Head of School

Last night we went to a meeting. A parent meeting, where we interviewed both candidates for Head of School. There are two administrative positions open next year at our school--one is the Montessori Head of School and the other is the business end. Last night was for the Montessori one. Two candidates, both tall, both from rural midwestern backgrounds. And that's where their similarities ended.

We met J first. He was well-prepared. He introduced himself well, gave some background, and fielded good questions about gender, racial and economic diversity, transitioning students to non-montessori middle and high schools, test scores, all sorts of things. Good questions, and mostly good answers. He got hung up on the "how would you bring in good teachers?" at first but pulled it out in the end. I was worried because he used the word craigslist...but then went on to talk about passion and goals and etc.

The only thing, in fact, that worried me was that his fiance was moving here and he was following. She was entering a chaplaincy program as an Episcopal priest. How long were they going to stay? We didn't get to ask until it occurred to us much later. More on that in a moment.

Then we met T. Nice, enthusiastic, and turned me off immediately. I extended benefit of the doubt, though, because I often do not react well to cheerleader-esque women who seem like they will have their team and the other team. You know? Women who go to the restroom together and share makeup and talk about getting their daughters into the right sorority. I know this is one of my hot buttons, though, and so I relaxed. But no. The first question was about diversity, and there were many ways she could have approached it. She was moving from the Southwest and so although black-white race issues may not be the name of the game there, she could sure talk about Latino populations and how she worked with two different cultures in her classroom.

Nope. She said her husband, because he has a Romance-language based last name and dark skin, is often confused for being Latino where they're from. As are her kids. And it "really pisses them off."

Ok, my grandmother could has answered that question better.

Her discipline ideas were designed for stuffed animals, not children who kick teachers and spit at other students. You know? And I envisioned myself as a teacher working for her. About how she would never answer my questions at a faculty meeting. I'd get all the bad subs. The aide would never come relieve me at lunch because she'd be tied up with the head of school. Crap like that. And I thought about the teachers I like at the school and their personalities and decided, nope, it's not just my reaction to her bubbly farmgirl act. I don't like her.

And neither did anyone else. I'd never seen so much marching to the same drummer at this school before. Ever.

But I still was worried about J leaving us after a year and going home with the wife and here we'd be, stuck again. So I latched onto another parent who asked one of our board members about it afterward.

"I don't know," she said, "but write it on your ballot [each parent had a ballot and room for comments to turn in after the meeting] and I'll be sure it gets asked."

"Well, then, can I wait to vote until I have the answer?" the other parent asked.

The board member kind of wrinkled up her nose and said something to the effect of, "Oh, don't worry about it, the board is going to make the decision."

Thus training me to never waste another evening at a parent meeting at school. I try not to use this word here, or at all unless I'm calling myself by it, but what a bitch.

I've sat on school boards. I've been on parish council. And this board, wow. What a secretive punishing group of people it can be. And this woman. I keep looking at her trying to figure out how she got on the board.

And then I check myself before I open my mouth one too many times and the administrator who always hears my complaints, via email in the middle of the night, tells me I should run.

But anyway, we got the chance to ask J about his longish-term plans, and it was at least two years and looking to buy a house in the neighborhood and fell in love with St. Louis and all those things you want to hear. Much better than T's answer of "we'll see. Wherever we buy a house it will have to have a good high school." We all voted even though Miss I'm So Impressed I'm On The School Board thought it was a waste of time for us, and went home to ruminate some more. Hoping the teachers and board felt the same way. Hoping they wouldn't screw up and hire the giggly chick.

They didn't.

But they're still thinking about her for the head of the pre-elementary classroom, which is our word for kindergarten. Yeah. Maeve's room. I already voiced my opinion about THAT one. And we'll wait and see.

Sunbonnet Sue vs Henry

Sr. Mary asked me what a Sunbonnet Sue was. Here's a couple. Sorry for the lousy lighting--I took them just now on the bed in the guest room and didn't bother to stage them better. But it gives an idea at least.

Two girls on my gift list this year, Maeve and my niece Delaney, are receiving this style of Sue. The little girl with the big bonnet, the child proportions. I'm using 30s era prints when I can--I got a bag of feedsack scraps at an antique mall last month (SCORE) and have several waiting in the wings to create. The two big Sues here are from an exchange I participated in last summer--I didn't make them, just added to them (the crocheted lace, the little leaves cut from an old handkerchief). The two smaller orange-sherbet colored Sues are from a kit. They came ready to applique, which I promptly did, adding the tatting and, for one, the fence and the yo-yo flowers (yes, those scrunchy things are called yo-yos).

The older girls (Sophia and my nieces Kennedy and Maci) are not getting this style of Sue, but of Sue's older sister, sometimes referred to as Parasol Girl or Colonial Lady or Southern Belle (depending on the quilter and the era). I broke down and purchased a book that has a very nice pattern for a Parasol Girl, and also one where she puts the parasol down and sits on a swing! I love it.

And, because I am lazy and know this (although less than I once was), I went on ebay to see if I could find any other Sues or Parasols. I like to make a quilt that doesn't look like I made each and every element the same. I like the eye to move. And so using other women's Sues as a backdrop for my gussying-up is perfect. Especially those Colonial Ladies, which can get pretty intricate. I am impatient with applique. I mean, there's a lot to do on these, even before you start the embroidery:

This one is not mine, fyi, but found online.

Well, I found a whole quilt top, hand appliqued in appropriate fabrics. It was a little simpler than this one above here, but starting with a background I can make things fancy. There were 12 blocks and I paid just over $1 a block. I figured it was worth a shot.

Well, it was a shot in the dark. You never know. It is in very good condition, perhaps new. Freshly laundered, the blocks were machine stitched to a sashing border and were easy to separate (since I would intersperse them with my own blocks in the final productions). But then I took a closer look at them. The parasols were an MC Escher delight--somehow both in front and in back of the lady. But this wonder of physics wasn't as dismaying as the necks on these girls, which, I must say in my defense, did not show up in the photographs online. The never-saw-the-sun Southern Belle skin, with the flash on, disappeared into the background. Henry Rollins doesn't have a neck like this.
I guess I should have noticed where the parasol handle begins and ends, but I was looking at the fabric and the stitching and, alas, missed this detail. And then, after the neck? Look at the shoulders. And this Lady was an average example. Many of them had even more, well, chiseled, features. And the hats are disturbing. They indicate no face (as is typical of Sunbonnet Sues and Ladies) but the width of the bonnet isn't enough. So the neck here is as long as the Lady's torso. Like some sort of strange alpaca hybrid.

So I'm going to give them a pass. I looked over the fabric--it's all good-quality cotton in appropriate colors and prints for a vintage-looking quilt. But it's just not quite what I want if I have to start over from scratch. Plus, which the seller failed to mention, the blocks are rectangular, about 17 x 14 inches. Not as useful as I'd like them to be.

Henry Rollins, on the other hand....
Ok, time to go pick up Maeve and start over on the Parasol Ladies. And maybe dig out my old Black Flag albums.

Salon Part One

The email I just sent out. In case you didn't get it and should have (it was not intentional, just tired...):

This June 6, I am going to host the first of what I hope becomes a continuing series of salons. This first one will be at my house at 7:00 p.m., Sunday, June 6.

What is a salon?
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously following Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" ("aut delectare aut prodesse est"). [from Wikipedia]

I have taken the idea from blog friends of mine in Vermont, who have hosted them during the long winter months for several years now. They bring in a guest speaker of some sort, listen, ask questions, talk, and share food and drink. Topics range from practical (cheesemaking, shepherding) to political to philosophical (death and dying, a recorder & flute concert, etc).

Not every gathering will interest every person, and some gatherings may draw folks for that time only and without obligation to continue. Those who wish to be a part, and who wish to host or have an idea, are welcome. Those who wish to only come once or twice are also welcome.

This June, I have invited my pastor, Fr. John Vien, to speak about his recent mission trip to Sacre Coeur Hospital in Milot, Haiti, after the devastating earthquake this winter. I have been listening to him speak about his experiences during homilies since his return and his words have stayed with me. He was the first speaker I thought of when my friend Ann and I started considering this idea.

If you would like to come and listen and talk and be together, please consider June 6. Let me know if you plan to attend so I can gauge how many chairs I might need, and how much chocolate.

Vacated

My parents left this morning to take the big boat to England. Is it the Queen Mary? I can't remember. It's the big cruise ship. They're in New York now, caught in traffic, but the cruise people know they're there and on their way (I just used all those there-sounding words together in one sentence!). They sail at 5, I think, this evening, and get to London on Thursday.

