They are talking about you

In happier Trader Joe's news, here's an entry that once upon a time I'd have posted on Overheard in Portland (RIP?)*

Scene: I am next in line at a register. The woman in front of me has just departed.

Cashier: "She always comes through our line. Always."

Bagger: "And every time, It's awkward as heck."

Cashier: "At least she brought a bag this time."

(Obviously I worried that they would also find me awkward as heck and proceed to discuss me after I left. But the bagger and I bonded over the best product sold by Trader Joe's, and I'm 90 percent sure I was not terribly awkward. Also, I brought a bag.)

*Nobody reads blogs anymore, and I also can't hear very well anymore, so. Maybe 2025 will be the Year of Hearing Aids and Blogging!

All things go

I've got to be honest, I have had recurring thoughts lately of shutting down this blorg. I'm not sure why, aside from a general feeling that the internets have become something I want to use only in a very methodical, efficient way and then turn my attention away from entirely. And if I come here and post a rabbit each month, methodically? Well, that's pretty boring, number one. I was going to say number two, I'm running out of locations for my monthly rabbit photo shoot, but that's ridiculous. THE WORLD IS MY RABBIT RABBIT OYSTER.

Maybe I'll start a newsletter? is a thought I've had on and off for three or four years. I have actually signed up for and then deleted several different newslettering platforms over the years. 

Maybe Google will eliminate Blogger is a thought I've had on and off for at least 15 years. Also, Why on earth hasn't Google eliminated Blogger, no one but me uses it anymore.

I realized today that I started this thing almost 19 years ago, and so I decided I should keep going at least until my big 20th anniversary, assuming Google doesn't pull the plug in the next 16 months. To wit:

This month in animals:

CROWS. Holly and I made a pledge to become old ladies who are friends with crows, and to that end I am continuing to foster my relationship with the crows in my yard and on my regular dog walking routes. Yesterday in the grocery store parking lot I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out peanuts, a penny (lucky: found on the ground), and a couple of rocks. I am a 12-year-old pretending to have a bank account and a driver's license and two grown children.

BEARS.

BEARS. Langlais Sculpture Preserve. 

CLOVER. Clover in boots, Clover in a jacket. Clover in Mark's arms, because we didn't put her boots on and her paws hurt from the salted sidewalks.

I'm Virginia, adoring and worrying over you (you're Pinka, her beloved spaniel).

Missed a day

Blerg, it was November 18 that broke my record! I actually remembered while lying in bed last night, but having pledged to myself not to look at screens after a certain late hour, I accepted defeat and fell asleep instead of blorging.

In my defense, Adam and Jeannette came for dinner (!!!). In other news, a wreath arrived in the mail from Dad so we went ahead and started our annual struggle with holiday porch lights — we seem to go through many stages of them looking weird before getting them to a somewhat normal state. It's early to do these things, yes! But we want to make the most of a Closer to Normal Than Last Year season. 

It's the twenty-ninth birthday of my first baby, my sweet, stubborn, shockingly brilliant girl. She is far away, once again celebrating (or not — I hope she is!) in a distant country. I'll never forget her stories of the first birthday she spent without us, turning sixteen in a German village near the Black Forest, so homesick, but fêted at school with cakes and gifts, held aloft on a chair and paraded around, as her classmates sang! I thought, those Germans really know how to do birthdays right.

Mica mermaid, 1994

Everything present is made out of the past

It's November, and you know what that means! I attempt to write a blog post every day and don't...quite. Maybe I'll get it this year: hooray for low-stakes challenges!

Thought: Public art in the roundabout like something out of the George Saunders story The Semplica-Girl Diaries. Pay $18/hr for humans to stand there? 

Thought: Mark Zuckerberg's plastic Lego hair. Also his plastic Lego soul.

Habit: Everyday, watching the middle schoolers walk in groups, or alone, I smile at the ones who walk alone.

Internetty: Hello, it's me, age 54, googling "can you take a dog on a cruise?" 

Vicarious excitement: An Amazing Race to the airport (Zoë on the bus, bound for Israel, Mark in the car with...her vaccine card).

