Lucy's Spleen

Brought home our turkey. Rubbed it down with salt, bacon fat, shallots and herbs. Finally threw out last year's fruit cake to make some room in the fridge.

Tonight I

Dealt with the second one of these:

 

So now I have a pair of these:

The chairs were a road find and the fabric is a curtain I scored at Goodwill. I can't get enough of its nubblyness.

When I was a kid we had green shag carpeting, a cast iron wood-burning stove, and a little teeny kid-sized red rocking chair that was mine, all mine, at leas until I grew out of it.  I used to sit in front of that stove in my rocking chair in the winters, bundled up in the afghan my grandma made me. I would spread a quilt across my lap and rock slowly, slowly, saying, "I'm old, I'm cold, and I'm tired."

I must have been around five years old at the time. Thanks to Brohawk for sparking the memory. 

Also: there will be a dozen people in our tiny apartment for Thanksgiving this year. Holy shit! This will be the first time we've hosted anything on that scale since we moved to Boston, and I feel shocked and grateful that we "suddenly" (it feels strangely sudden to me) know enough people out here to populate a full-fledged Family Holiday. We're having a couple of Olden Besties from Salt Lake coming up from New York on Thursday, plus our new friends here who we really really like, plus a couple of virtual strangers, which is how it should be for Thanksgiving, given the history of the occasion and whatnot. This is my favorite goddamn holiday, I tell you. I'm in my element.

Bah! Failure. I totally forgot to post yesterday. It was the Scorpion Bowl, I know. It got to me.

Cop out post

A dear friend arrived on short notice. Curry stew, good rioja, Freddy Mercury, and white pine pollen under the microscope. A happy evening.

 

Rule #1: No thinking about the archives. No looking at the archives. 

Can it really be that I have no chocolate hidden anywhere in this house? No? Oh, good.

The first three friend couples are in various stages of secret to full blown pregnancy. I am thrilled for them but also this hurts me in a deep, unexamined part of myself. It means I lose a part of myself, a deep-running piece of my identity which has been the self-held belief- and okay let's face it most people who know me have believed it also- that I would be the first. I'm disappointed in myself that I'm not ready like I thought I would be; I never finished college and now here's another way I have managed to fail. When am I going to start acting my age already?

On the other hand, don't get me near them because as I keep saying that shit is contagious and the reality is I don't want to be pregnant, not quite yet. For one thing, I think if I hold off I'll be the first of my Grandma's grandchildren to not already be knocked up at the time of walking down the aisle. Lu was a very religious woman and she only died a couple of months ago. I still can't believe she won't be there to see us married, but I believe she would have appreciated that a little bit. Also, I'm so damn happy right now. I'm too happy to care about being or not being parents yet. We are so in love and we slept in until 11:00 both days last weekend; we have few obligations and so goddamn much fun together- what's the rush? Third: I used to be religious as all hell and what can I say? I'm a little old fashioned still.

Things to make or do by the end of this weekend:

Re-cover the second of two Road Find chairs (do)

Hang new photo prints in living room (do)

Gyno appointment (make)

Vacuum everything (do)

Paint/hang new used shelf/towel bar in kitchen (finish). I've been multitasking by painting this shelf all the while of writing this post, drinking wine, and chatting with a girlfriend. I'm using the most incredible shade of green.

Ways to See

It's an astoundingly gorgeous Autumn afternoon and a friend comes out with Stan and me to take a bunch of pictures of us to use for engagement/wedding stuff/whatever. The experience of having our picture taken together is an unusual one for us- normally I am the photographer. There is a lot of laughing, a bit of crying (me), and much goofing around. We're nervous in front of the camera, so we try to gain confidence by losing ourselves in humor. We try to make nice faces, but each nice face necessitates a ridiculous one to counter it and the camera keeps capturing those in-betweens. We pose next to a pond, in a field, tête-à-tête lying in a pile of leaves.  We sit together under a tree, the two of us in a pool of golden sunlight surrounded by shadow. We put our hands to the earth, touch the leaves and seeds and pine cones blanketing the lawn around us. We wonder, what if we had eyes at the tips of our pinky fingers? How would our brains process the additional perspective? A breeze stirs, the afternoon light ripples and shimmers under our tree.  A leaf falls near my left knee, then another. What if we looked around through our pinky eyeballs and our eyeball eyeballs at the same time? How would the resulting image composite appear to us? We're no longer self-conscious, there is no camera.  We are the only ones here. We hold our pinkies out at one another looking, laughing. We are the only people, just the two of us.

 

What would we see if we held our hands up to our faces, looked ourselves directly in the eyes?

Dance Off

Moss, Lichen, Leaves, Stones

 

Exploring My Talent

Needless to say, I ignored the girl who wrote me on Facebook that, "I am trying to friend as many Emma's as possible we are the coolest! Ad me :)."

I'm depressed that I even know about this, but who in the hell is Miracle Whup trying to reach with its we will not tone it down ad campaign? Does Kraft really think it's money well spent to try to sell me on "hardcore Miracle Whip attitude and revelry?" Also why does all the media coverage describe the campaign as "for hipsters?" It so doesn't even begin to be ironic enough for the Bacon Generation. Asserting that "snarfing sandwiches" will be "very cool and totally hip" is not hip. The terms "in your face" and "massively dope" are not hip. Miracle Whup is not hip, it's oil and corn syrup. Fuck you.

Well, at least there's this:

I once fell from a train into a marching band unloading from a road trip---I think that means something and I want to honor that experience.