Could it Possibly Be Any Hotter and Stickier?

And to top it off, our new air conditioning system broke this morning. So my legs are sticking to the chair and I'm sweating. Not merely glowing.

Will has a new friend, Noel. It's really his first friendship, and he's infatuated. He and Noel run around all morning together in preschool camp. We've heard several times how Will and Noel spotted a cat in a tree the other day. Will brought a half-deflated Trader Joe's balloon to camp to show Noel, asked me if Noel could come to Maine with us, asked if Noel could come over to see our cat, and said he'll miss Noel when camp is over. Conversation in the car on the way to camp:

Jack (skeptically): He sure talks about Noel a lot now. How did he make friends with Noel?

Me: Well, since he's sitting right next to you and not doing much, why don't you ask him?

Jack: Will, how did you make friends with Noel?

Will: Well . . . I went to camp. Noel and William (Noel's brother) were there. And now we're friends.

So there ya go.

Tomorrow I'll be busy packing, and we leave Friday morning. Wouldn't you know the heat wave will break just as we go Down East. Murphy's Law, and all that, whoever Murphy was. Have a happy week, dear readers.

Wild Blueberry Bushes in the Sun

Wild blueberry bushes in the sun have a certain spicy scent that I love, less cloying than lavender and utterly envigorating. You always know you can reach the mountaintop when you come across that scent. On our Maine vacations, when we weren't hiking we were clambering over the rocks on the beach, for miles. Who needs sand, anyway? We felt like we could go on forever, that we would never tire of the perching, jumping, and climbing up again. And again and again.

And when it rained? The old cabins we rented were full of the owner's discarded treasures and books. The very best was a cylinder Victrola. We listened to songs from the 1930s on it, especially "Catch that Tiger" and a song with the words, "Yabba dabba doo, the monkeys in the zoo." As a child I always read anything I could get my hands on, and the musty books were always entertainment enough for me, whether they were the original Pollyanna books, obsolete Girl Scout handbooks, or P. G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster series, all of which I remember reading.

The town of Ellsworth, on Mt. Desert Island, had a blueberry pancake breakfast one Saturday, in which cheerful volunteers scooped cupfuls of batter out of garbage cans to splat on the griddle. Pancakes eaten outside are always delicious, but with Maine blueberries, they are just too good. Look away, vegetarians, but every vacation we had to boil the obligatory lobster. I don't remember the lobster crawling around on the kitchen floor a la Annie Hall, but it was all quite a delightful ordeal of delayed gratification. Crack the various parts. Carefully, tediously, extract the tender flesh. Dip that little piece in butter. Now you can eat it. Do it all over again for the next little piece.

Even the leaky rowboats and bee stings have a gauze of nostalgia over them, I suppose because my mother and my brother David are gone. Did I tell you that we forgot our bickering on these vacations? And that we all helped with the dishes and the sweeping?

Eight Days until Maine

Joe Miller, here's the recipe for the Apricot-Almond Cobbler. And we've gotten two more pounds of apricots this week. I'll make some other apricot dessert this Saturday for when my brother and father come over.

A big thanks to Scrivener for recommending my blog here (see #4). I think I may have a couple more readers now. Blogging away in obscurity is fine with me, but welcome aboard, everyone. He nows says he did that so that I would post more often. Jo(e) is right, he is a pest.

Here's a list of things that I was thinking about last night.

A Few Things I Dislike

When Jack puts his lips on the kitchen countertop and blows, creating a loud farting sound

Having to admit that the child yelling "My penis is peeing!" in the swimming pool is mine

Camp that is only 2 1/2 hours long

Taking two kids to two different camp locations for camp that is only 2 1/2 hours long

When my declawed cat scratched a visitor's bare legs, drawing blood. The hind claws still work just dandy.

Knowing that we have to clean out bucketsfull (is that a word?) of ancient cedar shake debris from our attic. (We neglected to cover our stuff up there when we got two old roofs taken off and a new one put on.)

A Few Things I Like

My husband putting away the dishes and loading the dishwasher

Jack and Will kissing and hugging each other

Friends who will drive five hours or more, with two small kids, just to visit us for 24 hours

The anticpated coolness and fresh air of Maine in August

Memories of childhood vacations spent in Maine

Having a DVD player in the van (so much for those simple vacations of yore)

Fantasizing about going here next summer

Two Pounds of Fresh Apricots and Two Geeks

Two pounds of fresh apricots are waiting patiently in my red Pyrex bowl (like the bowl my mother used to have) to be made into an apricot-almond cobbler today. The apricots just arrived in the CSA on Wednesday, and our friends Scott, Kathy and their children are coming to visit today from Virginia. The convergence of the apricots and our friends makes me giddy, since all are so delicious and rarely experienced by us.

