Lemon Trees and Dirty Streets

ScapeGoatYarns time.

2010-12-15T23:11:00.001-08:00

Hello. I'm over here. Come join me.

Dead Bird

2010-10-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

There was a little brown bird outside the kitchen door, belly up. Claws tucked. Edie noticed it and said, "Look at the pumpkin!" I told her that actually, it was a bird.
"It can't fly."
"Why do you think it can't fly?"

She studied it for a moment longer, and pronounced it dead.
"Because it's dead. We gotta bury it!"

So we buried it. I found a bird's nest of pulled wool, still soft with lanolin, looking like a cloud, and laid the bird inside it. Edie helped me dig a hole behind the shed with her toy shovel, and I made it deeper with my grown up shovel. We laid the bird in it and said, "Good bye, bird." Then we covered it with dirt and patted it down.

music

2009-09-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Could it be about time for a post? Two months and some change, what's to report?

Hm. Hmm.

It is overwhelming to contemplate catching up with the summer, so I'll let it drift. It was a good summer, tinged with the slight panic of having said yes to a project I wasn't sure I'd be ready for.

So I bought new strings, I dug out old scale books, I fretted over the loss of my notes from lessons with Andrew Ehrlich, my Portland teacher...I reviewed the shifting rule, tuned my ears back to a concert A, played along with a drone, and threw my violin down in frustration nearly every time I picked it up. Which didn't really matter, when it came down to it, because playing in Jherek Bischoff's 30th Birthday concert at Town Hall was a fresh dose of pure magic, where a force greater than myself took hold of the reins and I didn't screw up too much at all. There were old friends, new friends, aquaintances, legends, and mysterious bearded strangers. Jherek's dad was there, his brother was there. A handful of degenerates were there. My daughter's one-octave, rainbow colored glockenspiel was there, I played it, and I didn't screw up too much at all. Jherek's music is incredibly luscious and alive. I love it. Everyone who was there loved it. I don't know what to else to say, except that I came away inspired. Everybody did, I guess.

2009-07-04T00:34:00.000-07:00

Holy Moly time flies!

Today I am sunburnt and happy. Forgot to apply sunscreen on the parts that never see the light of day...such as my back. We went swimming in a lake! Leann and Brad came to whisk us away from the tantalizing glow of a computer screen swarming with zombies, on into the day!

Actually I'm kidding about the zombies. That's what I've been doing with my late nights instead of writing in this blog, but this morning we got up and out by 8:30 am. I had the day off (woohoo!) and Edie and I took a long stroll to Cafe Ladro so I could get one of my freebies. We played at the local elementary school for a bit, and some kids at the YMCA came out to play on the climber too. One kid took great joy in wheeling Edie's stroller around wildly, first empty and then, as we made to leave, with her in it. By the time I pushed her up the hill to our house, she was zonked out and I was sweaty yuck, so I parked the stroller at the foot of the stairs and got some lunch while Uncle Robby babysat for five minutes.

He doesn't like bugs. I came out to find him swaddled in his blanket like a creepy troll, in an effort to protect himself from the big scary beetle that my cat had injured and was now buzzing around in circles, on its back. He ran inside and I got to work on my sweater for a WHOLE HOUR! while Edie rested. Did I mention I'm working on a sweater? It's made from recycled yarn; I pulled apart a super bulky brown thing that was extra unflattering, and I'm making the Wrenna pattern, from the book, French Girl Knits. Last Wednesday I went to Maria and Chris' house for a knit-b-que and Maria and I are knitting the very exact same sweater! What I mean is that we are each knitting a sweater from the same pattern, not that we are knitting a sweater together. Leann is working on a scarf with some cute self striping yarn. We ate brahts and beer and Edie came for a while, and also ate brahts and beer, though not with anybody's permish.

Anyhow, just wanted to say it feels good to be sunburned, after a day like today. We went to the lake, Edie rode on an air mattress with Leann and then with me. We ate sandwiches and bananas while somebody at a picnic table nearby sang Cat Stevens perfectly, but just for one song. If I'd have known he was going to get up and leave after the one song, I'd have clapped much louder, but I clapped just a little, thinking he was going to play a whole Cat Stevens album. Some crazy little boys put Edie and I to work, building a swimming pool on the beach. "Here, you do this rock like this. Do it right, or you'll be fired." I asked him if he was going to give me a paycheck, and he said he'd find one and it would be a beautiful paycheck. "I'll give you a rock and it will be your paycheck, and then you give me a paycheck rock too, okay?" Their redheaded stepchild of a little brother came up and started splashing Edie. She liked it, so I didn't stop him. I said "do you think she likes getting splashed? Would you like it if she splashed you?" to which he answered a double yes. A couple of minutes later, though, he dumped a bucket of water on her head ("I'm gonna give her a shower!") and she cried. I turned her to face him so he could see that what he'd done had upset her. Which, I'm pretty sure was the point.

There was another family there. When the little boy who liked splashing Edie took his pail and shovel from her, because they were his and not hers, this other dad came over with his son, who handed Edie a pail and shovel and said, "Would you like to borrow my toys?"

Whoa, I just got really tired.

After the lake we stopped by Candice's house to dance and eat raspberries while the boys played soccer games and Edie watched. She's fascinated by the backyard sports. It was great to see Candice again. We are going to start a weekly lunch date because our jobs are close together.

Time for bed already, my goodness!

Happy Fourth of July.

Where we're at.

2009-05-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

oh. has a month really almost flown by since I was lamenting the green lung lava that threatened to drown us all in its persistent bubbling forth?

I have been so maniacally busy, all these days. gone is my internet addiction, since there is no time for it. gone also my drumstick ice cream cone addiction, since the little layered packages of hydrogenated deliciousness are just too hard to hunt down and I don't have time anyways and besides, I'm not all that unhappy anymore so the need for chocolate has simmered down from a raging tempest of need to a pleasant burbling once-in-a-while thought. I still love coffee though. I still spend extra time thinking about coffee, even decaf like I drink. Also yarn. I find my mind wandering, as children tumble past me on the playground throwing woodchips and crashing tricycles, to what my next knitting project might be, and where I might obtain the yarn for it.

There's a whole choir of fiddlehead ferns sprouting along the outside of the chainlink fence as if to cheer us on. They reminded me of a scarf pattern I want to try. Our playground is in a beautiful place, completely surrounded by trees, and more than one kind of bird. The kids like to pretend they can see exotic animals in the distance, just behind that bush there. Do you see it? The antelope? We've seen woodpeckers and hawks, slugs, lots of slugs, and tent caterpillars. I guess this is their year. Some things get squished, and some get sucked into the field of static electricity put off by our yellow plastic slide. The kids stand underneath to demonstrate static's hair raising properties, and if I accidentally touch them as they slide down, I get a good jolt.

I can't say that every day is magical and creative and fun. There are some really stressful times, like today when I opened a new package of bubble wands and suddenly the children became piranhas, all teeth and needs. "BACK OFF!" I said too many times to feel skillful about. But later I turned them all into sharks with good results. "Great white sharks have to be very sneaky, or their prey will get scared and swim off. So we're going to sneak onto the playground, very quietly." Ahhh....peace and quiet for about 45 seconds. In a place like our playground, though, things do get a little bit magical once in a while. We are surrounded by trees, and airplanes fly overhead. The nearby airport is not a commercial one, so the planes are more varied than I've ever noticed. A two story carrier, a shiny seafoam blue plane, and a faraway jet plane with huge plumes trailing. A robin redbreast cleaning up fallen cheerios.

There was a lazy afternoon of hopscotch, but I was tired of drawing squares for them so I drew some smaller boxes, for the squirrels. Then some very tiny squares, for the ants. Then some which were very far apart, for the crickets, and some lilypad shaped, for the frogs. Suddenly hopscotch was fun again, and we lost track of time until all the parents came, one by one.

Another afternoon was rainy, and Gavin built a bowling ball from some waffle blocks. Then we were setting up lincoln log pins and these crazy little kids were waiting for their turns, in chairs that they brought over from the table. We had a mini-bowling alley right there and absolutely EVERYBODY who played, cooperated in setting up the pins for the next player. There was no fighting, no whining, just happy kids talking excitedly about bowling and reciting the order of players. "After Gavin it's Trinity, after Trinity it's William, then David, then me. Right?"

One of the highlights of the past month, I've been wanting to put down here, was on the way to work, riding what has become our usual bus since we are almost never out the door before ten o clock anymore. At one point, the driver stuck his head out the window and said, "Hey, Mom."
When I looked up, trying to figure out if I'd really heard him say that, he explained that she lives along his route, and she waits for him outside every morning. They just celebrated their 50th and 75th birthdays last October. "You're never too old to be somebody's kid," he told me. I totally agree. I'm not that old, but old enough to feel a tiny bit foolish for being so glad when my dad hops on the same bus as me so he can walk me and Edie home, or when we get there and my mom is in the middle of fixing us dinner.

This isn't a forever thing, this living at home again after being old enough to have grown up already, but for right now, it's pretty good. It's exactly where we need to be. And the sunset comes in my room at night, and the frogs.

Green lungs.

2009-04-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

I've been sick...

fuhhhhhhhh
eeeehhhhhh
verrrrrrrrr.

(forever)

which is not true. I've been sick for about three weeks, as has the baby E, as has my mother, as has me.

It is mostly just draining of energy. and we coughs a lot.

but we had a couple of super nice days this week, playing in the yard and dreaming about a summer garden. Edie befriended a plastic horse that's lain dormant in the corner for ages, riding it (though it doesn't move in any way - it used to sit on springs like the pinchy riding horses of childhood), neighing for it, and giving it hugs and kisses. The weather was so nice that even Champ got into playing ball, though he's usually too tired or old or something. We took him to an off leash dog park, where he got busy herding the other dogs, and where Edie got lots and lots of doggy kisses.

I think Mountlake Terrace is a pretty great place to be right now. It's pretty out, and when the sun's not shining, the greenness is. Green green green green glorious green.

Today

2009-04-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

We are doing a bit better now.
Wee One's spirit is back - she can't scare it away for long. Where yesterday morning she was laying on the floor, listless and vacant, today she was trying on paper bag hats and discovering small daisies in the grass. Apple cheeked, and still sick, sounding like a winterbound goose when she opens her mouth, but happy. Happy today.

And next week her Hoppers will be here, to appreciate the changes a month can make in a Wee Thing. Grammy can bathe her proper again, and Grandpa will sing her the pie song from the first movie she ever saw. Best of all, she won't be at school for those last two hours of the day when we all go out to play and she sees me not coming to get her for what feels like forever.

Here's what I love today:

The garage sale that Laura called to tell us about, where eight dollars became two pairs of dangly earrings, two funky scarves for dress up, two pretty shirts, two rope lights for our bedroom, one green one purple, four issues of Babybug magazine, one wooden car, a stack of plastic cups and bowls, a necklace with two keys (one big one small), a purple beaded flower ring, a sturdy skirt for playing in, a pair of leather baby shoes with bears on them, a pair of baby socks, and a novel about streetcops in jazz-era Seattle, Rat City. The woman selling her things is the director of an arts-based preschool and is a retired dancer for the Bolshoi Theater herself.

This poem, written by Neil Gaiman for Tori Amos' Wee One, unborn at the time.

The writing of Robert Fulghum. I just blazed through Maybe (maybe not) though maybe I should take his words easy. They are meant for pausing between, in quiet reflection. Ha. And right now I'm reading Words I Wish I Wrote, which is full of tasty nuggets.

Lemon Ginger tea for sore sorry throats.

Avocado Chocolate Shakes for all occasions.

Finding a lost baby shoe, two days later on the gravel roadside where and when I least expected it yesterday.

The sky between six and seven pm, lately. Holy Clouds! Dark and broody sky meets jubilant sun as it bids our diamond studded emerald forest farewell for the evening.

Walking the same route up and down the hill, noticing the flowering trees cranking it up just one more notch each time.

An epiphany concerning the female duck's drab choice of costuming, uncovered while walking past a drake and his mate at the transit station. Him, gaily colored and bearing a crust of bread toward his sweetheart, sitting in the bushes and nearly impossible to see. Oh...right...a sitting duck, wearing camoflauge as she warms her Wee Ones to life. Something I neglected to learn during childhood, when one can reasonable expect to learn things about ducks and their logic.

A gigantic bag of frozen fruit from Costco, mostly peaches white and yellow, which has diminished considerably under my devoted attention.

Likewise a fortunately not so gigantic bag of Sundrops- the prettier, healthier cousins of M&Ms. Their shells are colored with beet juice, beta carotene, and purple cabbage; and if you pay attention, you can just taste the colors.

Fitting into some clothes unexpectedly. Thanks, feet. Thanks, hills.

Lost. (the tv show, though the state of being by the same name definitely has a place in my heart as well.)

Speaking of shows, I just discovered Yo Gabba Gabba on Nick Jr. Actually I found out about it from reading a blog. But I have the feeling that I'm one of the last to know, as usual. It feels like the first time I ever found the Nickelodeon channel when I was a kid, watching TV in the summertime by myself. I'm pretty sure the show was "You Can't Do That On Television," and it was so awesome that I looked around me in disbelief, the way I always do when I stumble across something awesome that nobody has ever mentioned before. Check it out, the Yo Gabba Gabba compilation cd just jumped to the top of my priority list and bumped Andrew Bird's new album down to second place.

That's it, because it's late and I am about to go love on some Grey Gardens remake with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.

But also? I am not knitting all that much right now.
Which might be kind of a good sign, in a way.

separation

2009-04-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

this is very very difficult for us both.

I'm worried she's not eating enough healthy food either. In the mornings, she just wants to nurse. At school, she cries too hard to eat. At night, she just wants to nurse and then she passes out.

So if I've been a bit hard to get ahold of, or if I've forgotten to return an email or text message or phone call, please forgive me. I've been either at work or one hundred and twenty percent belonging to the poor exhausted Wee One.

And now she is sleeping, some soup and tea are heating, and an episode of Lost is beckoning.

See you when we emerge from this tough time.

this week

2009-04-11T00:42:00.000-07:00

Has been a little rough for the Wee One.

Days two and three were progressively worse, I think, as it dawned on her that this might be a regular thing, our getting on a bus and going to this neat place with other kids and new toys, only to have me say goodbye and leave without her, then reappear at other parts of the day, in the distance, such as during the fire drill we had on Tuesday where the class I was in marched single file right out to where the class she was in had been carried, and she saw me over her teacher's shoulder and gestured for me to come there, saying "MaMAH?" like she does now, with a question mark at the end. I waved and blew kisses while the assistant director counted heads and complimented us on our quick escape from a burning building, and her wails followed me back down the ramp as I brought up the rear of the line, urging the children to hurry up for god's sake, to lessen the amount of time my daughter would have to watch her mom walk away from her, and maybe to escape the sound of somebody's heart breaking, mine or hers I am not sure.

It'll get better, yeah, when she gets used to it. That's what they say and it's true. I just wish she didn't have to get used to it. I like having a job but being Edie's Mama is my biggest and best job now, and it's all day, every day, even and except for when she's standing at the gate of her play yard, straining to catch a glimpse of that two-timing mama who keeps ducking behind the slide to avoid being seen, screaming hoarsely over and over, "MAMAAAAH!"

Wednesday she pooped big time on the bus ride to school, so I changed her before dropping her off. This gave her time to consider what surely lay just ahead, and she was reasonably clingy. I tried to put her down several times and she lifted her legs so I would have to lay her down on her back or keep holding her. She hadn't nursed much that morning so I took her to a corner of the room and offered her milk. She ignored my offer and instead picked out a little plush frog that said something complicated that was definitely not ribbit, when I squeezed the target on his belly. We hung out for a minute, then it was time to do that worst thing ever.
"Okay sweetie, I love you."
She stared at me and shook her head no.
"Bye bye."
Instantly a hot stream of vomit splashed across my front, cascaded down my sweater and pooled onto my skirt. Um. I sat, paralyzed as if Edie were one of those strange insects whose venom immobilizes its prey. My little volcano erupted two more times, in quick succession, on herself and the frog and the pillows nearby and maybe a little bit on the rest of the plush toys. Her teacher Maritza came back from a break and started to clean up the mess while I slowly gathered my thoughts. Trying to be helpful, I changed Edie into some new clothes before saying bye bye again, but this probably only heighted her anxiety. The rest of the day, no matter where in the center I was, I could hear her screaming herself raw.

Thursday she was sick and we both stayed home.
Today she was still congested and coughing and pretty miserable, so we both stayed home again.

And around six o clock, while I was looking for the remote to turn off the TV Edie had turned on, there was a crash from the kitchen and the kind of cry she only uses when something hurts. I ran in and found her on the floor in front of the high chair, which she'd been trying to climb on. Her left foot looked funny but I scooped her up and nursed her back to a state of calm, then tried moving it gently and it didn't seem to hurt her at all, so I didn't worry.
Then she got down to go pet the dog, and when she put her left foot down she cried and stumbled. I had her try again, with help, and it still hurt her.
I put her in the sling and walked down to Stevens Hospital to get it checked out. Grandma joined us after putting the groceries away. Remind me to update the baby book. First X-rays (screamed), first dose of nasty pink Tylenol (spit half out the side of her mouth), first pulse taken using little glowing finger sticker. She and my mom do this "E.T. Phone Home" routine where one or the other will point her finger and then the other will do the same. So while they took her pulse and she leaned against me with all the weight of being sick and tired and sprained, her finger glowed just like E.T.'s.

The incredibly handsome doctor, after reporting the lack of brokenness on her X-rays, and congratulating us on nothing being wrong, and after looking the other way as we batted around an inflated blue glove pilfered from a supply shelf, bid us good night and told me, "You are blessed." I agree.

And I continue to pray that Edie hold off on phoning home just yet, though to her, any and every thing can be used as a phone (napkins, calculators, glasses, even tiny stickers apparently link to the mothership). Let my ship come first, in good order.

And please let next week be softer on our hearts.

Oh okay so it's been a month.

2009-04-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

Almost.

Here's what's going on.

Me and Emily have moved in with my mother and taken control of the ex-my-bedroom turned computer room turned my-bedroom again. Kenneth got an apartment on Capitol Hill, so he can be closer to his job and besides, we broke up.

Yesterday was Emily's and my first day of school/work, respectively. She screamed until she vomited after I hugged her goodbye and then did the unthinkable: turned and walked out the door without her. I then blinked back a couple of wee tears, made coffee, and then grinned, giddy at the thought that I actually did it! Okay, grinned might be too strong a word. But I was surprised to find myself smiling. I don't actually want to spend my weekdays away from my daughter, avoiding the windows and doors where she might catch a glimpse of me and get upset all over again. I'd much rather hang out with her all day, feeding chips to the dog and throwing dolls down the stairs or whatever. Whoa, I'm pretty sure I've typed that line before. Anyways and However, the giddiness came from the prospect of getting paid, and the relief of finally doing what I've been dreading, and surviving. Sure, she screamed. Sure, I heard it from the hallway as I went into other classrooms and learned the names of other peoples' children. Sure, the older kids had to be my lookout on the playground, telling me, "okay, she's not looking," as I darted past her field of vision to duck behind the barn so I could pour someone a cup of water. Sure, she saw me once or twice because some genius installed windows linking all the classrooms together in a series of picture within a pictures, and I happened to reach for something just as she was washing her hands at the sink a few feet away, behind the window, and our eyes met, I ducked back saying "SHIT!" loud enough for several 2 year olds to stare at me wonderingly, and Emily erupted in a fresh spurt of crying. (She's here!? I've been crying all morning and she's frakkin' right there!?) But the freedom is exhilarating. I'm bringing home the bacon! My boobs get a break! My kid gets new friends and fresh experiences every day! And, if anything goes wrong with her, I don't have to drive like mad (ride the bus like mad) through bad traffic with high pitched anxiety turning my organs upside down. I'm right there, already. Our morning commute is pretty easy (or will be, once Edie gets the hang of staying in her seat while the bus is moving and we won't have to play Cowboys and Piglets the whole way there) and our evening commute is even better.

When it was finally six o clock and we finally got down to a handful of kids, our groups combined to have snack in one classroom. I scooped the Wee One up and held her, then sat her on my lap while she devoured some animal crackers, some fish crackers, and fed me pretzels. Then she scooted off my lap to sit in her own chair beside me. Uh, what? I kind of thought she'd be clinging to me like a barnacle when I picked her up, but if I didn't know any better, I'd say she actually seemed fine.

