Night Editor

Sunday Routine with or without my Muse

2011-01-16T10:36:00.000-06:00

5 degrees and light snow. I slept late; was up at midnight last night after a terrifying dream, Black Swan-like dream. Ken woke me up. I was gnashing and calling out Tim's name. Luckily Tim was on a sleepover or he might have rushed in, frightened. I went downstairs, made some hot cocoa and half an English muffin, scanned the news headlines on the Web, and fell back to sleep after an hour or so.

Sunday mornings I love to drink tea in bed while watching the CBS show Sunday Morning. But I only caught the last half hour of it today.

Yesterday I was so out of focus I could hardly pay attention. Housework? Walk in the snow? Nap? So I picked up New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith--a gift from a few years back--and poured myself a Coke. I'd been encouraged by an article in Salon to read long neglected/unread books from my shelf, the so-called TBR Pile Challenge (To Be Read Pile). I'd read the chapbook before but closer now this time. Smith's clever and biting (and funny and sad) poems were the perfect smattering for a jittery afternoon. I liked "To An American Publisher":

You say I must write another book? But I've just written this
   one.
You liked it so much that's the reason? Read it again then.

But I felt she spoke my heart in "My Muse":

     My Muse sits forlorn
     She wishes she had not been born
     She sits in the cold
     No word she says is ever told.

Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy
When I am happy I live and despise writing
For my Muse this cannot but be dispiriting.

For breakfast, I stir-fried onions and spinach in olive oil and butter and then poured whisked eggs over the top for a scramble. Read the news and thought about health care, Rep. Giffords, and the cable segment yesterday on discourse in America with Arianna Huffington and Cornel West. Wouldn't it be great to hear Cornel West one night each week this winter? I would never tire of his reason and candor and expression.
It's NFL playoff Sunday so in a few hours the TV will be on. But for now, I have a new Avett Brothers CD and the book Atonement that I haven't read, another from my TBR stack. After finishing a novel last week that I thought was poorly written I can tell already from the opening pages that McEwan will be masterly.

Dreaming through a White Christmas

2010-12-29T10:16:00.000-06:00

We've had full days this Christmas, punctuated by long, fitful sleeps and daytime naps. More dreams than we know what to do with. Ken and I know better than to come down from our sleep and try to tell each other the guts of our dreams. We can never quite pull off the emotions or the fantastical settings or plots. I keep a journal and sometimes I write about my dreams. The other night I had a dream that Ken and I had invited another publisher in town (a competitor, really) over for dinner. The publisher came with his wife while Ken and I, new to our dingy apartment, were still trying to set up our Target-purchased furniture. (Section A fits into Slot B, watch you don't pull off the plastic veneer). They were calm and composed (and we were not). They had brought many expensive bottles of red wine ($30 and $40 and $50 each) and we were scrambling to find a place to set the bottles and glasses to pour into.

In my journal I named that dream "Inadequacy."

The night before we left for the Gunflint Trail, where we spent Christmas with Megan, Tim had a reaction to the powerful antibiotic Erythromycin. The adverse affects of that wide-spectrum drug, which he'd been prescribed for bronchitis, include pyschotic reactions, night sweats, and allergic reactions that include swelling of the face and neck. Tim panicked when he felt his throat begin to swell. I called the doc on call and she told us to run out for some Benadryl. It was now 10 PM and Ken and I had been running all day, buying our Christmas food, wrapping presents, taking Tim to the clinic. This would be Ken's third trip to Walgreen's but he was out and back in a flash. We gave Tim the Benadryl and the measure alone made him feel less scared. But then he got mad. The first doctor, not our regular family doctor, "hadn't even checked" him. Didn't test him for strep throat, didn't have him breathe while he held a stethoscope to his back. "How did he know what I had?!" Tim implored me. Because the medicine he had been given didn't make him feel better but rather made him feel much worse, he thought the doctor had done a really poor job.

Ken and I slept fitfully that night, each of us tiptoeing in to Tim's room to check on his breathing (what if throat closed up in his sleep?). Tim slept soundly and got progressively better each day.

That early morning we got another four inches of snow, but not so much to keep us from driving up to camp via Highway 61. It was a beautiful drive, full of snowy treetops and a metallic sparkle coming off Lake Superior. There were still freighters in action on the big lake and we guessed where they might be coming from: Norway, Russia? (We had heard on MPR that shipping action out of the Duluth port was up 25% this year.) We spotted four bald eagles sitting close and low to the highway, always near a dead deer in the ditch, always near the murder of jet black crows pecking away at the road kill.

As we made our way around one of the last bends on the Gunflint we came up on two incredible moose. They were big as large horses and when they saw us they walked slowly into the woods, stopping on the trail to turn their necks and look back at us.

Megan met us with the snowmobile at the camp drop-off point and made two trips hauling us and our gear and presents and food and bottles of wine across West Bearskin Lake to the camp itself. As we were bringing everything up the hill to the main hall, Ken turned to Megan and said, "I haven't seen Tim smile so much in weeks." It was Christmas Eve and the sights and sounds would give us much to dream about.

Thera-py

2010-12-08T04:32:00.000-06:00

Yes, it is 3:59 a.m. I am nursing a very sore throat. Started last night on the road to Duluth. Woke up a few times throughout the night with it. Tried to suck a Fisherman's Friend cough drop in my sleep, but drooled on my pillow like I used to when I wore orthodontia head gear.

And, by the way, good morning, Mr. Dayton. Congratulations on your new job. We're all counting on you. Please stick with it, hang in there, give it all you've got.

On Twitter, this post was retweeted: "What women want: chocolate-covered pretzels and Gabriel Byrne." If I had a season's worth of In Treatment I'd go back to bed and watch the whole thing. Instead, I have Thera-flu. I'm typing only as long as it takes me to down this mug of it. The narcotics in it make me a little goofy but I'll take the throat relief.

Someone yesterday sent me a list of "you know you're getting old" items, which often are repetitive and not too funny but all of these seemed right-on. One was "Seems hard to remember the last time you weren't a little tired." Or, "Why doesn't MapQuest simply jump to #5 on the given directions. I mean, we know the way out of our own neighborhoods."

If you sit alone in your house in the middle of the night, what do you see? What do you hear? I note:

*our quite-organized neighbors all have timers on their Christmas lights. The bright, twinkly lights are off now.

*Both guys (husband and son) are snoring. Both guys like to sleep with their bedroom doors swung open.

*We have no pets. If we did, I wouldn't be alone here at the dining table; I'd have company, I'm sure.

*It's good that we have modern, muted keyboards. If I had to do this on a Smith-Corona typewriter, I'd have to type in a closet in the basement.

*Just as the refrigerator fan goes off, the heater fan goes on. Forced-air heat is no friend for a sore throat.

*The neighbor two doors down lost his wife to cancer this spring. It will be his first Christmas without her. I wonder how he is doing and whether he is up nights, too.

*Yep, a Chevy Blazer just drove by with its flashers on. Stopped next door to throw the paper up the sidewalk. 4:21 a.m., 5 degrees here. Tough work.

My list is so much less than Robert Frost's in "Acquainted with the Night":

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Gentlemen, start your engines

2010-12-04T10:39:00.003-06:00

I love the way that a deep snowfall muffles the city, packs it in, the clammering sounds softened by a layer of down and fluff. In the morning, feeling like you've fallen asleep in a snowbank, you hear nothing but the clear music of a morning cardinal, calling out with the sweetness of a young soloist in the metro boys' choir.

Well, that, and the roar of the neighboring snowblowers. Gentlemen, start your engines.

The back alley snowplow comes out earlier than anyone else. Snow = jobs = money. That guy is the first to scrape away the white stuff. Then, you'll hear my husband. And you'll, like me, be grateful for his brawn and his old-school ways. He shovels and scrapes by hand, stopping once in a while to look out over the lawns and streets. It's an easy rhythm. You lull back to sleep. And then the rich neighbor, the one who leaves for work every Saturday before nine, tries to start up his small snowblower. It usually takes him five or six tries. He lives on the corner and he's got a lot to blow. (He's from Wayzata but you'd think he moved in from the Carolinas the way he bumbles with that machine.) So you're back awake again. Then the guy across the back alley revs up his big monster. He's got two big lanes of driveways, suburban in breadth and depth, and while he's fast, he's loud.

Might as well get up and make some tea.

Ken is at the table, ruddy-cheeked, eating pan-made oatmeal and sourdough toast. He's got hat hair. His reading glasses were $14.99 at Walgreen's. He's got them on so he can read the local Highland weekly. He recognizes one of Tim's baseball coaches in the editorials. The guy wrote in to support the college's plans to expand their tennis courts. The other letters decry the expansion.

Tim comes home from an overnight. He had trouble driving home in the snow so he put his truck in low, 4-wheel drive, and backed up and flipped it into forward a few times to gain some momentum. He's wearing one of Ken's old roofing pullovers--and it fits. His cheeks are red, too.

Ken says, "We better go to George's to get your skates sharpened." Tim has a game today at one. Tim says, "I don't want to go back out." Ken says, "Then it looks like you won't get your skates sharpened." They start up the truck again and head out together. I know they're going by Bruegger's Bagels so I ask for a morning sandwich.

And so the house is quiet again. The sidewalks are scraped, the alleys are plowed. The men in the house are out. Our cottage is surrounded by snow. Even the birdhouse roof is loaded with three inches of white.

My ears are perked. I wait for the soloist to call out again.

Holidays on Ice

2010-11-21T10:15:00.001-06:00

Sunday morning, the one before Thanksgiving. Drinking chai tea in a silver thermal mug. Feet up on the dining chair, facing laptop set on dining room table. Windows to the front of me, windows to the side. Just saw a teen in a Nissan race up to the stop sign and skid. Skid-d-d-d-skidddd. Night brought a sheet of ice, making everything, as my friend Julie says, "like a glazed donut." Tim called at 12:08 a.m. (last night) to say he was sorry he had just missed curfew but the people he was going to catch a ride home with were having trouble on the ice and they were standing out near Michael's house looking over at a few accidents on West 7th and seeing all the red police lights. We told him he should just spend the night there, because neither one of us wanted to venture out ourselves. And then we both let out a sigh of relief.

Funny. I was eager to try out my new hockey skates at open skate today but I'm a little leary about driving out on the ice.

I've had a few Saturdays in a row now where I don't leave the house all day. Even though I am cooped up too much all week, I am always on the run during the work week. I get an e-mail every 45 seconds. And run to meetings or off-site events. So come Saturday I am content to putter around the house. Yesterday Ken made a bacon-eggs-and-biscuit breakfast and I read the early Sunday edition with tea. I vacuumed one bedroom and picked up. I opened the mail. I Tweeted and Facebooked. I watched Lidia's Italian Kitchen. I got Tim's help to make a pumpkin pie. He stirred up the filling and I made the crust.

Now that was a small accomplishment. About 15 years ago my dear neighbor Pat, a scholar, mother of four, and terrific southern cook, told me I should learn to cut corners to manage things. Because she was such a good cook, one piece of her advice I embraced was using Pillsbury frozen pie crusts. I used those dough wands for years, even when I recreated Pat's prize sweet potato pie recipe. But I never really liked the taste and the way the crusts shriveled up. Yet, I feared the failed homemade crust. Silly, now, because it really is as easy as they say. I used a combination of butter and Crisco and threw some whole wheat farmers' market flour into the dough. It was just right.

Megan will drive home from the Gunflint Wednesday and we'll all have the long holiday weekend together. Today I'll make myself leave the house if I have to, just so I get out in the fresh air and elements, even though it would be so easy to stay in my pajamas all day, cooking and puttering and listening to football.

I bought my new skates at Hockey Giant, a Bloomington store Ken has been frequenting for years. He scopes out the merchandise--sticks and pads and skates--so that he knows when there are good deals to be had for Tim. It's expensive to play hockey but Ken has always managed to outfit Tim on a budget. He tracks all the gear Tim outgrows and turns it in for credit at Play It Again Sports. He bargains with the floor people on last year's models. I appreciated Ken's efforts more now that I was buying my own skates. Once you settle on a pair and pay for them, you bring them back to the skate sharpening station and have them baked in a small convection-like oven. That softens up the boot. You sit in your laced-up skates for five minutes and then you walk around the floor for another five. The boot molds to your foot as if you've broken them in by skating four or five times. The floor guy helped me lace-up the skates for the fitting, placing his thumb on the crossed laces like all of us Mighty Mite parents used to do with our kids. I ran through the criss-crosses and lace pulls like lightning and he paused, looked up, and said, "You don't have to rush through this. Take your time and get it right. You don't want to have the boot tongue crooked." The way he said it, so grandfatherly in his tone, and the fact that he took the time to say it when retail experiences are normally so rushed and impersonal, really affected me. You're lucky when you get personalized advice from friends and family. Makes you feel surrounded by people who care. And sometimes it takes a stranger to say something you need to hear. Slow down. Take your time. These are the things you really want to take some time with.

Progress

2010-10-21T09:26:00.000-05:00

My last day at work this week and then I'm off to Chicago with a friend for a weekend getaway. Hooray for that! I had 13 items on my to-do list for work and I'm down to 8 now. Progress.

Other more important news, my dad is home from the hospital with plans to return Sunday night for an aortic valve replacement. He's super-excited and anxious to get his heart repaired (it was a year ago today that he had heart failure) and get on with his life. My brother is flying down Saturday to stay with Mom for a week and I'll look for flights to go down in early November. I've been talking with Dad every day and that's been good for both of us.

Tim's team beat Woodbury easily last night. Ken and I made pulled pork sandwiches and had some people over for dinner and beers before the game. We thought, "We definitely need to use our crock pot more." I've been reading on Twitter about Roger Ebert's cookbook The Pot (or something like that) and so I should give some of his recipes a try.

They're replacing the telephone poles around our house--two of them, to be exact. The old poles were loaded down with all the cables and such that our modern households need so I'm glad to see we're getting reinforcements. They've been working on the transfer all week (they set those 40- or 60-foot poles so that 1/3 of them is below ground; yes, I just Googled telephone poles) so our clocks are all awhack and blinking when we get home.

Must get through another coupla items on this list. You have a good weekend.

Matters of the Heart

2010-10-18T13:09:00.000-05:00

My dad is in the hospital today, coming out right now from anesthesia. He had a heart catheter inserted this morning at Doctors Hospital in Edinburg, Texas. (Goofy hospital name, eh?) Mom called me at work, cell phone to cell phone, to tell me that he's awake now from the morning's procedure and will now wait six hours for them to investigate and take x-rays.

I've never seen my dad in a hospital bed. Never seen him in a hospital gown. Never even seen him in a hospital, except twice when he came to visit me after the birth of each of our kids.

I hate being so far away. I'd like to help him pass the time today and help my mom cope with the day's events. Go with her out to the hospital's back lot with all the orderlies so she can have her cigarette.

Mom said they've already had an initial look. Dad's heart has healed some from his heart failure of a year ago and that the stent they put in then is working. But, as we all suspected, the valve is in terrible shape. He may want to do heart surgery as soon as possible--maybe as early as Wednesday. Mom wasn't expecting to hear that news. She'd rather stay ahead of her options--planning things carefully--and this one caught her off-guard.

My favorite Aunt Pat lives near Mom and Dad and is probably up at the hospital with Mom now. It's all I can do to keep from calling them, but I told Mom I would wait for her call this afternoon.

Morning

2010-09-14T09:47:00.000-05:00

Mother and Child, Kathe Kollwitz

I woke early this morning; Ken was already in the bathroom. I laid in bed a few minutes and then heard Tim's alarm go off. Jumped out of bed then since my window of opportunity to get into the sole toilet of the house was about to vanquish. I was gruff with Ken, again, and Tim was grumpy with me when he found out we hadn't gone to the instant cash machine for his lunch money, again. I flipped up my laptop and let people at work know I was staying home another day. Viruses have been taking a toll on me harder than usual.

It's the beginning of fall here. The air is crisp and the squirrels are busy digging hiding spots and Margaret Atwood--on Twitter--says Mercury is in retrograde until September 27, and then things will get better.

Tim came out of the shower and asked if I was going to take one, too. Because if I was there was a big cockroach in there. "No, its not a cockroach," I say. "Probably a centipede."

"Centipede or cockroach, whatever it is it's big," Tim says.

"Why didn't you kill it?" I ask, knowing full well Tim is afraid of spiders.

"I couldn't reach it," he answered.

I fielded about ten e-mails and then, after Tim left for school, I went out to cash my reimbursement check and to stop by the bakery, La Patisserie, to get a croissant and some pastries for the guys. The rising sun was so bright that I had trouble seeing my way. Megan's old day care teacher, Lisa, was at the crosswalk at the Bean Factory and I stopped abruptly for her--hadn't spotted her ahead of time because of that blinding sun.

I saw mothers at the bus stops with their kids and one who hugged her child before she left her to the walking patrol lines. I thought to myself what it would be like to stay home to care for the family. Then I saw a slightly older woman--mid- to late-thirties--trudging up the sidewalk on Montreal lugging her baby in a car seat, and I immediately recognized that unwieldy pull of the shoulder and the feeling of that precious cargo hitting aginst my hip or knees. Why do we have to return to work so soon, leaving our babies with strangers? Norway and Sweden are so sane, so smart to allow for such generous parental leaves, all the way around. If I had any do-overs it would be to enjoy my babies more, to have protected more time with them.

The village was quiet for the most part this Tuesday. Protestors were just getting out in front of Planned Parenthood. Catholic school kids were crossing the street in uniform. The Tiffany Lounge neon sign, with the outline of a martini glass with olive, was off. The bulldozers were breaking up the old Snyder's lot. A semi-trailer full of new cars was pulling into the Ford plant. I pulled into the TCF drive-thru and sat waiting for my cash, taking in this morning scene.

What Franzenfreude?

2010-09-11T17:10:00.002-05:00

The talk of the book world is Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen. Haven't read it yet; haven't even seen it yet. Did read an article in the Times about Franzen's chic book launch party. The name dropping, the pictures of svelte women of the publishing scene. Me, I'm re-reading Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. In sweatpants and a tee-shirt, windows open for this September breeze, college football on TV.

Speaking of football, Tim's playing pretty regularly in varsity now. Last night we sat through winds and rains, pants and shoes soaked to our skin, to watch Tim's team beat White Bear Lake. He plays wingback on offense, blocking for his runners, and middle linebacker on the second team defense. He's happy.

My BWCA trip was lovely. Easy and relaxing. We went about seven miles the first day with many portages, one 180-rods (1/2 mile). We camped for two nights on Lake Polly, spending one day reading, swimming, exploring, and cooking. I loved sleeping outdoors in a tent, loved swimming in that cold clear lake, loved paddling in the Kawishiwi. Saw eagles, whiskey jacks, scolding red squirrels, a huge beaver making its way across the lake. Our campsite was on an island filled with white cedar. We ate campside bruschetta, quinoa with salmon, zucchini and onion pancakes, and I brought a bottle of Calvados for the end of our evenings.

I'm all worn out today--by a bad cold I picked up from the kids, by the rush of work and back-to-school, by our quick trip up to see my parents, and our press author picnic today, which was fantastic but filled with at least thirty 5-minute conversations. It was like speed-dating, I'd guess. Whew.

Now for that Franzenfreude, many have used it to mean the pain one feels in all the showering upon Franzen but as the president of FSG, which published Freedom, says, freude means joy. I'll leave that discussion for the glamorous Manhattan crowd. A nap is in order. Let it be then: Napfreude.

Anticipation

2010-08-25T08:59:00.000-05:00

I'm at work for a short day, then off for a short trip in the Boundary Waters. My paddling friend was mostly packed two weeks ago. I started putting it all together last night. Today I pack my clothes, my gear, my overnight bag for the motel out, my share of the food. Okay, everything. But I've got most of it ready and laid out in the den.

I get anxious the day or two before I take a trip, lists running through my mind, so I was up a few times last night. At midnight, I heard Tim downstairs playing a video game. At 2:30 a.m. he was up and in the bathroom. I knocked on the door and told him he shouldn't stay up so late and to get to bed.

I suspect he's a little anxious and full of anticipation, too. His first intra-squad football scrimmage is today, that kind of showcase where coaches can see how it's all fitting together and who is up for the call to Varsity and who's not. Tim was really tired last night at dinner; had given it his all during yesterday's practice. This afternoon the boys will have team pictures at 3, practice, a meeting, and then a team scrimmage at 5:30, followed by a family BBQ. It's a beautiful St. Paul day. 62 degrees when I drove in; temps not expected to rise above 75. I'm hoping to be all packed, free and easy, and ready to take in the preseason show.

Sunday, a day of rest

2010-08-22T10:58:00.000-05:00

Relaxing on a Sunday, combing the sports pages

Did you read Ruth Riechl's Sunday routine highlighted in today's New York Times? Now that's my kind of Sunday. Except I'd rather not do all that cooking. Nonetheless, Ken and I do cook quite a bit on Sundays, and often the morning starts with a big, wonderful breakfast. Ken makes a great from-scratch buttermilk biscuit and that will be the cornerstone to fried eggs and bacon, or sausage omelets, or eggs, potatoes, and gravy. Megan and Tim LOVE these Sunday morning breakfasts. They call about them; they write others about them; they plan their social lives around them.

But this morning, Ken has left the house early for a trip to Cabela's in Owatonna--to return a cot he bought and to buy me new rain paints for my BWCA trip--and Tim is still sleeping. Tim got together for a bonfire with friends until midnight last night and tomorrow is week 2 of football practice, so I'm glad he's still sleeping. Plus, it opens up the living room for me where I can watch Almanac and read the newspapers online, without complaint.

We'll make a big dinner, maybe grill something (last week we grilled an organic chicken with thyme and sage), and finish up our laundry and preparations for the week (lunch supplies in order, bills to pay, compare our schedules). I hear the Vikings have an exhibition game on TV tonight; we'll watch that (I'll watch only until Mad Men is on!).

Friday football ended with a watermelon feed for the boys. Tim came home and said there was bad news. One of his teammates broke his ankle and ripped three ligaments during a drill. Kid's out for the year. The player works hard at football and gives it his all in practice and games and I feel for him, having a chance to make varsity and then having to sit out his junior year. Plus, the injury sounds bad, especially the torn ligaments, which could cause him a lot of problems beyond high school.

The news came a day after Percy Harvin's collapse on the Vikings practice field. Football is a dangerous sport. It's not easy to be a parent of a football player and not feel conflicted about this. At dinner Friday night, as Tim ate with his elbows on the table (a kid takes home the manners of the school lunchroom), I could see that his forearms were bruised from wrist to elbow, on both arms. He had deep scratches on both arms as well, from helmets, he thought. And they haven't even faced an opponent yet. Some people ask me which is worse: hockey or football? I don't know, the potential for serious injury--and the rules that accompany each of these sports--is probably equally dangerous. The part I'm most worried about is the head, however, and football seems to be the leader in head injuries. Reports last week reported whether Lou Gehrig might have died from injuries related to repeated concussions rather than from ALS.

But I can see a new confidence in Tim this week. He speaks with pride about what he's learning in pre-season and he can't wait for the first game in a few weeks. He's been involved in both defense (as middle linebacker) and in offense (as guard) in the last few days. He'll take whatever role they give him. When I asked if he was sore, he said he was, but in a good way. When I asked if he knew all the plays, he said he knew the defense pretty well (from last year) but not the offense, so he'd have to study the playbook.

Ken called me from the car on Friday and I asked him where he was. He said he was in the area (of Tim's school, which is a few blocks from our house) and thought he'd stop home, grab his lunch, and spend 10 or 15 minutes at the practice field watching the boys. Then he called later in the afternoon and I asked again where he was. He said though he stopped home in the morning to get his lunch, he got distracted and forgot it, so he returned back to eat it, and then took another 10-15 minutes to watch more of practice. Guy cracks me up.

2 days 'til Saturday

2010-08-19T09:13:00.001-05:00

Boys practice in full pads today.