Remembering: Just a couple of weeks ago, on our mini-Anniversary-getaway-weekend, Mark and I ate dinner outside at a fish shack, and a man who worked there pointed at Clover and said, "Wait! Wasn't that dog here for lunch?" (I guess she has a doppelgänger in the Lincolnville area!)

Animals:

• An enormous brown hawk, swooping down low, so close to my head it made me say "Whoa!"
• A busy animal hurrying into a shrub, disguising itself as a cute, tiny squirrel: in retrospect, obviously a rat.
• So many dogs, always.
• Mice, a-pooping in my kitchen cabinet.

Reading: Proust could declutter his apartment all he liked, but he couldn’t stop people from serving him madeleines.

As an elephant draws itself out of the mud

In world news, I heard a few weeks ago on the BBC that China's famous Strong-willed Pig "died of old age and exhaustion." 

Remembering Mom's watch giving her a list of Star Wars movies she didn't recall asking for. 

The bright green lizard on the brick wall of the patio, Z and Isaac laughing out there when we were all three, magically, in Durham simultaneously (Adam too!).

How funny it is when you actually hear someone saying "Yoohoo," a thought I had just now when I heard someone yoohooing at my next door neighbor.

A dance class in the park, a group of a dozen people practicing their moves (salsa?) in slow motion.

Yesterday I was seven in the woods

I don't remember if I've mentioned Spencer Tweedy's blog, Observations, but it's one of my favorites. It's so simple, just a list of ordinary or extraordinary things he observed that day. I like the way he sees the world.

The other day I met my pal Melissa for lunch at Rose, where we split a delicious bagel sandwich. It made me extremely happy when the bagel was ready and they called out, "Circe?"

I am tired of all the takes on astrology lately (maybe because I keep seeing youthful astrology memes where the Libra version is unrecognizable to me, a 50-something Libra lady). However, this thread on the signs as NYT Cooking comments is hilarious.

I'm glad to know the correct spelling and pronunciation of Kyiv now.*




*Whatever ends up happening, we are, in fact, impeaching this motherfucker as I type.

Let your hands be hands and the wings be wings

Gustopher Robin at rest

Detail: fur

Lately, Blogger has been challenging me to get extra creative and try seven times before it'll let me upload a photo. I've worried for years that this Google-owned free blogging platform will just vanish one day. According to my official profile, I've had this blorg for over 15 years, which is A LOT OF YEARS.

Above, puppy boy napping. Don't ever let me forget how beautiful his fur is.

Impeach Facebook

As I contemplate quitting The Book of Faces and Twitter (I am definitely taking some time away from both this month), I've been making mental pro and con lists, trying to sort out what's positive and healthy, what's necessary or at least convenient, how I can use social media so it doesn't use me.

Some of the pertinent issues I'm facing with loosening my connection are getting news, learning about cool stuff, connecting with other people, expressing myself.

I still use an RSS reader almost every day, where I read blogs, basically (are they all blogs? Do we still call them blogs?). I still blog, with (obviously) great irregularity and half-heartedness. Does anyone besides my mom still read it? Do I care? (I'm not implying that I don't, just that I'm uncertain.)

My brother is thinking of doing a newsletter, which I would enthusiastically add to my list of newsletters, and would read with even more enthusiasm than I read the ones I already subscribe to! I add and subtract them as the whim takes me. I am not a paying subscriber to any of them (which often gets you extra issues/deals/info), at least not yet. Maybe I want to write a newsletter? Do I?


Newsletters I always love:

Laura Olin (Everything good. She describes it as lovely/meaningful things, and it is!)
The Collected AHP from Anne Helen Petersen

Newsletters I almost always love:

Leah Finnegan
Brainpickings
Carrie Frye's Black Cardigan
Austin Kleon
Strange Times ("...a day-by-day rereading of the weirdest articles printed in the 1921 New York Times. Starring gangsters, killers, bootleggers, madmen and jazz, it is a weekly reminder that the past was stranger than we think.")

