Dreams of the Bourgeoisie

Can you even imagine?

Where is that Sugar Daddy of ours?

Muster Bluster

It was a blustery day, and I mustered up some bluster. Now I'm flustered.

Roses, Wind, Anthem and Yeats

That's a rose that hung over a falling-down wall on my street the other day. I took it with the camera on my phone, and it certainly doesn't do the thing justice, but it was riotously perfect. Despite the profuse rose bloom, it's getting cold here in Los Angeles, some kind of blustery wind is blowing the palm fronds about, we've heard that there's snow in the mountains and tonight is supposed to go down into the 30s. For all those who scorn the "lack of seasons" we have here in Los Angeles, I throw that at you, extra hard. I mean, I'm going to have put on socks with my clogs today!

I've done my daily Anthem Blue Cross chores, talked to the lovely Natasha at the California Insurance Commission, folded some laundry, procured a plumber for the broken toilet, caught up with my friend D who has been itinerant of late (we discussed why his dear friends shouldn't move to Ireland, especially because of the weather), neglected to go for a walk, eaten a bowl of cereal with frozen Trader Joe's blueberries, made a few telephone calls for my job and am now off into the big, wide world.

What are you up to?

The Irish might not have good weather, but they sure have a monopoly on poets, and here's one of my favorites:

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats, 1865

What I look like when I'm talking on the phone with an agent of Anthem Blue Cross

while eating a breadstick instead of a cigarette.

I got our premium bill in the mail today, due February 1st. I noticed that the amount due was considerably higher than my last payment (for January) -- exactly 24.89% higher. I remembered reading back in October that Anthem was hiking rates for individual policy holders up to 30%, and I think I did my usual ranting about it, but when we didn't get a notice, I was relieved. For once, I thought, we got a pass.

Evidently not.

I quickly called Anthem and filed a grievance. I told the unfortunate agent that I believed they were out of compliance in not notifying us of the rate increase within a reasonable time. The Unfortunate Agent told me that I had been informed. I took a long drag on my breadstick. I said that I had not been informed and so it goes. I filed an oral grievance on the phone with her, and when I asked her for a written copy of the letter they claimed to have originally sent, she claimed that she would speak to a supervisor about it. I took another long drag on the breadstick. She also said that she would file my grievance and that I would be notified in 30 days that it had been filed and a "decision" would be made 30 days after that. I told her there is no "decision" to be made, and then I asked her for a written copy of the grievance. She told me that she couldn't give me anything but a tracking number. I took yet another drag on the breadstick. I asked her for the number of the California Insurance Commission. She gave it to me, and then asked me if I needed anything else. I told her that I felt sorry for her having to work for such an unethical business, and she asked me, again, if I needed anything else. Bless her heart.  I placed the call immediately to the California Insurance Commission and had a lovely chat with the Fortunate Agent who told me that she was hearing about these rate increases and the lack of notification about them. She told me that she would call me tomorrow morning with an update and when I asked her about Sophie's drug problem, she told me that she could help me with that, too.

I finished my bread stick and called it a day.

I think a little poetry is in order

POEM

I demand that the human race
cease multiplying its kind
             and bow out
             I advise it

And as punishment & reward
for making this plea I know
              I'll be reborn
              the last human
Everybody else dead and I'm
an old woman roaming the earth
               groaning in caves
               sleeping on mats

And sometimes I'll cackle, sometimes
pray, sometimes cry, eat & cook
                 at my little stove
                 in the corner
"Always knew it anyway,"
                 I'll say
And one morning won't get up from my mat

Jack Kerouac, 1962

Traffic in Los Angeles is a small price to pay

for this western view. Keep looking and you might see the ocean, glistening, seven miles away.**

Those of you who think we still have smog out here in Los Angeles need to get with the program. During the winter months especially, the air is so clear, it's nearly unbearable, and I almost had an accident last night exclaiming over the colors as I drove my kids home from school at 5:15. Their noses buried in books and iPods, they appeared oblivious to my screams of pleasure -- oh, my god, boys! Look at the colors! but then they did look and we all ooh'd and aah'd until the oranges faded to pink then purple then blue and then it was all can we get donuts after we drop Noah off? and can I have a cupcake before dinner?

**The ocean is seven miles away from where I live, but you can't really see it unless, perhaps, you were to climb up to the top of those very skinny palms. And because of traffic, those seven miles would take you more than twenty minutes to travel and maybe even more. But it's the same sky, baby.

