Seattle, Week 2

This afternoon we floated over the deep blue waters of the Puget Sound on the Poulsbo-Edmonds Ferry. The sun shone for perhaps the second day since we've been here. From the upper deck, we watched the water churning from the ferry's engines, stretching out in a foaming path; in the distance the Cascades rose distinct and snow-capped; to our right we could see Mount Rainer's bulk, and to our left, the skyline of Seattle, where we'll walk about this evening with my brother and his partner, taking in the lights and finding a Thai restaurant. Or Vietnamese--the jury is out on that.

This morning when I ventured downstairs to my sister's kitchen, my mother met me by the coffee pot. "Does this day feel SPECIAL to you?" she asked. I peered at her from my sleep-blurred eyes. She pressed: "Because when I woke up this morning, the day felt really special."

After a few lovely days of Christmas presents, wine, and conversation, this particular morning promised house-cleaning (my sister's in-laws follow on our heels). I supposed that cleaning toilets would be pretty special, but I still was befuddled when Mom said again,

"Doesn't this day just feel really special?" Had I forgotten my sister's birthday again? I thought wildly. No, it's in January. What was my madre getting at?

Finally she caved. "It's the nineteenth!" she announced.

Sure enough. Twelve years of marriage to Martin. Martin was waiting to see if I'd realize why the day was special too; I'd greeted him this morning by telling him not to wake me up with his questions--since he's just arrived, he's still on Pennsylvania time. I've adjusted to Washington time, so he awakens me far too early with his bright chatter.

But after twelve years of marriage, he was unsurprised that the date had slipped my mind. He is celebrating right now by stuffing himself with corn chips and watching football with my Dad, a past time he dreams about at our house, where we scorn television but dream about watching it at other houses.

If anyone needs to reach me, I'm at my parent's house. Oh, and Sally, will you water my plants? Pleease? I'll send you some rare Seattle sunshine.

Interested in wearing a bra on your head? Read my story in the O-R.

Attracting Females

Near the end of our chicken curry tonight at my sister's house in Washington, my seven year old nephew Josiah, who had been quiet during the meal, spoke up.

"Some males sing. Some fight. I'm going to dance."

We begged that he expand, so he said, "Well, male aminals like to attract females. I'm an aminal, and I'm a male, and I'm going to attract a female."

We asked Josiah to show us his dance but he said, "No. I'll feel foolish."

Bribing ensued, and finally promised four pieces of candy from the gingerbread house, Josiah scooted off his chair and laid himself, belly down on the floor, where he began to slither like a snake.

Bea was curious. Wearing her pink tutu, she sidled up to Josiah where she got down on her hands and knees right next to her cousin. Josiah jumped up.

"I attracted a female!" he cried triumphantly. Then he glanced around. "I need another male!" he announced, "So we can do the fighting thing."

Apparently he was pleased with his first experiment as a male aminal. When neither Granddaddy or his dad offered to take him up on the fighting thing, Josiah got on the floor again and began howling--and was marginally less successful with his singing than with his dancing,

But he received great accolades from the adults, and he is now, at this very moment, eating his reward: four delicious pieces of candy from the gingerbread house.

We,re here. Typing on my sister,s ipad. Super cool but i can,t find the apostrophe. Today sailed over the swells of the puget sound, cascades bright in setting sun.

Here we are in the Pittsburgh airport, waiting for our late airplane. As things fall now, we'll coast into Seattle around 2:30 am our time. Two girls will be quite sleepy, I think. Their mother, and their grandparents, perhaps a tad tired as well. We found a wonderful children's area and Elspeth and Bea are having a lovely time, watching Pittsburgh's own Mr. Rogers and running around a wooden plane and up and down a ramp. Mom just handed me a charming, engaging book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society; since it's epistolary, it's perfect for airport reading.

Good news includes happy children thus far, and since it's not Christmas, there's no emotional wrench about missing all the magic. Think of us, holding sleeping girls, sailing high up in the air.

Headed Out

If I were smart, I'd go to bed now, chatter my way through getting undressed, plunge myself under the covers, curl into a ball, and wait for my body to warm the sheets. But I won't. I've trained myself; I practice a blind devotion to late hours. I love being awake when the children are sleeping, even after a day like today, where, as my mother aptly described, all events fit into each other like puzzle pieces, tightly without space in between. But I got everything done that I aimed to; last column for December written, last minute shopping accomplished, tea sipped with my dear friend, an interview conducted with Mimi (fabulous woman, fount of history), cakes baked for a University party, supper delivered to a new-baby-family, suitcases packed. At some point soon--perhaps the first morning when I awaken in Seattle with few to no responsibilities--I am fully expecting that Christmas will hit me and I'll be bowled over with joy and peace.

Just as an aside, I've been reflecting on how peaceful, generally, I feel these days, and I think one big reason is that I'm getting to work--a little and in spurts--but work nonetheless, and by this I mean work separate from the very hard work of parenting and running a household. I still balance this, in partnership with Martin, in the context of being with the children, but I find that after I write an article or interview someone, I have renewed energy to get on the floor and play tea party with the sweet girls. I recently saw a lovely mother with a new baby, and any sadness I felt at being "done" with babies evaporated. Ah, I love sleeping through the night; I love children who evidence a semblance of independence, and though I love holding a baby, I am content to give her back to her mother. I shall enjoy this small zen while it lasts. Wish me good speed, friends. I'm headed out of the freezing cold, due west.

At the risk of being Twitteresque and tremendously tedious, I have to share this moment with you. Close your eyes and imagine the warmest thing you can: your father's hand on your head before bed, a cup of tea wrapped by your own fingers, your feet in a basin of steaming water, a baby curled up on your chest, wool blankets wrapped about your shoulders. . .and then you will know how this one blast of sunlight, in the middle of endless days of grey snow, feels right now, flooding over my desk, lighting up the geranium leaf. Blessed shadows.

Also, the gutteral screaming of a two year old, announcing moment is over and naptime is imminent.

Twice-Annual First-Night-of-Exams-Open-House

Over thirty students packed into our warm kitchen and scattered throughout the house. One enormous pot of chili, consumed. Countless pots of chai, sipped and gulped. Double batch of cornbread, slightly overbaked, almost completely eaten. Texas sheet cake: crumbs washed away down the drain. Two students headbanged in the living-room. Everywhere, laughter. My parents arrived, squeezed into the hallway to collect their chili, and then fled upstairs, where they watched a movie with the girls, who eventually trailed upstairs. Nine-thirty: house cleaned,vaccuumed, dishes washed, kitchen mopped. Ten o'clock: bottle of wine, paltry leftovers, Mom, Dad, Martin and I slumped around the kitchen table, enjoying quiet conversation and an empty house. Will we do it again? Gladly we will, in another six months.

Christmas Mash-Up

Merry's question should have been adequate warning for the reaction of an entire room of people, faces flushed with Christmas: "What is the play ABOUT?"

As my friend Elesha (aka, Singer One in the play)said, "It's highly conceptual."

These were my goals as I wrote the script and directed a crew of wild children: to avoid a dry retelling of the classic Christmas story; to evoke a child-like spirit of wonder and questions; to keep the play, and thus the practices, mercifully short.

Basically, as I explained to my friend Sal this morning, the play was a God-spell like Christmas mash-up, with children asking questions, playing drums, singing snippets of Christmas carols, and reading short lines from scripts. They were dressed in a variety of colors and outfits from around the world and scarves were draped over a series of wooden stairs and tiny folding chairs. Granted, the last carol, "Joy to the World," in which the audience was supposed to participate, started in, say, at least three different keys, and may have never totally recovered, but the kids played their drums and Martin banged out a good beat on a metal chair, and even Bea, in her tiny Chinese pantsuit, joined in on the djembe. Afterwards there was a stunned silence into which I yelled, "That's our Christmas celebration for this year! And now we can all EAT!"

Which we did--I flew back to the church kitchen to cut up my Texas sheet cake. And nobody said anything about the Christmas play--not any of the women who came back to retrieve pots of soup or casseroles for the pot-luck table, not any of the men who cleared up afterward. I'm used to Baptists or free-wheeling nondenominationalists or dry but funny Episcopalians who, in their various ways, gush a little more: "Oh, honey, that was so cuuute," a Baptist Texan at Martin's parent's church might have said (I imagined), "Those kids looked so dahlin' up there, and they beat their drums so well."