On the bus ride home she was in a great mood, playing peek a boo with the other passengers, giving me her version of an eskimo kiss which is more of a head butt, and trying to grab the person in front of us whose gender I could not with confidence discern. I kept it neutral, "Um, we don't grab other people on the bus. Not everybody wants you to touch their hair. Let's keep our hands to ourselves." We got home and Edie actually went to the other room. By herself!

So she's pretty independent. And awake now.

We've got to get ready for our second day of school/work.

by the way

2009-03-12T00:18:00.000-07:00

She is climbing on EVERYTHING.

She imitates her daddy spraypainting the graffiti freewall in the backyard

She is trying to make words, usually capturing just the first sound.
"Ah Oh...Cah Oh.." for avocado, yesterday.

She dances when she sees her shadow.
Of course, it's never winter here.

The Secret Best Park Ever.

2009-03-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

It is getting incredibly difficult to make a blog entry, these days.

I get on here and the first thing I do is scroll down the side, looking for updates to the blogs that I read. Then I click on them all, and watch the tabs line up like bowling pins. Then I click them. I skim the text, glance at the pictures, follow the links, look at more pictures, skim some more text, and by the time I remember that I wanted to post a blog, the baby wakes up from her nap, or she is already awake and I become aware that she is (A) eating cat food or (B) on top of the computer desk via her new magical climbing skills.

Once in a while she is (C) conducting experiments that involve the toilet.
between you and I.

The internet is becoming a problem. The internet is something I do instead of knit, instead of write, instead of nourish my growing child's curiosity about the world, and the last thing is the reason I am going to redouble my efforts to halve the time I spend staring into a glowing screen. It is cute, but it also breaks my heart that while my daughter does not yet say many words, she knows exactly how to hold a cell phone (between her shoulder and ear) while she pretends to talk like everybody else does. Technology has crept into our lives so steadily that I don't even take notice of well dressed people who seem to be talking to themselves, or teenagers who type with their thumbs on the bus. It's just another day.

The interview in the March 2009 Sun Magazine speaks to all my hidden fears about our connected society. I don't think you can read the whole thing online, but if it interests you, please consider buying a copy or subscribing. The printed word is in some danger, and would appreciate it awfully much if we could show it some love. The Sun is one of those things that keeps me going, through good times and bad, with its simple design, lack of advertising, and personal stories that remind me that nobody is alone in this world. Black letters on white paper.
I have conducted much of my life here online, posting pictures and jotting down thoughts and following links and making inane comments on social networking sites, so much that I feel a deep loss of real experience. I crave quiet moments spent enjoying the way light plays on a glass of water as I write with a pencil on paper. I crave moments with Edie noticing leaves or the way a slug moves patiently over slick grass. I crave time to think. I crave space to inhabit.

So I'll be restricting my time on the computer. I appreciate the way the internet has allowed me to keep in touch with people I wouldn't otherwise get to see, friends and family, but I get so easily sucked into its distractions.

For now, something has been bugging me to tell you.

There is a park down the street from the house. This is not the park that I take the Bean to regularly, the one just up the street. This park lives across the railroad tracks, a fact I only just became conscious of the other day when I explored it for the first time. You see, one of the first days we were here, Kenneth drove us past this park which looked full of promise, by which I mean trees. Green trees, green grass hills, and it looked like it went on for more than a block.
"Hey that looks like a nice park, are those trails!?" I pointed out my window.
Kenneth glanced in the direction I was pointing, then said, "that park is not safe. You can't go in there." Or something to the effect that I actually wiped my memory clean of the park. That park became a hazy border on the map in my head labeled Inglewood. Walk far enough one way, and you run into the cement walls bordering the massive cemetery - a nice enough place, but not worth the walk along busy streets just to reach the entrance gate. Walk far enough another way, and you reach the thrift store, beyond which the airplanes are just too large on the horizon. Walk far enough the other way, and you can catch a bus to Westchester for bubble tea and spaghetti. But for some reason, that last direction on my map just ended at the railroad tracks. Maybe because Florence is so busy, I don't like walking along busy streets with the baby in her sling, so I've always turned back before reaching the tracks. Edie, Peggy-dog, and I have worn a tight little square around the neighborhood.

The other day, though, I was feeling pretty bored of the route, so I dared to cross the tracks. I was just going to explore a street I'd seen that was fenced off from the main road, to see what those houses looked like. As soon as I'd crossed the busy street, though, I noticed the park again, as if for the first time. "Look, Edie, there's a park, and trails, and trees..."
I had completely forgot it was there. So we went in. On the trails were students from a nearby Catholic high school, laughing and talking on their way home. There were people with dogs, and there were joggers wearing shiny, plasticky sweat suits and carrying weights. We descended into a valley and there was a little playground, with baby swings! The park by our house has two squeaky swings that I sit on while Edie sits on my lap, octopus style, and hangs on while we swing together. Here she could ride by herself, so we hung out at the playground for a long time. There was a simple climber, just stairs and a slide, and crumbling asphalt all around us. We made Peggy wait, though she was eager to keep exploring; I tied her to a post. It was a little bit of magic, the sudden appearance of the perfect place to be, a wooded oasis in the middle of a desert city. Just down the path there was a little skate park with a few kids practicing tricks. Edie watched them for a while, and they smiled at us. It was getting late and a few drops of rain started to fall, but before leaving I really wanted to see what else was in this park, so we continued down the path into the heart of the park. To the right there were eight tennis courts, and two baseball fields. A team of girls was playing and we watched them for a second, but then my attention was diverted. Not one more playground, but two! Two towering blue and yellow structures, like castle grounds, with moats and bridges and slides and stairs and tunnels, connected by a wading pool which was not filled but probably would be this summer. I couldn't believe it. To get to the climbers, we passed something called "The Inglewood Playhouse", a little brick building, beyond which was an amphitheater built into the grassy hill. We also walked by two swimming pools. Since Edie had already played and it was time to be getting home, we kept going but I made a note to return. Then, as if the cosmic joke needed any extra punchlines, we came upon another playground, with more baby swings, and just beyond that? Another one. I counted five separate playgrounds at the park that day.

In case the meaning of all this isn't clear, I will mention that the entire time we've lived here I've made snide little comments about the shitty park up the street, where I found broken glass in the sandbox twice, saw a dog piss in it once, and watched Siddhartha kitty bury a turd once as well. The park where I was informed not to sit on the grass because they use recycled waste water to keep it green, and where mysterious bugs like sand fleas settle on our blanket. We've driven miles across town in all directions to visit the nicer parks in nicer neighborhoods. I rode my bike all over the other day, trying to find another park to take Edie. I have begged Kenneth to drive us to the good parks on days when he'd worked the extra early shift and wanted to take a nap, but the baby had woken up from hers and I wanted to take her somewhere different from the dirty, abandoned park up the street. As I stood in front of the fifth climber and watched a group of men set up a volleyball net and rake the sand flat, as they played tapes on a boombox sitting in the back of a truck, I wanted to call Kenneth at work and demand an explanation as to why this paradise had been kept from me and the baby, but I settled for calling my mom and describing the scene to her instead. The baby climbed out of her sling and tried to steal a volleyball from the game, so I got off the phone quickly and chased her back into the sling.
I walked through some unfamiliar neighborhoods on the way out, hungrily taking in the newness of streets I've never seen. I walked all the way home before I realized that I'd dropped my cell phone right by the volleyball court.
Grandpa got home at the same time, and I made a big deal about the secret park we'd found.
"It's not a secret," he told me.
"Well, how come nobody told me about it?"
He didn't answer, but called my phone several times. One of the men from the volleyball game called back, and told him in halting English to meet at the park. A little while later Grandpa called from the park to ask where I'd dropped the phone. It is a huge park.
"All the way back, by the volleyball court. Past the fifth playground."
"You went all the way in, huh?"

Later, Grammy called from her car on the way home from work.
"Nobody told you about that park?" She was laughing.
"Yeah, and it's really nice!" I said.
"This whole time you've been asking where a park was, and nobody told you about that one?"
"Exactly!" I said, indignant.
"It's not safe there." .

When she got home, I argued with her a bit, as I like to do, because Kenneth's mother and I are like the opposite of soul-mates. We are soul-opposites. Everything down to the tiniest opinion about the silliest things, we disagree on. It has made for an interesting leg on this spiritual journey, and a good challenge. Anyways, she confessed that she hasn't been to the park since she was practically a teenager herself. Somewhere along the way, the park got a bad reputation for violent gang activity and she'd just never gone back. I told her it was even better than Polliwog park, the place in Manhattan Beach with a duck and turtle pond.

"Hey Eric, Kendal says Centinela's even better than Polliwog," said Grammy.
"Yeah, it's pretty big."

And it is. It is a massive, wooded area, with plenty of space for dogs and kids and stressed out grownups to stretch out, unwind, and run. The cement paths go up and down hills, through shade and sun, and I just can't say enough about it. I still have trouble believing it has been there this whole time and we never knew about it. Or, we knew about it, but we never went there, because we were told not to. And I guess when I say we, I mean Kenneth and I both. When he got home and I told him about the park, he explained that he'd never been there either. He wasn't allowed to, growing up.

So, the next day I dragged him to the park. I don't know if it was good of me to push it or not. Was he better off not knowing what a great place had been just down the road his whole life, or was he better off seeing with his own eyes what local lore had branded too dangerous to risk venturing into? I didn't care. I just wanted to spend some time at the park with my family, so we went. We watched the skaters and we played on the slides, getting shocked by the static electricity. We met a dad and his baby girl, from South Central.
"There's parks in my neighborhood but we drive over here because it's so nice, you know?"

Yeah.

We are moving to Seattle in a week, by the way.
We both have jobs lined up, and Edie will go to the daycare I've worked at off and on since I was 18 years old. I am so excited for her to go to school, and have other friends like her (and by that I mean Wee.)

It's time to make dinner before the wee one awakens.

If you are still reading this.

naaaaaaaaaap

2009-02-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

My wee one has been fast asleep for a record-breaking length of time.

Two hours and forty minutes? Seriously!? This is a wonderful thing, except I don't know how to manage my time. Had I known there would be two hours and forty one minutes of uninterrupted time in my life today, I might have made a list. I may have planned. I would have folded the clothes immediately, knowing that Wee One would sleep through the opening and closing of drawers. I might have swept the floor. I would have straightened the living room.

then again, I might have done just what I did and watched Big Love, begun a new knitting project, reheated some leftover stirfry, and caught up on some of my favorite blogs.

And she is still sleeping!

The weirdest part is that she usually wakes up right when I notice that she's been asleep for a long time. I think, "hey, she's been asleep for a while..." and almost instantly her little voice answers me from the other room.

And yet?

silence.

Thrift Score!

2009-02-18T14:40:00.001-08:00

Hello, Edie is 13 months old yesterday. When did that happen?

This morning I had a good feeling about the thrift store, and I always try and act on it when that happens, especially after reading this cautionary tale over at owl in the dark. Asidedly, could her life appear any more charming? I'm completely fascinated with this lady's blog - her boyfriend used to play in the Cocteau Twins, she has two pure white cats and her knitted creations are like something an elf might have snuck in to make while she slept.

I'm on a limited budget now, so I've set up more rules about thrift store shopping. Thank goodness, or I'd find way too many things. All I ever look for anymore are wool sweaters. I found a pair of high heeled boots that I almost bought, until 70cents turned into 7dollars. Edie got to babysit the last half an inch of my green tea frappacino, as a reward/bribe for staying in her stroller, complacently fingering the fringe on a couple of shawls while I read the tags. Some of the older sweaters boast "100% virgin acrylic." Oh, virgin acrylic, huh? I don't know what that means, except it sounds more like wool that way. I found a little capelet made of 100% wool, with big easy seams to undo, and in a cream color which is good for dying. Then I discovered the Men's sweater section. Hello, cashmere! Hello, lambswool in argyle! Unfortunately I didn't have enough cash to rescue all the sweaters that deserve a new life as a felted blanket, but I have a good feeling they'll still be there when I return. It is getting warmer out, and I am becoming well-aquainted with a lot of the sweaters living at that store. In other words, the sweaters tend not to move very fast around here, so as far as scoring good wool for cheap goes, Inglewood is not the worst place to be.

I ended up with a hunter green cashmere sweater in a fingering or sock weight yarn and a light brown cashmere/angora/nylon blend in sock weight as well. I want to experiment with dying brown to see how it turns out. I also just found out last night that I can use Wilton's icing colors (for cake decorating) to dye wool, which will give me more options for color mixing. When I told Kenneth, he left the room and brought back a package of icing color that he'd bought a while back. Sweet.

So....I just realized what the most positive aspect of living here has been, for me. I've been so focused on what we are missing here, that we used to have in Portland - plenty of friends, parks, nice places to walk, a public transportation that is not brain surgery to utilize, and perhaps most of all, coffee shops - that I completely overlooked what has been happening in the vacuum. I am learning more and more to work with what I have, for entertainment aka yarn. Hunting for sweaters and colors to make new yarn with is one of my favorite things to do here, and the love of yarn is starting to consume me. If I were working, I'd probably spend too much of my paycheck at the yarn shop, amassing cool balls of color to store in my stash bin and perhaps knit up someday. Since I can't really afford to horde yarn like that, my thoughts turn more and more often to creating my own yarn. I think about color combinations all the time, and I've been watching videos about spinning yarn online.

And here I thought I might focus on writing, if everything that kept me preoccupied in Portland was removed.

I'm not sure if these thoughts are clearly laid out...it was a mini-piphany that I had while walking around the same old dirty streets, looking for new colors in the cracks......

and This weeks list of Ten...

Ten songs that describe you or your life.

huh.

1. Sovay, by Andrew Bird, though I don't know why.
2. Emily, by Joanna Newsom
3. Little Room, by the White Stripes
4. Me and the Bean, by Spoon
5. Here it Comes, by Modest Mouse
6. Good Friday, by CocoRosie
that's all I got.

blog neglect

2009-02-13T22:21:00.000-08:00

Hi there.

I just signed up to receive weekly blog prompts, Ten on Tuesday, because I have been feeling utterly uninspired to make words out of life lately. The words would be something like

ice cream
homesick
television
bike ride
new shorts
knitting knitting blah blah blah
edie this and that
dirty
gerty
jinx
etcetera

The good news is that we've been having at-least-once-weekly playdates with Clementine and her mom Kimb, which means (a) we get out of the house and (b) we practice our social skills. Oh, and (c) sometimes I get paid to play toys and go to the park while Kimb keeps the books at her new job.

This week's list of ten, by the way, only a couple of days late, is Ten Things You're Really Good At.

Hmm. Okay,

1. Being Edie's mom. Every day has it's bad mama moments, such as leaving the child out back with the dog while I ran inside for such necessities as coffee, knitting, notecards, my cell phone; returning to find the child squeezing under the gate on her way to freedom aka the driveway and beyond that, The Busy Street; then running back through the house to catch her out front because I have no key for that gate and am not the correct size for squeezing under (as are Edie and the cats), narrating the whole time while on the phone with my mother for comedy's sake. Or it might be as simple as trying to prevent the child from falling into a water fountain by accidentally knocking the child into the water fountain. (try and figure that one out, it's like a moebius strip or one of those other things that I cannot for the life of me describe or name - a glass vase whose handle becomes a hole in its center? if anybody has a guess help me out! name that mystery object) Just as complex as all that is the fact (theory?) that I'm best at being Edie's mom, even though there are lots of times when I am a crappy mom. I believe I got picked for the team because I'm really good at doing whatever it is that the child needs her maternal unit to do, in order to carry out her earthly directive on this go-round.

2. Typing. Maybe not so good at grammar or make-sensical sentence structure, but sure do I love to hear the sound of keys clicking as I spell out combinations of letters that may or may not have anything to say for themselves.

3. Going with the flow, sometimes. Or at least compared to the kinds of people I've been surrounding myself with lately. Just kidding, everybody I am referring to! Jokes! What I mean is, even though sometimes I get a little controlfreaky because I think my way is the best way, for the most part I think I've learned to let life take the wheel. That's the best way to get somewhere new, to be surprised.....wait a second, see? The "best way"? Exactly what I just told you.

4. Watching Battlestar Galactica which brings me to numbers

5-10. Kenneth just home and the baby is asleep (miracle!) and it's time to watch the latest episode of BSG.

Happy Vallantimes Day!

ee hoppings

2009-02-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

Gotta make this quick because I'm not alone at the helm.

Today we went to the Getty Museum and ran down the grassy hill with Clementine. we played in the kid's section and danced in front of lots of movable mirrors. We sang into long foam tubes meant for sticking into holes in walls, an interactive version of the giant pipe sculpture in the front of the place. We nursed our babies in a cgo6iijrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrjj

see waht I mean

?
ell into the fountain. G ot l
agll 0weht

N
b0 Atee\\

9.nd then Edie fell into

the reflecting pool for a mom etn.

got all drippy and soaked.

and it's funny because the woman who took Kimb's ten dollar parkiung fee had a tattoo on her arm which was this poem by ee cummings:

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

Hmmmm coincidence?

ee cummings?
EE?
Edith Emily?

alert the dalai lama.

moving pitchas!

2009-02-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

Erika Shira, an old friend from highschool who found me on facebook, made this from Edith Emily's Santa pictures:

which is so cool because I don't know how to do that, but I wanted to!

Thanks Erika. Your computer prowess has no limits.

By the Way!

2009-01-31T18:58:00.000-08:00

Edith Emily's birthday was wonderful. Thank you to everybody who came, and especially to Jill and Paul for hosting us, to my mom for making a special cake from the shredded coconut company booklet of birthday tradition (The rocking horse cake was the same one my sister enjoyed at her first birthday as well), and to the Hopper family for flying all the way up from LA. Edie is a lucky girl.

Sometimes I forget how much I have to be grateful for. A whole year spent getting to know this great kid, watching her grow and make new connections in the world every day. Family and friends who never fail to support and care for us. Food in the fridge, roof over our heads, it's too much to consider when every day there are little hassles to get irritated about. So, I think I'll follow Soule Mama's example and focus on the little things that make me thankful.

Today I'm grateful for:
bare baby toes in clean sand
an afternoon with Kimb and Clementine, who let us stop by for a visit
Edie pretending a banana is a cell phone
A beautiful January day which was more like July
Orange, yellow, and pink poppies in bloom along the road
Having an iced mocha at the best coffee shop in LA with Kenneth
and a pile of yarn the color of wildflowers waiting to be knit into things.

homesickness

2009-01-30T00:41:00.000-08:00

Things have been a little cranky around here lately.

that's a way of saying that I've been a little cranky, without actually assigning any guilt.

you could say that I am ready to go home. To have a home of our own. Something kind of brownish green, tucked into some trees, surrounded by loamy needles and cones and diamonds of rain. Something wooden and warm and garlicky with a chalkboard and soft floor rugs. Windowsills cluttered with spice jars and colored glass that we found on a walk, with dry goods stacked and fruit hung, pots and pans dangling like party decorations, with homemade smells fogging up the window glass every day.

Something might have a corner full of instruments - the toy piano, tambourine, the violin, empty popcorn tins and loose seed pods for shaking. A bowl full of sticks for drumming on things, not people and not animals. Another corner with a cat for company, a table of books, a teapot ready. Drawers full of yarn and fabric scraps, sewing needles for big fingers and little. A typewriter and sheafs of paper embroidered with letters, spelling out simple moments in time, the ones perfumed by the magic of life. Somewhere, a bed which is really a boat set adrift in the mysterious sea fog, fortified with a shelf of books, a basket of knitting, a bell, and a journal for recording the impossible things in between.

I hope that all this daydreaming I do in the offbeats, the bits of time when the diaper is dry and that warm, tiny body is settled into my lap or deeply focused on some private thoughts of her own, I hope that it is serious work, that the glimpses I get of a rain spattered window reflecting a cozy and flickering fire, the girl busy with her games on the floor, the quiet unshattered peace of a place all our own, I hope that it is being dreamed into existence, that each glimpse erects another beam in a reality that I will someday soon meet, and recognize. We will wipe our boots and leave them by the front door, on the porch, and hang up our coats and scarves before racing to build a fire and dry off, now that we are home. I hope that this place already exists with us in it, and all that's left is to follow the steps leading up to it, like a scavenger hunt with the inevitable conclusion of us, happy in the place we were always meant to inhabit, the place which for so long has inhabited all my waking dreams.

oh okay blog.

