the annual end-of-year questions

Oh, this is not a good idea this year.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before? WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING, QUIZ?

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I did. I vowed to set everything right again, and get my family back together on Oahu. Unfortunately, I took a sledgehammer to the first 7 months of the year before figuring out I had other tools.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? We had a stillborn in the family, which was terrible and sad.

4. Did anyone close to you die? My mom and all my aunts tried. Evidently this was the year we learned about our family's predisposition to heart failure. My heart joins my uterus in ticking ominously toward detonation. And my grandfather fell on a turtle tank and slashed his arm open down to the bone and nearly bled to death.

5. What places did you visit? Kihei, Maui. This sounds fancy until you realize it is 15 minutes away from where I shopped at Costco, but we dragged ourselves all the way across the valley and went to the ocean center and mini putt for a long weekend, annoying cashiers by being white and still asking for Kamaaina rates.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012? fish and chips at the Highland Games.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Oh god.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I published another book and relocated to Oahu in a permanent manner.

9. What was your biggest failure? Letting the "say yes and figure it out later" memo from work bleed over into my personal life. Evidently I am too naive to survive on my own in the wild.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? burned thumb, sinus infection, and a cold. And I tore my thumbnail on a piece of oatmeal and on the seam of my jeans.

11. What was the best thing you bought? I gave my royalties to Gavin for his trip to Indiana with my mom this summer. He poisoned himself with a hot dog on a train, but had an amazing summer among the bats and fireflies in Bloomington, ate at the Runcible Spoon, and met my dad for the first time.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Mike's, for getting a good job with the university, confronting his personal issues with a professional, and coming to rescue me from Maui.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Mine.

14. Where did most of your money go? childcare and food.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? I was happy about the new season of Sherlock, and my friends sent me some amazing mail.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012? pass

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? happier
b) thinner or fatter? much, much fatter
c) richer or poorer? haaahaha, shut up quiz.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? reading and drawing and interviewing.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? backing the car into things.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? Drinking Santa's scotch.

21. Did you fall in love in 2012? Once again, the love I already suffer from remained firmly hooked in my heart.

22. What was your favorite TV program? Sherlock! Downton Abbey!

23. What did you do for your birthday in 2012? There was a lot of Mongolian beef.

24. What was the best book you read? The Hogfather. 11/22/63.

25. What did you want and get? one-way tickets back home.

26. What did you want and not get? a job to go with the tickets.

27. What was your favorite film of this year? I only watched the Avengers and the Hobbit, but they were worth the trips. Even with the weird evil-albino sub-plot.

28. Did you make some new friends this year? Very much the opposite of this.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Bagging a transfer before the preschool blew away.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012? expansive and depressing.

31. What kept you sane? it is very predictable to say "friends and family", but that is usually how it goes. The people you can weep and gnash and flee to are the ones who keep your marbles from spilling out your ears.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Watson's sweater.

33. What political issue stirred you the most? I was dealing with the school massacre well enough until people started suggesting that teachers wear guns.

34. Who did you miss? Everyone in turn, the same people in particular. There was a lot of loneliness this year.

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012. "Say yes and figure it out later" is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE MOTTO. "Say fuck no and take it back later" would be better.

RIP Kamikaze

The smallest Java finch was the most intrepid. First to dive out of the nest, first to fly clumsily into the seed bowl, first to hop into our hands and nip our noses. Gavin and my mom took the birds into the cat-free safety of the bathroom every day to let them stretch their wings and bathe in a lid full of water. Yesterday, for no visible reason, Kamikaze squawked in pain and fell dead while flying. Our best guess is that her heart gave out.

We held a little funeral service by the tree behind the house. Gavin cried very hard as he put the little bird into its box, Leif cried because his brother was distressed and the bird wasn't moving, my mom cried because she loved the little thing and her grandson was heartbroken, I cried because the whole thing was so sad. Mike dug the hole and helped the boys pick flowers to put in the tiny grave.

We talked about pets and loss, about loving them while they are with us and grieving them when they go. The two birds left in the cage looked forlorn to Gavin, so we went to the pet store and let him choose a finch to bring home.

Enter Finn.

Pets - and people - are heartbreak waiting to happen, and that's exactly why we have to love them whole-heartedly while we have them.

Christmas 2012: the fattening

Can't talk. Candy. Roast beast. Wii. Guess who danced like a turducken and still got high score on DDR?

This person. These children have NO COORDINATION.

The cat was worse, though.

This year I made another knock-you-naked fruitcake. It had half a bottle of brandy soaked into it over a period of 3 weeks. And more in the hard sauce. And my family wouldn't let me eat it, of course, because I am hugely pregnant. That is gratitude for you.

