Only in New York

I did a search online today for fun fabric stores in "The City". That's what the snooty patooties up here call New York. In Texas we just called it "New York City?!?" like the good Pace Picante Sauce eaters that we were.

Point is, I made an incredible discovery.


Are you ready for this?

That's right, people. It's all spandex, all the time.
Who's in?

Inspiration: Kay Ryan

We returned on Saturday from a truly wonderful vacation in Los Angeles. I could say many wonderful things about our time there, but today, I'll share one particular souvenir.

On our last full day, HC and P and I went to Venice Beach and walked the long pavement lined with hippies, musicians and street vendors. It made us feel very exotic and dangerous to see medical marijuana advertised via sandwich-boards and stroll casually by oxygen bars in that bohemian grunge that is just gritty enough to emphasize the joys of clean sheets and shampoo. It was a beautiful clear day, a little chilly. The sand was clean, the sea calm and the dramatic outline of the mountains in the distance reminded us that despite the lightness of the air and sand and water, the Earth is indeed quite heavy.

I was interested but sleepy, and as we wandered I looked for a place where we could sit inside, looking out with a view of the ocean and drink coffee. This was a surprisingly difficult challenge, and the quest inspired us further and further down the sidewalk (not a bad thing, considering all the wonderful things to spy along the way). Finally, we reached a promising looking place the three of us ducked in to be seated inside an outdoor seating area that was temporarily sheltered with maroon and white striped canvas walls and plastic windows that made everything outside seem to wobble as we looked through them.

By sheer serendipity, the restaurant turned out to be The Sidewalk Cafe, which I had read about both in an English class in college and some of my California literature while planning the trip. The building that houses the restaurant has a vivid history and shares a roof with the independent Small World Books, one of the best bookstores I've seen. After a few onion rings and iced coffees, we went in a poked around the shop -- HC to play with the resident bookstore feline, and me to find some reading material for our five hour plane trip home.

I picked up two books: a volume of collected poems by Dylan Thomas, and "The Best of It", a new collection of poems by Kay Ryan, current United States Poet Laureate.

As a side note, I'd like to point out that I have looked for Ryan's poetry in many a Borders and Barnes and Noble to no avail. I'm not very widely read in poetry, despite my love of it, but she is my absolute favorite nonetheless. Small World Books had her book prominently displayed, along with copies of some of her earlier published collections.

I've since been sucked into reading poem after poem, and then going back and rereading the ones I already read. Ryan's poems aren't long, but they pack a huge amount of meaning into sharp, witty and easily accessible language. I love that they aren't obscure academic experiments wandering off into the ethers, and neither are they brutal confessions and self-examination.

I'll share with you one of my favorites:

A Hundred Bolts of Satin, by Kay Ryan

All you
have to lose
is one
connection
and the mind
uncouples
all the way back.
It seems
to have been
a train.
There seems
to have been
a track.
The things
that you
unpack
from the
abandoned cars
cannot sustain
life: a crate of
tractor axles,
for example,
a dozen dozen
clasp knives,
a hundred
bolts of satin --
perhaps you
specialized
more than
you imagined.

I'm not going to kill the effect by analyzing all the aspects of this poem that inspire me. However, there are a few things I'll say. First and foremost, this poem pretty much describes me in a nutshell and what better way to charm an audience than to give it personal and amusing attention. Second, the concise but light nature of the poem itself is just so wonderful. There aren't any spare words or concepts -- and when it closes, there's this feeling of completeness, like everything that needs to be said has been so and anything more would be superfluous. To me, this aspect of her writing is the most inspiring.

But inspiration is uncomfortable sometimes. It can arouse such a distressing restlessness. The power of the inspiration itself is like a reprimand of what little has been accomplished so far.

It's one thing to be inspired to learn to sew. There are instructions. One learns.

The call to wisdom, precision and wit prove more difficult to answer.

Mystery Tulips

I've been waiting with eager anticipation to see how the minimal landscaping I put in last year will turn out this year. I planted a lot of bulbs and transplanted peonies and ripped up about eight tons of other crud that was just plain irritating.

It's a lot of fun, a year later, especially since, as I may have mentioned before, I have the memory of a goldfish. I really have no idea what's out there now.

Except...there were a few things I was really excited about growing and what's blooming is ... not them. I like weird things, like giant globe alliums that remind me of clovers on steroids (with blooms like a foot in diameter) and exotic tiger's eye lillies. I like things that have strange and interesting foliage. My favorite things are unusual. Why put effort into things that are normal?

So you understand: I did not plant plain pink tulips. I did not ask for plain pink tulips. I don't know how they got there.

I don't think they were there last year. Were they?

Someone, please explain.

Hey, tulip invaders. You see that shadow? It's me. Not tiptoeing. Looming.

After Easter

1. I'm sorta done trying new recipes for a while. They were good, but not *that* good (I'm talking to you, hummus deviled eggs). My brain is only so big, and there's really no excuse for the number of things I forgot this Easter.

