Wuthering Heights

I was thinking about how I might review this movie, which I enjoyed overall, and I realized I'd much rather write a review of the movie-viewing experience itself. 

Mark and I went to see this on a Tuesday (cheap) night at one of the theaters with the super-comfortable lounge chairs (which make me think of Dad every time, and his La-Z-Boy antipathy). We met Janet there, because she is our patron saint of going to the movies, partly because she regularly insists on treating us, using a complicated logical argument that has to do with "points" on her "card." She also pays to fill up her giant Film Fanatic Club member's popcorn bucket, and then shares it most generously. The theater was busy for a Tuesday, and our movie was as crowded as any I've been to since Covid times began. In particular, there were several large groups of (promising) young women.

We found our seats, reserved by Janet, which disappointed her since she'd meant for us to sit in the next row back, but which seemed pretty great to us. We tilted back, La-Z-Boys all, and the giant popcorn bucket sat on my lap throughout (I was in the middle). Mark expressed his apprehension about seeing Wuthering Heights in mixed company, anticipating it would be "steamy," and having read one review that said it should have been rated NC-17. He asked Janet if she had seen Saltburn or Promising Young Woman, which she had not, and we warned her to be prepared for...fluids. 

The lights went down and there were fluids and the color red and sexy bread dough but nothing NC-17 for sure, and it was steamy but absolutely fine in mixed company. Also, my expectations were modest since I had gotten wind that a lot of people found it "bad," but I didn't, and neither did my companions.

I ate far too much salty popcorn.

Near the end (spoiler alert) the promising young women began to sob collectively, and when the credits began, they started laughing en masse — catharsis! It was really pretty wonderful, and though I didn't sob, I did find myself laughing along with them (as did my companions).

Mark and I were outrageously parched, so while Janet stopped at the restroom, he and I attempted to find a concession stand employee or a cup for water or a water fountain, none of which were available. I resorted to sucking on ice cubes which I dispensed into my hands from the soda machine, and Mark resorted to stealing a cup from behind the counter, only to be caught red handed by the nonplussed concession stand employee who suddenly appeared from nowhere. Mark traded the purloined soda cup for two teeny water cups, and we dispensed (club soda?) into them and guzzled it down. Janet claimed not to be thirsty when she emerged from the restroom. 

Into the night we went, and into our cars, and we were home by 9:30. A

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!

Your spine is a flower

Egad, that last post hath no title.

And today is Monday, so I'm in organized work mode. But I want to share a snapshot of morning work before I dive into blurbing these babies:

Okay, they're totally just making words up at this point to keep me employed?

And briefly, a highlight of my weekend was mishearing "Lancaster, PA" as "Cirque de Soleil," which made Mark and me laugh (I laughed harder). Another highlight was ice skating down a frozen river and around a large pond and not falling down. And a lowlight was seeing a full grown adult man in the Trader Joe's parking lot wearing a sweatshirt with a cartoon dinosaur that said in all caps DON'T BE A CUNTOSAURUS.

Small reprieves of coffee and birdsong

Today is a good day, the rain falling and falling, finally, all the bags of compost dispersed this weekend making even bare patches in the garden look lush and happy. True, rain is falling on a wheelbarrow heaped with items headed for the trash, but I am content in the knowledge that both garage and shed are tidier than they've been in years. And someone stopped to pick up the huge wooden toboggan we left on the curb, hoping a passerby would fall for it the way Mark did years ago (it's lived in our garage, yearning for snow, for years).

But most of all, today is a good day because Mark and I started it by consoling a crying boy in the park who had lost his phone as he rode to middle school on his bike. We asked where exactly he'd been riding and promised to deliver his phone to the school if we found it. "Oh no," I fretted, slowly searching a block of damp sidewalk. "We have to find it!" Reader, we found it. And we got to tell him we found it and see his smiley, relieved little face. 

I found you some things:

Artificial yes. Intelligence? Not so much.

Alliumphobia, perfectly rational.

Here's to October, the month of months! If you're reading this, I probably love you so, so, so much. 

We quiver inside our shocked fur

I've seen a half dozen hummingbirds in the last two weeks, enticed by my prolific red bee balm, one of which hovered in the air like a little AI creation, 18 inches from my face, and I swear looked me in the eye.

