Purple Haze Lenin

So, this was a fairly relaxed weekend. Other than baking cakes and going to one baseball game, I didn't do much. On the way home from Oliver's game, he screamed out Look, Mom! Lenin got a cotton Schwab! That enormous sculpture is right around the corner from our house -- it's a sort of art installation at a gallery that used to be a car dealership and now hosts raucous parties instead of art, except for the great leader. It appeared overnight last fall and is entitled "Lenin with Madame Mao." That's evidently her on the top. My mother takes great offense to this installation as she imagines it's another sign of the great Liberal Conspiracy That Has Enveloped Her Daughter. I try to allay her fears by only wearing my Communist pajamas at night. This weekend, another installation appeared, a dirty cotton swab. My quip was that it apparently signified the reason why Lenin didn't actually listen to the people. He had wax in his ears.

I also made a second cake, this one milk chocolate. I think chocolate is my specialty, to tell you the truth. I'm hoping that I get lots of orders for cakes and cupcakes over the next few months -- enough to buy a new pair of communist pajamas.

This afternoon, a large iguana was sighted strolling through our neighborhood. Here it is on the pathway leading to the Crazy Cat Lady. That thing gave me the creeps, but actually far less so than the Crazy Cat Lady and her infernal cats.

And here is Sophie and me in the late afternoon, as the sun goes down and makes a sort of purple haze in her bedroom. She had a fairly decent weekend. I took her for walks. She stayed in her swing outside while I watered the flowers. She had some seizures and lay beside me while I read a TC Boyle short story in the April 15th issue of The New Yorker. The story satisfied me and had one of the best ending lines I've read in a long time. Sophie loves words on a page and stares intently as I read. I like to imagine that she, too, can read and has a wealth of stories in her head, things to turn over and over and never feels the need to talk about them.

Odds

So we woke up this morning on a Sunday like a thousand other Sundays, and I gather no one I know won that Powerball lottery. Yesterday I bought my very first ticket on the way to Oliver's baseball game, along with a glazed jelly donut and an iced coffee (with whole milk). I figured that if I won, tomorrow, I'd have the availability to hire a personal trainer. Today, no one I know won the six hundred million dollars, it's half-sunny out, the fejoya tree is heavy with fruit that no one likes, and I have to bake a chocolate cake with milk chocolate frosting. I'll need to get some exercise and do some laundry, War and Peace is languishing on my bed, I'll avoid The New York Times so that I don't have to read about the IRS, and I'll probably curse under my breath a few times in irritation at some thing or another, and then I'll finger some beads and pray that a job will fall into my lap tomorrow morning. Sophie will have no more seizures, Oliver's eyes will suddenly let go of words that writhe and hide, Henry will hit consistent home runs, The Husband will decide that I am a goddess, and I? I will stand like a tree first and then fly.

Hula Hula

The Baker is very, very tired.

WARNING: This cake is not subtle.

Blue Velvet Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

The Baker is Back

via Etsy

This morning I was up at 6:30 baking a cake. I've got two cake orders today, orders I took at the last minute because My Other Job has drawn to a close, and I need the work. I have a Blue Velvet Cake with Purple Frosting and a Luau Theme to make today and a Milk Chocolate Chocolate Cake tomorrow. I will, of course, post photos later.

If you know of anyone who needs to hire a baker, please let me know. I can also advocate for children with special healthcare needs, review grants, create caregiver manuals and train caregivers, write grants and pull my legs over my head.

Reader, what are you up to this weekend?

Words and Mules

Last night I drove east while Mr. Darcy read The End of the Affair to me and even though the mountains were a postcard backdrop to the winding road and the sky above a hazy gray, it was words that enveloped me, perfect English words, strung together just so, so that I knew nothing but the story and the story was mine, remembered. Naked, we wrap ourselves in words, and stories find us precisely at the moment they should, where the sky meets the mountain and the mountain meets the road and the road meets us, hurtling forward. A Moscow Mule at the end, with a moon slice of lime.

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow 

from flying over your head,

but you can prevent them from

building nests in your hair.

Chinese Proverb

Gone Missing

Even though it's from the satiric newspaper The Onion, this story resonated and made me laugh out loud:

ROANOKE, VA—According to reports from stunned Melberg family sources, Mom just walked up the stairs, slammed the door to her bedroom, and locked it.

The shocking incident occurred shortly before dinner time in the Melberg home at 46 Fairmoor St. Although Mom had reportedly been silently chopping vegetables in the kitchen, showing no signs of outward agitation or anger, multiple sources confirmed seeing her walk briskly through the living room and up the stairs before locking herself in her bedroom at approximately 6:38 p.m.

Read the rest HERE. 

It reminded me of some notes I'd scratched in my little purse notebook the other day when I was listening to NPR in the carpool line at The Brothers' school. I was listening to a story related to the saving of the three women who had been kidnapped and held hostage for nearly a decade in Ohio. The woman on the program was some kind of official at a national organization that compiles data on missing persons, and she had a thick, lovely southern accent. She sounded matter-of-fact and kind at the same time even though she was basically detailing statistics about how many people "go missing" each year, how many are found and how many of these are children, runaways, etc. As you might suspect, while there are hundreds of thousands of people reported missing each year, most are resolved and only a tiny percentage are open cases. At some point in the woman's discussion, she said (in her thick southern accent) -- and I'll paraphrase here -- that some folks just go missin' on their own accord. They up and leave their families and disappear. They might start a new life in some other place, change their name, you name it. It's your right to go missin' and some do just that. 

Reader, despite the gravity of the Ohio story and the prospect of losing one's child, I practically burst out laughing when she spoke. I thought, as I sat in the carpool line I want to just go missing. Now, before you act all concerned and leave earnest comments, I'm not threatening to go missing. I'm just saying. 