How We Do It: Part XXI in a series

Did I read about someone the other day -- a parent of a child with disabilities who was approaching a milestone or did someone call me to tell me about it? I was sympathetic. I think I pointed out that milestones like these cause, sometimes, physical difficulties. It wasn't long ago that I watched the coltish legs of my friends' daughters, the daughters the same age as my own but who pranced by Sophie as if she didn't exist. I remembered them on birthdays when I closed my eyes to blow out the candles on her cake and wished for -- what? No more seizures? A different life? A long life? Life? Five years, ten years, fifteen years and I felt not nausea but a pull upward from the gut to the throat. I went long periods where I didn't know how to breathe and when I did remember, it ached. After a lunch with my friends in one of those years, the milestone years, the coltish legs more shapely now, breasts formed, elementary school merging into middle and the friends', the mothers' anxiety of school, where to go and will she get in and I murmured my sympathy yet screamed inside how can they? how can they worry? how can they talk of these things in front of me? and afterward, I lay on my bed, my face pressed into the cool green of the cover, my feet hanging over the side. Did I cry? I remember the cool green and the press upward of stomach to throat, the ache in the lungs, the breath. On the phone the other day -- was it on the phone? -- when I spoke of milestones (but you're always so calm, they say, they have said, over and over through the years, the miles, the stones), I knew, at once, that I wasn't even dreading Sophie's eighteenth birthday, coming up in early March. Things do get better, some might say. The coltish girls drive now and they fill out applications for college. Where will they go? It's hard to adjust to the cold of the east when you've grown up in LA. I shake my head and say Why not Berkeley, then? My god, when I was a girl, Berkeley? So exotic! California! Eighteen years and going into the nineteenth, and finally, at last, without effort, the milestones are behind us. I care nothing for the coltish girls going off to Chicago, to New England, the South or even Berkeley. I look into Sophie's deep brown eyes that have seen nearly eighteen years, she leans into me, there is nothing in my stomach, no pull to my throat, I can breathe and there is, absolutely, no ache.

The Annual Gingerbread House Stomp

What boys are for

It was time. Every year, The Husband and The Brothers make a fantastic, beautiful gingerbread house and every year, when the Christmas decorations are down and stored away in the attic, when the house looks serene and organized and uncluttered, relative to its Christmas curio shop look of the previous weeks, the gingerbread house is put outside on the grass and stomped to bits.

Yes, you read that correctly. Stomped to bits in an ancient boy rite. Here are some from past years: 2008, 2009, and  2010. This year, The Brothers added a broken lacrosse stick and baseballs as the instruments of destruction, which made me very uncomfortable, but what's a woman to do in the face of so much male energy?

I took a video for your enjoyment:

Yosemite, Part Four

There's this:

and there's this:

Snowshoes

Our night walk through the forest on snowshoes!

And then there's this:

Oh, and this:

The Wawona Hotel, where we stay when we visit Yosemite in summer

and also this:

Oliver with very large icicle

and this:

Oliver's ART shot

Tired, yet? Because there's this:

and, finally, this:

Whew! That's one holy place, no?

Oh, Yosemite!

New Year's Resolution

Normally, I think they're hogwash, made in earnest to be broken just as earnestly. I sort of like the idea of picking a word to guide one's days, a word that is powerful, and whenever I try to imagine a word that might really speak to me, I think of the word:

CHOICE

as in choosing to be happy or some such other earnestness.

This year, though, I am making a New Year's Resolution, too, and I plan on pursuing it this very week. Here it is:

I resolve to procure medical marijuana for Sophie and give it a try.

I resolve to procure medical marijuana for Sophie and give it a whirl.

I resolve to procure medical marijuana for Sophie and give it a go.

Thank goodness we have a choice in California.

Reader, what is your word or resolution this year?

Saturday Night West Coast Re-Post

So, I'm going to institute a new ritual here on the old blog. It's called Saturday Night West Coast Re-Post, and every Saturday evening, I will post something old from the vast archives of a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. I hope you'll join me and post something from your archives on Saturday night, particularly if you're the type that doesn't go out on Saturday night but, rather, crawls home from a day of watching boy lacrosse and wonders if it will take too much effort to walk up the street with your three children and have dinner at a neighbor's house.

Here's my repost, from the medieval era, August of 2009:

Gallows Humor

I was trying to clean up my computer archives and found this email that I had sent to a friend over ten years ago and that he had saved and then sent back to me.

Dear David:

> >

> > I have been getting your various messages--telephone and email, etc.

> > Forgive me my delinquency in returning them. Things have been a bit

> > hectic here--even more hectic than usual. About a month ago, Michael

> > was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle to work. He was dragged

> > a little but escaped with a pretty messed up left arm. Eighty

> > stitches but no broken bones or head injuries.

> > About two weeks after it happened, the wound got infected so he was

> > hospitalized and had surgery--a skin graft, etc. He is fine now and

> > back at work, just not cooking until the thing heals. In any case,

> > he was lucky. So, on the day he was hospitalized for infection, I

> > set off for the hospital for a visit with Henry and Sophie. As we

> > were leaving the house, Sophie had one of her famous drop seizures

> > and cracked her head open on the floor. We landed up going to the

> > hospital in an ambulance and SHE got ten stitches in her forehead.

> > Needless to say, I've been a basket case.

> > Henry is fine.

> >

> > How has your life been of late? You know, everyone always says to

> > me, "It could have been worse." My silent reply is, "It could have been

> > a whole lot fucking better."

