Kiddie Quote of the Week

"So when this house is dirty and yechy and full of stuff, we'll buy a new one."

Parental caveats:  the remark was made by Ms. 4 to Ms. 6, when both adults were out of the room (although we did convene elsewhere to giggle quietly), but even so I would vociferously deny that her assumptions were based on some lesson learned at home (our house being without doubt dirty, yechy and full of stuff, but a new one does NOT loom on the near horizon).  In any event, I am intrigued by future opportunity, should she find herself able to pursue this formula in her own adulthood, for the scavenger class.  Perhaps I could leap in as the middle-woman myself.  Want a low-rent dirty, yechy house full of stuff, anyone?

Antiseptic to Accustomed

The desired illusion of a business-class hotel room being to have the traveler believe him/herself to be the sole occupant of a pristine and antiseptic hideaway untouched by other's hands and magically cleaned, in their absence, of any soil they might themselves impose on it -- the room I've occupied for the last four days wins my Lifetime Award hands down.

It's not so much that the hotel management decided to provide all-white linen (with the exception of a bizarre and useless strip of green-and-gold cloth laid at the foot of the snowy bed), but that they have also laid on no less than six large pillows per bed.  SIX.  Any more, and they would have occluded the beds altogether.  I'm not at all sure what you're supposed to do with all these pillows if both beds are actually occupied.  Certainly you couldn't sleep with them; there'd be no room for you.  This many pillows, and to some degree they become a little worrisome(quick -- glancing around -- are all twelve of you okay? Everyone in their places?  No stains yet?  Whew......we're okay, then).

So, with my nights companioned by a deluge of bridal-clad pillowing, my days by the hum and bustle of high-rise business, and my evenings by that surreal orange glow of the neon-lit asphalt, I'm more than ready to get back to my natal rolling hills, where days are slow and one-story, evenings grassy and cricket-filled, and nights companioned by my soundly sleeping daughters and an absolute, blissful dearth of pillows.

When you come home, what's your "accustomed"?

Backstories

Business-tripping, traveling light, melting into mass transit and mining the backstory. 

Do you make up background for the faces chance-passed as you shoulder your own way down the street?  Here's two of mine:

A gray suit and self-effacing tie encase the thin frame of a grim young man, straight-lipped and staring unblinkingly ahead.  Next to him flutters a female whose ripe bounty stretches her flimsy bedroom-lacy top.  Pastel spiked clogs match her glitter-peach lipstick; her artless blonde beehive 'do doesn't even tremble as she prattles happily in his ear, a fond pleasure in every sweep of her manicured nails.  He's her brother, not her lover.  He still can't believe 'Fiona' (why-the-hell change her name?  What was wrong with Sarah Mae?) is on the up-and-up, with that call-girl getup in the middle of the staid working world.  On a business trip himself, he was sure he'd catch her out, arriving unnanounced at the front desk of her purported workplace.  Surely it was some elaborate trick, that she was really there, that obscene beehive whipping this-way-and-that as she answered the phone, typed a form, expertly dealt with her suited bosses zipping past.  What in the world is he going to tell Mother?)

A picture-perfect young couple in jeans and clean t-shirts, the father doting on his wife and child, the mother holding tight to the hand of the wide-eyed girl as they negotiate the crowd of strangers.  Seated, the little girl's high-pitched questions bringing a gentle hand pulling the wisps of hair from her soft cheek, a doting maternal smile in a mouth that mirrors the child's features and reforms them into high-cheeked, perfect-lipped adult beauty.  The child's a neighbor and they're not a couple except in their daring, perfect scam that keeps a whole block in the low-rent district well-fed and clothed.  They encore their little drama city-wide, never in the same place twice:  rushing into a convenience store in the late hours, the mother's arresting wide eyes engage the attendent:  "Quick!  Can Daisy use your potty?  Oh, she's been sooo good this week, and if we don't have an accident, she'll get her Care Bear!"  Beaming and solicitous, the attendant rushes out with the key -- and the male partner quickly and efficiently empties the register.

What's your own backstory (the truth need not apply)?  I'm still musing over my own....

"Simple Faith"

Warning:  This one's an exercise in naval-gazing.  Uninterested parties may exit quietly through here, which is a great blog anyway, but (more specific to this link) where readers can engage in revelatory naval-gazing of their own.

Do you every feel like no matter what you do; no matter how much you learn, experience, suffer, or makeover, there's some essence of you that any passerby immediately identifies?  Like "blonde," or "arrogant," or "buckteeth," or "chatterbox"?

