The malapert bookworm

Because I'm too mopey to post, I take refuge in my annual delight: Holiday specials! Last year, I did a pretty thorough rundown:

Part the first: A new one, and my favorites

Part the Second: The Good, the Weird and the Ugly

And Part the Third: The Rest (an "Ani-magic" wonderland)

ho, ho, ho

Tags: calendar, tv

My years turn when the ancient Samhain festivities also turn the seasons, traditionally. Like our modern New Year, it ought to be a time of reflection, doubly so for me; but also like the modern New Year, it's often so hectic and busy that I rarely let myself take the time for it.

I love Hallowe'en, and I love Samhain. I love birthdays -- all the trappings of all of these. I love hokey, tacky orange and purple decorations, and would drape the house in lights and set up hay bales if I could afford to buy them. (But like the xmas lights, I'd probably be too lazy/procrastinating to remove them, which would be bad. Maybe the goats could eat the hay?) I also love birthday cakes, and paper plates with cartoon characters on them, and glittery candles. (I also love bonfires and straw dolls and the trappings of the ancient holiday, but those things don't really  fall into the realm of guilty pleasures.)

We had a Hallowe'en fair at church last night, and it was wonderful -- pulled together in just a few weeks with a minimum of planning, just shy of a spur-of-the-moment thing, but a triumph nonetheless. (Special kudos to T. for the irresistible black light room and S. for the wonderful Samhain room.) Tomorrow, of course, is trick-or-treat, complete this year with a visit from Granny. Today, which ought to be the big event (my birthday) feels more like the pleasant lull in the swirl of activities. I plan to go to taekwondo (which I love) and the library (love even more), but not much is planned in the way of celebrations.

That's OK with me. For all my big talk about having a Kung Fu Panda party (!), I find that I relish the prospect of a pretty basic family dinner (maybe out, probably in, for budget's sake). I find that I relish the prospect of watching Samurai 7 and The Office while wrapped in my blankie (trying to keep the thermostat a bit lower these days). And I find, in particular, that I look forward to tomorrow, when salvador_dalai  and his mom (and some other friends) will go out to see my brother-in-law's awesome Big Band, The Streamliners, and I'll stay home and watch movies with the kids. This is not the function of my extreme (ha!) age (41, if you wondered); even at 25, I'd still just as soon have curled up with a book or a computer game as have gone to a concert or bar. We're having an election party on Tuesday, which will be fun.

But for now, I'm in quiet mode. I'm thinking of my cool birthday present from Hannah: Two interesting small rocks she found on the playground.

So in a way, I'm celebrating Samhain a bit like my ancestors after all. I'm reflecting after a year's harvest, a sometimes-bitter one this year. I'm going to burn up the old year, and let the new one come in with the frost. I'm going to cherish my interesting rocks, and I'm going to cherish the children who collect them, and I'm going to find some oh so elusive quietness here, at the turning of the year.

I know this is an exceedingly odd thing to herald a return from long absence (fall break, busy time, bad cold, all in succession, whatev). But when I heard it was Weird Al's birthday -- and that he's only 8 years older than me (give or take a week), I couldn't resist. Loved you back when you were setting '80s rock and pop to polka tunes, loved you more when you set the story of Episode I to the tune of "American Pie."

This one is my favorite (and, I think, msbitterheart 's)
www.youtube.com/watch

It is good to be busy, if that means having friends and interests. But things are getting a little too busy for me. A full, fun weekend behind us, with a full, partly fun week ahead, I'm staring at my google calendar and wondering, WTF? Between business trips and much-anticipated get-togethers with friends, taekwondo and board meetings, doctor's appointments and school events, there is a lot of stuff coming up. Last night I tumbled into bed around 10:30 -- which is waaaayy early for me. Tomorrow, we're driving to Tullahoma so I can give a workshop at the UT Space Institute (while Rob takes the kids to the Hands On Museum). There's some not-fun stuff (Zeke goes to the allergist, always an ordeal), but mostly it's good. Still, a part of me resents the hectic swirl.