Extra chocolate milk is in the fridge. A study in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism showed that plain chocolate milk is as good--or better--than sports drinks like Gatorade at helping athletes recover from strenuous exercise.
Last night Tim made himself a Digiorno pepperoni pizza, then loaded the top with fresh mozzarella and hot Italian sausage. He said it was a pizza made for a fork.

Read an interesting story about the Vikings accommodating better their safety Husain Abdullah during his observance of Ramadan. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/08/09/vikings-abdullah-ramadan-fast/
Last year, Coach Childress said, he shouldered the fast by himself.

I had to drop off a check at the school and so swung by the practice field and saw all the players going through offensive drills. Some of those O-Men looking mighty big. I was just saying that I could have brought a worry stone to the dentist yesterday; I got a little anxious about them poking around a sore tooth. If Tim makes varsity and plays against these lumbering boys I'm going to need a worry stone at games, too.

Aches and Pains

2010-08-17T13:43:00.001-05:00

This morning we three each felt a few aches and pains. Ken's left knee hurt because of all the house chores he did this weekend. His right knee has been replaced with titanium so it hardly hurts anymore. He can't kneel on that knee though so all the kneeling he had to do (installing washer and dryer, trimming grass) was on his left--hence the hurt.

My right foot is tender and sore. I dropped my laptop on the top of my bare foot. I've now developed a bundle of nerves in the tissue between those bones in what's called Morton's Neuroma. Makes it sound like a movie starring John Cusack.

After a full day of football practice, Tim's ankle, thighs, hips, and back were sore. Ken and I got to go to the office to sit for a spell. Tim had to go back to another day of two-a-days.

After practice yesterday Tim and some teammates went swimming at a friend's above-ground pool ("fits 8 comfortably"), watched a few episodes of Entourage, and ate dinner at Cleveland Wok. Doesn't sound too shabby to me. I, on the other hand, worked 'til five, pulled weeds in the garden, and had frozen pizza with the hubby.

All summer I've given Tim a small chore list during the week, nudges for him to do things like empty the trash, put away clean dishes, and mow the lawn. I noticed in his gym bag last night that he had grabbed the notebook in which I wrote him these notes and the first two pages have marked in black Sharpie: "Tim, wash dishes before I get home." Or, "Hi Tim, there are leftovers in the fridge and please also mow the lawn. Do a good job, okay?" Annoying, annoying, I see how annoying these are now. He'll use this 3-ring notebook to write down plays and such from his football meetings. I bet he keeps 'em just to get him fired up for football drills.

Two-a-days

2010-08-16T14:02:00.000-05:00

I never had to do two-a-days. I did work three jobs during the summer between my junior and senior years in college and on a few crazy days put in back-to-back shifts on all three in one day. I was Parks and Rec youth guide and a waitress at a hotel restaurant, and for a few weeks each month, a gymnastics and dance instructor for the same Parks and Rec division. But that's not the same.

I was a dancer for much of my youth and took both modern and ballet classes for a number of years. The hardest workouts were when I danced at the University of North Dakota as a 16-year-old. I also ran track and played basketball in high school. The track coach at the time didn't trust us girls to run our requisite four miles each day in the first month of training and so she'd take us in a van out to the "fourth-mile" on a country road and then tell us to meet her at the track for the next stage.

I also played hockey for a short while and I do clearly remember the grueling hours we girl hockey players were assigned for ice time (back in 1976). We carpooled, in the deep-freeze of northern Minnesota winter, to get to the rink and on the ice by 5:30 a.m. Ladies' Night Out, I guess, it still being dark and all.

Tim is trying out for his high school varsity football team. Fall practice opened today with a 7 a.m. (sharp!) meeting. The practice times this week are 7:30 to 2:45. Today and tomorrow they wear shorts, tees, cleats, and helmets only. Players are advised to pack their lunches in coolers and bring foldable chairs for meetings and film reviews.

This weekend we helped him get prepared. Bought all kinds of fixings for his lunches. Gave him the $21 for the team-required practice stuff from school. Bought a high-end girdle and some quick-dry practice shirts from Dick's: $91.00. (I asked him why he needs new shirts for football practice when we have a gazillion old t-shirts available at home and he told me the ones we had were too hot and too big for a day of practice. Okay. I buy that.) Ken set the alarm for 5:15 and made himself and Tim turkey sandwiches. He had cleaned out our empty Gatorade bottles, filled them with water, and stuck them in the freezer Sunday night. That way the bottles can keep the lunch cold in the cooler and Tim can drink from them by the end of the day.

Tim has his own car now so he got himself up, had a toaster waffle and some milk, and headed out the door with his cooler and his gym bag at 6:45 a.m.

In solidarity, I did 50 crunches and 5 push-ups before work this morning.

He's a linebacker and will be working to make the starting squad on a pretty competitive team. There is also the option of making second team or playing junior varsity. Last year he started for his 10th grade team, played some junior varsity, and suited up for varsity. He's been working out all summer and also worked the high school camp for younger kids, so he's definitely prepared for today.

I got the first two seasons of Friday Night Lights at the library Saturday and we all watched many of the Season 1 episodes over the weekend. Now there's a hyped-up phenomenon: Texas high school football. I was encouraged to see that the women of the series--by the end of the season--started to have more substantial roles and better character development beyond cheerleading and girlfriends who do or don't have sex. I was pretty fascinated with all the context the show's creators brought into the show: the pressure by the townsfolks, the dynamics during practice and on game days, the toll such competition takes on families.

More as documentation of something I find really compelling (because I was an athlete, because I still know so little about football and the systems that keep it a national pasttime) and less because I'm a fawning helicopter mom, I want to post a few summaries on practice and try-outs for the next month or so. Bear with me or visit again in October!

Getting by

2010-08-02T20:48:00.000-05:00

"Suicide" has barged into my life three times in the last month. Too much for my psyche. My good friend's brother committed suicide and my friend worried about her elderly parents' ability to cope. One of our Press writers lost her sister to suicide and our writer was next of kin and had to attend first to the funeral service and then to an appropriately meaningful memorial service weeks later. Today we learned a former colleague killed himself on Friday, after a lifetime struggling with depression and a summer with additional work stresses.

Today's news stopped me in my tracks. Our editor in chief commented that on days like this it is hard getting by. What other news will we need to cope with? For those of us without the extra burdens of depression, chronic illness, severe poverty, it might seem trivial to say, but we all can be worn down by the coping, the constant coping. And she said it's as if we need to keep our view on the long gaze, keep looking ahead, keep our visions clear to the future. Otherwise, if we look down or too closely, we may stop in our tracks for longer than we hoped. Stop and wonder about this grace of God.

Making Saints and Pulling Bishops Weed

2010-07-31T21:27:00.001-05:00

I ventured away from home only twice today: to the Pleasant Ave. compost site and the Merriam Park Library. I worked in the rough-and-tumble yard 'til late afternoon. (Don't ask me to get up or anything because I'm sore and stiff and planted in this leather chair right now.) I could only tackle a few large areas today: the rusted Snow-on-Mountain or Variegated Bishops Weed all along the line of the picket fence and the rock steps leading up to the back yard. While I was at it, I pulled out some nasty crab grass and Creeping Charlie and even leaned over the picket fence to chop down the purple aster, which I had hoped to cut earlier to stop its legginess; two pickets were quite rotted from age and their tops busted off on my lean. Anyway, I cut and pulled and filled two big leaf bags with the green refuse and so Tim and I headed over to the compost site together to dump them. I still have the inside of the fence to clean up, which is now so completely overrun by that Bishops Weed that I'll be pulling those deep roots out much of tomorrow. Most gardeners will tell you to say no, just say no, to any offer of a gift of Bishops Weed. Too invasive! No matter if its free--that plant has been crowding gardeners for centuries.

I found "The Herbal” by John Gerard, who made this comment about the also-named Gout Weed in 1633:
“…..Herbe Gerard groweth of it selfe in gardens without setting or sowing, and is so fruitful in his increase, that where it once hath taken root, it will be hardly got out againe, spoiling and getting every year more ground, to the annoying of better herbs."

I returned my two rented DVDs at the library. Of course they were overdue, putting them at the same price as the Red Box movies at McDonald's on W. 7th. Still, at least this time I watched them both. Sometimes I rent library movies, keep them too long, and then return them late without ever having watched them. One of our authors at the Press recently told us she no longer uses her library anymore. She loves libraries, sure, but with all the late fees she pays, she can't afford them anymore.

Last night I stayed up past midnight watching the terrific French film Séraphine, based on the life of French painter Séraphine de Senlis--"a beautiful portrait of an artistic mind." Forget Bravo's Work of Art, this movie was a work of art. From a user review on the IMDb site:

Seraphine recalls other outstanding understated French films like La Dentelliere and Brodeuses, films in which female acting transcends subject matter. If Marion Cotillard was born to play Piaf then Moreau was born to play Seraphine, the beautiful innocent, condemned to a life of harsh servitude yet never wavers from her simple faith and sings to the virgin on a daily basis. Completely untrained she uses what little spare time she has to paint flowers and fruit with no thought of reward, a real definition of Art For Art's Sake. Because this is a true story about a real person her gift is, ultimately appreciated by the German art collector/critic who also 'discovered' Rousseau; for a mayfly moment she knows something akin to happiness/contentment before spending her last years in an asylum. The film scores on all levels, not least the visuals in which almost every set up whether indoors or out, reeks of paintings we can all but name but ultimately remain elusive. In the leading role Yolande Moreauis beyond praise.

In the movie, Seraphine cleans houses--often barefoot--all day, walks miles to and from her home, her employ, church, and the fields, and paints on her hands and knees, her humble supplies and wood panels spread flat on the floor. Yet, despite all this hardship, her physical life beckoned, entwined with art and nature in such a way that a day in front the computer seems so much like penance. So I didn't really mind all that Bishops Weed. It got me to dig my nails into the ground.

Speaking of art and faith, I just learned about a talented typesetter and book packager I worked with years ago who has a practice of making Saints, by hand, in cast stone and pewter. He writes in the Artist's Statement on his website, In the Company of Saints:

Why Saints? My first contact with saints came when as a little Presbyterian kid I found a tiny plastic statue of St. Christopher, in a leather case, in a parking lot. I picked it up and put it in my pocket (thus unknowingly allying myself with St. Dismas, patron of thieves). I didn't know much, but I vaguely knew that I'd found a religious object. I felt comfort. No matter how humble the image, it seemed to me to intimate a binding of the spiritual and physical, something everyone longs for at some point in their life. Years past. I forgot my little St. Christopher until I studied European medieval literature and then taught it. Saints, of course, are a major theme. In the Canterbury Tales, for instance, saints, in a way, trot along with the pilgrims. I started to feel like those pilgrims. I started thinking of saints as spiritual aunts or uncles, figures who could give you advice and compassion without large doses of the doctrine you might get from parents. I ended up editing Catholic theological books for fifteen years, many of the books about or by saints. Finally, I wearied of words and started trying to carve my own images of saints. I had no training, no idea what I was doing. I just went into a garage and started trying to make statues of saints. ~Hank Schlau

Check out his work. You can order statues or medals online. There is St. Anthony, Finder of Lost Things; St. James, Patron of Walkers, Runners and Pilgrims; St. Jerome, Patron of Booklovers and Librarians; and many more. I think I'll go with Hildegard of Bingen, Patron of Gardeners, Musicians and Artists. Seems a perfect choice.

Friday Night Vice (cheap)

2010-07-30T21:57:00.005-05:00

No smoking, no nightclubs. Just Laurent Bros Kettle Korn, Trader Joe's Honey Moon Viognier, and the July Elle interviews with Drew Barrymore and Javier Bardem.

It's payday and I was finally able to book an appointment at the salon to fix the hot mess that new Aveda graduate left me with over a month ago. I knew when he gasped, like a woman in the dark during a horror movie, after rinsing my hair that he had blown it in the foil and color department. Then he said, "I'll be right back," and rushed over to get his instructor. A bit like that scene in As Good As It Gets when Cuba Gooding Jr and his assistant get a good look at Greg Kinnear after his mugging.

I stopped by the St. Luke's Farmers Market on the way home from work and got that great kettle corn, bok choy, Yukon Golds, four new tomatoes, and some white and red onions. Then I washed the dishes and watched the Twins with Tim, who was multi-tasking--watching music videos with earplugs on the laptop, catching some plays of the game, and nodding to me every once in awhile (when he saw my lips move, I suppose). "Can you believe Casilla got a home run?" I say. He looks up, looks over, nods, and looks down.

In that interview with Drew Barrymore in the new Elle, which I read at the salon, she says something that I will cop for my new line when asked about how I sleep: "I have the ears of a new puppy." Lately I too have jumped and startled awake at the sound of every creak and pop. I've started to sleep with a fan just for the white noise. Sounds like a fussy stage to be in but I can't seem to help it. We leave next weekend to attend the VFW state tourney in Austin, Minnesota, where we'll share the Holiday Inn with dozens of high school boys and their families. Whoa, boy, I'll have to bring my ear plugs, turbo fan, and a couple bottles of that Honey Moon.

36 Hours with the Teens

2010-07-24T09:37:00.001-05:00

So last night I walked into the living room and the two teens are in chairs, three feet from the TV, playing the video games they had just purchased from GameStop, where they traded in their expensive Christmas and birthday gift games for used ones. Not a great deal to me but whatever. I remember as a teen blowing all my waitress tips on clothes I would discard after one school year, so marked by that year's fashion that I'd be dated in the eyes of others if I had carried them through another year. A Hoodie and jeans with elephant bells, one year, set me back more than any other one outfit until my twenties.

At any rate, I walked into the living room where the boys were side by side, controls in hand, like a pair strapped into a roller coaster, and they put the game on mute. I looked over at the screen and saw it was another war game. Then they paused it. And waited. I wanted to drawn down the blinds in each of the three windows and they just waited. And watched me as I went over to the windows, one by one. Then waited. As I left the room the action came back on. Then the sound, beginning with some animated soldier saying, "Fuck you."

Remember when we muted the set because our nighttime drama might be too rough for the children's innocent ears?

Tim knows I hate the war games. Sometimes he tries to discuss the merits of the games, such as interactive maps that lets him discover the Middle East, or role-playing games that include decisions of ethics or humane efforts. I listen, because I know it is important to him--these games, the whole range of them--but I don't buy it. His friend had purchased a skateboarding game and Tim had also traded for a mysticism game so I'm hoping they will mix up this assault on their brains today.

His friend is spending the weekend with us while his parents are out in Bayfield with friends. Ken's up on the Gunflint so I'm host. The two sixteen-year-olds have been friends for years so it's a welcome change for me.

Last night I kicked them out, though, so I could have some quiet and also some time to clean the house. I only got about a third of the way on the cleaning. I forget how much work it is to clean. Up and down the stairs, I spent half my time putting things in order, divvying up people's belongings and restoring back to their respective places.

Dinner last night was marinated sirloin on the grill, sliced and served with a mayo-Dijon sauce (which no one else ate but me), fried Yukon Golds, salad, and the New French baguette that you bake in your own oven, always a hit with teen boys.

I cleaned up the spare room for Adam, an act I've always loved doing for others. I suppose I love it because people have done it so nicely for me: fresh sheets, plumped pillows, the best quilt in the house, a set of towels placed on bed's edge, night lamp left on as welcome.

This morning Tim had to leave early for his baseball game and he popped into Adam's room to tell him he was leaving. I had been awake for awhile with tea and the NYT. Adam got up soon after that--and our house was very quiet. He didn't seem too uncomfortable and when I asked him if he wanted breakfast he quickly said yes. While we ate we shared some stories. He talked about his grandparents, whom I had seen over the Fourth, and how his grandma had called wondering his sister's shoe size. His sister is in college and away for the summer, working. So Adam told his grandma he'd call her back and then went into his sister's closet and checked out the sizes of all the pairs of shoes in there, hoping to come back with an average, which was size 8, he determined. With so much eye aversion and mumbling going on among the teens of the world, I so appreciated this effort at table conversation.

Adam's gone home for some down time while I head over to Tim's game. Tonight the three of us are making homemade pasta. Adam knows how to make Alfredo sauce from scratch (he brought his shaker/strainer and the recipe) and Tim learned how to make egg noodles while on a retreat at school. We'll head to Cossetta's for some semolina flour and Italian sausage.

Food, the great mediator.

What we're up to

2010-07-05T22:02:00.001-05:00

What we're doing
I'm upstairs in bed, no TV, checking e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, daily newspapers. Guys are downstairs fighting over remote control. Back from a long weekend away together near Finlayson--a quick last-minute change in our 4th of July plans that really turned out fun. Adam is spending the night because our friend, his dad, just got diagnosed with Lyme's Disease, literally ten minutes ago. He didn't feel well much of the weekend (though was a trooper about it) and the long, stormy ride home did him in. Got in to urgent care just in time. If you've been out in the woods, check yourself for ticks, please.

What we're eating
Lots of great meals outside and around the kitchen table. Watermelon, chilled linguine salad, slow-grilled barbecue ribs, fresh strawberries, homemade carrot cake, kielbasa with fried potatoes, hazelnut/chocolate rochers. Maybe should feast on salads and lighter fare this week!

What we're wearing
It was such a hot, muggy weekend that we've all had showers and are wearing tee-shirts and jammy pants, the house air-conditioning feeling like a spa hotel.

What we're reading
I started Sam Lipsyte's The Ask. Tim is re-reading Anne Ursu's first novel. Our friend Rhonda started Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna (?) and hates it.

What we're buying
Smoke balls (fireworks) at the shop in Finlayson, Leinenkugel's variety pack, a very beautiful, stark, handmade wooden chair ($25) from the antique store in Griese; also, a country red cake tin with carrying handle (2.50), and Graham Greene's The Quiet American (50 cents). Coca Cola (me), Starburst popsicles (the boys) for the ride home.

What we're playing
This weekend, bocce ball, wiffle ball, four-wheeling on Dick's 80 acres.

What we're hoping
That it will stop raining, cool off, and hurry up and be another weekend.

2010-06-28T22:37:00.001-05:00

Finally, a beautiful breezy summer night. I've thrown open the windows and it was fun to read quietly while listening to the sounds of the neighborhood. We have the happiest child who lives across the street and he talks and sings in his backyard all evening long. The triplets on the other side of us are now big and loud and they jumped on their trampoline so boisterously you'd think they'd fly off in different trajectories. Tim burst in the door and asked if he could spend the night at Connor's. He had brought over his cheesecake dessert to share at Connor's house and together they made fettucini with peas, he told me, emphasizing the "peas" for my benefit.

My dad's blood pressure is back to a more livable level and he stopped taking a new medication that had precipitated the drop. He and mom went into the doc today to check in about it all. And, Mom sounded better on the phone. I called her at lunch today while sitting outside in the sun, a practice my colleague has embraced for better connections with her mother. It's a good routine. Thank goodness for cell phones.

I started Olive Kitteridge and love it; can't put it down. Another reader posted this picture that she named "old people kissing" to illustrate two lines from the book: They weren’t young anymore, this was the thing. They kept telling each other as though they couldn’t believe it. I made a Paul Newman thin-crust margarita pizza (ridiculously low price at Target this week) and ate slices while I read on the porch after work. Ken worked out at the gym so my dinner was solo, which was okay for a Monday.

This Monday was full of meetings, including one about three new technology projects. But the internal network connection in the conference room didn't work so we couldn't view the beta tests on screen. Figures. Another meeting was one full of thoughtful people and I was encouraged by the outcomes today. Plus, the meeting leader had a knockout dress and show-stopping jewelry to go with it. A pleasure.

I read that Meritage is serving up a fabulous lobster roll and it sounds so good I'll have to treat myself to lunch there sometime this week.

And now, back to Olive.

Sifting through these feelings

2010-06-27T15:56:00.001-05:00

3:30 Sunday afternoon. Tim and I sit in the air-conditioned living room, unwinding after lunch of tacos--beef, onion, cilantro, corn tortillas. Ken is upstairs watching tv and, most likely, about to take a long nap. I could jump in the car and drive up to see my parents. My mom called about two hours ago crying, upset, overwhelmed. My dad, who has been suffering after heart failure almost 8 months ago, was weak and tired and in bed for much of the late morning and his blood pressure had just dropped to 84/53. When I picked up the phone and heard her words and sobs I thought my dad had died.

They're mostly alone up at their home on Lake Beltrami and they both could use more companionship and assistance.

I suggested Mom call the ER and speak with a nurse or ask to speak with a cardiologist before bringing Dad in anywhere. She did and seemed to have a good conversation with an on-call nurse, who said if my father's blood pressure didn't rise in the next two hours they should come into the ER. Mom just called and said Dad's pressure had gone up four points, he was irritated but not confused, and she was feeling better--had just needed someone to talk with.

I could still drive up there anytime and now am thinking of changing plans so I can drive up there to see them this weekend.

Worry takes so many forms. I've gotten pretty good at masking it with busyness or a feigned calmness, but I really am worried.

So Tim can sense that and he's sitting next to me reading The Lightning Thief and we're going in to the kitchen soon to make a few desserts. He'll make a no-bake cheesecake and I'll make a chocolate chip/date cake that both he and Ken love. Did anyone see that movie with Jessica Lange, the one where she bakes muffins in the summertime to ease her worry and sadness? Tins upon tins of muffins cooled in her city kitchen while she smoked cigarettes in the window casement overlooking the fire escape. I don't smoke anymore so I'll have to settle for the calming ritual of measuring, sifting, stirring, and baking.

A Gingerbread Room of Her Own

2010-06-24T10:10:00.001-05:00

" 'My refuge,' she calls it." If this isn't a study in modern American living, I don't know what is.

A Room of My Own

2010-06-15T21:20:00.000-05:00

Decadent. That's all this is. Decadent. I'm on my crewel-embroidered loveseat in front of my wrought-iron balcony, the white sheers blowing softly in the breeze swirling down off the mountains. I hear music out in the distance. It's a beautiful 75-degree night in Salt Lake City; they've definitely kicked off summer here. The open-air Farmers Market began last week, there'll be outdoor jazz on Thursdays. I'm in the glorious Grand America hotel, built special for the 2002 Olympics. I'll be participating in a conference come Thursday but I so needed a getaway, a regrouping, that when I found an amazing deal on Expedia for seven nights at this grand place, I jumped on it.

In a few weeks the press marks its fiscal year end, a mark that we use to measure and look back on our previous year, and in this case it is one in which we cut staff and operating budget and new title output 30%. A risk and a triumph--we hit our sales goal a full month early and garnered a lot of great media attention and book awards. We dug in, this small team of publishing professionals, working as hard as we could to make this year a success. As if we owned the press and our lives depended on it. On the personal front, this month marked a lot of other milestones as well, not least of which is Megan graduating from college and Tim making it through his "underclassmen" years of high school. Two years ago he looked to me, after we both had sent in our applications--he for Cretin and me for the press director job--and he said, "We're both either going to get good news or we're going to get bad news. Either way, I predict we'll get the same answers." And we did; he called it.

I felt a real need to celebrate these accomplishments. I've given up a lot the last two years--mostly my free time and my carefully developed buffer against stress. After these months working like crazy to keep ahead of things, juggling books and authors and organizational-wide committee meetings and the ever-changing publishing industry, among so many things, I was starting to lose head capacity. My mind felt so full and so often my decisions had to be handed down quickly after rapid fire, and I needed to get back the clear-headedness and reasoned deliberation a good leader needs.

This guy writes in an SLC alternative paper under a feature titled, “As good as it gets: City Weekly designs the perfect summer day, “ . . . Having a whole day with no agenda and no people in my face is always a treat. . . . Friends naturally drop in and out of these “me” days, but I try to stay highly flexible and unscheduled. As a working professional . . . finding a way to schedule a full day of nothing in particular is hard work in itself. How often can any of us honestly say we have nothing on our daily schedules? No yard work to be done, no chores around the house, no family obligations. Even when your day is full of fun, like dinner parties with friends . . . you’re still sacrificing some quality solo time. It’s a life full of compromises, and we all just try to find a balance we can live with. My “me time” days help me keep balanced" (Dan Nailen, Utah City Weekly music editor).

