How To Get Wheel Chaired Off A Plane And Avoid Walking Like The Suckers

There are things I recommend and things I don't, and one of the things I don't is getting yourself into the situation I got myself into on Sunday night. I should say we got ourselves into, because I was not alone in this. Here's the truth: I was sitting at dinner with three other people on Sunday evening about 5:00 pm, and we've ordered six plates between us--three were appetizers and one was a salad but still, six plates of food and this is to say nothing of the four beers. (One each). It's not like we've ordered lightly, either. I've procured a sandwich that has beer-and-coffee-glazed ham, brie, and some sort of leafery, on a toasted onion bun. Noah has mushroom stew over blue cheese grits. On top of this we've ordered buffalo wings and a delicate little number called Tater Tot Casserole with gravy on top. So you see, we're eating less like people who want to live to see tomorrow and more like people who don't believe there is one. There we are, at this cute little spot on the beach, and the waitress comes to see how we're doing and we tell her we need boxes because it is going on six in the evening and WE ARE GOING TO DINNER LATER.

"You're going to dinner later? Oh my gosh," the waitress says, and then she begins to laugh at our stupidity and we would be laughing with her were we not too busy looking down at our lamb corn dogs and blue cheese grits and feeling queasy.

To be fair, we had dinner reservations for a late 9:15 pm at Mozza. I don't know what, we think we're socialites or something. "That'll be really nice,"  I say ahead of time. "To get some cocktails around seven and have a late dinner. Like Parisians or extremely classy college students." Instead, because this was the day after a wedding and some people don't check their clocks, like ever, we end up getting to the cocktail joint for a four o'clock happy hour and then thoughtlessly continue to the spot where we had already planned to get lunch, blissfully unaware that it's dinner time until we have consumed a Texas portioned meal.

I have wanted to go to Mozza ever since I first heard of it's existence, a promised land like Eldorado, but Mozza was in LA and we were always in Orange County. Now, however, the gods have smiled and there is a Mozza in Newport Beach and here's what you do: you make a late arrival and pretend to be famous people and not a group of four idiots, or maybe hobbits, who are showing up for second dinner still satisfied from first dinner. You order a bottle of wine and you skip the appetizers. No matter what you do, you order the clam pizza. Then you slowly go to heaven or have a Harry Met Sally moment, and you bang the table and you weep. The other pizzas we had that night, I could take or leave but the clam pizza, with the white wine and the garlicky super deliciousness and the red chilies was just heaven. Then you ask them to call the paramedics before you order the butterscotch budino topped with salted caramel because you are about to go into a food coma and you will need to be revived.

Speaking of paramedics. You know what I recommend even less than second dinner? Forgetting to take your Dramamine until it's too late and you are taking off from John Wayne airport at an alarming 75 degree angle. One you will never get used to it, no matter how many times you have taken off from John Wayne you are still convinced that the plane's nose is going to flip backwards over the tail and you're all going to crash land on your heads. Then they reach a certain altitude, cut the engines, and wait to see how it all works out. Meanwhile the pressure changes are having party time with your sensitive inner ear areas. Imagine the woozy swoop of an elevator starting and stopping, over and over again, for forty minutes.

It feels that the ascent from John Wayne takes an hour, an entire hour during which you are bombarded with pressure changes and swervy curvy turning plane maneuvers. Then you start to feel sick. Really sick. You are terrified of puking but then you reach the place where you are begging sweet Jesus to allow you to barf your Mozza--the same Mozza whose take-out box everyone commented on as you were boarding and asked you to sit next to them and share and boy are they glad you didn't--because you're sure you would feel better. And the stewardess comes with cool towels. She puts them on your neck and your forehead and then hands you one and tells you to put it "between your girls", which is nothing less than a thoughtful touch. And finally, when you start to feel like maybe you are not going to die, you know what happens? You come in over the Rocky Mountains on a warm and windy day and the plane bumps and skips, not like a thing that is meant to glide on the air but like you are in a bathtub, and an angry toddler is picking you up and slamming you into choppy waters again and again. It goes on forever. You keep trying to ask your husband when the goshdarn plane is going to fudging land, goshdarnit, but you feel so sick and so certain of your impending doom that you can only moan, over and over, "dear Jesus dear Jesus dear Jesus" and you are not taking anything in vain here, you are praying to the powers that be to save your sorry life. You never were a good flyer. Always a little nervous and now this. Now the pilot decides he wants to reenact the crash from Lost and you are so motion sick it's like you've been hand selected for some god's wrathful revenge and all you've had to eat is rancid meat soaked in cream.