One of the upsides to a total inability to delegate - nobody really knows what I was *supposed* to do but forgot! I would enumerate them here, but ... seriously... it's embarrassing.

2. I really don't suggest overeating when 5 1/2 months pregnant. The combined sensations of a stuffed belly and fetal flip-flops is weird. Real weird.

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Easter Plans

Okay, so in an unprecedented act of planning ahead, I have officially (well, mostly) planned my Easter menu FOUR DAYS before Easter dinner is to be served.

This is incredible, especially if you remember that on Christmas, Peter had to drive around (at around noon, mind you, cutting it pretty close) looking for some store - any store - to be open and selling Christmas turkeys. I can honestly say that the Jews saved our Christmas dinner!

Easter Menu 2010

BREAKFAST
Hot Cross Buns (duh!)

DINNER

Soup:
Fresh Pea Soup

Meat:
Lamb (recipe so far undetermined)
Spiral Sliced Ham

Vegetables:
Thomas Keller's Homemade Creamed Corn
Raw Asparagus Salad
Stuffed Onions
Classic Green Bean Casserole
Shaved Carrot Ribbons Salad
Hasselback Potatoes

Extras:
Bunny Cake (no, it's not made of bunny.)
Tour de Deviled Eggs

And these adorable little chicks!

I Hate Paris in the Springtime

Springtime is like adolescence. No one enjoys adolescence.

Once the novelty of winter wears off, the snow gets slushy and all your cute sweaters and coats stop fitting because your pregnant belly is too unwieldy (oh wait, is that just me?) you're left just aching for those first few warm days of the new season. What you wouldn’t give for a little green in the garden. How you yearn for just one colorful flower, for the freedom of short sleeves and sitting on the back patio.

Then, all at once, a whole week of glorious weather opens up a world that you thought you’d forgotten. On your daily hike you see *gasp* a real live fern! Even the grossness of the season’s first tick stuck deep in the dog’s fur is made pleasanter by the subtle promise it holds of a whole summer’s worth of outdoor adventures.

Beware, though, this spring tease.

The following week will startle you out of your happy fantasies of gurgling brooks and daffodils.

It will get cold again. Quite cold.

And then it never. Stops. Raining.

(For the record, I've never been to Paris in the springtime or otherwise, so I really can't speak with much authority on the issue.)

Social Commentary from the Grocery Line

First of all, it was the express lane and that woman must have had 120 items. The sign says 12 ITEMS OR LESS for a reason.

Secondly, call me judgmental, but she didn't need all that food. She was, in my estimation, about 5'6" and around 250 pounds. Maybe 275. In spandex.

There are many, many reasons for people to be overweight -- I get that. Lack of nutritional education, eating disorders, depression, some sort of disability inhibiting exercise. Heck, we all can think of a bad day that ended in too much comfort food. It doesn't make it ok, but it makes it understandable.

Spandex, though? There's no excuse.

Here’s what really got on my nerves though: there was a little girl (offspring?) hanging off the front of her grocery cart, perhaps 5 years old and quite cute. She was cheerful and babbling on about some nonsense in the way that 5 year olds are prone to do. Despite how cute she was, I can understand the babbling getting a bit old and, if I were the adult in charge, I may even resort to the smile-and-nod routine for a few minutes.

Or even half an hour.

In such cases, no stones would be thrown by me.

However, this woman was not resorting to the smile-and-nod routine. She leaned heavily against her too-full cart with her back to the child, reading an US Weekly and listening to an IPod. Every once in a while the little girl would come around to the front of the cart and tug on her mother’s shirt, at which point the woman would turn and say, “WHAT?!” at that irritating I-have-headphones-in-and-therefore-can’t-gauge-my-indoor-voice volume.

Finally registering on the fact that her mother was far more interested in celebrity gossip than whatever cutie-patootie had to say, the little girl pointed to the cover and said “I like her shoes.”
For those of you (P, this is for you) who don’t know, Suri is the daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. US Weekly thinks she might be growing up too fast, or so I gathered.

In response to this child’s innocent ploy for her mother’s attention, the mother ripped the earphones out of her ears and threw the unpurchased magazine back into the rack next to the Bubblicious and Almond Joys.

“NO!” she shouted, “those are supposed to be play-clothes! That is totally, completely inappropriate! NO. You do not like those shoes! They’ve dressed her up like a GROWN WOMAN. IT IS TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE.”

Never before have I witnessed the word “inappropriate” being used with quite so much unintended dramatic irony.

And for the record, I think Suri looks cute. Especially in those shoes.


Q: Is dramatic irony always unintentional? If it is, does that make "unintended dramatic irony" redundant? Was my majoring in English a total failure? And while we're on the subject, why am I a 25 year old college graduate still unable to spell the word "exercise" without the help of a dictionary?
A: It's past my bedtime.