BICADIBL

No, it's not an acronym for some prehistoric reptile with only two teeth.  It's the founding of a new blog!  Anke and I have had so much fun coming up with nonsense definitions for the Captchas on Blogger that we've decided to take it to the next level.

Thus, the founding of the BICADIBL, The Bilingual Captcha Dictionary Blog, at http://bicadibl.blogspot.com   ...So go on over and enjoy some of the first juicy tidbits and join in the fun with a morsel of your own.  It's meaning-making on a useless (but highly personally-rewarding) level!

Every cloud has a...

...microbial lining?

Fascinating and apparently true, there be little critters up in the mesosphere (ahem, that's above the stratosphere, for those keeping score).

So, perhaps we should think twice about whether that white, untouched snow is really that much cleaner than the yellow snow....

Go read. It will do your brain good!

It's a Snowmergency!

OK, well maybe not really a "mergency" (as my son calls them), but we are all pretty much going bananas up here. Not only have we pulverized our previous snowfall total record (which, I may add, was set in the notoriously noxious winter of 1978), but we are apparently getting a little too loopy up here.

I would call it cabin fever, but, being that we all live in some form of modified suburbia, I'm not sure that that keeps to the spirit of the phrase. All I can say is that my gas fireplace (controlled by a switch, thank you very much) is workin' overtime.

I just went out a while ago to shovel the 10 feet from my driveway to my front door of its 8" of snow (underlayed with a stunningly beautiful 1/2 inch of ice) and it took me over a half an hour. After which time, aside from being in a slightly surly mood, I couldn't feel my fingertips.

Well, I had planned to go out and take pictures this morning of the gorgeous trees, branches encased in ice (they looked like wonderful, weird tootsie-roll lollipops) but alas, it was too cold. I was too much of a wuss. I could say something deep about the fleetingness of beauty and change and blah blah but truth is, most of what I can think of is "Thank God for the Attached Garage".

Then, I stumbled upon this post on the Isthmus (a local Madison free newspaper) web site titled, "We're one snowstorm away from anarchy" (make sure to read all the way down, it gets better and better) and almost peed my pants. I said almost, friends. Thank God I didn't. No one likes peecicles.

Down to Earth

So I know it's been a while since I've written a "real" blog post... and suddenly, kapow! I have ten million things I want to write about. And, of course, very little time to actually sit down and do it. Better that way than the other way around, I suppose!

Today I was reading a Richard Scarry book to my son for the umpteen-millionth time. (I say that with all love, because I do truly love Richard Scarry books, and I love that my son loves them). He requested a story that hasn't been on our top ten Scarry radar, called "The Accident". Now, there's nothing grand about "The Accident" per se. It has the usual Scarry cast of characters who get into an unfortunate pile-up because they were not looking where they were going. Then a fellow named Greasy George comes along and he does a predictably bad job at putting all the cars back together, equally combining the parts from all the cars and the motorcycle until each vehicle is absurdly cock-eyed.

Again, cute, but we've seen this kind of thing before. And then, in an aside, you see a voice coming out from under an engine hood. It's Seargent Murphy's radio. It says, "Come in, Seargent Murphy! Your little girl Bridget will not take her nap. Come home immediately!"

I've seen this page probably zillions of times, but today this little snippet just made me heave a happy sigh. I'm not sure when Richard Scarry wrote this story, but it was probably at least 30 years ago. And apparently back then mothers were getting fed up with their kids some days and calling in the big kahuna.

Sometimes I feel like a wonderful mother. Sometimes I feel like an hysterical knit-wit who doesn't even know how to garner the cooperation of someone 1/3 of her size. And sometimes I feel like I'm insane for getting frustrated and saying to my husband (as we all do, I suppose?) "Here. Here's your child. Now you deal with him!"

Somehow it's the collision of all these feelings that gave me some moment of clarity today. That, and the fact that, suddenly, my little guy is saying things like, "Hey mama! Come here! I have an idea!" and wanting to have his hands cleaned and even eating gasp! stir-fried chicken and vegetables over rice at the table and trying bamboo shoots and liking them. "Bamboo! Bamboo! Bamboo!"

Yet for all the progress today held, I still must type with the strains of evening protest in the background (doesn't want diaper on, doesn't want this set of pyjamas, wants those pyjamas) which makes me so annoyed and yet amused. Seargent Murphy, we have a problem indeed. Come in immediately!

O-bama-rama

Give this Barack Obama widget a fly...

Juvenile but satisfying!

