Adventures in the Pointless Forest

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.

Conversations featuring the young of this fine state.

I think the girl in the first case was about seven, and the boy in the second one was a little younger, five or six.

Northern California

Little girl: Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.

Mother: Yes?

Little girl: (urgently) What about the goat cheese?

Mother: I already got the goat cheese.

Little girl: (very relieved) Oh, okay.

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Southern California

Mother: How'd you like it?

Little boy: (earnestly) It was so relaxing. 

Mother: Oh yeah?

Little boy: Yeah. You just, like, meditate for sixteen hours.

Don't you just wish you were married to me?

Me: Sometime we should go out on a date that requires real dressing up, in the sense of you wearing a suit. Or doesn't require it, but includes it. Plus dzing.

Steve: dz?

Me: Your perfume.

Steve: Oh, Dzing! Not "Dee Zee-ing".

Me: Right.

Steve: I was like... "Demilitarized Zoning"?

Me: That would be "dmzing".

Steve: MORE FOOL I.

Me: Which smells like napalm.

Steve: Victory.

Me: Old napalm. Indeed.

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We occasionally have the old-fashioned kind of conversation, too.

(As I said in a voicemail when we were trying to coordinate our activities from across a bay on this recent trip: "You need to call me so that we can discuss this with words. From our mouths.")

On this occasion, I am clanking about in the kitchen: "What's 200 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit?"

"About 400." (hem, hem.) "392, specifically. You can figure it out exactly, because it's 1.8 times 200, plus 32. It's super easy to go in that direction. Harder going the other way."

"What? How am I supposed to remember 1.8?"

"Well, boiling is 100, compared to 212 in Farenheit. So you just offset by 32 degrees because of freezing, and—"

(Psh.) "'Fahrenheit is really great; multiply by 1.8.'"

Sorted!

I am so glad I have the category "American Things".

Scene: Our house is on a corner lot, with no fence or wall to obscure the view of either street as it approaches the intersection. I am standing idly on the front step, holding Jane, who had become fractous indoors.

Two moderately glossy cars pull up, one right after the other, from the west, and pause at the stop sign to my right. The drivers are of a similar type, somehow very Southern Californian: fifty-something men, lightly tanned, well kept but casually dressed, hair silver rather than merely gray. They are perhaps music executives, or successful tax attorneys, or character actors who play music executives and tax attorneys.

The first car turns left. The driver of the car behind leans out his window and shouts: "TURN SIGNAL!!" by which he does not mean, "By Jove, old shoe, if it isn't my old chum 'Turn Signal'!" nor "Bravo, my good man, for your brilliant deployment of the turn signal," but rather "Jesus fucking christ, jackass, try using your fucking turn signal sometime."

The other driver nearly hits the car parked in front of my house in his haste to lean out his own window in turn, so that he might reply: "BITE ME, MOTHERFUCKER!"

Both cars drive away with vigor. I cackle with delight.

The end.

Where nobody's dreams come true.

Okay, speaking of La Brea Carpets, can you believe that none—NOT ONE!—of these places is called that? What a missed opportunity.

La Brea Carpet.

I like grey, post-industrial cities. I like their rough edges and brick houses. I like scowls and efficiency and please get the hell out of the middle of the sidewalk if you aren't going to go anywhere. I like being a hater.

But I have to admit that sunshine, comfort, and gorgeous fruits and vegetables are pretty good too.

"These avocados are really nice," a woman near me said to the man selling them at the farmers' market. "Do you have them all year round?"

"Eeeeehh yes, but..."

"I know," she said. "Some times are better than others."

"Yeah, in December they get a little blah." 

There is no denying that it is extremely pleasant to be able to walk with ease to two farmers' markets bursting with produce, an excellent cheese shop, a sweet little bakery just around the corner with quite decent coffee, a slightly further away cafe with really very good coffee, multiple superlative taquerias, et cetera, all in the nicest possible weather and terrain for walking in. There are also several venues for frozen yogurt, if you are suddenly seized with the need for some. I haven't been, but you never know.

At the same time, it's all a bit obscene, isn't it? At least the Tuesday farmer's market is laid out cruelly and has a horrible thicket of people who need to learn how to get the hell out of the middle of the sidewalk standing between oneself and the lovely food. And there is no shortage of horrible marvellous aroma types to kindle a hot little bonfire of mingled self- and other-loathing in my breast. Still...

When we spent the night in Tucumcari, New Mexico, I woke up in the morning, stepped outside, and said "Oh! I see! This is why people like to live in this part of the world." It wasn't midday hot yet, and the air was soft and dry. It smelled wonderful in a way that is nothing at all like other places. 

From the day I was born until I went away to school, I lived in just one city. Since then, this will be the fifth. It will be good to have a year of saying Oh! This is why people like Southern California! 

Also, no doubt, Oh! This is why everyone else in the world hates Southern California. 

Here is something I like without reservation. It is a water machine. It lives near our house, outside a convenience store just down the block from the garage where the Spanish-language AA meetings happen.