That's exactly what I came out here to do. Find that me time to get me back in balance.

So tonight, after a long stint at the outdoor pool, where I wrote my Aunt Sue a letter and read some more of the mesmerizing book, This House of Sky by Ivan Doig, I have showered, drenched myself in Gilchrist & Soames primrose body lotion, and am wrapped in the terry hotel robe, waiting for room service to deliver my house salad and bread basket. Utah airs Colorado Rockies baseball and they're playing at Target Field this evening so I even have the Twins on TV.

The thing about down time is that you finally get the chance to free your mind, let it roam. Lately, when I give it the chance, my mind has been developing an urge to explore the Southwest, my birthplace. I was born in El Paso, Texas, and for the first five years of my life we lived in the middle of the Texas desert and took our vacations in the mountains of New Mexico, camping and picnicking and hiking. I've lived in Minnesota a good thirty years now but I've been feeling a pull to those places of my past. Coming here to Salt Lake City, seeing the mountains surround this basin and breathing in the crisp, tight air, I feel a bit of that Southwest vibe. But this is the Great West. Wagon trails and cowboys and sheepherding.

So I've had this freeing time these last two days--long sleeps and walks and swims by the pool--and I was thinking of my youth. This morning I took a walk to the fantastic SLC City Library. I love visiting city libraries. In Norway, where I met up with Megan last spring, I spent a morning at the National Library in Oslo while she attended class. I love people-watching at libraries. I love browsing the shelves and the displays and picking up books that fit my fancy. After taking in the breathtaking 360-degree from the rooftop deck here, I settled into a chair on the fourth floor, right along the glass edge of the steep overlook into the atrium, and read the poetry of Alire Saenz, The Book of What Remains. There is luck and there is chance and there is fate. I hope you can get out for some me time, some down time, because see, Saenz, as luck or chance or fate would have it, is a former Catholic priest who lives and teaches in El Paso. His poetry included many meditations on the dessert--what I craved. And also this passage. I'll be reading more of his work.

One time I was
At a party. Some guy asked me: What are you, anyway?
I downed my beer. Mexican I said. Really he said. Do
You play soccer? No I said but I drink tequila. He smiled
At me. That's cool. I smiled back So what are you?
What do you thnk I am? he said. An asshole I said. People
Hate you when you're right. Especially if you're Mexican.

Do you remember your first car?

2010-06-07T22:19:00.002-05:00

We pooled our money with the teen kid and bought a 1998 Chevy Blazer for him. Good-to-excellent condition, V-8, automatic, 4-door, air, 149,000 miles, $2800.00 from our friend and neighbor Jim. Tim took Ken and me out separately for test drives. He showed me the 6-CD holder, the cassette player (which he probably won't use, he said, so seriously), tested the cruise control, and told me you could get in the locked doors only by inserting the key into the hatchback, which then released all locks.

It's the perfect first car for a teen guy and I hope it lasts him well through the rest of high school.

Our neighbor John, who sold Megan her first car--an old 2-door Ford Explorer--waved hi to Tim as he pulled into the driveway. "You behind the wheel now?" John asked. "Yep," says Tim. John says, "Want to buy my old truck?" "I just bought this one," Tim answered quite proudly. "Looks nicer than mine," John replied. A nice exchange between neighbors.

As a parent, I feel the loss of control, bit by bit. Your kids get their license and you no longer drive them to and from places. They get their own vehicle and you can no longer say quickly, without advance warning, "Have my car home by 3; I need it for work." Tim was out and about today with a few friends, from noon to five. Where did they go? What did they do? I know they had lunch together at Cleveland Wok. Where did the other four hours go? For him, it seems pretty seamless and easy. I asked him to be home by 5:30 and he was. No problem from his end. Meanwhile, I wonder and worry a bit what shenanigans they're up to.

Take big breath now.

Two years of him growing right before our eyes.

10 Things to Do in the Garden

2010-06-03T17:04:00.000-05:00

1. Cut mint. Make Mojitos. http://kitchengardeners.org/recipes/homegrown-mojito (Write on back of hand: buy rum on way home)
2. Water new seedlings of carrots and red onion.
3. Keep pulling out sprouts of morning glories. Doesn't seem quite right to swear in conjunction with the word "glories" but fucking morning glories from last year have invaded my garden plot. More glory sprouts than mayflies in Winona.
4. Stand on raised garden bed edge and talk with neighbor over chain-link fence. Invite her over for Mojitos, #1 above.
5. Plant bean seeds which were left out of frenzy of planting three weeks ago.
6. Cup new basil plants with halved milk/orange juice cartons to keep bugs off low-lying leaves.
7. Cut white and magenta peonies for bedroom. Savor white peony scent during sleep.
8. Bring out new pail of kitchen compost to add to backyard compost bin. Rinse and repeat in two weeks.
9. Dig up chaotic grass/weed/vine/undertended mess behind garage and plant new native grasses and hardy-as-heck perennials to fill.
10. Oh yeah, buy new sunscreen and wear it. Religously.

Lunch Breaks

2010-05-23T22:22:00.002-05:00

Last week I was determined to make the most of my lunch breaks, after a stint of lunching at my desk, in front of my computer, for what seemed like weeks and weeks. I'd get home each night feeling completely drained and you know what? I was.

So last week, with that beauty of a Minnesota spring still wowing us, I popped my bag lunch into my tote, with my book and my camera inside as well, and hiked to spots about town.

A favorite is the Kellogg Boulevard-side park of St. Paul's Central Library. If you can score a bench under a tree, you get a great view of the passersby--joggers and office workers walking and talking, out-of-towners taking in the sights. Out beyond, the High Bridge and a nip of the Mississippi River, and by your feet, the park birds skittering close to catch any extra crumbs.

I went twice last week, once to check out some books (Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and two of my favorite picture books, The Gardener and The Journey, by Sarah Stewart, both illustrated by David Small). There is a third, The Library, but it was checked out (as it should be!). The second time to share the spot with a colleague--and catch up on work news.

I felt renewed by Friday. I had explored the city a little (also had a fun sidewalk patio lunch at Cossetta's; a leisurely picnic on the grounds of the Capitol), got some exercise, and some fresh air and dappled sun.

This week--hmmm, I'm thinking of venturing farther. Irvine Park, Upper Landing, Lowertown's Mears Park?

Work day

2010-05-18T08:17:00.004-05:00

So gorgeous in Saint Paul this morning I can hardly stand it. I read in a blog that that writer's day was divided into many different discrete increments, all of which were part of the big orchestra of her packed day. That kind of phrase makes me panic, to tell you the truth. But I live it as well and if you see me hunkering down, with a scowl on my face, hunched over my keyboard or my steering wheel, it's because I'm trying to keep up.

But on these paradisal days of spring and early summer, I just have to loosen up, expand the routine to include as much of this sweet air as possible.

I slept with all the windows open last night and had that perfect morning chill, where I reached over and grabbed the extra quilt for another snooze before getting up at six. I knew I'd be on duty for Tim's start to the day--he needed a lunch, his uniform was wet in the washer, I'd give him a ride. I made the sandwiches, started the dryer, took a shower, and then in my briefs and bra did yoga in front of the sunrise.

Since we left early, I took the long route, past all those still-blooming lilacs of St. Kate's, and along Cleveland Avenue with the bicyclists, the bus riders, the college students. I stopped at my favorite morning cafe, Trotter's, and got a chai and a loaf of their honey wheat bread, still so warm from the morning bake that they put it whole and unsliced in an open paper bag, so the steam wouldn't get it all wet.

I dropped off my books at Merriam Park Library, corner of Fairview and Marshall. The church was for sale next door earlier this year but now it isn't. When I saw the For Sale sign in front of it I wondered who might buy it. What were the contingencies? Have you ever seen a for sale sign in front of a church? I had my camera along and after depositing the books into the return bin, one by one--the way that Meg Ryan deposits her letters into the mailbox in When Harry Met Sally--I took some pictures of the morning light against that now-saved church. The colors of that shot--morning blue and sun-soaked Minnesota limestone--are my favorite colors in the world.

Field Hands

2010-05-10T22:34:00.002-05:00

I submitted this to the Short Shorts call for entries. It had to be 400 words or less. The piece wasn't selected but had fun writing for pleasure again. In this scene, I am sure I'm thinking about the anti-immigration sentiments around the Southwest and my own experience with the Mexican and Mexican American communities in the Red River Valley.

Field Hands
I was fifteen when you sent me out with the migrant crew that summer. I know why you did this. Our neighbors, the Gamboas, were Mexican; they had settled here after years on the migrant circuit. You had arranged for me to ride out with them to the farm near Argyle each day. Joe and his wife and Joe Jr. They’d wait for me in the alley before dawn and the Tejano music played loud in my ears from the store speakers in the back of the sedan.

In Argyle, we met up with the Mexicans just in from California. The farmer handed out supplies and then pulled me aside, telling me what to do: hoe every third sprout, take care walking between the rows, work my way down to the end of the half-mile, and come back on my left again.

We gathered at the west end of the field. They were all speaking Spanish, even the Gamboas. I measured and walked—1-2-3, hoe; 1-2-3, hoe, like a young boy, carefully learning the box step or a very slow waltz. When I looked up the others were far ahead of me, the rhythms of their hoes pricking and clicking, steel against dirt, fast—like their Spanish--and they kept it up all morning, da da deem, da da deem, da da deem.

Each day I brought something new to the fields. A scarf for my hair. A roll of toilet paper. A better lunch. Each morning we would ride the thirty miles to the fields, and every night at five back home again. At lunch break we’d sit in the shade of the cars parked in the ditch and the Mexicans would unwrap the most beautiful things from tinfoil: tortillas filled with rice and meat, corn tamales with hot peppers, orange soda in bright red water jugs.

I was getting stronger and darker with each day. My arms and legs were brown and taut and you could see the muscles in my hands and the veins blue near my bones. You told me there was a point at which a woman moves from being strong to being hard. But I did not believe this. When I looked in the mirror after my cool bath each night I’d see my torso, soft and white, a perfectly framed outline of all my private territory, all my virgin sweet spots. Tender, bright. Ready.

Preparations

2010-05-08T16:36:00.001-05:00

We're working hard this weekend. Megan graduates on Thursday and Ken's side of the family is coming in Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. We decided to paint this front living room, which had some water damage from the fall rains. Ken late fall fixed the flashing on either side of the fireplace but we hadn't had time to patch the plaster walls until a few weeks ago.

I found the color I liked from Restoration Hardware but when we tested it thought it was too dark. So I asked Ken to get a few gallons only a "tad" lighter and he came back with "'Blue Mist" from Abbott. It's close but a little more blue, a little less silver than I had hoped. Still, you can see here it will catch the light nicely.

We haven't seen Ken's mom for a year-and-a-half and we're excited to sit on the porch and listen to her stories and have her undivided attention for ours. She's wheelchair-bound (she has had MS for thirty years) and we have 23 steps up to our only bathroom on the second floor. Last time she visited--for Megan's high school graduation four years ago--we were able to get her up those stairs. We'll see this week.

We have a full itinerary: Tim's baseball games, grandparents' mass, Megan's Am Studies celebration, big dinner out together, a party at Crosby Park for all the friends and family.

My parents fly in Friday night and this will be the first time I've seen them since Dad's heart attack last fall. I'm anxious: about their flight, about their stamina and moods with all the commotion.

Whew. I'm glad Ken and I are partners--he gives me confidence and energy to take on this full week. He's funny enough to get through the anxiety, strong and steady to take charge with the Honey-Do list.

But now we're breaking out the Knob Creek. The kids are both gone and we've worked really hard the last three weekends. Hmmm, I wonder if Grand Shanghai still delivers?This could be the night we let loose before the big week!

Tuesday is Chipotle Night

2010-04-27T21:13:00.002-05:00

It's 9 pm and I'm in bed early. The Twins are on TV. I just finished three carnita tacos from Chipotle. It's not my usual--I normally order barbacoa tacos but Ken said they had run out. Tim's usual is a burrito with extra chicken, rice, black beans, and extra cheese. The thing comes back as bloated as the Goodyear Blimp. When one of us makes the Chipotle run it's a hard task to call down the line for one order while you're naming out the other, three in a row. You have to be very systematic or you forget an ingredient. Once I agreed to get Chipotle for an entire baseball team; I took notes, one-by-one on the back of some bank deposit slips but I was still stressed out. The counter help handled my large order without batting an eye.

It's Tuesday night, which has become take-out night at our house. Tim had a baseball game up in Shoreview and on game nights, by the time we all get home it's 7:30 or so; too late to cook. Last week we ordered Pizza Hut's $10 pasta special. Thick, gummy chicken alfredo--the kind a teen boy can love. I'm hoping to convince them on a Pizza Luce delivery next week.

Tim smacked a 3-run homer in the first inning, 291 yards to the right field fence. Or do I say "over" the right field fence? We pulled up to the game about three minutes after he crossed the plate. Traffic from St. Paul up 35E and 694 was slow-pokey. But we got some nice play-by-play re-creations and then when Tim got up to bat the second time the opposing Mounds View coach said, "Let's strike out Thome here." Tim's not nearly as thick as Thome but resembles him, relatively speaking. Compared to football, a lot of beanpoles play baseball. Tim is 5'10" and 215. Thick.

Today I had three meetings and a few complicated e-mails. I got two things crossed off my to-do list. I took a short walk up to the Capitol and pulled a couple of blooming lilacs off the bushes next to the freeway for my desk. I went in early so I could leave early and Ken picked me up for the game. I changed into my jeans and sweater in the car and when we got to the game I went barefoot until it was time to leave. I petted the dog "Rudy" and quizzed our third-grade friend, Gino. I met Tommy J.'s old grandpa and then, when we got home, watered the herbs and plants. A very nice Tuesday, for a Tuesday, even if they were out of barbacoa.

Springing

2010-04-24T21:51:00.001-05:00

We're thick in the spring cleaning/spring sprucing up. Dropcloths cover the living room and we've got the two sections of painted wall to compare: blue pewter and blue mist. We're going with blue mist. Ken patched the water damage above the fireplace and it looks terrific. I've been backup. Boxed up all the books from the shelves, found trim paint downstairs, washed alcoves. Tomorrow we paint.

Megan graduates May 13 and a lot of the rellies are coming in for it: from Colorado, West Virginia, Chicago, and South Texas. Ken and I had been so busy last winter with work and with keeping up with Tim's teenaged life (and Megan's intermittent needs) that we haven't done much of any housekeep except, cooking, dishes, and a quick run-through of everything else once a month.

I am, therefore, a rather slow backup to Ken. He simply jumps in and starts moving stuff without regard to a staging plan. I like to be a little more systematic so we don't live in chaos in the rooms to which he's moved everything. But, that's how we're different. As I was putting away books, I found:

1. My skinny, extremely modest engagement ring
2. The prayer card for Ken's dad
3. A little dish of kyped Legos and other little plastic things that Timmy took from his day care a couple of times a month in his young days. Only a piece here and a piece there. I'm not sure exactly why he took those things but I guessed there was a good-enough reason, like he had a hard time transitioning from day care to home each day.
4. The garden book that the kids made me for Mother's Day one year. Colored construction paper with pictures of flowers pasted on top, interspersed with white pages that they named "Notes."
5. Megan's baby book and Tim's baby book (which I hadn't done until 8 years after he was born when I came across Megan's baby book and felt bad I had never composed his).

Needless to say, I paused in my painting prep work and sat down for about 90 minutes looking through everything. Ken was disappointed when he got back this evening and saw I hadn't made great progress.

This morning, while he sanded, I picked up all my garden items at the St. Paul/Lowertown Farmers' Market, which opened for the season today. I'll plant the herbs and veggies a little bit each night after work. Beans, carrots, red onions, rosemary, basil, cilantro, parsley.

After that I stopped at Mississippi Market, got all the things we normally get from there (milk, pak-our-own eggs, bulk pantry items, refill of our laundry detergent). When I brought home everything and started putting away groceries I saw our fridge was as groddy as the shared microwave in any employee lunchroom. So I scrubbed it. Another chore checked off my list!

But now we're both tired. Ken's knees hurt and my feet are sore. Last time we worked this hard on our house was for Megan's graduation. Which must mean that in two years--for Tim's high school graduation--we'll be back at it again.

Earth Day

2010-04-21T23:17:00.002-05:00

I took a long walk through the Superior National Forest on my way back from Nett Lake. The leaves were just beginning to bud and all those white and yellow spring flowers were still tucked under the forest soil, waiting to burst up. The woodpeckers were especially energetic.The sun was a bit pale but the breeze was sweet--spring had arrived.

I'd like to continue on with my best late-night prose but I won't. Or as our dear colleague Will Powers would say, "I shan't."

Because right now you should click this off, turn away from your computer, and get outside. Get outside, dammit.

Country Roads, West Virginia

2010-04-06T21:17:00.002-05:00

None of my in-laws work in the coal mines anymore but they all live in or are emotionally connected to West Virginia and are deeply concerned about the mine blast and deaths today.

I have a soft spot in my heart for West Virginia, seeing it for the first time through my husband's eyes. He introduced me to Meadow Bluff, Bad-Off Mountain, Rainelle, Beckley, the New River Gorge. I was pregnant with Megan and I felt like I was at a Baptist church picnic, everyone blessing me with their words and their kind eyes. No hail Jesus or real God-talk but the personable faith of country folk.

I met Lacy and Bill and Tommy and Grandma Berry and mean Uncle Oakley and more. We shot old pump shotguns and made cast-iron skillet berry pies and hiked up through the family cemeteries, learning the stories of all those who came--and died--before us. I walked with Lacy; he hitched his broken body up and through the stepped ridges of the lines of headstones. When I asked Ken's dad what had happened to Lacy, he just said, "the mine." An accident with a cart and a plunge down the mine shaft. Lacy lived on whiskey and painkillers.

Our next trip, years after Megan was born, we took the four-wheelers up the mountain backing against Ken's parents' place and explored the terrain of an abandoned mine, land stripped, lots of erosion and tumble-down parts leftover from the rigs. I took a steep bank too sharply and tipped my four-wheeler on to two wheels and the young teen who had led the way was immediately by my side, holding back my fall like Hercules in the cartoons.

It's easy to make jokes about West Virginia, the old couches and velour recliners on the porch, the welfare whites and Oxytocin epidemic. Jamie Oliver decided to kick off his Eating in America series in West Virgina, focusing on the community with the nation's worst obesity rate, I believe. When you think about the constant threat of working in the mines, you can see why people might not button down their health habits. The Irish depended on the mines, too, and yet we cut them slack for poor drinking and eating--it's almost romantic--but the West Virginnies are mocked.

But like any impoverished or marginalized community, you really can't speak the truth of it unless you get inside it. And the thing about West Virginians, they'll definitely let you inside. C'mon in, door's open, they say.

My husband likes to tell the story of how I went to pick wildflowers up on one of those ridges after a couple of big swills of neighbor Herb's clear moonshine. I came back scraped and scratched and all the kin who had come over for the Sunday picnic were concerned until I laughed and told them that I "fell right off the side of that mountain," tipsy as I had felt from the strong brew. They all laughed but only after I had laughed, and one auntie said, "Well at least you got yourself some flowers."

April

2010-04-05T14:36:00.002-05:00

Here we are, the first Monday in April. It's 58 degrees and cloudy. I've turned the heat off in the house but I'm home for the afternoon and I think I'll just reach over to the thermostat and turn it on. There.

We finally got out in the yard for some raking and garden tilling. Handspade and shovel tilling. My raised bed has some rockin' soil. I did the squeeze test on it: "Take a loose ball of soil about the size of a ping-pong ball in the palm of your hand. Gently squeeze it between the ball of your thumb and your index finger.... If it crumbles, it has a reasonably balanced texture" (Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening). The other test is the "undercover test": "Observe your soil closely. [Look for] abundant earthworms and other soil organisms." Turns out my raised bed of dirt passed both tests. Healthy topsoil, good balance of moisture, earthworms galore!

Megan was home for Easter break and she and Ken raked the yard, Tim pruned wayward branches, I started in on the gardens. One down, three to go. Days like that makes me realize we can achieve family harmony. Many times in the last twenty years I wondered if we would, if we could. But this weekend we played together, cooked together, worked together. We're such a small family unit you'd think, piece of cake. Compared to the big St. Paul Catholic families or our own original families, which were often double in size, and four seems completely doable. But we're a stubborn group, sensitive and boisterous at once. Seems sometimes no one is willing to back down. Now that the boy is a card-carrying teenager (driver's permit--license soon to come) he's got a whole new world to claim. We used to be able to plan a movie or a meal with relatively easy buy-in from him; now he too wants full say.

Which is only right.

As long as he helps with prep or clean-up.

So the garden. Early warm spring means I might actually get some things planted and moved in time. Last year I didn't take enough time to weed in the spring so I had wick-wack in all my beds and then never could catch up with it all. And I rushed the planting of herbs and tomatoes so that the basil was crowded by the sage was crowded by the tomatoes. No harmony there.

The first Monday in April. My fingers are fat and dirty, swollen from the first day out in the garden, the first dig. It's a good feeling. Goes well against this sterile keyboard.

The hope of spring--keep that soil loose and balanced, those earthworms actively content.

Winter

2010-02-20T10:10:00.008-06:00

Mid-February and the sky is filled with snow. Ken is making buttermilk biscuits and bacon, Tim is playing Call of Duty on the downstairs TV. I'm in bed with tea and a laptop, wearing SmartWool socks and some flannels. I can see why we give in to the urge to shut in. I remember someone in a writing workshop, where we were talking about settings in novels, saying,"What's wrong with the domestic life?" Be all that you can be right here in the slatted light of your bedroom with tea and laptop and biscuits and bacon on the way. Yeah, my fortune would have me as one of those 500-pound shut-ins who have to be forklifted out of the room. Especially with my husband in the kitchen. (The man knows no cholesterol boundaries.)

Here's what I like to do lately: come back to bed with my chai, open up the NY Times on my computer, and click through all the slide shows in the Real Estate section. Today I was richly rewarded with the whimsical and inspiring story of the West Village woman who makes her living in food and runs the TreatsTruck streetside vending company ("Not too fancy, always delicious"). How lovely--her apartment a perfect collection of all that is meaningful to her: pastel vintage aprons, cookbooks interspersed with jars of FLUFFY for color, handmade vanity in red shellac.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/realestate/21habi.html?hpw; NYT photo by Mike Appelton)

My son and I met in the living room for a quick morning chat. I can see he is settling in for a domestic day himself. Hockey is over for the season; he can put away his gear for awhile. I noticed we both had greasy hair and bed-mussed houseclothes. He said he was hungry and I said he should ask his dad to make breakfast. Tim shouted to Ken, "Mom and I would like to request breakfast." And then, "And Mom and I would like biscuits. With gravy." And finally, "And bacon." And then he looked at me with a conspiratorial eye as if to say, "I got you covered."

We're going to write letters today, motivated in part by Tim's late Christmas thank-yous. I haven't connected with my mother-in-law in over a month and I know how much she likes getting mail. Tim has a list: Grandma McClanahan, Grandma and Papa, Aunt Pat, Aunt Sue and Uncle Larry, Aunt Kathy and Uncle Mike, Aunt Katrina and Uncle Ed, Owen. I woke in a start last night (my room is cold and I had that post-martini jolt that always hits me after a night of cocktails) and I read for awhile but then, as middle-of-the-night-minds are wont to do, I obsessed. I blocked thoughts of work but fell into a worry-bead pattern of family concern. Who will I call first if something happened to Ken? What is the name of my father's heart doctor? How will we know if Ed and Katrina capsize their boat down on the Mississippi? What is our emergency plan? I was determined, at 4:30 a.m., to come up with an emergency plan for EVERYONE.

