Mad Mutter

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving...is...over. One more holiday done and accounted for. It was fun, and everyone gorged themselves on wonderful food and good company. And I am always amazed at how you can cook and clean and decorate for two full days, and eat your meal in an hour or so, max. And then...it's time to clean up! Yay! And then you have refrigerators full of rich left over food that you eat compulsively because it is there, and you can't help it. Well. Really, I am talking about me. I don't know about you.

But we got really lucky around here-- we got sick! The day after Thanksgiving, F began to wilt around the edges and proceeded to vomit all night. The next morning I was queasy and had body and muscle aches. I was terrified we had poisoned all our guests with our magnificent feast, so I called my friend who was also here. When she answered, I said, "Hi. Are you sick?" And she said, "Are you psychic?". So I called my other friend, who has a toddler. Thankfully, they all were fine, though they had eaten the same food (except the toddler, because she's at an age where she doesn't actually eat food). I was relieved, and since my malaise seemed to be centered around body aches and the need to sleep absolutely every moment of the day, I figured it must be some other bug which happened to be floating around.

But to get back to the lucky part-- I couldn't eat anything! Except a few little rice crackers! I have broken the Thanksgiving cycle of food, food and more leftover food! I am not even tempted by the exquisite slice of cheesecake topped by cranberries and cointreau that is sitting, leftover and lonely, in the fridge! Well okay, maybe a little.

Santa, redux

I was discussing the upcoming holidays with C in the car today. I was singing the praises of Santa Claus, and how we could send him a little Christmas list, and how he lives at the North Pole and has elves that make toys for him (I have no shame or guilt even when it comes to Christmas lies, none, I love them).... C didn't seem overly excited, more cautious and a little nervous. She said,

"And Mom, he has those claws, too. He has little claws."

I was baffled for a moment until I realized that she has been hearing Santa Claws all these years, which explains her reticence, and the several times she has admitted to being just a little scared of Santa. And rightly so, if he sports a little red cap and suit and black boots and sneaks into your house at night and has...claws. I would be too.
I hastily explained that it was just a last name, and that he didn't have claws ("Just little fingernails?" "Yes just like you and me").

And backing up to the current holiday, I'm all cooked out for the day, especially since I am sharing the kitchen with my enthusiastic 9 and 10 year old sons. We've all lived through the day, and have managed to produce a beautiful pumpkin tart (courtesy of F, the 10 year old), truffles (M, the 9 year old-- the shapes are a bit funky, but how can they not taste good with just chocolate, cream and butter?), and cheesecake with cranberry/cointreau topping, marinated mushrooms and artichoke hearts, and a 20 pound turkey dry brined and awaiting its fate (me).

Much more to be made tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

karate

Okay, here's something new; I'm taking karate with my two sons. I'm one of the oldest people there, of course, a middle aged woman flailing about among all sorts of preadolescences and a few assorted teens and adults. Next up: purple belt.

This is not something I imagined I would ever be doing in my life. It is only because my husband and I have managed to raise three children who are as team sport phobic as we are. Hence karate, and since I have to drive the boys there and back, I figured I might as well get something out of the time. And you know what? It's kind of fun. Especially the part where you get to (almost) hit people. I'm a little surprised at how much I enjoy that, actually. And there's a real visceral excitement to watching the brown and black belts spar. It's a nice sanctioned way to work off a little rage and frustration, which alas, I do carry around with me some of the time.

And also, I'm busy busy busy. Notice the --what-- four month hiatus? Unannounced? I am so impressed with bloggers who actually plan when they will take a break. And by the way, thanks you for your concerned comment, Suzanne. I am still here, healthy, though with most of my energy taken up by the demands of work and family. I did get my contractors license, by the way. All that miserable studying afforded me a nice little card that I can carry around in my wallet, and a whole lot of new scary official sounding rules to follow. Yay! I have two subcontractors I'm working with now, and not one but three projects to worry about. I'm working on a new website, and when I get it finished, many years from now, I will provide a link.

So hello to anyone who stops by. I will try to post now and again.

hey! another post!

