Anniversary

14 year wedding anniversary today. D had roses delivered to my work: one pale peach rose for every year, and an extra red one in the middle for the years to come. He's a good man. I'm glad we found each other 22 years ago. And I'd say the same even if he hadn't given me roses: a good man.

A little lighter poetry for you

One of my all time favorites, from A.A. Milne:

The Four Friends

Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow,
Leonard was a lion with a six foot tail,
George was a goat, and his beard was yellow,
And James was a very small snail.

Leonard had a stall, and a great big strong one,
Earnest had a manger, and its walls were thick,
George found a pen, but I think it was the wrong one,
And James sat down on a brick

Earnest started trumpeting, and cracked his manger,
Leonard started roaring, and shivered his stall,
James gave a huffle of a snail in danger
And nobody heard him at all.

Earnest started trumpeting and raised such a rumpus,
Leonard started roaring and trying to kick,
James went on a journey with the goats new compass
And he reached the end of his brick.

Ernest was an elephant and very well intentioned,
Leonard was a lion with a brave new tail,
George was a goat, as I think I have mentioned,
but James was only a snail.





I love the rhyme of "intentioned" and "mentioned." I love the wrong pen. And I love the snail's huffle. This is right up there with Nash's Custard the Dragon in my book. Just plain silly, and fun, and from a time before ours, but still something children today can love. Case in point.

I was deferred from giving blood again yesterday - the second time in a row - because of a low hematocrit count. This in spite of the fact that I take iron daily and was nowhere in my cycle (thank you for asking) that would have caused a lower than usual count. The culprit, I think, is probably coffee. The Blood Bank gave me a second copy of a purple photocopied leaflet entitled, "Hematocrit Levels Handbook" which tells me that, "Coffee taken with meals can reduce iron absorption up to 39%." Since I take coffee with, before, and after breakfast, it doesn't matter how many nuts, beans, apricots or raisins I eat - it's not going to help. One more reason to cut back.

On the other hand, apparently iron or stainless steel cookware helps: "One study found that spaghetti has almost 30 times as much iron when cooked in an iron pot than in a glass one." Who cooks spaghetti in a glass pot these days? And who knows what hematocritic value Calphalon has?

I must be tired. I started out with a darling poem for children and ended up discussing the health benefits of cookware. Heck. Maybe I am anemic. If I ate red meat, I'd have a big old steak to see if that helps me string sentences together any better. As it is, I guess I'll go have a raisin. Or a cup of coffee. Yeah. That always enables me to focus.

When 4 is better than 2

Four is better than two when you're talking about children entertaining each other. R's friend Richie and his little sister, S's friend Julia, have been busy since after 4pm with some elaborate political negotiations.

They currently represent two kingdoms - R & R are the emperors of Japan and China, playing in direct contradiction of actual current events by forming an alliance. Hmm. Do you think we could channel the friendly emperors in my house so that Nobutaka Machimura and Wu Dawei have productive talks?

Anyway, here Japan & China are in a feud against S & J, from the Kingdom of Jasmine & Some Other Princess.

But wait - borders change quickly! Now sooner had I written that than Richie is Merlin & R is King Arthur, and they're holding a unicorn hostage while announcing riddles that S & J must solve in order to gain entry to the kingdom.

Little did they know that the 5-year-olds already know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx:

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs at night?"

"A baby, an adult, and..." (this took an minute) "...and an old lady!"

The little girls have been allowed to be part of the kingdom. A proclamation has just been read. The princess is giving Arthur "the most powerfulist jewel" in the kingdom, and has rushed off with her sister the Other Princess to the ball which apparently has already started.

All this, and more, lasting over an hour total now. About as long as it would have taken to sit glassy-eyed in front of a video or two.

And yes, I know that the riddle of the Sphinx also (sometimes) includes "...and is weakest when it walks on 4 legs."

Man may be weakest walking on 4 legs, but when it comes to kids contained in a house, 4 is definately better than 2.

Look out Barbie and Log - it's Bottle & Tape!

So S has a piece of folded up clear tape that she calls "Tape." Tape has adventures. Tape has family (more tape strips and even some little scraps of paper - it's a mixed family). Tape has all of S's attention for extended periods of time while she narrates Tape's dramas.