I'm a casual traveler at this stage in my life--they have far too many formal dinners awaiting them in the coming week for my taste (although the menus looked good...). I like a backpack and hiking boots and finding my way, although I do also like clean sheets when I find my way there.

They'll have a good time, though, and I'm glad--they've been planning this for a year now. But it also makes me look at the state of things here in Chez Wissinger and know it will be at least a year, probably two, before we take off to anywhere more interesting than my in-laws or to (our favorite) Rock Eddy. Leo is not at a good travel age. He doesn't understand why he's still in the carseat or why he should be quite and so forth. So it would be good to wait.

But I hate waiting.

My brother-in-law Pete and his girlfriend (soon to be wife) Kaylen are busy planning the honeymoon right now, too, which they're taking in San Francisco and parts nearby. Basically, a slightly tweaked version of my own honeymoon with Mike. Sigh. We were there in 1996 and 2006 and I suppose we'll go back in 2016 as well. But that seems so far away. Talking to her over email about Big Sur and Yosemite and San Francisco (which she knows better than I do) just makes me remember that my time will come again. Leo will get big enough to travel well and Maeve has her list of places to go (which are different from my list, though) and soon enough I'll be sitting here at the computer with hot chocolate in hand, on a cozy February night, looking around the internet for the perfect spot to find those clean sheets in the middle of Wyoming or Nevada or Vermont and making my plan.

But for now, I have to go pick up my parents' car at the airport and continue with the basement cleaning. Irish dance and school meetings and piano and dinner in the crock pot. Because that's not so bad either.

Three Things At Midnight

1. This stomach bug is for real and not just something I ate.

2. Arrested Development is really funny. I'm still in season 1. I needed a break from gritty police dramas (as Netflix calls them).

3. Sunbonnet Sues are really adorable. I used to not like them. But they've grown on me. The current one I'm working on has little yo-yo flowers she's picking and a crocheted trim on her bonnet (cut from a vintage hanky, not crocheted by me, because as Gail learned this evening, I cannot crochet...alas, I would love to help her (although I am sort of glad I can't--she's crocheting Irish dance dress collars, dang it, there's dance again...).

Pictures soon on the quilting progress. Aw.

One last thing about Little Rock

On the way to dance practice this evening, Sophia had her medals from the weekend to show and tell at the end of class. She was looking out the window and said, "I danced last on each of these dances."

"Yes," I agreed. "All your other dances you danced in the middle."

"I'm less nervous when I dance last," she declared--or decided, whichever.

"I hear that there is a chance that judges will ease up at the end of a group in comparison to the beginning," I remind her. I remember this happening in an email from her teacher. Judges reset, unconsciously, their expectations after the first few girls. It's better to go later.

"I especially do well when I dance alone--that's how I placed into novice in the jig, too. I was last, all by myself."

"Huh," I said, to see if she'd say more.

"Miss Mary said that the most important thing was to keep the judge's eyes on you, and when you're alone, what, like she's going to stare at the girls standing still behind you?"

A lot of it is knowing what you're doing, but some of it is game theory. There's some figuring it out. Even if judges don't really ease up towards the end, if you've convinced yourself you dance better at the end of a row, then so be it.

"Then we'll observe from now on how girls wind up at the end--either signing in first, or signing in last. And you can try to aim for those last spots more often."

"I also need to turn my toes out more."

"Yes, probably."

Ok, returning to normal life in three, two, one.

Little Rock Photos

A few images from the weekend. Mostly in the hallway while we waited during other dances. Slip jigs, for instance, always seem to take forever. One girl from our school said they are just a tad bit longer than others. Or something. Maeve made friends--but unlike previous new friends at shows where parents know me, these friends did not give her a turn on the handheld game devices. And she was too--something, proud, shy, polite, none seems right for Maeve--to ask for a turn. But she made other friends playing games with less technology. There was a hackey-sack at one point.
And yes, a tae kwan do competition was happening in the same convention center. Talk about a clash of culture.

Leo did the best he could to shriek loudly. Many dads commented to him that they felt the same way. And he learned to climb in and out of the stroller.
Sophia stayed patient and good. And then I even got a naughty snapshot of her onstage that I couldn't resist. I had my full 35 mm looking camera with me, too. No sneaky slim thing or my phone. And nobody said a word. This photo is from her light jig--note that some girls are in solo costumes. These aren't as bizarre as some that we saw this weekend. Many are, well, simply bizarre in the color choice (black with fluorescent orange? really?), sequin use and skirt construction--one on Saturday looked like a hoop skirt with weird dangly arrows coming off the bottom. These here, besides the odd poofy red and pink one, aren't as distressing as some. And the first two girls, the fourth, and sixth girl in line are in school dress (like Sophia is as well). There's something about this photo, with the looks on the girls' (and boy's) faces, the polite smiles and hope, that keeps me staring at it. Hmm.
This photo was post-single jig. She realized she needed to reapply the sock glue--maybe that's why she didn't place in single jig. WHO KNOWS. But this smile says "Mom take the danged photo so I can change my shoes and go back in."

Feisy Feisness

Little Rock: Good and Bad.

It was a good feis because it was a totally different group of people to compete against (we've seen a lot of a certain Chicago girl, for instance, the past year or so, and all the St. Louis girls).

It was a bad feis because the hotel, any hotel, was not connected to the actual venue. If it had been, we would have stayed at that hotel--I love just walking downstairs with Sophia dressed and not worrying about weather or whatnot. But in Little Rock it was at a convention center, and we were not going to stay in the way-overpriced hotel connected to their convention center (the feis didn't recommend it, even--suggesting one across the river and a shuttle away). So we stayed at the Hampton about 4 blocks thisaway, and 3 blocks thataway, to quote the desk clerk.

It was a good feis because everything happens in one room. I like that.

It was a bad feis because they had a 1/3 of the chairs they needed. We camped in the hallway, which actually made the day go faster because we weren't watching every. single. dancer.

It was a good feis because they reported results deep--some dances to 7th place, even.

It was a bad feis because they weren't consistent about their reporting. Sophia was in one that didn't post past 3rd place, for instance. Umm. And there were 12 girls, they really could have told us who was 4th.

It was a good feis because, well, here are some other things that made me kinda crazy:

She didn't place in her reel, and she kept up a brave face but I knew she really wanted to. There were 16 girls and they posted to 5th and that was that. She was disappointed but told me she was ok. Then she had her novice light jig (novice is further along than advanced beginner, go figure, they sound like synonyms to me). We knew she wouldn't place and she didn't. And neither with slip jig, which is her weakest dance.

But single jig, from where I stood, I thought she at least came in the top four or so. Really. She likes that dance and you can tell. But no. That's the one they only reported to 3rd. She checked the wall and said not a single word to me afterward. It was looking like a bad day. She danced her treble jig and then, standing on stage to dance her hornpipe, they called for a lunch break.

I had a hard time with this. Which is the polite way of saying I threw a mini-fit. We were given a half hour. And this area of Little Rock had no real options. On the schedule, lunch was supposed to happen after Sophia's last dance, so I hadn't even packed anything. We were trapped. We wound up at a diner across the street for an ice cream cone. But it calmed everyone down and we went back to the feis just in time for them to call dancers back to the stage. Ugh.

She danced hornpipe and then almost immediately danced St. Patrick's Day for the first time. She looked ok with the hornpipe but there were 12 girls and I was like, yeah, well, this day has been way too long. And they hadn't even posted results for the treble jig yet. So aggravated.

We sat in the hall and waited. I worked on some Sunbonnet Sues. Sophia, out of the wig and dress, was fine and chatty. Oh! I forgot to mention. As I went to tell her that she was up for St. Patrick's Day and had to go back to the stage, I told her I thought it was the best slip jig she'd done at a feis so far and that I was happy with how she did and especially how she handled herself (SO MANY girls in tears and yelling at parents and all those emotional moments). She smiled and said, "I really hope I don't get third. I mean, I know I'll go home with a medal, but I really hope it isn't third. You know?"

Yes, I knew.

I told her to do her best. She was nervous about the rolls (I think that's what they are) and she asked when the next feis would be. I said ours, in July, or we could try Memphis. I was thinking, yeah right I'll never get her to another out of town feis. But she cocked her head to the side and asked how far away Memphis was. I explained how it would work with my mother-in-law's house involved.

"Let's go to Memphis, then," she decided. That girl. It's totally different to be Sophia than to be, I think, anyone else on earth. If I'd been a 3rd grader competing in a solo competition and had my hopes up and had them dashed, I'd be, well, I'd probably be one of the girls in tears swearing she'd never come back.