A Notice That Yours Truly (me) Will Be Reading in the Southland

along with other contributors to my favorite writing teacher and mentor, Barbara Abercrombie's new book, Kicking in the Wall. I have two small pieces that Barbara included in the book and will probably be reading one or both tonight along with a few other people and the great woman herself. Here's the notice for any of you Los Angeles, Pasadena or southern California people out there. It'll be fun!

You can read more about Barbara's book here and purchase it at your local bookstore or here.

The Best Blog Post Evah

In case you missed it, you can read my earlier post HERE. I got this graphic novella from a Reader named Missy Slick.

illustrated by Missy Slick

.

My posse is growing and my gratitude overflows.

I am wondering whether you

would rather see the pile of papers in my filing box, papers that I need to go through and make sense of, insurance claims, etc., that reach all the way up to suicidal Virginia Woolf's nose:

or,

see what I made myself for lunch today, smoked lemon pepper salmon with cream cheese on a toasted bagel, positioned in front of hydrangeas and roses?

or

listen to the poet Frank O'Hara read An Airplane Whistle (after Heine) which is not from his collection titled Lunch Poems.

Stealing Jimmy Dean

Bonnie Parker, 1934

The woman in front of me in the check-out line had at least thirty cans of dog food on the conveyor belt. She was dressed in tiny shorts and a tee-shirt, her hair too blonde for her age, her voice brassy and loud, too loud for the grocery store line at 10:00 pm. I felt judgmental. I had promised The Brothers that I would buy some of those frozen biscuits with sausage and cheese for this morning's breakfast. The Brothers have to take onerous state standardized tests this week, so a hearty breakfast is in order, and the crap will ease their hearts if not sharpen their brains. The cashier was a buoyant young man, trim and neat, and he kept up a constant stream of chatter as he scanned each can of dog food. What kind of dog do you have? he asked the lady. Oh, he's a mix, she replied. What's his name, the cashier asked. It's Salad, the lady said, and then quickly added that her dog had seizures and that's why they called him Salad. The cashier looked blank but laughed quickly and loudly when she clarified. His name was Caesar, but he started having seizures so we call him Salad, now. As the cashier put the last can of dog food into the woman's bag, I pulled out my pistol and shot straight through the can with such force that dog food splattered both cashier and customer who were both struck dumb as I picked my way through the mess and walked out of the store with the Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits stuffed into my bag. I nodded at the thin sliver of moon that shone down on the parking lot, stepped into my car and peeled off, toward home.

He slid further down as it reached his shoulders, in a kind of

nirvana not based on freedom from desires but on attainment.

-- from Salter's All That Is

The dog prances like a circus pony, silly in purple. The Filipino caregiver next door hoses the lawn, his phone on speaker, and as he inches toward her in navy Crocs his voice grows loud, Tagalog, and the water in the hose smells like childhood, redolent of summers. A car goes by, too fast, and the girl in the wheelchair drools over the hairbrush that she rubs over her mouth, over and over. The woman looks down at her arched foot and blue toenails, a pink ridge on the top from her clogs, the resignation of age. A crystal wine glass sits on the stone pathway, from another marriage, an unaccustomed sauvignon blanc. The sun sets slowly behind her back and the mockingbirds jeer.

Redolent of the Sea

A Tiny Clue

You could spend your entire life
eavesdropping on the mermaid
before you'd pickup the tiniest little clue
about where she was really from. One autumn day
    I happened upon
her and her child
while she was comforting it under her shawl,

'You are not the blue-green pup of the seal.
You are not the grey chick of the greater black-backed gull.
You are not that kit of the otter. Nor are you
the calf of the slender hornless cow.'

This was the lullaby she was singing
but she stopped short
immediately she realized
someone else was in the neighborhood.

I had the distinct sense she was embarrassed
I'd overheard her in the first place.
I also came away with the impression
the lullaby was, to put it mildly, redolent of the sea.

Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, from The Fifty Minute Mermaid, translated by Paul Muldoon

It's Enough

Let's be honest. I dreaded writing a post for Mother's Day. I knew things were going to be -- interesting -- when I came home from an all-day writing workshop yesterday afternoon and had to reassure Oliver that it was all right if he had forgotten to take the money Dad had given him and walk around the corner to our neighborhood store to buy me a present. A few hours later, Henry came home from his last baseball game, angry and upset that he had only played two innings and that they had lost the game and baseball was over and he sucked as a player and I don't want to talk about it anymore, Mom. An hour or so after that, The Husband came home and I overheard some tight whispering and then Oliver stormed down the hall to his room.

Reader, why the hell is there this silly day that we call Mother's Day? Why, why, why are we set up, year after year to engage in this charade of celebration? As much as I love and am grateful for my mother, I can't remember a single Mother's Day as a child. Did we do enough? Did Dad buy appropriate gifts for her? Was she happy? Did she feel taken for granted? Sigh.

I woke up this morning to texts from both of my sisters, Melissa and Jennifer, whom I rarely write about or mention on the blog. They are both terrific mothers, and we are probably better friends now, at the ages of 39, 47 and 49 than we ever were as children. We share the same brutal sense of humor and realized that even now at our advanced ages, we are hard put to appreciate enough our own mother and feel appreciated enough by our own children. We won't even talk about The Husbands. What the hey?

I woke up this morning to no presents, but The Husband made me my favorite breakfast and gave me perfectly gorgeous flowers. It's enough. It's enough. It's enough.

Happy Mother's Day to the rest of you. Now let's begin again tomorrow, my favorite day of the week.