Girl Singer in Cast

Might I kvell a bit?

Back in January, the girlie wrote out her New Year's resolutions. There were only three: learn to ride a "hourse", learn to sing better, form a band. Being indulgent parents who needed to find things to keep her occupied during the summer, we sent her to horseback riding camp for a week, and signed her up for a week of rock and roll camp at a music school in town. All resolutions accounted for!

For the first day of rock star camp, she was to bring in a list of five favorite songs; she picked six:

• Respect / Aretha Franklin
• Bad Romance / Lady Gaga
• Girls In Their Summer Clothes / Bruce Springsteen
• Back In The USSR / The Beatles
• Friend of the Devil / Grateful Dead
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps / The Beatles

I love this list. I think we're bringing her up right.

Unfortunately, the poor chicken broke her arm on Saturday, ice skating. Yes, ice skating in August. It's a pretty minor break, and she's only in the cast until just after Labor Day, but still. She was a real trooper about it. Also, I'm really glad she didn't fall off a horse last week, because that might not have been such a minor little break. And, her "instrument" for rock star camp is voice, which is also good, 'cause I think she'd have a hard time learning guitar, drums or piano with that cast on her right arm. I'm sure she'll have no trouble wielding a microphone.

Summer in a Glass

I don't know what it is about iced tea and lemonade, but it's what I love to drink in the summer, well, before 5:00 anyway. It's better than plain tea with a slice of lemon, it's less sweet than (most) straight lemonade. I do, however, draw the line at calling it by the name of a professional golfer. "Half lemonade, half iced tea, not too much ice" is what I ask for (otherwise they add too much ice and it's all watery before you're done).

But the other day, it occurred to me that there was no reason to buy one with my sandwich; I could just make it.



Assemble the ingredients:

1 fancy office Keurig machine
1 wide mouth pint Mason jar (with ring)
1 Cuppow lid
1 black tea K-cup
4 ounces lemonade (or, Joe's Summer Blend)
ice



Dump a bunch of ice cubes in the mason jar. Brew a four ounce cup of tea directly over the ice.



Top off with lemonade.

Expect everyone in your office to assume that you're drinking moonshine.

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So, what's the Cuppow? It is a seriously clever little gizmo: a plastic insert for your Mason jar to turn it into a sippy cup/travel mug. Want one? I'm so enamored of mine (which I bought with my own scratch) that I asked the Cuppow people for one to give away. Comment on this post with a better name for this drink than that of a golfer; the best name wins, unless I get flummoxed and just draw names out of a Mason jar. Cuppow will ship it directly to you (but you'll have to supply your own Mason jar), so make sure that your email address is in your comment or you're properly logged in. Without an email address, I can't get in touch with you. (Comments close on 8/27.)

And no, no one paid me to write this post, and I bought my own Cuppow lid, and the office pays for the Keurig, and I bought my own lemonade at the Greenmarket, and of course, all of my opinions are my own.

Free Ice

If you find yourself in New York, staying in a hotel not far from East 57th Street, and you decide you need some wine, because you are not the kind of person who will pay $35 for a half bottle of Chardonnay out of the mini-bar, I suggest that you wander over to Sherry-Lehmann, and buy yourself two bottles of a nice Sauvignon Blanc, and tell the salesperson that you are staying in a hotel, and that there is no room in the tiny refrigerator, because it is full of the afore-mentioned half bottles of very expensive wine, and when he offers to put ice in the box, do not stop to think "what could he mean, put ice in the box?" and accept his gracious offer.

Because when you finally open the box several hours later, you will discover that he has lined a two-bottle-sized corrugated box with a very sturdy plastic bag, and has packed ice all around your two bottles of wine, and rolled up the plastic bag, and sealed the box well, and it is just like a private little ice bucket for your Sauvignon Blanc, and really, there isn't anything better.

Yes, I did this last week.

Incidentally, Sherry-Lehmann has a reputation for being a high-end, to the carriage trade, hoity-toity wine seller. The fact of the matter is that it is perfectly possibly to find perfectly nice bottles of wine on their website for under $10 a bottle, and - if you live in the right place and buy a case or two - the shipping is free. Actually setting foot in the store was slightly bewildering and felt a little like going to Mecca, but the ice in the box was such a perfect gesture and one you'd never get if you were shopping on-line. Bricks and mortar, for the win!

Right. The Swag Post.

It's hard not to come home from the BlogHer conference without a whole lot of stuff. Even being selective, somehow you end up with toothpaste and vibrators and tee shirts and body scrub and battery operated candles.

One of the sponsors was Perrigo - a drug manufacturer that makes products that get sold as store brands. They were there with a display of over the counter pharmaceuticals branded for Walgreens, but that's really not the point. I am one of those people who from time to time - a couple of times a year - needs to take a 14 day course of Omeprazole to get my digestive tract back in good working order. The pills are usually blister-packed and in a box - like the Rite Aid box in my picture. The blister-packs are insanely annoying, so much so that I usually attack the plastic and foil with scissors to extract all the pills at once. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Perrigo version for Walgreens was in a BOTTLE. I liked it so much that I told the rep so, and now I'm telling you. I'll grant you that there are times when blister-packs are okay - like when you need to carry a couple of pills out and about with you - but having Omeprazole in a bottle is a better thing.

Another sponsor was SaveAntibiotics.org, a program of the Pew Charitable Trusts Health Group. From their website:

The Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming is working to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics by phasing out the overuse and misuse of the drugs in food animal production. We work with public health and food industry leaders, veterinarians, agricultural interests, academics, and citizen groups who share our objective of protecting human and animal health.

I don't know about you, but I'm all for reducing antibiotic use in the food supply - it's one of the reasons we don't buy supermarket meat in our household. Sure, sometimes a cow with mastitis might need a dose of amoxicillin, but "up to 70% of US antibiotics go to farm animals that aren't sick". Dosing up chickens and pigs so that they can be crammed into overcrowded, dirty barns is a terrible idea, one that leads to drug-resistant bug strains.

The huge irony here is that SaveAntibiotics.org was one of the little sponsors with a no-frills booth, while Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Farms spent top dollar for big, splashy booths and top billing, and handed out glop all the live long day. What kind of antibiotics are in their meats, huh? And how does BlogHer reconcile the message here? Factory meat on the one hand, anti-antibiotics on the other. I'm really glad the Pew people were at the conference, and I hope their message got through to at least a couple of people.

Verizon was another sponsor. I suppose they were flogging something at their booth; I didn't stop to see. BUT. They included a plastic postage-paid envelope in the official BlogHer swag bag, an envelope to use to "donate your old wireless phone to HopeLine and support victims of domestic violence". I like that. Instead of dead or obsolete phones going in the trash, they might help someone. I'll be using that envelope soon.