I had a post all written the other day but then I lost it when I tried to save it because we were having DSL problems and I ignored my geek husband's advice. It was about how John (geek husband) wanted to go to the Tyler Arboretum last Sunday. This shocked me, but I soon learned it was so he could try out his new GPS tracker. Hmmpph. Did I say he is a geek? It wasn't as horrible a distraction from nature as I had feared. I think he got it for our trip to Maine in two weeks, although I might find it handy if I ever go to the King of Prussia mall again. I'd like to not have to use the car's alarm function just in order to find where I parked. Even better, though, is my plan to never go to the King of Prussia Mall.

Speaking of geeks, I have to tell you that when I was in college in the late 1970's "geek" meant "not Greek," as in not affiliated with a fraternity or sorority. That was all it meant. And "nerd" was a new word, I guess, which is probably why the Roches spelled it wrong on their album "Nurds," which came out in that era (like James Beard spelled "pasta" "paste" in an early 1970s cookbook, instead of just calling it "macaroni" like like all the other Americans). And yes, I was a geek in that non-Greek sense of the word, along with the Indian students, pimply ROTC members, gay artists posing as straight chemistry majors, and confused malnourished transfers who smoked. Anyway, what are the students at my college called now if they're not in a frat or sorority? PWSHGACs? People Who Should Have Gone to Another College?

Well, it's back to those beautiful apricots.

Not really, that last sentence was an awkward attempt at closure. Sometimes I forget this is a blog. What I'm really going to do is throw the dead lightning bugs out of Jack and Will's bug catcher, which is on the kitchen table next to the cat. Then I'm going to push the cat off the table. Then, yes, I'll clean the table. Give me some credit.

Meet Our Imaginary Friends

I have an imaginary son named Bill, who always washes his hands quickly before dinner, using just the right amount of soap, and who trots obediently up to his bath when he's asked, never lying down on the stairs or insisting that I carry or drag him. Or so I told Jack when he asked me if I had any imaginary friends. Jack and Will share their imagary friends, Jubie Vicdaria (a boy) and Christopher Zero (a girl). The other night all four of them, Jack, Will, Jubie, and Christopher, all visited yet another friend, Asworth, who lives in Hawaii. They took me with them, which was nice. A significant part of the visit involved Will and Jack lying on top of me on the sofa. There was some confusion as to who got to be Asworth, so each boy played their own Asworth. It all worked out, Asworth being a rather sketchy, amorphous character, a kindly host residing in the shadows. At some point it was revealed that he is Aslan's cousin (from the Narnia stories), but none of us quite knew what to do with that information, so we disbanded the game before returning home, so I guess that means we're still all in Hawaii.

Jack will often tell me about "Jubie's World," where instead of green traffic lights they have purple, and where they speak a special language. In Jubie's world, children are permitted to do lots of things they can't do in our world. Last night John was asked to give Jubie a bath, which he was pleased to do. The IFs don't seem to eat, but Jack and Will's bunnies do, so they sit at the breakfast table propped up against the wall, and we give them tiny bowls of cereal. (The boys both sleep with their bunnies, but I don't know where the IFs sleep.)

Realism does rear its ugly head now and again. Will, as he was finishing his lunch yesterday, remarked, "We're meat. We're built out of meat." As he cheerfully polished off a piece of ham.

Next to Godliness

No matter how good you think Ben and Jerry's ice cream is, it is not "homemade." And neither are the vast majority of products you can find in the supermarket, as everyone knows. The word did well with focus groups and that's why it is slapped liberally on food labels. One of the great things about web commerce is that you can actually buy homemade stuff because the artisan can market the product directly. To just randomly choose one of these entrepreneurs, oh, hmmm, let me see . . . let's take my brother Dan's Southside Soap. He really makes this in his home and has done so for years. Big, textured herbal-smelling chunks of real honest soap that clean ya real good, I can testify. He has also made ale, beer, mead, dog food, yogurt, lamps out of PVC pipe, and curtain rods out of copper tubing, thankfully none of which are offered for sale on the web. The mead is fermenting on his kitchen counter now, in an enormous bottle, to be consumed by knights and ladies in the mid distant future.

So if you're dirty, or if you're clean but running out of soap, or need to restock your gift supplies with unique but inexpensive consumables, then what's not to like about my brother's soap, eh?