But there was pie. Sadly, I seared off part of my thumb taking it out of the oven, and then a cat stepped in it while I was administering burn treatment. He didn't notice, tottered off, discovered pie on his foot, licked it off, and stared around, bewildered as to where it came from. Lucky cat.

I decided to serve the cat-print piece to whichever guest annoyed me, and then accidentally gave it to myself. Damn.

The kids wrote notes, left booze and a fretful gingerbread man, hung stockings, then ran to bed to read Christmas stories and toss sleeplessly.

"And stay in bed until 5am!" I said.

At 5am I was jolted awake by hands on my shoulders. "MOM IT'S 5AM SANTA CAME COME ON." 

5am. I did this.

By 7am, the house was demolished. It was perfect and wonderful.

Judging from the loot, Santa had opinions about what kind of year I've had. He gave me a banana slicer.

The pudding blazed. We need to get rid of the Braddah Kimo's rum before it sets the rafters on fire.

Whoops.

Successful holiday. And nobody has to catch a plane the next day.

the kid turns 10

Ten years ago, I had a baby. Dr. B shuffled in with his arms outstretched and his hair sticking up, let a nurse swoop a gown and gloves over his pajamas without breaking his stride, caught the tiny person like a football, and plopped him on my chest. He had tufts of hair on the tips of his ears (the baby, not the doctor), and a headful of dark hair which made my mother crow about her wily recessive genes.

Now a decade has gone by, and my boy is a creature of long legs and derpy laughs and goodness.

He sat beside me when I was upset over the news in Connecticut, and cried when he saw the picture of the principal who's children would have no mother for Christmas. I held his head against my chest and he kissed my belly.

His birthday was perfect, though. He conspired with his grandma for a homemade neapolitan cake with fresh buttercream, old enough now to choose flavor over novelty air-sprayed character cakes.

We watched the Hobbit (odd, I don't remember the parts in the book about frenetic battles on falling scaffolding and evil albino orcs on conveniently also-albino wargs - PETER JACKSON) and then hit D&B's for an evening of screaming neon overstimulation and obsessive gambling for rolls of tickets. 

There were Lego dwarfs, Hot Topic apparel, and headphones - gifts that denoted the new and growing shift from child to pre-adolescent.

Happy birthday, my good-hearted kid.

December things

My doctor said that I did not need to fast for the glucose test, but I decided to err on the side of caution. Then ate all the leftover hobbit stew from my mom's Lord of the Rings party. And arrived at the lab without my cards, so couldn't take the test anyway. Fails upon fails. Trying again tomorrow. Sans stew.

today, 27 weeks

The boy and I rarely spend time one-on-one. His ideal two-person playtime is an hour hanging paintings and shearing sheep on Minecraft, which is an activity I defer to the peen-possessing parent. My attempts to cultivate time involve sheets of cookies and scorched Sculpey figurines. So when my aunt came over with two tickets to the cousins' skating school holiday program, we snatched them up and ditched everyone for an evening sipping hot cocoa and watching kids in sequins faceplant on the ice.

my cousin is the cookie flailing off on the right

Worth every mile of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.

Meanwhile, in the evenings over eggnog and stories with my mother, I improvised another damned baby garment.

details/guidelines on my ravelry page

Will need to take a lot of trips into freezer aisles to justify this much knitwear.

Also, the asshole cat got into the tree, knocked it over, and broke the topper. And the other cat punched a bunch of holes in the leather chair - not because she was scratching it, but because she's too fat to sit on the back of it without hanging on with her claws.

ALSO, the Apple nerds have confiscated the computer, so I have a new sketchbook. Hopefully something illustrative will come of this.

why I am not a teacher

I got a kindergarden workbook and a pack of stickers. I made plans to visit museums and the zoo and the aquarium. With just one child and a city's worth of enrichment, it would be impossible to fail.

It has been two days. The child has a black eye from rolling into a table corner, and this morning said to his dad as he left for work, "Bye-bye, boobies!" then laughed like a lunatic at himself. "I am practicing unschooling," I said defensively. "Which here means 'the opposite of learning'."

cake, birds, and trees

Am so tired. Was dragged to weird corner medical center when my head was exploding from sinuses-outward, laughed too much at the "blood and urine samples" box on the outside of the door, and was excited when the doctor's scale said I had only gained 15 lbs. Except I can't read numbers, got on the scale at home, and saw that it was actually 30. I had a very sad shower and got into a towel the size of a couch blanket.