Also in the official swag bag was a full-size bottle of some Lysol multi-purpose cleaner. Um. How many of the attendees FLEW to New York on AIRPLANES? How many of those bottles got tucked behind plants in the lobby of the Hilton? A free coupon would have been a more efficient way to get the product in the hands of people who might want to try it and didn't want to pack it in their checked luggage.

Why oh why does Land O Lakes think that butter needs olive oil? That's a misguided product invention if ever I heard one. If I want to saute my antibiotic-free chicken breasts in a mix of olive oil and butter, I can pour a glug from the olive oil bottle and drop in a pat of nice plain butter. (Besides, if you've read Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, you'll be pretty sure that whatever is in that Land O Lakes stuff is a far cry from real fresh olive oil.)

Next, who needs feminine wash? Poise was there, branching out from incontinence with a whole new line of products aimed at menopausal women. Who knows, the cooling towelettes could come in handy, especially since it's been so stinking hot in New York City. But "feminine wash"? Are you actually going to wash your armpits with bar soap, and your head with shampoo, and your "intimate area" with something else altogether? Thanks, soap works fine down there.

Onward. I got invited to a party for B(L)oomers - you know, baby boomers, old ladies - which was not a BlogHer official party. I went, out of some perverse curiosity, and I actually had a good time there. The wine they were serving amused me no end - instead of a bottle, it comes in four individual cups all shrink-wrapped together, Stacked. Sure, there's a huge plastic thing going on which makes my earthy-crunchy self cringe, but if you were heading for a glass-free picnic zone? And it's portion-controlled? And you could use the plastic glasses for votives later? More to the point, the merlot wasn't half bad.

Best of all, the B(L)oomers party was sponsored in part by Demeter, the maker of all those thoroughly idiosyncratic and wonderful fragrances, like Gin & Tonic, and Tomato, and Mildew, and Black Pepper. And bestest of all, I won a door prize of ten bottles, ten that I got to pick out myself. And because ten was kind of more than I needed, I gave some to Sarah and Aurelia and Stephanie (who came over to hang out in my swanky hotel room and drink wine and eat potato chips), and to my sister-in-law who got me said hotel room. And my daughter got a bottle of Hersheys Kisses, and my husband got Fireplace, so she now smells like chocolate and he smells like wood smoke. I kept Dirt and Laundromat and Greenhouse for myself.

Until next year. Or maybe not.

And, Back Home Again

I have never had a manicure. Oh, I've painted my fingernails a couple of times, ineptly, but later I look down and my fingers look like someone else's fingers and I reach for the nail polish remover as soon as I can.

excellent * crowded * crazy

But Thursday night, after picking up my badge for the BlogHer conference, Sarah and I headed to the Expo hall to see what was what. We found Amanda getting her nails "done" so we bellied up to the bar and got ours done too - stick on plastic nails. I picked a steely dark blue/purple; Sarah went with jungle red. And so it began: two days and three nights of other, like some kind of out of body experience, the disconnect enhanced by the fact that the conference was in New York, in my city.

fun * moving * weird

I stayed up too late, I talked to strangers, I was captivated by both Martha Stewart and Katie Couric. I got fired up about a project that has nothing to do with my blog and everything to do with real life, in my town - and met someone who might can help. I met a foster mother from Mississippi, and I gushed at Lesbian Dad who maybe has the happiest smile ever. I hugged Neil and Marty and Cecily and Bon and Dresden and a lot of other people, and I never even laid eyes on Liz or Isabel or Joanne.

annoying * educational * terrific

The first thing I did when I got home was peel off my plastic fingernails. And then I took a nap, and then I mailed some stick on breast lifts to my sister, because it's nice to redistribute swag. And then we went to the pool, and now I'm back to my real life.

Red White Blue

We're all watching the Olympics, right? We all hate NBC, we all loved the James Bond meets the Queen skit during the opening ceremony, and we're all atwitter about the skimpy bathing suits on the male divers. Oh, that last one is just me and my sister? Okay, then.

The bathing suits fascinate me. Like, what's with the long legs? I suppose it's something aerodynamic, but don't you kind of miss the old Speedos - the kind with no Lycra, the ones we had back in the day, the kind you had to tie the straps together in the back with a shoelace because otherwise they were forever falling off your shoulders? Maybe that's part of my affection for the suits on the male divers - it's like what a bathing suit looks like in my mind's eye.

In 1972, when Mark Spitz won his seven gold medals at Munich (with no goggles and a mustache, by the way), he wore a red, white and blue Speedo - a patriotic pattern that became de rigueur at the pool we frequented. My father even had one. And all summer long, a pale freckled 10 year old boy we knew wore one of those iconic suits day in and day out - I think it was the only bathing suit he owned. By Labor Day, the sun had oozed through the white parts of the bathing suit, and his butt was tanned with stars and stripes.

I always wondered how long it took for that tan to fade.

Let's Review: Wunderlist

I was whining to a friend, over a glass of wine, that I couldn't keep track of everything I needed to be doing, and that I wanted was the perfect list.  Scraps of paper weren't cutting it. Nor were little notebooks. TeuxDeux was clean and snappy but not enough, and neither was the built-in Reminders app on my phone.

In a fit one afternoon, I turned to the google, and I found the holy grail: Wunderlist.

It is well-nigh perfect. It is:

• Free
• Available on the web
• Pretty
• Available as a desktop application
• Clean
• Available as a mobile app
• Free

It syncs across all platforms. It lets you have categories of lists, with sub-lists. It has little tick boxes to check off your things. Items can have dates, if they need dates. Very Important Things can get a star. You can PRINT your lists - that might be the part that I actually swooned at. You can email your lists. You can even add items by emailing them to Wunderlist.

Two caveats - though you could have others: it doesn't let you sort your lists, and there's no way to add recurring tasks.

Overall? I love it.

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Nope, no one paid me for this. I just like the app, a lot.

Madness

You know what's crazy? A couple of years ago, I had to buy a couple of cap guns for work, you know, props. I found just what we needed someplace online; they looked like something you'd see in an old Western, and did nothing more than go snap! and pop! when you shot them. Toys, you know. But because New York City, where I work, has strict rules about guns, I had to have the toy guns mailed to my house, outside the city (so I could hand carry them to work with me on the train). [Should I be admitting that?]

Last week, as you know, unless you live under that proverbial rock, someone shot a whole mess of people at a movie theater in Colorado, and killed twelve of them. Twelve innocent people, shot by a madman (a "fiend" in a New York Post headline I read over someone's shoulder).

