Christmas 2007

My mother arrived for the holidays.

On Christmas morning, Gavin was excited by the stockings when I turned on the tree. He had to pull up the feet on his slightly too-big Christmas footie pajamas so he could get to them. We tore open our gifts, we made a huge mess, we put on fancy aprons and made eggs Benedict, we piled on the couch and cheered for Gavin while he attacked virtual bad guys with his electronic light saber. The man brought over his cat to terrorize Po the Porkchop. Neither of the cats appreciated the stinky dehydrated shrimp treats Santa brought them. In the evening we ate roast beef, lamb, Yorkshire pudding, artichokes, carrots and potatoes, baked apples and rhubarb pie. We toasted with wine and sparkling blueberry juice, clinking each time Gavin cried, "To Santa! To Christmas! Cheers!"

Good holiday. Made it through another one.

2007 fades out

Another year. I've been looking back at my pictures since last November and realized that my smile doesn't reach my eyes in any of them. I spent a lot of time this year keeping busy, trying not to be alone in my head, trying not to look sad. As a kid, when I imagined this sort of thing, I thought it would be like a sad romantic movie, where the heartbroken woman stares out windows and withdraws from everyone. It didn't happen that way. I turned into a live nerve ending, instead. I tried to escape myself, grasping at anything to make it stop. I kept myself distracted enough that it only caught up with me in the moments I was alone; driving in the car, late after bedtime, the long nights Gavin was away. Eventually I got tired and gave up, let it catch me, and that's when I finally went numb, grieving the wasted years and the lies and love I thought I had. Day to day life is okay, I work with wonderful people. But I'm just moving on, going through the motions of the Rest of my Life and hoping I feel it again someday. I need to, considering where things are headed these days.

Time wounds all heels.

Five

Gavin walked out of the bedroom and went sleepily to the advent calendar to pull out the candy for number 16. "Happy Birthday, baby boy!" I yelled, putting down my book. He climbed under the couch blanket with me to lay beside the Christmas tree. "I'm FIVE, mom!" "I know! You're huge! What do you want to do today?" "Umm... you know, I always play on the computer when I turn five."

And so the boy played Lego Star Wars while I made banana pancakes shaped like teddy bears. When the sun was up, we stuffed into the car with his dad and went to the toy store for toppers for his cake, then took in a matinee of Alvin and the Chipmunks before returning home for foods and presents. Mike and I ate the leftovers of our traditional pre-birthday Thai takeout while Gavin ate pizza. I jammed Luke Skywalker up to his knees in the top of Gavin's cake, set R-2 by his side, and lit five candles around them. Gavin blew them out and opened his presents, carefully pulling off bows and trying not to tear the paper. He thanked the people who weren't there for his presents.

Love him.

Conquering Heroes

The garden center at Target was close to closing when we showed up looking for a tree last night. Our Christmas boxes disappeared in the move, resting somewhere in the Land of Things Put in Safe Places, so we picked up a few boxes of ornaments and lights. I gravitated toward the smaller trees. Mike made a sad face.  "Okay," I compromised, "How about one my height, then?" "How about one my height?" he said. "It would be your height once it was in the stand," I said. He shook a big tree gently by the trunk, waving the branches to tempt me. It worked on Gavin. "Mom, can we get one that goes all the way up to the ceiling?" I was outnumbered.

And so an hour later we were home, Mike's legs sticking out from beneath a huge tree that swallowed up my entire living room. The top bobbled while he wrestled it onto the stand. The cat ran under the bed. Gavin watched. "Is it supposed to be crooked, dad?" "No." "Well it is." "Thank you." "You're welcome." By the time the tree was up it was past 10pm, so we left it naked, brushed our teeth, read a book, and said goodbye to dad for the night.

In the morning I sat knitting, listening to A Breath of Snow and Ashes on cd, when Gavin stumbled out of the bedroom. Po (now dubbed "Fat Fat Porkchop") meowed for treats, and he gave her some in the kitchen. "Wow, mom," he said, climbing onto my lap atop my knitting, "I was listening all night for the tree to fall over, and it's still up!" "Amazing!"

Gavin helped me string lights until his dad arrived, shivering from the cold. We ripped open our packages of new ornaments like early presents and covered the poor tree in sugared pine cones, snowflakes, and plastic icicles. We patted ourselves on the back for general fantasticness and opened the traditional box of tree chocolates while Gavin pulled out the first day of his advent calendar.

And after all this - do I get to stay at home baking cookies and listening to sappy holiday music with the boys? No. I am at work, typing on my lunch break with a cup of decaf tea, after dealing with grouchy patrons all morning. The Christmas Spirit is upon us again, like wolves at our throats.

But the tree is up, the presents are stashed, the cocoa is well stocked, and I am feeling kind of happy.

Birthday a la Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving weekend was pretty good. The crew from Valencia drove up in the early afternoon, packing into my kitchen to steal my aprons and pour brandied eggnogs. We feasted on turkey, fatty fat fat tomato pie, broccoli casserole, sausage-stuffed pumpkin, chestnut dressing, and mashed coconut sweet potatoes. Gavin and Mat zoned in on the computer, battling lego droids for hours while the rest of us ate pie with our fingers. At this point Gavin starting calling Mat "dad". We converted the ex-husband's apartment into a hotel for the night. Friday was a day of snacking, ice skating, and battling through the Christmas Spirit to beat our way [unsuccessfully] to a Wii. Yuri had no shame scooting around the ice rink in a walker, while Gavin enjoyed falling spectacularly as often as possible. Marc joined us for a couple turns around the rink, only crashing to the ice once or twice after some amazing accidental triple-axles.

When all the guests were packed with leftovers, stuffed with pie, and kissed goodbye, we piled up cat food in our kitchens and drove up to the Bay. I've only ever visited San Francisco in the chilly months, and it was really nice walking through the brisk air into Union Square to meet Mr. HS. We threw ourselves across the couches in Anthropologie, we laughed at terrible break dancers, we ate really good Thai food and bought chocolate at the Ghirardelli shop. As the sun went down into the fog, we drove over the mountain into Santa Cruz, imposing ourselves on Mr. HS and fiance to allow Gavin a go at the overrated Wii until we were all mouse-eyed with exhaustion and went to our hotel.

Sunday morning we went into town and ate fresh scones, brie omelette, and eggs Benedict on hot sourdough. Walked through the downtown streets and dropped a dollar into the case of a street bag piper; drove to the seaside to take in the seals and salty air. We said goodbye to our friends over semi-authentic Hawaiian plate lunch, and left with a sense that we had found a backup town to think about moving to. Santa Cruz is really nice.

screaming skulls

Mike and I stood on our doorsteps, phones to our ears. I watched Gavin run down the sidewalk to the corner. "I see him," said Mike. Gavin disappeared around the corner and I heard his voice in the background over the phone. "Got him!" And so the boy has earned the relative independence of going to his dad's by himself. Apartment to myself, I took up my knitting, put on some tea, and turned on the tv. The Sad Sad Housewife channel was doing its best to contribute the the holiday suicide statistics by playing marathons of winter romantic comedies. When Harry Met Sally was followed by Serendipity, and I watched from under my eyebrows as my needles clicked until I finally shut it off, gathered my stuff, and went to visit the boys. Mike was baking a pie while Gavin lay quietly on the bed, penitent for having punted the cat. "You in trouble?" He nodded, sniffing miserably. I laid down beside him and pushed his hair out of his face and he whispered that he hoped he hadn't hurt her. At that moment, the cat scrambled up onto the bed, across my leg and onto his face, all four paws wrapped around his head and tongue tangling in his hair. He made a muffled noise and flapped his arms to fend her off, causing her to leap in a cartwheel down his torso, hug his leg, and attack it with her hind claws. "She doesn't look very hurt, does she?" Gavin laughed and curled against me as I shooed her off. After going through the bedside bookshelf, Gavin climbed under the covers and cozied up to listen to the Cavern of Screaming Skulls until he fell asleep. I snuck out and sat on the couch in front of Oz with the alpaca arm warmers I'm making to match my new knitted capelet that I'm never going to wear.

The dancers arrived on time, and I made myself busy in the kitchen making fudge while they practiced dancing to bagpipe music. Fudge used to be my specialty, but all my attempts have puddled since moving here. I finally bought a jar of marshmallow fluff, followed the recipe on the back, and was annoyed when it set perfectly. I suppose anything will set if you choke it with marshmallows. Including myself, because I did just that.