Summer: Chapter One

I'm going to try to not think about last week. No preschool, no camp, no patience, and I had to get the house ready for weekend guests, no small feat. My routineless boys bonded a lot, let's say a whole lot. Jack and Will have developed their own shorthand. "Oh-ee, oh-ee, oh-ee, oh,ee," when yelled by Jack in the house seems to mean "Run around throwing things while yelling. When Mommy and Daddy show anger, laugh maniacally." Another one of these coded commands is "Jane has cut the pie too small." No idea where this came from, but when proclaimed at loud volume, while spinning around holding a potentially dangerous kitchen implement, it seems to indicate "Let's stop Mommy and Daddy from having a conversation by doing whatever it takes. Anything goes."

Last Tuesday when John was at his class (Why ever did I have to give him those clippings about grad program open houses last fall, anyway?), Will pooped in his underpants and peed copiously on their bedroom rug. Poop in the underwear must be dealt with immediately, thoroughly, and carefully. Jack was instigating mayhem and throwing his clothes up into the ceiling fan, and running into the bathroom where I was with Will and flailing, causing poop to smear in unwanted places. I cursed something awful, loudly, which Jack decided to repeat for several following nights whenever I was in the bathroom with Will.

I've been reading my grandfather's letters now and again, and in one letter to my mother, who was home with me (toddler) and my brother David (infant), he assures her she is a good mother. Sometimes I need that assurance, too. Now that the boys are excited about their half-day camp, we have more structure, and I've got some time to myself. Except for Will pushing all the neatly folded laundry off the dining room table yesterday and me screaming bloody murder, it's been a good week so far. Last night when they were getting crazy, I started playing my yoga DVD and they were mesmerized. Jack was even doing some of the positions, especially Warrior Two.

About that Weird Fish Paste in a Tube they Sell at Ikea

Don't buy it. That picture on the tube of a child smilingly taking a bite out of a cracker loaded with the stuff? Why do you think they used a drawing instead of a photo?

Anyhoozy, I want to share a poem with you that I wrote in sixth grade, April 27, 1970, to be exact. I found it going through family papers. I was attending Augusta Country Day School in Augusta, Georgia that year, and only for that year. That year I had two fabulous friends. Hilary was English and Chris was another Army brat, from Massachusetts. The rest of the girls were Southern belles in training. Hilary, Chris and I climbed trees, eschewed the blue eyshadow all the other girls were wearing, and got straight A's. It was my last year of childlike oblivion. A month after writing this poem we moved to Germany, where I soon attended a large American school with grades 7-12. Mannheim American High School was a place where I was certain I'd be crucified for wearing saddle shoes and white socks, and the innocence such clothing signified.

This poem must have been the result of an assignment on "something you learned from your mother." I do know my mother had slammed a few doors by the time I wrote this, contrary to the poem's claim. This poem is filled with lies, fake dialogue, clumsy versification, and drift of thesis, but at least I make fun of my own attempt in the last line. The footnote is original. Don't know why I had to make my brother Dan sound like a demented fairy. (On second thought, maybe I wrote this just for the hell of it, because there's no grade or mark of any kind.)

Patience--A Lesson Learned

Patience certainly is a thing I admire my my mother for.
For I have never heard or seen her madly slam a door.
Once my brother got his glider stuck up in a tree,
He kicked and screamed and yelled quite loud, and also bruised his knee.
My mother just then came rushing out
To see what all it was about.
"Why Dan, your glider's in the tree!"
"I know, I know, painfully said he.
My mother suggested then and there
To send a rock into the air
And that is just what he did do,
And hit the glider that 'twas brand new.
The glider then turned round and round
And soon fell, twirling, to the ground.
"La, la, de, da, oh happy day!"
That's what I heard my brother say.
And the moral of this story is,
Don't fly your gliders near the triz.*

*In other words, trees.

Sum Sum Summertime

Montessori is out for the summer, so I took Will out of his part-time child care as well. I started off the season by getting pinkeye in both eyes and twisting my back a little.

Yesterday we rescued some great chaise-lounges from my Dad's. He was going to have the "junk man" take them away before closing on his house. After we clean the heck out of the chaises, which are moldy and dusty, and my eyes and back are all better, I'm going to restart summer.

