Rosemary for Remembrance

2005-05-12T20:47:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for me, you should check out http://jonquil.livejournal.com.

Warning: no fanfic content.

2002-10-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I flew to Ohio for a writers' conference. The highlight for me was a workshop with Jennifer Crusie, author of Welcome To Temptation. In person, Crusie is as snarky, intelligent, and widely read as her books would make you think.

I learned a lot; I was reminded of things I'd already forgotten. I'll try to do a list later, after it's all had time to jell. But I felt fed, spiritually, for the first time in a long time.

2002-09-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

And in the lighter news department, Big feet, big boots. Oh, well. We'll all have to go back to picking dates by their personality, not their shoe size.

2002-09-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

In the good news front, we happened on the Musée Mecanique Sunday. Just stumbled on to it after eating lunch at the Cliff House. It had been rather a fraught day; we went to the Egypt exhibition in the Legion of Honor palace (mostly bas-reliefs; I had forgotten how incredibly delicate Egyptian carving was), and our 9-year-old son had complained the whole time. He then complained all the way through lunch. Then we left the Cliff House, I went downstairs to check out the view, and I insisted that the whole very crabby family come downstairs. After which we spent a happy hour or so (and many, many quarters) playing with mechanical wonders from the late 19th and early 20th century. Peep shows! An animated hanging! "The Drunkard's Dream"! Orchestrions!

My favorites are the fortune-telling machines whose eyes move, who breathe, and who pass their hands over cards. (Grandma tells me that "My marriage life will run more smoothly when I overcome my inclination to jump to conclusions.") Those are really disturbing toys. I want to work one into a story, even though I'm sure it's been done. Just imagine if the card said something like "You will die tomorrow" or "Duck when you leave the Museum."

In not-so-light news, I've had double vision at distances for a week. Optometrist's appointment today at two. I suspect middle age has just landed me another clout on the head. Fortune's a right strumpet.

2002-09-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

I walk into the room to find my husband holding a ruler. "I've got six inches. I can't decide if eight inches or ten inches would be better."
"Wouldn't ten inches be hard to maneuver?"
"Babe, if you've got ten inches, you don't HAVE to maneuver."
So he gets out the ruler and he measures.
And decides he'll have to visit a cutlery store before he decides what size of chef's knife he wants for his birthday.

2002-09-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Hindu Finger Puppets. Is this a great country, or what?

2002-09-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Pajamas On Parade This sounds like fun.

2002-09-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently President Bush wants to call September 11th "Patriot Day". This is wrong on so many levels. Let me count the ways:

Massachusetts and Maine already have a perfectly serviceable Patriot's Day. It's April 19th, the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. Nowadays best remembered for the Boston Marathon.
We didn't call Pearl Harbor or Gettysburg or Armistice Day Patriot's Day. We remembered them by the names that were specific to the occasion. "September 11th" has power; "Patriot Day" is generic. September 11th is the day I spent huddled on my living-room floor clutching my husband. Patriot Day is when the linens go on sale.
Many of the dead weren't Americans. They were illegal immigrants working at Windows On The World, or foreign businessmen with appointments at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, or vacationers visiting America. If they were patriots, it wasn't America that made their hearts beat faster.
The people who died didn't die for their countries. They were ordinary people, going about the business of their ordinary lives. Making phone calls, cleaning offices, flying to visit family. They were murdered; they didn't volunteer.
Most significant to me: September 11, 2001 punched us all in the gut. What we did with the punch was individual. Some of us grieved for the dead. Some of us raged at the murderers. Some of us waved the flag. A friend of mine, a New Yorker, refers to it as "Happy Fucking Birthday"; instead of celebrating a personal event, she lived through universal horror. September 11th fills me with grief and anger, but not patriotism. Patriotism, for me, celebrates something we do right, not the wrong we were done by somebody else.

As always, your September 11th may vary.

2002-09-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

Rob Morse: Top 10 better things to do today

My favorite: "Make love. That's what every soldier in a combat zone wishes he could do -- and al Qaeda has made America a combat zone. Live and love while you can. "

2002-09-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

They're selling "I <heart> New York" cookies in the company cafeteria. I'll be reachin' for the bottle, Lord, before this day is done.

2002-09-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

A4 Paper Size God's Will. Who knew?

2002-09-11T08:41:00.000-07:00

I'm not much for symbolism. I don't wear red ribbons, pink ribbons, red-white-and-blue ribbons. I don't fly decorative flags for Easter, Valentine's Day. I don't fly the American flag on the Fourth, although I sometimes think I should. Dar Williams wrote, "Way back where we come from, we never like to bother, we don't like to make our passions other people's concern." Which sums it up for me.

My 9-year-old came home from school guilty Monday. "All those people, millions of them, were dying, and I was just playing." After we'd corrected his orders of magnitude, we said "You're a kid. You're SUPPOSED to be playing." Then Tuesday he came home from school and wouldn't show us his homework until we nagged. "It's something you don't want to think about." His homework for September 11th was to wear red, white and blue.

If I wore anything for September 11th, it would be black. This isn't a patriotic moment for me. It's a tragic moment.

Your September 11th is different from mine.

2002-09-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

Turning over a new leaf, I walked my 9-year-old son to school this morning. It is, no lie, uphill all the way. Today, that translated into half an hour of walking uphill. You have to pay back for that spectacular view out over the valley.

It was actually pretty neat. We talked, and he let me know about all the things he preferred about North Carolina. Except that he kept saying that he wanted to keep our California house, and California weather, and his horse camp. In short, there's lots of stuff he likes here.

I can tell you one thing, though. If I keep walking my son to school, the demi-Goth black shirt and jeans are Right Out.

2002-09-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

The world is even weirder than I thought.A site devoted to airline meals past and present. Check out the ones from the '80s.

2002-09-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

A History of one small Asatru sect. Can't we all just get along?

2002-09-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

In 1927, an Australian physics professor set up a demonstration of pitch flowing through a glass funnel. Since then, seven drops of pitch have fallen. The The Pitch Drop Experimenteighth will fall any day now.

2002-09-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of brides have princess fantasies, but this is a bit over the top, no?

2002-09-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

Bad vacation. Bad, bad vacation. 11 people. 4 generations. 1 bedroom per nuclear family. (Grandmother, 93, gets one. Parents, 70something, get another. I, my husband, and our two kids get another. My brother, his wife, and their two kids, get another.

In a beach house. Where it rained. And rained. And my brother's kids aren't allowed to watch more than 1/2 hour of TV a day, which means mine couldn't either.

Hell is other people.

Something I said on one of my mailing lists:

"Every so often I go through the bookstore and sneer, because I am like that. Judging purely by titles, the most overused tropes (is that the word I want?) right now are SEALs, sheikhs, millionaires, and pregnancies.

"Some of the recent gems I spotted:
Navy SEAL Dad
Sheiks of Summer: The Sheik's Virgin/Sheikh of Ice/Kismet (a threefer)
and the grand champion: Millionaire Cop And Mom-To-Be. I am not making this up.

Any moment I'm going to see Baby SEAL Sheikh."

Seeing this, a friend of mine dared me to write Baby SEAL Sheikh. So I did.

Courtneigh gazed pensively at her cherubic son Stud. Even though his manhood was currently covered in baby byproduct, it bid fair to become one of the great prominences of legend. He was so like Achmed.... or Lieutenant Rock, for that matter. It was so hard to tell with babies.

She reached languidly for a diaper pin (Courtneigh was an old-fashioned girl and didn't believe in modern conveniences like Pampers, contraception or employment; indeed, she sometimes wondered about antibiotics) and stabbed herself.

"Oh, gosh-darn!" she exclaimed. Then, dimpling. "That's another quarter for the cuss box!" She raised her long graceful white hand to her eyes. A single drop of blood trembled on the tip, reminding her of the crystal tear she had shed when Achmed mounted his black stallion and galloped away without a backward look.

"But I couldn't have possibly hurt myself that badly on a diaper pin!" She glanced at the rose-decoupaged ribbon-trimmed Longaberger basket that held diaper pins, zinc ointment, and Vaseline. Courtneigh believed that single motherhood was no excuse for letting your standards down.

She gasped. "How did that get there?" For there, among the gingham, the potpourri, the ruffles, and the silk roses, nestled a golden pin. A trident.

A deep masculine voice interrupted her reverie. "I can see you weren't expecting me to return."

2002-08-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

I read an article in the Sunday New York Times this morning. It's eight o'clock in the evening and I'm still white-hot with rage.

You may remember the charming concept of "secondary virginity". The idea is that a young lady realizes that it was wrong of her to indulge in the sins of the flesh, so she stops indulging. Apparently the simple decision to go and sin no more isn't sufficient, so various religious organizations created the label to go with it. Secondary virginity. Once you repent, you're a virgin again. Sort of. Because, apparently, only virgins are allowed to say no. (I'm not making this up. Really. There were articles in the Charlotte Observer.)

