What a Rummy Nation...

Missing Things

2012-01-25T22:56:00.000-08:00

My camera has gone missing. It's in a little felt green and yellow zipped pouch that a friend brought back from Turkey as a souvenir for me. I spent over an hour hunting high, low, and in between for it in my apartment and my car this afternoon, and finally had to cancel out on the job that requires me to have a camera in hand. Which wasn't much of a misery on my part because by that time I had a gonzo headache and wanted nothing better than to curl up on my bed under my new muskrat coat and close my eyes. I still haven't found my camera, though it did occur to me after the headache dissipated that I've actually got a backup--the camera that my mom gave me (which my father had given her) that she used for doing the church directory two years ago. It's the camera with which she took his last picture (just six hours before he died), and when I scrolled through the memory I found the original shot, as well as other photos (which I hadn't seen before) from their last visit with my brother and sister in law and a weekend the two of them spent at the coast. There were also some pictures of Granddaddy, which made the whole review somewhat surreal. At any rate, the camera will do for work, though it's far nicer than my little point-and-shoot, and I am now equipped to create really artistic shots, should the mood strike.

I'm also missing a huge chunk of ambition and self-discipline. Having a second major headache within six days has undeniably contributed, but I can't seem to make myself get busy, other than the usual work (more than 80 hours in 10 days, which though it sounds impressive on the surface doesn't really average out to much) with my creative and intellectual projects. Have I completed any more of my pieced bags? No. Have I written any more cover letters or books proposals? No. Have I re-strung the necklaces that have been lying around forever waiting for repair? No, again. I made two lamps (and rewired two that weren't functioning), but sold only one at the last estate sale. I did take in a large number of earrings and some eight bracelets to the gallery in Bethesda for their Valentine's Day promotion (but these were already long made), and I did send out an evite to a home show that I'm sharing with Anita on February 11 (something I'd been procrastinating on for weeks), and I did go over to my coworker's house last night and we outlined the novel we want to write (now, I'm just having a fit of "how on earth do I turn this great idea into a fun, readable piece of pulp fiction???" Betwixt summarizing a storyline and coming up with believable dialogue a great gulf is fixed.). Profound laziness otherwise. Haven't read my Bible, haven't cleaned the house. Dirty dishes are sitting on the counter while clean ones languish in the washer. There's a dead poinsettia on top of my china cabinet. I have been spending an incredible amount of time watching Castle dvds, and speculating how Nathan Fillion's chin and nose will gradually meet in ensuing decades, in a sort of mortal Pangaea.

I did attend my honorary nephew's Tae Kwon Do graduation (and demonstration) last Friday night--lots of children wearing deadly serious expressions as they moved carefully through their choreographed routines, yelling fiercely as they struck down imaginary enemies. It was adorable. What was sweetest, probably, was when the time came that Noah was presented with his new belt and instructed to give the old one to his family, he spotted me in the crowd and ran over to hand it to me. After the ceremony broke up, another woman asked me, "What level is your child?" It was a comfortable, inclusive feeling to be able to respond. I gave the belt to his dad and grandmother, and then after his mom, my friend Leah, changed out of her own black belt regalia, the five of us went to dinner at the Asian restaurant next door.

"Strange Convergences” and Granddaddy’s Memoirs

2012-01-14T20:33:00.001-08:00

Two months ago, my friend Irina translated selections from Granddaddy’s memoirs into Russian, and sent me the translations for comments and corrections. I’m just now getting around to it. The first selection is about the beginning of the war in the Pacific, the infamous Pearl Harbor attack. Granddaddy’s skipper had told the crew aboard his ship during general assembly on Saturday, December 6, that the war would begin with such a surprise attack on an American possession somewhere, and less than 24 hours later it occurred. Historians of Russia (or readers of Japanese military-naval history, such as the captain clearly was) were only caught off guard by the location of the attack, not the expectation, the empire having successfully caught the Russian Far Eastern fleet sitting in Port Arthur some 35 years earlier—and winning strategies, as Francis Ford Coppolla’s Patton would have us remember, are meant to be repeated. It did work like a charm the second time, at least initially. The Americans didn't take more than a year to get around to fighting back, however, so the rest of the scenario didn't play out well from the Japanese perspective.

Curiously, also on December 6, 1941, while my Granddaddy was mulling over his captain’s words and anticipating a lazy “rope yarn” Sunday, the Japanese envoys were at a formal dinner at the home of my current employer’s grandparents. The envoys excused themselves for a bit and asked to use the telephone, and their host showed them into his office. I don’t know what exactly was communicated during that conversation, but the furniture used is in the library where I’ve been cataloguing—I’d been plopping books down in the chair, and occasionally using it as a sort of footstool to reach shelves (that was before they brought in the 8-foot ladder, which I needed to reach the highest levels). I don’t know whether this is the quite the level of disrespect as climbing on the equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg (at least it’s not a public historic monument).

Hogan’s Heroes and Downton Abbey

2012-01-09T01:57:00.000-08:00

The miniseries fad du jour on both sides of the pond is the castle-centered lushly costumed BBC period melodrama Downton Abbey, which began broadcast of its second season in the US just last night—these episodes are whittled versions of those which aired in Britain in the fall, concluding on Christmas Day. Several of my friends and two of my employers had told me how good the series was, and so I watched the two-hour premier yesterday evening, thoroughly enjoying it. However much the filmfan side of my brain was entertained, the historian in me couldn’t help noting a curious underlying similarity to another cult favorite television series, Hogan’s Heroes.

Maggie Smith and the late Werner Klemperer might appear at first to be the most dissimilar pairing one could imagine, but they have onscreen the same great comic timing, though of course the characters of an English Dowager Duchess and the least competent Luftstalag Kommandant ever must necessarily differ in subtlety. But what is unequivocally identical in both Downton Abbey and Hogan’s Heroes is their shared rosy rewriting of dreadful epochs—not to say that these rescriptings are unwelcome, or unenjoyable. After all, one wants to imagine that African American radio operators were treated as equals by their fellow Allied prisoners in World War II German internment camps, and that together they were able to make fools of their captors, for instance, or that English and Irish servants were treated with identical courtesy and care by their superiors downstairs and upstairs in 1930s Britain. Creation of these humorous or beautiful imaginary pasts perhaps allows us to cope with events that we personally endured but couldn’t necessarily articulate in their gruesome reality (Klemperer’s family had to flee from the anti-Jewish persecution in Germany—playing an idiot Nazi was no doubt a bit of catharsis) or operates to stain collective memory backwards with ideals that we now share, but which would have been truly anachronistic in the original circumstances, so allowing our pleasant little fantasies of how life should be nowadays to weave a popular tale of how life had begun inevitably to develop then.

It makes for watchable, relaxing television and delightful characters; but from a factual point of view, to echo Sergeant Schultz, “I know nothink, I see nothink!”

Cat, Cathedral

2012-01-07T23:29:00.002-08:00

Scleroderma. I don’t know exactly what it means, but the word has been teasing the fringe of my brain with its sharp little claws, and I have to acknowledge it, give it the blogging equivalent of a good scratch behind the ears before I can go about other business.

Mr. B’s cat loves attention, which she demands with the world’s rustiest meow. Before I went to the gym this afternoon, I walked around the building to find her meditating in a patch of clover. Knowing me to be a total pushover where pussycats are concerned, she got up and trotted over for a belly rub and a good ten minutes of other caressing. She’s a stocky beast, white and orange, with small ears and a short tail—there must be some Manx somewhere in her ancestry. Mr. B. is wrapped firmly around her pretty paw, and when we come home from church in his truck she recognizes the vehicle from afar and comes out to sit on the verge, waiting for lunch. My exercise pants were liberally dusted with short orange-tipped white hairs when I finished paying my respects to the furry one.

The concert last evening at the cathedral was lovely, although even superbly-performed medieval music (which this was) becomes monotonous after a while, and I found my gaze wandering toward the ceiling, to see that black netting has been installed from nave to choir, probably to keep any loose stones from pelting down on the congregation. The front tower repairs seem to be done, but the roof over the front and the buttresses seem to be still in the process of being shored up after the liberal shaking they received last fall.

A former employee of Intervarsity Press, who knows several of the academic editors still on staff has agreed to read a proposal for Irina’s and my translation. I am also looking into a professional organization for children’s book authors and illustrators, as I have several of those drafted. About a Russian cat, of course.

Employment Doldrums

2012-01-05T18:57:00.000-08:00

DC is cold, and dark, and not too many people are shopping or moving, which means that the consignment shop has to furlough staff (none of us are fired, we’re just on unpaid holiday until business picks back up) and our next estate sale setup doesn’t begin until February 1, because the owner hasn’t gone through her stuff yet (hasn’t determined what of the vast quantities of paraphernalia abounding throughout her house she’ll want to move across country). My boss said she’s going to be careful not to use the word “hoarder” in conversation with my colleagues, but there’s a great deal of stuff in the place. Literally thousands upon thousands of books.

I am delighted to know there are other readers out there (and cheered by the prospect that even were we to sell half the volumes, many more may be left over), though I admit it’s going to be a chore making sense of it all in the near term. Post-sale, I have a standing offer to homeowners: I will clean out all leftover books for free, donating all the ones I can’t sell to a local library (they’ll get the donation receipt for tax purposes)—effectively, they are paying me in paperbacks to clean out that part of their houses; it benefits me (I think I usually average between $12 and $15 per hour in revenue from this practice), it recycles the books (they are either sold to university bookstores for class texts or given to the library to raise funds for local literacy; incidentally, many charitable organizations either won’t accept books at all, or accept only a few, and trash the rest—I know, I’ve talked to the Goodwill employees) and it empties the house of print material (even the most congenial of movers resents having to pack books and when they’re charging the homeowner upwards of $150 an hour for moving, wouldn’t the owner in question rather “pay” me in literature?). So, when I lug all those hundreds of pounds of bound material to my ever-accommodating Accord, everybody wins. I can turn over twelve copy-paper boxfuls of books in two days—I don’t have room to store them in my house, and I hate tripping over boxes in my living room, and so I have become pretty efficient in churning through hundreds of ISBN numbers. It helps that I now have internet access a home. When I had to sit in the dark in the Arlington Courthouse parking lot, balancing my laptop on my steering wheel and painfully punching in codes with my arm crooked sideways, it was a pain in the pit.

We set off the alarm at the house when we went over to get the lay of the land this afternoon—the realtor had given us the key (the homeowner is in California until the middle of the month), but hadn’t mentioned anything so obvious as a security system. It was very loud, and my boss had the dickens of a time getting in touch with the powers that be to get the code. And of course one of those men of the type I most despise came over on an ATV to see who we were and if we’d managed to turn off the system. I hate men who ask dumb questions, then don’t listen to the answers, who condescend to women, and who act like the person they are talking to is somehow at fault for something, no matter the clarity of his or her innocence. These guys tend to be big and beefy, walk with a swagger, and probably were the sorts who were bullies in childhood. As adults, they are unfortunately frequently attracted to careers in law enforcement. That’s why I have always been so grateful when I’ve interacted with a reasonable, competent, and courteous policeperson. And why I do not buy cars from dealerships who employ these types—one reason I ended up with an Accord and not a Ford. The guy in the customer area had been a policeman (!) and had once given my mother a ticket for running a stopsign she didn’t run. He didn’t recognize her, but he treated us like dirt, and we took our business elsewhere. This fellow this afternoon was of the same scumwad ilk, although the owner had already spoken to us by that time and given us the code to deactivate the alarm, and we were able to address him by name. Sometimes I wish there were a zombie virus (a la Shawn of the Dead) and such people (clearly prone to such an infection by nature) could be put to mindless, useful work digging ditches, fed on the occasional raw chicken and housed in garden sheds.

I made a lot of pearl jewelry last night while listening to Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero, from his new series combining the Greek and Roman pantheons and an entertaining assortment of modern-day demigods. After I attend an Anonymous Four concert at the National Cathedral tomorrow night and host what may be an engagement party (ask her, already!) for a Philosophical Friend this Saturday, it appears I will have time to sew. Or I may go visit my niece in Rhode Island, since she’s just been diagnosed with pneumonia and might need minding while my sister tests for her nursing license—of course, since my sister doesn’t test for another ten days, I hope Rita’s well out of the woods by then, and that her little brother hasn’t decided to appropriate her germs, like Mums did mine.

Happy Birthday, Happy New Year

2012-01-02T00:16:00.000-08:00

First, I need to wish my dear sister in law a happy birthday, as I slept most of the afternoon away [despite discovering Tomato, my honorary nephew's cat, had piddled on my futon (or scared his companion into piddling) while I was at church this morning--I put down a towel over the wet spot and put in earplugs, and I was gone] and neglected to phone her...

Then, it's time for my annual goals list--of last year's, I actually tried the cat acquisition, which didn't pan out, due not to piddling but to allergies, and I did see quite a few of my lamps sold in estate sales (and several in galleries) so if that counts as "artwork" that goal did get accomplished:

My goals for the Year of Our Lord 2012:

1. Since I'm no longer writing a dissertation, I want to write a best-selling novel.
2. I want to see my non-fiction Russian co-translation published!
3. Visit Ireland, Canada, and the Czech Republic--or three other countries to which I've never been before. (This one’s a repeat from the last two years, but third time's the charm!)
4. Buy property out west for a writer's/artist's/craftsperson's retreat.
5. See at least a dozen of my quilted bags sold in a gallery.
6. Pay off at least half of my financial debt to my mom.
7. Resume my personal physical fitness training and develop decent abs and non-bubbly thighs that I won’t be ashamed to show off come swimsuit season! Mums shouldn't be the only one who looks good in a string bikini.
8. Go out West with my mom and my brother and see the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone again.
9. Go shooting with my new pistol!
10. Meet Stan Lee, Eric Shanower and Steve Franks (or Steven Spielberg--I'm not picky) and get their autographs.

Bored and Disgusted

2011-12-30T00:09:00.000-08:00

For perhaps the first time in my life, I am totally bored with movies, and books, and feel like all of fiction and film ought to be tossed out the window and stomped to tears of paper and sherds of plastic discs, turned into mulch (of only something so useful could be made of it all) and used to manure a garden of marigolds.

Mission Impossible 4 wasn't that bad, nor was the latest Sherlock Holmes flick, but how many explosions and perfectly-executed acts of specially effects enhanced daring-do can one stomach? I find myself already bored to tears with my Amazon Prime membership a bare two weeks after starting it--the free offerings are mostly musty old Hollywood movies of the sing a song, do a dance, have standard love triangle and hijinx ensue sort, and the newer, screw this person, screw that person, have heart to heart with gay best friend, finally fall into bed with Mr. Right genre. It's all thoroughly banal.

And then in print, I read into the early morning hours only to be betrayed by an author I've been broadcasting to friends and family as a new favorite: Boris Akunin, writes in Russian yet isn't depressing. Yet his last mystery, Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel, has him trying to outmaster the Master and Margarita, with its sudden veer into the supernatural, the superstitious, the ahistorical, and the weirdly blasphemous (or is that giving him too much credit). For volumes his "female Father Brown" has been carefully sleuthing, balancing faith and reason, finding rational explanations for seemingly irrational phenomena, leading us on a tour of 19th-century provincial Russia, presenting in a microcosm, like Miss Marple's equally removed St. Mary Mead, the types and archetypes, the villains and saints of that time and place in history, offering the author chances to examine the cultural and political developments since from the viewpoint and in the words of his bygone characters. Now, in this last adventure he sends these characters scurrying off to St. Petersburg and the Holy Land, interacting with a neo-Sodom settlement of happy homosexuals financed by an American philanthropist and a proto-Israeli commune operating in strange accord with its Circassian warlord neighbors, following a Holy Fool who might be Jesus who's been transported to 19th-century rural Russia via a system of time-warping caves with the unwitting assistance of a red rooster. Akunin's hitherto reasonable, if impetuous nun tracks this Emmanuel from peasant village to the Garden of Gethsemane, all the while pursued by a rabid band of zealot assassins dispatched by a member of the Holy Synod who want to get rid of this "antiChrist" while at the same time murdering numbers of other people, mostly bystanders of mixed innocence and ignorance. It's wacko, like Akunin must have gotten tired of the careful, beautiful research and writing that distinguished his previous work and just decided to throw everything into a huge overheated boiler and damn the torpedoes, whatever nonsense came out, just so long as everyone died or was miserable or unaccounted for at the end, and some pseudophilosophical blather was spouted, well, so be it.

Pah. A lesson on me. Every unhappy family or film or book is all alike, ultimately dehumanizing in some way, and to dwell on it further is useless.

Broken Grandmommy Ring/Finger

2011-12-25T19:14:00.000-08:00

Grandmommy took a header over a couple of suitcases she'd packed and left next to her couch before departing on a multi-mile walk yesterday afternoon. She caught herself and ended up with a bad scrape on one arm and a broken ring finger bone on her left--it was a clean break in the palm of her hand, so her left arm's swaddled up like the Baby Jesus and we're praying it knits quickly. My aunt and uncle were actually just a few minutes away from the house when she tripped--they were on their way to pick her up so she could spend a few days with them in Macon, GA, before and after her eye injection Tuesday--so they were able to whisk her off to the emergency room promptly. My brother and my mom and I were already scheduled to go down to visit tomorrow, but this adds an extra element of urgency to the trip.

I think it was the afternoon of my grandfather's funeral, or perhaps it was the evening of the viewing, Grandmommy gave me their wedding rings--"They are mine to give to who I want to, and I don't want arguments over them later" she said. Granddaddy's (which I don't think I'd ever seen him wear) was bent into an odd trapezoidal shape (probably the reason he never wore it) from the battering his hands were always taking. Grandmommy's wedding and engagement bands were soldered together--actually, I remember twenty-five or so years ago when the back of the bands had been worn through from age and friction, and she had the bands replaced and then attached to one another to keep further deterioration at bay. As a result of this earlier band replacement and soldering, the diamond top of the wedding band was loosened, and fell off on a trip she and Granddaddy were taking, and was lost. She got a replacement (not as pretty as the original--the diamonds weren't set the same) and then had the whole fused together again. So, really, the only part of the set that is original is the top part of the engagement ring. A few months after she gave the set to me (Granddaddy's battered ring went into my jewelry box, while hers immediately took up permanent residence on my right middle finger), I noticed that one of the tiny side diamonds was missing, and just this week (Granddaddy would have been 95 last Monday) I noticed that there's a crack in the gold of the engagement ring, running from the inside of the band to the bottom of the largest central diamond. In other words, the ring has legitimately been worn out. It survived 63 years of marriage, but it has come to the end of its useful life.

Of course, I have no intention of melting it down to sell the gold! Instead, I would like to have the components remade into a ring that I can wear for my remaining years of life, and then pass down to my niece or some other of Grandmommy's and Granddaddy's deserving descendants. I want to have the gold from both his and her wedding rings combined, and a short inscription carved on the inside of the new band to commemorate their faithfulness and mutual affection. The trick will be coming up with a design that incorporates the stones and the metal without looking like a men's club ring from the 1980s. And it's got to be comfortable, as I don't intend to take it off much, if at all. I like the early 20th century look, with the combination of white and yellow gold, and the stones set into the band. We'll see. I've got to start sketching.

Christmas Chaos

2011-12-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas chaos for me has been lasting for more than six weeks now. I've had no time to blog, very little time to eat and less to exercise, as I juggle four jobs and the usual "special holiday" demands--parties, jewelry/craft sales, and so forth. I wouldn't have been able to pull off my own annual Christmas party without my mother's flying up for a week and not only gamely coming along with me to work the estate sale (the last of 2011!) we were setting up in Potomac, MD, but also assembling the traditional baklava (Southern style, with pecans in addition to the almonds and walnuts) while I frantically straightened and cleaned the house. I was debilitatingly low on my quota of sleep until this past weekend, when I had a rare night with no commitments and was able to retire early. My maternal side of the family celebrated its Christmas today in Georgia, but I'm at work in Bethesda, and my teleportation skills are not up to par these days. I hope to drive down at a leisurely pace tomorrow, having shrouded the computer at work with plastic, as we had a dramatic leak in the roof yesterday which set me dreaming all last night about falling ceiling plaster and damp insulation.

There is some benefit to being so busy--it leaves little time for worrying--but there is also considerable cost--I haven't communicated with many friends in months, because I simply haven't had a moment, or any available energy, to touch base. And a few of my female acquaintances are directly in harm's way: a coworker had to fly to Teheran to be with a sick sibling, and another former classmate is in Cairo working as a democratic activist. Other ladies are simply overcome by the stresses of work, or have encountered the sudden loss of employment over the last month. I keep thinking that January is going to be an oasis of calm after all this manic activity and mental anxiety, but I may be deluding myself.

I was able to complete a few of the patchwork bags I've been piecing for what seems like forever, and of the six finished, one sold. The only thing besides sleeping, reading and eating I plan to do over my Christmas break is sew. I may leave Mums with another carpetful of threads to vacuum, but I'd like to begin 2012 with enough inventory to see me through the summer. Anita's asked me to think about returning to the market, but I'd only do it semimonthly and with a display of bags instead of jewelry.

Estate sale coworkers and I are chatting about creating a reality TV series based on our experiences. One's daughter is a TV producer, so this isn't as far-fetched as it might seem. Another is planning to collaborate with me on a novel manuscript--she's supplying the plot outline, I'm writing descriptions and we're both structuring the dialogue. It's a murder mystery series.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the news director of the largest local radio station (tagline: "Traffic and weather together on the eights") whom I encountered under unfortunate circumstances a couple of weeks ago: in the dark and rain, right across from the National Cathedral when my 13-year-old car's front bumper slid into the rear of his new Lexus. The only damage (it was less than 5 mph) was that one of the screws holding on my license plate punched a small, screw-head-sized hole into his bumper. But it's a Lexus. He was gracious, not a jerk (thank God!), though you could tell he was not thrilled that I'd bumped him. He took a photo with his phone and emailed it to me, and said he'd be in touch (he was on his way to dinner, and the police don't come for domestic violence on the street in Georgetown--why would they come for such a minor traffic incident?). I wrote him a nice note back, but haven't heard anything. The holidays being what they are, and his job being what it is, it may be weeks yet. I hope the fix isn't expensive, and that the dealer doesn't try to convince him he needs a whole new bumper. I did get a very generous bonus from one of my bosses, but I don't want it to vanish into some car dealer's pocket.

Screaming Fits & Novel Writing

2011-11-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

This weekend's estate sale has gone beautifully thus far--none of the behavior and shoplifting problems that bedeviled the last one, though we did have two customers almost yelling at each other for five minutes yesterday over a $65 framed print, each claiming to have claimed it first. Sheesh. It's not like it's the Shroud of Turin. And today we had a little girl (about 6 years old) go into shrieking hysterics at the mere sight of Charlie, my bosses dog, who was lying placidly underneath the checkout table. She begged her grandmother to take her away, which the woman did, after a few minutes of agony for us and all the other customers. At any rate, I bought myself a Makita drill, some candles (for my posh Christmas party) and some long-sleeved t-shirts. I put offers in on a KitchenAid mixer (white, in the box) and a Singer sewing machine table (perfect for my projects room). I was happy to provide lamps for the otherwise dimly-lit townhouse, and sold three at full price--tomorrow they'll all be discounted 25%.

My perfume-sniper colleague and I do plan to write a novel together, but it's not going to happen until January, after the pre-Christmas obligations are done, notwithstanding November is NaNoWriMo. Since I still don't have an Internet connection at home, that would interfere with our earlier collaboration anyway.

This has been the most social weekend I've had in months! I'm blogging over at friends' (the parents of Augustus Wiggle), and the NPV and Rachel just came in. We're waiting for the guests of honor, but much good food and pleasant company is already assembled. Yesterday, while I was at work, my friend Heidi called me to say she was taking me up on my standing invitation to come down from Pennsylvania to spend the weekend, and arrived within three hours. It was a wonderful surprise, and Susan and she and I went out to an Irish pub for dinner, then home for chat, the decibel level in the pub being astronomical. Then Heidi and I watched an episode of Psych. I still can't always find the legendary pineapple in each episode, but refuse on moral grounds to cheat by looking it up online...

PMC, Age Woes, and Wickedness

2011-10-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

I dreamed from childhood of being able to work with PMC, although it wouldn’t be invented for another twenty-five years. Why couldn’t one make precious metals into a workable clay, that once dried and fired emerged from the kiln as a sculpted piece of pure silver or gold? Thankfully, my daydreaming about the “what ifs” of jewelry creation was shared by scientists at the 3M companies, who finally developed a recipe for Precious Metal Clay, now available in all sorts of elastic permutations in silver, gold, copper and other elements. I haven’t a kiln, so attempting to use PMC would be senseless right now, but I hope that one of these days, in my dream house (which will consist mostly of workshops and a large library), I’ll have one installed.

I did have PMC for the first time this last month, but it was PreMenstrual Cramping of the hot-irons-applied-to-the-lower-half-of-my-back kind, not of the gilded nature. It was a sort of trial by fire, as it felt like my kidneys and assorted other organs were being slow-roasted. I’d been blissfully pain-free for decades with regards to cyclical girly matters, and all of a sudden I was laid low, wrongly ascribing this severe discomfort to my wearing of a new pair of tennis shoes with air-filled pockets in the soles. But my second X chromosome, not Reebok, was to blame. Sometimes I really hate being female. Other times I love it, because I can swan around in funky embroidered wear and beaded slippers and be considered only mildly wacky, rather than downright nuts, which I would be if I were a guy sporting the same colorful outfits.

Work is good, but exhausting. I am busy morning to night every day. Every day is different, and often in a different location, which means that I average more than an hour in the car daily (a short and blissful period compared to most commutes in the greater DC area, made even happier by the fact that I always have a novel to read on my steering wheel when traffic’s at a standstill). Everything involves some organizing, and then a variation of tagging or cataloging, usually with a mind to assess value, either for retail or auction, or for insurance purposes. And then there is the clutter of my own home to be sorted, something I am loath to do when I return home after a long day up to my armpits in other people’s possessions. I just want to curl up on whatever small piece of territory is left uncovered by stacks of fabric, pieces of lamps, and jewelry components, and nap. Only a month until the annual Georgetown show, and I have nothing ready for it! Exactly a month until my 37th birthday, and I am most certainly not ready for that, either.

My baby brother turned 29 Tuesday a week ago. I called to twit him about being almost thirty, and he responded by pointing out that I, personally, was within spitting distance of 40. Touche. He sounded good for a guy who'd spent the better part of the morning dissecting a human leg and had come home to reemerse himself in a John Le Carre novel. I am looking forward to seeing him at Thanksgiving.

Grandmommy said she'd had a great 89th birthday when I called her that same Tuesday night. She'd gone on her usual multi-mile walk in the morning and had been fielding congratulatory phone calls much of the afternoon. I was after dark calling myself, because I worked late at my new book-cataloging gig and then called her before I reported for another three hours of ticketing estate sale consignments. I didn't get home until after midnight. I had an even later night the previous weekend, also doubling on the work-commitments on Saturday, meaning I was drawing some wage for at least twelve hours. Needless to say, I have darkened the door of the gym only once in the last two weeks--though part of that wussiness was due to the aforementioned worst backache I've endured since injuring myself doing a charity book sale half a decade ago.

We'd bad theft at our estate sale last weekend--Friday an entire mink jacket disappeared, and we still can't figure out how (those things aren't exactly non-bulky)—and numerous smaller items went AWOL, including a wooden bowl I’d consigned. Rampant price-switching was the new norm. Many nasty, messy people trashed the place—CDs scattered all over the floor, linens tossed on the bed, clothing carelessly dumped in the bathroom, just unbelievable. We don’t know exactly how to avoid this in the future, given that the house was a nice area (Potomac, MD—where the rich folks live) and shouldn’t necessarily have attracted lowlifes to begin with—we had next to no problems when we did a house in the ‘hood last year off Georgia Avenue in DC. Or maybe we had problems precisely because the area was so nice, whereas thieves didn’t think to come to the house downtown because they thought there wouldn’t be anything worth taking. Ironically, stealing from a house is a felony in Maryland, so these light-fingered creeps are risking serious legal trouble, not just a misdemeanor shoplifting charge. If we could only catch them! Short of having an off-duty cop in every room, I don’t see how we can, and it’s depressing to think that people would just come in and take what doesn’t belong to them. And after we’ve worked so hard to organize it and present it in the best light!

Late Night, Five Days Ago

2011-10-19T11:46:00.002-07:00

It’s getting to that time of night when I start seeing alien faces leering at me from the curlicue patterns in the Persian silk rug draped over the end of my bed. Of course, being temporarily bereft of Internet access at home means I can’t figure out what exact species of grasshopper nearly caused me to keel over from fright this afternoon, so I can only describe it as an unholy cross of a spider and cricket, all big and thin and creepy and stripy and crouched ready to spring in a flock of a score or so in the hollow within the folding table I was setting up in the basement of the house where we’re doing a sale. I was so freaked out by the sight of these horror movie escapees that I almost vomited my heart (which I found had suddenly lodged itself in the vicinity of my vocal cords), while my skin had gone goosebumps in a fraction of a second. Nasty, nasty creatures. Not at all like the jolly fat brown crickets that occasionally turn up in my apartment—those I catch in my bare hands, toss in the toilet, and flush while cackling evilly. I don’t even think a clutch of roaches, as awful as they are, would have made me as jittery. Roaches--at least Yankee roaches such as we have here (quite unlike the poetically-named Palmetto bugs of South Carolina)—only run, they don’t jump. And they can be stomped. These things made me want to turn and run shrieking. Instead, I slammed the table halves back together and ran the whole out into the back yard, where I flipped the thing open and over and released the ‘hoppers out into the wild. But my skin continued to crawl for half an hour at the thought of them. I may have to start carrying a brace of frogs in my pocket holsters in self-defense.