Summer for us is so all about the pool. Every community around here has its own pool. You have to live within strict geographic limits to join. So ours is, natch, the Swarthmore Swim Club. It's not fancy by any means but it's very pleasant indeed. A friend of mine, who just moved out of Swarthmore to West Chester (to pursue the dream of a large suburban house on a cul de sac, with one whole acre of yard) used to complain that the Swarthmore Swim Club was clique-ish. To which I say, of course it is, it's the Swarthmore Swim Club, for Pete's sake. We go for the pool, and we see a number of people we know, and the number is higher every year, and I really don't care whether there are cliques or not. I don't want to be in a clique myself, but if other people do, that's their problem. There was a time when such things would have bothered me.

Our routine is this: we plop our stuff down on the grass kind of behind the best spots, which are inevitably covered with other people's towels, clothes, newspapers, and other detritus. The boys take their shirts and sandals off, and we all go in the "big" pool (shallow end). Then someone migrates to the baby pool, they go back and forth between the pools, etc. At their ages, 3 and 5, I need to watch them to a certain extent, but I can socialize a little or read something light.

After a while comes the request that I dread: "Can we play Battleship?" The swim club has seen fit to keep lots of board games for the members to use, bless their souls. So one of the boys gets the game, we set it on the towels, and I pretend that we are actually going to play this in a civilized manner, following the rules, until someone wins. Will's too young to focus, but he likes to move the ships around randomly on the board, which is no good. Jack likes to play, and could probably play a whole game, if only he wasn't playing against Will and me. I try to keep things together, but sitting on a towel for a period of time moving little pegs around on a little board that is constantly tipping over gets old. So I try to find a distraction. "Hey, there's Alex! Wouldn't you like to get back in the pool with him?"

Some of the mothers don't go in the water, but my rule is to get completely wet at least once every hour. Otherwise, what's the point? My mother had a helmet-like "hairdo" that she got every week at the hairdresser, and so she never put her head underwater. You couldn't splash anywhere near her, either. It was hard to for all of us to live with her tenous, fragile hairstyle. I believe I think of her every time I dunk my head under.

Another joke for you, this time from Will:

What did the turtle say to the banana?

Nothing.

Boyz at the Pool

Husband and sons at the pool and I just got home early from the Philadelphia Writers' Conference.

Yesterday: two sessions were fantastic. Jane Eisner was the keynote. She writes the syndicated column American Rhythms. Another very interesting session was on publishing nonfiction books, which was given by Foster Winans. Winans was writing for the Wall Street Journal in the early 1980s, when he got busted for insider trading. After 8 1/2 months in prison, he dusted himself off and wrote a best-selling, well reviewed book on . . . insider trading (Trading Secrets). A few years later he wrote fictionalized sequels to The Little House on the Prairie. Next? A memoir called From the Big House to the Little House. Har. I made that up.

Then an abysmal, condescending session on memoir that I want to forget as soon as possible, and a useless, sleep-inducing one on magazine writing. Thank goodness I came back, because all of today's sessions were great. Jonathan Maberry, who heads up The Writer's Room in Bucks county, and who has unpredictably become an expert on vampires, talked about how to get editors to read your magazine queries and book proposals. He's pragmatic, efficient, ruthless, and persistent. Whereas I've been dreamy, inefficient, tentative, and sporadic. Also attended a session on literary short stories, in order to avoid another memoir droning session, and attended one on writing for children in order to avoid the magazine writing zombie.

Ah, Dear Readers (as Charlotte Bronte would say), when I said I would keep writing, I meant for publication. The blog remains occasional. Yes, Jo(e) and Scrivener, I've thought quite a bit about whether or not to read more blogs. I do read yours every few days or so, and, as you know, hardly ever comment. I guess I feel divided about the blogging and how much I should do it. I'm afraid I'll be distracted by blog-reading, commenting, and linking when I should really be doing my own writing for publication. On the other hand, blogging certainly counts as something that can be valuable. A great way to network, to "publish" in a way, to get exposure, and contribute to an online community. Guess I'm trying to define my boundaries and that's why I come across as fickle or inconsistent.

But here's another thought. Since blogging is actually a great way to hash out ideas that may go into print, I've considered just writing one entry a week and structuring it more. Readers could expect to read a new entry, say, every Wednesday, and that would be stated up in the description. Other days I could focus on reading and commenting on other blogs, or other writing. Any thoughts? Thanks for reading, everyone. Maybe someday I will write my Blogging Manifesto. Blogifesto?

We're having a pastoral candidate preach at church tomorrow and meet with the congregation. People will bring their show-off dishes to the potluck. I'm bringing a spinach salad with strawberries, mainly because we get a giant bag of spinach every week in the CSA and it's a little hard to know what to do with it all. But not as difficult as the virtuous and prolific "Asian greens," whose season is thankfully over.

Oh, hey! Here's a joke from Jack.

