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Traffic Caused by Massive Underwear Shortage
“OK, so I had a little gas…”
…said my husband, as i lowered the window, maneuvering through traffic…
Monday mornings. Seasonal Chaos — the movement from loose summer nights into fall. The first full week back to school. A disarmingly sunny few days, meaning we spent too much time outside. Who knows why, exactly, but this morning was particularly rough getting out of the house. Chez moi, it went something like this:
We were all running about twenty minutes late, with the exception of my husband, who left himself about ten minutes to get dressed and get to his bus (a mere soupcon of moments to transition from sleep to work). Groggily, he wandered through the dining room and asked, “could you drop me off at the bus stop?”
My daughter complained that her nose hurt and her “legs were weak.” I did a quick scan of her energy and concluded that she had probably stayed up too late sneaking Harry Potter by flashlight.
The illogical prognosis: “you’ll feel better when you get dressed.” I don’t know why, but this always works. “OK” she said, “is my my Animal Planet t-shirt clean?”
I felt a sharp shock as I realized that no one had bothered to do much laundry this weekend. Did we have clean underwear? As I lifted a very light-feeling box of Weetabix, I then also realized that we’d blown off the grocery shopping, and it was going to be a mix-and-match cereal day.
As we climbed into the car and wobbled into the glorious, disorienting-to-Seattleites morning sunshine, my daughter exclaimed “I forgot to brush my teeth!”
Prognosis: I handed her a Starbucks napkin and told her to do her best.
Then my husband rubbed his chin, “I forgot to shave!”
Prognosis: for once, there would be at least one man walking around today with a sexy, “oops, I forgot to shave” beard that wasn’t staged. (I often wonder, how does James Denton, who plays Mike Delfino, the world’s sexiest plumber on Desperate Housewives, maintain a consistent 5-o’clock shadow? Every. single. episode?)
I left my disarmingly sexy husband (with actual, unstaged bed-head as well) at the bus stop, and hit the express lanes. I grudgingly contributed to the carbon-emissions which were horribly apparent as a brown ribbon within the clear sunny weather, making the bay sparkle and the mountains stand out like they were blue etchings on the sky.
I felt such a sloppy, chaotic mess on this beautiful planet. Why did we seem so out-of-sync with nature this morning? Which planetary transits might have this chaotic effect which disturbed the small, but important details of our morning routines…?
When I hit the gridlock on I-5, I realized, maybe it wasn’t just me and my family. Maybe a lot of us had gotten up late this morning, played too much in the sun this weekend, stayed up too late reading Harry Potter, forgotten to shave, had critically low clean underwear and breakfast cereal levels…and now we were all piling onto the freeway at the same time.
Or, maybe it was a local phenomenon. In Seattle, it’s still sort of summer about halfway through October. While everyone else is putting on scarves, walking through crunchy leaves, and behaving like a Robert Frost poem, Seattleites are still coming home to a Norman Rockwell summer evening on the porch, the barbecue, kids in the sprinkler.
What was it that caused our chaos, and the resulting traffic…I may never know. What I do know, is thank the goddesses and gods for Mike Delfino and his staged beard, and the new season of Desperate Housewives, the start of which will indicate “Fall is Here” to the West Coast.
Solstice Wishes
Happy Summer Solstice!
Every summer, the police threaten to arrest the painted naked bicyclists in Fremont’s Solstice parade. Every summer, they never do.
Here’s to the power behind that fact, and the idea that nothing outside you fears can stop your crazy dreams. Not even the Seattle police.
Here’s to berries, flowers, long hot days, evenings on the porch, crazy new adventures, and all the usual familiar ones. Here’s to letting dreams blossom, and here’s to the bright side of nature.
Happy Solstice!
welcome 2007
My mom used to light a menorah when I was a kid (in the west-coast scandinavian lutheran tradition of chanukah, you shove candles in it and light it whenever). I always wonder what it is which makes us reach for tradition this time of year. My heart goes on a roller coaster ride of emotion from Thanksgiving until about now.
This particular year was immensely special. This year ended in a weather catastrophe, with uprooted trees, smashed houses and power outages. Add to that a mix of strangely meaningful tradition. And the quotients bring a blessing in the end.
We spent xmas eve with friends from Slovakia. This came about when, a few months back, we received their mail in our box. They moved from our neighborhood about three years ago, so this was odd…but I hadn’t seen them in a while, and dropped it by. Katarina invited us to come for Christmas Eve, warning me that they would have a lot of strange food.
After a series of bed-hopping during our 8 day power outage, I got a call from Katarina, to be sure that we were really coming for Christmas Eve…I wouldn’t dream of missing it. Over and over I have thought how fortunate it was to receive their mail…just that once in three years, and end up spending Christmas Eve with them.
This was really meaningful for me as half my family is from Slovakia, and, over the years, I’ve longed to attach to some sort of tradition. We had plates of strange food and gallons of wine it seemed. We danced to bronski beat and I felt at HOME. I felt like I KNEW all of this stuff, even though it was the first time I’d experienced Slovak christmas traditions.
Then, I went home and threw up. The next day (christmas), we were going to my brother & brother in law’s. My bro-in-law called me at about ten, saying “when are you getting here, I’ve got the champagne chilled.” I managed to get over the previous night’s hangover in time to start the next one. So onto the next tradition, in which I get together with my crazy, brilliant family, where all the memories and love just start to make me ache.