Oh the dinosaur blue jays, a crow mama and teenage baby calling for peanuts, dozens of sparrows startled out of the rain-dampened grass when I open the screen door, little goldfinches with their shockingly bright feather jackets, a woodpecker diligently working on the remains of the suet (previously ravaged, loudly, by starlings). 

When I look at the garden I see the holes where we need to plant more flowers (tis the season of yellow and red — I need more blue! more purple and pink! more white!). But if I list everything in bloom I'm stunned by it all. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Especially this past (long) weekend, when Stella and Ben visited and indulged us on an arduous canoe paddle and a wild and stormy boat ride out to Eastern Egg Rock to get a really good look at the puffins nesting there. We also spotted seals, porpoises, and many seabirds. In return, we indulged them with a perfect Red's Dairy Freeze score (4 for 4 nights). Plus there were lobster rolls, bocce, board games, an Eastern Prom food truck picnic, bubble tea, and used bookstores. And the back garden fauna was satisfying too: a rabbit* (first rabbit we've seen in our yard in 25 years); two skunks, flaunting their white-striped tails at twilight (we all yelled SKUNK!!); lots of squirrels.

Seen, but not captured on film, no matter how hard I tried:

Flashing sign at the corner of State and Congress: SNOW HAULING

Alarming the tourists since 1999:

Mark, to Ben and Stella, in line for the puffin cruise: "Did you hear about that humpback whale that flipped a boat over the other day?"

Up top we saw so many puffins!

Below deck there were bodies on the floor.

*I think it's a New England Cottontail

If a black bear attacks, do not play dead

Who pooped in my raised bed? Who keeps digging in there, amongst the volunteer strawberry plants?*

"People are advised to play dead and lock their hands behind their neck...in the event of a grizzly bear attack. If a black bear attacks, do not play dead." —Amanda Holpuch in the New York Times

I replaced all the good bird seed with unshelled black sunflower seeds to send the soft-beaked starlings a subtle message: Fuck off, friends. They descend to peck vindictively at the remains of the suet. The crows visit to caw at me periodically throughout the day; they've trained me to toss peanuts into the yard on command.

A few days ago, I pulled into the Back Cove lot to get a look at a giant wire art installation — two huge egret heads against the blue sky. In the Subaru parked beside me, a man was calmly eating food with a fork as a woman in the passenger seat leaned out the open car door and vomited on the asphalt. When she was done, she closed the door and they both swigged from a bottle of mouthwash, swished for a long time, and then simultaneously opened their doors and spit on the ground.

The song my brain sings whilst I sit on my parents' fancy heated toilet seat in late June: hot seat in the summertime, to the tune of this.

“To kill an eel, seize it with a cloth and bang its head violently against a hard surface.” — Larousse Gastronomique, 1938

*I devised a torture-chamber-looking method of diverting the pooper that involves take-out chopsticks and skewers. Watch this space for DIY slug murder and powdery mildew abatement.

(Insert bebop style scat singing here)

On the equinox, a cold day with heavy clouds that blew aside periodically so the sun could remind us it was still there, we listened to music outdoors, bundled into hats and coats. Mark even got his photo in the newspaper* (he's a small face among a cluster of small faces, and I am half a white hat to his left). I turned away from the music to photograph our long shadows on the dead, gold lawn behind us.

What else has been going on, according to my "notes," follows below:

Mark, on daylight saving time: "So it's 6:15 but we're pretending it's 7:15?"

I've been forgetting my dreams lately, but last night dreamt a menstrual products company called "Bulletproof Femininity."

An elderly Hannaford employee to me, a shivering 56-year-old woman in the parking lot: "Since I met you I’ve turned my life around! You — your aura — you’ve got a million dollar smile!"

A radiology tech to me on the phone: "Our breasts aren't twins — they're sisters."**

Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen worker, after we placed our drive-through order: "I appreciate you."

An unclaimed belt, abandoned in a bin at Logan Airport security. Why did this seem so poignant? 

