrote it down, which I probably did. I am easily overwhelmed. I make social appointments and dread honoring them. I'm not funny until you've known me a really long time. I get exhausted and pass out after half a glass of wine, I am therefore a failure at parties. I dread loud environments, I can't raise my voice, unless at my children. I am distracted. When you pause and search for a word I provide it for you, which annoys you and I try to stop, but I can't. Often I know where the story is going after the first sentence, and by the time you've finished it I've lost my energy to give the proper reaction. I can't admit when I'm wrong.

I am sorry.

I want to live everywhere, all at once. Los Angeles, Taos, and Paris currently highest on my list. This sends my husband looking for jobs in each city, except Paris, to which he replies that I must be the one to get a job in Paris. He does not like the French (he does not know the French).But like Sylvia, I am wintering. Winter is for women, Sylvia writes. She is talking about the bees; in the winter they seal out the males, the drones, who don't make honey but consume great amounts of it, who would eat them out of house and home.

Winter is a thing to be survived, it demands female energy, quietude, patience, and peace. So says Sylvia, or so say I. Here I am, dear January, I am fallow. O'Keefe spent long periods fallow, so I read, long periods of gathering, of stillness, of waiting, and so do I. The muse, like spring, like honey and hurry and drone cells, drowsy cells, green grass, vital energies, always return.

What is it Oprah says? This I know for sure.

99 Problems But A Burger Ain't One

Today I needed a cheeseburger and a coke.

Not to worry, sometimes I just do.

I've been busy this week. I have mourned the lack of a flocked or white tree in my home anew, and I have kicked myself in the pants and told myself to get over it. I have bought and returned Christmas gifts (already). I have cleaned the house spiffy while listening to Ira Glass only to watch it be decidedly un-spiffed within scant minutes of my daughters arriving home.

I have downgraded to basic cable. Life without a DVR is hairy.

You heard it from me.

I have written no less than four blog posts this week and not posted any of them.

Because my spirit was restive and my heart

wasn't in the right place.

You know what my mom taught me: if you don't have anything nice to say, get on the internet.

(One of those blogs was about my mother-flocking unflocked tree. I wrote about how I sent Mr. V out alone and he came home with something that looked less like a tree and more like a well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous craft of mine. I wrote about how I decided to ignore the tree's patchy crooked visage and be grateful for my Mr. V.

Then I wrote how I call him Mr.V because it unsettles him to read his own name on the blog. I want you to know that so you don't go thinking I'm some hairy-legged feminist, even though right now THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM).

On Monday I instant messaged my sister.

"Do you want to meet me at Ikea?" I said.

"I am actually at Ikea now," she replied. "But yes."

She drove home, put her kids down for naps, and drove me back to Socialist Paradise.

(I call it that because I don't want you to think I'm a socialist even thought right now THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM.)

At Ikea I fulfilled Indy's wish for a box of puppies and our own wish for a topper of tree.

(Red. Felt. Star. 99 cents, thanks for asking)

Over free coffee and Swedish meatballs we discussed the important things like religious leanings and should I buy white frames and leave them white or paint them color.

It should come as no surprise to you that my sister is a Lutheran and I remain unaffiliated.

We like it that way. And that's ok.

She took the above picture of me and I like it so much I'm going to frame it and put it on my wall next to my bed. So every day I can arise and see myself being a nihilist. Don't ask me to explain why, I can't say why.

In a move calculated by my publicist to exponentially increase my street cred, I get to fly solo to the City of Angels on Monday night to attend the Jay-Z/Kanye West concert. (Solo flight. Concert with friend. She got the tickets free. She has connections. I can't say who.)

(She used to work for the Governator. That's all I'm saying)

What, you didn't know I was hard core?

Before that, I have to face a potluck.

Potluck, flight, concert, flight, drive, Disneyland, beach, Christmas.

Home.

That is all--wait.

I love you.

Over and out.

P.S: NO WAIT.

The blog address has changed. You can find me now at www.vesuviusathome.com .

This makes me inordinately pleased.

Please change your bookmarks and your links, but: not to worry.

tuttlebrewd.blogspot.com should still direct you back here.

P.P.S but seriously, change your bookmarks and your links. Wouldn't you rather see vesuviusathome.com up there in your address bar?

I sure would.

Winter Fruit

December first. I wake to snow. I crave hot drink and solitude by a window where I can see the falling white and listen to my soul. Like a Christmas miracle, I am granted exactly that. I sit inside a warm, bright place and watch the barren earth drape itself in purity. Ridiculous, I think of Queen Elizabeth. Barren. White and bare.

I have pregnancy on the brain.

A misplaced desire, I tell my husband. Tell myself. Like the timing of everything in my life, the arrival of this strange want confounds me. I don't think I actually crave a baby. I think I crave the things it represents: joyful anticipation. A cherished arrival. A soft and holy hush. The earth appears unfruitful, but in this time it is waiting. In the cold, life is being knit together underneath. Too deep to see, too subtle yet to feel. Like an artist not deep in the work, but deep in the waiting. Gathering inspiration. Anticipating joy.

