For the day after the day after Christmas Eve, my family celebrated by doing the thing that all families are so good at doing: splitting up. My sister and mother have been appointed Pair Productive and my father and I have are Pair Out and About (technically 'pair' is a misnomer as we went along with my wonderful 9 year old niece, but she's in training, yet, so does not get to count as a whole member (no voting rights) of the pair and there is no single descriptive word for 2 and a half).
But, I am not going to tell you about the day. Not yet.
We regrouped this evening and my father and sister took the Christmas decorations out to the shed (productive, see) and I helped Mama in the kitchen by blathering on and making a pot of tea and doing some dishes while she made dinner and tried to keep the 2 year old from getting too much in the way (boiling water type stuff). Dinner ended and the puzzle was brought out. it's a mary engelbreit-brecht-brucetta-whatever. It is a round puzzle. Not a sphere, but round.
the 2 year old was dressed in his pajamas, laid down in his bed and left there. we knew there would be no sleep. we knew this. we sent my niece upstairs to lock all of the doors and the gate. she came back down, we chatted about Jorge's toilet playing habits, ha ha ha.
i began reading, as i had promised my wonderful 9 year old niece (i am learning on this trip more about the value of trust in relationships. mostly i am learning it because of Ethel and her presence on this vacation. she lets me drape her around my shoulders and will stay there for many moments only minimally supported and without complaint, until she is ready to hop down . she hasn't hurt me yet on her descent. yet.) and my family collected around the dining room table to put together the round puzzle of letters and bowls and cherries and a cute cat.
and then there was the sound of water falling on the kitchen floor. coming from the light in the ceiling.
what followed:
Papa ran upstairs to find my nephew stark naked in the bathroom surrounded by water flowing happily into and out of the bowl of the toilet.
my nephew found himself standing in the hallway crying in surprise and because he got swatted once on the butt to get him out of the bathroom where he had created this playland for himself.
my nephew then found himself in dry pajamas and a new diaper, in bed, with the door closed, much to his very loud chagrin.
my mother came upstairs to get big towels to help collect the water from the floor of the kitchen.
i worked kid magic and got doors open so that the dream of dry floors could be realized.
my sister put a bowl under the light through which the water was running which we then stood and watched until the flow had subsided to a drip and then to nothing (i believe that we truly could sit and watch paint dry if we felt it was the thing to do).
the plunger was applied with great vigor to the toilet upstairs, to no avail.
it was decided that though my nephew usually just clogs the toilet with toilet paper, this time he must have dropped something stubborn (but not feline, all the cats are accounted for) into his favorite play area.
very quietly we all agreed that it was really very funny.
the grumpy emergency maintenance man came and said that he'll have to be back tomorrow to really fix things, but that my sister shouldn't expect him before 3.
we all hate the emergency maintenance man.
the cats are fine.
oh, and my sister did turn off the light that became a fount of water not unlike a breast spewing a steady stream of slightly off-white milk.
and now?
everyone is in bed. the book i was reading out loud (remember that part?) is still unfinished and my nephew is still trying to get out of going to sleep.
the couch awaits me. i get to spend some time alone in DC tomorrow, and will have to sleep in my clothes again tonight.
oh, and we gave up on the puzzle about 5 minutes before i knelt down to write this. they will finish it tomorrow. i have faith.
Wednesday 26 December 2007
Saturday 22 December 2007
The Great French Toast Negotiation
notes for later, because i cannot find my notebook right now...
Family road trip: 3 adults (plus or minus adulthood), 1 child, 1 kitten (usually asleep inconveniently) (the kitten plays no role in the action to follow. i just like talking about her because she came with and has been a wonderful traveler and is suffering from the snobbery and intolerance of my sister's cats)
Mindy's Corner Restaurant: Ohio somewhere. on the corner of one street and another, across from a gas station, on the other side of the bridge from the highway.
Round about 12:30pm ET
Mindy's is your run of the mill family run restaurant with a huge dining room, wood tables, paper placemats (with a word search) and meatloaf special for lunch.
9 year Sierra asked if it would be alright to have breakfast for lunch. it is a peculiar thing, having breakfast for some other meal than breakfast. makes the whole day feel decadent somehow, just because you had an omelette for supper. johnsons are all for daily decadence where food is involved, and her request was granted.
she wanted pancakes. i resisted, knowing that pancakes are merely a vehicle for syrup - liquid sugar - more potent than regular coffee, and said no. she wanted french toast. i reminded her that it was just for the syrup.
- I don't always have syrup on my french toast.
- no, sometimes you use sugar, and that's just the same thing.
- okay.
the waitress came by and it was clear that none of us, minus the 9 year old, knew what we wanted, but since the aunt (that's me for those of you not following along) was being stubborn and marginally health concious (mostly of my own). she left us to continue or negotiations.
i countered finally with one scrambled egg, 2 strips of bacon and one piece of white toast with grape jelly (she, like me, doesn't do strawberry jam). negotiating with me is really not a possibility. i decided what she was going to eat, and forewarning was pretty much all that she was getting.
the waitress returned.
- we have finished our negotiations, i said
- alright, so what're you having?
- if i get a slice of french toast, then -
- oh, no, that wasn't it -
we ordered the mostly protein and starch meal for her (tire her out, clog her arteries, make her sleep)
and the little shit just sat there and smirked at me.
when the waitress brought our meals, she handed over the egg and meat and bread saying "here's your french toast" and my neice had the decency and good humor to laugh.
later i will tell you of the Fog of Doom and the Mortification of the Felines, but for now, i have a book that is fucking with my head, and i am happy that almost everyone else is asleep.
Family road trip: 3 adults (plus or minus adulthood), 1 child, 1 kitten (usually asleep inconveniently) (the kitten plays no role in the action to follow. i just like talking about her because she came with and has been a wonderful traveler and is suffering from the snobbery and intolerance of my sister's cats)
Mindy's Corner Restaurant: Ohio somewhere. on the corner of one street and another, across from a gas station, on the other side of the bridge from the highway.
Round about 12:30pm ET
Mindy's is your run of the mill family run restaurant with a huge dining room, wood tables, paper placemats (with a word search) and meatloaf special for lunch.
9 year Sierra asked if it would be alright to have breakfast for lunch. it is a peculiar thing, having breakfast for some other meal than breakfast. makes the whole day feel decadent somehow, just because you had an omelette for supper. johnsons are all for daily decadence where food is involved, and her request was granted.
she wanted pancakes. i resisted, knowing that pancakes are merely a vehicle for syrup - liquid sugar - more potent than regular coffee, and said no. she wanted french toast. i reminded her that it was just for the syrup.
- I don't always have syrup on my french toast.
- no, sometimes you use sugar, and that's just the same thing.
- okay.
the waitress came by and it was clear that none of us, minus the 9 year old, knew what we wanted, but since the aunt (that's me for those of you not following along) was being stubborn and marginally health concious (mostly of my own). she left us to continue or negotiations.
i countered finally with one scrambled egg, 2 strips of bacon and one piece of white toast with grape jelly (she, like me, doesn't do strawberry jam). negotiating with me is really not a possibility. i decided what she was going to eat, and forewarning was pretty much all that she was getting.
the waitress returned.
- we have finished our negotiations, i said
- alright, so what're you having?
- if i get a slice of french toast, then -
- oh, no, that wasn't it -
we ordered the mostly protein and starch meal for her (tire her out, clog her arteries, make her sleep)
and the little shit just sat there and smirked at me.
when the waitress brought our meals, she handed over the egg and meat and bread saying "here's your french toast" and my neice had the decency and good humor to laugh.
later i will tell you of the Fog of Doom and the Mortification of the Felines, but for now, i have a book that is fucking with my head, and i am happy that almost everyone else is asleep.