People always say, "Oh, I don't have time for [ ]." Whatever goes in that blank is what I do, but not them: Girl Scouts, stitching, etc. And I always think, "Yes, you do." But they are filling up their time with all sorts of things that they do that I, in turn, don't have time for. We make our choices. I feel like I had an insanely busy weekend, but I still "had time" for a long nap on Saturday (to recuperate from the drive-in camping trip). And I am always rushing around in the morning, getting Hannah to school and myself to work, but I still "had time" to snuggle with Zeke.

I hate feeling like my dance card is full. I prefer to have long stretches of unplanned time, because I always have lots of "unscheduled" things to do to fill that time (writing, stitching, snuggling). But if I am honest with myself, I'm more productive when I have to work in short, scheduled bursts.

As long as there's time for snuggles, I guess I'm okay.

Last night, in anticipation of breaking in our new tent at the drive-in movie camp-out tonight, Zeke got a little nervous and upset.

"I don't want to see that big rabbit!" he wailed.

"What rabbit?" We were concerned.

"That big rabbit that gives candy!"

"The Easter bunny?" It's a non sequitur, but at least we have a firm referent now.

"That giant rabbit that gives candy on Thanksgiving!"

[laughing]

"It's not funny!"

[laughter incompletely stifled]

"I don't want to see it!"

[laughter threatening] "You don't want to see the Thanksgiving rabbit?"

"No!"

[laughing]

"Stop laughing!"

[trying to stop laughing, and failing] "Why are you worried about the big Thanksgiving rabbit?"

"Because I'm scared of him!"

[still trying not to laugh] "But why are you scared NOW?"

"Because of the tent!"

[laughing again]

"Stop it!"

Hannah intervenes: "Are you worried that you'll see the Easter Bunny just like H. did?" she asked, in her "big sister" voice. Light dawns, as we recall her telling us a few days back that a friend claims to have once seen the Easter Bunny in person while she was camping in the front yard on Easter weekend.

Zeke somewhat tearfully affirms this, and we hasten to reassure him: "We promise that you will NOT see the giant bunny  when we camp out in the tent tomorrow. And you will NOT see him at Thanksgiving, even if we camp out at Thanksgiving, which we will probably not do."

"Really? I don't want to see him."

"We promise that you will NEVER see the Thanksgiving Bunny." [more laughing. kisses and snuggles, but still laughing.]

It occurred to me later that, even though Hannah, with characteristic brilliance, figured out the basic problem, we still never got around to unraveling how the famous giant candy-dispensing bunny got associated with Thanksgiving in the first place. I guess Thanksgiving is kind of short on gifting mascots. Maybe a turkey could come around and leave cornucopias full of candy corn, or a pilgrim could come and leave smallpox-riddled blankets or something.

Avast, landlubber! Raise a tankard to Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket and exaggerate your "R"s today.

With all due respect to Robert Newton/Long John Silver and his many successors, here's some actual piraticality, salvaged, according to Wikipedia, from the Adventure:

Such a day, rum all out- Our company somewhat sober- A damned confusion amongst us -- Rogues a-plotting -- Great talk of separation -- so I looked sharp for a prize -- Such a day found one with a great deal of liquor on board, so kept the company hot, damned hot, then things went well again.

Here is my pirate name:

But this one, though more random, might be a cooler name: Cap'n Amora Deadbones Get one here


I'll answer to either, 'slong as you call me Cap'n, ya squib, and don't forget to look sharp for a prize.

The party is over, the dishwasher is full, and Zeke's room is even fuller of Bionicles than it was before. I love having parties, much more than going to them, even though I have never once in my life been prepared right on time. I am invariably still decorating the cake, or blowing up balloons, or whatever, when people come. Luckily, we are the kind of people who are almost always late, and thus we tend to have friends who are the same way. This is nice, because we end up with a kind of graduated arrival, with friends and relations trickling in. It gives people a chance to settle in, allows me to at least exchange a word or two with individuals before they become a crowd.

