7:16 PM

**if you're confused by this post, scroll on down to the previous two.  The build-up and climax have occurred. The denouement will be described tomorrow.

2:10 PM

**If this post confuses you, see previous one.

Laziness, small tests of change, baseball, lacrosse, The Husband, The Mistress and Chocolate Cake

I've worn glasses for near-sightedness since I was about seven years old. When I wake up in the morning, I put on my glasses first so that I can see the world. A little later, I put in my contacts and still later I take them out and put my glasses back on. Now that I'm nearing the half century mark, it's getting difficult to read with just my contacts or just my glasses. So, I had to buy some of those glasses for reading. Except that at night, when I do most of my reading, I have to put them on over my glasses.

Yes, I know. I could get graduated lenses or whatever the hell they're called. But I can't be bothered. Hence, the laziness of the title.

This morning, Oliver woke up very chipper at 7:15. That he doesn't bound out of bed at this time on school mornings is a constant source of amazement to me -- and not a little irritation. The two of us got off on the wrong foot, and I landed up hollering at him for being fresh and taking away his iPod. I had asked him to empty the dishwasher and feed the dog and got what my father would have called too much lip. I told him that his attitude needed to change; I expected more respect and response and he was to think about what he could do to earn back his privileges.  In lieu (there I go, using that phrase again) of prolonging all the drama, I emptied the dishwasher but left the silverware basket on the table.

My intention is to see how long that basket will sit there. Hence, the small tests of change of the title.

Henry has his first pre-baseball season baseball practice this morning from 10:30 until 1:00. Oliver has a lacrosse game from 11:30 until 1:00. Henry then has a lacrosse game from 4:15 until 6:30. The Husband is spending the day and night with The Mistress. I must bake a chocolate cake for a client and ferry these boys to and fro. Hence the baseball, lacrosse, The Husband, The Mistress and chocolate cake of the title.

Reader, what does your Saturday look like?

Friday Surf Report -- Things I Like

• There's a common theme running through many of my posts, and that is one of escape. I'm just about dying to escape, actually -- perhaps to one of the cabins featured on freecabinporn, like this one in Finland. No offense, but I don't want company. You'll have to pick your own porn.

• My friends Erika of The Flight of Our Hummingbird and Phil Dzalio of Healing, Empowering and Thriving continue the struggle with Amber, The Girl Who Would Insist on the Distinction Between Non-Persons, Humans and Persons Despite Being Admonished By Persons Old Enough to Be Her Mother, Wise Enough To Be Shamans and Angry Enough To Rip Holes in the Ozone. Erika, who is not only brilliant but incredibly funny, told me that her comments  to Amber (that were possibly the longest comments known to the blogging world) on Amber's website, where she proudly carries on the discussion using all the knowledge that her recent Bachelor's degree in Philosophy has gotten her, demonstrated her (Erika's) own commonality with the None Shall Pass Knight of Monty Python's Holy Grail. I think it's an apt comparison for many of us in the disability community who just can't give it up. Our formidable strength and resilience, though, is only as strong as our ability to not take ourselves seriously. We do have the most amazing senses of humor, if I do say so myself.

• I'm savoring the last pages of The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal. I've written about it before and highly recommend it.

• I love children's books. I really love vintage ones. I really, really like this blog.

In lieu of a real post

here's a silly post. I wonder how many times I've titled my post "In lieu..." -- no matter.

I still have nothing to say -- and everything to say, I suppose. But what I want to tell you is that today I had an appointment in Beverly Hills, and I hate going to Beverly Hills because with a few possible exceptions, it's a freak show over there. Crazy BMW drivers, mustard-colored Rolls-Royces, paparazzi on every corner, fifty year old women who are probably really eighty, slicked-back Porsche-driving metrosexuals -- well -- the list could go on and on and I just hate going there. But I had this appointment, so I drove my car into one of the large parking garages and as I climbed up the ramp in my car, a hot pink Beetle came down. On the side of the car was a large painting of one of those little Japanese dolls -- something like this, but just the head:

And the woman driving the hot pink car with the Japanese doll painted on the side WAS THE JAPANESE DOLL. Exactly. She looked exactly like the doll painted on the side of her hot pink car. I thought I might be hallucinating because I was in Beverly Hills overload, but there she was, driving her car like a normal person, right beside me.

It was fantastic. I have no idea who she was or where she was going, but it was fantastic.

Comments Housekeeping

Many of you have expressed to me through email that you're having trouble leaving comments here. Are you primarily WordPress users? I think the problem is here on Blogger but is restricted to WordPress users. I went on the help forums and found this information which confirms that while it's a Blogger problem, if you're a WordPress user and want to leave a comment you should do the following. Any advice? Let me know if it works -- or not.

The problem is OpenID. It simply doesn't work very well. When possible, always use the NAME/URL option. http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/blogspot-blogger-not-accepting-my-wordpress-comments?replies=9

Thank You

for your kind and supportive comments on my last post.