Lines I liked:

“I like a little sand in my oyster.” — Joan Acocella

"If there is anything I’d enjoy before I die, it’d be not having to see your fucking horrible bastard face wandering around my garden." — Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera, just before having her leg amputated

"Calm is a form of resistance." — John Berger

“It is a moral failure to miss the profound beauty of the world.” — Lauren Groff

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." — 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich

"Quel est ton tourment?"*** — Simone Weil

*DM me for a link

**All is well in the mammary department

***"What are you going through?"

Where can we live but days?

Animals this week:

• two red-tailed hawks in Deering Oaks
• many of the little brown ones at my bird feeders
• ditto a few starlings
• a corgi named Gordon
• a beautiful black cat with a plume of white fur on its chest, sitting on my fence

I don't think I've mentioned my dental coronation here, during which my new beloved dentist filed a crumbly old tooth down to a nubbin and fitted a brand new fake tooth onto it like a Lego piece (plus magic glue). My tongue can't stop admiring the wonderful new tooth, it's so smooth.*

Also in medical miscellany, at my routine mammogram this week I saw a sign that said "Avoid handshakes — try an elbow bump instead," with that last part inexpertly covered with masking tape. Elbow bumps are so 2020.

This morning we encountered the usual mob of middle-schoolers, but with an extra Lord of the Flies vibe. One kid with huge headphones was scrawling graffiti in black marker on the bridge railing, another walked with a portable speaker at his chest blaring Kendrick Lamar, a pack of boys behind him. Several were headed in the wrong direction, away from the school. We realized next week is winter break.

We're giving The Last of Us a shot, despite all the...zombies. I spent most of the first two episodes moaning, "Oh no, I hate zombies." Also, not a fan of these particular fungi. But episode 3 has inspired me to continue, it was sweet and touching and sad.

Absolutely NOT 10 miles west of Boston.

*It should feel amazing, it cost as much as a brand new sofa or a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2

Accept the fluster of lost door keys

Things I found wrote in my phone notes this week:

“Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.” - Freud

Party invite idea — "Should we break some bread? Are y'interested?"

The way the Property Brothers karate chop the tops of throw pillows continues to haunt me.

A thing that actually haunts me:

When Isaac and Edna were here last month, the three of us were driving on the shortcut road behind Trader Joe's when we saw a man step off a curb, fall flat on his face, and just lie there for several long seconds. I pulled over, and we all jumped out of the car. He insisted he was fine and got up on all fours while fat, dark drops of blood dripped from his nose. Isaac and Edna kept handing him tissues from a box in the car, which he held to his nostrils until we noticed he had a jagged little cut between his eyebrows and told him to press the tissues there. 

We offered to take him somewhere, buy bandaids at the Walgreens, call someone. He said, "No, no, I just need to figure out how to stand up," and somehow I kind of hauled him up from the ground — or, he leaned all of his weight on me and hauled himself up? I encouraged him to: "I'm stronger than I look," I told this massive man. (I wondered if it was true as I said it, and I guess so, because he got to his feet with his hands on my shoulders as I pretended to be something wide and solid). He thanked us, but continued to say he was fine, that he lived nearby, and then he walked away. 

I think it haunts me because I'm constantly questioning the best way to help (I often defer to pretending not to see in an attempt to protect a person's dignity*) and second-guessing whether my help was actually helpful. Also, I wasn't clear what this man's situation was: he seemed sober, wore warmish clothes, Carhartt-ish, had a sturdy backpack. He was maybe in his sixties? Was he down on his luck, or a man who happened to be walking through a down-on-their-luck area of town? It doesn't really matter, except: did he have bandaids at home, or money to buy them...or a home? And why don't I have a first aid kit in my car?

*See: the time I pretended I didn't see a middle-aged man's pants fall down and expose his bare butt as he juggled to-go coffee cups and a bag of pastries. I am positive that guy didn't want my help.

As smoke is in the world

It's Friday, or as I like to think of it, Gentleman's Saturday.* Specifically, it's Friday the 13th, always a lucky day for me, a person who missed being born on Friday the 13th by a mere ~19 hours. 

It's been a month of birds-of-prey sightings: just this morning I saw another Deering Oaks hawk, a smallish brown one drying its wings while perched in a tree, holding them wide and letting the wind blow through the feathers. 