Newsletters I sometimes love:

R. Eric Thomas's Here For It
Two Bossy Dames
Jamie Varon's Friday Letters
The Shatner Chatner (Oh how I want it to be the Toast, but alas, it is not.)

My life was the size of my life

Uh oh, looks like this entire month could be a collection of posts about how I keep forgetting to write in this here blorg. The weekend went by, and I utterly forgot. Mark came home from his travels, and we had some catching up to do on lengthy dog walks, screen printing, and cooking food that's not a bowl of cereal or a roasted sweet potato, which seemed to be what I subsisted on in my solitude! Oh, and cheese and crackers too.

We made Moroccan fish stew last night, and I bought a lovely loaf of bread from Standard.

Despite writing my dreams down lately, I keep losing them by the time I'm upright. I know something interesting went on in my brain last night, but I can't remember a single detail.

Living must be your whole occupation

I'm not off to the best start, as far as this posting every day thing. Ah well! I have been spending my days writing things, printing things, and stitching away on an endless embroidery project while watching Bojack Horseman and Forever. In between, I walk dogs, talk to dogs, pet a sweet cat, and let the dogs out in the back yard to wrestle and chase squirrels. Even though I suspect she's out for actual squirrel blood, I love to watch Clover fly around the perimeter of the yard like a cartoon reindeer.

Mark is helping Isaac and Edna move to a new apartment in Ossining, which looks from photos like it has a lovely ornate ceiling and beautiful floors. I am making holiday plans — I always start off with such energy and focus!

A couple of complaints to follow. My house is so dirty right now. Everything is covered in layers of dog and cat hair and dry leaves. I am washing our duvet right now because I'm tired of sleeping with hair in my mouth. Also, I fear that we really really need a new mattress, unless there's some other reason I keep waking up feeling like I've been cage fighting all night long. End complaints.https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/living

Nablopomo

Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive

Here we go, the month of November, in which I attempt to write a little somethin in this blorg every day, even when I've got nothing to say!

Today is November the second, and unless their plans have changed (i.e. their alarms didn't go off in the middle of the night), my best pal Holly and her daughter Maia are on their way to tour colleges in Maine, starting this very morning, with the college that is a mere blocks from my house. I have my fingers crossed that Maia loves this conveniently-located college.

Mark is out of town, so Clover is extra cuddly. It may be due to slight anxiety, but I'll take it. 

NaBloPoMo

Or something like that. It's November! I turned 50 and lived to tell about it. I am going to attempt to write a little something every day, even though no one reads blogs anymore. This blog is twelve and a half years old.

My routine is all askew, thanks to Gus and his hurt leg. He is wobbly, and most days I walk him slowly around the neighborhood while Mark adventures with Clover in the woods. I need to look at the ocean soon, though.


"I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall--
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do."

- Mary Oliver, of course

Worst blorger ever

I didn't even manage a Rabbit rabbit blerg post this month. This is going to be a real test of my superstitious/borderline OCD (not Borderline/OCD, I just mean verging on OCD) personality issues, since Rabbit rabbit (the saying, photographing, posting of it on the first day of the month, first thing in the morning) is one of my magic spells for happy living.

Holy crap, would you get a load of those strawberries?!

My neighbor gave me a pint of strawberries! She "picked too many," have you ever heard of such a thing? Zucchini, yes. Chard, sure. But strawberries?

They are so. Good. My immediate thought was "a dollop of whipped cream and you've got a healthy, balanced dinner, all the food groups basically represented!"

Recommendations:

The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu. Tell me if you don't cry out in a tremulous American voice at some point, "Canada."

GLOW if you want something smart and funny. You'll never recognize Trudy from Mad Men.

Vietnamese iced coffee from CÔNG TỬ BỘT (when they open. Sometime next weekish, I think).

Flowers, especially if you can pick em in your own back yard or by the side of the road.

Lady's mantle, cosmos, chamomile, coreopsis, astilbe, bachelor's button.

Birthday Girl

Well dang. I was going to post every single day, November-style, and somehow nine days have elapsed since I last wrote a little something. In the the interim, there were horrific world events and small personal events and a third whirlwind trip to Ikea and hours of work, much of it in the dark after 4PM, candles lit hygge-style.