Seven Years In Blogspot

2011-10-02T16:54:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of this foray into blogdom. I went to the Maryland Renaissance Fair with a girlfriend and a coworker of hers, Bree. Bree just got back from a purely recreational trip to eastern Turkey, where she wandered far afield with hundreds of other Western hikers, exploring this land of cheese and honey, staying off mountains known to be infiltrated by Iranian kidnappers, yet venturing into other heavily-militarized zones to see ruinous castles and ancient churches. I wish I weren't such a chicken and were brave enough to undertake such independent adventures, but I am an armchair explorer when alone, and usually hesitate to stray from the beaten path without company. However, perhaps like the Victorian spinsters to whom I not infrequently compare myself, I will eventually become something of a corseted swashbuckler in my later years, dancing on Himalayan peaks and canoeing in Andean rivers, among visits to other less-civilized places.

The Renn Fair was set up neatly as usual (one of the reasons I enjoy going, besides all the arts and crafts and shows and opportunities for people-watching, is they've got it organized so well, from staff directing parking to staff managing the long lines at the privy stations, which are well stocked with hand cleanser and paper towels), but the weather was cold and dreary, and about 4:30 a chilly rain started falling, which sent us shivering under our anachronistic umbrellas. We'd earlier combated the cold with that long-debunked standard remedy: alcohol. My companions got glasses of mead, while I chose a cupful of hard cider. We'd all have rather had warm mulled wine, but curiously (it's October--you'd think they'd expect some cooler weather, given that the fair lasts until the end of the month) that wasn't available. But the drinks did make us feel less frozen for a while under our stockingless old-style garb, as did the spinach pie we had for lunch, and we watched a juggling and balancing act and then found our way to the jousting ring, which had been upgraded since last year. Unfortunately, one of the "knights" was unhorsed in the first tilt and went helmet-first into a wood doorpost, so that cut short that particular event. The man in question was able to remount after some worried flurry around his supine armored form by his squires, but he was out of the running as far as any immediate daring-do, and I expect was carefully checked for a concussion afterwards.

Before we left, we stopped to grab a final deep-fried treat--a trio of battered Oreos. Only after we'd placed our order and were huddling with the other patrons under the dripping awning did we notice that, unlike the rest of the booths, the preparation area of the stand selling this cardiac-arresting confection looked positively medieval--there was a grimy five-foot wall separating the cooking area from the counter, and behind this buttress peered a skinny one-eyed man (he wore no patch--the sightless eye was milky) with unwashed grey hair wearing what I took at first glance for a camouflage baseball cap. Then I realized that the Advanced Auto Parts logo crowned the area above the cap's bill and the whole thing had once been taupe--the camouflage pattern was suggested by the large spots of grease and smears of grime that covered it and the face of the man who wore it. Around this frightening apparition rose roiling grease smoke, and every minute or so he'd turn around from whatever witches cauldron he was stirring and his filthy bare hands would cradle an order of fried chocolate-covered bacon, or fried Snickers, or some other delicacy in a little paper tray up over the lip of the partition. Maybe one does not need to venture out of suburban Maryland to encounter the odd peril.

A 200-LB, 4-FT Venus

2011-09-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

My mother is now the proud owner of a 200-pound, 4-foot tall solid concrete facsimile of the Venus Italica of Canova. This Venus, even in approximation, is most assuredly not to be confused with the Louvre’s Winged Victory or with the sylph-like Venus on the Half Shell, and certainly not with Canova’s own other Venus (Venus Victorious, a nude portrait of Napoleon’s sister). She’s a remarkably retiring, modest goddess, a normal-looking curvaceous lady clasping a swag of drapery to her bosom, not some tarted-up escapee from some adolescent Playboy fantasy, as so many classical female statues have been reconceived in reproduction. Mums had a very definite idea of what she wanted for her garden nook, and it was little short of a miracle that we found her, in a huge antique mall in Jacksonville, Florida. She was mislabeled as Athena (as if SHE would ever gad about in the buff!), and priced at less than a third of the cost of the same image listed online (not including shipping, which would be considerable). It took two men straining mightily to lift her inside Mums’ Toyota Highlander. I recommended that Mums ply some of the young men from her kickboxing class with baked goods in order to get her out of the car and into the garden once we're back home tomorrow, because there’s no way she and I can do it alone. I can’t think of too many guys who would turn down an opportunity to manhandle a nude female sculpture and show off their own great musculature in exchange for home-cooked sweets...

Quirky Signs & Symbols and Abundant Wildlife

2011-09-22T19:53:00.001-07:00

Mums and I had lunch with Grandmommy on Wednesday and continued on from Middle Georgia to Savannah, where we found lodging on the beach. We weren’t hungry for any supper after the great midday meal, but was there amongst the salad greens in the pattern of our Tybee Island hotel bedspread some foliage of a munchies-inducing nature, or was this simply my imagination?

This morning we went for a long walk on the beach. We found half a dozen large dead jellyfish washed ashore…

And a living starfish waving its arms in a tidepool…

And then I rescued a giant (platter-sized—I wish I’d photographed my foot beside it!) horseshoe crab in another pool, which a couple of jovial rednecks had left upside down with its legs waving after holding it up by its trailing spine—it was a good 2 feet long from front of “hoof” to spine tip)...

And they displayed a fish which quickly buried itself in the sand to its eyeballs after it was returned to the water.

I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of the five or so dolphins which swam offshore, but I did note that some humans ranked lower than animals on the TI pier.

While some semi-domestic animals had their own management agency…

And, among non-Muggles, there's got to be a Quidditch match going on forever under the sea, because their snitch is missing ...

We’d first realized this was going to be a signal trip when we saw, emblazoned in large letters on the pumps at a gas station in Sandersville, GA, this proud claim, the “small print” to its banner announcement of “double-filtered” fuel: …SYSTEM CAN NOT BE BYPASSED…. I think they meant it “cannot be surpassed”.

At Tybee the sign outside the local diner read:

Now, “home-cooked” meals are legendarily tasty, but as Mums said, the dishes that are concocted in Home Ec classes tend to be infamous.

In the Soul Food category, we’ve encountered some deep thoughts on wayside church billboards, some more philosophically obscure than others, including "Those who remain in the valley will never go over the hill" and "God wants us to get in the game, not to keep score."

And then there is the lure of discount shopping:

These were antiques that didn’t quite make the retail grade at the factory, I guess. [To be fair, I ended up buying three lamps there.]

We’re now on Amelia Island, in Florida, and aside from a few misplaced commas, as comfortable and content as could be.

Good News And Off To Warmer Climes

2011-09-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

A couple in Maryland were so happy with the job I did on the books that we sold for them at an estate sale this summer that they hired me this week as an independent contractor to organize and catalogue the contents of their permanent home library. The wife, like me, is an insatiable omnivorous reader, and there are thousands of books to sort and record. I'm to work one day a week for them, at a quite nice hourly rate. I start in October, after I return from GA. So, now I have not four, but five part-time jobs!

Mums and I plan to leave on a long-awaited vacation to points in Florida on Wednesday. I'm working up in Bethesda today, and intend to drive to GA tomorrow. We haven't made any reservations at hotels and whatnot, as we intend this beach trip to be random and relaxed--we'll drive to where it suits us, find a place to stay for the night, and then continue on, or not, as our whimsy takes us. We both hope the weather will cooperate! Will post pictures!

Scotch and Water

2011-09-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

Either the cocktail recipe book I have is a marvel of misdirection, or most mixed drinks are nasty.

I used to wonder if I might be able to make it as a bartender, though I am not male, jocular, nor do I know any clever tricks involving swirling colorful squirts of spirituous liquors into small expensive combinations. I can flip a mean towel over my shoulder, though, and bellow, “what’ll ya have?” with the best of them.

There was a bartending school on the back side of the second floor of a building one block from my old digs in Arlington; the front, ground floor was occupied by a framing shop and a Papa John’s Pizza delivery hub, and there was a discreet wrought-iron staircase at the back for the booze-mixing students. I glimpsed a class once, the backs of the future barspiders to the window, some scribbling in notebooks as their instructor poured, stirred and shook.

I knew I didn’t have the looks or the leg-muscles for barkeeping, though—standing up for hours and hours, chatting up complete strangers and shepherding them from sobriety into garrulous inebriation—nor the stomach to put up with the loosening inhibitions. But I did want to find out more about drinks, how they were made, of what curious ingredients they were constructed, what went into piquantly-named beverages like the Whiskey Sour and the urbane Metropolitan. I do like margaritas, and there’s one sky-blue concoction I had once when out with some fellow graduate students years ago that I’ve always wanted to reproduce.

But though I may have champagne taste, my pocketbook these days runs more to affording soda water (forget even rotgut beer brews like PBR), and so how was I to go about experimenting mixology at home? Estate sales. Just as estate sales agents price everything from bedroom slippers to bathmats, Old Master paintings to Tinker Toys, they also occasionally sell booze, or the dregs of it. Over the last five months or so, for less than $30 total, I’ve acquired a liquor cabinet that makes me look like I’ve pickled my brain for years—five kinds of whiskey, several rums, Cointreau, Kahlua, some odder liqueurs, all the bottles partially empty. The recipe book I found in a stack of random publications that was being given away.

And so, occasionally, when I’m feeling restless, as last night, I try out different combinations. And they are almost all disgusting. Many taste medicinal, others don’t even ascend to that level of palatability. The kitchen sink drainpipe gets cleaner after such experiments. I don’t feel guilty about simply dumping such undrinkable swill, since it cost me so little. I have also found that whiskey—even the high-end brands--is pretty vile, however you try to disguise it. Kahlua is too sweet to my taste, and crème de menthe is a frightening molasses-slow sludge of deep, evil green. Rum is decent (maybe I’m a pirate at heart), but only in small, slowly-sipped quantities, and gomme syrup is sugar-saturated water that tends to start crystalizing around the edges of its container almost immediately.

I still haven’t found the perfect margarita recipe, which is just as well, because unlike all the aforementioned nixed mixes, I know I like them, and that would be bad for my brain, my bank balance, and my bum (it would expand, and I would sit on it even more than I already do).

It's bucketting down today--the street outside is glittering like a lake in the lights from the parking garage opposite the Bethesda Gallery. Business has been correspondingly slow. We have weepy Alison Krause on the CD player, and I'm sorting through a year's worth of ragged "want" cards from customers with variously legible handwriting. It's the sort of atmosphere that lends itself to critical introspection.

Why is it, when I am trying to galvanize someone I've known for years out of what I consider to be emotional lethargy, I come across like a whining shrew harpy rather than as robust and serious, a solemn force to be reckoned with? [BTW, shrew harpies are like the toy dogs of the harpy family—genuine, grown-up harpies can take the flesh off a man’s bones in a matter of seconds. Shrew harpies are yappy and frequently stepped on.] As anyone who’s been around me for any length of time can tell, I don’t do “cutting” very well (except maybe inadvertently) and here I was attempting to convey in a brutal manner that a (former?) male friend obviously didn’t care a whit about me, as he hadn’t telephoned or called or even emailed but a couple of times in the past year—and in my gut I imagined that maybe if I hurt his feelings, he’d realize what a schmuck he’d been, and (by some irrational logic) also what a catch I was, and actually get around to resuming our previous regular chitchat, walks, meals, etc. So, at the end of our last, brief, telephone exchange I blurted, “I guess we’ll talk soon. Or maybe we won’t, since you are lousy about keeping in touch.” Which is true, but not a statement designed to make a middle-aged man’s heart go pitter-pat. And I certainly sounded like a squeak pig. And so my attempt at force majeure was flat, laughable, and entirely unproductive. I loathe that too-glib phrase “he’s just not that into you,” but it’s applicable in this case. At least I wasn’t emotionally abused or in any other way led down the garden path by the guy in question, so some progress is being made in terms of the quality of my fraught romantic relationships. But I do hate to see such beautiful calf muscles disappear into the sunset; the guy has gorgeous gams. A girl, even a strong-jawed, unglam sort like yours truly, needs exercise-enhanced male pulchritude in the vicinity to keep her spirits up. Maybe I'll slog through the rain to the gym this evening.

Shaken, Then Stirred (Or) Cats, Quakes, Bags, Guys

2011-08-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

Of course, I was standing behind a glass case, next to glass shelves filled to capacity with Waterford, Orrefors and other crystal when the earthquake hit Bethesda Tuesday afternoon. Exactly where you don't want to be when the walls, floors, ceiling and so forth are moving about unexpectedly. I knew what was going on immediately (having been through two, less severe, earthquakes before), and my coworkers told me later I was quite calm (they were freaking out), standing at the counter, waiting for the world to stop jerking. My internal shaking didn't commence until sometime after the external vibration had ceased--I was on an adrenalin high for the next three hours, jazzed that we'd escaped without injury to shop or person (nothing in the whole store broke, despite the 5.8 tremors).

To round out the week, Hurricane Irene is supposed to brush us tomorrow night.

Brushing and clipping didn't do my sinuses any good, Bertram-wise. I had to return him to the abuse of his big brother after only a week. Why:

Semi-normal (tired) eye:

Eye briefly exposed to Bertram:

Note swelling. It was still very hard to give him up. He was a sweetie, and had made himself comfortable:

A handsome and winsome kitty. Very genteel. The fault was all mine--allergies unexpected and uncontrollable even with generous doses of Claritin. His previous owners were actually quite happy to see him again (they know his big brother is the one that needs to be re-homed), and promised that I can come visit when I want. Still, it was a huge emotional blow to be unable to keep him--I'd always thought that I'd settle down with a cat and a catalogue of personal peculiarities and grow old content. And I wanted a fuzzy beast to cuddle when the miseries stalked me!

Instead, I am stuck with some 18 unfinished patchwork bags cluttering my common room area, and a couple of singularly annoying male relationships (or lack thereof). I met one fellow last weekend who seemed promising, until a short exchange of emails ended with an insult to my Southern heritage and a comment that I had imbibed the "liberal cool-aid" (sic), which latter remark caused Susan to snort into her margarita this evening and blurt "You!?" in disbelief. Meantime, a long-time male buddy remained obtuse to my real, financial needs keeping me from doctoral program-completion and instead cheerfully offered an alternative dissertation topic, as if that would magically solve my problems. I thought murderous thoughts and euphemistically damned all and sundry who opt for the "be warmed and filled" or the Pollyanna "it's all jolly" mentality in lieu of even the "Gee, that sucks" commiseration or the practical "Here, let me help" attention that would be, you know, useful and welcome.

Friendship has been a great gift to me these last three, increasingly depressing weeks. Susan and Stephen invited me out this evening to the Marine Barracks Evening Parade in honor of the Montford Point Marines, which was awesome. Not anywhere near as well known as the Tuskeegee Airmen, the Montford Point Marines were the first African Americans in the Marine Corps, first recruited in 1942. I was in tears watching these old fellows, who reminded me so much of Granddaddy, be honored by the current members of the service. That generation was and is incredible to me--the huge challenges they faced from enemies abroad and opponents to freedom and equal opportunity at home, and how far we've come since then. And how truly far there is to go, as each generation has to resolve to treat others as we would have them treat us. Apart from the historical-social aspect, it was just fascinating to watch the precision drill teams in action, and listen to the drum and bugle corps--observing some 200 Marines in picture-perfect formation is an obsessive-compulsive's delight!

Temporary delights or no, it's been a hard month. I am pretty down and lonely. I've had some health issues, which never brighten the day. Work has been spotty, more irregular than usual, and a transcription gig which I had thought might increase my income has had the opposite effect, occupying my time while not plumping my pocketbook. I haven't been sleeping well, and find myself frequently on the edge of tears, wondering what I am useful for, and when I'll have any stability in income and identifiable accomplishments, when I'll have somebody who will just hold me close and pat me gently on the head. My outlook is pretty grim for the short term, and I can only pray that something good, or more than one something good, will happen soon, because it's like every couple of days brings a new round of sinking sadness.

Opportunity Costs

2011-08-11T15:37:00.001-07:00

Happily, Bertram has not cost me a dime thus far. He came with a carrier, bag of cat litter, litter pan, litter scoop, food dish and bag of kibble. He's up to date on his shots, his front claws have been removed, and he has been neutered. He's very sweet and fluffy--one of the softest cats I've ever met--and has only generated a mild allergic reaction in yours truly, which is a good thing, considering he's a Maine Coon, and there is a lot of fur involved. He won't sit still for the camera, and so the only clear photo I have of him thus far is of his fuzzy posterior and tummy. He doesn't eat or excrete much, and hasn't yet displayed any bad habits, but then I've only had him since Sunday afternoon, so time will tell.

Bertram is a bright, purry spot on what has been a dismal and depressing fortnight. I've even had one brief glimpse of the depths of serious, clinical depression which so bedeviled me for decades (same old themes of OCD thought reinvigorated by current headlines and hysteria), but hopefully that was a one-of moment. There've been unexpected expenses on the auto front: a flat tire (cost $25 and two plugs to fix) and a plugged emissions-control pipe ($340 to root out and replace), and then there is the almost-inevitable resignation from my graduate school program.

The latter has been a source of much heartache. I've wanted to get my Ph.D. for as long as I can remember--since I was three, at least. But taking out a loan on a liberal arts advanced degree is ridiculous in ordinary times, and in a day and age when countries are crying havoc and loosing the dogs of Wall Street, it's downright stupid. A Russian History Ph.D. in these post-Cold War days is no guarantee of employment--in fact, it's little more than a "vanity"--a considerable bolster to my intellect and psyche, perhaps, but without any direct financial recompense in the near or even distant future. At least two liberal arts Ph.D.s I know are unable to find employment in their fields, and at a tiny college in Pennsylvania a single opening for a faculty position in the same attracted over 150 applicants--typical, from my observations at Georgetown. Trying to explain this fact to well-meaning people with "practical" degrees (finance, medicine, computer science) gives me a headache--additionally that I already owe my mother money I don't have a hope of paying off in any reasonable time (she's assured me that she'll take it out of me in elder care, and, failing that, it'll be deducted from my share of her estate), and can't take on any more debt, no matter how glamorous it would be to have people call me "Dr. P." As I've repeated a lot lately, "That and 5 bucks will give me a small cup of coffee at Starbucks."

Furthermore, I can't work at all and make any headway on my dissertation--I've tried part-time jobs (I currently have four to make ends meet) and these inevitably swell to full-time. I suppose it's a personal credit that all my bosses want to monopolize as much of my time as possible, and that two of them have given me raises in the last six months because they are so pleased with my work, but I'm still barely making do and until this last Sunday evening I'd not touched my dissertation research for more than 6 weeks. And I haven't been frittering my time away watching TV, either--I hadn't turned my set on in that time period. There's been no spare time--I work late, get home late, eat late, hit the gym between ten and eleven, and come home to shower and go to bed.

So, I did some number crunching, to see what it would take for me to start and finish (insofar as it depends on me) my dissertation writing in a year. Particularly as so many people have acted like it's a moral failing for me to quit "When you're almost done!" (Like writing 400+ pages of text on sources you've gathered but haven't had time yet to read is "almost done"...) A dear pastor from my church even called last night to tell me he thought I should keep going. Well, let's see if someone wants to give me the money to make this possible! (It has to be a gift, not a loan, because as aforementioned, this doctorate is an intellectual enrichment exercise, not a financial coup de gras)... I could do it in a year, so: My rent is $1345 per month, including utilities, excepting electricity, which averages $55 per month (more in summer, less in winter). That's $16,800 for a year. My other expenses, including gas (!), food, and photocopying (or book-buying), besides the mentally-and-physically-necessary gym membership, run about $800 a month. That's another $9600. Then there's Georgetown tuition and health insurance: $4750 (that's just for thesis-writing credit, one semester of tuition and a whole year of health insurance): so far, we're up to $31,150. Assuming that my gas expenses go down because I'm not driving to work every day, and that I can stay with friends/acquaintances in Ukraine and Russia for the one trip to archives/museums I need to make to each country to satisfy a prospective dissertation committee, I think I can accomplish the whole for $32,000.

This is what I emailed the pastor, at least. But I also told him that I thought that in these "uncertain" economic times (Gosh, that's an irritating phrase!) the deacons probably had a better use for their charity fund than financing my frivolous education.

It's really disappointing, though, to be almost (well, with the serious caveat of all that research and writing to be done) within sight of this terminal degree, and have to toss in the towel. But, there it is, as Daddy liked to say.

Quick Update

2011-07-31T21:32:00.001-07:00

Went down for a "short nap" yesterday at 5 PM and woke up this morning at 9 AM...guess I was a little fatigued.

Saw "Captain America" this evening with a girl I met at a party on Friday (along with an Extremely Cute Russian guy from Moscow...he didn't seem to be impressed by my new Hermes perfume, which my scent-savvy coworker (the bestower of this fine elixir) told me was "catnip for men"...nor did the new haircut or the strapless dress garner much male attention...).

Working a lot--my AC bill was $95.95 for last month, and that's with being gone for a week!!--and still trying to straighten up my tornado-hit-it apartment in the evenings.

Dealing with deep-rooted bitterness, long-cherished and semi-suppressed, that's bubbling over in tears lately. Pointed sermon on the subject this morning at church, which Mr. B (who spent last weekend in the hospital, recovering from a mild stroke) attended with me.

Nominated my friend and co-translator Irina for an independent scholar award for Slavic area studies research.

Talked with a recently-published author about the TMTF project and cajoled him into critiquing my agent query letter. It took him six years to get his own work published, but it's rated top-50 young adult adventure fantasy on Amazon.

Made a couple more lamps, but the upcoming estate sale in Bethesda is stuffed full of goodies, so there is no need (or room) to bring any more in.

Still no Bertram (my furry potential roommate)--we were supposed to see if we'd hit it off over a two-week trial period, but his current mistress hasn't called me to set up a date. And once September rolls around I plan to be gone several weeks, so she'd better contact me soon or wait until the beginning of October. I really want someone to cuddle up to!

Swift Return, Belated Post, Timely Dispatch

2011-07-21T14:31:00.004-07:00

I was down in Georgia for only two days--I drove down last Tuesday morning (leaving DC about 5 AM), and drove back up here on Friday. Wednesday, Mums and I traveled to Dublin in time for lunch, and stayed at Grandmommy's until after lunch Thursday. Body and soul were fed well, and I was grateful to have had even this brief opportunity to spend with my two noble kinswomen, although I was unable to catch up with any friends in the area given the brevity of my stay. I finished the Tamora Pierce "Protector of the Small" quartet and began a distopian trilogy in my audiobook reading-while-driving--twenty hours in the car allows a good bit of material to be heard.

Saturday was my last day at the Arlington Courthouse Market. I finally carried through on my resolution to quit after a disappointing day so hot and dull that I fell asleep in my borrowed folding chair for an hour, having sold only one $15 pair of earrings. Both the Bethesda shop and my estate sale boss want me to work on Saturdays, and why should I haul myself out of bed before dawn to suffer in all weathers outdoors for little or no return when I could be sleeping in and then indoors earning a regular wage? Besides, the Bethesda store will be sold in September to a fellow jewelry artist, a serious businessperson who knows and likes me, and she plans to have a permanent jewelry display in the store--and has assured me that both Anita's and my work are welcome. So, my creations will be for sale all week, whether I'm on site or not. Too, although I'm certainly not giving up the personal jewelry selling entirely (I need to persuade some friends to host shows!), I'm more interested in making lamps and in sewing right now--there's the potential to have a better return on my investment of time and energy in these creative pursuits than in making jewelry right now. I certainly use many of the skills I've learned from metalworking and beading in lampmaking and sewing, whether it be wiring, drilling, or embellishing.

All this week I've worked at the Bethesda gallery--I'm to be there Friday and Saturday as well, though I'm leaving early tomorrow because Leah and some other friends of hers and I plan to go to dinner and see Harry Potter together--and there've been people met and items encountered that make the experience at once delightful and frustrating. First the sublime, then the ridiculous.

Yesterday, we had a new consignor, a girl who has just been hired as a professor at Georgetown. April's lived the last decade abroad, getting her doctorate at Oxford and then teaching at Cambridge. Her grandfather was one of two Japanese men not interned in California during World War II--his bilingual talents were considered to be of value by the OSS, and so he was spared from the camp confinement to which his wife and the rest of their family was sent. He also claimed that his uncle would be a useful translator. This uncle did not speak a word of English at the time, so in the evenings her grandfather would give the man intensive English lessons, which he, being a dedicated and bright individual, picked up quickly. I asked April if she herself spoke Japanese, but she didn't--although her aunt (younger than her late father) is fluent, her father (having been born immediately after the war, when the political climate was unfavorable) was not taught the language by his parents, and so she had determined to study it in college. But her father recommended that she take up Chinese, with which she fell in love, and she never made it to learning Japanese, instead concentrating on Mandarin. She was over on the mainland during the Falun Gong "uprising" and was out on the corner of a park one morning, practicing her reading comprehension by puzzling out an anti-FG government poster. A little old man came up to her and said, simply, "We will be back." She nodded at him pleasantly, continuing to read the poster. The fellow headed across the park. A minute later, a van screeched to a halt, officials with guns burst out the back, picked up the man and threw him into the back of the van, slammed the doors and roared off. April said that she just stood there, stunned--it had all happened in the blink of an eye, and though you always fantasize about doing something to respond to such an event, when it occurred she was helpless. At that point, she decided that she couldn't handle living and teaching in China.

As delightful as it was to meet April and hear of her adventures abroad, it was a trial and a tribulation to deal with Donna, one of the "grand dames" of Georgetown, whom I first encountered some three weeks ago, when I was hard at work on the ginormous estate sale we were setting up in the District. She contacted my boss to ask her if she might consign silver with us, which proposal we welcomed. She also said that she had a Degas (of a ballet dancer, no less) that she wanted to sell, which of course prompted visions of greenbacks (if not of Sugarplum Fairies) to dance in our heads. She wanted an inventory made of the silver before it left her house--an entirely reasonable request. My boss asked me to come along to see the artwork and to type up the silver list.

The first dramatic disappointment was the "Degas"--the only thing it had in common with the French Impressionist's work was that it was an oil painting, but there the similarities ended. The picture wasn't worth more than $150, certainly not the millions of dollars of which we had dreamed. And its framed siblings were more or less dreck, notwithstanding their alleged aristocratic pedigrees. Our hopes in the art regard flatter than a pointe slipper toe, we repaired downstairs to paw through the boxful of plata.

There was only one working light in the basement, and nowhere to sit. I ended up on the floor with my computer, typing up silver descriptions for three full hours. Donna had told my boss that the "du Ponts gave me this for my wedding", "the Vanderbilts" that, and so forth. OK, OK, so you and your parents had monied/influential connections. Donna stopped by for five minutes while we were sorting silver--she was all bleached blonde and wearing a suit worth more than a Third World family's annual income. Smiling, charming, remembered my name from the first introduction. Terrible problem: she'd locked her keys in her Mercedes when she'd gone to the manicurists, and she was due at X ambassador's house in an hour for dinner! My longsuffering boss volunteered to drive her. I spent another hour in the basement finishing the list, and then went home to email it.

Two days later, after we'd gotten all the silver, painstakingly weighed each piece, tagged it and priced it...Donna called us to say that she was picking it up, that her children wanted it. Didn't offer to reimburse us a dime for the time and energy we'd put into the effort, no apology for violating the contract terms, nothing. Simply swept in, swept up the silver, and swept out. Not a word about any of the paintings, which she hadn't consigned after all. Told us she wanted to put "some really nice antiques" into the sale instead, including a curio and a china cabinet. My boss, distressed over the loss of the silver, was slightly molified--one of the reasons she'd welcomed this woman's attentions is that she's a "who's who" (I'd never heard of her, but every town has its own local power brokers, and Donna is the Washington variety), who could potentially make referrals to others of the rich and well-connected. But we also needed a china cabinet for the sale's assorted small valuables, to keep those with sticky fingers from walking away with them.

The two cabinets arrived, and we were appalled. Filth like I haven't seen since the hoarder's house. They were coated in grime, and stank with old mildew. We put more than an hour into the china cabinet alone cleaning it with every chemical we had on hand. It was considerably better, but not perfect, when we finally installed it in the dining room and filled it with do-dads. The light mounted inside was a definite fire hazard, so I illuminated the contents with a floor lamp. The curio cabinet, which was missing its glass shelves, we stuck way up in an attic bedroom, where it could cook out its noxious fumes in front of a sunny window without bringing down the tone of the rest of the sale. We did end up selling both pieces, not for thousands (as their misguided mistress had claimed they were worth), but for hundreds.

Although there was only one "leftover" from the Georgetown sale that Donna owned, she got the name of the Bethesda gallery from my boss and decided to send it with more of her dilapidated furniture there. When I arrived on Monday, there were an odd number of beat-up chairs (a celebrity had apparently once rested her bum in one, and Donna thought that lent value to the dumpster-ready piece), a small dirty bed frame, and a two-part dining-room cabinet with one drawer akimbo sitting in our back room. Unsaleable shit, in other words, not mincing about. The chairs and bed could not be resurrected--they needed to go directly to donation, where some thrifty person might bare their bones and remake them beautiful. The cabinet had pretty lines, but like its fellows it was so incredibly dirty that it was hard to tell the diamond from the dung. Then we found, as the day progressed, that all of my coworkers and I had developed runny noses, scratchy throats, sneezing. The cabinet was full of mold. No one had the time or protective gear to clean it. But what sealed its fate for me was its mechanical failure--the stuck drawer. We told our boss she had to call Donna, tell her this was unbearable and send the crap away ASAP.