You know what that adds up to? That adds up to someone hyperventilating. That adds up to you weakly moaning to the flight attendants this hilarious punchline: "I can't get off the plane". At which point they decide to call the paramedics and to give you oxygen because you keep saying you can't breath, you can't breathe. Then the paramedics, the sick bastards, will ask you to stand and move into a wheel chair even though you are insisting to them that you are going to faint and wildly searching the crowd to see who is holding the ammonia they're going to need to bring you around. When you tell the paramedics you are going to faint, they will reply that there is no way this is possible. Not with a blood pressure this high. How high? 144 over 100. You know that that is, Paramedic Bob? That is the blood pressure of a woman who has seen her fiery death in detail and lived to tell the story. That is the blood pressure of a woman who has managed to hold down Mozza while her sadistic pilot decided to do an air show rather than a landing.

So just a recap here. Things I recommend:

-Mozza
-Ipswich clam pizzette with garlic, chilis, and pecorino
-Butterscotch Burdino with sea salted caramel
-A nice light-bodied wine

Things I Do Not Recommend:
-Having second dinner
-Forgetting to take your Dramamine
-Taking your Dramamine too late and on an empty stomach
-Envisioning your airplane seat freed from the airplane and plummeting in a terrible death spin to earth some thousand miles below
-Hyperventilating and having the paramedics wheel you off the plane

Guys, it's just not as fabulous as it sounds.

Oh yeah, here is me with my sister-in-law Susie, in the one picture I took during three days in California:





You're welcome, mom and dad!

Three for Fall

Autumn is my favorite time of year to read. Well, autumn and summer. And also January. Ok, maybe every time of year is my favorite time to read, but you know there is something extra alluring about sitting down with a chai and a great book on these smoky, dusky days. Here are three books I'll always wish I could read for the first time. Again.

The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson




When I can't find a good book, it feels like I can't breathe. I'd been trying a variety of things--classics, popular fantasy, new releases--and nothing would take. Then along came The Family Fang and saved my life.

The third page (or so) had me laughing harder than the latest Chelsea Handler book--and I love Chelsea Handler. The Family Fang is so approachable, so witty and deeply entertaining. It is the story of Annie and Buster Fang, known in the art world as Child A and Child B. Their parents are performance artists who have been incorporating Annie and Buster into their oddball public stunts since they were babies. The book plays with some serious themes--as adults, Annie and Buster have trouble determining which events in their lives are real and which are for entertainment. But mostly it's just a great time when Child A and Child B each suffer a career mishap and land themselves back at home with their famous, crazy parents. I loved every page of this book. I read it slowly. Part of me wanted to stay with the family Fang forever, I was so wrapped up in their lives and having such a fantastic, hilarious, thought-provoking time there. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.


The Rules of Civility, Amor Towles



It's kind of like if you took really good writing, the good kind of good writing, not the stuffy kind. Then you add all the romantic Manhattan sets from Gossip Girl, only if Gossip Girl was set in in the 1930's so it's even better. Ice cold dirty Martini's, extra olives, instead of fluorescent pink Cosmopolitans and your grandmother's pearls replacing Juicy Couture. Stockings drying on the radiator instead of hair dye and spray tans. Ok? And then you took a little bit of Great Gatsby--not the parts you're supposed to value as the Great American Novel, but the parts you might have actually liked if you weren't constantly having it's greatness shoved down your throat--the ambiance, the intrigue, the ingenue. Dress it up in the sleek, stylish working-girl story lines of Mad Men. Add a sharp-tongued heroine and fantastic rat-a-tat banter of a black and white starring Bette Davis--and you've got yourself a novel to fall into and fall in love with. I loved every minute I spent in this book, bashing around New York, New York with working-class Katey Kontent and her high society friends and lovers. If I developed a freak memory loss, where every day I woke up not remembering anything from the day before, it would all be ok as long as someone would hand me this book every morning, and I could read it anew. Maybe that's a weird thing to say but love makes you crazy.