When she danced St. Patrick's Day, the first girls danced in a pair and then she was alone. As the two danced, Mary Helen asked me what I thought. I don't know anything anymore, but I told her I was afraid Sophia would take third.

"Even against that other girl in blue?"

I looked.

"I think she'd have to really screw up. Bend an elbow or something."

And then, not the girl in blue, but the other girl, just stopped. Ten seconds before the girl in blue stopped. Before the tune was complete--and like I've said before, this is a traditional set with no room for improvisation, and certainly not just ending early.

"Like that," I said quietly. We both knew Sophia would do better than that. She got up and rocked that baby out. Sophia may not be the best technical dancer, but when she's up there, the joy just exudes from her. And she looks like she just came in from a day of shepherding on the Aran Islands, which helps at shows at least. Dang.

So anyway we were out sitting around talking about quilting when she got up to see if there were any results. She came back out and was all smiles. Second, I thought. Whew. At least we won't go home totally mystified by the judges here.

"I got first in St. Patrick's Day!" she announced.

We were all obviously thrilled. Except for Maeve, who had no idea what was going on because she'd made new friends over on this set of carpeted steps and was chatting them up about who knows what? Other siblings and a few older dancers waiting for championships to start. Funny Maeve.

So we started gathering things up to go get the medal and head out, when Sophia ran back out. She'd taken 5th in hornpipe as well. It's only the second time she's danced hornpipe at a feis. She was so danged happy.

So we went in and she got the medal for 1st and then they gave her a medal for 5th, not a ribbon. That was nice. Another good thing about the feis. We walked out with a 4 hour drive ahead of us but at least it wouldn't be a disappointed drive home.

I love her so much. In such a different way than I love Leo or Maeve. She astounds me all the time.

But in the van, almost to I-55, Maeve piped up with a whine: "Sophia won't let me see her medals!"

"I don't want her fingerprints on them!" Sophia yelled from the back seat of my mother-in-law's van.

So she's not an angel if that's what you're concerned about. Later she asked to see the Sunbonnet Sue I was working on and I handed it to her: "Note that I'm letting you put your hands on something important that belongs to me."

She rolled her eyes. "Maeve can see my medals."

Back to the critique of the feis: I don't know if we'll return. It was a good experience but further from my in-laws house than I thought it would be. I don't know. I'm also anxious to read how she did in the reel and what in the world made her not place (seriously, she did a good job). Mystery.

But we have Memphis next month, and then An Samhra in July. And I think it'll go just fine.

Little Rock Here We Come

Feis weekend. We're leaving in the morning, me and the kids, to go to my in-laws. Then my mother-in-law will join us and we'll head down to Little Rock. Sophia's in small to middling groups of girls for her dances so I'm hopeful she'll do well.

And she is too. For the first time, she isn't saying things like "I hate going to feis's [correct would be "feiseanna", I think...], I don't like competitions, I only want to go to shows." After her first feis, I told her she only had to do our school's feis--the one we sponsor--and in fact she's had her best success at that one (hmm....). Later she negotiated with me and decided she could do all the St. Louis ones, as long as I got the online results that gave her an idea of where she would have placed when she didn't place. Which happens pretty much all the time--she'll place in one dance out of 5, for instance. But it's nice to know that you were close to 4th or 6th or whatever, out of 23 dancers. Or that maybe (slip jig) you were closer to the bottom!

But this time, she's saying things like "I really hope I place in the reel this time." I don't know why that one specifically--she is much better at single jig, for instance. Of course maybe she just figures she'll be fine in single jig (there are only 9 girls competing, but for that matter, there are only 16 in the reel). And at the St. Louis feis we went to in February, she did come in 4th out of 23 girls....so maybe...

She's an advanced beginner, which means she needs to place in the top 3 of any given dance to move up to novice--which she already has for the light jig, last summer, but not in anything else. She told me last week that she really would like to have two, or maybe even three, novice dances next year (you move up in January). So maybe she's a little more focused. It's good to have a goal!

And man is she better at it now. She came home from this crazy little workshop with a guest teacher (who almost made her cry the first night, she told me) with really clean steps, really sharp hard shoe moves. So I'm hopeful.

The nice thing is, her last dance is St. Patrick's Day, which is a traditional set dance (danced the same all over the world to a specific tune--as opposed to "reel" or "slip jig" which varies from school to school). Traditional sets are optional--not every school seems to put much weight on them. But ours teaches them (and frankly, when I signed Sophia up for "Irish Dance" I was thinking along these lines--learn things that people have been dancing for a long long time, that whole "jig music combined with Irish American pride" thing I've mentioned before). Anyway, at a feis, there doesn't tend to be as many dancers signed up for the traditional sets. This weekend, she's one of three dancers in her age group. So we know she'll be coming home with at least one medal! It will end on a good note even if she's disappointed with the results in the reel (her first dance).

But now, I must go clean. The first floor is done except for mopping the kitchen, and the girl's room (the third floor) is done except vacuuming, which won't happen anyway because Mike is staying here to do work in the attic this weekend. But the room in which I sit, and my room, and the guest room. Yikes.

Wish Sophia luck!! Talk with you next week.

30 Days of Song: Day 30

Your favorite song this time last year: hmm. "Let It Be" by the Beatles

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me,
shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

From last April's South City Musings:

We saw the pediatric epileptologist today. Dr. Vashist, after an extremely long wait in the front waiting room and then even more waiting in the exam room, turned out to be a young, extremely friendly and engaging person. She had Maeve run and jump and touch her nose and all those weird neurology tests. Maeve passed.

She then turned to talk to me. We went over all the details of January 28, and at the end, she knocked on the side of the wood cabinets and said, "only one. That's what we want to hear."

Her EEG was normal, the MRI was normal. The high fever afterward means it's likely the seizure was febrile. Now, since there is a family history of epilepsy, we're not in the clear (actually, nobody's in the clear, ever). But Dr. Vashist told me that even if it wasn't febrile, she wouldn't do anything until/unless Maeve has another one. And even then, depending on how long it is between them, we would have to see.

"Let her be who she is going to be and don't worry," she told me. "You don't have to come back to see me and if all goes well, we'll never see her again."

It isn't until I wrote that right there that it all sort of came into perspective. How much I've been holding my breath for the past two months. How sometimes, I feel like the luckiest unlucky person I know.

30 Days of Song: Day 29

A song from your childhood: "Midnight Rider" by the Allman Bothers Band

I gotta run to keep from hiding
I'm bound to keep on riding
And I got one more silver dollar
And I ain't gonna let them catch me, no,
Ain't gonna let them catch the midnight rider

You grow up thinking your family is like everybody else. But they let you in on the secret bit by bit. That's marijuana in that bag. I used to ride this motorcycle, until that day on the bridge. He chased the kid down the steps with a shotgun. I was beating them with a table leg when Mom came out and started beating me with a broom handle. Usually I just like big tits, but this one's got brains as well. I've always cut the cocaine with vitamins.

Get yourself a handful a uncles, one with a pirate patch, two with raging red hair, all with aging unreadable black line tattoos, but you remember when you were a kid--they were naked ladies--talking to you without removing the cigarette from their lips, the gravelly two-toned voices you don't hear anywhere else but from their mouths and in your memory. The oil on the floor, the human sweat mixed with grease and leaded gasoline, producing a distinct stale odor in the warm night that you think is unique to that garage, until you find it on yourself, repulsively, after helping a boyfriend jack up his car to change a tire one night, going home to scrub it off, realizing that soap and water is not going to take away the heavy suffocating feeling that no matter how much your father pretends, he does not come from good people, and deciding that you have two choices: get yourself some frosted hair, frosted lipstick, and frosted jeans; or, marry yourself into some Nice family, and as God is your witness, spend the rest of your life passing for Nice.

I'm nice. Right? And I can laugh about it now. I didn't keep my maiden name, though.

30 Days of Song: Day 28

A Song that makes me feel guilty: "China" by Tori Amos

sometimes I think you want me to touch you
how can I when you build that great wall around you
in your eyes I saw a future together
you just look away in the distance

We were sitting on the Brazos River County Park boardwalk. You had your hand on my thigh, tentatively, while we stared out at the river and the bugs in the overgrown swamp in front of us. It was mid-August, 1993, and we knew we were at the end. You're right next to me, but I need an airplane. We'd come to the park before, with my sisters back in the late spring, to walk around with them and fight with each other. We fought a lot, especially for people only 19 years old. What, I think now, could we possibly have had to fight about?