After stumbling out from his nap, Gavin and I gathered up our goods and walked back home. We wound down the evening by watching Japanese commercials and snowboarding videos. "Wow!" said Gavin, watching a body whirl through the air, "That's so cooool! And I would never do that." I kissed his head.

a good autumn weekend

Saturday morning smelled like winter, the ground was cold and wet. We bundled into the car and drove into the fog up the grapevine, out between the mountains to Fillmore. Yuri met us at IHOP for a late breakfast. I pulled tea bags and packets of splenda from my purse; she pulled vegetarian sausages from hers. Purses are magic. We ate a caramel apple at the train station, swapping library horror stories until the Pumpkinliner chuffed up and we waved goodbye until Thanksgiving. Gavin chose seats in the open-air car, looking over the railing at the pomegranate and orange orchards while all the dads in the car twisted open bottles of pumpkin ale. At the 'Ichabog' pumpkin patch, Gavin kicked off his sneakers and dove into the jumpy castle while Mike and I walked through the pumpkins under the trees. A musician played Grateful Dead songs on a stage with a dozen dancing toddlers and mothers. Mike reached up and picked an orange. We chased Gavin through the dark, musty hay maze. Older kids ran through screaming, pretending to be scared of the latex corpses in the dead ends. Gavin stood in a shaft of light from a tear in the ceiling tarp, blowing the dust motes into swirls and looking at how the light was broken up by the shadows of his fingers. He looked around the bales of hay at each turn, avoiding the rubber spiders and rats, and then ran out into the light to find a pumpkin. We finally settled on a tiny round one and a huge pear-shaped one just as the train rattled back into the patch. Gavin chose an outdoor seat with a table by the engine, put his head down on his arms, and fell asleep before we reached the station. He woke up an hour and a half later as we pulled into our driveway, and the boys went to the video store for the Battle for Endor while I took off my boots and sorted through the day's photos.


On Sunday I found myself on the floor, shivering under wet plaster and trying to make my Valkyrie armor for Halloween. Gavin put on a movie for us and sat by my head feeding me peanut M&Ms while I dried out. I realized I had forgotten to spray down with PAM, and had to tear off all my body hair and a layer of skin to get the damn thing off. Not sure about it, but maybe it'll look more like armor with some paint.
 

Sat my plaster torso on the lanai and knitted while Gavin built spaceships out of his magnetic building blocks. Made a chicken and broccoli cream soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, and the boys washed dishes and baked a loaf of Irish soda bread. I threw in a batch of cupcakes while the oven was hot. Gavin licked the beaters and ate a steaming slice of buttered bread. Everything was okay.

Fall again

Winter is coming. I woke up this morning with Gavin's feet in my face. Covering him with my side of the comforter and easing the door shut, I ate my cereal in front of the computer until he shuffled out and rolled under the couch blanket. We sat together and watched cartoons, my hands feeding fuzzy orange yarn onto my circular needles. Po spread herself gingerly across our laps, subdued by her girly-bit surgery earlier this week and chilled by the air on the lanai. Today was the first day of long pants, long sleeves, cozy socks and covered shoes. Gavin led the way down the hall to his preschool classroom, pausing to say hi to the lizards and stare at the sullen picture day kids being dressed as chefs and tennis players by squealing puppet-shaking photographers. I knelt down to hug him goodbye, and he gave me his usual farewell speech as he inched nearer to the kids playing blocks, "Bye, mom! Have a good day at work! Don't forget to bring me a nice book - and tell me if the Snack Man comes [Marc] - and do everything I want you to do! Bye!"

At the library, it was a tour day. It wasn't until all the students bunched in that I discovered "special ed class" meant "30 children in wheelchairs", and found myself in the middle of a crowded sea of expectant, parked little faces. I wondered how many I could cram vertically into the elevator before deciding that a stationary point-and-yell tour would have to do. I hollered and waved my arms, then mustered my best Scary Voice to read Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls despite the bored slump of the younger teachers. Had an irritated Tea-Drinking Knitting Cat Lady Librarian moment where I wanted to yell at them about their posture before remembering, yet again, that I was their age. Feeling older these days. I have discovered myself seriously thinking about buying horrifying seasonal cardigans and fake hand-carved reindeer sculptures. It starts as a joke, and ends with people piling cardigans and figurines under your Christmas tree. This will not do.

Speaking of cardigans, fashion rant: why does nothing look good on me this season? Who are these people designing for? Why am I being asked to pay $90 for a Vera Wang skirt that makes my butt look like it flaps around my knees? Why are potato sacks with drawstrings around the neck back in fashion? WHY?! I need clothing!



In other news, have successfully dumped Johnny the Coffee Pot and am no longer forking over $7 a bag for dark roasted panic attacks. I made peach jam. Gavin is featured in a full-page ad in Black Belt Magazine this month, because his dad makes the ads. Have knit 2 more hats and started a third, as well as beginning my first [toddler-sized] sweater.

overheard at the library

me: Does anyone actually say 'o-possum'?
marc: only if they're singing an anthem.

J: Russia has dissolved its government.
S: wow, really? Huh.
K: The kindergardeners didn't know who Maisy was.
S: *gasp* That is truly a tragic commentary on today's society. It really is.

saved as draft and published 9/30/09

Back from vacation.

Gavin enjoyed his first day of preschool today, even though we both tried to oversleep. If it weren't for Po yowling into our ears and shaking our heads with her claws at 8:13am, we might have made it up to 13 hours each. We shuffled out in our undercrackers and stared into the empty fridge. My empty fridge. My wilting plants. My angry cat and comfy couch and little white tea cups It had been very difficult leaving my mother behind. Gavin sobbed like his heart was breaking when we said goodbye to his granny at the airport. My mom started crying. I started crying. The woman beside me started crying. Her husband started crying. The old man behind them started crying. It was terrible.

Adventure finds us, charges $75 co-pay

9pm.

"It's just a bump from daycare, it's not broken," Mike told me as he dropped off the car and Gavin for the night. He had a little makeshift sling made from a pillow case, and was sleeping in his booster seat. I lifted him out and he woke sharply, holding his arm with his good hand. As I laid him in bed, he cried out and began sobbing. 15 minutes later we were all sitting in the ER, slumped with other sleepy people and scribbling out medical forms. Wrapped in a blanket, Gavin slept on our laps. A teenage girl with home-inked tattoos and a shaved head sat near us, wearing a shirt that read "Baby Girl" in glittering pink plastic gems and holding a 5 day old preemie on her lap, unlit cigarette hanging from her lips. A blonde woman with a small pregnant belly sat hunched over, wincing in pain and shuffling to the desk periodically to ask if anyone could help her. A beefy young man with a trucker cap and one shoe limped by under his small wife with what looked like a snake bite to the foot.

11pm.

The technician couldn't find a fracture, but kept pointing to the elbow on the x-ray and muttering with his colleague. Gavin quietly asked Mike to wipe the tears off his cheeks while he held his arm bent in front of him.

1am.

A nurse put us in the linen cubby beside the ambulance entrance while she scrounged up a doctor. "We can't see a fracture, but he's only 4 and the area around the joint is still cartilage, which doesn't show up on the x-ray. There's a lot of swelling around the joint, indicating that he might have smashed the bones of his forearm and broken the cartilage. Either that or it's Nursemaid's Elbow, which means we'd have to straighten the arm and force the bone back under the tendon, but he's not holding his arm the way he would be, which also points toward a break. We'll get him in a splint and send you to an orthopedic surgeon for a better look at it." Scribbled on the paperwork they handed us was a simple diagnosis in ballpoint pen: broken elbow.

And so the kiddo starts at his new preschool this week with a battle wound. A formidable first impression. Especially if he keeps wearing his pointy-eared snood as a sling over his cast.



update, 8/24: Not broken! Splint was removed after 3 days, child is gingerly recovering mobility.

rats

Last night. Bedtime.
"Mom, what you gonna dream about?"
"I guess I'll dream about rats."
"Ratatouille? Me too. I'll be the rat. Who you gonna be?"
"I'll be the lady chef."
"Oooh, with the knives?"
"Yep, you bet."
"Ok. Dad can be the boy who can't cook. The garbage boy."

haha.

The garbage boy was on the couch when I woke up from putting Gavin down for his nap yesterday. He had finished off his swatch of practice knitting and had the Stitch n Bitch book open to a new project, a triangle of cloth already forming on his needles. I looked at the page. "Umm... What are you doing?" He held it up and grinned. "I'm making a bikini!" o_0


Delinquents

At Longs Drugs.
cashier 1: Man, you are gonna get so drunk off these.
cashier 2: hurr, that's the idea.
cashier 3: customer!
cashier 1: oh, sorry customer.
me: beer and laundry soap! Getting drunk and doing laundry on a Saturday night, I see.
cashier 2: you know it.
me: just don't confuse the two.
cashier 2: drink the soap? Yeah that wouldn't be so good. You wanna go on a date with me and make sure I drink the right ones?
me: but I already have a hot date delivering these very important eye patches to people with no eyes.

Well, I lied. Everyone had eyes, and the patches served duty as ear muffs and tiny hats for most of the night.

The kiddo discovered a patch in my purse and has not taken it off since. There's m' boy.

coffffeeeeeee

I decided to break up with my coffee maker, but it didn't work out. Love is blind. The blind that comes with raging headaches and shaking hands and makes you knock all the cereal out of the cupboard in a frantic search for filters. I didn't tell my machine, but I switched to half-caf. I will sneak off in the night.


The other day Gavin tried to fall asleep at 5pm, which wouldn't do because then he'd be up doing the pretty girl dance with Po until midnight, so I nudged him. "Oh, I'm not sleeping, mom, my eyes were just a little bit broken, that's all." When we finally went to bed and woke up again (in the morning) he shuffled into the bathroom as I scrabbled at the coffee pot. After a long moment there was a clatter in the bathroom and then warbling falsetto, so I popped in to check on him. He had an audience of stuffed cats, and looked up at me in my jammies, "Oh hi mom! I was just... um..." he looked concerned, reached up slowly, and then juggled my nungas. "Huh, look at that."

I guess they weren't where he thought they should be without a bra on.