Donna is not someone used to being denied her whims. Just as she'd let us know that she knew everyone worth knowing, and she'd mentioned that she had X and Y expensive/exclusive possessions and privileges, she rode Manolo-shod over my boss, browbeating her into being less than forceful about the need to clear the air at the store. Donna has a gift of charisma, of making her listeners want to please, and this character trait is only enhanced by her possession, or appearance of possession, of temporal power, and with it the implicit threat that she could ruin a public-dependent small enterprise's reputation among her affluent and influential network of friends and acquaintances. So when my boss told me yesterday morning that she didn't have a definitive "go ahead" from Donna for the donation (the pickup for which I'd already scheduled), I was not happy, and said as much. "Why don't you call and talk to her?" suggested my boss, more than happy to give me the task of dealing with this peroxided powerbroker.

So I did. Donna tried to get me to keep the stuff--she said each of my bosses--the estate sale woman and the store owner--had been understanding, that a little cleaning (Hah!) and sandpaper were all that was needed (where did she think I would do all this repair work?!), that they were worth a lot of money ("Horse puckey!" I thought)... I stuck to my guns, told her I would consider working on the china cabinet, but that the other items must go immediately--they were health hazards. That I was so sorry that her storage company had not treated her possessions properly, etc. After I hung up, I looked over the cabinet again, and managed to get the drawer pushed in, after much effort. And then I couldn't get it open again, and the nasty germs infesting the thing were making me sick. So I decided it, too, must go into the tumbrel. Due diligence had been satisfied.

Within an hour after the donation people (a mental illness charity) had hauled out the offensive objects, our allergies subsided, another proof that we'd made the right decision. But I have OCD, and worrying comes naturally and repetitively--what if this Donna person decided to make life miserable for me, or for either of my employers??? Prayed for relief from the fear of (wo)man--I'm already a pleaser by nature, and although there was certainly ample justification for my insistence on removing this woman's stuff from the floor, and I know from my non-stuffed nose to my toes that I did the right thing, my estate sale boss in particular communicated to me her discomfort at my making this woman to do something she didn't want. But Donna is not God, and for that, I am grateful. I am certainly no Daniel, either, just a pigheaded plebe who hates to be forced to breathe filth.

C'est ma vie, aujourdhui!

Still in Virginia

2011-07-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to drive to Georgia yet, but I hope I'll be sufficiently rested to make the whole trip tomorrow. My father's elder brother is in the hospital with chest pain (he's had several heart attacks before) so we are all concerned and would appreciate prayer for his full recovery. I don't want to have to face another family funeral.

Sale Over

2011-07-11T02:22:00.002-07:00

I told Dex in an email before I went to bed about five hours ago that not only do I feel like physical tortilla, I'm pretty much spiritual flatbread, too. I missed church today to work almost nine hours at what probably will have been our largest estate sale of the year. It was the fourteenth straight day I'd worked on this particular project, with hours spent in the evenings typing away on my computer on behalf of two other part-time jobs. I will be able to pay my rent next month, but I'm in desperate need of decent rest--and I can't sleep! This is the third time I've woken up since lying down in exhaustion, and I'm trying to make decent use of the minutes my brain is unsettled--particularly since I simply haven't had a spare moment to blog in almost three weeks!

I am supposed to drive half-way to Georgia tomorrow (later today) after a surprise birthday party for a coworker in Bethesda at noon. I need to be out of town both to escape employment demands on my "free" time (otherwise one of my multiple bosses calls to beg me to help them) and to spend some needed relational days with family.  I want to sit down and talk to Grandmommy about things that really matter, help her with any tasks that I might be better equipped than she to handle (such as ladder-climbing to change ceiling lightbulbs and such) and to be basically reminded about what is Real, rather than the amorphous "spirituality" cheerfully and enthusiastically embraced by a couple of my otherwise delightful new coworkers.

I went out to eat with said coworkers this evening. We'd been talking about sharing a pitcher of margarita for a week, and at last, when the final customer had been served and shooed out of the house, the front door to the two-hundred-year-old house secured with an enormous and ancient brass key (it looked more like an ornamental paperweight than a real tool for locks) at six, and we'd sat down in the paneled drawing room for a brief post-sale chat with our wonderful, indefatigable boss, Nancy--the first proper sit-down any of us had had all day--we set to meet on Wisconsin Avenue at a good Mexican restaurant for dinner and our drink.

One of the ladies, Emily, is a long-time estate-sale customer and former "perfume sniper" at a posh department store--she contacted Nancy after the cosmetics trade became tedious and asked if she needed any assistance--and the other, Mary, is a friend of Nancy's from her evening "prayer group" (a focused meditation class).  They both fit perfectly into our gynocracy, being neat and honest to an equally obsessive degree, good humored and energetic. They also hit it off instantly, finding all sorts of commonalities, from favorite colors to places both had been (Holland in the early 1970s, for instance), over chips and salsa, they realized that they are both Catholics by upbringing, though Emily only goes to mass occasionally because she doesn't agree with her priest's insistence on Christianity's exclusive validity, and Mary is a professional mystic. Her official title is "spiritual counselor"--I asked her what that means, and she explained that she teaches people how to incorporate the spiritual practices to which they feel most drawn into their lives in order to grow closer to the god (unspecified) of their choice--Allah, the divine love, whatever. Emily chimed in that she believes "there are many paths to the same goal." Well, so do I, but I think that the goals we have in mind are diametrically opposed to one another.

Had no clue to go about speaking to them in comprehensible ways about the many problems with their thinking. It's like socking a tar baby or squeezing one of those annoyingly unpoppable "stress balls"--the original thinking is so mushy that its unmanageable. So, I kept trying to change the subject to "safe" topics like what they'd majored in in college, etc. They kept talking about how they'd known one another in past lives (the spiritual counselor thinks she may be the reincarnation of Isadora Duncan, the modernist dancer who was killed when her long flowing neck scarf got caught in the wheel of the convertible in which she was riding). Electronic devices have turned on to give her peculiar messages over the years, from comforting phrases for a friend whose mother had just committed suicide to clues about her previous incarnations. Oh, my. She's also an ordained minister and can perform weddings in any of the fifty states. I kept thinking about my late Grandmother.  A very dynamic and enthusiastic woman, full of vital energy and a sense of karmic mission. How do you go about addressing the eternally consequential serious errors of such a sweetly, deliberately vague person?

I think the estate sale was a success. I managed to move tons of furniture and household goods up and down three flights of stairs without injuring myself, the furniture, or anyone else (I was the "designated schlepper" for the sale). We sold three-quarters of the mansion library, including a book by one of the American Founding Fathers (published during his lifetime) for $3000. There were a few rotten apples among the more than a thousand customers who came into the house from the Thursday night invitation-only preview reception through the last hours of the discount day today; most people were cordial, simply happy to get a chance to tour the impressive mansion and three acres of meticulously maintained gardens. I sold most of the items I was permitted to consign (lamps for the darker rooms, dishes to "plump" kitchens denuded after two days of locust-like visits by customers), which means that my own living room, for three weeks a frightenly hoarder-like area, is resuming its former neat aspect. That is, the chairs and sofa are beginning to emerge from underneath the piles of paper, boxes, plates, and other materials which had hid them, though there are still numerous lamp parts stacked on the floor and coffee table and pieces of patchwork tote bags draped everywhere. And, of course, the carpet in my jewelry-making room is still covered wall-to-wall with beads! But must rest--the sun is peeking between the cracks in my window blinds and I have miles to go on little sleep.

Rare Books and Retail--An Unfinished Post

2011-07-11T00:39:00.001-07:00

I've spent several of the last week's days in the library at the huge estate whose sale we're preparing in Georgetown. Supposedly, a big auction house in New York had come and taken the cream of the collection, but I have found enough gleanings left that if we sell only a quarter of what's available, my own salary and that of all of my colleagues will be paid just from the company's 30% take. For example, we've got a 1820 3rd edition of Washington Irving's tales, published in London under the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon. It's in lovely shape. On ABE, the cheapest version of this book is $1750, plus shipping, and prices ascend steeply from that point. So, I priced our copy at $1250, which I think is fair. There are dozens of other nice editions--a 1796 reprint of the Wealth of Nations (originally issued in 1776, one of the few book-publication dates I know offhand), a compilation of Benjamin Franklin's writings, issued during his lifetime by one of his friends (I recognized the publisher, but his name escapes me at the moment). The oldest book we've discovered is from 16-something. It's been a crash course in re-familiarizing myself with Roman numerals, as many, if not most, books before about 1930 were dated that way, if they were dated at all. And not only are the books themselves treasures, previous readers tucked odd items between their pages--an old (early 19th-century) door key, a telegram from a major New York paper asking the multi-millionaire former owner about another multi-millionaire's (duPont's) purchase of a castle in Europe, an 1890s newspaper clipping of a letter to the editor about China...

Everyone in retail has theories about how people behave--selling is not only about the merchandise's immutable qualities, but also about the environment in which it is presented, and, of course, in the times where you and your fellows stand around "bowling turkeys" (being bored out of your mind because customers are as rare as hen's teeth), the relationships you have within the sales force. I thought it was just the Arlington Marketers who blamed poor sales on every meteorological phenomenon (and its polar opposite), the time of day, the news, the calendar, and so forth. It turns out, talking to Lori, a woman with 30+ years experience in upper-tier store sales, including a decade or so on Fifth Avenue, that the brick front retailers have as many kooky notions about what causes people to buy or not to buy as us tent-top vendors. The problem is that people are predictably unpredictable in their shopping habits, when pouring rain can see shoppers forking over massive sums, and perfect sunny weather can keep people away from the cash registers in droves.

Strawberries, Horses, Rabbits and Vampires

2011-06-20T21:18:00.002-07:00

Rita was so deeply engrossed in a chapter of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Banks of Plum Creek that I don’t think she really registered that Mums and I were leaving. Her mom had told her we were going home, to get up and tell us goodbye, which she did dutifully but automatically, with the distracted look in her eyes of a girl whose mind is elsewhere—in this case, on the American prairie—and in seconds after the hugs and kisses she was back on the couch, effectively deaf to the world. Exactly as I was when I was only a bit older than she—she’s got a considerable start on her old aunt because she learned to read so early, and I didn’t get to that milestone until first grade.

We played knights and horse for hours several days running. The first day I made the mistake of trotting on all fours on hardwood with both children (about 75 lbs total of wiggling gleefulness) on my back, and discovered to my chagrin that not only was I much stiffer than I recall being the last time I was the beast of burden for small fry (some twenty years ago), my knees couldn’t stand the punishment. Bruised and wiser, I decided to take an adult stance and only give piggy-back style horse rides in the grassy backyard to one young relative at a time. Brad referred to me as “horse” for much of that period, as he was a knight, complete with lance and sword (usually imaginary, sometimes simulated by sticks and other items), and we had to slay dragons and bad monsters and such. Rita was also a knight, and the two of them almost came to blows over equine access until I instituted a strict 1-2 rotation of riders, with frequent breathers given the horse for water and rest.

We ate lots of pretend food, and bedded down on the picnic table, and played “drums” on the moss underneath the tree in the southern corner of the yard. Brad and Rita both decided that their knightly pets (all knights have pets, I was told) lived in the tree. “What sort of pets do you have?” I asked. “Doggies and monsters!” responded Brad. “Vampires and bunnies,” said Rita. “Not vampire bunnies?” I wanted to know. “No,” she said. Anxious to expand her reading list, I started to describe the plot of Debra and James Howe’s Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery. Rita looked at me pityingly. “Oh, I know that,” she said, with the assured air of someone who has already read the books in question. It’s a bit humbling to be literarily outpaced by a six-year-old.

Later, three-year-old Brad wanted to show off his real pet, his “little rabbit” as he called Fahrenheit, who is really, truly a jumbo bunny. This rescued herbivore’s been moved to a hutch outdoors (the space he formerly occupied indoors is now an aviary for a flock of 6 parakeets), and every day one of the adults fetches him out of this confinement and puts him into a movable playpen in the backyard, where he can munch clover to his furry heart’s content, eat what delicacies the children bring him, and lie in the shade of a plastic picnic table. That bunny has it made.

Here’s a shot of the movable enclosure. Rita is lying on one bench and Brad the other, while they harass Fahrenheit, who is resting under the table.

A boy and his “little” bunny on the swing.

Brad has the “poor little puppy” look down pat— those liquid milk chocolate spaniel eyes are hard to resist...

...and he knows it, the little stinker.

On Saturday, we went strawberry and pea-picking. A good time was had by all.

(We ate the fruits and vegetables of our labor that evening—delicious! Fahrenheit got the leftover pea pods.)

Rita with strawberry:

A little ham with his strawberry:

Thanks to the perpetually-tardy U.S. Airways, we made it back safely to Augusta this afternoon, more than two hours late. I’ve loaded my car, and plan to drive all the way back to DC tomorrow. But I don’t intend to set my alarm tonight—I need all the sleep I can get. I’ve been exercising like a fiend these last two weeks; thus far I don’t see a difference in my poorly-stirred tapioca pudding thighs, but I am flat tired. Must persevere! I am consoled by my cute new haircut—the shortest and bounciest to date.

Graduation

2011-06-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

My niece and goddaughter Rita graduated from kindergarten this morning. We were all proud. The event was held at City Hall, and the class marched in to "Pomp and Circumstance" wearing cobalt-blue caps and gowns (these they had to return at the end of the ceremony for the use of next year's class, but they were allowed to keep their 2011 tassels). They sang songs, danced, and did a dramatic reading of Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice. Then each student was given a rose and a diploma--the roses were for the moms--and we all watched a photo montage about the graduates and the year's activities. Then we all went downstairs for cake--my nephew Brad was VERY disappointed that it wasn't cupcakes, but a teacher's aide and I assured him that it was just a difference of shape. He still managed to spread icing from his chin to his knees and over the cloth seat of one of the City Hall chairs.

I had given Rita a necklace before we left for the graduation, and after the ceremony her paternal grandmother gave her a teddybear wearing a cap and holding a diploma. Rita's best friend in the class, a little boy named Minolo (who complimented her on her black-patent shoes), asked his parents, "How come Rita gets gifts at graduation and I don't?" Ah, equity in loot. They assured him that he had a gift waiting at home.

Sorry for the quality of the pictures--I'm not a good photographer!

Rita stands acknowledging her guests.

Fixed "picture grin" (I did the same when I was her age) firmly in place after cake and congratulations.

Providence

2011-06-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

We met a host of extremely nice people, Mums and I yesterday, during what turned out to be an eventful trip up to my sister’s house in Rhode Island. For one thing, we never actually made it to her house. We finally washed up at the hotel where—thank God—we’d made reservations, some seven hours after originally scheduled, almost too tired to make the expected pleasant chit-chat with the night manager at the desk.

We left home at 11 AM sharp. A friend from Mums’ church had sweetly volunteered to drive us to the airport, and we encountered no traffic or delays at check-in or security, so we were ready and waiting to board a good hour before they called zones. I worked on footnoting Prof. Stites’ last book—he’d managed to finish it before succumbing to cancer last year, but instead of using Word or a standard footnoting scheme, he had used some obscure word-processing program and put the notes in-text, at the end of the paragraphs to which they pertained, with a curious system of plus marks to tell readers what part of the narrative to which they referred. So my current advisor, who is working on prepping the book for press, asked me (given that I was Stites’ last assistant, and aided him in tracking down sources) to fix the formatting. It’s not a difficult job, just extremely time-consuming, and I’ve been snatching minutes here and there to work on it.

The first unexpectedness in our travel was quite minor—a bit of nausea while on the ground, of all places, in the turbo-prop aircraft while we waited for taxi-clearance to the gate in Charlotte, NC. The early afternoon sun feathering through the whirling blades produced a rapidly-blinking light-dark pattern in the cabin, and with the vibration and lack of fresh air I felt decidedly uncomfortable.

With only thirty minutes until our next flight was due to leave, and—by the sacred word of Murphy it HAD to be at the farthest end of a distant concourse from the one where we landed—so we hoofed it in record time, giving ourselves enough leeway so that we could use the restroom, but there was no way we could have scrounged lunch. They were a few minutes late calling us onto the 737, and when we were all seated, and the flight crew had run through the whole litany of safety information, and we’d pulled back from the gate, the captain announced that a gauge was malfunctioning, and we’d have to get it replaced before proceeding to Providence. Fifteen minutes, they said. I fell into conversation with my seatmate, a bubbly young woman from Alabama who was going to Rhode Island at the invitation, and on the dime, of a national drugstore chain, who had seen her coupon-savings blog (over 200,000 visits last month alone) and asked her, and a handful of other bloggers, up to corporate headquarters for a tour and powwow. I’m adding her site, couponingtodisney.com, to my blogroll. So, I wasn’t fretful at the time spent fixing—or as we soon found out, vainly attempting to fix, the errant gauge.

Eventually, our plane was returned to the gate, and the pilot announced that it would be a while, and anyone who wanted to de-plane might do so, just “stay in the boarding area so you can hear announcements.” Mums and I got our carry-ons and got off. It took more than three hours to fix the problem, but as we were not within hailing distance of a fast-food joint, and couldn’t go farther afield because of the risk of missing the plane—no one knew when it might be ready to go—we had to make do with the nutrition bars that Mums had prudently packed in her capacious purse. Cuisine it was not.

We got to Providence late—it was just a few minutes before 8 when we completed the paperwork for the rental car and walked out to the lot. Although it’s the airport for a state capital, T. F. Greene Airport is only just a little bigger than petite Augusta-Bush Field, and like it, pretty much closes up shop at 7 PM. The lady at Avis was very nice, but I think we were her last customers for the evening, and she’d been awaiting our arrival for some time.

We pulled out of the parking garage, drove a quarter of a mile down a side street, and got on I-95. And immediately the left rear tire went flat. Not mildly flat, but catastrophically flat—the rim was bent 45 degrees. God’s grace we made it to the shoulder safely. Mums was completely freaked—we were both tired, we were hungry, we’d just declined the exorbitantly-priced catastrophic-event plans offered by Avis, and here we were, less than a mile from the airport, and hadn’t hit anything, and boom, we were stuck on the side of the road in the twilight, cars racing past.

A Rhode Island state trooper pulled up, ruby lights flashing, behind us ten minutes later, while Mums was still struggling to get through to the Avis people (they say local numbers are on their rental agreement, but there was no such thing, so she ended up talking to the national emergency hotline). I got out, explained what had happened. He was so nice, and offered to call AAA for me, saying that he could speed up the process. Ten minutes after he'd roared off down the interstate, the AAA tow truck showed up. Mums had emptied the trunk of the rental, and the AAA guy opened the hatch where the spare should have been. There was no spare, just a pitiful patch kit—totally useless in this case. And in its state, the car couldn't be simply towed.“I’m gonna call a flatbed,” he told us.

The flatbed pulled up five minutes later—turns out the man who drives it lives at the exit where we’d gotten on. Then, just minutes after that, a THIRD AAA truck showed up—I think he just stopped by to see what the fuss was about. It was like the cavalry had arrived. All three men were very jovial—it was kind of like being at a backyard barbeque rather than being stuck on the side of a highway with a disabled vehicle. Finally, the Avis guy appeared—he’d been rousted from his coffee break by the local staff at the airport rental office saying “some woman had a flat and is having hysterics on the connector.”

One of the AAA guys and the Avis fellow recognized each other as familiar and both went through their previous employment history to discover that they both used to work at the same place. It was like old home week. We left everything in the AAA trio’s capable hands, the Avis guy drove us back to the airport and we picked up another rental.

Wanting a sit-down dinner (sometimes you just need a little pampering), we drove across the street to a tavern, where a small crowd of enthusiastic patrons were clustered around the bar watching the Bruins/Canucks Stanley Cup final game. I asked our waiter who was winning. He cheerfully responded “We’re ahead 2-0.” No need to dispute the “we.” My brother-in-law, who has a framed Bruins jersey signed by Bobby Orr, would have approved. My mom texted my siblings to give them the update on our adventures and tell them where we were--my brother Bob responded that he, too, would be in a tavern under the circumstances, but he wouldn't be wasting time on solid food. Believe me, if I hadn't been detailed to drive from the restaurant to the hotel (Mums was still pretty shaken up by the blowout), I would have indulged.

We got to our hotel and into bed just before midnight. I don’t know when I’ve been as exhausted by a day of traveling, but at least in the short term it had a happy ending!

New Digs, New Birds, Old Friends

2011-06-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

My mother’s new condo is huge (to me) and light-filled. It’s odd coming “home” to a place you’ve not seen since the foundation was poured and the first floor framed, yet walk through now to recognize many familiar objects in each room, from carpets to couches to art you yourself purchased years ago in far-away places and had framed.

Even if I were sentimentally disposed to drive past “the old home place” where we had lived for over a quarter of a century, I’m not really allowed to, as it’s in a guarded, gated neighborhood where I no longer am a resident. Happily, I am not tempted to do so, and I am thoroughly impressed by Mums’ new digs. Grandmommy and my Boston aunt and cousin are coming to visit for the first time on Monday, which will be the first anniversary of my Dad’s death. I doubt we’ll go to the cemetery unless one of our guests expresses a desire to go—Daddy’s not really there, after all.

The layout of the ground floor of the condo is friendly and open, a welcoming space with comfortable furniture and calm colors. The master bedroom is off around a corner, shielded from noise by the laundry room and its own large closet, where Mums’ shirts are arranged by color. Upstairs is the guest bedroom, a second full bath and another large room which she has converted into an office, and a loft where she’s set up two vignettes: a sort of miniature parlor (where I am currently typing) and an exercise area anchored by the treadmill. Mums is not one for knickknacks, but there is a shelf of mementos (a mother and child sculpture, a matroshka, a Polish box and a teapot) on one wall and the sill of the dormer window above the treadmill is also lined with curios. There are hardwood floors throughout and slate tiles in the bathrooms and kitchen. It feels clean and fresh, and manageable—I know it is far more to Mums’ taste than the old house, something that can be enjoyed and shared without being burdensome. She’s already had more people over for meals in the last two months than she did in the previous fifteen years—and our old oak table and china cabinet, which my parents purchased when I was only a year or so old, has pride of place in the center of the dining area between the kitchen and the living room. I remember helping Daddy sand and re-varnish it more than twenty years ago.

From some institutional perspectives, singles like me don’t have families, but we do in fact have people who love and care about us, even if we don’t have a spouse and children, and for each of these family members and friends we are extremely grateful. Before I left DC yesterday, I attended the promotion ceremony for a girlfriend of mine, who was assuming the rank of “full bird” colonel in the Air Force. The event was a lot like a wedding, only without the inconvenience of a groom. She was proudly decked in her dress blues, her “fruit salad” of decorations like a dessert plate over her heart, and we were all hugely proud of her—she’s excelled in every stage of her career, from enlisted person to high-ranking officer, flown combat missions, trained hundreds of other pilots, managed airfields and multi-billion-dollar international programs in parts of the world where women aren’t even considered to be full human beings. Everybody was damp-eyed as she presented her two sisters and her parents silver Air Force medallions engraved with particular statements reflecting how each of them had influenced and supported her throughout her life. She’s a very cool dude, and I was pleased to have been invited to witness the event—I wish I were as disciplined and dedicated as she! …besides the obvious estrogen-appeal of being able to fly powerful planes armed to the teeth with fiercesome weaponry… Afterwards , there was cake and punch and hors d’oeurves and pictures of the blushing new colonel with various gaggles of guests. I ended up talking to another high-achieving woman about the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam—she’s writing a book on the subject. I shared my own book-publishing hopes, and then ducked out and hurried home to pack and leave for North Carolina.

Paxifist and I ended up talking for five solid hours, until three AM [when we were both about to fall over, literally—I know I staggered from the shower to the futon in the playroom/office and fell on the mattress and into unconsciousness without my usual animal wiggling to establish the perfect sleeping position]. Kindred spirits are precious things. She and others have been such a witness of God’s love to me, even at moments of such severe depression that those less compassionate would have abandoned me to my fears without a qualm, they sat with me and soothed me. I am more grateful than I can express to God and to each of these dear people. The shocks and miseries that life throws at us are far more easy to bear in the company of others who know that this is not all there is to human existence, and that “behind a frowning Providence/ He hides a smiling face.” I am glad Providence does not always frown, too! Just as it is a blessing to have a whole flock of honorary nephews who give me hugs, it is awesome to have such effectual sisters in my personal immediate family. No husband, be he ever so dear, could surpass the value of these sororal relationships.

Cute Honorary Nephew Pictures!

2011-06-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

I have had a great time the last several days getting to hang out with two of my honorary nephews (and their parents!). On Sunday evening, Micah, who is six, had a lot of good questions about how to value various items, how the market works setting prices, and showed off his multi-digit multiplication, addition, and division skills. And he's not even in first grade yet! I didn't learn all that stuff until I was in third, and I certainly didn't have too many economic questions until I was in high school. And he's been reading for three years as well--his parents are mulling home-schooling, because he's way far ahead of the game. I think he'd be bored stiff in regular school. At the rate he's going, he'll be ready for calculus and AP English by the time he hits adolescence. I am grateful, though, that both his parents aren't pushing him at all (all of this numerical and linguistic finesse is at his own initiative--they are just responding to his interests) and each believes he needs time to "just be a kid". Micah showed me his latest Lego creations before dinner, and then expended some of his youthful energy playing ball with his dad outside. I expended some of my less-than-youthful energy playing Scrabble with his parents and grandmother after he went to bed--his grandma "swooped" the rest of the field with that seven-letter word beginning the game--an eighty-point start that none of us were able to overcome.

On Monday, after morning work in cold storage in downtown DC, I got to enjoy the continuing pleasant weather on a stroll to Tysons II (the uber-expensive mall, where Cole Haan, Cartier and the like all have stores) with Serena and Augustus Wiggle. Gus Wiggle is now twenty pounds of five-month old baby roundness--he's so fat, he has creases at the bases of his toes--and he was in a cheerful mood most of the afternoon, producing two dirty diapers that I changed (showing off my mad baby-handling skillz). He's smiling frequently now, but I didn't get any pictures of his rakish grins, since when I had my camera handy he was completely occupied by stuffing his fists in his mouth.

Photos!

Yummy fists!

Baby jowls!

Smoke and Mirrors

2011-05-30T23:31:00.001-07:00

We've all heard of "buying the farm", but smoking the farm was a new experience. I lit La Finca from the citronella candle and puffed carefully on the clipped end, careful not to allow the thick smoke to travel past my tonsils. It didn't taste like cow dung, but perhaps it smelled like it--it's hard to tell when you are guppy-mouthing the smoke, creating neat patterns in the air like a contemplative dragon. This was the third cigar (or the fourth) I'd ever smoked in my life, and it provided a great distraction from the impressively angular cheekbones of the uber-Presbyterian deacon (a retired Air Force officer, of whom I've been terrified for years--he looks like something from the eighteenth century, a fiercely proper and rigorously catechised Church of Scotland stereotype down to his bones--except now I know he can laugh, and he does have braces, which somewhat infringes on the unapproachable affect) who was sitting on my left.

Three friends, the deacon and I celebrated Memorial Day with a late barbecue of bratwurst and hotdogs, and then watched the sunset from the back porch of our host's lakeside condo. Dean'd decorated the railing with two little strings of LED Chinese-lantern lights, and when the sun was down asked if anyone minded if he smoked a cigar. The deacon, and the other two said, "Go ahead." I said, "No, as long as you bring me one, too." I relish the idea of shocking the deacon with my wild-living ways. And I can't stand to have cigars smoked around me unless I am partaking as well--"either everyone does, or everyone does not" to quote Robin McKinley. It's funny, I've only ever indulged in cigars with other Christians, particularly Presbyterians.

I had another evening of high revelry with my friend Hermione, who accompanied me on Saturday night to the Russia House restaurant in Dupont Circle. I had a Groupon for 50 bucks, which covered a third of the cost of our meal (H and I split the remainder of the check; she picked up the tip), and the experience was worth every last kopek. Great service by the young Russian staff, we were encouraged to linger at our table (we stayed three hours, which was as long as we needed to finish off six dishes, two desserts, and a whole bottle of good Georgian red wine), and the food was superb. Mushroom sauce to die for. Rabbit sausages with cherries. Pirogi in puff pastry. The richest creme brulee I think I have ever spooned onto my tongue. Heavenly. And, no doubt, entirely fattening. I am developing what the Brits would call a "tyre" around my middle, and it's not making me happy. But for a glorious evening I chose to overlook this unpleasant development and let gastronomic hedonism rule. And Hermione and I simply had a good time talking--she'll be abroad for the summer, and so this was the last opportunity we'll have had to get together until probably the end of September. She plans to spend the summer getting in shape--though, given that she runs marathons, how much more fit can she be?! I, on the other hand, am becoming increasingly pear-shaped.

Reflective images of one's less-than-toned physique are not pleasant to behold. I am resolved to go to the gym more frequently and lay off the snacks. And I've also started praying for an exercise/walking partner. I've so little motivation to get out and move my ever-broadening buns without company, and I sorely need it for accountability, too. Being flabby feels very unpleasant, particularly in 95+ heat. And how can I launch what Hermione terms an "all-out dating offensive" if I'm not looking and feeling my best?

Le Saga Duh eBay (and) The HORRORS Of Broccoli

2011-05-25T21:31:00.001-07:00

Common complaint of a consumer calling a help-line: speaking to a series of people with faux English names (the kind they must have dredged out of 1940s movies or pre-War novels abandoned on Yon Far Shore by fleeing expatriates bound for home and the Blitz) for whom the King's/Queen's is not their native language, trying to explain a situation complex enough to require sequential reasoning and elementary math proficiency, all of which is lost in translation. It's maddening. And eBay's call centers may well be found in Singapore and Mumbai--they are definitely NOT in this hemisphere. I've spent a total of more than three quarters of an hour on the phone to these distant places trying to resolve a question of some fifty dollars which was not credited to my account. The last woman I got at least had the common decency to introduce herself by a Chinese name--and she noted that the previous people to whom I had spoken had never actually sent the emails which they said they'd dispatch promptly. (So basically, they act to call the customer and then lose the paperwork?!) If it weren't such a large sum, I should have given up weeks ago, but poverty has made me persistent.