Now you know, October is coming. Every October I get pretensions about myself and think I'm going to read Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker.

I never have.

But that's ok, because there is an author whom I'd much rather spend October with. Her books are deliciously spooky, overwhelmingly absorbing. They crawl under my skin and don't leave me for months. They haunt me. I was lucky enough to get to write a review of her latest one over here on Blogher.

My title over there is better this time, and you know why? Because they changed it.

Feel like buying a book? Maybe you will want to head over to your local Barnes and Noble or independent bookstore. Did you know that even used book stores often stock new releases? I mention it because I'm hoping to avoid more of this:


I loved you, Borders Longmont.

Happy reading, friends and lovers.

My Awkward, Unweildy Creations

In the midst of the Broncos game I swore, jumped off the couch, and ran to the oven, remembering the chocolate chip cookies that had been in it for the better part of thirty minutes. Why the hell am I even baking these things, I asked myself, drawing my charred chocolate crisps from the oven. It's like I think of myself as some kind of Martha Stewart meets June Cleaver, but in reality I am exactly what would happen if you gave Spike from Buffy and Balki from Perfect Strangers a home to clean and a bunch of children to take care of. The children would turn to smarth-mouthed monsters dressed like flamboyant singing circus freaks and the house is covered in something that might be blood. I decide to make cookies because I don't want to buy them, because store-boughts are full of hydrogenated oils and other bad things I can't name, other nutritional monsters in the closet, and then I spend three full weeks pulling the butter out every morning to soften it and putting it, melted beyond recognition and unused, back into the fridge at night. Finally I muster the energy to stir the ingredients together, a task which I find boring and tedious and only complete for the end product, and then I go and burn the damn cookies and when I wake up from my domestic nightmare-haze it seems I have feed the children Xtra Pizza Goldfish for dinner and not stopped them from coating it in maple syrup. And they've painted themselves again, Indy paints herself like she is the descendant of the Comanches, or Braveheart, or a Raiders fan, and most nights while I am busy burning the cookies and serving nutritionally insufficient dinners I am also busy forgetting things like bath time, or reading charts, because my mind is dreamy, drifting toward the book I'm reading, or the thing I wrote today, and really I am not suited for this at all.

Mothering is the only thing I've ever done that I haven't been good at. I'm not some sort of life prodigy, I've just been able to avoid doing things at which I suck. I don't do math and I don't play sports. I was good at school and spent a lot of time watching tv, and so you see, I succeeded at nearly everything I tried. I mean, I had the tv guide memorized like some kind of savant. I had a good-enough grasp on the Dewey Decimal system, that was all that mattered. Now along comes this mothering thing and truly, I'm an idiot at it. That and housekeeping. I've owned a wood dining table and desk for nine years now. Never once, in those entire nine years, did it occur to me that my wood furniture might need wood furniture polish. I just kept spraying it with Windex and blaming the poor workmanship for the fact that it went dull and lost it's slick lacquer. What I am saying here is that I appear to have the homemaking skills of Al Bundy.