Wednesday 19 December 2007
A.A. Milne essay
I don't generally post work by other people on this blog. In point of fact, I have never posted anything like this before. It's my blog. My words. That kind of thing.
I read this and immediately thought of at least a dozen people who are my MyFriends who would enjoy this and decided against making it into a bulletin and running the risk of strange changes made during reposting and such. Because it's that kind of a thing. For bibliophiles, anyway. I specifically thought of Erick and Ula and Chandreyee and Jenny and the folks at A Novel Idea, etc., etc. I found this at Quotidiana which I have just found and am enjoying hugely.
"My library
by A.A. Milne
When I moved into a new house a few weeks ago, my books, as was natural, moved with me. Strong, perspiring men shovelled them into packing-cases, and staggered with them to the van, cursing Caxton as they went. On arrival at this end, they staggered with them into the room selected for my library, heaved off the lids of the cases, and awaited orders. The immediate need was for an emptier room. Together we hurried the books into the new white shelves which awaited them, the order in which they stood being of no matter so long as they were off the floor. Armful after armful was hastily stacked, the only pause being when (in the curious way in which these things happen) my own name suddenly caught the eye of the foreman. "Did you write this one, sir?" he asked. I admitted it. "H'm," he said noncommittally. He glanced along the names of every armful after that, and appeared a little surprised at the number of books which I hadn't written. An easy-going profession, evidently.
So we got the books up at last, and there they are still. I told myself that when a wet afternoon came along I would arrange them properly. When the wet afternoon came, I told myself that I would arrange them one of these fine mornings. As they are now, I have to look along every shelf in the search for the book which I want. To come to Keats is no guarantee that we are on the road to Shelley. Shelley, if he did not drop out on the way, is probably next to How to Be a Golfer Though Middle-aged.
Having written as far as this, I had to get up and see where Shelley really was. It is worse than I thought. He is between Geometrical Optics and Studies in New Zealand Scenery. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whom I find myself to be entertaining unawares, sits beside Anarchy or Order, which was apparently "sent in the hope that you will become a member of the Duty and Discipline Movement"—a vain hope, it would seem, for I have not yet paid my subscription. What I Found Out, by an English Governess, shares a corner with The Recreations of a Country Parson; they are followed by Villette and Baedeker's Switzerland. Something will have to be done about it. But I am wondering what is to be done. If I gave you the impression that my books were precisely arranged in their old shelves, I misled you. They were arranged in the order known as "all anyhow." Possibly they were a little less "anyhow" than they are now, in that the volumes of any particular work were at least together, but that is all that can be claimed for them. For years I put off the business of tidying them up, just as I am putting it off now. It is not laziness; it is simply that I don't know how to begin.
Let us suppose that we decide to have all the poetry together. It sounds reasonable. But then Byron is eleven inches high (my tallest poet), and Beattie (my shortest) is just over four inches. How foolish they will look standing side by side. Perhaps you don't know Beattie, but I assure you that he was a poet. He wrote those majestic lines:—
The shepherd-swain of whom I mention made
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe or plough he never swayed—
An honest heart was almost all his stock.
Of course, one would hardly expect a shepherd to sway a plough in the ordinary way, but Beattie was quite right to remind us that Edwin didn't either. Edwin was the name of the shepherd- swain. "And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy," we are told a little further on in a line that should live. Well, having satisfied you that Beattie was really a poet, I can now return to my argument that an eleven-inch Byron cannot stand next to a four-inch Beattie, and be followed by an eight-inch Cowper, without making the shelf look silly. Yet how can I discard Beattie—Beattie who wrote:—
"And now the downy cheek and deepened voice Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime."
You see the difficulty. If you arrange your books according to their contents you are sure to get an untidy shelf. If you arrange your books according to their size and colour you get an effective wall, but the poetically inclined visitor may lose sight of Beattie altogether. Before, then, we decide what to do about it, we must ask ourselves that very awkward question, "Why do we have books on our shelves at all?" It is a most embarrassing question to answer.
Of course, you think that the proper answer (in your own case) is an indignant protest that you bought them in order to read them, and that yon put them on your shelves in order that you could refer to them when necessary. A little reflection will show you what a stupid answer that is. If you only want to read them, why are some of them bound in morocco and half-calf and other expensive coverings? Why did you buy a first edition when a hundredth edition was so much cheaper? Why have you got half a dozen copies of The Rubaiyat? What is the particular value of this other book that you treasure it so carefully? Why, the fact that its pages are uncut. If you cut the pages and read it, the value would go.
So, then, your library is not just for reference. You know as well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china. Of course, it is nice to have the books there, so that one can refer to them when one wishes. One may be writing an article on sea-bathing, for instance, and have come to the sentence which begins: "In the well-remembered words of Coleridge, perhaps almost too familiar to be quoted"—and then one may have to look them up. On these occasions a library is not only ornamental but useful. But do not let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed, the more I survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, "How pretty your books look," and I am inclined to think that that is good enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should lose if I started to arrange them methodically.
But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put them the right way round.
(1920)"
If you are interested in more, I suggest you head to your local library and pick up a copy. If you like it enough to buy it, or just think it will look pretty on your shelf, head to your local locally owned used or new bookstore and pick one up. Please buy books responsibly.
SJ
I read this and immediately thought of at least a dozen people who are my MyFriends who would enjoy this and decided against making it into a bulletin and running the risk of strange changes made during reposting and such. Because it's that kind of a thing. For bibliophiles, anyway. I specifically thought of Erick and Ula and Chandreyee and Jenny and the folks at A Novel Idea, etc., etc. I found this at Quotidiana which I have just found and am enjoying hugely.
"My library
by A.A. Milne
When I moved into a new house a few weeks ago, my books, as was natural, moved with me. Strong, perspiring men shovelled them into packing-cases, and staggered with them to the van, cursing Caxton as they went. On arrival at this end, they staggered with them into the room selected for my library, heaved off the lids of the cases, and awaited orders. The immediate need was for an emptier room. Together we hurried the books into the new white shelves which awaited them, the order in which they stood being of no matter so long as they were off the floor. Armful after armful was hastily stacked, the only pause being when (in the curious way in which these things happen) my own name suddenly caught the eye of the foreman. "Did you write this one, sir?" he asked. I admitted it. "H'm," he said noncommittally. He glanced along the names of every armful after that, and appeared a little surprised at the number of books which I hadn't written. An easy-going profession, evidently.
So we got the books up at last, and there they are still. I told myself that when a wet afternoon came along I would arrange them properly. When the wet afternoon came, I told myself that I would arrange them one of these fine mornings. As they are now, I have to look along every shelf in the search for the book which I want. To come to Keats is no guarantee that we are on the road to Shelley. Shelley, if he did not drop out on the way, is probably next to How to Be a Golfer Though Middle-aged.
Having written as far as this, I had to get up and see where Shelley really was. It is worse than I thought. He is between Geometrical Optics and Studies in New Zealand Scenery. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whom I find myself to be entertaining unawares, sits beside Anarchy or Order, which was apparently "sent in the hope that you will become a member of the Duty and Discipline Movement"—a vain hope, it would seem, for I have not yet paid my subscription. What I Found Out, by an English Governess, shares a corner with The Recreations of a Country Parson; they are followed by Villette and Baedeker's Switzerland. Something will have to be done about it. But I am wondering what is to be done. If I gave you the impression that my books were precisely arranged in their old shelves, I misled you. They were arranged in the order known as "all anyhow." Possibly they were a little less "anyhow" than they are now, in that the volumes of any particular work were at least together, but that is all that can be claimed for them. For years I put off the business of tidying them up, just as I am putting it off now. It is not laziness; it is simply that I don't know how to begin.