And today, it allowed Zeke to open a passle of presents right from the start. (I've never been a big fan of the big Present Opening Ceremony, where the kid -- or bride! -- sits in front of everyone and opens everything at one time.) Still, I was suspicious of what might happen if Zeke opened presents before the party proper. "Now, remember, if you go ahead and open Nana and Grandad's present, you aren't going to spend the whole party playing with it. You'll still need to pay attention to your friends and do party activities." He said, "OK!" Flash ahead five minutes. "But I want to build this Bionicle!" I reminded him of what he said, and he insisted, "But building a Bionicle IS a party activity!"

And when you turn Five (which he technically doesn't do until Tuesday), it really is largely about the presents. In theory anyway -- in reality, he had a really good time playing with the four other guys about his age who were here; there was one older sibling on hand for Hannah to hang out with, and cool parents for me to hang out with. (It is a stroke of great good fortune that the parents of some my kids' friends are people I would have chosen for my own friends anyway. I have no idea how I lucked into that, except to suspect that my kids have singularly good taste in people.)

We do not, by and large, have planned activities, because I figure the kids are perfectly capable of making their own fun. If we have bubbles and sidewalk chalk on hand, we're covered, but we didn't even break into any of that. (My brilliant "Make Your Own Toa Mask" idea remained an idea only, the stack of paper plates and crayones lying largely ignored. This is generally the fate of most pre-planned party activities in my experience.) The kids mostly chased each other around the house and yard with foam swords and popped balloons in a variety of ways. We had a goat-viewig and -petting session, and Zeke did indeed get to open up some of his new Bionicles and work on assembling them, with his chums on hand to help. (We got him a couple of big bags of spare parts from eBay.) 

And Zeke's carefully researched cake -- with it swirl of the six elemental Toa colors -- was also a hit. salvador_dalai had a great idea, far too late: Make cupcakes and buy a batch of Bionicle masks on eBay to top them with. Maybe next year....

In honor of the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, enjoy the winning limerick from a 2003 competition by The Discovery Channel:

DNA is the script of our fate
It delineates us trait by trait
If our story is trite
We go back for rewrites
And hope for a chance to mutate

Written by Sandra in Ontario, Canada.

Read the runners-up here.

And more about National DNA Day.

Thanks, Crick, Watson and Franklin!

It is snowing. Great, big white fluffy flakes. I know this is lameness itself for those of you who have been dealing with winter storms and muddy drifts and icy roads for a month and more. But in Tennessee, even a flurry (like we got, all too briefly, last Wednesday night) is a big deal.

I am instantly a kid. Snow! I rushed outside my basement office (on the glamorous Lower Parking Garage level of the university's administrative tower) to see it. Even falling through the light wells into the parking garage, it is beautiful. The ginkgo trees are bare and scraggly, and the periwinkle, poorly tended to (low maintenance critter that it is), is patchy. There's a white plastic grocery bag hanging on one of the limbs.

Still, the snow is beautiful. Like watching the tide, I could watch it snow for hours. It almost never snows for hours at a time here, and anyway, I had to come back inside (to write this as I pretend to work). But even in my windowless, fluorescent-lit catacomb, I have a little spring in my step, a little catch of excitement in my heart. Cinderblock walls and loading docks can physically separate me from the snow, but not from the childlike wonderment of knowing that it snows.

Again, with apologies to S. Colbert, esq. It's been way to long, and way too many miscreants and annoyances under the bridge since the last time, but here at last, my latest Notice Board. 

Things I learned on Saturday:
--You're never too old for a birthday party.
--If you invite cool people, you will have fun, no matter what else goes on.
--If salvador_dalai makes the food, it will be yummy. If wenso contributes, it will be extra-yummy.
--The two best places to be in my house are 1) near the food and 2) near the books. In my house, one is never very far from either.
--If you bill an affair as a "birthday party" and also invite children, you should have a cake. (There was brief but manfully contained disappointment on this score.)