This time we didn't fight. We sat. I put my hand on yours, and it automatically flipped over and grasped mine awkwardly. I traced the scars on the inside of your arm and you pulled away.

"Come on, let's head back, it's fucking hot out here."

You dropped me off at my house. I was packing to leave, to head back to St. Louis the next morning with my family. You called once that evening, but I had my brother take a message. When I called back, your mother answered since you'd already gone to work.

Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes played on my walkman in the van on the 14 hour trip the next day. Funny how the cracks don't seem to show. I broke up with you over the phone two weeks later.

Emma Donnelly's Last Gathering

Well, maybe not the last. I have a feeling when my aunt (really my mother's cousin's wife) Gracemarie dies, that will be the last gathering. But this one might be the second or third-last gathering.

Last night I went to my great-aunt's wake.

Wait, who is Emma Donnelly?

She's my great-grandmother. She and her husband Theodore Wibbenmeyer had 4 children. But Theodore was dead before any of his grandchildren knew him, and she'd remarried to a man named Leon Marchildon. So really it's Emma Donnelly's last gathering.

No, she wasn't there. She died in 1985 or 84. Can't recall--I was young.

But everyone there was a descendant of Emma Donnelly. We could walk in one of those Irish parades and wave at people as we dress as potatoes or slices of bread or something stupid like that: "Descendants of Emma Donnelly." The St. Patrick's Day Parades here in town always have a few groups like that.

Emma's four children are Sarah, Art, Mary, and Albert. Art (Arthur, or Bud) was my grandfather. He and each of his siblings, as if in a planned community of some sort, each had a daughter. And then promptly had a son. And then had no more children. Joan and Jim. Cheryl and Paul. Lucy and Dan. Michelle and Andy.

Now, Emma's 8 grandchildren were more willy-nilly about their procreation. The great-grandchildren are Christine, Michael, Tony, Tim, Maureen, Jane, Bridgett, Ian, Bevin, Colleen, Paul, Katie, Kelci, mumble mumble mumble. Generations being what they are, Lucy, Dan, Michelle, and Andy are my age even though they're my mother's cousins. Their kids are Sophia's ages. And I suck at names, really. But there's a bunch of them. And of course some of us great-grandchildren have continued to have children ourselves. So it's a big line.

Of course they weren't all there--my brother lives in Texas and my mother's brother's line didn't come at all. But there was a bunch of us. Everyone except Mike and myself (and possibly Dan, who might list himself as "not interested") were 5 or 6 standard deviations from the norm when it come to politics. Very conservative. And most of them pretty well off to boot. But thank goodness none of that came up in conversation. Thank goodness.

Sophia and Maeve ran around with other kids--their third cousins for the most part--and Sophia came up to me at one point and asked, "Is this all we have to do?" She was excited to hear that, yes, this is all she had to do. Run around with folks who look vaguely like you and eat pizza in the "coffee lounge." It was probably the most relaxed funeral home I'd ever attended, but of course it helped that Sarah was, again, 93 years old. Sadness was at a minimum, frankly. It was good to see people.

But I still cried when I ran into Gracemarie. I don't know what my deal was. And she cried too and told me it was my fault as she laughed through tears. And then it was ok again and I was able to go hang out with the folks I won't see again until the next funeral.

30 days of song: day 27

A song I wish I could play: "Telephone Road" by Steve Earle

Telephone Road is ten miles long
Fifty car lots and a hundred honky-tonks
Jukebox blastin' and the beer bottles ring
Jimmy banging on a pinball machine

Mama never told me about nothin' like this
I guess Houston's 'bout a big as a city can get
Sometimes I get lonesome for Lafeyette
Someday I'm goin' home but I ain't ready yet

Come on come on come on let's go
This ain't Louisiana
Your Mama won't know
Come on come on come on let's go
Everybody's rockin' out on Telephone Road

I went to high school right smack in the middle of grungy Houston, Texas. You probably don't know this Steve Earle song--it really only resonates with folks who have been there.

My junior year, I really wanted to date Casey. Or the baseball coach, whichever got to me first, I guess. Casey I think really did not want to date me. But had not a clue how to let a girl down easy. After baseball games, he would take me home, since we both lived in Pearland (Pear. Land. Not Pearl. Land.) and it just made sense, right? He drove a jeep wrangler jacked up on these huge tires--he kept a step stool for passengers. We'd head home on Mykawa Road, except when the fog rolled in early, and then it was always down Telephone Road. Fifty car lots and a hundred honky-tonks.

The fog had rolled in that night, and we headed home on Telephone. At some crossroads just on the edge of Houston, the wrangler died. Died. Casey's cursing under his breath, trying to get it started. Things didn't work too well for Casey in general, and with this jeep in specific, and he turned and shook his head at me. We were stuck. Too far to walk back (and too completely disgusting), and still too far to make it to the happy little suburb we called home. In the era before cell phones, our choices were few. Our only logical choice was to walk into one of the ice houses (honky-tonks) and hope we wouldn't be raped and killed.

Wrangler by the side of the road, flashers on. He's dressed in a baseball uniform, you know, tight white pants and a shirt that reads "Rebels" across the front in brown. I'm in the hideous uniform skirt and blue oxford cloth button-down. We head over to the nearest ice house and walk through the garage door.

It's. A. Biker. Bar. I'm right behind Casey, and he practically backs up over me trying to get out. But we've already been seen, and the bartender yells at us that nobody under 21 allowed. One of the guys at the bar stands up. It's like being in some "city slicker gets trapped in rural America and terrible things happen" movie. You know the genre.

"Can we use the phone?" Casey's thin little voice yells over to the bar. The standing guy is joined by someone next to him, and an impossibly skinny woman (why do so many Texan women have hair wider than their hips?) makes a trio.

"Y'all lost or somethin?" she asks us.

"Jeep broke down," Casey replies.

"Jerry, why not see what's goin on?" she says to the first guy. Jerry and the other guy follow Casey out to the jeep. They do not rape or kill him. She takes me back to the bathroom hallway, as filthy as you think it'll be, and gives me money for the phone. Casey's mom comes and picks us up. They get the wrangler towed and nobody dies.

Twice bitten

A while back ebay sent me a message: the card you have on file was just used to start a new account. We blocked it until we heard from you. Or something like that. Crap. I fled to my bank's website and found, yes, that someone in Hong Kong had made two small charges, each $1, to test the card. I called my bank and canceled the card. Whew. If ebay had commercials I would have done a testimonial for them. Saved my butt while I wasn't even looking.

And I had been doing something very stupid: I was using my debit card online. Yes. The Visa-linked debit card with access to all our portable cash. Indeed. Stupid.

So that week while I waited 7-10 business days for my new card to arrive in the mail and lived in an all-cash lifestyle, I went to my credit union, where we keep our Christmas account and the kids' saving accounts because they're friendly and small and have very low minimum balances and so forth. It's also where we kept the money for my taxes two years ago when I was a contractor, so that funds didn't intermingle. We don't use it all the time but it's nice to have there. Anyway, I went looking for a credit card to use online, something we'd pay very month as a bill instead of using our debit card for each payment (things like netflix and a couple of charities that automatically pull every month). The idea being that if fraud does happen, I'm not waiting two weeks with no money to have the bank figure it out--I'm dealing with a credit card company, not my checking account. I could still buy groceries.

So I walk in and sign in at the desk for banking services. They call my name and I explain what I want to do. They treated me like a two week old tuna sandwich. It was horrible. One woman actually said, "Sweetie, you don't have a job, so you'll have to have your husband come down and do this." And yes, it's true, I don't have a job. And if they'd simply said, "oh, you and your husband will have to be on the card together so that we can have proof of income" or something like that, it would have been fine. Facts are facts. But they acted like I was some naive little woman, barefoot and pregnant in our sod house or something. And tiptoed around and whispered to each other. AS IF I'M THE ONLY STAY AT HOME MOM ON EARTH?

So I didn't get the card. But lucky me they put me on mailing lists for pre-approved nonsense I didn't want. I'm still getting junk in the mail.

My new debit card arrived and I was so ticked off, you know what I did? Went back to doing the same stuff we'd done before. Yeah. Because I could have just had Mike go in and fill out paperwork and get the dang card in his name and still have used it for the same purposes, but no. Pride or anger or some deadly sin got in the way and lo. Here we are.

Last night my card was declined. Mike and I just about flipped. We didn't even try his--I paid cash and went outside to call the bank. They'd stopped a sketchy attempt at 3 a.m. Sunday morning. Declined a purchase online at some nonsense website like getgoodmoneyonline.com. I confirmed that, no, I didn't make that attempt. And so they cancelled the card and in 7-10 business days I'll have a new one.

