15 years or 150,000 miles

My car’s odometer flipped 150,000 while I was driving over to Leah’s last night.  That’s a lot of time behind the wheel, and, of course, given my impecunious state, I’m hoping to see another 150,000 from behind the same before my little Honda falls into rusty dust.  I do need to procure a new set of tires much sooner.  I noticed the other day that the back ones are nearing smooth, whereas the fronts are deceptively new-appearing.  What we have here is a failure to rotate.  One of the front ones (I’d been checking the air pressure in all obsessively, and meantime overlooking the rotation schedule) has a double-plug in it thanks to absorbing a bolt last year, so I’ve been preoccupied with the potential for flats, rather than attentive to routine maintenance (besides oil changes, which I’ve religiously observed).

At Leah’s all the usual suspects were assembling—my friends since undergraduate days, the three girls who drove/flew all the way to GA at a moment’s notice when they heard my father died, and then drove me back up here afterwards (today is the 21-month anniversary of his death).  They are the best.  Given that Leah’s 10^th wedding anniversary is approaching (a date she and her husband shared with my grandparents—May 17^th) and her and my 15^th undergraduate class reunion is taking place that weekend, we’ve determined to combine these observances (he went to our university, though with our other friends, he preceded us by a couple of years), and they’ve rented a house for all of us to share.  I hope it will be comfortable—it should be a little easier in some ways than the last time we all shared vacation digs, since the four little boys (my honorary nephews) are now all out of diapers and nap time is no longer de rigeur—though, come to think of it, all of us adults enjoyed nap times, too!

I’ve mixed emotions about the reunion…  I’ll be with friends, so it’s not like I’ll have no one to talk to, (which is always a hazard at such functions), and it will be fun seeing how cushy things have become since our hard-knock tenure (to tell truth, we had it good—I particularly remember the good D-hall food and the church-like cafeteria); I know they’ve got many more luxuries now, though they are missing some of the old-fashioned joys we shared, which included climbing in and out of classroom building windows at any time of the night, so we could sit on the roofs underneath the stars.  I know at least one classmate has died (we two were the finalists for the year at Oxford program—the award went to her) and of a few other unwelcome developments.  I do hope to see some of my old professors, and hope they are happy to see me!  I’m in an unusual position of not being socially changed—I have no husband or children to introduce to acquaintances of yore (or to show the hallowed colonnade where I once trod), I’ve no distinctive career to claim as a self-identifier.  I’m just older.  Wiser, too, I guess.  I don’t really remember too many people in my own class, since most of my friends were a year ahead, and with the core group that met at Leah’s I’ve kept in regular touch, so a reunion is superfluous in that regard.  But it’s a beautiful town, and a lovely campus, and I hope to enjoy the show, so to speak, as one of my ever-expanding collection of “interesting cultural experiences”. 

But It's A Good Pain

[Friday night--couldn't post as internet access was down, likely due to weather]  I am in agony.  Not, as my more fitness-oriented readers would suppose, from yesterday’s workout, although I did walk five miles and then do 28 minutes at 11 on the elliptical trainer.  No, I just returned from another superb meal at the Russia House in Dupont Circle with my friend Isabelle.  As before, we split a bottle of red Georgian wine, and then plowed through five or so tapas-style dishes before sitting back and spooning in individual portions of crème brulee.  Ah, me.  The joys of Groupons.

I have been always a harsh judge of people who let their property go to pot—you know the sort where you drive by and a shutter has fallen into the bushes and lies there for months without being replaced?  Well, let she who is without sin…  There’s a lovely cabinet in the corner of my room that I use for clothes storage.  I acquired it two years ago at the Crate and Barrel outlet in Leesburg, VA.  It cost a fraction of ordinary retail because the pane of glass in one of the three doors had been broken, and there were one or two other minor cosmetic details that I knew were easily fixable.  Yet, since I bought this cabinet, I had not replaced the glass or attended to the other issues.  Finally, fed up with my own hypocrisy, I determined yesterday that I was going to fix it.  It took at most 30 minutes and cost around 12 dollars, and that included going to the hardware store for the glass (which they cut to precision), installing the wooden border to secure the pane (and mitering it with my hacksaw) and staining the wood with a touch-up pen.  At least I can mark that particular file of my broad and unending archives of personal procrastination off the list.

The women’s retreat proved entirely restful, physically, socially and spiritually.  I am so glad I went.

Read the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins Wednesday and Thursday.  Good, but not exactly what I would consider really children’s literature, though told simply, and about a girl in her teens.  No butterflies and fairies in these, but depictions of grave physical and psychological damage and political intrigue.  Fascinating for its interweaving of the modern reality television genre, the gladiator competitions of ancient Rome, and the concentration/internment camps of our own and the last century into an amalgam both original and shockingly familiar.