Masturbator

me: "See, there goes his hand again, but it's not mov- oh! I saw tendons twitching."
Heather: "Oh, I'm just SO glad I came in today."
me: "Marcus is doing stealth recon somewhere."
circ staff: "Marcus went upstairs!"
me: "Oh, he's upstairs, he'll see it all up there!"
manly circ staff: "I'll throw him out if you want."
me: “Thank you, I would love to see you pick him up by the shirt and chuck him out. I'll let you know."
Marc came downstairs nodding, then stalked into the back room to scald his eyeballs with rubbing alcohol. Heather and I pushed and raced out to the computer room and stood right behind the man with the 5 chat windows open, watching him type rapidly with one hand and pretend to scratch with the other. When his biceps got into the action Heather's eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped down to kneel beside him. "Sir, we're getting complaints about what you're doing with your hands. You have to stop. Now." He stared at her, but put his arms on the table.

I was laughing about this while guiding a patron down an aisle. I mostly get hit on by friendly old men, but lately younger guys have used me for practice, posing against the desk with stupid compliments on my typing speed. This guy tried it, using the good old "hey, how tall are you?" line to break the ice. I told him, and he tried to convince me he was a 6' 3" basketball player who likes to go to Oscar parties. Except he was a 5'8" middle-aged man who likes to carry Star Wars toys in his stained pockets. 

Interesting day at the library.

preschool love

A couple weeks ago, Gavin heaved a heavy sigh and said,
"Mom, I'm not in love with A. anymore."
"Why not?"
"She's not my girlfriend anymore. She's P.'s girlfriend now."
"Oh dear. Well, you didn't really love her too much anyway, you said she whines and takes your snacks."
"Yeah. And P. says I can't be in love with her because she's his girlfriend now."
"Well you can be in love with whoever you want, he can't control you how you feel."
"Yeah... but she always hit hit hits anyway and screams a lot."
"Sounds like it's ok she's not your girlfriend anymore, then."
"Yeah."

Cut to yesterday.

"Mom, A. is almost part of my family."
"How's that?"
"Well, I am going to marry her."
"But I thought she wasn't your girlfriend anymore?"
"She is again."
"What happened to P.?"
"He has a boyfriend now."
"Well that happens sometimes."
"Yeah.

haha.


This morning is the last program of the summer, which is going to rely on my nonexistent skills as fingerprinting expert. I am bringing candy to appease outraged children.

Went into the kitchen for breakfast, where Po leaped onto her hind legs and did the Pretty Girl dance on the cupboard door. I reached in and grabbed the last tin of food out of the box, flipping it over to discover a bubbling foam of tiny maggots exploding from a dented crack in the aluminum. Oh no! The protein is escaping! I chucked it in the trash and gave Po dental treats instead. I hope that is not a signal of things to come today.

knit 2, snarl 3

Have knit a 5x5 swatch. It has a couple holes in it, but those are for tiny feet to go through.

For the second weekend in a row, Marc's wife and I managed to get together and hang out. We dried off in the shade beside the pool, watching Gavin cannonball into the water and the baby rearrange our slippers on the towel, talking about love and metabolisms. It's nice having another mom to talk to.

Yesterday I dropped off the kiddo with his father and went out for a morning of necessary shopping. I drifted on autopilot. Sat outside Target with a diet coke and stared at the mountains. I can't see where I'm going anymore, I got to the light at the end of the tunnel and everything's misty out here. I have no purpose, no mission in life. I am not looking for that guy out there who is supposed to be looking for me as well. I wonder if he's sitting with his elbows on his knees, too.

nerdpost2

To everyone's surprise, the spotted dick was the first to go. It might have looked like fetid meatloaf, but it turned out to be a succulently moist toffee pudding that was well worth the embarrassment it did to my Le Creuset.

The midnight opening at Russo's was great, the marketplace crowded with students, professors, muggles, news vans, radio stations, and vendors. The line wrapped a thousand people deep, Potter music erupting from massive speakers as the crowd surged at midnight. Employees flung books out as fast as they could snatch tickets, and by 12:15am the book was gleaming in my eager hands.


Better wizards than I have lost buttocks:




The police blocked off the marketplace exits as the boxes arrived and were unloaded, but Russo's was taking no chances and placed their own guard against the mob of squibs:




And this goes down as the stupidest picture of me in recent months:

Milky Way redux

Right. Am a strong woman. Will reclaim athleticism and become master of morning swimming.

The pool was full of bugs. I got out the ridiculously long scoopie net and swished it around in the water. Thunked half a cup of dead corpses into the bushes and wondered idly how many calories would have been in them. Decided that my wake would wash the rest of the dead things off to the gutters, so leaped in and swam back and forth until my ears started hurting and I was forced to crawl out and lay sprawled on the deck. Spat out 3 gnats, picked my way over the wet grass like a cat, and up to my apartment for a shower. Peeled off my speedo and found a second layer of drowned gnats underneath, which set me off into a laughing fit that scared Po out of the litter box. And I feel bad about eating shrimp? I thought illogically. Dumped cocoa body wash over my head and washed away the lingering irritation of last night's banging-Mike's-head-against-floor dreams. Unfortunately, deliciously scented skin was sabotaged when a jar of curry powder leaped out of the cupboard, flung its contents all over me, and smashed itself on the floor. Damn it.

Sang in car on the way to work. "When the stars -- and the moon -- and the sky fall throooough, I'll throw it all awaaaay when I swallow! Deep as the seagulls!" I don't really understand Brandi Carlile, but I love her.

Man vs. Wild vindicated me last night, and I punched the air with a hoot. Sexy Unnessary-Goat-Eyeball-Eating Survival Man explained, up on a cliff, "An easy way to tell how long you've got is to put your hand up like this against the horizon, and every finger is 15 minutes. I've got one hand - two - and so that's about two hours until sunset." HA! I win! Pointlessly smug.

words from Gavin

"Mom, I want to spend the night with dad. It'll be ok, don't be scared sleeping by yous-self. I won't be dead, I promise."

"If the bad guys come in, I'll WHOOSH up with my flying saucer and you can spray them with the pepper sprays and then I will BONK them on theirs head and thems bounce high high high and CRASH and break theirs body all up." [This said enthusiastically. We had some words about breaking people's bodies.]

camping

The 27-year-old-13-year-old Returns


In my memories of 16 years ago, we pushed through tall bushes and bright green foliage to step into a clearing with a towering redwood. At the base, my youngest aunt exchanged vows with her new husband. My grandparents stood to one side, Uncle Don choked up a bit as he officiated. 2 years later we all returned, filing quietly through the same leafy greenery to pay our respects to my grandmother's ashes and pour our grief into the tree. The forest has burned since then. Unable to find any walls of bushes, I trusted the memory skills of my feet to carry me off the path and over crunching layers of dead bark while Mike and Gavin followed cautiously behind. Rounding several crisped young trees, there she was, as solid as ever. The inside crack of the tree was black, red weeping sap solidified like dried blood in places. Someone years ago had dropped a pen; it was melted into the pine needles. I wondered if it had been one of us. White flecks showed in the dirt in the hollow, and I said hi to grandma.

"Did she turn into the tree?" asked Gavin, frowning. "Why can't she come say hi and hug us? When is she coming back to life?" "She's dead, baby. Maybe her spirit grew into the tree's. Maybe she's gone forever. We don't know what happens when we die." "Then why are we alive? It's so sad." "That's why we have children. She had my mom, my mom had me, I had you, and so now you're living for grandma, and when you have a baby they'll be alive for you. That's how we go on." We regarded the tree somberly. Suddenly a very tanned half-naked boy appeared around the side, long hair streaked with tiny braids. Pointy ears and slanted eyes. "Oh, hello," he said in surprise, and disappeared. I turned to Mike, "I just saw an elf!" My mother later argued that it was a tree spirit. We wondered if it would be upset by its discovery and appear at our tent with half a dozen tree spirit cronies and crowbars to whack us.

The forest was as amazing as ever, even with the hoots and screams of the tourists. Shafts of light, dust motes, blue jays, squirrels, curling plants, mossy remains of fallen giants. The earthy smell was so heavy you could feel it. Forests are cathedrals. When Gavin's small legs got tired, we said goodbye to the pet sticks he had carried around, got back into the car, and drove down the mountains to the lake just as evening set in.

Bears!

No bears, actually. A deer bounded across the road, a squirrel tried to attack the car, and several hawks eyeballed Gavin, but no bears tried to muscle in on our marshmallow roasting. Perhaps because we didn't have any; we forgot to bring implements of fire. Or ice, for that matter. Or a bottle opener. Mike pulled out a warm beer, looked around for a sharp rock, and bashed the top of the bottle clean off. He stared at the ragged edges sadly. "At least we have something to chase off the park ranger when he comes to get our money." Gavin celebrated the erection of the tent (oh hush) by rolling in the dirt until he was monochromatic. At nightfall the lake exploded in holiday fireworks, and we watched from our hilltop view.

Gavin woke me up by poking me in the forehead repeatedly. I had become wedged between the two twin air mattresses. After enjoying the luxury of the extra-big handicap port-a-potty, we walked down to the lake to throw rocks, pluck hooks from the sand, and poke a dead fish with a stick. A gang of smug ducks cruised by. As Gavin waded through the shallow water, swirls of sand glittered with gold behind him. I picked out several flecks and held them up in the sun on my fingers. The golden shores of Lake Isabella! Pretty.