And that madman bought all of his ammunition on the internet:

In the four months before the shootings, he also bought 3,000 rounds of handgun ammunition, 3,000 rounds for a semiautomatic rifle and 350 shells for a 12-guage shotgun, all over the Internet.

Six Thousand, Three Hundred and Fifty. That's a big number. That's a lot of ammo. It's mind-bogglingly crazy that anyone can buy any ammunition on the internet, and you can't even buy a toy gun to be shipped to Manhattan. And that's not even addressing the weaponry issue.

Jason Alexander wrote a rant about the weapons. In case you missed it, here, here's a quote:

These weapons are military weapons. They belong in accountable hands, controlled hands and trained hands. They should not be in the hands of private citizens to be used against police, neighborhood intruders or people who don’t agree with you. These are the weapons that maniacs acquire to wreak murder and mayhem on innocents. They are not the same as handguns to help homeowners protect themselves from intruders. They are not the same as hunting rifles or sporting rifles. These weapons are designed for harm and death on big scales.

I actually do understand that some people want to own guns for the purposes of deer hunting or target shooting. Hell, there are shooting sports in the Olympics. But assault weapons in the hands of ordinary folk? No, no, no.

What in hell are we going to do about this?

From a Death Sentence to a Surplus of Wonder

Because, as you know, I can't stay away from the medical non-fiction, I was inexorably drawn to Susan Gubar's "Memoir of a Debulked Woman".

Oof. And, wow.

"Doctored, I am a maundering wreck of the woman I had been." (p. 182)

It's her telling of her travails with ovarian cancer - diagnosis, surgery (the debulking of the title), chemotherapy, remission, recurrence. And because she's a scholar, it's laced with quotes from a huge array of books and articles - from writings about medicine to poetry, fiction, memoir. Because I'm me, and was astounded by the ten tiny-type pages of "works cited", I counted them. 177, ranging from W.H. Auden and Margaret Atwood, to Gail Goodwin, Philip Larkin, Oliver Sacks and Virginia Woolf. It's kind of a tour de force.

"When is an ache an ache, and not the sign of a recurrence or a metastasis?" (p. 210)

All through, though, Gubar pulls no punches - chemo is described as the horror that it is, drains and ostomies are excruciatingly detailed. And ovarian cancer is lamented as a silent killer. It may or may not have symptoms, its symptoms may be disregarded as "other, more benign ailments", and there is no reliable test or screening tool for early detection.

"Cancer is paranoia's dream come true; there's something in there that I cannot see or feel or imagine, trying to murder me." (p. 64)

Reading Gubar provoked an awful lot of what my kid's elementary school teachers would call text-to-self connection. Every intestinal twinge convinced my inner paranoiac that cancer was masquerading as indigestion. The several friends I've known who've had ovarian cancer? I wept for them. My mother - who endured several regimes of chemotherapy and two different courses of radiation - was not far from my mind, ever. [And Gubar's own elderly mother makes numerous demanding appearances through Memoir of a Debulked Woman.]

"As in childbirth, I speculate to Jo, in dying we may need a doula." (p. 226)

Gubar's book is grisly, and not particularly hopeful - because most cases of ovarian cancer are not diagnosed early enough, treatment is too often not very successful. She anticipates death, spins beauty and understanding out of bits of poetry and prose. It's heart-rending, and clear-eyed, and makes the point that our "social prohibitions against acknowledging dying or mourning" mean that we shy from hospice, rail against "death panels", and spend countless dollars keeping the very sick alive. But she's alive, nearly four years past diagnosis, and writes with a fluid underlying joy. It's a gift, this book.

Diamonds on the soles of her shoes

I walked through the diamond district the other day. It's a single block, 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth, chock-a-block with jewelry sellers. Wholesale, retail, guys with diamonds jingling in their pockets, a ingot of armored trucks idling at curbside. I've never shopped there, not being a diamonds kind of girl, but it was between Grand Central and where I was going, so on Thursday morning before nine, I found myself thinking about linoleum.

See, my mother had known a guy who'd been in the jewelry business forever. It was a family business, and they made fancy, high-end baubles for fancy, rich women. After years and years in one location, they saw fit to move their shop, and in the process of packing up to move, one of the things they did was sell the worn linoleum floor. You see, the old floor had so much gold dust ground into it from so many years of fabrication that it was worth money to someone who was going to reclaim the gold, a modern day prospector if you will.

Did you know that a jewelry maker's linoleum floor could be worth a fortune?

BPA Killed My Horse

So, good news, right? The FDA banned bisphenol A, or BPA, from baby bottles and sippy cups. Yeah!

But wait, read the details. There's a long article in the New York Times, and a nice concise one by the AP.

Here's what really happened. Consumers got up in arms, manufacturers voluntarily stopped using it, the chemical manufacturers asked the FDA to ban it AFTER "determining that all manufacturers of bottles and sippy cups had already abandoned BPA due to concerns about its health effects", and THEN the FDA acted - simply codifying "what the industry was already doing based on the preference of consumers".

Frankly, this is a totally disingenuous action. The chemical industry gets to bat its eyelashes and say oh yes, we were behind the ban and reap all kinds of good publicity for its selfless rejection of a chemical that the National Toxicology Program has "some concern" about.

And banning something that manufacturers had already stopped using is kind of like beating that poor dead horse.

Canada declared BPA a toxic substance nearly two years ago. A better action on the part of the FDA would have been an outright ban on BPA, instead of this namby-pamby innocent until proven guilty or the consumers do enough cage-rattling.

Oy.

La Bella Luna

Even though I say "no" a lot, sometimes I do actually say "yes". And so it was that the girl and I ended up going to a movie at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon, beautiful sunny day notwithstanding.

We saw "Brave", which was excellent but a little scary; my fierce eight and three-quarters year old whimpered a couple of times "I don't like this movie" and hunkered down under my arm. The story begins much like "The Princess Knight" - feisty girl bests the boys who are competing to win her hand in marriage. But it goes on to an epic battle, and a witch and a spell, a need to "mend the bond torn by pride", and healthy doses of girl power, love and family ties.

However, the excellent thing about the movie was that a) there were no previews and b) there was a short. I can't remember the last time I saw a short, in a theater. I don't think I've ever seen a commercial release without being assaulted by previews. And, the short was fabulous. Animated, with just some grunting in lieu of words, it's a little tale of three generations - father and grandfather teaching a boy to take care of the moon.



