Flotsam: November 2008 Archives

I liked this idea, and when I went to do it myself, found something equally funny. Claudia's randomly chosen pic was of sheep, which figures. My randomly chosen pic was of this darling girl and her equally darling bicycle. Which also figures.

I guess whoever we are, we leave a trail of imprints from our obsessions wherever we go, like breadcrumbs to find our way back to ourselves if we should get lost.

That's the second time in a week that I've used that phrase or something close to it - I think I must be feeling a little lost, wondering where my inner lounge chair is. It's a bit fluttery in here of late. Not sure what to do about that, other than just to hold on and wait it out.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day here, and then turned far colder than I'd expected. All I really wanted, at the end of it, was a hot shower, with this. I'm sure a visitor (not that I have any) would find it odd that I have three different soaps "going" at once, but I'm a fickle girl that way. I want what I want when I want it. And so, at least in the realm of soap, I give it to myself.

Would that other areas of life were as simple.

So I made the gingerbread of Mordor. And it was duly admired and gobbled, and it sent out its mysterious power unto all those who came into contact with it. That being that you may be full to the brim already, even with much gingerbreadness, and yet, lo the gingerbread will still call to you and make you sup again of its deep brandy-laced goodness.

Lordy.

The other Thanksgivingy treats were also thus duly consumed - yea, overconsumed.

And then came I once more onto my bicyclette, and we did (he and me) (he being the bicyclette) make our way homewards unto our own hood, there to take a shower and sit dully upon the couch, thinking upon the many faux pas we may have committed while imbibing too much wine and wishing for things we cannot have.

Okay, the bike probably didn't make any gaffes whatsoever. But I, well, that is another story.

Enh. So what. Big deal.

The thing about holidays, you see, is that there's all this pressure to feel a prescribed way on a given day. Lovey-dovey on Valentine's Day, saintly on Xmas, spooky-playful on Halloween, gracious to our moms on mother's day, and thankful on thanksgiving.

And yet, I often don't feel that way on that day. I might feel that way on a completely other day - I'm sure on Arbor Day I felt perfectly thankful, but today I am nursing a big ol' grudge against fate, and I am sour. And then to have to hide that, channel it into some semblance of cheer laced with dark humor, well, it doesn't always work.

I didn't even know that was what I was doing until after the coffee took effect. Again, oh well. This is one of those days when I can't cobble together an articulate or entertaining post, and I think that whether there's some deeper meaning to all this whirlwind or not, I simply don't care to iron it out into neat little rows.

All I know is this: I'm very, very thirsty for some reason.

I'd wanted to post this last night but my ftp client was misbehaving, which sounds rather like I'm a dominatrix and had an unruly man show up for a little f+t=p.

You fill in the blanks.

Anyway, what I did instead of that last night was make soup. Soup is one of those elemental things that brings me back to myself when I am feeling far away. In this case, the personal drift was caused by not being able to eat the things I normally eat, by a week of having to live like some kind of 1950s bourgeois teenager being fed peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread by his beaproned mother.

Yuck.

So I gathered the entire contents of the vegetable drawer - a single giant rutabaga (seriously, it had to be eight inches tall), a passel of white baby turnips, three sturdy carrots, a handful of yellow fingerlings (potatoes), two celery roots, and a small beautiful bunch of kale - and made them into white bean soup.

While I was at it, I made stock from the ends and peels for next time.

The whole pot of soup is now in the fridge, a much-larger quantity than I have tupperware for, and probably more than I can eat in a week, even if I have it for both lunch and dinner. But damn, I needed to do that. I also need to bake some bread, a thing which I've not yet done in this apartment, though I've lived here for a few years.

But I have this friend with a bread fetish, and...he keeps nudging me about it. You should have seen the look on his face when he found out that I can bake bread. It was as if I'd told him I know how to shape the very clouds of the sky with my bare hands. (Well, I can do that, too, but it's a story for another time.)

Stayed up way too late last night, obsessing.

Again, you fill in the blanks. I tell ya, the blog, it writes itself some days.

Today as I was packing up my bike bag, I made sure that pocketcam was stowed in there, safe in its little pink pouch, so that I could take some cityscapes for the blog.