From the Mennonites, nothing. I couldn't figure out whether it was because one is not supposed to congratulate anyone on their accomplishments, since all the glory is due God, or whether they just all were so confused they had no idea what in the world to say. Finally I dropped a word to young-church-lady Rachel, who was collecting cutlery and setting up the tea bags in little baskets, and she confirmed that the children had really enjoyed themselves. Not a single word from the rest of church-goers, and was I being paranoid when I caught a funny light in the choir director's eyes when she spoke to me later over plates of sloppy joe and unidentifiable food?

Not to worry; I ate a lot of dessert with good people, sang some carols, and the kids beat their drums and waved scarves all evening, through the eating and the sacred singing, creating such a racket on stage that most of us were afraid to watch lest we must chide for irresponsible behavior. But I think all that joyful racket was an indication that THEY GOT IT, they got the Christmas fever, or the Christmas FEVA, man. As I ate my tenth slice of cake, Martin grinned and said, "Just see if they ask YOU to do the Christmas play again!" and we high-fived.

Merry Christmas, people. Rock the season. There's much to celebrate, much play to be had, little cause for overwrought solemnity, more cause for drum-beating and flashes of light and crying babies--and children, like wayward, dirty shepherds, yelling and spreading their raucous joy all over our stages and our lives.

Interested in a rabid opossum and the story of its demise? Find it at my Observer-Reporter column by clicking on the geranium to the right.

Elspeth's Monologues

Sunshine today; slant of light on Elspeth's hands, catching the little copper pot on the dining room table, making it a tiny deposit of summer, bright, gleaming. The girls are playing with new birthday presents: wooden cookies, a pink tea set. There's a bit of a battle raging between the two oldest, who are spreading and organizing perfectly with an eye for precision, and the youngest, who is grabbing all she can, stashing it, trying to share as well but failing, resorting to petty violence, such as whacking her older sister with a wooden lollipop. Martin's unloading the dishwasher and listening to the Car-Talk Brothers, and we are all full of french toast and caffeine and feeling fine despite the columns I have to write/collect information for before leaving for Seattle next week; the sporadic squabbling of the girls; and our varying states of physical unreadiness for the day.

I would like now, fine readers, to enrich your lives with a spot of nonsense, or rather, a storm of nonsense, which was imparted to the small Wazoo world last week by way of Elspeth's mouth as she sat at lunch table. I regret that I only began recording her monologue after she'd been going for a while, but at least I got this--let me set the stage--Elspeth sits across from me, and she's talking to everyone and no-one, and verbalizing this list, for unknown reasons, unless it was just for the joy of saying everything that came into her colorful, candy-like brain:

"Lamp-posters, little monkey tail, a little piglet, a pen with writing, a noodle poster, a washcloth, a tin can, spaghetti and cheese, nose posters, polar bear ears, a hairy, hairy head, an elephant trunk, top of a lamp, a fan, a lamp, a little person's head--"

[at this point she broke into song:] "A boy is made out of nails and yucky stuff! A girl is made out of lovely stuff, like polkadot tails and--" [she narrows her eyes pouts her lips, drops her voice to guttural growl:] "A ROCK STAR!"

[She continues in falsetto:] "How did you ever learn how to use thunder? How about a looky-looker? Where do noodles learn to dance? WHO? Knock-knock door? I definitely forgot about the witch. Haven't you seen the monkey swinging with no tail on? Yes, and how did YOU learn to dance? Anyway, I'm going to give that to a love-wench."

We transitioned here, possibly to nap-time, otherwise the rapid-fire monologue might have continued. And here, dear ones, in the sunshine, the intermittent screams of tension and purrs of contentment, in my Smart-Wool socks and my syrup smells, I leave you. Happy Saturday.

Lovely Gleaming Bit 'O Magic

The more I write, the more I realize how very narrow and well-trod are the paths through my brain.

Last year, I heard a sixth-grader give a report on writing; one of the steps to good writing, he said, was to make a list of your "go-to" words and forbid yourself from using them. There are words that I use as often as I wear my ratty, long, balled sweater in the house; there are images I turn to easily, as I'd turn to one of my children. . .yeah, yeah, there's always the bird, feathers bright against snow/feather bright as blood/etc. image. The gleam of wood/hair/etc. under lamplight. "Gleam" is a favorite word for me these days. It tastes good on my tongue and makes me warm, too, like tea. . .maybe it's a winter word.

Then there are the words I use about a thousand times a day in correspondence and conversation. Lovely is at the top of my list. Fabulous, wonderful. "Brilliant," not quite so bad. A "Jolly" once and a while.

It's absolutely (oh, I use that a lot, too, absolutely, absolutely I do) painful to listen to the recordings of my interviews for the paper, because I have to listen to my own grating voice saying, "That's great," and "Oh, that's so nice," about twenty times every few minutes. I sound like a bumbling idiot, usually because I'm trying to jot down notes as the subject is speaking. Still, it's a terribly (oh, that one too) humbling experience.

Are signature/overused words okay, do you think, in common speech and repartee? Are they like comfortable clothes, after all, or a familiar scent, or do they just stink after a while, like a mouse in your pocket?

Just got good news: one of my poems, Geometry, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and will appear along with two other poems in the upcoming issue of Lamplighter Review. Special thanks to my fabulous in-house editor, Martin B. Cockroft the Magnificent, who pushes me to spare language, simplicity, and good form.

Do heffalumps and woozles like honey?
Well, do they? Elspeth just climbed up on my lap and asked me this.
It's snowing.

One hour later:
Elspeth reached up to hug me tonight and sighed, Mommy. I like you with a pinch of salt.

Naming Things

At nap time today, I was reading Bea a book by Sandra Boynton where the speaker introduces all his pets--they're all named Bob, except for his turtle, who has a long, fancy name in curly script. Elspeth, who was gathering up her books on my bed, overheard me singing the book out loud and swaggered into Bea's room, singing her own version of the text:

"I've got an eyeball named Bob, and a head named Bob, and a shirt named Bob, and a dirty sock named Bob!" Bea broke into giggles and Elspeth, fueled by the approval, continued throughout Bea's room, picking items up and naming them all Bob, shaking her hips and popping her eyeballs in mock astonishment for effect.

And then, right before I put Bea in bed, Elspeth ran down the hallway, calling, "Who wants sanitizer for breakfast?"

I love this craziness, this sense of humor of hers based in total randomness. The other day she threw up her hands and said, "Oh, my Clara! I mean, it's impossible!" Absolute nonsense. And to me, probably because I'm her adoring mother but also because I get the biggest kick out of misnamed things, misplaced words, strange, erratic shouts, and things that go "Kablam! Piddle! Pop!" in the midst of a chaotic room--I think it shows the flashes of brilliance that I want to wrap up in several scarves made of macaroni and push, by their bumpy shoulders, into my stories and poems and conversations. Like a prince who turns into a frog. Or a witch who lives in a house made of candy. Or something brand new, like a dirty sock named Bob.

Wait for it. . .

Our band's last gig at the Harvest Festival, photo courtesy B. Randolph
Martin's beside me, picking out chords and trying to play Kings of Convenience's "Gold in the Air of Summer." The alternate tuning sounds really nice, even though he just stretched on new strings--the ends are sticking out like six lethal whiskers. New strings always sound cold and tinny, but he's warming them up.

Our friend Amy was just here practicing with us for our band's slot in. . .wait for it. . .the Faculty Talent Show at the U! Tonight Amy said we should all just quit our jobs and go on tour--our three girls and her daughter could ride along in the bus, do our accounts, set up and tear down for us. Who needs school? Tonight, over tomato soup and grilled cheese, Merry tried to get Martin and me serious about becoming famous. "You could go on the Prairie Home Companion," she breathed, her eyes round, "Or Mountain Stage!" (When you don't have TV reception, radio provides all points of reference. When asked at school to name a famous person, Merry named Carl Casell, who among other things, is the official scorer for "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," the NPR news show. . .and he IS in the Radio Hall of Fame.)

I said, "Merry, if Daddy and I were famous, we wouldn't get to spend so much time with you girls."

She took this as a valid point, though she finally concluded that Martin's and my dreams were old ones, and we'd probably fulfilled all of them already.