Sarah Silverman's song "I'm F**cking Matt Damon"

Brushmasters

My husband is an inspiration. He has figured out how to play the national anthem on our electric toothbrush-- simply by by varying how open or closed he has his mouth.

He is also the source of the following little ditty we sing to our son at toothbrushing time. Sung to the tune of "Take me out to the ballgame":


Take me out to the bathroom
Take me out to the sink
Bring me a toothbrush and some toothpaste
I don't care if the paste goes to waste
Let me brush my molars and canines
If they're not clean it's a shame
For it's one, two, three strikes you're out
At the toothbrush game!

Something makes me think that, aside from science, he has multiple callings in life.

Aah, it all becomes clear now...

From the NYTimes about the unseen, long-term effects of binge-drinking (italics are mine):

On a microscopic level, Dr. Crews has shown that heavy binge-drinking in rats diminishes the genesis of nerve cells, shrinks the development of the branchlike connections between brain cells and contributes to neuronal cell death. The binges activate an inflammatory response in rat brains rather than a pure regrowth of normal neuronal cells. Even after longstanding sobriety this inflammatory response translates into a tendency to stay the course, a diminished capacity for relearning and maladaptive decision-making.

I wonder who this makes me think of... hmmm....

More Heave-Ho, Less Ho-Ho

Since I can't bear to dissect the fact that I spent a good 6 hours of today working on presents for others (I knitted, bought, wrapped, packaged, carded, addressed and mailed... for SIX stinkin' hours!), I will supply you with some joyful distraction and some things that have given me a chuckle in the past few days.

1) This web site for snow blowers. I got a good giggle out of the copy on this one. "The snow will shiver in fear, not you!" Uh-huh. Go out there and show that snow who's boss. Er... or just finish clearing the path, you over-testosteroned dolt-freak!

2) Oh. My. God. Nothing says Christmas cheer like this. Make sure to watch the video clip. Hey, don't blame me. I wasn't out there looking for that special gift for the hunting enthusiast in my life!

3) "What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough." A review of the earliest episodes of Sesame Street, now available on DVD. Elmo is DEFINITELY prozacky. Read on.

4) Slimey Worm's MySpace page. Yup. A 38-year-old male living in Oscar's Trash Can. Notice the "friends"... Some people have way too much time on their hands! (Though if you ever see a copy of the book "Slimey to the Moon" snag it for me... I'll pay you back!) ;)

5) This gal kicks some major butt (see above comic)

Happy Holidays, y'all!

Too fine a point

Not sure where to start this, so I guess I'll start with the drive. Tonight, amidst the falling snow, I left my house, husband tucking present-crazed child into bed, mother and stepfather watching television in the basement. At almost 9:00 on a Thursday evening with two inches down in the last hours upon the almost foot of snow on the ground, did I really need to be out driving?

A girlfriend of mine is out of town for a few days and I promised her that I'd go by her house and pick up her mail and any packages that might have been dropped there. In fact, even when she goes out of town for only a couple of days, I always volunteer to do it. And I don't mind doing it. Somehow, perhaps, by visiting her house while she's gone I feel like I'm tending the friendship or visiting just a little.

Anyhow, as I drove into her neighborhood, I noticed a young man walking on the other side of the road. I was struck by such jealousy (though jealousy isn't the word)-- I wanted to be him. Suddenly I could read this stranger's gait and I knew: He's young, he's working something out as he slices through the snow. Sometimes you just need to escape into an outside where you can march the stupidity out of yourself and your thinking.

As I pulled into my friend's driveway, I noticed three hulking boxes which looked like elephants trying t0 "hide" behind the fake doric columns of her front porch. They looked so insipid! And somehow so sweet as well, like they were trying so hard.

I feel like that often myself, especially around my son. I am so filled with love for him, I could just be him. Then I remove myself and say this is the adult voice I use and the sensible thing I say to make sure you're safe and know boundaries all the while thinking Ha! If he only knew how we are all just pretending.

I loaded the awkward boxes into the back of my car, quickly rearranging my daily detritus (grocery freezer bag, pair of son's rubber frog boots only worn inside the house) and tossing them on top. Haphazard, but out of the snow. Not so silly and alone on the porch at least.

On the way back, I started to drive even more slowly, more deliberately. And I'm not sure it was out of a sense of safety, but rather, as though my wheels were working through something for me. I realized that I was listening to a classical piece that siphened me into it, and everything I saw was an extension of that listening, that movement of the car, the music. The snow is piled in drifts reflecting tangerine-colored light from the streetlights. All somehow so cozy and perfect and piled it seemed out of a movie, or a thought about winter, not actual winter itself.