So I was sitting, squeezed on a too-small, way-too-squishy little sofa, with two other moms, waiting for our four-year-olds to finish twirling around in their impossibly cute pink leotards endearingly exposing their chubby legs.  I was explaining that I had to go away for a week for training in The Big City, and take Self-Important Business Contacts to Very Expensive Dinners, and that I was a little worried that my long-past expertise in this area was a little rusty.  Not to mention my wardrobe a little -- hmmm -- "be-mothered," as it were, with the odd pbj stain or possibly even the draggly unkempt string or two dangling tellingly from the cuff.

One of my friends said:  "So our simple Faith is off to the big city, eh?  I know what you mean about wardrobe, I'm always thinking...."

And fortunately she talked on about her own clothing situation for some time -- time enough to let me collect my thoughts and join inobstrusively back in the conversation at the appropriate moment.

Because I was a little stuck on "simple Faith," to be honest.  It was just so sadly reminiscent of the day when, as a 21-year-old summer employee, I came across my own job interview.  My boss-to-be had labeled me "wholesome." 

I dare you to come up with any 21-year-old on earth who desires the sobriquet "wholesome."  Fortunately I was able to laugh it off, given that I was, at the time, systematically sleeping my way through my then-boss's highly eligible young male staff.  Although, looking at it from a distance, I now acknowledge that (STDs aside) there are quite a few far less wholesome things for healthy young un-partnered men and women to be doing than the periodic roll in the hay.

Anyway, now that I'm twice as old, know twice as many languages, have traveled to ten times as many countries, and find little opportunity to roll in the hay even with my chosen Rolling Partner -- I can't even dredge up "wholesome" any more.  Instead, here I am "simple."

I can't wait to hear my label at eighty-four (hoping I get there in any condition to be labeled, that is).  I'm wondering about the natural end-point of the wholesome/simple progression. 

I'm thinking "peaceful" would be good, but I'm a little worried it might be "dull."

What's your own one-phrase essential descriptor?

An Impossible Job:  Meandering Thoughts

I didn’t want to watch the debate, but a colleague bullied me into it.  So I dragged myself out of bed (yes, yes 9 pm – shut up…. ) and sat through the thing.  Here are a few observations, in no particular order:

• These guys were both really nervous
  
• Both of these guys took their turn to look awkward
  
• Both of these guys took their turn to make good points
  
• Neither of these guys are superhuman; rather, they’re mistake-making humans
  
• Both these guys really, really, really want this job
  
• This is an impossible job for a mere nervous, awkward, mistake-making human being.

I find myself (completely ludicrously on one level), comparing this President, and his Challenger, and the job they both seek, with my boss, the CEO of a small high-tech R&D firm.  The more secure my boss becomes in his role as leader of our company, the less connected he is to the employees and the more focused on outward and forward-looking strategic and visionary leadership.  This is entirely appropriate, but it requires significant assistance from the management team to uphold the institution while also moving forward into his vision for it.

No leader of any institution, let alone the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, can possibly perform their job in isolation.  Any leader depends upon a large network of advisors and experts to inform and support his actions.

One of the key elements raised by this debate on foreign affairs in the midst of a nation at war is:  How do you change leadership in a time of crisis?  One of President Bush’s oft-repeated points was that he has been firm and consistent, and that changing the firm and consistent approach is a danger to the country.  One of Senator Kerry’s oft-repeated points was that the President’s policies have consistently led us in the wrong direction. 

In order to reach the peaceful world order that both men claim to desire, neither man can stand alone in a spotlight and perform to spec.  For me, as much as these fallible humans at the podium I am interested in the shadowy cohorts behind them.  I wish that I could walk into the offices of the vast array of supporting staff, like I walk into the offices of my colleagues at work, and learn more about how each team plans to put their leader’s vision into practice.  I wish, thinking about this debate, that the connection between a citizen and her leader were not so tenuous a thing as the modern world makes it. 

In any event, I’m glad my colleague bullied me into watching.  In this disconnected world, it was a far more substantive experience than I had expected.

The Point-of-Purchase Vote

So I heard a third of some pundit’s remarks on the radio the other day.  Fortunately it was the final third, when they get all worked up and throw lots of vitriol into the mic (that’s always the most interesting part).  This one was pontificating against the significant rise in absentee voting prior to this November’s U.S. election (it’s a presidential one, for the information of those one or two readers located in some halcyon desert isle on a far star where you are blissfully unassailable by political ads and their fallout).