I'm sure my mind was reacting to back-to-back outings with Cheryl, Will Powers's widow. She is coming up on the six-month mark without Will. WE are coming up on the six-month mark without Will. She is articulate and sensitive in revealing only a fraction of what her life has been like without the love of her life. One of her stories stayed with me. She described how she and Will would have Friday Nights. Friday Nights they aimed to do nothing outside the home. After a long week of work and obligations their goal was to meet at home, settle in with martinis or some other libation (it was okay if they had one, or okay if they had two, they weren't driving anywhere). They'd make dinner together and set the table (always with a bottle of wine) and then, just before sitting down, Cheryl would turn off all the lights so that their meal was centered by the glow of the table candles. And she described it was like the darkness enveloped them and let everything else fall away. And then they'd just talk and talk until sleep.

In seeking out book titles yesterday I came across the phrase, "Home is the new normal." I tend to avoid phrases like that but in this mid-winter, I can feel the pull: "There is no place like home."

2009: One memorable meal after another

2010-01-02T09:41:00.004-06:00

I spent much of yesterday tending a clinging cold but I was determined to make something of the new day. I read through many of my journals, the slim ones I keep in my purse, the one in my bedstand, the one I brought on trips with me throughout the year. My own personal year in review. Of course, I'd been reading many other year in reviews, including a handful of those called "Eleven Memorable Dishes," or "Top Ten Memorable Dishes," and such. I noticed a good deal of my journal notes included recaps of some of my memorable meals throughout last year. They are a good measure of a good life. I'm sure the meal had just as much to do with my dining companions as the food itself. And just as much with my own joy at the occasion. And so, without further ado, I present the first of my list here.

Thursday evening dinner, Oslo University: In early May I visited Megan in Norway, where she was studying at Oslo University for a junior semester abroad in the Midwest HECUA program, that spring titled, "The Divided States of Europe." They studied the effects of globalization on Scandinavia, Norway in particular. She shared coursework, service learning, and field studies with eight or so other midwestern students but lived in International Housing and shared a flat with six others: Moritz and Louise from Germany, Linda from China, and Amilton, Ole and Kari from Norway. Kari, a punker and art school student, had loaned me her extra bed and blanket and Megan cleaned and rearranged her small room to accommodate the two of us. I shared the shared bathroom and kitchen with them all, both of which had small contruction paper signs penned with notes from Amilton, whom Megan called "the house mother." One said, "The towel on the left hook is for hands; the towel on the right hook is for dish drying." Amilton and three others were med students; Norway's excellent higher education system provided all schooling for free, provided you were accepted into the program. Above the commode, which was tightly fit in a separate closet in the bath area, was this sign, "Gentlemen, this is not the place to mark your territory."

The night before I had enjoyed a birthday picnic with the midwestern HECUA students; we celebrated Danielle's birthday by grilling fatty hot dogs and sharing homemade potato salad and Megan brought a dense chocolate cake with vanilla cream sauce. They played frisbee on the grounds, built a small fire for roasting marshmallows, and made mixed drinks from Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum. It was fun to hear the students describe their experiences abroad: they had by then traveled throughout Norway and Sweden, spent their spring break in Greece, and had a three-week field study of immigrant and labor populations in Poland. It was my first trip abroad and I was all ears.

But the next night I had an especially memorable meal. Each month Megan's flatmates shared a communal meal, alternating turns as host. It was Amilton's turn. That morning I had accompanied Megan and her classmates to an Oslo NGO specializing in Norway's international relations. From there we had a pack lunch with the other classmates and then, like other of my six days there, Megan left for another class in the afternoon and I had time alone to explore. That afternoon I hiked the highway back up to Sogn and Megan's apartment to read and drink tea on her small patio deck as Amilton quietly prepared his shared dish.

Megan and her flatmates returned home solely or in pairs and I'd watch from the patio as they stepped off the bus or rounded the curve on their bikes, all waving if they happened to look up to my third-floor perch. They had all been terrific and were each quite unique in how they interacted with me. Amilton called us in and had us sit around the table, squeezing us in at the corners and ends. Linda, the med student from China, contributed a crisp lettuce salad with cucumbers, fresh strawberries and papaya, with a squeeze of mayonnaise. Norwegian mayonnaise, which like the other dairy products in Oslo, was especially natural-tasting and good. Amilton brought out of the oven two large baking sheets and we ooed and awed over the dishes: ten salmon steaks baked with green and black olives, peppers, tomatoes, and capers. Served with rice made with chicken stock and tomato paste. One of the Americans from HECUA, the birthday girl Danielle, came up from the second floor with cans of beers to share. It was delicious and Amilton was very proud and we were all in good spirits. Ole, the quiet Norwegian microbiologist, wearing a t-shirt with some insider joke about his field of study (accompanied by a drawing of a laboratory), slipped out quickly to get a map of the natural area in Sognefjord, and told me of a magical hike I might take through the forest. Linda, the boisterous German med student, described watching the Clint Eastwood movie, "Gran Torino," in Norwegian, and how she couldn't understand anything being said at all until Eastwood said, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," and she sparkled with laughter and said, "Dose words I know!"

I didn't set too many expectations for this trip, only: be excited and up for anything; enjoy Megan; relax and enjoy myself. On my KLM flight over, after two long days of preparation, which also included setting Tim up to stay with two different families because Ken was traveling that week as well, I wrote "We're somewhere up by Greenland, above Newfoundland. It's almost midnight. I am so excited and so happy. Finally, I'm heading to Europe. I wish Ken and Tim were here but I'm feeling very happy to go it alone and have Megan--and Norway--to myself." When I got off the plane in Oslo that morning, it was terrific to see her out in front of everyone, waiting for me with a small sign of paper she had penned with block letters, "MOM." She held it shyly by her side and when she finally saw me she turned it over to the front for a quick reveal. We talked and talked and talked as we took the bus from the Gardermoen Airport to our hotel near SlottsParken. The whole trip was filled with our appreciation for each other and our thrill at seeing the country together.

Last Day of the First Decade of the New Millennium

2009-12-31T15:53:00.008-06:00

Some say out with the old, in with the new.

It's been nearly three months since I posted here. Been biding my time I suppose with the cocktail-party chat of Facebook. But my friend Sharon reminded me about the blog today and so I sit down to write. It's New Year's Eve, 2009. I've just had a Cecil's poppy seed hamitashin with a glass of milk (Oh Lord, one of my favorite local snacks) and I've got on the Oklahoma/Stanford Sun Bowl. It's in El Paso, Texas, my birthplace. I love Stanford's running back, Gerhardt, and he's had a good game. Stanford's coach I don't love so much. Guy goes ballistic on the sidelines, like too many other big-time coaches these days.

I've been thinking of taking a trip to El Paso, so it's fun to see it as backdrop to this college game. I haven't been back since I was five, since my dad and our family were transferred to Oklahoma in the Sixties, before Dad left for Vietnam. I remember some things about this spot in Texas: the heat, of course; the mountains nearby; the snake pits; the way my family felt during the five years we were stationed there. Recently my mom spoke venomously about the place, running it down hard and shaking her head over our time there. She got so worked up I finally had to say "Hey, that's my birthplace you're running down." She looked at me and said, "Why, you have no attachment to that place, do you? You probably don't even remember it." "Yeah, sure I do," I said with a little more force than I expected. Lately I've been pondering my mom's remarks and their effects on me. She'll be extra careful when she thinks there is an issue to tip-toe around--but the rest of us don't. And then she'll be strident about some things that a few of us happen to hold dear to our hearts. I can't write it off completely to her getting older, though she did just turn 70. I guess I can recognize my growing intolerance for her biting words because I'm getting older. Recently, in my bedside journal, I wrote: "I need to learn how to assert myself more without the fear of damaging my relationships." I was thinking of this one relationship in particular. . . .

Wow, what a tough year: 2009. My husband lost his job earlier in the year when the small business he worked for closed its doors. I've been tracking this recession by his street-stumping in sales now for Canon. Hardly anyone is buying much right now, business-to-business. It took him three months to close a big deal, and even then he wasn't lowest bidder. I've tracked in other ways, too. My own organization had deep budget cuts in June and I had to lay off three of our staffers. I was feeling this holiday like I could sleep for weeks and then realized I've been sleeping fitfully for over 90 days and 90 nights. One of our intern candidates dropped out because she couldn't secure a student loan for last fall. Our high-earning, lawyer-neighbor across the street was laid off and tried to start up a neighborhood blog. I think it was a futile attempt because as managing attorney he was always working, or playing golf on Saturdays, so none of us really knew him well enough. I see now that he is back to work again.

I lost two dear friends in the fall. My colleague Will and my elderly mentor and friend, Marilyn. I still get teary when I think long about both of them. I learned a great deal from Will and Marilyn and I always felt they had my best interests at heart. They seemed to know what was dear to me and what I was striving for and weren't afraid to gently redirect me if they thought it might help. I went to them for advice. The strength of their advice and my trust in it doesn't limit me now that they are gone. I think it has prompted me to seek out wisdom more now than before. Marilyn ran the children's division for the Wilder Foundation, working her way up to vice-president of this esteemed social service organization. She was a good conversationalist and an astute leader and I always looked forward to conversations with her. She seemed like a character right out of Cynthia Rylant's children's books: strictly Norwegian, tiny, stooped, with a double-stacked bun of wrapped gray hair on the top of her head, light as a bird's nest but disproportionate to her small frame. We just lunched with her widow, Owen, and he said he misses most her companionship. He said that it isn't the silence in the house because much of their later years Marilyn and he lived quiet lives. But as he worked on his stocks downstairs and she worked on her many correspondences upstairs, he had a feeling of safety and comfort.

In so many ways I wish I could wipe the slate clean and begin 2010 anew. But it's in the memory of these friends that I know we all carry things forward. I feel optismtic about so much to come. Megan will graduate from college in the spring. Tim turns sixteen. We'll have a new design manager at work. Our sales are up and we have really good books in the hopper. This summer, I'll return for a week of writing at Mallard Island in Rainy Lake. I have high hopes for the eradication of those slimy slugs in my gardens. I'll maybe travel south. I'll think about asserting myself more in small ways--or large. Watch out. I may be asking you for advice on that.

All the excitement

2009-10-06T09:10:00.002-05:00

These two few days are full of sports hype--the excitement of the Minnesota/Wisconsin football matchup, the Vikings/Packers game, and the single-game playoff today between the Twins and the Tigers. But it's raining and cold, and I am the third person in my family to get sick with the flu. Oh wretched Jesus, or oh merciful jesus, or so help me god I AM going to get an early flu shot next year. My son Tim was confirmed with the H1N1 virus last week. I tended him as carefully as I could, running cool baths, rubbing his head and shoulders while he lay feverishly on my lap, all two-hundred pounds of him in a cold sweat. He was, like me, calculating in his sickness. "I think I feel better," he'd say, and then "I could probably go to school tomorrow," and then, an hour later, "I feel a lot worse now." When the sore throat morphed over to nausea and pains in his stomach, I rubbed his back while he lay stretched out, head limp on his hands. "Why do I feel better when you rub my back?" he asked. His temp got as high as 105 and we were both scared. But he is almost better and back to school today, where 225 kids were also out sick. He hasn't eaten much so I hope he makes it through the day okay. I heard from my friend that General Mills expected 30% of their workforce to be out sick this week.

Kind of strange to watch the hype of Monday Night Football with all the accoutrements of this sick household. Half-eaten bowls of red jello, glasses of apple juice, all the layers we've been wearing strewn about our couches and sick-beds: socks, cardigans, sweatpants. All of them we pull on and then off, and on again. Such a contrast to the bright-toothed, tight-bellied, sparkly NFL cheerleaders and the football players with the tight butts showcased in their white football pants.

Tim and I went to the Highland Park Library Saturday, so sick we were of TV, and he got two sci-fi titles and I got:

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Wrobleski
All the Small Living Things, Stegner
Jaques and Julie, a Pepin/Child cookbook
and Sew Easy, the essential guide to getting started

The last I got because it has all the projects printed on fold-out card stock, which are tucked into a case on the left; inside the case on the right is the guidebook, and it feels like I'm playing with paperdolls when I go through it. Turns out I can't look at the cookbook at all, not one bit, because I can't hold down any food. Even the scrumptious country tart looks unappealing to me.

Which reminds me, at West Publishing one of our secretaries was always battling weight and then she got the severe flu and was out a full seven days. And when she came back and we asked her how she felt she said she lost 10 pounds, and that was a good thing for her.

I ran into a few former West colleagues at the memorial service for Will Powers and we reminesced a bit. In the eighties, at the Kellogg Boulevard location, I sat between Roz and Lisa, back when we were assistant production editors in the college textbook division. Lisa suffered from general anxiety and the job only made it worse. She would always twist her hair when she was on the phone (we didn't have computers on our desks then so you can imagine how much we were on the telephone back then) and by lunch she had a swirling tower of red hair, twirled from base to tip like the top of a soft-serve cone. Roz would shout over the cubicles to tell Lisa to smooth down her hair. It happened often. And then Lisa had a problem with clenching her jaw too tightly, even during the day, so she wore a dental appliance to protect her teeth. She also rubbed her toes against each other too much and appeared on the elevator wearing sandals and a toe divider like the ones you might get for a pedicure. It was winter and when Roz saw the sandals and the purple toe divider she gave Lisa an exasperated "Now that's really carrying it too far, don't you think, Lisa?" Roz was about the only one who could be honest with her.

Now my head's getting a little dizzy--all this writing is the most excitement I've had for a few days. If you're a Twins fan, let's root them on this afternoon. And if you're a Tigers fan, well, my heart goes out to you. God knows your city needs this boost. But still, a win in the dome would be a perfect way to exit that marshmallow.

In Memoriam

2009-09-23T19:45:00.002-05:00

Working with Will Powers has been one of the great gifts of my career. I’m not sure publishing allows for the kind of all-encompassing skill and talent that Will brought to his work any more than other trades do (think of the gifts Will would have brought to the job had he been a professional chef, carpenter, architect, doctor—Oh, they would all have to do with the hands!) but Will’s passions were perfectly suited to our field: his passion for the book arts, of course; the pursuit of intellectual pleasure; the democracy of the word. And, it seems to me, most of all, the discovery of the best in people.

Like many editors, I am a master in the art of no. Show me your prize and I’ll find a way to reject it or tear it apart and have it completely redone. But Will was a master in the Art of Yes. Yes, the budget is tight, but we can do this. Yes, that schedule is crunched, but we can do this. Yes, that text is a conundrum of words and maps and charts and translations, but we can do this. I got so jazzed bringing a unique problem Will’s way and watching him solve it: Hey Will, looks like we’ve got an Arabic publisher interested in our English edition of the Swedish Moberg titles. What say? And then I’d receive e-mails, typed so hard and fast I could hear his fingers hitting the keyboard like an old newsroom reporter on a Smith Corona. I’d have queries and solutions and links to New York Times articles and then maybe a day or two later a sample, borrowed from the local library.

Theologian Sally McFague writes often about the “loving eye” (versus the “arrogant eye") and “to see the world as it is.” Loving it as it is. In that regard Will holds my highest admiration. Being able to see the world as it is, with loving eyes, and engaging it so thoroughly, well, it seems to me that is the Art of Yes. Even if you didn’t know Monk’s music or Marcella Hazan’s recipes or the difference between Bodoni and Baskerville, he would aim to find common ground.

I suppose for Will and me, beyond making beautiful books together, our common ground was storytelling. I’m not a great cook or a music aficionado but I love people and so did Will. I had such fun sharing stories with Will about our working-class beginnings, our travels around these States--bars and restaurants and shop floors filled with noble citizens and troubled misfits alike. I had hoped he might write his own book someday and was prodding him to think about it. It’s clear now that we don’t need that book to get what we need, what we want from his life well lived. It’s clear that his passion is all around us. It’s clear we’ll all aim to see a little more of this world with those loving eyes, with an enthusiasm for common ground, with a hope that we, too, will master the Art of Yes.

The Big Fall Shows

2009-09-22T07:55:00.003-05:00

Here it is, the first day of Autumn, 2009. Our fantastic late fall weather has shifted in the last twenty-four hours and and today it is cool, overcast, still. I could build a fire in the fireplace today and it wouldn't seem out of place.

When I'm lazy I pull out my laptop and browse through things, never quite landing a serious eye on anything, catching words only briefly, lingering over pretty pictures. It's like the channel surfing of the nineties: flip, flip, flip, pause--nah, flip, flip . Sometimes I flip through the Etsy website; sometimes I flip through GearJunkie. This week I've been flipping through fall fashion pictures from all the big shows. You'd think I'd attend to my own fashion more the way I'm drawn to those fashion shots. But they are simply eye-candy, for the moment. And always, I'm a little like my German/Indian grandmother, finding fault first before I praise the entirety. The big shows are always over the top and for a sensible Midwest woman, there is always something to fault. Big gory eye makeup, weird flaps and zippers, and this year, superbly clunky shoes, gladiator-style with lifts and wraps and chunks. Gladiator mid-ankle boots, chunk bootlets, strapped, bootie stilletos. You just know that if you wore any one of them everyone on the bus would stare at you.

It's amusing how just when I'm ready to pull out my fall sweaters and wool pants, I'm catching the spring looks on the runway. In fall, they show spring. In spring, they show fall.

We do somewhat the same in the book world. It gives the buyers of this world a chance to work ahead of the consumer. This week we're working on our spring catalog; all book covers need to be done by October 15. But our fall show, the midwest regional trade show, showcases our current fall books; the publishing world is a lot more "just in time." The books are out--and came out as early as August--but this is the time we handsell the books to our trade accounts, our independent bookstore partners throughout the five-state area. We bring in authors, give away books, talk up promotional plans for the holiday season, and take orders. Pre-orders for this season look stronger for our frontlist than they did last season, despite all the conservative practices of the entire industry this year. Blue is the new black, I hear. But really, frugality is the new black. Everyone wants to get out of the red and into the black.

The big fall shows are happening everywhere, some just in time and some pushing the season ahead. Push-push. College campuses are revved up with the "prospie" tours, hoping to sell their best features to the high school juniors and seniors touring their top five choices. Even health care has its push-push, its high-selling season. November is typically open enrollment for managed health care. And just as soon as we pull off Halloween, the Christmas push-push will be on full steam ahead.

Despite all the big fall shows, the thing I tend to like about fall is that by nature it signals a slowing down, at least for a city girl like me (that is, I haven't crops to pull in, produce to put up). It might last only a few weeks, before the holiday hubabub, but the first days of fall are just made for lingering. Poets might say this is the wistfulness of fall, where we mourn another summer gone by. But I've always loved the coming of winter, the beauty of things turning and closing down for the night. We talked over drinks on Frost's patio last night and all agreed we have no trouble falling asleep at night. We're tired. We've pushed enough for the day. Clean sheets on soft skin and plump pillows and we're happy as clams. Fall is like the sweet hour before sleep comes on. Ahhh.

Summer in the City

2009-08-08T13:23:00.004-05:00

It's as if I was on the North Dakota prairie: young, alone, wakened by flashes of a great Midwestern storm through my bedroom windows, big cracks and booms and the rain falling hard. I hit the weekday snooze alarm and then woke again, at noon.

There is so much earnest work going on in this world. The storm has passed. It is hot and windy. I feel no guilt that I still sit here in night clothes at 1:00 in the afternoon. Yesterday the glass was half-empty. Today it is a quarter-full.

I seek out a daily poem and today I fell on this one, read by the poet herself, Lucille Clifton. It is a perfect post-storm, layabout-in-night-clothes-on-a-Saturday-afternoon poem.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15599

Practicing health

2009-07-27T20:39:00.003-05:00

I've incorporated a few new health practices. The first was prompted by my finding a lump--well, I like to call it a knot--in my right breast. It's been checked out and diagnosed as a cyst, aspirated, and I've been given a clean bill of health by the outstanding Virginia Piper Breast Center at Abbott Northwestern. There is a reason why City Pages readers voted it the best place to get a mammogram. This was the most intentional, appropriately woman-centered care I've ever received. And it was organized and efficient without seeming at all robotic or cold. They served tea in china cups and saucers and had all their display materials and literature translated into at least five languages. They even had a Spanish-language edition of Self. We got waffle-weave white robes and a warm blanket during the short wait from ultrasound to doctor's visit.

Booking an appointment at the Piper Center was my first step in practicing good self-care, good breast health. You know, in the past I am ashamed to say that I sometimes suffered from breast cancer overload. I frequently sign Walk for the Cure pledge sheets, buy raffles and wear pink ribbons, get my painful mammograms, and do my own check of the girls monthly. I sometimes wearied about all the vigilance. And then, silly and self-centered as this sounds, I find my own knot and suddenly all that advocacy and education is hugely important. You must be diligent. Early detection is one of our best defences.

I felt such solidarity with all the women in the waiting room; some I know had battled cancer; some were there, like me, with brand new issues; others, regular healthy patients, were there for their annual check-ups. Each one of us were kind and thoughtful to each other as were the nursing staff, volunteers, and physicians.

If you live in the Twin Cities, or simply want a spot with some good links, check them out at http://www.allina.com/ahs/VPCI.nsf/page/pbc_home

Now, just in time to include any male readers in the crowd who might be wondering what else they can read, I also took in my first "financial health day." I must have read some recommendation along these lines and so I set aside half of Sunday to tackle some of our family budget and financial issues. I made a pot of tea and had gathered a lot of our bills and documents and planning sheets around the computer workstation. This is what I did in the course of three hours, all of which is going to save us about $200/month:

1. Canceled Netflix. School will be starting soon and we'll be too busy to watch movies so regularly.

2. Changed our cell phone family plan, reducing our minutes to better match our usage. I checked through our last three billings and then checked our home phone service and found that we have unlimited long-distance calling on the land line. Noting that both my husband and I could call our out-of-town families with our home phones (which have clearer reception anyway), I reduced our cell phone minutes by half. I kept our features the same, including the amount of text messages the kids get. Tim is just now entering text message heaven as a 15-year-old so no use worrying he'll go over his limit.

3. Called Comcast to inquire about saving money. Turns out just by calling we could save on a new "bundle" promotion. That call alone--without reducing our service--saves us $40.00/month.

4. Found a new everyday credit card with lower interest rates and no annual fees.

5. Found a separate new credit card to which I can transfer our balance for a 0% rate for 12 months. I'll aim to be diligent about paying off that balance and not use the card for anything else.

6. Secured my daughter's last year of undergraduate student loans.

So there you go. In the name of breasts and pocketbooks, my work is done for the day.

Midsummer classic

2009-07-14T21:52:00.003-05:00

Does the MLB All-Star game mean that summer is half over?

Mauer got a double and now Nathan is pitching. I love watching Joe Nathan. He has more nervous tics than an introverted teen boy on his first date. I love it when he motors his lips on an exhale, shakes his head, mutters to himself, pulls back his jersey, hikes up his belt, then fires in a perfect slider.

I think nervous tics are endearing. My favorite aunt bites on her inner cheek. My dad pushes up his eyeglasses with his middle finger. My son twists his mouth to the right when he's upset with a situation.

I parked my car up on Summit Avenue and walked in to work this morning. Summit Avenue is a bike freeway because of that long grand bike lane so I have plenty to watch between the bicyclists, the front lawn flower gardens, the turrets and balconies and wraparound porches. My colleague decided he wanted to live near Cathedral Hill when he first visited St. Paul some years ago and heard the St. Paul Cathedral bells chime on the hour. He said, "I want to live within striking distance of those bells."

And, of course, I had that nice little stroll on my way home tonight. A little bit of fresh air to bookend the workday does wonders. So did noontime yoga. And a turkey avocado sandwich and a "Pot of Pickles" from the Cheeky Monkey Deli, courtesy a colleague.