After enjoying a cozy breakfast in the village and making off with a wooden bear and chicken from the Bear (and chicken!) Store, we picked up snacks for the drive home and I slammed my own head in the car door. It can be done! That would have been an anticlimactic way to die, even if it did make a good gravestone inscription.

We drove home, and I thought about how strange it is living for no purpose. No more schooling, no muse, no true love. It's Gavin's turn, and I'm just killing time.

stir until crazy

Having completely squicked myself out with self-help books on understanding abusive sexual addictions, I tossed the lot and picked up some books on zen philosophy. I have been the only person doing any squaring in this squaring-off with Mike, and I say he can sing ballads under my balcony with roses in his teeth (up his nose?) while I squander my evenings reading in the tub; this ickiness is his to face, not mine.  It's a bit hard getting through non-fiction while getting sidetracked by Harry Potter, but it's a nice change after the nastiness of the other stuff.


use the CATALOG!

Today I have been stir crazy. Heather threw a handful of chocolates at me as I snarled past her office, flapping my stacks of book reviews. Moment for self-examination: will these chocolates bring me pleasure, or will they bring me happiness? Pleasure, surely. But they also prevent me from shaking patrons by the hair, so that counts towards some sort of happiness. It is comforting to have newfound spiritualosity.

edited to add: whoever thinks it is funny to have a tiny kitten meow as their cell phone ring tone is going to find their locker bashed open. Any day now. Just sayin.

did what now?

Gavin got his first kiss today - then his first reprimand for kissing at daycare. He shrugged about it as he explained what happened this evening, "She kissed my cheek, and cheek, and lips." He pointed to each. "She said she had to kiss me cause I'm hers boyfriend. I don't want to be hers boyfriend. I want her to kiss me on my cheek, not my lips. When we eat lunch she goes, gimme yous fruit! and I tell hers no, it's my fruit, and she says wah gimme pweeeeze wah and I don't want to give it to hers cause I'm hungwy and she's whining." He sighed. "She says I has to cause I'm hers boyfriend. But I don't. Oh well." I think I made a strangled noise. I thought about the little girl's sparkling pink Disney Princess hoof-shoes and imagined her clippity-clopping on my son's arm to the prom, adjusting her plastic tiara and eating off his plate. 

Yikes.

barf

On Wednesday, I bragged about how great it is having an older child who sleeps through the night, and Gavin spent the next night vomiting from 1am - 6am. I assured Gavin that it's normal for kids to throw up, and that when he grows up he won't do it as much, then I spent Thursday night vomiting from 10pm - 5am. I need to shut up.

Friday was a soggy blur of naps, movies, and tea. Children of Men was stressful, The Devil Wears Prada disappointed me because it did not, in fact, star Glen Close as Satan. I tried reading in bed and woke up 4 hours later with a fever, so took a couple ibuprofen and watched the last disc of Arrested Development. Mike picked up Gavin and made dinner, and then he got sick, too. I am hoping he is the only father who has been infected with our flu, and that everything is purged before Father's Day. Advance apologies to Marc and all the dads at Gavin's daycare.

Sort of a sad week.

stalkers, police, and fishies

Marc has earned himself his donut for a daring exhibition of super-sleuthing, and for not being the person unconscious under the bushes (that was a drunk person). Now we are armed with the powers of INFORMATION, because he followed my stalker stalker on his lunch break and figured out how far from my apartment he lives (too far to get to me on foot, which is good).

I took a break from writing my latest incident report to push through the crowded lobby and stand in the 98 degree afternoon waiting for my policemen. SRP event #2 was a success. Librarian wins. The auditorium was packed, the officers trotted in their dogs to gasps and cheers, and they brought fantastic BPD badge stickers and collectible photo information cards of themselves. They wowed the crowd with a story about this morning's showdown with an armed robber, the dogs leaped and rolled and flung slobber on toddlers, and I basked in sweet, sweet victory over last week's humiliation. The boys, having enjoyed the frolicking police and waited in line for Officer Handsome's autograph, took me out to a Korean bbq joint for dinner, where I found myself eyeball-to-eyeballs with a bowl of tiny dried fish. I felt a bit guilty eating so many little dead creatures in one sitting, but they brought me right back to my cuttlefish youth, and I was very pleased by them. 

In summary: good week.

turpentine

One night alone a week, always looking not to be.

Agreed to go out with a co-worker. Dark pool hall, laughing tattooed dwarf bartender swinging his cue stick, smell of stale beer, a hand on my waist. I don't want to be here.

At a restaurant afterwards, there was a girl in wedge sandals and a Forever21 corset leaning against the bathroom sink unsteadily. "Don't I need Botox? Look at my eyes." They were caked in mascara but managed to focus on me for a moment. "No, you're beautiful." Went out to find my co-worker talking to some people. A Nigerian man with a British accent squeezed my hand, "Why is your drink still full?" I didn't take another sip of it. I don't want to be here.

Finally went back home.

The next day I got my kid back again. We rummaged through my box of old photos. Gavin pulled one out, looked at it for a long time, and put it on the fridge.

Bloomington, Indiana, summer 1986:




Heads together, rolled up on the bed, safe and together and all the time in the world.
This is where I want to be.

walking my mind to an easy time

My baby somehow stopped being a baby this year. Yesterday morning he wrapped his arms around my ribs in his sleep and rolled onto me. I tucked my chin over his head and felt his toes resting on my shins. I've measured him by how far his toes reach while he's sleeping on me; when he was born they curled against my navel, when he was 2 they rested above my knees. They're fast on their way to my own toes, now.

We ate cereal together and sat around on the couch for a bit. He leaned against me watching cartoons while I read. Some of his drawings from daycare are laying on the table - he wrote his own name on all of them. As we walked to the car, he slipped in the wet grass and fell onto the parkinglot asphalt, skinning his knees and hands. He brushed himself off and chuckled, "I ok, I just fell down, that's all." He cringed a bit as he climbed into his carseat. "Mom, how long is it going to hurt?" I turned and put my frozen quesadilla on his knee, and for a moment we looked at it melting there before laughing.

The ride was quiet, radio softly burning holes in me.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

I've sucked it up and agreed to return to New York this summer in order to allow my boy a visit with his family, maybe a trip to Lake George. The decision disturbed some of the internal sediment, the radio regained a bit of bite. I glanced back and saw him staring hard out the car window, hands clasped in his lap, contemplating the music and landscape as well. Small glimpse into his adult self, and it looks very much like me.

not snow white

After a slow morning watching Marc perform air reference in front of the dead computer while I folded endless piles of reading logs, the day began to pick up with the first non-catalog-related reference question: "Do you know there's a bird upstairs?" A bird! We went running upstairs. Marc chased it with a cardboard box while I stretched my finger out like Snow White. Someone had turned on one of the industrial fans because of the broken a/c, and I had horrible visions of chasing the bird into it with a WHAP! of feathers. After running back and forth a dozen times with the box and the finger, we came to terms with our failure as hunters and just opened the doors. I think we may be the reason humans are omnivores.

After work, my skinny neighbor college boy and Marc lugged a used computer desk up to my apartment. Just like Gavin goes through every one of his toys when he meets someone new, I showed them around the apartment, pointing out all my books, pictures, and shiny objects. This is probably why people have housewarming parties, to get it all out of your system.

And so I finally have a full set of grownup furniture. Someone asked me the other day if Bakersfield was going to be a long-term thing, and for the first time in my life I shrugged and said, "Who knows? Got nowhere to go and nothing to do." Just waiting for something Extraordinary, and if it never finds me - well, at least I had it once anyway.

that white chick

I've been Couched.

Javier and Mike wrestled the couch upstairs into my newly tidied apartment. Once everyone had worn themselves out with the novelty of sitting and saying "ooooh", Mike packed Gavin off for their weekly sleepover night. Javier paused for a moment, then lunged for the television. He popped up the Mexican soccer game and held his hand out optimistically for a beer. I laughed, went to the fridge, and joined him on the new couch to watch the match. I did commentary. "Ooh! The guy is saying, 'dude ran down the field, he kicked! He's running the other way now! Kicks again and red guy gets the ball! Run run run run!' I am learning Spanish!" Javier hooked his arm around my head and muffled me. His phone dinged, with his free hand he flicked it open. "Sister's having a bbq. Her boyfriend is cooking - real southern black guy, that dude can cook. Let's roll."

We rolled. 

Trio of little girls dancing salsa; beefy prison guard singing falsetto to Gnarls Barkley over smoking ribs; women laughing over the rattle of the cocktail shaker; Javier swapping Vegas stories with his childhood friends. His buddy rubbed his face abashedly, "I don't know how I got up onto the roof, but I just wanted to take leak, so there I'm hanging to the side of the building and this security guard asks if I'm ok because the people on the street think I'm a jumper." I flicked on Futurama as I gnawed my bbq. "Where did you get this girl? She's darker than you are, bro. Hey, he making you happy? Treating you right?" I spit out my diet Pepsi. Javier patted my knee and smirked. 

