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.