Let us suppose that we decide to have all the poetry together. It sounds reasonable. But then Byron is eleven inches high (my tallest poet), and Beattie (my shortest) is just over four inches. How foolish they will look standing side by side. Perhaps you don't know Beattie, but I assure you that he was a poet. He wrote those majestic lines:—
The shepherd-swain of whom I mention made
On Scotia's mountains fed his little flock;
The sickle, scythe or plough he never swayed—
An honest heart was almost all his stock.
Of course, one would hardly expect a shepherd to sway a plough in the ordinary way, but Beattie was quite right to remind us that Edwin didn't either. Edwin was the name of the shepherd- swain. "And yet poor Edwin was no vulgar boy," we are told a little further on in a line that should live. Well, having satisfied you that Beattie was really a poet, I can now return to my argument that an eleven-inch Byron cannot stand next to a four-inch Beattie, and be followed by an eight-inch Cowper, without making the shelf look silly. Yet how can I discard Beattie—Beattie who wrote:—
"And now the downy cheek and deepened voice Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime."
You see the difficulty. If you arrange your books according to their contents you are sure to get an untidy shelf. If you arrange your books according to their size and colour you get an effective wall, but the poetically inclined visitor may lose sight of Beattie altogether. Before, then, we decide what to do about it, we must ask ourselves that very awkward question, "Why do we have books on our shelves at all?" It is a most embarrassing question to answer.
Of course, you think that the proper answer (in your own case) is an indignant protest that you bought them in order to read them, and that yon put them on your shelves in order that you could refer to them when necessary. A little reflection will show you what a stupid answer that is. If you only want to read them, why are some of them bound in morocco and half-calf and other expensive coverings? Why did you buy a first edition when a hundredth edition was so much cheaper? Why have you got half a dozen copies of The Rubaiyat? What is the particular value of this other book that you treasure it so carefully? Why, the fact that its pages are uncut. If you cut the pages and read it, the value would go.
So, then, your library is not just for reference. You know as well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china. Of course, it is nice to have the books there, so that one can refer to them when one wishes. One may be writing an article on sea-bathing, for instance, and have come to the sentence which begins: "In the well-remembered words of Coleridge, perhaps almost too familiar to be quoted"—and then one may have to look them up. On these occasions a library is not only ornamental but useful. But do not let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed, the more I survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, "How pretty your books look," and I am inclined to think that that is good enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should lose if I started to arrange them methodically.
But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put them the right way round.
(1920)"
If you are interested in more, I suggest you head to your local library and pick up a copy. If you like it enough to buy it, or just think it will look pretty on your shelf, head to your local locally owned used or new bookstore and pick one up. Please buy books responsibly.
SJ
Tuesday 18 December 2007
does it count if it’s on CD?
one of the more difficult parts of being in a space with no other human there is filling it. if you live with no other humans, it is occasionally oppressively silent, even with the royal twins tearing through the house at break neck speed and getting yelled at for thinking that the ball of yarn that i'm working with, thankyouverymuch, is something to be hunted and carried off to the den under the bed. if you live with other humans and find yourself alone in the house for awhile, the silence can be a relief, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be filled with the personally chosen sounds of the individual.
i have always enjoyed a silent home, partly because there was always enough going on outside or in the house that adding noise to it just made no sense. there are the wonderful sounds of a house settling into the ground and all of the creaks and grinds and breaks associated with that motion. it takes time to sink a brick house, even in a swamp that has been filled with concrete pylons and dozens of layers of city that have sunk into the muck and built on over and over again for an hundred and fifty years, and the sounds spread out and go slowly or jerk for a few seconds, adjusting to some milimetric difference.
as a child, most winter evenings were spent in the living room, many involved a fire in the fireplace and listening to my father read to me/us from Laura Ingalls Wilder or Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. (thought - it sounds so much more impressive to speak of reading from an author than saying we read Little House on the Prairie and Tom Sawyer and A Christmas Carol. i wonder what trick of the language allows for that?)(yes, alright, idyllic childhood, without it, i would likely be a much more depressing combination of cliches without any hope of escape) it helps that my father has a pleasant reading voice and that he chose to read to us about young people who lived in places we knew of and had visited.
remember that Dream On guy? the one who was of the first generation of people raised in front of the television? yeah. I don't get that guy. i wasn't that guy. every now and then i go into cable addiction and Cannot Turn It Off! but then i move or get divorced or something like that (cable = husband or roommate(s), i never have it when i'm single.) as a child i hung out in the library upstairs, reading the spines of my parent's books. this is something i have written about almost ad nauseum.
part of the difficulty i have with sitting down to read a book is that it's one thing. i'm doing one thing, and only one thing. it is nice to read for information or for a class because then there is a notepad next to me and a pencil in my hand, and i can write things down, tease out bits of fun information, beginnings of theoretical underpinnings etc. it is my way of being actively involved with a text, there is a dialogue, not just parasitism for quotes or someone else's opinion or philosophy, but the recognition that there is something here that i find fascinating, that will be around for a while, that i will want to continue to engage with and in. i am allowed the illusion of multi-tasking, even though i'm sitting still only engaging two of my senses (unless i'm reading aloud, but we'll get there).
i finished reading Possession by AS Byatt. again. I read it about every year. and every year when i finish the book, i immediately turn to the front and begin it again. this year, i didn't do that. i wanted more than just a rehash. i wanted to find bits of it in my world and my home. i started writing - one of those dreaded book responses from college. and then i started looking for, and finding easily (because i've read the book so many damn times) discussions about certain themes - most notably the theme of what we call education, knowing, information having, can do to people - and i marked them with color coded post-it tabs. that is the reading that i truly enjoy doing, but rarely get the chance to - rarely does a book warrant that kind of attention. rarely do i have that attention to give.
i took a class in World Music at the end of last century and learned about this amazing thing: balinese shadow puppet shows accompanied by gamelan music (move my soul to heaven) that tell old and very well known stories, like the Ramadan. people crowd into these places. they smoke, they speak to each other, they watch the show, they eat. this goes on for near to 24 hours. gnungh! so want to do this. so want to.
i look at Trilogy Tuesday from years ago (lord of the rings - all three movies to herald the release of Return of the King. 12 hours in a movie theatre. Bad bad food. Smelled like a locker room by the time we were done. So. Much. Fucking. Fun. i was in tears for a week - just emotionally exhausted. it was wonderful) as a sort of test run. the culture of Bali and of Omaha are vastly different, though, so we'll see how much of a test run it really was.
part of my multi-tasking at home involves yarn work. more than a few years back, i discovered that commentaries are the most wonderful things ever, because they allowed me to watch a beloved movie, without having to watch it, while still being somewhat involved with it - thinking about the process of the end product. i tend to find commentaries sort of inspiring. sometimes they are awful, but that's for another blog. the point here, is that i enjoy listening to people speak about what they did, and why they did it, and what the thoughts were about it. but, i'm listening to it. (over and over and over again.)