Today was shaping up to be the day that I didn't post for the first time in more than a year. I just didn't feel like it. I felt dry. I felt old. I felt sick of myself.

But here I am, filled with gratitude.

And a dogged sense of humor.

How We Do It: Part VIII in a series

I was in my room, working on the computer and simultaneously talking to Oliver, who had just gotten out of the shower and was begging me to look up the video of the song Cherokee Nation. He had been singing the song incessantly since he'd gotten home from school, and while it made me laugh -- do you remember that song? -- it was also becoming tiresome.Cher - o - kee Nation! Cher-o - kee Pride! he shouted and then we laughed together at Paul Revere and the Raiders, their mustaches and long hair, what Oliver called hippies and in the olden days, so when he paused in the shouting of the song, we heard a steady banging coming from Sophie's room. I jumped up from my desk and Oliver froze as I ran out of the room. Sophie had fallen and was having a seizure, her head banging on the door over and over. Oliver and I realized this simultaneously, and as I tried to open the door, he yelled for Henry, who came running down the hall and as I moved out of the way, he placed his hands on the top of the door (cut-off halfway so that we can see Sophie in her room but not completely shut her out) and leaped over the door and over Sophie who lay on the floor, bent and seizing, her head banging on the door. He knelt down and drew her into his lap and held her there until the jerking stopped and he could drag her away from the door and we could open it and go inside. When I picked her up (thank you strong back) and put her on her bed, both boys left the room, and I sat there on the bed thinking of knights in shining armor and warrior Indians, the olden days.

Sophie on the Trampoline

January Rose

Less Being More


It started when he was a young man
and went to Italy. He climbed mountains,
wanting to be a poet. But he was troubled
by what Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in
her journal about William having worn
himself out searching all day to find
a simile for a nightingale. It seemed
a long way from the tug of passion.
He ended up staying in pensione
where the old women would take up
the children in the middle of the night
to rent the room, carrying them warm
and clinging to the mothers, the babies
making a mewing sound. He began hunting
for the second rate. The insignificant
ruins, the negligible museums, the back-
country villages with only one pizzeria
and two small bars. The unimproved.


Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven

Poetry and politics intersect

Philoctetes, by James Barry

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

from The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney

The Cure at Troy is Heaney's version of Sophocles' play Philoctetes, a Greek hero who was left wounded by the Greeks on an island where he was forgotten about until the final stage of the Siege of Troy. Philoctetes owns an invincible bow that the Greeks need to win the Trojan War, so they are forced to return to the island and ask for Philoctetes's support.

The back of my copy of the book says this about Heaney's work: Heaney's reading of Philoctetes is particularly responsive to the Greek playwright's understanding of the relations between public and private morality. "The Cure at Troy" dramatizes the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency, and it further explores ways in which the victims of injustice can become as devoted to the contemplation of their wounds as the perpetrators are to the justifications of their system.


I've read this part of this poem over and over during the last twenty years, and each time it speaks to me in a different way. During my first reading, the third and fourth stanzas leaped up and out, resonating with me as I began my arduous journey with Sophie -- Believe in miracles/ and cures and healing wells -- then those perfectly beautiful rhymed Call miracle self-healing:/The utter, self-revealing/Double-take of feeling. 


What's so fantastic about poetry, and this piece especially, is how it speaks to both one's private experience and to the larger culture. I am sure that we read into the words, taking what we want or wish or understand -- at least in our own very personal lives --  but I also think the poetry speaks strongly to our current political climate, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be amazing if our political leaders would stop talking about family values, money, American exceptionalism and all that bullshit and, rather, listen to a poet like Heaney who is able to articulate what it means to be human, to be working towards a common good, to be rhyming hope and history and justice?

(Yeah, I know. My head is in the clouds and I'm flying my poetry freak flag over here.)

My New Old Blog

How to Eat

Side of the Road

The Husband and I went to hear Lucinda Williams last night at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. Her craggy, strong voice sounded exactly the same as it had years before, and we were both stunned and thrilled when she opened with Side of the Road, a more obscure one that happens to be our favorite. We had just wondered what she might sing when she walkd out and began singing it. Afterward, The Husband said I could really just leave now.







You wait in the car on the side of the road
Lemme go and stand awhile, I wanna know you're there but I wanna be alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs
I just stood and looked out at the open space and a farmhouse out a ways
And I wondered about the people who lived in it
And I wondered if they were happy and content
Were there children and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I won't come back and
stay beside you
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
La la la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

Surfing Friday - Things I Like

Moms are Solutionary Revolutionaries

Piano Music

What I Mean by Fake Work
What I Mean by Cheerful Pretending

What do you like? I'd love a discussion about the last two, if you're so inclined. Oh, and I've started my old food blog up, again.  Here's the link: How To Eat