Sometimes I feel bad for my kids. I wouldn't want me for a mother. I'm trying to think what I would want me for. I'm a poor drinking buddy. I don't get entertaining and boisterous, I get tired and pass out. Sure I had a few good moments over Labor Day flinging marshmallows at the neighbors with my sister, but that was an exception to the rule. I am a clumsy mother, a distracted wife. I could get really down on myself, but then there's this: I want my kids to be happy, damnit. Not perfect. Not successful. Not rich or high-achieving, not results-oriented. As adults I want them to know how to follow their souls, not the money. So Ayla told me she stepped on a cactus and I laughed, so what? I swear to god, I thought she said catfish. So Indy packs her own corn tortilla and Nutella sandwich for school. Who cares? She's the only kid in Kindergarten who can't read yet, she might also be the next Nigella. Or Missioni. I mean, have you seen her ensembles? She might be, I don't care if she's not. My kids know I love them. They are given room to explore. To make messes. To create art. Ayla writes in her diary and sketches a massive fudging grasshopper that I have allowed her to bring into the house, that might have peed on the carpet. Indy spins long tales about George Washington riding rockets and killing aliens, I don't think she's certain it's not true. I don't love them with cookies or well-ordered lives. This is how I love them: I allow them just to be. So I can't control what they think or do. It's difficult to control any person, especially if you are aiming to raise an actual human and not a drone. Between my moments of failure we find moments of grace. My children have an actual human for a mother. A complete and total failure. Not a perfect drone. My demands are not on their appearances, or their skills or performance. My demand is on their hearts, and it is only one: that they listen to it. That they honor it and stay true.

Maybe, somehow, we'll be all right.

Remember That Time I Didn't Like Inception?

I saw the Harry Potter movie and I thought it was terrible.

I had an Insucktion-type blog ready, but when it came down to it, I couldn't post it. I just couldn't find it in my heart to take the mickey out of anything Harry Potter related, even a terrible, terrible movie.

. . . but can I just say that when Bonnie Wright and Daniel Radcliffe kissed each other like that, the director should have yelled 'cut', slapped them both, slapped them both again, and made them do it over, this time pretending that they actually wanted to? I mean, the first part, "Harry Potter and the Interminable Afternoon At Gringott's" was fine, but the second half, "Harry Potter and the Series of Awkward Encounters at Hogwarts", kind of lagged. None of the punchy moments were actually punched. Molly Weasley screaming her trademark line at Lestrange was handled with the same enthusiasm with which I shut off my 5:50 am alarm every morning. Ron and Hermione showed the passion of the brother and sister I have come to think of them as, thanks to the movies.

Remember when Gandalf came back from the dead? Remember when Braveheart rode his horse back and forth in front of rag-tag Scottish army, screaming about poetry and freedom and making our genitals cry? I thought that the "Harry's actually alive" moment had that same resonance and vigor. No seriously. It was really awesome the way Hagrid fumbled Harry and Harry ran away like a rat. It was just like the Braveheart moment. You know, if William Wallace had fallen off his horse and ran while the English shot arrows into his ass. It was like the Gandalf moment, if Stryder had shrugged and looked vaguely hungry instead of staring in the half terror, half wonder of true awe.

But man, the moment when HP7.2 really shone was that totally unexpected scene where-for a moment!--you thought Neville ACTUALLY HAD PLUMMETED TO HIS DEATH OFF THE BRIDGE. If you were not holding your breath and peeing your pants, check your probably-Nordic pulse. When the camera lingered over the place where the bridge broke off, not showing us the full depth into which Neville had supposedly fallen, I was totally buying it. How could I not? I was certain he was dead, but then! SPOILER ALERT: Neville's hand appeared on the precipice of the cliff and he PULLED HIMSELF BACK UP!! No way. No fracking way, guys. Mind = blown. I have never seen that shot in a movie before. So fresh, so original, so authentically riveting. And using up valuable screen time to make us fake-think a character who we knew was going to live was actually going to die--wow. I mean, wow. Writerly and directorial prowess right there.


Each scene of the movie felt merely a hurried byway to the cheesy, awkward, off-pitch and anti-climactic next. The whole thing felt disjointed, not unlike this picture:



In which Harry anticipates the upcoming alien probing with terror, Hermione reveals confused dismay that they've discontinued the Salted Caramel flavor at Pinkberry, and Ron missed the apocalypse memo and has been misinformed that this is not the ultimate climax of a seven-years-in-the-making drama, but rather a shoot for the Land's End catalog.