yesterday, after i found that i could lift my head without unendurable pain (aftereffect of surgery - i recover okay, but when i get sick, i get sick right now and a lot and it sucks), i worked on a new project while listening to the new adventures of sherlock holmes - it's at the library, except for the ones that i have, they are the recordings (organized in someone's drunken notion of order) of the radio show from WWII and just after. it's taken some time and practice to pay attention the way that you would were this the only time you would hear it, and in fact, i'm sure that i don't, because i know that i can listen to them again.
in the last few weeks, i have listened to something like 4 or 5 books read aloud and recorded for my listening pleasure. i have wondered if listening to them counts as having read them. particularly in the case of non-fiction, although why that should be different simply leads us to a discussion of how i'm an elitist bitch, and we all know that already. i've answered the question for myself by deciding that it is just as easy to not pay attention to a book that is sitting in your lap, open, with your eyes fixed on it and moving over the words on the page, as it is to disregard the voice reading to you those words. the only real difficulty comes when you want to cite something or remember a specific line. when it is a machine controlling the reading (to some extent) and not a person sitting in the room with you, it is difficult to say "would you read that bit again" or "what chapter is that in" though not entirely impossible.
i enjoy sitting down to an entire day of a television show. one of these days i will own stargate sg-1 all 10 seasons box set, and i will have a television to hand with the necessary cords and i will do nothing but watch stargate. beginning with the movie. it will be wonderful and food-filled and i will have a headache and bad back for a week afterwards, because it will take me a while to get through it all, but i will - have no doubt or fear - it will happen.
the idea of 24 hours of entertainment, or storytelling or more specifically, story performance, seems so utterly appropriate to me, and i have no clue why. perhaps it's to do with the long nights of reading that i will indulge in on occasion. perhaps it's just the notion of being completely consumed by a thing - i tire of and find annoying the flighty entertainment that is available on a regular basis. i have now one show - two by proximity (one to the show i watch, one to my parents), and that is enough.
i get to go home and listen to someone read to me of war and love and honor and mystery and occasionally engage me in ridiculous conversation in Portuguese.
my home is filled with voices and story and i am not bound to one room or one chair or one attitude. i can do the dishes and move about, chasing the cats and blocking work. it is difficult to take notes, because i cannot look away from the book and now that everything will be in the same spot, but the discs end after very little time, so it is of no real consequence.
the only time it's really trying is when i know that i could have read the damn thing faster myself.
i have always enjoyed a silent home, partly because there was always enough going on outside or in the house that adding noise to it just made no sense. there are the wonderful sounds of a house settling into the ground and all of the creaks and grinds and breaks associated with that motion. it takes time to sink a brick house, even in a swamp that has been filled with concrete pylons and dozens of layers of city that have sunk into the muck and built on over and over again for an hundred and fifty years, and the sounds spread out and go slowly or jerk for a few seconds, adjusting to some milimetric difference.
as a child, most winter evenings were spent in the living room, many involved a fire in the fireplace and listening to my father read to me/us from Laura Ingalls Wilder or Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. (thought - it sounds so much more impressive to speak of reading from an author than saying we read Little House on the Prairie and Tom Sawyer and A Christmas Carol. i wonder what trick of the language allows for that?)(yes, alright, idyllic childhood, without it, i would likely be a much more depressing combination of cliches without any hope of escape) it helps that my father has a pleasant reading voice and that he chose to read to us about young people who lived in places we knew of and had visited.
remember that Dream On guy? the one who was of the first generation of people raised in front of the television? yeah. I don't get that guy. i wasn't that guy. every now and then i go into cable addiction and Cannot Turn It Off! but then i move or get divorced or something like that (cable = husband or roommate(s), i never have it when i'm single.) as a child i hung out in the library upstairs, reading the spines of my parent's books. this is something i have written about almost ad nauseum.
part of the difficulty i have with sitting down to read a book is that it's one thing. i'm doing one thing, and only one thing. it is nice to read for information or for a class because then there is a notepad next to me and a pencil in my hand, and i can write things down, tease out bits of fun information, beginnings of theoretical underpinnings etc. it is my way of being actively involved with a text, there is a dialogue, not just parasitism for quotes or someone else's opinion or philosophy, but the recognition that there is something here that i find fascinating, that will be around for a while, that i will want to continue to engage with and in. i am allowed the illusion of multi-tasking, even though i'm sitting still only engaging two of my senses (unless i'm reading aloud, but we'll get there).
i finished reading Possession by AS Byatt. again. I read it about every year. and every year when i finish the book, i immediately turn to the front and begin it again. this year, i didn't do that. i wanted more than just a rehash. i wanted to find bits of it in my world and my home. i started writing - one of those dreaded book responses from college. and then i started looking for, and finding easily (because i've read the book so many damn times) discussions about certain themes - most notably the theme of what we call education, knowing, information having, can do to people - and i marked them with color coded post-it tabs. that is the reading that i truly enjoy doing, but rarely get the chance to - rarely does a book warrant that kind of attention. rarely do i have that attention to give.
i took a class in World Music at the end of last century and learned about this amazing thing: balinese shadow puppet shows accompanied by gamelan music (move my soul to heaven) that tell old and very well known stories, like the Ramadan. people crowd into these places. they smoke, they speak to each other, they watch the show, they eat. this goes on for near to 24 hours. gnungh! so want to do this. so want to.
i look at Trilogy Tuesday from years ago (lord of the rings - all three movies to herald the release of Return of the King. 12 hours in a movie theatre. Bad bad food. Smelled like a locker room by the time we were done. So. Much. Fucking. Fun. i was in tears for a week - just emotionally exhausted. it was wonderful) as a sort of test run. the culture of Bali and of Omaha are vastly different, though, so we'll see how much of a test run it really was.
part of my multi-tasking at home involves yarn work. more than a few years back, i discovered that commentaries are the most wonderful things ever, because they allowed me to watch a beloved movie, without having to watch it, while still being somewhat involved with it - thinking about the process of the end product. i tend to find commentaries sort of inspiring. sometimes they are awful, but that's for another blog. the point here, is that i enjoy listening to people speak about what they did, and why they did it, and what the thoughts were about it. but, i'm listening to it. (over and over and over again.)
yesterday, after i found that i could lift my head without unendurable pain (aftereffect of surgery - i recover okay, but when i get sick, i get sick right now and a lot and it sucks), i worked on a new project while listening to the new adventures of sherlock holmes - it's at the library, except for the ones that i have, they are the recordings (organized in someone's drunken notion of order) of the radio show from WWII and just after. it's taken some time and practice to pay attention the way that you would were this the only time you would hear it, and in fact, i'm sure that i don't, because i know that i can listen to them again.
in the last few weeks, i have listened to something like 4 or 5 books read aloud and recorded for my listening pleasure. i have wondered if listening to them counts as having read them. particularly in the case of non-fiction, although why that should be different simply leads us to a discussion of how i'm an elitist bitch, and we all know that already. i've answered the question for myself by deciding that it is just as easy to not pay attention to a book that is sitting in your lap, open, with your eyes fixed on it and moving over the words on the page, as it is to disregard the voice reading to you those words. the only real difficulty comes when you want to cite something or remember a specific line. when it is a machine controlling the reading (to some extent) and not a person sitting in the room with you, it is difficult to say "would you read that bit again" or "what chapter is that in" though not entirely impossible.
i enjoy sitting down to an entire day of a television show. one of these days i will own stargate sg-1 all 10 seasons box set, and i will have a television to hand with the necessary cords and i will do nothing but watch stargate. beginning with the movie. it will be wonderful and food-filled and i will have a headache and bad back for a week afterwards, because it will take me a while to get through it all, but i will - have no doubt or fear - it will happen.
the idea of 24 hours of entertainment, or storytelling or more specifically, story performance, seems so utterly appropriate to me, and i have no clue why. perhaps it's to do with the long nights of reading that i will indulge in on occasion. perhaps it's just the notion of being completely consumed by a thing - i tire of and find annoying the flighty entertainment that is available on a regular basis. i have now one show - two by proximity (one to the show i watch, one to my parents), and that is enough.
i get to go home and listen to someone read to me of war and love and honor and mystery and occasionally engage me in ridiculous conversation in Portuguese.
my home is filled with voices and story and i am not bound to one room or one chair or one attitude. i can do the dishes and move about, chasing the cats and blocking work. it is difficult to take notes, because i cannot look away from the book and now that everything will be in the same spot, but the discs end after very little time, so it is of no real consequence.
the only time it's really trying is when i know that i could have read the damn thing faster myself.