Well, down in Charlotte (God, am I glad I left), the ministers and the Southern belles have come up with a new, improved variation. Secondary chastity. For some fixed period before the wedding -- the exact period is a matter of some debate-- the bride-elect stops sleeping with the groom-elect. It's supposed to put that virginal zing back into the wedding night.

Here's the article. (Registration required, but free.)

Whether fresh out of college or older, Southern women say the decision of when and how long to stop having sex — as little as a month or as much as a year — has become standard girl talk at sorority houses and bridal showers. "My daughter has said to me that all her friends do this," said Cynthia Goodwin, a former schoolteacher in her 50's who lives in Monroe, N.C. "Twenty-five years ago, it may have happened, but we didn't talk about it."

Kim Burgess, 38, a medical staff supervisor in Newnan, Ga., who married in May after abstaining for a month, said: "It's nothing your mother teaches you, because you're not supposed to be having sex. The holding out makes you feel like you've been a good girl."

Honey, the way I was brought up, a good girl, not to say a lady, didn't give newspaper interviews about her sex life.

If you realize it's wrong to have premarital sex, good on you. Stop immediately, and may God bless your repentance. But stopping precisely four-to-twelve weeks before the wedding? I say it's sanctified cock-teasing, and I say the hell with it.

2002-08-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

Libraries are my cathedrals.

You walk in. They have more books than even you could read, about things you've never even contemplated. (Non-pornographic things.) You show a little piece of plastic, and you get to take the books home and read them. For free.

My first love was Morrison-Reeves Library. When I was a little girl, the building looked like this. Romanesque Revival built in 1893, with granite columns and carved-sandstone gargoyles and a downstairs children's reading room with a window seat. And in the adult department... the bottom, the fiction section, was ordinary enough. But it sat under two stories of spiderwebbed cast iron stacks. The floors of the stacks were glass, to let light through. If you needed nonfiction, you had to climb up narrow iron stairs, listening to the stairs creak as you went, avoiding looking at the abyss below.

I used to climb those stairs all the way to the top and back again, with both arms full of books, because I was a library page. You didn't wear a skirt when you were shelving, because people could See Things.

Morrison-Reeves built a new library in 1975; I helped move the books from the old building to the new. Then the old building was torn down to become a parking lot. I still walk those stacks in dreams.

2002-07-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

Saturday we took the kids to the Point Reyes Lighthouse. It's an odd beast -- set below one of the foggiest cliffs in the U.S. It's set halfway down the cliff because otherwise it would be up in the fog layer.

This means that you climb down 300 steps, plus a couple of long slopes, to get to the lighthouse and its first-order Fresnel lens driven by the original clockwork mechanism. Then you climb up 300 steps to get back.

I intend to spend the remainder of the week travelling by palanquin. And I understand why the original light-house keepers drank the alcohol they were supposed to use to clean the Fresnel lens.

Another Fresnel lens link.

2002-07-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

So, what's up? I have a new neuro appointment. The first week in September. I've also been struggling through bureaucratic Hell to find a psychiatrist. I was halfway through negotiations with one clinic when they informed me that my medical insurance "did a cut-out on mental health care." Which turned out to mean I had to go to a separate Website to check mental health, that the out-of-network penalty was 50% coverage, and that the people I'd been talking to were definitely out-of-network. Before this happened, I had gone through the fun-fun-fun of a phone pre-interview to discuss the intimate psychiatric details of why I had to see a psychiatrist. With a total stranger. In a shared office. Do you love the American health-care system, or what?

On the good news front, I'm working on a novel. Every morning I get up after reading the paper and write. I like what I'm writing. I'm scared and in major avoidance mode (yesterday I cleaned out the catbox rather than write), but I also feel hopeful. It's kind of like pregnancy. This is the right thing to do, but terrifying.

Which leads me to fanfic. I owe a debt. I have a half-finished WIP that's been half-finished for a year now. I have promised to finish it. Right now, the single most important thing in my life (well, after husband and kids) is writing the real novel. The stakes are a lot higher. It's a lot harder. I apologize to anybody who wants more of "Something In Between", but it isn't going to get any attention until I have a solid first draft of the salable (I hope) book.

2002-07-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

Shadow is settling in. Actually, "the kitten" is settling in; that's what we mostly call him. Par for the course; both of my children were "the baby" for months, even though they had official names when they left the hospital.

He spent his first five days closed into the kitchen and sitting room. Now those are the only rooms he acknowledges. The doors are wide open, but as far as he's concerned, one window, one chair, two packing boxes, and the catbox are all he needs. Sometimes I carry him off into the bedroom for cuddles. He likes the cuddles, but dives under the dresser when he's free to move. He never comes to any of the bedrooms or living rooms under his own power.

He doesn't hiss any more. He meows for attention. He's finally gotten to the point where he walks up to the chair, meows for attention, and hops into my lap. He spends most of most evenings sitting in my lap and purring and squirming. He's not much for play; mostly he wants affection, which he's getting lots of.

I like having a pet.

2002-07-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

Even in the blissful Bay Area, there are migraines. Two to three a week. I'm several thousand miles from my neurologist, so I need to find a new neurologist. I picked one from the managed care company's list. Today was my second visit.

Migraines. Killer migraines. Frequent killer migraines. I mention that I had a migraine that morning. "Funny, you don't look like you have a migraine. I can usually tell." No, that's because the medication worked. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. His solution? I take too many antidepressants. (I'm on a combination therapy because single medications all failed.) He especially doesn't like Celexa, the AD I'm taking. He reads me a list of its side effects from the PDR. None of which, as I point out to him, include migraines. He's noticed that people with migraines are often angry people, and depressed people are often angry people, and have I ever done therapy?

Why, yes, I reply, I have done therapy until it's coming out my nose. Ah, but it wasn't with the right therapists. And have I considered electroconvulsive therapy? It isn't really as bad for you as the rumors have it, and there aren't serious long-term memory effects. No, I say, memory loss is kind of a career problem for a writer.

So the asshole, in short, isn't going to talk about the migraines, he wants to talk about my depression treatment, and second-guess that. He wants to find a new psychiatrist for me, but all the psychiatrists he knows are either dead or retired. Sometimes both! We share a chuckle. He will continue to try to find a psychiatrist he can recommend. One with -- and this is a direct quote "gray hair".

I will go find a new neurologist. And a psychiatrist. And hopefully the neurologist will be interested in treating my migraines, and the psychiatrist in treating the depression. Wouldn't that be nice?

2002-07-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I have some elegant shantung mules. In red. They are fabulous.

I am wearing my dark royal blue '50s-style shirtwaist with the ankle-length wide skirt. You can't wear black with royal (almost navy) blue. All my shoes are black. Except the elegant shantung mules.

So, of course, I wore the elegant shantung mules. Forgetting that I work for a Very Big Company. Which is so big that it doesn't have an office, it has a campus. And I had an appointment somewhere on the campus, somewhere I hadn't yet dropped breadcrumbs to.

So I walked all over the campus, searching for a building. In vain. Because the building isn't actually on the campus, it's down the street. But I walked and walked in unhappy ignorance. I think I walked past the Lost Ark. It couldn't have been more lost than I was. Maybe I bumped into an honest man. Whatever. I walked over a bump in the sidewalk, fell, and twisted my ankle. In the elegant shantung mules.

Another fashion victim.

2002-07-08T12:06:00.000-07:00

You know, you just can't make up stuff like this:

" In www.SuperShagLand.com, a parody of Nintendo's hit Super Mario Brothers, an intrepid man or woman chases the boy or girl of their dreams, gaining points for each condom they gather and losing points for drinking alcohol or bumping into monks, nuns or dogs. "

I would think it'd be okay if you bumped into a monk or nun, as long as you were wearing a condom, but what do I know of these things?

2002-07-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

We have a new kitten.

A friend of ours has been feeding a colony of feral cats for months. The tamest of the lot, obviously an abandoned pet, showed up with a litter of kittens. When they got older, she brought them to Deb to be admired and fed and petted and played with.

Last Monday, Shadow came to our house in a cat carrier. He spent the night behind the gas stove, hissing. He's slowly adapted to this whole human-being thing. Now he sits in the window and yells. When you come near, he hisses. Then he gets petted. If you stop petting him, he yells again. Sort of like Resurrected!Buffy, really.

2002-07-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Reached Realtor. Not only has house not shown in 3 weeks, not only has nothing in the neighborhood shown or sold, not only did she give an open house and nobody came, but the buyer who fell through because she lied about her divorce status is suing us in small-claims court for the return of her deposit.

I hope there's another Jilly Cooper in the mail when I get home. Or possibly a cask of malmsey.

2002-07-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

The secret to life is being able to handle day-to-day annoyances serenely.

I can't. That's what makes it a secret.

So, in the ongoing saga of our house, the realtor had a family crisis in early June -- her father had a massive stroke. Since then, we haven't heard one word from her. I've made repeated calls to her, her assistant, and her broker, and have not gotten useful information. We have an empty house in what should be an active real estate market, and we have no idea if anybody's looking in it. Two weeks ago, I asked the broker to do a market analysis, and she came back grimly announcing that we were $5K over the market.