"What did the turtle say when the truck drove away?"

"There goes a butt."

That's it. That's the joke. Because the word "butt" is funny in any context, apparently. When I was reading Prince Caspian to him (of the Narnia series), it mentions a "water butt." Have no idea what that is, some kind of rock formation? It was funny, though, you betcha. And when butts become cliche you can always say "fart," also funny. Once John told a bedtime story about a farting leaf, very very funny.

My 25th College Reunion and How I'm Blowing It Off

It's this coming weekend but I backed out about three weeks ago. My college is a couple hours away, and John was going to stay home with the kids. Very nice of him, eh? But then I thought, hmmm . . . is this really how I want to spend a weekend without the kids and husband? So I decided to go to the Philadelphia Writers' Conference instead this Friday and Saturday. In 1990 I went to a college reunion to see if any good men were single (two, but then I wasn't sure how to follow up) and in 2000 I went to show off John and baby Jack, who could be transported adorably in a backpack carried by John, but this time? Without a clear, self-interested motive, what is the point of a reunion? It's so often not quite the right people who show up, anyway.

Yeah, I'm really supposed to be writing, but I've been procrastinating for a few months. I suddenly got motivated a couple of weeks ago, and I've sent a query letter out. I'd like to write an article about the future of this estate in Rose Valley. Mike, who wrote this plea to save the estate, doesn't know much about what's happening, but the pictures are very good. It's private property, and you can't see a thing from the street, so I don't know how he got them.

It's funny how I got into journalism. I taught at a small college in Virginia for a few years and one of the first classes I had to teach was "Newswriting." Ha! I was a literature professor, but at a college like that you have to teach many subjects that are almost completely foreign to you. Newswriting, Beowulf, whatever. I expanded the course to "News and Feature Writing" and after a couple of semesters I had thought of so many interesting features myself that I started proposing ideas to the editor of the local alternative newspsaper. She took me up on almost every idea I had. I wrote about community-supported agriculture, urban renewal in my town, modern-day jousting in the "hollers" of Virginia, life on a rural bookmobile, and more.

My most amazing experience was writing the article about urban renewal. Several blocks of black businesses, churches, and homes in my small city had been razed in the early sixties as a "slum clearance" project. Most of it had been blacktopped over, with one white-owned store reopened and a few other stores constructed. Mostly it was a pretty nondescript zone by the time I lived there. Most people who had sold their property to the city couldn't afford to buy anything, so they had to move to a newly constucted housing project, and no one had enough money to reopen their businesses. (This story could be told, unfortunately, for many cities and towns in the US at that time.)

Due to the growth of a large university in the town and a number of demographic and cultural changes, the history of this clearance was only kept alive by a handful of people who lived in the historically black neighborhood, most of whom were quite elderly. But when I worked as a census taker in 2000 I met a woman who knew all these people, and through her I met them and talked to them. I found pictures of the old houses and shops in a file at the housing authority and used some of the woman's family pictures. The story was on the cover of the paper with all these incredible photos. It created quite a wave of interest, I was asked to speak at the college and for a local activist group, it spurred some college students to embark on their own related history projects, and people were constantly asking the paper for reprints. Finally they even reprinted the whole thing in 2004. Working on that was about a thousand times more gratifying than writing an academic journal article, and I knew I could never go back. (Remind me to tell you a story about a blind date and a journal article I wrote.)

So anyway, here I am up here north of the Mason-Dixon line trying to start this up again. Oh, I'm working with a journal editor on publishing one of my blog entries. So stay tuned, and don't let me stop writing.

Suicide and Damnation

This post really is about suicide and damnation; the title contains no hyperbole or metaphor. It's a switch in tone from the Trader Joe's post, but that's the way life is: Happy, sad, happy, sad. No, wait, it's more like happy, mundane and boring, sad, mundane and boring, happy. I just try to keep the mundane and boring parts out of my blog as best I can.

My friend Bill's brother Matt (both pseudonyms) died of an overdose in West Hollywood on Saturday. He had been suicidal since the 1980's and had threatened suicide a week before his death, when his other brother had refused to give him money for crystal meth. Matt had lived in L.A. for many years and had been alienated from his family for a very long time. I had a brother like that, too, only in San Francisco, only he didn't kill himself; he died in a fire when his life was actually looking up, sort of. But this isn't about my brother right now. Bob and I used to talk about our brothers and what to do about them and always came up with this conclusion: nothing.

