cook me up some long string beans
February 28, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
lovely
having nothing to do but clip away at paper
the groove required to bake all bread ever eaten in the house
jude’s funny loaves of bread he rolls and mistreats before baking
sleeping babes in the bed with us by morning
entire days spent with friends, coffee, little work
henry singing along with musician friends in the neighborhood
“cold, cold water from the bottom of the well”
lola, of course
cool guy who made evol
tolerable
gum in the mouths of small children
being reminded it’s still winter after all
lone phrases from songs that stick in the head (as in, “big blonde, and beautiful.” why?)
emaciated and airbrushed starlets in scraps of expensive fabric
repeated requests for food (from children, not from emaciated starlets)
making that sad song better
February 26, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 4 Comments
whose kid is that standing on his drum? we have to love miss carol who works with all of these young musicians. she is happy and ready and understanding of the trial it is to sit “like a pretzel” (formerly known as “indian style.” ahem.) in a circle, playing forte and piano because we know italian. thank you, miss carol for meeting jude where he is at, for greeting him cheerfully as he wraps himself constrictor-like around my legs, for rolling on the floor, leaping through the air, pretending to pointe on the tips of your toes with your pristine socks, bobbing your bobbed hair silly with the rest of the sillies. you make a difference.
four ninety five
February 23, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
in hanna city, illinois there used to be the funkiest store called “meyers’” wherein i could find things that were hanging on the walls thirty years prior, when my mother was there, coin purse in hand, folded down socks around ankles. i used to buy blue envelopes there, a small box at a time, envelopes cut from bits of sky and boxed and placed in a dusty meyers’ corner. when we learned they were closing forever i went and bought all of the blue envelopes and now some are in a stack near the desk and the rest of them, they sit in a dusty corner in our basement, maybe in the attic (?), a giant box full of neat little boxes full of rectangles of sky. i just couldn’t let them be tossed into the trash. ernie understands. in fact, i think it was his $20 that bought them all. the aisles in meyers’ weren’t aisles as much as they were small tunnels in caves made of large tan coveralls, cheap and horribly decorated ceramics, crepe paper damaged by water (marked down in price due to the discoloration the water made, the colors in swollen swirls and concentric cirles, wilted). knitting needles in dangerous piles on the floor, duct tape in all colors, thousands of atrocious shirts shrouded in yellowed plastic on racks in the back, ribbon and cocoa and cigarettes, all for sale if you dared approach the sarcastic and large sweating man with the scary glasses and those greasy strings of hair that hung damp and shiny on his forehead, his glasses, his sideburns.
meyers’ is gone, somewhere there’s something like it, perhaps. in greenville we’ve only wilson’s, (what is with the naming of the last name?) the five and dime store that has nothing in it for five cents, or for a dime. maybe for five dimes there’s something there, buried. wilson’s doesn’t have a sarcastic and sweaty man grunting at us as we pay for things, large fingers bumping too many keys on the cash register. the boys are like me, digging through bin and basket as we do at hole-in-the-wall thrift stores (with which the shining electronic signs and outrageously priced books and dresses and furniture of goodwill industries cannot compete), looking for something long ago forgotten.
this week we took the rainy day with us and went to wilson’s to buy spring cookie cutters (well, we didn’t go there to buy those, but we ended up buying them after all) and some kind of junk store trinket for boys who are good at being a team together. henry got two transformer knock-offs that are called “changeable robots.” he speaks robotically in the voice of the robot to tell us “i-am-Changeable-Robot.” jude got a dinosaur that shoots gumballs into his mouth via its mouth. i searched high and low, over hill and under to find an embroidery hoop (found high, in the back left corner: stretch!) and the miniature clothespins were left behind, somewhere misplaced as we were distractedly wading towards the girl in the front who was staring out the watery window and across the street.
carefully on tip-toe
February 22, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
it’s been this kind of week, the kind with grape jelly and coffee spilled on a white shirt at the same breakfast: unsuspecting, sticky, a get-it-over-with kind of week. hurrah for the weekend, homemade pizza, church, wii, sewing, a husband at home for roughhousing, for talking to, for the checking of sanity. i need to go to bed earlier, i think, well before i want to go to bed, and i need to do it on purpose, teeth brushed and glasses off of the face (instead of smashed between my temples and the pillow, lights on, the horrible possibility of jeans still buttoned on my body).
a banjo strong, strung with golden twine
February 18, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 4 Comments
oh! such delight i do not deserve.