2009-01-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

sorry blog. I've been neglecting you.

I've been knitting a whole bunch. I scammed Kenneth into buying me a delicious skein of candy colored yarn and the right size needles to knit Edie some mittens, because baby it is cold up here in the NW! When she tried them on she made them talk like puppets. Then tore them off.

Why oh why did I start knitting? I coulda hadda book all rote by now, but all I got is a bunch of stuff made out of yarn. Silly stuff, that only knitters or friends or kids of knitters wear.

For that matter, why did I start reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels? Why did I start watching American Idol? Why oh why oh why am I trying to finish scrapbooking the first year of Edie's life when she's already plunging headlong into the second one?

Sorry blog. Sorry friends and family who read blog. Sorry Kendal. You have been writing stories in my head but my fingers took a vacation after finishing that orange kool-aid baby hat made with tiny needles. I didn't write it down!?

What happened here?

We had christmas and we had new years and we had a first birthday at the farm. We looked at the Space needle and we looked at EMP and we drove through Portland, very fast, so Kenneth could meet with store leaders about transferring. Emily kid learned about climbing stairs, and then she figured out throwing things down stairs.

Blocks...cackle cackle.

Shoes...cackle.

Water bottle...Hilarious!

Then we caught her in the kitchen, pulling a bottle of wine from the rack, presumably in order to throw it down the stairs as well. She must have gotten the idea when I spilled my wine glass all over Jill's carpet and my friend and ex-boss Lisa's back. Oh probably not. But I had to work it in there. Clumsy, yes. I haven't written in a month.

What the heck!?

There have been words, like I said. Words ran through my head and I thought I should corrall them in a holding pen, write them down somewhere, like here maybe, but then. Then again. What then?

Then somebody threw something down the stairs and giggled, and we all ran to see.

Thanks.

2008-12-25T00:39:00.000-08:00

Holy stocking stuffers am I ever excited for Christmas!

I always assumed that my parents were exhausted in the morning because they'd stayed up into the wee hours of night playing eggnog rummy with Santa and scooping reindeer turds off the back porch, from where they'd rolled off the slanted roof...and then later I figured it was because they'd stayed up late covering for Santa when he decided we were too old for such things. Even after figuring out a thing or two, and going to bed with a little sigh of regret that there were no more surprises left in life, now that the truth was out, I'd still wake up in the morning and dash down the hall to see that Yes! He came! Whoever he is! The stockings would be so fat with surprises that they'd crawled down from their places on the mantle and lay sluggish, hungover, by the fireplace. The gift pile, which I'd been keeping careful track of since the first of December, would have exploded to twice the size, having decided to produce offspring after all. We were spoiled rotten, we were blessed. We also had to wait. For Mommy and Daddy to get out of bed.

"GET UP SANTA CAME!" I'd yell at the top of my lungs, I'd bounce on the bed. And you know what those lazy grownups did? They pressed the snooze button.

"Just give us a half hour and then we'll get up." One of them would mumble from a drool covered pillow, and I'd groan, and complain. It wasn't fair. All those beautiful shiny wrapped packages crying out to be opened, admired, and played with, and these two heartless creatures just lay in bed, snoring like it was any other day. No, any other day they would have been up, drinking coffee, bickering, making breakfast. It seemed that Christmas day was, for them, the one day out of the year when both parents would sleep in to the tortuous hour of nine. NINE! Can you believe it?

One year my mom said I could open one present while I waited for them to get up, and I misheard her. They found me surrounded by discarded wrapping paper and toys - all of them - and I held up a doll. "Look what Grandma gave me!"

Another year my sister tied me in bed and promised to free me at seven o clock. The torture! She actually had the nerve to go down the hall and come back, reporting matter of factly, "Santa came, and the stockings are so full they're sitting on the ground."

Another year I shared a room with my brother - he was about three or four, and I was a disillusioned teenager. He would not go to sleep. "Go to sleep or Santa won't come," I reminded him. He was silent for a little while, and then my dad walked down the hall outside our room.
"Did you hear that? I think it's reindeers on the roof!"

Anyways...a new truth has surfaced. Santa has come and gone, and I am still awake. Why is this? I am so excited for Edie to open her presents! I think I might be more excited for Edie to open her presents than I ever was to open mine. Is it possible? Probably not. But still, I can't sleep. I am a geek. I went to RadioShack today to replace the batteries in the old Minolta Uncle Lee gave me. The Pentax has black and white film in it and the Minolta has a roll of Fujicolor. I finally tracked down the camcorder charger and it is plugged into the wall. As I type this, I realize how fortunate we are, how spoiled. Sorry for complaining about the snow. Sorry for being jealous. There are people spending their holidays inside of an airport, wearing the same clothes from last week, I hear. We are warm and well and with family and there is a homemade stocking full of goodies waiting out there for Edie to wake up. She'll be sweaty headed and rosy cheeked and bright eyed and I'll get to be surprised all over again.

Did you hear that?

Kenneth and I had some "decaf irish coffee" which we strongly suspect may not have been decaf after all. His dad prepared the grounds, and I'm not sure Grandpa Hopper even allows "decaf" into his paradigm. There is a jar labeled decaf, but for Grandpa Hopper it probably appears all pixelated, like a censored face on Cops.

We were laying in bed, grinding our teeth and whispering about Christmas, and I told him about my brother listening for reindeer. "Did you hear that!?" I repeated, to demonstrate without saying as much that I was, in effect, as excited as a three year old boy listening for signs of Santa.
Kenneth was getting irritated, though, because he wanted to try and get some sleep.
"That's just the rain, dear. Now go to sleep."
"The reindeer!?"
And he laughed, because he hadn't even meant it like that. Random stroke of genius.

Good night, sleep tight. Don't let Donner or Dasher bite.
And Merry Christmas.

Love,
Kendal

Snow day...

2008-12-19T12:11:00.000-08:00

More like a No Day.

I'm trying to be positive about LA but dangit why does the first big snow storm in YEARS have to happen the one winter I am away from the Northwest? My daughter's first winter?

Sure, it's cold here. It's even so cold I can finally wear socks with my shoes, and gloves on my hands. We even have the heaters on. But I miss the snow. Everybody I talk to tells me about the snow! the snow! the magical beautiful wondrous snow! I am getting jealous. I am worried that it may never snow again. My daughter will have missed her one chance to experience snow because we made the dumb choice to live in LA for a little while...just long enough to miss all the good stuff.

Ugh. Gotta stop thinking this way. There is a Ray Bradbury story which has haunted me ever since I read it long long long ago. I think we even saw a made-for-tv adaptation of it in Mrs. Cotton's fourth grade class. It's awful. It takes place in an elementary school on Venus, where it rains ALL THE TIME. The children have to take daily treatments of artificial sunlight to avoid rickets or jaundice or whatever diseases spring from having no vitamin D in the body. The thing about Venus is that the sun only comes out once every 7 years, for just a few hours. None of these kids are old enough to remember what the sun is like, except for one girl who moved to Venus from Earth more recently, and can therefore remember the sunlight. She talks about it to no end, and it really pisses the other children off. They think she's bragging, or making it up. So they play a cruel trick on her. They lock her in a closet on the day the sun is supposed to come out, just for a minute. They just want to scare her a little bit, but then the sun comes out and they all get distracted and run outside to play. In the TV program, suddenly blooming flowers surround happy, laughing children as they run through green fields in the sunshine, then cut away to a girl screaming and pounding on the door to be let out, then back to the happy laughing children, until the sun goes behind a cloud, a thunderclap claps, and all the children then remember their classmate, locked away, and they run to let her out but it is too late.

She is broken when they open the door. Seven more years of rain.

So yeah, I can be overdramatic about things, certainly. Sure, it'll probably snow again next year, and maybe it will even stick. If we're lucky, it might even snow when we come up in January for Edie's birthday. But I can hear you all up there, laughing and throwing snowballs and cozying up under blankets by the fire. I see your pictures, of your loved little ones all bundled up for their first big snow day. Meanwhile, we'll put on our sunglasses and drive to the beach to catch some chilly rays of sunlight...just because we can. We probably won't even need scarves. How about THAT, Seattle, Portland, and New York? There's still leaves on our trees!

When parenting advice from strangers comes in handy

2008-12-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

"Those bloomers are so great...especially when she learns how to take her diaper off." - random stranger.

Well, she figured it out. Just a little elbow grease applied to the velcro tab, and voila! Naked Time!
And those bloomers...they really are so great. Someday Edie may figure out how to get the bloomers off, but I'm hoping that by the time she does, she'll be too exhausted to pull off the velcro tab.

and also?

2008-12-18T00:04:00.001-08:00

Happy Holidays!

I forgot to mention

2008-12-17T23:41:00.000-08:00

Edith Emily is in the habit of practicing new words upon waking, every morning. One morning she woke up, rolled over, smiled, and said, "Grah....Pah," a bit shyly. She is reticent with her new words, they tend to be a bit fragile until strengthened by repetition. But in the calm of morning, after everybody has gone off to work and the house belongs to us and the animals, new words are free to float out of her mouth, syllable by syllable. It is so fascinating to see how she breaks everything down into simple syllables, building blocks of English. A couple of days ago I was reminding her, not so gently myself, to be gentle. "Gentle, Edie, gentle! PLEASE!" while fending off miniature slaps to the face. She recently learned how to give a high five, but not that the high five is best limited to another person's hand only. She high fives my face, my chest, my belly, and then tugs my hair for good measure. After being headbutted in the mouth one too many times, I found myself yelling, "GENTLE! GENTLE! BE GENTLE WITH THE MAMA/CAT/BOOK/etc!"
And she tentatively mouthed, "dehhhh...teh," which sounded just like the way we say gentle, drawn out while we show her what a gentle touch looks like.

Today was my favorite new word day so far. She woke up, stretched, and rolled over to find Siddhartha heating the bed beside her. She patted his fur and said, "Dah...tha."
She said it several times more, and when we went out to tell Grandpa, who stayed home sick from work, the news, she demonstrated her new prowess with language by swaying her hips in rhythm with the word. "Dah....tha. Dah....tha. A-Dah....tha."

What a joy to know this little person, and watch her grow, tumbling out from herself in new directions every day. Thanks, Life. I am lucky beyond measure.
There's more here...

hmm.

2008-12-17T23:16:00.000-08:00

Okay...Maria inspired me. She just blogged about how she hasn't felt like blogging lately but that she'd at least try and I have been feeling the same way but I also should at least try. Another thing? Her blog is called Kicking Ass and Taking Temps and I think I may have unwittingly lifted the rhythm and syntax from her blog title for mine - Lemon trees and dirty streets. Sorry, Maria. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I was setting up this blog. It's kind of like writing a song and getting excited about it because it is so good, and then you realize that it's already a song, written by somebody else. I just hope that my blog posts are mostly original thoughts, beamed directly in from outer space.

Yeah. I haven't felt much like blogging lately, but I should at least try. Wait....that sounds familiar. Dangit again! We all do it once in a while.

I've been knitting a lot. Although, it doesn't seem like I've finished anything lately. Oh wait. Here it is.

The Christmas Stocking before getting hotwashed, as a cozy sleeping bag:
And here is The Christmas Stocking, after being shrunk in the wash, smelling of a day at the sheep pen, still damp.

The colors turned out being a little bit silly. See the stripes on the right? Those were supposed to last for the entire stocking. But they didn't. That stocking consumed every last bit and then demanded more. MORE! So I fed it the last of my very soft, very cozy, Glazed Carrot Malabrigo Worsted Merino, but still it wanted MORE! I tried to feed it that recycled sweater wool, but the color was funky, the texture all wrong. An emergency trip to the Yarn Store never hurt anybody except for my credit card debt. There, I decided not to try and match the original colors, but instead went with a deep blue and grey that looked good with the orange. (I thought.)

Here is a funny excerpt from a web show that a friend of mine just linked to on Facebook:

All that's left for me to say is that don't ever feed the seagulls at Hermosa Beach. I learned the terrifying way. It was like a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. All I remember was throwing a chunk of croissant to one gull and the rest is a beaky, mangy, squawking cloud of greed and desperation. Thanks, California. I can check running from seagulls, in absolute terror, while screaming for the baby's and my life, off of my list of things to do before I die.

I hope you are still reading. Thanks for hanging in there. Hope your holidays are shaping up, despite everything, to contain nuggets of joy. We here at the Inglewood Hacienda are slowly collecting the cheer, giftwrapped surprise for Edie by rediscovered vintage holiday postcard collection by cup of contraband hot chocolate.

What special moments are making their way into your holidays?

funny baby, funny dog

2008-12-09T11:11:00.000-08:00

Emily's new game is going into Grammy's room and getting on her treadmill, then trying to walk in place, with varying degrees of success. (while the treadmill is off, of course)

Peggy Dog's new game, apparently, is hide and seek. We were hanging out in the back yard, just picking up pinecones and sticking them in our mouths and stuff, pulling Gertrude's tail, you know....and I realized that Peggy wasn't around. I thought I could hear her barking though.

"Peggy!"

"Bark bark bark!"

"AAAAAAH!" says Emily.

"Peggy!"

"Bark bark bark!"

"AAAAAAH!"

and so on until I realized that Peggy was not going to come running in answer. That is unusual for her. Maybe she was trapped on the other side of the fence in our neighbor's backyard, somehow. That's what it sounded like. I ran into Grammy's bedroom to call Peggy from her bathroom window. Peggy answered from right outside the window. So I ran back outside, scooped Edie up and went to the front, to see if Peggy had gotten into the neighbor's yard. Their gate was locked, though, and when I peeked over the fence I could only see squirrels. That only left one place we hadn't actually checked, the narrow area between our back yard fence and the house on the side. We went back through the house and walked around the side of the house to check. No dog.

"Peggy!"

and in answer, she came bolting out of a square hole in the bottom of the house, pushing aside a loose screen and bouncing with excitement. She'd been under the house, and I would almost think she'd been trapped there if she didn't seem so excited when she got out. She tore around the yard a couple of times and ran up to me playfully - I've never seen her like that before. I think she had been playing a game with us. Hide and Seek dog.

take two

2008-12-04T22:34:00.001-08:00

well...nothing is as easy as it seems at first. It seems that I was engaging in some wishful thinking when I read the label of the sweater that said 70% wool, 20% mohair, and 10% nylon. I was thinking that perhaps the 10% nylon referred to the band of fabric knit from a narrower yarn which formed the collar of my thrifted sweater, and not a percentage of nylon present in the yarn that makes up the entire sweater. I unraveled most of both sleeves until the yarn broke and I threw one cuff in the washer to see if it would felt. It wouldn't. It got a little bit shorter, but aside from that it seems perfectly machine abusable. The yarn also untwisted into a flimsy four parallel strands. My recycling enthusiasm went too far here, as I realize that the sweater probably would have made a better sweater as was than as is. At least I can use the handfuls of sweater ramen that I gathered for some Kool-Aid testing, since my first time dying yarn will surely not be as easy as I expect. Plus, I think I need to get a nice brown to compliment Edie's blue and purple stocking. There is no brown flavored Kool-Aid so I'll have to muddle some flavors together until they make poop soup.

The good news is that the perfect sweater sent me a mental telegram today, asking me to please come and pick her up from the thrift store. I dragged Kenneth and the baby out of the house, and Kenneth helped me sift through all the 100% acrylic sweaters until he got bored and wandered off into the baby clothes. I found two mens sweaters made of 100% lambswool, too fine to unravel but perfect for felting. I can use the felted sweaters to make something like this or whatever. Edie has an adorable dress made from a felted purple sweater that I found at Lily Toad in St. John's. Then I found the perfect sweater. 100% wool, chunky enough to see every stitch, hand knitted and seamed, and well loved by somebody who knew how to treat a sweater. It wasn't until I was happily unraveling one of the sleeves that I felt a pang of guilt - the sweater was well crafted, with bobbles and cables and panels of moss stitch and wooden buttons and ribbing. Who am I to say that Edie's first Christmas stocking is worth more than all that hard work? Actually, I rescued it from the thrift store for four dollars and I knew where not to cut this time and so I guess it is up to me to decide that this wool is done being a sweater and ready to become a holiday tradition. It's just that from the smell of things (smells just like my mom's old doll clothes that I used to love playing with), the sweater has been a sweater for a long long time. Life goes on. It really does! As I was pulling the crispy loops out of one another, it occured to me that the sheep who gave its coat to make this coat has been dead a very long time. How amazing that a piece of that sheep's life can live on in a sweater, and then change color and become a stocking (and probably some toys too, since one sleeve is about all I need for the stocking) long after the sheep itself has been repurposed into somebody's dinner, and that somebody probably also has become something else by now. I wonder what things will outlive me?

oooh anticipation

2008-12-02T18:56:00.000-08:00

I just returned from Vons with roughly 20 packets of Kool-Aid with which to dye portions of my as-of-yet still un-unraveled white sweater. As soon as I figure out which strings to cut I will make piles of sweater ramen, gather them into loose skeins, and make candy out of them.

knitting and knitting and walking.

2008-12-02T15:05:00.000-08:00

I have been knitting so much lately that my hair resembles handspun yarn. I thought that was so clever that I set it as my Facebook status. In case you are reading it for the second time.

I'm working on a felted Christmas stocking for the Wee One. Silly me, I've never felted wool before and so there are a few things I might have done wrong. Felting is actually called Fulling, and it means you accidentally shrink something woolen in the wash, on purpose. Because it's going to shrink, you knit it up to be ENORMOUS before you shrink it. Really a silly thing to do, but when it's all done, you have a nice felty fabric, which is sturdier than a knitted fabric.

First of all, I started out with not enough yarn. I am using a gorgeous blue that goes from light to dark as you knit, and a really squongy skein of handspun, handdyed, handfound yarn that Kenneth rescued from a busy street for me as I watched him from the sidewalk, hot cocoa and hotdogs in hand, baby in belly. It was all dirty and decorated with little bits of dried brown leaves, so I didn't recognize it as being a nice pretty bit of mauve yarn until beginning this stocking project. Well....I am almost out of yarn and I haven't turned the heel yet. So far it is an ankle warmer, which everybody ought to know won't hold any of Santa's treasures unless his elves affix some velcro to the toys. I'm racking...wait, is it wracking? I'm wracking my head to find a skein of 100 percent animal hair in a nice color that will go with forget-me-not/hydrangea bush scheme I've got going, and then I remember a sweater that I bought at the local thrift store for five bucks. It's huge and white and has the right kind of seams for unraveling into piles and piles of yarn. It's part sheep and part rabbit. So I finally went online to see if angora will felt along with wool, and sure enough it does. But then the nice lady in the website goes on to tell me that a smart felter only uses yarn from the same company, to ensure even felting. And that a smart felter uses needles way bigger than the ones I am using. Oops, and oops. So I guess we'll see how it turns out. But first, I have to unravel a sweater and learn how to dye a skein of yarn.

In other, more interesting news, Edith Emily Amargosa Pants is a certified WALKER! We took her to her Grammy's favorite doctor yesterday, even though he doesn't see children anymore. Grammy pulled some strings and got us an appointment. Secretly I think she just wanted to show off the grandbaby to the family physician. He was cut from Family Physician cloth, alright! If you could go deep inside your psyche, riffle through various archetypes and stereotypes, and find your first idea of "doctor", you'll find Dr. Peterson. He's white-haired, wry, witty, and before the exam he sits you in his wood paneled office to talk. Wooden shelves filled with carved wooden ducks, and a regal portrait of a dog with a dead duck in its mouth oversees business. The only thing missing was a pipe filled with cherry-vanilla tobacco, but you know the rules....California and smoking. Anyways, we were waiting in the room designated for such activities as browsing National Geographic, filling out paperwork, and waiting, and I was admiring the carpet, which was a lush green and brown plaid, and which Kenneth assures me has been there since before he was born. (Dr. Peterson delivered both Kenneth and his brother Joseph) Edie passed the time by standing up and taking one step, then another, then wobbling a bit as she decided whether to continue or to fall, then two more steps as both of us watched! The kid has excellent timing, whether it's heading for the birth canal just after her auntie arrives in town, or waiting until both of her parents are present and attentive to take four steps on her own.

Since then, she's crossed rooms with her newfound confidence. It is such a joy to see the light blink on behind her eyes as she realizes that she can do this thing that has for so long eluded her. It's as if she could do it all along, and she just had to realize it.