Then, last night, S discovered Bottle. Bottle is an empty 2 liter Calistoga container, but really, that's stereotyping. He's so much more complex than that. Bottle has a strip of paper across his neck with a face on it. Yesterday, S pointed to the face and said that if Bottle looked a little unhappy, there was a reason. Bottle had been playing at the school playground, and his friend had pushed him, and he fell down on a big, big piece of glass, and it cut his head right off. But then a girl helped him put it back on, so he's better. But he's still mad at the friend who pushed him.

This story has varied little since the first telling. R asked her about 10 minutes later about it, and the only change was that S added, "Oh, and *I* was the girl who helped him."

Tonight at the dinner, we were all being goofy as usual, but R had just done something extra polite. This prompted D to make a joke by tossing another newly empty 2 liter bottle behind his shoulder and saying, "I'm so glad you guys have such great table manners!"

S exclaimed, "Oh good!I can make Bottle's dad!" and R and I busted up.

We could hardly stop laughing, so we had S explain her story again to Papa, and it was the same thing (almost verbatim). Except that she did clarify about the decapitation.

"He had to go to the hospital. It was kind of an emergency."

when saturday night isn't

It really doesn't feel like Saturday night, because it really didn't feel like a day off today, and because I need to be at work tomorrow morning at 6am.

This was my day - by choice! so I'd better not complain, huh? And it is pretty dull reading, so skip to a more interesting site if you'd rather. This one, for example, I found by Googling "interesting web site."

Okay, my day:

7:40 - take Ford to dealership to have airbag-light-staying-on problem checked
(jogged home from dealership -3.3 miles)

9:30 - take S to dance class, bring R. While S has dance class, R & I have hot chocolate and mocha, respectively, and split a chocolate & regular croissant, at the Tea Room, which Lisa, among others, has called her favorite spot for breakfast (see Feb. 21 post).

10:40 - S's dance class gets out 10 minutes late. We go home, grab a few needed items (like helmet and crop) and go to R's riding lesson. S and I hang out while R rides.

12:45 - go from R's lesson to Novato. Get the Prius washed, then go to the dealership across the way to have 5,000 mile maintenance (on the car, not us). We walked from there to the mall across the way, had lunch at Fresh Choice & then window shopped Pier One and shopped for clothes at Target (pronounced "tar-jay," if you'd like).

4:15 - leave Target
4:20 - return to Target, with moaning and groaning kids in tow, to retrace our steps through the store to find a pair of sunglasses I'd dropped. These are the same sunglasses that had gone missing for a couple of days before I'd found them in the car hidden next to the passenger seat, and I was not going to lose them again. Find the glasses on the floor in the kids' clothing section, where we'd been 20 minutes before.

4:30 or so - pick up Prius.

5:00 or so - go home, picked up D, go to the Ford dealership, pick up the Escape, D & I drive back home in the 2 cars. Then D goes back to work (until 8pm) and I try to get yardwork done/make dinner/mind kids at the same time, and am unsuccessful in all but making dinner. Pour myself a glass of wine and have a happy rest-of-the evening. I'd had wine Wed. when S's ex-preschool teacher was over, but apart from that, this was the first time in weeks that I'd had any alcohol. A little goes a long way when you drink so seldom.

8:15 - read a bedtime story to the kids in the big bed. Asleep by 8:20. (I am, that is. The kids might have fallen asleep around 8:30.)

9:30-10:40 - hit snooze button for alarm countless times. Finally get up, convinced that I wouldn't be able to write a thing.

11:06-11:33 - yawn an estimated 26 times while blogging.

11:39 - go back to bed.

happy poetry (formerly, briefly, titled "draft"!)

I know. I'm so chipper and happy in my poetry. But really, if I wanted to write cheerful rhyming verse, I'd apply for a job with a greeting card company.

It's been a really long week, and now that I'm at the end of it (although tomorrow will be busy and I work Sunday), I'm just so relieved.

And I just spent an hour tooling around on the Web looking for a good poem to post here. I read Ezra Pound, ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wislawa Szymborska, Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke. I must say, none of it was very cheerful. So I thought I would check out "humorous poetry," which led me to limericks.


Um....I reviewed several of those.

Um.

There were none that were appropriate to post here.

To the Ants

I also have a poem about a spider. And about scarabs. But this is neither my first or last poem about ants. Nor is it finished, so constructive criticism and suggestions are appreciated, for those of you inclined. (Thanks to Josh & Julie for your comments last week. You may note some changes.)