In a flash of warmth, Martin told her one of our dreams was to have three girls, and we did, and one of his dreams was that he would marry me, and he did,

to which I said, "That was one of my dreams, too." (I meant, to marry Martin, of course),

and Merry looked at me and asked, "You wanted to marry YOURSELF?"

I said, "One of my dreams was to have a smart-aleck eight-almost-nine-year old, and that came true." And she grinned.

I am losing any cohesive thread that might have linked this blog entry together. Oh, well. The girls get school off tomorrow for. . .wait for it again. . .the first day of hunting. They will not be hunting, but most of the county will. I will be doing laundry and writing an article and praying for the deer.

Peaceful Family Outing

A woman with a beautifully dark complexion and a thick mass of hair that hangs down past the ties of her green apron just came and cleared my table. "Got left with the dishes," she commented.

"That is a GOOD deal," I said. "Left with the dishes but no kids. I'll take that ANY day."

I stood up and tried to help her load up the black tray and succeeded in tipping over plastic cups and wadding a bunch of white napkins in one fist. "We had a bit of an incident with the hot chocolate," I explained. (Was I twitching? Was my eyelid fluttering uncontrollably?)

"That's what a mop is for," she replied, waiting as I fumbled with more dishes. Finally she said, as I swiped at a storm of crumbs all over the table, "And we have cloths to mop off the tables, too."

Now the woman is wiping off the rack of gift cards by the check-out, her hair lustrous under the recessed lighting--and I realize that she's pregnant, close to her due date. Is it her first child? Heh, heh. Life is about to change forever, lady.

Another couple just came in with a baby strapped in a car seat--the man, an older guy with trendy glasses and hiking boots, just paused from working on his Blackberry to tuck in a striped green, white, and blue blanket back into the seat. His wife, also working on a Blackberry, speaks low in German. Goopy, spineless, relaxing music--high female voices singing indecipherable but probably Christmassy lyrics-- spread over us all like a vague blessing. . .the man utters a long stream of oogie-boogie--ahs and unearths his son, a surprisingly chunky kid, suited up in shades of blue, from the depths of the blanket. Now, over the loudspeaker, there's a disturbingly operatic cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Just a few minutes ago, this corner of the box bookstore up on a hill just over the PA border in West Virginia was a blur of hands waving soup spoons, smashed bagel pieces, crushed green straws, and an arc of hot chocolate that spattered two out of five family members--Bea had already speckled her white turtleneck with chocolate and Elspeth, who dropped the cup, missed the fountain entirely.

It was shortly after the chaos that Martin offered to take the girls to the children's section and the woman with the gleaming hair came and saved our table from its sad state.

And there you have it. Just another peaceful family outing. And still the Christmas music streams on--now a 1950's beat, a perky female voice, and lyrics that include: bells, ring out, Christmas every day.

It's a magical time, all in all.

Now Italian, a duet of two of the world's most full-throated tenors.

PIE

I just had a happy thought: Pie! Pumpkin and pecan, rummy whipped cream, in glittering foil south of the milk jug.

We carried home this treasure from our Thanksgiving home up on a ridge. This friendly fellow, J, roasted a turkey covered in fat-back. Oh, my. Can the spits of heaven hold anything more succulent?

I just chatted with my brother-in-law and their turkey, when they cut into it, spurted blood and was still partially frozen. Though I missed family this holiday, I am rumly satisfied to think that I ate the far superior bird. (Thank you, J, T, and kids, for a lovely feast!)

Martin and I have spent this guest-less holiday writing in the evenings. "An hour and a half!" he said tonight, and we sat down with our laptops and fell to. I feel as though I should be working on another short story or my article for the paper, but I've been swimming through the warm waters of poetry instead. Perhaps it's the changing weather--instead of knitting I'm turning to the tight link of words, though they haven't been particularly warm nor cuddly--mostly just strange.

But there's nothing strange about pie and I'm just waiting for Martin to give up so we can shake off the silence and eat.

I give thanks for Ogden Nash, my old friends, my father, etc.

I'd like to thank my father for reading Ogden Nash to me. At least I remember his boyish face, his eyes alive with the impending mirth, the expectation that Nash would bend us double with laughter. When I actually read Nash poems, I wonder if my memory is correct: "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker" is one observation I don't think my father ever shared with us as he sat on the edge of my bed. And I was a young adult when I read about the clever turtle being so fertile, and I was older still--just turning NOW, as a matter of fact, when I found the gentle account of Miranda turning thirty: "How old is spring?" the poem finishes. And it was only last winter that Martin gave a splitting reading of that fabulous fable, "The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus."

But I am not giving a shout-out to Ogden, but to my father. Actually, scratch that. WHAT HO, OGDEN! YOU ROCK! It's not every man who can write a two line poem about a cow that makes me laugh out loud. Make yourself thankful for belly laughs this year and go read some zappy shorts. Please, I beg you, do not skip the one on parsley.

Leave dear Ogden for a minute, jollyish reader, and return to my white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, laughs-through-his-nose father. He read to us for hours when we were children, mastering voices and even singing when called on by the text, though his singing voice sounds like Winnie the Pooh's. He read us everything from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, (where I first heard about menstruation) to the entire Lord of the Rings series, which we stretched out over our interminable summer car rides when we were on leave from Kenya. Go back further than that and I have my father's voice calling out the islands of Maine in Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder --his voice is imprinted so strongly on those words that I still cry every time I read it to my own children.

My father travelled quite a lot, and I remember the smell of his suitcase as he unzipped the old, fake leather and threw it open. Nestled among his socks and toothbrush were small gifts for us. If he'd been back to America, the open suitcase smelled like ziplock bags and drugstores and my grandmama's house in Pennsylvania. If he'd been to Thailand or Dacca, the suitcase was damp with humidity and smelled of sweat, dust, and spices.

I just chatted with my mother on the phone as she floated across the Puget Sound to join my sister and her family and my brother for Thanksgiving. Here I am, sitting at a table covered with my mother's old blue tablecloth, spun in India; the white stripes in the cloth start at Martin, who works at the other end of the table, and flow all the way across to me. Silver sage from our garden dries among candles; there's a painted leaf Merry brought home from school and a paper with an upside down heart and the word MOM that Elspeth presented to me this afternoon. A box of Kleenex (Bea has a cold), the roar of the heater, lamplight glowing on our mantle clock. The sounds of my father's voice deep down inside of me, my mother's laugh fresh in my ears. I give thanks for all of it, for the glitter and drop and water-flow of so many stories, for the way they fill me with color.

Being Paper Stinks

Just before bed, Beatrix came downstairs and said, "Aw. Paper can't draw."

I thought she was being particularly empathetic. In our world, where half of our household is drawing constantly, I never once stopped to think about the poor, sad plight of paper: assigned to passivity, made to carry adornment and art, good and bad. The pencil or pen or crayon--now, they've got the good jobs.

I suppose Bea suddenly had a flash of awareness into another creature's plight; that the sympathy was directed to an inanimate object just made it more charming. I love how children twist your head around on your shoulders like that.

On that note, Elspeth's friend Ben (who comes from a balanced, nonviolent household)educated me today as Martin and I made the kids lunch. "If you lose your head," he explained, "You're dead." He clarified: "If someone slices your head off with a sword, you're dead. But if they cut your hand off, you're okay." (Also, he added, a foot or a leg would be okay, too). A few minutes later he told me: "God is everywhere. So if you play hide and seek and God is counting, he'll tag you really fast."

There are No Monsters in This House

In the past few months, Beatrix has developed a complicated relationship toward Monsters. Like my big sister, Heather, who loved volcanoes and would bring home loads of books picturing explosions and decimation but who also hid them in the bottom of her closet at night, Bea both adores and fears Monsters. She jumps at books depicting anything with fur or horns or a scary or dopey (Jim Henson variety) face; she loves the book A World Full of Monsters, that shows that in the 'olden days,' monsters were plentiful but now only fix and clean things at night (Martin has major issues with this book as he says it reads like social commentary).

The other day Bea got a simperingly sweet look on her face and said, "Aw. Monsters best friend to me." Pit this against her panicked dive into pillows in the Play Room and the trembling that accompanied "I scared, Mommy. Monsters!" I watched her run into a room and pause, whispering to herself in a somewhat unsure voice, "No monsters!"