Before then, though, Mike is going to march somewhere--to the bank, the credit union, Target Visa, I don't care--and get a card for us to use online.

In the car last night he asked, "Are you mad at me?"

"No," I told him. "I'm mad at me."

All is well. I'm just...me. You know?

30 Days of Song: day 26

A song I can play on an instrument: "Thom II" by Rose Polenzani

The only thing I have to write with is my blood.
The only thing I want to ask you: Take my love.
I want to cut myself
but it looks like it hurts a lot.

She was the first cutter I knew. Self-injurer. At least, the first one who couldn't hide it. I can look back and speculate about a couple of people from high school, even earlier, but she was the first one I encountered. She lived on my floor my freshman year and she was depressed. That would be understating it.

Back when dorms still allowed smoking, she'd sit in the hall with an old cafeteria glass for an ash-tray, smoking menthols, shaking. I didn't have much to say to her--she was the suitemate (shared a bathroom) of my friends Deb and Luu, on the periphery of the same crowd I was on the periphery of. But we knew she was a little fragile. Her roommate dropped out the fourth week of school, and then she had a depressing single. Of course, I had a depressing single as well, but I filled my time better. One afternoon in October, Mike C. had a new calculator, a new-fangled graphing one, and we had no clue how to make it do its tricks. She was a math major. So we knocked on her door.

She came to the door in a haze. Mike C. asked about the calculator. She took it in her shaky hands, slid to the floor of the hallway to look at it. That's when Mike C. and I both saw the blood. I mean, I've cut myself shaving. I put my hand through a window pane once by accident, and I've seen blood. But shaving cuts aren't this kind of emergency, and she wasn't acting like it was an emergency. Blood dripped from beneath her jeans leg, pooled on the ground behind her heel. She was focused on the calculator.

We just stared at the blood. Took the calculator back after a few moments' tutoring lesson, and went back to Mike C's room. That was the first and last beer I had in college.

I like you, I like you,
but it looks like it hurts a lot.

And then this was the first song I learned to play by ear on the guitar.

House Tour

It's going really well. The B&B is so nicely put together. I think it's gone over well with the crowd, which was SOOOOOO slow this morning but has picked up. I'm heading back over there in a minute but wanted to come home for just a second and be still. Just be still. And not have to smile or stand. Ah.

30 Days of Song: Day 25

A Song that makes me laugh: "Dr. Bernice" by Cracker

Baby, don't you drive around with Dr. Bernice
She's not a lady doctor at all.
She's got hands like a man
With hair on the back,
She'll crush you in her embrace.

Johnny and I used to laugh and laugh at this song. It's so bizarre and rambling. Then, after we broke up and he got the Cracker album in the break up, I met Dr. Bernice. Not her real name. My reading theory professor. Rachel and I would sit in class and mentally give her makeovers, mostly involving a lot of wax and a better bra. She smoked cheap-ass cigarettes like there really was no tomorrow, her office unbearable to be in.

She knew her stuff, for a while. An elementary ed major, I took three classes from her. She became my adviser on her request, Rachel and I both, and we would go to lunch. It was fun hanging out with a professor. Even if her hands shook and she didn't have any protective coloration to hide how friggin bizarre and somewhat damaged she was. It took me some time to catch on, I will admit.

Baby, don't you drive around with Dr. Bernice,
That ain't a real cadillac.
It's a delta '88, spray-painted black,
With fake leather seats from Juarèz.

She invited Rachel and I, and Rachel's hanger-on roommate, over to her apartment for dinner one night while we were student teaching. Rachel and roommate had choice placements, because Rachel could play the games better than I could, stuck over in rural Illinois teaching people with last names like Gummersheimer who didn't come to school if it was a half day cause there's stuff to do at home on the farm. I was set for eggs, though, the whole semester.

Sitting in her living room, chatting about whatever--Rachel and roommate were still single, I was engaged to Mike--Dr. Bernice mentioned she'd been picking men up in bars and in the personal ads. She mentioned she'd been coughing up blood now and then. We were not equipped to handle either of these statements. Then Rachel tapped me on the shoulder while Dr. B was in back getting dinner together. She pointed to the end table next to her. A used condom lay there, deflated, next to a stack of reading theory journals.

She was fired at the end of that semester. She called me a couple times that summer, drunk, slurring her words, wanting to be part of my life. I extricated myself best I could--Mike and I moved and changed phone numbers.

Though the world may whisper and howl at your door,
You're not obliged to let them all in.

Edward Blake November 18, 1886 aged 58

My father's name is Richard Michael Blake. His father's name was Eddie Blake, married to Anna (just to keep the Edwards straight). His father's name is Edward D. (the D. stands for something...), married to Jennie. Edward D.'s father is Edward, just plain Edward, married to the elusive Bridget Dwyer-Dewire-Dwyre-Dwyne-Kidney (pick a maiden name, any maiden name).




I visited that Edward's grave today up at Calvary Cemetery, which is a place I should be spending more time in. Bridget is there, too, buried in 1904, but she doesn't have her own headstone, or even a mark on his. Ah well. It was worth a shot. This one doesn't even say where he was born, or give me any birthdate except the "aged 58" which puts him in 1828. That's more than I had before.

He's the suicide--"Rough on Rats" if you remember. Arsenic. He was a bartender/saloon owner in East St. Louis. Left his kids with his in-laws and he and Bridget ran off to start a bar. Or so it seems.

30 Days of Song: Day 24

A song I want to play at my funeral: I could think of lots of bad choices, lots of light-hearted tacky things ("Cocaine", "Losing my Religion") but honestly, I haven't thought much about it. I know what readings I would like, and I know what I want the presider to say. But if things go well, that's a while off, right?

I know some songs I don't want at my funeral. I don't want Ave Maria or Amazing Grace. Nyet. And On Eagles Wings? My mother-in-law and I are in agreement. If they play that at her funeral, I'm supposed to walk out in protest.

I suppose if I had to say something right this moment, it would be Simeon's Canticle, which is sung at compline (night prayer). Lord, let your servant go in peace...

30 Days of Song: day 23

A song you want played at your wedding: Well, I got married 14 years ago. But one that did play at my wedding (well, at the reception): "Crazy" by Patsy Cline

Crazy
For thinking my love could hold you
I'm crazy for tryin
And I'm crazy for cryin
And I'm crazy for lovin you

It's not the typical, that's for sure. And when we were planning, I didn't have any clue what we might use. There were lots of stereotypical choices, the DJ's list was long. On the phone one night, long before the date, he said, "Crazy by Patsy Cline," with a definitive sound in his voice.

That warm July night at my wedding reception, this is the song my father and I danced to. Alone on the dance floor, he held my hand and said quietly in the pause before the song started, "ok, now, we can cry together."

He was right.

One of the few moments of my life I wish I could have both experienced and watched.

I'll play it again someday.

Auntie Sarah

My Aunt Sarah died this morning. We'd seen her at an Irish dance show down at the nursing home she'd moved into in January. She was 93 and had lived on her own until about two years ago when she started trading between her son and daughter. She seemed to be doing so well at Nazareth House. She was. She ate well and looked good. She was 93.

Ninety-three.

I was hoping to see her again now that flu season is passing--they don't allow kids past the front room during flu season, and with Maeve and Leo, there wasn't any way to juggle that easily. Plus Leo had RSV this winter and let's face it--that's not what a nursing home needs. Germy babies.

The last time I visited her at her house in south city, it was in decline in a major way. The beds weren't made, the dishes weren't washed--but I'm just her niece's daughter and I didn't feel like I could do much. Other folks stepped in as well and she recognized that she needed to be with other people, too. She was 93, after all.

I was sad and upset when she was still living at home; I worried a bit when she was living with her daughter...but once she got to Nazareth I stopped worrying because they got my grandmother back on her feet, to my great shock, and I knew they'd take care of Sarah. And they did. And now that she's gone, well, it's ok. That's how it should be--a good long life, lots of family and friends, cheating at scrabble, living, and then dying. I don't have any heartwrenching thoughts this afternoon, nothing I wish I'd asked or said or done. I'm glad I got to live with her when I was in college, I'm glad she read at my wedding, I was always happy when we got a chance to visit together. My last phone call with her tore me apart, but then I got to see her in March and it was ok. She was 93 and here we are.

May we live as well as she did and die peacefully a happy death.