Final polishing step is exposure to ultra-violet light. 

 

There's a soothing cadence to the slight failure of parallel structure, isn't there? This is why people BEVERAGES COFFEE COOKING ICE PLANTS Southern California.

Reports from the road

Greetings from a motel on the outskirts of Tulsa. 

It is with great regret that I must report that we did not visit the J. J. Hawes Grain Elevator Museum in Illinois. Instead we stopped at what was surely the crustiest McDonalds in the state, if not the whole nation. We had chosen it specially for the presumed-to-be-sparkling bathrooms, so this was a real blow to our illusions. 

When we arrived, there was a sign up saying that the bathroom was closed for cleaning, but judging by what I encountered after the sign went away, their janitor robot got stuck on "Filthify" instead of "Sterilize." We had a lovely picnic on a bit of grass outside.

Here you see Nemo as a prisoner of conscience. I believe we will be hearing from Amnesty International shortly.

Missouri certainly has a lot of roadside adult superstores. One (at least) is conveniently located right next to a roadside church. I hope the proprietors have wacky adventures together. Also in Missouri, we shared a scrap of roadside rest area with a woman and her giant grey poodle. The poodle had bows on its ears.

"Look, Jane, it's Missouruh," Steve said.

I've remembered that my favorite thing about long road trips is the opportunity to engage in hours and hours and hours of amiable conversation about nothing. Today alone we have covered Nancy Sinatra, the best kind of pie, genderqueerness, Pope John Paul II, where to draw the line between faithful pronunciation of the names of states and dialect caricature, the plot of Carousel, bald eagles (as emblem of the United States, as emblem of the Order of the Cincinnati, and in falconry), stupid villains in Batman, and the world's largest rocking chair.

Tomorrow's my birthday! I will celebrate it by being old and eating the leftovers of this terrible pizza we just ordered. I think it might be the best one yet.

Fair weather.

Our neighborhood has a street fair every June. Normally we avoid it on the principle that people are annoying, and densely packed people standing in one's way in the middle of the road are even more annoying than the regular kind. Because we are about to move away, however, we felt we ought to give it a chance. 

I have been growing fonder of our neighborhood the closer we get to leaving it. It is unpretentious and pleasantly full of people who vocally admire our infant. I especially enjoy our many non-English-speaking Russian neighbors. When our paths cross they make burbling happy noises to convey the depth of their baby joy. Really, I think every child should be doted upon by old men and women with walnut faces full of gold teeth, crying "Er ha oh? Woooo? Ah!" like so many ancient Mr. Beans.

(Incidentally, am I the only person who thinks Rowan Atkinson is rather dishy? Think particularly of the Elizabethan series of Blackadder. Who's the queen? ME.)

It turns out that people are indeed exceptionally stupid under fairgoing conditions, but there were surly small humans to make up for it. There is something cheering about the silent fury of a child who is deeply but resignedly Fed Up, lips pressed together and nostrils flared in profound irritation. Smile and the world smiles with you? Bah. What warms the cockles of my heart is the sight of pure unadulterated PEEVE, glaring out from under the canopy of a stroller.

There was also a spice stand, which was convenient because I had accidentally bought two containers of cumin when shopping last week, instead of one of cumin and one of coriander seeds. Why was there a spice stand at a street fair, between the lemonade and the balloon animals? Who knows. They were doing a pretty brisk business though. Party people want their packets of sea salt and cubeb.

Also, apparently, giant American eyeballs.

 

Pomp and circumstance.

Sunday I attended commencement, where F and I at last realized our longtime dream -- formulated even before we went off to our separate graduate schools -- of being employed by the same institution and sitting next to one another in the ranks of faculty, flasks hidden in our hoods. Bourbon in mine, pear vodka in hers. Because we are old and boring now, and because commencement commences rather early in the morning, we did not get schnockered, but we did at least pull off a ceremonial toast.

It is delightful and astonishing to me that this extremely implausible scenario we invented has in fact come to pass. I did not think all those years ago to imagine an infant waiting at home for me, and getting things in and out of one's hood while sitting in a small folding chair is more difficult than I had anticipated, but all in all the whole thing was shockingly in line with our original predictions. Well done, us.

In the evening we celebrated M's newly minted master's degree by gathering in his backyard in our fancy outfits and taking photos. Then we lined up and had our own tiny processional around and around the garden. This was very festive and included both my infant in arms and a medium-sized dog frolicking about and nipping at his owner's heels. Steve, who has no fancy outfit, stood on the sidelines and clapped as we passed.

I find that I like other people's graduations quite a lot more than I liked any of my own. It is very satisfying to be part of the ceremonial furnishings. I used to like to say that I would choose my graduate program on the basis of its regalia, but of course I did not, and now I have robes that are not particularly flattering to my delicate complexion.