I'm having a rotten time with my temper lately. I was civility and patience itself with the eBay offshore contractors, but I've been close to snapping at my American colleagues in person almost every day the last two weeks. It's like my soul needs power-washing--I'm becoming a complainer and a witch. I apologized to one boss for my behavior and asked the other for a raise. Prayer appreciated.

I hate broccoli. That's not a complaint--just a fact. I've loathed the stuff since childhood. I hate the smell, the texture and the flavor. To me, broccoli ruins every dish to which it is added, even more so than olives. Nasty, greasy little deceptively-grape-like orbs, olives. People have lectured me on the health benefits of broccoli until I've turned green, and I remember one episode from childhood (I was five) when I was sent to my room and threatened with bodily harm for refusing to eat broccoli, but I just couldn't and can't bring myself to touch the loathsome stuff. Until now. I went shopping at Trader Joe's the other afternoon and they had this wonderful wasabi-mayonnaise slaw on their sample counter, so I bought the plain bagged slaw, the cranberry-almond trail mix they'd tossed into it, and a jar of that delicious sinus-clearing mayo and whipped up my own salad this afternoon...and I noticed that the slaw was made from raw julienned carrots and broccoli stems! It's really good. Of course, the wasabi flavor also helps to mask any residual broccoliness too. Don't break out the steamed flowerets, though--I still can't stomach them.

Fat Cats And Fast Cars

2011-05-15T21:17:00.005-07:00

As my dates usually are, this one was not a success. Ben turned out to be enormous, with a dominating personality to match. I picked him up as his mistress mentioned that at his last checkup he’d weighed “fifteen.” “Kilos?!” I guessed, hefting his fuzzy bulk. “Pounds,” she clarified. I think the scale must be off. Ben had some matting and was obviously too lazy to groom his own back, where the long thick black fur was a little greasy. And then he bit me several times—not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to show that he was a bossy male animal despite his missing gonads and removed front claws. Apparently he’s intimidated his smaller feline companion to the degree that the vet is recommending kitty Prozac for the other’s anxiety. Ben’s like a tuxedo-colored sofa cushion, but clearly not as chill as I like, and his sheer girth is intimidating. So I had a legitimate reason to turn him down. There’s always some diplomatic pressure when your bosses sister sets you up with somebody, be it man or cat.

On the fun, successful night out front, I took myself out Saturday evening to see Fast Five. I flirted briefly with the idea of calling a friend to see if she’d meet me at the theater, but I realized that I’m probably one of the few girls I know who’d want to go to see this action flick, and what did I need company for? So I bought myself a ticket, a large popcorn and a “medium” drink (so much liquid you could have drowned an entire litter of puppies in it), found a perfect seat, and kicked back to enjoy the show. Had a fantastic time—it was nice being able to chortle loudly at the great cheeziness and admire the high-speed daring-do without the subconscious urge to make sure a companion was reacting the same way. I was so happy and relaxed afterwards, despite the fact that my bladder was on the verge of explosion. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are a great onscreen team—I hope they make some more B-movies together…

My Sinuses Are Going On Strike

2011-05-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

They've been subjected to impossible working conditions, and they've decided to implement a nasal work stoppage in protest. I only lasted a little over seven hours today at the hoarder's house before I had to give up because my poor nose was dripping like a faucet and I was sneezing every few minutes. Between the pollen outside, and the dust, mold and mildew indoors, it was pretty darn miserable. I worked more than 10 hours yesterday, and there's only so much to which a body can be subjected and keep marching along. Maybe it'll rain tomorrow and I'll get the morning off from the market--heaven knows I need the cash, but I also need the rest! Anita and I have been invited to a community craft show indoors tomorrow evening, so we'll be getting a little selling in whatever the weather.

My friend Sahar got back safely from Iran and brought me a pretty embroidered blouse. I plan to wear it to the Russia House restaurant near Dupont Circle when a girlfriend and I go out to dinner there next week. Maybe I'll also wear my Bedouin jewelry for a really bohemian effect.

My stable of honorary nephews increased by two a week ago, when my friend Rose gave birth to tiny twin boys. Thus far, everybody is doing OK--Mom is home from the hospital, and the twins are in the Neo-natal ICU, where they'll stay for the foreseeable future, since they were delivered at only 25 weeks gestation. They are only a bit smaller than my dad and my aunt were when they were born two months early almost 63 years ago--and both of them survived without ill effects (except for my Dad being legally blind in one eye as a consequence of being treated with pure oxygen...but Daddy was always accident prone). So I am praying for their continued well-being and asking others to do the same!

Have finally put up the seven loads of laundry I did last weekend over at another friend's house...although feline in many respects, one place I will not make a nest to snooze is in a pile of clean clothes, so I dumped them over my bed before I left for work this morning, so I would be forced to put them up before retiring to sleep tonight. It's pretty sad that I've got to psych myself out to get my own apartment organized, but sometimes I have to resort to such basic tricks to keep disciplined.

On that note, let me do a little bit of dissertation reading, and then to sleep!

We See Into Your SOUL

2011-05-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

Well, not exactly, but estate sale people do get a personal perspective on their clients that few other human beings share, except perhaps personal physicians. We see what you've been reading (how the porn magazines are cheek by jowl with the devotional books; or if there's a more savory intellectual theme to the library), what you've been collecting (sometimes to overwhelming degree), whether you kept track of your bills and your pennies, whether you or a loved one have suffered physical degradation in your final years (indicated by medicines in the cabinet, dribbles of food down the front of clothes, mobility assistance devices and other paraphernalia), whether you turned to drugs (I've found crumbling street pills in twists of tinfoil) or more conventional physical satisfaction (slutty underwear, loads of condoms, sex toys), if you were a decent housekeeper or a slob, what family meant or means to you, what sort of pet you kept or keep, on what you spent your income...digging through such detritus constructs a three-dimensional biography of the person living in the house. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple may have been able to extrapolate personality types from her limited circle within St. Mary Meade, but I'll wager that after a while, were I blessed with the gift of creative writing, I'd be able to pen all sorts of grim and hilarious tales based on individuals I've found within the world of the estate sale.

One of my several sweet coworkers at the sales can't understand "why a nice all-American girl" like me isn't married and so she was thrilled last week when my bosses sister came up to me and asked, "Are you still interested in meeting Ben?" and I responded that I was. "Ooo, do you have a date? Who's this Ben?" she wanted to know. I decided to tease her and responded seriously, "Well, kind of. He's furry and about a foot high..." She thought I was being down on the poor guy, and said in righteous defensiveness, "How do you know he's only a foot high?!" "He's a cat," I said. She was very disappointed.

I wrote a serious agent query letter to a man who specializes in Russian history books, and sent a draft off to Irina this afternoon while my friend Leah was reviewing my tax return to see if I needed to re-file (I don't, as my tax obligation neither increased nor decreased a penny). Our book is ready for the press and I'd love for my 37th birthday party to do double-duty as a book launch celebration. I'm saving up money to go to Prague and Ukraine in September--I've got free lodging in the Czech Republic capital and my hostess says she'll go with me to visit Pirogov's house museum in Vinitsa, which is a blessing. I'm not a huge fan of lone traveling, or rather, of lone touring--the getting to and from by myself is fine, it's just so nice to have someone to be with me on either end! Dissertation research/note-taking/writing continues slowly but steadily--must formally constitute a new committee! A tiny side diamond dropped out of my grandmother's engagement ring, which she gave me along with her wedding ring (the two are soldered together) about a year ago (today would have been her and Granddaddy's 64th wedding anniversary--it's Leah and Sam's 9th), and I'm wondering whether I should have a jeweler monkey around with it replacing the little 1-pt stone or leave well enough alone. Based on the model of a quilted bag Grandmommy made and gave me for Christmas several years ago, I'm sewing patchwork totes, which I plan to make my chief craft for selling over the next few months, rather than jewelry. My father's semi-industrial tent-sewing machine has worked like a champ on the upholstery fabric I'm using. I'm hoping to sell my beautiful antique Singer at an estate sale sometime soon--my apartment is too small for two sewing machines.

Am heading to the gym (oh my, I'm actually making it twice this week!), Chekhov in hand.

Estate Sale Finds

2011-05-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

Thursday marked a high point (or a low ebb, depending on your perspective) in terms of things I have discovered while prepping people's houses for estate sales. We were working in the shopaholic hoarder's house, and I was in my respirator mask down in the mildew and mold infested basement, whence I'd been hauling junk for three days. I found a dresser and futon under mounds of boxes filled with everything from candles to video tapes to bits of old newspaper and postage stamps. And (among other paraphernalia, including shoes with the tags still on them and a FDR-style wheelchair) I found an assortment of kitchen items--old cookie tins, glass jars--and garden supplies. Since the woman is prone to stuff odds and ends (including rocks!) into any hollow vessel, I was not entirely surprised when I picked up a battered tin that had a lid and felt the heft of something inside. I opened it and found two ziplock bags containing a grey, rocky powder.

"Hmm," I muttered. "This looks a lot like cremains."

Then I found her husband's name with his birth and death dates on a slip of metal underneath the bags.

She'd lost her dead husband's remains in the basement.

I toyed with the idea of just heaving him into the dumpster in the driveway (a more decent burial than he'd enjoyed heretofore), but I ended up stuffing the bags back into the tin and putting it in the hall closet for her to pick up along with the family pictures we'd found.

Having Missed April...

2011-05-02T07:44:00.003-07:00

About halfway through April I found myself in the situation of having so much to write about that I didn't know where to start, and then the guilt set in, and I never could talk myself up to the level of enthusiasm to update the blog. So, here it is a new month already, there are already a dozen topics that I want to ramble on about that concern the last 24 hours alone (Bin Laden being offed!) and I'm forced to choose whether to continue hiding from blogging in a fit of postless shame or to just go ahead and try to tackle a few, very few, of life's little developments...

My sister tells me that she boiled up two dozen white eggs for decorating before Easter. Rita (age 6 as of April 18) was preparing the little bowls of vegetable dye, when Brad (age 3 as of February 12) came in to the kitchen and S Dawg asked him if he wanted to dye an egg. "Yes!" he responded, and, seizing an egg, he ran out onto the back porch, where he proceeded to stomp the egg into oblivion and scatter its guts. His sister and his mother watched him with their mouths hanging open, "What on earth?!" Finished obliterating the egg, Brad came back inside. "There, I killed it," he said. "Can I "die" another one?"

Rita has told her mother that she wants to study the history of vampires when she grows up. She's obsessed with vampires thanks to reading the Spiderman comic, whose current villain is a vampire. She and her little brother went to the circus on Saturday and now she is drawing vampire clowns. I wanted to be a florist when I was Rita's age.

I do know of one woman who penned her doctoral dissertation on vampires in literature some twenty or thirty years ago, well before the current Twilight mania. She now works part-time as an actress and Queen Victoria impersonator, and frequents the book discussion forums where I post. I started a thread on crazy hats after seeing pictures of Princess Beatrice's Lady Gaga-worthy toque which she supported to Friday's Royal Wedding. The thread has way more responses from other Forumites than any other (on more serious topics) that I've attempted over the years.

I lent one of my hatpins to a girl who was getting up at 4:30 AM to watch the wedding at a local bar which was serving a wee sma' brunch in honor of the event--girls all over the area were wearing hats in celebration. I refused to get up at such an hour to watch the event live--another girl friend taped it, and she's having a party (to which we are all wearing hats) this Wednesday, where we'll watch highlights. In any case, I couldn't have gotten up that early on Friday because I'd worked 14.5 hours Thursday prepping an estate sale and didn't get home until 1 AM--and had to be at my bosses house by 9 AM Friday morning.

This was the most loathed client in my experience of estate sale work. We should have gathered the vibe from the sign to the right of the driveway: Service Entrance in Rear. The house had 9 bathrooms in some 10,000 sq. ft., which included five bedrooms, a three-car garage, an exercise room with a hot tub, two (fully-stocked) bars, and a wine cellar. It was not the nicest house I've been in as an estate sales agent, despite its considerable size--we visit palatial residences as well as more humble dwellings. But it was the least cordial of all the owners/executors with whom we've dealt. She treated us like servants, and she treated her Asian housekeeper like a slave. Really appalling condescension. She wouldn't let us put clothes on the furniture, much of which was encased in plastic, and she lectured me on "how we don't wash our hands in the kitchen sink." We all hated her most vigorously by the time we finished our work, but the sale itself was pretty successful, just judging from the foot traffic and the fact that tables that had been heaped with goods were emptied by Sunday afternoon.

If foot traffic alone were an indication of success, Anita's and my first day back at the market on Saturday in almost two months (it'd rained every one) would have been rosy. Sadly, most people were just browsing, and so I just enjoyed the cool caress of the breeze on my bare (sunscreen-slathered) arms and sat on the trunk of my car reading Chekhov.

Like many people, I suspect, my only acquaintance with Chekhov heretofore was several ballet/dramatic performances of "The Cherry Orchard", which I found pointless and depressing (the ennui of a dying breed of social class does not appeal to me) and which did not in the least encourage me to investigate this "great Russian writer" further. But then I decided to write about another famous Russian physician, and figured that if I were going to discuss his cultural impact, I might as well see if Chekhov, who began producing short stories while he was studying medicine with those who had worked with and been taught by Pirogov, had anything to say about him. So, I checked out what the local public library had by the younger man, and discovered that he was truly a great writer, writing fun and funny short stories as well as more serious dramatic fare.

I don't understand why it's the grimmest, least appealing work of the so-called "masters" that gets forced down the throats of modern students. If all I knew of Dickens were Great Expectations, I'd hate the man--I don't understand why high school students are made to read this instead of the decidedly fascinating David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickelby. At least some teachers choose to make their classes read Tale of Two Cities, which is awesome. Chekhov is the same--there's so much more great, readable material out there besides "The Cherry Orchard". And I don't know that students appreciate the "Orchard" as much as they should if they aren't acquainted with Russian history, anyway. And adolescence is depressing enough without having literary misery hanging over one's head--there are much more "relatable" stories within each man's repertoire--why not sucker students in with these, and then leave them to wade through Bleak House on their own?

Dissertation work is going slowly, but I've managed hours and hours of it. I have found two explicit Pirogov references in Chekhov thus far, and was glad to see Doctor Zhivago broadcast on one of the local public TV channels this weekend. In my biography I argue that Zhivago would not have been possible without Pirogov.

Hmm, what else to mention in this belated update? A couple of friends got married in April, a couple more are getting married in May. I spent an afternoon with an honorary nephew, whom I got to cuddle more at church last night. I'm going to have to file an amended federal tax return, which may net me a few dollars. Irina and I finished the formerly-titled Two Motherlands manuscript and it goes off to published readers soon. I bought a lamp and parts for another. I went to an auction in Falls Church, VA, and saw at least five people in a room of forty whom I recognized from my various part-time "second-sales" and artisan market jobs from MD, DC and VA--that community in the greater Washington area is a small one, it seems. I sold three small items on eBay--my first real success in that medium. I learned a new Yiddish word, which has a cognate in Russian! I got my MA diploma from Georgetown and my father's picture framed, and hung them both, and I managed to make it through Lent without chocolate milkshakes.

The pollen count is finally dropping (unlike gas prices) and I am able to breathe!

A Little Something Special

2011-04-25T20:19:00.000-07:00

If anyone out there is feeling particularly flush, I've found a nice listing on eBay that I wouldn't mind being gifted.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

After ANOTHER Saturday of rain (Anita and I actually went to the market yesterday at 7:30 AM, but no one else was there in the drizzle but for a miserably damp Asian woman we didn't know, so we ate breakfast at the Silver Diner and parted to our respective apartments to return to bed), today was beautiful--perfect sunshiny Resurrection weather. If I hadn't become so overwhelmed by pollen, I might have felt like going out after church (Leah was so sweet to invite me for dinner with her family!), but as it was I sat down at my computer and finished the very last, absolutely final, I-swear-there-can't-be-a-typo-left corrections to the English manuscript of the book formerly known as Two Motherlands, Two Fatherlands [In a day or so, Irina will be sending it off to two published American authors she knows (one of whom has a literary agent...here's hoping it's catching!) and the real effort of getting it accepted by a respected press in this country and/or the UK begins]. Then I vaccuumed the house and breathed a little easier.

I wish I were being more faithful about blog posting--life has been full of "interesting cultural experiences" lately--but what little time I have been able to muster for typing has been dedicated to listing things for sale online (Etsy, eBay and Amazon) and to the slow slog through Pirogov's unfinished autobiography.

Happy Birthday, Rita!

2011-04-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

My niece turned 6 today! The years have flown--when you are little, time crawls, which enables you to absorb incredible amounts of information within (what seems to an adult) a blink of an eye. And Rita started absorbing information from her first breath, her little eyes focused and memorizing every detail of her environment from birth. I had hoped to be up in Rhode Island to observe this birthday with her and her family, but scheduling did not permit, nor will it this coming weekend (my sister has a major exam the day after Easter, so she wouldn't be able to spend any time with me and the pipsqueaks). I want to see them all before June, or a full year will have passed since the last time we laid eyes on one another.

I've been too tired to blog the last three weeks. Taxes took up time (and huge amounts of money), I've been working a lot, and applying for real jobs (Dex gave me a lead on several possibilities and a contact within the company with the openings, so I figured I'd follow up--I'd love to have a bigger paycheck and a more regular workday!). And Mums visited for a week, which was great fun. I've cat-sat and dandled babies and run a two-day booksale at Georgetown for the History Honor Society (and donated all the leftovers to the local public library). I've signed a two-year continuation of the lease on my apartment. I have gotten very very little done on my dissertation, but my friend Irina and I are just a day or so away (after almost eight years!) from having the English translation of her book ready to send to publishers.

Have to work up in Bethesda tomorrow, so I need to get some sleep. Hope all my friends in NC are OK--I've tried calling in the aftermath of the plague of tornadoes, but didn't reach them.

Tuberculosis Therapy, 1889

2011-03-31T21:45:00.004-07:00

I'm reading about amputations, specifically the spread of Pirogov's "heel-conserving" technique, and I came across the following passage in the Philadelphia Medical Times of March 1, 1889:

Dr. Woodbury called attention to the observations of Agille, in which it is stated that the prognosis of pulmonary tuberculosis is improved by an amputation, the larger the better. It seems as if the nutritive powers are insufficient for the needs of the whole body, but may suffice if a large part has been removed.

So, as a treatment for a contagious bacterial infection which involves the lungs, nowadays usually treated over a course of half a year with a quartet of heavy-hitting drugs, one recommended strategy was lopping off major body parts! Given that nutrition and rest were then the only ways known to respond to the symptoms of the disease, which include unitentional weight loss and fatigue, I suppose it seems logical in context to "relieve the stress" on the damaged lungs by giving them less body to breathe for, but I do wonder how often doctors recommended leg removal as a remedy for TB? And how often patients agreed to this draconian measure?

A Secret Service

2011-03-30T09:36:00.001-07:00

My honorary nephew Noah is a born capitalist. His mother is a CPA and his father is an economist, so it is perhaps to be expected that he would take to calculation from an early age. He’d learned his multiplication tables by age 4 (a feat I didn’t manage myself until age 10), but has lately taken to attempting (at just shy of age 6) to attempting to charge his parents for such amenities as the morning paper—a sign on his bedroom door proclaims that it was 50 cents, but can be had for the amazing sale price of only 25 cents…per page. He has also, his mother tells me, taken to taxing his parents a dollar a day. They explained to him that in exchange for taxes, the government provides services: “What service are you going to provide, Noah?” He thought a moment and responded, “It’s a secret service.”

My friend Leah, Noah’s mother, is a saint. She’s currently struggling with my 2010 taxes, which are quintuply complicated by the fact that not only have I earned dribs and drabs of income from four or so sources as an independent contractor, I also changed my residency to VA from GA last year. I still will probably be below the federal poverty line when all is said and done. But Lord willing, I’ll have my dissertation done by December, and then I can cast about for more lucrative employment.

Priced Out of Housing

2011-03-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

I am quite upset by the news I received in the mail today that my rent is going up to $1345 per month, an increase of $50 per month (a staggering $600 per year). I don't know what to do. There is no place in the DC area that is even reasonable (this is one of the best), and it's not worth it (gas prices being what they are) to move even miles out of town for a better rental rate--then, the money would simply go into the tank rather than into the rental office. I love my apartment. For the first time in my life I've hung pictures on the walls of place not owned by a relative. I have furniture, lamps, a workroom for my jewelry-making, plenty of space for my books. I have a spot to park my car. It's not too loud, and I have a friendly resident manager. Moving in and of itself will be expensive--probably a grand or more to pack and shift everything. Not to mention the time involved. On the other hand, I have a debt to my mom that I need to repay. I don't know what to do! I was expecting the fee to go up a little--say, $15-20, maybe even $25, but this is a tremendous leap and I don't see how I can handle it. I mean, I'm earning a pittance above minimum wage as it is, and I am actually working on my dissertation in what little free time I can scrimp. Please pray that I will have wisdom to know what to do!

Superannuated?

2011-03-26T22:23:00.001-07:00

This evening I hosted a semi-surprise 30th birthday party for the NPV. It was only semi-surprise because he'd (he claimed) noticed too many cars parked on the street, and because the ten or so people who were here in my living room waiting to yell "surprise" were yakking away and he could hear them through the door when he and his fiancee were knocking. In fact (I don't think he noticed this) they (all the guys at least) were so deeply engrossed in discussing the weight they'd gained (ladies, don't you HATE when guys--and these weren't overweight men--obsess about this?!) that most of them hadn't heard them knocking on the door and were a bit caught off-guard when it opened to let in the guest of honor.

The cake was put together thanks to Susan, who came over early to help with prep--I was way, way behind (I'd turned off my alarm, and instead of the insomnia that I've suffered the past two Friday nights, I slept straight through for over 14 hours, waking at 2:30 PM with a nasty backache from an overfull bladder) , and all my grand plans for elaborate decorating were killed by the clock.

Little Augustus Wiggle was a star attraction--at 9 weeks old, he's almost 14 lbs, and has tremendous baby jowls on either side of a wee little nose and mouth. It was the first time Susan or Steven had seen him, and though he spent most of the evening being rocked on his daddy's knees, any who wanted to got to cuddle him in turns. I forgot, again, to get out my camera, but Rachel brought hers, and she's a much better photographer than I, so maybe they'll eventually be cute baby pictures for me to post.

I made my niece/goddaughter's birthday present this afternoon while the cake was in the oven--her 6th birthday is coming up April 18, and every girl needs a little jewelry (in addition to some picture books). She's into the solar system and Spiderman comic, so I may see if there's a science-related book I can find her in addition to the usual fiction.

As to my own (advanced) age...I was rather chagrined to learn that, whereas I automatically think of people who are taller than me as being older than me (that is, adults--because I'm short and thus permanently youthful), the reverse isn't true, and I'm not even within possibilities range for some men who are, well, a bit younger, but definitely considerably taller. It's not like I'm even interested (after all, if someone makes disparaging comments about cats, that's pretty much a deal-breaker), but to be written off by someone with whom you otherwise have a downright remarkable number of shared interests because of piddly little details like "years" is insulting. Ptooie--may he rot. I spit upon his grave.

I have found the cemetery where I wish to be interred! It's probably clear that despite being "too old" for certain young whippersnappers to romance, I am (as far as I know) hale and well, and hope to remain so for decades yet. But since I've been doing so much research about funerary practices for my dissertation, and I'm a "crunchy con", and Daddy's departure came out of the blue (reemphasizing the fact that one never knows one's end) I've decided to nail down my own desires in that quarter. Given that I expire expectedly--this doesn't hold true if I'm abroad at the time or something equally inconvenient to friends and family assembling within a week or so happens--I do NOT want to be embalmed, and I want my mortal remains to be buried in a plain wooden box (the only kind allowed), clad in one of what my sister calls my "Miss Havisham" nightgowns, at Ramsey Creek preserve in South Carolina. That way, it'll be relatively cheap for my estate, and I'll biodegrade quickly and naturally--and people might actually be interested in visiting the site, since it's not a "cemetery" in the conventional sense of the word, but more like a wilderness hiking area. Modern memorial gardens are so incredibly dull, anyway, without the great long saccharine inscriptions and the ornate tombstones that make old churchyards so appealing--I'd rather be let push up wildflowers in the woods.

As to temporal dwelling-places, on Wednesday my mother finalized the purchase of her new townhouse and yesterday she sold the house where we spent 27 or so years (it was way too big, and she and Daddy had been planning to move elsewhere for a long time, but he could never find the perfect house plan for their prospective new place...). She's got to be out of the old place by the end of the month, and so she and some folks from her church spent all day today shifting the lighter items the two miles between house and townhouse. It'll be weird to go "home" again in a month or two...I need to make sure she gives me a key!

The Hoarder

2011-03-23T22:20:00.000-07:00

After all, nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a mermaid ornament...unless it's 74 identical mermaid ornaments...still lying untouched in styrofoam sarcophagi in individual boxes. The estate sale company I work for is dealing with its first hoarder. It is (it's really a "I am selling this house because I can't physically walk through it anymore, much less sleep in it" sale, not a case of death) not only a person who threw (and still throws...a knowledgible source told us her current residence is just as bad) nothing away, she is a shopaholic.

Therefore, not only are there newspapers, and hangers, and used candy-wrappers, and pens and pins and crumpled stationery and so on and so on...there are designer purses, and clothing still with the price tags affixed, and other items still in the plastic bags in which they traveled from the store--some with sales slips included--which were apparently lost immediately upon their arrival at the house.

We've filled three of the industrial-size dumpsters with trash from the ground floor alone, and we haven't touched the garage or the basement (which is as large as the rest of the house). I went out to Home Depot today and bought myself a respirator, because the mold is so bad in the basement that just a few minutes getting the lay of the land down there gave me a hoarse voice and constricted lungs. I am wearing long sleeves, long pants, and rubber gloves, and tomorrow I intend to wear my most delapidated pair of jeans and my old hiking boots. Curiously, I have not seen a single roach or other nasty bug, and there is little evidence of mice.

The owner of all these things (more than 10 times what the house should normally hold--even after we've thrown away many metric tons of garbage, the rooms are so full of saleable stuff they are hard to navigate) has (or had) money...like I said, there are designer items around, underneath the piles of debris. There is also some really nice furniture that we've dug out, and as I told my boss, "If we sell half the picture frames, we'll break even on the cost of the sale." We've found more than a dozen living-room style table lamps so far.

I've always thought of myself as a packrat, but this sale has provided both a cautionary tale and a profound relief...I'm not bad off (there but for the grace of God and daily meds go I!), and there's no way on this earth I would ever want to have even a quarter of the amount of paraphernalia this person has collected. After I get off work I'm anxious to run home and (besides take a thorough and lengthy shower to wash all vestiges of the house from my skin) clean out even more of my own possessions: just as a gut reflex. I'm even winnowing my shoe collection. But I need help with my closet. I hope some fashion-savvy girlfriends can brutally cull, so I'll be chic and uncluttered. And frugal--neatness really does save money, because when you know where your scissors are, you won't be tempted to buy another pair, and another. And another. And another... (and those are just the pairs we found in the dining room!)

Sleepless in Arlington

2011-03-19T23:54:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I am still awake. I've been awake since 8:40 AM Friday. Right now, it is 2:15 AM Sunday. My brain just keeps churning, and I haven't experienced my usual ache between the shoulder blades that comes when I'm tired.

Friday I went back to working at an estate sale. I hadn't left my apartment since Monday (had been holed up working on my dissertation for four days), and was desperate for human contact. Grabbed basic groceries on way back home from work and then went to a movie with Susan and her husband. Home after midnight and tried to wind down by making jewelry. At three AM I took a shower and tried to sleep. I lay down and thought about Daddy and Granddaddy (and something mean I had done to someone thirteen years ago), and cried. I got up, I checked my email or something, tried to relax.  Took Tylenol for a burgeoning headache. Lay down again, tried mentally counting backwards and chanting "sleep" to myself, which frequently works when I'm getting stuck trying to doze off--I am not one of those people who can just sleep on command. Finally got back up at 5 and took a sleeping pill. Still lay awake, staring off into space and watching the light grow between the blinds. Anita called me to make sure I was awake at 7:15.

The market was windy, and slow (Anita came in to help me set up and then went back home to nap), but the sales have not been bad thus far this year--a better start than any of the past three years, I'd say. It was sunny, and I didn't mind at all getting a little burnt on my face and neck because I've been mewed up for so long indoors and desperately needed the solar radiation. I took notes on a book about the Russian Orthodox cult of the saints (yes, relevant to my dissertation topic...the formal proposal I turned in on Thursday to my advisor: she wrote me that she liked it, and believed I had found a good perspective, which was so encouraging after her earlier voicing doubts about the workability of biography) and waited for customers to choose baubles and fork over their paper and plastic. Then I went to Michaels to use my weekly 40% off coupon on one item (I've got a list of more expensive supplies that I'm gradually collecting, thanks to this once-weekly or bi-weekly shopping) and then home to chill, thinking I'd try to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime, since the time change, and my vampire-like study habits, and this bizarre insomnia, have my sleep schedule more cockeyed than it's ever been.  And I'm still awake eleven hours later.  It's hard to type, and this post is probably not making much sense.