Of course, I can't find my video camera battery charger, so another milestone gets recorded in words, and on the pages of her journal instead. We did take a couple of short movies on the camera.

a scattering of thoughts about thoughts

2008-11-25T23:32:00.000-08:00

We were on a walk today, with Peggy dog on her leash, Edith Emily in her sling. I could smell the rain coming. Wind was blowing, and the colors seemed extra vivid to me. Wherever I looked I noticed interesting combinations of colors - dark purple berries on a forest green bush, the sudden florescent spattering of fallen leaves on a bright lawn, sun faded tan adobe walls flush against sun faded bricks, the light grey of concrete as a backdrop for a teal painted iron fence, some lavender blossoms - and I realized I was imagining the colors as skeins of yarn. Hand dyed hanks of the colors I saw around me on a day whose sky was greyer than the rest. I have been thinking about knitting a lot lately, and knitting a lot as well. Ravelry provides an endless source of fascination, as nearly everyone in the world currently using wool to make things seem to have a profile on there, with pictures of finished projects, yarn stashes, and hand dyed, handspun fibery goodness. Then there are the knitting blogs....

But anyways, I did not open this posting box to write about knitting. I wanted to express somehow, the thoughts that swirled through my head this afternoon as Peggy dragged us through the neighborhood, nose first. It seems like whatever my mind is tuned into, becomes the way I see. I do not remember ever noticing colors so vividly before. When I was taking a lot of pictures, I would notice interesting colors, but they were always part of a larger scene - something with visual interest beside color - form, content, light and shadow, whatever. Today was different because it was so specific to just color combinations. I realized that I haven't been writing as much (yes I know, nanowrimo actually took too much joy away from the writing process and I turned to knitting instead. told you something like that was bound to happen...) lately, but when I was writing pretty regular blog entries, my thoughts on walks like this were more word oriented. I would spend mental energy thinking about how I would describe something, and sifting through the day to find interesting situations worth writing about. So now that my thoughts have been tuned to knitting, the pieces of the world that I perceive the most happen to be color and texture oriented. Forgive me if I am repeating myself, I'm just circling what is probably a very simple concept.

Different people perceive the world differently. We probably all know this, to some degree. Yet it's a hard thing to really know. I am constantly surprised when another person reveals that no, they are not on the same page as I am. Because I'm only looking at one page, I forget that there are words on the other side. I have never had any interest in sailing, but my cousin has an album full of sailing photos on his facebook page. He's also a commercial pilot. Which reminds me of a friend of mine's father, who has participated in sailing races and also got his pilot's license a few years ago. He and his wife live on a private runway so he can fly his plane whenever he wants. Today it was windy, like I mentioned, and to me that means that my skirt flaps around on our walk, Edie wears a hat, leaves eddy up into momentary swirls of color, and the trees dance. A windy day is beautiful to me, and exciting to walk through. I was thinking today, after noticing how I was noticing colors especially, that on a day like this my cousin or my friend's dad might have some extra perception regarding the wind. The direction, the quality, how fast, how cold...things that don't matter much to me necessarily, because I am just walking around going gaga over the color of things. But if I could jump into somebody else's head, what bits of the world would I notice especially much? The sound of things? The way it smells? How healthy the plant life is? What kind of birds are singing? The make and model of every car that passes? The price of cigarettes at the corner store?

What if we were aware of all the details, all at once?

Today I finally remembered to water Kenneth's garden while he was at work. I turned on the sprinkler and ran inside to try and squeeze a shower in while Edie napped. She woke up screaming before I could turn the water on, and I ran to comfort her wearing my towel. She was inconsolable for a long time - she hadn't been ready to wake up when she did. Finally she calmed down, though she was clingy, and I remembered the sprinkler. Ran outside and turned it off, but the garden looked like the flooded farms of the midwest. Gurty drank from one of the pools between the rows of kale. And now it is pouring rain like LA thinks it's Portland.

2008-11-17T22:27:00.001-08:00

this might sound crazy...
but I actually think Emily is trying to pretend she has long hair when she drapes yarn around her neck. Tonight she placed a few strands in their usual spot, and then started tugging her hair. Plus, she acts really girly when she plays with the yarn. You can blame Grammy, because she sure doesn't get that girly stuff from me.

The fires

2008-11-16T11:04:00.000-08:00

The sky is yellow.
The air smells like campfire, and it tastes acrid.
Everything is dusted with ash.

Today we will stay inside.

baby movies

2008-11-12T09:30:00.000-08:00

baby movies

2008-11-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

One of Emily's more unfortunate favorite activities is to drape yarn around her neck. She will crawl over to me when I am knitting and grab the yarn between me and the skeins, and loop it over the back of her neck like she is putting on a necklace. She is so methodical about it, she must think she is doing some kind of grown up activity, but I can't think of what she might be imitating.

Just in the time I've taken to write this, she's put about four loops around her neck.
Oh, Kid! I'm going to have to knit her a little scarf that she can drape around her neck all she wants.

She waves now, at everybody. It's really cute.
She also says Kitty Cat, Dog, Dada, Mama, and Grandpa. Of course, it's not that obvious. It's more like "Kkkhhkcat" and "Gah Puh". Still. It's an exciting time to know this kid.
She's also kissing and hugging a lot more. She used to like giving the cold shoulder when we went in for the kiss, but now she's all about it. This morning she woke up and started kissing my face right away. Awwww....cuddly baby. I'll have some more pictures up on Picasa soon.

It's a good time for pep talks.

2008-11-10T21:21:00.001-08:00

Thanks, Neil Gaiman.

I hate the novel so far. I don't even want to write novels! I thought I'd be writing fast and furious memoir stuff, about things that really happened, because you know that's what I know and they say to write what you know. Plus I am my favorite main character! My life is my favorite plot!

But I had trouble with the fast pace, trying to get every precious little detail of my precious little memories in line just right, so I had to make somebody up and make her go do stuff that I didn't do. The good news? I still have an imagination! I can still make pictures in my head of places I've never been!
The bad news? It's a load of crap, so far, and doesn't carry the emotional weight that it would if it were MY story happening. But I have to just get out of the way and type this dreadful thing, because I said I would. Bleah.

2008-11-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

Where are my uninterrupted stretches of writing time for NaNo!!??

I'm so far behind. Like, 10,000 words behind.

2008-11-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

Ah, so this is what true, deep gratitude feels like. I have been truly, deeply grateful in the past, the last and biggest example being that time I held a brand new soul in my hands as she took her first breaths and told her "thank you for being here, for choosing us." And of course there have been plenty of moments since that one where I took pause and realized how lucky I am. (remember when you helped me attend Literary Star class?) It happens whenever that above-mentioned, still pretty new soul falls asleep after nursing, arching her body, smacking her lips a couple of times, and letting out a deep sigh before becoming perfectly still for a blissful stretch of time. When she sleeps, her face glows from within, and she looks like a completely different creature than the animated, squirmy, laughing and wild Edith Emily who grows faster and faster every day. I say a quick and silent thank you before getting up to do the things I cannot do when she is awake. I say thank you other times, for other things - these past few rainy days in LA have been heaven, getting out to walk the dog, our new bike seat and thus freedom, and new friends in town.

This gratitude right now is so different. This is the gratitude of a collective spirit, a world holding its breath to see about renewing that hope for the future. I have learned to be grateful for the blessings I have received; I have tried to be grateful for the blessings that others receive and sometimes succeeded, sometimes held hands with Lady Jealousy at the same time; and now, finally, I can feel the gratitude that belongs to us all.

For some odd reason, it gave me the energy to unload the dishwasher, throw the diapers in the wash, load the dishwasher, and wipe the counter tops, just in the last hour! Usually that constitutes a day's work for me, dragging my sad and homesick self between the chores and the couch while the baby makes do with a floorful of toys.

The effects of happiness are instantaneous. Hope for the future does wonders for a body. I feel ten years younger, twenty five pounds lighter. I'm not sure, but I think I might be falling back in love with America, that crazy b$@!* I am so grateful to be alive today, and that my daughter's first years will be spent in a changing society, under the leadership of the first African American President of the USA. As she grows older, I look forward to telling her stories about this election - how more people than ever before came out to vote because we were ready for a big change, a good change. The work is only just beginning, but I am so excited to see what we can make with this time, with this country.

At the same time...
Yes on 8? Come ON, California! You are losing some major cool points with me. As my friend Salvez pointed out, Oregon also has farmer's markets and ocean beaches. Equal marriage rights for same-sex couples was one of the only things that gave you an edge besides all the frozen yogurt places and the show Californication. I am very very disappointed in you, California, and I am counting down the minutes until we are on our way back to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beaver Bridge Town, where the air is clear, and the tap water drinkable.

NaWoAmMo

2008-11-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

dangit, I really and truly believed that a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius would just fly from my fingertips and onto the page, happy to finally have been set free. Doh. I started writing about one thing. Then I got bored with it after about, oh, like a blog's length. My attention span is not what it once was. Was it ever? Hm. So I kept at it, writing crappy scenes that didn't connect to one another. After about 2000 words, I started a new novel. This one was much easier to write like a story. I used the third person and changed "I" to a character named "_____". Still a true story, but now it seemed like fiction. After a page of that story, I got bored again. Just now I had a great story idea in the shower, one that would be ACTUALLY fictional, but that I could easily pretend myself into. But maybe I need to practice sticking with the original idea for a change. I really do seem to be more of a sprinter than a long distance marathon writer. Pace yourself, Kendal.

Anyways, though roughly half of my word count is crap, or little admonishments from my internal editor (what the heck? she was supposed to go stay in the Internal Editor Kennel for the month. She keeps escaping!) about what a crappy excuse for a story I am trying to write, I have 3480 words now, including both story starts and the third idea. Nothing fits together. Maybe they should rename it National Word Amassing Month, because I think the term "Novel Writing" is rather misleading.

At least there are the pep talks to look forward to:
I received this message in my inbox yesterday...

"Dear Writer,

Howdy! NaNo Program Director Chris Baty here. Welcome to the 10th NaNoWriMo! It's great to have you on board.

I'll be sending you one of these emails each week from here until the end of the event. Between my emails, you'll also get two encouraging missives from our panel of celebrity author pep talkers. This week, you'll be hearing from Jonathan Stroud and Philip Pullman.

Okay. Enough chit-chat. It's time to talk geodes.

Geodes, for the geologically disinclined, look like normal rocks on the outside. But when you cut them open, they're filled with all sorts of wonders—bubbly layers of agate, sparkly crystals, elves.

As a kid, I was obsessed with geodes. The highlight of my year was a visit to Dick's Rock Shop in Fountain, Colorado. The owner of the store, Richard Stearns, had a crate of dirty, unremarkable, tennis-ball-sized rocks in his Geode Bin. You'd spend an hour hunting through them until you'd picked out the perfect dirty, unremarkable rock.

Richard would then fire up his slab saw and cut the thing in half for you. The machine screamed and spit water to cool the blade, and it was messy and slow. Most of the time, Richard would lose a finger in the process.

That's how I remember it anyway. The details are a little fuzzy after so many years.

When he was done, Richard would present you with both halves of your geode. They'd be wet, and sometimes you'd gaze down into a glittering concavity of purple or green. Other times, you'd cry because you'd stupidly picked one of the geodes where the all the crystals were caked with a calcified layer of elf spit.

As we head into NaNoWriMo, I'm reminded of the feeling I got standing in Dick's Rock Shop, watching as that year's mystery stone revealed whatever magic it possessed. After nine NaNoWriMo novels—most of which have trended more towards elf spit than gemstones—I still get an excited stomach-flutter at the start of November. I can't help but feel giddy as I ponder questions like: Will this be the best novel I've ever written? And, secretly: Will this be the best novel ever written in the history of humankind?

Because it really could be.

Then the writing starts, and by the second sentence, two new questions have occurred to me. Namely: What am I doing? And: Could this be the worst novel ever written in the history of humankind?

And you know what? It really could be. But that's fine. Trust me on this. Don't waste your time measuring the success of your NaNo novel by the sparkle of your prose or the rock-solid genius of your plot. The books we write in November won't start out like the novels we buy in bookstores. Because the novels we buy in bookstores didn't start out like bookstore-novels either.

Nope. They started out as way-less beautiful, way-more exciting things called first drafts. These are the dinged-up cousins to final drafts, and they're packed with crazy energy and laughable tangents and embarrassing instances where a main character's name shifts six times over the course of a single chapter.

Creating this reckless, romantic, and potential-filled beast is the first step in writing a great book. It's also a fantastic workout for your imagination, and monkey-barrels of fun. There's a catch, though. Getting through a first draft will require you leave perfectionism and self-criticism at the door. Fear not: We'll keep them both safe and return them to you in December.

But in November, you are beyond criticism. Because you are doing something that few people in the world have the guts to try—you're packing a huge creative challenge into an already-hectic life. You're juggling work and home; family and friends. With all of that going on, you've signed up for NaNoWriMo. Where you've spent the last few weeks hunting through the bin of possible novel ideas, trying to pick out the perfect one. Maybe you've got yours already. Or maybe you feel like you're not quite ready.

You're ready.

It's November 1, writer.

What say we fire up the ol' slab saw and find out what's in there?

Chris
NaNoWriMo"

Can this guy write or what?

Back to the typing board.

Happy Halloween! And NaNoWriMo!

2008-10-31T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well. In less than 25 minutes I will set off for uncharted territory. Last week we brought home an uncarved pumpkin and now a sweet little owl sits on the porch, created in a mad dash to pack as much Halloween fun into the few hours between naptime and bedtime as possible. It was my first experience carving a pumpkin under the time/space/supervisory constraints of having a young child nearby, throwing pumpkin guts on herself, myself, and the dog. Less than five minutes, it took, and the results are more than satisfactory, in fact it is my favorite Owl-O-Lantern I've ever carved! I think it provides an apt metaphor for the weeks to come.

Sitting in front of me, in the ether, is what the zen people call the Uncarved Block. An Unwritten Novel. I just have to uncover it by hitting a bunch of random keys until the word mark has been reached. Then I'll have surprised myself. Maybe I'll even surprise the novel, who was sitting around drinking whiskey inside of the whale's belly, fully aware that it may never live to see the moonlight or feel the wind on its beard ever again, before I maced the whale in the eyes and caused it to heave the contents of its guts all over this computer screen, or something like that.

Before I begin, however, I want to take a couple of minutes to tell you about the fabulous day we just had.

Kenneth installed a new child seat on my bicycle. We bought a wee little helmet for Edie, yellow with chickens. I'm sorry there is no picture. I forgot to bring the camera. So there are no pictures of Edie's first bike ride, but I have words for you.
Seagulls pecking at mussels
Pelicans diving beak first
Doggies, doggies, and doggies.
Cheering with the exhilaration of FINALLY going fast! On a Bike!
Edie cheering along, "WOOOOO!"
And waving to doggies.

In Venice we lost the trail. Rode a little way down the boardwalk and back, met the King Overlord of All That is New Age. Really. He was amazing. I'd tell you about him but I think he might show up in the novel, and do you know how much stories hate to be repeated before they are shown to their rooms for the night? Oooh, there is ten minutes left.

Quickly now, there is the pumpkin carving marathon that I mentioned, and then there is us taking Edie out "Trick-Or-Treating" in a shameless ploy to relive childhood and amass vast quantities of cheap sugary treats. My half of the loot is dedicated to the Noveling process, a very important cause. In the nine minutes I have left can I just tell you that the first place we trick or treated at, an apartment building with big open doors and sidewalk chalk arrows pointing the way, the tenants were gathered in the courtyard around a candlelit table filled with sushi, wine, various other dishes, and jello shooters. That's right, I said Jello Shooters. They were for the parents. That's us. Parents got jello shooters. Grammy didn't believe us when we came home but then the tiny plastic cup with jello remnants fell out of the treat bag. The woman who gave us the jello shooters told us that her husband used to take the kids trick or treating with a shotglass for himself.

Sometimes the best parenting advice comes from the most unexpected places.

Okay I think I'd better rest my fingers for FIVE MINUTES!!!!!!

Let the Novel Writing begin!

2008-10-30T10:11:00.001-07:00

Aw, the great Inglewood Adventure continues.

you see, we don't actually live in LA. LA County, yes, but LA proper, no. We live in a suburb of LA called Inglewood. We live right by a nursing home, a church, IHOP, Quizno's, McDonald's, and Vons, which is Californian for Safeway.

Last night we went to Vons to pick up some ingredients for chicken soup and a pumpkin. Edily rode in the cart. She is learning to wave. A woman said hi to her and waved and I saw Emily's little hand waving back, down at her side and not at all visible to the woman.
"Up high, kid. You gotta show off that fancy wave."
And then. And then, this guy rolled his cart real close and looked me straight in the eyes. He opened up a black binder which was perched on the baby seat of his cart and silently flipped the pages, one at a time. Was he trying to sell me a magazine subscription? I shook my head with the same apologetic-but-not-really face I use to say I'm all out of spare change (there hasn't really been any such thing since before the Child arrived) and pressed on through the meat department before I realized what he was selling. Those were miniature movie posters!
I hurried to catch up to Kenneth. "Hey, I just saw my first Inglewood bootlegger!"
"Oh yeah, they're in here all the time, or out in the parking lot." He was unimpressed, having grown up with such exotic things, but I still felt like something significant had happened.

When we came home I told Grammy and Grandpa about it. "This guy at the store tried to sell me bootleg DVDs!"
Grandpa said, "What titles did he have?"

Rats, I didn't see.

celebrity sightings are getting old.

2008-10-27T14:07:00.001-07:00

gosh it's so BORING to see famous people all the time.

I wouldn't know, but I'm already totally unimpressed that today Kenneth saw Meg Ryan and Bob Saget in the same half hour. He even talked to Meg Ryan!

She said, "Is this the only bacon you have?"
and he said. "Yup. Although there is some Tempeh bacon over in the tofu case."
and she said, "um...Tempeh, huh."

2008-10-26T14:37:00.001-07:00

and

2008-10-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

making the world shake

videos!

2008-10-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

We took a little trip to the pier at Redondo Beach.
This is from the car on the way home.

fun with colors

2008-10-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

got this link from ZeFrank's blog.
Click the colors and see!

Banksy

2008-10-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Just found out about this artist.

Celebrity Sighting of the Day.

2008-10-20T19:58:00.001-07:00

Kenneth called me from work again today. This time, he admitted his excitement. He almost asked her for Battlestar spoilers, but then again he didn't.

When in LA...

2008-10-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

Kenneth doesn't like to make a big deal out of the high ratio of celebrity : the rest of us in this Godforsaken He- I mean, in this fertile valley of avocados and lip injections known as LA. I can see why, I mean, it's very touristy and not at all cool to act like you care when you see somebody from the movies buying their caramel frappaccino two places up ahead of you in line, or to get overly excited when famous writers wander into your bookclub (It's an honest mistake, and it happens all the time around here.) Plus, celebrities are people too, and people have a basic right to go grocery shopping without every person they meet staring or fumbling for some awkward comment about loving the work they've done. That said, I firmly believe in milking this LA opportunity for everything it's worth, and if all it's worth is a few celebrity sightings and year-round farmer's markets, well, I say bring it. Since Kenneth believes in pretending not to care when Flea buys pet food at his Whole Foods store, then I believe in pretending to care. Which I don't. Not really (which is sort of a lie - I am a shameless namedropper. Did you know I used to date a guy whose best friend's older brother played in the same space-rock band as Eddie Vedder's wife, Beth? We practically spent Christmas together, Pearl Jam and I). But I ask anyways, "Did you see any celebrities today?" as a sort of public service, so that Kenneth can be geeky about it without bothering any of the rich and famous who buy wild-caught Alaskan salmon at his store (Catherine O'Hara). I asked him this morning and Kenneth realized that he hadn't seen any in a while.

But then he called me from work, and guess who was shopping today, pushing his daughter in a cart around the store?
That's right. Little Nicky the Wedding Water Gilmore Guy.

"Was he being funny? Did you ask him to say something funny?!"
"Not really...he was just being a dad, which I respect."

ps. this morning I had a dream wherein I saw Kevin Nealon at a party and told him how much I loved his book. It took him a second to remember that he'd written a book, but he recovered quickly and thanked me for reading.

Escape, one month at a time.