Then there was my birthday. There was chinese food, cake, presents, and yarn. This was pretty great. 

At some point I knitted a Christmas sock. Just one.

The moment the 1st of December appeared, cookies and advent calendars and trees were employed.

It was the usual scene of bio-terror and mutation.

The birds turned into birds.

The boys behaved irresponsibly with the LED lights.

The child looked too much like an adolescent and I had to go make a hot buttered rum for someone.

I got very shmoopy about glass Janis Joplin and Metallica balls from college, 10 year-old baby ornaments for a long-limbed child, an R2-D2 ornament bought in Santa Cruz on the day I found out I was pregnant with Leif. 

Mike gathered us all up into a crushing hug. It's been sometimes sad and long months broken, but it's a 15 year story, and it's the one we have. Come Christmas, I'm always happy to have it.

Thanksgiving 2012

Am dying. Sinuses. Tried flushing the evil out of them with creepy saline rinse - was promised relief, got three days of sneezing salt water.

Despite this, THANKSGIVING. Which I love. With people I love. More of them in one place this year than in years past.

I fed the people cinnamon buns and mimosas while they played with birds and electronics.

My turkey was laughable, and weighed less than the cat. We ate the entire thing, and felt very accomplished. Next year, will go shopping sooner than two days beforehand, and beat those other greedy consumers off the 24lb birds - using the 12lb bird I ended up with.

I prepped the cousins on etiquette beforehand, and everyone got through the feast with minimal sucking-cup-onto-face-edness.

Now it is officially Christmas season, and I can stop pretending like I haven't already been listening to Baby it's Cold Outside for the past 2 weeks.

The only version of this song that doesn't sound like a date-rape ballad.

conversation with my mom

Discussing the marginal writing in Game of Thrones, which I've been reading because we've started watching the series.

me: The style is very woo, I'm writing a fantasy novel. Like, there's a dire wolf that is killed, but as she's dying she whelps her pups, and they're all, it's a sign! because there's one pup for each of the lord's children. And they're all too small to open their eyes, being just born and all, except for the albino wolf pup, who's eyes are open. For some reason.

mom: And then come to find out the pup has defective eyelids. And - it's a sign! It's a watch dog.


 I died.

I admit it

Being back home again after 6 years, I've been moving like someone reading crowded bathroom graffiti. The things I wanted to forget are still here, scrawled into every surface. People who left their imprints on the couch, voices on the phone, the loop of sidewalk I ran with angsty music in my ears, lanes of traffic I still navigate on auto-pilot. After all this time, it's comforting again.

So a few months ago, I found out that I was pregnant. This was not happy news - it made my hands shake and ears go cold. Around that time, the I wish my mother had aborted me article was circulating the internet, and I read it thoughtfully before deciding the article was bullshit. This was not a story about why a woman should have had an abortion - it was a story about why a woman should have dumped her damn boyfriend. It would have been my mother's story, my sister-in-law's story, my aunt's story, but these women bit down, left the men, and went on with their lives, education, and careers with their children. I still might have gone in for the pills, but my cousin had just lost her baby at 22 weeks, and it felt cold of me to discard the pregnancy while still grieving with the family for hers. I couldn't do it. But I had the choice, and being able to make that decision and move ahead with purpose was important. Had I been forced, I would have been desperate to claw it from my body.

So I needed to leave Maui, like, now. I had been interviewing for transfers for months, and the government hiring scene was grim. Leap and the net will appear, they say. I sent the kids ahead to Oahu. I gave up the job. Mike came and gathered me bodily to take me home. I had mixed feelings about that. I can't get rid of him, but I need the help, and he's kind.

Now there is family, and illustration, and holidays, and time. Gavin rides to school on the back of my mom's motorcycle, wearing a new helmet because he outgrew his old one - which makes him a hell of a lot cooler than I was at 9 years old, and gives me a lurch of anxiety every time I wave goodbye manically to them in the mornings. Leif is finishing his month at preschool before staying home to challenge my skills as nurturing stay-at-home parent - a gig which drove me to get my Master's degree and publish a book the first time I attempted it. I've been making a routine of housework and cooking, which has resulted in my closing myself into doors, splattering dishwater and stove grease all over my belly, falling over headlong while trying to bend over with a dustpan, and scrabbling on furniture to stand up after sitting down and getting stuck. My natural pelican-like grace has been even further compromised. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this thing that is happening, but I've been making sure to separate my feelings about the pregnancy from my feelings about the baby. She didn't do anything wrong here, and she's mine. The little kicks and hiccups make it easier. She's a quieter fetus than the boys were, so far.

yesterday, 24 weeks

I've also become reluctantly attached to the ugly little baby birds, which I've been nannying during the days. They have horrifying little feathers now. Should knit them a snugli.

erlack. And awww.