Here's a caveat on the last post; I realized I made it sound as though I am a Nazi ogre of a parent, setting my daughter up for all manner of eating disorder by forcing her to eat foods she hates. Really, we only insist that she have three bites of whatever green and vegetable like item is on her plate. I have been told that children, when left to their own devices, will actually choose a well balanced diet over time. This is patently false in the case of C, who would choose to eat exclusively meat and dairy products, with a sprinkling of fruit here and there, preferably dried. And if given the opportunity she would eat only sweets. She harbors an abiding hatred for any kind of vegetable except for artichokes, and I think that's because they look extra cool and also because you can dip them into an enticing mixture of lemon and melted butter.

I have read that to develop a taste for a certain food, you have to taste it a set number of times, like 23 or some other random figure which I can't remember. I don't know if this is true, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed in the hopes that one day the children will do something other than stare glumly at the healthful food I set in front of them.

Okay. I hope I've cleared that up.

Also, even though I know you're never ever supposed to mention anything to do with your own lame lack of posts, I will anyway. Jeez I wish I could be more regular! Partly because I've lost most of the few lovely people who used to stop by. My fervent thanks to those of you who still check over here from time to time. I still read your blogs too, when I am not studying for some damn test, or ruining my eyes painting brocade onto the garments of figures that are three inches high. Because yes! I am still painting maquettes!  Instead of working on this giant terrifying  project which is hanging ominously over my head like a  guillotine! Okay, now I will stop feeling sorry for myself. At least publicly.

In book news, I've just reread Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee, which I deeply admire. It's one of those novels that  has an unreliable protagonist, to me an unsympathetic character, repugnant in some ways. I don't usually care for that form, I loathed The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. I was ready to hurl it across the room before I finished. But Disgrace is subtle and morally complex in a way that leaves me thinking about it long after I put it down. I don't know much about South Africa post apartheid, though I have some friends who lived there for awhile. But clearly, David Lurie's journey toward some sort of weary peace is a metaphor for the recent history of that country. I'm hosting book club next week(!) and I look forward to a discussion. Partly because I've been trying to get this book in for a couple of years, and I finally managed to guilt the other member into choosing it.   

license to study

I am studying for my Contractor's License Exam. This is boring. Boooorrrriiinngg. I have one big book on Law and Business, another on my supposed Trade, and a corresponding set of CDs and DVDs with each one. As it turns out, the CDs and the DVDs are exactly the same, except that in the DVD you can actually see the nebbishy guy in the bad suit sitting in some fake library behind a desk as he drones on and on about something you never ever wanted to know about anyway.

I do want my license, honest, I do. Because it will make me all official, and other nebbishy guys and hopefully their feminine counterparts will want to pay me lots more money to do what I already do. Let's just say I feel about this the way my daughter feels about eating her vegetables. She, the one who cannot bring herself to swallow the offending stuff, and who keeps putting more and more into her mouth even as her face contorts in hopeless disgust, and then when you gently suggest she might have a drink of milk to help get it all down (cheeks puffed out like fat putti), well, she does just that, and then the overload causes her to spew the entire content of her distended cheeks out across the table onto everyone and their plates. I feel like that. You know, because vegetables are good for her, but that doesn't mean she has to like them.

It doesn't help that I have put off studying until very, very late, because I was under the mistaken impression that once your application was processed, your test date would be set for two to three months later. As it transpires, my test date was set for about 2 1/2 weeks after my application was processed. So now I am studying. Do you know how many days a subcontractor has to file a mechanics lien or stop notice (once cessation/completion of work is filed)? I do! 90 days!  A prime contractor? 60 days! Ooooh, I could go on and on. But I won't, because I have to study.

cats and prey of all sorts

I know we're heading into summer because our cat Coco, the mighty huntress, has started bringing in green apples and plums from the trees outside and rolling them around on the floor. It used to be apples only, but our Santa Rosa plum has its first big crop this year. I am fervently hoping she is not climbing it and actually picking the plums, as she is wont to do with the apples. The tree is immature and not terribly strong, and also, I don't want her to pick them all, because I want to eat them! And maybe even make some jam with them.

When she brings them in, they end up rolling under furniture where we find them much much later, looking like those strange apple head dolls. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Why do I remember these dolls with carved apple faces that have been allowed to dry and shrivel so they look like little ancient people? Anyway. We know it is Coco bringing them in, because Pablo is just too stupid to think up something like that. And also, it was happening long before we ever got him.