Must digest a bit before I retire.  Tomorrow I plan to go to a chocolate festival in Fairfax.  “No calorie left unconsumed” is my motto this week.

[Today] The chocolate festival was delicious.  Marie and I forked over a couple of tokens apiece for fruit to dip into the chocolate fountains, and we voted for the best decorated cake at the Chocolate Challenge.  I also bid on one at the silent auction--an incredible design made by a baker at the Ritz-Carlton.  If I win, I'll post pictures! 

Have to digest again--after indulging in sweets, we went to a great little mom and pop Greek/Italian eatery...

Wounds and Healing

Wednesday, my four year old nephew came downstairs and climbed up on the futon next to me.  He leaned over and kissed my left wrist, then sat back, and instructed, “Now, rub it in.”  “Oh, do you have to rub in kisses, are they like lotion?” I asked him.  “Yes,” he said.  “Well, will you kiss my other arm then?” I said.  He proceeded to carefully smooch my right arm from the hand to the shoulder, over my elbow-length shirt.  I dutifully rubbed in the kisses, and he was satisfied.  My skin felt younger immediately.  Several times while I was there he came up to me, threw his little arms around my waist and exclaimed, “I love you, Aunt K.”  Rita was also demonstrably fond of me (my sister told me that the poor girl cried all day yesterday after they deposited me at the airport), crawling into my lap and humming affectionately while nuzzling my cheek (as we are prone to do in my family, like nesting animals).   

The two of them came rushing to my rescue when I fell down the stairs Thursday morning, landing loudly on my elbow and my bum in a heap of shoes by the front door.  Rita rushed to fetch an icepack from the freezer for my injured arm, and Brad went for a wad of tissue from the bathroom to tuck under my head.  Then he brought his blanket and a pillow, saying generously that I could borrow them, since I was hurt.  They were both very concerned, and hovered around patting me gently until I was able to get up (groaning) and thank them both for being so sweet.  No bones broken, thank God, but I’ve got a really remarkable bruise on my backside as a souvenir of my tumble.

Other than the shower head shrieking terribly throughout my evening ablutions, the church women’s retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore has thus far been lovely; my comrades are friendly, and the accommodations pleasant.  I want to shed the grief that’s been haunting me, to reconnect with God, and be reminded of his fatherhood and that he does have a good plan for my life.  I’ve been so thoroughly discouraged over the last couple of months that I’ve begun to fear the advent of another of my terrible every seven-year bouts with deep depression, and become really desperate for spiritual encouragement and renewal.  Furthermore, I’ve been punishingly lonely without family (it was hard to leave Rhode Island, and this notwithstanding the cold and the lack of green—it was just so good to be with my loved ones) and feeling ever more intellectually stagnant.  So, I hope this weekend will be a blessing.  I need help.

The Bookworm and the Ham

My six-year-old niece Rita read the whole of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe yesterday.  She’s so much like me it’s alarming (except she was shocked to hear I hadn't learned to read until first grade).  She “goes deaf” when she reads and forgets to eat, and she reads in odd places and positions, like so:

She read Superfudge today, and started on another Beverly Cleary before bedtime.  She also made two potholders (woven using one of those little peg looms), painted a suncatcher, played four rounds of Busytown (a Richard Scary boardgame) and drew a picture.  And talked about Star Wars for three full hours.  I was repeatedly queried on what should be done with Darth Vader, and what particular scenes (in all three of the old movies, and the first of the new) meant. 

Four year old Brad, on the other hand, is a total ham.  He kept insisting I take his picture and then he wanted to see what he looked like—the boy would never have survived in the age of film cameras.  He also loves to be kissed by his mommy and me—and who can help it, since he resembles the Norman Rockwell ideal of the pink-cheeked innocent lad, all frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails, or in his case, puppy-dog eyes…

When Brad got home from school today, he told Rita (who has a week off) that her potholders were beautiful, and said “good job!” without being prompted.  When they aren’t fighting, the two siblings are quite fond (they’ll spontaneously hug each other, peaceably paint pictures together, and so forth), but when one gets angry at the other, I never heard such dramatics.

Reading and Re-Writing

I cannot recommend Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption too highly.  It is a horrifying and heartening story that shows with graceful hands how God can bring hope out of some of the cruelest schemes of dehumanisation man has implemented. 

I re-read selections from Granddaddy's memoirs on the train up here to Providence, as I needed to cross-check my friend Irina's Russian translations of the same (a proofing I'd promised before the end of 2011 and never quite got around to).  Reading Unbroken made me appreciate Granddaddy's wartime life even more; although he deliberately edited his own taped reminiscences (for instance, he says that his skipper's nickname was "No-Dirt Callahan" and that it was said in an admiring way--one gets the impression that Dirt wasn't the exact word used), hovering around the edges of his words are echoes of the emotional toll the experiences took, as friends were lost, and he saw broken bodies and exploding bombs and heard wounded men scream. 