Matt was found by his landlady, his apartment filthy and littered with needles. He had been a user for years, and had finally overdosed. Was it a suicide? For Matt's family, this question is critical because they are all devout Catholics. Matt's eternal fate hinges on the answer to this question, but apparently prayer can tip the balance from hell to purgatory. So Bill says in his email to me,

". . . The question of suicide will most likely remain unresolved mainly because no one can now know for certain what thoughts were going through his head as he lost consciousness. I believe so fervently all that the Church teaches that I've found myself praying all the more for Matt and asking others do so so. Thanks for those prayers. "

I don't believe that God punishes people for being depressed or for trying to kill their pain with drugs. I am disgusted at Bill for letting his theology blind him to the realities of mental illness. Bill is an attorney, very bright, who also has an MA in English. But he hasn't read any contemporary (last 50 years) books in a very long time "There are so many good nineteenth century novels to read, why should I read anything new?" Bill had never heard or read the word "vegan" until I told him last year, and I had to spell it. Sometimes I think his mental world is filled with dust and cobwebs. And lots of Catholic theology. The older I get, the more aware of the world's mysteries I become, its paradoxes, ironies, sadness and joy together. But Bob is as dogmatic as ever. It's possible I'm not being fair.

Reading this post was like eating a brick, wasn't it? On a lighter note, Will is peeing quite well in the potty now, albeit with dubious aim, John dented our car this time, NOT ME, and Jack wants me to teach him to knit and my Dad had a sarcastic, sexist comment about that. Roofers coming Monday. I'm trying Neutrogena Self-Tanning Lotion on my legs, since they are incapable of tanning on their own. Sad, happy, mundane and boring, there you go.

The Righteous Truth about Trader Joe's

So when will Trader Joe be beatified, anyway? Ever since St. Joe's, I mean Trader Joe's, came to Media last year--and I hesitate to say this because I'm going to sound like a lobotomized housewife--it has changed my life. I shop there at least two times a week because it's so convenient, I know the entire lovely staff, from the almost sarcastically cheerful 20-year-old man who asks too many questions about what I did last weekend (Can't remember) or what I'm going to do that day (Laundry? Don't know, really) to the red-hat-wearing lady who finds Will's songs about the bottled water charming. I love them all. And the parking situation is nirvanic at 9 AM on a weekday and they have balloons for the children. Plus immaculate wood floors, handwritten happy signage and, of course, low prices. AND healthy food. I mean, what more is there to say? For Pete's sake, what more would it take to convince you? Let me share my newly evolved theology with you.

1) Heathen: people who have never heard of Trader Joe's and don't know what they're missing. I hope they'll be saved nevertheless because it's not their fault. But I don't care that much because most of these people aren't American and probably wear socks with sandals.

2) Seekers: People who have seen the light but do not live within 100 miles of a Trader Joe's and so cannot reasonably be expected to stock up there. Most of these people live with a Trader-Joe-sized hole in their souls. What can I say to these folks? Have hope. Pray, even. I believe they are still expanding. Or, just move.

People who do live within 100 miles of a Trader Joe's and do not shop there: Two subcategories.


3) Ignorant Due to Extenuating Circumstances: If you're institutionalized, or under 3 years old or over 100, then your ignorance is pardoned.

4) Willfully Refusing Trader Joe's Grace: Two sub-categories.

a. Nonbelievers Who Don't Like "Strange" Food. Upon death, off to a Super Wal-Mart with you and no looking back. Never another chance to eat Trader Joe's Red Pepper Spread.

b. Nonbelievers Who Think Whole Foods Must be Better Because it's More Expensive and in a More Exclusive Neighborhood. Jane Cohen, I'm talking about you. Your wickedness is revealed in the blogosphere. As of NOW.

And just in case you think I'm in serious need of deprogramming, I know TJ's is not perfect. Especially the mayonnaise and the pumpkin-filled tortellinis. And sometimes the staff's cheerfulness and enthusiasm for the products is just a tad grating. And no, red-hat lady, when my kids are running around grabbing all the chocolate off the shelves I don't give a rat's ass about trying the Citrus Hand Lotion, thank you.

The Party's Over

I'm still trying to pick myself up off the floor. We had a party for 25 people on Saturday, one reason I haven't been blogging. My advisor from Temple has just retired, so I invited her and all her graduate students from the last twelve years (not everyone in her classes, but everyone who either has or has had her on their dissertation committee or people who are clearly her acolytes). I got most of the guest list from her. Sally is an eminent Victorian scholar, which sounds much more dull than it actually is in her case. Sally has long gray braids to her hips and has walked with a cane for many years, I think because of some kind of scoliosis. She is very petite but has a bellowing laugh that comes from deep inside her. I love it, but others find it annoying. In the early nineties she had us actually compile a collection of essays by Victorian women, which was published and well reviewed. It was the most exciting work I ever did in graduate school, the most thorough immersion in historical research I ever experienced. We were sleuths and it was great.