And of course, New Years…on New Year’s Eve, I turn Japanese, and we cook onigiri rice balls, toshikoshi soba and I try to think of the 106 (or is it 9?) desires which distract us from our true selves. I made mai fun noodles (ok that’s Chinese but who’s counting), and managed to drop water into the hot oil, which sputtered for about two minutes all over the kitchen. The neighbor girl who was hanging around thought it was HILARIOUS.
We then ended up with our Australian friends for the remainder of New Year’s Eve. In their tradition, they put little stretchy insulated wraps on the bottles of beer, and watch SpongeBob, and laugh a lot.
A Perfect Set of Knockers
I have always had inklings of life’s endless possibilities, but from the time I was 15, I had external affirmation that I could go anywhere: I had the ideal bra size. My industrially-made bra size is two numbers and a letter: 34, as in inches around my chest, and the letter “C,” which refers to the shape and depth of the bra cup. C is larger and fuller than both A, and B. Metaphorically speaking, the letter C is also the actual shape of a breast, caught up in a bra, in profile, although I’m not sure the lingerie pioneers consciously understood this when setting sizes.
Culturally, the C-cup bra size is a touchstone, magically announcing “just right” amongst those in the know. Victoria’s Secret openly displays cup sizes up to C on the racks, and shoves any larger sizes away in drawers. Yes, the public is kind to C-cups: according to the unanimous decision of my female peers in high school P.E. class, I had the Vogue-est boobs of all. Perhaps it was their brave, honest way of admiring the refreshing, decent size of my breasts. Our brothers and our male peers had long lauded the quality of hugeness, but here was a new quasi-feminist voice: tidy and understated was now Vogue. Read the rest of this entry »
A Day at the Tennis Club (Or, How to Survive American Plutocrat Hangouts)
So, when you have children, you often end up at places you might not necessarily choose to hang out. Chuck E. Cheese being the most widely experienced non-chosen hangout. Today, for me, it was the exclusive (for Seattle) Tennis Club.
The reason for going was a playdate. The word “playdate” is hard for me to accept into my vocabulary, because I’m such a fan of wild-child-ringing-the-doorbell style “playdates,” where you say “can so-and-so play?” instead of all this infernal arranging that goes on.
So, anyway, here we are at the Tennis Club. Where Slade Gorton (Senator Skeletor) is reportedly a member. As I sit and watch the tennis tournament, the Blue Angels fly overhead for the SeaFair show.
I imagine that I’m Barbara Bush. I watch the tennis tournament, and shade my eyes to look up and watch these charming Navy fellows up there, flying around in those smart little planes. To protect my colonial self-interest.
Ahhh. Sigh. A nice man goes by with a tray of…hot dogs (well, this is Seattle, says Barbara, reaching up to touch her pearls.)
I wander down to the dock, where I am informed I am not welcome, because I am not a member (the public is allowed in this weekend, due to the tennis tournament, but only to certain areas.) The reverie is broken.
As I walk six feet away, to the grass, where my non-member person is allowed, I ponder that, by accident, I have worn a flowery sundress (all that was clean), and my big, floppy, purple hat. I sort of look like I’m an outsider-trying-to-fit-in. And I have to laugh, because there’s nothing I can really do about that. My husband actually looks like he could be a member, with his Ray-Ban sunglasses and all. In fact, he has the sort of demeanor which makes you wonder if he might have once been a Navy Pilot. So he’s actually got enough mystique that he could walk INSIDE the tennis club and use the bathroom if he wanted. Probably.
We end up watching some old guys — none of them under 70 — down on the clay courts play their own little tournament. We are one of about 6 spectators. Everyone speaks in whispers and wears white (even in Seattle). My daughter’s friend drily observes that we don’t have to be quiet here, because these players are probably pretty deaf.
So, we finally left after two. long. hours. We’re hungry, so we search for a cafe which might satisfy us with some intellectual, non-plutocratic atmosphere, as well as sandwiches.
We stumble into Hillside Quickie, an organic vegan cafe on 15th Ave. on Capitol Hill. It’s OUTSTANDING. I have the African Mama burger, made of quinoa, and an amazing array of spices. I am so excited by this place, that I’m inspired to return to veganism (or at least look at some cookbooks). This place kicks plutocratic hot dogs anyday. I am grateful to it for restoring my faith, and wiping any hanger-on colonial vibes from my aura. Because of vegetables and grains, and a few select spices, I’m sure the human race will survive this current madness, these Slade Gortons, these Bushes, these inconvenient truths of our days — because of the Hillside Quickie, I am certain the American Way and the Pursuit of Happiness will, once again, see the light. It has more life than the evil ever will.
O, Father, Where Art Thou?
More on the Mother and Father archetypes — but mainly, the missing Father.
To begin, here is an excerpt from Caroline Myss’ description of the Mother archetype in Sacred Contracts:
This archetype is the keeper and protector of life, from children to the family to…the earth and all of life…she may be referred to as wrathful. The power of compassion and the endless capacity to forgive her children…are essential to the Good Mother.
In the Torah, who is protector of all of life? Who is also wrathful, but compassionate, and forgiving? These characteristics belong not to the Mother archetype, but to Yaweh, a distant, male, deity. The Mother archetype was shifted to a deity, and Miriam, Sarah, and Eve are left holding the minor responsibility of continuing the Jewish lineage. Their true energies have been reassigned.
