Emotional Eating Be Damned

Chicken Apple Sausage in Hot Dog Bun with Spicy Mustard
Small Popcorn, no butter
Small Diet Coke
Chocolate Biscuit Bar from Trader Joe's

I sat between two gay couples by myself this afternoon and watched a movie about a lesbian couple with teenagers, living in Los Angeles. I loved the movie.

I left the movie and headed out into the sunshine. A girl with dyed red hair, black leather pants and a hot pink g-string that poked up out of the pants looked up from her phone and winked. I paid $2.00 for my parking and said thank you, have a nice day to the cashier in the parking booth and she replied, god willing. I felt tearful in the car and put on my sunglasses even though I was alone. The sun kept going into and out of the clouds but never stayed. I wondered what the hell I was doing. I pulled into the Trader Joe's parking lot and heard raised voices as I walked inside. An old man in a gold Cadillac persistently or should I say insistently kept backing his car out of a space despite the yells and then screams of shoppers. There was a bang, a small one and I kept walking inside. I picked up a gallon of milk and then returned it for a half gallon because Henry will be gone this week and no one else drinks as much milk. I bought one pound of butter, two pizzas, a bunch of bananas and a three-pack of paper towels. The cashier had eyes that appeared to be coming out of his small head and was exceedingly friendly. I removed my sunglasses and answered that yes I was having a very nice day. I remarked how few people were in the store and how that was unusual and he said that he thought so, too.

When I got home, the boys were still fighting and Sophie was humming. What's for dinner, they asked and when I said pizza, they said yay and ran out the door. I turned inside.

Not So Silent Saturday

Things I Didn't Know I Loved: After Nazim Hifnet


I always knew I loved the sky,
the way it seems solid and insubstantial at the same time;
the way it disappears above us
even as we pursue it in a climbing plane,
like wishes or answers to certain questions—always out of reach;
the way it embodies blue,
even when it is gray.

But I didn't know I loved the clouds,
those shaggy eyebrows glowering
over the face of the sun.
Perhaps I only love the strange shapes clouds can take,
as if they are sketches by an artist
who keeps changing her mind.
Perhaps I love their deceptive softness,
like a bosom I'd like to rest my head against
but never can.

And I know I love the grass, even as I am cutting it as short
as the hair on my grandson's newly barbered head.
I love the way the smell of grass can fill my nostrils
with intimations of youth and lust;
the way it stains my handkerchief with meanings
that never wash out.

Sometimes I love the rain, staccato on the roof,
and always the snow when I am inside looking out
at the blurring around the edges of parked cars
and trees. And I love trees,
in winter when their austere shapes
are like the cutout silhouettes artists sell at fairs
and in May when their branches
are fuzzy with growth, the leaves poking out
like new green horns on a young deer.

But how about the sound of trains,
those drawn-out whistles of longing in the night,
like coyotes made of steam and steel, no color at all,
reminding me of prisoners on chain gangs I've only seen
in movies, defeated men hammering spikes into rails,
the burly guards watching over them?

Those whistles give loneliness and departure a voice.
It is the kind of loneliness I can take in my arms, tasting
of tears that comfort even as they burn, dampening the pillows
and all the feathers of all the geese who were plucked to fill
them.

Perhaps I embrace the music of departure—song without lyrics,
so I can learn to love it, though I don't love it now.
For at the end of the story, when sky and clouds and grass,
and even you my love of so many years,
have almost disappeared,
it will be all there is left to love.


--Linda Pastan

What I want to say to the health insurance industry and those who fought against healthcare reform

Haiku My Heart Friday

We stood on the steps

I would have eaten you up

If we lived back then.

For more Haiku My Heart, see recuerda mi corazon.

Apricots and Plums

Is there a more beautiful fruit? Sadly, these apricots don't taste nearly as good as they look (and this photo is blurry, but trust me, they're stunning).

So with a little sugar, lemon juice and vanilla, some flour, baking soda, baking powder and buttermilk, I turned them into this:

And then I read this

This is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums 

that were in

the icebox

and which 

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me 

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

-- William Carlos Williams

You asked for it

and thank God you did, because otherwise I might feel pressure to write something incredibly inspiring or uplifting or hysterically funny and I'm just not in the mood to even attempt that, so....

here are some pictures of my workspace. I should say that your idea of a mess might not be mine. I am a Virgo and notoriously neat. I might have lots of clutter, but it's very organized clutter. I do have a lot of stuff -- or should I say crap. I live in a very small house with four other people, none of whom are Virgos. My "workspace" is not a room of my own. It's in my bedroom, though, and I can lean my head a little to the left when I'm at my desk and using my stretch powers, peer into most of the other rooms of the house. The boys race into and out of my bedroom, both from the hallway and from outside because, sadly, the only door to the backyard is in my bedroom. I feel their wind at my back and using my most prodigious powers of focus and ability to ignore everyone and everything, continue to type or read away.

the swimming trophy from 1977, when I was just about fourteen, that we recently found in a storage box and that the boys insisted I display. Since it's literally the ONLY award I've ever gotten for anything athletic, I obliged.