If Harry had shown anything approaching this level of emotion in the movie, I would have been thrilled. I don't blame Daniel Radcliffe. I've seen him perform live and naked. I know he's a good actor because, while watching Harry Potter and the Half-Turgid Member, I was so swept up in the drama that I barely even noticed said member at all.

Shoot. Now I've gone and done what I swore I had no heart to do.

Let's move on.

In case you didn't know, here is what actually happened to Neville:



Happy Labor Day weekend. Special thanks to she-knows-who for the Pomegranate-infused tequila and the San Pelligrino Limonata. I'm having a love affair. It sounds like Anthony Bourdain and tastes like paradise.

oxo

-V

Beekeeper

Today at work a man approached me and asked if we had any copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook.

Is it a real cookbook? I asked.

No, he said. Or maybe any copies of The Book of Revenge?

Now here's the thing. Customers bring all manner of things through the queue, and I do not bat an eye. I pride myself on not batting an eye. I don't care if they're buying nudie mags, or books about sex with robots (true story), or the biographies of Glenn Beck or my arch nemesis Tim Tebow. I don't believe in censorship, and I don't believe it's my business what people choose to look at or read. I'm just happy they're buying it and not sneaking it into the men's restroom (often true story).

So when this gentlemen asked for these materials, I said, without any inflection: Is it about anarchy?

Because I was starting to get a feeling, but I honestly wasn't sure. Are we talking about bombs, or baking? Sometimes you just don't know.

This is when a co-worker chimed in and helped me. She told the aspiring Anarchist that we hadn't seen those books in in awhile. He thanked us and left, and a few minutes, while working with another customer, I replayed the conversation in my head and began to laugh hysterically.

"Is it a real cookbook?" I had asked him. What the hell was I thinking? What would they teach in the Anarchist's Cookbook? How to bake cookies without measuring precise cups of flour--because you know, down with the rules, and all that? Tips for using barbecue grills illegally? All the things a young anarchist needs to know about roasting a chicken without government interference? Don't measure out the vanilla extract, it might say. Just go ahead and pour in as much as you feel. Freedom from state! IS IT A REAL COOKBOOK, I asked him??


We have these customers, at Borders. One old farmer in a worn hat. It took me awhile to realize that he wasn't coming in for books on woodworking or metallurgy. He was coming in to have a chat. Once I wised up, I made a point of small talk. How's the table coming. How you handling the heat? You seen our new stuff on ship-in-a-bottle-building? He'd go away for an hour. Then he'd return.

We'd chat again.

I never asked if he had a wife. I don't think he did.

I worry about him, and the others like him. Widowers or old bachelors with no one at home. Borders is the only gig in town. Where are these folks going to go? Will someone remember to set aside the magazines on Will and Kate for the old ladies? The Linda Lael Miller McKettrick series that are supposed to be sent back? Will the people at the other stores know the difference between the need for a book, and the need for human connection?

Will the old men do their crosswords alone?

*********

I learned today that Mercury is in retrograde and really, that explains it all. Don't worry, my mom taught me how astrology is the devil's work, but here's the deal: You know how attached I am to my Gemini sign (married a Gemini. BFF is a Gemini. I always get along with Geminis, and you know we're the Twins, right?) and if you were a fly on our wall these last few weeks you'd have witnessed the effects of Mercury getting all down with its retro self for sure. Things are topsy-turvy. I spoke harshly to Mr. V THROUGH THE INTERNETS which I've never done before. We can blame the heat too, ok? Let's blame that. I know this much is true: I've been working out, I've been taking my B vitamins, I've been eating healthy and avoiding sweets and my stress levels are still through the roof.

Add to that the fact that my computer froze up twice today and we've got ourselves a case of Old School Mercury. No doubts about it.

Here is what I want: to keep bees. I can't think of a better thing on any level. Metaphorically, spiritually, environmentally. The honey bees are dying. If you start to cry apocalypse I will hold on to reason for awhile but eventually I will give in and fret. I don't want the honey bees to die. I don't want the world to end, because I'm a big fan of this place and call me crazy, but the apocalypse doesn't sound like a kickin' good time. There's a high chance of pestilence, and a low chance of Dean Winchester.

