. . . it shits.
I had a pithy little memorial day post spinning around yesterday, but was totally creamed by other signs that the universe is indeed out to get us:
Turtle and Monkey's Mom discovered that the woman her husband had an affair with? Is Pregnant.
Sue, who I personally think has found a new voice with everything thrown her way of late, suffered a seizure last Friday. Her husband C. has the story on his blog.
And finally, Chance, who has suffered more than enough loss for one lifetime, found out that her final round of Surrogate IVF did not work out. Kym's beta started lowish, and dropped. There are no embryos in the freezer, and there's no more money on the tree.
I hate singling out stories when I know there's so much more hurt out there that I'm missing and not personally noting, but these three really twisted my weekend into knots and made me flip off karma and the universe more than once. I tried so hard to strip naked and dance in traffic and divert the bad luck in my direction, but apparently that's not how it works.
Please, if you haven't already, lend some support. Toss in some swear words. Fluff up the pillows. It's the least we can do.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Seeds of Life?
It's not often that the metaphor becomes reality, but here the last few weekends I've been working quite hard on the new kitchen garden.
During the kitchen reno, some doors were moved around, and this lovely patch outside the kitchen -- facing south -- was dug up and cornered off. This spring we brought in mushroom soil and tilled it in. Bella and I started some seeds inside (went a bit better than last year -- only managed to brutally murder some cherry tomatoes, and for some reason the rosemary self-aborted? I'm terrible with rosemary. I understand for most people rosemary is akin to a chia pet, the one thing they can keep alive by sprinkling beer on it when they open one. Not so much, me), and sowed the rest into the ground. We planted a marigold border, and finished that off with multi-colored globe amaranth seed.
Right now, it is a nicely squared off patch of dirt. If things go as they should, in a few months we should have: broccoli, carrots, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumber, beets, lettuce, arugula, and a host of herbs including one entire row of basil for my Italian husband. There should -- allegedly -- be sunflowers against the back wall, and cheerful flowers in the corners.
It's very nice in theory, isn't it.
Once it was in, and I was purposefully watering with the sprayer, I tried to self-analyze (shit, am I good at that now) about how I felt about my endeavor. And that's when I realized the irony of life imitating metaphor: the first thing that popped in my head was how this felt as if I had a positive pregnancy stick in my hand. It's "implanted." In theory, it's one of those "positive" symbols. But I know nothing of gardening, right now it just looks like brown soil, and (to me) it will seem nothing short of a Biblical miracle if there is food to harvest at the end of the day from these mere seeds I've jammed in crooked rows. As I've told my neighbors, "If we get vegetables from this, it's a bonus."
(To gently reiterate and avoid any confusion: METAPHOR, LIFE-STORY-USUALLY-EMPLOYING METAPHOR, SWAPPING PLACES. THERE IS NO POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST. THERE IS A GARDEN. Kinda like bringing a metaphor to life, but without having to clean horse parts off your bat and shoes. Just thought I'd clarify.)
One of the contractors who worked on the kitchen and "consulted" on the garden swung by this week -- she's one of these types that maintains a self-sufficient farm in a yard the size of a postage stamp, replete with chickens and goats. And she was incrredibly impressed by our plot, and I gave her the line about it looking nice in theory, and wouldn't it be awesome if vegetables actually grew from those seeds?
"Why wouldn't they?" she asked. In complete seriousness.
Ha ha ha, why wouldn't they, IS SHE FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
Just because you put seeds in dirt and add water and sunshine does not mean you get a beet (or god forbid, some rosemary) in a few months. No sir-ee. I mean, why should it work? Not like I know what I'm doing. Then I read this article about lead in urban gardens, and I'm utterly convinced I will give us all brain damage should the garden actually produce something and I prepare grilled eggplant and beet salad, so this week on my to-do list is packing up some dirt to send off to the EPA for testing.
Seriously, I just wanted a little vegetable garden. Instead I got a boatload of cautious pessimism, irony, and paranoia.
Sounds about right.
(Poison Beets!)
During the kitchen reno, some doors were moved around, and this lovely patch outside the kitchen -- facing south -- was dug up and cornered off. This spring we brought in mushroom soil and tilled it in. Bella and I started some seeds inside (went a bit better than last year -- only managed to brutally murder some cherry tomatoes, and for some reason the rosemary self-aborted? I'm terrible with rosemary. I understand for most people rosemary is akin to a chia pet, the one thing they can keep alive by sprinkling beer on it when they open one. Not so much, me), and sowed the rest into the ground. We planted a marigold border, and finished that off with multi-colored globe amaranth seed.
Right now, it is a nicely squared off patch of dirt. If things go as they should, in a few months we should have: broccoli, carrots, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumber, beets, lettuce, arugula, and a host of herbs including one entire row of basil for my Italian husband. There should -- allegedly -- be sunflowers against the back wall, and cheerful flowers in the corners.