Passing all the strung-up lights, the white deer were silhouetted and illuminated at once as they grazed upon the snow-wrapped yards. Dwarf pines swathed in frenetic dancing lights looked like little overdressed chihuahuas, blinking to themselves in that nervous way. All this man-made love and the snow arranging themselves together, working it out.

And that, perhaps, is exactly it. Working it out is beautiful and human and sometimes forced. And sometimes loveliness and grace just happens to settle up upon it-- upon the intention and the ritual and the routes of dailiness. Grace upon work. Work in the hopes of grace.

More! More! More!

There's a point at the end of Sesame Street where Slimy the Worm, bedecked in a sleeping cap (when did we stop using those?) implores to Oscar the Grouch: "Read more, read more! Read more Trash!" Oscar replies, "N0, Slimy. That was enough excitement for such a small worm. We'll read more tomorrow!"

Now when my son starts whining at us for something (yes, much of the time, books, but other stuff, too), we call him Slimy. "More, more, more!" we croon. It always makes him laugh. Now he's starting to use this mantra as well, and his two-year-old approximation of Slimy's voice, whenever he whines. Somehow it makes the whining more fun for both of us.

Now that it's getting dark out so early, we are often driving after dark, when Christmas lights are in their full bloom. He's in the back yelling, "More Christmas lights! More lights!" and I have to point them out to him as we pass. To tell the truth, I like looking at the lights, too. It's one of the least conflicted feelings I have about the season which is upon us.

***

I was somewhat dumbfounded by this rant on Slate.com by Christopher Hitchens, the notorious God-hater. I mean, I can understand the instinct to want strict separation of church and state. No government-sponsored Christmas trees or holiday programs or whatnot. I, personally, am not offended by them, but do acknowledge the criticism that they can be seen as endorsement of one religion over another.

Still, this guy really strikes me as joyless. And that's about the harshest thing I can say about anyone. He seems like a miserable human being. And his arguments, while some of them are not altogether without merit, are mirthless and unhuman.

Well, now he's taking potshots at Hanukkah. Not that I should be surprised, but I am taken aback. I wonder if it's because in general, I think public criticism of anything Jewish or even mildly Jewish is usually pounced upon and torn apart by the media. And while I think that some of that instinct is perhaps a little overdone (especially when it comes to legitimate criticism of Israeli policies or politics), I am also adamantly opposed to protecting hate speech. Period. That's why I could never join the ACLU.

Now, mind you, I know that this opinion is a controversial one. "Where do you draw the line?" people ask. Truth is, I'm not sure. But a line does have to be drawn somewhere for the health of our society, and it behooves us to think about this issue and debate it.

Anyhow, whether or not this rant constitutes hate speech (which I think it doesn't), it is still shocking and disconcerting. After reading it I felt horrible. Just horrible. Partially because I felt that he used an arithmetic which is not humane in its logic.

Then I found this response and felt better about the world again. Yes, thinking and feeling and knowing. Not to be warm and fuzzy about it, but looking for the light isn't that bad.

More light! Want more, MORE!

MamaH has not approved this ad

...but she still thinks it's freakin' funny. Good thing Huckabees is too conservative to get elected. At least he's making a joke of himself in more ways than one!

'Tis the season...

Let the games begin!

Ahem, let me rephrase that. As of November 1st: Let the games begin!

If you're confused, that is a true sign of your mental and fiscal health. You see, November 1st is the day that all things Halloween go in the bargain bin and wide swathes of nearly every store automatically pop up with tinsel, trimmings and light-diode-impregnated fake northern spruces.

Aah, the joys of the season that starts too soon, lasts too long, and drives the folks who work retail into lifetime Christmas music haters. Or is it "holiday" music haters?

Yes, as you can see, there is serious debate going on about whether the Wisconsin State "holiday tree" (dubbed so in the 1980's in a conniption of political correctness) should be renamed the "Christmas tree". Serious debate. Did I say that already?

Well, speaking as a resident Jew, I can plead... PLEASE return it to being the Christmas tree. Holiday tree is just ludicrous. Unless, that is, some wild roaming sect of Jews actually does have a penchant for felling small trees and bedecking them with oil lamps or candles. If there is such a case, my bad. Otherwise, let's just take down the whole ruse of egalitarianism. Trees have nothing to do with Hanukkah, nor to my knowledge, with Kwanzaa.