30 Days of Song: Day 22

A song I listen to when I'm sad: Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel

When illusion spin her net
I'm never where I want to be
And liberty she pirouette
When I think that I am free
Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes but still can see
No one taught them etiquette
I will show another me

When my grandfather died and Mike's grandmother died on the very same day in 2004 and I made the unpopular decision to run away from all that and go hide in the cabin in the woods, it didn't go well for me. My mother didn't let it go for a long time, and it still comes up on occasion. But my mother-in-law, I went down to visit her in March of that year, and she gave me a little bracelet with a charm on it that said "One Day At A Time".

It makes me wonder about what Maria, my post-partum counselor, referred to as the "Milieu." We are colored by our experiences and reflect them back out into our world, where they are subtly inserted into other people's views of who we are and what we mean. I'm not even sure if Mary Helen knows the basic vocabulary and aphorisms of twelve step groups. But she couldn't have picked a more relevant motto to give me on the occasion of my grandfather's death, and, well, my mother's freak out.

When my daughter Sophia was born via c-section, face up and looking at the surgeon, every bouquet I received had a stargazer lily in it.

Supposedly, when you pray a certain St. Theresa the Little Flower novena, your prayer will be answered, and roses will be involved. I haven't tried it, because I feel like I would be tempting something. But I wonder.

When my childhood friend Marita was giving birth, without my knowing, I was wearing a necklace she'd given me for graduation.

Amusingly, I noted months afterwards, when I parted on bad terms with a casual friend once, never to speak to her again, we each had a book in our possession belonging to the other. She left my social crowd and eventually her husband and daughter. The book she loaned me was Circle of Friends. The one I had given her was One Hundred Years of Solitude.

It makes me wonder at the power of words, the subconscious way we take what's around us and incorporate it into our beings. It makes me cautious about what names I give my pets (Bleys (pronounced Blaze) has caught on fire several times, for instance, and don't get me started on Wiz), and especially my children. When I dropped my first name, Sarah, and moved my middle name, Bridgett, to the front position when I got
married, was that a shift from princess to fiery arrow? When I look at my life now, I certainly think it was.

The bracelet was a talisman for me during my second pregnancy. Maeve was born in October 2004. All my bouquets had mums.

So I'm still taking it one day at a time. Easy does it. But I passed the bracelet on to someone else's wife.

30 Days of Song: Day 21

A song I listen to when I'm happy: "Signed Sealed Delivered" by Stevie Wonder

I've done a lot of foolish things
That I really didn't mean

Fall 1992. I've never been much of a joiner, but my dorm floormate Dez and I decided it might be fun to do some DJing down at the college radio station. KSLU at the time had power measured in watts. It mostly could only be heard in the dorms, where it ran through the telephone wires or something like that. You could not pick it up even a mile south of campus at the medical school complex. It was totally lame. But they ran the station on 16 hour days, and some shows, like the morning weekday news and music show, got some listeners. Dez and I, being freshmen, were given the Saturday evening slots. She had 3-6, I had 6-9. Since we were both such total introvert losers at the time, we decided it might be better if we did them together as a SIX HOUR show.

We had a playlist--it was standard stuff, a few recent albums, a lot of music from the last ten years. We played this on vinyl and on carts (some sort of mystifying 8-track kind of cartridge). We could fill in the gaps with our own music--the better DJs at the station had themes, of course: jazz, rock, alternative, and so on. Dez and I were college-poor and had little to offer. So we mostly wandered in their stacks of ancient LPs and played whatever we found.

We played the first 2 hours standard, from the list, throwing in the occasional odd duck. But the last four hours we called the show "The Cheesy as All Hell Hour" and played four hours of guilty pleasures, one hit wonders, and odd things. Our favorite was an album by Ted Knight called Hi Guys, the best song being "I'm in love with Barbara Walters." Round about 9 o'clock every Saturday, we were starving, dehydrated, delirious from living in the basement of the student center like rodents, and we ended the show with "Signed, Sealed, Delivered". We usually danced around the station like idiots and signed off, swearing we were going to get lives before next semester came around.

Ten on Tuesday Returns: 10 most terrifying trips I've taken

By car, I mean. I don't know if I can get 10 here but I'll try. In order, even (from least terrifying to most). 10 on Tuesday has disappeared, the writing prompt that used to appear in my email inbox, alas, but I'll try to remember to create my own anyway.

1. Leaving Baker, Nevada, and heading out onto US 50/US 6 through central Nevada. The loneliest road in America. Ghost towns, old warm springs--it's just too sparse for me.

2. In high school in central Georgia, continuing my dork role as basketball statistician, riding the chartered bus to and from games with the varsity team was a nice perk--later in Texas, as a team statistician I had to ride either on the smelly school bus or in the coach's truck. Anyway, this particular trip was somewhat stressful--being escorted out of town by a group of rednecks in pick up trucks, who earlier, during the game, had sat on Lumber City home team side of the gym dressed in fatigues and paper bags over their heads chanting exactly what you think they'd be chanting. More detail here.

3. The first time I went to Cairo with Mike, it was right after the flood of '93. And things were still wet there. We had to take the long way around to get into town for his mother's surprise 40th birthday party. Leaving, his father suggested we take the levee road. Driving at night on a levee means black water on one side, and something way far down on the other side--land? water? you don't know--and it's a one-lane proposition and here comes a pick up truck. Plus, at the end of it, we're both so bewildered by directions we don't know which way to go. We argue about which direction the river is. Eventually I realize that in Illinois, the river is WEST. Anyway. This will be the first of the detour-to-Cairo stories for me. One time we got lost in backroads next to the Super Max prison. I can't even figure out how that happened. Dead ends in graveyards, too, seem to happen. If the road floods, there's no easy way to get there...

4. The Trail Ridge Road across Rocky Mountain National Park. The trip west isn't so bad. The trip back east is a little harrowing. Highest contiguous road in the US. Which is why I just had to take it. I'm a sucker for superlatives.

5. The "Is that a dead body being dropped in the ditch" trip home from Megan's that I write about here. A different sort of terrifying.

6. Setting out from West Wendover, Nevada, staring down the Bonneville Salt Flats. Not too terrifying--it's an interstate--but still, the prospect of no services for that length of time is a little hard to swallow for this city girl. Plus it is so flat. And so salty.


7. The road through Colorado National Monument. It was near dusk, it was cliffs on one side or another, and it was made all the more awful by local yokels passing us at 80 miles an hour.


8. Before Mike learned to drive in the mountains, and burned up our brakes somewhere along the line, the result being that the Wawona Road out of Yosemite was done in low gear, pulling over to the side to let faster vehicles over, wondering a) if we would make it to the valley, and b) if we would survive once we got there. Story, lovely story here.


9. January 2004 we headed down to Houston to my brother's wedding and got lost in Arkansas. That wasn't the scary part. It was when we realized it (at Ft. Smith) and decided instead of turning back and taking the right road, we'd just cut through the Kiamichi Mountains! In the dark! In the fog! With logging trucks coming at us at every turn! Yeah!

10. The blizzard we drove through on the way to Branson this past January. Maybe it's the proximity to the event, but it still makes me sick thinking about it. About how Close To Death we might have been. Or maybe not. But still.

Bentos of March

I'm still making about 2 or 3 a week for Sophia's lunches--they're easier as time goes by--and for Maeve at home. I haven't taken photos of them all but here are a few from March:

A pumpernickel bagel with chevre; baby oranges (those "cuties"); two girl scout lemon cookies and heirloom tomatoes.

For Maeve: a go-gurt, a fruit salad of baby oranges and blueberries; leftover chicken-less pot pie (just the veggies--I had too much when I made the pot pie the last time), cheezits and salami.

Carrot slices, turkey, lettuce, another baby orange, star fruit and a bell pepper HI.

An avocado caterpillar with carrot legs and radishes (with sunflower seed eyes); extra candy-coated sunflower seeds; crackers, more carrots, lettuce, and hummus.

Lastly, with Maeve grinning, 3 soy chick-nuggets, cheezits, pecans, baby orange slices; carrots, a girl scout lemon cookie, and star-shaped mushrooms and fruit leather.

Whew!

Mixed Metaphor

I'll have more to say about our weekend, and I have pictures to post from the last month (bad Bridgett), but this weekend we were down on the Gasconade River at one of my favorite places on earth, Rock Eddy Bluff Farm. It has its own tab over there on the right. Anyway, as we were chatting with the owners before we left, another couple came down from their cabin to do the same. Talk moved to various topics, and landed on kids living in bad situations (poverty, crime, foster care, etc). And the guy said, "Yeah, those kids sure do get the raw end of the stick."