It's very nice in theory, isn't it.
Once it was in, and I was purposefully watering with the sprayer, I tried to self-analyze (shit, am I good at that now) about how I felt about my endeavor. And that's when I realized the irony of life imitating metaphor: the first thing that popped in my head was how this felt as if I had a positive pregnancy stick in my hand. It's "implanted." In theory, it's one of those "positive" symbols. But I know nothing of gardening, right now it just looks like brown soil, and (to me) it will seem nothing short of a Biblical miracle if there is food to harvest at the end of the day from these mere seeds I've jammed in crooked rows. As I've told my neighbors, "If we get vegetables from this, it's a bonus."
(To gently reiterate and avoid any confusion: METAPHOR, LIFE-STORY-USUALLY-EMPLOYING METAPHOR, SWAPPING PLACES. THERE IS NO POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST. THERE IS A GARDEN. Kinda like bringing a metaphor to life, but without having to clean horse parts off your bat and shoes. Just thought I'd clarify.)
One of the contractors who worked on the kitchen and "consulted" on the garden swung by this week -- she's one of these types that maintains a self-sufficient farm in a yard the size of a postage stamp, replete with chickens and goats. And she was incrredibly impressed by our plot, and I gave her the line about it looking nice in theory, and wouldn't it be awesome if vegetables actually grew from those seeds?
"Why wouldn't they?" she asked. In complete seriousness.
Ha ha ha, why wouldn't they, IS SHE FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
Just because you put seeds in dirt and add water and sunshine does not mean you get a beet (or god forbid, some rosemary) in a few months. No sir-ee. I mean, why should it work? Not like I know what I'm doing. Then I read this article about lead in urban gardens, and I'm utterly convinced I will give us all brain damage should the garden actually produce something and I prepare grilled eggplant and beet salad, so this week on my to-do list is packing up some dirt to send off to the EPA for testing.
Seriously, I just wanted a little vegetable garden. Instead I got a boatload of cautious pessimism, irony, and paranoia.
Sounds about right.
(Poison Beets!)
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Happy. Mother's. Day.
Deconstruct THAT one.
I've got a post up on, er, you know, that thing that's happening today. Today, at GITW.
I've got a post up on, er, you know, that thing that's happening today. Today, at GITW.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Lipstick Cherry All Over the Lens
Spring is here, that fickle bitch, what with a week encompassing a prickly 92 degrees and a damp, cool 54. There are fields of weeds to be pulled up, there is yellow-green fuzz on my car and surfaces in my house near windows that I deigned to open the last nice day. We're stockpiling alright -- on claratin, flonase and the like, and I feel like printing shirts for me and Bella that announce, "ALLERGIES! NOT FLU!"
Spring is pretty coupled with problematic, and ultimately makes me feel like I should be doing more than I'm doing, and, well, feeling more than I'm feeling.
I've noticed before, but never so much until this year, that one thing I like so much about this neighborhood is spring. It seems as if every house, even the most ramshackle, boarded up, neglected heaps have something in the front yard -- be it a scraggly, volunteer dogwood tree, a few bulbs that were probably deposited by a run-away squirrel, a technicolor fuscia-hued azalea in desperate need of pruning and shaping. There is color there, as if mother nature said, "Dang, this place needs a hit of rogue," in hopes that the human passers-by would overlook the dirt-filled yard, the sunken porch, the stump overgrown with ravenous vine. And this time of year? It works. This old trick works, and my eye is drawn to the lonely clump of red tulips, or the appropriately-named weeping cherry, or the grape-like clumps of bright purple wisteria -- even if their ancient support has long-ago collapsed, and they're now slithering across an un-mowed lawn. The dilapidated that exists in a few pockets will soon be overpowered by a layer of green, and I will only come to realize how dumpy some of the nearby abodes are in late fall, when the leaves finally drop and there is no amount of snow that hides the droopy shutters.
Sometimes it's a bit whorish, but spring's a welcome makeover.
(Lest I embarrass my neighbors, this is a unkempt corner of my yard, where someone thought it wise to randomly plant azalea of varying colors in the middle of unruly, weedy groundcover.)
:::
I played violin seriously from age four to twenty-two, and until college, studied with the same teacher. She was a Juliard-trained woman, who came of professional age at a time when orchestras were still edgy about hiring women (their stamina for rehearsal and uteri exploding with babies in need of attention were undoubtedly ticks against them in the hiring process), and -- much like me, now that I think of it -- arrived in New York City, sight-unseen, from the south. She was proper, she was elegant, and you could tell through her music that her cool and sophisticated demeanor masked a river of romance that ran through her bones.
She taught kids like me for a living, and had crazy hours -- she eventually ran a studio, travelled in order to meet demand elsewhere in the Phoenix area, worked camps and master classes, and taught taught taught, six days a week, beginning at 7:00 a.m. and often running through the dinner hour.
