Adventures in the Pointless Forest

Scenes from a table.

The table did come! For the two or three of you who haven't already seen it, here is the photographic evidence:

I especially like this corner.

It is a very pleasing table and I am glad to have it. And now that we have a table, it can be the setting for rewarding interactions like this one.

JANE: Muk! Muuk? Muk.

ME: More milk, please?

JANE: Yeah.

ME: Can you say "milk, please"?

JANE: Yeah.

ME: "Milk, please?"

JANE: Yeah.

ME: "Milk, please."

JANE (encouraging): Yeah!

ME (pouring milk): Well, I'm glad we had this little conversation.

fin

Detritus

A few things rendered quickly quickly, in hope that discharging them will clear the way for something a little more coherent, extended, and even amusing:

(a) Do you know what makes a great icebreaker when you are visiting a friend of a friend you have never met before? Arriving at their doorstep with a child covered in carsickness vomit. Truly! Suddenly everyone has a shared project with genuine, smalltalk-bypassing urgency but no actual danger or illness. Quick! Towels, water, an amusingly giant garment to serve as a change of clothes! By the time it's all sorted out no one is a stranger and everyone is awake, freshly scrubbed, and filled with the warm glow of modest accomplishment.

(b) Halloween came and went, and Jane was a very fine small Batman, or Batma'am if you prefer.

Please admire the authentic Adam West physique.

(c) Jane has switched to answering almost all questions with "yah!" This is just as uninformative as her previous approach, but much more gratifying in producing the illusion of happy, agreeable conversation.

(d) We finally repotted those poor trees. We also got them some food to replenish their severely depleted nutrients, which seems most likely to have been the immediate cause of their less than perfect health. (Thrilling? Yes! Tune in next week to watch them grow in real time, followed by our top-rated As the Paint Dries.)

(e) Is it possible? Could it be true that our long anticipated, long awaited dining room table—ordered at the beginning of August—will be delivered tomorrow? So we are told. I'll keep you posted.

(f) We were in danger of running out of exciting things to keep us occupied, with the imminent resolution of both the Sickly Tree Project and the Interminable Table Wait, but fortunately we all seem to be coming down with icky sticky colds, so that's all right. 

I could post something new, I suppose.

What, hello, hello, what?

My colleague across the hall likes to ask me if I have "anything new or interesting" to report. The answer is always, always no. No, there is nothing new and certainly nothing interesting. No.

It is becoming a sort of principle on which my entire life is predicated, this complete lack of novelty and interest. That is perhaps why I have not said anything here for two weeks, and that was a dream about tooth spiders.

But, then, who am I to presume that you would rather read about things that are interesting or new? Maybe you prefer the old and the dull. Maybe you have been thinking, "Oh, everyone is always telling me about interesting new things! That sort of stuff is so predictable and easy to find. What I would really like, and no one ever offers me, is some good, stale tedium."

If so, join me, won't you, over a nice cup of the boring detritus of my unglamorous life?

The gardener (who is employed by our landlord and usually comes and goes on his own mysterious schedule, leaving things attractive and doused in toxic chemicals) rang the bell the other day to tell me that one of my trees was dying. I do not think it is dying, I think it is manifesting its deciduous nature, about which I was warned by the nursery when I bought it.

But the gardener assures me that it is dying, and that the problem is its pot. It is currently sitting inside a nice wooden planter, not yet freed from the pot in which it was purchased. The pot in question is one of those weird paperish pots that you can supposedly pop right into a hole in the dirt and let disintegrate. The gardener tells me that the tree is dying—and surely he would know if a tree was dying? better than I would, right?—because the pot does not drain. But when I water the tree, the pot manifestly does drain. And how could a pot whose problem is (also?) probably that it is turning to dirt itself pretty quickly also be killing the tree inside it by not draining? 

In any case, this weekend I have to go find a tree-sized plastic pot that will please him. "These pots," he says, indicating the other, non-deciduous trees, are fine. "Get one like that." I don't know what he will say when the tree continues to turn yellow and drop all its leaves after I put it in a shitty plastic pot. Or we could get some dirt, which will be heavy, and plant the thing right in the planter, after which it will still die, or "die." Either way. 

