Archive for the ‘ABC-Along 2008’ Category
K Is for Kindred Spirit
When I was little, we moved a lot. I was in a new school in new towns in 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, another one in another town for junior high, and then a private high school, where I got to stay until I graduated. As you can imagine, moving so much made it hard to develop any lasting friendships. I’ve always felt like an outsider among groups of friends, like I don’t fit in anywhere, and I’m sure that moving around had a lot to do with that.
It didn’t help much that I’m a natural introvert, so making new friends has never been easy for me. I’ve always felt more comfortable in my own head and in books than interacting with other people, though I sometimes wonder if that’s as much a result of moving so much as it is an innate inclination. I think I also, at some point, stopped really putting a lot of effort into friendships, because what was the point when I would most likely be leaving at some point? It was easier to move away from people I didn’t really care about than to leave really good friends.
But there’s always been one exception to this, and that exception is my friend Francesca. We met in 2nd grade, when I was 6 and she was 7. I don’t remember if we bonded instantly upon meeting, but we pretty quickly became fast friends. It seems like I was at her house every day after school, and her family was like a surrogate family for me. Here we are having a tea party on a cardboard box in her yard (me on the left, her on the right):
We had some arguments over stupid things, like kids do. There was the Helen incident, when the popular girl in our class decided to not like Francesca. When Helen decided to not like you, that meant none of the other girls were allowed to like you. I cringe to think of it now and am ashamed to admit that I didn’t stick by my friend during that time, but somehow we made it through that and stayed friends.
There was the time we were mad at each other over SOMETHING, I have no idea what, and had a fight outside her house. We yelled and she tried to hit me with her hair, and then her mother came out and offered us glasses of milk to cool off.
There was the Great Honeysuckle Purge of 3rd Grade, which I won’t relate here right now, to spare myself her groans when she reads this. Suffice to say that the honeysuckle incident has gone down in infamy and Francesca is thoroughly sick of hearing about it, but when I saw her mother recently at her bridal shower, the first thing she said to me was, “The last time I saw you, you said I was an overbearing mother” and the second thing she said to me was, “Do you remember when you ate the honeysuckle?”
Somehow, Francesca and I stayed friends through all my moves. We talked on the phone without seeing each other in person for years. As we grew up, we remained interested in the same things. When we could both drive, we saw each other a little more frequently. We went to concerts together, went to Cape Cod together, and just generally spent more time together.
A couple of years after college, we drifted apart and didn’t see each other or speak for a few years. I’m not really sure what happened, but I suppose I just didn’t put much effort into it. My mid 20’s were a crazy, selfish, and did I meantion crazy? time of my life. But in 1999, when I was getting ready to be married, I was thinking a lot about her. I was remembering how we always talked about how we would be in each other’s weddings, and I started to realize how much I wanted her there at my wedding. So I sent her an invitation, along with a letter telling her how much I missed her and wanted her to come.
She did come, and suddenly we were in each other’s lives again. And 2 months ago, I was maid of honer at HER wedding.
Here we are last weekend, knitting at Yankee Stadium and trying to be alert for foul balls while the husbands watched the game (me on the left again, her on the right again):
So K is for Kindred spirit, and also for Kim, and for Knitting!
J Is for Joxer
J is for Joxer, the doofiest cat I know.
I’ve written before about how sneaky Joxer is, and long time readers will probably remember the story of his arrival in our family, so I won’t mention that again. Instead, I’ll tell you what a goofball he is.
A while back, over a year ago, I saw this fabric tunnel thing at the pet store. Somehow, I have a knack of knowing what toys will appeal to which cat just upon seeing the toy in a store, and when I saw this tunnel, I turned to Scott and said, “Joxer will love this.” So we bought it and brought it home and set it up, and sure enough, within seconds of standing up the tunnel on the floor, Joxer came running from across the room and dove into it. The thing is, that tunnel is meant for normal sized cats, not the 20 pounds of feline maniacalness that is my Joji. As soon as he dove his enormous body into the tunnel, it collapsed, and it has never stood up properly again.
That doesn’t deter my boy, though. Since the tunnel won’t stand up for him to get his body into it, he just lays next to it with his arms stuck into it. (His loooooong arms, which earned him one of his nicknames: Longshanks.) Once or twice I day, I’ll set it up so it’s standing precariously on its side, beckoning for him to enter. That’s when he tries to get all sly and sneaky and to pretend he doesn’t care. He wanders around, acting like he’s not looking at it, while all the time his eyes keep darting over to it. 30 seconds later, he can’t take it anymore and he pounces. The tunnel collapses and he and it go sliding 10 feet across the hardwood floor from the force of his leap.
It’s a pretty damned funny sight to behold.