2008-10-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

Last month it was family in Seattle. Next month it'll be NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Starting November first, I'll be diving headlong into the sometimes luxurious, sometimes shark-infested waters of my own imagination, desperately fishing for the 1667 or so words that I'll need to type daily in order to meet the 50,000 word mark by the stroke of midnight, November 30th. What if I don't?

Well, most of my adult life thus far has been spent becoming adjusted to disappointment in myself, as I gracefully steer miles around any sort of finish line that I can see. I took the slacker approach to graduating high school, eventually earning my diploma through the local community college not by actually completing the American History course that I needed to cover the tenth of a credit my transcript was lacking, but by handing in one or two papers and then disappearing for the rest of the course. It was too sad for the academic counselor in charge of my case. She had already waived the P.E. requirements so that I wouldn't have to take archery. Months after dropping out of the Adult High School program, I received a diploma in the mail. Congratulations, it said. You slacked your way out of high school at last.

So then I tried some college. Then some jobs, then no jobs, then some more college, then less college and more jobs, and every combination possible. The latest attempt at reaching a goal found me throwing in the towel at the halfway mark, no longer so sure about majoring in Violin Performance while the residing professor deconstructed my bow arm and smirked at the Cello Professor when I skipped the entire Peanut Butter section of a Mozart Concerto during my audition. (As my childhood violin teacher explained song form to me, there is the bread and there is the peanut butter. The bread is the part at the beginning and the end, holding all the chewiness in the middle.) I barely made it into the music program, but then there was a snag in the residency status which I'd mistakenly thought two years in Oregon would have earned me. It would have, had I not attended school the whole time. I couldn't afford to pay out of state tuition for a degree I was no longer sure I wanted. So I got pregnant instead.

While growing a whole little person and ushering her safely (and with style!) into this world, then ensuring her continued survival by keeping her away from knives, broken glass, and Sarah Palin is its own kind of goal, which I meet with varying degrees of success each day, my daughter will never have the sheen of a finished product that I can hold up and say "Look! I wrote a book!" She is an ongoing process and while I can take some credit for her original adorableness and good sense of rhythm, she is her own creation now. But I can say that if I don't write this book, I might have to fill the creative void with another child, to remind me that I can achieve something. I can make something cool out of udon noodle soup and buffalo wings.

You might be asking yourself how you can stop me. How you can help me to reach my latest goal, one of the most unreachable and therefore most likely goals yet - 50,000 words in 30 days. What, does she want more money from me? In this crisis? The answer is a solid no, although I seldom actually refuse money. No, but there are some things you can do to ensure that Edie has a happy few years as an only child.

One, you can bug me about the novel. Ask me how it's going, how many words do I have. I may or may not decide to post excerpts of it here. It may be too embarrassing to share. The idea is not to produce a work of art, but to produce something. Anything. Typing fast is key. Not caring is also key. Telling all my friends and family about the Novel so I have more face to lose, should I decide to drop out and learn accordion instead, is perhaps the keystone.

Two, you can forgive another month of lite-blogging. If I blog, you'll know that I am procrastinating on the Novel, and then you can flog me with words. Flog and blog. Blog Floggers.

Three, I'll need music to write by. Tell me who I should listen to and I'll give it a try, really! I'll make a station on Pandora, but if you send me a mix of your favorite songs to write by, I guaran-frakkin'-tee I'll pop it in the stereo and give it a spin.

Four, and most importantly, you can JOIN ME! There is strength in numbers, even if only on a virtual space such as the internet. If we can't have an actual Noveling date at the cafe, we can at least commiserate online. Anyone can do this, you just have to sign up. And cancel many if not all of your engagements for November.

Fifthly, that's all I can think of for now. See you around!

We are back!

2008-10-15T19:03:00.001-07:00

What a quick month that was!

We are back in LA and do you know what?

The sky was perfectly clear today. Blue with a smear of clouds and not a sign of smog anywhere. We drove to Playa del Rey and watched the sun set. It was so perfect, it looked like a t-shirt. It looked like a soft jazz compilation LP cover. It looked like the movies.

It looks like we're wintering south. And the Hoppers are getting a puppy.

Good things.

2008-10-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

Spending time at Jill and Paul's farm, chasing chickens, pulling weeds, eating dirt, finding all kinds of spiders and crickets, attending the farmer's market, walking the bay trail, petting Patches Kitty, drinking a wee bit of wine, visiting with Corbin and Erin and Adam, playing peek a boo with Auntie Jill and Uncle Paul, and eating the most delicious meals. Thank you guys!

Walking the weekly trail with Mom and her friend Mary, avoiding the squirrels and crows which lurk behind every tree, and running into an old friend, Liz, who invited us over for a visit next week. Before she recognized me, she said that Edie was leaning around me to wave at her. "Do I know this baby? I love this baby!"

Attending Robby's homecoming festivities. We went to the assembly and saw hundreds of people dressed in Orange! Green! Purple! and Yellow! and screamed and jumped (okay, Edie did. I just held her.) When I went into the hall looking for a place to change her diaper, the football coach unlocked the training room so I could change her on a massage table. I called it the muscle room because of the decorating scheme, posters of various kinds of hue man anatomy. We later followed the homecoming parade around downtown Edmonds (my brother plays the quads in the pep band, it's his senior year at EWHS) until I got bored and found a baby reeeeeetail store. They had affordable halloween costumes, and I got one. It's a surprise, which one. It was between the one I got and a shiny Lobster costume. A few hours later we were invited to our new friend Clementine's toddler Halloween party, in LA. Serendipity! We shall not weep in our fancy costumes, alone but for a pile of tootsie rolls, on the Saturday before All Hallow's Eve.

PS. Edie can crow like a rooster now. She is growing a tooth and she loves to practice biting things with it. Mostly parts of my body. Today I accidentally bit her finger, so now we're even. She's had fingers accidentally bitten by both Daddy and Mommy now.

2008-09-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

EdithEmily and I are in Seattle now.
She's asleep on Grandma Janet's chest, rocking.
Kenneth took us out for sushi the night before we left, two nights ago. Edie sat in the high chair while the elderly waitress hovered, making sure she didn't tip forward and bump her head on the edge of the glass table top. She brought a paper crane, a plastic dipping bowl. When Edie dropped one bowl, she brought another, and another. I offered Edie some pickled ginger, yuk.
We fed her mashed avocado from the avocado rolls.
We did not feed her wasabi, or sake, but enjoyed these things for ourselves.
Salmon, seared tuna, pickled radish, spider roll heaven.

2008-09-09T23:40:00.001-07:00

I think I've become overly dependent on italics to put the stress in my writer voice. Is there a better way to emphasize a word? Is there a way to write it so that no emphasis is necessary? If it seems like I am being a bit overly scrutinitical, it's because I just got rejected by www.tutor.com. I do not meet the minimum requirements to be an online tutor. And that is after I lied about having an associate's degree. Sure, it's probably just that you need a PC and I'm using Kenneth's Macbook, but it brings up all these fresh feelings of loserliness. I'm not schooled enough, I'm not focused enough, not dedicated enough, not interested enough to get a job.

Today we met some more kids at the park. There were six of them, four girls and two boys. There was a white van parked on the street that they kept glancing at, so I assumed it was their parent or guardian. I asked the oldest girl, after she'd reprimanded one of the boys for asking me when Edie and I would be getting off the swing ("Tyler! Be nice!"), if they were all siblings. She laughed and said, um, Yeah, we're all family. Then she and another girl pretended to be sisters. You know sometimes white people can't tell black people apart. That's what she thought, maybe. I just can't tell people apart, period. Especially without my glasses, I can't even tell if people have faces or are composed of watercolored dots. So they pretended to be related while I slowly connected the watercolor dots: they were part of an afterschool program, they'd been driven here in the white van. Their caregiver was sitting in the van, talking on the phone. Tyler asked me to push his friend Kimmy on the swing, and I said no, because I had to watch my baby. He offered to watch my baby for me while I pushed. So he got off the swing and stood in front of Edie with his arms crossed, literally watching her sit in the sand, while I pushed Kimmy on the swing. Kimmy began to pump her legs like Tyler had shown her, so I went back to the baby. The two older girls came over, still pretending to be sisters. They talked to me about my baby. Tia was confused when I told her that Edie is 8 months old.
"I thought that babies had to be at least 9 months old."
I explained that first they grow inside the mother for 9 months, and when they are born the count starts over. So Edie's actually been a living creature for 17 months. The counting is funky from the start anyways, since weeks pregnant begins with the first day of last period. That's not when Edie started! I didn't try and explain the last part.
I did tell them about having her at home, in a tub full of warm water. The oldest girl said, "Really? That's tight!"
They asked why I didn't "get" to have my baby in a hospital, like normal moms. I told them it was my choice, because women have been having babies since before there were hospitals, so I figured I could do without the hospital. Later I thought about my other reason for having E at home. It's the same reason I got pregnant in the first place. There was a point when I just decided to be an animal. Not in the uncivilized sense of the word, but to quit resisting my instincts. It seems like we humans have gotten ourselves into quite a pickle because of our efforts to separate ourselves from the rest of the natural world. We are a pretty nifty species, with our language and reflective tendencies, but we are still made of animal. At least that's the way I see it. So if a cat can find a dark corner and suddenly...Kittens! and if a cow can drop a calf with minimal involvement from Farmer John, I reason that a woman doesn't have to be any different. She can curl up in a dark corner and calf an infant along with the rest of the natural world. It worked for me and the Wee One.

And if a lady can get paid to drive kids to the park where they supervise each other while she talks on the phone then I can just as well get myself a job hanging out with kids while they play and come up with interesting questions. As long as they don't require the use of a PC.

Holy Tomato

2008-09-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

This morning we awoke with a shared vision. Just an old habit resurfacing.
"Let's go out to coffee."
Which was a pretty uneventful prospect, in St. John's. It was a matter of strapping on the baby, grabbing Travel Scrabble and a dictionary, and hiking up to either Anna Banana's or Ladybug Cafe, depending on how far we felt like walking and whether Jinx followed us or not (Anna Banana's wins the prize for Most Outdoor Pet Dishes, hands down). Sometimes, for a special treat, we'd get in the ... car ... and, um, drive... to the Little Red Bike Cafe. We actually rode our bikes there once, but I had this person living in my belly who got upset about knees banging on the wall. Kenneth refused to park the car anywhere near the cafe, being a diehard fan of biking and being also completely mortified to be seen driving there.

Here, the coffee outing is a completely different story. The only walking distance coffee is at the Starbucks inside of Vons, which just doesn't offer that relaxed coffee house atmosphere we crave. So we do the next best thing. Wait. The next best thing might be to stay home and brew up a pot of carbon-print free joe, but that also doesn't offer that relaxed coffee house atmosphere. Not relaxed in the slightest. :) So we Google and we Mapquest and we set off for the nearest hit returned after typing FairTrade ShadeGrown FreeRange HormoneFree WildCaught Etcetera.
The Conservatory for Coffee and Tea looked the most promising, its website decorated with the latte art we so took for granted in Stumptown.

I'd never been to Culver City before. Venice BLVD was closed. Some runners were having a marathon, apparently. So we jigsawed around this block and that block until, waiting at the light to cross Venice again, having mistakenly thought that we'd avoided the blockadence and would be able to turn left, Kenneth spotted a Wee Mouse as it ran under our car. Kenneth, being the guy that he is, showed some Concern for the fate of the creature. He revved and rocked the car a bit to scare the mouse out from under impending death while I squinted out the window to see if it ran. Kenneth spotted it again, this time hiding beside the wheel of a jeep behind us. Under the jeep. I stuck my head out the window and peered at the mouse several times. The Tough Guy in the Jeep stared at me. I didn't try and explain because he wouldn't have heard me. Kenneth rolled forward so that Jeep Guy might roll forward and scare off the mouse. Finally he did. The mouse tried to run in front of the back wheel and hopped back just in time not to be crushed. But then the light turned Green. Jeep Guy honked viciously at us, not knowing about the Wee Mouse or the Peril it was in, just that some lady kept staring at him out her window. We went, he went, and I don't know where the mouse went.

We passed SONY STUDIOS which is the size of a town. The Conservatory for Coffee and Tea was closed. We drove around some more and found Venice Grind and right next to it...

A FARMER'S MARKET!

Where there was a bucket of free gerbera daisies for the kids. It had a sign reading "Kids Pick One Free" and Kenneth helped Edie pick a pink one. She chewed on it until it ended up behind my ear instead. She kept a little green bit of it in her mouth for a long time though, which I found later. We sampled the wares. They were all delicious. We found the Heirloom Tomato guy, who was so nice he let us sample a melon from the next stand over. It was his personal melon, not for sale! He just wanted to share! Farmer's Market people are great people. We also saw the same guy selling dragonfruit that we'd seen at the El Segundo farmer's market. We split a dragonfruit from his stand for breakfast and now I believe in aliens. It's what would happen if you took the sourness out of a kiwi, replacing it with purple sorbet but keeping the seeds, and poured it into the perfectly hollow center of a spiky pink rubber football. Or something like that. There was a little girl exiting Heirloom Tomato Heaven with her mother, and she'd pulled a big yellow Pineapple tomato out of the bag and her mom had to stop her from eating it right there. In this land of processed kid foods that aren't really foods but brightly wrapped bits of science experiments aggressively marketed until some of our nation's young will only eat food from a box or can, and only if it's a certain kind of box or can, it is so refreshing to witness a kid trying to sneak a tomato before dinner.

I made bruschetta from my two little heirlooms...but next time I'm going to sneak one before we get home.

Lit Star Class

2008-09-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

is starting.

Sing A Longing for St. John's...

2008-09-06T21:25:00.000-07:00

oh man. my old neighborhood bookstore, St. John's Booksellers, just sent me an email advertising a SING-ALONG next Sunday. They are going to get together, brew some tea, and sing old folk songs out of a songbook. I don't even necessarily want to go, but the fact that it's there...in Portland. This is the same bookstore we went into to see Nena's chicks in a box, behind the counter. We had to ask to see them - special insider knowledge. Peeping babies for her backyard, as soon as they got old enough. Later she had ducklings. I love St. John's. It is such a special place. Portland is a special place, but St. John's is a really special place.

Here's how much I love it : the St. John's bridge is stuck to my leg, forever.

Monster Baby

2008-09-04T11:36:00.000-07:00

I was in the middle of upgrading my baby doll with the scary wall-eye into a suitably weird gift for Maria's graduation when I got pregnant. I made Wall-Eyed Dolly a pair of butterfly wings out of two coat hangers, some yarn and a silk shirt, painted her head to match the wings, painted her arms and legs an alarming shade of Frankenstein Green, and sewed a forest scene scrap of fabric to her torso. While I was working on her, my friend Tara named her Monster Baby.

Now I have a Monster Baby of my very own, except that both of her eyes point in the same direction.Another thing I want you to know is that my Monster Baby is a quick study. After so many pictures were taken of her with the flash on, she began averting her eyes whenever I pointed the camera at her. Which, of course, was so darn cute I just took more pictures of her.

politicky-tacky

2008-09-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

Kenneth's grandmother told his mother that she overheard somebody calling Sarah Palin, "Caribou Barbie". I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Palin is proud of her daughter's "choice" to keep the baby. Wait. What? So it was her choice? She chose to keep her baby? What was the other choice? Surely it wasn't the A word. Oh....Adoption. Yes, we are all proud of your choice, Bristol.

After watching some of the RNC last night, I've decided that if I were a major television network, I'd offer the Palin/McCain family their very own reality show. Seriously, despite their kooky politics, I just can't get enough of those adorable doe-eyed girls, and Cindy McCain bouncing the latest baby Palin while the world watches is family values to the tenth power. They can all live in a huge white mansion, and the show will be called "The Other White House." It will be more popular than the Osbournes, I predict.

All that comparison of Obama to celebrities like Britney and Paris, and now we have rumours of one Jamie Lynn Spears wishing Bristol Palin a happy, healthy pregnancy. The Palin family has become a media feeding frenzy. Even though I just can't look away from the mess, tonight I will, for just an hour, in order to see what Barack Obama has to say on the O'Reilly Factor. It is not to be missed.

2008-08-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting chickens for some time now. In the Fairmount Hotel I'd fantasize about taking over the building - growing food on the roof, grazing goats and sheep in the courtyard, and letting chickens run rampant on the wrap around porch. In our St John's home we discussed the viability of building a coop in the yard, Kenneth drew up plans, but I was pregnant and we got suckered into taking a birthing class instead of dropping two hundred bones on lumber and chicken wire. I did learn to focus on my breath when the pain of a gasping uterus got out of hand, and how to navigate through hormone and anxiety fueled storms with a carefully scripted dialogue:

"I'm hungry, let's get some dinner."

"I hear you saying that you're getting hungry, and that you would like to get some dinner. I am also hungry, and feel that we should stop at that Pho place by Fred Meyer's and eat there."

"I hear that you want to some Pho, and I agree that Pho would be a good choice, but I feel like we should order it to go and take it home so that we can watch a movie."

"It sounds like you are saying that you would like to watch a movie and eat at the same time, but I am feeling like by the time we get our food home it will be cold and we may have already murdered one another in a state of temporary insanity caused by extremely low-blood sugar..."

and so on until we forgot to use the dialogue and reverted back to yelling and pounding walls. (the throwing of things and the pounding of walls I must shamefully admit, was all mine. Those hormones, huh?)

We never got those chickens. The best time to embark on a great chicken adventure, we were informed by those better informed than we, is the springtime, and our spring was all booked up by this newborn baby adventure we had scheduled the previous spring.

Now that we are living in LA, in a room that has become completely overrun by six-legged creatures of a particular succulence to the aforementioned type of fowl, I find myself wishing once again for a small flock of chickens to clean up this mess. Dreams of motherly little birds clucking with pleasure at the bounty of ants on our floor dance through my head. These ants. They walk on us at night, crawl up the sides of coffee cups, and hunt for stray cat kibbles on the bathroom floor.

Last night Kenneth woke with a start when Emily's hand grazed his cheek - he thought it was a mouse crawling over him.

I'm getting homesick. Homesickness is crawling over me as frequently as the tiny colonists. When I change Edie's diaper, there it is again! Thoughts of the Pacific Northwest march past me, on me, running here and there. I miss Washington, and the kooky Willamette River Valley town of Portland. There's one on the screen now.

All I can do is put food away and sweep the floor often. We'll see about the rest eventually.

wow a whole week

2008-08-28T03:19:00.001-07:00

has elapsed and I think that is the longest since arriving here that the blog has been without update. For a while there a nice rhythm was settling into my bones...sleep in the mornings with Baby E while Kenneth gets up early to have his time...and after he and the baby go to sleep for the night, I'd sneak away to write in this blog. It was working so nicely, but then the daddy had to go and get himself hired at Whole Foods. In the meat department. Evenings. Same exact hours as before. I'm not complaining about his having a job. I'm not complaining about having whole stretches of day where Edie and I get to sit on blankets at the park or flirt with a busful of strangers on the way to the farmer's market across town. I'm complaining about that precious bit of night time that was mine, all mine, in which to write, read, knit, or read about knitting, or writing, while the rest of the house lay dormant.

Now, it seems there is no dormant time. None!
Kenneth comes home late and we hang out with a movie and leftover whatever was for dinner earlier (I always eat twice) as soon as Edie is asleep. Edie is getting to bed later and later now because she seems to be waiting up for Daddy to get home. By the time we go to sleep ourselves, Baby Early Bird is only a few hours away from getting the worm. She's fast now, too. When she's up, I'd better be too, or else bits of paper get consumed and diaper pails intimately explored. Her morning nap is my morning nap. Her afternoon nap is my lunch break. We'd better get outside at least once as well, or she and I both go a little nuts.

All I'm saying is that Kenneth and I should both be unemployed, so that we'd have time to write/knit/sew/play drums/cook delicious foods AND enjoy our precious infant child.

Right now it is piles of done and undone laundry mixing in ways that prevent their being cleaned, or hung.
It is a cascading trail of ants, an undulating puddle of ants, a carefully scripted and contagiously cheerful contingent of ants, holding their very own conference of delegates around the rubber soled shoes smelling ominously of meat. The promise of our future, they say, is that every ant will be gainfully employed, labor will not be outsourced, the crumbs in our house will be carried out by the ants under our house.
The cats are understandably upset as their litter pan has been exported to a little spot outside, by where the dog lays at night. I'm too tired to think of a practical solution. Just go somewhere. Anywhere. Jinx is gone gone gone. For some reason I haven't been dwelling on it. It is what it is. If I think too hard, I'll get sad, and there is no room for being sad about Jinx in a situation like this. Right Left Right Left. You just gotta keep walking.

