i’ve made shoes for everyone
August 26, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | 10 Comments
perhaps i should worry aloud more often. i kid you not: immediately after posting yesterday about the worrisome delay of our birkenstock order, i walked upstairs and found the box leaning against the bricks to the left of the door, just beneath the mailbox!
they arrived three weeks and one day after ordering. three weeks is a long time to wait for things these days, especially when you’re used to amazon dot com and her speedy deliveries. my feet rejoice, even though they feel heavy in real shoes after a summer of flip flopping about or going barefoot. my favorite part about the shoes is the sunburst straps of leather on the outsides of the feet. i also love the black as i don’t seem to be able to get away from black these days. gracen has the same pair, only in a nice tiny size, with her miniature pinky toes disappearing into the sunset (sunbursting leather strappage) and hers are a nice shade of red. red was considered, but black will be better with the variety wine coloured wardrobe i’ve seemed to have created.
i like it that ernie and i were both able to buy birks (and have them shipped in german newspapers) for under ninety euros (roughly $115), which is not often possible in the regular birkenstock selling store. i like the handwritten invoice. i like the ‘e’ for ‘euro.’ i like it that they address is correct.
i had forgotten that i really like the german newspaper that is wrapped around the shoes to keep them from moving around in the box. the combination scent of paper and new shoes is smile material for sure. in fact, this is reason alone, perhaps, to order your birkenstocks from the confusing and frightening hawea.de.
thanks, again, PA greenes, for birthday cash to spend on whatever wished or longed for!
i’ve made shoes for everyone
August 26, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
perhaps i should worry aloud more often. i kid you not: immediately after posting yesterday about the worrisome delay of our birkenstock order, i walked upstairs and found the box leaning against the bricks to the left of the door, just beneath the mailbox!
they arrived three weeks and one day after ordering. three weeks is a long time to wait for things these days, especially when you’re used to amazon dot com and her speedy deliveries. my feet rejoice, even though they feel heavy in real shoes after a summer of flip flopping about or going barefoot. my favorite part about the shoes is the sunburst straps of leather on the outsides of the feet. i also love the black as i don’t seem to be able to get away from black these days. gracen has the same pair, only in a nice tiny size, with her miniature pinky toes disappearing into the sunset (sunbursting leather strappage) and hers are a nice shade of red. red was considered, but black will be better with the variety wine coloured wardrobe i’ve seemed to have created.
i like it that ernie and i were both able to buy birks (and have them shipped in german newspapers) for under ninety euros (roughly $115), which is not often possible in the regular birkenstock selling store. i like the handwritten invoice. i like the ‘e’ for ‘euro.’ i like it that they address is correct.
i had forgotten that i really like the german newspaper that is wrapped around the shoes to keep them from moving around in the box. the combination scent of paper and new shoes is smile material for sure. in fact, this is reason alone, perhaps, to order your birkenstocks from the confusing and frightening hawea.de.
thanks, again, PA greenes, for birthday cash to spend on whatever wished or longed for!
wonder no more
August 24, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the house is nearly empty, the beginnings of echoes in parts of the house where beds have been removed, furniture sold and sent away in the dark. we’ve had too much mac & cheese for dinner, lunch, breakfast, if henry had is way.
if you’ve been confused as to the destination of our relocation, be confused no more. i’m sorry, especially towards carrie, for being vague and secretive. sometimes i just don’t know what to say.
four days from today the trailer of the truck will be dropped off at the curb and we will pack (u-pack). mostly, ernie will pack the truck. six days from today we will send the trailer off with the driver and will get into our own car and follow (not really) the truck at a leisurely pace, down to the carolinas, stopping in the southern one, where we will unload the truck, begin to work, and do all of those things that happen when one moves far away from the original location.
we’ve got a box of fun surprises (though not enough, no doubt) for the ride. we have new haircuts (short!). we do not have our new birkenstocks, which are taking a worrisome amount of time to travel here from germany. my feet are very sad every day when the mailman drops trash into our slot and does not leave a box from germany on the doorstep. but the hairs of my head are not sad at all, however, as ernie gave me the best haircut ever the other night. hooray for scissors.
think of us and pray for us, if you will, for the next week, two weeks. it’s hard to get everything done with children in the mix, with the need for food creating disaster in the kitchen throughout the day. i feel crabby and know that it shows as i act crabby, too.