And later in the day, we went to the pool and I dived in, and I went down the slide, and I let myself be dragged around the shallow end by two strong little swim team girls. Because, one does need to say "yes". It's where the magic lies.

Red Fruits of Summer

So. It's summer. It's too hot to cook. But there's all that lusciousness at the greenmarket, blueberries and peaches and raspberries and apricots and plums and strawberries and maybe even gooseberries. And you want to use it.



Instead of heating up the kitchen with a 400° oven for that shortcake I told you to make, all you do is hull the strawberries and cut them in half, add the currants, add the raspberries, add a tablespoon of sugar. Toss it gently and put it aside until it's time for dessert - an hour or two will do. What you want is for the strawberries to give up some of their juice - the sugar helps that along by pulling the juices out of the berries. Then, all you need is some good vanilla ice cream. A blob of ice cream covered with the juicy berries? That, dears, is summer.

Waffling Hyperbole

Oh, oh, oh. Great sadness in the world: Marion Cunningham has died. And while her New York Times obituary came complete with a recipe, it wasn't the recipe, it was one for coffee cake. Now, honestly, there's nothing wrong with coffee cake - I could do with a slice at about 4:00 most afternoons - but her hands-down absolute-best make-this-Sunday-morning recipe was the waffles. Raised waffles. Crispy, tangy, light, tender, thin, buttery, yeasty waffles, like nothing you've ever had before. They're easy, too, but you have to start them the night before - mix up the batter, let it sit, add some eggs in the morning and go to town. Yes, you need a waffle iron, but don't you have one? Everyone should have a waffle iron, preferably a vintage one, chrome, with a cotton-covered black and white cord.

I first had these at a bed and breakfast in California, the kind of bed and breakfast that hands out copies of the recipes for the home-baked goodies they fed you that morning. There were two winners, an apple French toast, which I make for Christmas breakfast almost every year, and these waffles, which we make about once a month, just because.

Promise me this: you'll try these waffles, and you'll toast Marion Cunningham with your morning coffee. Even though I never met her, I feel confident in saying it's what she would have wanted. Besides, they really are the best waffles ever.

Marion Cunningham's Raised Waffles
[originally from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and now all over the intertubes]

1/2 cup warm water
1 package dry yeast
2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Use a rather large mixing bowl — the batter will rise to double its original volume. Put the water in the mixing bowl and sprinkle in the yeast. Let stand to dissolve for 5 minutes. Add the milk, butter, salt, sugar, and flour to the yeast mixture and beat until smooth and blended. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand overnight at room temperature.

Just before cooking the waffles, beat in the eggs, add the baking soda, and stir until well mixed. The batter will be very thin. Pour about 1/2 to 3/4 cup batter into a very hot waffle iron. (Use a regular one, not one of those very deep Belgian waffle makers.) Bake the waffles until they are golden and crisp.

Theoretically, the batter will keep for a couple of days in the fridge. We prefer to bake it all off, and freeze any extra waffles, because, it probably goes without saying, we don't buy frozen waffles in our house.

Little Is Better Than Nothing

I finally cleaned out "my" closet at my mother's house, the closet in what had been my bedroom. There was stuff in there that had come home with me from college, and hadn't been touched since. There were boxes marked "treasures" and others full of letters from old boyfriends. There was a box labeled "three mink stole", containing, yes, a three mink stole just like the one your grandmother probably had.

Some stuff I fondled and threw out. Some stuff I packed up again and sent to storage. And some of the "treasures" I felt compelled to photograph and catalog before I tossed them:

• wicker tea strainer
• empty drawstring bag marked "bathtub playmate of the year"
• 1983 Cats playbill
• Silly Putty, still putty-like
• the glasses I wore in fourth grade
• a Kent comb missing a tooth
• a brass nut & bolt
• a brush with which to clean a record
• 790. Little is better than nothing (fortune from a fortune cookie)
• a really ugly Christmas ornament
• the plastic cup from a container of strawberry yogurt from "The Loseley Herd of Pedigreed Jersey" - which I think was bought in England in 1978
• an almost full box of business cards from a job I had in 1982
• my first ATM card, from college
• a cancelled check, to the college bookstore for $1.14
• an almost full bottle of salt tablets, dating to when I first got contact lenses in high school and before you could buy ready made saline solution
• a souvenir yarmulke from Suanne's 1983 wedding, and a little tulle wrapped bundle of rice
• the kind of plastic mermaid who perches on the edge of a glass
• a wire and tissue paper flower that I made, oh, 42 years ago?
• a plastic ruler
• one formerly white pointe shoe that my mother had picked up on a backstage tour at the New York State Theater - Freed 6X, maker X, Sara Leland - sliced to accommodate a bunion.
• the erasable memo board that had graced the door of my college dorm room - with the last notes as we were about to graduate, including the address of the restaurant where we had our Chinese banquet with Bing.
• a notebook from the time I spent four months in London, with this jejune note about Bruce:

I also found my first pair of glasses, the ones that I had in kindergarten. Alas, the plastic had turned green and crumbled to bits.

I need to remember that I will exit this earth with naught but what I came with.

The Hand-Me-Down Conundrum

What do you do with your kid's clothes when they don't fit anymore? You pass them on as hand-me-downs, to cousins and neighbors. If they're from Hanna Andersson and still in great shape, maybe you put them on eBay. My sister takes stuff to a consignment store, but they tend to pay you in store credit AFTER your stuff sells - that's not instant-gratification enough for me.

I first heard about thredUP a couple of years ago, and while I appreciated the idea behind it - swapping kid's clothes - it seemed cumbersome and unpredictable. However, they've recently revamped their whole model, and it seems pretty cool. In essence, it's an online consignment shop. You can buy stuff, and you can sell stuff.

The buying part is easy - you browse through a really stripped down grid of clothes that you can narrow down by size and/or gender. Sure, you're not seeing multiple pictures of that sweater, and you don't know exactly what it's made of - but a Carter's onesie is a Carter's onesie, and the prices are really reasonable.

The selling part is easy too - you order a "bag", you fill it up, you send it back by prepaid UPS or USPS. They inventory your stuff, and pay you - either by PayPal, or with a store credit - and there's no waiting for your stuff to sell. You'll probably get less cash than if you sold on eBay, but there's also no taking pictures, no writing copy, no keeping track of packages to ship - that is, no hassle.

I really like the idea of it, and I suspect that if you're in an area that is devoid of consignment shops, thredUP would be a great resource.

If you want to try it out, click here and use coupon code TU10 to get 10% off your first purchase. The code is good through Sept 1, and your kids probably need new clothes for back to school, right?