I myself have had to white-out and re-write bits from a selection in the 1950s storybook I brought up for my niece and nephew to enjoy: the entertaining tale whose titular character formerly was known as "Little Black Sambo" is now known simply throughout the text as "Sam" and the tiger-outwitting Sam's parents are just "Mommy" and "Daddy".  I take comfort in the fact that only one of the illustrations associated with the story was even mildly racist (and actually totally culturally wrong, given that the action takes place in India, where tigers abound, not the African subcontinent), and hopefully that pre-modern Aunt Jemima-like image of Sam's Mommy cooking pancakes with the tiger butter will not impress itself too deeply on my small relative's minds. 

Given that my niece has apparently believed for years that her father is African-American (she came home from school around Martin Luther King Day to inform her mother that, horribly, in the old days Daddy wouldn't have been able to live with them because of the color of his skin--he's actually a swarthy Portuguese man who looks and sounds like Raymond from the show "Everybody Loves Raymond"), I expect if anything Rita and Brad will identify with Sam and his parents, rather than viewing them as irretrievably "other".

Bar Bets and Bustiers

John Calvin’s bones are climbing his crypt walls at that headline, no doubt, but I didn’t make the bet—my trivia team was its unwitting subject.  Monday night was the first of a new quarter, trivia-competition-wise, and our all-girl team decided to discard our old nom de hmm “That’s What She Said” and adopt another.  The new name is an homage to a typo (scripto?) from last quarter: “No Man’s Cupcake” (the answer we meant to write was “no man’s land” but we were discussing desserts at the time, and, well, we added crawling through icing to the perils of the First World War).  It seemed fitting, given the gender makeup of our group.  During the game we noticed some yuppie policy-wonk type guys at another table looking over at us, and eventually one came over and asked us what our team was called.  “I won the bet!” he crowed when we told him. 

My friend and teammate Mia brought me my Comic-Con magazine/preview program, which had been mailed to her address, since she was the one who bought my ticket for me at last year’s ultimate nerdfest.  We’ve been discussing costumes for months, and for one of the four days I’m planning to be a character from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Mia tells me they have a zombie parade and we’ve got to participate) and for one of the other days I’d like to be a half-and-half steampunkish Snidely Whiplash/Moulin Rouge chorus girl.  I’ve ordered a top hat, and I’ll find a suit at an estate sale I can alter to 19^th century lines, and then split down the middle (I plan to cut the topper in two and cover the new opening with ostrich feathers and sequins)—the cravat or bow tie will be connected to a black velvet neck ribbon with half a cameo on it.  But, I need another corset, preferably in red leather (fabric just isn’t as comfortable for day-long wear, and my brown leather one has a pre-Victorian vibe and is besides insufficiently flashy) which will contrast with the men’s garb, and to which I can add lace and feathers.  I’ll have a mustache on one side of my face (and a Sherlockian pipe), and false eyelashes and outlandish feminine makeup on the other.  The whole point is to have fun dressing up, after all—why go to Comic-Con and be dull?

I need to send Mums the dates for the trip so she can meet me out there in San Diego the last day of the convention and we can spend the next week sightseeing.  I'm going to a new part of the country and I want to stay to explore a while; and it’s much more fun to explore with someone else.  I shall eschew eccentric dress once Mums arrives, however.  She might refuse to be seen with me, although Californians are probably used to weirdness by this point.

Hazards of Multitasking

I am a fundamentally lazy person, which is why I like to do more than one thing at a time (listening to an audiobook while sewing or driving, for instance, and talking on the phone while cleaning the house or making jewelry)--I thereby feel less guilty about doing nothing at all betweentimes.  I also do not enjoy exercising for its own sake--I'd rather be digging a ditch or walking TO somewhere specific rather than beating my body into fitness on a treadmill or elliptical--which is why I usually read a book when I'm at the gym [Mums says I can only do this because I'm not working out hard enough (whatever!)].  I've noticed I'm not the only one who likes to distract herself while burning calories, but even so, before yesterday evening I'd never seen anyone actively knitting while walking on a stair-climber.  It was one of those escalator-style climbers, and although I was distracted for a while watching an adrenaline-packed scene from one of the Fast and the Furious movies that was playing on flatscreen overhead, and so didn't see disaster strike, it seems at one point either her ball of fuchsia yarn or the washcloth or whatever she was working on decided to drop onto the moving stairs, with predictable results--I looked over later to see her pulling bright pink string out of the machine.  I'm not sure the was the end of her evening's exercise, but it probably put purled to her knitting.