Then, go ahead and put up a menorah, or a kwanzaa candle thing, and maybe a festivus pole for good measure. (Festivus-- what an awesome stroke of comic genius!) Just don't waste our time pretending that the 50,000-pound elephant in the room is not indeed a towering elephant. In a whispered tone: We know about Christmas. It's OK. You can have that. Just don't expect us to decorate it with stars of david and play dreidel beneath it.

***

OK, on from the substantive debate. Now it's time for the real meaning of this holiday, er, christmas, er, shopping season... prezzies! Lots of 'em!

Including these dumb presents and these all-time most dangerous presents. Yep, they're real, folks. Reminds me of the cornballer from Arrested Development.

***

Yes, that's about as substantive as it gets these days... I've been running around trying to get everything done, knitting everything I can get my hands on (gee, can't guess if that's displaced mothering instinct, can we?) and almost ran a stop sign the other day (no kid in car... keep your pants on!) because I had a very surreal Luis Bunuel kind of image in my head of knitting eyelashes. Very strange. Perhaps a few too many lattes in the pot?

100% More Cheese

OK, OK...

Let me just lick off my fingers from these natural Cheetos (No preservatives, No artificial flavors, No artificial colors) and type a couple of minutes....

Yes, the glamor life in the intervening month or so (or longer?) since my last little snippet has trodden by and I've had only the impulse to write, never the follow-through or the subject matter, for that matter.

Life has just been strings of little whack-a-doodle details with no coherent storylines and it sort of reminds me of an episode of the show "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel. I saw one the other week when my husband was out of town about conch farmers who have to go out and harvest kelp to feed to the conch. They scoot out on this little dinky motorboat and haul all this slimy, long, rope-like kelp onto the boat and have to cut it with sharp knives (that stuff is actually amazingly strong). Does this sound like a good idea? Wielding sharp knives on a wet, slippery boat? One of the cameramen ends up puking.

Anyhow, nothing nearly as risky, but perhaps as dumb. My 2 1/2-year-0ld son had to have eye surgery and was on all sorts of drops and steriods. I believe this was the beginning of my downfall, because in order to keep him content (and from rubbing his eye all the time), we coaxed him into short bouts of mania with new toys, stickers, books, even the odd blue lollipop or two. It's been more than a month where I have had to physically catch him and hold him down for 5 eyedrops a day (during the day mostly by myself). And let me tell you, that ain't fun. Not woeful, just not fun.

Let's see now... Umm... There's been the fact that my son is 2 1/2 and thinks defiance is uproariously funny... that's been a good one. Then there has been the cold that has been passed along and has taken up residence at the farthest crevice of my sinus system (sort of like the solar system without any of the cache) and makes anyone who talks to me on the phone want to immediately get off because it's too obnoxious and/or painful to listen to me snort and snuff through the conversation.

Plus, the only freelance job I've had in a while is a five-hour whopper writing copy about acrylic bathtubs. Now with 100% new American acrylic!

Yes, all these things. And not knowing what to do with my life (how is it that everyone is doing something important with a capital "i" and I'm knitting an itchy scarf and eating "natural" Cheetos at 1pm?) and also not knowing if I will have another child (bigger, scarier, let's-not-go-there-because-it-could-get-messy).

Yup. The world of meaning, knock- knock- knockin' down my (OH-- mustn't forget... Oh crap. Whatever it is, I forgot it). Door?

Hello?

How do you say "Ass-in-nine"?

A little late night nugget for your reading pleasure:

Bush's copy of his UN speech was accidentally posted on the Web, along with "idiot-proof" phonetic spellings. How do you say, "Doh!"?

Cue the Angels!

This has been a beastly week, but at least there's some redemption in the world: Apparently the New York Times has made all of its internet content free. Yes, that's right. Free.

I was one of the suckers who paid the $49.95/year to have access to all the blogs and goodies the NYTimes hid behind its little Times Select icons until this summer when I decided I would use that $49.95 to buy myself a cute bracelet in Germany. So much for my intellectual prowess...

Still, now I can freely graze among the lilies. You can, too. Go check it out.

***

And, in other news, my toddler managed to give himself a gigantic goose egg on his forehead sunday night. He attended preschool Monday morning wearing his bike helmet (to stave off further possible injury on the playground).

Classy.

And apparently they blew the shofar on Monday for the kids to hear. Now he's obsessed. He runs around saying, "Shofar outside! Woman blow it!" Today he came home with a decorated paper-plate facsimile of the shofar and even tried to take it to bed with him. Cue the angels, indeed!