It was not uncommon to arrive at the studio, sometime after my school had let out in the late afternoon, 4:30 p.m. or so, and while I warmed up, she would pull out her compact, and carefully apply lipstick -- always something cheery. For years I was too young to take much away from this ritual, but at some point, I wondered why she was putting lipstick on for me, for a violin lesson, for fuck's sake.
Silly me.
At some point, I'm not sure whether the wondering got the best of me, or she volunteered the information, but in a late-afternoon practice room, as she focused on her mirror, she said, "If you're ever tired, just put on a little lipstick. Wakes you right up."
All this time, she was fucking exhausted, drinking coffee out of her thermos, escorting me and countless others through pouty twinkle-twinkle to stress-laden competitions and auditions and tapings, always with a freshly made pair of lips.
She taught me so much, this teacher. She saw me weekly, for fourteen years. She was in charge of selecting my music, and while my friends were put through the usual paces of Bloch and Bruch and Mendelssohn by their instructors, she sensed something else in me, and put in front of me raw and passionate, wildly-fun and painfully-aching Wieniawski and Lalo. I realized only in retrospect that she, of all people, gleaned a personality that I was only coming to understand myself. And yet I remember so clearly, things like this hot Arizona afternoon, wandering through my scales, while she dabbed her LateAfternoonDoldrums Red freshly made mouth on a dainty handkerchief.
:::
My neighborhood springtime lipstick application and memories of Mrs. M coincided nicely with Julia's timely piece at GITW on how we take care of ourselves -- our outward selves and appearances. I didn't cut my hair in '07, in large part because I didn't want to go back to the stylist who did my hair at 39w and have to explain the whole fucking thing; and in part because I simply didn't care. My eyebrows grew shabby. My skin, already fucked over by progesterone supplements and pregnancy, exploded in a torrent of stress and hormones. It didn't help that I rarely bothered to wash it. I brushed my teeth if I had the energy, I gave up flossing. The makeup I had bought expressly for my brother's wedding, a month before Maddy was conceived, lay in the drawer collecting dust. I didn't want to buy new clothes for my new, large, ungainly, memory-laden and depressing body, so I wore sweats and big t-shirts well into summer. I looked the part, there was no mistaking that something about me was completely, totally wrong. Could be grief; could be flu.
My first foray out into groups and crowds was a local fundraiser held at a neighbor's house, in May? June? Well, it seemed awfully soon to me, whenever it was. I pulled a comb through my unkempt hair, poured my body into a cheap sundress, decided no amount of makeup could possibly do justice to my skin. But heeding some advice from the crevices of my memory, I pulled out an ancient tube of lipstick and carefully applied it.
Not for anyone else, mind you. Not to look better, certainly -- my mouth was in no way going to detract from my baggy eyes or my sorry midsection.
Just a quick coating of Wake the fuck up Pink to get me out the door.
:::
Bella returned home from a party last week, and nestled in her goodie bag was a plastic container of lipgloss on a string. While I can still (!) pull the ol' bluff of "Hey, you don't like gum so I'm throwing it out, ok?" (much like I make a face and explain, "Eew, this drink has BUBBLES in it. You don't like bubbles. I'll find you some water." These scams aren't long for the making, are they), there was no getting rid of the MAKEUP. She seriously ground her finger into the pink goo, and mashed it on her lips, so she more resembled The Joker than any angelic child model made up beyond their years. It was depressing (she's FOUR!) and simultaneously fucking hilarious.
"How do I look?" Bella asked, with a mature downward glance that screamed for a Louis Vitton briefcase, and possibly a fan to blow some wind through the wisps of hair around her face.
"Beautiful."
Sometimes it's not about how it alters the outside, but how it makes you feel on the inside.
Spring is pretty coupled with problematic, and ultimately makes me feel like I should be doing more than I'm doing, and, well, feeling more than I'm feeling.
I've noticed before, but never so much until this year, that one thing I like so much about this neighborhood is spring. It seems as if every house, even the most ramshackle, boarded up, neglected heaps have something in the front yard -- be it a scraggly, volunteer dogwood tree, a few bulbs that were probably deposited by a run-away squirrel, a technicolor fuscia-hued azalea in desperate need of pruning and shaping. There is color there, as if mother nature said, "Dang, this place needs a hit of rogue," in hopes that the human passers-by would overlook the dirt-filled yard, the sunken porch, the stump overgrown with ravenous vine. And this time of year? It works. This old trick works, and my eye is drawn to the lonely clump of red tulips, or the appropriately-named weeping cherry, or the grape-like clumps of bright purple wisteria -- even if their ancient support has long-ago collapsed, and they're now slithering across an un-mowed lawn. The dilapidated that exists in a few pockets will soon be overpowered by a layer of green, and I will only come to realize how dumpy some of the nearby abodes are in late fall, when the leaves finally drop and there is no amount of snow that hides the droopy shutters.