I love mixed metaphors. I giggled about that one for a long time.

30 Days of Song: Day 20

A song I listen to when I'm angry: "Little White Dove" by Jess Klein

I know, I know, you've been bit by a mean old crow
Carried your heart, carried your heart off in his beak
So what's in your mouth now, baby, come on, talk to me

Entangled emotional lives. On the way to Cape Girardeau to see a movie while we were staying at my inlaws a few Christmases ago, Mike and I were, well, it wasn't a fight, because we were on the same side. But many times, we have these discussions that an outsider might get nervous with, somebody afraid of confrontation, for instance. And I was using a lot of swear words and demanding to know what was so different about us, about our lives with our families. And he said, "Bridgett, you and and your siblings have far more entangled emotional lives than I have with mine."

It's true--my brother told me that his girlfriend was pregnant before he admitted it to my parents. My sisters complain to me about each other, about each other's boyfriends, about my parents. I'm sure they complain about me to each other. And like I've said, we are an outspoken belligerent lot. We don't suffer fools for very long, and we can be viciously unafraid of confrontation. There aren't a lot of heartfelt moments, though, nothing for a greeting card, nothing I would carry around and ruminate upon later how sweet or poignant or open this or that was. But as we age, I suspect these will happen more. Adult siblings, you know, they've been through all the same bullshit I have. And they see through all mine right now. In my pocket, take it from me.

On the couch about a year and a half ago, watching Law & Order reruns on DVD and knitting, folding laundry, drinking coffee too late in the day, my sister Bevin says to me, "I was trying to think back. I think it was 2004 that Jesse was killed. For a while I'd convinced myself it was 2005, but I think I'm messing that up." I confirmed it--I was pregnant with Maeve when it happened.

We sat there quietly for a moment. I paused Mike Logan and Phil Cerreta. I wanted to ask her how she was holding up, with the new trial coming and probably being a witness again, with her friends spread far afield--I know I was nervous about how it will go the second time--but I felt weird saying it. So I stopped knitting, looked at her as she chewed on the inside of her cheek a bit. So what's in your mouth, baby, come on, talk to me.

"I guess I'll have to take off work," she said. "I think by law they have to let me."

"Yeah, they certainly do." I know that much. We sit a bit more, and then she picks up the remote, turns the police procedural back on. Entangled emotional lives. Hearts break, birds fly.

30 Days of Song: Day 19

A Song from my favorite album: "One Tree Hill" by U2, off the Joshua Tree album. Sometimes an album comes along at just the right time.

We turn away to face the cold, enduring chill
As the day begs the night for mercy
A sun so bright it leaves no shadows
Only scars carved into stone on the face of earth

February 1991. "Why are the lower lockers shut?" I ask Gabe who has the two lockers next to mine, being that he's a Biondo and I'm a Blake. He shrugs, slams his shut, and goes to class. I have books in the lower lockers, though--we could lock the top ones with a padlock, keep our coats and purses up there, but the bottom ones were extras, where we could stash school-owned books, stuff nobody would care to steal--but now there's a wire through all the lock mechanisms, straight down the row. At least I won't have to fight Brian for them anymore, I think to myself. Brian was this unassuming kid who mumbled and stored school books in the lower lockers outside each his classes. Mine sat outside the Latin classroom, and so Brian's Latin text was always mingled in with my literature and Russian and Algebra II.

Homeroom, our teacher tells us there's to be an assembly right after homeroom. We all file down to the cafeteria. "Probably about the lockers," Matt says to me and John. We arrange ourselves on the benches; the whole school is present. Fr. Bill, our principal, is a mess. Sweaty, red-faced, upset.

I remember his exact words: "We don't yet know why, [dramatic pause], but Brian M---- killed himself this morning. Perhaps late last night." Brian. The kid with the Latin text. Three days later, my entire class, except John and Johnny, were loaded up and bussed to the funeral. The two left behind had their own reasons; the ones on the bus had several as well--get out of Mrs. Krusleski's class; diversions are always good; it is good to mourn even if we didn't know him well, and so on. The bus stopped at some little Black Baptist Church, wailing and gnashing of teeth, closed casket, completely uncomfortable for the Catholic school kids sitting in the choir loft in their blue uniforms and varsity letter jackets. We had no clue what we'd walked in on.

I remember walking out with Celeste, who was sobbing, and Matt, who wasn't going to, really, honest, he's ok--and blinking in the bright cold sunlight. My class really never recovered. The school was glad when we graduated and left them alone.

I don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts
While bullets rape the night of the merciful
I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky
And the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill

30 Days of Song: Day 18

A song I wish I heard on the radio (I assume it means that I wish it came on the radio, as opposed to "I wish I'd first heard this on the radio"): "Murder Tonight in the Trailer Park" by the Cowboy Junkies

Homicide is tying yellow ribbons
around her silver Airstream
Red cherries slashing up the night
cutting through that cordoned crime scene

(pause)

June, 1992. About 2 in the morning. Megan and I had gone out. We'd been at the diner alone--since I started dating Johnny, I wasn't part of the ice house dancing trying to drink cheap beer by Jason's truck crowd. But Megan and I were still friends, for the moment. She was heading to Finland in July, but I had a few more weeks. I dropped her off at her house and headed home via back roads with no names, straight perpendicular lines slicing up the scrub. I knew these--they were a shortcut of sorts, no traffic lights, if you could avoid getting bewildered and turned around. I knew my route. When I reached the turnoff towards Pearland, I realized the thing I thought was a post of some sort at the corner was a man, shaved head, standing stock still, staring at me, something small in his hand, held close to his face, like a phone.

I drove down the short road to the one that becomes McKean once it hits town. I turned right, and saw a pick-up truck parked almost in the ditch, lights out. I passed it, and my brights caught two men in stetsons dragging what looked like a woman into the ditch. About a tenth of a mile past them, I thought to myself, "I wonder if they need help?" and made a three point turn. The truck lights came on as my brights caught it, and they U-turned fast, heading away from me into the darkness. I realized suddenly what I had almost done.

Home wasn't far away. I woke up my parents, shaking, nearly in tears from the fright, the possibility. We called the Brazoria County Sheriff--we didn't have 911 out that far yet--and they wanted me to come out and show them where. My dad drove me to the spot, and big barrel chested men in state troopers' hats shook our hands. They had spotlights directed into the ditches, but you couldn't see the bottom all the way, not into the water.

"Well, it's too dark tonight to get down in that ditch. Probably was, bunch a drunk Mexicans helping their buddy back into the truck when he fell out." My dad and I nodded in response and we drove home.

"But Dad," I said after I'd stopped shaking, trying to be reassured by the officer's words. "She had a navy blue skirt on. Her head was sagged against her chest. Her shirt was a blouse--white, buttons, collar--and she had long blonde hair."

"We did the right thing," he told me.

I still wonder where they dumped her, after I spooked them.

30 Days of Song: Day 17

A song you hear often on the radio:

I listen to the radio. I mean, listen. Sometimes I'll realize that this or that song on the radio is speaking to me. Not like "Bridgett, put your foil hat back on" kind of speaking to me, but that at that moment, this was the song I needed to hear.

I knew Maeve was going to be a girl when I heard John Mayer's "Daughters" for the nth time. I knew, before the ultrasound, that Leo was a boy because "Danny's Song" seemed to be on every station. The spring I spent tutoring Ben, in a body cast from a broken hip caused by something that looked at first to be cancer but turned out to be a benign tumor, it was a hugely stressful time for me personally and professionally, and Natalie Merchant's "Kind and Generous" would come on a lot.

Lately? 867-5309 has been turning up way too much. Hmm.

30 days of song: day 16

A song you used to love but now hate (well, not hate...but it annoys me): "Leavin Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" by Emmylou Harris

Lord she never would've done it if she hadn't got drunk
If she hadn't started running with a travelin man
If she hadn't started taking those crazy chances

My last high school wasn't on a creek, it was on a bayou, even though we were well inside the borders of Texas, things were deeply influenced by Cajun culture. A large weird minority group, they influenced language and food and mostly demonstrated hotheadedness.

And one significant conversation happened with this Cajun woman from Shreveport. Her name was Monique. She sat next to me at a baseball tournament between games one night--I was between statistician gigs. Told me how she'd met her husband at a baseball game like this. She and her friends had come down to Nacogdoches to watch an ex-boyfriend play. How the catcher on the opposing team had asked her out, from all the girls in the crowd, and she wound up getting drunk and back at his place, sorting through his mail trying to figure out who he was. How she knew getting into bed with him was a bad idea, but she couldn't even help herself. How her family was livid when she dropped out to marry him. How she knew he wasn't the perfect man, but he was hers. At least for now, she ended with a sigh.