I like the community of the lives of bees. The female leadership. The precise, miraculous proportions of the hive, both in structure and population. It is mystical to me. How do the bees know? Bees do what they were made to do without asking why. Their yield is both beautiful and sweet. I think I could learn from the bees.

I would like to keep bees to help the earth. Because bees in the ancient world linked this world to the next. I would like to keep bees as a meditation for my soul. To learn to take something I've been afraid of in my life, and coax it sweet.

Did you know you have to talk to your bees? Neil Gaiman knows. Beekeepers say that if you don't tell the bees the news, they'll leave. They'll want to be informed of births or deaths. They want to know if you've fallen in love. There were earthquakes all over today and I can't help thinking that someone ought to alert the bees.

There are so many things we still don't know.

****

"I dreamt--marvelous error!--that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures."-Antonio Machado.

I don't know. I think that says it all.

Things That End in August

Yesterday they said it would hit one hundred degrees.

Today I wake to clouds and thank the stars. I've got a nasty cold and the end of summer weighing me down. In the living room the goblins fight until they put on Michael Jackson videos and go slack-jawed and silent. I'm reminded of my young self, watching Kids Incorporated. I think how I still watch Kids Incorporated, only now it's called The Glee Project.

I've been waiting for Colorado peaches, but they haven't come.

The neighborhood kids walk up the block to school in the mornings. We've got until next Wednesday. I'm awake to see them because I'm headed to work at Borders. I jumped back on the sinking ship, thinking how Ayla wants an American Girl Doll for Christmas.

I tell myself this isn't going backwards.

It's noon. I hear it's Friday. Octoyeah is going down on twitter, otherwise I wouldn't know. I have spent the last week shopping for back-to-school shoes and jeans and fretting over finances. Indy is starting Kindergarten. I'm not worried the way I worried over Ayla, because by now we've been there and done that. But Indy is my baby. My last one. And her starting Kindergarten only means that I don't have babies anymore.

Ayla's Fairy Godmother sent her an ipod with Harajuku girl headphones. The word for how Ayla felt upon receiving the gift: honored.

She knows I'm a big girl, Ayla said with a tried-on solemnity. I'm going to call her and tell her how I feel like a big girl.

It took a Fairy Godmother to honor something Ayla felt within herself. Her mommy, my job is to keep her young. But I also want to honor her, when she shows me who she feels she is.

You are a big girl, Little Bird. In full bloom.



So it goes.

Austerity Now

On Saturday I made that pizza and it was so good that I made it again for Sunday lunch, and just now for Monday linner.

I left off the chicken and the bacon because I'd intended to go pescetarian again anyway, but then we went to the Boulder County Fair and I had a moment. I was starving and didn't want anything fried or on a stick, so I ordered a pulled pork sandwich. Then I followed the girls around the corner and there were the happy piggies, panting in their pens.

I had them in my mouth.

It was really weird. I felt bad and backed away from the jolly fellows. We meandered through the livestock pens, where I witnessed one farm girl sobbing and clutching her sold-off goat, and where all the chickens and turkeys and roosters were in individual pens, in a room with a few big fans in it.

And I didn't like seeing them in those cages.

And I thought about how much worse things are for the animals I actually consume.

We've been making delicious Roovy Smoovies nearly every day, as our purple-stained carpet would happily bear witness too. The girls christened them so, I don't know if they heard it, or misheard something, or just made it up. My brother-in-law Z once told me that I know smoovies aren't healthy, don't I? And now I would like to latently tell him to suck it. We make our Roovy Smoovies with lots of frozen berries and bananas, fat free organic yogurt, almond butter, wheat germ, and flax seed. You know what? Sometimes I add a scoop of Nutella and I declare that dandy. My point is that now I'm going to start tossing in handfuls of kale and spinach. You know, for protein. I hear you don't taste them in there, and I can afford that now because remember?

