Adventures in the Pointless Forest

Koala components

Ingredients: one pre-made fleecy hat with ears, two flat shiny black beads with an uncanny resemblance to an unblinking marsupial gaze, some cheap felt, needle, thread, and (this was the bit I was proudest of) some upholstery fringe. Also one naptime. 

It is not clear to me what the intended proper purpose of that sort of fringe is. Lampshades? The edge of a pillow? Anything I can think of seems kind of lunatic. (Lunatic FRINGE! Oh god. I didn't mean to do that, but it's so brilliantly stupid I think I'll leave it.) 

Add one infant. Result!

Why a koala, particularly? Oh, right. She's missing the rest of her costume there--namely, me.

That's better.

If only I'd thought to gather some fallen eucalyptus boughs last time I was on campus. They might have been good for beating down the cold I've been brewing up all weekend, too. (Go away, cold.)

There were lots of cute moppets in costume on display downtown in the afternoon, but it seemed at first that trick or treat was a huge bust, and I was very sad. Morose, even. But no! Everyone was just waiting long enough to psych me out. There was a good hour or so of very concentrated activity, starting later than I was used to.

Earlier today, R. at the coffee shop, who first suggested the koala costume you see here, said, "What is up with all these kids in Scream outfits? Have they even seen Scream?"

And truly, there were a lot of those masks out there. Soon enough, there was a group of at least five eight-year-olds in varying states of Scream deshabille on our own doorstep. "Ah, a whole bunch of Screams!" I observed.

"How did you know?" said the lead kid, amazed. "Have you seen that movie?"

"Yeah. Have you?"

"Yeah! I saw Scream one. And two! I wanna see three."

So I guess that clears that up. And now all the little kids have given way to teenagers and older on their way to parties, so we have closed up shop. As Steve said, "When it turns into 'Hey bitch! Cross the fuckin' street! ...ooh, can I have some candy?' it's not really trick-or-treating anymore." Maybe they will be horribly yet self-referentially murdered. Sorry, teens! If you had stuck with koala hats, Skeet Ulrich might have spared you.

PS. The subjects of this Wikipedia "photo of bears doing it," as Drew put it, are hilariously desultory. Just thought you should know.

A thing we BOTH cried over.

The afterword to Knuffle Bunny Free. We were in public, too, merrily looking through picture books at the bookstore. I squirted real tears out of my eyes onto the ground; Steve merely turned bright red and hid, with dignity, around a corner.

There's a hand towel bungeed to our coffee table.

I got paid! My bank account is now looking almost unwholesomely healthy. You'll be pleased to learn that I immediately responded by purchasing the expensive lipstick I had been contemplating. Then I made some food for the baby, to demonstrate concretely that I could both have lipstick and feed my own child. Well done me.

It turns out that I am the kind of person, at least right now, who really enjoys making tiny baby delicacies. This will probably surprise exactly no one who knows me, since it combines my abiding interests in cooking, geeking out over cooking (as I used to do with bread baking), and avoiding slimy half-eaten purees.

There is no way, obviously, to pass entirely over the fact that infant eating is a messy process, especially if you are also attracted by the difficult to reconcile ideals of letting them feed themselves and of not being a fussy control freak, but I do my best and have been channeling my overly fastidious impulses into cunning little vegetable patties. I may as well enjoy it while I can. You also may be interested to know that organic brown rice ricecakes are for the birds. They are nasty hard things that get sticky and useless in five seconds flat. Their store brand white rice counterparts are more like it. 

Meanwhile, Halloween is nigh upon us and so today I was in a position to say, "This bag is filled with koala components." And say it I did. If it comes out at all successfully, I will be sure to post photos, never fear. I suppose we had also better remember to buy a few sacks of candy to dispense to the local small costumed people. I hope there will be plenty of them. It is so disappointing when trick or treating comprises a mere trickle of desultorily dressed youths whose parents are sitting in idling cars nearby.

On the other hand, Halloween is by all reports a thing here, and by "thing" I believe I mean the kind of drunken, fratty revelry that one would prefer to flee town altogether in order to avoid, not unlike St. Patrick's Day in Chicago. Once we accidentally went to Chicago on St. Patrick's Day, and as visitors we didn't even have our own home out of the way of things to escape to. I won't forget that sea of bobbing boozy giant green foam top hats in a hurry.

I'm not entirely sure what the Halloween equivalent of the giant green hat is, but I guess I'll find out. 

This photo spread of "Dogs Looking Depressed in Their Halloween Costumes" is a good idea, but ultimately I'm not convinced. None of the dogs looks as glum as the captions claim. By contrast, pretty much almost every photo ever taken of a cat would fit right in at mycathatesyou.com. What this proves about cats and dogs is left as an exercise for the reader.

The Red and the Black.

Once upon a time, I was truly broke, and also profoundly stupid about it. Because I could not afford to pay them, I hid my credit card statements under the futon. This was a brilliant scheme, in no way doomed to collapse like the proverbial house of cards. Indeed, it wasn't really so much a house of cards as it was a pre-collapsed messy pile of cards, lightly shredded so as to provide an ideal home for rats to come nest inside. Possibly literally.

That was all a long time ago, and I like to think I am much more responsible, though really it's mostly that I make more money now. But since our move, I have been gazing upon my dwindling bank balance with shame and horror.

I was absolutely hemorrhaging money. Yes, moving and appliances are expensive, and baby things, too. I knew that our rent had gone up and that I was being wildly free with such luxuries as expensive cheese and interlibrary loan. But really, it was appalling that I was apparently so utterly incapable of staying in the black; so out of control with my purchases of onesies, ginger beer, and organic sunblock; such a complete failure at living within my means.