But that was before I realized how finger-numbingly cold it was out.

It's the kind of cold that catches you unawares, the kind where you think you have enough clothes on, only to realize, after the frail sun goes down (at about 4 pm), that there aren't enough clothes in the universe to keep your extremities from turning into ten tiny blocks of ice, and - um - ten other tiny blocks of ice.

So instead I took lap-pictures. Here's the view from my lap, five minutes ago (now the view from my lap would just be a shot of this here computer screen, with this very post on it, like that room full of mirrors stretching endlessly and self-referentially onward).

Exhibit A: I wanted applesauce. It was too late (and too cold) to go buy some, but I had two oldish apples kicking around the fruit bowl, so I made some.

Exhibit B: Sleeping cat. Big surprise, I know. But hey, it appears to be her job. That and a lot of licking herself (and my head after a shower - ewwwww), and a certain amount of decorating the apt with cat-hair.

Exhibit C: Cowl-on-needles. Why? Because I need something I can yank over the bottom half of my face on days like these, and the balaclava I cast on for last night is gonna take too long. So this might be called The Interim Cowl. I made it in this pretty pretty hand-dyed lilac yarn that I bought at last year's Rhinebeck, to match the little earflap cap I'd already made out of it. Which he who shall not be named has dubbed the Little Blue Riding Hood. (After which I promptly removed it, since I hated that moniker) (But it was not as cold that day) (And I still haven't seen him - it's officially been a fortnight, if I am remembering the vague definition of that term correctly)

Anyway. I've got so little to report that it hardly seems worth mentioning. Clearly, I've fallen off the daily posting bandwagon, due firstly to illness and then to exhaustion and persistent malaise following illness.

I coulda beena contenda. Maybe.

I guess I just get tired of hearing myself talk about nothing, too.

I mean, I'm knitting (mostly gifts for fellow cyclists, since everybody's cold). I'm still on a bland awful American-type diet. White bread, for pete's sake. Chicken soup. And I hate eating chicken. I hadn't eaten a piece of animal flesh in maybe eight months, but I was starting to get faint from lack of protein, and my stomach will not allow me to ingest any of my normal sources of it yet.

Where are my vegetables, my glorious fruits? I looked at a bottle of guava juice yesterday and nearly cried. Okay, that's an exaggeration; it was more like a wistful sigh, but still. It was sad.

No guava. No Boy. Sigh.

Boywich is here. He likes his new gloves.

I'd been knitting them in secret because he reads the blog. They're simple stockinette fingerless mittens done in Jitterbug Toscana. Nice colors.

On me, of course, they reached almost all the way to the fingertips.

I'm exhausted for some reason; half asleep, even. Spent most of the day doing errands and laundry and stuff. Then we went into town, and he met a few of my cycling fiends - I mean friends - I mean fiends.

Kitwich has been very happy - it took her a few hours to remember who he was, but I fancy she's especially content at the moment because all the people she knows well are here.

I'd really like to tell you some kind of scintillating story, but it's mostly hangin' out here right now. Boywich may have had the idea that it'd be all dance parties in the big city, but I suddenly realize that I live a pretty quiet life most days. And that I'm pretty okay with that most days.

PS. He just read this and said, "I knew it wouldn't be all dance parties. I just came to hang out."

This poor man walked into the bike shop this evening to ask about the "bike theft situation" in NYC, since he was recently arrived from London and was concerned about it. And I'm afraid I laughed.

But not so much at his question as at his accent. And not the way that sounds - all cruel and middle-schoolish. I laughed because the last time I'd heard those vowels and inflections and that particular lilt, it had been coming out of the mouth of the man I was sleeping with at the time, and it was saying very specific, very sexual things to me.

And I'd had trouble keeping a straight face then. I mean, it was sexy, too. It was just weird, the way he sounded as if he were asking me if I'd like more sugar in my tea, when what he was actually asking me was, shall we say, rather different.

I couldn't decide whether to be turned on or fall off the bed laughing. In the end, I think I held my breath to keep a straight face, and said something clever like, "Yes, 'more sugar' would be lovely."

Tonight, though, the whole scene came flooding back to me and I burst out laughing.