Tonight some friends kept our children so Martin and I could cram unbelievably big pieces of Spider Roll soaked in soy sauce and wasabi paste into our mouths. Bea came home freshly bathed and in her little friend's pyjamas. As soon as we stood in our front hallway, she requested that I remove her p.j. shirt, which sported a picture of a T-Rex. No monsters!

Before bed, she mentioned monsters again. Now, some parents may use Reason or a big can of Monster-Off to comfort their children, but Bea and I have together developed a song. If you have monster problems in your house or in YOUR HEAD, you can also employ this little ditty, adapting it to your needs, of course.

Chorus:
There are no monsters in this house!
There are no monsters in this house!
There may be a tiny mouse,
but there are no monsters in this house!

Verse 1:
There is a Beatrix in this house.
There is an Elspeth in this house.
There is a Merry in this house.
But there-are-no-monsters-in-this-house!

Repeat chorus.
Add verses as needed.
Sing until heart palpitations are less insistent and fear is less quivery and sleep is. . .imminent.

Got to share: a poem, Postscript, about leaving Kenya, accepted by The MacGuffin this morning. Also, my last column in the Observer-Reporter (click on geranium at right)may finally cast some clarity on your next career move. It helps to live in a sunny, warm climate, I expect, though our hot dog guy manages just fine in PA. See. . .if you can catch the grammatical error I overlooked as well as the tricky idiom (misplacing, mistaking, grasping for idioms runs in my family). Martin has given me plenty of roughing up over the O-R one, though I don't think it's as bad as my mother announcing that "some guy was going to sue another guy until his pants fell down." Mom, I know you told me not to tell anyone you said that, but the statue of limitations is up.

Poetry in the Church Kitchen

Tonight, I read Babar's Family, The Gardener, and Yesterday I Had the Blues to Elspeth. I made my way through that beautiful, gentle book, The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen, and it might have been as Elspeth and I studied the cows snuggled into the hay that sleep began knocking on my head. And then I was gone for two hours. My Martin just awakened me to drink tea. Falling asleep early is a Sunday night tradition for me, especially after a weekend like this one, where we partied. And partied. And then partied some more. Our Mennonite Church had a big anniversary bash all weekend. We attended the coffeehouse Friday night, skipped the hymn sing Saturday, and came back for a full day today. In the afternoon Martin and I strapped Bea into the car for a short nap before he and I led a workshop on poetry as prayer.

The workshop was small but good, in a tiny, airless room with bright frogs on the wall. We looked over a diverse group of poems Martin had compiled, from Rilke to John Berryman, sacred East Indian verse to Denise Levertov, and some great ones by Maurice Manning, where he addresses God as Boss. We'd just started into our own writing exercise--I had begun:

You are the great huge boulder I saw
as we drove past broken-down houses
and bars with cold neon signs
Fast food wrappers clogged the gutters
and a woman staggered across a bridge past sealed cars

I had the boulder fixed in my mind: immovable, striped black, in the middle of a wide creek banked by bare trees--the water lapped and beat and foamed and streamed over the rock. . .I was looking forward to getting that boulder on my page. It had so delighted me as we drove a depressed, ugly part of town. That was during our drive where Bea slept--and just as I wrote To my, a little girl in a purple dress popped her head in to say Bea was crying.

And was she ever. Her little chest heaved against me when I lifted her up, her face was streaked with tears and snot, and she wanted to go home. I couldn't blame her--it had been a long day. She smeared chocolate on her face as I arranged a platter of cookies for the post-workshop reception, and soon other women from the Poetry workshop appeared in the kitchen, arranging things on platters, filling white coffee pitchers. I helped find a broom and a dustpan to sweep up the shards of a broken mug in the hall. I never got to finish my poem, and when I stopped back in with a clinging Bea, Martin was finishing up. I was disappointed at the timing of Bea's breakdown.

Now, looking back, I realize that there was a really good sort of poetry happening in the kitchen--the story of community, the movement of people in a kitchen, a smeared and broken child sitting on the counter comforted at last, food being placed carefully on plates and a stream of hot coffee filling pitchers. It's such a old, familiar poetry, and one I know well from growing up in churches--love becoming tactile, feeding and being received by hungry people. Poetry, incarnation, food--these together are good.

Just A Small Town Girl

I have had the Journey song, "Don't Stop Believing" stuck in my head ALL DAY LONG. I kid you not. As I type, it's reeling in the back of my brain like the handle on a meat grinder. I am about to be driven to distraction. I am about to. . .

break open another Troeg's Dream Weaver Wheat Beer. I'm afraid the song "Dream Weaver" is not sticky enough to displace Journey, though. Blast it all. If I could only. . .

hold onto this feeling.

Attended an eight year old's birthday party today; there were all these young children running about in fairy wings and stuffing red velvet cake with black-green icing into their mouths. The icing covered an Eight-dollar Bill Cake, embossed with the birthday girl's head. Also on the cake platter: three or four cupcake coins in the front. I hear that we will see evidence of this bright and delicious cake tomorrow at noon. They tell me this is something I can look forward to, since Thanksgiving is still some days away. It's the next big thing.

Don't Stop!

Oh, man. This is worse than the hiccups.

Sorry, But I'm Making an Abstract Right Now

Martin brought home gifts for the girls yesterday from a bookstore. Elspeth's was a big book of Chagall, whom she's shown an affinity for. The book wouldn't have been my first choice for a four-year old, especially since the cover, To Russia, Asses, and Others, depicts a woman painted in a cubist style with her head floating away into a black and red sky. Elspeth took it in stride, and Martin left her in bed last night "explaining the paintings to Pink Bear:" See, that woman is tossing her head in the air, Elspeth was saying as he walked away. It just goes to show you that children hold diverse worlds of wild and crazy things--they're not disturbed by the things that make us squeamish, and the soil of their imaginations are rich enough to produce sunflowers and wolves and teapots and monsters with six heads. No young child I know has ever showed any horror when Grandma is eaten by the wolf or when the woodcutter arrives and cuts the wolf's head clear off. . .

Anyhow, this morning, Elspeth was at her Drawing Table coloring like crazy.


"You'd better get dressed, honey," I said--she was almost late for preschool.

"I can't. I'm making an abstract right now."

So, at the price of timeliness, we let her finish.

Here's her work, rather influenced by Chagall, I think, though there are no discernible heads floating away. Maybe that's coming later.

Mice and Other Small Things

Martin stole this line from me and sewed it into his fabulous poem, Proposal:

We must have a proliferation of pockets--
pockets for money and mice and other small things.
We all must give a little.

Martin loves dashes. I am fond of semicolons, and it is this sort of diversity that brings real spice to our marriage.

He also loves the song, "Dreams," by Fleetwood Mac, which he is strumming out on the guitar next to me here. This is his second time through; the first time was folky, but this time he's playing it with staccato notes and a bluesy flair: When-the-rain-washES-you-clean-you'll--KNo-ho.

Back to mice: my friend Michelle ma Belle went to to a big box pet store yesterday and, persuaded by her love for her adorable children with their angel faces and the salesperson, who assured Michelle that the mice were of the same sex and therefore would not produce more rodents in the privacy of wood shavings, she brought home two manmice.

Next day, and the boys have made urine that would sink a freighter, much, much urine. So Michelle M.B. does a little research on the big-box-pet-store site, and finds out:

NEVER, EVER BUY TWO MALE MICE, YA IDGIT. TWO MALE MICE WILL FIGHT AND PRODUCE ENDLESS STREAMS OF UGLY-SMELLING PEE TO MARK THEIR TERRITORY AND PROCLAIM DOMINANCE OVER THEIR SMALL BUT SIGNIFICANT REALM.

So Ma Belle calls the good old staff back at same pet store and repeats information gleaned from their website.

"Oh, we only have male mice here," they say. "We only carry males of everything. But there's a Female Big-box-pet-store up in Pittsburgh."

It turns out mice are returnable for twenty-some days. Maybe damaged or already-been-opened goods go to the snakes. . .in any case, M. M. B. was going to buy something reptilian or amphibian in the first place, but it turns out that those suckers are rather expensive.

All I can say is that I hope my girls, when they visit their friend's new female mice pair, are not smitten. I was forever turned off of rodents-as-pets when I walked into my bedroom as a child and saw Juliet eating Lady MacBeth and two other tiny pink, squealing hamster babies. Romeo was small and a coward; he just stood by and let it all happen.

