you’re a mean old daddy but i like you
April 24, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
papery leaf hurdles for the sunshine make breezy patterns on the floor. there’s a shade across the front of the house already, green leaves and and blackly greener grass and mud, the shadows of bush and branch.
we’re off to the windy city with hoodies in hands. no laundry or dishes for nearly a week. swimming clothes and a box full of books to stuff in the car and we’re nearly there already.
time to play and sleep and read and write.
maybe i’ll go to amsterdam, maybe i’ll go to rome
and rent me a grand piano and put some flowers ’round my room.
but let’s not talk about fare-thee-wells now, the night is a starry dome….
carey, get out your cane and i’ll put on some silver….
you’re a mean old daddy but i like you
April 24, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
papery leaf hurdles for the sunshine make breezy patterns on the floor. there’s a shade across the front of the house already, green leaves and and blackly greener grass and mud, the shadows of bush and branch.
we’re off to the windy city with hoodies in hands. no laundry or dishes for nearly a week. swimming clothes and a box full of books to stuff in the car and we’re nearly there already.
time to play and sleep and read and write.
maybe i’ll go to amsterdam, maybe i’ll go to rome
and rent me a grand piano and put some flowers ’round my room.
but let’s not talk about fare-thee-wells now, the night is a starry dome….
carey, get out your cane and i’ll put on some silver….
my soul got happy and stayed all day
April 22, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
here’s a little something that is truly delightful, “some magic that will heal my ailing soul.” my darling dearling tucked it under his arm and bought it on wednesday night so that i could carefully turn pages and slip paper from envelopes and go birding sans binoculars both yesterday and today and tomorrow for sure.
strange, but true, i have two boys who can eat an entire box of macaroni and cheese (and tell me they’re finished, by hand or mouth, one way or another) between themselves. they don’t do it every time i whip such a sorry, cheezy, lunch together, mind you. and not without a healthy sprinkle of frozen peas mixed in, of course. but they have eaten the cooked contents of a box themselves only this past week! i’m astonished. one would think they should both be reading and toilet capable in order to participate in a macaroni eating fest. one would think so and one (myself, their mother!) would be wrong.
cold and windy. the doors and windows barred shut. the green is oustanding from treetop to grass bottom. the mud here in illinois is black and then blacker, nothing like the slippery red clay sludge of south carolina. something overwhelming about something so dark and black and quiet.
coffee flows from the shining black pot on the counter. gray days call for tea or coffee and sometimes both. my nose is cold and i’m wearing socks again. it’s a welcome sort of cold, though. it’s a spring cold, the kind you choose to let in the house through screen and iron or to send in a swirl and a howl around the bricks and glass and prematurely blooming lilacs.
jude is feverish and cries out in the night. i hear him and am cut to the quick. i am tired and bleary and sometimes cry or grump to myself. i can hardly abide a baby crying, a new baby in particular. someone told me recently that she awoke in the night and heard through the open windows a baby somewhere in the neighborhood screaming and wailing and crying. i thought about my jude crying as i bounced and nursed and walked and swayed. i wondered if anyone was awakened in the neighborhood by his crying.
“it cut through me like a knife…i was really, really uncomfortable. maybe it was a baby crying it out? i don’t know… i mean, it was eery,” she said.
and i know what she means, that uncomfortable feeling. the feeling that you need to get up and slip on some shoes and go to find out what is going on with that baby.
i, for one, do not like to sleep alone. i like having someone (and, most often, three someones) warm nearby, someone snoring, someone stealing covers, someone talking nonsense in his sleep. ernie says that we were not designed to sleep alone and i readily agree. it’s interesting that adults, who are, for the most part cognitively responsible and emotionally functional, sleep in a tangle one with another, night after night, until old age and its bodily curiosities move them to do otherwise. but in turn, these same adults expect babies, who are fresh from womb and heartbeat, a cozy place as near to mama as near can be, to sleep alone in their own beds and rooms, “so that they will learn” that they are “not the center of the universe” and other malarkey. it’s more than interesting, it’s lamentable.
enough! it’s friday night, earth night it is, and the birds are sleeping safely and soundly. something must be done to ring in the weekend.
who makes the morning fabulous?