I stared at her for just another moment, curious how one person could contain so much naivete and fatalism mixed together. Then I followed her gaze out towards the dugout, where he was going over the lineup. And instead of the guilt or shame I should have been feeling, there was this rush.

Later, our team was in the field, and I was alone at the end of the bench with my stat book. Saw you talkin, he said, spitting out another sunflower seed hull and walking towards me with a grin. Don't worry about her. I told him I wasn't going to worry about her ever again. Good for you--you're a lot smarter than she is. Well, no shit, I thought, but didn't say.

Just an ordinary story bout the way things go.

More Maeve than Sophia all the time

He sits there, behind me, playing with those big legos (duplos? megablocks? Something like that). Talks to himself a bit. And then...

Plunk.

Plunk.

Plunk.

He drops them down to the front hall (our small front bedroom is now open to the stairwell, with a railing, of course).

"No Leo," I say sternly. "Don't drop them."

Plunk.

"Leo!" I say louder, to get his attention. He meets my eyes. And grins. He returns to playing on the rug.

Plunk.

Plunk.

"No dropping," I say again. He grins. I try diversion. I move him to another section of the room to look at the fisher-price people. He puts them on his fingers. Good, I think. Busy for a moment.

Plunk.

He's crawled back over and dropped the people into the front hall. When I turn around, before I can say anything, he's grinning again.

That was 10 minutes ago, though. Now he's putting blocks together and saying "dank" as he passes them from hand to hand. And then reaching over to the railing and shaking his head.

I can see the future.

Rain, Quilts, Naked

Here it is thunderstorming just as promised. The only problem with that is that my car is at the mechanics (maintenance--we know nothing about cars, frankly). So picking up Sophia 12 blocks away might be a challenge. I might call in support on that--today is Bevin's day off, for instance. Hmm. I got a bike ride in this morning, yay. My goal is 625 miles by the end of the season (mid-Novemberish). I have 604 left to go at this point.

Christmas this year, I've decided, is quilted. There is no reason for me to ignore the fact that I know how to sew, and that I know how to sew cheaply, quickly, and well. I spent Leo's naptime working through the plan for my nieces' quilts (Sunbonnet Sues and Colonial/Parasol Ladies). Now he is awake, snacked, and naked--the diaper I had on him is now off. He's disturbed by this turn of events. Better go handle that.

My brother the american

My brother Ian just acquired a semi-automatic rifle. He lives in Texas, see...and they grow 'em stupid there. I know, I posted recently about learning to shoot an air rifle over Christmas and enjoying the experience. And Mike goes hunting with his dad every November to find us a deer. So there is a shotgun involved there.

But there's something ridiculous about semi-automatic weapons in the hands of people like, well, like Ian and his friends. But there's no tellin' him nothin', not now or ever before. I got on Facebook this morning and there it was, a photo of this big thing that looks like something that would come as a GI Joe accessory, posed gracefully on his bed for the moment to be captured for internet eternity.

I looked at it, read the posts from his red meat friends. Specs and model numbers and God Bless America kind of stuff. And I simply wrote, "Thank God you're sober now." At least now, he's less likely to accidentally kill someone in a drunken stupor. Someone like my sister-in-law or one of his neighbors.

But I have a feeling it will be a cold day in Houston before we stay at his house again. I'm such a bleeding heart. But I just don't care for it, no sir.

Neigh is for Neighbors

On Diane Rehm right now is a man who, after a neighborhood tragedy, realized he didn't know his neighbors much at all--and they didn't know each other either. And so he set about getting to know them, by having sleepovers at their houses. That last bit is an interesting, crazy, funny twist, perhaps, but it aggravated me a bit.

Knowing my neighbors.

Long-time readers will know I know my neighbors quite well. We've vacationed with the folks two doors down. We camp every summer with three or four of the families (always on the hottest weekend of the year, it is compulsory). We have block parties and stoop sitting and baby showers and mah jongg evenings. Even folks who move away don't move far--a half block away is hardly far enough away to be out of the loop.

The man on the radio came to the conclusion that he had to know, or get to know, his neighbors after a tragedy. Eight houses down, a man came home and shot his wife and then himself, leaving two children behind. The wife had seen the writing on the wall and had frantically tried to get in touch with a friend on the other side of town all day, presumably to go stay over there. She had her kids do their homework at the library. Her husband cut off her cell phone and disabled her car--her only real route of escape at the end would have been to run to a neighbor's house.

But she didn't know any of them.

We also got to know the neighbors via bad things happening. No murder suicides, but drug dealers, car break ins, prostitutes on the corner. I know, those of you who don't live in The City are thinking, golly, glad I don't live there. The thing is, we didn't have street dealing, and the prostitutes were inside. It was more of a distribution site than anything truly dangerous to us day-to-day.

But it was real and present and needed to end. We began to realize that the other people near us also had children, and even more we needed to bring an end to the illegal activity on our block, before we wound up on the 10 o'clock news.

The block captain who lives behind me gathered us all into her backyard and presented us with the concept of a block list. A map, essentially, of the block, with the names and phone numbers below. If you put your information down, you get a copy. That way, if you see illegal activity, you call 911. Then you call George and Hank and Carol and have them call 911. The more calls, the faster the response. The more calls for real things, the more patrols.

It worked--it took a long time, but that house on the corner is now overpriced condos instead of a qat den.

But the other thing that happened is we learned each others' names. We weren't just the neighbors with the sagging blue porch, we were Bridgett and Mike. He wasn't the guy with the upside-down Texas longhorn sticker on his car (from Oklahoma), he was Eric. We had an instant, easy way to get to know each other. And it worked.

It isn't for everyone--there is an older couple up the street who have talked my ear off about the "Renters" across the street from them and how it isn't worth it to get to know "Renters" since they'll be gone in a couple of years. And how block parties aren't for them. They only live here because it's close to work and they don't need us. And that's fine (but then she invited my kids to a children's concert in the park, where she plays cello or something--I just found this amusing after her rant about lousy neighbors). I also think we can be suffocating to new people who don't have the history we have together. But we are here, we are nosy when strange characters are around, and we aren't afraid to ask you your business.

As it should be. I sit here and write on a blog and anonymous people read it. When I have trouble with some sort of technology or service, I call a hotline that is answered half a globe away. Corporations have no face. It's nice that something still does. The world is anonymous enough.

30 Days of Song: Day 15

A song that describes you..."Shotgun" by Jr Walker and the All Stars

I said, shotgun, shoot em for he runs now
Do the jerk baby
Do the jerk now

Long bus trips get me. They make me say things I shouldn't. In 1994, on that chartered bus home from Arizona's RA conference, instead of succumbing to the inevitable journalling and letter writing mania like on the trip there, I sat closer to the UH folks I'd hitched a ride with. I shared a seat with Ruben on the way back to Dallas, and before our hilarious late night breakfast at the truck stop in Amarillo, we found ourselves in a 9 or 10 person "True Confessions" game. One person asks a question, the rest of the people in the circle answer it. I was a total stranger and couldn't have cared less what they thought about me, and I was kind of interested, at least from an idle curiosity standpoint, in what their lives were like. I learned things like the reason Cathy used crutches was a non-progressive cerebral palsy-like syndrome. Ruben, whom I already knew was gay and very much not in the closet, was ostracized from his family. Eric was practically wed to his girlfriend Mary, but he was worried because all his friends hated her. By the fourth or fifth question, with all the folks answering, I was getting pretty damned tired and it made me a little loose with my words.

The next question was "what one thing could you never do, but you wish you could with all your heart?"

Ruben, who had presented at the conference about working with gay and lesbian students who live on your floor without tripping over your own two feet (and prejudices), said he wished he could go back and erase the night when he came out to his parents. Eric wished he could have a stronger personality, louder voice, better carriage with strangers. Cathy, whose crutches lay on the floor beneath her, wished she could dance.

I mean, oh my God. There were a couple of less poignant moments, but when it got to me, I couldn't take it.

"I wish I could be an assassin."

"An assassin?" repeated Eric. "But you know you couldn't because you couldn't live with yourself?"

"No, not that. I just know I'd screw up. I wouldn't have good aim. Not the steadiest fingers. I wouldn't be up to the task."

The game ended for several miles. Then I asked, "who was your first love?" and they all bounced right back.

I would be a bad assassin. But I like to sing this song and think about putting on high heels and a red dress...do the jerk now.