My husband broke a tooth last night.

We're having trouble finding daycare for the kids over the summer; we're lurching from summer camp to summer camp.

And this doesn't compare to being a woman in Afghanistan or a poor person anywhere; my troubles are pretty darned tiny. But I would really like to stop stubbing my toe on the rocks of life for a month or so.

2002-07-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

So, the migraines continue apace, the old house in NC has still not sold and the realtor isn't returning phone calls, and the child care is shaky.

When this sort of thing happens, the only course is to read romance novels. Really bad romance novels. The kind whose covers you want to hide at the checkout counter. "Mostly I read Dostoyevsky! Honestly! Oh, look, right behind you, it's a meteorite!"

At times like these, Jilly Cooper really hits the spot. (They're known as "bonkbusters" in the U.K.) Observe the cover. All about sex and high life and sex and bad puns (not terribly funny, but hey) and intrigue and sex. And British class issues.

You can tell somebody's going to be the villain when she puts picture windows into an Elizabethan and plants a pink-and-mauve garden. You can also tell because she pronounces "i" as "ai". "That would be faine." What's wrong with this, I don't know, but apprently it's damning. Much more so than, say, getting pregnant at an orgy, or seducing a woman because you want to photocopy her company's proposal, or throwing a temper tantrum and announcing to the press that your mother doesn't know your father because she conceived you at an orgy.
And that's three sympathetic characters. In Rivals, if you're curious.

Then there's the character who muses "Rupert's cock was amazing. As he entered her, she felt all the surprised joy of a canal lock discovering it could accommodate the QEII."

Really, it's all good.

2002-06-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

Thoughts after reading too many romance novels:

An aureole is a halo. An areola is a nipple. A woman who has aureoles on her breasts is bucking for a damned peculiar form of sainthood.

The next time a hero compliments a heroine on how tight she is, and goes on to infer that she has not been getting much of late, I'd like to see her frappé him with her superbly-toned Kegel muscles. Then she should go find a man who appreciates a woman who works out regularly.

2002-06-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

I've been having a long visit from my old acquaintance the migraine. My husband has been doing lots of small and big nice things for me.

Me: "Thank you for doing my hair."
Him: "I like doing your hair. And your nails."
thoughtful pause
"And Bruce."

2002-06-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

I just walked past an animated 5-way hall conversation on a technical subject.
Carried on in French.
I don't think I'm in North Carolina any more.
Yippeee!

Scene: The very back of Costco, in front of a magnificent display of lemon, coconut, and chocolate cakes. Our 9-year-old son made a beeline for the chocolate.
Son: "I want one of these fow my next birthday!"
Me: smiled absent-mindedly.
Son: "If I don't get one, I will unleash howwow upon the wowld!"
Husband considered for a moment. "That's certainly worth $12.98."

2002-05-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

In the last two months, I:

Moved cross-country to California. Yippeeee!
Failed to sell the old house. Repainted old house exterior and interior. Waited through showings. Whined.
Failed to unpack. Boxes, boxes everywhere.
Started leading a much, much better life.
Couldn't get FTP access to my new host until today.
Missed you all a lot.

It's nice to be back in the swing of things.

2002-05-31T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back.

2002-03-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

My sixth-grade honor student's assigned reading:

"Do you know me? I'm Huck Finn. I was in THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER. That book was made by Mark Twain. He told the truth, mainly. He did stretch some parts. That's nothing. I never heard of people who always told the truth."

The first paragraph is annotated in pencil in my daughter's hand: "Stupid."

My husband: "I can hardly wait until 'African-American Servant Jim' shows up."

2002-03-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

The movers are coming Friday. The California purchase is supposed to close Thursday, 3/28. And the local sale, due to close 3/26,. seems to be falling through. The buyer and the buyer's agent and the buyer's mortgage company had neglected to inform us that the purchase was contingent on the buyer's husband signing a separation agreement. Which he has missed repeated opportunities to do, each time without explicitly refusing to sign or authorizing his lawyer to admit that he had not signed.

So I am scurrying madly to attempt to preserve the purchase of our dream house.

2002-03-17T16:17:00.000-08:00

Daughter stepping out of shower, dripping wet hair hanging to her knees: "I don't like to be vain, but I approve of every single aspect of being me."

It sounds nice to be eleven.

2002-03-16T11:56:00.000-08:00

We were planning a going-away party for both children. Our son's was a pizza party at home. Our daughter's was at a paint-your-own pottery place. One of her good friends lives in a homeless shelter (a secret only she knows).

Me: "You should check if Friend needs a ride. She may not have access to a car."
Daughter: "I'm pretty sure she does. They were living in it before they got into the shelter."

What a world.

The good news is, that particular child won't be homeless for much longer; the relative who cares for her has found a job.

I'll be rehosting this blog soon; Geocities is forbidding FTP access unless you pay them for hosting. Watch this space for my new address.

2002-03-04T07:01:00.000-08:00

We came, we saw, we bought a house.

I cannot describe how much I love this house. Actually, I can, because I wrote a letter to the seller. (This is surprisingly common in California, although usually it's done when multiple people are bidding for the same house. Yes, they routinely have closed-envelope auctions of desirable houses. You submit your bid to the selling realtor, then the buyer looks at all the bids and decides which s/he likes best. If a house is being sold this way, you try to look warm and winsome, include pictures of the family and the dog (no lie!), and so on, because there will probably be multiple bids at the same price and you want to stand out.)

We fell in love with newaddress for the garden, the kitchen, and of course the view. The house keeps its secrets; from the front, you see the pretty rose-covered gate, the entry path, and the painted door. Then you walk inside and discover a spacious home with a magnificent vista.

The garden is a delight. The back garden is truly an extension of the house; the deck and the upper terrace provide as much sitting room outside as in. The plantings are cleverly designed to be beautiful both from above and at ground level. We love the combination of decorative and edible plants. If you accept our offer, Jonquil would like to talk to you sometime about what’s planted where and what needs special attention.

We’ve seen a lot of kitchens in our house hunt. Many of them have been designed to impress – elaborate finishes, expensive tiles, granite counters. Your kitchen was obviously designed for a cook. The stove is a professional tool; the storage space is well-thought out, and the working space is comfortable. It’s clean, handsome, and inviting. We especially like the living space off the kitchen, because the people who aren’t cooking can sit in the dining room or sitting area and talk to the cook.

And then there’s the view. When you look out the living and dining room windows, and when you stand on the deck, you can see the valley spread out before you. There’s a panoramic view of the sky at night. It’s exhilarating to look out at the world.

The house itself is nicely laid out. The bedrooms are generous and comfortable; the living room and dining room are large, inviting, and take full advantage of the glorious view.

We love your house, and we hope you’ll choose to sell it to us.

Every word is heartfelt. I love this house.

Oh, also I learned to tat, and mostly learned to net.

2002-02-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

Me, on preteen daughter: "She's intelligent, beautiful, and emotionally volatile. I'm living with Dawn."
Suela: "But without the shoplifting and the vampire snogging. I hope."

2002-02-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

Christine Lavin gives wonderful concerts. She's constantly writing new songs and updating the topical references in her old songs. She's warm, witty, and spontaneous, and still has an amazing singing voice at 50.

She sang two of my favorite songs, the hilarious "It's A Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind", and the serious "The Kind Of Love You Never Recover From". Happiness was had. Lavin gave away CDs to the oldest and the youngest person in the audience. Daughter was 11. Another little girl was 9. All was nearly lost when I piped up "My son is 8... but he's asleep." Christine decided he qualified. Son, on way to parking lot: "That's the first time I ever won something while I was asleep."

I felt bad for the 9-year-old, but that's because I have a lifetime supply of Liberal Protestant Guilt.

Son woke up in time for the fire-baton (okay, glowlight-baton) finale. Christine asked if he was still asleep. We said, no, he was awake. She said "He was probably dreaming he was at a concert... then he woke up and WAS at a concert! That kid's gonna need therapy!"

2002-02-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

I went to Indiana, where my father got visibly better by the time I left. The highlight of the visit was a 4-hour Cutthroat Hearts game with my parents and my brother, in which my father got that old card-shark gleam in his eye. (He's a retired mathematics/computer science professor who worked his way through the Navy playing poker.) It was just like old times.

My home town has gotten greyer and sadder. Not only are a lot of the landmark stores I remember closed (yet another dying American downtown), but I see more shabby unpainted houses every time I visit, and the school system has 200 fewer students each year. My mother says that none of their friends' children settled in Richmond after college -- there's just nothing to attract them back.

When I was a kid people worked at Alcoa, or at the Wayne Works (you may have ridden one of their schoolbuses with the Indian head on the side), or at the Purina plant, or at Gray Iron Works. All of them closed now. The new factories that came to town left when their tax incentives failed.

I came home to a very tight work deadline which is concurrent with a househunting visit to Silicon Valley. See you after the dust settles. When, I hope, there will be time for essays again.

