why I keep trying

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I ♥ Wes Anderson (MOONRISE KINGDOM IN DA HIZZOUSE!!!)

This may be the best Wes Anderson ever. There will be no review, but I will tell you a few things that I loved.

raccoon patch (badge?) of the Khaki Scouts

the canoes

the tents

those dark green canvas tents we had to use when I was a kid at summer camp in Charlevoix, Michigan and how they would not repel water when it rained

the smell of mildew (actually hate this, but it’s a stark memory; the first time I smelled it was at summer camp)

Edward Norton’s character

the two lead actors

Bill Murray’s face

Bill Murray’s naked belly

Billy Murray’s hair

the inside of the sheriff’s trailer (SO MUCH!)

smoking

Gogol Bordello (oops, that wasn’t in the movie)

the Benjamin Britten, Hank Williams, Mark Mothersbaugh, et al, soundtrack

the Burnell family (okay, you don’t know what that means or who they are, but trust me, they belong in this post)

growing up in the 1960s and 70s and how much Wes Anderson seems to understand this about me

death

the repeated motifs of death and loss and love in Anderson’s movies

recognizing the Ocean House at Watch Hill near the end of the movie

crisp writing

attention to detail

clear vision

trusting the audience’s intelligence

I went to the movie having seen a trailer for it only once and that was a few months ago. I recommend the same. In fact, you shouldn’t even be reading this post.

I loved going over the fine flaws in the film with Hubby afterward. I love knowing that the flaws don’t matter, even the more gross ones, because its heart, its heart, its heart is in the right place and we trust Wes Anderson.

My kids being at the movie, sitting behind us, getting the movie. Getting it and asking to see it again, asap.

The trailer for Sleeper that was played before the movie because Amherst Arts Cinema will be doing a Woody Allen retrospective this summer. Knowing how shitty his last movie was in spite of people falling all over themselves saying how great it was and what a return to form. How shitty his new movie looks even though I’ve never been to Rome. BUT BUT BUT, I am trying to trust that his old stuff will please, oh god, please, stand the test of time so I can go to see some of those movies again on the big screen, what a gift, I hope I hope I hope. We used to watch several of these films at home when we still had a VCR player. We had about 5 of his really good films. I remember that Hannah and Her Sisters was busted and wouldn’t play anyway. What to do with all of this waste, this plastic, this human folly? But I digress….

the little plastic record player that is featured in the film and is built and folds into its own case so cleverly. You already know I didn’t have one of those growing up, remember?

C’est tout, mes petites….

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kitchen mysteries

I opened the silverware drawer this morning and to my horror, the tea spoons were facing in opposite directions. GHASTLY!

I recently wrote that I don’t allow the same knife to be used for the butter and the jam, cross-contamination of substances being what it is. Other family members engage in this behavior, as you may recall. They even use the same knife for jam and peanut butter. YES, it’s true, and I know you are trembling at this horrible news. I didn’t tell you about the peanut butter and jam in that last post, but now you know what kind of household I live in.

You remember the butter devil, too, right?

Once you are unloading the dishwasher and putting away the silverware, why you wouldn’t let all the spoons nest together? It makes them happy. It makes me happy. It conserves space. It is sensible. It is the only way, the tao of the kitchen.

On another note, when I searched google images for spoons in a drawer, I came up across a few surprises. Lookie here:

I know what you’re thinking. HOW is it possible to make one tool that measures tablespoon, teaspoon, 1/2 teaspoon, 1/4 spoon?

Kitchen mysteries. Dare ya.

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maybe you’ve noticed

These last few weeks have been no exception to a sea of changes that seemed to coincide with the start of my blog, January 01, 2011.

You may recall that my youngest graduated from the 8th Grade less than 2 weeks ago. You may recall that I am peri-menopausal, if not outright menopausal (don’t hold your breath, you have to go a WHOLE YEAR without a period before you are considered good enough to be fully old, crone-like, ancient menopausal). You may remember that we had 2 cats get killed within 6 months of each other. You may also remember that Hubby and I celebrated 21 years of marriage recently.

Completing 8th Grade in a Waldorf school is a BIG DEAL, I have stated before. I mean to write a nice, long, lovely post about this, but in some way I am uninspired.