But just for a second?

Jinx is the most amazing cat I've ever known. People who are devoutly Un-cat people have admitted, a little bashfully, that there is just something about that cat. Junior at the Fairmount called him Cat Dog. Every neighbor I talked to would tell me stories about Jinx. "Your son came to visit me this morning. He just walked straight past me, through the door, and into the bathroom where he drank from my toilet." Or how Tim walked up the front steps, opened the front door, and saw Jinx galloping toward him from the end of the block. Tim held the door waiting, and when Jinx got to him he stopped running, looked up as if to say thank you, and walked nonchalantly up the stairs and turned right, heading for my apartment.
Once, when he'd been missing for a whole day and I was starting to worry, I went out to look for him and ran into the former live-in building manager who'd been fired the week before and wasn't taking it very well. He was staggering down the street with a big grin, a six-pack in one hand and a paper sack in the other. "Hey I got me a new cat, man, he's the sweetest thing! He's been cuddling with me all day and now I got a sack full of cat food." I asked if it was Jinx and it was. He took the disappointment well. "No problem, man, we're gonna watch American Idol together and I'm gonna feed him some dinner. Then I'll send him up to you." I told him that that would be fine as long as Jinx was home before midnight. Jinx would spend all day visiting the neighbors, eating their fried chicken and sleeping on their couches, but he always made it back to my door around midnight. We slept like spoons in a drawer, every night. He was my cat boyfriend. When my other boyfriend started coming around, Jinx moved to the foot of the bed, and then the chair by the window, without much complaint. When we moved in with that other boyfriend and his football jock cat, Siddartha, Jinx was miffed but he still did not complain. He transferred headquarters to the attic, where he could sleep undisturbed and still be the Alpha catdog. Sid and then the kitten, Gertrude, took over the house with their busy wrestling, and Jinx took over the neighborhood.

Oh man that is simply quite enough.

That cat is special and I hope he has found a situation that makes him happy. I don't blame him for taking off - we are crowded into somebody else's home with a dog that was here first and a cat that was here first. The one spot behind the dresser in the closet that Jinx had found for privacy got taken away when we moved some furniture. Leaving was the sensible thing to do.

I guess.

We miss him though.

Things we made.

2008-08-26T21:45:00.001-07:00

It starts out simply enough. A spur-of-the moment trip to Joann fabrics to pick up some more of that cotton yarn that lends itself so nicely to the market bag pattern I've been testing out, becomes a sudden fabric epiphany. How we got all the way across the store to the fabric swatches from Yarn Town is out of my hands. Edie was driving the cart, chubby legs all a-dangling, when we screeched to a halt before a bolt of gold, cranberry, and forest green butterflies competing for air space. One of those now-rare moments of same wavelength surfing, and not a word was exchanged before the project agreed upon.
"I'll make her a dress!"
"You should make her a dress."

Well, if Kenneth was going to make her a dress, then I would too. Never mind the thirty-odd knitting projects I've started, here was a remnant of orange, and another of zebra. While we were at it, the baby's baby has been naked for too long, since I stripped her of the flame retardant pink and purple pantsuit she came with. So, she needed a matching dress.
And while this pattern, copied from a handmade dress purchased at Lily Toad, was so incredibly easy to make and easy to put on (nothing over the head and no finger-snagging sleevery), there was that old sheet that I rescued from the donation pile in the garage. Mama Hops came home to the whole operation and said, "Um, is that my sheet?"

Not any more, Grammy.By the way...there are no photos of the dress Kenneth made yet, which has nothing to do with the fact that it's the cutest one.

LA, this behavior's gotta stop.

2008-08-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

Oh Los Angeles, I think you are winning.
Wearing me down to a nubbin with your evil ways, your hot sunshiney desert ways.
Your hoses bleeding good clean water into green grass lawns that never meant to grow here, bleeding water into wasted puddles in the street.
Your plastic bags, your long commutes, your angry, angry drivers.
Those infinite spots of tar on every sidewalk where aborted bits of chewing gum were flung to rest and became oily black stains in the heat.
The woman who came too close with her cigarette and touched my baby's arm, asked for change, and kept her hand on Edie when I said I had none and said "Just two quarters? Emily, your mama doesn't want to help me..." (but then I grew a voice I didn't know I had and told her she needed to Let Go. Now. The situation didn't make me nervous so much as realize that I have a grizzly bear hibernating in me. Don't touch my cub with those soiled intentions.)
LA I am tired of that nicotine stained sky you call blue every day, punctuated only by the 24-hour parade of airplanes coming in to land, so close we can reach out and draw our own logos on their smooth sides. That seaweed flavored fruit roll-up spread thickly over our heads, nibbled by the jagged teeth of those raggedy palms meant to suggest some kind of paradise. That poor battered sky getting bruised by those great black oil wells, pumping their blind fists in the air without listening to reason.
LA why do you have to clutter up every moment of space with your WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS everywhere? Each place of business competes with each other in volume of printed material scraping my eyeballs as we drive by. It's not just Randy's Donuts. It's Try Randy's Bacon Double Cheeseburger. It's Drive Thru around Back. It's Gatorade and Pepsi Cola and Fried Chicken and everything on the menu has its own separate sign. As if nobody wants to talk to each other. Now I completely empathize with any citizen of this town who does not enjoy reading for pleasure. The visual assault of word upon word upon meaningless money-grubbing word makes me want to banish printed material from the house and watch something on tv that requires no reading. Better yet, hire a mime.

So I've undertaken many knitting projects. So many that nearly all of my needles are busy dreaming up futures free of entanglement. My hands need this variety of texture so they knit a row of each at a time. They stroke the rabbity tail of baby alpaca for a minute, then scrub with a no-nonsense string of American cotton, rough to the touch, before switching to the mysterious forest of wool in shades of Pine, Fir, Cedar, and Birch, all blending together soundlessly. Wordlessly, which is strangely enough just what I need right now.

Let Grammy teach the baby to say Apple. I am teaching her to sit contentedly in silence with nameless colors and feelings. Just kidding. She is a noisy little sprout of song, wildly tapping her egg shaker against the new tambourine, trying to clap and bowing her head irreverently with her hands clasped, not clapped. Grunting with the effort. Pulling book after book out of the basket by the bed, not to read, but to wave in the air and pass from one hand to the other while alternately chewing or studying the covers. How far will they go if scooted? How about thrown? Dropped? What sound will the egg shaker make if tapped on a piece of tupperware? The floor? A belly? Emily is busy. Yes Emily. Yes Edie too. Embrace the confusion, as we have.

"This happens. This really happens."

2008-08-19T23:02:00.000-07:00

According to Gertrude, our third and weirdest cat, there are frogs in L.A.

I know!

I didn't believe her either, but then she coughed up the proof.
Half of which is currently lying beside the other half of which, in a smear of grass on the bathroom rug.
It is too tired and I am too late to clean it up tonight.

By the way...If you can guess what movie the subject of this post is from, I'll send you a very special postcard. If it's too hard, I gave you a hint.

Good night, sleep tight, I hope we all feel better in the morning. Gertrude already does.

Edit: Turns out they were simply crickets. Three in a row, posing as a frog. It's not like I looked super closely at them...

Highlights.

2008-08-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

Today a man with rollerskate blue highlights in his hair and a cowboy hat on his head asked Kenneth if there would be women walking the streets, later. This is a family blog and so that's all I will say. But he punctuated his question with fun little details about why he was asking.

Today Edie was given her first balloon, at the grocery store. It was a red balloon. She yanked on it like an upside down yo-yo, all the way to KC's Crepes cafe where we occasionally get our bubble tea on. In the cafe, staring at the balloon finally got her to notice the mirrored ceiling, which I've been trying to show her for a month. We both tipped our heads all the way back to make faces in the mirror, until she almost fell out of the sling.

Edie hit her head twice in one hour, first backward then forward. She's toughening up.
Did I mention she pulls herself up on things now?
Did I mention she likes to dance?
Did I mention she is trying to talk?

Blog under Construction

2008-08-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Things are getting a bit ugly around here. Please forgive the mess as I stumble through basic page design issues. It's a step at a time, so until then....chaos!

Lost cat busybody society

2008-08-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Did you know there are people who browse the lost pet ads on Craigslist.com, not because they have found a lost animal and want to return it, but because they have a message to share, and don't you know the people who need to hear it the most are those who have just lost a beloved pet?

I placed a second ad on craigslist for Jinx. Maybe I shouldn't have admitted it was the second time he's run away, but I just wanted to head off those (above-mentioned) who might be keeping track. Maybe I shouldn't have made a feeble joke about the reason for Jinx's disappearance being the eternal, infernal, sunny weather. Maybe I shouldn't have posted the ad last night in a fit of guilt after reading the chapter in The Amber Spyglass wherein Lyra is separated from her beloved Pan for the first time in her life, and I realized I hadn't taken any measures to increase the chances of Jinx's safe return home. I wasn't really thinking straight. I meant to type "neutered male" but instead I wrote "intact." I was probably thinking that I hope Jinx is intact, wherever he is. Not that his Special Purpose is intact, because it's not.

This morning when I checked my email there were two responses to the ad. Hallelujah! Have they seen Jinx? Have they adopted him and renamed him Fluffy, and their children will be very sad to lose their new sticky lollipop holder but they'll manage, maybe they'll get a kitten after seeing how well Jinx fit into the family?

NO.
One email contained the "kind advice" that if I really love and cherish my cat, I should keep him indoors only. It's the responsible thing to do. Oh, and this woman's vet says that cats that aren't fixed are more likely to be hit by cars because all that mating ritual stuff is distracting.

I responded thanking her for the friendly advice but admitting that I had really hoped for some actual information about my actual cat, not vague advice about the right way to have a cat. Jinx is simply not an indoor cat. To keep him indoors would be like trying to force Edie to become a dental hygienist when her dream is to be a cowgirl. I know, because I did try. It just wasn't possible. Glasses broke, blinds were ruined, and he outmeowed my determination. That is why I love him so much, he's not nobody's cat but his OWN. He does what he wants. (I'm just a little perturbed that he wanted to run away again)

Next email told me that it was my own fault he ran away, for not getting him fixed. The author hoped that I would learn a lesson from this, and called me stupid for thinking it was the weather that drove Jinx to a life of vagrancy. I responded appropriately, and then fixed the ad.

Lost neutered male....please respond ONLY if you have actually seen Jinx, or know where he might be found.

I remember when Jinx was fixed. He sat on my lap, stone still, purr silenced, for hours and hours. I canceled my plans for that night so I could sit with him by the window while he recovered from the drugs, and the snip. They all say it's the best thing but it will never feel quite right to me, to interfere with another creatures ability to reproduce. I'll bet there are a number of animal creatures who'd like to spay and neuter the humans, if they could. I did it, though, I did the "responsible" thing and fixed Jinx so he wouldn't be a frustrated kitty. I kept him inside, too, until he showed me that he could handle himself outside without the leash that he wore as a kitten chasing leaves and climbing trees.

My Birthday in the Hood.

2008-08-13T02:17:00.000-07:00

Psssssst.

Hey. Hey you.
Thank you for generously donating to the Send Kendal to Online Literary Star School fund.
I made roll call!
I waved some kizzash in the aiyer (like I simply did not care, though I did) and Ms. Gore did declayer, "you're in."
Sah-weeet!

And now...remedial English skillz, yo, LA has gotten all stuck in my grillz
like a superfly stuck under the hood.

I am so sorry. It is Two in the Morning.
The baby is asleep.
The babydaddy is asleep.
The babydaddy's mama and daddy are asleep.
The cats (minus my favorite one) are even not peeing on towels, not biting or licking the baby or my feet, and not singing the blues by the door, they are, indeed, asleep.

This is MY time.
Me, Myself, and Sleep Deprived I time.

I had a wonderful birthday.
Kenneth made a chocolate cake with mixed berry filling and blackberries placed like soccer players on a snowy field of frosting.
We ate spaghetti for dinner.
We had bubble tea and witnessed an LA moment, wherein one tall, lean, tan, rushity rush rush lady parked, rolled windows down, got out, went in, came back, checked locks, looked around, went back in, Edie fussed, the lady came back, looked in car windows, and explained, "Oh, I heard a baby crying, and I thought it was mine!" before returning to the doorway of the shop to stand in line. We shared aforementioned LA moment with another couple of customers sitting at a table across from us in the parking lot sunbrella alcove. "Did she just say..." Sure 'nuf, an infant seat reclined away from us in the backseat of her car. I thought it might be fun to pretend to kidnap the baby, just to teach her a lesson, but then I had my hands full with my very own baby already.
We went swimming at the YMCA, where they let us swim for free because Edith Emily is just the cutest little thing! She is also the most enthusiastic swimmer I've ever seen, but then again, it's in her genes. It's in all our genes, get it? Because you gotta be a good swimmer just to get here? Really, we weren't going to have her in the pool, we were going to take turns holding her and playing in the water, but she was so into it. It's basically a GIGANTIC bathtub full of salty tasting (?) water and people. Water and people are Edie's two favorite things besides breasts and plastic bags. So we dipped her in a few times and she howled with glee, and splashed, and waved, and charmed everybody out of the pool. Actually the session was over.
On the way home we were so jazzed about life that we risked ours to satisfy a sudden craving for soft serve ice cream. The only place to get the fix was at Foster's Freeze.....in the ghetto.
"Oh boy let's go there!"
So we did. Quickly, and with locked car doors. They had no drive thru window, so we held the baby close and ran, hunched over to avoid possible crossfire from gang warfare, and made it to the front counter. The signs advertising various sundry delights were overwhelming in their sun-faded commotion of flavors. Peach Parfait! Banana Twirl! Whipped cream cup! We both opted for simplicity, for safety's sake. One small chocolate shake and one medium chocolate-dipped twist cone that immediately commenced avalanching before I could savor it properly. "Cup, please," and a styrofoam cup and plastic spoon were shoved promptly through the small window, the only window not protected by iron bars. We hustled back to the car and the doors were powerlocked before I could shut mine behind me.

"That girl who made your shake."
"Yeah?"
"You think she was a Blood or a Crip?"
"Just eat your ice cream."

By the way.
It was a great birthday.
Thank you for contributing to my writerly aspirations by reading this here blog.

Good things about Friday

2008-08-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

First visit to the Inglewood Public Library. It is one of those old-fashioned sort of libraries that has more books than computers. Three floors of books. The non-fiction section is divided in half and the dewey decimels are also arranged alphabetically, somehow. A-P or Q is on one floor, and the rest is upstairs. Also, it is walking distance from the house, hallelujah. Being able to walk to a library is basically my first criteria in judging whether a city is livable. Inglewood is, surprisingly, livable. Jinx doesn't think so, though, as he is still MIAWOL and that is not my favorite thing to have happened since we got here. I was just thinking Jinx might be with me for a long time, I was imagining a future where Jinx gets old, cantankerous, and grayer than now, while Edie grows up beside him, all of us taking near daily walks around the neighborhood to watch insects and chase birds. Que Cera, Cera, maybe.

On the way home from the library, we set out to find a vegan restaurant rumoured to be hidden somewhere on Market Street, between abandoned storefront number one and abandoned storefront number two. Almost gave up, but then a door swung open and we were inside a cool, swank room, posh with stuffed chairs resembling thrones for a fairy court, shoe and purse strap sculpture on the wall, exotic plants, and jazz piped through a couple of well placed speakers. There were, to our surprise, people in there...eating. Up until then I had only seen Bruno's Chicken, Randy's Donuts, and GG's Soul Kitchen (WOOOO YOU ALMOST PASSED GG'S! SO DON'T COOK TONIGHT, COME ON IN! reads the sign), aside from the IHOP, Quizno's, and McDonald's right by our house. Kenneth and I had both figured Inglewood to be a vegan-business unfriendly place.

We approached the counter and noticed the sign saying that only cash would be accepted. We were still greeted warmly by the owner, Danielle, who gave us each a miniature sample taco. It was a perfect business maneuver, to give hungry newcomers a taste of vegan food, a taste of the restaurant, and a tiny feeling of owing her some business for the free tacos. Aside from the ease we slipped into from being out of the sun, fed for free, and delighted to find a nice place to eat in a down-and-out part of town, the food itself was completely mood-altering. The tiny housemade tortillas carried five times their weight in kale, carrots, almond cheese, wild whole grain rice, fresh corn salsa and guacamole, as well as some spicy orange dressing crawling over the top of the whole thing like the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Only three inches from end to end, and we waxed nostalgic about those tacos the whole way home.

"Remember how good those tacos were?"
"That was an amazing taco."
"Yeah, but remember?"
"Let's go back soon."
"Yeah we should go back there."
"Those tacos were really good."
"Seriously good."

Good tacos.

National Night Out 2008

2008-08-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Our first whiff of it came bobbing past in the form of a balloon, clinging statically to the head of a little girl, a sticky princess' sausage crown. Under one arm, LA style, she held a pink balloon poodle. Her parents folded her sleepy form into a minivan and rolled the heavy door shut.
Kenneth and I looked at each other.
"Oh yeah, there's that thing tonight..."
We had just stepped out for some fresh air, but it was getting dark fast. We would have turned back at that point, but up ahead - Lights! Banners! Glow sticks and blinky buttons!
"Let's go!" I said, but Kenneth didn't feel quite safe about it. This is a don't-go-out-after-dark neighborhood, but there were little kids shuffling past us in sandals, smelling of hot dogs and danger.
I dragged him down the block to a police barricade, where 3 or 4 officers stood upon podiums of shiny white Segway, and then we saw the banner announcing National Night Out, presented by the neighborhood crime watch. There was a child seat safety information booth, people handing out glow sticks, raffle ticket hawkers, and a stand selling pina colada in the empty pineapple shell! I'm pretty sure those hot dogs were bacon wrapped, as well. Edie immediately began to claw her way out of the babyhawk carrier, using my hair for leverage (my hair is starting to have some weird layering effects from all the havoc she wreaks), and looked around in utter amazement at this sudden crowd of people, flashing lights, noises and smells.
The event was scheduled to run from six until nine pm, and we got there at eight thirty. Just in time to feast eyes on some shiny lowrider cars, and see a performance by four female dancers.

Aztec dancers. A little bit like this:

They were shiny and flashy and ranged widely in age. A little girl, a medium-sized girl, an almost-woman, and a mother-woman. They were like Vegas showgirls who had gone back in time to start an ancient tradition with big feathers.
Edie.
Was.
Riveted.
Watching her face open in amazement, slack jawed and bug eyed, brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat. Holding her above my head for a good view, I could feel her tiny heart beat faster between my fingers, keeping perfect time with the relentless drum. She soaked it all in, delighted and terrified, turning occasionally to look at the people in the crowd - "Are you guys catching this?" Every so often a cheer escaped her to soar in the air - she just couldn't keep it caged. The dancers were running, and their feet were singing like rain! They were spinning in circles, with ribbons of flame streaming out from their heads like the sun. Their gold and silver costumes flashed and sparkled like a late afternoon stream, and the drummer made earthquakes in our skin.

We left awestruck, with glow sticks.
Kenneth's right hand dueled Kenneth's left hand in a light saber battle of miniature proportions.
And Jinx is missing again.

trial run

2008-08-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

Oh man.

We are practicing for when I am at work for part of the day and Kenneth is in charge of Edie.
So I am supposed to pretend not to be here.
While she cries.
And every cell in my body is telling me to go get her.
Now.

I know it's inevitable, that when I do go back to work and have to be away from her, she will cry and cry. My body will leak milk and I will feel hopelessly adrift from my purpose, which is, right now, to respond to that particular crying infant with whatever she needs.

But I actually am home right now.
She knows I am home, so why the heck has Mama been ignoring her cries this whole time!?

This is dumb.

Birthday Wish. (Paypal button enclosed)

2008-08-04T14:54:00.001-07:00

Well, it's that special time of year again. That time when, everywhere I go, I hear the same thing from everyone I meet.

"Kendal, what do you want for your birthday?"

And usually the answer is Nothing. Your existence on this earth is Gift Enough for me.

Okay, it's not completely true. I am too old to be asked that, and I can usually think up one or two things that would be just nifty to have at any given moment. This year, though, it's not just a thing. It's an opportunity.

Lemme asplane.