In short, I had a great time. Thanks to all the lovelies who helped make it so fun: salvador_dalai, msbitterheart, rainerrobin, ratjin, captaincoffey, wenso, miistry and other non-LJers (gasp) in attendance. My MO at parties is to hunker down with one or two conversation-partners, maybe switching off a time or two. I'm sorry I didn't have as much chance as I'd've liked to chat with the lovely Peggy or with the lovely Steve, but there will be other parties -- especially now that the house is truly big enough to be comfortable with a big group. salvador_dalai likes to work the crowd, holding court at the bar and generally being The Most Excellent Host. It was a good party for both styles of partying. 

And then yesterday, Z decided to have a (quote) Par-Tay during the long quiet Sunday afternoon. He and Hannah raced downstairs and made some decorations out of pipe cleaners. Hannah made a game that somehow involved a "board" of paper with various letters and symbols (a flower, chemical abbreviations, family initials) and complicated moving pieces made from several pipe cleaners. Zeke also danced in his inimitable fashion. Apparently, also, the lights must be out for a true "Par-Tay," so the festivites occurred in the gloom of afternoon sunlight through the purple sheers in our bedroom. That was a pretty good party, too.

 It is an interesting conundrum that we have had trouble deciding whom to make our Day of the Dead shrines to. We haven't lost any family members in several years, nor did we lose a pet this year. I am having trouble thinking of a famous person to dedicate one to -- there are so many possibilities, that it seems a shame to choose, say, Elvis, and not honor, say, Janis Joplin. Wikipedia has a picture of a shrine (in Southern California, where else?) to dead TV shows, which is less ridiculous that it seems at first glance. After all, some of the deaths that have been the most profoundly saddening to me occurred in books (thanks a lot, J.K. Rowling!).

And somehow it seems wrong to honor the deaths in Iraq in this way -- I guess I can't make cheerful skull pictures for a tragedy so immense and horrifying. This may mean that I don't have the right spirit of the holiday, but then, it's a holiday I'm adopting, not one I actually grew up with.

I love Halloween -- I'm a total nerd about Christmas, too, grooving on all the corny stuff, but Halloween is my favorite. Probably because of my birthday, which meant that all through my youth, the appearance of my mom's light-up plastic witch-on-a-pumpkin meant time for birthday cake, presents and parties as well as trick-or-treat and jack-o-lanterns.

I do not like being scared, and I hate horror movies. But I love Halloween. Maybe it's a paradox.

Well, I'm 40. Intimations of morality, etc. Like the song says, though, "I feel fine."

Shouldn't I be having a breakdown of some kind? Counting grey hairs? I have been trying to take time for reflection, to honor the milestone, but mostly it's my usual doing-stuff-all-the-time-while-trying-to-watch-TV-in-betwween kind of thing. I did get to take the kids to school today, which I love; I wish I could do it every day. And I'm going out to lunch, which I have pledged never to do and which I sneak and do on rare occasions (sorry, salvador_dalai).

But despite being officially a middle-aged lady now, I do feel fine. Boom.

Zeke is four. I know parents always say things like, "I can't believe how fast they grow up." But some things are cliches because they are nearly universal experiences.

I can't believe how fast they grow up.

Hannah's milestones were monumental, but somehow Z's seem more poignant: He is my baby, remaining my baby in a way that Hannah was not, even at 2 or 3, perhaps because I know, at a deep unspoken level, that he is my last baby. A few months back, holding my newest nephew (then 3 months or so), I reveled in the velvety head against my neck, the heavy warmth of him in my arms. "You can put him in his carrier; he's asleep now." "No--that's OK," I'd say; "I'll just hold him." So sweet, to hold a baby.

But he wasn't MY baby: My baby is a great big boy now, all robots and books and crafts. He's a wonderful boy, don't get me wrong: Incorrigibly picking up kittens (to which he's allergic), climbing dirt piles one day and demanding to have his toenails painted the next. Charming (maybe too charming, as we his willing slaves will someday regret), intelligent like his sister, stubborn and irrepressibly moody, with a laugh that brings strangers over to comment on it.

He is wonderful -- But no longer truly a baby.