Friday 14 December 2007
sometimes you only get part of the story
In the classroom next to my office, the Chinese language class is having their last meeting. There have been presentations followed by applause, punctuated by laughter every afternoon this week. All semester long I have heard them every afternoon, the teacher's voice unintelligible even without the bricks of concrete between us, as I do not speak Chinese. It was rather like listening to an increasingly more expressive army or choir repeating her words loudly and more and more clearly. Now they are singing. The music is nothing I know, nothing I have heard. I want to cry for the beauty and the understanding that it is goodbye. The semester is over. Even though it is likely that these people will see each other again, perhaps even in their Chinese study, this time is done. It is time to move on and all that, and they are recognizing it in music. I want to cry.
Walking to work after lunch today, I was behind a group of men all loud and boisterous, less from an exuberant personality trait than the need to speak loudly enough to be heard through the ear muffs that are the ubiquitous and required at this time of year. (in case anyone is coming to the state for the first time, yes, they do hand them out as you cross the border north from Kansas and there are ear muff kiosks at the airports. consider it a public mental health service. cold ears = super cranky.) I do not have any idea what they were talking about, though, not because of my own ear covering, but because I was thoroughly distracted by the precarious position of the pants on the man just in front of me. I have no idea what was holding them up, and I didn't see braces or suspenders, so it might have been sheer luck or will, but my stomach clenched in anticipation of the moment when they would fall, he would fall, and I would have to look away in horror lest I catch of glimpse of underwear I am sure he would rather not acknowledge having. I always assume that everyone is secretly ashamed of their underwear - which is why we keep putting it display - and would not want to make that shame greater by involving myself in it in any way.
Also, I learned that Iowegians change lightbulbs that are blown. Apparently Nebraskans don't, at least not the ones that work at the university. The man who said that was wearing stupid gloves, therefore I do not trust him, even if he is from my mother's home state.
Ula had today off. She was "sick," a condition brought on at her office manager's insistence. Sometimes I am amazed that she can tolerate me, as I would be happy to be unsupervised and have days off randomly with nothing to do but roam around town, and she was so flustered at the change of routine that her phone wasn't ringing properly. Yes, I am convinced that was the problem. Her phone would ring, in her pocket, and neither one of us would hear it. This is the woman who can hear her phone ringing in the bottom of her purse in a crowded bar on a Friday night. And she didn't hear it.
Partly that could be because we were both very unsettled at having just seen/not seen my ex husband, who I didn't see because I was looking at the sandwich shop sign - a thing which I have never done as it is a place into which I will not go on principle (chain) - and she saw him and his girlfriend and I totally missed it, thereby, I am sure, being thoroughly rude. This actually bothers me. Not that I am not rude by nature, but it's disturbing to me to be rude on accident. It indicates a lack of awareness of my surroundings followed by the several moments of concern over how to make it okay - how to prevent any more negativity about me going out into the world. It's selfish, I'm hip.
Ula really should not have days off. Everything is thrown off balance.
Every now and then things are just floomey. They just go all odd and there's really nothing to do but wait them out and read a good book. That's the problem - there's really nothing that you can "do" - not just to make it better, but at all, because everything is all topsy-turvy and any action that is committed will very likely end up having to be committed again. I recommend a nice long read in a very warm place with a glass of water - seriously, I mean water. It's good for you and will help avoid the hangover you are likely to give yourself otherwise. Because, remember, it's not just you for whom the world is all upside down - it's everyone around you and it's the kind of thing that is catching.
It's a good thing that I have a healthy sense of the goddess's humor.
The students are gone now. The hall is quiet, and there is much to think about that has nothing to do with any of this.
I hope you all have wonderful weekends and are safe and warm.
Walking to work after lunch today, I was behind a group of men all loud and boisterous, less from an exuberant personality trait than the need to speak loudly enough to be heard through the ear muffs that are the ubiquitous and required at this time of year. (in case anyone is coming to the state for the first time, yes, they do hand them out as you cross the border north from Kansas and there are ear muff kiosks at the airports. consider it a public mental health service. cold ears = super cranky.) I do not have any idea what they were talking about, though, not because of my own ear covering, but because I was thoroughly distracted by the precarious position of the pants on the man just in front of me. I have no idea what was holding them up, and I didn't see braces or suspenders, so it might have been sheer luck or will, but my stomach clenched in anticipation of the moment when they would fall, he would fall, and I would have to look away in horror lest I catch of glimpse of underwear I am sure he would rather not acknowledge having. I always assume that everyone is secretly ashamed of their underwear - which is why we keep putting it display - and would not want to make that shame greater by involving myself in it in any way.
Also, I learned that Iowegians change lightbulbs that are blown. Apparently Nebraskans don't, at least not the ones that work at the university. The man who said that was wearing stupid gloves, therefore I do not trust him, even if he is from my mother's home state.
Ula had today off. She was "sick," a condition brought on at her office manager's insistence. Sometimes I am amazed that she can tolerate me, as I would be happy to be unsupervised and have days off randomly with nothing to do but roam around town, and she was so flustered at the change of routine that her phone wasn't ringing properly. Yes, I am convinced that was the problem. Her phone would ring, in her pocket, and neither one of us would hear it. This is the woman who can hear her phone ringing in the bottom of her purse in a crowded bar on a Friday night. And she didn't hear it.
Partly that could be because we were both very unsettled at having just seen/not seen my ex husband, who I didn't see because I was looking at the sandwich shop sign - a thing which I have never done as it is a place into which I will not go on principle (chain) - and she saw him and his girlfriend and I totally missed it, thereby, I am sure, being thoroughly rude. This actually bothers me. Not that I am not rude by nature, but it's disturbing to me to be rude on accident. It indicates a lack of awareness of my surroundings followed by the several moments of concern over how to make it okay - how to prevent any more negativity about me going out into the world. It's selfish, I'm hip.
Ula really should not have days off. Everything is thrown off balance.
Every now and then things are just floomey. They just go all odd and there's really nothing to do but wait them out and read a good book. That's the problem - there's really nothing that you can "do" - not just to make it better, but at all, because everything is all topsy-turvy and any action that is committed will very likely end up having to be committed again. I recommend a nice long read in a very warm place with a glass of water - seriously, I mean water. It's good for you and will help avoid the hangover you are likely to give yourself otherwise. Because, remember, it's not just you for whom the world is all upside down - it's everyone around you and it's the kind of thing that is catching.
It's a good thing that I have a healthy sense of the goddess's humor.
The students are gone now. The hall is quiet, and there is much to think about that has nothing to do with any of this.
I hope you all have wonderful weekends and are safe and warm.
Tuesday 11 December 2007
it’s not that I don’t want to complain...