Now it's Memorial Day.  Apple pie! Bratwurst simmering in Guinness, cheddar brats to burn our tongues off with molten cheese, fancy chips and dips. Just a three-person family to-do over a good movie and music, but with the notable addition of my fabulous COUCH!

couch couch couch

savior and destroyer

Couch shopping after work is hard. The furniture store was dark and the parking lot was empty when we pulled up at 6pm. We got out anyway to look at the hours on the door. 

"Is that a bird?" We stopped, and all three of us tilted our heads to listen. I walked over to a dumpster under a street light, and a tiny black kitten ran mewing toward me. I scooped her up, and Gavin and Mike both ran in excited circles around me as we headed back to the car. Mike gently pulled the kitten off the back of my neck when she escaped my hands, made love-eyes and started squeaking at her, and I realized I would not be keeping the kitten. He needs the company anyway.

At work today, we suffered as a group from a strange bout of clean-it-ness, punctuated by impromptu yoga (which was Heather's fault). I assembled the Summer Reading Program mobiles and stood on a table to hang one above the kids' reading area, then peeled off the colorful clings and stared in horror at the state of the web- and mud-encrusted windows. A few minutes later I was standing outside with an industrial bucket of soapy water and my dress pants rolled up. People honked and yelled words of encouragement as I attacked the massive glass-covered building with a scrubber on a stick, shooing spiders and brushing grapefruit-sized wads of cobwebs off the children's windows. I banged the window and scrubbed extra hard where Heather's face periodically pressed against it on the other side. "'Scuse me, ma'am." I turned to find two young mormon boys in suits climbing off their bikes behind me. "Can I give you something?" A hand, perhaps? A power-washer? A boost up to the second story windows? "Here's a picture of Jesus." I started laughing, wiped my hands on my jeans, and stuffed it into my back pocket. "What's so funny?" I gestured at the building, my bucket, their bikes. "Oh... I see... sorry, here, maybe I could -" I was all set to hand him the scrubber, "- come by your house instead?" Haaahaha.

And so I have saved a baby, complicated and enhanced Mike's lonely life, and murdered possibly dozens of tiny hapless spidery souls.

burn

I wasn't surprised 5 years ago when John told me about his drag performances. "Giiiirl," he told me, "I could do your makeup. I'm good, for real. I can do you up glam, or I could make you look totally fishy." "Fishy?" "You know, like a girl. A wo-man." "I am a girl." "Yeah, but I could make you look like one." Last night I answered the phone and got the latest on my dear boy, who's little brother is having a very special wedding soon; "Yeah, girl, I'm ordained. Thank you internet, I'm a minister." "Wow! Does it expire?" "Nope, as long as I keep good records and don't get in trouble, I can marry anyone in the state of Hawaii forevers. Nice, eh?"

IKE-AAAH

"Smell that mountain air, suck it in. Mmmmm." We stood at a rest area outside Frazier Park, admiring the breeze while Gavin stomped around with his lip out. "I'm tired of driving." "Well, we'll let dad drive for a bit, then." As we drove on into the Left Armpit of Hell (Burbank), Mike pointed at a fire hazard sign. "Do you think it's ever not 'high'?" "Maybe when it snows? I dunno." The drive took longer than normal because Gavin thought false pee alarms would make the trip go faster, and we arrived at IKEA around noon. IKEA had it's way with us, and as we drove back over the mountain, a wall of smoke hit us, covering the highway in a white haze for more than 10 miles. The sun was a pinprick of orange. As we got back to Frazier Park, a line of firemen were spraying the wildfire. Bushes burned on the black crispy mountainside. We slowed and stared, made bad jokes about how hot we were, and decided never to move to Frazier Park after all.

tonight

Librarians On the Town Part II. Seeking further answers to pressing questions: does everyone have a cool name except me? Should I change mine to Reina Deth? How many bars downtown have pool tables, and which ones will allow me to win?

And for posterity, the week's Reference Questions Du Jours:

Where are the spiderman books for kids who can't read? Like, with no words?
Do you have a printout I can have of all your nonfiction books? Can you make one?
How much does it cost to rent a book?
Where are the books on how to kill yourself?
What do you mean 1183 minus 1133 is 50? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? It should be much higher, in the hundreds! How does that work? HOW? What kind of calculator are you using? TELL ME.

(feel free to add here, Marc.)

Mother's Day: liver is in the air

The day began early, cat sailing out the bedroom door after yowling me awake, groggy self shuffling into the bathroom to find up some advil and take a shower to get the smell of chicken wings off me. Gavin tackled me with his Mother's Day card, which I pinned up on the fridge. We ate cereal and sat over his baby album, reminiscing. Mike and I stood in front of the stove, eating rum cake with our hands. By noon we had a mission; liverwurst. We hadn't had any since the last time we were in New York. 

The deli was closed. The other deli was closed. The deli near the library was out of business. The deli across town was closed. Supermarket after supermarket we came up empty, so finally we bought a log of mass-market stuff and I texted J. to see if he knew where to get liverwurst. This led to a long thumb-spraining explanation of what liverwurst was. On the one hand, I now have info on the location of a German meat market on the east side. On the other, I have to beat J. at pool in exchange for my earring that he is holding hostage. Wily.

But it was a good day, a good long weekend. Happy to get back into the work week.

"Yes to Methamphetamines!"

You stop blogging for a few days and everything gets wadded up around your armpits.


Gavin and I went to see a jousting tournament and came away smelling like porcupine pee. My brief appearance at the library tent before being derailed by alpacas has circulated through the higher-ups, yet nobody has said anything about a certain reference librarian's purple pantaloons. Except me. Pantaloons!

My computer was fixed for two easy payments of chocolate chip and lemon cream cheese cookies. Also I bought rum for my "Mother's Day Cake".

Some jerk at the Beale stole Superman's briefcase with his costume in it.
Showed boss the soiled anatomy book and had it confiscated, bagged, labeled as biohazard, and was ordered into restroom to scour clean. Had not occurred to self that perpetrator most likely had not washed hands to peruse remainder of book.

Marc helped me cobble the auditorium tables into a Horseshoe of Craftiness for a very successful card-making activity with snobby scrapbooking material. Browbeat xfh into bringing child to ensure own Mother's Day card. Taking this train by the horns and riding it all the way into a cliff of triumph. Also moment of bragging: my baby can write his own name.

Tonight: Pool! Jukebox! Lemons and straws!

raining babies!

I have a new cousin! Fetus Ted joins the family.



Beth and I sat around patting bellies with Chris and Gavin, back when birds twittered and ideals were shiny. Now everyone is rolling onward, and my life fell off the side of the road in an unceremonious blip. I originally made the predictable phoenix metaphor just to steer through it all, but you don't really get reborn, you just get all mangled and disgusting. 

So welcome to the world, cousin! Don't mess it up, this is your chance.

you learn something new every - oh god no!

I guess technically everything you see in life is something you can't un-see, but some of those things just really stick it to you more than others. This week I have seen 3 un-un-seeable things. The worst of these things was the video on the Bakersfield Californian news website of a Gavin-sized girl being killed by a car. They didn't even edit it, they wanted people to be mad and help find the driver. Secondly, I put my face way too close to a mysterious smeared substance that had glued two pages of our library's anatomy book together before realizing which bodily fluid I was looking at. Threw the book and took a hot scouring shower. And then earlier this week Harris wrestled the remote away from me and snapped off the television after Rachel Ray popped on grinning manically outside a familiar-looking headshop, "In this episode we explore a place dear to my heart, the place I grew up - Lake George Village!" I howled. My heart hurts.

Cinco de Mayo. In celebration of this legendary battle against the French, Gavin and I will eat chips and guacamole, watch cartoons, and go to bed. Rawk. Will try to make up for it by finding tomorrow's jousting tournament and watching men stick each other with pointy things.

wrecked

"Would she like the Amber Bock, you think?" Harris yelled across the bar. The bartender looked me up and down. I flexed. He had a shaved head, heavy mustache, thick tattooed arms, and said in a soft, high voice, "Nope, no way. I'll make her something she'll like." He clunked down a fruity Southern Comfort drink in front of me and I pretended to like it. I would have rather had the beer. We filled up the jukebox and bobbed around the pool table under faded Saint Patrick's Day streamers. I took a carefully measured shot and sent the cue ball flying out the doorway. The bartender bent down and scooped it into his hand before it hit the pair of policemen beside him, who looked at me and then followed an angry woman into the back alley. "When you retell that story, make sure to mention how you hit the cop in the leg and had to have the bartender save you." "Will do." Note to readers: edit the previous accordingly.

As the tavern filled up with nervous prom-goers with fake IDs and glassy-eyed regulars huddling protectively on their favorite stools, we ran out of quarters and gave up our pool sticks to sit around playing with coasters. He said, "I saw [my high school boyfriend and Harris's ex-bandmate's] mom on Molokai, she gave me his cell phone number." We sent him an obnoxious picture message. Back at my place for checkers and cards, Harris talked for a few hours about various substances he enjoyed, and at 5am I tried to sleep while he maintained a death grip around my ribs. I pried him off periodically, jammed the pillow over my head, then finally gave up and made breakfast.