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Disclaimer: thredUP offered me a store credit to try out the site. They didn't pay me to write about it, and there was no expectation that I would write anything. My opinions - as ever - are very much my own.

Common Sense, Common Cents

In the department of ridiculously small amounts of money, I just received a check - in an envelope, by first class mail - for the total amount of zero and 07/100 dollars. Yes, seven cents.

Some mumbo-jumbo in connection with our mortgage refinancing had caused a credit of seven cents to appear in our long-dormant zero balance HELOC account. I wrote it off in my head, thinking seven cents wasn't worth any attention (though I did encourage my eight year old to pick up a penny in a parking lot yesterday, but then, she's eight and most of her net worth is in pennies), and being not quite sure that they really owed that money to me (there hadn't been any money in the account at the beginning of the refinance process). That Chase felt they had to clear the account by mailing me a check for seven cents astonishes me - not least of which is that Chase knows I have a Chase mortgage and a Chase checking account. Wouldn't it have been simpler and cheaper for them to have done a book transfer into one of those accounts? Besides the obvious - postage - how much did it cost for them to issue the check and clear it at the other end?

A little common sense might go a long way in these matters of dollars and cents.

Independence

When in the course of blog events it becomes necessary for one writer to dissolve the advertising bands which have connected her with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's dog entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of wo/man-kind requires that she should declare the causes which impel her to the separation.

Okay, that's a little belabored. But, as of today, I've dropped the BlogHer ad widget from my blog.

I originally signed up for their ad program thinking that it would a) provide a little pocket money and b) drive a little traffic via the links to other blogs in the network. I also thought - misguidedly - that running the ads, with the implicit signal that I'd been approved by the network, was a form of validation - you like me, you really like me!

In point of fact, the BlogHer widget does diddly squat as to traffic, and made my whole site load slowly. The income isn't worth the trouble - and on a real estate basis, dollars per pixel, the few other ads I've sold have paid a lot more. Furthermore, the contract with BlogHer constrained me as to some content - not that I really care to do any sponsored posts; I just don't like being told what not to do. There's also the issue of the ads themselves - given my earthy-crunchy eco-frugal nature, what the fuck was I doing running ads for Olive Garden and Hellman's mayo and Tyson Foods and Venus razors?

My blog gets a reasonable amount of traffic; no, I'm not The Bloggess, but people read and comment and read and don't comment. And frankly, the amount of traffic is fine; I'm not hoping to quit my day job because I'm not using this as much more than an outlet for me, for the things I think about.

Just so you understand how ridiculously small the income stream was, in the six month period from June 2011 to November 2011, I earned a grand total of $26.48 - enough to buy um, not much. And BlogHer owes me about that much for the seven month period that just ended, meaning that the monthly average has actually gone down. If I were Anna Viele, I might go into enormous detail about this and ad sizes and that and conspiracy theories, but I'm not. Suffice it to say, it wasn't worth it.

So I finally pulled the plug. Hallelujah!

St. George and the Very Small Dinosaur

St. George slew the dragon; Calvary St. George's seems to slay birds.



This is the second bird I've seen there, feet up alongside the steps. The first one was tiny; this one was bigger, almost pigeon-sized. I originally saw the bird on Friday, but when it was still there on Saturday, I stopped. My daughter was with me; instead of being grossed out by the dead bird, or bewildered by my photography, she was concerned that the flies weren't leaving it in peace.

Poor thing. And what is it about that church that keeps killing the birds?

Vasistas

I know. Aimless archaeology. I discovered this scrap of paper when I was emptying out my mother's desk, in preparation for its removal to my house.

Before last month, I'd never heard of a transom being called anything but a transom, but Marinka's husband claimed that it was called a "vasistas" in French. And not that I'm trying to side with Marinka's husband or anything, but apparently one Neal Hitzig had heard this too and wrote to the New York Times about it ... eighteen years ago. Neal does call it "apocryphal" (and Neal's letter is footnote #5 in the wikipedia article which one of Marinka's commenters cited). Anyway, my mother saw fit to rip it out of the paper. She liked words. She also liked ripping things out of the newspaper. She kept everything. I just didn't expect to be reminded of Marinka while I was cleaning out my mother's desk. Go figure.

The desk, a beautiful Eastlake rolltop desk, with burled insets, and a glass-fronted bookcase on top, had been in my father's family. Family lore, if my memory serves, had it stored in the attic of my grandparent's garage/barn, from where it had to be lowered by block and tackle. Tucked in one of its little drawers is a scrap of paper ripped out of some magazine, lord knows when, with a picture of the desk's twin and notes as to its provenance. I'm looking forward to the its appearance in my living room. The desk, that is. The scraps of paper...? Big sigh. I think the rest of my summer is going to be an immersion in aimless archaeology. And shredding.

The Last Day of Third Grade

Finally! Today's the last day of school for my girl. The end of third grade isn't actually a graduation, but her grandmother gave her the mortarboard deely boppers, so of course she had to wear them to school. Goofball.

This time of year, there's always a lot of blather about commencement speeches and what messages they send and "everyone is wonderful" (except for the guy at the high school graduation who went viral with the "you are not special" speech. The speaker at my own college graduation - on a beautiful June day 30 years ago - was Maya Angelou. I can't find her address online - but it riffed on her poem "Phenomenal Women".

I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

All anyone remembers about it is the phenomenal part - we are indeed phenomenal, each and every one of us (and you too). Be yourself, be phenomenal. Oddly enough though, when you actually read the poem, it's kind of all about her looks - she's not pretty, yet men are drawn to her, based on some inner light. She's not phenomenal for the things she does, the words she speaks, the life she leads:

It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.

Yes, joy in the feet is a wonderful thing but that's not all there is.

Last month, the commencement address at my alma mater was by Melissa Harris-Perry - Tulane University professor of political science, author, Nation columnist, MSNBC host, and "nerdland" icon.

Her charge to the graduates was far more provocative - and, dare I say, useful - than most:

Be ignorant.
Be silent.
Be thick.

Be ignorant - you do not know everything, and nor should you be expected to.
Be silent - because there are times when one must listen, and thinking before speaking is always a good idea.
Be thick - commitment and sturdiness will stand you in good stead, and besides "Thin women look great in bikinis. Thick women look terrific in history books."

My girl is finding her way, starting to assess her peers, navigating the rocky social straits, losing herself in books, and I'm sure she'll turn out to be a phenomenal woman. But I'm going to add silent, ignorant and thick to the agenda.

Pink Suede Shoes

She intrigues me. I don't know who she is, I've never seen her on my train before.