Mr. Pundit’s opinion was that absentee voting spelled the downfall of the integrity of the election (“integrity of the election” …. WHAT?  Oh – yes, sorry, back to the topic at hand).  “An absentee voter,” spluttered Mr. Pundit, “could quite possible vote before any of the debates!  Why suppose,” he went on, obviously reaching for the extreme in his desire to sway the torpid listener, “Suppose a terrorist attack occurred the day before the election?  An absentee voter would miss the opportunity to factor that into his decision!”

Ah, yes.  Quite.  Yes, I would definitely want to base my vote for the President of the Most Powerful Nation on Earth on his spin-makers’ abilities to coach him better than the other guy for a series of brief podium performances.  Oh, yes, and I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to grade him on his first  reaction to some potential catastrophe on the day before the election (in fact:  heck, why haven’t we thought of that one before?  In the event of lack of actual terrorism, why don’t we sit them both down at a spot-lit desk and hand ‘em the phone?  Let ‘em ad lib while the unexpected dire news spews into their ears?  Thinking about this, I’m suddenly significantly more in favor of this diplomatic-corps-entry-exam type situation than a debate anyway.  We could have them on split-screen, and watch their differing reactions as things get worse and worse.  Much better than reality tv). 

So anyway:  I’ve been shaking my head over Mr. Pundit’s opinion for days now, but maybe my complete disagreement is misplaced.  Maybe, in fact, the informed citizen doesn’t need to consider past performance, voting records, and considered plans for the future in making their choice.  Maybe the best voters are the ones who heed every high-cost ad, right to the eve of the election?  Every instant reaction to every breaking event?

Maybe I’m the one out in left field (or somewhere off on that far star). 

What do you think?

Very, Very, Very Old House

This was how it was midway through the weekend (kindly readers will focus on the state of the wall and ignore the Grumpy Large Bottomed Paint-Scraper, whose 6-year-old photographer neglected to suggest she engage in the standard rump-hiding subterfuges (turning hind-to-wall, holding up a drop-cloth, or perhaps just falling off the ladder altogether)). 

The underpinings of my house -- the log cabin part -- is 145 years old.  It gets successively younger as you go outward, but nothing's much under a decade.  The cedar shingles whose hideously peeling state finally got the better of me this weekend may have been around quite a while -- maybe even longer than me -- and they're definitely way beyond hiding their age.  It's taken me several more months (well, okay.  maybe years) to get around to helping out on the makeover because I kept hoping the spouse would do it.  However, by the time he'd given the last of our multitude of outbuildings brand-new barn paint, and perched precariously on every re-tarred roof, I began to acknowledge not only that the east wall appeared to have fallen off the bottom of his list, but that he'd definitely done more than his share of ladder-and-brush balancing.

So there I was, atop the full extension of the double aluminum ladder, paint bucket in hand.  The kids were watching from a safe distance.

• Ms. 6:  Go Mommy!  Wow -- you're brave!
  
• Me:  [contemplative silence]
  
• Ms. 6:  Mommy, why are you spending more time looking around than going up?

Really, that was the only thing that got me up those last few rungs to prime the apex.  I hate ladders.

The final coat is waiting -- uh.  Well, not better painting weather, the likes of which couldn't be equaled beyond today's bright azure skies.  Perhaps it's waiting....another goading remark from the younger set?  Or someone to say:  "You know -- I LIKE the primer look.  You weren't thinking of ruining that nice mottled dual-tone color for something monotonously monochrome, were you?" 

I tried out the spouse:

• Me:  (considering the probable near-term arrival of the dregs of Francis)  It's not too dreadful a thing to let primer get thoroughly soaked, is it?
  
• Spouse:  The worst that could happen is you'd have to do it again.
  
• Me:  Oh. 

Grasping Infinity

We were all in bed.  I was very tired.

• Ms. 6:  Mommy, what's the biggest number?
  
• Ms. 4:  Sixteen.
  
• Me:   There is no biggest number, honey.  They go on forever.
  
• Ms. 4:  I mean thirteen.
  
• Ms. 6:  Thirteen is a tiny number, 4.  What do you mean, 'forever,' Mommy?  that's ridiculous.
  
• Me:  It's called infinity.  Going on forever.
  
• Ms. 6:  That doesn't make sense.  What's the biggest number YOU know?
  
• Me:  I can't tell you, honey.  Let's say, for example, that the biggest number I thought I knew was 100.  Well, then I know that there's a number that's 100 plus 1, and 100 plus 2, and 100 plus 3.  You see what I mean?  They go on forever.
  
