Son, can you play me a memory?

I have of late had not just one song maddeningly lodged in my brain, but the entire oeuvre of Billy Joel* taking up valuable space there. Mainly this one** (why?) and Piano Man. So many thoughts about this song, which I've known by heart at least since junior high:

• What on earth is a "real estate novelist"?
• "Makin love to his tonic and gin" was like nails on a chalkboard to me, even when I was 12.
• As a kid I assumed being in the Navy for life was a much worse fate than never having time for a wife or becoming stuck as a bartender, unable to pursue your dreams of being a movie star.
• And finally, I wish I were a skilled cartoonist so I could draw my initial interpretation of "they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar."***

*Okay, okay, maybe not his whole opus.

**This way there be earworms.

***Think baguette in a Mason jar.

I want to fly like an eagle

Ooh, I like the new retro design, Facebook! Nicely done!

Hey I keep imagining writing about how we've now officially lived in Maine for 20 years and forgetting to do it. Which means we've lived here approximately 20 years and a week. We moved to Maine in February and instantly fell ill with the flu, all four of us. I remember it was vacation week — we planned to have that week to settle in before Zoë started school, but we stayed sick well into the following week. I picture us lying on mattresses on the floor and kids vomiting into the popcorn bowl* when I think of that time. We had a dog! Poor Happy, I don't even remember how we accommodated her needs for those first weeks. I guess we had a fenced yard full of dog poop.

Twenty years. Time is weird, and it keeps on slippin slippin slippin into the future,** doesn't it?

Also, this makes both our refrigerator and stove approximately 20 years old.






*Popcorn bowl = vomit bowl, sorry if you've eaten popcorn at my house.

**You're welcome, that's today's earworm especially for my favorite Academy Award winner!

Opposite day

The opposite of a gratitude list, or as Ganching might say, "minuses."* 

• A man at Whole Foods sort of walked "through" me several times in the produce section. I have never felt more invisible! He'd be like, "Woah, excuse me!" after basically stopping right in front of me as I was striding purposefully, or the opposite, where he'd realize he was about to walk into me at the very last minute. I'm sure it wasn't me, it was him, but still.
• If you're on your phone, looking down at it, as you pull up to or through an intersection, or go around a corner, while driving your fucking car, you make me feel like an elderly person because I believe it's my duty to scowl at you.
• My boots smell like cat pee.**

*She always pairs them with "pluses," though.

**Theo has nothing to do with it. It's actually just "wet boot," but it's reminiscent of cat pee, which is actually another vivid memory-spurring scent, back to the basement of friends just a few doors down from our house when I was in fifth grade and we'd play down there. It seemed very cool (I think there was a "bar" in the basement), but boy did it smell like cat pee.

Mermaid

I've just been thinking about the walk we used to take beside a reservoir on a path lined with mica, and how Zoë would stick flakes of mica to her arms and face so she would shine with mermaid scales.

There's a photograph of her mermaid face somewhere — I need to find it!

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.

a summary of 2010, the happy parts anyway*

ninety-seven movies watched
sixty-three books read
one hundred and forty-one conversations overheard
(approximately) seven hundred photographs taken
twelve rabbit rabbits
two bones broken (in the same arm)
one national park visited (twice)
three cousins hosted
one hockey game attended
three pets buried in the yard
three craft fairs
two german friends
innumerable: crows, baked goods, games played, walks on the beach, moments of maternal pride, tears shed, hugs given and received, rabbit costume sightings, songs sung and heard, t-shirts printed and stitched, cups of coffee consumed, reasons i love my dog, fires built in the yard, friends, and family.

as far as the not happy parts, it would be silly to list them. they live in the past, and a new year lies ahead. as usual, i am ready to shake the dust of 2010 off my feet and step boldly into 2011.

*yeah, oh boy, i am such a weirdo. why i included broken bones and deceased pets in this list is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

my fifth birthday was my very favorite one*

mean mama is five years old today! happy blog-writing anniversary to me!!

fascinating facts:

i think it's telling that my very first post was about a trip to the grocery store, and that i surreptitiously took a photograph of a bunch of chicken that the person in front of me was purchasing. i don't blog so much about hannaford lately, but i tweet about it all the time.

i've had over 30,000 page views.

my dog has changed over the years. he used to be darker red, and spottier.

my boy has changed. he hardly ever wears a sailor suit anymore.

my girl has changed. she almost never wears her hair in shrimpies anymore. nor does she carry a parasol.

my pictures have gotten much bigger.

i've baked a hell of a lot of cupcakes in the past five years.

we used to have a fish. now we have a guinea pig.

we used to have a book store. now we have a clothing company.


i could go on and on, but i'll sum this up by saying that when i read back over five years of bloggery, my favorite thing is looking at old pictures of bean and boo and remembering all the fun things the four of us have done together over the past few years. but also? i crack myself up.



*i wore a pink velvet dress.

the adventures of buckaroo banzai

does every family have a personal cult film, a movie that each person pretty much knows by heart (and can recite, annoyingly, line by line)? for my family, that film was buckaroo banzai, which came out in 1984. we owned it on vhs and watched it dozens of times and subjected our friends to it and quoted from it in unison. here's how much i loved it at the age of 16 or 17: you know those rocks, way up above the road, that in most towns high school kids will paint with sports-related or school-spirit-type messages, such as "JJ LAX '85" or whatever? i shanghaied my high school friends into climbing up there with me so we could paint "BUCKAROO BANZAI." i was so proud of myself.

m, boo, and i are visiting my mom and dad in cambridge for a couple of days, and last night we realized that boo had really never experienced buckaroo banzai (officially he'd seen it, but i think he was about two), so we all watched it. it's just as bizarre and wonderful as ever, twenty-five years later!

"hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. hey. don't be mean. we don't have to be mean. because, remember, no matter where you go,...there you are."

bunnies

(image borrowed from dpw)


this bunny, if i remember correctly, is from my childhood. it's on the plaza in kansas city (that's pronounced with a flat midwestern "a" by the way, not like the plahza hotel in new york), along with a bunch more (and weren't there some other animals, too? an odd turtle or something like that?). i used to love walking around there at easter time -- when we lived in kansas (approximately between the years i was in kindergarten and second grade), there was a huge family brunch every sunday (at putsch's, i think). it's funny, those brunches are among my happiest childhood memories, but my actual memories of them are very vague and sketchy: walking past the aforementioned bunnies and the many fountains; peering in the window at russell stover; and the many choices of syrup for our pancakes at brunch. strawberry, blueberry,...there were at least four different brightly colored syrups. and strawberry pancakes.