She's wearing a fitted sleeveless dress, brownish beige, slightly textured. It's well cut, and makes me think of my mother's Anne Fogarty and Claire McCardell dresses - what one wore in the fifties. Her shoes are pink suede, with a high curvy heel and a little knotted ankle strap - they look a like a cross between character shoes and Fluevogs. And she's shepherding a bright orange folding Dahon. I can't imagine riding a bicycle in those shoes, but then, I'm not her.

Later, once she's settled in on the train, she takes a stainless steel tiffin box out of her snakeskin bag. Once breakfast is over - what she ate, I couldn't tell - she settles in with her knitting, an indeterminate object in pink wool.

Stylish. Environmentally correct. Crafty.

Does she live in my town? My town is so full of bankers and lawyers and people who wear suits to work. The mostly male commuters mostly drive to the train station. Who is she? Why did I find her so fascinating?

A Manifesto About Strawberry Shortcake

There is only one kind of strawberry shortcake. It does not use lady fingers, it does not involve angel food cake. Cool Whip is verboten, sponge cake is all wrong. The strawberries must be local, the cream has to be freshly whipped, and the shortcake is a biscuit.

If you’re me, you have a hardcover edition of The James Beard Cookbook found at a used bookstore and bought because you had to own a copy since your mother always had one. And when your mother made strawberry shortcake, she made it James Beard’s way, which is to say, one enormous shortcake, cut into wedges at the table. Little individual ones, plated in the kitchen, are all well and good – providing that they’re made with biscuits and good berries and real whipped cream – but there is nothing more jaw-droppingly stupendous than an exuberant pile of whipped cream atop an enormous craggy biscuit with pink rivulets flowing off the macerated strawberries.

This is it. This is love. And this is how we celebrated Father's Day.



Strawberry Shortcake (adapted ever so gently from James Beard)

2 cups flour
2 ½ t. baking powder
1 t. salt
4 T. sugar
5 T. butter
¾ cup heavy cream
~2 T. softened butter

1 quart strawberries
2 T. sugar

1 ¼ cups heavy cream
2 T. powdered sugar
¼ t. vanilla extract (optional)

Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender, or two knives, or your fingers. Stir in just enough heavy cream to make a smooth, soft dough, not too sticky. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead gently for about a minute. Divide it into two portions, one a little bigger than the other. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the larger piece into a circle about 9” across and ½” thick. Gently transfer the disk to a greased cookie sheet. Spread the disk with soft butter. Roll the small piece of dough into a circle about 7” across and ½” thick, and transfer it to atop the first piece. Bake at 450° F for about 20 minutes, until nicely browned and baked through. Let cool.

While the shortcake is baking, clean the strawberries and cut them in half. Sprinkle with 2 T. sugar, stir gently, and set aside.

Just before serving, whip the cream with the powdered sugar and vanilla. Slip the shortcake onto a serving plate, and gently remove the top circle with a spatula. Cover the bottom with half of the strawberries and half the whipped cream. Replace the top circle, spread it with the remaining whipped cream and top with the remaining strawberries. Serve immediately.

Invention

I made a quilt for our new nephew, my brother's child, who arrived not too long ago with aplomb and no warning. The quilt was, therefore, hastily done, but I think it's nice. A vintage green and white striped pillowcase opened up to just the right size for the backing; the pieced front is a bunch of funky damask towels cut into 6" squares (so as to avoid the stains and holes) and pieced together. My daughter embroidered his name and the year on one of the squares, and I tied the whole thing together with a bit of blue embroidery thread.

Midway through, I realized that the iron was hot - not just temperature hot, but electrically hot. Yeah. I gingerly finished the necessary ironing, but that iron is toast. And then the sewing machine did that clunk clunk sputter thing and I finally dragged it off to a repair shop, where the old lady chastised me for using the wrong thread and the wrong kind of needle. Whatev. Just fix it, 'kay?

My head is full of projects like this. I have plastic storage boxes galore - this one full of old t-shirts, a complementary palate of darks and jewel tones, the next filled with scraps of felted wool, leftovers from a while ago project. I could make a patchwork quilt of the t-shirts, a patchwork blanket from the wool bits.

But that I had more time.

At least my sewing machine works again.

Patterns

Heaven is an empty house. The other members of the household left me home alone yesterday, for a couple of blissful hours, while the girlie went and tried out for the swim team. Other people might use the time to take a nap, or catch up on Desperate Housewives. I embraced the chance for a bit of time to putter around my cellar.

There was a box in a corner, a box of odds and ends that I'd brought home from my mother's house a month or more ago. I emptied it, and put away the odd bits of fabric and paper, a jar full of paper fasteners, a small bone crochet hook. I was about to take the box upstairs, for the recycling bin, when I noticed that it wasn't just a plain white box that 10 reams of copier paper had come in. No, she'd decorated the side of the box, with a collage of paint chips, purples and teals and blues. A bit of matte board, cut to a small rectangle, labeled it "Patterns".

These are the things that rend the heart. This, this box, is a microcosm of her time, her sensibility. Someone else would have scribbled "patterns" with a black Sharpie. Who else would have used the paint chips for découpage?

Now I have a 9" x 17" piece of corrugated cardboard, propped up against the wall by my desk. I can't keep everything. Where do I stop?

Or, where do I start?

Swamped

Busy, busy, busy - June is some month. I'll be back one day.

In the meantime, see if you can identify the common thread in these here photos.





'

Most creative answer gets a prize. Maybe. It's at the whim of the management.

Road Trip

The girl and I, we're going on a road trip. My college reunion is this weekend, and while I wouldn't take her out of school for a trip to Disney, a trip to a college campus, even at eight, seems like an appropriate excuse for an absence. It's educational! It's aspirational! It's a day and a half out of school a few weeks before the end of third grade!

She's beside herself. She's been talking about it for weeks, she packed on Sunday, and she's handing me lists and instructions at every turn.

Here, Mommy, this is what you do when you pick me up at school:

Right. Like I've never picked her up early. Like I wouldn't wait for her.

And here, Mommy, this is what I packed:

Um, what about underpants? And a toothbrush? Or shoes? I should note that the "two time wasters" are not the DSi XL and the 3DS - no, the time wasters are a handheld clicker and a sliding number puzzle - essential road trip supplies. Also, she packed another bag with about six books, a stuffed animal, Julie, and lord only knows what else - it weighs a ton.

Oh, and Mommy, I need some more songs on my iPod:

Despite the admonition of Not One More! Not One Less!, I did add one more: I included the Beach Boys singing California Girls. I can't wait for her to cue it up and sputter this isn't Katy Perry.