Pescetarian.




I also made Frozen Cherry Mojitos over the weekend. In fact, I made them twice. I didn't have any rum so I made them with some 1800 Tequila. Because I'm down like that. I ask you: is this the kind of action taken by a person who always has to follow the rulcipes? No. I can cut loose. Get jiggy, and all that. You know what other rule I scoffed? The mint rule.No mint, no rum, no problem! We are not bound by tradition here.

I left out the mint because the store was out.

It would have been better with the mint.

The mojitos were delicious, and also an appropriate send-off for my uncontrollable drinking. Just kidding, I've never imbibed uncontrollably, but I do have a confession to make.

I feel bad because all this time, I've been misleading you. I've been letting you believe that wine and I are always off together, having a good time. Relaxing and feeling all happy and cool and stuff. But that isn't true. The truth is, wine and I aren't having that much fun. Wine and I are exhausted. I have half a glass and I'm useless for three hours. And beer? You know how I'm always telling you about me and beer, and all our wonderful adventures, the tandem bike rides and the ice skating in the park? Also not true. When beer and I get together, I just feel bloated. Hard liquor? We actually feel kind of sea-sick together.

We aren't having any fun.

Don't get me wrong. I still intend to get ludicrously drunk at weddings and scream at everyone to do the Beyonce, come on, I said do the Beyonce, damnit! I just think alcohol and I are taking our relationship down a notch. We're going from married and together every night to one night stands. We'll meet up at parties and fun community outings, enjoy each other for an hour, and that's going to be about it.

So that's what I did this weekend. Shaved off some unnecessaries. It always feels good to do that, and anyway, who knows what might pop up in their place? Perhaps a butterscotch hued pair of leather. . . boots. . .that I can. . . wear to the. . . county fair, to see the. . .cows.

Shoot.


Post Script: In case you were wondering: the only thing free about the "free" Boulder County fair were the view of the carnies and the scent of manure.

Post Post Script: I learned that fancy word for fish eater from my cousin. She's got smarts and a sweet job in sustainability. When we were kids and I was buying Sour Punch Straws, she was saving her pennies. I think she might be my hero.

Post Post Script: I hardly ever actually get drunk. It just occurred to me that I assume you all can see my tongue in my cheek. But maybe you can't.

Over and out.

Things People Say About God

One of the great perks of my life is that I spend a lot of time sitting at Starbucks.

People come to Starbucks to talk to their girlfriends while their kids run around--hey, I've done it too--or to type forcefully on their laptops, or sometimes to sit with a mystery novel.

The old men come to sit and read the newspapers, and the friendlier baristas, the ones from Colombia and Venezuela and Brazil, stop to chat with them.

The old ladies come to do the crosswords or to stare out the window together and pepper the long silences with afterthought comments on the weather, or their children, or the deteriorating health of their friends.

Teenagers come to be really loud and self-conscious and buy Venti frappucino's with their parent's money. (Hey. I did it too.)

And then, some people come to Starbucks to talk about God.

My first creative writing class in college was taught by a poet named Cactus May.

He's the one that taught me to do this.

So if you don't like it, you can blame him.



This conversation was held between a man and a woman, both in their late twenties. I can't write as fast as they talk. I can't make out every word. I don't fill in any blanks.


Man: You just get it in you, because if it's not in you, there's nothing to enlighten. . .. .I'm ready to move forward and I'm graciously trying to help you get on to the same page. . . . if something hurts your ego, what does that mean? And what does God do with that?

(The woman replies, I can't hear her)

Man: We'll check in, just see how they're doing, ok it's going well thus far. . . what you have to do is you have to clear yourself. . . waiting on God frees you from having to do anything. .. . just start to listen. That's what listening used to mean. . . . new season. Sitting down cleaning all that desire empty I'm going to be used for your service. . . his goal. . . . empty out of you that's how much God wants to fill you up you have to give him that. The cup he had to drink was death. . . . Would going back to school make you more righteous?. . . We can go to Wal-mart and look for some skin product for this guy. .. . we all have plans for our lives but is he coming into this what is god doing. .. . exactly. . . attempting to get back on that page but together. . . ministry. . . headed towards getting a house and we're gonna get comfortable. Honey it's on Christ. . . laid down his. . . all I'm doing is because this stuff comes but it has to come in God's. . .seek ye first the kingdom of god so I don't even wanna think about a house. I don't wanna think about kids all I wanna think about is god's will for our lives when you seek it on your own it gets crazy so you gotta be willing to put down all that stuff thank you for the treats honey god told us to give you that gift card.