When I grew up I wanted to be a writer, or maybe an artist. In college that was the main topic of most of my personal essays. How I want to be a writer but all my neuroses and hangups are getting in the way, because all I ever write about is me, myself, and I. I showed one such essay to my dad, who read it and asked me, "Well, if you want to be a writer, why don't you write?"

Yeah. Hmm. Good question.

Because even though I loved to write, I didn't. Not often. Whenever one of those essays was due, I let the deadline loom over me like a thundercloud, and fretted and whined and complained about how I SHOULD be working on it. This happened over and over and over again. It happened with every writing project I came across. Emails, letters, thank-you notes, journal entries.

So, in order to write more, I began to read more. Self-help creativity boosting writer's block breaking books.

Zen and the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury.

On Writing, by Stephen King.

Writing Down the Bones; Thunder and Lightning - Cracking Open the Writer's Craft; and Wild Mind, by Natalie Goldberg.

Steering the Craft, by Ursela K. Le Guin.

The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp.

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott.

and with each new book purchase was a renewed belief that maybe this book will write a book for me. A ridiculous and unshakable notion that once I'd read what this writer had to say about the craft, there'd suddenly be a masterpiece flowing from my fingertips, money in the bank, and a deal in the works. Inevitably the time would come when the writing book would say, okay, I've told you all you need to know, given you tools, tips, and exercises, now go. fly. put pen to paper and create.

I'd say, "Okay, next!" and find myself another pretty paperback full of inspiration and writerly wisdom to read on the bus. Until I took Ariel Gore's book, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead, out of the library. Immediately my bluff was called. Chapter One: Write. Gore brought up every argument a person can make to excuse themselves from having to try, and reading her words did a magical thing for me. I started to write. I wrote while nursing Edie, while going to the bathroom, while taking a bath. I wrote in the car and wrote longer and longer emails. Her advice led me to actually try to get something published, and I was surprised at how easy it was to complete a story in one day. All I had to do was banish the idea of perfection. Not too easy, but doable.

So getting to the point of all this, it so happens that Ariel Gore is hosting an online writer's workshop in September. The class costs 275 dollars, which is about 275 dollars more than I can afford, but that important little voice everybody's got told me I have to enroll. Ariel Gore has already proven herself able to karate chop a three foot stack of writer's blocks, and now I'm betting she can help me send my writing in a direction it wants to go. Can you help me help her help me? This economy has been tough on everybody I know, but if there is any chance you can and want to spare 10 dollars to send me to virtual writing school this fall, I will appreciate it forever!

(My birthday is next week)

Polliwog Park, or The Time a Little Turtle Head Really Did Poke Out

2008-08-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Today is Barack Obama's birthday. You can send him a card if you want, or you can just give him your vote. Either way.

Okay anyways, yesterday we Got Out of the House.
And it was a durn good thing we did, because the stagnant, thick, roast-in-hell kind of air we were breathing in the house was doing strange things to all our spirits. Tempers and temperatures ran side-by-side, in a steady race to the top of the hills. As for me, I was content to lay on the bed in an inert stupor, half-heartedly trying to nurse Edie so as not to have to actually play with her, while Kenneth locked himself inside Grand Theft Auto Land with the windows shut and the fan becalmed. Grampa was oblivious behind his studio quality headphones, playing Unreal on his computer, while Grammy made up for us all - washing, ironing, treadmill walking, "The Walton's" watching, baby jiggling, picnic packing, and finally, mercifully, family herding.
"Get in the car, we're going to the park. It'll be GOOD for us."
One by one we dragged our sweaty bodies outside and hefted ourselves into the car. Buckled seatbelts, and waited for the AC to kick in.

Once there, we found shade. There were hundreds of people gathered for a free reggae concert in the park. There were trees here, and they resembled Evergreens. Evergreens. Evergreens. Mmmmmmm.

Evergreens, with their large, triangular patches of shade.

(Let me tell you about the other time we were at an other park, resting in a spiky, palm-tree shaped patch of shade that wouldn't quit sliding away, one jagged tooth at a time, some other time.)

We saw kids and kids and kids. Families celebrating birthdays, weddings, bar mitzvahs, but mostly Sunday. The wedding crowd slinked around wearing long silk dresses and six inch silver heels, carrying plastic wine glasses. Maybe we'll just call them wine plastics. Carrying wine plastics full of ...guess what? Wine.

See what heat does to a brain?

We walked down the hill to the playground/duck pond area, and found children dancing over what looked like steaming sewer grates. We discovered they were misters. By the pond, a gaggle of small boys were dipping a net in the water and pulling out turtles. They mistook our curiosity as Adult Concern.

"Are you guys catching turtles?" (as in "Cool! Turtles!")

The first boy we asked just shrugged and pointed at their spokesboy, taller, tanner, and more serious than the rest. "He is, ask him."

Spokesboy strode over with the confidence of one who is used to diffusing Concerned Adults.

"We're catching turtles, and then we release them. We just catch them and give them names, and then put them back."

Meanwhile Kenneth whispered that if we ever need a pet turtle, this would be the place to find one.

I pulled Edie out of her sling, so she could get a closer look at the turtle crawling out of the net that Spokesboy was holding. He held it closer to her. "You wanna see the turtle?"

What a great kid.

Across the surface of the pond there were dozens upon dozens of little turtle heads poking out of the water, opening their mouths like baby birds, and flipping under the water. There were hundreds. I have never dared to dream that a person could go to the duck pond to feed the turtles. Life is a magical place.

Amargosa

2008-08-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

I realized a couple of nights ago that we are 5 hours from the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel. It's been a dream of mine to visit and meet Marta Becket for ten years now, since I first heard of her. So sometime this year, crappy economy, gas prices, and personal finances allowing, we just might make the trip. This is the email I received when I inquired about performances. It's a shame we won't be able to see Marta dance, but the lady deserves a rest. She's been busy her whole life.

Dear Kendal,

Marta's performance season runs from the first Saturday in October thru the second Saturday in May.

She no longer is dancing (she will be 84 years old next month) however, she does what she calls her "Sitting Down" show. During this, she speaks about her life, how she came to live in Death Valley Junction, tells about the murals painted inside the Opera House and then sings original songs of hers. It is about a 45 minute show and is quite entertaining. After the show she sits on stage to give autographs and answer questions.

The tickets are $15 per adult, the doors open at 7:45pm and the show begins at 8:15pm.
If you would be interested or able to make a performance it is suggested that you make reservations as more often than not, her shows sell out. In order to reserve a seat we will need a credit card number, expiration date, cvv code, and a telephone number. It may interest you to stay at the hotel on show night, if so, you would want to book a room in advance (we fill up quickly on show night) and if you are a hotel guest you get preferred seating.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you,
Mary-Lee
Amargosa Opera House & Hotel

Did you get your tickets to the Gun Show? (flex)

2008-07-31T21:21:00.001-07:00

Because I don't feel like writing about the mile-square cemetery where I practiced driving in loops around stone angels and funeral procession gridlock made from blingin' cadillacs polished to somber shades of eggplant, saffron, and tamarind, several of which had matching "Compton's Finest" logos spelled in gold on their rear windows, and imagined that whomever they were grieving was probably too young to die;

and Because all that happened today of note was that Edie and I rode the Metro bus which is a wholly different system from Portland's Tri-Met which threw me into the role I've been trying to avoid, which is the new-to-towner who doesn't know how much to pay or where to pay it or what the transfer's good for or where to catch the number 3, forcing me to Talk To Strangers, which is one of the baby's and my favorite things to do but which has recently become a bone of contention among the Representatives of the House but even more recently has been resolved with a promise to be cautious and an assurance that you can take the girl out of Friendly Neighborhoods but you can't take the Friendly Neighborhoods out of the girl, so why fight it?
Um...where was I? Oh yes, because of all that, and additionally because today one of the riders on the bus, watching Edie play with A Stranger, said, "You know why babies love Peek-a-Boo so much? Because that's the nature of everything. It's here and then it's gone!" and then after watching more Strangers watch her stare back at them and bounce and flip upside down and make a monstrous face followed by an adorable smile followed by bellowing at the top of baby lungs, this Particular Stranger got up to leave and said "Thank you, I believe she just made everybody here's day a little better," and without an ounce of Motherpride I can say that it is true. She does make people's days better, everywhere she goes! Super Baby. Another Stranger said it almost made him want to have kids and then I laughed a Terrible Laugh and congratulated Edie, "Our work here is done, Muahahahaha!"

Anyways, because I don't feel like writing about any of that, I present you with a random story which has for no apparent reason been nagging at me lately. I've been thinking about Trevor the Tiny Farm Boy.

We had just gotten all the children settled down for Circle Time, after bringing them in from the playground, removing stuck sleeves from twisted arms, replacing accidented pants with fresh pairs, taking the potty goers to the potty, and changing the diaper wearers' diapers.
"Here we are together
together, together.
Here....we are together
together a- "
"Trevor!" My co-teacher pointed at the window, where the smallest boy in the class was drifting past in his coat, in the gathering darkness, with his tree branch rifle shouldered and ready.
"Oh my God, we left Trevor outside!" It had been nearly a half hour.
I kept the circle going as Stacy ran outside to get Trevor.
When Trevor came to circle, bringing the chill of an autumn afternoon with him, I asked him what he'd been doing out there, knowing the answer before he proudly replied.

"Nootin' Caiyotes."

Trevor was the only child of a Farmer and a Farmer's Wife. They were archetypal in their Farmerliness. Trevor's dad was about 12 feet tall, wore muddy boots and red flannel shirts with suspenders, and had a hearty, booming voice which sometimes caught in his thick brown mustache. He was the embodiment of rugged country masculinity, and it was obvious that he was Trevor's hero in every way, though Trevor resembled his mother much more closely. She was short and stout, with a high melodic voice and a quick, easy laugh. She always wore solid colored dresses with brown boots, and looked like she'd be right at home canning fruit and baking pies, most days. Trevor loved to follow his dad around the farm, checking on the animals, fixing the heavy equipment, stomping in the mud with bravado. He and his dad even took their guns to the edge of the property to see if they could spot any threats to the livestock. Coyotes. Trevor's favorite thing to do was shoot at the Coyotes, and this carried over into his imaginative play at school. It was getting to be quite the issue with the other kids, though, because in the absence of real coyotes on the fenced-in field of gravel that we considered a playground, there was only one reliable moving target. The other kids. I don't remember how many times the other children came crying, "Teacher, Trevor keeps shooting me with his gun."

The preschool had an anti-weapon policy, of course. As teachers we were supposed to uphold a zero-tolerance policy regarding guns and other violent weapons, and we tried. We encouraged Trevor to build towers with blocks but they usually became guns which shot down other towers. We gave him playdough which became guns. Everything became a gun in the hands of this kid, unless it was a coyote. Nootin' Caiyotes was the only game Trevor wanted to play. He was bringing to school a big part of his life as a farmer. I understood that this family had a livelihood to protect, and that meant "Nootin' Caiyotes" every evening at dusk. (My sister and brother-in-law have taken a more gentle stance on the predatory deer that plague their fruit-trees, by hanging bars of Irish Springs from each tree, presumably because the deer prefer to stay dirty.) It was confusing to Trevor, who at the age of 3 had already learned to shoot a gun, to be in school and have everybody tell him that guns were bad and wrong. I felt for him, but I also felt for the other children, and most of all, the coyotes. It bothered me when he puffed out his little chest and boasted that he and his dad had shot 3 coyotes the day before. I didn't want to condemn his actions, since they were, to him and his family, a necessary part of life, but I did want him to consider another perspective.

So I made a trip to the Library (Public Libraries always save the day). I picked out a few books about wild animals, specifically coyotes, and brought them to the classroom. After lunch, as we were getting ready for Naptime, the kids were allowed to lay on their cots and read a book to help them settle down. Usually we let them pick out their own books but sometimes we'd pick for them. That's how Trevor found a picture book about coyotes on his cot.

A little boy wakes up in the moonlight. There are coyotes howling in the distance. The boy climbs out of bed, out his window, and runs to meet the coyotes on the hill. They greet the boy playfully, and spend the night running through the woods, having mystical coyote adventures. At the end of the night, the boy hugs the coyotes and returns to his bed, just as the sun is coming up.

When I made the back-patting/nose-rubbing/blanket-tucking rounds, I found Trevor lost in thought, staring at the cover of his book. He read it again. He was a child of few words, so I don't know what he thought of the story. I do know that he thought of it, which was all I'd hoped for. To plant a teeny tiny seed of something else inside that caiyote nootin' noggin of his.

the end.

Gender Bender

2008-07-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

Boy oh Girl, does it ever mess people up when a baby is wearing the wrong color.
What is so mind-blowing about a girl wearing blue? Pink, for a boy, I can sort of get. Pink has been co-opted by the mass marketing monster as a beacon to the young girl - pssst...over here...away from the sporting goods....this here is your aisle, full of ribbons, and ponies, and barbies, and My First Makeup Kits! to the point where no mother with an ounce of love for her son could feel right about clothing him in pink dresses, unless for sport. At least, I don't think I could feel quite right about it, if my daughter were a son. It's much much much easier to challenge the gender coding system when your kid can pull off a blue plaid shirt and jeans one minute, spit up on it, then don a lovely summer frock in citrus hues without batting a pretty little eyelash. Thanks, universe, for giving me a girl to dress in a living representation of My Ideological Platform. May the whole thing never backfire in the form of Hannah Montana, High School Musical, or whatever ghastly incarnation lies ahead.

Today I noticed that Edie's Little Bitty summer frock felt a bit stiff, and scratchy. Starchy. Little Bitty is Costco's brand of retro styled infant clothing, designed to conjure up simpler times; Easy Bake Ovens and mountains of glistening Spam. A gorgeous, shellacked housewife, with her three darling, well-pressed children. I whisked the dress off and replaced it with a comfortable tee shirt, which Jessica sent from Tasmania. It has a picture of the island of Tasmania, a Tasmanian Devil, and a Tasmanian Tiger on the front. Oh, and it's blue. Because it's hot here, Edie's been rocking the no-pants look all the time, and no shirt whenever we can. Her diaper today happened to also be blue. Blue like her eyes...the ones with Maybe She's Born With It lashes, and oceans of charm. As we waited outside the grocery store for Kenneth, an old man sitting across from us struck up a conversation.

"How old is he?"
"Um, she's six months old."
"He seems sweet enough now, but wait until he's fifteen, then you'll want to kill him."
"We've agreed to renegotiate her contract at fourteen."
"I've had two sons, and both of them were wonderful boys, and gave me five grandchildren. But when they were fifteen, boy I tell you."
"I believe it."
"What is his name?"
"Edith Emily. She's a girl."
At this moment he sees an employee of the store and seizes his opportunity to ask the young man if he could look for a book in the lost and found for him. The DaVinci Code. I notice that he has several volumes resting on the seat of the walker next to him. One is a book of American Poetry. The store employee runs into the store to inquire about the book, and I change the subject to the DaVinci Code. He admits that he's gotten around to reading it a bit late, and then he left the book at this store about a month ago. He just moved here from New York and donated thousands of books and cds to the Salvation Army. He's been making trips to Border's Books to replenish some of his materials, but the selection isn't great. The store employee comes out to say that he couldn't find the book, or anybody who knew anything about the book. It's a shame, because the old man spoke with someone in Lost and Found on the phone, and they said they'd hold it for him, but the employee insists that he knows nothing.
We chat a minute longer, and then a van pulls up. On the side it says "Sunrise Senior Living" with a phone number and a logo.
"There's my ride. It's been a pleasure talking with you."
"You too, good luck with your books."
"That's a beautiful boy you have there, take good care of him."
I laugh.
"Okay, I will."

Later, we went to Trader Joe's to catch up on some groceries. I stopped by the sample table to pay my respects, and the woman behind the counter squealed when she saw Edie. In the highest pitched baby voice I've ever heard, the Mariah Carey of baby voices, she praised Edie's good looks and asked me how old he was.
"Um, she's six months old."
"Oh, he's a BIG boy!"

Then a little boy, about 5 or 6, spotted Edie and shouted, "BABY!"
He came right over, as if magnetized, with eyes like fishbowls. He grabbed her hand and studied the size difference between his and her fingers. "Look at those little fingers! The baby's squeezing my fingers!" The boy's father stood back, a little apologetically, and said, "Be gentle, now...don't touch the baby's face, your hands probably aren't that clean."
But the boy was unreachable, admiring every detail of Edie's little feet, nose, hair, and ears, touching her skin reverently, as if he'd never seen a baby before in his entire life.
"Do you remember being that little?" I asked him.
He looked at me with a deep knowing in his face and just nodded.
"Okay, that's enough, let's leave the baby alone now," said his father.
"I need to see the baby's tongue! Show me your tongue!"
Edie obliged.
"Hey, I saw it's tongue!" the boy said happily, then followed his father down the produce aisle.

As we were placing our overfull shopping basket on the shelf at the checkout stand, the little boy and his father were getting into line a few lanes over from us. The boy caught my eye and yelled, loud enough for the entire store to hear, "IS YOUR BABY A GIRL?"
I smiled at him and answered, "YES SHE IS!"

Mystery solved.

All we had to do was ask.

2008-07-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

He's back. He came home this morning at 5 am, presumably after seeing the 50 odd signs we posted up around the neighborhood in earnest. There's 15 signs on our street alone. We're going to leave the signs up for a couple more days, just in case, and also, because it's embarrassing to take them down right away. Oops, wait, nevermind, here he is.

I knew he was just going to show up. Kenneth had 100 copies made of the poster he spent all morning trying to print with eventual success, and made me a secret BLT while I was napping with Edie, so that when I woke up, I wouldn't get mad at him for playing too much Grand Theft Auto. I didn't get mad until late last night, when Edie was caffeinated (honestly - caffeine in cream soda?) and I was unsuccessfully trying to get her to settle down for the night. I scooped her up and stomped down the hall to the room where it sounded like a war was going on - gunshots, screaming, panic, and a bad Russian accent - to lay on the thickest guilt trip yet.

"Remember when we both used to lay in the bed with our daughter while she was going to sleep, and we'd do things like read, and talk?"
"What? Oh. Yeah?"
"Just wondering. Enjoy your new life!"
As I walked away he promised he'd be done in 15 minutes.
So we picked out some board books to chew on: Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and the minimalist White on Black (sequel to the bestselling Black on White).
Then, to my surprise and Edie's delight, Kenneth did emerge from Liberty City without a scratch, and resurrected our long-lost Lyra Belacqua from Philip Pullman's Amber Spyglass. Oh, hurry, Will, get Lyra and get out of there!
Edie reached for the pages with single minded focus. Man, can that girl crawl now, especially when she wants to crumple and tear something. She did fall asleep, after chapter 12. No more caffeine for me, and thus her, for a long time, maybe ever. Although, she was being pretty funny.

Now Jinx is back where he belongs, knocking over water glasses and biting our lips when we give him too many kisses. He's going to get even more spoiled for a while.

One other thing about the cats: Siddhartha finally used the cat door this morning. He was whining to be let out and I just scooted him over to the semi-open panel and let him come to the realization that outside was just a cat's initiative away and all he had to do was push, on his own. He stood with his head against the door for a minute while all the pieces clicked into place, and then slowwwwwwly squeezed his body through the hole. When he was all the way out I praised him and he turned around, looking embarrassed. Oh, that's how Jinx and Gerty keep getting in and outside when no people are home. Yes, Sid.

Where's Jinx?

2008-07-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

He's not at home.
Hasn't been since some time yesterday afternoon.
I love him a lot.
I hope he comes home.

Gerty loves him too, she came with us down the street to look for him. Usually she stays put.
My friend Jen's missing cat came home while she was playing his favorite song on the piano.

I was cranking the little music box (La Vie En Rose) just now, Edie was rocking back and forth and there was a meow at the door. It was Siddhartha.

But maybe Jinx will recognize the song if we play it during the quiet part of night, like now. Kenneth put the little music box, which wasn't really a box at all, but a throat, a voice, just the mechanism with a handle for cranking, into a little wooden box that used to house tea. Blueberry Tea from Canada that Sarasvati gave us in a set. Now it plays La Vie En Rose and smells like blueberries.

Jinx, please come home. We need you to keep nuzzling the baby when she cries. We also need you to follow us, meowing pitifully, when we go for a walk. And Jinx, if you don't come home, who will find the tiniest, remotest hiding places to curl up in, only to look up, annoyed, when we find you? Seriously, kid, this is a tough neighborhood and you can't be out running the streets like this. Get your furry tail back here and I will even let you drink from the toilet, unlimitedly.

she is MOBILE!