Everything is eerily green for January. It's 50 degrees and raining. There are teeny buds on the lilac.

We started out the week eating Chinese food and playing? solving? a mystery-in-a-box with Adam and Jeannette's wonderful upstairs neighbor, Dani. We were successful, but we required many hints.

Sleuths, sleuthing

*To be perfectly honest, I think of Thursday as Gentleman's Friday. Today is actually just normal Friday.

The morns are meeker than they were

Small things:

The older man in Whole Foods wearing a bright red t shirt with F R I D A Y in white (it was Friday).

Oceanside brunch, huge waves, a bright butterfly hiding its wings when it landed.

Clover, early at the empty Deering Oaks playground, loves to play hide and seek on the woodchips, ducking around the climbing structures like a little kid.

Clover, greeting a man on the beach she clearly thought was Mark (who was in Chicago), then returning, utterly defeated. Her tail so low after that it was dragging in the sand. Maybe she forgot about him remembered, and then felt heartbroken? She didn't enjoy the walk after that, kept looking over her shoulder for where we'd entered the beach, turned and trotted back the way we'd come the minute I said, "Oh, okay, want to go back to the car?"

The last days of summer, brilliant with goldenrod and sparkling with surprise asters. Cold enough at night to shut the windows and dig out the comforter. Clover curling up with me on the chilly nights, against my leg (it's like a weighted blanket to feel a dog on my legs, my favorite thing ever).

Not really listening to the BBC narrate the Queen's funeral procession, but catching phrases here and there, the best of which was "at least 40 corgis."

Ladybug-by-the-sea

No other earth to prepare for

Mark and Clover and I walked Adam and Charlie through the park the other night on their way home, and we heard a tiny brass ensemble, three musicians sitting on the sidewalk playing in the dark. Last night I had a dream in which I generously forgave a relative for their wrong opinion on Roe v Wade, grasping their hand with Jesus-like forbearance. The dream does not reflect my actual feelings on the issue.

I'm tired from listening to people talk, and a piece of my tooth broke off so now I definitely have to go to the dentist.* 

I found a plant sale, got up early on Saturday to drive almost an hour to buy three Virginia roses and lowbush blueberry and a hay scented fern and Joe Pye weed. Went by an artisanal Portland popup plant sale that was charging twice the price for teeny plants, so I resisted those. Next year I'm determined to start some from seed.

Hello from a work in progress and a patch of dirt upon which birds love to bathe.

*I have an actual appointment!

On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree

Saturday is my traditional sleep-in day, but I woke at 6:00 with my head full of dreams, and got up to write them down. For weeks I haven't really remembered them, just the fuzziest outline and sometimes one detail (the night before I wrote in my dream journal "A flimsy tray, a shoddy paint job when viewed up close."). Last night's was one of those satisfying dreams that went on and on, involved flooding and long conversations and an Eastern European city and twins and adventures.

Gray November beach with Clover, early — one of my favorite kinds of beach. She played with many dogs, even big, bouncy puppies, and was only ready to leave when she heard a distant scary sound (blasting? Morning fireworks?).

I wish you could see how sleepy the sky is already now, at 4:15 pm, how tired the branches of the trees are in my neighborhood, still shedding gold and brown leaves. The only thing that's missing is crows! Where did they go?

 

Pro and con

Pro: my heated seat en route to Trader Joe's today. 

Con: the Time & Temperature clock was blank, a bad omen if I ever saw one.

Comme ça

 

Ask Me About My Yuzu Mayonnaise

On Time Change Day, we went for a long, long, meandering walk around town and saw beautiful golden light and a pink-and-blue sky and then a crescent moon with Venus shining at its side and a fiery sunset and then, finally, a bruise colored sky that was just amazing. 

Also, as we walked past Ruski's, I saw two people in coonskin caps, one seated at an outdoor table (a young Black man) and the other standing, excitedly offering a fist bump (older white lady). 

You are the air of the now and gone

I'm inordinately annoyed that last week's recycling was never picked up, despite the Lodging of Complaints. Not only that, they Closed the Issue, claiming the recycling had been collected. I marched right out to double check that no, it had not, and Lodged another Complaint.