Somehow I don't think I'm going to make it to church in the morning.     Mr. B., who has been going to the eleven o'clock service every Sunday with me lately, called Saturday afternoon to say that he probably wasn't going to make it this week.  My physical shutdown is overdue. Maybe I'll sleep for 16 hours straight, like I did Thursday afternoon and night. It could be I'm just establishing my own weird rest/work rhythm: sleep for 16 hours, awake for 48. Or maybe I'm about to get KOed by fatigue--what the illness didn't two in two weeks, the weariness will.

The Stupid Shall Behave Idiotically

2011-03-15T15:47:00.001-07:00

I remember the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the problems in Japan, though significant, are nothing to compare, except perhaps for the fifty or so people currently working immediately on or around the reactors who are potentially getting poisonous doses of radiation trying to plug the leak(s). Japanese government has done a decent job of preemptively evacuting people around the plant so that the risk to the public is minimized--the higher levels of radiation are heavily localized within the plant, with an exponential drop in exposures over even small distances. Americans in the contiguous US need not start wigging and buying iodide tablets! For a good dose of sense rather than hysteria about the situation, I recommend reading the comments responding to recent posts on the issue on BubbleHeads, a retired (nuclear) submariner blog--his readers and commenters, almost all fellow "nukes," are among the best informed people in the world about the realities and ramifications of nuclear power and dealing with leaks, spikes and shocks. I would say that the risk of contagious disease in the aftermath of the tsunami should concern people more than "what ifs" about radiation.

I am not only annoyed by the Chicken Little announcements coming from science-ignorant reporters, I am less than happy with the state of my own historical researches, as reading Pirogov makes me feel like I am dealing with a cross between Jimmy Carter and Stephen Hawking. Very intelligent, social-gospel oriented guy--would have probably won both the Nobel Prizes for Peace and for some form of scientific innovation had there been Nobel Prizes when he was around. But his philosophy of life was fundamentally egocentric, he was almost George Lucas-esque in his belief in a universal mind ("God" in his definition) and a life-force running through humans and the "higher animals." Niceness was his ideal, and a very static and shallow ideal it is, for all its inspiration to him to mitigate the suffering of soldiers in battlefield hospitals all over Europe (he was instrumental in the founding and propagation of the Red Cross). I don't know yet where I'm going to start with my biography, but I think it will be on his deathbed. Seventy-two hours to go yet before presentation of the chapter and I've thirty pages of criticism of the illogic of his worldview and diestic religious model in a file, but little else.

Nine Days

2011-03-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

That's how long I've been sick. Or is it ten? I think I'm on the way to wellness, but that's what I thought last Thursday, and Saturday I was so ill I couldn't hold my head up, much less think about working on my dissertation. The first chapter of which I have NINE DAYS to write. I present it to a roundtable of my fellow Russianists next Friday.

No sweat.

I notice that I was spammed, in Russian, by an anonymous commenter on my last post.

Spring Sickness

2011-02-26T18:42:00.001-08:00

The shower water hitting my skull sounded like a piece of paper being rattled by a strong breeze. I hate being under the weather. It's like my brain has simultaneously shriveled like a raisin and turned to soup--it aches like its wrinkles are dried out, and at the same time it can't focus on anything. I plugged in an electric kettle at work this afternoon and left it to boil dry. I would turn and walk two feet in a different direction and completely forget why I'd altered my course. I fumbled receipts, had to remind myself to smile and act pleasant, got dizzy and dull and achey at moments. I left the shop an hour early. There's a rat chewing on the wiring behind my left eyebrow, my ears are ringing, and I have a pain between my shoulderblades, though I got plenty of sleep last night. In other words, all the people hacking, coughing, sneezing and sniffing in my vicinity over the last several weeks have done what even my relatively strong constitution has been unable to withstand--besieged it with enough germs to crack my protective carapace and flood my system. I have a feeling I am going to be getting a lot worse before I get better. So my last stop before home tonight was at the grocery store, where I bought two gallons of milk, a quartet of bananas, and a box of Zinc tablets...enough perishible provisions to last me for three days. I already have five cartons of orange juice in my fridge.

Plainly, I feel poorly. I think I've actually been running a low-grade fever for a couple of days--I've been cold, cold, cold though I've been keeping the thermostat at almost 80 and swaddling myself in layers, and it can't be ALL low iron in my blood causing me to feel like the Ghost of Christmas Past--but I think the overture is over and the opera is ready to begin. All I can hope for is losing a few pounds--thanks to the proverbially-advised "starving a fever"--before the aria at the end.

Multi-Tasking

2011-02-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

I'm working on three computers at once right now. My new laptop is burning the last DVDs of the job talks (an arduous process that requires me to "dumb down" the high definition format in which the camera recorded the events so that it can be played on the professors' geriatric computers)--this takes about an hour per DVD. I've been listening to a recorded book on my old laptop, and since that finished I've been squinting at the mostly-dark screen and editing the final, final, final version of the Two Motherlands, Two Fatherlands manuscript (I've read through the whole published Russian version and synchronized the translation, now I'm typing up these changes and correcting formatting issues). And on this computer I've just sold $24 worth of books (Amazon trade-in) and bought $31 worth.

Tomorrow I've been called to work at the gallery up in Bethesda. The owner sold it to a former employee last week (my coworkers like her, so there's no worry there). I plan to take my laptop (a functional one) and work on the book formatting in between customers. I'm almost done, and then it's 100% onto dissertation-writing--I'm supposed to present the first chapter to a roundtable of my fellow Russianists on March 18, a commitment I made deliberately to ensure that I'd get busy writing. I've been told that much of the jewelry Anita and I had consigned there for their annual accessories event sold, so I'm relieved not to have too much to ferry home.

My car looks like that of a homeless person--it's filthy outside and inside it's full of piles of clothes and cardboard boxes and mostly-empty plastic cups, magazines, receipts, toys and ceramics. I'm taking a load of donations to Montgomery County Thrift tomorrow morning before work, but I really need to clean out the whole thing and have it cleaned and tuned stem to stern. If it broke down on the beltway, everyone would just assume I was a bum living permanently on the shoulder of the inner loop.

Unhappy Valentine's Day & The "I Love Me" Wall

2011-02-15T13:44:00.002-08:00

Yesterday was not an unhappy day because of the lack of romance in my life, but because of the presence of computer problems. I woke up to discover that my fingerprint reader on my brand-new laptop had quit working. This in and of itself was not a catastrophe, as a "biometric identification device" is a neat toy, but not essential to word-processing. What did bother me, however, was that it had worked flawlessly up until Sunday, and then just disappeared overnight. That's right, not only had it ceased to operate, it was "undetected" every time I tried to set it up again.

Then I logged on to my email account and found a letter from a professor in the History Department saying that she couldn't open the job talk DVDs I'd just burned on Friday. While I was puzzling over this question, I noticed a reminder for "this week's African American and Russian job talks" from the chair of the department--another had been added this Friday, and...the one for Monday was beginning thirty minutes earlier than all the others. At 11 AM. I was checking my email (last-minute, before departing for campus to set up the video camera for the talk) at 11:03 AM. OH CRAP!!!

So, I get to the job talk thirty minutes late, and the camera doesn't have any juice in it, so I hunt between rapt people crammed in along the wall for a power outlet to no avail. The chair of the search committee allows a breather after the lecture for me to set up to film the Q&A section, but I lack a tripod, so I end up "steady-camming" the next 45 minutes, panning between the speaker at the one end of the room and the PowerPoint screen at the other. Not a brilliant start to the week. All the professors (and the speaker) were very gracious, though. And my arm wasn't totally numb, either.

Twenty minutes of computer trouble-shooting in the office of the professor who can't get my DVDs to work ends up without resolution. I promise to use a different program to burn new copies, and return home to my own problem computer, to find that...all three USB ports aren't working. In other words, I can't back up the files that I've changed since Wednesday (the last time I saved everything, given my crazy schedule). Most unhappy.

I go to bed. Maybe these software issues will all go away after I've had a good nap.

I wake up and rush off to trivia, the software problems still in residence. We finish fourth because I mess up doing basic subtraction on the third-round bonus question. The two other girls on the team ask me if I'd like to go with them to the Arlington Drafthouse and Cinema, which is having a special showing of The Princess Bride this evening. Like most other American females of a certain age, I not only own a copy of TPB, I can recite much of the dialogue from memory, but I agree because of the prospect of seeing it on the big screen again, and in pleasant company. Too, I have heard good things about the Drafthouse, yet have not been, and the notion that two twenty-something girls would be willing to have an old hen like me along for a casual evening's entertainment is subconsciously flattering.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the Drafthouse (physically a very comfortable venue) precedes its films with a short segment of stand-up comedy, or so it did yesterday evening. And standup nowadays, particularly on "romantic holidays" consists mostly of X-rated "jokes" and the "f" word. Ha ha. Not. So I had to sit through twenty awkward minutes of allusions to all sorts of sexual acts before getting to relax and enjoy the PG-rated feature.

Then I went home and went online for two hours to figure out how to rescue my computer files. I got the USB ports working (the drivers had spontaneously corrupted, so I had to uninstall and reinstall these), the data backed up, and the computer to at least admit that somewhere out in the known moral universe there might exist such a thing as a fingerprint reader--although it still won't admit it features such a device).

Today I installed my "I love me" wall in my bedroom. This is what I call that surface in any house or office which features the framed diplomas and certifications earned by the occupant. Given the number of painted self-portraits I have hanging on other walls in my apartment, a visitor might recognize more than the usual narcissism in yours truly. Natural egocentricity aside, both visual self-celebrations are the natural result of two twin trends: my unended studenthood (one can't help but accumulate degrees) and my artistic ambitions (I haven't anyone to sit for me but myself--if I had other models to work from, there wouldn't be so much KYP-centered material around).

I'm donating some of my clothes and the rest of my father's to charity tomorrow--they've been through two estate sales and these are truly the leftovers. I've also culled some dishes from my overstuffed cabinets and sold three of the tables that I used to use for jewelry display (Anita's husband got her new ones for Christmas). In other words, what with hanging the pictures and documents that have been sitting around in bubblewrap for months and with clearing out unnecessaries, my apartment is beginning to look considerably neater. ...Just in time for my mom to come visit for the Cherry Blossom Festival at the beginning of April!

Variations of Value

2011-02-09T22:12:00.003-08:00

One lesson I have learned from 25 years of antique collecting, seven years of handmade jewelry vending, and one year working estate sales is that material goods can command widely, wildly different prices. Most extreme are the numbers on the tags in posh retail establishments in well-heeled areas, in comparison to the amounts those very same items can command on the second-hand market in less tony locations. Not being a full-price shopper myself, nor one who participates in conspicuous consumption (despite having decidedly Dom P. taste), I am regularly astounded by people who think that just because they shelled out an unholy amount for a mirror or a bed frame they should be able to expect the same insanity from a subsequent purchaser.

For instance, we’ve done sales in several houses owned by multi-millionaires (who aren’t thin on the ground in this area—I myself live below the federal poverty line in one of the ten most expensive counties in the nation), and despite the success of each event, some of these people (two in the medical profession and one in the communications industry) have been chagrined by the relatively small return on what they had “invested” in household décor. Sure, your decorator charged you $395 for that lamp [this and all other examples are real!], but we can’t ask more than $25 for it, because they are available at Target for $45. She or he billed you $1985 for that gilt mirror, but the most we can hope to expect from the hundreds of people who will come to your sale is $265. Your wife spent more than $100,000 at exclusive boutiques from Paris to Milan and New York, but the most we can earn from that roomful of designer clothes is $35,000. The cushions on your bed cost $400 apiece for the fabric alone, but we can’t tag them for more than $30 each, or we’ll be laughed out of town by our customers.

It seems to be a disease of sorts, this affluenza, where spending vast sums is interpreted as directly associated with real value, when much of what is bought is simply not worth the scrip. What an antique dealer tells you your collection of old measuring cups is worth and what they’ll fetch in the real world are two entirely different things. I’ve been reading a great book by Matthew Brzezinski (the nephew of the former National Security advisor) called Casino Moscow, in which he recounts his observations of New Russians during the free-wheeling pre-Putin 1990s. An anecdote he says was popular at the time tells of two of these nouveau riche encountering one another one the street: one brags to the other about a pair of shoes he’d gotten in Paris for $1500. The other ridicules him. Says he could have gotten the same pair for $1800 locally. The greater the amount spent, in other words, was the prestige factor, as if it magically imparted some greater value to the article, though it was identical in every other way.

This is an attitude, I think, that is shared today by many people living here in the DC area. Whatever economic chaos is happening around them, those with the high-rolling mentality conflate expenditure with worth, and blithely (irrationally) think that they’ll recoup these amounts from consignment. Whereas if one buys really well-made “pre-owned” goods, you are much more likely to be able to get your money out of them should you decide to trade them in later. But at all times, value is variable: an item is worth neither more nor less than what someone is willing to pay for it at a given time. You could even make a few bucks on something you’re selling if you find a venue that sets it off and a purchaser that really wants it.

But I can’t see any normal conditions where you'd be able to make good on a six-foot ficus tree would that cost you $500 originally.

Dreaming

2011-02-01T11:46:00.002-08:00

Grandmommy and I were standing in her front yard, while she pointed out a series of dead or diseased pine trees at the edge of the grass close to the road. One which was not dying, the one nearest the end of the driveway and the mailbox, was split in two partway up the trunk, and a large plant, with a bulbous bottom, had taken root in the “v.” Above the bulb were succulent fat leaf-stems, like an aloe plant, and what on closer inspection what looked like the baited sections of a venus fly-trap. As we watched, the plant did trap insects, luring them in while the base swelled correspondingly. Then, as a squirrel ran up a neighboring pine tree, one stem of the plant caught the rodent by its fluffy tail and folded it into its needle-edged green taco shell for digestion.

People began coming to see this plant and eventually as it attempted to expand its diet to include bipeds, it was pruned like the hydra, and its bulb was neatly sectioned using Granddaddy’s old grey metal scroll saw. The slices looked like smoked salmon and tasted like melon, and the people eating it trailed seeds all over the yard, which I pointed out, but nobody seemed to care.

The next generation of this plant morphed into an aggressive spider plant, with tricycle-size suckers like tarantulas on tethers chasing people into the carport at the back of Grandmommy’s house, but before I could be grabbed by one of these awful things, my dreams were interrupted by the sound of my name being hollered repeatedly by my resident manager over a scatter of strangers’ voices that seemed to be coming from the front room of my apartment.

I crawled out of bed and staggered into the hall outside my bedroom, opening the door to the common area. Mr. B. was there, as were three firefighters, in full professional regalia, who seemed to be milling around my messy living room. One of them jocularly assured me that I wasn’t dreaming, “There’s a gas leak upstairs,” Mr. B. said. I thought blearily that I needed to put on shoes and a robe. But the firemen said I should stay put. So I took two aspirin and went back to bed.

Eventually, the festival lights of the fire truck on the ice-hemmed street went away and I settled into another odd dream about a monster—enormous, terrifying and always off-screen (though I got the impression it was something like Godzilla)—which gulped down cowering people among the marble buildings of downtown DC.

Then I got swallowed myself and discovered there was actually a Victorian inn inside this terrible beast, complete with handmade doilies, tea things, and so forth. It just got weirder from there.

When I finally emerged (after “snoozing” my alarm half a dozen times) from under the profoundly comfortable weight of five Grandmommy quilts, I wended my way to Georgetown for the second of the Russian History job talks. There, I set up the tiny HD camera I am using to record these events (I burn DVDs for the search committees after the fact), and sat down to listen to a history of the machinations surrounding Sino-Soviet relations. My recording was somewhat spoiled by the incessant rattling of crisps-bags as faculty members attempted to access their potato chips. The speaker, too, was somewhat rattled at first as he hunted unsuccessfully through his unnumbered notes for “fascinating quotes” that he’d referenced and then lost.

Lessons: Never watch "Little Shop of Horrors" (I haven’t seen it, but it might just reinforce my own fear of the vegetable menace). Always number presentation-pages and have quotes highlighted. Firemen really are cute in uniform!

Digital Non-Communication

2011-01-25T00:27:00.004-08:00

I may claim to be a writer, but I ain't writ on this blog for nigh on two weeks (sorry--just channeling a bit of hope that True Grit will have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar when the announcements are issued in a few hours). Nevertheless, this is my 900th post on this blog. I am re-commencing my second blog, so as not to clutter this one with posts focused on television and cinema: Camera C. I had begun that blog with the intention of using it to post pictures of special events in my life, but as I seldom take photographs, it has been languishing untouched for over two years. And since one of my great passions is film, I figured that I'd return to it with that mission.

I am glad I can type. When I slammed my left hand in the door of a borrowed minivan last week, however, I had a moment or two of wondering whether that would still be the case. My palm was indoors, my fingertips were out in the cold, and my fingers were sandwiched in the gasketted steel between the rim of the window and the crash frame. I do not seem to have suffered major long-term ill effects, though the knuckle of my "birdie" finger is somewhat creaky. Somehow, I don't think using one hand to close a door on the other was what Jesus was talking about.

For some reason, I was off the emailing list of my friend Merry when he and his wife sent out the annoucement of the surprise early arrival of their seven-pound son almost two weeks ago. I only found out about the advent of my new honorary nephew, Augustus Wiggle, on Sunday morning when I was reading the announcement insert in the church bulletin. Went over to see him after church. AW, he's a cutie. Full head of black hair and teeny little hands and feet. I would post pictures, but as aforementioned, I'm not good about carrying my camera. You'll just have to believe my written report of his attractiveness.

Had some technical difficulties in transfering the files onto my laptop of the job-talks I'm filming at Georgetown, and lost minutes in the middle when a cable came unplugged. I'm going to have to patch together the digital "tape" from what remains to me as well as from the files (lower quality resolution and sound) given me by the other camera people. There goes my chance at a documentary Academy Award! Darn.

I’m A Writer

2011-01-11T19:35:00.001-08:00

Today, at the age of 36 years, 1 month and 14 days, I can finally call myself a writer. Sure, I’ve had the odd article or editorial published before--and there is, of course, the hundreds of pages' worth of writing contained in this blog--but I’ve never been paid for any of my work. Financial recognition is part of my definition of claiming a particular profession.

This morning, the online company through which I’ve submitted several short essays on communication sent me a check, because people have actually been reading my work! The vast sum I earned? $3.10. Hey, it’s not a multi-million-dollar book deal. But it’s a start!

Fix-Up Follies

2011-01-08T00:22:00.001-08:00

A good talker I may be. A good caulker I am not. I can putty, I can grout, I can drill, I can sand, and paint, too, but I’m a bad hand with the caulk gun. It looks like a toddler trying to ice a cake--festoons everywhere but where you want it to be.

A man who claimed to be a carpenter installed the bathroom cabinet doors this past week. A walrus would have done a better job. We oysters—my brother and I—are having to fix the sloppy situation. We took most of the doors off, removed half the hinges (which weren’t flush, one factor in making the doors stand inappropriately ajar when hung), filled the holes and sanded them down…for the second time. Many rude words have crossed our lips describing the incompetence of the so-called professional who monkeyed up the works. Mums has fled town to the safety of Rhode Island.

Bob and I watched a Buster Keaton movie (“College”) after we’d tired of sanding and were waiting for the oil paint to dry. Appreciation of the already-witty slapstick was aided by the consumption of certain mellowing beverages. We hope our attempt at reattaching the doors will be successful tomorrow (later today—we’re not setting any alarms). There is no plan “B.”

But there is plenty of pizza to feed our weary souls.

Aimless, Angsty Books & Movies

2011-01-05T20:17:00.000-08:00

Grandmommy and I differ about movies.

She doesn’t see any use in them, says they’re “silly” and can’t understand how I’ve enjoyed them since toddlerhood. I don’t think there was any trauma associated with movies in her past that turned her against them—it’s just that she’s always been reality-focused, and sees more value in real life than in make-believe. Whereas I am unabashedly fond of fiction. Given that she’s pretty much ideal in every other respect, I can’t call this a flaw in her character.

She’s seen only two movies in the last 50 years (I don’t exaggerate—I know one, I don’t remember the name of the other), whereas I’ve seen two in the last four days.

I love the concert of visual images with music with effects (both audio and video) with acting and storytelling. I love that what can’t be created on stage by even the most innovative choreographers and set designers can be realized on screen, that hundreds of people—from makeup artists to background painters—have to work together creatively in fits and starts of months and even years to achieve what should be a seamless, natural narrative of two to three hours, refined to a neat window on worlds the viewer may never have experienced or even dreamed might exist.

The Soviets considered film to be the perfect collective art form, though their perspective on the cinema as a necessary propaganda tool tended to overshadow its entertainment properties and reduce storylines to didactic recitations of communist values. What is equally tiresome to me (besides this) is the tendency of some current directors [mostly indie] to attempt emotional depth using indefinite pauses in action and dialogue, and vague, somewhat quirky characterizations; these almost invariably seem aimless, and leave even a relatively impractical person like myself wondering, “Why on earth did I shell out good money for this crap?”

Of course, novelists nowadays are not immune from the same foibles. I picked up what seemed a promising, pleasantly light read at the library a week or so ago, and the almost mechanical, predictably tragical, “serious” scenarios that one, then another, cardboard cutout character agonized, shouted, grumbled and wept through were almost too much to bear. When the author introduced a stereotypical white-collar hypocritical and judgmental “Christian” into a moral dilemma, I just about got my eyes stuck backwards I rolled them so hard. Eventually, the cardboard people verbally defeat the stuffed people, openmindedness wins out, with just enough sorrow to keep things “real,” or so the author (and her editor) must have thought when they approved this yawn-worthy digital clockwork (analog clockwork would imply too much emotional investment by them or we readers] for the presses.

Gosh, it sucked—not because it was offensive—but because it was banal. I just didn’t care what happened to any of them—they could have all taken poison at the end, or had an orgy, or sailed off into the sunset, or gone their separate ways: it would have all been the same. At least I hadn’t paid anything to read the book—nor, to tell the truth, to watch its celluloid cousin. But millions were wasted—both in money and man-hours—making the movie, while only a couple of people frittered away their time writing and editing the book. Perhaps Grandmommy does have a point about movies being silly…

The Year in Review/The Year in Preview

2011-01-03T23:18:00.001-08:00

2010 was difficult. Losing Daddy and Granddaddy within three months of one another—there are no words to approximate the disorienting effects of these events, or to properly express the gratitude to God I have for getting me through them.

So, it is with much trepidation I even consider listing a set of ambitions for this year, as we none of us know how enormously our lives can change—either for ill or for good—in a moment.

Nonetheless, here are my goals for the Year of Our Lord 2011:

1. Start, and be well on the way to finishing, my dissertation.
2. Visit Ireland, Canada, and the Czech Republic--or three other countries to which I've never been before. (This one’s a repeat from last year, but now I have a formal invitation to stay with a friend in Prague!)
3. Buy a house.
4. Acquire a friendly, adult cat [Dependent entirely on fulfillment of goal #3, as I refuse to keep an animal in my present apartment, and buying a house will mean I am solvent enough to afford to keep a pet.]
5. See at least a dozen pieces of my non-jewelry artwork sold in a gallery.
6. Have a book proposal accepted by a reputable English-language publisher.
7. Pay off at least half of my financial debt to my mom.
8. Continue my personal physical fitness training and develop decent abs that I won’t be ashamed to show off come swimsuit season!
9. Go horseback riding through Rock Creek Park.
10. Splash in a pool underneath a pretty waterfall in the mountains.

Fixing Up The Place To Sell

2010-12-30T00:51:00.003-08:00

It's 4 AM and I am still in Augusta. I slept for three hours after we returned from dinner last night by way of the storage locker where Mums has been putting what little furniture remains to her (her condo is half the size of the house she is leaving), then popped awake. My brother just got up, and is driving back to Charleston in these wee hours, going to work, and then returning here this evening after he does laundry and takes a nap. I intend to drive to DC today with the "big wugga-wugga truck" (as I refer to Daddy's diesel), which is packed with the next-to-last load of my worldly possessions, those which are too big to fit into my amazing expanding Honda (so my friends claim, having seen how much I can stuff into it). Susan and Alan have invited me over for New Years, and I'd like to spend a couple of days straightening my apartment around these last pieces of furniture before turning around and heading back South to help Mums with further household fix-up chores.

Holy cow at the chores. My fingertips are raw from five hours of rubbing oiled steel wool over brass doorknobs, locks and handles, all of which were grossly tarnished and corroded from 26 years of exposure to the elements. The four or five real estate agents that Mums consulted (separately, so as to compare and contrast their recommendations for spiffing up the house to appeal to potential buyers) agreed that new locks ought to be installed, and so at great expense she had bought new ones and had them re-keyed. When my brother went to install them Tuesday night, however, he found that the maker had changed the design just slightly, yet significantly enough that the new locks wouldn't fit in the preexisting holes in the doors. After much tinkering, jiggling, swearing, and several trips to area hardware stores, it was determined that the best solution to this (latest) setback in house-prep was painstakingly polishing the old fixtures, and praying that the useless new ones could be returned to the store whence they came. Hence, both Bob and I were elbow-deep in teak oil, gun oil, metal polish, steel wool, and Dremel tool bits for hours. I've still got grey crud under my nails, despite two good showers.

The house has been repainted. A day or so after the painter left, a plumber and his apprentice arrived to fix a couple of irritating bathroom issues and install new faucets in the kitchen and laundry room. I overheard the senior man telling his acolyte that one had to sing or hum when installing faucets so they didn't develop leaks. He must not have chosen the right tune, because yesterday Mums found damp under the sink--they're going to have to come back to touch up the job. Purely coincidentally, after the plumbers left, the toilet in another bathroom upstairs started leaking, and the water made a spot on the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom, which means that not only will this be the third visit the plumbers have made in eight days, but also the ceiling has to be painted for the second time in ten!

This task will be done by the fellow who's been working on the outdoor paintwork (just the front porch and the doors--thank God the exterior is brick!). This fellow is a part-time firefighter and full-time good ol' boy who occasionally says, "I'm not trying to be a smart-butt." Given his Southern accent (even stronger than mine), he sits on the second part of the sanitized term, dividing it into semi-detached halves, like a Parker House roll: buh-uht. Does a great job painting, and can talk the hind legs off a billy goat.

Besides the painting, the plumbing, and the polishing, I've been caulking, cleaning, and drilling. The new hardware for the bathroom cabinets didn't fit exactly (never does, does it?), and so we had to fill, sand and paint over the old holes before installing the new hinges. I had to painstakingly grind out cracked grout from between bathroom and laundry room tiles--I am so glad Dremel makes an attachment for this!--so that Mums can re-grout. My brother put up new ceiling fans in the bedrooms, installed light fixtures in the bathrooms, and re-wired several things that Mums and I were just too frustrated to attempt. And let's not even mention the face-plates for the switches and plugs--those took a full day to re-attach all over the house.

There's still a lot to do--the cabinet doors still haven't been reinstalled, one of the fans in the bathrooms is making a loud noise, and the hardwood floors need buffing, and other such matters--but I think even Mums would agree that we have made a tremendous amount of progress and that the end of our work is in sight. We plan to list the house by February 1, and God willing, it will sell promptly. Mums' condo is framed (they poured the foundation ten days ago, and already have the bones of the building in place) and seems to be on target for its scheduled completion date of April 1. And then come the inevitable new house settling-in quirks!

Christmas Cat Contemplations

2010-12-25T18:34:00.001-08:00

We spent Christmas Day with Grandmommy in middle Georgia. There were only five of us, and three dogs, who were sequestered on the (heated) back porch when not being allowed out to frolic in the fenced-in backyard. There were no decorations—Grandmommy, who used to change out even her curtains for Christmas-themed ones, didn’t have so much as a wreath on the door—and the mood was unusually subdued. There was good food to eat, and plenty, as is normal for any Grandmommy visit, but the loss of both Daddy and Granddaddy sat with us at the table and sapped the already gray day of any holiday zest.

After lunch, my sweet sister-in-law, Isabelle, and I sat down to pour over the text of the children’s book I composed about the first adventures of a Russian kitten (I hope that we will produce an entire series centered on his character, but we’re just in the early stages now!) and decide on the number and contents of the illustrations she is creating to go with my story. Isabelle is a fantastic artist—she’s getting a Fine Arts degree from a school in Atlanta, and her ink drawings are among the best I’ve seen. And I am particular, really something of a snob when it comes to the visual arts. We’re considering self-publishing the book (high-quality—maybe contracting with a small but reputable company with some distribution contacts, or forming our own and establishing those connections for ourselves!) and selling through Amazon and independent booksellers, but I want to consider our options carefully over the next few months and approach this project from a solid business perspective so as to assure (insofar as it lies within our purview) success.

Thinking about the book and watching Isabelle and Nate with their dogs made me consider: While you can scare a cat, you can never intimidate one. A cat may regard you with deep suspicion and avoid you like the plague, or hiss and spit when you approach it, but it will never come cringing up to you, hugging the floor, and in the most abject “I am dirt and behold you are my master” fashion, piddle on the carpet to show its unworthiness. You will never see even the lowliest feline abase itself in such a way. In its regular interaction with its housemates, human and animal, if a cat pees on something outside its designated litterbox, it does so for reasons of incontinence, contempt, or pique, not humility. I also discovered today that I am apparently allergic to dogs (my nose ran constantly), whereas most cats do not affect me allergenwise.