To be honest, as yours truly is want to be, 20 years, and now 21 years of marriage, has been a monumental time of change for me and Hubby. We have always striven to make our relationship better and stronger, to dig deep in when things haven’t worked, but some remnants of old stuff have been getting in the way so Hubby and I find ourselves delving again, deeply and fundamentally. Why do I tell this here? For one, it’s a cultural taboo to talk about these things, at least until you’ve earned about 40 or 50 years in. Then, everyone is all ears about how do you make a marriage work and how did you do it and what is your best advice to young newlyweds.

Sometimes I think my poetry has dried up, but it’s not true, I write quite a bit. Sometimes I think I’m a bad mom. Sometimes I think that the garlic scape growing out of the compost bin is the loveliest thing in my life. Not only because garlic scapes are beautiful curled green things, but because there’s some accident there—I did not plant garlic in my compost bin.

I want to post poems here, I want to save them, I want to gnash my teeth. I want to scream at the poetry that gets published in respectable journals, I want to shout fuck you to name-dropping authors who are full of themselves and whose essays barely touch the surface of human experience.

I wanted to tell you about the ladybug that hitched a ride on the top tube of my new bike yesterday, my virgin ride on it, how I felt blessed, but how I was just trying to find an excuse that the world makes sense.

I did want to share about my cracked rib, but I didn’t want to divulge how it happened. I told a few people as the subject came up, but I hemmed and hawed with most people who asked.

I am not shy, so let’s say it involved a massage table, which has a very hard surface after all, and let’s say it involved sex and let’s say I’m being honest.

My right side has been feeling pained, deep intense pain like when you get the wind knocked out of you.

the solar plexus

When I was a little girl, in preschool or maybe kindergarten, at the little private school I attended for kids with high IQs in a suburb of Detroit, I remember getting the wind knocked out of me and going to see the nurse. Her name was Mim, we called her that at least, and I remember a white nurse’s hat and pink stripes, maybe even white shoes; somehow I associate her with the color pink. I loved her. I remember a stick of ammonia, smelling salts. I remember lying down in the nurse’s room more than once. How much I loved her and now, when I think of that time, how small I see myself, tiny and sad of heart.

I will write again. I will post poems, but maybe not my latest poems. I will save them for the waters or maybe for paper.

Sometimes poems reveal things and sometimes poems hide things and sometimes the time for either has not yet come.

This is me, one of the first photos I ever took of myself in a mirror (I found another one from earlier, when I still lived in the dorms at Kent State). This photo is from October, 1983, in a house I rented with 4 other people, Lake Street, Kent, Ohio. We found out my father had cancer in August 1983. One of many beginnings of growing up too soon and also one of many times when I wasn’t ready to let go of that tiny girl inside.

Remember to pay attention. You might miss something otherwise.

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cracked rib?

I think I have one.

A fact about me: I’ve never broken a bone in my body. I don’t think anything is broken, but I also don’t think it’s simple bruising.

I am right-handed and it’s my right side, but this (sitting, typing) isn’t bothering me at all. It’s more the cumulative overdoing. I think I can blog.

Happened Thursday and has gotten progressively more painful and limiting. But maybe it’s more painful because I still went to yoga class Thursday evening. I couldn’t do much cobra, but I did everything else. Friday, I can’t remember much of what I did.

Annie has been sick and awake in the middle of the night needing all sorts of things, so that doesn’t help. Two nights in-a-row so far. I’ve still been fighting off a weird virus myself, on-again, off-again. A mild cough, pathetic actually, it’s so small.

Ibuprofin and aspirin and ice packs. When I feel better, I do a lot. I hate to be too lazy. Okay, I used to hate to be lazy but that was before I started my blog.

Now will try to soak in those good Dead Sea salts I buy cheap from a company in Oregon. I have been buying my massage oils and essential oils and Dead Sea salts from them for over 20 years. I can’t say I’m crazy about their website, but I can say I’m crazy about their selection and prices.

I don’t have any birch oil, but birch oil is good for aches and pains. Now you know.

Here is a skeleton for you. 

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some moms do

I confess that I don’t allow the same butter knife to be used for buttering toast and dipping into the jam jar. At least while I’m looking. Once my daughter pointed out that a particular mom-friend of ours did allow this. I feel secure in my method, no matter how unsound.