Then there were the Russian hamsters who escaped and attacked my mother in the middle of night--amid her shrieks my father had to locate a thick winter glove to haul the crazy buggars away. Soon after, they escaped into the local park. Nobody knows how exactly they got so far from home, but perhaps it was in the same manner as when my little brother's goldfish slipped into a hole in the arboretum's frozen pond. My mother said, "I'm sure he'll be fine." She may have added something about the wild being an animal's natural habitat, and I think my brother was placated. At least he didn't have to clean the bowl anymore.

Found: Excitement

Well, that's what I get for craving excitement. Martin's parents left this morning, but before they did, I shopped for a dinner for 15 plus people and cleaned and vacuumed out the car (you could have licked the floor and had a full meal before the vacuum sucked it away). I knew for sure about this dinner. . .this morning after breakfast.

This is what I accomplished (I'm sorry, I am weak and need praise:) one huge ham, one immense pan of washed and cut root veggies, two sheets of rolls, an excellent salad in an incredibly humongous bowl, a bowl of fresh broccoli/carrots, a double recipe of my favorite chocolate cake, plus cinnamon whipped cream (Elspeth held the beaters for me) and an elegant fruit platter. And a pot of spiced apple cider.

Who's the woman?

Not to mention, cleaned the bathroom and the house.

And stayed pleasant throughout.

I said, WHO'S THE WOMAN?

The occasion was to honor and meet an author, Sam Swope, who stood in our kitchen in his blue pull-over sweater, tousled hair and socks (he'd shed his brown leathers at the door). I liked him immediately; his smile was infectious and unaffected, his way of speaking easy, and he genuinely seemed to care about asking another person questions and listened well to the answers. This is, I've found, unusual for visiting writers--they often shine a bit with a sheen of interest but you can tell travelling and speaking in countless places have gotten to them--maybe it's self-preservation so they don't get too exhausted. Some travelling writers talk to you like they might chat with the person sitting next to them in a plane--the conversation is interesting but you know you're just one more face that they'll forget. There was something really tangible about Sam Swope, though--maybe it's his experience teaching young children--I thought he was the kind of guy we could have around the house, drinking coffee and chatting with the kids. That is my highest compliment right there. I'm looking forward to picking up his book, "I Am A Pencil--" he's also written picture books.

I've got to put the girls to bed. Oh, I really do. And then I've got to clean up the downstairs.

Oh, one more thing: I just got my copy of the magazine, The Christian Century, and my poem is in it. You can pick one up at a bookstore.

I've had enough excitement now to make me crave a little good old sitting around tomorrow. How capricious and easily satisfied is this woman--or easily satisfied until the next craving, anyway.

Your Assignment IS. . . .

On this grey day, I've written a column and a draft of a children's picture book text. Folded one load of laundry and look forward to another exciting basket of underwear, socks, and shirts. Eaten maybe four pieces of lemon tea cake. Kettle heats, as we speak, for more tea. Diapers changed, children dressed. I can't remember what I fed them for lunch because I didn't--Martin's dear mother gave them mac 'n cheese while I finished working.

In one way, Elspeth and I are very much alike.

Like her, I'm always craving excitement. A check, neatly tucked inside the acceptance letter in the mail, the envelope flap licked days ago by some bushy-browed or braided editor somewhere. Where did I get this sense for impending delight? Is it folded into my personality? Where's the next party, people? Where's the next new thing to happen? This is not a trait of an adult, I don't think, or not an especially good one when it feeds impatience and makes me want to shout out in church or nail somebody with a whipped cream pie.

Which I did. Last year. The pie, but not in church. Sometimes life needs refreshing, a little injection of the absurd, a little performance art. My pie-throwing was misunderstood by several people. But real artists have been misunderstood throughout history. Why do I live with my tongue in my cheek?

Today it looks like Wazoo Farm is past 32,000 visits. Thanks, all you who check up on me and the craziness. To celebrate this vague occasion, go do something absurd and interesting in: Five, four, three, two, one. Yahoo! Wazoo!

Hey, everyone. I've got to give a great big wave to Anna at farmphotographie. Her photographs are really beautiful; REDS are my favorite but you may find BLUES delight you more. Check them out by clicking on her link above. Anna and her sisters also have a fantastic photoblog--find them in "Calling Cards," below right. I love moseying over to see what they've been up to in a day, and to bask in the warmth of their sisterhood.

Sleep

Ah, sleep is stalking me. Could it have something to do with the fact that we just finished a bottle of wine, a lemon-roast chicken, sweet potatoes, and peach-apple sauce with whipped cream? Or is it that we were at church practically all day: service, teaching Sunday School to a group of chickens, and then choir practice? Or maybe it's just Sunday evening, my usual time to drop in a heap at 9:00, warm and content, until morning.

Martin's parents have been with us for some days now, and their visit has sped by at a sadly fast pace. We've been eating a lot and laughing. . . .

I need to write, drink, ride my bike, read, laugh, kiss, more. I need to sing more, yell less, relax, sigh deeply and not sarcastically, and only once a day, because I am content.

All you whom I love, and all you who hold worlds of longing and joy: pleasant sleep to you. Brightness and strength in the morning.

A Few Wazoo Events

The community is busy this season,
with tea parties on my mother's old crocheted tablecloth with a tea service from my own childhood (I saved the Holland blue and white from my mama's purges). . .

. . .fishing (Bea and her friend Ethan: "I caught a big one. . .")

Maia and Merry, urbane sophisticates (often in fairy wings)

Merry reading to Elspea and the "lost Cockroft sister," Lily. . .

I do not have pictures of our recent Mystery Party at Murphey, the dog's house, where Martin dressed as a sleeze and I dressed as a hippie, nor do I have pics of other events, such as the very successful playgroup on Poplar Ridge.

**PIC OF T'S AMAZING HUMMUS HERE**


I also do not have a picture of my most recent oven fire, though I will describe it in the near future for your edification.

**SMOKE HERE**

I do not have a picture of Martin's recent poetry reading at the public library, though that was immensely fun.

**HANDSOME POET HERE**

I love having such a good poet for my husband. He really read well, with expression and hand movemment, with humor and confidence. Though I had heard/read those poems and offered my critiques, hearing them out loud took them from flat words to three dimensional objects; I could see each poem catching the light, sparkling, casting shadows. We need more poetry readings.

Merry Wander

I just browsed through some of our old pictures, and I found a series I'd saved under "Merry Wander." Merry, my oldest, is one of those children whom I've often seen walk away, not because she's angry or doesn't love home, but because she's brave and independent. The first day of school she set her jaw and boarded the bus just as she used to steel herself for a ride on the merry-go-round as a toddler. As the painted horses bobbed up and down to the cheery music, she'd scowl in concentration. Once when I was pushing her on the swing, she said in a musing sort of way: "I recognize that I'm having fun."

Dear Merry, wandering about not because she's lost but because she's determined to experience the next adventure, whether that means leaving home without a second glance or hunkering over a book she's reading, barely glancing up for a kiss before bed.

I looked at those pictures of her wandering into the snow, across the rocks in Sedona, down into the desert scrub, and I felt this stirring every parent feels, a mixture of pride and a little sadness at the water-gush of time: you can't cup it in your hands; it just rushes out, cold and clear, astonishes you, and then passes on through your fingers, and slips away. Of course there's always more coming, and that keeps me so busy and engaged that I have very little time for sadness.

And today is so bright and warm, a fuzzy gift in my hands, that I think a merry sort of wander may be called for. Over the river, then, through the woods!

November in Africa

Thought you all might enjoy what I found in my inbox this morning, from my dear childhood-in-Kenya friend, Rachel Robinson. Rachel is Kara's little sister(Karaduck--she's got flat feet--my bosom friend through middle and high school). I spent a lot of time at the Robinson's house, basking in their peaceful, silent, wind-chimy, planty, sun-catchery home, avoiding their clever, unpredictable African Grey Parrot, sitting at their dinner table in slight awe of their bearded father, Uncle Robbie, who grew up in East Africa and could speak Masaai, Swahili, Samburu (did I miss any? I'm sure I wrote one of them wrong), teasing their little brother (who is now a hunk, by the way), eating Aunt Margie's peanut-butter bars and hoping she'd make me meatloaf sandwiches layered with sliced dill pickles and ketchup for my school lunch. With Rachel, I always enjoyed a sort of middle-child camaraderie: What up with those oldest sisters, man? Rachel and I used to do things like run in the rain, hurl coffee beans from the plantation around their second house outside Nairobi, and shout life predictions to the wide, blue sky. I think mine was to write a musical, direct it, and perform the lead part. Thank goodness some predictions don't come true (I also said I'd wear a purple wedding dress but that was years before the musical one).