It's my sweet baby girl's 23rd birthday, and we are celebrating from afar. If I really get it together, I will bake a pie tonight.

Little Bean

Dubai

Only spammers comment on blogs anymore nowadays. Here's a recent spam comment I got:


naturally like your web site but you need to take a look at the spelling on several of your posts.

A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very troublesome to tell the 
truth nevertheless I'll definitely come again again.


You can tell this is spam 1) because of the accompanying link to "logo registration in Dubai," and 2) because, SPELLING PROBLEMS? Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Sixteen

According to my acupuncturers (I know, I just wanted to write that), I should be eating warm foods, roasted vegetables (especially orange-colored ones), whole grains, ginger tea. Drinking plenty of water, but not cold water and not during meals. I start off each day with a healthy bowl of oatmeal, but things go awry soon after. Still, in the Digestive Wars, I feel that I currently have the upper hand (is it me vs. bad bacteria? Or me vs. my very own small intestine?).

More on lying liars! Joanna brought my attention to this episode of This American Life. It's called "Hoaxing Yourself," and it's chock full of people who lie for odd and complex reasons. The guy who pretends to be British/believes he is British reminds me of the time, in my 20s, I met a British nanny who seemed really familiar, and eventually I remembered briefly meeting her my sophomore year of college, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, when she was most definitely not British.

The most interesting story to me, though, is the "Rent" fan who faked being terminally ill--factitious disorder!

I have gone back several times to read this story, of a young woman who faked cancer for months. It's absolutely fascinating, in part because she did this so successfully in person (not just online, which is weirdly common), and also because she didn't do it for financial gain--or any real gain that makes any sense. Attention, I guess, and in her case, connection with someone who actually was (physically) sick.

Then there's the aspect of factitious disease, particularly Munchausen by Proxy, that's hideously sexist, focused as it tends to be on women, particularly mothers. It's a little "hysteria," circa 1800, really. But still, incredibly interesting.

Nine

Today (so far) I

ate two and a half donuts (which is approximately one donut too many)(but one and a half were pumpkin ginger SO GOOD)

stained a bunch of boards in a well-ventilated room and spilled 1/4 can of stain on the basement floor and cleaned it up with kitty litter and paper towels

talked to my sweetest girl on the phone

drank coffee first, tea later

tried to remember to drink water too

peed a thousand times

listened to this Luluc Tiny Desk Concert

listened to the Dinner Party Download

listened to the Slate Culture Gabfest

listened to Welcome to Night Vale

did a load of laundry

listened to San Fermin

primed the walls in the kitchen

ate some potato chips

received this excellent spam comment on this very blog:



"I am an American man, and I have decided to boycott American women. In a nutshell, American women are the most likely to cheat on you, to divorce you, to get fat, to steal half of your money in the divorce courts, don’t know how to cook or clean, don’t want to have children, etc. Therefore, what intelligent man would want to get involved with American women?

American women are generally immature, selfish, extremely arrogant and self-centered, mentally unstable, irresponsible, and highly unchaste. The behavior of most American women is utterly disgusting, to say the least.

This blog is my attempt to explain why I feel American women are inferior to foreign women (non-American women), and why American men should boycott American women, and date/marry only foreign (non-American) women. BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN!"

They Played Roy Orbison and Patsy Cline

Apparently I've forgotten how to blog. I've also forgotten whether I object to using "blog" as a verb.

Here's a pretty picture:

The sky looks like this today where I live: the clouds look all puffy and cartoonish like that! I ate breakfast with my dad at the Palace Diner in Biddeford, drank a malt iced coffee with my sweetheart, texted with my girl in India, spent some quality time with my three boys (two of them non-human). I wrote some words on paper with a pen. I got no paid work done, as a little reward to myself for a week of getting lots of paid work done. Good job, self.