I just can't bring myself to it today.
I bought myself slippers at random while at target with Ula last week. I promptly developed a cold and stayed in bed for an entire Saturday (my first Saturday at home by myself with nowhere to be, mind), but I don't believe those things to be connected, necessarily.
The reason I mention this has to do with a late evening's adventure last night when it was required of me to go out of my apartment, down the stairs, out the front door, around to the back of the house, down the newly re-done (thank you, Howard) stairs and flip my fucking breaker. Again.
We moved the fridge. I am convinced that all of the things that are happening in my house are as a result of moving the fridge. I could have been content to live with a kitchen whose accessibility was severely hampered by the bottle-neck effect of the world's most ridiculously large for one person fridge placed right next to the stove giving an already narrow and dark kitchen the feel of a very strange vaginal canal leading to and from my womb-like bedroom (which I've decided to decorate like a cloud, just in case anyone was wondering). It's not that I'm a prude or anything, it's just that I really do have better things to do with my brain that actually have to go through the thought process every morning that 'I'm just now being born into the world. Again.' And believe me, I would. I'm very routine oriented when I feel like it.
The fridge was, therefore, moved to a much more acceptable spot and now holds a place of prestige and honor and occasionally acts as a very tall and not remotely cushion-y cushion for the terror twins who like to hang out there while I bathe. Don't ask, I don't know. And everything in it promptly froze. Which has been mentioned before, so I may continue.
With the fridge moved, the next project was the attempt to prevent wind from coming through the house by putting plastic up on all of the windows. There are ten in my cloud-room alone. This was not going to be, and in fact was not, a single evening's adventure. Now, I have been putting plastic up on windows since my parents discovered this wonderful new thing many many years ago. Which means that I have been used to using a hair dryer to shrink the plastic so that you can't hear the plastic billowing in the wind or see wrinkles - in effect, the only real purpose I can see for using the hair dryer is to make it look as though there is no plastic holding back the winter coming in through the windows that it will cost many thousands of dollars that not one of us has, to fix. I'm sure that there is some other, rational, not cynical explanation, but I don't know it.
If you ever come over to my house, you will notice that the plastic on the windows billows and is very visible. Because the hair dryer was not used to tighten it. Because I blew the breaker. Three times. I got tired of blowing the breaker every time the hair dryer got turned on. We turned off all of the lights in the house, lit candles and unplugged the clock. We forgot to unplug the fridge. And blew the breaker. At that point it was 7 at night and dark and I was tired. So I went to the bar with Ula. We had earned it.
A few days later, I was moving the second of two bookshelves from one side of the living room to the other and deciding how much more I was up for doing that evening when everything went dark. I had blown the breaker. I had Nothing plugged in! Nothing. There were only 3 lights on. And I blew the breaker.
So, I turn off lights when I leave rooms. I am comforted knowing that my heat is gas and the electricity in my cloud is on its own circuit, therefore guaranteeing that I will be warm even if I am in the dark. I have developed a very uncanny sense of time passing. I never bathe right before leaving the house, as I cannot dry my hair and have not pursued getting the toaster oven I would love to have, because it is something which gets plugged into walls and they are walls which I distrust.
Living alone means that I have lots of projects: going through boxes and sorting stuff, baking things, finishing craft things, starting craft things, cataloging my books, reading, listening to radio, cataloging my books, writing letters, exploring themes, cataloging my books.
In order to catalog my books, it is necessary to decide on the specific items of information which will be listed in combination with the title, author, publisher, edition, year of publication, pagination and illustration, if applicable. I have decided to include at least one quote from each book and perhaps some indication of whether I have read it before, if I remember why I have the book, etc. As I have no computer, but do have much paper and binders and a typewriter, it seems appropriate to use the typewriter to record the information I would like on some of the filler paper that I have collected over the years and to the put that paper into one of the many binders that I have, and perhaps to decorate that binder using the other kinds of resources that are at hand.
The sticking point is the typewriter. It's electric and makes a certain amount of noise, particularly when it's on my desk, which is wood, which is sitting on a wood floor which is the top of the ceiling of my downstairs neighbors. I do not want to rattle at them, so I decided to make a sort of pad to put between the typewriter and desk. I decided to use yarn for which there seems to be no other purpose and found a nice stitch (star stitch, in case you are interested) which I worked into a sort of frame, 24 x 18 inches, give or take. It was intentionally large, the cotton I used shrinks considerably when washed, which I did next. and since it's going to be stitched with ribbon to a piece of fabric and then to batting and a backing to make a sort of not quilted knotted-quilt pillow, I wanted to do what I could to make the piece square, which it didn't naturally want to be. So, I plugged in the iron.
It blew the breaker.
By the time I got outside, slippered and coated and ready to head to the back door, down the stairs to the basement and almost immediately back up again, there was no wind, the sky was as black as the clouds and light pollution would let it be, which was something like slate gray and the freezing rain had begun.
I stood under a tree in the backyard and smoked a cigarette, not wanting to walk up the snow covered back stairs, and also not wanting to be seen on the well-lit front porch by passers-by. It was unbelievably quiet. There weren't many cars to be heard and none to be seen moving down my street or through the intersection several feet away. Frozen rain crunches underfoot and as long as you don't make any sudden moves, is really not slippery. I paced back and forth ducking under the lowest of the evergreen branches under which I had taken shelter for my cigarette.
My fingers were a little cold, but with a hat and a coat and no wind to speak of, the winter wasn't so bad. It helped that my feet were warm and felt sturdy against the weather on the sidewalk, a thing which for a pedestrian is an odd study in ice and snow and salt and human habits. I really like my slippers. I'm glad I bought them.
I bought myself slippers at random while at target with Ula last week. I promptly developed a cold and stayed in bed for an entire Saturday (my first Saturday at home by myself with nowhere to be, mind), but I don't believe those things to be connected, necessarily.
The reason I mention this has to do with a late evening's adventure last night when it was required of me to go out of my apartment, down the stairs, out the front door, around to the back of the house, down the newly re-done (thank you, Howard) stairs and flip my fucking breaker. Again.
We moved the fridge. I am convinced that all of the things that are happening in my house are as a result of moving the fridge. I could have been content to live with a kitchen whose accessibility was severely hampered by the bottle-neck effect of the world's most ridiculously large for one person fridge placed right next to the stove giving an already narrow and dark kitchen the feel of a very strange vaginal canal leading to and from my womb-like bedroom (which I've decided to decorate like a cloud, just in case anyone was wondering). It's not that I'm a prude or anything, it's just that I really do have better things to do with my brain that actually have to go through the thought process every morning that 'I'm just now being born into the world. Again.' And believe me, I would. I'm very routine oriented when I feel like it.
The fridge was, therefore, moved to a much more acceptable spot and now holds a place of prestige and honor and occasionally acts as a very tall and not remotely cushion-y cushion for the terror twins who like to hang out there while I bathe. Don't ask, I don't know. And everything in it promptly froze. Which has been mentioned before, so I may continue.
With the fridge moved, the next project was the attempt to prevent wind from coming through the house by putting plastic up on all of the windows. There are ten in my cloud-room alone. This was not going to be, and in fact was not, a single evening's adventure. Now, I have been putting plastic up on windows since my parents discovered this wonderful new thing many many years ago. Which means that I have been used to using a hair dryer to shrink the plastic so that you can't hear the plastic billowing in the wind or see wrinkles - in effect, the only real purpose I can see for using the hair dryer is to make it look as though there is no plastic holding back the winter coming in through the windows that it will cost many thousands of dollars that not one of us has, to fix. I'm sure that there is some other, rational, not cynical explanation, but I don't know it.