The Brit in the shop tonight (who looked nothing like the other Brit) must have thought I was ridiculing him, or perhaps that all NYC girls are insane, or something equally unfortunate.

It didn't even occur to me to try to explain - all I could do was remove myself from the situation. So I stumbled out of the shop, calling goodbye over my shoulder. And proceeded to laugh hysterically for about the next seven miles.

Later, watching a science show (geek!) on TV, I learned that Russian space missions used to be (or still are) equipped with a sawed-off shotgun. Just in case. I had this image of a Russian mission control director deciding what type of firearm to put aboard, and thinking, "Hmmn. We can just use this." It seemed so typically Russian, and hilarious.

It wasn't just the fact that they'd equip people going to live in cramped quarters in space for months or years at a time (some of these missions were for space stations) with firearms, but also the choice of firearm that struck me as funny.

Sawed-off shotgun, in my mind, is the weapon of choice for women with abusive husbands, farmers defending their land, characters in blues songs, and her.

I don't know if such cultural differences make any real difference, if you follow my meaning. I sometimes feel that I have more in common with or understand better people whose lives have gone extremely differently than mine. I wonder if there are deeper ingredients that are similar - not just in who we are as people, but in the experiences themselves. There's something, for example, in my own experience that I think translates into being at war in someone else's experience. I'm not sure of the exact ingredient, but I can feel it.

Watching Band of Brothers, for example, makes me feel weirdly at home in some way.

And there's also the fact that humans are human everywhere, but we find different ways of dealing with the basic realities of life: food, shelter, interaction, conflict, love.
I treasure the parallels, but the differences are icing on the cake, somehow. Piquant.

"I don't speak Fahrenheit," he said to me the other day. Yeah, and even though I agree that the metric system is a far superior method, I look at those Celsius temps and can't make them make sense to myself. On the other hand, I swear I am learning Spanish by osmosis.

Well yes, I did have a nice day yesterday, thank you very much. It was not without its degree of emotional fraughtness, especially during the time when I found myself unexpectedly in crush-boy's company, but that went rather well, too. I don't think it was my imagination that he looked at me starry-eyed a few times.

Which just goes to show that these silly people have a point: one does feel better about oneself when dressed well.

Boywich arrives tomorrow, so I finally called my super about the electricity (or lack thereof) in the bathroom, after some gentle chiding by Special J over margaritas (her) and sangria (me). We had a lovely, lovely time together, by the way, getting our faces scrubbed and smoothed and lavender-oiled, and then having our feet made pretty. Sigh. Wish I could do that more often; there's nothing like having someone massage your arms and hands with lavender oil. Though I did wish I'd been able to book the woman who did it last time; I wanted to marry her by the end of it. (You think I'm joking, I know, but a facial involves a chest massage, too, and really, I lay there thinking, "Maybe I should be dating women." But no, it's just her.)

(Okay, I'll shut up now before this deteriorates into the kind of thing that sends the Google web crawlers into apoplexy)

Where was I? Oh yes, boys.

Damn his pretty, pretty eyes. Not really, I love those eyes.

Anyway, it's all as relatively copacetic as it could be, and now I can entertain myself with lurid fantasies involving him falling madly, desperately in love with me (because I am so wonderful, no?) and - well, we won't go into what happens next.

Let's just say that it's a good thing I have a sweet cat (for the snuggling) and a lot of these (for the other).

And two bikes, for the working off of all that extra energy, er, tension, er, you know what I mean. Ooomph.

Okay, full disclosure: I could fall in love with this guy at the drop of a hat (I can hear them all falling off the hatpegs on the bedroom wall, now - 23 of them), and it will be interesting to see what happens. It may well just dissipate - other crushes of mine certainly have. Or it may not.

And now, to bike. Perchance to pick up some more Dr. Bronner's and such, so that even if Boywich has to shower by candlelight, at least he can be immersed in lavender while doing so. We love Boywich.

PS. The toes, by the way, are fairy-blue.

Feeling unaccountably better this morning (and yes, it is actually morning; I know, you're aghast), because I am young and strong and beautiful - well, pick two.

Or perhaps because the sky looks like this today.