> >

> > Love,

> > Elizabeth

Oh, Yosemite: Part Three

I know ya'll are going to be excited because there are actual photos of The Husband today. I don't write much about him on this blog -- I don't write much about him offline, either -- and part of that is because I don't care to tiptoe or blunder through the dark thicket of marriage, the effects of disability on marriage, yada, yada, yada. The other reason that The Husband doesn't appear that often on this blog is because he is, quite literally, never around. The man works ungodly hours as a chef and always has worked this way. He is a wonderful father, though, particularly to his golden girl, Sophie. When he was able to get off work and come on a vacation with us, for the first time in over five years, we knew that we could handle bringing Sophie along, too.

But let's get back to Oh, Yosemite. The day before we left we signed up for a sleigh ride into the woods around the hotel. Here's the sleigh:

Here's another shot:

I love this quiet photo:

and this one:

and this one. Sophie has always been The Girl Who Loves Trees -- her face is nearly always looking upward, toward trees, so Yosemite was perfect for her. That's The Husband's right shoulder. That's all I have of him.

 Just kidding. Here he is, helping Sophie to walk around when we arrived at our little campfire in the woods.

We sat around a smoky firepit, drank warm apple cider and roasted marshmallows. Oliver cheered up considerably when the marshmallows were brought out. He was only wearing a sweatshirt on the ride despite my advice to go get your snow jacket, Oliver, it's going to be cold. He was freezing, of course, and mad at me because you're always right, Mom, and it's annoying.

Here he is, finally smiling, perfecting a new technique of heating up the roasting stick to an extremely high temperature and then inserting it into the marshmallow so that it cooks from the inside out. Have ya'll tried this?

So, there you go. Sleigh rides, Sophie, The Husband, Yosemite and marshmallows nouveaux. I hope you have a wonderful Saturday.

Oh, Yosemite: Part Two

I bet a lot of you are feeling overwhelmed cleaning up all the Christmas crap. I've restricted myself to two rooms in my house -- my bedroom and the kitchen -- because I can't face it. I'm still in my pajamas, trying to do some work for my jobs and the mounds of laundry that I wrote of yesterday. I've also spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out my new camera and how to download the two hundred photos that I took in Yosemite. This whole digital thing is nuts. So much for bourgeois complaints, though -- here are a few more photos that will, at the very least, amuse you and might, at most, distract you from the interminable undecorating chores:

Let me tell you a little story about a sled run that I took, deep in the woods of Yosemite, in a beautiful place called

I grew up, until I was ten years old, in New Jersey, and I lived much of my life on the east coast and am therefore well acquainted with winter clothing and winter "sports," like sledding. When the boys pleaded with me to go sledding, I acquiesed, lowered my large, ancient LL Bean-clad ugly winter coated body onto a small, round black saucer and began sliding, picking up speed and spinning and screaming, feeling the cold wind in my face and my boys' hoots and hollers in my ears. Such was my speed, though, and lack of skill, that I slid right into a hole where I embraced a lovely little pine.

Henry and Oliver ran over to check on whether I was alive, and I looked up and shouted at them, through my hysterical laughter, Go get the camera from Cara! Go get it and take my picture! You know you're aged or quickly aging when you can slide into a small hole on an even smaller black saucer and find humor.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. The saucer was wedged underneath my bottom, so I didn't even get that wet.

Henry, laughing nearly as hard as I, acted chivalrous and attempted to haul me out of the hole.

Oliver mocked me.

When I finally hauled myself up and out of the hole, my dignity and self-esteem shattered, my laughter nearly maniacal, I grabbed the camera from Henry and started figuring out how I was going to tell the story on my blog. As for Oliver, I took his furry head in my gloved hands and pushed it into the icy snow.

Just kidding.

Now go finish taking down the Christmas crap in your house.

Oh, Yosemite - Part One (via cell phone)

I really just don't know what photos to include here. I don't want to bore ya'll. Here are some photos from my cell phone:

That wasn't a backdrop, either. It was the real thing -- El Capitan and Half Dome. Magnificent. Here's another:

Here are some snowy woods (that we stopped by in the evening):

Whose woods these are? I think I know.

Oliver looked so cute all week, all bundled up. Honestly, you'd think he was half-Swiss:

Sophie wore -- and rocked -- a black turtleneck.

She also appeared in a pair of fantastic leg warmers:

Henry has morphed into a serious teenager and proved an elusive photo subject. Here he is in profile:

And here he is with red eyes:

Did you think this post was going to be about Yosemite and not photos of beautiful children?

That's the High Sierra Bloody Mary that I drank (and consumed) one afternoon at 2:00. The garnishes, as you can see, were outstanding: a whole carrot, big enough for a horse, a whole piece of celery, a sweet pickle, a pickled onion, a sweet pepper, a slice of lime and an olive. The salted rim was perfect, as was the spicy drink itself. I counted it as a salad and felt virtuous even when I lay down on my hotel bed, slightly drunk, in the late afternoon, with my children as witnesses.

The Husband? Were you wondering whether he came to Yosemite with us? He did come -- and we had the first family vacation we've had in many, many years. I'll post photos from my "real" camera later today and maybe tomorrow and maybe the next day. You'll see so much of Yosemite that you won't ever have to visit it yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy this:

My beautiful friend and travel companion extraordinaire, Cara