lots of crap -- a glass doorknob used as a paperweight, the plug to a therapy ball that I deflated, post-its, a pencil box that is probably from the 80s, the beautiful pod that a blogger friend sent me, rings and earrings, my Yogi Bhajan Everyday calendar that says today: All your personal and financial problems are because you do not care for your spiritual strength. You have wasted energy on petty things. Cut out all that burns you out so that your light can keep burning forever. Hmmmmmmmmm.....

stuff and lists

a close-up of my favorite silly coaster, given to me by my sister Jennifer. It says: we all know her/yoga student,/vegetarian,/democrat,/fifteen minutes from bankruptcy

I'm not sure I need a workspace makeover, actually, because I'm surrounded by all these things I love. Even those two hooligans running behind me --

I've got nothing

of interest to write about, to show you, to rant on, etc. It's a gray and cold day in Los Angeles. That's right. It's gray and cold. I woke up this morning and it was raining. Rain in July in the southwest is as likely as high surf in Buffalo in December. I waited patiently for the doctor to call to confirm Sophie's infusion time, and that call never came. I had a meeting with someone who is helping us to refinance our house and perhaps jerk our lives into more solvency. I relented and called the doctor myself and found out that Sophie's infusion is happening next week. We think. I've done several loads of laundry and let the boys play endlessly on the computer and watch television. I've read a few magazines and eaten some leftovers. I thought some more about the movie I am Love that I saw a couple of weeks ago and that still resonates with me. How easy it is to subsume one's identity into one's children and family and how alluring to run away from it all. I also thought a bit more about To Kill a Mockingbird, the movie, that I watched last night with the boys. It was amazing, still. It was weird hearing the word nigger so many times, and I had to stop the movie and explain things to the boys. They were rapt and disbelieving. Inevitable to think about: Jim Crow laws and President Obama, both in my lifetime. And weird, too, that we haven't had a woman president, yet, and there's not one in sight.

Interesting Reading

I read this post today with interest, particularly as it comes the day after July 4th --

On a lighter note, have you ever sat with a catalog and wondered what sort of people live in these surroundings? or I just have to have something, anything from this place? Here's a clever blog devoted to Catalog Living.

Last Night

We are fortunate to have friends who live up in the Hollywood Hills, and every year they invite us to a backyard barbecue on the fourth of July. I went to college back east with most of the people who come, so our host Emily makes North Carolina pulled pork barbecue with coleslaw and vinegar sauce. We have the most delicious salads, plum cobbler from her backyard tree and the red, white and blue cake. The kids run around,  and the grown-ups sip beer and wine and watch the sun set. When the fireworks start, they are from country clubs and parks all over the San Fernando Valley.

Red and Blue

White Teaser

Come back later for the red and the blue.

Ragtag

We do this every year. This year, when I called for a semblance of order (meaning get on something red, white and blue and come outside for the picture), I got this ragtag duo.

I admonished them for one second, before The Big O said, What? Mom, it's a free country!

And he's right.

Happy Fourth of July!

Waiting, patiently

La Jolla, 1998

The good news is that we're now waiting, not for a bed, but for a spot in the infusion center. No overnight hospital stay is an enormous relief. I hate hospitals with all my heart (except the maternity ward). In the meantime, Sophie is having a respite from seizures. You never know what's up with The Girl.

Silence

Odilon Redon - Le Silence

I've been walking around in a daze, it seems like, for days.

Days of daze.

After my post with all the free f words, I felt sort of bad. I wondered if my father had read it and whether he hated it. I wondered whether the lady who is going to interview me next week for a job read it and if so,
whether she thought I was not the sort for the job. I wondered whether I had gotten too upset about the insurance company not having any sense of urgency but doing what I think is systematic obfuscation. I wondered whether I have just had enough of all this and my tolerance has completely disappeared.

A well-meaning friend mentioned another friend whose daughter is on the autism spectrum. That child is hard, my friend said about the other friend's daughter. I mean, I know Sophie is hard, it's all hard, but at least she can't move around a lot. Then she mentioned that our friend, the mother of the child, always has a smile on her face. Now, I've spoken to this woman many times because she's dear to me, and she doesn't always have a smile in her voice. She has lots of despair and many tears -- perhaps less and fewer than I, though, so that comment stuck to me pretty much all day.

She always has a smile on her face.

I know my readers and I know that many of you are jumping to my defense right about now. I didn't spend much time chastising myself for not having a smile on my face very often, especially of late. I thought about the toll caring for Sophie has taken on me. I'm not sure when the tipping really happened -- perhaps around year ten? That other child is not eight years old, yet, so technically Sophie is twice her age. That's twice as many years of dealing. The smile, I admit, is rarer. I'm not sure why I feel pressure, the tiniest bit, I guess to be

stronger
more cheerful
less complaining
more tolerant
more accepting

but I do.

Days of daze. A daze of days.

Daze means both to stupefy (verb) and to be blinded by light.