A House Disheveled

2010-12-18T19:01:00.003-08:00

I'm not even vacuuming before I leave town this time. There are stacks of books and papers and boxes and what-used-to-be-stacks-but-are-now-just-toppled-piles-of-miscellany all over my apartment. It's a disaster. But I'm too tired to clean, and any attempt to straighten would just delay my departure, which has already been delayed because I was grading final exams. Russian history essay exams. One fellow typed (his handwriting was so illegible on the previous tests that we sent him to the learning issues center to type this one) seven single-spaced pages in the allotted two hours. HOLY COW. There were almost forty students in the class, and reading each essay--and the word-processed one wasn't alone for length--and writing comments and coming up with grades took two days. It was nine last night before I finished. And then I have two other projects which I'm just abandoning in mid-stride in order to get out of town for Christmas. Today I've been running errands. Getting my oil changed--I had a $5 coupon, and I was overdue. They tried to convince me I needed a radiator flush, too, to the tune of $89.99. They offered me a 10% discount (when I asked them if there were any coupons for this service), but then said I couldn't use my $5 oil change coupon in addition. Sorry, can't afford it, I told them. Maybe with a 20% discount I might have considered it. Or maybe not.

The King's Speech is the best movie I've seen in years. It will be my first Blu-ray purchase...when I finally find an Internet-capable player that costs less than $125.

Look Back in Apathy

2010-12-16T13:28:00.002-08:00

How can you consider yourself an adult of any cosmopolitan aspirations without knowing the basics of kosher rules? Especially when you are in training to be a nurse, you’d think that being aware that ham was off-menu and meat and milk don’t mix would be basic. It’s like the Tylenol-alcohol combo and other drug interactions—the nurses are the last-ditch defense between doctors (and nutritionists) and the patient.

S Dawg said she put an extra exam on a desk where no one was sitting and remarked “that’s for Elijah” and none of the other test-takers got it.

You miss so much when you can’t appreciate witty Biblical or historical allusions.

She asked me what organizational theories my colleagues were espousing these days, and I said they were still genuflecting at the altar of Foucault, but that they were also keen on using oceans, rivers and lakes as hubs of area studies: Atlantic World History, Pacific World History, Amazonian History and so forth. In other words, historians are now hovering over the waters.

In another return to past precedents, would John Ruskin have approved of the architecture of Facebook? S Dawg says one reason she’s not a subscriber (unlike our mother—you can “friend” her if you choose) is that she adheres to an Enlightenment notion of individuality (and individual privacy). You know, wherein your worth is not judged by the number of connections (real, or purchased in batches of 100) you maintain…like some insecure Tween getting everyone—even complete strangers—to sign her yearbook, to build her selfworth. [Is it only a coincidence that my heavily-penned yearbooks from first grade through college are on the couch behind me as I type?]

Thus, is Facebook a digital Gothicizing of society? Having discarded post-modernity, are we now looping philosophically like dying snakes, twisting ourselves into virtual gargoyles on electronic temples in an effort to find some meaning to life? It does put a new twist on the text about “living stones”…

I have 35+ essay Russian History exams to grade before I can leave town. It snowed last night. I want to curl up among my Grandmommy quilts and sleep instead of doing anything. This coming Sunday would have been Granddaddy's 94th birthday, and Saturday is the funeral of a sweet old man in my Sunday School class.

Leakage

2010-12-07T16:51:00.001-08:00

A State Department friend found it hilarious and ridiculous that after the recent Wikileaks disclosures of the thousands of classified documents (which I haven't yet had time to read--must find the time before they disappear!) from U.S. diplomatic sources, a general email was sent out to SD employees saying that although the information was now available to the public, they weren't allowed to access it from their work computers because it was still classified! Nutso, and really counterproductive, because of course any halfway curious SD drone otherwise uninterested in the data was now wild (thanks to the tantalizing prohibition) to read as much as he could. And, come on, if it's been declassified either de jure or de facto, it's in the public domain, and saying it's off-limits is silly—especially if you are dying to know what your boss REALLY thinks about her diplomatic counterparts.

At any rate, I checked Drudge for the first time ages this evening, and Lo! Interpol has a warrant out on the Wikileaks guy, after two women in Sweden claim other sort of leakage entirely…

It sounds so much like a Steig Larsson novel I can barely stand it.

If this isn’t a setup (and even to a militant non-conspiracy theorist like myself, it has a peculiarly convenient odor about it—there’s got to be a hefty payment to an offshore bank account somewhere to one of the duo of regretful blonds), U.S. government officials are sacrificing thank offerings to the gods tonight.

I’m just waiting for this headline: LOOSE CHICKS SINK LEAKS.

Theater Class

2010-12-07T15:01:00.000-08:00

The Russian history students in the class I am TAing this term had two options for their final project. They could write a standard research paper, or they could write and perform (or produce) a drama drawn from the historical sources. Today was the day that the theatrically-inclined groups or individuals presented their work to the class.

I realize that when I was in college I did not have access to the technology that these folks do, but notwithstanding that, I do not think I would have had the guts or the skills to create what they did. Besides plays, there were two animated films—one was a hand-drawn cartoon interlude between live-action play scenes, the other was the tale of Boris Godunov told entirely with red Solo cups. One play ended with a filmed sword-fight finale (quite well-choreographed), and another group did a whole live-action movie about the succession crisis that launched the Time of Troubles.

Besides the required historical narrative, there were allusions to Young Frankenstein and Star Wars, and a truly bizarre range of musical styles—from Russian rap to Spamalot and classical piano—to accompany the action. Of course, the acting was uneven, and the production values would have made James Cameron cringe, but given that these were not film-school students, and these were projects created at the same time that papers were due and tests were to be studied for in other subjects, they were a marvel. And funny. I wish they had uploaded them to YouTube…maybe they will eventually.

Quick Update

2010-12-06T21:09:00.002-08:00

Quick update re: the state of KYP’s world.

No, I haven’t died, been hospitalized, or even come down with the sniffles, though I have been sneezing a bit from the cold (considerable) and the dust (occasional). I have been working four part-time jobs like a madwoman; last week, I managed to get in more than 60 hours of semi-profitable labor in six days (Tuesday through Sunday), so as a consequence I am fried mentally and physically. There simply hasn't been time to write, though there have been (notwithstanding the pedantry of this post) plenty of interesting events, conversations and observations to write about.

Periodic fits of pushups have been my own formal exercise of late, as one can drop behind one’s tableclothed jewelry display and pretend to be looking for boxes while actually pistoning up and down insanely without anyone noticing. Or maybe they have noticed and just silently assumed that I’ve gone round the bend. I will have if I don’t get to the gym soon.

I bought a Persian rug for my living room to replace the one that’s too big and upside down (the front is too ugly to show--the back is pretty, but having the pile down makes the whole thing "creep" along the floor, so it develops dangerous wrinkles). I plan to sell the unbeloved one.

My dissertation advisor wants to meet with me this Thursday evening. I am terrified, as I have nothing to show her. The rationale behind my crazy work schedule this semester is to have made enough money by Christmas to afford to be able to work on my dissertation full-time next term. I have almost accomplished this. I am not going to get a TV until I have at least two chapters written. A film-fest on a flatscreen will be my reward to myself. I plan to sit on my new rug with my new gigantic Polish pottery punchbowl filled to the rim with hot buttered popcorn and veg out. But only after I have turned in two chapters. By March, maybe?

Ira wants the revised book manuscript in hand in the next two weeks. Have promised to send it to her by 20 December. A Californian who knows about the project also wants to read it, but he has no leads on publication venues. I have written myself a note to approach university presses in the Midwest.

My Christmas party is coming up on 11 December. I need to get the house organized and clean, and food prepared. And I have several jewelry commissions to finish between now and then!

Must go shower, have a short quiet time (also much neglected of late) and grade papers. The children are doing Russian history skits and videos tomorrow, and I want to give the professor their final tests before he starts harassing me about them.

Thanksgiving and Birthday

2010-11-28T20:04:00.002-08:00

My birthday was today--my brothers and Mums called, as did several friends and my dear Grandmommy. My sister and her offspring said "Happy Birthday" to me yesterday. Paxifist, with whom I stayed Friday night, treated me to "Tangled" (which we both enjoyed), and Anita took me out to Sunday brunch today, after she and I and a girl who sells pottery at the market moved all our stuff into the History Department in preparation for the first day of our annual History Honor Society fundraising sale on Tuesday.

Today was the first Sunday in Advent. This morning's sermon was on the text of Isaiah 9:1-7. It begins: "But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish." And it concludes: "The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this." I thought this was a thoroughly good text for my birthday, and for my next year, if not for the rest of my life. I look forward to God's removal of my gloom after this difficult time.

Thanksgiving was delicious, as is usual--on my father's side of the family, we favor the potluck smorgasbord model over any set menu, which means that each group brings an assortment of main and dessert dishes, enough to feed three times their number, and when the whole assortment is together, we've more than 30 people and enough food to treat the crew of the USS Bob Hope. I'd made two 9x13" pans of baklava, and less than half a panful was eaten, because there were multiple cakes, more than half a dozen pies, and other sweets, and that after a huge meal with some fifteen to twenty dishes that left me only capable of stuffing in two cookies and a tiny triangle of my own Greek confection before having to stand up in agony from my swollen belly.

I'm a Southern Greek, so I put chopped pecans in my baklava, along with the more traditional walnuts and almonds. I'm making two more panfuls for the Christmas party I'm hosting next week. I'm also making cupcakes. I haven't yet decided (besides salad) what's going to comprise the savory dish for my guests, but I'm set as far as desserts go. And I'm fine beverage-wise: 6 six-packs of orange soda and 5 of ginger beer. I am mulling over whether to lay in some ice, but at the rate the temperature is dropping outdoors all I may have to do is stack the drinks in the shrubbery and they'll be so cold a sip will freeze your teeth.

Unsettling

2010-11-22T20:42:00.001-08:00

I arrived in Georgia at three this morning. The house isn’t home anymore, though it looks the same from the outside. Mums was long asleep, and I was tired, but I wandered around for a while before I found a place to lie down. In every room, upstairs and down, the remaining furniture had been shoved to the center of the floor with lamps and blankets and books piled on top. Brown paper is laid everywhere on tile and hardwood, and window frames are taped. The walls are daubed with new paint and spackling compound. Light fixtures have been removed entirely or are hanging by wires rather than screwed in. Pictures, paintings, and family photographs are propped in closets and in the kitchen, ready to be swaddled in bubble wrap and packed. All the shower curtains and the portable mirrors in the bathrooms are down, and tools are lying in the tubs and on the countertops. A thin powder of sheetrock dust has spread over everything.

I finally unearthed a couch in the living room and climbed over into this makeshift nest for a few hours’ rest. But a neighbor’s dog was barking, and it kept up an unceasing “woo, woo” for an hour, while I fantasized all sorts of inhumane ways of dispatching the beast. Finally, I found a roll of paper towels and stuffed shredded bits in my ears, which I then clamped between a brace of cushions. Thus muffled, I managed to fall asleep.

Today, after hitting the gym, Mums and I did more prep work for my Atlanta brother’s anticipated return at the end of the week to continue the painting. Nate’s already accomplished an amazing amount—my other brother, Bob, who did a bunch of fixture-work this past weekend, hasn’t shirked, either. Together, they are saving Mums at least $7,000 in remodeling costs necessary to the anticipated listing of the house for sale February 1.

I’m unsettled—I’m the sort who clings to mementos as a sort of Bladerunner-style evidence of my own past existence: that’s a contributing factor to my becoming a historian. I want to keep memories and friends, people and their stories. Losing Daddy hurts and hurts, burning like an old wound, and cutting free of all the ephemera that surrounded him the last quarter century—books, furniture, the house itself—is to me further discombobulating, however much I recognize its being the natural course of things. I don’t feel whole at times anymore. Today I have been very sorrowful. Not actively crying (much), or even unhappy (strange as that may sound), but just like I am made of lead inside, wistful at the weird blankness of the world without my father and grandfather. Thanksgiving, and then my birthday (this coming Sunday), are going to be hard.

Creativity and Cider

2010-11-14T22:25:00.004-08:00

I haven't felt like making much jewelry the past six weeks, but this evening I've been struck with a fit of creativity and have made (or completed) five necklaces. The Georgetown show is looming in my consciousness, and I'm already wondering how many bracelets and pairs of earrings I can create for that four-day event and the two-day event at a friend's house in DC that immediately follows.

Saturday the market was slow, but I made the table and finished a book (The Catsitters by James Wolcott, which didn't have the tightest plot, but did have several rib-tickling sections of snappy dialogue which made the read entirely worthwhile).

This Thursday I lead the Russian History class discussion of Anna Labzina's Days of a Russian Noblewoman. I am requiring the children to turn in questions about the text, so as both to assure that they will have read it, and to provide some ignition fuel for the 75-minutes of chitchat about the contents.

I purchased some of the best and some of the worst hard apple cider I've ever tasted during last Thursday's run to Total Wine out in Falls Church, VA. I like cider that actually is redolent of apples, and found a delightful (and low-alcohol) variety in Kerisac Cider, a "product of France" confection of fermented apple juice and carbon dioxide (essentially sparking apple cider with a tiny kick). After this pleasant experience, I was exponentially repulsed by a putrescent amalgam of old tennis shoes and budget beer bottled under the label Doc's Draft Original Hard Apple Cider, which featured the script tagline "The Great American Cider." The word "awful" is the mildest term I can apply to this vomitous stuff. I took one stomach-churning sip and dumped my glass, and the remainder of the entire 22-oz bottle, down the kitchen drain. The sink gurgled in agony for a full five minutes--I hope it cleaned the pipes. The smell still leaking from the empty bottle is enough to curdle milk.

I am looking forward to Saturday night, when my friend Leah (whose birthday was today!) and I are going to dinner and then to see the latest Harry Potter on IMAX!

Rats and Relationships

2010-11-11T19:47:00.001-08:00

I’d always thought rats were nocturnal creatures. Perhaps this was a misunderstanding fueled by Hollywood movies, wherein rats are the stock animal background in any scenes featuring darkness, dankness, or general creepiness. So when the rat scuttled in front of me this morning when I was stopped at a light at 10:30 (almost noon if we hadn’t just switched to daylight savings time), I was surprised. It was a vigorous little creature, hustling across what was at that point a six-lane urban road. It reached the concrete median in the center, climbed deliberately over the three-inch obstacle, and immediately was struck by a car zooming in the opposite direction. One moment it was running about its rodent business, a millisecond later it was dead. A second car’s tire flipped the body a foot down the road—it was so light that certainly neither the driver of the deadly car or the other knew that a tiny life had been snuffed out.

I don’t mean to get all sentimental about a rat. Despite Ratatouille and other revisionist histories, I am aware that the little beasts frequently carry all sorts of nasty germs, in addition to the natural destructiveness wrought by their teeth and claws. I don’t lament sail-squirrels. But it’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything so alive die so unexpectedly, unnoticed. I once saw a pickup truck deliberately run over a tortoise—and I yelled and screamed invective at the &#(!@ driver (may he rot)—but tortoises are slow, defensive in posture at all times, not quick and nasty like rats. And human beings.

On a considerably less sentimental note, I am tired of well-meaning people giving me advice about dating! One sweet friend (married) recently cautioned me about hanging out with my guy friends because other guys will get the impression that I’m taken and not ask me out. Or, rather, the only guys who’ll ask me will be non-Christians—“Christian guys will just assume you are and stay away.” Well, hell. I’ve been asked out exactly ONCE in the last thirteen years by a Christian guy, when I have been obviously, demonstrably single the whole time, so it’s not like the SA’s (Granddaddy’s term—you can guess what it stands for) are lining up one way or the other! So either I can’t win for losing, or I just have to go on and live my life, effectually saying that if the fellows in question don’t have the guts (or—let’s call a spade a spade, the BALLS) to make any move, that’s their problem, not mine. I have asked several friends to set me up with folks they know, but thus far this hasn’t yielded anything. Of course, the friends in question may be shaking their collective heads over my sorry case, muttering, “K’s a nice girl, heart of gold, but she’s just a wee bit crusty…” My language is certainly worse around fellow believers (and on this blog) than it is in public, and that may turn off precisely the Godly sort of man that I’d love to be married to. Crumbs. But what you see is what you get—there’s no pretense in me. There it is, as my father would say.

Keeping Busy

2010-11-09T00:03:00.003-08:00

Forget the old image of a candle aflame at both ends and replace it with the picture of a pool of molten wax in a skillet over a blue flame, a wizened wick floating uselessly in the middle of the sizzling liquid, like a damned soul in the lake of fire. That’s my schedule lately.

2:30 AM. I’ve just gotten home from Georgetown, where I finished over 10 hours’ worth of painstaking grading of the second round of “quizzes” (tests) administered in the History of Russia I class. I had a few perfect scores, but most people’s marks hovered around 70%. They could have done better—a full third of the grade was comprised of an essay, and the professor had given them the question ahead of time! The rest of the test was four short answers, also from a list provided beforehand. I’ve only had one student all semester come to my office hours.

This past Thursday evening, after working at Georgetown, I went with Dex to the annual Romanian Christian Enterprises fundraiser. Like reading the new history of the Tuskegee Airmen, Freedom Flyers, attending the event was simultaneously encouraging and sobering, the small but steadily-growing victories of rescuing one orphan child at a time standing in stark contrast to the looming evil affecting thousands of such young unfortunates who languish in state custody every year.

I worked until 1:15 AM Saturday morning, helping to set up an estate sale in a posh flat over near the National Cathedral. [Wednesday I had spent six hours in closets and a cellar in a DC duplex, throwing away wastepaper and sorting financial documents to be given to the executors of another estate—all this detritus must be cleared before we can get down to the serious business of tagging and pricing.] I had to be up again at 7 AM to return to the Arlington Market with my jewelry wares, a day that proved surprisingly successful. I had already committed to going out with friends to a restaurant at the National Harbor that evening, so when I got back from my last fit of pleasant socializing at 10 PM, I was more than ready for bed, thanking God that I had an extra hour (Daylight Savings could not have come at a better time) for sleeping before church!

Keeping busy, despite fatigue, is one way that I’m shoring up my shaky emotional state—I keep wanting to call Daddy and tell him what I’m doing, ask his advice about things. Having him gone is like having one of my limbs torn away, which is ironic, because when we kids really irritated him with our needs, or he was feeling dramatic, Daddy would tell us that he’d “cut off his right arm” for us. At the Romanian Christian Enterprises meeting (they fed us, then there was a sit-down program, followed by dessert), a little girl was sitting in her father’s lap at the end of our row. He’d rub her small back occasionally, and it reminded me of the small affectionate gestures I miss so much—Daddy rubbing or patting my head, in particular. It always made me feel so loved and cared for, from the time I was a toddler. I miss him so much, even though he thought my jobs—from estate sales to jewelry making—were a waste of my time and talents. But his was a loyal opposition, and one that is hard to live without.

But one day at a time, one small victory at a time.... It is my nature (and I suspect that of a lot of other people) to want to arrive at a neat, complete solution to problems and concerns in a moment, to accomplish a goal in a single grand gesture, rather than realizing redemption and success in almost all facets of human existence are the results of a long, messy, and frequently painful process. As when rescuing children or challenging racism, our weak and sinful selves are used by God to build and heal relationships over time. Sanctification is not immediate, however much we wish it were--and we must rely on grace every single step of the way.

Flava

2010-10-31T23:17:00.002-07:00

You all will be happy to know that when the heavy poop comes down, I'll be ready to add a dash of flavor to the otherwise indigestable post-apocalyptic food... I cleaned out my spice cabinet this evening, and discovered (in addition to the new bottle of vanilla I just bought, under the impression that I was totally out)...THREE more full bottles of vanilla extract, several bottles of real almond extract (and one bottle of the fake stuff), one of peppermint extract, two bottles of lemon extract, and a bottle of anise extract. I can only surmise that they've been multiplying in the dark at the back of my kitchen cabinet--well, there is alcohol involved...

Baked and Toned

2010-10-30T16:13:00.003-07:00

Toned (despite a smoked turkey leg) and sepia toned.

I'm exhausted. I slept 12.5 hours last night, worked all day (estate sale, since Anita's out of town and I didn't feel like freezing my buns off alone) and tonight I plan to go to bed again at 8:30 and sleep as long as possible...I can't go to early church because the Marine Corps Marathon cuts me off from civilization between seven and ten. If they've opened the road before 11, I may be able to go to the late service.

My heat has finally been restored to functionality...not that I'd had it on, because I like to sleep with it cold, and I've been gone all day, every day. But it has been below freezing outdoors, and when I arrived at the estate sale this morning, the temperature indoors there was 62, so I turned on the heat. By mid-afternoon, with the sun pouring through the windows (contemporary style house, lots of glass), we were broiling in our own juices, and I had to switch on the AC.

I was going to go to a Halloween party this weekend, but I'm just too tired to go back out once I get a shower. At least I got to dress up once in October, for the Renaissance Fair!

Downsizing, Upgrading and Rearranging

2010-10-28T22:10:00.003-07:00

As of yesterday morning, I no longer have a television. Truthfully, I was not using it as a television before, just as a glorified video screen on which to watch movies from my large DVD collection, but I decided to put it in an estate sale and see if I could get some few dollars for it. I got the set (a 28-inch analog behemoth that weighed between fifty and sixty pounds) for free years ago from Dex, whose neighbor was getting rid of it. Now, I’m collecting dollars, slowly, from such random sources to purchase a new, larger, high-definition flat screen TV, which I won’t use as a TV either--still, it will make for a far superior home theater experience, and take up less room, despite its greater width.

All of Daddy’s remaining clothes and shoes are also at the sale in Bethesda. Any money gleaned from them will also go toward this hypothetical entertainment system. I think he would approve.

Except for the odd rainy day, the weather’s been beautiful, and I’ve taken advantage by walking to school. Autumn means the crabapple trees are laden with thick clusters of rosy, inedible fruit, and ornamental landscapes are being changed to reflect the cooler temperatures. In other words, it’s pansy season.

Tuesday afternoon, when I turned into the Key Bridge Marriot parking lot, a huge yellow rental moving van with a hydraulic lift on the back was stopped in the No Parking zone. Aboard were dozens of those steel bakery carts, the square-column sort about five feet tall with ten shelves which are rolled out of industrial-size ovens stacked with trays upon trays of loaves of fresh bread, croissants and pastries. Instead of baked goods, these were stacked with flats of blooming pansies, probably 500 plants per cart. Several of these loaded carts were already sitting on the sunny asphalt, while another was descending with a fat man on the lift from the truck. When I walked back from school hours later, the truck was gone and all the pansies were installed in the flowerbeds.

I love fall walks. There are drifts of yellow and tangerine leaves on the stone steps leading up to campus, the sort of picture that might be turned into the basis for a wonderfully complex jigsaw puzzle.

My sister has just diagnosed me as an extrovert, a label I never, ever, thought anyone would put on me, though it is true that lately my social life has been particularly active. Not only have I been keeping busy with TAing (my first student came to see me for help during my office hours this week!), and with estate sale work (we are booked solid through the beginning of 2011!), I’ve had friends over for dinner and tea, and gone over to other friends’ for dinner and tea, and driven to the Maryland Renaissance Fair (in costume, of course—my friend is supposed to send me a picture), I also helped out with a friend’s wedding reception.

I missed the exciting denouement of the service (the kiss) because I had to duck out early to make sure that the sliced cheese that Susan and I had carefully arranged on large platters was out on the tables in the fellowship hall with the plastic wrap removed before everyone started flooding in. There was no bouquet-catching (bloody or otherwise), but it was a truly happy occasion for me and for the more than 150 people who assembled to fellowship and wash down the cheese, crackers, grapes and nuts with apple cider and ice water. There was white-iced spice cake and flame-colored roses and gerber daisies. Beautiful and fun, with little waste of food or energy, the whole event was planned in less than six weeks, since the Marine groom is likely to be shipped to Afghanistan soon, and the bride wisely chose to forego some celebratory details in favor of more pre-separation married time. There were still flowers and candles aplenty, small children warbling during the service and running around at the reception, heartfelt toasts to the happy couple, and—in lieu of the usual paper guest book—the groom’s mother had pieced a quilt of fabrics representing the interests and experiences of husband and wife, which, stitched together into a new creation of blended beauty, was bordered in white, a plain area for those who attended the wedding to sign in permanent marker with their best wishes and congratulations. I thought this a lovely image and gift to bless their marriage.

I continue to downsize and rearrange my possessions, with an eye to upgrading not only my household technology, and my creative output (maybe not jewelry, yet something attractive and lucrative!), but also my connections with my friends. I want to have more people over to visit, to make my living space open and comfortable for guests. The first major test of my progress towards this goal is my upcoming Christmas party (already slated for early December, before everyone’s holiday calendars fill to bursting), to which I’ve invited a large number of sweet people, each of whom has been so kind to me this last difficult year. I think I may even set up a tent with hot refreshments and a space heater out in the apartment courtyard if my little apartment reaches overflow capacity. I fell asleep last night dreaming about this. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Winning

2010-10-19T07:21:00.002-07:00

My trivia team won the week last night, thanks to yours truly, who remembered the most trivial smidgen of trivia--film-related, of course--for the bonus question in the final round, which put us over the top by a single point. Nobody else got the bonus, which made me feel pretty good...that, and having my key lime pie (my indulgence of the evening) paid for by the gift certificate prize. I then went to the gym for two hours to expunge the effects of the pie.

Wisdom Hath Builded Her House

2010-10-15T03:06:00.003-07:00

The professor for the Medieval Russian History class I am assisting was off at a conference today, so I was responsible for teaching the class of 37 students, or rather leading this intellectually ragtag and somewhat unmotivated bunch in a discussion of the Domostroi, a sixteenth-century samizdat of sorts which remained popular for several hundred years after its initial appearance during the reign of Ivan the Awesome.

Thanks to prayer and preparation, the hour and twenty minute session went well, from my point of view. I got a little less than half the members of the class to speak up (an extraordinary number, given their usual laconic spirit), and we covered most of the material that I'd wanted to mention, though it wasn't in depth, because maybe five of the 37 have any biblical literacy whatsoever, and so most of the in-text allusions were lost on them. I mentioned Joseph's service with Potiphar (we were talking about the role of the slave-steward in wealthy Russian households) and only a handful pricked up their ears with any understanding of what I was talking about.

What I found shocking was that the American translator of the manuscript, who spent a dozen years tracking down the original manuscripts, ascertaining alterations in the text (there was a short version and a long version, and addtional material was added over the years--the identity of the original author or authors is still disputed, though it has been attributed to Sylvestr, a Kremlin priest) was clearly not so familiar with the Biblical sources herself. For example, in one footnote, tracing a quotation to Corinthians, she says that Paul is referring to an Old Testament passage (from Exodus) and "exaggerated" the numbers involved, when he is clearly referring to quite a different passage (in Numbers), where the information syncs up. Does she truly think that Paul, a student of the famous rabbi Gamaliel, would be so careless or impolitic as to misrepresent scripture, making three thousand into twenty-three thousand at the stroke of a pen--an error his contemporaries would have immediately seized upon to discredit him? Furthermore, she does not recognize the clear parallels between Sylvestr's letter to his son and the Book of Nehemiah, given the personal history of the Orthodox priest (FYI, Orthodox priests can marry and have families) in rebuilding Kremlin churches at the behest of an imperial ruler. I would have loved to explore this in detail with the students, but I knew it would be completely over their heads.

So, we talked instead about marriage customs, the preservation of personal honor, wife-beating, religious practice, diet, and locking up the household valuables from light-fingered slave/servants. I told them what the professor wanted me to emphasize about the arrangement of the household along monastic lines, with the father/abbot at the top, the mother/abbess beneath him, and the steward operating below and between them and their numerous children, retainers, and dependents. We discussed the practical advice aplenty, and even some rather repulsive recipes, besides instructions for the creation of a variety of meads. And turnip dishes.

I hope the children learned something. I enjoyed myself.

Hidden Treasure, Bloated Rat Carcasses, "Good Vibrations?" and Shoulder Pain

2010-10-12T13:19:00.003-07:00

On Sunday, it had been a month since Granddaddy's death, and tomorrow it will have been four months since Daddy's. I'm keeping VERY busy, although I've decided to quit the weekly jewelry vending come Christmas. I've lost a considerable amount on un-sales-remunerated booth fees over the last three weeks, putting "unpaid" to my growing conviction that this particular hobby has reached the end of its lucrative career. I'll still be fixing items for friends, and doing commission pieces, but I'm hoping to deplete the better part of my inventory between now and the new year. I'm appealing to friends to host sales, and am looking forward to my annual Georgetown fundraiser.

My left shoulder aches because I got my flu shot today and forgot to do the usual post-injection gyrations to keep the muscle from seizing up, so there's pain clear down to my wrist. I expect a good night's sleep to put all to rights.

The estate sales have resumed, and one finds such unexpected things while rooting through other people's storage...like a vibrator and a dead rat. The vibrator, was, I hope, a tasteless gag gift, being still in its box and tucked far under a bathroom sink. So gross. Almost as gross was the bloated rat carcass in the middle of the cellar floor at another house. Now that the putrid body has been removed, I am going to break out my stash of N-95 masks and long sleeved shirts to retrieve the treasures from below--and there are some beautiful things, it being the old home of two gay antique dealers.

I continue to be grateful for all the friends who call and email to check on me. I do continue to have bouts of melancholy, and am somewhat lonely at home with no one to keep me company, but I have had a succession of visitors over to eat and talk, which is pleasant. I am making some real progress at last on my dissertation, although I will not have Chapter 1 finished by this Friday!

Cat Emissions

2010-10-01T09:22:00.002-07:00

So, (this is last night) I’ve just gotten off the phone with my mom, who’s suggested that a doctor would consider me an excellent candidate for a hysterectomy. I’m 35, right? SHE may have totally given up on the usefulness of my reproductive organs, but I haven’t. Not yet. Not entirely, anyway. Now, I’m sipping a Sangiovese and raspberry lemonade concoction that I’ve tossed together in a gold-lined cup with “Forever” in gothic lettering on the side (my nod to Picardo and The Society of S) and thinking about flatulent cats.