Some Things I Like To Do

Cry: Oh, I just remembered this book I loved so much when I was a kid, and I spent about twenty minutes trying to find it online based on these search criteria: "Dog in kennel while family goes on vacation. Family dies in car crash. Possibly a Dell Yearling book. SO SAD." And I found it: The Visitor, by Gene Smith. Just look at that description, "When his master dies, Sassafras, an Irish setter, becomes a permanent resident of a kennel." BOO HOO HOO. I think I must've first read this book when I was around nine years old, and it became my go-to book when I wanted to bawl. It's funny to abruptly remember this, and to realize that one of my favorite activities, sitting in a movie theater--or in the privacy of my home with a book in my hands--with tears and snot pouring down my face, has always been one of my favorite activities.

Yell: Here's a good way to test out a possible name for your future child/ren: Holler it out loud, like you're calling the child in for dinner from your fictional back yard. I have done this to amusing effect with both sexually transmitted diseases ("Chlamydia! Come inside this instant, young lady!") and fonts ("Garamond! Helvetica! Dinner time!"). Just a suggestion. And note, I successfully named my own children Isaac and Zoë.

Walk/Listen: We have a houseguest these couple of weeks, cousin-auntie Lulu the hound dog. She has been a perfect guest, aside from one or two mornings when she decided she was ready for a walk at five AM. I've enjoyed taking her for a long stroll mid-morning every day. She sniffs all the smells and pees like a boy while I listen to a podcast. May I recommend Judge John Hodgman, in addition to my various NPR and pop culture favorites? It's adorable when a loud truck drives past and she bark-howls at it. She's so little, when you're used to a big old Gusdog.

Muse: I'm going to try to write in this lil' blog more often, because I'm feeling mute. I think it's the weather, which I've solemnly sworn (to myself) not to mention. I can sum it up, and my feelings about it, by mentioning at this point my suspicion that we may skip spring and summer this year and go right to fall. In which case I am moving to the desert.

Watch: Please go see The Grand Budapest Hotel. I loved it so much. And maybe you'll enjoy the web series High Maintenance as much as I do. And perhaps you'll grow to love The Bridge, as I have despite my initial reluctance (I wanted to watch the original, set on the border between Denmark and Sweden, which Mark thought sounded much less interesting than the American version, set on the border between El Paso and Juarez. "Why don't you want to watch it?" he asked, and I was all, "I don't know. Just, Mexico."). But it's pretty great, if dark and with the chopping of bodies and their parts and so on.

I like the beach. I like dogs. I am tired of always wearing these boots, and this sleeping bag coat.

The Longest Shortest Month of All

It's funny how things slow down over at Overheard in Portland this time of year. It sort of makes sense, when you think of everyone hibernating, huddling inside by their wood stoves and televisions, no strangers to eavesdrop upon. But things go on in restaurants, coffee shops, ski...lodges. Or whatever. I can't do it all myself, especially with my measurable hearing loss and a big fuzzy hat on top of that, covering my ears, rendering me even more handicapped!

Around here, it's a whole bunch of animal antics, running low on pellets for the stove, sitting constantly so close to the aforementioned stove that I am always thirsty and itchy from its drying effects, drinking hot drinks, eating hot bowls of oatmeal. Shoveling snow, walking in snow.

I've been reading lots and lots, especially enjoying I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place, a memoir by my former grad school teacher Howard Norman.

We've been watching season two of House of Cards (!!!!!!! is all I can say without spoiling anything for anyone), and Mark and I can't shake our Revenge addiction as we wait for our other favorite lowbrow show, Scandal, to start again (and yes, as you might guess, we started Revenge because Netflix thought we might like it based on our appreciation for one-word melodramatic noun titles). Plus, Isaac worked on a movie set last summer, and the movie starred the star of Revenge! So! Two degrees of separation, basically.

Eating my low FODMAP diet, but it's not doing much for me, digestive-wise. I did hit on a FODMAP-friendly cookie recipe that makes me happy. You can make it with either peanut butter or almond butter, it's super quick, and really delicious.

Drinking coffee with foamy milk thanks to my little milk frother thing my mom gave me--I am so hooked on this gadget!

Listening to the new Beck (aka my favorite Scientologist) album, which you can hear on NPR right now.

Thinking about the fact that my littlest baby will be a high school graduate in three months.

See ya, lazy kitties.