Then they got up, and left.

Presumably for Wal-mart.

Certain Slant

Central Park in October 2008


Yesterday I came both home and within two inches of smacking my husband's noggin with a cast iron skillet in the same exact moment.

Our house faces east and is full of the sun. It's two billion degrees outside, exactly. The flies keep getting in and I'd spent the night before being harassed by a nasty black rickety cricket. Then I walk in the house and what is the man doing? He's boiling potatoes. On the stove. In the house. The sun is shining, the blinds are melting, and the man is boiling potatoes. It gets worse.

He's boiling the potatoes in order to mash them.

And on the counter is a jar of gravy.

Excuse me while I run to the bathroom and puke. Why don't we just eat a really greasy quesadilla, put on a Fair Isle, and go to the county fair to ride the Spyder at one in the afternoon? I explain to him that this is how his actions make me feel. What's the point? We've had this conversation a hundred times. We'd have it again this afternoon when I got back from the movies and could smell it the second I stepped out of the car.

Beef stew.

Don't be too hard on him. It's not his fault that he's a Californian. When we were newlyweds, I told him gently at first, and then with ever-increasing consternation, that Russian Pork Chops and baked acorn squash are not things we make in July. Stuffed peppers are an autumn food and chili is only for months with an r--and even then, we're getting liberal. We don't buy blueberries in January, and we don't break out the dutch oven until well after Labor Day.

The issue we have here comes down to seasons. I go on insisting that foods are seasonal, Mr. V goes on priding himself on "not being a slave to the rules". I calmly tell him that they are not rules, just firm preferences colliding with common sense. You'd think he'd get less of a kick rebelling against those, but no.

Some things are just in our nature.

***

In May, I had a hag's toothache that summer would be a quiet season for me. A behind the scenes sort of time. I declared myself on blogging hiatus only to post almost every day that week. But then my posts tapered off. My tides receded. I needed to be inward, and so I have. I've been busy. I've gotten a lot done. For whatever reason, my spirit asked me for a bit of solitude and I gave it that.

Call me crazy, but the light felt different today. The clouds broke open in the late afternoon, the after-storm breeze was chilled. The light hit the trees at a certain slant and I heard the promise of fall.

Things come and go. My husband is out of his damn mind.

I believe in staying true to the seasons.


"hag's toothache" means a nagging feeling or a gnawing intuition, and I made it up just now.

Fiddlesticks You, July July!

(audio only)



Suck it July!

It's bleeding hot and all I can think about is Christmas.

I blame you, July. You bring the pinnacle of summer too soon and it's all downhill from there. And you know it.

You make me sick and listless with your temperatures, leaving me vulnerable for anxiety attacks over how I'm going to manage Christmas. I know you get the bitter irony in this, July.

And I know you're laughing at me.

Your mosquitoes are nothing short of torture.

I haven't been outside since June, July, and you know what?

You make me dream. Of other places. Places where it's not in the nineties for seven weeks straight. You and February make an extremely strong case for coastal lives.

See, now I'm worried about winter again.

And I blame you, July.

For everything.

I blame you for the fact that it's noon and I've not showered or dressed.

I blame you for all those nights when I put my kids to bed at ten pm, cleaned until eleven, showered sometime just before one.

For making me go bad on the promise I made in May to never complain about the heat again.

For the heat sickness I got at the pool and for every penny spent on Frappucinos. (You know I can't survive you without them, you bastard.)

But you're done! You're finished! You're through!

So you know what?

Suck it, July!