Let's see--November here means dusty coats, footie pjs, the roar of the furnace, the garden dry and brown. Anyone for East Africa? Here's Rachel:

From Uganda-- whoot whoot!! :) Wish I felt as excited about that as I sound right now. Naw, I mean, its all good-- just somedays I feel lonely and far away from people who really know me. But community takes good time. So I'll be patient. In the mean time... being here IS good. I do really love it. I love that it is still sunny and HOT during the days-- mid November. I love the parrots that fly by every morning on their way to work... And the monkeys that hang out in my guava tree making a racket.

For more of Rachel's adventure and images of her life--pictures so beautiful they make my heart ache with longing--visit her blog.

Cookies

I finished my column for the week--Whoopee Pie! (I actually wrote a bit about whoopee pie, which are called GOBS in this part of the world--who knew? The column was about a local Garden Club's Cookie Walk fundraiser, where you basically walk through a room filled with thousands of cookies, select the ones you want, and pay by the pound. That is my kind of walk, you know what I mean?) Now to tidy the house and tend to the laundry and then some ice-cream. . .

o blast Martin's ringing the blasted doorbell. sleeping children!

Blowing Chunks and Other Nice Things

A confession: I washed my hair this morning, swept it into a ponytail, and now, at 7:35 (it feels like 9 at least), it's still not brushed. That's due to my house-boundedness; Bea blew chunks (tossed her cookies, puked, etc.) last night at some point (she apparently slept through the ordeal and I didn't realize until after breakfast that she reeked). . .and I spent a day enjoying the sunshine flooding our playroom, Dr. Suess, laundry, stroking the back of a very tired little girl. . . .

I'm trying to figure out when I will get my column written this week, when I will be able to drive out and interview someone, when I will actually brush my hair. And so it goes.

Here's a funny bit: Martin was playing tea party with Bea. She set a tiny green and pink pot to boil on her pretend stove, held up two fingers, drew together her little eyebrows, and warned Martin: "It's HOT. You touch, you dead."

I have warned the children of the possibility of death in other circumstances, but never have I been quite that dire about the kettle. Losing fingers, hands, and other various body parts, eye skewering, "big owies that will make you cry and cry--" those I hold out as possibilities fairly often. As my Dad says, Hell is the place where everything your mother warned would happen to you, finally does. Think about it. Your eyes would get stuck crossed, you would trip over your lower lip, your hands would get consumed by snakes when you stuck them down a hole, a dog would rip you to shreds because you teased him, you'd get flattened by numerous cars, you'd trip about a thousand times over your shoelaces, fall down the stairs, cut your fingers off with the paring knife, your hair would get so tangled you'd have to cut it all off, your teeth would fall out from lack of flossing, even rot right out of your head because you ate that JubeJube. . .the possibilities are endless, varied, and truly horrible. Good thing I listened to my mother.

The Muse and the Fool

Tonight I am bundled up in a blanket, huddling in a detrimental posture over the keyboard while Martin makes tea. I thought maybe he'd like to take advantage of the new disc of Glee I received in a cheery red Netflix envelope. But no, he wants to be a writer and huddle in a detrimental posture in bed and type away on his laptop. I can't complain too loudly because a. I respect his tete a tete with the muse, though, geez, she is really hanging around lately; and b. I do love the man, and c. I'm also supposed to be a writer. But I like to veg once and a while and turn in my brain for an evening with the hot man in the baggy grey sweatpants and slippers. Is that so wrong?

Last week, Martin's muse put on her own slippers, cozied into a flannel robe, and got so comfortable she would not leave. I respect her but I don't always like her. For instance, last Thursday night I was so fried that I could not figure out where my father was. I'd just received a e-mail from him that read, "It's Thursday night in Santa Cruz. . ." which, by the way, would be an excellent first line in a short story, if I had any idea where in the world it was. I typed into the old Googler: "Santa Cruz." Pages of California. Now, my Dad doesn't hang in places like California--more likely he'll be in Haiti or Cambodia (I thought he was in the latter, but I knew for sure S. Cruz was NOT in Asia). So then I typed in: "Santa Cruz not California." How stupid is that? And came up with--surprise, surprise! More sunshine state. FINALLY I figured out where he was. Do YOU know? It starts with a B and it's in South America. Bingo! (It's not actually "Bingo." There is no such place).

Anyway, I thought this whole cyberspace journey was hee-larious and I tried to tell Martin, but he was going like gangbusters with his poem and muttered, "I'm not listening to you. I'm writing," after which I gave up, put on headphones, and watched some BBC and laughed so much that Martin's Muse went all in a huff and dragged him out into the hallway where he continued typing on his knees.

Go, Martin! Muse, stupid Muse. You know what they say: Dead fish and Muses began to stink after two days.

Friday found me very down-in-the-dumps. The autumn is always terribly busy, and though I start the semester bright-eyed and full of hope, vim, and vigor for my career, my triumphant life as a mother of three who also writes and bakes and cooks and skims through it all as if I am on some kind of spiritual and emotional speed, I get a bit bedraggled toward November. So I dragged my sorry self over to my friend, Sally's house, where I melted into a puddle and said, not in a fit of melodrama, as it might appear, but it a moment where I expressed the exact emotion I felt at that point in time: My life is so unexciting. There's nothing to look forward to. My mother would have thrown back her head and laughed uproariously. Sally did laugh, out of sympathy, and warmed me up by her very presence and understanding, and then she made me sweat on her treadmill, made me a really good salad, and took Elspeth for the afternoon so I could write. My friend Tonya fed me tea and gingersnaps that afternoon by a roaring fire and then we hung out with Sally and her husband Kevin, who came over wearing the single most ugly boutonniere I have ever seen. It was a cactus flower, a lily, and a fake autumn leaf wrapped up in green floral tape. It was utterly hideous. And an excellent conversation piece.

At the end of the day I felt like a new person. I mused over it all that night: I had received no particularly good news about my writing that week; I'd spent much of my time with children; I'd lost my temper more than once; I'd cried more than once; I'd written one, and I fear, rather mediocre, short story and mopped various runny noses--and I felt so good. I'd been loved, and loved, and loved again, by people who will love me whether I succeed or not. I'd been showered in crazy, openhearted love--it was just raining down on me and I was soaked to the skin. Some days when I am really a fool this doesn't feel like enough--I sit in self-induced misery, waiting for my better future, for the next good thing. But always, this life of mine is more, and more and more than I deserve, and I feel richer than a queen.

Happy Birthday to My Mother

What do you loony Facebook folks call this--a status update? Well, here's one for you: the new column is available now online on the Observer-Reporter; I'm listening to The Weepies Little Bird; I just ate, easily, a third of a loaf of homemade bread. . .and,

most importantly, it's MY MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY! Those of you who know this woman who loves the ocean and travelling and her grandchildren and good, thick books and new words (poplollies), this woman who gets lost and bungles idioms and laughs the whole time, who uses words like 'pure magic' and gets away with it--please wish her many happy returns of her day! I've been approached by Melancholy a few times today, Mama, who wanted me to be sad that I'm so far away from you on this day, but I explained you were never good friends with him and I wouldn't invite him to stay for tea. I have good people to drink tea with me, my own small family here, and isn't that what you always taught us? To acknowledge sadness but stride on into joy. Be brave, Kimberly, and so I try to be. As I was watching Elspeth and Bea dance in the living room this evening, I thought of the many times you watched me dance when I was a little girl. I felt, in your gaze, the love of warm oceans, bottomless and stretching forever. Many happy returns, Mommy.

November's Icy

Outside, the clouds are banking thickly into a wall. The wind that swept across the country days ago stripped the trees on the mountain outside my window bare, and now they're dark against the sky's white pile, like bristles on a scrubbing brush. One of our aspen trees still clings to a dozen dry yellow leaves; a single bird flies low through a brown forest of brittle cosmos and a black cat picks her way through delicately on white paws down the forlorn path littered with tomatoes never picked.