Oh, yes, I’m babysitting for a delightful pair of farting felines, while their family is away at a wedding. I don’t mean that to sound—if you’ll pardon the expression—catty at all. They are sweet, sweet kitties. Friendly, affectionate, soft, sleek fur, bouncy—the sort of animals even an ailurophobic might grant were alluring (albeit from a distance). But they have one teeny, weeny, fragrant flaw: occasionally (it’s not constant or too frequent, thank God) one or the both of them will let loose a silent, noxious expulsion of profound stink. They’ll be winding around your ankles in an ecstasy of happy purring and suddenly this…odor…undulates upwards, and you think “Whoa, what DID the cat just drag in?” Hopefully, Bonnie and Clyde (the fuzzy beasts in question) will outgrow the gas-passing (they are only six months old). Their human mamma has them on a combination of probiotics and special tinned catfood, which has helped with other digestive issues.

It’s pleasant to be distracted by such a minor, hilarious problem as flatulent cats. Just this week, the parents of two friendly acquaintances have been diagnosed with potentially terminal conditions. And yesterday I received a CD of Granddaddy’s funeral service from Grandmommy. My cousin Daniel wrote an excellent reflection on his wife’s blog about Granddaddy’s influence on his life (and his remark about how everyone ought to own a cat!)--their blog is much nicer than mine because of the beautiful pictures in each and every post! The very real weights of mortality slide onto my shoulders and those of my friends with little warning. But thank God with the real comfort that He is in control. Otherwise, just going forward would seem a condemnation rather than a blessing. You’ve got to take the farts with the purrs and fur.

Suffrage, Sushi and Sleeplessness

2010-09-22T09:19:00.001-07:00

I registered to vote in Arlington yesterday. Unlike the DMV, where they required several forms of legal documentation of my identity and citizenship (including my passport) before they’d issue me a license, the Board of Elections didn’t even ask me to show picture ID when I filled out their form! So, driving a car is considered more an issue of national security than voting for government leadership?

I’ve kept unusual hours of late. Staying up until 2 AM is not that odd for me—in fact, it’s pretty standard—but getting up at 6:30 the next morning and heading to school to work on dissertation stuff before the sun has fully risen is scary. Perhaps my subconscious is getting even with me for procrastinating on the project. Or maybe my wakefulness is due to the combination of a pineapple-blueberry cocktail and California rolls at dinner last night (a military officer girlfriend treated me). Either way, I’ve been jolting out of my bed at dawn to open my laptop and stare bleary-eyed at jpeg files of German textbooks. Chapter 1 is due to my advisor by October 15—I should mention that this date has been revised several times, as members of my family keep dying. I’d prefer not to have to ask for another extension!

Of course, besides endowing me with unusual diligence in my studies, insufficient sleep and/or the consumption of great sushi is leading me to contemplate the Great Philosophical Questions: e.g. Is it wrong to pop corn in corn oil? Isn’t this the vegetable equivalent of stewing a calf in its mother’s milk?

Obviously, I need a nap. And some calmingly bland instant oatmeal.

So Long, Fortune Cookie

2010-09-14T21:01:00.002-07:00

When I was little, some three decades ago, all Chinese restaurants in the United States (or all those that I visited) had what I’ll term a “pre-revolutionary” décor. The places were Orientalists’ dreams, little oases of the mythic, exotic East. Frequently dark, the only illumination came from antique-style palace lanterns: hexagonal light fixtures of carved wood (or wood-simulating resin) in the shape of roaring dragons or elaborate curlicues, set with painted paper or glass panes, and hung with long, red silk tassels. I loved these lanterns, hanging like jewels in an Aladdin’s cave, their tiny glowing pictures of princesses and peasants giving glimpses of imaginary lands.

Tiny paper parasols, and sometimes little plastic monkeys, came in children’s drinks, and my sister and I could play for hours with these miniature toys. There were chopsticks embossed with red characters next to each plate, and from dusty speakers somewhere overhead in the darkness twangy non-octave music. Between that and the padparadsha-colored sweet and sour sauce, I was in heaven. But the best part of the meal was at the end...when we were given our fortune cookies.

I love fortune cookies. I like the way they taste—from childhood I have always thought that they must be the perfect reproduction of the Israelite's heaven-sent manna in the wilderness: “wafers made with honey”—and I love cracking them open and discovering the little slips of paper inside, printed with magical insights.

These paper oracles used to make cheerful prophecies: “You will soon find money,” “You will meet a handsome stranger.” Then, over the years, I noticed that they had morphed into complimentary personal observations: “You are well-liked by many people,” “You are intelligent and witty.”

Coincidentally, around the same time that state lotteries started becoming popular, bakers began utilizing the previously-blank side of the paper by printing strings of lucky numbers on the back of the slips.

More recently, vocabulary words have joined the numbers (reinforcing the fiction of the “education lottery,” maybe), so unlucky readers could “learn Chinese” while they were digesting dessert. (How, from reading poor approximations, one is supposed to learn Chinese—a language where tones are all-important, inflections distinguishing between words that are roughly transcribed the same way in Latin characters—I don’t know).

But these are not the innovations I deplore: just last week, I found that the fortune-cookie manufacturers have now forgone buttering you up before encouraging you to gamble and commit linguistic assassination… My last “fortune” read: “A new wardrobe brings great joy and change to your life.”

Unless this is a Sign From Above informing me that I am grievously out of style and in desperate need of a makeover (I suppose I shouldn’t rule this out completely), this is stark evidence that the fortune cookie, as originated, is dead, and the didactic consumerist cookie has taken its place. I suppose the next one I crack open will tell me that I need to buy a new computer and get my eyebrows waxed.

Alas, like the modern chrome and steel Chinese restaurant, with its abstract murals and sleek fluorescent lighting, there’s a lack of mystique in the modern fortune cookie, a materialism I had thought this confection rose sweetly above.

Cortege

2010-09-13T19:18:00.006-07:00

Led by two police cruisers, the funeral procession pulled slowly out of the United Methodist Church parking lot around 12:15. I drove Grandmommy's car behind the hearse, she in the front passenger seat, my mom and her middle sister in the back. Every single car we passed in either direction pulled over or stopped in respect for the passing dead and mourners, though we were on the main road through the center of town. One guy who was out jogging stopped and sat down, watching. God bless each of those people--it was such a gracious gesture, probably not seen outside small town America.

There were about 150 people at the 11 AM service, a good turn-out for a funeral that was publicized only by word-of-mouth (the Dublin paper didn't publish the obituary until early this afternoon, after the internment). Caregivers from the Benton House (the Alzheimers facility where Granddaddy had stayed just less than two months, entering three weeks after my father's funeral and leaving three weeks ago, when he fractured his hip) came. Grandmommy hugged them all, tearfully repeating how grateful she was for their kindness to her husband.

So many people came who had worked with Granddaddy at the VA (he was one of the head facilities management guys there for some 40 years) or at the construction company where he was an estimator (where he worked for almost a decade after he left the VA and couldn't stand being retired), fellow WWII veterans, members of the UMC Sunday School class, the Men's Prayer Breakfast, the American Legion post where he'd been a member for over 60 years, and members of the Boy Scout troop which he'd led back in the 1950s. Even the funeral director in charge of arrangements had known him for half a century.

The blue felted casket was draped with a large American flag. Granddaddy would have been so proud to see that, and his four grandsons all lined up as pallbearers, one in the uniform of a Navy Lieutenant. Grandmommy, the strongest, Godliest lady I have ever known, was in tears in the other front pew, supported by her three daughters, with us granddaughters with them. For sixty-three years Grandmommy and Granddaddy have been thought of, spoken of, and loved as a single entity, and now they are parted by death.

At the viewing Sunday evening, Granddaddy's old Navy uniform, the red braid and medals little dimmed, were displayed on an easel next to the casket. The flat screen played a DVD of a film a Boston-based interviewer had made of her weekend visit with Grandmommy and Granddaddy about six years ago, getting them to talk about their experiences. So many of the visitors were enthralled by the video that a small crowd ended up standing in a semi-circle, glued to the screen, laughing at the stories. The hard-of-hearing folks also raised the volume to a decidedly unfunereal level, and I had to rush to dampen it when one of the undertakers seemed on the verge of going into shock.

To my eyes, Granddaddy's prepared body did not look much like him. Mums and Grandmommy (Grandmommy and one of my cousins had been holding his hands when he died Friday afternoon) both commented how good he looked, but they had seen him most recently, when he was in distress, the last couple of weeks, when he had lost some forty pounds from his normal weight of 168 (which he maintained from about age 20 until just a few months ago--he could still wear his Navy uniform 70 years after he'd acquired it), and as Mums said, "looked like death." The skin was unnaturally pale, the lips in a grim line his never ever were, his crew-cut hair angled in, and someone had attempted to manicure his work-broken nails. It was a wizened husk, the occupant obviously absent, and (like Daddy's body), cold and hard to the touch.

The music at the funeral was lovely. We sang the Navy hymn, and were played out by the jaunty "Anchors Away." At the cemetery, a naval honor guard was waiting, a woman and one man all in white, with a bugler--his instrument tucked under one arm, standing off to the side. After the pastor's words, the simple notes of Taps were blown while two members of the guard raised and held the flag over the casket. They then carefully folded it, regulation-style (as Granddaddy did every day, and taught all us grandchildren to do), and then the officer at their head knelt and presented the star-spangled triangle to a weeping Grandmommy, with thanks for Granddaddy's service.

Today was the last day that Granddaddy's flag at home will be flown. My brother took it out and raised it to the top of the pole, then lowered it to half mast. A cool Georgia autumn breeze caught it and displayed the colors proudly in the morning light, and it remained on display until nightfall, when I drove away to return to Augusta. Grandmommy called me on my cell phone to make sure I got in safely. "We love you," she said, still speaking for both her and Granddaddy. "I love you," I told her.

Granddaddy

2010-09-11T06:25:00.002-07:00

My dear Granddaddy, my mother's father, died yesterday afternoon in Dublin, GA. One of my cousins wrote a lovely, brief tribute to him on her own blog. I don't think I could have said it better, and I don't have such beautiful pictures. I am driving down to GA today. The funeral is scheduled for Monday afternoon. I miss him so much.

The Russian Way of Death

2010-09-07T17:50:00.002-07:00

Classes at Georgetown began last Wednesday, and I have been assigned to TA the undergraduate early Russian history class, in which there are more students than squirrel-hides in a packet (a standard unit of medieval Russian trade-currency, from which the modern word "sorok"--40--is derived). Electronic devices are verboten in the room, and so the students and I are handwriting our notes, which is a pleasant retro exercise, unencumbered by the distractions of internet chatting or cell phone texting.

Having recently read Mary Roach's entertaining Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (her visit to UT's Body Farm was briefer than that of Patricia Cornwell's fictional investigator, but as piquant in its own observations), and having promised a friend of mine that while he was daily writing 1500 words during the month of September on what could become the next English-language bestseller, I would be penning my dissertation, I was encouraged to investigate Russian funerary and mortuary practices. After all, Pirogov had to have obtained the cadavers he sliced for his anatomical studies from some source, and there was some back-story to his having been embalmed for public display, a curious amalgam of Orthodox religious tradition and secular scientific innovation. I thus have two bags full of books from Lauinger Library on the subject of death and burial, and a scheduled meeting with my adviser on Thursday afternoon. Her brother-in-law died of lymphoma just a few weeks ago (he was in his forties), so her own view of my necrocentric study may be jaundiced.

I Am Sunburnt…

2010-08-17T20:16:00.002-07:00

But there is nothing quite as refreshing as sinking chin-deep into warm, churning surf and letting the seafoam bubbles tickle your nose like salty champagne. The two days at Folly Beach, SC, have been glorious, worth the faun-like tan dapples that have developed on my forehead from spotty application of spray sunscreen. I spent hours in the ocean--until even my palms and the soles of my feet had turned pale (well, paler) and pruney--leaping waves like a demented jack-in-the-box and keeping a sharp eye out for hostile dorsal fins. While I frolicked in the jade-colored water pretending to be five rather than thirty-five, Mums walked up and down the shore (she’s a “by-the-sea” person, not an “in-the-sea” person) and then retired to a dune-top pavilion to read. It’s been a great vacation, as I had hoped.

To me, good vacations also must include good, memorable dining experiences, and we did well in that regard before we even glimpsed the Atlantic. My friend Dex had recommended I get in touch with the O’Henrys, old friends of his who’d hosted me and Susan and Midori on our visit to Charleston last year, and so I phoned them Saturday and made arrangements for the two of them to meet me and Mums for dinner Sunday night at one of my favorite local restaurants, Slightly North of Broad. I cannot speak too highly of the O’Henrys, who possess the great gift of hospitality of character (being able to make even total strangers immediately comfortable and welcome in their company, not merely in their home). Mums thoroughly enjoyed the evening, as I knew she would. And the food and the service were (as always) superb. Read the online menu and drool.

Monday’s main meal (before we ventured out to the beach) was consumed at the Hominy Grill, which Mrs. O’Henry had recommended for their shrimp and grits and their heavenly chocolate mousse. We ate out on the patio under a parasol and drank the best ice-cold sweet tea I’ve tasted in ages. Sunny after the morning rainstorm, the temperature was in the low nineties, and drops of condensation ran off our glasses and fell through the screen table onto our legs, where they traced cool trails down to our sandled feet. A flock of resident sparrows hopped around expectantly, waiting for us to drop cornbread crumbs. One boldly sat right by my chair until I tossed it a bit of bread, which it immediately seized in its beak and ran off carrying, too burdened to fly. I was too full to finish my own four-star meal.

In the Hominy Grill bathroom, there was a framed picture of actor Anthony Hopkins mugging with two restaurant employees during his visit. SNOB’s ladies’ room featured autographed book jackets—one by famous lowcountry author Pat Conroy hung right next to the toilet. Maybe someday a book of mine will make it into the toilet…or at least by it.

As to books, I am anxious to read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, which is the flavor du jour of the literate public. Mums and I stopped by a tiny bookstore called the Ravenous Reader on our return from the beach this evening, and the owner told us she’d sold seven copies of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today alone. Not wanting to leave a rare independent bookstore emptyhanded, I found a cute book for my niece and nephew: Splat the Cat. I think they'll like it--especially as my niece (a newly-hatched bookworm) is trying to teach her little brother how to read. Even if this story doesn't do the trick (he's only two, after all), I think he will like it being read to him, and she will enjoy reading it to herself.

I'm A Marshmallow

2010-08-13T21:34:00.002-07:00

...Mums is not. We've been hitting the gym every day (after Mums gets out of her kickboxing classes and does over two hundred pushups and walks on the treadmill in our former dining room for an hour or so). I'll bounce on the elliptical for half to three quarters of an hour and then head to the exercise bike and thence to various machines for arm strengthening. I'm usually oblivious to my surroundings until the arm workouts, because I'm anesthetizing myself with a book, but at that point I can't hold onto my reading, and am aware of the assortment of pudgy middle-aged men and young jocks in the room. Wee little Mums'll be over at the free weights, cheerfully curling a pair of 40-lb. barbells, or doing unaided pullups on a rack, her back muscles rippling. I hope I'm such fantastic condition when her age. Heck, I wish I could be half that lean and cut now. Frankly, though, I'm too lazy to put in the time, or the crunches, though I do envy her her eight-pack abs.

The probate of Daddy's will took all of about five minutes. We waited for about half an hour for the snow-haired clerk or judge or whatever she was (her secretary was too busy chatting to inform her that we'd arrived) to usher us back into a room framed with pictures of historical landmarks and ask Mums to swear that no, Daddy hadn't divorced her since his will was made six years ago, and no, he didn't have any other children other than us four living ones. Our family lawyer and the judge were both fine old Southern bluebloods, with soft patrician accents that have long been heard in the halls of the mighty hereabouts (and which notoriously can be used to such devastatingly mean, sarcastic effect on those deemed to have transgressed), so the proceedings, brief as they were, had an air of timeless propriety.

I had to get a new cell phone this afternoon. The old one died on the drive back from DC Wednesday, and upon examination it was found that damp had corroded the interior. As I had not dropped the thing in any puddles or dowsed it with liquid, I could only surmise that the DC humidity had done it in (with which hypothesis the Verizon clerk agreed). Thankfully, with rebate the new phone only cost $20. It has a little QWERTY keyboard inside for texting, and I think a low-resolution camera somewhere aboard. I hope it lasts longer than its predecessor, which I obtained less than a year ago. Mums jokes that she's going to be permanently indentured to Verizon, since every time one of us has an issue with his or her phone, the contract is extended two years from the service change date.

I plan to be back in DC August 20. Tomorrow, Mums wants me to help her pick out colors for her new condo (we spent time today at Lowes looking at paint for the house, since we've got to get rid of all the wallpaper and replace it with neutral tones in order to get the place ready to sell), and then Sunday afternoon we intend to drive to my brother's in Charleston. He, of course, has not called to acknowledge our imminent advent, but we figure we'll camp out on his front lawn until he gets home from evening church and then waylay him on his way to the door.

Reading, Clothing, Traveling, Crying

2010-08-10T17:36:00.002-07:00

I’ve been reading, not writing, the last two weeks: mystery novels, primarily, but also Rick Riordan’s young adult Percy Jackson mythology adventure series. The mysteries have ranged from pure fluff (Laura Levine) to beautifully literary (Boris Akunin). I’ve also spent a lot of time in the gym (reading the books on the stairmaster, the elliptical machine and the stationary bike), which sweaty activity is evidenced by the stench emitted by my recycled exercise pants which I'm wearing one last trip to Gold's before tomorrow's planned trip to GA.

I’ve also broken down and realized that my clothes (including the exercise togs) are pretty worn, and so I went shopping. I hate shopping, except maybe for books. I realize that (despite the regular trips to the gym) I have Titianesque thighs, and the new fad of “skinny” pants, doesn’t, if you’ll pardon the pun, sit well on my figure. I found two pairs of slacks to fit my outsize posterior at Target but they were so large in the waist that I had to have them taken in by the seamstress at the local cleaners.

[Warning to my four male readers: possible TMI in this paragraph.] There was no hope in the underwear department. The lingerie section was full of push up bras with so much lift I was afraid my bosoms were going to explode upward out of the cups like rocket-propelled grenades. And there were thong panties and silly “boy shorts” everywhere. Whatever happened to normal women’s underwear? You know, the sort made out of your basic cotton and elastic that covered the acreage without trying to landscape it like a PGA golf course?

The library’s going to close in just a few minutes, so I need to finish up and go to Gold’s. I’m planning to spend Sunday through Wednesday at my Charleston brother’s with my mother, at the beach. Daddy’s will is being probated this Friday, and Mums says she's got too much paperwork to do to have a vacation, but I think it'l do us both good. I’ve been trying to use endorphins and fiction to buoy my sagging spirits, but I’m crying almost every night as I fall asleep, remembering Daddy. Thanks for your prayers.

All Men Are Liars

2010-08-03T08:43:00.002-07:00

Little makes me more upset than to learn that someone with whom I have worked, whom I have trusted, is a thief. Far more angering is the fact that this person claims to be a Christian. Is there a special place in hell for such people?

There is an almost tangible cloud of petty hatred hanging over the DC area of late, and I don't think this is exclusively a reflection of low-level depression and middling sorrow on my part. I have seen people just being nasty to each other--on the road, in person--repeatedly, from furious explosions of road rage to yelling accusations of all sorts of malfeasance. I've personally witnessed two cases of domestic violence in public, and heard of more.

I am tired, yet grateful for the girlfriends who have phoned, asking me to walks and dinner and the pool. I haven't been able to take all of these pleasant offers of distraction (last week I worked more than 50 hours, besides changing my residency to VA), but I have thoroughly appreciated them and those who have extended them. My Charleston brother has told me I can crash at his place for a weekend, so I plan an escape to the beach (a non-oily one) in the next two weeks. And maybe do a bit of dissertation-writing, too.

Learning Patience?

2010-07-20T10:37:00.004-07:00

Was planning to change my residency, license, tags and so forth to Virginia today, but am still waiting for my new china cabinet to be delivered. "Sometime this afternoon," the mover said, which isn't terribly specific. I don't want to commit to the DMV, and sit, cell-phoneless, in the official waiting area for hours while my cabinet is on a truck somewhere; the mover doesn't usually come to my area (he's more of a DC/MD man), and so it was sheer grace that he happened to be making another Northern VA delivery and was going to be in the vicinity. The cabinet--which was built in Egypt, according to its original owner--has lots of glass and a marble top, so I knew that I couldn't hope to shift it myself, even with the help of friends, hence the waiting on a professional.

As to patience-building exercises, I may well have mentioned on the blog that a few months ago I got a tax delinquency notice from DC. They said I'd underpaid on my 2009 sales taxes, which was total baloney--they'd cashed the check for the full amount I owed back in January, days after they received it. So, I'd called and told them it was in error, and the woman at the office said they'd investigate and get back to me: No need for me to submit further documentation, "Don't call us, we'll call you," that sort of thing.

You can imagine my chagrin when last Monday I got a certified letter from the tax office saying that not only was I delinquent, I was delinquent in redressing this delinquency, and they were just about to put a lien on my property, publish my name on the Internet, and/or turn me over to collections: the financial equivalents of chopping off a hostage’s digits and mailing them to their loved ones in little packages. Only this time the digits were my own. And lest we forget, when it comes to disputes with tax offices, the taxpayer is considered guilty until proven innocent, not vice versa. Freak-out time.

First, I tried calling the number on the delinquency form. It rang, and rang. And rang. No answer. Repeated tries. No answer. Then I went on the Internet and looked up the general office number. I went through the usual "press 2 for x option" automated system, and kept getting the following response for my pains: "You have reached a non-working DC government number." Peachy. Finally, I just randomly pressed another number and got a human being in a completely different area of the office who gave me the contact information for a specific case investigative officer. Who, of course, was not picking up his phone. But at least he had an answering machine, which promised to get back to me in 24 hours. Left detailed message.

Twenty-four hours later, forty-eight hours later, still no response. Well, heck, I thought, I'm driving back up to DC on Friday, I'll go to the tax office in person on Monday. Asked my Sunday School class and texted a group of friends to pray. Monday morning, carefully gathered up all my documentation, including my sales order booklets and copies of the cancelled check and took the metro over to Union Station. The temperature hovered in the mid-90s, and I was wearing nice jeans, because I thought they might treat me better if I didn't look like a total slob. Walked the quarter mile to where the tax office was. Or where it used to be, but was no longer, I discovered. The doors to the building were locked, and there was a big redevelopment/office space available sign in front.

Called my mom, who started laughing when I told her what had happened. She looked up the new office address for me--it was two miles away, other side of Capitol Hill. All I could think was, "Thank God I put on sunscreen," and, later, "...and for public water fountains." Talk about cooking in ones own juices--sitting at the market on Saturday without any sales was bad enough, trekking across DC in the steamy height of summer, carrying a backpack full of tax documents made me feel like sin-burdened Christian in the Slough of Despond.

All the prayers for resolution were answered, though. When I finally walked into the deliciously air-conditioned new DC government building at 1101 Fourth Street SW, there was no line--I didn't even have to sit down in the waiting area before a little bell chimed and an electronic voice announced that my number was being served at Window 12. There, I didn't really have to explain anything, either--I just told the woman that I had been sent a delinquency notice for money I didn't owe, she pulled up my account on her computer, and three minutes of silent typing later she handed me a print-out that said my account was clear. I immediately felt 15 lbs lighter, and I don't think that was just the water-weight I sweated off walking!

I didn't notice until I got home that the printout was dated July 26, 2010, rather than July 19. Does this mean I'm still allegedly in arrears until my account is magically set to rights next Monday?

I'm just not going to worry about it.

Daddyisms and Granddaddy Visit

2010-07-15T18:41:00.001-07:00

Some of the nicest men I have known in my life are inveterate and unrepentant punsters, prone to come up with witticisms in a heartbeat, and sometimes to create euphemisms that become part of their peculiar parlance, obscure to the uninitiated. Some samples from my father’s repertoire:

In the car on the way to visit my grandparents circa September 1998, we were listening to an NPR report on Arab-Israeli relations when he suddenly spouted:

“Peace process hot
Peace process cold
Peace process is a crock
Twenty years old.”

An overweight person gobbling away at a restaurant was “Committing suicide by fork.”

An already obese individual was “Suffering from advanced biscuit poisoning.”

On a vacation to the Pacific Northwest with my mom and youngest brother, every time they entered a stand of large trees, he exclaimed: “The forest prime-weevil.”

[My siblings will have to add examples in the comment section—these were just a few that sprang to my mind.]

I visited my grandparents today. Not only is it hard to see Daddy’s personal effects gone from the Augusta house—the little reminder note on the garage door that read “STOP! Do you have your beeper? Your pass key? [Etc.]” was one of the first to be discarded—seeing furniture and pictures missing from Grandmommy’s house (items that have been used to furnish Granddaddy’s new room at the Alzheimer’s care center) was even more upsetting.

When I was born, Daddy was in the Army, and so we’d moved some 14 times before I was a teenager, but Grandmommy and Granddaddy’s house was always a constant. Granddaddy’s desk was always in the corner of their bedroom, their certificate of marriage hanging in a silver frame over it. He’d always sit at the head of the table at mealtimes, Grandmommy on his left, and he’d ask the same simple blessing. Today, the desk was gone, and the wedding certificate in its frame was in the closet on the floor, and Grandmommy sat at the head of the table.

We went to visit Granddaddy after lunch. It’s a nice facility—clean, new, lots of light, with an inner courtyard for the residents to enjoy—very comfortable and un-hospitalish, with no unpleasant odors and friendly staff, but it was heartbreaking to see Granddaddy there, even in the lovely room which my aunt had worked so hard to make familiar for him, with a Grandmommy quilt on the bed, his desk below a wall of family pictures, and patriotic memorabilia from his World War II service. Granddaddy didn’t know me or my mother (his eldest daughter). He was convinced there was another resident with his same name somewhere close. He could barely walk, and his voice had sunk to almost a whisper, his once-bright blue eyes fading like ink in a sunburnt photograph. It was so bizarre to see him old. Granddaddy’s always been so capable, even this last Christmas he was hopping around, stealing my cousin’s Santa hat and teasing younger relatives, but it’s like he’s aged twenty years in the space of seven months; my mother says his condition has deteriorated markedly in just six weeks. Grandmommy, whom I have only seen close to tears once—a month ago, when Daddy died—was blinking them back when we left, but (as has been her lifelong habit) resolutely focusing on the blessings of their relationship: “We had sixty-three years together.”

I am a self-centered person in many ways, deplorably ignorant of and insensitive to the sufferings and pain of others, but I do pray that God will use what has happened in the last month to make me more sensitive, more aware, and considerably less narcissistic than I have been, to know when to speak and when to silently listen.

Back to DC tomorrow, hopefully to the Arlington Market Saturday and church Sunday.

One Month

2010-07-13T17:14:00.002-07:00

It's been a month since Daddy died, and I'm only starting to mourn. Mums is still sick (she's been struggling with severe nausea for over five weeks now), and though externally she looks great and super-fit, she's feeling water-weak. Granddaddy was admitted to a special Alzheimer's resident care facility late Sunday night. Grandmommy is so sad, though she knows it is necessary. And the DC tax office is threatening to turn me over to collections for taxes I don't owe (and never have!); of course, I can't get through to anyone there via telephone, and I won't be in DC until next week at the earliest. I want to curl up and be held and let cry and cry.

International Relations: Deplorable and Delicious

2010-07-09T13:54:00.003-07:00

Last summer, in the international airport in Moscow, I made the acquaintance of Zhenya, an attractive, but shallow and materialistic young Russian woman, who was coming to the US to study English and live as the fiancée of a divorced Russian emigre almost twice her age. She asked me to sit next to her on the plane, and we talked (in a mixture of Russian and English) the whole ten-hour trip to Washington—about the superficial things with which she was obsessed (fashion, expensive cars, money), her family in Kazan and her studies in Environmental Engineering, and how I thought she shouldn’t live with this guy she barely knew. We exchanged contact information, and for a few months we got together every six weeks or so for coffee, and once (as previously blogged, last fall) to go to a museum with her obviously possessive fiancé and a more pleasant friend of his. I had her over to my apartment for tea one afternoon and showed her some of the jewelry I made. What was irritating was how she always wanted to know what this or that cost, how much the apartment rent was, was my diamond pendant real? And so forth.

In time, her “boyfriend” became abusive, and she temporarily moved out, to live with a friend from school. Around the same time, she also discovered that she was pregnant. She’d previously been begging me to find her a “nice American man,” and this entreaty intensified. I always put her off, told her I didn’t know any—well, I do know quite a few, but none that I’d be so cruel to as to have recommended him take a romantic interest in her (not because of the pregnancy, but because of her character)! She also kept pressing me to “help her find a job” etc., but aside from giving her advice, I left it up to her—after all, as a foreign student, most jobs were not legally available to her.

As to her pregnancy and housing issues, I told her about a local crisis pregnancy center and accompanied her to an appointment there, and told her about a good Russian Baptist church and took her to one of their services. In both cases, I was impressed by the people in each place and she was not interested in relying on their help; the director of the pregnancy center advised me against the trap of enablement, and told me to let her make her own decisions. So, after she moved back in with her fiancé, I quit any further communication. What was the point? I’m not a one-woman Salvation Army center, and she was clearly an energy leach, with no genuine reform of her lifestyle.

So, no communication for months, and then she emailed me the day before my father’s funeral, saying that she’d moved out permanently, and “could you find me a good man.” I didn’t respond—I thought, “Good for her” (for FINALLY moving out), but her renewed appeal for a “good man” when I’d just lost my own great Daddy simply reinforced my determination to avoid her. Life is not a Disney movie with handsome princes waiting in the wings to rescue damsels in distress—particularly clingy damsels of questionable morals and no backbone. Rescue-minded royalty is even in short supply for those of us with semi-solid morals and hard heads.