• Ms. 6:  But what's the NAME of the biggest number?
  
• Me:  As far as I know they stop having names at a certain point.
  
• Ms. 6:  Then they can't exist. 
  
• Me:  Sure they can.  You can have number 234,423,546,346,749,964,034,324 ... and so on, even if it's not named.

~ disgruntled silence all around ~

Honoring Mother and Daughter

So this is what my mother's done for me lately (last 24 hours):

• agreed on spur of moment to host two of my social events, due to my inability to get my own house presentable
  
• happily okay'd addition of more guests to first event
  
• prepared delicious and nutricious lunch for, and cleaned up after, my guests
  
• drove forty minutes to pool party (where I'd gone with guests while she cleaned up) to bring me my car key, as I'd locked my own in my car

You would think I was fourteen, not forty-two, and you'd think my mother might have found other things to do besides support me in my middle-age....but some mothers are like this.

All honor to mothers who never stop mothering!

And a little more honor for the guest-of-honor at yesterday's social event:  my new-minted four-year-old:

Climbing the Mountain

(Advance warning:  this is one of those pretentious ones .)

The ~ 2 mile ascent from that tourist mecca “Paradise Inn” midway up Mount Rainer and the high point of the skyline walk, just above the reaching toes of the mountain’s glacial cap, begins on curving pavement, for all the world like a well-tended urban horticultural garden, with the exotic flowers and stunted pines curving delicately away from the verges where the kids tumble accidentally-on-purpose in their game of upward chase.  They are watched indulgently by passing walkers – two little bright-clad nymphs dashing toward the summit.

Then after crossing the first chill burbling mountain stream on a thick bridge, the pavement peters into rock-lined gravel, and begins serious stair-steps.  The youngest suddenly (in mid-dash) abandons ‘chase’ for ‘pout,’ declaring “I’m tiWED.  I can’t WALK.”  You raise your eyes to the rising, white-draped goliath above, and breathe deeply of the pine and lupine.  This is all far too glorious for parent-child mind-games.  “Okay,” you say, and presenting your back, boost her up.  It’s even too glorious for the eldest to give voice to more than token grousing at the preferential treatment; she’s soon running upwards again alone, choosing her own of the many branching trails (having apparently inherited your tendency toward the steepest and most upward-directed). The youngest pulls your hat strings.  “Come ON horsey,” she trills in your ear, “FASTER.”  You laugh aloud, too entranced to feel the ache or give way to the least bit of annoyance.

Soon you’ve arrived at another burbling outflow, this time unbridged except by strategically-place rocks, and overlooked by equally strategic boulders about which rotund marmots trundle purposefully, gorging voraciously and rapidly on lupine as if there were not fields upon field upon fields of the azure flowers available on every hand.

Everyone pauses while the kids wade the stream (“Only in the stream or on the path,” you admonish sternly, “NOT on the green spaces”).

Then there’s a parting of the ways.  Even the eldest, wearied after a long day’s travel and hike, is unwilling to continue.  But you, laboring under a serious case of “because it’s there,” for once take up the spouse’s offer of solo childcare, even though you have very serious concerns (later bourn out) about the kids squabbling in your absence.  And you’re off, amazed at this little piece of adult freedom on a long vacation fraught with wifely and motherly duties.  You can barely believe your good fortune.  Each step compounds beauty upon beauty until it seems barely possible to augment the glory one iota more.  Paradise.  Indeed.

You only shoulder your camera twice in the next hour and a half of freedom – once when traversing the barely-shoe’s-width yardage through the middle of the glacier’s tongue (how embarrassing would  it be to end up the only of today’s – what? 500? – hikers across this expanse to tumble to the base of the ice and have to be ignominiously  hauled out, underneath that still ring of mountains?).  But finally you abandon the camera altogether as you begin the descent (driven, too quickly, by the knowledge of the familial infighting below). 

After all, it’s impossible, isn’t it, to capture the sense of a mountain by mere imagery?  A thousand thousand qualified nature photographers before you have painted and pictured this reaching glory, but there is truly no way to memorialize it.  A mountainview permeates the soul, and only there, glowing in your secret center, can it possibly provide any lasting sense of itself, after you plummet again to more human heights.

Final admission of guilt:  the photos are all mine and are unmodified except (I admit) I photoshopped the jet contrail out of the last one – okay, so I’m not one of the thousand thousand, okay?)