And that was the Bakersfield nightlife. The rest of the weekend was spent around the pool with Gavin (curse those college kids with their coolers in the kiddie pool), shopping for a couch (unsuccessful but good for free coffee samples), baking cookies (using pound-plus slabs of TJ's chocolate), and visiting health food stores (picking up 5-HTP as recommended). This morning Harris crushed me goodbye, promised to come back in 6 months when his visa was up, and threatened to carry me off if I was still a love pariah. That is somewhat sooner than 10 years, I calculated on my fingers. Ack.

alsatian insurance

Yesterday: I had just spit up my tea over a picture of a 1950s Betty Crocker meat pie when a message dinged, announcing the sudden arrival of a houseguest. Harris! Fresh off the greyhound and loose on the streets. My pocket hobo. 

Over pizza and bread pudding, Gavin exploded into narration of his weekend trip to the train station, sandwiching himself between the layers of my double-decker air bed as we turned the livingroom into a flophouse. After the house was quiet and my candles had guttered down to nubs, we curled up on pillows beside our empty wine mugs and I told my tale of woe while Harris prodded my torso and I slapped his hands away absently. Getting a bit sniffly at the end, he squeezed me crushingly, "In ten years if we're still alone, I'll come and marry you." Since the last person I had made this particular pledge of consolation with is now engaged, I laughed [wheezed] and agreed, "We'll show those wild dogs! Nobody's going to gnaw on our dried up carcasses except us! Ha." We flipped through high school photos, plotted devious [unsent] text messages to ex-friends, then shuffled off to our respective beds and listened to the cat yowl all night. 

Gavin wrapped his arms around my neck, and I dreamed a happy dream for a change, interrupting my ongoing streak of boring nightmares.* 

Today: we ran through the aisles of Trader Joe's in the morning, ate dried fruits over chai at lunch, skipped arm in arm to a sushi dinner. He may stay another night, maybe another week, before packing his bindle and heading back to Mexico. Tonight I think we'll make biscotti while he talks about eastern spirituality. Dieters and Dieties agree: cookies enhance spirituality. 

*I have been having the same nightmares for a year now, broken briefly 2 weeks ago by a fantastic run of superhero and ninja dreams before the reruns continued. Tired of repetitive emotional nightmares, I rented a bunch of horror and war films, hoping to battle some real monsters - only to find myself sitting in a cracked bathtub full of blood being comforted by eyeless ghouls while crying over being heartbroken. I count this as mild improvement.

fun with bears

Put down the very important reading I had borrowed from Marc's house on Sunday, and looked at the clock. 9:30am, had to be at work at 12:00pm. Plenty of time to prepare material for my afternoon presentation and draw for a bit. Ended up preparing vat of chili instead. Chili can only be made in vats. Even if you don't particularly like chili.

1:08pm. Looked up to find two circ ladies standing over me at the reference desk. "Come with us." They walked away. Intrigued, I followed them to the nonfiction. Took one look and ran for Marc. "Paranormal phenomena!" We all bunched into the aisle. Cookbooks were lining all the overhead beams, the floor, even propped up on the step stool. "Fairies!" "Bears!" "Tall people!" "Probably those giggling teenagers we saw last night."

Kernville

The 3-day Big Bend mama camping expedition was rained out. Looking at my fortune's worth of new camping gear, I decided to make the best of things and use my long weekend for a mother-son camping adventure in the mountains. Motel camping - I really wasn't interested in pitching a tent in 35 degrees.

The mountains were amazing, we pulled off on a remote side-road and hiked around the boulders until Gavin said his stuffed cat was tired. Lake Isabella twinkled, the rental fishing boats bobbed at the docks. As Gavin threw rocks into the water, I poked around in the sand and found a burned up lace high-heel shoe and scraps of clothing. Looked around for a dead body, but didn't find one.

In Kernville, we parked by the river and watched a bunch of girl scouts in wet suits practice paddling the air for their rafting adventure. The entire economy of Kernville is centered around white-water rafting. It is also run almost solely by desperate young men, which is either romantic or creepy, depending on how you look at things. We walked through the village from lodge to lodge, discovering that seasonal rates begin whenever the hell the owners feel like it. At one inn, Gavin rang the desk bell and a redheaded man with a tragic handlebar mustache popped out, did a double-take, got weird, and gestured us into a back room to ask the owner about rates. The owner appeared like a wolf - or a chupacabra - while the mustache man stood off to the side like someone who was about to watch a snake swallow a frog. I was the frog. After discussing rates with the leathery, tattooed, man we made our escape. "Oh god! My heart! Heart attack! Oh, my heart!" I heard him say from the doorway as I hefted Gavin up onto my hip to hurry across the road. I don't know what that was all about, but I was not sticking around to get murdered.

We picked the motel that fleeced us the least and headed up the mountain to find the redwoods. Gavin fell asleep in the back seat, his head bobbling from side to side on the switchback roads. It was closed. Coming back down from the roadblock, I followed three lumber trucks. They pulled aside to let me pass them next to Durwood, my great-aunt's lodge which was a magical place when I was a kid. As I stared nostalgically at the cabins, one of the truck drivers intercepted my loving gaze and thought it was for him, leaping ahead of the other trucks to chase my car down the mountain. I stepped on the gas.

We played by the river, explored a hobo-den under the bridge, watched a troop of boy scouts hunt for the troop of girl scouts in the campground, and ate dinner at the restaurant. As the sun went down, we headed to the hotel. After about an hour, Gavin declared he wanted to go home. What!? Well heck, if he wasn't having fun it wasn't worth the $85 to spend the night, particularly since the mountain trail was closed and there would be no redwood hiking in the morning. I got half my money back, counted it as a loss, and then backed into their carport. By which I mean the support beam, not the parking space. Great. During the ensuing insurance hassles, the manager's young daughter came out and discovered Gavin. The two played ball with her uncle, who gave me a bag of lemons. As we finally buckled up to leave, Gavin declared that he wanted to stay after all. I banged my head on the steering wheel. We drove home in the dark.

But it was awesome anyway, a beautiful day in our lazy village in the wooded mountains. Finding our way home, bit by bit.

donation treasures

Donations.

Nice. Marc found this one, not me.




Ernite frage. German for "oops I shouldn't have built my house on the edge of a cliff, sorry son."




"My comrade, we tried our best, but all of the missiles failed to make contact. The statues continue to mock us."




Jiggly fishes. The aforementioned aspic. Only 2 pts per serving.

the donations bin

I stood in front of the overflowing mountain of donations Marc was sorting through sadly. "Ok, fine, I'll help you." He made a strangled noise, "When these came in on Saturday - that was my crying time." We tossed yellowed paperbacks and moldy Grafton novels into piles.
"I am instituting a No Baldacci Ever policy," I said.
"I think all novels should have pictures of falling people on the covers. Oh, look, another," he said..
"Eew, that one was erotica, and it smelled funny."
"Hmm, this is a nice sticker, but I bet someone already licked the potency off it."
"Wait, don't lick it, that's erotica, too."
"Why don't paperbacks have little windows cut out on the front anymore? VC Andrews. Look, it looks like little birds but open it up and - oh no! It's a falling man!"
"Did you mean to put this Playboy compilation in your pile? It's in good condition at least."
"Yeah? How far into it?"
"Gross. Wow, the 70s were good to erotica. Everyone looks so happy in these pictures."
" ...Who donated these?"

 

Things found in the donations pile:

Little known fact about Henry VIII (after all, we are just now learning that he actually looked like THIS)

Wow so clever:

"Teach that book to mutine!"

Easter Fun! Except for you in the middle.

 

...Propping the chihuahua's head back on?

no biscuits for us

Eventful day. Gavin vomited from 1am-6am, claimed he was ok because he "just ate paper". My new drawing toy arrived, Gavin went to his Easter party at daycare after a healthy morning, then Mike forgot to pick him up for the first time and I had to go after work to get him on the way to the Condors vs. the Steelheads.

Yes, I went to a hockey game, drinking a plastic cup of beer in the middle of a group of mormons and nursing mothers. I sat where my boss told me to sit, then got ousted to another seat by a grumpy old man named "Cowboy" who pretended he didn't believe that my boss had any friends to bring. She shushed him with a burp rag. Marc shrugged when I asked if the scoring was like baseball or volleyball, having been strong-armed into bringing his wife and baby despite not being interested in hockey. Gavin sat on my lap with fries and a burger, asking which ones were the bad guys as the crowd roared and clabbered cowbells.

A fight! Best part. My boss - Heather - hooted as the crowd cheered. "That's Number 55! The one that comes to the library!" she said. "Myspace?" "Yep!" Gloves and helmets flew, the two players were allowed to punch each other for a few moments before their teammates leaned past the watching refs and pulled them apart. The stadium pounded and roared with approval as the opposing team member was sent to the penalty thingie. Gavin laughed. By the end of the night the salty old Cowboy was tickling him and ruffling his hair as they craned their necks up at the remote-controlled blimp that dropped coupons on the crowd. He even pulled a hockey puck from his weathered jeans and gave it to the kiddo.

I've never really liked sports, but it was good feeling to be in the middle of my own group of people - kissing baby knuckles and passing food, having my ponytail tweaked and watching Gavin tussle with my boss's husband. While the boys watched the Zamboni races, Heather handed me a stack of book reviews and we bent over them with highlighters.

The opposing team scored, we lost our free biscuits and gravy promised by the Voice of God, and 4,750 fans streamed out into the balmy night. Gavin admired his puck while we talked about the merits of teamsmanship and violence on the way home.

Next stop is Easter. Looking forward to some Sparkling Beet Cups.