Yesterday, out of the blue, she texted me and then telephoned me (from an unfamiliar number, since identified as “Zhenya! Ignore!” in my address book—I hung up on her when I realized who it was: “Can’t talk now, I’m in a store.” ) to say that she was getting a restraining order against the father of her unborn child. Lovely. Not that he doesn’t richly deserve it, but even less reason for me to want any involvement whatsoever—domestic violence practitioners so often threaten also those they suspect of helping their “loved” ones.

I’d go to the ends of the earth for a real friend, someone I knew was in trouble, who genuinely wanted to get out of a bad situation, but I’d also expect that they’d take advantage of any other external aid available, not just come to me alone, expecting me to magically solve their problems without their having to lift a finger. This girl is bad news, making bad, bad choices, and I refuse to be pulled down with her. I do feel thoroughly sorry for her baby—what parents!

In happier news, I went with Leah and a Lebanese friend of hers to a Greek restaurant in Old Town Alexandria last night after her martial arts class. Hercules, a Greek instructor for the State Department, whom I know from his visits to my and Anita’s jewelry booth at the Arlington Market, was singing traditional music inside. We sat outdoors (as the weather had at last cooled down to the point where being in a garden outdoors didn’t mean being cooked in one’s own juices), listened to the songs and watched other diners dance around the tables inside. Leah’s friend had grown up in Australia, and she told us about her elopement with her husband and the parties on three continents that their relatives had insisted on throwing them in lieu of a wedding.

After the delicious meal, Hercules came outside to sit at our table, rolled his eyes dramatically at our compliments on his music, and burbled to us about his own daughter’s upcoming marriage in Greece to a Finnish guy she met in London. It will be a small wedding, by native standards—150 guests instead of the whole village of 700. If I ever have the opportunity to marry, I—who have actually heretofore wanted a church wedding—want only a minister and a couple of witnesses with me and my husband at the ceremony. It would have been worth it to have a formal wedding if my father were around to enjoy it, but now it’d be too fraught with bitter-sweet emotion. He would have loved the Greek restaurant, and I’ll bet he would have gotten up and danced with the others whose feet were tapping too fervently to keep still in their seats.

Catching Up

2010-07-07T08:55:00.006-07:00

So, in the intervening weekends since my last post, I've attended two more weddings--one for a second cousin in Lexington, SC, and the other for my Bethesda gallery boss, in Annapolis, MD. I'm kind of "weddinged out." I realize that one is supposed to rejoice with those who rejoice, but I've lately been much more able to weep with others who are weeping. Still, all in all, both weddings were pleasant events, and I got through them with a cordial expression on my face and plenty of makeup. I did have to go outside and cry during the last one, as the bride is as Greek as I am, and her father danced with her to Greek music at the Annapolis Yacht Club, where the masts of moored sailboats surrounded us. Daddy would have loved it--sailboats AND Greek music?!--and I would have called him to tell him about it, too. Instead, I phoned my sister, who can be trusted to commiserate and not spout any sentimentalist clap-trap about how "he's watching over you" or "he's seeing you here." Bull hockey. God is watching me, but Daddy is otherwise involved in heaven.

I continue to be blessed with friends who help me--getting me out of the house and distracted, or providing muscle for my ongoing redecoration of my apartment, or sitting with me into the wee hours when I can't sleep for thinking about Daddy. Others have phoned and reminded me that they are praying for me and my family, and I continue to get a trickle of snail-mail sympathy cards. I need this more now, it seems, that the adrenalin and subconscious refusal to believe that this is all real are wearing thin.

My dear Granddaddy is not doing well--he didn't recognize who I was when I called to wish him and Grandmommy a Happy Fourth of July. Grandmommy sounded tired--and, for the first time, really old. She loved Daddy dearly, and he'd been giving her advice about Granddaddy's and her own health for years. We're all realizing how much we depended on him.

I'm back working at the Bethesda gallery and at the estate sales. Three weeks ago, my primary post for the week was going to be the story of the painting that I bought at a sale, owned for 24 hours, and then had to return.

Susan took almost all the wall-art in the apartment when she moved out, and I've been desperate to decorate. At one sale that I was working in Kensington, MD, I saw a lovely impressionist/pointillist garden scene, painted in oil, framed in gilded wood, about three feet high and two wide. The art dealer who advises my boss sneered delicately at it, said it was alright for a "ready made" picture, and told her to price it around $300.

I thought it was pretty, and would make a lovely centerpiece for my living room, so I went ahead, wrote a check for it, and took it home (shoving it over the front seats of my little Honda Accord, so it was balanced behind my head, threatening instant concussion in case of an accident) two days before the sale began. The next day, when I went in for work, my boss told me that she hated to do it, but she had to ask for me to return the painting. Turns out the artist, Lillian McKendrick, was a mid-twentieth-century painter of Russian parentage whose work is now considered fairly collectible. Her work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other exclusive places, and those pieces available to private collectors sell for about $15,000 a pop. Now, if I had bought the picture at the sale, I would have been able to keep it, and counted it as one of the "great buys" of my career thus far, but as I am an employee of the sale organizer and purchased it prior to the sale's official kick-off, ethically I was bound to return it. So I did. My boss returned my check and paid me $75 for my trouble, which helped to assuage my feelings somewhat. But it was kind of a bummer still--after all, I hadn't bought it because I thought it was a collector's item worth a bundle, I'd bought it because I liked it! But I comforted myself with the notion that not only had I been (briefly) the owner of a good oil painting, but that my taste in art was also demonstrably better than the so-called professional dealer's.

Snap taken of the picture before I returned it:

Pretty, yes?

Condolences

2010-06-23T19:10:00.002-07:00

My siblings, grandparents, mom and I have all appreciated the many sympathy cards that we have received over the past nine days. What we have most appreciated are the handwritten notes that have supplemented the pre-composed remarks printed on the cards--anyone can sign their name to generic thoughts, but it takes genuine effort to pen your own! Some of these individual remarks have been more than just a few lines of compassion, real little stories about Daddy's effect on the writer's life. I'd like to share one example, addressed to my mother by the sister of my father's best friend Sam:

Dear [EK],

I was shocked and saddened to hear of [your husband's] death. Even though I didn't see him often, I cried, realizing how much I will miss his exuberant warmth & sincere concern for people.

I worked with him in the University [Hospital] Recovery Room for almost 4 yrs (~1990-1994). I was shy & insecure then, but my spirit always lifted when I heard his voice (he always chattered as he brought his patients from OR to PACU). He talked to everyone, but he always made a special point to talk to me (since I was Sam's sister!). He sincerely wanted to know how I was doing. My best friend (Heather) also was a nurse there and said that he made everyone feel that way.

[Your husband] was so different from the other doctors there. Often they would make disparaging comments about their wives, but [your husband] glowed when he spoke of you & of his kids. He once said "EK is far more intelligent than I am." Frankly, it was refreshing and a joy to see a man who was happy in his marriage.

[Your husband] was also humble. One evening in PACU, we were bombarded with patients (& only 2 nurses). [Your husband] was on call & as he rolled his patient in, he asked "How can I help?" He then helped me transport a patient up to the floor. I've never had another physician volunteer to help in such a way

I will really miss him. My heart hurts for you and your children to lose him at such a young age. He was a man who practiced his faith every day. I will be praying for you and your family.

I am so grateful that Daddy made comparatively small decisions (talking to people, really listening to them, recognizing needs and reacting to do what he could to meet them) that had such a huge positive effect on others' lives. My grief at missing him is growing, as the adrenalin which marked my first week of reaction to the news of his death is wearing off.

Monday, I was shaking with nervous energy all day, filling my car with items to take to Goodwill, creating an enormous pile of Susan's stuff in the living room, vacuuming and dusting, even behind long-unshifted furniture. I tore down almost all the curtains, threw away papers, watered my erstwhile "garden." Yesterday, I was desperate to get out of the house. Susan's parents invited me to meet them and the newlyweds for brunch, and then I went to Leah's house for an hour, stopping to drop off the Goodwill load and retrieve a rug from the cleaner's on the way. Then I went directly to Maryland to work on an estate sale. I knew I was near the breaking point. I finally really, truly broke down in body-convulsing sobs when I was in the client's closet, tagging clothes, and ran across a show-polishing kit. The sight and scent triggered memories of Daddy polishing his shoes when I was little, and I cried and cried and cried. It was the first time I'd let myself feel the horror of not having him here, knowing that in this lifetime, however long I live, I'll never get to speak to him again, never hug him, never share weird dreams with him, never hear him carping about how I'm selling myself short, accomplishmentswise. It's just awful, the worst thing I've gone through thus far. If I have car trouble, computer trouble, technical questions, medical issues, financial concerns, I'll have to deal with them some other way than by calling him and asking him for advice. He'll never again tell me how beautiful I am, how smart I am, how I have funny-looking feet, or how I ought to bleach my hair blond. It's so weird, surreal, and so forth, to be sitting at the computer where he sat just ten days ago (I drove back down to GA today) and know that he won't come slamming through the door: Crash! thump, thump, thump, to get something off his desk or lie down on the couch behind me to play solitaire on his PDA.

I miss his calling patients (also while lying on the couch, taking notes):

"Hello, this is Dr. P--I'm calling for Jane Doe. Who am I speaking with? Ms. Doe, I'm an anesthesiologist and I'm putting you to sleep for Dr. Smith tomorrow. I understand you're having surgery on your left knee--is that right? Now, why are you having that surgery? Hm. Well, I need to ask you a few questions. Do you have any diabetes? Hypertension? Free-bleeding tendencies? Hepatitis? Have you ever had any heart problems? Uh-huh. What was the name of your cardiologist? Did he give you a stress test? What were the results? Are you a smoker? How many packs a day? Have you had any surgery before? When was that? Did you have any problems with anesthesia? Any chance you might be pregnant? Now, do you take any medications regularly? What's the dosage on that? Now, for your safety, it's important that your stomach's empty tomorrow when I put you to sleep. Have you already had supper? Good. Now, until midnight tonight you can have clear liquids only. After midnight, don't take anything by mouth--that means no ice, no chewing gum, no water. Except, I want you to take that [name of medicine] with just a sip of water when you wake up in the morning. Now, how tall are you and how much do you weigh? Do you have any questions I can answer for you? All right, I'll see you tomorrow at the hospital--remember, take that [medicine] with just a sip of water, but nothing else. Bye-bye."

It was always interesting listening to Daddy's side of these nightly dialogues because people's symptoms and situations varied so much: some people had a whole litany of past surgeries, complaints about pain, lists of medications, and questions. Others had shockingly bad height/weight ratios, which Daddy repeated carefully to himself as he made his notes, and I and my mother would roll our eyes at each other as Daddy kindly repeated: "Five-two, three hundred twenty-five pounds."

What was neat to me was how Daddy almost always remembered his past patients--even ones that he'd sedated for procedures decades earlier--and so many requested his services when they had to go under the knife again. I suppose there's nothing like trusting the guy who's breathing for you when you are out cold on an operating table. I am proud that Daddy always did good work in a compassionate way. I miss him terribly.

A Funeral And A Wedding

2010-06-21T20:44:00.006-07:00

Paxifist and Mary drove all the way from Mebane, NC, and Rockville, MD, respectively, to attend the viewing Tuesday evening and Daddy’s funeral Wednesday afternoon. Leah had to attend another friend’s father’s funeral Wednesday and so flew down that night, only to get stuck in Atlanta until Thursday morning, when the other two retrieved her and the three of them came over to spend several hours entertaining my fantastically energetic niece and nephew while the rest of my family stumbled around the house in various states of stupor and tears or fled to exercise. They then whisked me away northwards, so I would be back in DC in time for Susan’s wedding rehearsal Friday.

Tuesday morning my mother and I and my sister and sister-in-law went to the funeral home (Thomas Poteet and Sons on Davis Road in Augusta—they did a superb job, kind and professional) bringing Daddy’s glasses and wedding ring so they could be put on his body before the viewing. They ushered us into the huge parlor where the casket was, and there were flowers all along the wall, even from my cousin’s workplace and mine. My mom really appreciated the flowers. My father’s body looked like him—though there was a spot on the side of his nose from his falling dead they’d had to cover with foundation, and the inner edge of his lips seemed plastic—but his hands were shriveled claws, and they and his face were hard from the embalming fluid. I kept thinking about Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility as my mother’s face crumpled and my sister clipped a lock of his hair for a memento. The undertaker told us that we could bring pictures to display during the viewing that evening, and so when we got back home I ransacked the walls and shelves for photographs. The empty hooks were appalling.

The viewing went on for four hours instead of the scheduled two. We arrived a little after five (it wasn’t supposed to begin until 6), and the line, which at times stretched outside the funeral home, didn’t disappear until after nine (the event technically ended at 8). The most terrible sight for me was watching my stoic Navy brother Bob—whom I haven’t seen cry since he was a toddler—burst into tears upon seeing the silent contents of the silvery casket. The four of us kids went out of the parlor and sat on a couch, teary and numb, as relatives and friends began arriving early. Almost all my cousins (one is in her residency in obstetrics in Pennsylvania and had tried desperately to find a flight and simply couldn’t, the other two work in Colorado), on both sides of the family, came, and my aunts and uncles. Nurses from the hospital—a handful still in their scrubs, straight from work—came (some had worked with Daddy for over 25 years, and all were kind—one had been talking about heaven with Daddy while they worked together on Friday), and doctors (some were obviously preening themselves on their sensitivity in showing up, my Atlanta brother Nate noted later), folks from church, including an Indian missionary and his wife, who told my mother that Daddy had saved his life by correctly diagnosing his hepatitis years ago, and the owner of the Indian restaurant my parents loved, who told me how much she loved his dancing to the Bollywood music whenever they came in to eat. So many of them said over and over how much he clearly loved Mums and how proud he had been of his children, how he talked about us all the time. People I’d never met before knew our names and our interests, and spoke repeatedly about how willing Daddy was to help them, how much he knew, how smart he believed his wife and we kids were.

In the funeral home chapel.

The funeral was lovely. I had typed up most of the order of service and the words to the hymns. Probably a decade ago, for some reason I’d asked Daddy what was his favorite hymn, and as we’d flipped through the hymnal he’d flagged literally every other one: “I want this one sung at my funeral”. After fifty pages or so, I’d run out of Post-it notes, and realized that, like me, he just loved the great Church “oldies.” So Mums picked out three of her favorites, which meant he would have approved of all of them. She also wrote the bio for the back of the bulletin. Daddy’s photo, which appeared on the front of the funeral home pamphlet, she had made just Sunday morning. Daddy was ushering at church, and Mums is in charge of the church pictorial directory, and so she was in the vestibule snapping pictures of members as they arrived for the service. She was getting frustrated with the camera (no matter what she did, she was still getting background shadows), and Daddy came over to calm her down, and said, “Why don’t you take a picture of me?” So she did. It was the last one she took.

I was a bit late—due to truly unprecedentedly awful Beltway traffic—to Susan’s wedding rehearsal on Friday. Forty-five minutes, actually. Her sister, the matron of honor, was even later. I started sobbing several times during rehearsal and wondered how I was going to get through the wedding. Her parents had told everyone about Daddy, though, so they didn’t look at me weirdly. The honey-baked ham my mother had insisted I take with me in a cooler when I left home was consumed at the rehearsal dinner afterwards. Shakespeare proved opportune once again, as the “funeral meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” though not with the tragic Hamlet aftereffects. I spent the night at Leah’s. Kitten therapy in the middle of the night courtesy of Bonnie and Clyde, a brother-sister pair of little purrers she recently acquired from a rescue organization. I haven’t been sleeping well, waking up all face-swollen, which makes me wonder if I’ve been crying in my sleep.

I didn’t cry before or at the wedding, and managed to smile and smile and not be a villain. It seemed uncommonly short, and I wondered why my feet were aching in my silver shoes afterwards when Susan’s brother commented that the service had lasted seventy-five minutes. My sense of time is skewed. The wedding party went in a limo to some fountains in Crystal City for pictures (several quincinera parties had the same idea on this warm, sunny Saturday) and thence to the hotel for the reception. I didn’t have to duck out until the father-daughter dance, which was emotionally overwhelming. Thank God, Leah came along in Mums’ place as my “date” to keep an eye on me. The food was delicious. I was losing my self-control again when another bridesmaid distracted me by taking me out on the dance floor. Later, I danced with the NPV, Lad, and a Burundian named Michel, all of whom rocked and twirled me so I could think of little else except trying to keep time and on my feet. Incidentally, the NPV had gone all the way to David's Bridal in Springfield to get the ring pillow that I was responsible for supplying. It was a joyful wedding, and Susan and Steven bade us goodnight a little after nine. I can honestly say I enjoyed myself, but the Tolkien observation about feeling “thin and stretched” emotionally, like “butter over too little bread” hit me Sunday morning.

Current and Former Calvert Girls flank a dapper Mr. B

The happy newlyweds in the limo on the way to the reception.

Dex drove me to church on my request. I don’t think I would have made it otherwise. I didn’t cry until I was safe in Sunday school, having not shed a tear during the Father’s Day Ephesians 6:5 sermon. I was hugged until I felt safe and loved. So many dear fellow believers, fellow travelers, in my class. Thank God for my church. They prayed for me and my mom and our family, and you could hear the whispered “yes, Lords” and “Amens” rising from around the room. Sunday afternoon naps are also a gift from God. I wish I could sleep even more, but my apartment’s a wreck, and I spent the whole day today cleaning it. Flora, a former fashion designer from Alabama, is helping me turn the chaos into orderly interior design. It's already coming together beautifully, just thanks to her rearranging items I already own.

Mourning Daddy

2010-06-14T21:11:00.004-07:00

The sermon yesterday morning was on honoring your father and mother, and the Sunday School lesson was on the celebration of rest.

Just having Daddy beyond my reach is almost unbearable. I want to talk to him so badly. I want him to hug me when I walk through the door. I want him to be sitting at the kitchen table in his ratty old green terrycloth robe, his hair hanging down and his eyes starting out of their sockets behind his glasses as someone startles him by just coming into the room. Daddy startles easily. I’ve seen him just about jump from his skin when the deacons pass the plate at church.

I love his stories, his verbal visuals of events from work and childhood, his “retellings” of movies that so often were far more entertaining than the films themselves. I love his fixing things—a dexterity that my brother Nate has inherited—just knowing how to wire and plumb and build and do an excellent job at it. I love his outgoing aspect, his willingness to engage fully with people, finding them fascinating. He was firmly dedicated to our family (both sides and his children’s in-laws), and revelled in sampling new experiences.

He was incredibly generous—I remember the afternoon that he took me to Atlanta and we not only went shopping and ate lunch in a posh restaurant at Phipps Plaza, he also bought me a pair of floral gold and silver earrings at James Avery (I am wearing them right now).

I love that he took the need for personal salvation seriously, praying with his patients and witnessing to his colleagues, despite the fact that his temper sometimes tripped him up. I’m usually too afraid to talk about my faith, because I know I’ll screw up, but he didn’t let this fear of failure quell him, and he became more and more Godly as the years went on.

I am so sorry that several of my friends did not get to meet him. Of course, given that my mother has always told me, “You are your father’s clone!” they already have, in a way. But he was a much better storyteller than I am, with a broader range of experiences, from military to civilian doctoring; having been the son of a first-generation immigrant and having risen from abject poverty to enviable prosperity also marked him.

My eyes are shrunken and burning. All the tears have eaten, acid-like, into the whites, which are stained red.

Dex took me to the airport and sat with me for over an hour while we waited for my delayed plane. Delta charged me $25 for checking my suitcase of mourning clothes. I think I will write them a nasty letter about this. Insult to misery. Because of the delay for “technical reasons” in Washington, I missed my connecting flight in Atlanta (where I wrote most of this, but where it wasn’t posted because Hartsfield doesn’t provide free wifi), and was forced to wait until 5:40 to depart on the next leg of my journey.

It does me good to write. Sure beats crying and blowing my nose until it is the size of a plantain.

I am tired. I slept perhaps three hours last night, despite three Ibuprofen (my jaw was so painful I could barely open it) and three Ativan. I was considering the need to call our family internist to see if he could give me a quick prescription for something that’ll enable me to rest, but on my arrival home my mom told me that he had already sent over prescription for a "family-size" bottle with a bouquet of flowers.

My dear sister-in-law is writing thank-you notes for the food and supplies that people have been bringing by. We have two hams, and more carbs than you could shake a stick at. The funeral is scheduled for Wednesday at 1 PM. I should be able to be back in DC in time for Susan's wedding rehearsal on Friday.

It's going to be rough to see Daddy's empty body lying in a casket tomorrow at the visitation.

Daddy

2010-06-13T20:37:00.002-07:00

My dear Daddy died of a massive heart attack this evening while he was running on the treadmill at the gym. The other patrons said that he just fell, without trying to catch himself, and though CPR was immediately performed, they never got a heartbeat. At 8 PM, my mom got a call from the emergency room that they "needed a relative present" and she immediately called me to be praying, as she knew that Daddy had been at the gym and something bad must have happened. I called my siblings and my brothers immediately got on their way to Augusta--the one from Atlanta with my dear sister-in-law and the other from Charleston, SC. Less than 10 minutes later Mums called me back to say that Daddy was dead.

I am very aware of God's presence right now. I know that Daddy is with Him, but I miss him terribly. It's really surreal--his telephone and beeper numbers are in my phone, it's like I can just dial and he'll pick up, and all of this will go away.

Thank God that Daddy knew Jesus as his Lord and as his Savior. Thank God that he knew all of us kids were believers and that we loved him. Thank God that he got home early enough from work Friday to go with my mom to a movie. Thank God that I got to talk to him just a few days ago (Thursday, I think) and share fun memories of him taking me to movies when I was really little. He also told me (appropo of nothing I said) that "girls should ask their fathers about the men the want to marry." I won't get a chance to.

I don't remember if I told him I loved him when we last talked, but I am reminding myself that saying those words at that particular moment don't matter--we'd both said them to each other many, many times before.

He was only 61. That's so very, very young. My mom and he had been married for forty years. My grandparents haven't been told yet, unless my mom called them--I talked to my aunt and she and my uncle plan to drive to see them first thing tomorrow morning and tell them the news in person. Grandmommy and Daddy adored one another, and it's going to be doubly hard on her to lose her senior son-in-law at the same time that she is dealing with the increasing dementia of her own husband of 63 years.

We appreciate the prayers of all our Christian siblings, known and unknown.

I hope to leave for GA tomorrow morning, provided I've been able to sleep tonight. I don't have anyone to accompany me yet. My sister and brother-in-law and their children are driving down from New Hampshire, where they just went this morning on a long-awaited and long-deserved vacation. This has just caught us broadside, and we're wobbly.

Just A Little Busy

2010-06-09T06:47:00.002-07:00

I didn't get home until after midnight last night. "Home" being a relative term, as it's a cat-sitting gig out in Fairfax, and when I arrived I realized that today (Wednesday) was trash day and none of the rubbish bins had been dumped. I finished up another cat-sitting job yesterday morning in Falls Church (two hours there), rushed to put in a full day at the Bethesda gallery (seven and a half hours there), and then went directly thence to the estate sale I'm helping with in Kensington (five hours there), then back to Fairfax.

Some recreation has been shoehorned in betwixt my other commitments. Sunday, after cat care and church, but before estate sale work, the NPV and my friend Flora and I went to the Washington Post Hunt. I was so grateful to have two friends on my team. We came pretty close to winning, believe it or not. We figured out all five initial puzzles (in time to hide from a short but torrential downpour underneath one of the sponsorship tents), and the NPV managed to winkle out where the final clue was, but there we got stuck for a few minutes, and minutes made the difference, much to his disgust. Victory next year! Monday, I made it to trivia, and we finished second ($15 gift certificate toward food and drink).

This cat-sitting job runs through the early part of next week, and then I'm totally devoted to Susan and her wedding. And to making two panfuls of baklava--1 1/2 for her rehearsal dinner, and 1/2 for my boss's wedding shower Sunday afternoon, the day after Susan's and Steven's nuptials.

Holey Happiness

2010-06-03T07:11:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow (June 4) is National Doughnut Day. Isn't that cool?! The big chains (and probably some local shops--I'm speaking to you, Rhode Island) are all offering free doughnuts. You have to buy a beverage to get one at Dunkin, but Krispy Kreme doesn't require an accompanying purchase.

Speaking of sweet high-caloric bliss, the colonel "mother" of the cat-sitting gig I'm doing left a pint of Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream in the freezer. The nutritional information is horrifying: 360 calories for HALF A CUP and 26 grams of fat for the same volume. I love ice cream, and peanut butter is one of the staffs of life (I bless the memory of George Washington Carver!), but that's like eating a stick of butter. Even having worked out at the gym for an hour yesterday evening (I'm reading Boris Akunin's The Death of Achilles), I couldn't justify more than a single spoonful. Give me Edy's Slow Churned any day, any time.

Doughnut tomorrow!

FS & WPH SNAFU?

2010-06-02T13:10:00.003-07:00

I was not deemed sufficiently dazzling to be invited to interview in person for the Foreign Service, I learned via email yesterday afternoon.

Furthermore, nobody has emailed me as definitely available to be on my Washington Post Hunt team this Sunday. Anita claims she's no good at puzzles, Patricia is going to be out of town, another trivia team member is going--but with some friends from college--and the NPV is AWOL. I've been looking forward to the Hunt for months--maybe I can recruit the 20-year-old I'm "babysitting" (staying with while her parents are on vacation) this weekend, but she's almost terminally shy and I'm not optimistic about my persuasive skills right now. There's a $2000 first prize.

Ugly Rug, Sins of a Diarist, Shocking Shoes

2010-05-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

An arms control specialist I know once told me, “If there were a nuclear war, the only things left alive would be cockroaches, Fidel Castro and Keith Richards.”

I inadvertently acquired the World’s Most Hideous Rug this week from an eBay seller for $49.99, shipping included. The pictures on the site did not do it justice. Instead of a friendly floral in muted shades of pink and pale spring green on a cream-colored background, it turned out to be a garish mélange of fuchsia, orange, avocado and camel. And it stank of chemicals, though it was guaranteed (the seller had perfect feedback) to be pure wool. Just ghastly.

I decided to add my rug (liberally treated with Febreeze, which can work miracles on odors, but sadly not on colors) as a “filler” item to the estate sale I am currently working. I should be able to get my money back--possibly make some, besides. Among the items I’ve discovered while clearing out bedroom furniture for the sale is a small spiral-bound notebook, a diary. The first lines from one entry are representative of the whole:

August 21, 1969. Woke up and talked to Angela. Ate breakfast and got dressed.

Fascinating stuff, no? The stuff of which Pulitzer Prize-winning prose is made. A vivid illustration of the incredible inanity of everyday life. Like the Facebook status updates that Gene Weingarten ranted about in a recent Washington Post column.

Let’s exegete the diarist’s multiple compositional sins, shall we? First, waking is understood; to declare that one attained normal consciousness is to begin the day effectively redundant. Why bother getting out of bed? Now, if there had been elaboration (e.g. awoke “unable to breathe”, “after only fifteen minutes of sleep”, “to the smell of smoke”) that might have made the mention worthwhile. Secondly, who was Angela? What was the content of the conversation? Did the writer even need to be conscious to interact with her? Thirdly, whereas proper nutrition cannot be overvalued, the mere act of feeding one’s face isn’t pertinent without context: did it consist of snails and puppy-dog tails? Did chewing and swallowing occupy exactly three minutes and twenty-seven seconds? And lastly, given that swanning around in one’s birthday suit is generally frowned upon by polite society, why bother saying that you dressed if you don’t describe how, or in what you were attired?

As to clothing nudity, while I was searching Amazon.com for my required bridesmaid silver heels, I discovered that they list a wide range of what I call “streetwalker shoes”: Lucite platforms that tower eight inches off the ground, thigh-high black PVC boots, red leather bondage sandals, kitten-heeled boudoir slippers festooned with dyed feathers. They really aren’t that expensive, either….

Still Ill

2010-05-28T23:11:00.002-07:00

It is difficult to discern whether the severe shakiness I am currently experiencing is a resulting symptom of whatever nasty bug has had me in its pincers all week or the cumulative lack of calories consumed over the same period. In any case, I am not well, and am alternating between waking illness and the blessed relief of sleep.

I did go to work yesterday, though my arrival was somewhat delayed by beltway rubbernecking at a sand-colored tank over on the inner loop shoulder. I don't know whether it was in transit to or from Afghanistan, but it's relatively unusual to see such heavy-duty military hardware in the middle of civilian rush hour.

Nausea

2010-05-26T00:30:00.002-07:00

3:30 AM and I have woken up from nausea. Not fun. I've only been able to eat one meal since Monday evening--I'm just too queasy to think of food. Of course, it wasn't until a few minutes ago that I checked "how to get rid of nausea" on the web and figured out that what I was doing to settle my stomach was actually exacerbating the problem. Out with the acidic drink, in with diluted apple juice and ginger. No clue as to what prompted this episode, other than I've been battling a cold and perhaps the combination of zinc lozenges and post-nasal drip was somehow to blame. Happily, the cold is just about gone (the zinc did help), and if I can kick the queasiness, I'll be right as rain.

Great news on the "making ends meet" front: I was awarded a TAship for the fall! This includes tuition and a decent stipend. Even if the multiple jobs I've applied for don't pan out right away, I've got a Plan B. Thank God.

Last night, I dreamt that I was a six-foot-tall model-thin African American woman who owned half a shopping mall's worth of fashionable clothing boutiques and five-star restaurants. The story was very involved.