Fires.

So, R.’s parents were evacuated yesterday from their home, which is currently thick with falling ash. The Witch Fire is only a neighborhood away. Every hotel in town is full, so there is no where for them to go…my FIL even called the highest-end resorts in town, asking for the highest-end suites, and there was nothing available. So, my mother-in-law–who is 90 years old, by the way–hastily made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in her graying kitchen, and then they drove down to the local shopping area and parked in the Denny’s lot, planning to spend last night in their car. The Del Mar Fairgrounds evacuation point was at capacity. And, so, my 90-something MIL was parked at the Denny’s for the night.

This sort of thing drives me crazy. And it sets off all sort of emotional triggers to my own parents’ situation…my father, whose Parkinson’s has lately left him unable to walk, but who refuses to purchase a wheelchair on principle, and my mother, who refuses to go against his wishes and who thus ends up, at the age of 71, trying to carry my father singlehandedly to where he needs to go. And so I process all this by feeling helpless and infuriated, in that way that being out of control and at a distance can make you feel.

And R. has taken off again for the coast (he just got home from a week of business there on Saturday) to see if he can usher his parents to safety. I’ll keep you posted.

The Late-to-the-Party-As-Usual Meme

I was tagged a couple weeks ago by Omega Mom to do these two memes.

First, The Middle Name Meme:

Rules: You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have like to have. When you are tagged, you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and to read your blog.

L…is for LuLu (which was The Bee’s orphanage name) and LouLou (which was the nickname my family called me as a child–from my middle name)…cool, huh?

O…is for ornithology. Birds were a big part of my life growing up. My mom is an professional ornithologist, and so I would sometimes get up at 5 AM when I was young and go with mom to count birds in the bird-thirty hour of dawn. And family vacations ALWAYS involved bird walks. It was like learning another language.

U…is for…for…well, this is the one I had trouble with. I don’t play the ukelele. I just resigned from the UCC. So, I’m going to be wacky and go with Ullapool. U…is for Ullapool, which is a cold, rainy, seaport town in northern Scotland, where I had the best single malt scotch pull of my life. And it’s high on the list of places I’d like to go back to, which is saying something, since I’ve been there before. Multiple times. But, clearly, something is calling me back. Maybe a former life. Or something.

I…is for the Internets. Where I spend the grand majority of my time lately. And since I’m having the satellite wi-fied into the main house this coming week, I expect I’ll be spending even more of my time with you soon. Aren’t y’all lucky? Heh.

S…is for sonnets. I wrote my dissertation on the sonnet sequence as political discourse. Don’t ask. But the ‘S’ of the word does allow me to reference writing poetry, which is what I do now. So. S…is for poetry, which is the job du jour.

E…is for education. Because that’s the other thing I devoted way too many years of this little life to. Burn out, anyone?

Meme #2. This meme consists of ten questions to be answered.

1. If you could have super powers what would they be and what would you do with them? (Please feel free to be selfish, you do not have to save the world!)

I can only narrow this down to two, which fascinate me equally: time travel and invisibility. What would I do with them? Visit. Listen. Learn.

2. Were you to find your self stranded on an island with a CD player…it could happen…what would your top 10 blogger island discs be?

I have to say it’s hard these days to choose discs, rather than tracks…can I choose tracks? I think maybe it’s recognition of an ipod culture to say that, but it’s sort of true. There are very few entire discs I can listen to…but it would be some combination of the following current favorites:

Regina Spektor; Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; the Connells; Beethoven’s 6th Symphony (The Pastoral); Iron & Wine; Roseanne Cash; Crowded House; Fountains of Wayne; Hole; Lucinda Williams.

3. If you were a smell what would it be?

Lemon basil. (Isn’t it cool that these two actually come together?)

4. What bird would you most like to be?

A hummingbird. (Unless it’s strictly for the song, and then I’d be a woodthrush.)

5. If you were a bird who’s head would you poo on?

Isn’t that good luck? Hmmmmm. If it’s meant to indicate deep-seeded animosity, then Karl Rove.

6. Are there any foods that your body craves?

Salty ones. I’m rarely a sweets girl. I crave McDonald’s french fries and sour cream and onion potato chips like crazy, though.

7. What’s your favorite time of year?

Autumn. Although here in the desert, I have come to appreciate the winter very much too.

8. What’s your favorite time of day?

Early morning. Not too much has gone wrong yet.

9. If a rest is as good as a change which would you choose?

You know, I don’t really understand what this question is asking. I like to think I like change, if I’m reading that correctly. But, truth be told, I am terrible with it. And, as for rest, I never take naps. They scare me. Go figure.

10. If you could have a dinner party and invite any 5 people from the past or present who would they be? (Living or deceased.)

The Bee’s birth mom. Shakespeare. J.K. Rowling. Ghandi. Toss-up between Princess Diana and Mary Magdalene. Heh.

So, I’m supposed to tag six bloggers. Um, yeah. I have lost track of who did this meme, back in the day. So, if you haven’t done it, and I read you, you’re tagged. You know who you are.