A SHORT LIST OF THINGS JANE HAS BEEN SAYING ALL THE TIME, WITH THE MANIFEST, AND MANIFESTLY MISTAKEN, IMPRESSION THAT THEY WILL BE UNDERSTOOD

• Ducky (nb: whatever this means, it is definitely not "ducky")
• My key (nb: whatever this means, it is definitely not "my key" or "Mikey")
• Babetz

"Babetz" is actually the least mysterious of these, oddly enough, because she always says it at the table, and has recently occasionally been pronouncing it a little more like "mawetz." Ah. Babetz = more water. Of course. That should help with the ducky and the keys.

She also answers all questions "no." Whether they are phrased in a yes/no format is immaterial. It is a sort of gentle, chiding "no," a touch condescending. "Noooooo," you silly person, no.

Q. Do you want more beans?
A. [reaching for more] Noooo.

Q. What do you mean when you say "ducky"? Ducky?
A. No, no. Ducky! Ducky! Ducky ducky ducky.

Q. What do you think of that toast, Jane?
A. Noooo. No.

In conclusion, obviously very advanced. 

Take that, Algonquin Round Table.

HIM: All fire, or just the one?

ME: I hope just the one. We need fire! It burns things. In a good way.

HIM: Do you think the fire was breaking into the home, and the home destroyed it in an act of self defense? Or was it just some innocent little fire minding its own business when... pow!

ME: It was probably a revenge killing scenario.

HIM: "Hey! I'm just a campfire! I never did anything to you!"

ME: "I've seen what your kind does to houses."

HIM: "Not me! I never hurt anybody! I just toast marshmallows in peace!"

ME: "Oh please. You're all alike."

HIM: Racist!

ME: "You're not trustworthy. You can't be trusted." (confidentially) "That's what 'not trustworthy' means."

HIM: Do you think the campfire taunted the house about not being so trustworthy itself, what with its mortgage being underwater because of the real estate downturn? 

ME: I hope not. That would really be playing with fire.

HIM: YYEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH!

 

Status report

Tired. We are tired. 

Jane has been transformed into a fountain of snot, and though she is being pretty good natured about it, she is still not quite the very pinnacle of well rested good humor, and neither am I. Yet for some reason I decided today would be the right day to clean the front porch, which had gone happily uncleaned since before we moved in.

I should have taken pictures before I started, because it was comically encrusted with

• mysterious black clinging dirt on every surface
• drifts of leaves and twigs and other kinds of more silty dusty dirt
• cobwebs EVERYWHERE 
• really, everywhere

These were dense, creepy, luxuriant cobwebs. They would be the envy of any Halloween propmaster. They covered every window corner, every intersection of planes. They stretched from the back of each chair leg to the floor, and across each gap in the railing.

Some were fairly small and just held more of the black clinging dirt. Others were larger and bedecked with gnats and dried leaves. The biggest one, right by the front door, was about the size and shape of a substantial colander, and full of dead moths.

Oh, look, I missed a corner:

Just multiply that times EVERYWHERE and you get the idea.

Anyway, having strategically waited until it was well into the hottest part of the day, not to mention, of course, the twelve months of cobweb ripening that I'd waited before that, I made my move.

I swept and brushed and swabbed and whacked and toiled and missed that one corner while Jane stood on the other side of the screen door, rattling it and gushing snot, suggesting "Out! Out! Out!" alternating with an occasional "Cheese?" And now the porch is merely ramshackle and dusty (except for that corner) rather than shameful and haunted.

And I am sweaty and stinky and tired and pleased. Mediocrity hooray!

You want me to title these things?

Steve is out of town, visiting the nice people who pay him to go tippy-tap at his computer all day. I thought for sure that today would be abysmal as a result, but in fact I was so resigned to that certainty that it was entirely lovely instead. Tomorrow we'll just have to try harder. 

As predicted, the charm of eating off the floor wore off rapidly in the face of rampaging, food-fisted baby. So for the moment we are dining at an end table, because we have one.

The whole arrangement is at about knee height, and Jane is very pleased to put her feet on the table at any moment when she is not actively engaged in eating.

Full sized plates are not possible, as you see. At larger meals we pull up a couple of footstools to hold the serving dishes. All is whisked away between times to allow us to appreciate the calm blue ocean of space, and also so there can be an end table where one is expected.