For her retirement we got her a beautiful duffel bag from Levenger, which she admired greatly. I had ordered her a cake that said "Thank you, Sally. Happy Travels." Because "Happy Retirement" sounds like "Happy Death" to me. Everyone gave a tribute to her. It was fun and unstuffy, mainly because no faculty were invited to this party. Nothing against faculty per se, it's just that their presence would have added a networking element, with its attendant mood of insecurity. Plus, I would have felt even more incompetent for having upended the whole container of maple glaze on the floor in the kitchen and having to dredge the salmon in it, right there on the floor next to the dishwasher. As it was, it was an enormously sticky mess for a few minutes, but it all ended up on the grill anyway, and was delicious, and everyone was happy, and hardly anyone knew.

A Little Housekeeping

Well, I finally changed my comments section so anyone can comment, not just people with Blogger accounts. Plus, I get emailed if someone comments. I should have done this months ago! Well, back to an improvised saag paneer I'm making. It's gray and I not unreasonably expected it to be green . . . It tastes sort of okay but the premixed garam masala I bought doesn't pack much of a punch. Must stop doing this makeshift Indian and use my cookbook.

Then my mom's group is hosting a "wine and dessert" evening. If I start out the week with wine and dessert on a Monday, then what on earth will I be doing on Friday? Something illegal? Nah, probably just checking compulsively to see if I get any more comments. Wait, I don't have to do that if I get emailed now. . . guess I'll have to do something illegal, after all.

One Fine Old Dixie Recipe

I found a cookbook my mother gave my grandmother for her birthday in 1941, Fine Old Dixie Recipes. The cover is wooden, with a picture of a Southern mammy bearing a platter of chicken. I was going to copy the recipe for Kentucky Burgoo but I found someone has beaten me to it. It saves me the work, but still, it's a deflating experience. Anyway, here it is.

Hula Heaven

I was thrilled to see that my dad still has my mother's indestructible 1940s-era Viewmaster and her box of reels. It's all ours now, along with another Viewmaster dated from the 1960s. The boys can each use one. As a child, I remember looking at reels depicting the Seven Wonders of the World, but we don't seem to have that one any more. We do have many reels of Europe, but my favorites are of Hawaii and Oklahoma. The pictures in the Hawaii reel (from the 1950s) are entitled "Dancing Hula Girls," "Girls Dancing Hula," "Hula Dancing," and so on, but one is "Eating Poi." The "Hula Dancing" picture has about ten shapely young women in grass skirts posing in a perfect semi-circle, with a brawny shirtless young man kneeling in a stylized football-star pose in the center. I told Jack to show it to Daddy and say "Welcome to Hawaii." He did, but not before changing the picture to "Eating Poi." Oh, well.

The Oklahoma reel has a picture of Oklahoma A & M College at Stillwater (now Oklahoma State), with some swell co-eds posing on the lawn in their long skirts and bobby socks. A number of other slides depict farm machinery, cows, and buffalo. When we lived in Oklahoma, we did see some desultory buffalo behind a metal fence. It was hotter than hell there. That's about all I remember, because I was three when we left. My grandmother and mother lived in Hawaii in the early to mid 1940s, so that's probably why there are three reels of Hawaii. (I haven't looked at the other two yet, I've got to savor them slowly.)

I had to explain to the boys that we don't know anyone in the pictures, and that people didn't take Viewmaster pictures themselves; they bought the reels of places they wanted to see or places they had already visited. Will likes to say "That's incredible" when anything surprises him in the picture, whether it's a large fish on "Wonders of the Deep" or the Brandenburg Gate.

Good News, Circa 1961

More capital letters for you, dear readers.

My brother Dan and I went to my Dad's house the other day to take memorabilia home with us. We found a darkly yellowed telegram announcing Dan's birth (1961, in Oklahoma) to my grandfather, who lived in Pennsylvania. (My grandmother was visiting us in Oklahoma.)

"BABY BOY 6 LBS 14 OZ ALL IS WELL LOVE NANCY"

The paper is so fragile and ancient-looking. You had to pay per word to send a telegram, which is why they almost always read so terse and factual. Yet those few words held such great joy. In these days of cheap long distance phone calls, email, baby blogs, mommy blogs, and daddy blogs, it's shocking to remember that words of joy, or sorrow, could be sent only at great cost, and only to one address.