So that's that. I am embarrassed and scared and determined and optimistic. Which is pretty standard stuff for this type of thing. So if I look suspiciously fat in some of my recent pictures, that is why. And it's just how it's going to be for the next 3 months. 

settling

So far, in my new role of household layabout, I have managed in less than a week to completely destroy my mother's house. Also, I don't know how to open the dishwasher.

The barge unit arrived, a van was rented, the inherited furniture was unloaded (these are my mother's, entrusted to me by a relative in California 4 years ago, which has taken this long to get home to her because of inter-island shenanigans), and in order to make room for the hutch, a desk had to be moved. This desk caused a shuffling of furniture which resulted in a wall-length mirror getting torn out. The adhesive on the mirror gouged giant holes in the wall. Which necessitated patching and painting, and meanwhile everything has been crammed with boxes of books which can't be unloaded without the shelves, which can't be mounted until the wall is repaired, and it is just a chain-reaction of logistical fuckery. The closets need to be arranged to accommodate trunks and a couple bins of quilts and holiday trappings, and I suck at Tetris. I have the spacial-arrangement skills of a thing that doesn't have any spacial-arrangement skills. Also no attention span for it. Guess what I am supposed to be doing right now?

Not this.

On top of moving hassles, a very distressed construction worker showed up at the house with a box full of baby birds he found while tearing out an attic, because my mom has a reputation for being some sort of wild bird rescue wizard. 

They are the most adorably horrifying things ever, and now my mom is in love with them. She carries them in a little box stuffed down her motorcycle jacket, keeps them under a warming light, and plugs them full of baby bird formula with a syringe every 30 minutes. They are supposed to turn into Java Sparrows.

I am not sure about this. They look more like Skeksis to me.

 Laundry to fold. Boxes to unpack. Furniture to shuffle. Dishwasher to take a crowbar to. I am doing it.

Halloween 2012

Rescue

While our friend Jeanie's house in Breezy Point burned to the ground, I was being retrieved from Maui in a permanent manner. Finding ourselves with three cats and two carriers, Mike and I cut peep holes in a cardboard box, stuffed the largest hamcat into it, and duct-taped it shut. 20 minutes into the 2-hour drive to town, Sookie pooped in the box. We pulled over the car and the moving van, ripped open the duct tape, laid down fresh piddle pads, stuck her back in, and weighed the top shut with my backpack.

40 minutes later, she pooped again.

And escaped out the top of the box.

And got poop all over my backpack.

There was wrestling and tape stuck to the cat and expletives and flailing with pee pads, then she was back in the box, box turned on its side to trap her in, seat belt around the box. The other cats gave her side-eye from their carriers.

Mike unloaded furniture from the van and packed a barge unit single-handedly (amazing) while I checked the car in for shipment. We rode the empty van to Walmart, got a large carrier for the enormous cat, and she trotted inside it with obvious relief. We have forever ruined her potential to be the next internet box cat.

All went well until the plane landed in Honolulu, and I paced the baggage claim, waiting for someone to come out with my hamcat. Finally, a guilty-looking employee emerged with the carrier, admitted that the clips had all burst open, the carrier had fallen apart, and that Sookie the hambeast had been loose in the cargo hold when they finally found and caught her behind some baggage. She looked as if she did not appreciate the adventure, huddled in the back of the carrier with saucer-eyes.

My mom fetched us from the airport; Gavin hugged me tightly while I kissed his hair, then crooned into the carriers at the angry cats.

When we stopped at the preschool to pick up Leif, he ran and tackled me, and we kissed each other until we cried. I missed my boys so much, it's still hard to believe that the difficulty of this past year is over, that we can relax as a family, and nobody has to leave again.

Halloween

The next morning, Sal was on Day 3 with no power in New York, Jeanie started her trip home to rescue her family, and Leif helped me hang up paper decorations to lure trick-or-treaters.

The pumpkin was adorable, the biggest one Leif could carry home from his preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch. Gavin designed, I carved. My kids are weenies about getting pumpkin goo on their hands, which I always thought was the best part.

The young cousins stormed the house, and Gavin had a great time terrorizing the picky eaters with my meal preparations - "Mom is making OCTOPUS for dinner!" These were wieners that were snipped at the ends so they curled into tentacles when you boiled them.

When I put their plates out they ate the poor creatures in a gruesome, ketchup-bloody manner. So that worked according to plan.