2008-07-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

oh, the horror. Suddenly there are death traps at every turn. This morning she very cheerfully scooted off the bed (not so fast...we sleep on the floor to thwart head trauma) and lay with her head propped on the mattress, chewing something. She looked like Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer, lazing in the grass with a stalk of wheat between her teeth. Only upon closer inspection it was an electrical cord, plugged right into that gummy little mouth of hers.

We've been working on her, laying her down on her belly and putting things out of reach, then watching her turn red and flop around, grunting, then whining from the frustration. Then we walked to the holy tree at the hospital, the tree with long roots dangling from the uppermost branches like the gnarled beard hairs of an ancient monk. We found a place clear of the strange little fruits it sheds, something between a plum and a fig and small enough to choke on, and sat down to relax. Edie sat scraping her hands on the rough grass (it feels like astroturf here - it's gotta be tough in order to survive the weather) for a while, then crawled over to where Kenneth held out a dinosaur book. Wait, crawled? Yes. CRAWLED.

And because we haven't taken any pictures down here yet, I present you with some from Leann's camera, taken a couple of days before we left Seattle for LA.

By the way...

2008-07-25T00:19:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who is reading this blog. Thank you for all the encouraging words and thoughts. It has meant a lot to me to stay connected in such a big noisy road-ragey place. Sometimes the stress is palpable, so I dive into the laptop screen to pick out what I want to from the chaos of the day, and while a simpler, quieter version of events unfolds, everything around me drops away and there is silence! Or, at least, the sound of waves constantly erasing and rewriting time and time again.

"Didn't you hear what I just said?"
"Uh....no. I'm working on the blog."

Thanks, Blog.

LA is both better and worse than I expected. Which is always to be expected, when expecting.

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days.

2008-07-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

There is no reality check in the world that compares to trying on swimsuits. I made four trips to the dressing room today.
"Maybe just one more size up this time..."
And then it dawned on me.

They're making everything smaller now.

The next big reality check came in the shape of some waves that smacked me in the face and I flailed my arms like a monkey who has seen people swim on television a few times. How long has it been since I've swum- no, swam- no...swimmed? I can remember an instructor demonstrating the back stroke with one leg and both arms, while standing on the other leg, a crowd of dripping nine year olds shivering around her, waiting to cannonball back into the pool. So, a billion years, then. I haven't been in a body of water bigger than a bathtub in four years. I think maybe we'll check out "Swimming for Dummies" or see about some classes. Surfing is a far off goal, yet. Gotta swim first. I can still do somersaults, anyways, and a pretty good Frog Stroke. It was FUN.
Edie thoroughly enjoyed the sand. She spent an hour grabbing handfuls and letting it stream out from her fists. When it was my turn to watch her so Kenneth could play in the water, she tipped over forwards and came up sandy-faced, but unfazed. By the time we left, salty and tangled and burnt, we all had a little sand in our diapers.

We walked down the boardwalk where people can ride along the coast and talked about finding a baby seat for Edie so we can bike to Venice Beach and buy trinkets like the little blue bird whistle we bought last time. Then we saw a baby riding on the front of his dad's bike and Kenneth chased him down to ask about the seat. It was an iBert. Then a kamakazi squirrel ran right by us and we headed for home by way of bubble tea. Which is when tragedy struck.

I didn't see it happen, I only saw the man running at the crosswalk to scoop up a white towel in the middle of the road, and Kenneth said something about a dog. We made our turn and could see that the towel he was carrying was actually a broken dog, a wee tiny dog, the kind you can fold up and store in your armpit. Kenneth parked across the street and we ran over to see if we could help. The man was kneeling on the sidewalk, holding the tiny dog and looking kind of broken himself. There was nothing to say so we put our hands on his back. Another woman came running out of her car to see if she could help. There wasn't really anything to do. She asked him if he needed help and he said he didn't know what to do.
:(
It was his mother's dog. She was going to be devastated.
:(
:(
The dog's name was Obi. They had been at the park across the street, having some off-leash time, and Obi just didn't want to stop running so he tried to run home. What does a pocket dog know about LA traffic when there's running to be had?
We gave the man one of our beach towels to wrap him in.
He slowly walked his mother's dog back to her apartment around the corner.
We slowly walked the long way to the bubble tea cafe.
We talked about not knowing what to say or do.
Then I thought of something that I wished I'd said to him.

We didn't have enough money for bubble tea and a crepe, and we were hungry, so we split a crepe and just smelled the bubble tea. We always forget that the place is cash only.

On the way back we started whistling as we got close to the apartment building where the guy said his mother lived. Whistling past the graveyard, I thought, trying not to look to closely at the windows, trying not to wonder too hard what was going on in someone else's life. Are we interested in other people's tragedy because we feel genuine compassion, or because we have a morbid obsession with things that could have happened to us and didn't? Whatever our motives for gathering around it, I know that if it were me I wouldn't want to cry alone on a city sidewalk. If Jinx were suddenly limp in my arms, I'd be grateful for the hands of strangers at my back, letting me grieve not-alone. Whoever the driver was, they didn't stop. Maybe they couldn't face it just then. It was a busy intersection and to suddenly stop would likely have caused a worse accident than the tiny broken dog in the road. Maybe the driver had a screaming baby in the car, or an audition to get to.

It took me and Kenneth both a second before we noticed the young man sitting peacefully on his knees in the yard, folded beach towel laid out before him. We shared a moment of awkward silence, wondering whether to say anything or not, and then I grabbed my chance.
"Did you guys have fun at the park today?"
"Yeah we did."
"Make sure you tell your mom about that."
"I will. She's on her way home now. Thank you for your help, I appreciate it."
"No problem, man, sorry."

Sorry.

2008-07-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Today is Kenneth's birthday.

Last night we went to Alejo's Italian Restaurant and had spaghetti from heaven. Spaghetti Bolognese and Spaghetti Carbonara. Edie had a spoon. The bread came with garlic olive oil with a whole school of garlic swimming in it. I heaped it on so that I could breath fire. Edie had a spoon. She went through all four spoons on the table while we were there, each being retired as soon as it hit the God-only-knows-what floor, but she didn't cry like the waitstaff and the other diners obviously feared. I am pretty sure I heard an "oh, this oughta be interesting" from the table behind us as we walked in, and the service was phenomenally fast. One of the perks of parenthood is that your meal ticket always lands at the top of the pile.

busy day

2008-07-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

This morning I found an inexhaustible source of joy. Not the baby...the joy she brings us ebbs and flows with her moods, and ours. I'm talking about the ocean. We drove to Whole Foods so that Kenneth could pursue employment there, and then we were close to the beach, so we went. After sunscreening our child to a pale shade of ghostly, then feeding, and burping, we walked across the soft sand just past the life guard station.
"Oh my god, it's just like that show, Bay...view?"
"BayWatch."
"Do all the life guards wear those red swimsuits?"
"Yes, and they're orange."
"Oh, as in, safety."
"Yeah."
Then the waves said, "Come and play!"
So I handed Kenneth the baby, dropped the sling, left my shoes, and walked directly into the water.
I don't really remember the last time I stood on a rapidly diminishing pile of sand, watching my feet sink deep as the water rushes past, making me feel like I am being pulled backwards by some impossible force which disturbs nothing but the sand. Maybe this was the only time it's happened. Whatever happened, it erased all my grown-upness and seriousness for just a minute and I played. Waves crashed into my ankles and made me dizzy with joy. Joy! If ten minutes of wading in the surf can bring such joy to a somewhat grumpy, uptight squarepants like me, then why do we dump so much trash into the oceans? We shouldn't. We should dump our sad, worrisome selves in the oceans instead and stay put until either we get buried in the sand or we emerge laughing, like I did today. I can't wait to get back in there with a swimsuit. Today cemented my intention to learn how to surf. If that's the only thing that goes right with this trip, then I'll be able to surf!

From there the day just got better and better, even on the rollercoaster of an expanded daily family life. We traveled across the city to Los Feliz, to see Grandmomma Jane, Kenneth's mother's mother. She printed out Edie's astrological chart and tried to tell me what some of the aspects meant while the rest of the family talked over her, around her, at her, and under her. Oh well, I can look up the rest of the chart in a book someday. :) We met Grandmomma's live-in George, who had a stroke and has difficulty speaking his mind. He is definitely aware of his surroundings, though. He spoke mostly to Edie, "Hey, man. Hey, man. Hey, man. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah right. Ha ha. Yeah, man."
She babbled right back. "Blah blah blah blah blah."
There was a flying saucer toy, just sitting on the table. It came with a remote control trigger. Kenneth found it right away. So, for much of our visit there was a hovering space craft, dipping, floating, weaving, falling, and flipping over. Edie LOVED it, and hated it a bit at the same time. She stared at it and said "Huh!" a couple of times.

We walked to a taco stand down the street, rumored to be one of Oprah's recommended eats. While we waited for our food, I met Warren "Bugs" from Liverpool. He'd come to LA in 1967 and never left. He introduced me to his gorgeous dog, Red Girl, who was half Chow and half Retriever. She was gracious enough to give my hand a soft kiss, then turned away in disinterest for the remainder of our conversation. He showed me the scar on his stomach where a 6 pound tumor had been removed, and told me that he'd just found out he would not have to undergo chemo treatments a second time. Then our food was ready and we took it home to enjoy with our delicious watermelon from the saturday market.

After lunch, Kenneth and I took a walk through the neighborhood. He promised me he'd show me his "old haunts", just as soon as we stopped at 7-11 for a slushie. Edie had been really fussy back at Grandmomma's house, hungry but too excited to eat. By the time we'd walked a few blocks, she'd settled down enough to nurse in the sling. This is a pretty obvious maneuver, with the sling we have. She sits up in the babyhawk while I hand her the boob as if we are at a lunch counter. Maybe I should wear a hairnet and a bored expression. Anyways, we walked by this guy in the parking lot, who was overseeing the installation of a white cadillac upon a tow truck's ramp. He had a captain's hat on, boating shoes, a navy blue jacket, white plastic sunglasses, and a yellow teeshirt that said "Breastfeeding is a gift of health" or something to that effect, with the universal symbol for breastfeeding on it. I know this, because he came into 7-11 after seeing our traveling picnic enter the store, and showed his shirt to Kenneth. I didn't believe Kenneth at first so when we left the store, I demanded to see the tee shirt. Sure enough.

Then, after making fun of Kenneth's lame "old haunts", he casually mentioned that we were headed for the La Luz de Jesus gallery. A few years ago I was really digging Mark Ryden, when he and other Juxtapozy artists were being shown regularly at the La Luz de Jesus. I remember sighing wistfully, to think that I couldn't go to the gallery because, sigh, I lived in Seattle. It never crossed my mind that I might actually go there someday, or that when I did, it would be free, and just because we were in the neighborhood. What a lovely surprise. Oh, and we picked up some oilcloth for our diaper pail while we were there, because the whole front of the gallery is a store filled with everything you never needed, but lusted after anyways. Bobbleheads, sideshow freak action figures, essential oils that you can mix by the dropperful, vinyl toys, a Frida Kahlo beaded curtain, and loads of delicious coffee table books about...everything. None of that stuff even matters, though, once you make your way back to the gallery section. The art is phenomenal.

The day ended with more loveliness, after Edie screamed and screamed to be in the carseat past her bedtime. (She hates doing anything but going to bed, past her bedtime, especially and most of all, riding in the carseat.) Nothing helped, not pulling over to feed her, not changing her diaper, not walking up and down the block we stopped on with her, not feeding her again, not until we employed the trick that Grandmomma had imparted just before we left.
"Press her close to your chest, sing, 'Ommmmmmmmm,' and make it resonate your whole body."
We couldn't put her to our skin, but we both sang "OM" to her for a while as her eyeballs rolled around in her sleepy, sweaty head, as she almost fell asleep, and then as she caught her seventeenth wind and started babbling happily.

"Did she just say 'f@*k'?"

Another farmer's market

2008-07-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

This one gets a green thumbs up.
This morning Kenneth woke up at the b. crack of dawn to convince Mama/Grammy (with much arm-twisting) that today was not, in fact, Clean House Day. Today was actually Go To The Santa Monica Farmer's Market Before All The Good Produce Is Gone Day. So after much arm-pulling and hem-hawing and a walk around the block and a lemme-take-a-shower and i have to feed the baby, we went. Grampa drove Grammy's car, which is mercifully equipped with oh-shit handles by all of the seats, even in back. I knitted for most of the drive in order to keep my eyes and mind off of the road.
We parked on level seven of a parking garage and waited a very long time for the elevator. Long enough to enjoy the beach view, and to play "Find the Fake Owl on the Building Across the Street." When the elevator finally came, we crowded in and went down to level four to pick up a couple of guys, then the elevator doors opened onto level six where we picked up a woman and her mother, then down to the second floor, and by the time we escaped on ground level, we were a crowded elevator, indeed.
We walked down the block, over, and over some more to find the farmer's market. Every stand had a sample table, with crispy, sweet watermelon, green "rocky mountain" cantaloupe, ripe strawberries that tasted like real strawberries, lush heirloom tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, and plums. We picked up a couple of green plums, a bunch of beets, fresh basil, purple fingerling potatoes that really looked like fingers, a flat of strawberries, a tiny green melon and the perfect watermelon. My only complaint? Again, with the bags. Plastic bags were flying everywhere and when I told Grandpa that he didn't need a bag for his tomatoes he made the point that they needed it to weigh the produce. So then I started thinking that since they have reusable shopping bags, there should also be reusable produce bags. They could fold up real small, and a person could carry a dozen produce bags with them to the farmer's market. Feel free to steal the idea for your own farmer's market, but I'm taking it to the Santa Monica Promenade. We'll sew up some reusable produce bags out of something light and water resistant like nylon, and sell them at the entrance to the farmer's market.

Anyways, we walked around Santa Monica for a bit and had some delicious brunch. When we got back to the house, Kenneth's aunts Sharon and Doreen came over with his Grandpa (Grandpa's Daddy - and they're all named Daddy - Kenneth, Eric, and William Jr, so he is Edie's Daddy's Daddy's Daddy) and cousin Daryl. We had spaghetti outside and it was delicious. Grandpa Daddy and his kids (Sharon, Doreen, and Eric) told some old family stories and they were also delicious ("She flipped the boiling water on me so I threw a fork and it stuck in her behind" kind of stories). I laughed until I cried. They grew up in a 10-kid household, so things must have been pretty chaotic most of the time. They have some delicious stories. Edie practiced her wave on everybody. She fingered Great-Grandpa's elbow wrinkles and grabbed Daryl's nose. Even when it was time to lay down and nap a while in our bedroom, she could hear the voices in the other room and kept waving for a while. She might have been waving to the ceiling fan. She's always loved those.

La Vie En Rose

2008-07-17T19:44:00.001-07:00

Ahhhh....now that's better.

We spent the better part of the day indoors. The best way to get a cat (or three) acclimated to a new situation is to keep them inside for a few days, so they know where the food is, and the litter. And the dog and the other cat, in some cases. It seems the same trick works for humans who have a big adjustment to make.

Today we let the heat have its way with the day and just stayed in. Washed some diapers, made aloe vera solution for the cloth wipes, cleaned off our new dresser (which was generously donated to us by Kenneth's young cousins, Ella and Mia, and covered with Mia's Dora the Explorer sticker collection.), put away some clothes, and had Trader Joe's chicken enchiladas for lunch. We set up the high chair and because it's missing a buckle we used some ties from an old housedress to tie Edie in.

Today was her 6 month birthday so we mushed up a sweet pear and gave her a bowl and a spoon. She handled that spoon like a champ. All that grabbing at Mama's food paid off. The pear made her face make a face like, oh....not so good. But she kept eating and eating and then slammed the bowl around and fingerpainted and licked pear off the side of the tray, so I think it was a success.

After the day had become tame and we'd all had a little nap, we went to the El Segundo Farmer's Market, which was much more like a farmer's market than the farmer's market from the day before. There were maybe 3 or 4 local vendors, and they were so eager to give out plastic bags. I'd pick up a plum, turn it over, and there would be a freshly opened plastic bag in my face. "Oh, no thanks, I'll just use the one I've got." Then we'd get to the next stand and they'd follow us around with an open plastic bag. Apparently once they get you to put the fruit in a bag it's official, you can't steal or change your mind about buying. And we were two blocks away from the Chevron Oil refinery, for what that's worth.

For dinner we shared a bacon-wrapped hot dog and a strawberry-watermelon agua fresca, then walked around El Segundo a bit at my insistence. I really like this part of town. Kenneth tells me that's because it's an exclusive white-people community, but really it's because this town reminds me of parts of Portland, with small independent restaurants and coffee shops and walkable streets. Apparently these things exist here only in the "white" neighborhoods. There isn't as much commerce in the "black" neighborhoods, like where we live. For the record, I saw a lot of different kinds of people when we were in El Segundo. All shades of brown, and some with accents I couldn't place. And yes, there were a lot of white people. But the best thing we saw was actually heard, not seen. Andean Pan Pipers playing Dust in the Wind.

We whistled La Vie En Rose all the way home.

a few more things

2008-07-16T15:34:00.000-07:00

Kenneth bought me and Edie a little Music Box diaphragm. This one plays "La Vie en Rose". It played in my head all day so that I wouldn't be sad for all the beautiful aspects of Portland we left behind.

There are windchimes somewhere outside the house, and gosh if that isn't a soul-stirring sound.

People are friendly here, they're just also more fashionable.

We passed a Plastic Surgery center on the way home, and Flynt Publishing offices. Talk about your one-stop shop.

And advertising everywhere. EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE! EVERYWHERE!
I feel a sudden burning neeeeeeeeeeed to go watch the new High School Musical movie.
But not really.
But really?
How big does your damn poster need to be?

Day One

2008-07-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I was visiting my mom in Mountlake Terrace, WA, and she took me to Costco for something or other. It was my first time in years, so in the mad rush of oversized shopping carts flying around sample carts of bento beef bullion cutlets and margarine cracker sandwiches with polenta paste, I could only go slowly and stare. People darting into unofficial lanes of traffic, faces either contorted into masks of permanent road rage or dazzling smiles of apology as they bump together, alternately excusing themselves and mowing down stray children in a stressed-out shopper's frenzy. I made the joke several times, thinking it to be just the most clever thing, that Costco should install traffic signals for the intersections and maybe institute some kind of licensing test. Nobody but the baby laughed, and even hers was more sympathy than genuine amusement. She did reach out a tiny sausage hand and grip the cart for me so that all I had to do was walk while she pushed. But enough of that. We made it out of that concrete cave alive, and with only two family sized boxes of granola bars.

So after spending the better part of this first L.A. day in the backseat of the Honda, desperately trying to placate one steaming hot and sweaty screaming daughter and crying some myself, while Kenneth dodged and weaved and sped and braked and cursed, and other L.A. humans drove their cars too close to us and yelled at us and honked at us, we made it home; we sat on the bench outside a good long while, listening to sirens in the not-too-distant distance, calling out to our barely remembered cats (she laughed when I said "Gurty!" oh yeah...that word and that creature, together like always), and I'm getting to the point....Costco. First impressions of L.A. between "home" and the "farmer's market" at Orange Grove is that the city is one big, hot, smoggy Costco. But that's just because Costco reminds me of road rage.

It's not all bad.

This morning Kenneth made me a decaf latte with Washington coffee and we walked Peggy the dog a few blocks that way, a few blocks over, a few blocks back, and saw the most gorgeous, magnificent, humoungous, adjectivy tree of unknown identification in the Daniel Freeman Hospital park. People had climbed up its roots to carve their tags into the smooth silvery bark, but somehow that just added to its apparent holiness. I walked all around it with my mouth hanging open and almost tripped on a root (well, I did trip on a root- I almost fell down) with the baby on my back. The security guard on duty told us it was a special tree, alright. It has roots that go clear across the grass to the dumpster in the back.

And there's termitesinthehousewe'llhavetotentitandfumigate. Boards chewed through. A little sticker in the attic saying "this house was fumigated on July 15, 2005".
Emily and I arrived exactly 3 years later, to the day!

Oh, and one other thing. Airplanes are really loud when they are right overhead. So now I don't have to miss the Portland ThunderandLightning storm that waved us goodbye a couple weeks back in St. John's.