That's why I love that my grandfather lavishly returned a message,

"CONGRATULATIONS LOVE PAPA."

HE CLAIMS WIFE LEFT HIM FOR A NEW YORK STRIPPER.

This is what one sees when, working out on the elliptical trainer at the Y, assiduously reading the May 9 New Yorker, one looks up, on some unexplainable whim, at the television. One is assaulted by several waves: The ceaseless capital letters of closed captioning; the faux shock of this sentence, since the man in question appears to be a typical high school jock turned flabby couch potato; and the way one finds it difficult to stop reading the closed captioning when one knows one should. Just something addictive about reading Jerry Springer dialogue in bald capital letters . . . the desperation, the opportunism, the tawdriness of it all . . . back to that article about Alvin Ailey.

The in-law visit is proceeding well. I don't have much privacy, so blogging when they are around is out of the question. Much of the furniture I got from my Dad has been mended, window boxes are repaired and rebuilt, light fixtures have been hung. Grammy has given the boys many treats and a few new toys and I have been called mean. Grammy and Grandpa watched Jack's "Developmental Baseball I" practice yesterday. John took Jack's training wheels off his bike and he rode halfway around the track at the local school.

My dad came over for dinner last night. I like for him to spend time with John's parents. My dad was amazed at how easily the rickety furniture could be repaired. My family usually just lives with quirks and irritations instead of trying to fix them. I grilled some fresh yellowfin tuna and we had that on a cous-cous salad with mint, lemon, spring onions, Kalamata olives, and capers. The mint was from our garden. For dessert I made an angel food cake from scratch using powdered egg whites that you reconstitute with water. It wasn't nearly as high as the angel food cakes my grandmother made, but then she used mixes. It was delicious with strawberries. A wonderful low-fat dinner. Pat me on the back!

Yesterday afternoon we were going to go to a historic house a mile from us that we've never been to, but it was closed for a private function. There used to be a quarry by this house, which closed a half century ago. The fieldstone on our house came from that quarry, according to the all-knowing neighbor Hazel. I love the stone with its myriad shades of gray, gold, and rust.

The whole family is going to church (we go to church in Germantown) this morning, and afterwards we are going to a Mother's Day brunch (which I arranged, of course) at the Valley Green Inn, in the middle of Fairmount Park, the largest city park in the world, so eat your heart out, New York. I find some of the Inn's FAQs to be rather amusing.

In-Law Panic

The In-laws are Coming. Today. The refrigerator has been cleaned and mystery foods thrown out. The "guest" bathroom, which I use when we don't have guests: scrubbed up and down. Next: all the boxes and oddments that have accumulated in the guest bedroom in the absence of the last guests. Then the dining room. We have had a whole lot of stuff (booze, candles, paintings, things that don't belong there) stacked on the table since we got my mother's antiques. Need to put all that in the new chest and the corner cupboard. Finally the living room (we don't have a family room) will be reclaimed for adults and children to use.

I still marvel at the thinginess of life. Especially life as a parent and homeowner. Where did all this stuff come from? The toys. The clothes. The paperwork. The food. For so many years I had a tiny apartment, a meager publishing salary, or an even more meager graduate stipend, and I was fine. Now, the stuff is here, along with a lot of joy, commitment of the best kind, and I suppose this is what it means to be grown up in America.

It's hard to get really excited about cleaning and organizing and maintaining stuff. I've been some zen-oriented books about this sort of thing: Sweeping Changes by Gary Thorpe, which is charming to the point of being odd,with lots of zen. I'm also reading The Zen of Organizing by Regina Leeds, which is more practical, the zen being just a trendy topnote. What I'm getting out of it so far is that sorting through and maintaining your things is a spiritual exercise in understanding the unity of all things. You leave guilt and judgement behind. You respect every thing that you have and give every one a chance to perform its proper function.

Cleaning frantically for one's inlaws is not in the plans of either Thorpe or Leeds, of course. Mervin and Marilyn are coming this afternoon. Serenity goes out the window today. Not that my inlaws are judgmental or anything. They're "salt of the earth" folks coming to the big, bad East from Indiana. They come here to see us and aren't interested in city adventures. I cook for them, Marilyn watches the children and does miscellaneous jobs (John inherited his admirable laundry-folding skills from her), while Mervin builds shelves, does electrical work and carpentry of any sort, and fixes simple plumbing problems. He gets the floor muddy and Marilyn scolds him.

Will is up. Breakfast time.