2002-02-12T05:16:00.000-08:00

The phone rang at 7AM. Never a good sign.

Except that it was. My father, in a hoarse voice, telling me that the pathology results had come back. They are the best they could possibly be. The surgeon got the entire cancer, it had not penetrated the bowel wall. Under these circumstances, the 5-year survival rate is better than 90%.

Wow.

2002-02-11T14:04:00.000-08:00

Six years ago, I planted a Japanese flowering apricot (Prunus mume) tree. I read about it an essay by the distinguished gardening writer Elizabeth Lawrence, who gardened in this very town. According to her, Prunus mume flowers in January, when hints of Spring are welcome. The flowers are fragrant.

The tree was a twig when I planted it. It's over 6 feet tall now, and has never flowered. Now I will never see it flower.

2002-02-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

Headlines For Our Time:

Scientists Find Jurassic Age Dinosaur Vomit.

2002-02-11T05:29:00.000-08:00

The Peshawar Lancers, S.M. Stirling, Roc, 2002, ISBN 0-451-45848-6

This is a very strange book. It's set in India, it's all about an alternate-universe British Raj, and it contains nearly no Indian characters. There are three romantic couples, all upper-class and white European-descended. There is a Faithful Sikh Sidekick and a Treacherous Pathan Ally. The latter turns out, at book's end, to be an Afghan prince. The good guys are the transplanted British upper class. The bad guys are the Russians, who are Satan-worshippers, ritual cannibals, and ardent devotees of the world's end. Just in case that wasn't nasty enough for you, they also employ Thugs.

A cataclysm has occurred, forcing the Europeans to move to their Colonial possessions. A hundred and fifty years later, Europeans rule almost all of the industrialized world. There's France Outre-Mer, the Raj, and a few smaller states. Against them are Dai-Nippon (a blend of China and Japan), and the Russians.

Here is one population list from the back of the book:
"India: ... Population: 130 million, of which sahib-log 10.7 million; Eurasians 6 million; Christians 18 percent, Muslims 7 percent, Sikhs 7 percent, remainder other Hindu and Buddhist." [Other Hindu?]

What's missing here? Apparently S.M. Stirling hasn't noticed. He has dutifully put in touches of Indian color -- some landscapes, an evocation of Bombay. The most sharply-focused descriptions are of Indian dishes, all of which could be found in one American restaurant or another. But the natives of India have nearly vanished. They're there to provide exoticism, but they have no aspirations or goals of their own. Apparently the British and French rulers were so benevolent that self-determination seems irrelevant to modern Indians.

The adventure plot is great fun, as is the technological milieu. Unfortunately, I kept being thrown out of the book by its cultural premise. This book has no place for characters like Kim, an Eurasian street-child focused on survival and amusement, or his lama. The working classes don't exist, far less the poor. When I read real Victorian/Edwardian melodrama, I say to myself, "Times were different." That's not an excuse I can make here. I find it inconceivable that The Peshawar Lancers could have been written in the 21st century.

2002-02-08T10:27:00.000-08:00

My father's out of surgery. He didn't need blood during, the surgeon is pleased in general, and they don't think the tumor penetrated the colon wall. (We won't really know until the pathology report comes back.) So far, so good.

2002-02-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

The trunks of our pine trees are steaming in the morning sun. I feel I should go out and Morris dance or something.

The children are very needy now. They have every right to be. They're worried about moving from the place they've lived 9 years, about leaving their schools, their grandparents, and everything they know except us. They're scared and insecure. Since they're children, this comes out not only as clinginess, but as quarrelling and confrontation and petty misbehavior and tantrums.
The problem is, we're all needy right now. We're all exhausted. The wells are dry. Mom and Dad are frightened too. Mom and Dad are overwhelmed too. Mom and Dad need comforting too.
But part of the iron-clad commitment of parenting is that you will be there. Doesn't matter that the baby's screaming when you have three-day flu. Doesn't matter that your needs are obviously greater than theirs -- after all, you're a grownup and you have Big Grownup Problems. Oddly enough, Big Kid Problems seem just as urgent and weighty to them. So Big Kid Problems must be addressed. Because you're the Mommy, and that's your job.

2002-02-08T05:24:00.000-08:00

My father's going into surgery for the colon cancer in an hour. Pray for us, or wish us well, please.

I adore old melodrama: Beau Geste, Ouida, Kipling, The Prisoner of Zenda, Graustark, Scaramouche, and so on. So far, a quarter of the way in, S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers is making me happy. It's in an alternate British India (don't want to spoil the premise) in which the British are nearly completely assimilated, although they have maintained their rule. Thugs! The Great Game! Romance! Adventure!

2002-02-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

Today's new Internet amusement: Googlewhacking

Find two English words that, when searched in Google, produce precisely one result. The official (or as official as such things get) rules.
Mine is "onomastic codswallop". Or it will be, until this page gets indexed.

2002-02-04T05:44:00.000-08:00

In quiet (well, not-so) despair over Bush administration foreign policy, which boils down to "Do as we say, not as we do." International law applies to other people, not to us. Over the weekend, an Administration official expressed surprise at the idea that the conditions at Camp X-Ray might adversely affect the treatment of our prisoners of war.

The free-flying accusations of non-patriotism are scary, too. If I continue to believe that the President has the IQ of day-old steamed zucchini, the terrorists have won. I didn't respect the man September 10th; why should he be sacrosanct now?

2002-02-01T05:03:00.000-08:00

Wednesday was quite the layer cake of a day. We were negotiating and counter-negotiating to sell the house. I was waiting for the phone to ring with the latest counteroffer. The phone did ring, it was my father, saying "Hello, <Jonquil>." "Hi, Daddy, what do you know?" "Bad question."

Yesterday we signed papers accepting an offer on the house. Now it's time for inspections, loan approvals, and the like.

Today I'm waiting for the next phone call from my father, telling me what his surgeon says and when the surgery will be.

The story I posted Wednesday is actually a Zen teaching story about the Japanese master Sengai.

2002-01-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

This is a story I read. Tonight, for once, I'm not going to do the research to verify that this is an authentic Chinese story, giving you links and cites. Just listen.

Long ago, when China was already a gracious and ancient civilization, a man had something to celebrate. Perhaps his son had passed the civil service examinations; perhaps his grandson had been born; perhaps something even more wonderful had happened. In any case, the man went to the local sage and scholar and asked him, as a great favor, to inscribe a blessing.

The sage thought. Perhaps he returned to his house; perhaps he just sat and thought where he was. He took out a lovely clean sheet of paper. And then he wrote "Father dies. Son dies. Grandson dies."

When the man saw the scroll, he said something courteous and indirect and respectful. It boiled down to "What are you, NUTS?"

And the sage explained. The worst thing that can happen is to see your child die before you. What the sage had wished for the man was that he should die before his son, and that his son in turn should die before his own children. In short, for the world to move in its natural order.

My father called me this afternoon. He's been diagnosed with colon cancer. He's 72. I'm 42. My daughter is 11. My son is 8. My father's mother died of colon cancer when I was 13 and my brother was 10.

Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.

Not much of a comfort, is it?

Nobody's dying yet. My father's only got the diagnosis. We don't know what the surgery will find, what treatments will be recommended, what the prognosis will be. My mother's mother had colon cancer 20 years ago and is still ticking along at 90-something. I may look at this note a year from now and say "What an overreaction!"

God, I hope so.

2002-01-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

I am sick and tired of waking up and wishing I hadn't.

2002-01-25T13:50:00.000-08:00

Getting-home-from-school conversation:

Daughter: "I saw a really scary movie in school today."
Parents: "Ah?"
D: "About eating disorders. It was yucky."
Husband: "Well, now you're informed, and because you're a sensible person, you won't think you're too fat."
D: "And I won't try and throw up all my food unless it's really, really bad."

2002-01-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

And the latest viral quiz:

1. What was your favourite toy, as a child? (Pick an age. Or ages.)
Um, the current book? Otherwise, probably Francie. She was Barbie's younger sister (cousin?), and had a much less aggressively "Hello, Sailor" figure.

2. What's your favorite toy now? (Define 'toy' any way you'd like.)
My laptop. With the wireless Ethernet card. Geekgasm, man.

3. What toy did you always want, as a child, but never got?
A really serious doll's house.

4. Is it still available now? If so, why the hell haven't you bought it?
Hey, I have a real house. (Wanna buy it?)

5. What toy do you most want *now*, that you can't really afford? (Hey, maybe your friends will chip in and buy you one...)
Now that I've got the wireless Ethernet hub (did I say geekgasm already?) hmm... A big 16:9 flat-panel TV.

6. What toy do you regret ever having taken out of the package/played with/let your dog chew on, because man, if you still had it in pristine condition, you'd be raking in the bucks on E-Bay?
Probably my Barbie-sized Princess Leia. Except that I believe toys are toys, and for playing with. As Spike, Willow, and Buffy can attest. My daughter agrees; I came into my office the other day to find Spike on his knees, taking a big musical-comedy bow.