I cannot compare myself to my own mother. When I was growing up, she came into my school, at least once, and did a talk about being from Germany for International Night. Okay, I made the last part up, but it’s the best I can recollect. Maybe it was during the day and we were studying Europe.

My mom was the only one who ever mowed the lawn. Maybe my brother did, too, once he was a teenager. I’ll have to ask him.

My father was the one who grilled the steaks. I don’t think we ate hamburgers from the grill. I am not sure why. I think because my parents were European and they didn’t know how these things were done in the US.

I was what you call a “picky eater” when I was young, but I think it’s an unfair label.

There are many things I won’t eat; I’m not adventurous like some of my friends. But I’ve come around to some degree.

Back in Kent, Ohio, I had a massage client who traveled the world for her job. She is the one who taught me that it is rude to turn down food you are offered when visiting a foreign country. This may be one reason I’m averse to traveling to certain places. She told me the 2 strangest things she ever ate were 1. pickled reindeer horn (Sweden?) and 2. monkey brain (China). Am I making this up? I don’t think so, but sometimes details are sketchy. She was a cool person, very energetic, blond, sexy. She lived in an underground house, built into the side of a hill. Someone gave her a clock made of a cast-iron frying pan and she felt obliged to put it on her wall, but she hated it. She drove a red Saab, a rare sight in Kent. A couple of years after she became a client of mine, she had a terrible car accident, was hit sideways by an 18-wheeler. Her car was slammed into the center-guard rail on the interstate. One of her MDs told her she was millimeters away from becoming completely paralyzed from the neck down. She came out okay. I could tell you more that I remember, but I’m sure this is one of those things that is not mine to tell—I’ve already revealed a lot. It’s just so interesting. I will never forget some of those details.

I feel young and hip because I recently put a little streak of reddish-pink into my hair (I believe the official name is “candy apple red”). This is from last week; the color has already faded out more. Last night, I put a faint purple tint in, but, to my surprise, I don’t like it as much.

I’m sure no one reading this would EVER click on the photo and use the close-up feature to try to look at my pores. To my horror, this is possible so I’ve begun to make sure you can’t do this. Because my pores are not my best feature.

What is my best feature you ask? My sparkling personality, of course.

♥ ♥ ♥

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labor aid

Before the birth of my first daughter, my midwife gave me a recipe for LABOR AID, a concoction that was supposed to help keep me hydrated and energized during the whole of labor and childbirth. Paul must have made the batch of it up at some point, I don’t really remember, but it is one of the best things I can think of from an otherwise long and exhausting birth (I still haven’t told you my birth stories. Some day maybe).

I have been trying to find an adequate recipe for a home-made energy drink since I’ve started biking again. I tend to be more dehydrated than most people, not sure why; add to that the intense heat this spring and I often find myself thirsty and head-achy even on days I’m not working out. I know I need support in the form of fluids and minerals. I feel it deep down in myself and high up in my light-headed brain. It’s a familiar place which seems to go hand-in-hand somehow with sleep-deprivation, depression, and anemia.

Here’s the rough labor aid recipe I’ve been making of late. My youngest kid, the baker, has the job of helping to make this when I call for it. She pulls out the funnel, strainer, lemons, maple syrup, and sea salt, as well as the old green glass Sunsweet Prune Juice jar from my childhood. And away we go….

Labor Aid or Sports Drink Recipe:

juice of 3 lemons

1/4 C maple syrup (you already know we use local, because, well, we can)

1/2 tsp sea salt (I use whatever we have in the cupboard, but I am partial to pink ♥ varieties)

4-5 C water

Put it all in an appropriate refrigerator jar or pitcher, whatever you’ve got. My old green glass jar, from my childhood, is my favorite. It holds 40 oz. of liquid, it’s skinny to fit better in our crammed fridge; it rocks. Shake. Refrigerate. Shake again and drink at will. Enjoy. Make more.

Notes:

Recently, someone told me that Celtic sea salt has the highest concentration of minerals of all sea salts. I haven’t heeded the advice yet, so fuck me. That’s how one gets to be in labor (eventually) in the first place.