To The Ants

If you stay, no good can come of it.
It will end in a way neither of us wants.
I know, you are just doing your job. You scout
for new ground, a place to raise a family,
the next home for a cluster of eggs.
But my task is to keep counters
clean of single-file lines, no matter
how handsome the individual parts
of the moving social whole.

I hope you know I admire you:
your strength, symmetry, absolute
dedication to the cause. How you care
for your dead, how you tidy up.
Even the way you create
chemicals to lay trails and hail nest mates
seems a feat too great for such a tiny creature.

But that’s just me. The next person
who comes along will not be so kind.
You will find a thumb blocking out the light
from the kitchen sun, until there is
only a darkness more absolute
than the deepest tunnels you dig.


c 4/05

Entertaining

Tonight S's past preschool teacher came over for dinner. We had a great time, especially because it was very relaxed.

At the end of the evening, our guest and I took turns reading pages of a story about a leprechaun for S, then the girls were tucked in and probably asleep within about a minute. Now the dishes from the home-cooked meal are done, the dog's been fed, I've (pretty much) blogged, and I'm still awake but ready for bed.

I will post the newly revised Ant poem tomorrow, after a little more feedback from the Yahoo poetry group.

Bright April

I used to like Sara Teasedale's "I Shall Not Care", and I think the sliver of me that is an angst-ridden teenager still has a soft spot for it. But while looking for it online, I ran across this one, which seems more appropriate, in a broader sense, now:


There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.


Sara Teasedale



Now, isn't that cheerful?


But I mean, honestly, that you can either look at the way in which the world has gone on fine before us and will do so after us - before and after each of us, individually, myself included, and before and after all of us, collectively - and you can find this to be about the most depressing, ego-deflating, terrifyingly brutal thing, or you see at is as a comfort. It means that the mountains in North Wales that I feel a part of will be just fine without me. Dinas Bran will continue to crumble into ruins, and the gorse will bloom every year. Fortunately, I am not responsible for the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. That's some relief.

I've mentioned my love of ants. I've written a new poem about them. And after I test it out on an online poetry community I belong to, I'll post it here. Because it's April, and I am working on poems before the coming of the soft rains.

Poetry in Sebastopol

Thanks to Suzanne for the hot lead on an evening of poetry. The Western Sonoma County Historical Society hosted "a night of vintage and contemporary poetry" at the Veterans Building. In spite of the fact that Suzanne and I felt a little bit like outsiders crashing the gig (as non-society members), it was great to hear Terry Ehret (the county's poet laureate) read, and to learn more about a little volume of poetry that was published in 1933 - a compilation of about a hundred literary voices in the area. Some of the vintage poetry was full of the emotionally manipulative pathos and forced rhymes you might expect from the era, but some of it was not so syrupy and did really evoke a little something about the local geography and history.

One of the things I found interesting was Terry's mention of William Keith, a painter whose work she had studied while writing poetry for the Oakland Museum. He created very large paintings, but in the end, Terry was inspired to write by a much smaller sketch he'd done. Here's one of the poems she read tonight:


Landscape
Untitled
WILLIAM KEITH
oil painting on a cigar box lid


A landscape might show up anywhere,
say as black and green,
red brushstrokes
on the lid of a cigar box,

inside three small glass bottles,
the dark amber which could be the sky,

an old, hinged palette,

brushes of various widths
and their stiff white hair,

whatever is near, your face perhaps.

Come closer.
You will begin to see how deep the woods are,
how much of night is suggested.
Are you thinking about sleep?
It is easy to imagine.

The tools you might use to invent the world
are everywhere, close at hand.

Sunday at the Zoo with J-

S was treated to a trip to the Zoo with a friend today. I think she must have had a blast. She came back sunburned and tired, with a plush stuffed tiger under her arm.

My car did not sell over the weekend, and even though it's only been "on the market" for a little while, I'm already almost ready to park it somewhere with a "$10 or best offer" sign on it. I guess I could see what the dealership would pay me for it if I'm that desperate. Time to visit the Kelley Blue Book site again, check the loan payoff amount, and weigh patience against instant gratification of being rid the extra car.

Apart from that, it was a good weekend. I even managed to read a little, and laze in the sun a little, and nap. And go for a short run. Plus the usual chores, and a lot of whispering to save my voice, which seems to be mostly gone, although I feel fine.

But it is bedtime, since tomorrow's a "school day."

Kid chatter

Heard today on the court:

Tiffany, one of the little girls across the street whose uncle had died, told me that she was going to go to her grandmother's to pick out one or two of her late uncle's things that she can keep. She's eight years old. She already, she said, has his pocketknife, although she said she didn't use it. "And I had some of his pepperspray," she continued, "But my I had to give it to my dad," then added by way of explanation, "Because he needs some."

About half an hour later, the girl on the corner who's 11, was saying to the boy across the street who's 7, "Did you know that there was a world-famous chess player who had been imprisoned, and he was just released from detention, in Japan?"

All those words.
And the boy asked, "What's chess?"

How silly is this?

I want to sell my Escape this weekend, but of course to sell one's car, one needs a pink slip. So after a long time carefully searching the 2 or 3 places the pink slip might be, I'm guessing it's in the safe deposit box at the bank. Now, to open a safe deposit box, one needs a key. I'm very careful about where I keep our key. Usually. But after looking in the 2 places that it normally would be, I've searched high and low pretty much everywhere else, and it's nowhere to be found.

I think the only thing more frustrating than spending all night looking for something is spending all night looking for something and not finding it. It's also ironic, for a couple of reasons. One is that I have a reputation among friends and family as a "finder" - I can almost always point them to the place they've left or lost an item. It's a gift I'm grateful for and something for which I can't really take credit (because it is, after all, a gift). But I can never seem to track down my own things that I've lost. The other bit of irony is that the key is probably somewhere new that I put so it would be "safe." It's apparently very safe, wherever it is.

On the brighter side, I've gone through a lot of paperwork and have done a lot of cleaning up tonight! But I'm wiped out, and ready to call it a day.

Arrrgh!

This is frustrating! I'd just posted a lovely little late-night post, full of - if not profound wisdom and insight into the human condition - at least complete sentences and links and a touch of humor at the end. But now, alas! it is gone. That fickle web. Something must be up with Blogger's site. Unless this really is the END OF THE INTERNET that I mentioned to Josh earlier in the evening. Too late to recreate it tonight. Bon nuit.

A "stay home" day

S calls weekends "stay home" days, but today I had to take one of those mid-week. I was feeling cold-y yesterday, and much worse this morning. I can't believe how much this fifths disease thing has beaten down our immune systems around here. I woke up only to call in sick at 6am, and then didn't wake again until 11. That left me only a little time to do nothing more daunting than balance my checkbook (where DOES the money go???) and clean out my purse - not as easy as you might think! - before running to the bank to keep the mortgage check from bouncing, and then getting the kids at school. R had a playdate here with one of the wilder boys in her class, and then I took the girls to his house (he has a 5 year old sister) to play while I went to a dr appointment. The appointment had nothing (on the face of it) to do with my cold: it was something scheduled last month with the same therapist I'd seen a couple of times. Talking with her has been so helpful, coming as it does during this time of re-evaluation of who I am and what I want to do with my life. All these changes I'm going through are very early mid-life, pre-perimenopausal, I know. But I also don't want to belittle this step in my journey by slapping a cultural or hormonal label on it.

But after the dr appointment, and after the stay at home, I feel so much better. Still, I'm sipping fizzy vitamin C drink as a write this, and tomorrow will undoubtedly come earlier than I want it to. Here's a poem that's 5 years old, written when R was S's age. I only tweaked a word or two while posting it here.



What Makes Creation Messy

We plant seeds in a riot of potting soil and peat pots.
My 5-year-old rips into packets, spills geneses:
snapdragon and cantaloupe, corn and beans.
Seeds for lavender and poppy, small as pill bug scat.

She bores holes with her pinky, thumb curving in the air,
I poke the earth with silent commands. To this one: germinate,
to that one: sprout. Grow and astound us, be bountiful, be green.
She writes the future with a laundry marker around the out-
side of the pots: CarrOt. PEPPEr. PumPkIN. BEaN.
CorN. PoPPy. CorN. BeaN.

Her fingers slip and leave hieroglyphs on the table, her hand.
They look like nicks, like the lines misused pruning shears make
on a slender apple tree branch.

The ecstasy of beginning behind us, now we'll mind the heat,
drip water to tempt the question-mark curves of green into straightening.
They're ours now, tiny things to tend or neglect at will.
She'll learn how apt seedlings are to shrivel if left alone.

Still in packets, the others are kept safe from either fate:
they await their turn to thrive or die
until the next time we give creation a go.

A Post A Day

gives you quantity but not necessarily quality. I mean, really. What was I thinking saying I'd blog every day? I obviously wasn't thinking of times like this, when the kids are tucked into bed and I want nothing more than to crawl between the sheets myself and put another day's worth of didn't-do-it's to rest.

I was thinking the habit of journaling daily would do me good. And maybe it has, somehow. It's given my consistency while other things that had been habitual in my life shift and drop away. But have I written elsewhere or otherwise, even knowing I'll be seeing my writer's group Thursday? Uh... no. Not really. Not yet.

Here's something from Gerard Manley Hopkins. I think I first read it in High School. Those of you who did not have Mr. Skinner for English may not know it as well:


Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Close to midnight

The girls and I went to bed early and I only am up to blog and see if the Tooth Fairy came.

I am (still) feeling a huge lack of time and space needed to do some serious meditating and soul searching. I think this feeling was heightened by the weekend away from home. Even though it included a long drive, it's hard to focus on the Meaning of Life while you're dodging semi's on the Grapevine.

Another poem in honor of National Poetry Month. And no, it's not mine. My throat is hurting - is it my body's way of ensuring that I take a day off work, have time and space to think and to write? Protestant Work Ethic vs. Suppressed Existential Crisis. Who will win?!



Caps
People should be open on top like a cup.
A piece of bread should be able to sop
some of us up. We should be milk-like
or like wine. We should not have to be
trying to get our caps off all the time.
The storybook boy attempts the simple gesture
of baring his head for his emperor,
but another hat has appeared.
This happens over and over.
Who does not share his despair of simplicity,
of acting clearly and with dignity?
And what pleasure can we find in the caps,
brightly feathered and infinitely various,
that pile up so high they bury us?

-- Kay Ryan

Home

Only a short entry, here, to say that we have safely arrived home after the long drive. We couldn't resist a little more swimming time this morning, and so didn't start the trip north until after noon. And then it was the frustrating stop-and-go of the megapolis L.A., and once we were north of that madness, the reward of spills of wildflowers on the sharp desert hills. Then the monotony of everything south and north of Buttonwillow, a dicey pit stop or two, and finally, darkness, the girls asleep, and two torrential downpours between Merced and Berkeley. Made it home awake but only for about five minutes more. Always nice to return.

Hemet for a Day

S and I arrived at Grandma's just before noon. Last night, we stayed in a smoking room (all that was left) at the Best Western in Lebec. We lazed around this afternoon, then went for a swim when Aunt J brought R over (she stayed at her house last night. It was amazing swimming in a huge pool in beautiful weather, and then lounging in a huge hot tub, looking up to see snow-covered mountains in the not-so-distant distance. My mom lives in a great little place, here.

In the early evening, I couldn't keep from napping a little while the girls played under Grandma's supervision. Then we had a simple dinner - pizza for the girls, an omelet for me. And now I'm going to round them up and get them to bed because they're going to have a hard time adjusting to getting up at what will feel like an hour earlier than school on Monday, and I figure we might as well start the earlier bedtime today. Besides, I have an ulterior motive. I'm still sleepy, and I know that an 8+ hour drive will require some energy.

I've been dared to post a poem of my own here. I will. And I'll make it a new one. But it won't be today, I'm afraid, as I don't have the time and space to write anything but this at the moment. But maybe the long drive home will give me something, if the girls sleep. There's only so many times you can sing every song from every Dar Williams CD, after all.

National Poetry Month is here again

Last night there was a poetry reading in the city: S.W. Merwin and Adrienne Rich. I couldn't make it, but to honor the event, here's a poem by Merwin and the beginning of one by Rich (with a link to the full poem). I'll be on the road all afternoon and probably until midnight, on my way south again with one daughter to pick up the other at Grandma's. This means the time to post is now!


Term

At the last minute a word is waiting
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through
all its uses and circumstances to
utter at last that meaning of its own
for which it had long been the only word
though it seems now that any word would do

W.S. Merwin


Stepping Backward
 
Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.

... (Adrienne Rich. Read the rest of the poem here.)