7. What toy are you ashamed to admit having played with -- and liked -- as a child?
Oh, God. "The Bride Game". Where you moved your counter around the board, gathering the necessities for your wedding: dress, bouquet, honeymoon tickets, and, oh, yes, a Groom. Collect the whole set!

8. What toy (modern or childhood) would you never buy for a child, or want bought for yours?
Anything electronic that beeps, bloops, or bops. Our children were the first grandchildren and niece/nephew on both sides. People bought us So. Damned. Many. beep-toys. I wanted to give our nieces and nephews drum sets, or possibly ferrets, but my husband overruled me.

9. What toy are (or were) you most neurotic about protecting? ("Do what I say, or Mr. Fett here gets it...")
The laptop. The sprogs have always had access to the personal computers. The laptop is mine. Okay, technically it's my husband's, too. But I know whom it really loves.

10. Do you still have any of your childhood toys? What's your best beloved? In a box somewhere, I think so. I cheerfully threw away a lot of stuffed animals this year when I was packing. My parents say Eeto was terribly important when I was a year old, but I don't remember her at all. Into the trash with her! Off with her... whooops, I seem to have already managed that bit.

2002-01-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

Doing It Right

Michaelangelo once said, "Where I steal, there I leave my knife." Which is a nice ambiguous sentence in translation. I've always read it as "If you're going to redo somebody else's work, you have to do it better."

Properly done, literary references start a conversation. "Here's what older writer said. Here's what I (or my characters) think about what older writer said. Here's what I say in return."

A simple example happened in last year's season finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The heroes were, as usual, facing imminent death and/or world-destruction. The exhausted heroine says, "Hey, everybody knows their jobs. Remember, the ritual starts, we all die. And I'll kill anyone who comes near Dawn." One character, Spike, turns to another, Giles, and says "Not exactly the St. Crispin's Day speech." Giles replies, "We few, we happy few..." to which Spike rejoins, "...We band of buggered."

So, a one-line quotation from Shakespeare. What does it accomplish? It lets the characters draw a parallel between their own desperate fight and the fight in Henry V... which Henry won. It demonstrates that Spike and Giles share a common British-schoolboy referent. This is important, in context, because Spike has been pretending for years to be a lower-class yobbo. It shows Giles accepting Spike, whom he despises, as a partner in repartee. And it gives us a good laugh at the end, as Spike subverts the quotation to his own sardonic purposes.

In short, the literary reference illuminates both character and situation.

Another example is the movie Clueless. The plot is deliberately taken from Jane Austen's Emma. The movie asks "What did Austen say that's still true? How can we create these situations today, in a completely different society? Are the solutions the same as they were in the 19th century?" The movie isn't just Emma-with-a-cellphone. It's a social comedy of the 1990s, with its own voice and worldview.

A larger example is Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. R&G is all about two minor characters in Hamlet, and what they do when they aren't onstage. Periodically, Hamlet or Ophelia or Polonius comes through and delivers one of the great scenes, word-for-word from the original play. Then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to make sense of what is happening.

R&G could not exist without Hamlet. But it asks some profound questions about the play: What is it like to get caught in the clockwork of somebody else's tragedy? Do Hamlet's actions make any sense at all? It also asks the larger question, "What is the right behavior in a world in which your own actions are meaningless, and the senseless actions of others dominate your life?"

Stoppard took what Shakespeare had to say, and then he riffed on it. He engaged in a dialogue with Shakespeare. He built something new from something very old. That's what writing is for: to restate old truths and combine them with the new.

I can't invent tragic thwarted love, or unjust death, or bravery in appalling circumstances. All of those have existed for a thousand years, and been written over and over again by the greatest writers of every culture. I can't even say anything new on the subject. I can say, in my voice, what I see. I can paint the old ghosts in my own colors. And that is the reason it's worth writing at all.

First posted on glass_onion.

2002-01-16T05:42:00.000-08:00

I have always loftily despised people who obsessed about their children's sports achievements. "I've been practicing all week with little Haylee's dance, and her team won first place!" "Son, you've got to follow through. Here, watch me."

Saturday night I walked into my 8-year-old's bedroom at 10 PM. The light was still on. He was lying on his back with a novel held over his head. When I tried to gently remove it from his hands, he wouldn't let go. "Mom, I'm ALMOST finished!"

And I felt a fierce stab of joy. That's my son. He loves a book too much to put it down, just as I did and do.

Now I get it. When you love something desperately, you want your children to love it, too. It isn't necessarily that you want them to grow up and compensate for your failures; it's that you want to share the joy, and to be reassured that you've passed on more than the shape of your nose.

2002-01-14T08:16:00.000-08:00

I have comments again! Yippee! http://rateyourmusic.com/yaccs/.

2002-01-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

I am 42. For the first time in my life, I can reliably lower Venetian blinds, my husband having kindly explained to me that you do not, as I had always thought, pull the cord out into the plane of the room, but sideways within the plane of the window.

I suppose I ought to be embarrassed, but actually I'm quietly pleased. So that's how it works!

2002-01-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

A system crash ate a 3/4-finished essay on Le Guin. So, instead, for your reading pleasure:
"Forbidden Love" trailer for Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

The Lucasfilm logo appears. Instead of purring in anticipation as for Star Wars I, the audience moans in soon-to-be justified dread.

Princess Amidala appears. She appears to have been viciously attacked with a bushel basket.
Amidala: "Why, Ani! You've grown!"
Anakin Skywalker The Soon To Be Bad Guy: "Stop calling me Annie. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya!"
Audience: "I find this guy slightly less appealing than the kid in the last episode."

Amidala: "Look at my hair! It changes! Every scene!"
Audience: "Who are you, Christina Aguilera?"
Anakin: "Ours is a forbidden love."
Amidala: "Yup, forbidden all right."
Anakin: "Really, really forbidden."
Amidala: "No way are we going to snog." (looks over shoulder at audience.) "Really. Watch us not snog!"
Audience: "Aiiieeee!"
Amidala: "You're giving me the cold shoulder because you're a Jedi, aren't you?"
Anakin: "Nope, I just keep colliding with your hair."

Obi-wan: "You can't trust her. Even though last movie I trusted her when she was the universe's only known elected Queen. Now she's a politician, and untrustworthy. You know, I've been in some really good movies. Go watch Velvet Goldmine again and admire my full-frontal nudity."

Amidala: "Don't look at me like that. It makes me think of my appalling hair choices."
Anakin: "Don't worry. I'm a 20-year-old guy with a bun and an elflock."
Audience: "Gaah! My eyes!"

George Lucas: "But wait, there's more! Observe my Carmina Burana-derivative soundtrack! And my flashy quick cutting! And boy, are those some sets and special effects, or what? And swords! did I mention the swords?"
Audience: "Hah. As if that made up for the two hours of ennui that were the last movie. And we've been at rock concerts that had more convincing lightsabers."

George Lucas: "Don't miss Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones!!"
Audience: "Attack of the WHAT?" (laugh so hard they miss the first 10 minutes of Harry Potter)

2002-01-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

Loaf of banana-blueberry bread in oven. More precisely, loaf is 2/3 banana-blueberry 1/3 plain-banana. Son hates blueberries. Am disgracefully overindulgent parent. Son will no doubt grow up to join fanatical organization antithetical to all values cherished most dearly. Poss. Promise Keepers.

2002-01-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

Cassie Claire has started writing diaries for each character in The Lord Of The Rings. They're hysterical. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and read up.

Why, yes, Virginia, there are homoerotic overtones.

2002-01-09T17:53:00.000-08:00

In our household, if it isn't purple, it's probably black. Seriously. When we take the kids out to an amusement park, we tend to look like either Revenge Of The Barney or Beatnik Family Reunion. It's not a political statement (I think), we just like purple. And black.

At laundry day, this causes a bit of a problem, because all the other clothes in the house slowly turn a nasty sort of greyish-lavendery-grunge. With magenta splotches, courtesy of my daughter. (Yes, I was brought up to sort clothes before I did laundry. I was also brought up to give money to the ACLU, vote Democratic, and cook cornbread in a cast-iron skillet. I held on to the important traditions.)

This is an unsolicited product endorsement. There's a product called "Woolite Dye Magnet" in U.S. supermarkets and Target. It works. You put this innocent little bit of white felted paper into your wash, and it becomes the scapegoat. It sacrifices its snowy purity for the higher good. When you take the bit of felted paper out of the dry clothes, it is a bright purple, or a nasty grey, or occasionally a pale magenta.

The other clothes, however, are their original color. I consider this nifty.

2002-01-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

Snow Ice Cream

When a proper fluffy snow, unmixed with rain or sleet, begins to fall, place a clean bowl out of doors, out of the reach of children and other animals. (I recommend the top of the car.) When the bowl is full enough, bring it inside and scoop snow into serving bowls. Try to compact the snow as little as possible. Your goal is snow clouds, not snowballs. Pour cream (half-and-half will do) over the top of each scoop of snow. Pour a little vanilla over the top, then sprinkle with sugar. (Real maple syrup, surprisingly, gives you unsatisfying sticky goo.)