Sometimes it's a bit whorish, but spring's a welcome makeover.
(Lest I embarrass my neighbors, this is a unkempt corner of my yard, where someone thought it wise to randomly plant azalea of varying colors in the middle of unruly, weedy groundcover.)
:::
I played violin seriously from age four to twenty-two, and until college, studied with the same teacher. She was a Juliard-trained woman, who came of professional age at a time when orchestras were still edgy about hiring women (their stamina for rehearsal and uteri exploding with babies in need of attention were undoubtedly ticks against them in the hiring process), and -- much like me, now that I think of it -- arrived in New York City, sight-unseen, from the south. She was proper, she was elegant, and you could tell through her music that her cool and sophisticated demeanor masked a river of romance that ran through her bones.
She taught kids like me for a living, and had crazy hours -- she eventually ran a studio, travelled in order to meet demand elsewhere in the Phoenix area, worked camps and master classes, and taught taught taught, six days a week, beginning at 7:00 a.m. and often running through the dinner hour.
It was not uncommon to arrive at the studio, sometime after my school had let out in the late afternoon, 4:30 p.m. or so, and while I warmed up, she would pull out her compact, and carefully apply lipstick -- always something cheery. For years I was too young to take much away from this ritual, but at some point, I wondered why she was putting lipstick on for me, for a violin lesson, for fuck's sake.
Silly me.
At some point, I'm not sure whether the wondering got the best of me, or she volunteered the information, but in a late-afternoon practice room, as she focused on her mirror, she said, "If you're ever tired, just put on a little lipstick. Wakes you right up."
All this time, she was fucking exhausted, drinking coffee out of her thermos, escorting me and countless others through pouty twinkle-twinkle to stress-laden competitions and auditions and tapings, always with a freshly made pair of lips.
She taught me so much, this teacher. She saw me weekly, for fourteen years. She was in charge of selecting my music, and while my friends were put through the usual paces of Bloch and Bruch and Mendelssohn by their instructors, she sensed something else in me, and put in front of me raw and passionate, wildly-fun and painfully-aching Wieniawski and Lalo. I realized only in retrospect that she, of all people, gleaned a personality that I was only coming to understand myself. And yet I remember so clearly, things like this hot Arizona afternoon, wandering through my scales, while she dabbed her LateAfternoonDoldrums Red freshly made mouth on a dainty handkerchief.
:::
My neighborhood springtime lipstick application and memories of Mrs. M coincided nicely with Julia's timely piece at GITW on how we take care of ourselves -- our outward selves and appearances. I didn't cut my hair in '07, in large part because I didn't want to go back to the stylist who did my hair at 39w and have to explain the whole fucking thing; and in part because I simply didn't care. My eyebrows grew shabby. My skin, already fucked over by progesterone supplements and pregnancy, exploded in a torrent of stress and hormones. It didn't help that I rarely bothered to wash it. I brushed my teeth if I had the energy, I gave up flossing. The makeup I had bought expressly for my brother's wedding, a month before Maddy was conceived, lay in the drawer collecting dust. I didn't want to buy new clothes for my new, large, ungainly, memory-laden and depressing body, so I wore sweats and big t-shirts well into summer. I looked the part, there was no mistaking that something about me was completely, totally wrong. Could be grief; could be flu.
My first foray out into groups and crowds was a local fundraiser held at a neighbor's house, in May? June? Well, it seemed awfully soon to me, whenever it was. I pulled a comb through my unkempt hair, poured my body into a cheap sundress, decided no amount of makeup could possibly do justice to my skin. But heeding some advice from the crevices of my memory, I pulled out an ancient tube of lipstick and carefully applied it.
Not for anyone else, mind you. Not to look better, certainly -- my mouth was in no way going to detract from my baggy eyes or my sorry midsection.
Just a quick coating of Wake the fuck up Pink to get me out the door.
:::
Bella returned home from a party last week, and nestled in her goodie bag was a plastic container of lipgloss on a string. While I can still (!) pull the ol' bluff of "Hey, you don't like gum so I'm throwing it out, ok?" (much like I make a face and explain, "Eew, this drink has BUBBLES in it. You don't like bubbles. I'll find you some water." These scams aren't long for the making, are they), there was no getting rid of the MAKEUP. She seriously ground her finger into the pink goo, and mashed it on her lips, so she more resembled The Joker than any angelic child model made up beyond their years. It was depressing (she's FOUR!) and simultaneously fucking hilarious.
"How do I look?" Bella asked, with a mature downward glance that screamed for a Louis Vitton briefcase, and possibly a fan to blow some wind through the wisps of hair around her face.
"Beautiful."
Sometimes it's not about how it alters the outside, but how it makes you feel on the inside.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