Aside from being doofy and sneaky, he’s also one of the sweetest cats I’ve ever known. He’s definitely a lover, not a fighter. We were really blessed the day he and his sister decided they wanted to live here.
H Is for Holly Hobbie
When I was a little girl, I had three rag dolls I was utterly in love with: Raggedy Ann, Raggedy Andy, and Holly Hobbie. They were all huge; bigger than I was. I remember dragging them around behind me by their arms, because they were too big for me to pick up.
Of the three, Holly Hobbie was my favorite. It may have been that Raggedy Ann and Andy looked a little like clowns, and I’ve never been fond of clowns, but I think it was mostly because I was in love with her costume. I loved it so much that I used to wear it. Yeah, that’s how big those dolls were: I could wear their clothes. So I would take Holly Hobbie’s dress and bonnet and I’d wear them myself and just go about my day.
I have no idea what happened to my original rag dolls, and I actually completely forgot about them for a while. Until a few years ago, when something suddenly made me think of Holly Hobbie and how much I loved her and I suddenly missed her. Missed her so much that I went out and bought myself one on eBay. Actually, I bought myself two: one for me and one for the daughter I still hope to have one day.
Flutterings #16
I haven’t been blogging much lately, mainly because I’m so overwhelmed by being so far behind in the ABC-Along. Every time I think of something I’d like to write about, I think about the letter H and I freeze. Which is nuts, when you think about it, considering that the ABC-Along is meant to be fun! So I’m going to set aside anxiety over that and try to post more often about other things.
On the knitting front, I was recently struck with a serious case of finish-itis. Yes, that’s finish-itis, not start-itis.Arwen, the hooded scarf, and Scott’s socks are all done. I’m more than half-finished with the crochet border on Lizard Ridge, leaving only the log cabin crazy quilt, which is going to be an ongoing project to use up scraps of worsted. The only thing keeping me from marking things as completed in Ravelry is that I want to get photos of them first.I’ve such a case of fnish-itis that I even just brought my Top Down Raglan Shrug out to the living room to re-knit the sleeves. I’ve never been happy with the straight edge of the bind off and I’ve always wanted to re-knit the cuffs. I added lace cuffs that should have been knitted bottom up and knit them top down, which ruined what should have been a pretty scalloped edge. Since I’m going to re-knit anyway, I may also shorten the sleeves to above the elbow.
Last weekend, my mother and her husband spent the weekend in the city. We saw them on the 4th – and on Sunday, but on City Island – at the Millenium Hilton downtown. They had a suite there and they got Scott and me a room for the night, so we were able to sit in the room and watch the fireworks over the East River. The windows opened a little, so we were even able to hear the booms. It was really a nice way to spend Independence Day.
This weekend, we’ll be in Pittsburgh. We drive out on Friday and home on Sunday.Scott’s mother got married in January in a small ceremony with no reception. This Saturday they’re having what I thought was to be their reception, but they’re calling it a family reunion. Scott and I have never met her husband, and this weekend will be inundated with his entire family, so it should be interesting. It’s strange for Scott, since neither he nor any of his three siblings have children – we’re the only ones who ever really wanted to, and Scott’s the youngest of them all at 45 – but his mother’s new husband has kids and grandkids and great-grandchildren galore.I think Scott’s mother is a little, I don’t know, embarrassed maybe is the word, that she has no grandchildren to show off to her husband’s family. As a result, she’s been asking us about the IVF stuff a lot more frequently lately, even though before the new husband, she changed the subject immediately whenever Scott mentioned any of our plans for adoption or IVF. She never wanted grandchildren and was happy before that none of her kids had children. This is a real turnaround, and Scott and I are her only hope. It’s weird, to say the least.
G Is for Boogie
Well, really, G is for Goblin, but that means it’s for Boogie, because Goblin doesn’t know his name is Goblin. He thinks it’s Boogie.
All of this is my fault for confusing the poor guy and rarely calling him my his given name over the past 11 years. This cat has more nicknames than a GWB cabinet meeting. Boogie, Boogie Buns, Boogie Bonanza, Gobbyboullabaise, Boogins, Gobbybuhlin, Boogie Butt, Gobble, Gobbldegook, Goblinka… those are just a few of his nicknames, and that’s only a short list of those I’ve used this month. Funny thing, while I was writing this, I remembered that I once, years ago, before Xena and Joxer existed, posted a list of some of the names we used for Demon and Goblin, which you can read here in the older archives. It’s funny how a couple of those have stuck, and also that we weren’t calling him Boogie yet then. I’m not sure when we started calling him that, but it stuck pretty hard, and now he thinks it’s his name.