2002-01-03T12:43:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is also a snow day.

Numfar! Cease to do the Dance of Snow!

2002-01-03T07:18:00.000-08:00

Snow Day!

2002-01-02T15:20:00.000-08:00

It's snowing!

Proper snow. Snow in big fluffy clumps that you catch on your tongue, making you laugh in spite of yourself. Snow that sticks to the grass and roads, so that your footsteps drag and leave a blurred trail behind you. Snow that hisses through the air, rattles the dry oak leaves above you, and patters upon the ground. Snow that makes the children's joyful faces glow brighter than Christmas.

I put on my French Foreign Legion surplus cape (truly) and walked to the corner and back.

Somebody Else's Child's Brother: "Hey, when Ellen's mom walks around in that cloak, it's like the Grim Reaper!"

2002-01-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

And it's a new year.

Registered children for local schools that I devoutly hope they won't be attending next year. Just in case...

People keep touring our house, then buying something else in the same neighborhood. Something smaller, but with a garage. Contemplating building a Potemkin garage of leftover Christmas boxes and tissue paper.

Conversation fragment drifting across from the Nintendo room:

Somebody Else's Child: "Someone said the F-word!"

(general incomprehension and confusion.) "I didn't!" "Huh?" "What F-word?"

My daughter, lightbulb going on over her head: "Oh, you mean intercourse!"

No, nobody had said anything of the sort. Somebody Else's Child insisted that it had been whispered. Whatever.

2001-12-30T15:04:00.000-08:00

Whoo-hoo! Adam Felber of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me has a blog!

St. Augustine Sweet Orange Roll dough in the warm oven. I think it's rising. Shoulda heated the milk more before incorporating it into the eggs and butter. (The Parker House Rolls were tough as jerky. I think I overkneaded them. Ah, well. Next year for sure.)

Baking is nice. It perfumes the house. It gives me a feeling of peace and accomplishment. Here's hoping we all have that feeling (with or without yeast) in the coming year.

2001-12-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

I wish you food, and warmth, and safety, and love. God bless us, every one.

2001-12-23T14:53:00.000-08:00

James Beard was a really, really good cook, but he must have been much more dextrous than I am.

You shape Parker House rolls by rolling the dough flat, cutting it into circles with a biscuit cutter, brushing the top with melted butter, and pressing a chopstick ("or other cylindrical object", says Beard helpfully) across the diameter of the circle. You fold the circle along the compressed line, brush the top of the half-circle with butter, and put it on a baking sheet to rise. After the rolls have risen, you put them into the oven.

Where, while baking, each roll neatly unfolds itself into an oval with an indented line down the middle. Creating the hallowed Jonquil family tradition, the Christmas yoni.

If this leads to our household's being blessed with fertility in the coming year, I am going to be exceptionally cross.

2001-12-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

A sponge for Parker House rolls is rising in the oven, and suddenly the world is a more orderly and harmonious place.

The dangerous thing about blogging is that you begin to observe your life in advance, to edit what is happening into seemly patterns. Which leads to inattention. Which led, in particular, to my forgetting to melt the butter in the hot milk before pouring the flour into the milk. Fortunately, yeast baking is robust, and will tolerate mid-course corrections. I sliced the butter into tiny bits and turned up the speed on the KitchenAid, and all is (so far) well.

Baking is magic. Since we had children, my husband does all of the main-course cooking; before that, we shared supper and he baked all the bread. Nowadays I scarcely cook at all, but if I do, I'm baking. Christmas just isn't right without that yeast smell.

This year it's James Beard's recipe from Beard On Bread. Beard is a cook after my own heart: cranky, opinionated, and right. You have to watch him -- in his superb James Beard's American Cooking, he will sometimes begin a recipe with "I cannot imagine why people eat this." When you see one of those recipes, run. If he didn't love the food, he couldn't cook it. But his character and personality shine through, and he knew his bread. I've tried other people's roll recipes, but I come back to Beard's, which is neither leaden nor so fluffy that it doesn't taste like bread any more.

2001-12-21T08:06:00.000-08:00

Financial advice for Buffy. Snerk.

2001-12-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

Who's that woman?
An old Internet friend of mine casually told me today that Google had found some very, very old Usenet archives. Google now indexes Usenet postings from 1981 to the present. Damn you, Jürgen Christoffel, Bruce Jones, Kent Landfield, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman. And bless you, too.

Back in the early '80s (gather round me, children), "news" flowed from UNIX box to UNIX box. We pontificated. We extolled. We flamed. We strutted. And then the storage space was reused, and the posturing was as lost as the voice of your great-grandfather. The bits scattered to the four winds; the disk drives died, the hosts were retired, and the oxides on the backup tapes flaked and became useless. Gone forever.

Except that now they're back. And I'm reading my Usenet postings with that mixture of shame and delight usually reserved for teenage pictures. "Did I really wear my hair like that?" "Oh, look at that shirt!" And in a quiet voice, one that nobody else is allowed to hear, "God, I was hot."

So there I am. Laying down the law about abortion, reviewing Alpha Flight, denouncing generalizations about costume history, asking why ar(1) isn't working. In a snarky voice that hasn't changed, as far as I can see, at all.

I'm not sure what "I was so much younger then" means any more. There I am, in my early twenties, so frightfully young. There's that young girl, with her life ahead of her. And the things she has to say are could as easily have been said by this middle-aged mother last week.

"Who's that woman, that cheery, weary woman,
Who's dressing for yet one more spree?
Each day I see her pass
In my looking-glass
Lord, lord, lord, that woman is me." -- Stephen Sondheim, Follies

2001-12-16T06:55:00.000-08:00

An open letter to the chefs of America

If it contains anything other than olive oil, salt, egg, and garlic (optionally potato or breadcrumb) it is not aïoli.
If the predominant flavors are not basil, garlic, olive oil, hard Italian cheeses, salt, and optionally pinenuts, it is not pesto.
If it is not based on tomatoes or tomatillos, it is not salsa.

You are not Alice fucking Waters. A salmagundi of discordant flavors is not a well-composed dish. It is more difficult, and more worthy of respect, to put together a well-balanced and subtle salade vinaigrette than to ladle out raspberry-vinegar rosemary-infused-sesame-oil dried-onion star-anise-scented mélange on virgin endive with pralines and gingerbread croutons. Oh, and would you like fresh-ground pepper with that?

Prove to me that you can dish up a perfect custard sauce. Then we can talk about the coriander-vanilla marmalade over duck confit on oysters with shredded deep-fried spinach.

This has been a public service announcement.

2001-12-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

It's raining. And my pansy blossoms are rotting, and I wonder what I did wrong.

2001-12-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

Middle school sucks. In case you don't remember. There you are, on the cusp of puberty, discovering the power of cruelty. You can attract attention by having the wrong body, the wrong hair, the wrong jokes... and you wonder, is it me? Are they really the normal ones, and I'm weird?

I'm hugging my daughter a lot lately. Helplessly. Because I couldn't cope in my day and I have no strategies to give her. "Endure. Someday you'll be a grownup" is pretty useless when you're 11.

My God, I have become Martha Stewart. Yesterday I was killing time while the house was being shown (buy my house! Please! So I can get out of the South!), and I wandered into an antique store.

I came out with a "set" (actually two related pieces plus an intruder) of Danish-modern silverplate. That lovely clean '50s design. This is a teak-handled gravy boat and a matching small dish, both in a round-shading-to-square shape and unornamented, with a Danish crowned mark on the bottom. Almost certainly the silverplate mark, because there's no purity number and the hallmark isn't the official pure-silver hallmark. They came with a Danish-modern-style Gorham teak-and-silverplate butterdish.

I polished them and put them on the top shelf of the china cabinet. They're very pretty.

Stop me before I take up découpage.

2001-12-09T16:01:00.000-08:00

The yeast was dead to begin with.

Liquid-helium dead. Opossum-by-the-side-of-the-road dead. Bo-Derek's-career dead. In short, unlikely to arise screaming for vengeance or brains or the head of Alfredo Garcia.

Yr humble corresp'nt was ignorant of its condition. Therefore did she cheerfully measure flour, milk, egg, butter, forbidden herbs gathered by eldritch moonlight in a desecrated monastery, and, alas, the departed yeast. And mixed. And kneaded. And wrapped the whole tenderly in a linen cloth (okay, Saran Wrap) and nestled it in a warm place to rise.

Half an hour later, the lump of dough was the same size and shape as when it had been dragged untimely into this mortal kitchen. Half an hour later yet, no change. At which point your most obedient hied her to the kitchen, took out a Pyrex measuring cup, inserted thereunto warm water, sugar, and another teaspoon of the beige (hmmm.... sensing a pattern here...) powder.

And, lo, the water neither foamed nor sizzled nor formed little clots of floating goo.

And the writer was most vexed. And possibly even said "Darn." And sent forth her noble spouse to hunt for fresh yeast, that which possessed life and vigor.