(Tomorrow is recycling day, and unless they skip us two weeks in a row, this is truly No Big Deal.)

Much more important: Mark is home after nine days caring for his sister after her cancer treatment. It was really lonely around here without him. The only plus side* was the way Clover shifted her allegiance to me (her second-favorite person in the world). When we picked him up at the airport last night, I imagined the inside of her brain this way: "Wait. Wait, is that... It's that guy! I totally forgot about him, he's my favorite person!" I can make myself cry by imagining her seeing her mother or Gus again.**

Candles, hot tea, November leaves, gray sky. 

*actually, it was also fun reading tons of books, watching bad TV, and eating sardines on crackers for dinner.

**granted, I can make myself cry by watching a Folgers commercial.

Isn't it your dream to be wholly invisible someday?

Both brothers were here, it was like a dream! The weather was mild, the walks were long and meandering, the soft serve was soft and sweet and flavored with fresh peaches. David finally won Clover over after nearly five years (she is a little heartbreaker). My brothers! My heart!

And now my parents are roadtripping up from Cackalacky for a visit, hooray!

I'm going to try to turn my attention back to bloggery, away from online time sucks, like Twitter where I get mad at people and compose angry tweets and delete them.

Actually mostly they are getting it. I just like this person's illustration.

Roundabout: paved.

Pandemic: continuing apace.

Brain: lacking focus.

Stomach: generally not terrible.

Fingers sticky if I could only hear it

The air is translucent again, after days of thick, sticky heat, and birds singing through it in the yard. It feels like Maine!

Isaac was here for almost a week, and so was Oona, and there was some A+ cousin time, Zoë and Isaac and Oona (and sometimes Jonah) heading to the lake, to visit the food trucks on the Eastern Prom. Friday night, Adam, Oona, Zoë, and I watched Stop Making Sense in Congress Square Park, alongside a five-year-old's rollicking birthday party (birthday boy in a suit, much dancing along to the movie). 

I do keep thinking I should write more here, as a way to keep track of the Things and When they Happened.

Like this, a Kettle Cove picnic-by-the-sea on a hot August evening, with banh mi and cold seltzer and a raspberry swirl pound cake made by Oona and me. No Frisbee was played, no swimming was done, but there were Good Dogs there.

Or this, early on a Saturday morning, after we heard a rumor that Cong Tu Bot had reopened for breakfast only, and just the four of us headed out first thing to sit outside and try their breakfast sandwich and coconut yogurt with lychee and mango and sweet Vietnamese iced coffee and brilliant green pandan coffee cake. Pictured: walking there from where we parked the car, from across the street, I thought, my family!

You can't have it all, but there is this

My latest aphorisms:

The ugliest smoothies are often the most delicious

A dog pees on your leg, seven years of good luck

Related: a tall, friendly hound dog named Baxter peed on my leg this morning. I also made a smoothie that came out a sickly avocado green (almond milk, half a banana, frozen blueberries and peaches, matcha, a handful of baby spinach, a spoonful of almond butter). It was so good.

I can't stop thinking about Nomadland. I truly can't recommend it highly enough! 

And that thing that's kept me going through the endless month of JanuFebruary has happened at last: one of my two favorite brothers* bought a condo in Portland!!

Sneak peek!

I am beside myself with excitement about this and now have to patiently wait out the rest of our pre-vaccine life until Adam and Jeannette come to set up their (part time, for now) household here, a 15 minute walk from my house! 

*now to scheme a way to get the other favorite brother here

You're the turmeric in my oatmeal, you're the goat milk in my tea

 Wonderful:

A murder of crows at the city golf course, and rediscovering that "city golf course" is a misleading descriptor for acres of public city land, rolling hills and evergreen stands beside a lazy river. It helped that we had it all to ourselves, before cross country skiers and walkers and skaters arrived. The crows have been spurning my back yard for months (or years), and I've missed that low, strange sound of a hundred of them gathered to discuss the weather.

Mark described the groaning sound Clover makes when we arrive at one of her favorite places or pull up in our driveway as sounding like Marge Simpson, and YES.

This peanut sauce on anything.