Four years ago, this moment, I was probably holding him, or watching a family member hold him, a little blanket-wrapped burrito of a guy. Exactly four years ago, on his second day, is the day that Hannah met him for the first time, bemused and gentle and amazed.  One of my favorite pictures is of her, wide-eyed, her hand on his tiny head. Now, I'm leaving in a few minutes for the Montessori birthday ritual, the Walk around the Sun, signifying the number of years. For Z, that's four times he's been around the sun already. Last night, I dreamed he set himself on fire, and I woke up in a sweat, not so much weepy as urgent; it was hard to calm myself back to sleep. The second time I woke up, this morning, he had crawled into our bed, as is his habit, a great big boy curved into the space in the middle of the mattress. No longer a baby, but still and always "my baby.".

Today is apparently the 40th anniversary of the first Big Mac. It was first served at a McDonald's in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1967, and was such a hit that it went national the next year. It was invented by Jim Delligatti, and according to Wikipedia, the distinctive feature is its central bun layer, which stabilizes the stacked ingredients. The McDonald's website has a little history timeline, and notes Delligatti's historic achievement, adding that he was one of the original franchisees. I don't actually eat Big Macs; I'm just a trivia nerd.

All of the details don't erase the fact that that damn jingle is stuck in my head now. All together now: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce...." 

The reason I'm macking  on a sandwich I don't eat? It's almost exactly the same age as me. I find myself unofficially collecting a list of other things and people born in 1967 as the big birthday approaches. (File this, I suppose, under the "I'm so old that..." list I made a couple of days ago.)

To my beloved, who didn't get the day he deserves today: Too busy, lots of shuffling around, packing to come back from his mom's house after a very busy (yard sale) stay. Too hectic, the kids too keyed up.

But then, no one day could ever truly deliver what he deserves, because he is so wonderful. He is having some alone time, while the kids and I work on quickie presents for my father, their grandad, and a space of peace -- however brief -- is not a bad present in itself. He should have had a whole day of it, leisure to read in a shady spot, or maybe the library. Time to sit on the porch with a gin and tonic, dodging the 90+ degree heat. Time to think about the story he's writing, the presentation he's giving in a few weeks. Just... time.

Tomorrow, the workers will be back, and the kids will need breakfast, and the cats will need feeding, and the dishwasher will need emptying. Maybe he'll get some of that self-time when the kids go next door to hang out with grandad. But in general, he'll go on: Making most of their ( and our ) meals. Doing the lion's share of the housework, and readying the house for the final stage of renovation (lots of crap to move around in the living room and kitchen). Helping Hannah research her next rodenty pets. Helping Zeke build Legos, and reading more and more and more Dr. Seuss to him. Refereeing. Chaffeuring. Cooking. If he's lucky, reading and writing.

I wish our lives were less hectic. I wish his summer -- with the kids home all the time -- was more *his*.

I love him very much, and am deeply humbled and grateful by all he does for us.

Should've posted this last week, as it came up in Chris's sermon Sunday last, but I was preoccupied with pop culture (and certain shiny seafarers who shall remain nameless). The context was Pentecost, and the notion of drunkenness -- not necessarily chemically induced, but basically a freeing joy erupting into everyday life. (For instance, Rumi was quoted extensively, and Dickinson, and this gem from Wendell Berry: "Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts."

This was Chris' great closing line: "There are times when laughter turns the water into wine."

I'd almost forgotten it, and then I found my program where I'd noted it down, along other notes on the service (because I am a gigantic nerd). What a great writer/speaker we have at our church.

And I got all the way through a whole post without mentioning pirates. Oh. Damn.

I had a wonderful Mother's Day, and an almost entirely noncommercial one. No presents were bought for me at any of the sales urging people to "show Mom how special she is" with diamonds and cell phones and perfume. Didn't even get any flowers, and didn't even (gasp) go out to eat.