And he returned bearing the mighty microbe. Which, when mixed with water and sugar, bubbled mightily. Wherefore the cook did mix the yeasty water, the lifeless dough, and more flour, and knead it until once again did it resemble dough instead of sticky liquid goo.

Eftsoons began the dough to rise. And it was good.

Ridiculously Easy Poppyseed Roll Bread (from King Arthur Flour)

Combine 3 cups all-purpose flour (King Arthur Unbleached really is tastier and prettier), 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 large egg, 3/4 cup milk, 3 tablespoons butter. Mix and knead until satiny and elastic.

(Hearty apologies to unAmerican readers. My good kitchen scale is in storage, or I'd give you the gram equivalents.)

Let dough rise until doubled in bulk. Punch dough down. Let it rest for 10 minutes, then roll into a rectangle approximately 12 inches by 16 inches. (Death to hegemonistic American measures!)

Open a can of poppyseed or almond filling. (I'm guessing this is about 1 1/2 American cups; the can says net weight 354 grams.) Spread it on the dough, leaving an inch free on all sides. Roll the dough the long way (making a long thin roll) and seal both ends. (If you can; I can't, and it always spills out on the baking sheet. Oh, well.) Let rest on a baking sheet for about 1/2 hour. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. (Oh, the shame! Oh, the insularity!) Bake roll for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Vow to resist the oppression of decadent Yankee cultural influence, and go reread Elizabeth David's Bread And Yeast Cookery.

2001-12-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

From a Yahoo article:

Bobby Jindal, HHS assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, told reporters at a congressional health policy briefing that the bar codes [on prescriptions] would contain a unique product code, plus the expiration date and lot number.

The bar code would be matched against a similar code a hospital patient would have, probably on the wristband patients wear for identification.

Call me unreasonable, but I don't like the thought of the hospital putting an expiration date on me, coded or otherwise.

2001-12-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

Mysterious Cultural Phenomenon #105:
Liturgical Dancewear.

I've read about liturgical dance in the local paper. After all, David danced before the Lord, why can't we? (David also arranged for his lover's husband to be murdered, but you don't see that in the Sunday bulletin.) I just wrote it off as yet another Not-Like-Me moment.

Until I saw the above catalog page. Apparently it's okay if women dance before the Lord, as long as they don't have breasts, hips, or collarbones. Because, y'know, it's church.

This bothers me. There are certainly women in the congregation wearing form-fitting (if modest) dresses. But having women dancing in form-fitting clothes -- why, you might think about their bodies rather than their dance. And guys aren't in control of their thoughts when they see women in leotards, so let's solve the problem by ruffling every body part that might provoke Impure Thoughts. But not in a becoming way. Sort of a Southern Christian burka.

So, liturgical dance is done by women, for mixed-gender audiences, but in clothes far more concealing than they would normally wear to church. Because dance is good, but bodies are bad.

2001-11-29T10:52:00.000-08:00

Damn, the American public school system is screwed up.

My daughter's middle school has a "scholars program." Kids with excellent test scores were put into classes working 2 years ahead of grade level. To get in, their parents had to commit to supporting them in the extra work, and the kids had to commit to the challenge. We got to the parent-teacher night and found, not to our surprise but to our sorrow, that the scholars' classes were lily-white in a majority-black school. That didn't change our decision about what was best for our daughter.

2 months into the school year it was discovered that the previous year's test scores were badly flawed. Lots of kids had test scores that qualified them for the Scholar's Program, but hadn't been informed. Furthermore, most of those kids were black. The Superintendent, quite correctly, said "This problem gets fixed now, not next year." So an entirely new block of Scholar's classes was created for the short-changed kids. They didn't have to do the forms that committed them to extra work, because the Superintendent felt this was discouraging minority kids from even trying.

The existing Scholars classes were overcrowded. So they moved 4 kids, including my daughter, into the new block. Where they have vegetated for two months, because the teacher has her hands full trying to bring the new kids up to Scholars' level. As of today, my daughter's covering material that her old class covered in September. And very unhappy about it.

So I called the teacher and pointed out that my daughter wasn't being challenged, which was the whole point of the program. She agreed, unhappily. She says she had already decided to set up a separate table for the kids who can deal with the material, where they will work independently. She admits that this is less than ideal, but it's the best she can do under the circumstances.

I tried to get my daughter transferred back to her old classes in October, when it became clear that she wasn't being challenged. That couldn't be done.

I believe in justice. I believe in not trapping kids in the ghetto of low expectations. But I also believe that my daughter is being short-changed by this particular decision, and in the last analysis, her welfare (and her brother's) matter to me more than anybody else's.

And we're moving someday. Probably not for months. But that limits the amount of energy I have to protest and advocate.

2001-11-26T06:46:00.000-08:00

Spike. Buffy. Zipper. Pain. Conflicting needs. Gaaaaaah. Excuse me, let's roll the videotape. Again.

This is not a romantic relationship. Spike wishes it were. It's not Twuuu Wuuuv, it's two desperate people using one another. And I don't see it as a feminist failure at all. (A) Buffy is totally in charge and (B) she was kicking his ass all over the house, both emotionally and physically. I see a very strong woman falling apart in a strong-woman way.

One of the many weird things about having a house on the market is that you work hard to expunge all traces of your own personality. Two of the three kitchen crocks gone. 95% of the books. All the wall-mounted bookshelves. The bolts of crimson silk, the embroidery projects, the patterns. The stack of half-read magazines by the bed. The 40 (no, I'm not exaggerating) different bottles of perfume atop the dresser.

In exchange, I get beige everywhere. There are some improvements -- the clean, brilliant windows, the lack of clutter (who knew the playroom had a floor?), the space. Next house, please God, we'll manage to keep the clean. But I'll welcome the clutter back. Because it's clutter that makes it home.

Where am I? Whose house is this?

Four things you would eat on the last day of your life:
Ma Po Dou Fu; cassoulet; Julia Child's orange genoise with apricot glaze; soft-scrambled eggs, my comfort food of choice.

Four CDs from your collection that you will never get tired of:
Dar Williams, The Green World and The Honesty Room (thanks, Nestra!); Stephen Sondheim's Assassins and Follies

Four celebrities you would have sex with:
(bearing in mind it would be adultery, so I'd run for the hills at even the hint of reciprocated interest)
James Marsters, Stephen Sondheim (yes, I know he's gay), Alan Rickman, hmmmmmmm.

Four vacations you have taken:

Vacation? What's a vacation? 17 years ago I went to the Southwest of England with my husband. I have been owed a trip to Paris for three years, and haven't taken it due to family crises.

Four things you'd like to learn:

Fencing, Aikido, draping (a sewing technique in which you create by draping fabric over a dress form and cutting away the bits that don't look like your vision of the garment. Madeleine Vionnet was the Queen of this.), fluent Latin instead of my two-terms-of-college stumbling

Four beverages you drink frequently:
Tea, usually Keemun Ji Hong; Seltzer; Diet Coke; more seltzer

God, I miss nightly wine, which doesn't play nicely with my medications.

Four tv shows that were on when you were a kid:
The Avengers, The Flintstones (preempted for the Kennedy assassination), Mission:Impossible, Mr. Terrific

Four places to go in your city:

Away.

Four things to do when you're bored:
Read, embroider, watch scenes involving zippers, take a hot bath with a fashion magazine.

Four things that never fail to cheer you up:
Singin' In The Rain, Astaire and Rogers, new Buffy, a promising movie preview (Lord of The Rings, Eyes Wide Shut (better than the movie!), Spy Kids, Roger Rabbit)

2001-11-15T13:46:00.000-08:00

My house is cream. Fields and fields of cream.

The walls are the color of summer cream. The carpets are darker cream -- no, say it, Jonquil, they're beige. The kitchen and bathroom floors are vinyl masquerading as speckled cream tiles.

The four rooms I painted stand out like whores in a nunnery. The living room is a deep rich burgundy, toning with the purple velvet, wine-and-green striped, and jewel-tones-on-black-chintz chairs. The dining room is an aggressive deep peacock blue. The children's bathroom is ice blue. Our bathroom is robin's egg blue, but will be cream by tomorrow evening.

This is not my beautiful house.

2001-11-14T12:36:00.000-08:00

Kate Bolin asks:
Where else would you find a faux gameshow filled with celebrities making jokes about recent news events?

U.S. National Public Radio, "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". The newscasters of NPR let their snark out. Celebrity guests have included the guy who draws Tom Tomorrow, the woman who voices Bart Simpson, and similar left-liberal types. Every Saturday at 2PM. The prize for every event? Carl Kassell, NPR's molasses-voiced announcer, records the outgoing message on your answering machine.

2001-11-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

Gaaah. My end tables are covered with mayonnaise and plastic wrap. Because that is supposed to vanquish white rings caused by un-coastered glasses.

I am turning into Martha Stewart.