And my only plans are to cycle into my bike shop, where the owner has brought me a present (is it a hot boy?), and then to go to a spa with Special J, where we will have our faces and feet made very beautiful.

What color shall I have put on my toes, I wonder?

The funny thing is, when I was unscrewing a lightbulb to change it, and the whole wall-mounted unit thing shorted out with that curious small explosion noise, taking the wall outlets out with it, I didn't think I'd find myself enjoying having to shower by candlelight.

You just never know, I guess.

I'll call the super tomorrow, I suppose - particularly since I'll have company staying with me later in this week (who may or may not appreciate that "living in the dark ages" look), but for now it's kind of preindustrial in the bathroom at night - apart from those most marvelous inventions: hot and cold running water and a flush toilet (and I pray those keep working) - and there's something romantic about it.

I have to light the candles every evening, and I get to see myself lit from below, in that soft, warm, almost rosy light. Makes me feel quieter, somehow.

Okay, this daily posting shit really bites.

Apparently there was a false alarm in the "getting everything you asked for" department. Whatever. Much, much too tired to examine, parse, slice and dice, fold, spindle, mutilate, index, brief, or debrief it for you.

Seriously. Grand total of 8 hours' sleep in last 3 days = Lizbon must become horizontal.

Miracle I didn't get killed on way home. Still not sure how I managed to ride in that state, much less ride so frickin' fast. Maybe bike has built-in homing device installed in headset. That's why Chris King costs more...

Does everyone go through this? Each season there is a color or small group of colors that kind of sets you afire, that makes you feel just right somehow, so that you want to wear nothing but.

It's not quite like having a favorite color, because the palette rotates quite a lot. For example, I tend to wear groups of colors seasonally - bright, hot colors in summer and cool darker ones in winter. But every so often a season will come in which there's one color that just sticks in my mind.

This fall it's deep dove grey. Stainless steel, Old Navy is calling it. At American Apparel, it's Asphalt. I could wear it every single day. Unfortunately I don't own enough of it to wear it every single day, so I am alternating it with plum and black and a particular shade of blue.

I'm enjoying those, too, but if I had to pick one, there'd be no contest.

It's all I want to knit, it's all I want to put on in the morning. In yarn form, one can have the variations spun right in, so that you knit yourself a garment with your whole season's palette.

I've been making myself knit some other colors, primarily as gifts for other people, but I feel like I'm chomping at some sort of bit to get at that Tortuga you see in the top edge of the photo. Grrrrrrrreeeeyyyyyy.

Okay, I'm doin' it. I'm not sure why. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I have a feeling I'll get something out of it, if nothing other than the daily exercise of my literary muscles.

Though I suppose to really flex the lits, I ought to post fiction. If I run out of true tales to tell, it may come to that: 30 Tall Tales From A Short Person.

In the shop today, as I wheeled out my bike, another patron looked at it and said, "Hunh. I didn't think you were that small." Snort.

Anyway, I really am rather nervous about how I shall fill up a month's worth of posts. I expect at some point I will segue into the fantastical, as I am wont to do when entertaining myself in my own head.

For example, it occurs to me that if I were a superhero, my mutant power would be to make men forget they have girlfriends and/or wives. And as amusing as that may sound, it would not be my first choice of superpowers.

I should much prefer to be able to fly, for example - the better to swoop over the rooftops in the grey dawn light.

Time-traveling might be entertaining, in a Connecticut-Yankee sort of way. As would being able to wave a magic wand and degravitize certain objects.

During the mad pre-holiday rush, I might choose to be able to speed-knit - though I suppose that's not so much a mutant power as simply knowing how to knit Continental.

Aw, I'm just filibustering. The truth is, what's on my mind lately mostly has to do with being a bit lonely in a very specific way. I had a delightful day with friends today, for instance, and yet when I got home I still felt kind of lost. I've begun to feel, quite recently, that I may have passed over the border between wishing vaguely for a boy to play with and actually being ready to cope with having a boy to play with.

Believe me, there is a distinction. We shall see. So far, the mutant power does not extend to luring fabulous boys out of the woodwork. Okay, not to luring fabulous single boys out of the woodwork.