I fretted, I cringed, I berated myself as an irresponsible fool. I considered getting myself some new lipstick, as I had used up my previous tube. But then I reconsidered. "You cannot afford treats like lipstick! You don't deserve treats like lipstick! If you buy that lipstick, you will not be able to feed and clothe your own child!"

Then, at last, I realized THAT NONE OF MY PAY CHECKS HAVE ACTUALLY GONE INTO MY ACCOUNT. None! For months. Thousands of dollars simply never arrived.

So:

(a) I'm an incredible simpleton who should not be let out of the house, and

(b) This is going to be hellish to resolve, probably, because the university system does believe that it has deposited them, and seems to have had the correct information for my bank and account numbers, but

(c) Thank fucking god.

"I do not deserve nice things!" Possibly.

"I cannot manage my money!" Evidently.

"I will never be able to retire!" Well, no, not if you never get paid even when you have a paying job, you moron. You are an idiot! An idiot... who can afford lipstick. Hooray.

Whine.

This week is a little bit crazy, and we are trying with only moderate success to entertain our out-of-town guests. Oddly, they have decided to stay around longer than originally planned. Maybe they hope that if they wait long enough, we will be magically transformed into someone more useful. Their optimism, I fear, is unlikely to be borne out by reality. Meanwhile, Steve has to steal time from the evening to get his work done, I have a talk to give tomorrow, we won't get any weekend, I'm behind on laundry, the cat pissed on the sofa, and we have fleas. FLEAS. I think they arrived via the Thing That Scrabbled Under the Floor.

(Last week, we heard an alarming scrabbling sound under the floor. It fortunately has not returned since then, but Steve and I both reacted to it the same way, which was to daintily pull up our feet in alarm. You can perhaps imagine the scene. Very practical and butch, both of us. Despite this, and the fleas, and the cat piss, I swear to you that we appear to live in a fairly clean and charming little house, not a depressing shithole. It doesn't feel that way at the moment, however.)

We dosed the cat and I just did an elaborate and dusty nontoxic thing that is supposed to suffocate any flea eggs lurking around while leaving all the other living things in the house unscathed. But Jesus Christ. Please send cake.

Small pleasures.

Sometimes Steve reads aloud to me as I cook dinner and the baby kicks her feet in her bouncy chair. Usually it's something by Angela Thirkell. Soothing, lightly comic, undemanding, not too too horribly sentimental. And just this once, pornographic:

"The boats and other conveyances were just slowing down and several people were getting off."

"Saucy!" You see, here I am being "witty" by interpreting this innocuous sentence as a double entendre. Adding a little life to the proceedings, what?

Little do I realize what delights are waiting just around the corner. Steve continues:

"Calling to Mr Grant to follow her, Delia climbed onto the still-moving platform and seized the ostrich, onto which she leapt and sat sidesaddle, with an expression of pride and contentment. Under her direction, Mr Grant took possession of the cock, whose orbit was within that of the ostrich, and mounted it astride."

"What? No!"

"Oh yes. 'One of the oily men came round.'"

"Dear me."

"Mr Grant, who did not understand his cousin's peculiar devotion to this form of mental stimulus, was ready enough to ride on a cock two or three times, but felt a distinct uneasiness at the thought of half a crown's worth of this exercise. However Delia looked so happy and so pretty, with the flush of excitement on her face, that he determined to endure as long as possible."

As one would.

At this point we have to call a recess for the purpose of lying on the floor and howling.

After we have recovered sufficiently to carry on, there is a lull in the text of nearly two full pages in which nothing salacious occurs. Then Lydia Keith arrives and casually remarks, "I say, someone's on my cock."

I say.

"Mr Grant, really quite glad of an excuse to dismount, offered his cock to Lydia, who immediately flung a leg over it, explaining that she had put on a frock with pleats on purpose, as she always felt sick if she rode sideways."  

Gooood night, everybody!

Op, pff. Op, pff. Op, pff.

Another animated gif from the annals of infancy, or ginfancy, if you will. 

We are adventuresome.

This weekend we were determined to go out and do something, beyond our usual adventuresome outings to the market and the coffee shop. So we packed the baby into the car and headed off to Knapp's Castle. This is the ruin of a former mansion up in the Santa Ynez mountains. The house, first built by the (I presume robber-baronish) founder of Union Carbide, was consumed in a forest fire just a few weeks after the second owners moved in, in 1940. As you can see at the Wikipedia link, the remaining sandstone bits made for quite majestic ruins, much more attractive probably than the original building. 

You can visit it as the apex of a long hike, or you can drive nearly all the way there and park at the top trailhead. We were in the market for more of a little outing suitable for tucking in between lunch and Her Majesty's afternoon nap, and less of a multi-hour trudge with infant strapped to one's front, so up we drove.

Oh, up and up and up, windier and windier, blind turn after blind turn, and the fog blew across the road and the mountain sheered off just to our right into the deathsome abyss, and Steve's knuckles got whiter and whiter on the steering wheel. Poor Steve. 

Then we emerged through the top of the clouds and arrived at our destination, hurrah!

Well, perhaps not entirely hurrah.

   

 

There were some bugs. Indeed, there were dense swarms of bugs, and the swarming they did was around our heads.

 

So we gave the view a brisk, admiring glance, turned smartly on our heels, and went home. The drive was much less harrowing on the way down, as mountain drives often are, and we even got back in time for a quick trip to the coffee shop. I call that an outstanding success, especially as no one got shat on.

What did you do this weekend?