Note to prospective dinner guests: a somewhat more humane camping table will be arriving soon.

In the meantime, Jane has composed an interpretive dance to convey the poignancy and humor of her odd-tabled state.

A giant piece of nothing.

Hello, Sunday evening Internet. We have just been helping a friend move in -- well, Steve has been doing that, while I have been helping Jane walk up and down and up and down and up and down the stairs, and making something not too complicated to eat. Each according to his abilities.

While we were at it, we seized the opportunity to foist off our dining room table and a sofa, both of which I have been dying to get out of the house so that we might have room for (among other things) a larger, more rectangular table. Then we might have more than one person over at once without creating the dinner-time equivalent of a clown car, as we did for the very occasion of the table's last night in our house.

We do not yet have this larger table, of course (where would we have put it?) so suddenly we have a giant piece of nothing instead. It's quite nice, this bare expanse, skirted by our tableless chairs like so many party guests reluctant to go out on the dance floor. So broad and unblemished by furniture, so easy to keep clean! I am charmed.

I may be less charmed when it takes our new table weeks to arrive and there is nowhere to put things and we have eaten dozens of picnics in our own home and my in-laws arrive for their long-since-scheduled visit and have to eat off the coffee table. Maybe by then one of the more adventuresome chairs will have approached another chair and asked it if it wants to do the electric slide.

Recent status

Con: Cat pissing on things, leading us to become ever more baroque in our habits in order to keep him and tempting piss-spots separated at the times of day when extracurricular pissing tends to occur. Rapidly decreasing likelihood that I will be able to keep up the pretense of a viable academic career for the duration. Concomitant anxiety about ability to be happily self sufficient, or indeed self sufficient at all. The need to go on performing onerous ceremonial duties despite aforementioned diminishing prospect of payoff. Bright red remains of pimple on neck, of all places. Laundry backlog. 

Pro: The usual embarrassing and obvious assortment of familial blessings. Also the weather is absurdly gorgeous. The first day of classes, which I had (as always) been dreading, was (as always) fun and stimulating, and indeed even more than usual. I am reading The Dud Avocado, which is as entertaining as advertised. 

Before that I was reading Joan Aiken's insane children's book Black Hearts at Battersea, the first sequel to The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. (I am delighted to learn, via Wikipedia, that Joan Aiken had a brother and a sister, named John and Jane. Oh, Conrad Aiken, you card. "If only there had been a Jean and a June," Steve said. Greedy.) It has two best things:

First, the wonderfully offhand way that Sophie explains her unconventional upbringing.

"Who looked after you before that, then, child?"

"An otter in the forest," Sophie explained. "I can still recall how difficult it was to learn human language, and how strange it seemed to eat anything but fish."

Second, the depiction of the Duke of Battersea's apparently IMMENSE hot air balloon, "capable of carrying at least eight persons and their luggage for hundreds of miles." It carries not only our heroes, but also their dominoes, playing cards, spilikins, billiard balls, and telescopes, with room left over for Sophie to sew topazes onto a large velvet dress. It sounds like a highly comfortable way to travel:

In fact, the wicker, galleon-shaped car, with its high-decked ends and low waist, was excellently adapted to their needs. Dr Field and the Duke played chess at the forecastle end, Simon steered on the poop, directing the balloon's progress, when necessary, by means of a pair of dangling ropes, while Sophie with her dressmaking and the Duchess with her Patience occupied the central portion. 

Even better, at night everyone is tucked well up under piles of furs and sheepskin rugs, with a charcoal brazier to ensure that any last trace of chill is chased away. 

By midnight, generally, every creature in our house is gathered together into one small bedroom. Adults in the bed, cat curled up somewhere on top, baby in her infant cot-tent on the floor nearby. Because the house is poorly insulated and entirely unheated, the door is closed to give the gently glowing space heater in the corner a manageable amount of space to heat.

I like to imagine as I drift off that we are in some extra snug yet adventuresome and unlikely location like the Duke's balloon. Sometimes it is a specially eiderdown-laden version of the Kon Tiki. Sometimes it is a Victorian train car, or a biodome on the moon, or a Swiss Family Robinson treehouse.