Tendering Words

One of the things that I'm amazed about with my son at this age is what he does, thinks and says when he's playing by himself.

This afternoon, as our iTunes picked an interesting mix of Vivaldi, REM, Keb Mo', Ray Charles and Coolio (yes, Coolio), my toddler guy was playing contentedly by himself.

At one point I heard him say, "helmet guy, we share with our friends!"

Last week, after he awoke from his nap, everything was cool. "Cool helmet, helmet guy!"

Today, he kept referring to himself as "Sweet boy."

You see, it's almost impossible for me at this point to have an independent thought from my son. I'm so enraptured with his language development that apparently I've turned into the parrot.


***

...And some sad news in the parrot world: Alex, the grey parrot, is no longer amongst the living.

He was, according to his obit, one of the world's most developed bird-brains: He knew over 100 words.

Apparently, the night before he died, when "his" researcher put him back in his cage, he said, "You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

Papa Guy

I've been quite a stress kitten lately. I'll admit it. As my husband prepares to teach his first graduate class and simultaneously is falling prey to the rigors of organic lawn care, I have been minding the home front and trying to figure out what the hell to do with my toddler. Truth be told, my ideas usually run out around Thursday. And, with the end-of-summer hole (no swimming lessons or playgroups) to fill in the desperate blanks, I've been fit to be tied.

But enough about that. Bitching ain't going to solve it. Instead, I want to talk about why I am going to go down in the pantheon of bad (but inventive) moms. Why, you ask?

Well, with my verbal dexterity underchallenged as a stay-at-home-mom, I've resorted to playing small linguistic tricks on my son.

For instance, take last week. My husband was obsessed with the lawn. He thinks we have grubs, which are hatching into Japanese beetles and eating up our plants and planning the demise of our lawn ecosystem. Since using pesticides are out of the question (and, no irony here) I am in agreement with that, we have to find another way to get rid of the grub-a-dub-dubs. Enter the beneficial nematode. A boon to the lawn-obsessed, this little microscopic critter (which supposedly resembles a worm when you get one close enough to see) seeks out the grubs and eats them. Yum! Now that's some good Grub!

So, aforementioned husband waffles back and forth. Do we order them? D0 we not order them? Enough to cover our lawn will cost $50. For those of you keeping track, $50 buys you 50 million beneficial nematodes from the Internet. Finally, after much back-and-forth, he decides to order them. They show up a day later, packaged in a white styrofoam cooler which needs to go directly into the fridge. (I bet you're not eating at my house after you heard that!)

So, given the huge amount of care and interest the beneficial nematode has inspired in our house, I decide to tell my son that papa is getting nematodes. Can you say nematodes? "Nee-man-toes!" Shakes his head knowingly. I ask, "Do you know what nematodes are?" "Yup!" he says cheerily, shaking his head. I left it at that. As long as he thinks he knows what they are, who am I to spoil it with the actual (and perhaps icky) explanation?

Since my little chatterbox is actually an old chatterbox with a skipping record, it has been taken up into his vocabulary stew. It is not unusual to hear a string of words like this one: "Helmet guy goes up there up the ladder nematode. Jet engines!"

And, upon overhearing a conversation I had on the phone with someone last week, he has also picked up another little ditty. Someone we know just found out that they have two spleens. No matter how funny that may sound, it apparently isn't very funny if you're that person. Two spleens-- not so fun. So when I heard it, I said in a loud voice, "He has TWO SPLEENS?" and started laughing hysterically. Suddenly, my son was orbiting the couch at great velocity yelling "Two SPEENS!"

To make matters that much worse, I have two languages to mess around with. ONCE, mind you, months and months ago, when my son pointed to a picture of a parrot in one of his books, I told him that the German word for parrot was papagei. Then I thought to myself, giggled, and said it as two words: PAPA GUY... which is apt, for my -guy obsessed child ("Where helmet guy go?" "Guy over there and up a ladder!") And, ever the little parrot, he's stuck on repeat.

Where Mama go? To hell, apparently. Mama go where she not warp minds of small children.

Stories

The past couple of days I've fallen asleep while telling my son a bedtime/naptime story. Picture me laying on the floor (beige carpet-- awful suburban plague), me sticking my hand through the slots to hold my son's hand. (The command comes from behind the blanket: "Mama, hold the hand!") and so I do. It's a concession. A weakness, perhaps. Still, it seems a godsend to have him fall asleep behind the bars of the crib as compared to the wild late-night air mattress surfing that he practiced while we were in Germany. So, I'll throw him a bone.