Wordless Wednesday: Asparagus

The Lamest Post in the History of Forever

Allow me to complain. I don't do it all that often. But considering that we just had a three day weekend, I feel robbed.

Saturday got taken up by a work-related memorial service, in the city - one of those events at which one's attendance feels mandatory rather than heart-felt. She was a lovely woman, and important to our organization in many ways over a long period of time, but I barely knew her, and would rather have been almost anywhere else at 11:00 on Saturday morning.

Sunday, we went for a bike ride, en famille. At what should have been the mid-point, I fell off my bike. I wasn't even riding! I'd stopped, waiting for my people, and in the process of dismounting, I caught my leg on the rear tire and went down, smash, on my tuchus. I swear, I thought I'd broken my coccyx, so much so that my husband took me to the ER where they shot me up with morphine and x-rayed me. Luckily it's not broken, but as the nice doctor pointed out, that means two weeks of pain instead of six weeks. Joy. I spent the rest of the weekend doped up on Percocet, reading and napping.

I did stagger out to the Memorial Day parade, briefly, and managed to miss two of the three dignitaries as they went by. I did wave frantically at the Secretary of State; I don't think she saw me though.

The worst bit about this damned injury is that on Thursday I have to get in the car and drive for four hours. I think I'll take my husband's car, because his isn't a stick shift, but still - not exactly looking forward to it.

Maybe it won't be so bad; I did make it to work today.

Okay. I'm not going to complain anymore.

Oh, except that this inability to move is going to interfere with my Couch to 5K training - of which I'd only gotten through the first week.

Argh.

No more lame posts. I promise.

(Maybe.)

Wedding Chicken

The bits and bobs surfacing as we clean out our mother's house are mindboggling in their breadth. Just last weekend, I brought home a copper asparagus pot and my junior high school jumpsuit. We found the box of clock bits that Moky had glommed onto when a neighbor's house was emptied - it wasn't that Moky was going to fix any clocks, she just didn't want the gears and springs going in a dumpster. Some crazy karma thing made me take the clock bits home, but I promptly located a clockmaker in my county who came and picked them up - they've moved on to a place where they may actually be of use. [And the guy gave us a Kit Kat Clock in return, even though I specifically said I didn't want any money.]

Up in my bedroom, hanging off the pier glass, were the crown of thyme and bouquet of lavender that had been my floral adornment for my wedding. They were dried out, scentless and shedding - because they were nearly 17 years old - but I popped them in a plastic bag. You can't just throw away your wedding bouquet, can you?

Happily, my husband was planning to grill some chicken for dinner. Happily, he agreed that the right send off for the thyme and lavender was as grill seasoning. Happily, the chicken was delicious, and the thyme and lavender actually came through with some flavor lo these 17 years later.

Me, I ate my wedding bouquet. You?

Cultural Icon

Back in the day, junior high school that is, we had to wear gym suits - at least the girls did. I'd forgotten all about my gym suit, until - of course - it turned up in a box at my mother's house. Of course, I brought it home for the girlie.



She put it right on, and I'll be damned but the thing fits her perfectly which just doesn't make any sense given that she's in third grade and I wore it in seventh, eighth and ninth grades. Great mysteries of life. She then threatened to wear it to school; I dissuaded her. [She also pointed out that it doesn't really fit her; it's got boob darts and she's got no boobs.]

It looks a little like Rosie the Riveter's jumpsuit, it's made out of some unfaded perma-magic everlasting fabric, and my name is tidily embroidered in script - needlework by Moky.

Is there a gym suit museum somewhere?

Double Exposure

Remember that she learned to ride her bike? Here's evidence - complete with an inadvertent multiple exposure, which I like, it gives it motion.

Elected Office...Not.

So yesterday was the local school and library voting - budgets and board members. For some reason, no one ran for library board. As I was entering the high school gym to vote, I ran into the editor of the local paper, and I asked her why no one was running. She lit up and said "write yourself in". So I did.

This morning, I woke up to an email from said editor, subject line reading:

You and Bill Clinton got same number of votes!

Out of 62 write-in votes, I got two, Bill got two, and the winner got 34. So, I lost the race, but I'm totally tickled by the results.

My Mother In My Garden

I spent a good chunk of time in the garden on Sunday. I had flowers to pot up for the front steps, and plants gotten at the garden club sale to put in the ground. There was a bleeding heart that was eating a corner of the perennial bed, a bleeding heart so big it had collapsed of its own sheer exuberance (abetted by a heavy rain). Even though it was still kind of in full bloom, I heartlessly dug it up and divided it in half. Here's hoping it survives. I impaled myself trying to prune the flowering quince, getting intractable thorns stuck in both hands. By the time I was done, I was filthy and sore, and oh so very pleased with myself.

It's impossible for me to work in the garden without thinking of my mother. Hers was her joy. A chore, to be sure, but a joy. She was ever shuffling hosta; I do the same. Her plants are scattered through my yard - hosta, astilbe, sedum - and solomon's seal running up along the front steps.



The sign was hers, bought in France, brought home and mounted on a bit of plywood. It faded terribly, its white letters all chalked off a few years after she got it. But she loved it so, and so painstakingly repainted all the little letters. You can't tell from a distance, but up close? It bears her brushmarks. And I think that's a bit of her standard issue hosta in the lower right hand corner.



It amuses me no end to have her sign living in my own garden. Little children are particularly perplexed, because (as yet) none of them speak French. If you come visit, you're not allowed pick the mushrooms (we've only toadstools), but I might send you home with a piece of hosta.

Yes.

Poetry for mother's day? Written by your very own child?

Yes, I said, yes.

(Though, upon reflection, I hope she's not comparing me to the one of our cats whose name is Rainbow...)

Banking Shenanigans

About six weeks ago, we decided it was time to refinance the mortgage. We’re 8 years into a 30 year loan, and current interest rates are more than two points less than we’ve been paying. Refinancing is going to knock about 15% off of the monthly payment, and two plus years off the remainder of the loan. I’ve been going back and forth with the loan officer, coming up with odd little bits of information and various bank statements. Sometimes it’s seemed like dealing with Mo, Larry and Curly – the process of trying to get my employment verification to the person who asked for it took a week of attempted emails and aborted faxes before I just hand-delivered it to the guy at the branch. [True story: when we got our mortgage 8 years ago, the bank never even tried to verify either my employment or my husband’s.]