Scraped thin

I feel transparent. Here, doing my job, talking with friends, reading. No longer waiting for life to start after school or marriage or kids - this is it, the Rest of My Life, and it feels empty. Meaningless. My co-worker says it's human nature to feel like whatever we are feeling at the moment is what we will be feeling forever - love, sadness, loneliness - and of course it always changes. I've stopped looking ahead, trying not to look behind at the crash scene, just watching my feet and wondering when they'll land on something that feels more like home. I'm not depressed, exactly. I am going places, seeing things - it just all feels thin, like I'm doing it all from so high up I can't quite hear or breathe. Sometimes a memory or a song will make my chest clench, that sharp pain and warmth that feels like your heart really is broken and bleeding, and then a moment later I'll be laughing again. How engaged in life can you be when you know that at any moment you can be stabbed in the chest?
 

Thinking about this Maya Angelou poem:

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.


I got back from Valencia to find that my Mike had not fed or given water to my cat as promised. A car pulled up in front of my apartment and he got out with his girlfriend. An hour later he texted me to say he had just gotten home and that he was going for a bike ride. Gavin spent the rest of the day asking why his dad hadn't come over to say hi so he could tell him about our trip. I explained as simply as I could, disappointed. You want to believe the people will change for the better when they say they are, but Mike has not seen a therapist, not stopped lying, continues to discard his promises and family when his sex life predominates his life. I want none of it.

madness

I woke up, climbed over my sleeping child, and foraged in the kitchen for foods. A peek out the window confirmed that the xfh had arrived home unkilled from his motorcycle trip over the grapevine at night. Oh well.

Mike knocked on my door at 7am. I looked through the peek hole and let him in, standing in my cupcake jammies holding half a grapefruit. He looked surprised, "Where's Gavin?" I took the spoon out of my mouth. "You're really hairy." Gavin ran out of the bedroom at the sound of his dad's voice, then went around showing him every new item purchased since the last time he saw him. I left the boys to enjoy each other and took a shower. Shaved one leg before giving up and deciding to wear tights.

Dressed, checked messages. Declined another of what sounded suspiciously like a date with co-worker. Felt reassured about my position re: dying alone and being eaten by wild dogs.

We gave Gavin a pep-talk about bullies, threw him out at daycare with kisses and pats. At work, I propped up a little paper bag containing one Smiths donut on Marc's desk as thanks for doing my desk duty while I was out sick. Settled into reference desk, scanning for new cartoons taped up around the desk. For angry noses! was freshly scribbled on the box of tissues. I admired the pasting job on the reference bear where Marc had added my suggested uniform of newsboy cap, cape, and spartan undies. The reference computer immediately crashed. The catalog stations kicked up their heels and died. "Well," I told Marc, "We can just tell them to stop complaining, it's Friday." "And they'll exclaim, 'FRIDAY!?' and run out the door waving their arms in liberated hysteria."

By lunch, the only person to do that was me. After going to the bank about a lost check, xfh and I sat in a booth at Sequoia talking about nothing much while he ate roast beef and I gnawed raw veggies. As he dropped me off at work again, he smiled. "Hey, I love you." I turned irritably. "Yeah, you, too, you jerk." He hugged me, I told him to shave and find a therapist, and that was that.

Jerk.

jerky and coke

My mother's visit came to an end. She kissed us goodbye early in the morning, leaving Gavin and I curled under the sparse blankets of a stiff bed at Motel 6. The two of us drove home from LAX by ourselves, eating a gas station breakfast of dry cereal, pink milk, and beef jerky. We crested the mountain to see an endless expanse of clear-skied valley, the highway disappearing into the northern horizon, and it felt like being hit by the sun.

Gavin and I cleaned up the visiting mess, put in laundry, rolled through Trader Joe's. We enjoyed the last of the evening light walking through the prairie dog field, throwing stones into the water pooled in the ruts. "I smell animal," I said, looking at the burrows ringing the wash. Gavin stood up straight and sniffed. "I don't. I smell dirt, and water, and grass." ""Well, that's a good smell, isn't it?" "Yeah, it sure is." We smiled at each other, listened to the silence of buzzing insects and talking crows, then walked back to the apartment. While Gavin snacked on letter-shaped cookies and crashed cars on the computer, I folded laundry and watched Stranger than Fiction. Po lumped herself on the balcony to watch college students walk their dogs. At the very moment the narrator typed, The phone rang, my phone rang along with the one in the movie. I jumped, grabbed it, talked to my mom and listened to my grandfather in the background. Pictures of the new baby up on my screen. I both happy and sad. Hiding among other refugees, waiting for the Next Big Thing. Looking at that horizon.

Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Oh, SHUT UP.

My mother has come to visit, while Mike has flown thousands of miles away. This has been great. Gavin knocked the papasan over onto himself, we went shopping at World Market, and I introduced my mom to Trader Joes. This week we have eaten Bakersfield's favorite chewy thingies, I got pepper spray up my nose, called a kung fu master, not called a clown, learned to make a "squirrel pole", watched Gavin learn to play volleyball, dug the volleyball out of a homemade grave he left it in, sat beside the pool in a bikini, washed the car while my mom and Gavin told me what to do, accidentally murdered the last Hawaiian car cockroach with soap suds, and bought a floofy dress with pink flowers on it.

Keeping busy.

Quiet afternoon. St. Patrick's Day alone, cleaning up pictures on my phone. Marc's pyramid of goat milk tins, my kid laughing, Chinese dragon... got all the way back into October's pictures and found myself with forehead on the floor, sobbing. 

 

American Wasteland

Marc: So how did the meeting go?
me: It was fine, boring, didn't have to kill anyone. I was a bit late, though, because I got distracted by a big sign that said "TORTILLAS". Painted right on the building! "TORTILLAS!" I got excited and missed the library.
Marc: I'm not sure anyone has called the tortilla excuse for that purpose before.
me: Well it was pretty amazing.

4pm: drove home from the east side, windows down to enjoy the heat, Black Sabbath blaring. I took in the whitewashed buildings, tumbleweeds against the sides of the liquor stores, cracked mud and date palms, shuffling old men. Someone in a low rider hooted at me when I leaned out the window to see around the layer of dust and bug on my windshield. I felt a sudden surge of affection for the dusty town, for the expanse of lonely roads like spokes into the desert. I feel like that kid in Arizona again.

10am: In Trader Joes I grabbed jars of curries, chutney, fancy peanut butter, frozen greek food. The clerk examining my ID for the liquor winked at me, "Why Bakersfield?" I put my hand over my eyes and jabbed randomly at the counter. He laughed and said, "I can't tell you how many people have told me they've done the same thing." City of wanderers. Maybe this will be okay.

hi-speed recording

13somethingstupidgoddambrokenscale.

Driving through the industrial district, all radio stations on commercials. I haven't seen any bugs in California, and realized this is because they are all splattered across my windshield. Peered through gutty yellow haze at lazily pumping oil wells, reaching blindly for a CD and popping one in to cover the radio advertisements. Aerosmith. Cat Stevens. Nickelback. Oh no. Last summer's mix disc of heartbreak Slapped stereo, grabbed disc, sent it sailing like a flashing silver frisbee out the window into a dusty oil field. Felt much better.

Morning not off to great start. One of my online friends is having marriage problems, which caused me to feel a fresh spurt of wounded anger and prompted me to take back my spare house key. Feeling sad in the car on the way to daycare, I looked out window at stop light to see the gruesome body of a dead cat beside us on the road. Whipped around and turned Gavin's head, too late to prevent the wide-eyed stare of horror at the small crushed form. And I punched a hole through my sandwich with my heel. Dropped off troubled child and arrived at work an hour early. Mondays.

the public life

Ah, lunch break.

The public library does not disappoint!

Having been ravaged by the preschool storytime, I crawled back to my desk and plotted to organize a new, improved, more psychological program of toddler mesmerization. May require me to overcome irrational fear of puppets, but will be well worth it in terms of quelling potential outbreak of library infanticide across the service base.

Foolishly leaping to the call, "We have a hot patron on the phone for you!" (oh, goody! Hot patron! Maybe it's Steve the Pirate!) was yelled at by patron refusing to pay fines, having many overdue books on - dun dun dun - bipolar disorder. Alas, no, I did not receive brownies the next day. Also, was asked out by middle-aged salesman who, upon repeated rejection, unblinkingly requested books on repressing one's sexual urges.

Saturday with Loverman Joe

134.0

Perhaps the day has not been perfect: the serated knife accidentally mistook my knuckle for foods, I spent way longer than I wanted to straddling my ex-husband's shoulders while screwing hooks into the ceiling, and in a fit of homeopathic inspiration I glugged 8 cups of special herbal tea with the only notable result that I am now the magical ginger fart fairy. On the other hand, I made a bread pudding of breathtaking splendiforousness (the secret ingredient is blood - possibly gingery), there is now light in the bedroom by way of a dangling paper lantern and blinding energy-saver bulb, and the chow - tea aside - has been amazing. Helloooo Trader Joes. Fresh guacamole with thick hunks of avocado, flaming hot tomatillo salsa, organic corn chips, herb and goat cheese potato chips, Fat Weasel Ale and Oregon Honey Beer. A feast! Too full of magical tea to actually feast, but still a damn fine meal in front of Firefly on a Saturday evening.