And truth be told, the storytelling does me good. It's like those beginning creative writing workshop exercises where you get to pick disparate words or phrases out of a hat and have to craft something out of them.

Only mostly what you got from those exercises was a bunch of crap with maybe a funny line or two. (Don't apply for the poet-laureate position just yet...)

Yet somehow, despite the common constraints, dictated by a 2 1/2-year-old with certain predelictions, shall we say, to "Papa, Max and Elmo with helmets on!" or "Helmet guys!" or "Duffy train driver and ice cream truck!", it's amazing the amount of variety I've mined.

Take for example, my masterpiece from last week, "Papa, Max and Elmo take two modes of transportation (helmets on, for safety, of course) to visit the Helmet Guy Convention". Now that was a finely crafted piece of oral literature. And there are other favorites (of mine, not of his-- I can safely say that my stories put him to sleep. Does that count as being "good"?) Like when my son got to take his nap in the back of a dump truck while the "helmet guy" drove him to sleep, or when the firemen had to come and pump out our flooded backyard (we woke up to ducks swimming around in it!)

But, perhaps like all good children's stories, there are certain predictabilities (see the aforementioned child falling asleep portion of the program). However, I am apparently too good of a hypnotist. Telling the stories is so relaxing to me that I have woken up drooling, with carpet-rash over half of my face. This afternoon when I awoke after an hour, I was still holding my son's hand, and I couldn't feel most of my arm because it was asleep.

Aaah, love. Is it terrible to say that I am good at this thing love? That I am good at talking? (Consult any elementary-school report card for confirmation).

The other night I had a dream that I had to take over teaching my husband's class when he went on a trip. I remember: I was overcome with joy!

And I remember why, I suppose. When I most loved teaching, I got to tell stories. In them, we were all awake. We learned things. Them and I. Completely engaged in love.

Dispatch from Abroad

Greetings from the land of the bizarro keyboard. It's been a year since I've typed on one of these, and it shows. A tutorial: y and z are switched. The @ symbol is hidden on the 'l' key and only accessible by hitting the alt key simultaneously. Then there's the beautiful ü, ö, ä with their little follow-the-dancing balls breaking up the monotony of the normal asdf jkl;. It's more like asdf jklö. Even these (non)sense combinations are an order of sorts. A discipline which fingers forget and remember again just long enough to forget. A constant deja vu.

§§§

And just the same, it's amazing to me how much knowledge is stuck inside of me, leaping to the surface as if it were there all the time (it was). Yesterday we had some friends over and they were talking about the moving sidewalks in the Paris underground. Instead of the conveyor-belt technology used in most airports, they are apparently comprised of many cylinders which propel you the minute you step on them. There are two lanes- slow and fast, and the fast one accelerates you at impressive speed. Our friends said that no matter how prepared you are for it mentally, it still comes as a physical surprise. Something about all those small cylinders causing such momentum seems as though it can't be true.

I wish that for the three years I lived here, I had kept a blog. I can only imagine what things I had said as I return to the thoughts, walking down the streets. It would be interesting to see the persistence of perception or the slight kant as if walking up a slight incline. Today, here. Three years, a decade from now, head cocked a little to the side.

§§§

Before leaving home, my husband and I both had a feeling we did not want to leave. We weren't ready to come. There's always so much in motion that it's hard to feel like it's possible (even preferable?) to leave it, stop-motion. Perhaps we crave a more episodic handling of our exposition. This is the point in the plot where we wind things up. Although we live in simultaneousness as a point of being (breathing AND looking AND thinking AND biting nails), our minds trick us into thinking that it is not so. Focus and selection is an amazing coping skill.

Yet when we arrived, our arrival was immediate. Here is our bank. There is where I always bought the plums (much better than the stand right next to it) and money is money, not some computation of this is how much? (If you've looked at the value of the Euro recently, you'll know how dangerous of an automatism this is!)

At the same time, life at home is whole and constant, even without us this period of time. The fruit flies that swarm around half-eaten bananas here are the same that are digesting our compost at home. The process (though unseeable: when will our compost finally yield DIRT, for God's sakes?) is ongoing.

§§§

I can tell you where I am now because I do this blog anonymously. Therefore I am not worried that you will go to my house, foil my security system and steal my dirt. I can tell you where I am, but never who I am. That's the riddle that keeps life rolling forward.