The valley swarms with tiny ghouls every year, and we had a mountain of candy to appease them. Fewer and fewer lights have been on in recent years, and small feet have to venture farther into the neighborhood to fill their buckets, but we found haunted houses, graveyards of zombies, and tents full of drunk Bob Marleys despite the flagging economy. 

I SAID HOLD STILL AND LOOK CUTE

man and spawn

 horribly unflattering picture of the women-folk and sprogs

My mom, Valhallarama, stayed behind with her sister, Betsy Ross, and handed out candy with Sweet Transvestite blaring on the stereo. The littles gave out before the big kids, so I brought them home to dump out their loot and took up my traditional duty as Beer Wench, keeping the adults watered.

The big kids staggered in not long after, and we raged with sugar until the last sorry teenagers straggled through at 9pm.

Success.

Tsunami

The warning sirens started going off at bedtime, and the phone started lighting up with texts. My home is on high ground, I could listen to the cops whipping by to round up the drunks at the beach, and tried to stay awake by watching Game of Thrones, but I fell asleep during the live-streaming webcam footage of the waves. One would think that, given all the tsunamis in recent years, the news stations would have a more sophisticated option for surveillance than hotel webcams. Nobody could see what happened to Kahului, and when I checked again this morning, the official word was, "It is dark out." Very helpful.

And of course I have to drive out today.

Will take pictures if there are sharks on the road.

time wasting through productivity

I have been completely failing at packing and donating and getting stuff ready to move. I have been succeeding wildly, though, at activities which keep my ass parked in front of Misfits.

The weekends are long and quiet. As an introverted-type who deals with the public all week, I like the alone time, although in general I feel comforted having someone like-minded around the house messing with their own projects. Especially if those projects result in beer or furniture or fancier backyard lounging.

On Canadian Thanksgiving  (I was born in Newfoundland) I used the excuse to put on almost-Christmassy classical music and fix a feast in miniature. The sweet potatoes were purple, and the Yorkshire pudding deflated a bit, and the wine was just root beer, but it felt homey for a few minutes. Until it just underscored how alone I was, and I cleaned it all up.

Finished the stocking. Haven't decided who's name to stitch onto the top. My mom told me to make a second one and she would wear them as socks under her motorcycle boots.



New Ancestral Stocking

In an attempt to clear out my yarn stash before tossing most of it at the thrift store, I got into some nubby black cotton and made up a little baby sweater. Immediately, every cat in the house had to find it and lay on it. Because cat hair shows on black, and they are still mad about the top-hat incident.

CO 56 stitches for front and back, 34 stitches for sleeves, and that's all the notes I took.

Failing at pattern-making.



While sorting all the crap in my sewing cupboard, I became sidetracked by some Anna Maria Horner fabric and an old Simplicity baby pattern.

So I still haven't hauled any shit to the thrift store or dump, but I have it all mentally arranged. And that counts for... very little, but still something.

speaking of hairy apples

No sooner had I said, "Those hairy apple things my janitor made me eat last year," than he turned up with a pile of hairy brown apple things. My coworkers eyeballed them and generously pushed them all toward me. Well guess who will be immortal when the right scary fruit thing comes along? This pie-making lady, that is who.

Definitely not an apple.

Recipe:

2 weird brown hairy fruit things

2 granny smith apples

spoonful of flour

1 handful of sugar, because there isn't much left and the brown sugar is missing

cinnamon

butter

lazy-ass pre-made pie crusts

Peel and chop up the fruits, toss them with flour, then mix in sugar and cinnamon, dump into pie crust, dollop with butter, pop top crust on and try to get fancy with it.

DONE. 

Actually, cook it for an hour at 350 first, and then for sure this time DONE.

P is for Pie.

The magic fruit cooked up just like apples, with a tart, perfumey, rose-like flavor. It is so amazing that after eating it, you may need this:

(I was very excited by this body fluid kit on the marine corps base bus. May petition the Friends of the Library to install them by our public computers. And flower pots. And trash cans. People are gross.)

Been trying to use this spare time to finish projects. I've started sketching out the next book project, but I can't find my fookin art box, which has all my paint brushes in it. So I'm finishing the Christmas stocking, which is roughly large enough to stuff an entire child into. The rule is that if it's bigger than my stocking, it's cheating. Not sure what to do about this.

Found my sketchbook from last year while hunting for my box (leave it) and found these cat gestures.

So, friends, WHERE IS MY BOX? It is blue, and well-used, and covered in splotches. It should be very hard to hide in a house with no closets. Internet, find it for me. I can't buy more brushes until Monday, and that is YEARS.

Edit: FOUND. Out in the open. Of course.