That said, it certainly could be worse. I am not actually redheaded, but have that sort of generally gingery coloring that graces many merely russetish-haired people with redheaded relations, and pale skin that can look dangerously like a cheese if threatened. There are colors that would be an unmitigated disaster. The "Sunburst Sandweave" yellow of Johns Hopkins robes, for instance, would be spectacularly dire.

 

Although it's a bit difficult to imagine who would be truly flattered by that particular sallow hue. Idris Elba, perhaps.

That's cheating, though, isn't it? I mean, are we seriously proposing that Idris Elba would be ill served by some other school's regalia? I think not. Still, if your school's robes look bad on Clive Owen --

-- and, as you can see, they do -- then I think we can agree that it is a bit much to ask most ordinary mortals, particularly a set of ordinary mortals united by the sartorially unpromising quality of having a doctoral degree, to manage better.

Someone (STEVE) should make a virtual makeover type of application, but for regalia. In the meantime, this page is fun for browsing. Mouseover action! Enjoy yourself over there. There are some real horrors. I am sorry for your fate, poor University of Texas at Dallas graduates. If only you had known.

Tiny houses

This is hardly a scoop, because it came to my attention via today's New York Times, but I really love Annina Günther's miniature interiors. Not only are they tiny and scrupulous, they are fantastically full of quotidian detail. 

For instance:

As she renovates the dollhouse, its tiny owners do the same in their own tiny way.

The front entry is cluttered.

And, as she says, every house share needs a hippie.

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I am feeling very fond of our own, full-sized, house just now, which is not actually our own but a rental. I like our stuff in this house, and how we have it arranged. I like the mixture of old and new. There's the chair with excessively elaborate turned wood arms and legs, a handmedown from someone with more rococo tastes, stuck in a corner and piled with blankets. There's the great slab of dark-stained maple that is our coffee table, the densely quilted quilt a friend made us, the stacking tables that were my grandmother's, the window seat that no one ever sits on because it has been co-opted as a shelf for a tiny fraction of our ridiculous quantity of books, the crib filled with pillows because the baby actually sleeps in our room. Everything looks right, though I admit I'd have made some different choices if I'd been designing the bathroom.

Soon, though, we won't live here anymore. This summer, we're moving across the country for the sake of a one-year postdoc I'm taking. It's a lovely position, in a beautiful place, and academia is like that, but there is certainly something highly deranged about picking up everything including a cat, a baby, and our ridiculous complement of possessions and taking it all that way, only to move it all again a year later. 

I'd try not to think about it too much, but we have to find a place to move into, and we've become spoiled and picky. The nice thing about going for such a limited time is that it makes it easier to throw money at this problem in good cheer. The not so nice thing is that, spendthrift or not, it's difficult to be successfully picky about housing from 2500 miles away. But I really mind living in dank places and rickety places and places with wall-to-wall carpet or, for that matter, places with no washing machine. It's a pickle.

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Once upon a time, I went apartment searching on Steve's behalf in Berkeley, where I already lived. It was a major undertaking. The rental market was appalling, and he was on a budget.

There was no Craigslist. Instead you registered with a place called "Apartment Finder" and phoned in every morning to listen to a recording of the dismal listings that met your parameters that day. A robotic voice took you through the paces. "Studio... apartment. Full... kitchen. One... bathroom. Shower. No... bathtub. No... pets." Then you ran off to the showing, arriving fifteen minutes early only to discover that the place had been rented two hours earlier to the fellow who was helping the previous tenant move out.

One day there was a listing in Steve's price range in a really lovely part of town. "Surely this apartment must be in the one and only falling down shack in the Berkeley Hills," my roommate and I said to each other. But when we arrived at the listed address, the building was beautiful.

Unsurprisingly, many other people also turned up for the showing. We milled around on the sidewalk, marveling over the attractiveness and eyeing up the competition as we waited for the landlord to arrive.

He emerged suddenly from around the side of the building. "This way!" he said happily, and motioned for us to follow. We walked up the driveway and through a side entrance.

This door led out of the beautiful sunny day into a dark, unfinished basement.

It was not a basement apartment. It was just a basement. The ceiling was just barely over my head. I am five foot four. The exposed pipes hung somewhat lower.

Stooping and staring, two dozen people made their way through the cellar in mounting dudgeon. In one corner, I can see it now, was a tiny bleak washroom containing a toilet and a not very nice sink. Nearby, two milk crates filled with pantry items and plates supported a small hotplate. Under the one narrow window lay a mattress with a rumpled duvet and a single pillow on top. I believe there was also a lonely guitar.

The landlord seemed genuinely puzzled as person after person made offended noises and left.

"Who would live there?" we wondered as we walked down the hill. "A zombie, maybe."

It might have its charms, for the right tenant. "Zombie... pit." Apartment Finders could say. "One... window. No... kitchen. No... shower. No... view. No... hope."

So, this is what I am afraid of, whenever we think about moving. Please don't make us live in a zombie pit. It's no kind of place to raise a baby, and we don't even own a guitar.