Everything appears dormant. One day it finally blooms.

All creation works like this.

What I crave is not a baby, but fruition. A fruit of my efforts, and peace. A soft and settled place. Not the frightful winds of autumn, not the rushed daze of spring. Like a child given a paper bird on a string, I twirl these two things between cold fingers. On one side, waiting. On the other side, harvest. I wait and know together, they can fly.

The miracle is, I feel it all. I can hold all this, and it is all right.

It is good.

A confused desire, I tell my husband, because my spirit likens my creative work to fertility. A book, like a baby, waits to be born. On the first of December, my creativity feels barren.

But all is not as it appears.

What I know is there is value in both these things: the quiet and the coming. One the comfort, the other joy.

Here is the promise in the depths of the dirt, beneath the earth frozen, beneath the solid snow: in the blackest, twisted forest, still things grow.

The barren world slow turns to blooming.

Out of darkness, light.

I Blame Fort Collins

On Friday the husband and I decided to go out and celebrate the anniversary of our first date, ten years ago that very day. Driving into town, I got the familair Ft. Collin's willies.

"Ugh," I told Mr. V. "I'm so glad we don't live here anymore. Ugh, I hate it here so much. Don't you hate it here?"

"That's enough with your theatrics," said Mr. V. Not really, but what he did say was "Yeeeaaaah," so you know I've interpreted right.

We wanted to go to Johnny Carino's (my college mecca, y'all) since that was the site of our first date but alas, the Carino's in Ft. Collins had not survived what some call "the economic downturn", but what I optimistically refer to as "life since moving out of my parent's". It was fine, I was in the mood for sushi anyway. I was raised not to love sushi, and what better way to celebrate your dating anniversary than with some latent rebellion?

I was in a mediocre mood. The food struck me as exactly that. The lighting was harsh and the place in general lacked ambiance. We made the mistake of telling the waiter we'd sample any four sakes. We forgot we were in a college town. We forgot anyone in their right mind would drink fruity sakes. (We forgot just to ask for the four most expensive sakes, without putting it that way). What we got was one decent pearl sake and three cups of fruit punch.

I was whelmed.

My husband does this thing where he eats lunch. So then at dinner, he's all like, "No, I'm full now". Unlike me. I always skip lunch and do annoying things like want to order a second Spider roll at dinner. But, remember? The sushi was mediocre so we passed. Mr. V suggested gelato. Then we walked out into the cold windy night and remembered gelato was a stupid idea. I started to get antsy. This is the problem with having date night only twice a year. It puts things on you, like expectations and pressure. If we went out to eat every night, would it matter if we didn't have a good time, I ask you? It would not. Because there would be tomorrow.

Knowing there was no tomorrow, we turned to Coopersmith's. They had a red ale and a cherry ale new on tap. They tasted overly sour and acidic, like Warhead juice. I don't know, maybe the problem was with my mouth. I ordered a Scrumpy Cider, expecting--what else?--scrumpy. What I got was a sour apple Jolly Rancher, which everyone knows is the worst friggin kind.

Remember when we used to come here all the time, and they gave us Pubside Regular free beers, said I?

You shouldn't have brought that up, said husband. Now I am morose.

Again, he did not actually say that, but that was the subtext. I know you feel me.

We did this thing on our first date where Mr. V had a cookie and I said I did not want a cookie and then I ate his. (Classic). Ten years in, Mr. V asks a billion times if I want the damn cookie and even if I say no twenty times he buys a second one anyway. This time around, we did this thing where I wanted a hot soft pretzel.

"Maybe we should get a pretzel," I said.

"Do you want a pretzel?" he said.

I shrugged. Any woman knows of course I wanted the damn pretzel, why would I say "Maybe we should get a pretzel" if I didn't want a pretzel? Have you ever heard me say "maybe we should get a sister wife" or "maybe we should get a Mariah Carey Christmas cd"? No, and you know why? Because I do not. Want one.

You know how this went. Later, much later, he asked why I didn't just tell him I wanted a pretzel.

I thought that's what I was doing.

Ten years in, some things never change.

Pretzel or no, I'd do it all again.

**my ego needs you to know I was eight months pregnant in that photo**

Soft Things

image via Pinterest

Today I'm thinking about the Nutcracker. My parents took me when I was little, too little to remember any of the performance. The hush of the theater, my itchy black tights. All the adults in their woolen coats, the bright lights inside, the cold white outside. My dad carrying me to the car when it was over. I'm thinking about his winter coat, the velvety elbow patches. I always had to touch those elbow patches, brushing the grain of the suede back and forth, back and forth. Gramma had a mink coat, soft as silence, soft as heaven, and in its folds were sweet things. Butterscotches and Lifesavers. I spent a lot of my childhood sitting in church in itchy tights, being slipped hard candies to keep me silent.

I would tilt back my head and count the lights.

Today I'm thinking about the Christmas pageants. The brown paper bag that held an orange, a red apple, chewy peppermints.