We've just lost 30% of our staff and are picking our way through a reduced operating budget on top of that. Any respite from that hard work is welcome. I spent all morning coordinating our new phones, moving office furniture, deciding on new office protocol (who will be our technology coordinator and our emergency situation liaison?). We had a design intern come in for an interview today and normally our office manager would have written up a parking pass for him but now she's gone so I had to track down the paid slips and then I didn't know what to do for a purchase order so I just wrote in "P.O. to come" and told the candidate to try to float that by the parking attendant.

Still, it's midsummer and the fall lies ahead full of promise and opportunity. Fall is the publisher's bonanza--Gift Season. We have a good deck of offerings and this afternoon talked through our big conference plans this afternoon. There will be author signings and giveaways and web marketing and special orders. It's like the opposite of back-to-school; we don't dread its coming, we anticipate it!

Is the recession on its way to being over? Slate.com today says yes, according to experts they polled. Job news seems grim but personally, we're starting to spend a little more money ourselves this summer. A few more dinners out, a new tie for Ken, talk of house repairs. Nothing glamorous, but a little loosening.

I worked on my tan Sunday. I got out the Hawaiian Beach suntan oil, my book and a pink beach blanket and brought it all out to the backyard where I lay in the sun for an hour or so. I hadn't done that since vacation last summer. I left an index fingerprint of oil on a few of my paperback book pages.

Half of us at the office bike in to work regularly. Bikes are kept in each individual's office because people are afraid of their bikes being scavenged out in the unprotected bike lock area. It's nice to hear the clicking of wheels and spokes coming down our office hallways and then office doors shutting as people change from their tee-shirts and shorts to work clothes. It's a comforting summer ritual.

I haven't yet swum in a lake this summer so I say the season isn't half over but that the best is yet to come. We head to Gull Lake near Brainerd this weekend where we'll watch the boys play in the AAA state tourney for fifteen-year-olds. We'll bring our sunflower seeds and coolers of ice and Gatorade, our camp chairs, and I'll tote along the Hawaiian Beach. Might as well work on my tan while I'm cheering.

If Jim Harrison can crank out poems so easily

2009-07-11T15:22:00.003-05:00

why can't we?

Heart murmurs and
heartbreaks
and reckless hearts and the
heart of the matter.
Get to the heart of the matter.
What is it?
Quit yer yappin'--what is it?
Are you listening?
Those are coos you hear.
Wing flaps. My body
yearning.

~PJM, July 2009

4 Days into July

2009-07-04T08:41:00.005-05:00

Summer is here in Minnesota, finally. Except it is 69 degrees and cloudy today, the 4th of July. The Twins lost to Detroit last night after 16 innings. I watched innings 9 through 13 but then fell asleep. At least I made it upstairs to bed. Tim and Ken fell asleep on the sectional couch.

The neighbors have dressed up their houses for 4th of July parties: flags are hung, the sidewalks have been edged, all the flower beds are groomed. We have neighbors on two sides with backyard pools and they draw a lot of friends and families. Yesterday, as one set of neighbors worked on their yard, their young son Sasha, whom they adopted from Russia this winter, was playing in the back with another friend. We heard a yelp and then a wail and then, "Sasha bit me!" Sasha's dad, the corporate lawyer, went running to the back and gave his four-year-old son an earful and a spanking, too. Ken and I went inside to give them some privacy; also, I thought I might get the giggles because of the YouTube video-gone-viral, "Charlie bit me."

Sarah Palin, the idiot, resigned her post as Alaska's governor. I didn't listen to one word of the press conference. Still, couldn't she have waited until July 4 to announce? What symbolism is there in July 3? Who advises her anyway? Her hubbie? Maybe she didn't want to be upstaged by our Independence Day froo-la--or Michael Jackson.

We hung a flag yesterday. Ken came home with a deluxe nylon American flag from Home Depot. And then, wanting to save money, he scrounged around in the basement for a pole, and also a pole holder he must have bought at a flea market for 10 cents. He knew it was down there somewhere. Our basement, you should know, looks like it belongs to Sanford and Son. So then he comes up from downstairs with a copper plumbing tube and some black hockey laces and his drill. He has me hold the tube in place against the picnic table while he drills holes for the flag's grommets. I'm trying gently to remind him that if he got such a nice flag at least he should give it the dignity of a good pole--with eagle top--and not jury-rig the thing. This makes him mad. I think about pulling out my West Virginny accent to emphasize my point. He reminds me he really didn't want to spend more money. I tell him the flag deserves it. Finally, with a frown on his face, he heads over to S&S Hardware and comes back with a $14 flag set, with cotton flag and pole, and eagle end cap. As we put that together, substituting the deluxe flag for the cotton one, I say to him, "You drive me nuts sometimes." He says, "It goes both ways."

When I asked him why he bought a flag, thinking it might be because of our neighbors' flag-dressing, he told me it was because of a story I had told to Megan the night before. Megan was home for a day and a night from her summer work as guide in the Boundary Waters. We all really missed each other and were gathered on the porch telling stories. I told her that one night Tim and I were talking (Tim is 15; Megan is 21; I'm 47; Ken is older than all of us) and Tim said, "Megan is a liberal." Yep, I told him. I said that I thought most people were from the ages of 17 to 22. He said, "I know, I know, she wants to change the world." I chuckled. He was thinking hard about something.

"Did I ever tell you why I got kicked out of Mr. Bakke's class in 8th grade?" I said no, then thought it remarkable I hadn't pressed him for an explanation back then. Second-child syndrome, I guess.

Tim told me the story. A girl in his class, a bossy-bossy-pants girl who was always running her mouth and giving out her opinions and criticizing others announced in class that anyone who joined the Army was stupid. That only stupid people joined the Army, that they had nothing better to do with their lives, and that our country took advantage of that. Tim said he could feel himself getting really angry. My dad joined the Air Force after a year in college. He had, in fact, run out of money, didn't have a functioning parent to guide him, and didn't know if he had other good options. My dad, however, is a very smart man. My Grandpa Teubert was drafted into the Army during WWII. He survived the Battle of the Bulge. My cousin needed funds for college; he was planning to be a firefighter when he graduated. Being one of masculine brawn and skills, he thought the Army Reserves would be a good choice for him. Six years later he was sent to Iraq for a long and brutal tour. He survived the storming of Basra. My Aunt Pat, striving to leave the backwoods small Wisconsin town of her youth, tried to join the Navy. She passed all requirements, except the one for weight. She needed to weigh over 100 pounds and she was under. So my grandma sewed silver dollar coins into the waistband of Aunt Pat's skirt and also into the lining of her hat and Aunt Pat, holding up her skirt with one hand, passed the 100-pound mark on the scale.

Tim comes from a line of military men and women. And he lives with a couple of liberal-minded citizens. He weighs these worldviews with serious consideration. He is a serious kid. The girl in his class kept talking, and no one, including the teacher, reproached her. She said, "The only reason people go into the military is so they can learn to kill people. They're stupid and they're inhuman."

Tim had had enough. He pushed himself away from the table and jumped up. "Fuck you," he said to her. "Fuck you," is all he said. The teacher asked him to leave the room. Tim did, gladly. And, in telling me the story that night, Tim looked over at me and said, "I was so mad at her it just came out. It was the worst thing I've ever said in class."

So when I asked Ken why he bought the flag he told me, "Because of the story you told about Tim last night."

Hole in the Day

2009-06-29T13:02:00.004-05:00

The great Ojibwe chiefs Hole in the Day (father and son), Bug-o-na-ghe-zhisk, were tranformative leaders here in northern Minnesota in the 1800s. There is a park named Hole-in-the-Day near Leech Lake, a few towns over from where I sit today typing. I'm in Bemidji visiting my parents before heading down to Mille Lacs for a meeting. The younger Bug-o-na-ghe-zhisk was handsome, diplomatic, charismatic, one who traveled to Washington to meet with President Lincoln as part of his work on land treaty negotiations. I'm taken with his picture, above, shot in NYC during that trip.

I'm online courtesy of the Kitchigami Hot Spot wireless network. I should be on the lake but it's cold and windy. I hope Dad and I can go out later. It's very quiet on the lake this long weekend. I woke this morning and sort of tip-toed out to the lakeshore. Just beyond the dock was a merganser--I didn't see her chicks but Mom says she's got them. Two loons cried out further in the bay. Mom's got yellow finches at her bird feeder. Down the bumpy road, yellow ladyslippers have started to wilt and fade but I see now red-and-yellow columbine in new bloom and the wild pink geraniums.

My dad was awake early reading and watching CNN in the living room on mute. They just got air conditioning in the house because, even though the lake weather can be cool and breezy it can also be unbearably hot and humid, and Mom doesn't like the heat. The lakehouse is pristine; Mom keeps out the spiders and the bugs and the rusty water from her pipes. It's a home for them, not a lake cabin, and I try not to get bummed that we can't flop around wet and barefoot and let the screen door slap and build campfires out near the beach. Mom is afraid of even contained fires in the woods and they don't have a slapping screen door.

Right now, at this moment, I feel a gravitational pull to clarity, one thing or the other. Black or white, not gray. I'm really a little sick of the gray. We all live in the gray all the time, it seems. Can't be expecting wisdom to come down completely on one side or the other.

My dad and mom have a storm scanner set up in the second bedroom to warn them of oncoming bad weather but I'd rather just go out to the dock and look up at the sky. I rather resent the loud bleeping of the weather watcher; I'd rather the loud screeching of the loons. Technology intrudes on nature.

And I can't expect work not to blur into home and home to stay separate from work. I text on my cell phone at my son's game and I take calls from home when I'm at the office.

Blending makes things easier, I suppose. It's the only way to juggle our multiplex lives. If I take a stand on separation--THERE WILL BE NO TEXTING AT THE TABLE!--I get the stink eye. If I tell myself, today I will not check Outlook, today I will not check Outlook, it seems a trap, like I'm a bulemic, fasting all day only to pig out come 9:00 pm, because sure enough I'll make it through a lovely day of gardening, and biking, and G&Ts on the porch, and then I get into bed, bring up the laptop to the top of my lap, and click into work.

Can I tell you something? Last Friday my husband and I went to a backyard party. It was lovely, at first. A blending of families from our son's hockey team and a few neighbors, and the younger kids. The teen boys all gathered at another house to watch the NHL draft. We were friends with some of the gathered, not so much with others. We shared really good homemade salads and grilled chicken with aioli and some beers. We played that ball-golf game that people make with PVC pipe and rope. And then at the end of the night the conversation of a few couples turned racist. It was a small comment or two but I can't say "a little racist" because that's like saying "a litte pregnant." You are or you're not and they were. Are. And so my husband and I looked over at each other and left. And we felt uncomfortable about it through the next morning. About not saying anything, I suppose. About feeling complicit. And I thought, "I'm blending my values and politics and belief systems into a wider circle of people and I don't really know who they are and what they believe."

I do believe that blending in is a part of life; we all assimilate one way or another. We blend the old and the new. We blend the strange with the familiar. And we all bring to our lives our own beliefs and preferences (and fetishes and extremes) and through them alter our surroundings to fit. Too much one way and we lose control; too much the other and we lose serendipity and the charm of an arms-wide-open view.

I'm about to learn the wisdom of chiefs Hole in the Day thanks to a work assignment. I know my small examples here pale to their struggles: between traditional life and customs and the new white immigrants. Between life and death. I imagine that their best diplomacy was that precarious blend of clarity and compromise, between a strongly held belief system and what they did/we must do to survive in this world.

Traveling Pants

2009-06-20T16:47:00.002-05:00

I'm in Philadelphia for a university press conference, where book professionals and vendors get together to share ideas, horror stories, martinis, crowded elevators, visions of the future. It's the last night of a three-day affair and I'm bushed. I'd go for a walk to get something other than artificial air but I have one more reception and collegial dinner and I'm storing up energy for that.

I'm never quite satisfied with what I pack for a business trip. I don't have it down to a science, like some people. Some of my Boundary Waters canoe trip packing has helped me out some. The primary goals for a week on trail aren't so different. You want to be light, but prepared for weather. It's good to have ease of comfort and clothes that are versatile. A quick-dry top, for instance, can double as a swimsuit tank.

No matter my intentions for packing light and easy for business, I always have two problems: too many shoes and too much to iron. The shoes are definitely a woman thing. Shoes for walking, shoes for a dress, flats with jeans. Yada yada.

I did land on a really versatile lightweight suit and the pants carry over well to evening. They're black, well-fitted, tailored. I looked around the reception room last night and counted over 36 women wearing black tailored pants: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

I love my friend Lisa's Facebook updates when she travels: "looking forward to a big featherbed, a nice quiet dinner, some alone time with cable TV in my hotel room." I would say that's a sisterhood, too, especially for busy moms. I brought toenail polish on this trip because I pictured just such a night of "me time."

Sometimes I think creepy things about hotel security--like what if there were remote cameras in the rooms, with central monitoring stations not unlike security in casinos or the Houston control room for NASA. I chuckle to think what the sisterhood of travel might reveal through the cameras and the responses by my imagined voyeurs:
"Damn, how can that girl read through so many magazines in one night? Did you see her eat that whole chocolate bar? Why do women always pick that IN TREATMENT on HBO when there is so much else?

A pox on PowerPoint Creator

2009-06-14T18:48:00.002-05:00

Notice how I only find time to post on Sundays? And I'm procrastinating because I'm preparing my PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow morning. I like PowerPoint about as much as I like WalMart. It's cheap, low-end, and everywhere.

In fact I'm feeling like one big Luddite today. It seems all my technology is pressing down on me. For instance, I'd like to go for a run/walk tonight with my little I-pod Shuffle but my son lost his ear plugs for his I-Pod Mini and so keeps using mine and I'd go get them but then I have to go through this whole routine of wiping down the little white ear buttons with rubbing alcohol because, well this is gross, but because he has what we call here "sweet potato ears."

And I'd load up some new songs for both him and myself except our home Mac needs an OSX update and without it we can't use I-Tunes. Or Netflix. Or online banking through TCF. Except for the life of me I forgot my Mac user name and password and somehow didn't write it down.

Our small digital camera is out of batteries, too, and doesn't take a charge. It has a few nice pictures from Oslo on it. When those batteries ran out in Oslo, Megan and I both decided the price of Norwegian batteries was too high so I took a dozen or so other photos on my cell phone, which I'd load up on to Facebook but I can't do that on this laptop (I need a work IT professional to install the photo uploader) and I keep forgetting to bring the cord into work.

And speaking of my phone, I just opened my AT&T bill and saw that they charged me $57 more than usual because, apparently, my phone keeps attempting to auto-sync by wireless and it's racking up the minutes doing so.

They're doing all kinds of sewer work in my Highland neighborhood and every day that repair work trips off the power in our block. I come home to 13 blinking digital clocks--on the stove, on the coffeemaker, on the undercabinet radio, on the alarm clocks--and it's one big fat metaphor for my Life in the Digital Age, everything yelling out for attention.

Ken and I stopped by Korte's to pick up some coffee beans and potato chips (he needed the first for the morning; we had some good French onion dip left over from our Friday night party) and on the rack in front of the register were the magazines of the week: "The Tweet Smell of Success" and "If you're over 5o, you can't ignore Facebook anymore." Geez, what happened to celebrity snooping and UFO spotting? And then, the credit card machine broke down at our register and we didn't have cash.

You know that night last spring to honor Earth Hour, the effort to get people round the world to turn off their lights? I'd like to declare a project called In Praise of Analog and make it last a week. I'd like to take my pointer finger and pull the big hand toward the little hand and flip off the thin rubber band of the morning newspaper and spread the sheets across the dining room table. I'd like to talk to my mom with my ear cradled on the heavy plastic of a rotary phone receiver, winding the curly cord around my waist as I cook.

Think of the extra calories we'd burn if we had to get up to turn the TV whenever we didn't like what was on?

May it please the court

2009-06-01T08:01:00.006-05:00

Saturday we got a letter in our mailbox about a bankruptcy proceeding for which we "may have a claim." The attorney named as trustee in the case reminds us to file with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court against my husband's former company, a small business that had valiantly stayed afloat for almost 25 years before closing its doors last December in the midst of the worst downturn its owner had ever seen. My husband and his colleagues were cold-calling firms, sending out their lowest bids, figuring how to turn a buck--a foot in the world of possible success, a foot in the world of shutdown. His boss scrambled at the end and was able to honor her commitment to pay her employees before shutting down. So we have nothing to claim and feel bad for her just seeing this document.

Imagine the number of proceedings going on in courts around the country? Imagine the number of claims in the proceedings for GM alone, which declared bankruptcy bright and early this morning. The day of declaration must seem very sad for those who have tried so hard to give it a go, but I know the day of reckoning and grief was earlier, when the leaders and management privately looked each other in the eye and said it was not going to get any better, the bottom had fallen out. As in a marriage breakdown, often you know before you know.

Another court action: in an hour or so the Minnesota Supreme Court hears arguments from Al Franken and Norm Coleman's lawyers on the vote recount. This thing has become so protracted that they ought to declare bankruptcy and get a fresh start. I'm willing to re-vote. I'd bet voter turnout would be much less than in the fall, not just because we've already voted in our president but because we might not care so much about our two Senate nominees anymore. Their near-tie is indicative of the predicament of our political system. And it seems we're heading for a statistical tie on so many fronts. Those who choose to vote (or speak up) are the most ardent participants on either side and we keep zero-balancing. Who speaks for the middle-roaders or about-to-opt-out citizens? Who is willing to rally the reluctant, draw out their passions? And if politics and religion aren't our motivators anymore, what is? Certainly not money, in these bankrupt times. (Breaking even is the new success.) Peace? Family? Love?

I for one am glad I don't have to rally the reluctant in Congress as Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayer will do this week, meeting with Democrats and Republicans in person and by phone. Can you imagine the rough spots of the phone call with Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky? Well, I would be scrambling to fill it with small talk: "How 'bout that filly Rachel Alexandra, huh?" Maybe throw in a little subliminal message: "She sure is something."

My husband is back to work now; in fact, he leaves tonight for California. In many ways he has a fresh start; in many ways he has the lead-up to his old firm's bankruptcy decision still weighing on his mind. Gotta keep digging in; gotta keep moving forward. And I'm on furlough today, paying back my debt to the public debt as an employee linked to our state budget woes. I'm not supposed to work on this unpaid day but I will, furiously. I've got my own rallying to do. Gotta keep digging; gotta keep moving forward.

Good morning Sunday

2009-05-31T09:59:00.007-05:00

I'm in the dining room, typing on the laptop. It's a gorgeous, sunny Sunday morning. The neighborhood is quiet. Last week my son just finished a short film for his video production class assignment, "My Neighborhood." In it he shows a 360 degree view of our corner block and says, "I wouldn't want to live anywhere else but here."

I remember two friends of mine, some twenty years ago, talking about Sundays. The one friend, a church-going Lutheran, asked why the other never went to church. The answer was, "Because I want to reserve my Sundays." The pious friend said, "But what do you think Sundays are for?" The answer, "For reading the New York Times, what else?"

I slept in Megan's room last night because the neighbors behind us had a kick-off-the-summer pool party and they were out loud and late. Our big bedroom overlooks our backyard and the alley and everytime I was about to fall asleep I'd hear a yahoo and a splash. Meg's room, tucked under the eaves in the middle, still has all the stuff of her high-school days plus the stuff of college tucked in corners and under spaces while she's away in the Boundary Waters. There's a dried wrist corsage from a prom hanging on a jewelry hook.

I slept until eight and took a chai tea into my bedroom to watch the CBS show Sunday Morning. I've come to like Charles Osgood and for a moment almost forgot that Charles Kuralt was previously the longtime host. Remember when we learned that the iconic Kuralt had a "shadow" second family in Montana? Now there's a slice of American life. None of us are perfect--a theme played out this a.m. with their story on that British talent-show competitor Susan Boyle. I think it's completely understandable that Boyle screamed at hounding reporters last week and can just imagine her lashing them with a heavily accented, "Get out of my way you fucking bloodsuckers." I agreed with the morning reporter that I liked her even better for it.

The kid and I are alone this weekend. Ken is catching walleye up at Big Whinny; apparently they've been getting their limits. Tim asked for pancakes so I had to go up to Korte's to pick up milk, and $60.00 later I also brought back home two sacks of groceries with tonight's dinner (ribeyes) and the week's lunch fixins (bread, sliced cheese, apples). As we all say now, "Remember when we could bring home two sacks of groceries for $20.00?"

Along the way the neighborhood had come alive. My neighbor zoomed his bike around the corner wearing long tight bike shorts and matching UnderArmor fitted top. A managing attorney, he works until seven every weeknight and then Saturdays too so I bet he's glad for his Sunday. The little kids on the block had layed down their trikes and training-wheel bikes and were toddling up and down the block with their helmets on, looking like a row of cranial-protected Beanie Babies. Very funny. Maybe they felt stealth wearing their helmets doing their everyday sidewalk fun; maybe, like my son when he was young, they had sticks tucked inside their makeshift holsters like guns.

I step outside to check the plants in front and the wooden rocking chair is rocking back and forth briskly. The neighbor's tomcat is a prowler and they let him roam all night. In the morning, after his escapades, he curls up on the chair cushion but jumps off when we come out the front door each morning. I wonder if he wishes the chair wouldn't rock so hard after his leap so as to leave no trace. I can imagine him hiding behind with a paw up to stop the rocking. Sometimes my husband will sit out on the porch in the early morning and he'll call out for the cat in his high funny falsetto cat voice and the black cat (with no tail--lost it in a streetfight) will come back up the stairs and lie down on the wood floor, just out of Ken's reach.

I don't have much in particular to say this day except it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I'm glad to have it be mine.

Speaking of books

2009-05-21T21:15:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, when people in my business complain about the declining book economy, I want to ask them when's the last time they actually bought a book. I've been making an effort to visit bookstores around the Twin Cities. It's fun to browse "offline" again and to lay down my dollars at the local businesses that keep me in business. Birchbark Books, Micawber's, Magers & Quinn. Tonight I stopped by Sixth Sense, the best used bookseller in town (not the store to help our Press's bottom line, but a nice literary stop nonetheless), and picked up The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J. R. Moehringer (2006). Reviews include:

“It would have been easy for Moehringer to drift into sentimentality about growing up fatherless. Instead, he took the hard route and wrote the heck out of the thing. Moehringer paints a portrait of his life - and the bar full of men that stepped in to do the job his father couldn't - that is vivid, alive, and painfully honest. It's also pretty darned funny.” -American Way

“A wistful study of the character - and characters - of a Long Island bar called Dickens...in the tradition of Joseph Mitchell and Damon Runyon.” -New York Magazine

My mother grew up in a bar, too; her parents co-owned Tibbie's in Indianford, Wisconsin, a place memorialized by Sterling North and written up here: http://www.townoffulton.net/History/Tibbies.html My mom says the article, however, is full of errors. So it goes with local history. But I digress.

The thing I remember most about my mom's telling of that place is that she learned all she really needed to know about human nature sitting on the corner barstool having a Shirley Temple and waiting for my grandmother to get off her shift. Mom truly loved a lot of the regulars but then would be confused when she saw their worst sides come out (after a bad day or a stiff drink, or both). My grandma would tell her she's got to take the good with the bad, that everyone has a likeable side and an unlikeable side and that no one is perfect. I've always remembered that.

When I was in college, my husband--then boyfriend--and I worked at the Golden Frog Supper Club in Fountain City, Wisconsin, right on the main drag there along the Mississippi River. We had a lot of regulars, too, and a veteran staff of waitresses, cooks, and dishwashers. I'm sure Ken and I gave them plenty to talk and speculate about. One whiskey-voiced waitress (and there is always one like that in these joints) told me I'd look a lot prettier if I would pull my hair off my face. I had customers who always ordered the same thing: Kessler and water or brandy Manhattan sweet; crab legs with baked potato, extra sour cream or the salad bar (with a go-box when they were full--no kidding). No one really tipped very well but they were always happy when Ken or I remembered their usual orders. Our German cook took real pride in her figure and in keeping herself looking good: hair, skin, nails. It was a sad, sad day when Erna cut off two of her fingers at the knuckles in the meat slicer one evening. She quit the kitchen soon after that. Ken and I quit pretty soon after that ourselves.