When I was still half-asleep, Z., my morning person, climbed into bed to snuggle, and so I woke up fully while having my face and hair stroked. Hannah had made me a beautiful artwork of beads and colored paper, and she had even carefully selected a gift bag from our stash and made her own tag. Z. also made me a present/card, as well as a "goodie bag" full of stuff he found downstairs in what we call the Projects Area (buttons, pom-poms, colored popsicle sticks).

Because the kids were still running fevers, we didn't go to church, which was disappointing, but isntead we went next door to hang out with Nana and Grandad for a couple of hours. Mom loved the present I made for her ("Nana's Alphabet," a series of tiny pictures and alphabetical describers, like "naptime" and "pizzazz," strung together and fitting into a tiny round hatbox that I painted). Hannah also made her an artwork and a really fancy card.

Then -- Big Treat! In the afternoon, I went to the library. By myself! No hanging out by the children's department computers, no goofing off in the Reading Pond or reading Max and Ruby board books in the Circle. Those things are fun in their own way, but it was nice to head straight back to the grownup section and sit at a table by the windows overlooking the Greenbelt. It was more than nice. It was bliss. I was looking for a cross-stitch pattern for my dad, and I went through literally dozens of cross-stitch books. And looked out of the window. And read the first chapter of Katherine Tessaro's Innocence.

Then -- another treat! Though (lucky me) a less rare one. My wonderful husband made one of my favorite meals for supper (pot roast). This is not such a big deal as it may sound, as he cooks yummy food all the time; the pot roast is a bit of a production, nonetheless, and very very good. He even helped me make a chocolate cake, which is especially nice of him, as he doesn't like chocolate. 

I had looked forward to doing some stitching, and I actually didn't get to it. I turned in kind of early, read more Tessaro in bed (which I love to do and rarely manage), and that was good, too, considering that getting enough sleep is another kind of treat. I had to some of my regular chores (laundry), and I even had to go to the grocery store (which I don't much like and which I'm terrible at).

Still, all in all, a wonderful Mother's Day. One of the best ever.

I'd learned on Friday that Anna Jarvis, who is credited with making Mother's Day an actual holiday (following inspiration from her heroic mother, Ann Jarvis, who in part inspired Julia Ward Howe's pro-peace Mother's Day Proclamation), later in her life protested against the almost instantaneous commercialization of the holiday, going so far as to file suit to stop the observance. (NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10131839)
I admire her quixotic spirit, and her defiance of consumerism. I thank her. I didn't set out to have an almost entire non-commercial Mother's Day, but I did.

And I loved it.

My beloved, elderly great-aunt could never figure out switching between Standard and Daylight Saving Time. "I just can't get used to this fast time," she'd say after a time change. Or "We're on that slow time again, ain't we?" I don't remember now which was "fast" and which was "slow," spring or fall. She died when I was small, and her befuddlement over the time change has become part of family lore.

I'm starting to know how she felt.

Like Nanny Valentine, I just can't get used to this fast/slow time. I can't get used to waking up in the pitch dark all of a sudden, and although it's been four days already, I'm still discombobulated to glance at the clock and realize that, despite the balmy sunshine, it's nearly time for the kids to brush their teeth for bed. (Luckily it's spring break, so they can stay up later and sleep in.)

I know the extension of Daylight Saving Time is intended to help out retailers and golf course operators and probably the gas companies. (Any energy savings in turning on lights later is more than made up for by the increased gas consumption of evening activities.) But it sure is messing up my body clock. I'm wondering, if we have Standard time for 4 months out of 12, is it really "standard"? Why don't we just enact a clock-coup and keep the clocks flipped over? Then DST would be Standard. That might make it hard for folks to remember when to change their smoke detector batteries and flip their mattresses, but now that the time changes are spread out to 8-month and 4-month intervals, maybe it's not the most useful mnemonic for remembering those things, anyway. I can see a new publicity push: Change your smoke detector batteries on the Equinoxes! That way people would have to learn what the "equinoxes" are, but they could use the time they save running around changing clocks.

And I could stay comfy in the knowledge that each day in the spring, the sun will rise a little earlier and set a little later each day, just like it's supposed to.