Merry came in the door steaming yesterday: "The neighbors cut down their pear tree!" she said, her eyes large and angry. "They cut down a living thing." I suddenly realized why their front yard looked so vacant and swept--they'd been talking about cutting their rather gangly, heavily-producing tree down for the past year, but I never really believed they would. A lone yellow pear lies in the gutter in front of their house. Merry and Martin gathered the only fruit that was ever enjoyed from their tree--the neighbors grumpily loaded every pear in black trash bags and dumped them behind their house in a tangle of brush. Now the road lies bare and grey to our right; we can see cars coming for a good half-mile, and the last of our pear-sauce freezes in the downstairs ice-chest. All because of a great lack of imagination on our neighbor's part, because their pears did not taste like the soft, plastic-wrapped fruit in the styrofoam containers at the grocery store.

But here in my little make-shift office, one geranium blossom opens toward the muted sunlight, ten petals, like the swirling skirt of a dancer. I saved the geranium from three days of frost; it will bring me much joy throughout the coming sleet and snow, which, by the by, apparently starts tomorrow. A pear tree lost; a geranium saved. And so October passed and here comes November's icy winds.

It's Bad for You

Elspeth and her friend, Ben, played all afternoon. Mostly they play "Mommy and Daddy," towing stuffed animals and dolls around in various baskets and cooking food. Elspeth puncuates these games with interesting diversions, such as changing her clothes, pulling her arms into her dress and making her head disappear. I try to keep half an eye on them, since Elspeth is crazy enough to lead even a level-headed boy like Ben astray. One day a few weeks ago I found a pumpkin in the play kitchen alongside orange fragments, a butter knife, and my huge, Wustof Chef's knife. "I told Elspeth not to do it," Ben said. There was the period in which they liked to mix real soups with unooked pasta, raw beans, dried rice, and water. I picked out all the unsoaked beans (just starting to swell) and cooked the soup for dinner. It was fair.

A few minutes ago Elspeth waylaid me in the kitchen and said, "Mommy, can we have a Lifesaver?"

"Let's just look at them, not eat them," suggested Ben.

"Are you hungry?" I asked.

"Yes. But we feel like something sweet," Elspeth said.

"There are fruit and vegetables on the table," I redirected.

"Oooo," Ben purred, reaching for a baby carrot.

Elspeth was unimpressed. "We feel like something sweet like candy," she pressed.

"I don't think we should eat candy," Ben said. "It's bad for me. It's bad for my nose." He continued (and I'm not entirely sure how this bit fits in:) "When I drink, it comes out my nose."

Perhaps he was talking about fizzy soda drinks? Or what has his mother been telling him? Whatever stories she's been weaving, they seem to have worked. Ben thinks candy is a very, very bad idea.

How in heaven's name did we amass so much stuff? The pit is bottomless. I clear one layer, and there's another. I honestly think I could fill a dump-truck with the amount of sheer razzle we have in this home of ours. It's dazzling. When we moved every year for that first half-decade or so of our marriage, I purged at regular intervals. And now--after only five or six years in one house, I feel utterly ashamed, enraged, (and now cold and calm) over the state of things. I'm done, people. I mean business.
But
first, a cup of tea. A childhood in East Africa taught me that business of any kind, serious or pleasant, is better with tea and with a friend.
Martin is my friend. He loves tea. I'll go and find him.

Skulking

Mama's doing some skulking. Snuck off to Barnes & Butts this morning for a latte with the handsome boy who lives in my house (there's only one). Chewed on a bagel and a long listing of literary magazines.

And this afternoon I slunk around, getting rid of loads of stuff. Buried children's artwork and "treasures" under scraps of paper. And hid the Halloween candy.

Mama. Mistress of magnificence. Master of subterfuge.


Sal took the pic. Not me. I'm not that good.

Too Many Treats, Not Enough Tricks

It is that time of year again. . .the one holiday that gets Americans from every walk of life out and moving as a community, and they're filling huge sacks with candy. There's something strange about that. I have to admit that I turn the lights off and clear the whole family out of the house. We gave treats one year but I find the mix of happy people--some in sweet outfits, grinning as they hold open their bags, alongside the sour-faced, too-old, ghoulish, frowning out of downright disturbing masks--stressful. I do not come back until Trick or Treating is over.

I keep thinking, as I'm out on my porch collecting mail or putting away the stroller, that my neighbors are out on their porch--and then I glance over and realize that it's just the witch and the skeleton. As we sat on the swing in the sun today, Elspeth told me, "They [the witch and the skeleton] don't talk except when you're not watching."

"Maybe they're just sad they don't have any friends," I said. "Maybe they feel sad inside."

"No, Mommy," she said, "They're mean. And they don't have anything inside."

Our neighbors also seem to have buried some relatives in the front yard. Merry skipped over to their small front lawn the other day to collect wind-fall pears from among gravestones and skeletons rising out of the ground.

This is my nod to Halloween: I baked up two huge pans of extra chocolately brownies from scratch, iced them, and sprinkled them in orange and purple and black for two school parties tomorrow. They are so gooey that I'll have to spoon them out. Elspeth brought home a huge pink ghoul head filled with candy that I sorted out while she was busy eating a lollipop: the emergency car bag, the Martin-take-to-college bag (which included a white jelly mouse in a jar of clear corn syrup and three spider rings), and the very paltry left-overs, which I hid in the sauces/oils cabinet above the stove. And I may still steal the snack-size KitKat tonight when the kids are finally all in bed sleeping. I have to say I get immense satisfaction from dumping out the kids' candy and sorting through it--a childhood, post Trick-or-Treat feeling. Ah. Look at this loot. Of course most of it goes to the college students, but I take a charitable donation on our taxes for that.

In case the IRS reads blogs, I'm just kidding.

For Uncle A.J.

These pictures (all except the goon in the middle) were taken by my friend Sally during apple-picking at a local orchard. They go out with much love to my dear Uncle A.J. in North Carolina, who's not feeling too well at the moment. Wish we could send you one of the delicious, crisp winesaps or the sweet Macintosh. Much love from your grand-nieces, and many prayers to you and sweet Auntie.

Ten Things

Martin and I are about to start playing our Ten Things Game. Curiosity peaked? Well, at this point I could go so many ways: we sit down at night when the kids have gone to bed, and name ten things that drive us crazy about the other person OR we sit down and read ten poems to each other OR we eat ten pieces of chocolate or ten jalapenos OR we choose ten things we want to do with the rest of our lives. Ten freckles on the other's face. Ten nose hairs. Ten facial expressions.
Or none of the above.
Actually, the Ten Things Game gets instituted when the house feels as if it is closing in around us. I picked up a magazine this morning and flipped to a quote that was celebrating clutter, though the example of clutter cited in the article was a stack of books next to your bed. Wha? This person must not have children. Clutter in our house includes, but is not limited to, endless masterpieces created by the children at school and at home; stuffed dogs and cats and naked baby dolls; wooden vegetables; apple cores; "lost" toothbrushes; hair clips; endless articles of doll clothing; single socks; crayon stubs; treasures such as rocks, nails, pieces of glass, feathers, etc., etc. I even found a secret cache behind the children's poufe (large round sitting cushion) that consisted of, but was not limited to, a large hunk of stale white bread and an empty (sucked dry by the M.C.) plastic lime. (This is an aside, but I have to mention that the M.C. also painted the inside of our fridge the other day. Blue. She and I scrubbed for a while and then she sat in time out and pondered what a bad choice she had made).

So every night, Martin and I both have to find five things in the house that we will throw or give away. We put them in a pile, step back, and assess. If by chance one person really wants to keep that old picture frame that the other person chose, they may challenge the object only if they are willing to find two more things to give away as forfeit, bringing the total give-away total to eleven.

Martin and I played this game so well last year that we were almost down to essentials by the time we finished. Since then, our house has been eating with a voracious appetite, and is about to burst. It's time.

A couple of our friends are joining us in this game. Last night they freed themselves from the enslavement of ten clutterous items. Do you want to join?