So I'm looking forward to starting The Tender Bar this weekend. Seems to me it's going to be an endearing read.

On white T-shirts and lollipops

2009-05-17T20:51:00.004-05:00

Did you have a good weekend?

Did it feel to you like today was the first day of spring?

I'm wrapping up the day with a sack of Polish chocolate candies and a shot glass full of Zubrowka, Bison Grass Vodka, both gifts from Megan, who returned home yesterday from her semester abroad. The chocolate is quite good and comes with coconut, berry, caramel, and vanilla fillings, all wrapped in gaudy red, yellow, and foil-lined wrappers so that if you walked by my writing station right now I look a bit like those women at Skinner's Pub with the spent pull-tabs in mini-hills all around their drinking glasses. The "wodka" is 40 proof and has a long blade of grass lined diagonally inside the bottle. Megan and her class of American students were studying the divided states of Europe and how Scandinavia, in particular, is handling human rights and its role in the world. Since much of the first wave of labor workers came into Norway from Poland, they spent two weeks in Krakow and Warsaw studying human rights. After spending as much as $20.00 for a six-pack of good beer in Oslo, she and her comrades were quite thrilled to find draughts at the Polish pubs for as little as a dollar and vodka to bring home that wouldn't break the bank. It's quite good and a perfect nightcap to a full weekend in May.

Did you get outside? Was your weekend as sunny and breezy and green as we had here in St. Paul? We are all sunburned and our lips got chapped, too, so we've smeared them with dabs of Vaseline from the jar. The neighbors were out in full force: garage sale-going, dog walking, neglected garden tending. We had company both days and had lots of cooking and talking and the drinking of the wine and wodka on the porch. It was my side of the family and with Megan's return to the U.S. and my not-often-seen brother also making a surprise appearance, I had my hands full.

But I also had a chance to sit outside in the company of some good friends and wear my favorite white T-shirt with no jacket. Bare arms. Felt so good. No wonder the First Lady is always eager to bare hers (never mind she's got those enviable guns). I see that I've washed my white T-shirt so much I have what looks like a little moth hole in the middle of my belly. I got out the sandals, too. My mom said if I painted my toenails to match I would look quite nice at work. It's funny what moms choose to notice and comment about. At first I resented the comment on my appearance but then I remembered that just a few hours earlier I had looked at my daughter's rough feet and thought she could use a pedicure. Is the big difference that I chose not to say anything? Do we accept our mother's close inspection or does it just drum up uncomfortable feelings? For women, is there anything we can do about this, this complicated relationship? My mother spots my daughter's feet and offers to help her soak and loofah them. Is their generational difference wide enough for my daughter to accept the comment as love--and nothing else? What is it I can do to emulate that?

The little kids at the ball game wore their old shorts and sucked lollipops while hanging upside down at the monkey bars. No one warned them about choking. We were glad to drink cokes and show our bare arms and necks to the sun, no sunscreen. Out on the field, the fifteen year olds are getting better at turning double-plays and working the strike zone. One slight kid hit a near-homer to left center and all the players on the bench yelled out "STEROIDS!" The kid was scrawnier than Pawlenty so it was a funny cheer.

I hope you had a good weekend. Maybe you'll cut some lilacs to put in a jar for your desk. Maybe you'll put on your favorite tee under your button-down or paint your toenails to show under last year's sandals, for spring's posterity. If we didn't have our weekends, how would we ever know what spring feels like?

Home again

2009-05-11T12:25:00.004-05:00

Quiet Monday. Back from my trip to Norway and spending the day with my son. We are eating and making meals together, catching up on our news of the week, and our laundry, etc. I missed him! He's good at asking questions: What did you like best in Norway? What did you do in Norway that you wished you could do here? What are some of the things you and Megan did together? He's slow to acknowledge the moment and avoids "the big deal" conversation to "wrap up" an event. That is, if he's just played a nail-biter hockey game he doesn't want to dissect it right away and really just mumbles a few words of acknowledgment, but then later as the weekend unfolds we'll hear bits and pieces from him. So when I returned Saturday evening he wasn't all full of enthusiasm; just gave me a hug and asked if I had a good time and then stuck his nose in a book. He would fit in just fine in Norway, the land of the understated folks.

I must say next to seeing Megan and enjoying the beauty of Oslo, the thing I liked best was not working. When I heard her teachers and classmates discussing the Norwegian 6-hour workday, I nearly welled up in tears. How sane! How civilized! And then there is that infamous maternity/paternity leave. All over the city I saw well-rested mothers and fathers pushing high-end strollers around the parks and cafes; with so much time off for baby care I also guessed that they also had time to develop friendships with other new parents. So much of the American new parent experience is alone--and is often an abrupt shift from the race and hoo-wa of the working experience. We work right up until we give birth and then after the celebratory visits from parents and friends we're left alone in our houses and yards to tend to and fend for a new life. We walk the sidewalks or the aisles of Target often alone. Once I remember being so tired and lonely after a trying day of feeding, changing, rocking, feeding and changing that I just stayed in my husband's green checkered robe all day, and by the time he got home from work I was a mess. What a different scene from those healthy, active, sociable parents I saw in all the parks in Oslo.

I loved learning the transit systems and how clean and dependable the trains, trams, and busses were. They ran often so that we never waited more than 7 minutes as we worked our way east, west, north, and south around the city. Imagine our light rail line times 100.

I loved seeing the Norwegians face the sun. They've had a long winter of dark and snow--record amounts of snowfall--and so with the longer sunny days they sat out on benches and chairs and on blankets on the grass with their necks jutted out and their faces opened to the sun like river turtles on rocks. Seemed everywhere I looked there was a Norwegian sitting beside me with his face up, eyes closed, and an ever-so-slight, Mona Lisa-like grin on his face. I spent a whole afternoon on my own at the Botanical Garden and after walking through the rock gardens, the Japanese Garden, and the Magnolia Grove, I layed out on the grassy knoll with a half-dozen other visitors. A Norwegian man in office clothes rode up to the area on his bike, pulled a rolled blanket out of his bike basket and opened it up onto a spot. Then he proceeded to take off all his clothes--black suitcoat, white buttoned shirt, black pants, socks and shoes--until he was down to his tight white speedo-looking undies, and layed in the sun for about half an hour. I had to chuckle looking over. Then he got up, put back on all his clothes, shook out the grass from his blanket, rolled it up and took off on his bike.

I was out hiking the hills or along the river or down the stairways to the markets every day and I've not set foot off my porch here since I've been back home. I feel tired and sluggish and a little wistful. It's beautiful out and I should be digging in my garden and flower beds. But I don't feel like being industrious just yet.

There is a Norwegian phrase that I've forgotten but that is illustrative of the Norwegian spirit, and it translates to "actively relaxing." It is an intentional spirit of relaxing, a way of planning for the day but with the goal of relaxing--and not having anything to "show" for it. They are big on day picnics that move into building and watching bonfires near the waters at night. They spend a good deal of time sitting and chatting and looking contentedly on all around them. Hours. In their underwear, too, if they like. You'd think I'd have thought more about this phrase before my trip and maybe I have. But when I saw the concept in action I think, in answer to Tim's question, that is what I want to bring back into my life here at home.

Secret passwords

2009-04-28T18:36:00.003-05:00

Tuesday and the teenage kid and I are home alone for the week; K is in Texas for business training. For the first time in our 21 years as parents, we'll have an overlapping of obligations that take us both out of town at the same time. The kid cried out, "Don't worry. I can stay home alone!" I say quickly, "It's against the law to leave a kid under 16 home alone." I have no idea if this is true but it settled him down some. "Besides," I say, "you can't cook all your own meals for a week."

"Who says I would cook? 651-488-8888. Pizza Hut is really great."

Isn't it mind-boggling how many numbers we have to remember in our lives? Used to be that our parents made us remember our phone numbers once we reached a certain age. It helped to remember the sequence of three digits, imagine the dash, followed by four digits. Drove me nuts when some smart aleck grown-up changed the rhythm of that sequence to this: XXXXX-XX. C'mon!

It was a big deal to remember my social security card number for use in college. Because by then I had already committed my bike lock combo to memory, too. 36-6-8. There, now you have it. If you ever recognize my old blue bike and have a yearning to steal something, you've got my number.

Now I have a three-page cheat sheet with all my secret passwords. And for security purposes I have to change those passes at the institution's request to prevent identity theft.

For some time I was using self-invented labels for myself as cornerstones for my passwords. When I turned forty I had the partial password 'newgirl' with some combination of symbols and numbers. When I was forty-three I felt the impulse to write stronger than ever before and so I became 'scribeXX!!' And for that year when I felt I was just trying too hard at everything I changed to 'aimlow101.' How hilarious to see my cheatsheet looking like a listing of all those MySpace IDs: dizzyup girl and brobrau and child of the korn. If hackers could detect my secret feelings--and from the look and sound of me over the years this might not be too hard to do--they could raid my bank account, my Netflix subscription, and my blog sign-in.

But now I'm just sticking with the straight stuff, some unrelated combination of letters and symbols and numbers. My feelings about life still change with the seasons but there's no need to track it through secret passwords anymore. There is no reason to be so covert about my general state of mind. I have friends. And family. And co-workers there for me. I am human, hear me roar.

Sincerely yours,

Adrenaldepletiongirl
piningforvacay2221!

Why not start the new year with spring?

2009-04-13T14:33:00.002-05:00

I'm off on furlough today, my unpaid holiday and debt service to my organization in this rough economy. Though I was itching to do it, I did not check my work e-mail account all day. I woke early, drank tea and browsed through the newspaper, made scrambled eggs with spinach and parmesan, ran some errands, and brought my son in his spanking new white baseball pants to catch the bus for his baseball opener. Opening day! I could tell he was nervous. He went up to brush his teeth and came back down pointing to his upper lip and saying, "I think I might have to start shaving."

I haven't written here for a year. I left this nearly daily practice to pursue a new job. I devoted all my free time to that job application and subsequent seven interviews and after having won it (the job) in May 2008 I took over on July 1. It's a big job with a lot of responsibility and has kept me running ever since. I have lots of ideas to test out, a busy and creative staff, and a challenge to pull our traditional business into the new millennium, despite this rotten economy, which began its downturn right about the time I took over as director. Timing is everything, so true.

I've been keeping a handwritten journal this past year but I found writing this blog to be a better discipline. My journal often is made of scraps of thought and lists of daily activities--not so well-formed--and my blog posts always felt more polished than that. Knowing that there might be a reader out there kept me in line and away from the self-pitying prose my journals often harbored.

But there is this thing about revealing too much of my personal life when I have a relatively public position. What can I easily write about? What lines must I not cross between the personal and the public?

I've been sharing on Facebook but, as a writer, I find it unsatisfying. My life is already filled with bits and pieces and disjointed conversations. Why would I seek more?

So quietly I aim to start back into a few things I used to enjoy so much. For instance, using my body beyond the bent S-shape of an office worker and running, hiking, dancing, gardening. (I really have been devoted to my workstation. Oi vay!) Music. Reading full-fledged novels again. And writing this blog. If you happen to stumble upon Night Editor by chance, say hello. It'll be good to connect again.

No more clickety-click

2008-04-04T09:27:00.001-05:00

I have to go now. I loved doing this and I loved meeting new friends and meeting up with old friends. I loved thinking about what to write and sometimes couldn't wait to hear your reactions. But I have to go now. I've got to put my energies into a few new things and I know I'm going to need all the extra time I can get. I've got you all bookmarked and speed-dialed and all. Call me sometime. It'd be fun to catch up.

Popover Heaven

2008-04-03T16:10:00.003-05:00

There are only two ways to handle fatigue, in my opinion. One is to buck up and forge through it with all the outside help you can get. Strong coffee. Cold, bracing showers. (I once took No-Doze during a teen walkathon, my junior high version of speed.) Or you can give into it slowly, pampering yourself with all the soft and muted accoutrements that will eventually lead you to the Promised Land, where you can finally crawl into bed and sink into the pillows. Accoutrements, you say? Yes. Flannel pajamas for one. How good do they feel to put on before six, when you've had that kind of knock-out day at work? Foot soaks. Easy-reading magazines, like Style and Cigar Aficionado. And comfort food. Hubbie and I seem to be exhausted these days so I treated him to lunch today at the River Room at Macy's. Pink carpets, heavy black chairs, and warm POPOVERS. Best thing to salve a tired body since the mud bath.

Minnesota Twins |

2008-04-01T12:51:00.001-05:00

Gotta love our hometown sidearmer. Hooray for Opening Day!

Starry, Starry Night

2008-03-31T04:07:00.009-05:00

I couldn't sleep so I've gotten up, come downstairs in my nightgown, wrapped the fleece blanket around my shoulders, and turned on the computer. I don't normally suffer from insomnia but I've had enough sleepless nights to know that eyes wide open at 4 a.m. means I probably shouldn't fight it by thrashing in bed. It's too close to our 6 a.m. wake-up call anyway.

I had strange dreams all night and the last one that woke me felt eerily real: I was at a party full of people I didn't know, except I knew ABOUT them. They were the significant others of all the bloggers I read. As I walked through the party I heard familiar tales and names: "so when Heather got depressed the last time, I started seeing a shrink, too"; or "She calls me Non-birding Bill but I actually know a lot more about birds than people think." And every time I wanted to sit down, those people made me say silly phrases like, "Can I sit, for a bit, with my friend, Brad Pitt?"

Last night I had stopped by W. A. Frost for a drink and ordered what my friend ordered: one of those Frost specialties, a Caipirinha, with Cachaca, sugar, and lime. And then I had two of them, on an empty stomach. By the time I got home, I was feeling queazy, and all that sugar and alcohol made my head buzz.

So my body revolted in the middle of the night. It's not terrible waking up in the dark, while everyone else is asleep. The stars are out.

I did salvage the evening for myself by watching ONCE again. I love watching those two sing together: Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Now there's star power.

Did you watch the Academy Awards this year? I loved it when they won the Oscar for Best Song. I loved when Jon Stewart called them back out so Marketa could finish her acceptance speech. But I loved most of all Hansard's closing line at the podium, heavily accented with that thick Irish, "Make Art. Make Art."

Make Art.

Apparently, the title of the movie--ONCE--refers to the many talented artists that writer and director John Carney knew who put off their career by saying "once" they get this and that sorted out, but never succeed because they've put it off too long.

And watching that movie made me think of Jon Hassler. He died last week. There was a line in one of the obituaries that read,

"I finished teaching my 9 o'clock freshman English class and went to the library. I badly needed to write, but I never took a writing course, so I had a lot to learn. I did that by developing boyhood memories into stories."

He was thirty-seven at the time and in his forties before he published his first book.

I keep a few other quotes from Hassler in my computer, under the folder labeled "writing." I have to say he's one of my role models. I met him about ten years after he started writing, just a few years after he took the writer-in-residence position at St. John's University and just after he had published the critically acclaimed LOVE HUNTER. It was summer and I was lucky to have him, Trish Hampl, Judy Delton, and others for a summer of writing, my first serious efforts at creative writing. Jon inspired us all. He was approachable, engaging, encouraging, funny, humble--all those things you want in a teacher. We'd write anything for him. I wrote my first short story with his guidance. He wrote and he spoke and he had us write and then speak and then he sent us away and I walked over to the lakeside cafeteria at Bemidji State and wrote for hours, completely lost in my own words. I don't think I even looked up much and I remember having a backache from bending over my pages for so long. Make art. Make art. My god, it feels so good to make art.

After we all read our work at a public event at the end of the term, he pulled me aside and asked me to come up to his office for a chat. And we had one of those memorable conversations: about art, about work, about life. He encouraged me, gave me his card, and told me to call him if I ever needed help. I didn't have enough money not to work and a few months later I got my first job in publishing.

I finally called him twenty years later. The call was about him, however, not me. I asked him to write a small set of essays for a book we were publishing, and despite his many other demands, his illness, and the little amount of money I was offering him, he said yes. He typed his own letters and always addressed them to me with grace and kindness. He was easy to work with and honest. When I asked him for an essay on a particular theme, he sent one in with the comment: "I don't know if this is what you want. I don't know what else to write." During our work together I heard a few stories about his career, his uneasiness working with the New York scene, his brushes with Hollywood. One story intrigued me: Robert Redford optioned the movie rights to Love Hunter and then called Hassler to talk about the movie. He told Hassler he loved the book but could Hassler change the main character (who has MS) so that he is not sick, could he make the guy healthy. Hassler said no, no he didn't think he could do that. Redford didn't make the movie--and has never made the movie. Some time after that call Hassler got another call, this one from Paul Newman's agent. He could hear Newman in the background. "Mr. Newman would like to make the picture. Is there any way you could get the rights back so Newman can make the picture?" In the background Hassler could hear Newman saying, "Tell him I'LL play the sick guy. Tell him I WANT to play the sick guy."

This week I prepare for a chance at a new venture that might take me further away from my time to make art. I can't burn the candle at both ends for long, the way that many starving artists do, working by day, creating by night. I just burn out too easily. But if I can pull it off a few days a week, writing while the stars are still out, I could make it work. And, when I stop to really think about it, I badly need it to work.

Star Power

2008-03-30T18:43:00.006-05:00

There are only a handful of Hollywood stars I'd like to meet. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, together. Philip Seymour Hoffman, all day if I could. Frances McDormand. Sam Shepard. And George Clooney. There are more, of course. Sofia Coppola. Benicio Del Toro. Vanessa Redgrave. And face it, wouldn't Joan Cusack be a scream?

I was supposed to accompany an author this Tuesday to an interview with KARE-11's Showcase Minnesota. I saw that Aaron Eckhart was scheduled for the same hour. I love Aaron Eckhart! And then the author wrote to say that KARE-11 had posted George Clooney and Rene Zellweger as guests that same morning as well. Seriously, George Clooney! I imagined practicing my lines for the green room. But then I got the message that because George and Renee had been added last minute, our author was bumped--for the next day.

So close. Isn't that funny how when things don't work out you suddenly remember the most inane things from your adolescence? Like, "Close only counts in jarts, darts, and farts." Or how you could spend hours making funny faces in front of the camera? Back before Facebook. Even back when you had to pay for film.

*I took the top picture on the set of the movie Sweet Land. Shot in Montevideo, MN, these star trailers were set up in the farm fields. And the bottom pic is of my daughter and her beau, taken at one of our backyard parties.

Spring is for . . . yeah, well, you know the gig

2008-03-28T09:05:00.003-05:00

If you're looking for a spot to enjoy this weekend, come on over to my neighborhood. See the review of Ran-Ham at Twin City Sidewalks. For a little more sunshine, take a walk south along Hamline, past Highland Parkway, and mozie on over the old stone bridge on the left (at the intersection of Hamline and Edgcumbe Road) to the redone Highland Park/Disc Golf Course. Or if you're in the mood to shop, pop up to Gypsy Moon near the corner of Randolph and Fairview in the old kosher market building across from St. Kate's. I love both her vintage and new items, the feel of the place (a cat or two wander in and out), and her reasonable prices (gifts often under $20).

Spring is for thinking of Summertime

2008-03-26T08:26:00.000-05:00

Excuse me, but screw American Idol. Go here, sit back in your chair, close your eyes, and enjoy.

Spring is for Streaking

2008-03-25T09:21:00.004-05:00

Be careful. It's still a little chilly out there!

See today's story in the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Daily.

Spring is for Taking Inventory

2008-03-24T07:48:00.003-05:00

. . . of your fair-weather clothes

. . . of your fishing gear

. . . of your garden seeds and needs

. . . of your Easter basket loot.

Spring is for waiting

2008-03-21T08:20:00.002-05:00

photo untitled from 2038.cc [via]

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Excerpt from poem "I Am Waiting" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Spring is for poetry

2008-03-20T09:47:00.006-05:00

God's Ode to Creation

Now there shall be tum-tiddly-um, and tum-tiddly-um,
hey—presto! scarlet geranium!
—D.H. Lawrence

Today's the kind of day when I feel good
about that dazzling stuff I've made down there,
everything so mixed up that even lies
turn out to be the truth. The legendary
amaranth, for example, somebody insists
they saw it growing down in Hell, and presto!
not only does it have a genus, and seeds,
but a real chemical formula so everyone
can dye their underwear dark purplish red.
You give me credit for the natural,
flame trees, tansy, sleek dangerous leopards,
and even tiny mites like the golden neotode
worming down into the rich potato plant,
the jerboa, the noon, and the stargazer perch,
but I'm the author of the artificial, too,
those bolts of homespun Khaddar cloth, and guns,
concertos by Mozart, and tiny micro chips.
I've always loved the way the invisible
gets to be visible, my big winds measured
by the Beaufort Scale, so that a sailor
blown off course by Force 11 knows
the velocity of the storm that downed his ship
and understands, as he slowly starves to death
on a rocky desert island without coconut palms,
that the time between new moons, lunation,
is divided into 29 days, 12 hours,
44 minutes and 2.8 seconds.

What glorious precision!
It's too bad, I know you're thinking, that my rules
don't allow me to help that sunburned sailor
and I do regret that a Java sparrow didn't drop
some seeds from the mainland two centuries ago
so that a bunch of fruit trees could take root.
No need to impute malevolence to me,
or even indifference, for I feel bad
about what happens most days, looking down
at another execution in Huntsville,
sighing over another quake in Turkey.
But today the blue planet, wreathed in clouds,
looks extra lovely as it spins through space,
and I want a little praise for my handiwork,
my fleecy altocumulus, my silvery mists,
even that fancy stuff you built for me,
pagodas, skyscrapers, the Eiffel Tower.
Prayers are rare these days—instead I get
millions of poems constructed out of words
that sizzle in three thousand languages,
a few of them paeans, but most ironic jabs.
But do I zap the ones who mock? I don't.
At night I see them sweat and yearn, dreaming
of that one thing I never made, and won't.

Copyright © 2006 Maura Stanton All rights reserved.
from River Styx . For more on the poet, see also here.

Maria (muh-rye-ah), Maria, now that I can handle

2008-03-17T20:54:00.006-05:00

I just finished watching Frida and everything is now back in perspective. Yes, yes, I will learn more about this woman. And Selma Hayek, too. She is on a mission to highlight the women of Mexico in American popular culture, yes?

Our short stay in Lake Maria State Park helped, too. We needed to get out of the city. Friday night I woke in a fright. Seriously. I remembered something I had written in a very important letter. I've been writing so many important letters lately. Letters of recommendation, letters of application. In this one, I don't know even know exactly why I used this particular place name--I really should have used the town name Pazardjik but I was in a rush and couldn't remember it right, so I used Sofia. (Juliloquy, you'll wonder what all this is about. It was a reference to our writing exchange with your Bulgarian and my American students.) So I used Sofia but instead I typed Sophia. And apparently, so did the Washington Post on December 20. I know that because Friday night I leapt out of bed, charged down to the Webster's 3rd International we have open on our credenza, and verified my mistake. It had come up in a dream I was having and in that dream there I saw my spelling error so clearly. Oh Sofia, Sofia! I Wikipedia'd my mistake and saw that the place name is often misspelled--saw even the online Washington Post errata column noting their error, too. Dammit. When I write these important letters I get carried away with my own enthusiasm and then I read the message over and over, forgetting to look over every single letter. It's the message I aim for, not the spellings. I think it's something I've been doing since third grade. One of my elementary teachers wrote on my report card that I was a good student and had a smart way of looking at things but that "Pamela makes careless errors in her work." I am doomed. I trudged back upstairs that midnight eve, not comforted by the fact that I'm not alone in my mistakes. The minute my husband woke the next morning I told him my woes. I hadn't slept well and look, look what I did! He said, "What will they think? Hey, it just shows you're human."