i take you and pile high the memories
August 18, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
five years ago today mr. greene and i were married. the day glowed green, the sun setting and sending us off with a sparkle. i wore pink sandals, he wore striped socks. there were many daisies and many spectators. my mother and i made my dress and tightly stitched the buttons from her wedding dress up the back of mine. the morning of the wedding my friends and i drove (too far) to pick flowers. a flower girl forgot her shoes and is sock-footed in most of the pictures. the cake was green(e) and dotted. i don’t remember what it tasted like. there were many little lights and flickers. we ignored the tinging of glasses and chipped away at the fruit slush.
ernie wore his glasses, the old pair, brown and swirled, so that he could see me as i came through the door. i didn’t have my glasses (vanity), but the squinting of my eyes due to the smiling of my lips made the front of the church clear. a stained glass and turquoised blue hovered over.
if you take the universe and all time and cast it out in one large line of events, the five year wink of our love and covenant seems small and, perhaps, unnoticeable. but not to us, we who take notice of winks, winkings, winkers. this morning we baffle, “i feel like it was last week, yesterday, that we got married.” after twenty years there are people who say the same thing. “some people,” ernie smiles.
we will be those people, a thousand times and again. i’m not entirely sure where five years has gone. perhaps it’s the time that work takes, the driving, the working, the creating perhaps it’s the snips ot time wasted on meaningless activity that drones throughout the day. perhaps the boys take time and it wraps itself around their bones and organs like ligaments, shooting upward in a mesh of a thousand different strands, the workings of only to be seen in a photograph that elicits exclamations asking about the whereabouts of the minutes, hours, and days.
mr. greene is my one true love, the one who inspires me to work hard, to create, encourages me to be and to do better. he is the one who loves me the most, who is faithful and real and full of life. he’s dreamy and cool, too (which one might sniff at if one does not have such), and i often wonder exactly how this all happened to a klunk, a girl full of shortcomings, such as myself.
happy anniversary, dearling. sixty, seventy, more?
in our cities in the sun
August 15, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the circle of mess: encouraging one mess so that i can clean up another. today’s mess was lentils and brown rice, half used bags opened and dumped into containers. i’m quite certain that mr. rogers’ sand table has not a sprinkle of sand beneath it. were mr. rogers to go barefoot onto his patio he would not feel the sand sticking to his feet. but at our house, sensory exploration creates a tactile experience for the bottoms of your feet, as well as for your fingers and hands. half an hour was spent sweeping, brushing the stuff into the white box to save for later. that’s right, i must be insane, i saved it so that they can make another mess with it!
last week henry painted rockets and horses while jude made his standard dull purple paint color by mixing all colors all over himself, the table, the chair, the paper, all so that i could do dishes, clean the kitchen, vacuum the floor.
even the bathtub is a messmaking venue, armed with a large can of shaving cream via debbie from church they paint and smear and pile and bury and, of course, “shave” for the duration, until someone gets a glob in the eye, until someone is too tired and crabby to bathe nicely.
at least these messes are supervised, unlike the glittery make-up mess jude squirted on and ground into the rug yesterday morning, the soap messes that jude likes to make at the kitchen sink, the lotion (”goop!”) jude emptied onto his hands and smeared through his hair saturday? friday? the messes blur together. it’s too bad i can’t concentrate in the midst of disaster, that spending the day stepping barefoot on brown rice and lentils is really out of the question.
henry, armed with his very own yellow broom, tries to help by sweeping his mess with vigorous swooping motions, sending grain and legume flying.
only an ocean away
August 11, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
rain and cool at last. the thunder shouted, the lightning blinked through cracks in the roof of sky. we watch from the front of the house as we’ve no real porch for sitting. the nights breeze cool and everyone sleeps hard.
this morning we set sail for farmington for the city-wide yard sale. henry cleaned up on weaponry of all kinds: a tomahawk, swords, and jewels to wear on wrist and arm. mostly, we buy books and weapons. i look for a bed for jude that will match henry’s, though neither of them really sleep in their own beds, at least most of the time, most of the night(s). i hope for an old woman stash of fabric that has been washed, ironed, folded and stacked for a sale. these are the bests sorts of sales, with vintage notions in cool containers. a few weeks ago i bought an old elna sewing machine with boxes of cams and bobbins. i have a nice bernina and haven’t decided which machine to keep, perhaps both. they both do different things so part of me thinks i should keep them both.