TONIGHT, however, we are in a large fancy room at a large fancy hotel, so that I can attend Large Academic Conference. (All the small and unfancy rooms were sold out before I got around to making reservations.) There is a king-size bed! There are free cookies from the Executive Lounge! A loveseat! A six-foot-tall houseplant! There is even a corner, so that the baby can sleep around it from us.

And, god be praised, there is a real, true, functional BATHTUB. Not even the Duke of Battersea's balloon can compete with that. I can hardly believe my luck.

Getting settled.

(1) We have a refrigerator! Our long national nightmare is finally at an end. You may not have known we were having a long national nightmare, but we were. Sorry about that, America. You can start feeling better now.

(2) Because (a) we could not until now keep milk cold, and (b) the water here is so very hard that we have been afraid to make coffee until we get a Brita filter, because the machine is likely to crust over with scale after just one use, we we have gone from zero to (ostensibly) beloved regulars at TWO local coffee vendors in truly record time. Possibly the super-friendly and extroverted local culture is also to blame. We are all now on a first-name basis, a state of affairs that I find both charming and disconcerting.

In fact, the whole week and a half has been a complete social whirl. We went out to dinner with local friends and their baby, and had the fun of letting the babies flap their little hands at one another "just like a hobo fight!" as Steve said. We got invited to a lovely potluck full of nice academics who tell good funny stories, and saw them again at happy hour. A friend visiting his parents in LA drove up for the day and we all happily talked our heads off. Then we lost our car after dinner and walked around and around and around and AROUND in circles before finding it, making our friend and his friend horribly late for their drive back to LA. Oops. Sorry, friends. And now another friend is arriving this afternoon. Apparently we too are extroverts, now, whether we mean to be or not.

(3) Boxes. Boxes boxes boxes. Mess. Boxes. Paper! Boxes.

This is sadly completely unillustrative, because I haven't taken pictures of any of the really most chaotic vistas, like for example the one I am looking at right now. You'll just have to use your imagination. This week our trash and recycling pickup should be turned back on, so that should help matters a bit. (Sigh.) (Update: they told us to put the old recycling containers out to be replaced with new ones, because I guess the serial numbers on the side are how they can tell whether you've paid your trash bill. They did not replace them. Better luck next week?)

In other news, you'll be happy to know that hair is still with us. The flow has abated slightly, perhaps, but it is still a force to be reckoned with. I have spent an absurd amount of money on a vacuum cleaner, however, in the hopes that it will solve my two primary objections to vacuums I have known in the past. To wit: they are no match for hair, and I loathe using them, so they sit in the corner gathering dust anyhow, rather than hoovering it up. It remains to be seen whether this gambit will succeed.

It's nice, though, that my hairs have teamed up to make the new place feel like home. It's the little things, you know, that make all the difference. 

Habitation.

Last week Steve flew across the country, where he labored nobly and alone to the dispiriting tune of 

Oh, what a lovely house! Oh, it's already rented. Oh, what a lovely house! Oh, no cats. Oh, what a lovely place! Oh, it's only available starting immediately. Oh, what a lovely house, aside from the incredible hideousness. Oh, what a lovely apartment! What a pity that it is the horrid one which is actually for rent. Oh, what a lovely apartment! How unfortunate that it has no kitchen. Oh, what a lovely house! I will wait to hear back from the landlord... forever. And so on.

He phoned and we worried together that his expensive trip would be pointless. Landlords were generating creepy scammer vibes, and demanding deposits in cash. Perhaps we would be so lucky as to NOT ONLY fail to secure a place to live, but ALSO be ripped off for thousands of dollars!

"How would you describe the state of your house hunt?" 

"Sisyphean. Gloomy. Overcast and ominous."

Then a stack of books fell on my head. Morale was low.

Twenty minutes after Steve had hung up, he emailed me. "Tomorrow will be a brighter day!" he lied.

Then, all expectations to the contrary, it wasn't a lie, after all. Well, here it was not so bright; it was very wet, and my main entertainment for the day was to get caught in a rainstorm with an infant strapped to my chest, with no umbrella, while shopping for a toothbrush. But there, Steve found us a house.

It has toilets and everything!