I keep forgetting he came to us so recently, because he seems like such a paunchy middle aged beer drinking sort of guy. He's one of those cats who tends toward the large and chubby with a comparatively small head, and he's hopelessly inept as a hunter both in skill and inclination. But he's happy to appropriate Coco's prey and proudly pretend that he caught it himself. Last night we were finally managing to sponge the last of the blood out of the sofa from Coco's last gopher massacre, when, speak of the devil, Pablo came around the corner on the other side flipping a newly killed (and fortunately as of yet unpunctured) gopher around. Clearly he hadn't caught it because he was completely unconcerned when I took it away from him and disposed of it outside. Soon after, Coco came through with the very same look that I often wear, which says, Dammit, I know I put that somewhere. Let's see, I was just walking through here...

F, the oldest, is gone today and the two younger kids (4 and 8) are playing some sort of quest game with medieval costumes and secret messages and all manner of intrigue. They play much better together when F  isn't here, because M isn't striving to be as grown up and sophisticated as his older brother. It's a relief, really, because C adores playing with the boys, and they mostly leave her out of their games. This is possibly why she has always been the loudest of our three children.

And I can't think of a graceful or clever way to end this post, so that's just it. The End.

blah

I'm wandering through a fog of disconnect these days; is this my life? Do I belong in here somewhere? Oh yeah, and children! I have them! And a husband! And many many responsibilities! Which all seem very distant and blurry in this self absorbed little cocoon I seem to be lost in. I've felt like this before, on and off throughout my life, and don't particularly like the cotton ball feel of it, but what can I do? Wait it out, mostly. Hope that it goes soon. I come up for air for a day or two, and then there I am again, far away. It does help that I work alone, and can hole up in my studio for a few hours daily.

And work, well it keeps trudging along although I'm increasingly nervous about completing the actual work I'm contracted for. I'm still doing design work for completely different rooms in the house. Which are a lot of fun, admittedly.  The kids room design involves people in 18th century period dress, all the way around the perimeter of a 16' X 21' room, including the very large ceiling. The folks on the ceiling (only two or three) are balanced on a tightrope, and leaning over the edge of the wall. The guy in the center will be holding up the chandelier. Remember the concept of the house starting out very old in the Great Room and getting more contemporary as it moves outward? Well, this is more outward. I was thrilled at the notion of dressing a couple of women in fabulous 18th century garb-- I immediately ordered several costume books, and had a grand time yesterday dressing them up in the coolest outfits I could come up with. Sort of like over the top paper dolls.

But I also have the Great Room maquettes at the point where I can distress them, which is painfully close to being done, and I can hardly bear setting them aside at this point. I am itching to get my hands on the real thing, on all those splendid canvases that have been prepared for me and are sitting in a warehouse gathering dust.

Oh, and here's a development that probably is not actually a development-- I was recently contacted by  a company I have done work with in the past, who have asked me to bid on a mural for a large super luxury hotel in Los Angeles. I can't imagine it will get that far-- the work on my website is so representational, and I can't imagine the designers will see past that. I would like to expand beyond what I have now and explore more abstract pieces, but that's hard to do when you have only a couple of projects that show what you can do in that area. The good thing is that I honestly don't care, since I'm so busy already. But if a job like that actually came up, I would have to take it. Really. And I will have to get past my little slump to get ambitious again anyway. We'll see.

life of crime

A couple of mornings ago, I was in bed with C, coaxing her into wakefulness, trying to ease her past the fearful monster she can become if jolted too harshly out of sleep. My oldest son, F,, came into the room and said,

F: "Mom, I have two things to tell you. First, I don't have a single pair of clean pants." (Holds up dirty pants from yesterday to demonstrate the sorry state of his laundry)

Me: (in classic standard motherese): Well, you know I think you're getting old enough to take a little responsibility for  what you wear. You'll just have to  go through the laundry basket and get something that's only a little bit dirty (blah blah blah)..

F: (unperturbed) And the second thing is, there's a gopher head on the couch.