But luckily I was able to move on from Sophia to Maria. We were late pulling in to the park but there was still plenty of daylight when we checked in with the ranger. We forgot that access to the park trails and roads are different in the winter and instead of the quarter-mile hike into our cabin it was a full mile. They quit plowing the access road in winter and instead open it to cross-country skiers. My husband, with his new titanium knee and all, grabbed the plastic sled with our water jug and stove and a few other supplies. I put on the Duluth pack. We ran into a couple who had just stayed two nights in the same cabin and they assured us they had left it very clean and that the hike wasn't too bad, really.

You know how when you go out on an adventure and your traveling companion has something going on--they're afraid of flying or they hate not to be in charge or they suffer from low blood sugar--and you're so aware of this that all you can think of is their handicap or their discomfort and you forget entirely about yourself? It was all I could do to keep my focus on the snowy hill. I was so worried this would be too hard on my husband. Last time we had hiked was in Colorado and he was so cobbled and hitched-up it was a terrible sight to watch. But Sunday he pulled the sled up through the woods and around the bends and we only stopped a few times to catch our breath. I started to see the color come back in his cheeks. We both have been in the house too much lately. We came around the slough and saw the beaver dam and beyond that the simple roofline of the log cabin. When we got there, the wood was stacked neatly against the front landing and inside the cabin the wood floors were gleaming and the cast-iron stove was ready to be lit. We both agreed it hadn't been that long a hike. His knee felt great, he said. I took a deep breath and looked out over the hills. There is something I remember right about Bulgaria. Julie and her students had sent us a care package filled with cassette tapes of themselves and their favorite singers singing Bulgarian folk songs. And postcards of their homeland. And the red-and-white martenitsi: small, decorative pins, made of white and red yarn and worn from March (Marta) 1st until the 22nd of March (or the first time one sees a stork or swallow). The giving of the martenitsi is a Bulgarian tradition for welcoming the upcoming spring. The red and white woven threads are not just decoration, but symbolize the wish for good health, too.

We could have been wearing the martenitsi I kept from that care package. There is nothing like getting away together with an old friend, in the spring. Forget Sophia. Welcome Marta. And Maria, Maria. Now that I can handle.

words, words, enough already with the words

2008-03-13T12:49:00.007-05:00

This is just a fraction of the words I've taken in this Friday. Words, words, enough already with the words. Hubby and I have the weekend to ourselves so we're sneaking away for a cabin stay in one of the state parks. I'm aiming for that Zen state. In fact, I plan to give him the shush symbol every time he tries to strike up a conversation, so sick of words am I. I wonder how long it will be before he throws the aluminum coffeepot at my head?

Word on the street

"Those look like Penitentiary Potatoes," said the woman in line at the Dorothy Day Center.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" asked my husband, who was volunteering on the food line, scooping scalloped potatoes and ham.

"Oh that's a good thing, let me tell you, that IS a good thing" she said.

Mucky math

"Just when I thought my head would explode from trying to figure out delegate math, I’m hit with call-girl math.

The arithmetic of procuring a prostitute who is both experienced and inspirational is even more complicated than the arithmetic of procuring a president who is both experienced and inspirational."--Maureen Dowd, NY Times column, 3/12/08

Two very different claims to fame

When it comes to Guitar Hero, a Minnesota teenager is on top of the world. Chris Chike, 16, is the Guinness World Record holder for the highest score for a song on "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock."--from the Mpls./St. Paul Star Tribune

Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a cofounder of string field theory. . . .--From Papercuts blog

Good God, is it time yet?

17. Is sex possible after knee replacement?
Provided it does not involve chasing your partner around the room (or other obstacle-laden course) at high speeds.--from that notebook they sent home with us

And more sex

"To me, the most sensual food is scrambled eggs with caviar and creme fraiche. You have it on a Sunday morning when you lay in bed. You get up and make it with toast and a little champagne to start the day, and then you can go back to bed and enjoy life again."--quote from chef Daniel Boulud

Pop Not!

2008-03-11T09:02:00.003-05:00

Last week I was anxious and neurotic and sat in front of the tube watching American Idol and munching mindlessly on those Pop Nots! (those half-popped corn kernels I buy in bulk at the co-op). I should have thought of my mom's warning (see other passalong wisdom here) instead of tossing back these insanely addicting but hard-on-the-teeth snacks. She would say, "You be careful. (Her favorite line.) Your body can't do the same things it could at twenty." In her book, that warning counts for skiing, pick-up basketball, late-night partying, working weekends, and, if she knew about it, eating Pop Nots! with abandon.

Sure enough, after many fistfuls of the Pop Nots! I felt a ragged edge at the back of my right molar. And a gap. With a little overhang of old filling jutting over the edge. I must have clamped down on one of those hard kernels and broken off a chunk of my molar at the point of a hidden break or deep crack. Didn't even hurt. Except now it does, but I just don't want to face the pain of a dentist visit. And this terrific post here doesn't help. Oh, here comes another one of my family's sayings, this one from my Grandma Teubert: "Gawd, woman, you are falling apart."

Yeah, have fun with that one

2008-03-10T10:45:00.002-05:00

I got my first Netflix movie Saturday. My daughter gave me the three-month, unlimited subscription for Christmas. I let the boys fill up the queue first: they ordered The Pursuit of Happyness, Transformers, Flags of Our Fathers, etc. My film finally arrived. At breakfast my husband read the CD-sleeve description: "Also known for her controversial politcal and sexual reputation (she was a communist and a bisexual), Frida struggled with a life of wracking pain following an accident, the amputation of a leg, and finally, drug and alcohol abuse that killed her at age 47."

He looked at me and said, "Yeah, have fun with that one."

Monday Morning Report

2008-03-10T08:43:00.008-05:00

How was your weekend? Do your colleagues ask you that on Mondays? A friend of mine works at a place where they never ask her. Another used to have a bunch of colleagues who spent all Monday morning talking over their weekends, one-upping each other with their tales.

I had to work yesterday at a day-long photo shoot, so I took off Friday in exchange, which was perfect since it was the younger kid's 14th birthday. How do I know he's 14? He is now, officially, one inch taller than I. We measured. He got 23 text messages between 11 pm and 1 am; I checked the AT&T phone bill. He quotes lines from The Office at the dinner table. (When I mentioned to both kids that it's amazing how much their generation loves The Office, even when they hadn't worked in a real-live office themselves yet, my son said, "Are there really people like those characters?")

He wanted a "light early breakfast at 8 a.m.," presents, and then all day to play with his presents. He's very exacting about his birthdays. When he was younger he never declared his new birthday age--such as, "Now I'm seven!"--until we had had cake and candles and the birthday song. If someone came over to the house earlier than the cake celebration and said to him, "How do you feel being seven, T?" he'd cry out, "I'm NOT seven YET."

So we had his favorite breakfast and then we gave him his presents, which included one of those new deluxe gaming systems, the one he'd been requesting for months. And then the kid expected to play it immediately. Except:

1. We didn't have the ethernet cable so he could play with his friends online.
2. We wanted to take him shopping to buy a game for it.
3. After shopping at Target, we discover the 7-foot ethernet cable is too short.
4. After a second trip to Target and threading the replacement 14-foot ethernet cable down through the back of our computer station, we find the internet won't connect.
5. Sony's Help Desk line doesn't pick up.
6. Best Buy's Geek Squad line doesn't pick up.
7. Comcast's help line DOES pick up.
8. Internet connection works but online game doesn't.
9. Finally, after reading the 9-point type in the 54-page user's manual, we discover that we need to set up an online account. And because by now the kid is so impatient, he doesn't want me to set up my full adult account with a sub-account for him. "Just set it up once," he implored. It was now noon and his precise birthday plan was fading painfully away. So the Sony research folks can now see that a 46-year-old female in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is all set-up to play Call of Duty 4 with the online name of Timbo.

"It's a fool who plays it cool" and the advice we carry with us

2008-03-06T08:38:00.012-06:00

Why is it still cold and snowy? I know, people don't use the Farmer's Almanac here to forecast the weather. They measure it by the state high school hockey tournament --"Always snows during the tournament"--and that becomes the local wisdom.

And you feel like you'll never make it to spring. Then a little voice in your head calls out something like:

"Keep your chin up. It's not the end of the world."

Maybe your grandmother said it. Maybe your favorite aunt. My grandmother would probably say, "Never liked this place anyway." She was not keen on passing along memorable nuggets of wisdom. You had to learn the moral of the story only after you actually sat through one of her stories.

I've been soliciting a lot of advice from people recently. My friend Klecko quoted me the line above from the Beatles' "Hey Jude." It totally convinced me. It went with the other one from a local dean,

"Be patient and persistent."

Klecko's also the one who said he goes by the un-PC wisdom gleaned from an earlier boss:

"Think like a fat man."

He explained: if one is going to think about how to go about one's job it doesn't hurt to think "how can I get this done well with the least amount of physical effort?" Ha!

But that conflicts with the advice I got back as a teenager, "Work like a banshee," as in,

"Hard work pays off."

There are all kinds of books of quotations and one, The (Girl) Power of Quotations, lists this:

"A lady only chews gum in the privacy of her boudoir." We learned this as kids and at 45 and 46 years old, my sister and I still do not chew gum in public.

My mom wouldn't have told me that one but she would say, "You gotta have a comeback." When my brother and I started to knock up against the mean people of the world, she'd always say, "You need to have some comebacks." One of the things that drew me to my husband, which I didn't realize until some years after we married, is that he is the King of Comebacks. He's got the perfect ones for parenting or for when he's sympathizing with someone having a tough time. Once our daughter came running into the house after a day care teacher had revealed the facts on Santa, and my husband responded, "Good. That's over. I never liked that guy getting all the credit anyway." It stopped her right in her tracks, no tears, just a quizzical look in her eyes and a cocked head. Sort of like, "Well, that was a pretty cool trick you guys just pulled off for the last five years. Huh." I have never really mastered the art of that but I always think about it when someone tears at me pretty hard. (Bud Light designed a whole ad campaign on the art of the comeback: dude! Dude! DUDE!)

Seems I must have put stock in some of those nuggets of wisdom by the looks of my daughter's writing. See her "Advice to a daughter" here.

See that picture above? That's me at 21, about to launch out into the world. My parents and I had spent the summer at Big Wolf Lake while my dad and I took classes at Bemidji State. This is one of those typical weekend mornings spent drinking coffee and waking up to the sights on the lake. My aunt loves this picture because we're all so relaxed.

It never went like this: "Mom, Dad, can I talk to you about something?" Nope. Dad would sense something was wrong and then he'd talk to mom and during this summer at the lake I slept in the front room of this tiny cabin with only a floral chintz curtain for a door and I could hear them talking about me. And then in the morning as we sat around drinking coffee, thinking about starting our day, mom would say something like, "Let me tell you a story . . ." and then she'd pair up her own coming-of-age story with whatever she thought I was feeling and when she was done Dad might say, "Nothing we can do about it now, let's go make breakfast." Funny thing is, they often never got around to asking me what the matter was.

Once, I had this powerful dream. I had just learned of my great great-grandmother, a Native American woman of the Wisconsin Winnebago tribe, a single mother, an independent landowner. In my own life, I had been struggling through a lot for months and I felt alone in the world, kind of drowning. I was torn at work and torn among my many other roles in life. I'm not normally a dream-watcher and I tend to run on the Margaret Thatcher-side of mystical. But in my dream this great great-grandmother with the dark long hair spoke to me and said, simply, only these words: "You belong here."

Wisdom can be passed along and it doesn't have to rhyme and it doesn't have to be witty. Sometimes all it has to be is spoken at the right time, with love, plain and simple.

Tenuous Connections

2008-03-04T09:56:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I read a piece in the Paper Cuts blog about Philip B. Heymann, an author and former deputy attorney general under Clinton, who wrote a book on civil liberties and national security called Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning without War. The blog guest columnist Barry Gewen calls the book a standout. I’ve been paying closer attention to the issues of national security and freedom these days and have just subscribed to the outstanding Virginia Quarterly Review, in part due to their new issue on human rights. Check it out here. I’m very interested in learning about the details of our role in the world and those questions that Gewen poses so well: “The really interesting issues dwell in that difficult gray area where one is left wondering whether a particular curb on our freedom increases our security against terrorism, and if the sacrifice is worth it. This is not a realm for absolutists.” When I’m on my own, especially, I like to hang around in the gray areas, see where I really come up.

And that link to Heymann reminded me that he was the first author I published almost twenty-five years ago. He co-authored a book that was one of the first to analyze another first: the use of the insanity defense in a murder trial. The book, The Murder Trial of Wilbur Jackson, used gruesome photos of the crime scene (and this way before CSI and Cold Case and Law & Order SVU) and I remember weighing how many of them to put in, how far to go with the display of murder evidence in what was planned to be a classroom text. It was the days of keylining and Penta typesetting and I had to hand-crop all those 8 x 10-inch glossies of dead bodies and such.

I also had to design the interior text and the cover. I was trained-in by someone who lived by the constraints of the Penta system and her own limited design skills. “Never use more than two typefaces in a book, inside and out,” she told me. No gray area there. And then she gave me a list of typeface pairs and told me never to deviate. Palatino and Optima. Times Roman and Helvetica.

Here’s the amateur cover, still intact after all these years. You can see I followed her advice. Of course, now I know that rules and rulemakers are made to be questioned. There is tradition, yes, and that can act as a framework, yes. But in book publishing, as in life, there is plenty of room in the gray areas. Learning to navigate comes from sound advice, skill, training, and most of all, careful practice.

Season End

2008-03-03T22:22:00.005-06:00

These boys they grow up fast. This is a shot I snuck of the locker room action a few years back. I wouldn't even be allowed past the back hallway now that they're fourteen and up.

Ah, god, hockey is finally over. The Bantam team lost a tight game and the chance to advance to the regionals; final score 2-1, with the winning goal coming on a power play in the last two minutes of the third period.

Later that night, after the kid had showered and eaten, I asked him how he felt. He said, "Why do you parents always ask questions like that? How do you think I feel? We lost the game in the last two minutes on a stupid penalty."

Okay.

The secular rite of passage in these parts is the Bantam A tradition, when the coaches take all the boys out for a steak dinner at Manny's. Manny's. (I'm not even going to comment on the well-hung steer they have fronting their home page.) We chip in $30 and the good-looking young coaches, who all have good day jobs and get an additional salary to coach the kids, cover the rest. My son asked if he could order the double Porterhouse but they all said no. The kid is rarely seen without a pair of sweats and a tee-shirt so I took him out for a little shopping. We ended up with some nice black slacks and a Perry Ellis button-down. He was sharp. I forgot to take a picture.

So they all get together last Friday night at the local arena and pile into their coaches' cars, subwoofers and stereos blasting. The staff at Manny's is ready for all 17 of them. The kid said they had one waiter assigned just to them and he "worked them." The owner came out, apparently, and discreetly asked a regular if he wanted to take a different table in another room. The kids were on their good behavior but I don't blame the guy for saying yes. He moved. The waiter took them all into the back and showed them the cuts of beef and the live lobsters. They ordered appetizers to share and most of them had big steaks. They passed around large plates of fried onions and mashed potatoes and hash browns. Across the way, Brad Childress was cinching the deal with the wide receiver from Chicago, Bernard Berrian, and a few of the teens got up and asked them both for their autographs.

T. said the bill came to a thousand dollars after dessert and the tip was $225. Tim said it was the most amazing meal he had ever had and then said to me, "I had a taste of the good life tonight."

Uh-oh.

Lie, lady, lie

2008-03-03T15:40:00.003-06:00

Mary Schmich, a Chicago Tribune columnist, recently wrote a column that began:

"Which of the following sentences is correct?

I am going to lay down under my desk and weep.

I am going to lie down under my desk and weep."

If you're a writer or an editor, it's good reading. She talks about her newsroom copy editor, who despite his "intellectual finesse," couldn't remember the right usage of lie v. lay. She says,

When someone with his intellectual finesse confuses "lie" and "lay," it's obvious that the distinction has been lost to all but the crotchety few.

And she explains further:

I blame the defeat of "lie" on the rise of yoga. Or maybe yoga class is simply where I've accepted recently that it's time for purists like me (purists such as me? such as I?) to surrender.

"Lay down on your backs for bridge pose."

"Lay down on your bellies for cobra pose."

I've heard yoga teachers say those things thousands of times. And thousands of times I've wanted to shout, "No!"

I've wanted to leap up and explain that "to lie" is to recline, "to lay" is to place.

You lay your yoga mat on the floor. Then you lie down.

It's true. Our language changes all the time. When my kids used to ask for grammar advice I'd look up a rule or two. But now I ask them to read a sentence aloud or break it apart. And then I say, "Keep it if it sounds right."

What my own Mrs. Gray--my aged seventh-grade grammar teacher, the one who wore wool, two-piece skirt suits and weighed about a hundred pounds, twelve of which were devoted to the stacked and teased hair bun on top of her head--would say about the new slackening of rules. She would say, "It will sound right if it is right. You will will learn to recognize right with practice."

There are days I wish she worked in the office next to mine. I could fritter away the rest of a long Monday afternoon picking her brain with all kinds of persnickety questions.

Frozen Grand Central

2008-02-29T12:11:00.001-06:00

Speaking of human kinetics (baseball and all), even if you're not feeling particularly athletic, you could still pull off this bodily feat, yes?

My own body this week has been either Stop or Go. Frozen or frenetic. That song by Johnny Cash and the Carters is a good one to sing about now: Life is like a mountain railroad, with an engineer that’s brave;
We must make the run successful, from the cradle to the grave;
Watch the curves, the fills, the tunnels; never falter, never quail;
Keep your hand upon the throttle, and your eye upon the rail.

It's the weekend and I plan to do a lot of this: yoga. Have a good one.

And thanks, Julie, for the link!

and more baseball

2008-02-27T12:32:00.004-06:00

Baseball is just around the corner and, despite the recent trades and congressional hearings, we have nothing to complain about. We still have these guys to watch.

(AP photo)

baseball is just around the corner

2008-02-26T21:28:00.001-06:00

The Twins open their 2008 Spring Training home schedule at Hammond Stadium this Friday, February 29 at 7:05 p.m. (Eastern) hosting the Boston Red Sox.

See "Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star," by Tom Swift, to get the story of an American Indian baseball player and Hall of Famer who grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. The publisher, the University of Nebraska Press, calls this book a "portrait of greatness . . . of how a celebrated man thrived while carrying an untold weight on his shoulders."

Momma's Quarter Jar

2008-02-23T09:05:00.014-06:00

I've been too busy to write much lately. A typesetter friend of mine has been overworked and she wrote me, "Even my fingers are tired." But if you write yourself, you know how even if you can't find time to write, topics bubble up during your day: the lunar eclipse makes you think of the first time you felt people may be watching down on you from another world; the "Norm '08" bumper sticker you saw and the dinner conversations you imagine at that house; and this section from John Gardner's guide for novelists:

"Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections); obstinancy and tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true) ; childishness . . . ; a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both . . . ; a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarassing earnestness . . . ; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instbility; recklessness. . . ."

Gardner's list goes on. And we wonder: how does he know our extended families so well?

The practice of swearing has come up in my thoughts, and I don't mean so much in the way a Presbyterian pastor ponders about how to address the problem in his Sunday sermon, but that I've been thinking about my doing too much of it lately. And then it--swearing; a certain four-letter word, that is--has made the headlines with the restaging of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Instead of using the work "f***ing," the earlier staged versions used the euphemisms "ducking" and "rutting."

My daughter came by to visit us and shared some good stories about the first- and second-graders she tutors at an inner-city charter school, a job she has with the America Reads program. Last week they celebrated their 100th day of learning by bringing in 100 multicolored balloons filled with air and letting the kids jump on and pop all the balloons before class. My daughter has a short video of the glee on her cell phone.

The kids have many behavioral problems and psychological issues but the staff is committed to mediation and self-awareness. There is a "peace rug" out in the hall and if two students get into it, they first have to go try to work it out on the peace rug. One bubbly but rambunctious kid sometimes gets himself so worked up that he raises his hand and shouts out, "I need a break, need a break. I'm sending my own self for a break on the peace rug."

And after a discussion about being good, one second-grader said to my daughter, "You should see my mom's quarter jar. It's already half-full and it's a big jar." She said it was her mom's cussing jar and did her mom ever swear a lot.

If I kept a quarter jar these past weeks we'd all have a heyday at the arcades. Last week, when it got so cold that the streets were coated with that black ice, my son and I were heading down Highland Parkway going about twenty when a woman in front of us started backing down the middle of the street. I was so surprised by her white tail lights that it didn't quite register I was about to hit her. She was completely oblivious that she was on a city street and here we were heading right for her back end. I slammed on my brakes and the anti-lock mechanism ground round and round and we kept skidding ahead and because I was worried about us and ticked off at this oblivious driver and thinking how I don't need to deal with a car accident right now I let out with "Fuck!" (That word--a first from me in front of my son.) And then the driver put on her brakes and we came to a stop about two feet behind her. When I looked over at my son he wasn't looking at the near-miss at all but over at me. With that look that is a mix of surprise and clear disappointment.

I remember when my dad first said that word. He had been swearing in front of me for years, but mostly just the drawn-out, completely frustrated version of "Jeezus Kee-rist." But one day he was working under the hood of my brother's Chevy Nova and it was hot and the engine had been acting up and my dad was always cracking his tender, balding head on something--the chandelier, the bottom edge of the corner cupboard. And so this day he went to straighten up and must have forgot his head was under the propped hood and he cracked that bald head again. And there it came. One loud, "F***!" He didn't even look over at me but I knew he was embarassed I had heard.

And I remember the talk of my neighborhood on an air base in Oklahoma, when the little four-year-old came out with a phrase everyone was sure he had picked up from his parents. Someone had souped up an old car and was showing off its style, its speed, up and down the street. The moms were worried--would this be a regular disturbance? The dads were fairly impressed--that car could go fast and loud. And then the owner did a fast sprint on the road behind the houses and that tow-headed four-year-old, who had been watching from his dining room window, came running out pointing, and said, "Look at that little mother fucker go."

Once when my daughter was five and in her pious stage, and my husband was on the road a lot, I went in to her daycare for the nightly pick-up. Someone was out casing cars and saw mine--and that I had left my briefcase in the front seat. When we came out, my passenger window had been shattered and my briefcase with all my money and ID were stolen. It was very frightening for us. I know I swore mildly under my breath. When we got home I realized they had also taken my house key, which was on a different chain and in the pocket of my purse, so then I worried about them breaking into our home, too. The next day, when we were getting gas at SuperAmerica, our window fixed up with Saran Wrap and packing tape, the car in front of us took off without paying. The store clerks came running out threatening and shaking their fists at the air. I turned to my young daughter and said, "I'm sorry you've had to see all these terrible things this weekend." She looked at me and said, "That's okay, Mommy. But what's really bad for me is that you swore three times this weekend. I counted" And she looked at me accusingly.

So it's very funny that I also ran across this short video of an interview with George Clooney. Because in it he describes how as a kid he was sure he was going to break out with that certain four-letter word in his father's newsroom, with all the world watching. I swear--no really, I do--that I'm going to do the same thing sometime at the most inappropriate moments: job interviews, my kids' band concerts. . . . I better watch it. Maybe I'll get my own quarter jar.

Young Love

2008-02-21T08:53:00.004-06:00

My mom and dad just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Here they are, as seniors in high school (Mom, 1957; Dad, 1954).

Don't you wish you had known your parents when they were young adults, just entering the wide-open stage of the world?