If you ever come over to my house, you will notice that the plastic on the windows billows and is very visible. Because the hair dryer was not used to tighten it. Because I blew the breaker. Three times. I got tired of blowing the breaker every time the hair dryer got turned on. We turned off all of the lights in the house, lit candles and unplugged the clock. We forgot to unplug the fridge. And blew the breaker. At that point it was 7 at night and dark and I was tired. So I went to the bar with Ula. We had earned it.
A few days later, I was moving the second of two bookshelves from one side of the living room to the other and deciding how much more I was up for doing that evening when everything went dark. I had blown the breaker. I had Nothing plugged in! Nothing. There were only 3 lights on. And I blew the breaker.
So, I turn off lights when I leave rooms. I am comforted knowing that my heat is gas and the electricity in my cloud is on its own circuit, therefore guaranteeing that I will be warm even if I am in the dark. I have developed a very uncanny sense of time passing. I never bathe right before leaving the house, as I cannot dry my hair and have not pursued getting the toaster oven I would love to have, because it is something which gets plugged into walls and they are walls which I distrust.
Living alone means that I have lots of projects: going through boxes and sorting stuff, baking things, finishing craft things, starting craft things, cataloging my books, reading, listening to radio, cataloging my books, writing letters, exploring themes, cataloging my books.
In order to catalog my books, it is necessary to decide on the specific items of information which will be listed in combination with the title, author, publisher, edition, year of publication, pagination and illustration, if applicable. I have decided to include at least one quote from each book and perhaps some indication of whether I have read it before, if I remember why I have the book, etc. As I have no computer, but do have much paper and binders and a typewriter, it seems appropriate to use the typewriter to record the information I would like on some of the filler paper that I have collected over the years and to the put that paper into one of the many binders that I have, and perhaps to decorate that binder using the other kinds of resources that are at hand.
The sticking point is the typewriter. It's electric and makes a certain amount of noise, particularly when it's on my desk, which is wood, which is sitting on a wood floor which is the top of the ceiling of my downstairs neighbors. I do not want to rattle at them, so I decided to make a sort of pad to put between the typewriter and desk. I decided to use yarn for which there seems to be no other purpose and found a nice stitch (star stitch, in case you are interested) which I worked into a sort of frame, 24 x 18 inches, give or take. It was intentionally large, the cotton I used shrinks considerably when washed, which I did next. and since it's going to be stitched with ribbon to a piece of fabric and then to batting and a backing to make a sort of not quilted knotted-quilt pillow, I wanted to do what I could to make the piece square, which it didn't naturally want to be. So, I plugged in the iron.
It blew the breaker.
By the time I got outside, slippered and coated and ready to head to the back door, down the stairs to the basement and almost immediately back up again, there was no wind, the sky was as black as the clouds and light pollution would let it be, which was something like slate gray and the freezing rain had begun.
I stood under a tree in the backyard and smoked a cigarette, not wanting to walk up the snow covered back stairs, and also not wanting to be seen on the well-lit front porch by passers-by. It was unbelievably quiet. There weren't many cars to be heard and none to be seen moving down my street or through the intersection several feet away. Frozen rain crunches underfoot and as long as you don't make any sudden moves, is really not slippery. I paced back and forth ducking under the lowest of the evergreen branches under which I had taken shelter for my cigarette.
My fingers were a little cold, but with a hat and a coat and no wind to speak of, the winter wasn't so bad. It helped that my feet were warm and felt sturdy against the weather on the sidewalk, a thing which for a pedestrian is an odd study in ice and snow and salt and human habits. I really like my slippers. I'm glad I bought them.
Tuesday 4 December 2007
no really, it's all true...
Today is a day of gray clouds hiding the sun which has been on verge of sunset since about 11 this morning. Earlier, I wrote this in an email to a friend: "it's so lovely out. I'd really rather be on a park bench with a cup of hot chai and maybe a bag of some ridiculous Pepperidge Farm cookie or other. And my book. Which I'm loving utterly - the Wordsworth and Coleridge one."
And it's true. All of it. The part about the chai, the cookies (preferably one of the kinds with ridiculously huge nut bits or chocolate chunks - you know which ones, the kind that are named after cities because that's how big they are - not the nice little fancy you-can-drink-tea-with-them cookies that I really like, especially the variety packs of the tidy cookies, yeah - not those), and the book. Even the park bench thing is true, which is cool, because there are a few benches on campus, but no one ever sits on them to read, because why would anyone read?
I have finished the baby blanket and am now seriously contemplating beginning another one, because I know someone else who had a baby and they are small creatures and can get cold very easily, this being winter and all, and we all know that the only reason I'm thinking about it is that I'm still on a high from the completion of the one I've been working on for more than a year and that it's really a much better idea for me to continue going through every single box in my home and re-sorting and throwing away and all of that. Yes. I know. It's a much better idea.
But but but but there's a book at the library that's entirely ripple stitches - entirely!!! and and and I like the baby silk that I used for this last blanket (OMG! softest blanket ever! E-VER, do you hear me?). Yeah. Well. there are about 30 pounds of yarn at home that will not be used for anything that will ever touch a baby that I know - icky grody acrylic (does anyone know how to spell grodey without getting the red squiggly line?)
So, everything else I have to say is all kinds of thoughtful and serious and I'm really just not in the fucking mood.
It's beautiful out. And I'm in. And that's pissifying. But it's beautiful out.
And it's true. All of it. The part about the chai, the cookies (preferably one of the kinds with ridiculously huge nut bits or chocolate chunks - you know which ones, the kind that are named after cities because that's how big they are - not the nice little fancy you-can-drink-tea-with-them cookies that I really like, especially the variety packs of the tidy cookies, yeah - not those), and the book. Even the park bench thing is true, which is cool, because there are a few benches on campus, but no one ever sits on them to read, because why would anyone read?
I have finished the baby blanket and am now seriously contemplating beginning another one, because I know someone else who had a baby and they are small creatures and can get cold very easily, this being winter and all, and we all know that the only reason I'm thinking about it is that I'm still on a high from the completion of the one I've been working on for more than a year and that it's really a much better idea for me to continue going through every single box in my home and re-sorting and throwing away and all of that. Yes. I know. It's a much better idea.
But but but but there's a book at the library that's entirely ripple stitches - entirely!!! and and and I like the baby silk that I used for this last blanket (OMG! softest blanket ever! E-VER, do you hear me?). Yeah. Well. there are about 30 pounds of yarn at home that will not be used for anything that will ever touch a baby that I know - icky grody acrylic (does anyone know how to spell grodey without getting the red squiggly line?)
So, everything else I have to say is all kinds of thoughtful and serious and I'm really just not in the fucking mood.
It's beautiful out. And I'm in. And that's pissifying. But it's beautiful out.
Saturday 1 December 2007
Applesauce and other disturbances
Two days ago, while listening to a book about William Smith and the first geologic map of anything (Bath, in case you're curious), I decided to try my hand at applesauce.
Normally, I would not do this. Fruit is kind of a mystery to me, and I prefer to let it be. However, during the grand moving of everything around my place, the refrigerator got moved and everything inside of it promptly froze. Including the apples. Which then became not good for munching or salads. Very good for cooking down to bits with spices.
So, I hauled out the handy dandy bland but available Betty Crocker and found the recipe for applesauce which said I needed 4 apples - the same number of apples currently languishing in a frozen state in one of the crisper drawers of my increasingly moody refrigerator! What are the odds.