April 21, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
i think there are two things about cake-building that need to be understood.
first, the cake has to look terrible before it can look beautiful. when i’m stacking the layers on top of one another and cutting things off to even things out, the thing is a mess! i terrible mess.
secondly, no matter how terrible the cake looks in the beginning, there is no guarantee that it will ever look beautiful at all.
how did pedro build such a beautiful cake? it must be the moustache. “never trust a man with a moustache.”
for some reason my cakes-that-aren’t-cheesecake are never beautiful. no one cares as they eat the chocolately wonder, but i wilt and care as i light the candles and carry the thing out to the guests and their sweet teeth. perhaps had i not gone to college for years and years and one degree and another i could have pursued perfecting the art of cake building during those years, instead. one can only wonder.
joe’s birthday. grandma told him, “i’m mad at you for having your party outside! i don’t want to be out in the cold! i’m mad at you!” and he smirked and called to tell me. but at the end of the warm, though windy, evening and after her fat pieces of ugly yet delicious cake, she declared herself as “having a wonderful time!”
we twinkled the trees starry and i have to say the lights won’t be coming down all summer. the lanterns are inside in a pile on the sunporch table, as they will not withstand wind and rain, but the indoor/outdoor lights we bought for our christmas tree are taking an extended camping trip in the backyard. of course, we need more lights! many, many more lights! the tree needs to be ablaze with lights from top to bottom! get this girl some fancy tree climbing equipment and i’ll cover the thing with twinkling sensations in no time at all.
who makes the morning fabulous?
who says today’s a fun day?
why do i feel like sailing again?
honey, it’s you…
who makes the traffic interesting?
rescues a dreary sunday?
who makes me feel like painting again?
honey, it’s you…
who has a friend named melanie?
who’s not afraid to try new things?
who gets to spend her birthday in spain?
possibly you…
– steely dan, of course.
let joy kill you
April 19, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
with an itch and a sneeze we stand in the grass under petal and leaf and bud. a swoosh of wind the pollen and petals snow around us in a pink fluttering whorl. when the boys wake me up in the morning my eyes are stiff and burning. it’s taking more than coffee to shake the sleepy heavy feeling away.
the fans spin in full swing. the boys wear as little as possible. henry wants to “wear his dress”, meaning he wants to get dressed. he plays his harmonica and jumps from the couch to the rug and back onto the couch again and then does a flipping somersault across the couch, dropping his harmonica in the process.
he moves in a golden fluttering whorl, a constant swish of star-spun twinkle and dance.
this morning i sit at this wreckage on my desk and drink the last cup of coffee. henry chews gum after toast. jude snoozes in the sunny blue room upstairs.
today is joe’s birthday so we are readying to messy the kitchen as we batter together the makings of cake. a party tonight with lights in the trees and flowers on the table. the first birthday with dreamy weather and glossy green grass.
“i have seen them live long and laugh loud…”
you walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
April 16, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
as much as i try to stay awake i fall asleep on the couch and am sent upstairs to bed so that ernie can have the couch and tv and long blanket and cherry coke to himself. if i sit down for more than a moment and even relax one tiny muscle i’m falling asleep and it’s over.
jude has discovered that tummy sleeping feels better than back sleeping and no matter how hard i try to keep him on his back he rolls over and crunches up and sleeps for long hours at a time.
henry has new shoes that he can put on by himself. he puts them on the wrong feet and knows to switch them around.
this morning i watched the two of them laughing about cookies. henry was swinging in between two chairs. jude was in his highchair, toes on the table, chocolate covered. their hair sticking up to meet sunlight, their mouths pulled up with a laugh and a song, always a song. henry never quits his singing.
and i stopped and saw them there with that blue tunneling of vision that makes you really see something for what it is. i saw that moment, that millisecond of time and remembered that i will never see it again, it’s over and gone and we’re doing something else. even seconds later, it’s not the same. the sun is dimmer, the smiling is something else, the hair, the chairs, the swinging, the cookies, the toes are all different.
amazing, this “swirl in the air where your head was once, here.” it’s gone with the glitter of it in a flash. and it wouldn’t be the same if we noticed it all of the time, noticed the milliseconds of moments. they only matter when you’ve missed millions and billions of them already.
if you need a pick-me-up come on over and i will take my scissors to the back corner of our yard and clip some japanese quince for you to take home to your kitchen table.
i like your sleeves
April 14, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
possibly the coolest kid on the planet. 
then black and brindle red and brown
April 13, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
fun to chop with a rockin’ rocking mincer.
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April 13, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
meat in the nude.
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April 13, 2005 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
cooking with meat has never been easy for me. i normally don’t do it. ernie does it or we eat beans and rice. or pasta. or broccoli. it’s not that difficult to understand my aversion to dealing with meat: vegetables and grains don’t bleed on you when you’re cutting them. but last night i cut and cooked pieces of beef for dinner.
it’s not that i don’t like to eat meat, sometimes i really like to eat meat. sometimes a hot dog sounds really good. maybe it’s the idea of not having anything to do with the killing of animals with eyes and heartbeats in order to eat them that is appealing to me.
i thought that the monumental occasion of my unrequested meat preparation experience deserved documentation. and besides, i’m experimenting with the bloggerbot tool this morning, too.