My bottom started vibrating midway through eating, and I realized I was sitting on my phone. One of my co-workers has been trying to get me into the world of Mexican hip hop and bar crawling with his group of soccer hooligans, so I might cave in and be adventurous this week. Also hoping posse of rowdy men might protect me from creepy middle-aged library stalker man, who evidently unsettled the circulation staff yesterday by interrogating them about me after I made a brief appearance out front to chat with Marc at the reference desk about crunchy parenting. Cloth diaper chat is so damned sexy.


And now for something completely different

Things I just realized I never blogged about (bad record-keeper)

• In late January I found a funky tupperware in the wine cooler, and discovered my half-eaten rock-n-roll fruitcake from hell. 6 weeks old and looking mighty fine. After some rummaging, also located hard-sauce in fridge. Served to family. They lived!

• Being bid goodbye at my school, one of the classes (mysteriously bearing sombreros and a giant stuffed puma) gave me a box of girl scout cookies from a bag of about 20. Why so many boxes of cookies? Why, to catch on fire, of course! Teacher explained class activity, based on tragic demise of student's cookie in infamous burning microwave incident the previous semester (not mine! Although earned points for contributing flaming fortune cookie data). I miss those kids.

weekend

I started falling asleep in the papasan while reading, when suddenly my eyes popped open and I looked over the back of the chair at Mike, who was reading on the floor with headphones on. "Our anniversary was 2 days ago! And we didn't even remember!" "I remembered." "Not one thought about it! Or yesterday either!" "I thought about it." "Didn't even occur to me until just now! Well that wasn't so bad. Huh." Mike's lips flattened and he went back to reading. I frowned at him. He could at least get really ugly or go bald or something if he's going to be hanging around all the time. He has at least stopped crying for 5 days running, so his chances of surviving to find his own apartment by the 1st are improving.

Yesterday John called. "Giiiirl how you doing? No, it was time. It was time. You had to go and get on your own feet, we're 30 already! Well practically. I go out to clubs and the boys are like, 'dayum, you're 27? You're OLD' and I'm like 'shut UP, I know'. Anyways I made a pact with my friend and for our 30th birthdays we're going to have black parties. No, we're going to wear, like, all black, everything bllllack. You know, to mourn our lost 20s. No, you will not be eaten by wolves, shut up. You're not that lucky. No, you are a very attractive woman. If I ever turned straight you'd be the first person I'd call. Not Stacy - skank alert! Hahaha. Huh, I wonder how she's doing. Ok, you coming to the reunion this summer? Shit, that means I have to go, too. Well, call me more! Ok I love you, too." Got off phone feeling validated and also old.

Brooke called as well, but will not transcribe conversation as it involved a waaay too detailed argument about the merits of Battlestar vs. previous seasons vs. Firefly vs. Serenity vs. Hero, which I clearly won, although cannot really recall the outcome beyond, "yeah, get Netflix."

Bored, we went to the playground, where Gavin collected bits of colorful rubbish and raced them down the slides and I watched roving gangs of 10-year olds roll by on skateboards. They seemed to like me, which was nice, but they were also insane. "BAM BAM BAM! I'm all out of bullets," one of them said, twirling a plastic cap gun, "but I have more at home. I get this loaded and I can shoot eight bullets at once. I broke my fingers, look. Playing football at night. Then between these fingers got cut by glass. First there was a line and then pssshhhht it just starts shooting blood." He walked away, talking to himself. They looked like a group of kids from a Stephen King novel. I was still thinking about Uncle Steve (my cousin is married to his son) when I was at the book shop later a bit later, looking at the new Gunslinger comic. 7 installations? 7? I'll buy the first one as soon as I have 3 dollars to spend...

where am I?

 I'm still living in my head. That wasn't in the plan.

At least the skies are clear. And no moon in sight. Here I am in Kern County, near my grandmother's ashes. Library full of college students and old women in turquoise jewelry. Me in emotional armor. And my underpants showing. Need to buy thread and needle to keep my pants up until payday.

Po has stopped dragging her butt across the floor seductively and has gone back to chewing off my fingers. She's so mean. I ordered a manual self-cleaning litter box, the kind where you roll the thing across the bathroom floor and watching the balls of poop drop into a compartment, then you roll it back upright and take the drawer of poop out to empty. Po showed her appreciation by flipping onto her back and shredding my arm. Worst Valentine's Day ever.

new plan

"Mom, be careful driving to work. Don't hit any more cars."
"What? I've never hit a car!"
"Or trucks." [stern expression]
"Ok."
"Or motorcycles."
"Fine, mom doesn't get to have any fun."
"Boats, too!"
"I don't know about that."


Tights

I love my tights. You don't get to wear tights in Hawaii. Tips I have learned:

1. Watch out for your name badge lanyard while using the toilet. It can get caught on your tights and make you tip headfirst into the stall door when you try to stand up.

2. Sometimes your dress might get stuck to your tights while you are sitting, so give it a tug before standing up in an auditorium in front of 60 of your coworkers and admin.


Did they tell you about the black widows in the atrium?

So far my new job is pretty good, but nothing exciting yet. The most unexpected part of my week was hearing my boss librarian say, "Ok, next week you'll be over at the Southwest Library. We'll give you a week to train over there before running the branch, don't worry." Wait, I'm going to do what now? That does not sound like "read cute stories and do hand puppets with toddlers between long stretches of reading and playing on the internet". Oh no.

Ode to Hawaii

Things I will soon miss about Hawaii which annoy me now:

• The 4 o'clock Bob. All Bob Marley, all radio stations, every afternoon at 4:20. I knew every word to Buffalo Soldier long before I came here and had it shoved down my throat - thank you DJ Maleko for killing the magic. But at least now I know how to 'skank' at high school dances.

• The Shaka-Cut. Versatile driving technique in which you stick your hand out the window, shaka, and then do whatever the fuck you want.

• Honda boys. Nothing is more relaxing than the sound of drag racers at 2am, followed by ambulance sirens at 3.

• Eat or else. The office snack table is always filled with food I can't eat. Elaborate, steaming buffets appear at every staff meeting, baby shower, evening get-together, or casual conversation. I am only annoyed that I can't eat it all, I do like the culture of good and plentiful food. In Seattle someone got up before the conference lunch and announced, "Everyone please only take ONE wrap and choose ONE dessert, thank you" and my eyes shriveled a little. Mainland barbecues serve hot dogs. HOT DOGS.

• The Aloha Spirit. This is the spirit which drives people to shoot their neighbor's dog for barking, run over tourists, scream "GO HOME YOU FUCKIN' HAOLE" in the Ross parking lot, and otherwise make life spicy and interesting. Especially when coupled with the lethal "Christmas Spirit" from September to December.

Hawaii, farewell. I will return some day.

Burns Night 2007

Gavin and Chris discovered my old professor's grandson and the three tore it up behind the Leper Table, where we were banished with our spawn. They kept it on schedule this year, and the boys linked arms and sang "Jingle Bells" while the crowd roared along to "Auld Lang Syne".

Mike approached the table afterward, and people parted as though avoiding an impending brawl.
"They all wanted to know if we're fighting," he said, looking back at his table.
"Yeah, I was asked a couple times if it was a 'nasty' divorce."
"I told them, nah, we get along fine."
"Yeah. We get along great, it's just the times I randomly punch you in the face during conversation that might give things away."
"Like how just now your finger clipped my nose. I felt that."
"Sorry, missed.”

Among the Po-sessed

"Here are your kitty happy pills! Just give her half a pill for every 6 hours."
I shook the bottle of half a dozen valium and wondered if they thought I needed some, too, or if they were just trying to kill my cat. My purse is a den of sin. Po purred nervously in her carrier as Gavin listened to her heart with his plastic stethoscope.

In the car, the smell of cat pee suddenly filled the air, so I rolled down the windows. Sensing an escape route, Po morphed into Nega Po and slashed in a frenzy at the carrier until the latch burst loose. There was a struggle for control of the car, and a tense drive home with one hand on the wheel and a panting cat stuffed roughly under my armpit while Gavin laughed hysterically. He later explained, with pantomime, "Po go FWOOOSH! YOWOWOW! And mom go UHNNG OOOF RRRR. Hahahaha." Great.

not with the sunshine

mom post

"MOMMY! Where are you?"
"I'm downstairs, baby. I'm coming."
"You need to sleep some more, it's not time to wake up yet."
I got under the covers with him in my work clothes and Gavin wrapped his arms and legs around me, kissed my lips. In the dark, I could just make out his eyes drowsing closed and I spread my hand across his back to feel him breathe. He's right, I need to sleep more. I woke up three times last night to find I was staring at him, soaking him in after days apart. When he was asleep again I slipped away to make his lunch, then crept up at 6:00am to wake him for school. He scolded me last week for waking him up by singing "you are my sunshine", so I snuck up on him and began humming it quietly while rubbing his back. He stretched and rubbed his face. "Mom. Please don't go hum hum hum." Damn. I sang "Beautiful Boy" into his armpit and he curled up giggling. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

In 7-11, I handed him a musubi from the hot box and let him pick out a carton of chocolate milk. "Mom, what you gonna get? You need to eat something for lunch, too. And get yourself a soda. But remember, don't drink it in the car, save it for when you get to preschool so you'll have something nice." I love this kid.