The other day, the loan officer told me they needed just two more things – yet another bank statement, and a letter from me about my self-employment income. Why yes, you noticed my schedule C, I do have a tiny amount of self-employment income – I get three nickels for running ads on my blog, once in a while I do a sponsored post, and I do a teeny bit of social media work for a local newspaper. I sent the bank the following letter:

In the past few years, as reflected on our tax returns for 2009-2010-2011, I have had a small amount of free-lance income – from sponsored posts and ads on my blog, as well as a smattering of consulting work. I expect to continue to receive such income, but I do not expect it to rise beyond its current level of just about immaterial.

This morning Times revealed that Chase – our bank, as it happens – lost two BILLION dollars trading. And they want me to explain my bubkis free-lancing? Methinks they’re barking up the wrong damned tree.

Wordless Wednesday: Zip Art

[Flaming Cactus at Astor Place, NYC]

Get Swabbed!

A friend - an acquaintance really - has a son with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a relapse, actually. So I did the only rational thing that I could think to do, and signed up as a marrow donor.

It was incredibly easy - you fill out the forms on-line, they send you a kit, you swab the inside of your cheeks, and mail the swabs back to them. If I'm a match, they'll either collect peripheral blood stem cells via a blood donation, or pull marrow out of the pelvic bone.

If they call me because I'm a match, I'll tell you all about it.

You too can register - go to getswabbed.org. It won't cost you anything, and you don't even need to leave your house.

Also, lest we forget, FUCK CANCER.

50% of the Fifty

I kind of hate all those Facebook plug-ins and apps and what have you. I hardly ever use Spotify because I don’t like broadcasting what I’ve been listening to. I block all sorts of other things. But some tinch of OCD in me made me want to count up which of the 50 states I’ve actually been to – just to satisfy my own curiosity. It turns out that I’ve been to twenty-five states, as long as you count flying in for lunch, or changing planes. It’s not like I’ve slept in all 25.

• California
• Connecticut (I lived in New Haven as a toddler.)
• Delaware
• Florida (We spent a long weekend in a swank hotel in Palm Beach. It was lovely, and kind of like visiting a foreign country. Also, see Georgia.)
• Georgia (I went to a wedding in Albany, GA a long time ago. We flew People Express to Jacksonville, FL and drove from there.)
• Illinois (BlogHer was in Chicago a few years ago. Also, I've changed planes at O'Hare. Hasn’t everyone?)
• Maine (Their license plates say Vacationland for a reason.)
• Maryland
• Massachusetts (Four years of college.)
• Minnesota (I've changed planes in Minneapolis. That doesn't really count, right? Too bad, Minnesota makes the list.)
• Nevada (We spent the night in Reno, and dropped one quarter in one slot machine on the way out of town.)
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico (My brother lived in Albuquerque for a while, in an adobe house.)
• New York
• North Carolina (I lived in North Carolina when I was a baby, and my father was stationed at Camp Lejeune.)
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Texas (Austin. I've been to Austin. Also to Lockhart, for barbecue at Kreuz's. And to the Salt Lick. And to Güero's. It's all about the food.)
• Vermont
• Virginia (Another place lived, as a baby, also while my father was in the Marine Corps.)
• Washington
• West Virginia (We drove through the very end of West Virginia on the way home from Washington DC in February. It wasn't strictly necessary, but it was sort of amusing.)
• Wyoming (I had lunch in Jackson once. If you carefully review the other states I've been to, you'll note that I've been to none of the states that border Wyoming. Yes, we flew there. And back. For lunch. Insanity. I can't remember what we ate.)

Here’s the other half of the country:

Alabama • Alaska • Arizona • Arkansas • Colorado • Hawaii • Idaho • Indiana • Iowa • Kansas • Kentucky • Louisiana • Michigan • Mississippi • Missouri • Montana • Nebraska • North Dakota • Ohio • Oklahoma • South Carolina • South Dakota • Tennessee • Utah • Wisconsin

If we drive across the country one day, we could cross a bunch off the list.

Where have you been?

Sick Blue Water

Medical non-fiction fascinates me. I couldn't put down The Emperor of All Maladies. I loved The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I have a whole shelf of books exploring the human body from a sort of poetic anatomical point of view. So that I've read two different illness-oriented autobiographies in the past couple of months isn't too surprising.

The first was a book called [sic], by one Joshua Cody, which was very well reviewed in the Times, both in the daily paper, and in the Sunday book review. It so irritated me that I scribbled a list of my reactions, and wrote a long blog post about how horrible it was and how awful a person the insufferable, pompous author must be.

And then Blogger ate my post. Gone. Completely gone. Normally the fact of having written the post would have exorcised the irritant demon, but not in this case; I wanted the goddam thing PUBLISHED. I wanted my irritation known to the world. Happily, my list was still in the book:

horrified fascination • emperor's new clothes • brittle

self-absorbed • facile • erudite • glittering

monomaniacal • stream of consciousness

hallucinogenic • digressive • infuriating • chronicle of madness

Granted, the guy is smart. He can write. He tosses off the phrase "spindly tessellations" and you shiver with its perfection. But he sounds like a horse's ass, and he definitely doesn't sound like someone you want to hang out with.  Oddly enough, he addresses just that issue:

And I wouldn't like it if someone read my book and said, I admire him as a writer, but I would have no wish to meet someone who wrote things like that, or to be friends with someone who would write things like that. When I was writing this, I gave a draft of part of this book to a friend in publishing, and she said she thought the writing was good but warned me that if it's published "you won't be able to have regular relationships anymore." What the hell did she mean by that? Maybe the stuff about girls? And then--as a matter of fact--she never talked to me again.

I think part of my horrified fascination with Cody and his book - and why I even finished the book in the first place - was that he's a composer, he has a graduate degree from Columbia, he lives in New York. I went to Columbia, I have a graduate degree from their music department. And I cannot in my head reconcile this guy with the composers and musicologists who I know, who I knew at Columbia, who live and work in New York. He just doesn't fit. He doesn't make any sense. The graduate students at Columbia are living hand to mouth in roach-infested student housing; they aren't drinking martinis in bars in the East 20s and screwing strippers.

Skip [sic]. I read it so you don't have to.

On the other hand, you may well want to read Blue Water White Water. [Here - here's the beginning.] It's a mesmerizingly fast read about a guy with Guillain–Barré syndrome - paralyzed in the hospital, trapped in his own body and only able to communicate by flicking his eyeballs from side to side. Somehow, he captures the vicissitudes of his ordeal with a sharp, unsentimental, first person eye - horrible nurses, wonderful caretakers, insane pieces of medical equipment, months of boredom, rage, nostalgic memories. The book is breathtaking, the kind of book you read in one gulp. Even though you know the ending, you keep turning the pages. Here, here's another sample, from towards the end:

Read it. And hope that you never end up there.