We'll Always Have a Friend Wearing Big Red Shoes

It's a long story. It begins in Walmart. No, wait, it goes back further than that to a tiny skateboard with red wheels, a choking-hazard that Beatrix fell absolutely gaga for. She talked about it all the time. "Where my skateboard?" she'd say, at nap time, car rides, random moments throughout the day. "I think it's in Aunt Sally's car," I replied for two days, to which she said, "Oh, NO!" and burst into tears. Aunt Sally had to bribe her with an extra special treat to tide her over to the next day, when said skateboard was reunited with Beatrix. And then, Friday morning after the conclusion of my interview at a local bakery, it went missing.

This has caused great consternation at Wazoo Farm. This afternoon, the family finally drove out to Walmart to find a skateboard to make it all better. We found some, in plastic cases with wierd decals and extra wheels. There was even one with a skateboarder included, all in black with hair slanting over one eye. "No!" Bea said. "Little TINY skateboard." These offerings, at two inches long, were far too large.

Then I remembered that McDonalds had been giving out skateboards as the Boy Toy with Happy Meals, so our family turned our car that direction and we all piled out into a sticky parking lot.

"That ChickALay?" Beatrix queried, her whole body tense with excitement.

"Nope. It's McDonalds."

"McDONALDS!" she shouted, in a way that would have made our good friend with the big red shoes so very happy.

Inside, Martin almost shouted, "LOOK! The McRib! It's back!"

Now, we adults were planning to get nothing but water, but Martin said, "You HAVE to get a McRib. It's the right thing to do." I never found out exactly why this was, but he ordered and the girls sat on swinging chairs which they worked with an intensity that was truly impressive. Beatrix almost fell off.

There was a woman sitting on a high table talking at great volume to a man in a McDonalds employee cap. "Look," she was saying, "They got their own life, I got mine. I'm single, right? So I got nobody I come home to and nobody I'm responsible for, and that's my privilege. And then they're driving by my house and saying, 'Your company stayed for three hours,' and they're saying, 'She had company in her house for three hours,' and I'm saying, 'What goes on behind closed doors is none of your business!" The man in the cap kept nodding and listening.

I shouted up to Martin who was at the cash register, "Boy Toy! Boy Toy!" I wasn't calling him my hot and handsome play thing--I was reminding him to request the skateboards instead of the scented, molded plastic Strawberry Shortcake dolls.

The single woman with privileges went out of the restaurant, flipped up her cell-phone, chatted for about two minutes, and came back in to continue her monologue with the same guy, though he'd moved toward the door by then. She seemed incapable of silence. Martin was back by then and he raised his cup of ice water to mine and said dryly, "Cheers."

By this time the children were chowing their pale chicken nuggets. "I just knew this would happen," Martin said, as he gnawed his McRib. "They're giving out these buckets instead of the skateboards." The girls were pulling their food from neon green buckets decorated with Halloween Potato Heads.

"I thought I remembered skateboards," I said.

Merry said, "They only have the same toy for a limited time." Or something knowledgeable like that. She ate a medium fries in a sad way, eyes downcast.

Beatrix was dunking her nuggets in her caramel sauce. Martin passed over his McRib so I could taste it. "This is the strangest menu offering ever," he said. "It's called a rib sandwich but there are no bones. Observe. It is a fillet."

I bit into it. It tasted, in consistency and texture, like scrambled eggs doused with barbecue sauce. I passed it back.

Beatrix requested a straw, stuck the end into her caramel sauce, and began sucking. Then she dunked the straw into her milk. And back into the caramel sauce.

"That's disgusting," Martin commented, and continued eating his McRib sandwich. (Please do not miss the delicious and unitended irony.)

Near the end of our meal, the table piled high with trash, Beatrix poured her entire cup of water on the floor. She was suddenly like a creature possessed; she would not stay in her seat; she ran about and threw her arms around a strange man's legs until she saw his face and realized it was not Martin.

"I think it's the caramel sauce," I said.

"It is pure sugar," Martin agreed. We watched her run. A man in hunting gear with his son stood by and waited for his order. The checker, holding a tray piled with large fries, searched for a party who had moved to the back by the restrooms.

Then Elspeth began to take on the characteristics of a rubber ball. I noted that her caramel sauce package was also empty, licked completely clean.

Suddenly I jumped up, began throwing empty burger wrappers and caramel packets on to the tray. "I think it's time to go!" I announced.

Elspeth began to jig. "I've got to go potty!" she said. It apparently could not wait until home so the girls disappeared into the bathroom. Martin and I stood in an aisle discussing how long they would take. "At the soccer game, they were in there for, like, a half hour," he said. I sipped my decaf coffee. There was a moment of peace.

Soon after Elspeth almost collided in the parking lot with a car, but then we unstuck our feet and rode home through the darkness. Martin listened to baseball and Elspeth yelled from the back. Then Merry yelped as Elspeth pinched her. We waited for lights to turn green. As we neared home, Beatrix said, "Where my skateboard?"

Told you it was a long story.

For more from the Onion News Network on our favorite golden arches, click here.

Rainy Day Activities

Zombie Dancing. New Wazoo favorite.

"Let's get in the autumn-mobile and leaf."

Last night, we romped about the College Parks.  This common green land was originally set aside for grazing.  I like to think of the ghosts of sheep and cattle and horses roaming about the place as the children run up and down the sidewalks, among the trees, around the fountain, stopping to pose with the statuary.

 Leaf-pile building with friend "little Will."

 Standing below Lady Justice and the Civil War Soldiers (not pictured :).

 And here's some leaves for the folks in Texas.  Wish you could be here--all of you.  It's a stunning autumn.

Autumn Weeds and Rodents

A few visions of autumn at Wazoo. . .no pictures of the colorful leaves (yet) but a child in a corn maze up at a creamery/farm. Here's my maze-partner, JM, who calls me "Aunt Kim" (isn't that fine?)--with her I wandered through stalks and learned that cows have four stomachs and a full-grown Holstein weighs far more than 950 pounds. . .

and then there's my favorite, cosmos, as happy as if it it were July. Cosmos never lets me down, probably because it is technically a weed. I love weeds. They don't make a big fuss about themselves; they're just happy to be alive.

And they're tenacious little suckers. This is also why I secretly love our groundhog, Grassy Sam, who has been with us many years now. Enormous rodent though he be, he found a way up to the table where we were housing Merry's prize pumpkin, beautifully orange and plump with a smooth skin. He ate a huge hole (seemed partial to the seeds) as he sat on our table. Thanks to visiting friend "Uncle Jeff" for the picture.
So we moved the pumpkin (we figured we could still carve part of it into a jack 'o lantern) to the front porch and. . .something else ate it. Possibly Rocky Raccoon found it there--he is a menace I could do without, since he is cheeky enough to come in the back door to our enclosed porch for our trash. Grassy Sam, I like to think, has better manners than this. For instance, he never molests our main garden, though he could; and we are fairly good natured about letting him roam about the back yard. I did shoo him away from the red raspberries one year, and as far as I can tell, he hasn't been back.
I figure, if you're going to be a rodent, you should be a big one. The poor and awful field mice have been fleeing the harvesters and I keep seeing their blackened carcasses around town, one in our driveway and another on a sidewalk. The Wazoo cats (none of whom I know by name, none of whom are friendly or seem to care about us, but who prowl around the garden like royalty) keep them at bay--we haven't had a mouse problem in the house for years. That may also be in thanks to Sammy the Snake and his prolific offspring.

It's a jungle out there, I tell you, but nothing like my friend, Tonya's country lands where she almost gets run down by cows in the night and then horses the next night and then has to pound a rabid 'possum on the head with a flashlight and bury him early the next morning. That is exactly why I am a townie--3/4 of an acre is pushing it for us, but really it's the perfect size to tuck flowers and herbs and trees in helter-skelter and have it be alright.

Okay, just one little leaf picture.

Our magnificent maple. She's almost bare and the sound of the wind through her crisp leaves seems from another world--I puzzled over it for a while the other day. Is it a rushing sound, or a whoosh--does it sound like the ocean or a thousand birds flying through the sky--and I've come to conclusion that it sounds just like a strong autumn wind blowing through hundreds of dried yellow maple leaves. I love that tree. She wouldn't nod at any of my metaphors. And so a rodent is a rodent, a weed is a weed, and a maple is a maple. And with those deep thoughts, lovlies, plus a picture of Elspea hard at work in the playhouse, I bid you goodnight.