today was muddy for the rain of yesterday, last night. the boys stayed in the sun and mud for three hours this afternoon, their clothes (including the oft disputed over wolverine costume) are red with southern clay and slime. the house is therefore very clean due to my being inspired to make it so, and because the condition of being inside alone with such a lovely as lola and a breeze on wings floating through the door, the window, across the floor made it possible. i love the floors under bare feet when there are no crumbs to be found, perhaps because it is a luxury with all of the munching and open mouthed laughing going on around here.
belting aida
February 17, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 4 Comments
delightful
february springtime
late night trips for snacks (made by ernie, anticipated by me)
keeping house, the litany of every day life (so lovely i should give it its own post)
flowers all over the place!
planning to dress up and attend a fancy wedding
all of those crinoline skirts! where can i buy one for a fancy wedding?
lola falling sleepward with jubilant
disappointing
donut making gone wrong (too sweet! very sticky in the dough stage, and, thus, horribly messy!)
ernie thinking i’ve been crying after the liberal application of eye liner in an attempt to look like an aloof playwright
there’s a daisy
February 15, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
because he loves me, jude likes to give pinched crocuses to me, bits of evergreen, a stick, something with a bud, pieces of the color instead of the gray. because she loves me, my mom sent pink tulips my way, pink on the doorstep as a surprise that made me say, “oh!” because he loves me, ernie gave me flowers yesterday, had annie’s brilliant fingers work some floral magic for us. he was standing outside work when i picked him up, flowers in hand, smiling like he used to smile at me when we were all new together. so much love around here. days of flowers, pinks and the creamiest of whites sending heart shaped clouds through the house as we sail through it.
i sit with the second pot of coffee roaring in the kitchen. lola is whispering sweet nothings in my ear as she stands, one arm over my shoulder, in my lap (loves to stand, this girl, she thinks she’s so big now). the boys are pretending together, something new for them, cooperative play, jude usually unwilling to play the same story line with henry. yesterday we overheard jude pretending he was one of those kids on reading rainbow, the kids who review the books at the end. “hi, my name’s joshua, and i have a book for you that every kid should read!” henry and i giggled together and it was sweet to experience that with henry, to share a secret laugh together.
i don’t know what time i got up this morning, but it must have been early because today seems eternal and it’s barely half-way done. there must be something i really need to do today, the minutes remaining gossipping together about how i’m not doing it yet and whether or not i’ve the wherewithal to remember what it is.
i heart pink buttercream frosting
February 13, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
the house, once clean, recently, for the weekend past, cleaned well in anticipation of my mother-in-law, is now fast approaching a state of squalor. but we have valentine cookies, lots of them, frosted in pink loveliness using the most deliciously buttery recipe i could find that did not involve meringue or raw egginess of any kind. we are out of dough to cut and frost and sprinkle and may need to bake more today. butterflies are flitting, fluttering, insisting that i make cookies with the butterfly cutter nichole gave me for christmas. but the mess! the ocean of toys in the boys’ room, the laundry to fold, the sewing clutter from several projects in clips and threads on the floor! do cookies really taste better in a tidy house?
le ballon rouge
February 10, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
pink, red, some in white, balloons astray, they float and scurry, led by, followed by the wind. a valentine for me, for you, for those who notice while waiting for the endless tide of traffic, for those on benches, sidewalks, bound to the earth by legs and gravity.
today i wonder why i noticed the balloons, too many in too few days, popped by now, snagged on a thorn, a vine of winter, or flown too high into the atmospheric green, white, space in view, a few strokes forward before exploding silent. tonight i wonder how many other lost balloons in flight i do not see, preoccupied with the world in front of me, beside, beneath.
this, the big banana
February 9, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
things that make me chirp in the morning
that first trudge to the coffee machine
a clean kitchen
cold floors, the scramble for socks
stretching this body
lola! and her morning smiles
the sky, wearing her blue dress, the one with the twittering birds on it
starting laundry
bustle of activity on the road, in the house
baked goods, the need for butter
the damp, soapy humidity of the bathroom after a shower, or two
the sun in patches on the floor, the cat in stretches in the sun
things that make me twinkle in the night
lamplight seen from another room
the chance for time to oneself
dreaming in LOST
the cat asleep on henry’s feet
quiet talking
the murmer and hum of ernie working in his studio
turning out the light and thinking sleepy thoughts
too many pillows in the bed and the necessary tossing off of them into the darkness
waking up in the middle of the night and getting out of bed and doing what i want to do, just because i can