When I searched on teh internets, I found that many recipes call for adding 1 or 2 crushed Ca-Mg tablets. You make your stuff, I’ll make mine. They also said you can just drink some Emergen-C as a substitute for Gatorade. So fuck me again.

Sometimes I strain the lemon juice, sometimes not. I like pulp, but running the juice through a sieve makes the process of getting rid of the abundant seeds a lot easier.

I have used this for taking my Fe supplements when I’m anemic. Fe is better absorbed when taken with something acidic, so this drink is a good way of getting that synergistic Vitamin C at the same time.

Here’s a photo I lifted off of google images because it was so much easier than taking a photo of my own bottle. When Hubby and I used to go on road trips, I’d make up a big batch of raspberry iced tea and put it in one of these jars, oh god, that was good stuff! I used to have a clear glass bottle and a brown one, too. I think my mom still has another green one like this. You can find them at antique malls and junk shops. Of course, the lid on mine has been replaced, the old ones are usually rusted. I think baby food jar lids fit. My current bottle has a lid from maraschino cherries which makes a mind-blowing combination of childhood glass memories.

I could tell a story about how one of my green glass bottles broke one winter. It involves hot coffee, about 8 inches of snow on the back porch, my eager scientific mind, and my desire for my frozen-blended coffee drink double-fast.

Anyway, let me know what you think and feel free to share your own recipes. I’ll be waiting! Love, twinkly

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swamped!

Yo! My youngest is in the midst of her last week (ever) at her school. Completing your 8th Grade year is a Big Deal in a Waldorf school. I am swamped with all manner of details and loose ends, not to mention that I went to not one, but two (YES, TWO!!!), poetry readings already this week (only one was an open mic; the other, I sat dutifully and listened).

I want to share so many things with you, dear readers, but it will be a few more days before I can catch my breath.

I leave you with this perennial favorite for any end-of-the-school-year. This is the same as the version I had on my very own 45. Now get out your invisible mic and belt it out with Lulu:

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Gogol Bordello, Boston, June 1, 2012

Hubby, my older daughter, and I went to see Gogol Bordello in Boston last night. I figured out a little bit more why this is the best live band I’ve ever seen, and, when you go, the best live band you will ever see. It is their interaction with and inclusion of the audience in every move they make on stage. That’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the overarching ones.

One of my favorite things last night happened after the concert. We were driving back home on I-90 and we stopped at a rest stop to grab a bite to eat (I try, I really do. I had a cooler and food bag packed with healthy stuff, but McDonald’s fries and coffee won out in the end). While waiting in line, a 20-something man noticed my [new] Gogol Bordello t-shirt and asked, “Were you at the show?” He was in a state of bewilderment, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, a halo of bliss above his head. I answered that yes, I’d been at the show. We began to chat. It was nice to see the reverence in his face, the gears clicking in his head trying to figure out how it was possible for such a band to exist.

I also struck up a quick conversation, still in line at McDonald’s, with a teenage girl (14-years old, maybe) who had the same happy, dazed look on her face.

“Did you just come from the concert?” I asked.

“Yes. Weren’t they amazing?” she asked.

“Yes.” I answered, and: “Had you seen them before?”

“No, have you? Does he tour a lot?”

It was all so endearing.

♦ ♦ ♦

Just 2 hours ago, I bought tickets to see Gogol Bordello on Lake Champlain for a mid-August concert. This time, I’m going for it. Up in front of the stage with all the pretty young women and raving young men. RIGHT UP FRONT. That’ll be me backstage, the only sober person in a throng of groupies trying to share a bottle of wine with the band. Maybe Eugene will let me massage his hands. Or forearms. Or the twisted erector spinae muscles of his back. Yeah, that’s how fantasies work around here: me massaging famous rock stars.

It’s like my kid, clucking at me to Stop it, Mom when I was bounding, fleet-foot, up the aisle last night, dancing around, twirling my new t-shirt in the air. Nobody cares, Violet. Nobody cares what I am doing. They are not looking at me. She danced next to me the whole concert, her face glowing and carefree, safe with her parents, buoyed up by the good will all around her.

I’m here to be happy, to fill the empty spaces with energy and heat and vibration. Just like that band up there, biding our time and asking everyone to join in the ecstatic moments.

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It was 21 years ago today…

♥

Algonquin Park, Ontario, perhaps 1989

♥

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