Today I'm thinking about soft things, things that settle quietly on the soul. Things you might need to learn to live with, that melt away imperceptibility or maybe never. That take time to resolve. Today I want to know how to do it.

I want to know the way to be.

Last night another branch fell on our roof, and today we wake to more snow. When it snows you need to get up early, but you want to sleep late. You stumble around the house and envy hibernating, furry beasts. You think maybe your soul needs what you can't give your body. This quiet. This dark. This stillness.

The thing about snow is that your bed is always calling, but you can't go to it any more than usual.

I'm so grateful to the pagans for their festivals of lights.

I remember that it's always been the same. Our spirits, needing the stillness, but fearing the dark. Millions of souls, millions of years. Waking in darkness.

Searching for light.

Wink and A Prayer

To prove how absolutely asinine I can be, I have challenged myself to write a sonnet a day for the next thirty days.


Here is today's.

Sonnet Two: Wink Wink

Last night the falling branches struck my dreams.

I woke with noisy ocean in my bones.

I'd seen great tidals fingering my seams,

And sailed back to sleep, and heard you groan.
The children woke and donned their little boots,
I trampled out in mine and cursed the snow.
I fear I said a lot worse words than shoot,
Cold makes me mean and cranky, as you know.

Today my dumb dog thinks I'll take her walking.
I tell her look, the snow's still coming down.
She suffers to comprehend when I am talking,
I suffer from a lack of Pho in town.
The tree that once skimmed heaven lies in grass
Please bring me tea, and tell me this won't last.

Reality Is

Good morning sunshine.

Today is Ayla's birthday party and I am stressed to the nines. Hosting any kind of party is torture for me. Hell for this blogger would be a cultureless suburb in which I am forced to spend all my time planning and throwing parties.

So that's where we're at today and did I mention that I've got a spot of a cold?

We got back Tuesday from a trip to Santa Fe and Taos and I really didn't want to come back. As if wanting to move to New Mexico weren't enough, I also want things like "to wake up in a hotel room every day" and "to eat out for every meal".

I know. Who doesn't, right? Who doesn't want to live on vacation? Some people actually do up and move to their favorite vacation spots. They find that life and work are waiting for them all the same, in Palm Desert or Boca Raton or even in Bali, I suppose.

But would you really complain about going to work? If you were waking up in Bali?

These are the questions I've pondered all week. These and whether or not Kate Middleton is actually pregnant with twins. Did she actually have a brawl with the Queen? Were they both on roller blades when it happened? Were obscenities shouted at Camilla over a dinner of caviar and bone marrow? As usual when it comes to Kate, I am confused as to what is real.

But Kate is real, right? Kate and Dean Winchester?

:::

Like an alcoholic, I have a confession to make. Well, I suppose it's more of a boast to make other addicts feel weak and hopeless and drive them back to the substance that got them here:

I went to a book fair yesterday and walked away without yelling at anybody. If I had a sponsor, she'd be all wise, benevolent, and proud.

Those of you who know me best (we're talking my sister and my husband here) know that I am not, in general, an angry person and I am definitely not the sort of person who makes public scenes.

Unless some kind of book fair is involved.

I am baffled by my proclivities as much as you are. (I think). I started out small--a library book sale in which I was told that I could not bring my stroller into the tent and left in a massive huff. In one of my classier moments, I went home to call librarians "a bunch of red beret wearing fascists" on facebook and was only kind of joking.

Then I lost a library dvd, was charged $40 dollars for an item that costs under ten on amazon, and wrote such an emotionally appealing letter to the director of the library that I never have to pay fines at that library again. Ever.

FOR LIFE.

Next came the episode which I will not repeat but let me just say it may or may not have involved roller derby, the f-bomb, and caviar.

Also Kate and the paparazzi may have been there but I am a lady and am not going to say.

(They were totally there).

But yesterday, I walked into the AAUW book fair and found the aisles so crowded with people crawling on the floor to get at the understock, towing boxes and bags and bins behind them, that they were completely unmaneuverable. But somehow I managed to select an old paperback edition of "To The Lighthouse", a retrograde fantasy by an author I've never heard of that had praising blurbs by Tolkein and Lewis on the back, a PowerPuff girls 8 x 8 for my girls to fight over, and made it out of there without cussing at anyone.

I didn't even huff.

Ok maybe I huffed in my spirit but it was completely inaudible.

By inaudible I mean that I disguised my huff as a sneeze.

But you will notice that not once have I referred to anyone as a fascist or a communist or a wearer of red berets, so you see?

Progress.

Insufferably yours,
V

Cold and Shivers

Vesuvius is taking a break to stave off a nervous breakdown.

Anxiety + panic + worry = Vesuvius' creative self hunkered down on an ice floe somewhere, naked, shivering and stroking a dead fish.

Please check back later. Things always warm up again.

Love,

V


Post-edit:

Don't panic! The fish thing was supposed to be funny. Nothing's too bad (except I fear I have incurred the wrath of my daughter's bonhomous school principal. But that's a story for another day).

Offerings of wine and chocolate are accepted, as always.

Carry on.