joe is here to swordfight with henry while i give the kitchen a much needed mopping. i cleaned the boiler room of all of my belongings, most of which were christmas decorations, the rest of which went into a box bound for goodwill. happily, yesterday and this morning youth and youth leader from a local church hauled the half-a-garage (embarrassing) of junk we had to their missions fundraiser sale. liberated, i feel an urge to use murphy’s soap, to dust and to organize.
the move moves along and there is much to do. expect few words from this mama as she folds, wraps, tapes, and packs these greenes and their worldly belongings.
and then you can expect words, words, words, and more words as i’ve been blessed with a job that involves a good deal of writing. that’s all i’ll say for now. curiouser and curiouser.
the man in the moon is the face of a boy
August 9, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
sunday we went to farm king to see radar, the world’s tallest living horse. the thing was massive and had a frightening mouth (among other things). the first time we went (yes, friends, we went twice) we didn’t have a camera (?) so we went to grandmama’s, ate lunch, celebrated grandpa’s birthday, and then went back before radar was loaded onto his air-conditioned trailer (a true star) at four p.m. on the dot.
radar would not do any of the cool things he was doing the first time we were there, like standing tall over the fence while chewing straw with his enormous teeth. the extremely short woman (good choice when showing off a tall horse — must remember this in the event i’ve ever got to do such a thing) handed us radar’s business card. jude carried his around and tried to cram it into his pocket for the rest of the day. inside farm king there was a very large dog who wore a white sock on his back right foot and was desperately in need of a bath. ernie took good photographs of that dog. why wouldn’t you bathe your large dog if you were taking him to a store to show off? another thing to remember.
in other news, although he cannot fill it up with air on his own, jude is extremely amused by a whoopie cushion. sadly, shortly after this photo was taken, in attempt to “make a really really really big sound,” henry stomped on the thing and it popped. he then told jude that he would buy him another one, which i thought was nice, even though henry rarely has money of his own.
our stove had some kind of electrical difficulty just as i was frying an onion to make fajitas. everyone was hungry and it was a sad thing to eat sandwiches instead. last night my dad came by and moved the stove to find a terrible array of yuck behind, beside and beneath. how frequently is one supposed to pull out the stove and clean behind, beside and beneath it?
the most important find was a uniquely shaped lego that goes to a star-wars lego guy. the piece was lost a few months ago as henry bounded into the room to show his work (2 hours with poppy in the studio) to me and then proceeded to drop and shatter the guy, his ship, all of it, before i could even get a good look at his creation.
we found variety wooden spoons, chopsticks, millions of goldfish (?) “a cop car!” and a creepy plastic cat that eerily resembles the orange stray that lingers at each door and window of our house (depending on which rooms in which we’re living and working) these days of sun and storm. i don’t know the origin of either cat, but i do know that the squirrel woman who lives behind us has been lurking in my yard, curlers in her bangs, cigarette (menthol) between her fingers, searching for the cat so that she can put some manner of eye-drops in its eye (”he looks like he’s been kicked in the head,” she says on an exhale. “and what about that limp?”). maybe i should give the plastic cat to her so that the stray will follow her from room to room by way of window and door, glass and screen.
stars upon thars
August 1, 2006 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the heat is a drooling, sweating beast with fangs and venom and all manner of fire breathing tendency(ies). we swim in the stench of it. we wade in the murk and muck of it. our hair turns up and is damp on the back of our necks. we’re sticky and soggy and the cool pools of patience have dried, wrinkled, baked into cakes that crack at the slightest handling.
we spend the afternoons in the frigid AC of my mother’s living room. today my toes were cold and i briefly thought that tomorrow i may bring socks to send up and over my knees. then i remembered and wished for summers i spent between years of college, time spent practicing, reading, sleeping, writing, while wearing turtlenecks and jeans and velvet jackets, scarves and socks, because the air of the house was too cold to be dressed for summer.
it’s nice to drink coffee in cold rooms with barefeet over smooth cold wood.
today we came home to the swelter and quickly tip-toed a run over the woolly mashad to find stickers to stick to the stick. my study is hot and after we spend ten minutes in the heat of it the living room breathes and tricks us into thinking she’s a cooler place to sit.
i flip through catalogs with damp fingers and look at long sweaters and corderoy of all kinds and briefly (ever so) i can smell new pencils, bonfires, apples.