Goblin is my stalker kitty, with a strong need to always be within eye-shot of me or Scott. Fortunately for him, we spend a lot of time in the living room, which means he can plant his wide furry butt on the chaise – as in the above two photos* – and keep an eye on us all day. He does this sort of creepy thing where he stares at one of us and purrs. He can do this for 15-20 minutes at a time, which gets disconcerting.
Over the past year or so, but particularly since Demon died, we’re starting to realize that maybe Goblin isn’t as stupid as we once thought he was. I once compared him to an elephant crossed with a goldfish, but I’m not so sure now that that’s a fair assessment. For example, he frequently shows signs of basic cognitive thinking, in that he can plan several actions in advance in order to achieve a goal. We often see this when he’s trying to decide how to get to the back of the couch from the floor, when he knows we don’t want him there and will block him. He sits there and you can obviously see him plotting his path. He looks at the back of the couch, then at the chaise, then at the windowsill, then back at the chaise, then to the arm of the couch, then back to the back of the couch. After careful consideration, that is exactly the path he takes: floor to chair to windowsill to back of chaise to arm of couch to back of couch. Sometimes he makes a stop on the side table, too. Just to keep it fresh.
We call these maneuvers his Rube Gobberg machine.
As you can see from the photo above, Boogie’s a fairly portly little fellow. He’s meant to be rather a small cat, maybe 10 pounds or so, but he does, in fact, weigh slightly over 16 pounds. At a recent trip to the vet for a checkup, we were worried the vet would yell at us for letting him get so large, but to both my and Scott’s surprise, the vet was fine with Gobble’s weight, because it’s stayed constant. So at least he’s not ballooning. But as you can see from the second photo, his fat is so copious that it rolls up around his eyes. Alex dubbed that “eye fat,” which has become another of Boogie’s nicknames. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll ever come running to that one the way he does to Boogie.
*Note the fine patina of cat hair on the throw pillows in those photo, too. I kept those pillow away from the cats for years, which also meant keeping them from the people, so I finally decided to start using them. They were covered in a grey mist of cat hair within days, and I’ve never been able to get it off. Turns out, cleaning cat hair off beaded dupioni silk? Doesn’t really work so well, even with a Dyson.
F Is for Free
1,461 miles, 6 days, 5 shows – RRE tour, September 2006
Which is how I feel when we pack up the car and hit the road on tour.
No worries or responsibilities. Time slips by, marked only by when the band hits the stage and how long it will take to drive to the next city. It ceases to have real meaning, each day rolling into the next. Days are no longer Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Instead, they take on the names of whatever town we’ll be in that day. We lose track of anything but the now. We know where we are, and where we’re going next, but other than that, we don’t think about it.
The world recedes into the background. I feel out of step with general society, because I’m living in a bubble that consists a constant cycle of driving, eating, dancing, and sleeping. I sit in a restaurant and watch everyone around me, going about their daily lives, and it’s as if I have absolutely no connection with them.
There’s a feeling of disconnect, of being set loose from all ties. The music is the destination, but the travelling itself is almost more important.
I feel free, and it’s an incredible feeling.
E is for Emeralds (and Ear Piercings)
Late again. Story of my life.
These are the emerald earrings my paternal grandmother brought back for me from a trip to Italy. They’re small, and dainty, and suitable for a little girl. I have no idea what sort of monetary value they may have – I suspect not very much – but to me, they’re priceless, because they’re the only thing I have left of a grandmother who was very good to me.
I never did get to wear them very often, because when I was little, my ears weren’t pierced. I remember begging and pleading with my mother to allow me to get it done, but she always said I was too young. Finally, when I was around 7 or 8, I think, either I wore her down with my constant whining or she, at last, deemed me “old enough.”
So down to the mall we went, me nearly sick with excitement. We got to the jewelry shop where they did ear piercings, and I picked out what was to be my very first pair of stud earrings. I have no idea what I chose; probably just plain gold studs. I remember my mother being a stickler about them being gold, so I wouldn’t have an allergic reaction to them.
Studs chosen, I settled into the chair, full of anticipation and ready. That was when I saw the needle. A giant needle! The thing was huge!
That was it for me. I panicked. I jumped out of the chair and ran out into the mall. I have no idea how long I hid before my mother finally found me.
And that was the end of me begging to get my ears pierced.
I finally did it when I was around 12. By then, they were using piercing guns, which were a lot less frightening than the needle. (Though, everyone tells me the needle actually hurts less.) Once my ears were pierced, I wore these earrings a few times, but by then I was a teenager and a Deadhead and I started wearing beaded earrings and feathered earrings and these little emeralds seemed too childish.
On rare occasions, I’ve worn them as an adult. But I really think they’re best suited to little girls. I hope till my hoper is strained that I’ll have a little girl or granddaughter of my own one day, so I can pass them down.