Peeling frozen apples.
Yeah.
Cold hands and some not entirely certain passes at cutting the ice-apples in my hands had me pulling out the cutting board and creating not fourths but eighths out of the whole apples. The smaller bits are easier to carve the icky bits away from and the pan I was using is small-ish and I don't like to wait for things to fall apart on their own. I use force. (The metaphor is not available for extension at this time.)
The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of water. It isn't lying. It is very tempting to say that it's lying. Resist the temptation. Fight the Borg within. Trust the knowledge of your elders. One half of a cup of water is plenty for 4 medium sized cooking apples cut into fourths. Or eighths. Or rhomboids.
I currently live in an apartment with a gas stove. which is stupendously wonderful for things like fried chicken and boiling water, but soup and slow cooking - it's user error, I know this, but I'd really like to blame it on the very very old gas stove trying desperately to prove its worth at the very end. It needs love. And an overhaul. I have Brillo pads. I will win the battle of the ick on the burners, but I am no oven mechanic, I do not understand the tricky aspects of gas lines and burners that won't burn when something is over them.
The water boiled very quickly. And then didn't stop boiling. Not when I turned down the flame to the barest suggestion of gas spewage, not even when I pointed to the cookbook and informed the stove that I have explicit instructions saying that boiling is not any longer required. It boiled on. I found my potato masher. And I mashed the apples.
I love my potato masher. Truly. I don't know if my parents know that I have it. It is a combination potato masher - cudgel. In times of dire need, I can wallop someone over the head with the rounded end of my wooden masher and probably leave a very oddly shaped mark. None of these permanent plastic mashers for me, no, I will have something heavy and breakable, yes.
Mashing apples is very much not the same as stirring fudge. They both require standing at the stove, one hand on hip or the handle of the pot, one hand using a utensil to manipulate the contents of that pot in a specific and defined way. This is where the similarities end. Mashing apples releases energy in a focused and productive way and is destructive all at the same time. Stirring fudge is endless and frustrating. Even after the fudge is poured and chilled and cut and ready to eat. You still wasted a huge portion of your life stirring the fudge. I only stirred fudge once a year one time. Probably only 6 or 7 times in my life have I stood at a stove wooden spoon in hand, stirring fudge. And yet it is an overriding image in my mind, one of my favorite analogies and holiday memories and a great family joke. Because it is easier to explain than the 30 miles thing, I suspect.
The apples got mashed. I cooked them a bit longer, hoping that the boiling wouldn't hurt them, pulling out the stringy bits that I hate in applesauce - does no one else value consistency in their mush? If it's mush - I don't want to know what it was before it was mush. I want no lingering attempts at pre-mush identification. It's distracting.
In preparing the brown sugar and spices combination, I was still thinking that a half a cup of water would be too little, and planned the spices accordingly. Also, I didn't read the fractions before the word teaspoon until it occurred to me that maybe I didn't need that much nutmeg. and I added cloves. It is winter. If you are going put cinnamon (cassia for those of us who buy what's available) and nutmeg into something edible, you add cloves. It's my new rule about winter cooking. Fortunately, I enjoy dark brown sugar and I enjoy cloves and nutmeg; cinnamon (cassia) makes me twitch when there's too much - everyone's got their spice thing, this is mine.
It came out fine. It cooled down and is in my refrigerator right now. I haven't had any of it.
I will later, but right now my mother and I are waiting for the ice to melt from the trees and roads and maybe even sidewalks before venturing out into the world where it is gray and raining and probably wonderful.
Oh, and: Ethel eats soap.
Normally, I would not do this. Fruit is kind of a mystery to me, and I prefer to let it be. However, during the grand moving of everything around my place, the refrigerator got moved and everything inside of it promptly froze. Including the apples. Which then became not good for munching or salads. Very good for cooking down to bits with spices.
So, I hauled out the handy dandy bland but available Betty Crocker and found the recipe for applesauce which said I needed 4 apples - the same number of apples currently languishing in a frozen state in one of the crisper drawers of my increasingly moody refrigerator! What are the odds.
Peeling frozen apples.
Yeah.
Cold hands and some not entirely certain passes at cutting the ice-apples in my hands had me pulling out the cutting board and creating not fourths but eighths out of the whole apples. The smaller bits are easier to carve the icky bits away from and the pan I was using is small-ish and I don't like to wait for things to fall apart on their own. I use force. (The metaphor is not available for extension at this time.)
The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of water. It isn't lying. It is very tempting to say that it's lying. Resist the temptation. Fight the Borg within. Trust the knowledge of your elders. One half of a cup of water is plenty for 4 medium sized cooking apples cut into fourths. Or eighths. Or rhomboids.
I currently live in an apartment with a gas stove. which is stupendously wonderful for things like fried chicken and boiling water, but soup and slow cooking - it's user error, I know this, but I'd really like to blame it on the very very old gas stove trying desperately to prove its worth at the very end. It needs love. And an overhaul. I have Brillo pads. I will win the battle of the ick on the burners, but I am no oven mechanic, I do not understand the tricky aspects of gas lines and burners that won't burn when something is over them.
The water boiled very quickly. And then didn't stop boiling. Not when I turned down the flame to the barest suggestion of gas spewage, not even when I pointed to the cookbook and informed the stove that I have explicit instructions saying that boiling is not any longer required. It boiled on. I found my potato masher. And I mashed the apples.
I love my potato masher. Truly. I don't know if my parents know that I have it. It is a combination potato masher - cudgel. In times of dire need, I can wallop someone over the head with the rounded end of my wooden masher and probably leave a very oddly shaped mark. None of these permanent plastic mashers for me, no, I will have something heavy and breakable, yes.
Mashing apples is very much not the same as stirring fudge. They both require standing at the stove, one hand on hip or the handle of the pot, one hand using a utensil to manipulate the contents of that pot in a specific and defined way. This is where the similarities end. Mashing apples releases energy in a focused and productive way and is destructive all at the same time. Stirring fudge is endless and frustrating. Even after the fudge is poured and chilled and cut and ready to eat. You still wasted a huge portion of your life stirring the fudge. I only stirred fudge once a year one time. Probably only 6 or 7 times in my life have I stood at a stove wooden spoon in hand, stirring fudge. And yet it is an overriding image in my mind, one of my favorite analogies and holiday memories and a great family joke. Because it is easier to explain than the 30 miles thing, I suspect.
The apples got mashed. I cooked them a bit longer, hoping that the boiling wouldn't hurt them, pulling out the stringy bits that I hate in applesauce - does no one else value consistency in their mush? If it's mush - I don't want to know what it was before it was mush. I want no lingering attempts at pre-mush identification. It's distracting.
In preparing the brown sugar and spices combination, I was still thinking that a half a cup of water would be too little, and planned the spices accordingly. Also, I didn't read the fractions before the word teaspoon until it occurred to me that maybe I didn't need that much nutmeg. and I added cloves. It is winter. If you are going put cinnamon (cassia for those of us who buy what's available) and nutmeg into something edible, you add cloves. It's my new rule about winter cooking. Fortunately, I enjoy dark brown sugar and I enjoy cloves and nutmeg; cinnamon (cassia) makes me twitch when there's too much - everyone's got their spice thing, this is mine.
It came out fine. It cooled down and is in my refrigerator right now. I haven't had any of it.
I will later, but right now my mother and I are waiting for the ice to melt from the trees and roads and maybe even sidewalks before venturing out into the world where it is gray and raining and probably wonderful.
Oh, and: Ethel eats soap.
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