Post-President’s Day Report

2008-02-19T09:44:00.005-06:00

Best YouTube video of the week: Charlie Bit Me. My son and I had some time together this weekend; he was working on his big History Day project; I was tending house. We must have pulled up this video three times in the course of the weekend, and then spent the rest of the time trying to master that little boy’s British accent. Here’s the part that amazes me: despite the little brother’s clamping down on his older brother’s pointer finger—until it “really hurts, Charlie”—the older bro never slugs him, never pushes him.

My own brother learned to talk in England. He was born in Hunstanton during my father and mother’s first Air Force assignment overseas. Then, the three of them moved to El Paso, Texas, where I was born and where I learned to talk. My mother tells of bringing us out to public places and I would have this heavy Texas drawl while toddling around in diapers (the way I would say “play” in three long syllables, like Paula Dean) and my brother would have this proper Queen’s English accent, and the Texas folks found that just so funny. However charming, I promise you that if I had bit my older brother like that Charlie, he would have dropped his proper British manners and pushed me to the floor.

Best drink of the week: Sapphire Bombay Gin martini, Il Vesco Vino. Could it be that it was our first evening out in a month, my husband and me? That it was Valentine’s Day and we planned for a brief foray out in the cold for a martini and a few small bites—my settling on the cod fritters, he going for the seared tuna with capers? That I got to curl up with my book, John Gardner’s On Becoming A Novelist, with one of the four truffles my husband had bought me at Just Truffles? Because really, that martini sustained me all evening.

Best TV of the week: A River Runs Through It, replayed on TMC. I forgot how much I was taken with Brad Pitt in this, before the whole overexposed Aniston/Jolie affairs.

Best mail of the week: My son’s acceptance letter to one of the three high schools he’s waiting to hear from. Next two due up this Saturday.

Best meal of the week: Those braised short ribs. We made them Saturday, letting them stew in the oven crock all afternoon. A mom from my son’s hockey team said last night, “What were you guys cooking Saturday?” She had given my son a ride to practice that day. I told her short ribs. She said, “I could just smell the herbs and spices on your son when he came in the car. And then I’m sure I embarrassed him because I said to him, in front of all the other kids, ‘You smell luscious, T.’”

The apprentice

2008-02-17T11:26:00.006-06:00

There is a perfect weekend in winter--the one when you don't have much scheduled, your two men are at home and your daughter promises to stop by for a lunch together. The house is cozy, albeit messy, and the cupboards are full. The teen kid has been easy-going and we have been together a lot lately: shoveling sidewalks, playing Scrabble (me pointing out the possibility for "drivel," which used up all his letters and added a double-word score thereby putting him ahead for the win by just four--I mock him and say your win was based only on drivel!), and cooking together.

Our house is known for big weekend breakfasts. Big, cholesterol-laden brunches with homemade buttermilk biscuits and thick-cut bacon, and fried eggs, over-medium. My son likes to cook and so we are teaching him a few standbys. He stood by the stove Saturday, watching the bacon sizzle, and said, "But how do you have the patience to watch this bacon fry?" He is a techno-multitasker; that is, he can play PSP in one hand, hold the TV remote control in another, all the while watching for text messages on his new cell phone. But I needed to show him what cooks do "in the meantime."

"You don't just watch it, you do other things to get ready for the meal," I say. "Like set out the jam for toast and bring out the eggs to cook from room temperature."

"Can I just go in and watch TV, then?" he asks.

"No, you can leave rising bread unattended or a pot of soup, mostly, but you probably shouldn't walk away from frying bacon."

"Dad does," he says.

"Yeah, well, Dad also once let your sister fall into the ice fishing hole. Only one leg fell through, but still," I say. He knows I'm joking. Mostly.

"Or a cook could read," he says.

"Of course, a cook could read." And so I sorted through a few cookbooks for a cake recipe while he sat nearby, drinking his hot cocoa and reading a novel about baseball.

I love these weekends.

And even if you don't have a lover tonight . . .

2008-02-14T08:58:00.007-06:00

Valentine's Day is a day for love: "Book-love, I say again, lasts throughout life, it never flags or fails, but, like Beauty itself, is a joy forever." The Anatomy of Bibliomana Vol.II - Holbrook Jackson

Check out these love books, as seen variously at the Book Design Review blog.

Saucy short ribs, sex on the side

2008-02-13T14:51:00.005-06:00

This is mark bittman's attempt at soft porn, I guess. His come-hither poses don't get me but these short ribs do.

It's a good thing we can give food for Valentine's because it seems that's all we have on our minds these days. From MNSPEAK, in "Signs of Spring," editors ask: "Are there any other signs that winter is about to start its inevitable retreat?" Readers respond:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know that winter is NOT almost over because I'm still eating everything in my path. I bought one of those 330 piece licorice buckets from Costco and I can't stop eating it. When spring is coming around, some sort of seasonal vanity kicks in and I start eating horrible foods like salads and fruit.

»» Submitted by »»» nateek at 8:53 PM on February 12

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I agree with nateek, I'm still wearing my fat pants so it is definitely still winter. Of course the two bagels I had for breakfast might have something to do with the fat pants too...

»» Submitted by »»» mb21 at 9:31 PM on February 12

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Cat, nothing says I'm glad you were born like a bag of bugels and a can of cheez whiz.

»» Submitted by »»» PwrGeek at 10:05 PM on February 12

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I'm with Nate. I'm like a human composter right now. anything and everything.

pasty white
pants fell tight
hey...is that a fudge delight?
mmmm....good night.

»» Submitted by grote at 10:20 PM on February 12

Cold Metal Kissing

2008-02-12T11:58:00.000-06:00

This is my last winter life posting for awhile, I promise.

Remember the winter flagpole scene in A Christmas Story?

In Schoolhouses of Minnesota, Minnesota writer Jim Heynen writes "How to Kiss a Flagpole":

"What is the optimum time of day for flagpole kissing? Wait until the morning bell has rung and everyone else is inside. This will guarantee a sustained fifteen-minute flagpole kiss before anyone misses you. Then the real excitement begins. They'll try everything: soothing talk, encouragement to breathe really hot air, and cups of warm water poured continuously on the area of contact. Ideally, the fire department will come with sirens blaring and then use blowtorches to heat the flagpole below and above the kiss-point."

Now, think of the tongue-sticking on this cold thing:

Minus Thirteen and Sunny: Winter life continued

2008-02-10T09:48:00.000-06:00

"Ice fishing" by Niki Grangruth (niki.grangruth@gmail.com) [via]

Clark, the Canadian Hockey Goalie

2008-02-09T12:06:00.001-06:00

It's Hockey Day in Minnesota and even if you don't want to step out into this cold, snowy day, you can watch hockey all day on FSN. But you can also catch this video of Clark, the MVP Canadian goalie, which was shown to me by my own 13-yr-old defenseman. And he warns, "there's a lot of the Canadian version of the 'F' word in it, but it's hilarious."

Winter Palace

2008-02-08T09:25:00.000-06:00

I'm thinking of NOT leaving my winter palace this weekend, much less building myself a new one out of ice and snow. But if you're out and about and crazy about winter life, you could check out this castle, built by James Westin, in his Edina backyard. His castle will be open to visitors tonight and tomorrow and all donations go to Habitat for Humanity. [via]

Photo Craig Lassig/Minnesota Sun Newspapers

Winter Life

2008-02-07T09:53:00.000-06:00

The big snowflakes this morning were lovely but on my drive in I was feeling a little tired of winter already. It's only early February!

You too may be tired of the bleak skies and crusty snow but read the tales--here of sheep farming and here of snowshoeing and cross-country skiing the North Shore--by these hearty Minnesotans and you just might feel rejuvenated.

O v. C: Still on the fence after Fat Tuesday?

2008-02-06T09:56:00.000-06:00

This article by Gary Kamiya in Salon starts out:

"I've been leaning toward Barack Obama ever since the presidential race began. But until recently, I haven't been ready to make a final decision. I admit that I was initially drawn to him primarily because of his race: As a black man offering racial peace, he promised a kind of national healing, a chance to both symbolically and literally affirm that America can overcome its greatest divide."

I, too, am still on the fence, but reading pieces like this helps me figure things out.

Citizen parties

2008-02-05T08:42:00.000-06:00

Please

And then,

Quote of the day, from The Old Foodie:"[The cocktail hour] The pause between the errors and trials of the day and the hopes of the night. (Herbert Hoover)"

Mary-go-round, Mardi Gras, photo by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Carnival or Indianos on the Island of Palma

Men at Carnival in Rio

Their town, our town

2008-02-04T15:56:00.000-06:00

On the way home yesterday, I read the essay by Nathaniel Rich in the New York Times about his native Manhattan, how it now resembles so much of American “mall culture,” with Crate and Barrels and Gaps filling three floors of real estate on many of the prime streets, bankers and investors occupying the rest. He mourned the loss of New York’s bohemia, and was glad he now lived in Brooklyn, where he could find comfort in the unique and modest spaces that don’t cater to the world’s tourists.

It does stink that, from city to city, what you might find is exactly what you might find at our own MOA. Bright lights, long walls of sectioned windows, spiral staircases, sales on cue in January and July. The patrons might be better dressed or darker skinned but the wares are still the same.

I was on the plane home from five days in Manhattan where I worked a table at a writing conference. The young woman next to me was a kind of Britney Act-a-like. She had shiny long hair and wore those really big sunglasses with the rows of rhinestones on the side. When she got tired she would fling her head on the fold-down tray in front of her, splaying her thick hair to both sides so that it hung on my tray, too. She fixed her make-up three times during the flight and would turn to me with random questions like, “Did you have fun in New York?” and “Are you scared to fly?” When I asked her about the places she had visited she told me Chinatown and then said, “There were some serious smells there.”

Before we took off she spoke on her cell phone with great exasperation:

“Where will you be? Where will I find you? Is this a surprise? Why won’t you tell me?”

And then she turned to her writing friend beside her and said, “I think he’s going to spring it. I really do. And I don’t have any tissues and I look like butt. I really look like butt.” Her friend, who was quite plain, told her she looked beautiful. They were both from southern Minnesota and had made the trek to New York for the writing conference, too.

She told her friend that she would never had gotten involved with this guy if she had known he was in the service. When the friend asked her where her boyfriend was stationed, she said, “Iraq. It’s a bitch. But we’re writers, right? We can handle crazy.” And then she said:

“He doesn’t believe in anything I do and I don’t believe in anything he does.”

When we landed in Minneapolis and we all turned on our phones, hers rang again:

“What do you mean hurry? WHERE ARE YOU?,” she screamed. “Okay, okay I’ll walk to the baggage claim but can’t I stop and have a cigarette first? Okay, okay, I’m just kidding.”

When we all got to the lower level baggage carousel there he was, holding up a big hand-colored sign on white poster board. I didn’t make out the front side but as she got closer to him he flipped it over to the words “Marry Me” and then he got down on one knee and proposed to her. She said yes and we all clapped. Her friends had come with him and they took pictures of the scene. The old couple next to me had only heard the clapping and seen the camera flashes so they said, “Someone is sure happy to be home.” I told them he had just proposed and the woman asked, “Did he get down on one knee?”

* * * * *

It was a cleaner, sparklier New York since the last time I had visited. I was too busy to poke around much but I did have a fun time. On my first day, after I had checked-in and unloaded the exhibit gear, I took a walk near Broadway. A man came up to me and said I should take his ticket to Spring Awakenings, that he had double-booked himself and was going to see the Letterman show. He said it was intermission now but I could walk over in time to see the second act—-it was really good. I knew it was good; I’ve been following that play. So I knew enough of the plot and if I was going to catch only the second act of any play, this would be it. Besides, all those Tony nominations! And at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. I had never been. It was the perfect New York moment. Of course I went. It was amazing and Jonathon Groff, who plays Melchior, was unbelievably good. The whole cast was! I felt the need to explain to the two women on either side of me—-in our terrific seats three rows from the stage—-why a man sat there for the first act and me for the second (as if we were frugal Midwesterners who couldn’t afford two full seats). But I didn’t.

One of my colleagues was in town for a day on a separate matter so we met for dinner at Resto, a warm and inviting Belgian restaurant. The beer list! We split the beef cheeks roasted with fries in a cast-iron crock, and another hot crock, this one filled to the rim with steaming clams in white sauce. Perfect! Then we took the #6 back up to Midtown to have a drink at The Algonquin Hotel. The famous writers don’t take up residence much there anymore but the infamous cats in the lobby still do. We drank Benedictine and ate decadent chocolate cake.

On Saturday morning, I took a long walk in Central Park. I hiked under the bridges and around the zoo and by the Wollman Rink. There, in the bright Saturday morning sunshine, were loads of kids—-some taking figure skating lessons and some playing in Mite hockey games. Parents filled the bleachers at one end, where I overlooked the scene from the viewing level above. As one team of Mites came skating with the puck towards the end, a parent shouted out: “Tackle him!” A few people laughed but a young guy with a blue jacket with, simply, “COACH” on the back, shouted back, “Sir, we do NOT tackle in hockey. Seriously.”

I bought a shiny green ring at a gallery on 7th and, because it was my last night and I wanted to get away from the writer’s crowd, I asked the two shy guys behind the counter where a person could go for a quiet drink. One said, “Are you willing to go to Connecticut?” and they both chuckled. Then the same one said he liked a place on 2nd Avenue. “And there are tables there so you can sit down. I don’t know about you, but I like to sit down at a table.” I told him, “I do. Sometimes when I sit at a bar my feet dangle and I feel like a kid.” Then the other guy, a noticeably short, rather sit-com character kind of guy, said, “I like to sit at a bar. It makes me feel like I’m up there with the rest of the adults.” The one gave me the address and told me to ask for Philly. He said she was an artist behind the bar: “It would be a disgrace if you went in and ordered a beer," he said. "It’d be like going to the Met and saying, ‘Oh look at how well they’ve painted the walls.” So there I was, heading over in a taxi, following the advice of two strangers, looking for a woman named Philly. But he was right. She took good care of me, the place was cozy and intimate, and I sat by the window, watching the couples walk by, drinking my good drinks, taking notes in my little red journal.

*photo by Sheila O'Malley. For my New York photos, see her website.

2008 St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Sculptures

2008-01-29T09:05:00.001-06:00

I know, I know, it's cold again. But think of all the Winter Carnival sculptors spared the agony of watching that precious ice melt. . . .

Sunday down time

2008-01-27T13:44:00.001-06:00

It's Sunday afternoon and my husband is upstairs going through the motions of the knee machine (sigh of relief when leg is lifted and set into the faux wool lining; grimace and teeth-gritting when the knee is bent up). Today he was able to sustain a bend of a hundred degrees.

Yesterday we watched a bit of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which are being held here in St. Paul. "Hey," I asked, "do you want to go out later for a little Bob Costas sighting?" He tried to humor me back. I give him a 9.7 for effort. I thought about his body--our bodies--as I watched the pairs skating and then I wondered what he thought; those Olympic-caliber athletes pushing their bodies through triple lutzes and the most amazing spins and him trying to decide whether or not he can walk with one crutch yet.

The treat for ourselves last night: orders of Steamed Pork Bao (dumplings) with slivered ginger and steamed cabbage, and sesame chicken from Grand Shanghai. Delivered! I took mine with a glass of Summit India Pale Ale. He took his with a side of Percocet and Visteral. We both relaxed some. We watched the rerun of the denim episode on Project Runway and counted the number of times Ricky cried.

Speaking of reality tv . . . I've been thinking about scars and that reminded me about Padma Lakshmi, the host on Top Chef. The scar on her arm has been widely

discussed and plays a part, I think, in her mystique. One can imagine Salman Rushdie writing of it, even after their divorce. And then there's Joaquin Phoenix. That scar on his lip, with him since birth, is sometimes mesmerizing. You know it comes up in casting sessions.

I was examining Ken's long scar and was thinking about how that scar is going to resonate with us long after the staples have been pulled out. We will think about the way we held hands in the holding room at the hospital, we will remember how we covered it with Glad ziplock bags so he could shower. That scar will remind him of the pain and then it will fade away, but from time to time will evoke memory and maybe tenderness. Scars do that for me. The one on my mother's forehead, the one she's ashamed to show--she requests that her hairdresser leave her front curls long so she can pull them over that long scar. She fell out of a car when she was very young and has been covering that now-faded scar some sixty years.

There's the scar across the bridge of my daughter's nose, the scar she got when she was fighting over a heavy Tonka truck with Eric Jon Bredesen at toddler care and he got so frustrated with her he just let go of his end of that tug-of-war. The yellow metal came rushing back at her face and cut her between the eyes. It's small but I still notice it.

My own scars, the ones on my skin, are limited. I have one I got when the surgeon had to lance open a non-recluse brown spider bite on my arm; I had gotten it sometime during the night on a camping trip. My mom noticed all the redness and swelling when I came down a few days later in my sleeveless nightgown and she saw the poison was not only up to my shoulder but had started to come back down towards my heart. Dad rushed me to the flight surgeon at the air base and he lanced that sucker open with the finesse of a sushi chef. And there is the scar from that farm horse who kicked me in the shin (exactly as I had been warned); the scars on the side of my thigh where I fell in high school running the low hurdles, landing with a skid on the old-style track turf, made up of ground-up rocks and rubber; and of course, the scars of childbirth, the ones we're supposed to call our medals of honor.

* * *

I leave Wednesday for a long business trip to Manhattan. I'm trying to organize the house and schedules so that my husband can manage on his own for a few days before my daughter comes over to help. I've got the hockey games listed on the calendar, along with all the notes for next week's "spirit days" at my son's school. I've got quick-make meals in the freezer and a jump on the laundry and bills.

This time I'm not pre-planning a thing for my trip. I'll sit at my publisher's table, mingle, sell the press, and then walk the city on my time off. I'm not planning a side trip to any museums or tourist sites. As my colleague, who just returned from NYC himself, says, the city will be my museum. I've been reading Patricia Hampl and she writes of one of her favorite cities: "[Prague] is a loved city, loved by its residents and by those who visit it. A Western tourist feels quite alone in Prague; it is an exhilarating, surprising sesation. . . . It is a good city for walking; and walking is a good way to feel love."

Heave-ho!

2008-01-23T12:18:00.000-06:00

Awhile back a friend of mine told the story of how she cared for her sick and dying dog, Boo. Boo was on his last legs, literally, and couldn't really do the long stairs to my friend's upstairs bedroom. But Boo really wanted to sleep near his owner and she really wanted to sleep near him. Every night she would hoist Boo, a big blonde labrador, up the twenty steep stairs. Every morning, she would carry Boo down, carrying him like he was in one of those Coast Guard rescue carryalls, his front and back paws gathered together under him. He'd sometimes turn his long nose towards her during his carry and lick her neck or her cheek.

One night my friend was very weary and just flopped into bed after changing out of her work clothes. In the middle of the night she woke up to the panicky sound of her dog crooning and crying. Boo had been left downstairs and he was frightened. Out of a dead sleep my friend jumped up from bed, bolted down the long stairwell, picked up her heavy old dog, trudged back upstairs, and laid him down on the rug by the bedside. And then she sat at the foot of her bed, breathing so heavily she thought she was going to have a heart attack.

I thought of this scene yesterday, our first full day home from the hospital. I had work e-mails to check on and respond to, my husband's three meals and snacks, my son's History Day project resources to pick up at two different St. Paul libraries, a home health care assessment, three of my husband's knee workouts on the perpetual motion machine, one set of assisted exercises, two stints on the Game Ready ice machine, an orthodontist appointment for the kid, and his sports practice. At about five p.m. I said I just had to lie down awhile. Wow, I fell fast and hard asleep and didn't wake up until I heard my husband outside the little bedroom, shouting that Tim was downstairs and couldn't get in. Last I had left my husband he was strapped into the motion machine. He must have unstrapped himself, heaved over his legs, got up on his crutches fast, and come to get me. Meanwhile, my son is pounding on the door like there's no tomorrow. I jumped up so fast my head got dizzy and then I ran down those stairs to open the door. The kid just walked past me mad; he had been standing on the porch for ten minutes, wearing his practice shorts under his coat.

I just sat on the last step of the hallway, heaving and hoeing, trying to catch my breath like those firefighters who first come out of a smokey building.

I know some of you out there reading this are home with newborns and are probably thinking, that's nothing. Let me tell you about MY day. . . . But really, I thought I was going to fall apart for just a little minute there.

Blitzed out/blissed out

2008-01-22T23:33:00.000-06:00

I'm sure when the double dose of painkillers hits, my husband feels a little like this.

Got any drugs to go with that knee replacement?

2008-01-21T08:17:00.000-06:00

Holy cow, that was something. The hubby finally comes home today, five days after getting his knee replaced. His doctor is an atypical surgeon, that is, gentle, kind, understated. After the surgery, which took longer than expected, he came out to say, "The x-rays didn't project how bad his knee was. I had to bear down and dig in. But he had a bad knee before and he has a good one now." The doc had to spend time getting rid of a lot of bone spurs and realigning the leg from the severe arthritis that had developed around the knee.

Needless to say, the patient was in a lot of pain and to top things off, the self-administered IV machine of morphine-like dope shut down for an 90 minutes the day after surgery so it took the staff about five hours to get back on top of things. As they say on the ward, "You gotta stay ahead of the pain." And they hadn't. At one low point, as my husband is fighting the pain, one of the charge nurses leaned over and said something about why men don't have children and that he needed to breathe through the pain as women do during labor. The look on his face was something, "Oh no you di-int throw the labor card at me."

I have the walker, the transfer bench for the shower/tub, the cane (which I must return for a different one, apparently), the raised toilet seat, the perpetual motion machine, the game ready ice maker, the new pillows and bed rest, and a gift certificate for some meals to be prepared by Sociale in Highland. Friends are bringing by a "meat-and-potatoes" dinner tonight. We'll bring it upstairs where he'll have to camp out for the first week, since our only bathroom is up the 23 steps to our second floor. All I wish go well right now is him getting up those 23 steps today!

While he was in the hospital, he got notice for federal jury duty. I'll have to figure out how to get him out of that one. No driving for three weeks.

Man, I don't know how people cope with serious illness and disability. I have the upmost respect for their will and strength.

The Soon-to-Be Bionic Husband

2008-01-16T09:00:00.000-06:00

The Big Guy goes under the knife at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday for a knee replacement. He'll come home Sunday with a new titanium knee. I'll be at home for the week following, trying my best to care for him. We both agree this will be the 159th test to our marriage.

I can't wait for him to have a new lease on life and ease the pain of this bad knee (which has been, well, you know those teaching skeletons and their bone-on-bone joints, without any cartilage or ligaments? That's his knee except imagine a bunch of knicks and chips on the socket, like Goodwill china), which has been hobbling him for a long, long time now.

Except for the money, we are very much alike

2008-01-15T14:43:00.000-06:00

Steve Jobs made the news again today when he unveiled his newest, superslim laptop.

When I submitted my picture to one of those celebrity look-a-like websites, they told me I looked most like Steve Jobs.

(Well, maybe they meant Steve Jobs at 25, at left.)

Bundling Up

2008-01-15T09:17:00.000-06:00

It's minus 12 with the windchill this morning and I need a new hat. I left my favorite beret in Denver, I think. I have a great knit beanie for play but I need a new hat for work.

These are the ones I like:

I've been walking every day at lunch, going up Summit or Portland or Marshall Avenues to Dale Street and back. Today I have some knit yoga pants to wear under my jeans, but I think they'll be rather bulky. I'll feel like Rhoda Morganstern trying to make it through the Minnesota winters, big thighs and all.

In Fargo, I admired these boots worn by one of the moms, whose all-time favorite clothing site is Athleta. They're having a sale now so you should check them out. I like this Athleta Snuggle Scarf, too, which has a slit on one side so you can easily pull one end through the other. I like the brown version better. . . .

In a few weeks I'll be at the AWP Conference in NYC. I'm sure it'll be cold so while I'm out getting my new hat, I should keep in mind these cold weather fashion tips, from the Village Voice.

Otherwise, my windchill-addled side might have me going to NYC like this: