Did this really happen this year? The benefit in late February seems so long ago. It was held at the Axe and Fiddle, so many bands playing in seven hours that we had to move each one on and off in about 45 minutes. Began with the Coyote Singers native drumming group -- which could be heard for a block down the street -- and ending with Fijian bluesman Inoke Baravilala. Other friends made Haitian style food to serve to people. There were raffles, etc.. Next time I think "Well Matt and I could send a hundred dollars to Haiti or we could spend a hundred dollars to have a benefit and raise more..." I need to remember the 60+ hours of coordination that went into it. But Partners In Health got over $1000 and everyone had a good time. Can't get the beautiful flyer made by Ivan Delsol to upload, possibly because it's a pdf file.
I've been planning to have a second benefit for Haiti this summer, specifically for the cinema school that was leveled. Show films from and about Haiti and from the film school. May wait for my daughter to get here from England with her partner so I can dragoon them into helping.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Floor is done -- on to the next thing
Been a long time and many adventures and misadventures have happened fast enough to keep me from keeping up with this blog. I'm trying to post a few updates in quick succession now.
Here is our kitchen
at its worst. To the left of Kyle is the little orange heavy-duty jack that was all that was holding this side of a two-storey house up. We were reallly lucky that this particular part of the winter was mild. With just a double layer of blankets closing off the kitchen we were able to keep the house toasty warm with Stella (our cookstove) going morning and night.
Kyle DeBord here always comes to help out when we have gnarly construction projects that are two big for us.
Over two months after we started we finally had a floor and soon after that we could stop living with a refrigerator parked at the end of the dinner table
-- although sometimes this was a handy location for it. Here is Ronan getting her only chance to skate on a smooth surface a country girl is ever likely to have. Even the paved parts of the Weyerhaeuser logging road are so rough that skating on them would jar even a young person's teeth loose.
Five months later we do have a sink and several counter- and cupboard-like items installed but the trim still remains to be done. (I say it this way because everything we've put in the new kitchen is easily removable, even -- or especially -- my gorgeous steel sink with both basins deep enough to get a five-gallon carboy under the faucet.) I never seem to have the camera on hand during the two seconds every few days that the kitchen is clean enough to have its picture taken. Nor have I had any time lately to brew beer or make wine, which was the whole point to the deep sink.
Here is our kitchen
at its worst. To the left of Kyle is the little orange heavy-duty jack that was all that was holding this side of a two-storey house up. We were reallly lucky that this particular part of the winter was mild. With just a double layer of blankets closing off the kitchen we were able to keep the house toasty warm with Stella (our cookstove) going morning and night.Kyle DeBord here always comes to help out when we have gnarly construction projects that are two big for us.
Over two months after we started we finally had a floor and soon after that we could stop living with a refrigerator parked at the end of the dinner table
-- although sometimes this was a handy location for it. Here is Ronan getting her only chance to skate on a smooth surface a country girl is ever likely to have. Even the paved parts of the Weyerhaeuser logging road are so rough that skating on them would jar even a young person's teeth loose.Five months later we do have a sink and several counter- and cupboard-like items installed but the trim still remains to be done. (I say it this way because everything we've put in the new kitchen is easily removable, even -- or especially -- my gorgeous steel sink with both basins deep enough to get a five-gallon carboy under the faucet.) I never seem to have the camera on hand during the two seconds every few days that the kitchen is clean enough to have its picture taken. Nor have I had any time lately to brew beer or make wine, which was the whole point to the deep sink.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
You Know You've been unemployed too long when ...
you turn in a proposal to teach a fiction-writing class at the local community college wearing the same clothes you milked the goats in.
In my defense I will say that Olive (my co-teacher http://blogs.myspace.com/aeonnow) and I finished writing the proposal the day it was due and I thought I was just dropping it off at Lane Community College office where it would be put in the director's mailbox until she arrived at work. I didn't know her hours, but I knew she worked some evenings. When I handed the envelope over to the receptionist, she said -- before I could escape: "Can you stay? She wants to talk to you." Uh oh.
I looked down at my shirt, a long-dead leftover from my last professional job. It had been patched with silk-screened swatches of reproductions of another friend's art. But still more holes awaited new art. The whole bottom of the multi-coloured flannel shirt had come unhemmed and I had stopped the unraveling by painting a border in black acrylic along the edge. I hastily zipped my jacket up to cover it. The jacket, though a red fleece, had some soot smears from the woodstove and many bits of hay and seeds that had worked their way into the fabric and won't be coming out until they dissolve in the wash some distant day. However ...
You know you're in Cottage Grove when:
none of this matters and the director greets you by name, never casts so much as glance at your clothes, tells you that you did your homework well in preparing the proposal, and gives you not just a handshake but a double-palmed handhug at the end of the discussion. She also said (from looking at the attached supporting materials) that she would love it if I were to offer a feltmaking class.
Oh dang, I was going to throw in a link for Cada's art but I have to load Joy into the truck for a trip to the vet. Later --
In my defense I will say that Olive (my co-teacher http://blogs.myspace.com/aeonnow) and I finished writing the proposal the day it was due and I thought I was just dropping it off at Lane Community College office where it would be put in the director's mailbox until she arrived at work. I didn't know her hours, but I knew she worked some evenings. When I handed the envelope over to the receptionist, she said -- before I could escape: "Can you stay? She wants to talk to you." Uh oh.
I looked down at my shirt, a long-dead leftover from my last professional job. It had been patched with silk-screened swatches of reproductions of another friend's art. But still more holes awaited new art. The whole bottom of the multi-coloured flannel shirt had come unhemmed and I had stopped the unraveling by painting a border in black acrylic along the edge. I hastily zipped my jacket up to cover it. The jacket, though a red fleece, had some soot smears from the woodstove and many bits of hay and seeds that had worked their way into the fabric and won't be coming out until they dissolve in the wash some distant day. However ...
You know you're in Cottage Grove when:
none of this matters and the director greets you by name, never casts so much as glance at your clothes, tells you that you did your homework well in preparing the proposal, and gives you not just a handshake but a double-palmed handhug at the end of the discussion. She also said (from looking at the attached supporting materials) that she would love it if I were to offer a feltmaking class.
Oh dang, I was going to throw in a link for Cada's art but I have to load Joy into the truck for a trip to the vet. Later --
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Nightmare After Christmas -- A Fujiko Farm Holiday: Part 1
The festivities started on the Solstice with the First Annual Solstice Mud Wallow at Dorena Reservoir -- but I'll get back to that in a later post. Maybe. If not, use your imagination on that one. On Christmas we exchanged gifts and then went to some hot springs, steamed ourselves for a couple of hours and then found a Chinese buffet that was open and feasted on sushi, crab legs, and many other things. We didn't notice the fried frog legs until we were too full and limp to feel adventurous. The next day Ronan and I raced off the coast with Valerie and Bruce to do some impromptu whale watching. I'm not sure those wispy things I saw in the binoculars were whales' spoutings or just wave spume. But it was a bright sunny day at the coast (whereas Cottage Grove was fogged in), so it was plenty of fun whales or no whales. The first picture here is the remains of a sign warning people that the breakwall is not designed for walking on, blah-de-blah, proceed at your own risk. The next photo is of Ronan proceeding at her own risk. (Or that would be the next photo, but it got deleted.) We tried to make it out to the very furthest point but the tide was coming in and getting doused, ducked, or drowned by a sleeper wave would have put a damper on the dinner (fish and chips, of course!) that we were looking forward to having, so we turned back after scrabbling two-third of the way out. My hip joints felt plenty exercised from clambering up and over all those boulders.Then on Sunday the real fun began: we started moving the major appliances out of the kitchen so that we could tear up the floor and have a new one put in. By somebody else! Yah
oo! We won't be laying the tiles!! I may just have to pull up a chair and watch the tile layers work; it will be such a treat to not be doing it ourselves. ... But WE have to tear out the old stuff and get it ready for them. And then after glorious relief of watching someone else work, I will get the job of applying the wax. Knowing our house and its many mysteries and pitfalls, we figured that tearing out the old floor would make up for any guilt we might feel for not having the thrift and spine to lay the tiles ourselves. Last time we tore out a kitchen floor -- the one in the "apartment" side of our house, we found that there wasn't anything solid underneath it. By the time we removed everything that couldn't be saved, we were left with a big patch of dirt with some water pipes running across it and the outer skin of the two outside walls. That job took one month of working every day to complete. My housemates are extremely patient people.There kitchen wasn't small because it had room for a dinette in it. Our kitchen is on the huge side, a "farm kitchen" at 14 feet by 21, approximately. The first day all we did was get the buckets of bulk foods, the carboys of wine and cider, the two freezers and the fridge moved out and stowed in the back bedroom, the entry hall, and the d
ining room. We stopped early ( at 4:00 p.m.) and went to Tom and Lila's for a potluck and as much wine as we could put away without having to deal with a hangover the next day.Later as I was looking at the now-vacant half of the kitchen I suggested to Matt that we tear up that half of the floor first, put down the plywood underlayment and then tear out the side of the kitchen with the counters, the sink and the dishwasher. I suggested this because I thought there would an open crater in the house that would be belching cold air up into the house. I hung a sheet and a blanket over the doorway to the kitchen, both to stop (or slow) the draft and to block most of the demolition dust from getting into the rest of the house. Much to our surprise and relief we discovered decking under the particle board. The decking has made this project much less of a nightmare than it could have been. Ah, but other trials awaited us .... To be continued.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
odds and sods
Ah well, so much for getting back to posting at least once a week. Here are some of the things keeping that goal as an aspiration rather than an achieved done deal. Some of these odds-and-sods are from back in November.
NaNoWriMo. (Google it for more details, and you might understand why I don't have time to throw in links or to edit my sentences down to reasonable sizes.)
I've joined NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) because (being slow) I finally figured out what it was for: forcing yourself to generate a complete rough draft to an idea without stopping to fix everything and therefore never getting past the first few chapters. The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month of November. I am assuming it also means that your novel should have at least a semblance of a beginning, a middle, and an end and not just be 50,000 words of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Although I hear tell, that repetitions of something like this can fill part of the middle ... whatever it takes to keep you going.
Me, I'm at 37,212 words as of this moment and I have a comfortable 12 days left to get the remaining 13K in. I'm not counting Thanksgiving as a writing day. My success thus far is entirely predicated on cheating. The first 12K where the first couple of chapters of the novel, which I had written well before the summer when no writing happens. The next 14K or so came by cutting and pasting already typed sections from a file of notes and scenes. While cutting and pasting I envisioned and wrote the last paragraph of the whole novel, so victory is nearly assured. Jai ho! I have the ending already! Plus, if I absolutely fall down and get swept away by the holiday, mushroom hunting, quinces, wine making, working on a "found art" sculpture project with Ronan that involves frequent walks along the lakeside ... I can always - on the morning of November 30th - paste in the 31,000-word prequel to the novel, which although a stand-alone novella is intrinsic to the story and will have to be placed at the beginning of the book, when there is one. And I will have more than hit he 50K finish line.
Peach update. (Photo: "Peach is Gone". Ronan thought this was the most appropriate photo from Peach's last visit to scroung off our table. He's the gray blur there as he shoots back out the door.)
Attachment parenting really does raise healthy independent children, even when you least expect it. Peach went everywhere with us during his formative days, ate at the table, sleep in or next to our bed, had free reign of the house while learning to forage, and then started going outside for longer and longer periods of time.
At first Peach would drop by to terrorize children, defend territory, taunt cats, score some treats from mom (mostly mealworms and organic goatmilk mozzeralla, what a life!), and have a bath in a pie plate full of water provided for his convenience. Now he doesn't even say hello or acknowledge that he knows us. The only way I know Peach is still alive is I because they two scrubs jays he moved in with are still flying around as a flock of three -- and, yeah, I fancy I recognize his voice even if he refuses to recognize mine. Some friends of mine chided me about the about empty-nest syndrome and said "Kids have to leave home some time and make their own life." To which I thought, yeah, and where did my kid go? He moved right back in with his other parents! I've raised someone else's Boomerang Baby! Scrub jays, though, often allow last year''s kids, both sons and daughters, to hang around and help with next year's kids. They learn more about life and get better it, making them more likely to succeed when they do strike out on their own. I don't know if mom and dad scrub jay were aware of Peach all along -- they certainly could hear him carrying on in the house -- or if they recognized him by other means. Possibly the "other means", because Peach was attacked, just once, by papa Jay shortly after he started going outside.
Soft landing for Mushy Processed Peas.
Photo: A very young Mush! plays with Ronan's "Pet Shop" toys.
Sometimes I forget that Mush! has two names: Mush! as in the sled dog command and Mushy Processed Peas, because Ronan loves the whole name and notion of Mushy Processed Peas, a British culinary favorite that comes in cans labelled with those very words and a painted illustration of something that looks like a pile of baby poo. Really, I thought we had gone to far with raising Mush! I wasn't sure she would ever figure out how to be a duck after hanging out with us, sleeping next to the bed, and watching "Bones" with Ronan and her cat. But the same open door policy that worked with Peach is working for Mush! At first I would put her outside with the other ducks and she would ignore them. When she was done exploring the world, she would potter down to the house to come in and get fed and take a nap under the dining room table or near wherever someone was studying or working. Then she started staying out all day, but hanging around outside the door at lunchtime. Now, she doesn't want to be fed extra because it means coming away from the flock for a moment.
NaNoWriMo, again. I did my 50,147 words by November 29th. And wrote the end scene to the story, too. Still vey much a rough rough rough draft, but I got it done. Now I have a novelette to finish by Tuesday evening and an essay to write for an Oregon Quarterly contest that ends January 31.
Deep freeze. Only one burst pipe so far and it was on the outside of the house. Been without hot water for three days, without running water at all for one day. But we have Stella (ou
r cookstove) heating potable water for us and water to flush the toilets coming out of a dounspout. We're working on getting the water back on at this very moment. Gotta go!
Photo: Ronan with the giant ice beer bugs we keep melting and tipping out of the goats' water buckets.
NaNoWriMo. (Google it for more details, and you might understand why I don't have time to throw in links or to edit my sentences down to reasonable sizes.)
I've joined NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) because (being slow) I finally figured out what it was for: forcing yourself to generate a complete rough draft to an idea without stopping to fix everything and therefore never getting past the first few chapters. The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month of November. I am assuming it also means that your novel should have at least a semblance of a beginning, a middle, and an end and not just be 50,000 words of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Although I hear tell, that repetitions of something like this can fill part of the middle ... whatever it takes to keep you going.
Me, I'm at 37,212 words as of this moment and I have a comfortable 12 days left to get the remaining 13K in. I'm not counting Thanksgiving as a writing day. My success thus far is entirely predicated on cheating. The first 12K where the first couple of chapters of the novel, which I had written well before the summer when no writing happens. The next 14K or so came by cutting and pasting already typed sections from a file of notes and scenes. While cutting and pasting I envisioned and wrote the last paragraph of the whole novel, so victory is nearly assured. Jai ho! I have the ending already! Plus, if I absolutely fall down and get swept away by the holiday, mushroom hunting, quinces, wine making, working on a "found art" sculpture project with Ronan that involves frequent walks along the lakeside ... I can always - on the morning of November 30th - paste in the 31,000-word prequel to the novel, which although a stand-alone novella is intrinsic to the story and will have to be placed at the beginning of the book, when there is one. And I will have more than hit he 50K finish line.
Peach update. (Photo: "Peach is Gone". Ronan thought this was the most appropriate photo from Peach's last visit to scroung off our table. He's the gray blur there as he shoots back out the door.)
Attachment parenting really does raise healthy independent children, even when you least expect it. Peach went everywhere with us during his formative days, ate at the table, sleep in or next to our bed, had free reign of the house while learning to forage, and then started going outside for longer and longer periods of time.
At first Peach would drop by to terrorize children, defend territory, taunt cats, score some treats from mom (mostly mealworms and organic goatmilk mozzeralla, what a life!), and have a bath in a pie plate full of water provided for his convenience. Now he doesn't even say hello or acknowledge that he knows us. The only way I know Peach is still alive is I because they two scrubs jays he moved in with are still flying around as a flock of three -- and, yeah, I fancy I recognize his voice even if he refuses to recognize mine. Some friends of mine chided me about the about empty-nest syndrome and said "Kids have to leave home some time and make their own life." To which I thought, yeah, and where did my kid go? He moved right back in with his other parents! I've raised someone else's Boomerang Baby! Scrub jays, though, often allow last year''s kids, both sons and daughters, to hang around and help with next year's kids. They learn more about life and get better it, making them more likely to succeed when they do strike out on their own. I don't know if mom and dad scrub jay were aware of Peach all along -- they certainly could hear him carrying on in the house -- or if they recognized him by other means. Possibly the "other means", because Peach was attacked, just once, by papa Jay shortly after he started going outside.
Soft landing for Mushy Processed Peas.
Photo: A very young Mush! plays with Ronan's "Pet Shop" toys.
Sometimes I forget that Mush! has two names: Mush! as in the sled dog command and Mushy Processed Peas, because Ronan loves the whole name and notion of Mushy Processed Peas, a British culinary favorite that comes in cans labelled with those very words and a painted illustration of something that looks like a pile of baby poo. Really, I thought we had gone to far with raising Mush! I wasn't sure she would ever figure out how to be a duck after hanging out with us, sleeping next to the bed, and watching "Bones" with Ronan and her cat. But the same open door policy that worked with Peach is working for Mush! At first I would put her outside with the other ducks and she would ignore them. When she was done exploring the world, she would potter down to the house to come in and get fed and take a nap under the dining room table or near wherever someone was studying or working. Then she started staying out all day, but hanging around outside the door at lunchtime. Now, she doesn't want to be fed extra because it means coming away from the flock for a moment.
NaNoWriMo, again. I did my 50,147 words by November 29th. And wrote the end scene to the story, too. Still vey much a rough rough rough draft, but I got it done. Now I have a novelette to finish by Tuesday evening and an essay to write for an Oregon Quarterly contest that ends January 31.
Deep freeze. Only one burst pipe so far and it was on the outside of the house. Been without hot water for three days, without running water at all for one day. But we have Stella (ou
r cookstove) heating potable water for us and water to flush the toilets coming out of a dounspout. We're working on getting the water back on at this very moment. Gotta go!Photo: Ronan with the giant ice beer bugs we keep melting and tipping out of the goats' water buckets.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
speed wedding
Matty and I had our wedding a few Sundays back. It was a speed wedding. Like speed dating, only different. I think I got the whole thing wrapped up in under three minutes, between Matt packing his sandwiches and his rushing off to work. I can't remember what job he was going off to do, but I do remember it was a Sunday because I recalled as I got the wedding (ear)rings and came down the stairs that Saturday, not Sunday, is the typical wedding day. Oh, well, I wasn't going to wait another week; I could very well have lost the earrings by then and besides, I'd just cleaned them both in hydrogen peroxide. The wrong day of the week was fitting, too, in our -- or at least my -- general wrong-headed approach to life.
How did this start?
My own marriage was a bit of a bust. It was a seven-minute legal ceremony at the registrar's office in Carlisle, United Kingdom. Being over seven months pregnant at the time, I was not of sound mind. I don't remember what I promised or even what day it was. Was it May 23? 25? Or 27? All I remember was that the music that I chose from a list of seven-minute selections was "Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity" from Gustav Holst's The Planets. In May of 1998, I was in marooned in a small town (2000 people and nine pubs -- at I time when I couldn't drink) in a country that I had lived in for less than two months and my only friend, a crazy archeologist from Leeds, nearly got us all kicked out of the registrar's office when he threw a fit, even if it was a well-intentioned fit.
As for the after-the-legal-proceeding party, I christened that "the endurance picnic." We went to a stone circle called Long Meg and Her Sisters. It was really cold and windy -- we're talking northern England, it may have gotten around to sleeting. After enduring all I could of watching the guys get loaded, I went to the car and lay down and waited for it to be over while Matt and the archeologist and a couple of the young sons of some friends of Matt talked and smoked and climbed the standing stones.
All in all, I admit, I have sometimes, for seconds on end, fantasized about having an official wedding (since a wedding and a marriage are separate actions) as a sort of do-over of the whole commitment experience. My good friend Katie thought a wedding would be fun. I like parties, at least in theory. But ...
among other quirks, I am unable to wear any jewelry other than one gold ring in my left ear. Matt could maybe wear a wedding ring. Hard to say, though, since his last wedding ring stayed on less than an hour or two before he lost it when someone overturned the raft he was in. He never saw the ring again. Besides jewelry is a work hazard for Matt. Between our two records, neither of us saw the point to spending money on the things. But ...
Matt had mentioned that he would like to start wearing earrings again -- unlike me, both his ears are pierced. A few days later, I looked over at the statue of a Harpy that's next to my computer and noticed she was holding up my one gold earring. I remembered that my mother was keeping the match to it -- so that I wouldn't lose it. I called mom up and asked her to send me the ring. I joked t
o Matt that we could finally have wedding rings and that I would get (or find) a nice stud for his other ear, or maybe Ronan would lend him one of hers. Best off all, this earring was nicely designed by some goldsmith in Italy: pull hard on it (or get a branch caught in it) and the earring will just unlatch and come off -- way better than having it tear through your ear lobe. So, now we've got the rings, but ...
a wedding and a reception are also separate actions.
I've been to a heap of weddings lately: five in the last five years as opposed to zero in the preceding twenty. Much as I love the people involved, I'm not great at sitting still or paying attention for very many minutes, so I've always thought that the reception was the payment offered to friends by friends not just for your wedding gift to them but for your patience sitting through their lovely and lovingly crafted ceremony. So I got to thinking about how I don't really care much for weddings and how I care way Way WAY less for fussing and planning and spending money on stupid things like dresses and flowers and - ohmigosh! - the sleeting gobs of annoying details that go with weddings of which I have been able to remain blissfully ignorant.
And I thought: Sorry, Katie, no wedding -- but maybe I will come up with a reason and a trouble-free way to throw a big party someday.
I also thought: I am pretty sure I never liked those vows I couldn't remember. But I also didn't intend to spend hours, days, whatever, thinking of the perfect handcrafted vows. Quickly, I rousted Ronan, our best man/maid of honor/ring bearer/flowerless flower girl out of bed, grabbed the audience (Mush! the duck) and carried her downstairs (the audience/duck, not my daughter, who does stairs fine on her own). I gave Ronan the box with the freshly cleaned earrings in it, spun Matt away from the counter and sang the tune of "Here Comes the Bride" as fast as I could. I skipped from there straight to my vows, which were: "I promise to look out for you and second guess you to the best of my ability." Matt answered with: "I promise to look out for you and not to
second guess yo--"
at which point I reminded him of how much I need someone to second-guess me sometimes, so he amended his vows to:
"and to try to keep you from doing stupid things." I put his earring on. He put mine on. He grabbed his thermos of tea. I sang that "Wedding March" song really really fast. We kissed. Ronan smiled. The duck twittered. And ...
I forgot the date. It doesn't matter, because ...
I do all my measuring of the length of our relationship from the day we met. It's a day I can remember: April Fool's Day, 1991.
P.S. Our best man/maid of honor/ring bearer and flowergirl also turned out to be our photographer. Perhaps it was the time constraint she was under, but all the pictures came out blurry. She said the digital camera was twitchy, I say she must have - somehow - already had too much. Above left (way above) is the happy couple. Above right is Mush! looking very attentive. We forgot to tell Mush! it's not appropriate to wear black to a wedding. Another nonconformist in the family, oh dear.
P.P.S. Matt's students at Kennedy Alternative High School think his wedding earing is cool. They noticed it right away.
P.P.P.S. My housemates were offended they weren't invited. How could that be? Even my mother wasn't offended. The wedding was at eight in the morning. "Did you really want me to wake you up for a three-minute wedding?" I asked. That settled them down.
How did this start?
My own marriage was a bit of a bust. It was a seven-minute legal ceremony at the registrar's office in Carlisle, United Kingdom. Being over seven months pregnant at the time, I was not of sound mind. I don't remember what I promised or even what day it was. Was it May 23? 25? Or 27? All I remember was that the music that I chose from a list of seven-minute selections was "Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity" from Gustav Holst's The Planets. In May of 1998, I was in marooned in a small town (2000 people and nine pubs -- at I time when I couldn't drink) in a country that I had lived in for less than two months and my only friend, a crazy archeologist from Leeds, nearly got us all kicked out of the registrar's office when he threw a fit, even if it was a well-intentioned fit.
As for the after-the-legal-proceeding party, I christened that "the endurance picnic." We went to a stone circle called Long Meg and Her Sisters. It was really cold and windy -- we're talking northern England, it may have gotten around to sleeting. After enduring all I could of watching the guys get loaded, I went to the car and lay down and waited for it to be over while Matt and the archeologist and a couple of the young sons of some friends of Matt talked and smoked and climbed the standing stones.
All in all, I admit, I have sometimes, for seconds on end, fantasized about having an official wedding (since a wedding and a marriage are separate actions) as a sort of do-over of the whole commitment experience. My good friend Katie thought a wedding would be fun. I like parties, at least in theory. But ...
among other quirks, I am unable to wear any jewelry other than one gold ring in my left ear. Matt could maybe wear a wedding ring. Hard to say, though, since his last wedding ring stayed on less than an hour or two before he lost it when someone overturned the raft he was in. He never saw the ring again. Besides jewelry is a work hazard for Matt. Between our two records, neither of us saw the point to spending money on the things. But ...
Matt had mentioned that he would like to start wearing earrings again -- unlike me, both his ears are pierced. A few days later, I looked over at the statue of a Harpy that's next to my computer and noticed she was holding up my one gold earring. I remembered that my mother was keeping the match to it -- so that I wouldn't lose it. I called mom up and asked her to send me the ring. I joked t
o Matt that we could finally have wedding rings and that I would get (or find) a nice stud for his other ear, or maybe Ronan would lend him one of hers. Best off all, this earring was nicely designed by some goldsmith in Italy: pull hard on it (or get a branch caught in it) and the earring will just unlatch and come off -- way better than having it tear through your ear lobe. So, now we've got the rings, but ...a wedding and a reception are also separate actions.
I've been to a heap of weddings lately: five in the last five years as opposed to zero in the preceding twenty. Much as I love the people involved, I'm not great at sitting still or paying attention for very many minutes, so I've always thought that the reception was the payment offered to friends by friends not just for your wedding gift to them but for your patience sitting through their lovely and lovingly crafted ceremony. So I got to thinking about how I don't really care much for weddings and how I care way Way WAY less for fussing and planning and spending money on stupid things like dresses and flowers and - ohmigosh! - the sleeting gobs of annoying details that go with weddings of which I have been able to remain blissfully ignorant.
And I thought: Sorry, Katie, no wedding -- but maybe I will come up with a reason and a trouble-free way to throw a big party someday.
I also thought: I am pretty sure I never liked those vows I couldn't remember. But I also didn't intend to spend hours, days, whatever, thinking of the perfect handcrafted vows. Quickly, I rousted Ronan, our best man/maid of honor/ring bearer/flowerless flower girl out of bed, grabbed the audience (Mush! the duck) and carried her downstairs (the audience/duck, not my daughter, who does stairs fine on her own). I gave Ronan the box with the freshly cleaned earrings in it, spun Matt away from the counter and sang the tune of "Here Comes the Bride" as fast as I could. I skipped from there straight to my vows, which were: "I promise to look out for you and second guess you to the best of my ability." Matt answered with: "I promise to look out for you and not to
second guess yo--"at which point I reminded him of how much I need someone to second-guess me sometimes, so he amended his vows to:
"and to try to keep you from doing stupid things." I put his earring on. He put mine on. He grabbed his thermos of tea. I sang that "Wedding March" song really really fast. We kissed. Ronan smiled. The duck twittered. And ...
I forgot the date. It doesn't matter, because ...
I do all my measuring of the length of our relationship from the day we met. It's a day I can remember: April Fool's Day, 1991.
P.S. Our best man/maid of honor/ring bearer and flowergirl also turned out to be our photographer. Perhaps it was the time constraint she was under, but all the pictures came out blurry. She said the digital camera was twitchy, I say she must have - somehow - already had too much. Above left (way above) is the happy couple. Above right is Mush! looking very attentive. We forgot to tell Mush! it's not appropriate to wear black to a wedding. Another nonconformist in the family, oh dear.
P.P.S. Matt's students at Kennedy Alternative High School think his wedding earing is cool. They noticed it right away.
P.P.P.S. My housemates were offended they weren't invited. How could that be? Even my mother wasn't offended. The wedding was at eight in the morning. "Did you really want me to wake you up for a three-minute wedding?" I asked. That settled them down.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
website for hikers detained in Iran
Hey there everyone, I'm back from the Spirit World of Sun Dance; Hambaleceya; and a very busy June, July, and first part of August; and a sleepover on Dorena Lake aboard an 18-foot sailboat with three tweenagers and a week-old duckling (the duckling came along as our expert swimmer and also because it's imprinted on Ronan's ankles). I hope to be posting entries again soon, but in the meantime here is my tiny part in helping people get or stay informed about Josh Fattal and his friends. Josh was a coworker of Matthew's at Aprovecho and is a member of our community in Cottage Grove.
The link to a wesite the families of the hikers have created to help with the international negotiations is www.freethehikers.org
The families would appreciate it if you visit their website and also go from there to the associated Facebook page. Thank you.
The link to a wesite the families of the hikers have created to help with the international negotiations is www.freethehikers.org
The families would appreciate it if you visit their website and also go from there to the associated Facebook page. Thank you.
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