2001-11-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

I have been so profoundly grateful to the New York Times these last weeks. The daily picture-obituaries ("Portraits of Grief") for people dead in the 9/11 disaster run so deep. This wasn't thousands of people dead, a tidy number we can file in the almanac. This was Vishna, and Lucille, and Inna. Distinct people who gave the best hugs in the world, who always found time to play soccer with the kids, who always knew the latest joke, who fiercely loved taekwondo. The Times articles are insisting on the individual losses, in a time when it's so easy to think only in groups.

On the other hand, the title of the post-terrorism section, "America Challenged", is just dorky. Especially since the primary connotation of "challenged" nowadays is "yet another euphemism for handicapped".

2001-11-12T06:52:00.000-08:00

Dear God. It's going to be another day spent watching CNN.

2001-11-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

What a week.

I'd laughed at other people's funny horror stories about remodeling. After all, things like that don't happen to me, right? It's like bombings or car accidents or nearly electing a Klansman governor -- things that are properly horrifying and depressing, but happen in some far-distant place that's not my place.

Now I have my own remodeling horror stories. Remember "the vinyl people come today"? Well, he did. With the wrong vinyl. The one we'd tentatively agreed to before our Realtor suggested a better floor, one we in fact liked more. I found this out by peeking in the truck. He explained that the vinyl we'd requested hadn't come in. After some back-and-forth, we sent the vinyl person away. The business owner called and assured us he would make everything right on Friday: the vinyl and carpet would be installed simultaneously.

The vinyl guy left at 3, without doing the upstairs bathrooms. By 4, it was clear that the carpet people couldn't possibly finish that day; they were still working on the upstairs and hadn't touched the downstairs. And all our belongings were outdoors on the deck under a tarp. After a lot MORE back-and-forth, the floor guy agreed to have the carpeters finish "all the flat surfaces" that evening. They stayed until 8 to do that; we were trapped in the refloored kitchen, eating takeout pizza and letting the children watch Shrek on our portable TV/VCR. Yeah, yeah, I know, poor children in China don't even have a TV/VCR. Although they probably have bootleg copies of Shrek.

The carpeters came back on Saturday and finished. Total time: 14 hours for two carpeters working full-tilt. In other words, this never was, and never had been, a one-day job.

We were backed up by the realty company's services department, which had recommended these bozos and which put heavy pressure on them to live up to their promises. I shudder to think of what would have happened if we'd just been one angry residential customer.

Oh, and the cleaners managed to cause a major toilet leak in the upstairs bathroom (no fault of their own), dumping an entire toilet tank into the ceiling, where it leaked through the kitchen light fixture. Exciting times.

The window-washers come today, as does the vinyl installer to finish the job. The painter comes Thursday. What fresh horrors await us? Watch this space.

On the more amusing front, I was washing my pre-teen daughter's hair (it's hip-length and curly, so assistance is required) and she complained, "Hey, why can't I get handsome MEN washing my hair?" and grinned. The puberty express is definitely headed down the track.

2001-11-08T04:26:00.000-08:00

The vinyl people come today, "after 9 AM". We have the vinyl areas empty. Today, we get the carpet areas empty, by the old-fashioned method of dumping all movables into "livingroomIdon'tknowwhats" and "bedroombeatsthehelloutofme" boxes. These will live in the dining room until tonight, at which time we will move the kitchen movables in off the deck and move the living-area movables out onto the deck. Fortunately, fair weather predicted for the week.

My brain is dead. Yesterday all I was fit to do was create "office unsorted" boxes. Oh, well. We got a lot of sorting done before despair set in. I'd guess that we discarded or Goodwilled easily 300% of what we put into storage.

Nothing clever to say.

2001-11-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

Oh, and we're up to 83 boxes. Just in case you were wondering.

2001-11-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

There have been contractors in and out of the house all week.

Three questions I never want to answer politely again:

Have you read all those books?
You sure have got a lot of cleaning up to do, haven't you?
California, huh? Do you know how expensive that is?

Getting out of here getting out of here getting out of here...

I hope.

2001-11-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

I have a cosmopolitan brick.

Yesterday I was sorting and consolidating boxes that hadn't been opened in a Very Long Time. If ever. I opened one of the boxes of my childhood memorabilia, set aside the sealing wax, the dictionary that commemorated my 4th-grade school spelling championship, the Girl Scout sash (nearly naked of merit badges), and found... a brick.

A brick that my mother had sent from Indiana to New Hampshire. A brick that had travelled, unseen, from New Hampshire to Massachusetts to North Carolina, and then again from an apartment to our house. A brick, in short, that had Seen Life.

I looked at the brick. It failed to look at me. I racked my brains as to why this would have been a brick with sentimental value, and why my mother would have been crazy enough to pay U.S. postage rates to send a brick cross-country.

Finally it came to me. When I was a child, the best place in the whole wide world was the window seat in the children's department of Morrison-Reeves Library, a magnificent Romanesque Revival structure with turrets, cast-iron-and-glass stacks, gargoyles, and stuff. I still visit that library in dreams. When I was 13, I started working at Morrison-Reeves as a page. When I was 15 or so, we built a new library next door and tore my well-loved library down. (It was ancient. It was out of space. It was actually dangerous. Climbing those wrought-iron stacks with both arms full of books and no appendages free for the handrail was a character-building experience. But still...)

So I collected a brick from the wreckage and took it home to my bedroom. Where it stayed until my mother ruthlessly collected all my sentimental objects and mailed them to me, figuring that I could jolly well be sentimental about them in New Hampshire.

The sad thing is, I still feel sentimental about this brick. This time it's staying behind in North Carolina. Maybe it can tell stories to the other bricks. Why, I remember when I was a young brick, in Indiana...

2001-11-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

Jesus H. Christ.

Literally.

My kids got Christian tracts in their Halloween bags. My daughter was indignant. "What about JEWISH kids who are trick-or-treating?"

At least the rationalist kids are doing okay.

2001-10-31T16:21:00.000-08:00

Hallowe'en In The Southland

My group, of me (black leather duster, black sparkly eyelid and forehead bindis), Harry Potter (black robes, wand, Nimbus 2000), Hermione (black robes, wand, cauldron), a witch (black dress, glow-in-the-dark teeth), a black cat, a puppy, and Death, was universally acclaimed Most Likely To Get Wiped Out By A Minivan Backing Up.

About 60% of the neighborhood was dark, what with Christianity, anthrax fears (really), and suggestions by the local police that kids shouldn't trick-or-treat house-to-house this year. Pfeh to so-called adults, say I.

Harry is home, tired, watching TV. Hermione carried on with the witch's and puppy's daddies, but is expected shortly.

2001-10-31T10:10:00.000-08:00

Sooo...

Yesterday we signed the listing agreement, showings to start 11/11. One painter came through with estimates yesterday, another today. Carpeter this afternoon. Dishwasher fixed this morning. New stove installed tomorrow. 72 (!) boxes of books moved into storage. That's 72 boxes after a really brutal cull. "We don't read Poul Anderson any more. If I want to reread Bleak House, I'll get it from the library. David Eddings annoys me now."

72 boxes. We have a Book Problem.

2001-10-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

Long, long overdue update:

On October 3rd, I received my written job offer from Big California Company. On October 4th, my husband got his. We're moving!

I haven't had a migraine since October 2nd. Coincidence? You decide.

I am frantically packing and tidying so that the carpet people can come (not the Pratchett ones), after which we can formally put the house on the market.

Our lives are turning up.

2001-09-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

Here's what they don't tell you in the maternity ward:

Your job isn't to be the best friend. Your child will make those herself, by criteria which are not entirely clear to you.

You have just volunteered to be the person who shouts "DON'T SLAM THE DOOR!", who reflexively says "Did you wash your hands?" every time the bathroom door opens, who says "Did you finish your homework? What exactly is our definition of 'finish' today? Every problem?", who says "Sometimes people are just mean", and who searches her memory for a coping strategy better than her own childhood solutions, who is screamed at when the math homework is frustrating, who says "I don't CARE whose fault it is, you do not bite your brother!".

In short, the source of Order. The wellspring of lessons, both conscious and implied. The person who is supposed to know the answers, to set the rules, to be the template that one rejects and embraces.

Here's to eleven years of motherhood, and to the hope of carrying the job through to completion.

"I'm sure you've got a lot to learn; that's not your fault, it's just your turn." -- Dar Williams, "Teenagers, Kick Our Butts"

2001-09-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

Here's the sitch.

I can precisely date the moment at which I said "I have to get out of here" about my job.

It was July 2nd, 2001. I had just returned from my vacation. In one hour of phone meeting, work sucked all the vacation out of me. Because my beloved manager and my spectacularly competent co-worker filled me in on what had happened in my week-long absence.

Today is September 28, 2001. It's been almost two months since that epiphany. I am still at the same job. I have lost the ability to even pretend to give a damn. My co-workers are noticing. My professional pride is gone, and shame isn't enough to motivate me any more.

And I don't know when or if I will be able to leave. Because the job offer that was half-promised in July and definitely promised in August has STILL not made its way past the CEO's desk and been signed.

Compared with living in Afghanistan, I'm getting off easy. But I've lost all ability to think of anybody's misery but my own and my husband's.