Coco (yes, for God's sake I'll tell you the real name of our cat! I'm starting to tire of all the single letter names, frankly, and I'm sure anyone who might have occasion to read this is too), I guess, has recently decided that the right and proper place to eat gophers is the sofa in the living room. I guess it's cozier than the floor, sort of a kitty Ritz dining room. She has dined out in style a couple of times this week. Speaking of which, does anyone know how to get blood out of a sofa cushion? I think the current state of our sofa would be a little alarming to any guests we haven't already scared away, and you can only turn a bloody cushion over twice before you're out of luck.

I'm putting off going to work this morning, because my poor head is spinning with all the different designs I'm trying to juggle, knowing full well I should be focusing on the one that's due at the end of the year. However. I've been told I don't need to panic because everything is running behind. And I do need to design these other rooms because the project designer needs to know what the room looks like before he can move forward with fabric and furniture and etc etc. But I'm panicking anyway, because that's just what I do.

We're trying to figure out vacation plans for the summer, but I'm waiting for the test date for my contractor's license, and I suspect it will fall right in the middle of when we are supposed to be gone. And I've barely started studying yet! Hahahahaha! I've been fingerprinted and everything. The FBI knows what every single one of my fingerprints looks like, in excruciating detail. I went to a real police station and everything. They even had cells, but as far as I could tell no one was in them. Except I guess I will be now, if I ever commit a crime, because  the authorities totally know everything about my fingerprints. I had gotten a speeding ticket a couple of days before I went in (late to karate lessons, my first ticket in probably 15 years), and I was all nervous it would come up on my record and they wouldn't let me get my painting contractor's license. If I worry about this, does it mean I'm not actually cut out for a life of crime?

last paragraph

Here's the last paragraph of The Road, which ranks pretty far up there in last paragraphs as far as I'm concerned:

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

The Road
Cormac McCarthy

the road

I picked up The Road, by Cormac McCarthy the other day. Pulitzer prize winner, National Book Critic's Circle Award finalist, and post apocalytic science fiction. All in one package. What's not to love?

I'm a bit muddled in that I have several books going at once, an approach I've never been very good at. It's like dating more than one man at once, something I also was never very good at. I can never remember who says what. My little list includes Whispering Woman by AS Byatt, Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, and a YA series that hooked me in a popcorn sort of way when my eight year old read me a chapter (Seventh Tower series, not great, but it's by Garth Nix, and I was very impressed with his novel Sabriel).

So I decided to complicate things further by picking up The Road last night. Really, I couldn't wait. I got well past halfway through it last night, and will probably finish it tonight. It's a fast read, and mesmerizing, if pretty unrelentingly bleak. It manages to convey a really visceral sense of the end of things, while at the same time maintaining a lovely delicacy around the loving relationship between a father and his young son. Who are trying to survive in some way, though it's not clear how that will ultimately be possible.

I'm also struck by how representative of its time this book feels. It seems there is a snowballing sense of terror and helplessness at the trajectory we are all following. I see it increasingly in media, both print and film. J and I recently watched Children of Men, a movie based on a novel by PD James that I read many years ago. Interesting that it was made now. It's intelligent, thoughtful science fiction, if a little light on the actual science end of things. But I will watch just about any filmed attempt at science fiction that doesn't involve bloodthirtsy alien monsters who would like nothing more than to dismember and eat any human being they encounter. And for no particular reason except that they are Bad. And Alien. Also, this one stars Clive Owen, my current Most Gorgeous Man Ever. Again, what's not to love?

But what a brutal, hopeless movie. My god. Well done, though. I don't know where they got some of the locations they used. Thay can't have been sets. Somewhere that has been just devastated fairly recently. An ongoing atmosphere of filth, of polluted water, of black smoke smudging the sky. They throw you a little bone at the end, but even that is in question.

Both novel and movie emphasize the animal brutality people sink to in the face of catastrophe. I think to myself, would it really be like that? Everywhere? I would like to think not, but honestly, I have no idea.

I'm glad people are starting to take the severity of our situation seriously, I think that's the first step. I'm afraid the fear surrounding it could paralyze us though. Oh, and those who worry about the impact on business. This one actually makes me giggle. What kind of business will there be if the world is uninhabitable?

When I read The Road, and I think about my husband and my children, and about the world that I love, I get really scared. And wonder what I can do about it.