*Age, not months since LID…

Happy 41 to me*…

We’re spending the day in the Valley of Death, at the otolaryngologist’s, for The Bee’s follow-up appointment for the ear-tube surgery. I’m not sure if she’ll have another full hearing test or not, or whether he’ll just look in and see if the tubes are still open and in place. I haven’t noticed any difference in The Bee’s reactions to spoken words…the other day, I said the word “shower,” and she signed “flower.” Hard to know what that means. Perhaps she’s a postmodernist.

Oh, and yesterday’s post was spot on. Last night the temperature sunk to 40 degrees. It was darn right cold in them these parts.

Thank you

for the support and perspective, re: Dude and the mirror. Sometimes, when you live in a hole like I do, you wonder if your take on something is appropriate or accurate. I am sort of uber-private, too. I hate people I don’t know in my house, knocking on my door, in my driveway, etc., so Dude sort of pushed all sorts of buttons just by his very presence.* I get this hypersensitivity to unknown folks from my father, who refused to answer our door growing up, unless he was expecting someone. I guess the ethic of inviting a stranger to dinner is one that’s going to be lost on me–although I like it, in principle.

By the way, Dude IS the boss, the supervisor. He OWNS the appraisal company that the bank contracted with. But going to the bank and reporting our experience with him is a good idea, and one that I’ll pursue, as soon as we get a favorable appraisal. I don’t think I even mentioned yesterday that he *forgot*–or *overlooked*–pulling one of our plats. So, he didn’t even have an accurate sense of the property until R. pointed it out to him. GAH.

More later.

*Although it’s interesting, in light of my uber-privacy IRL, that I am one of the more public blogs that I read. Hmmmmmm…anybody want to psychoanalyze that? I’ve always attributed my lack of anxiety about stalkers to the fact that we live in the middle of nowhere, past a locked gate, a long driveway, a guard dog, and a gun (well, it IS the West, ya know…).

Pissed. Need advice.

Okay, so we had an appraiser here at the ranch today, as we’re going for a mortgage equity loan. R. arranged the whole thing, and–frankly, embarrassedly–I know precious little about it.

I was walking out of the bedroom, having just dressed The Bee this morning, and The Appraiser Dude is taking notes on my back garden. My weed-filled, choked-with-green, viper-pit of a back garden. Taking notes. GAH. The Bee walks straight up to him and yanks on the cord to his GPS. (Guffaw.) Dude grunts at her. I go into the main house and notice Dude entering my bedroom building, wandering around by himself. Eyebrow raises.

I mention this to R. when I get down to the office, but R. insists Dude didn’t go into the main house. I insist he did, or would. Then Dude barges into my office without knocking while I’m sitting at the computer, through my outside door, even though R. told him explicitly to use the other door, the one that goes to R.’s office. Guard dog wants to rip Dude’s northern vertebrae out. As Dude sticks his head in my door, I simply say, “You really don’t want to come in here.”

We pass a mid-day. Dude has long ago left.

I take The Bee back up to the house and notice that the door to the guest room is askew. The guest room sits at one end of our doublewide and used to be two separate bedrooms, but we ripped the wall out between those and merged the rooms as one. But the two original entrance doors remain, although I keep a strategically-placed chair and baskets thingy in front of the door that we never use, thusly:

It’s important that I do that because propped behind the unused door in the guest room is the largest damned mirror you will ever see–or not see, because I can no longer show it to you, because Dude frigging went through the door (behind the chair and baskets thingy) and the gargantuan, ceiling-to-floor mirror came crashing down. And broke. Leaving one of us with seven years of bad luck.

Now, my questions are plenty.

Such as: since he had just been in the guest room, having walked in through the usable door, and he could see how freaking big the room is, WHY would he jam his weight into the other door (behind the chair and baskets thingy), looking for “another room”? (This was his later–much later–explanation.)

Please note:

You can see the mirror on the floor here, and here is the room in the other direction, back of broken mirror also visible on floor:

How do we possibly tuck another room in here?

GAH.

GAH.

GAH.

So, the absolute worst of it is that Dude leaves WITHOUT SAYING A WORD ABOUT IT.

After doing his dirty deed and leaving the main house, he spends another 45 minutes walking and driving the property–all the way up the mountain to the back twenty–WITH R. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of chitchat, of guy-crap, of shooting the breeze, and Dude says nary a thing about the scene of ka-ka he left for me to walk in on in the guest room.

Jeezus. My dogs do a better job of cowering letting me know when they’ve had an accident.

I immediately have R. phone him. R. comes back and says it’s his “impression” that Dude was “hoping it would just go away.” R. says Dude reluctantly agreed to pay for a replacement mirror, but R. says take pictures in any case. Um, duh…hello? Blog!

Okay. I get that we initiated the reason for Dude to be here, even though we didn’t hire him–the bank did. I even get that R. should have been escorting Dude around 100% of the time whilst he was surveying. (I’m still unclear why that wasn’t happening…seems that R. was under the impression that Dude wanted to do his thing alone.)

What I don’t get is the imbecilic and completely immature way that Dude handles this mistake. What? Are we five?

No. We are a professional. We own our own business. We have an “& Associates” after our name on the shingle.

Okay. So, I need a reality check. Am I way out of line? Feeling overly-protective and overreacting as a result? How would you feel about this? Advice?

Maia’s Meme

So, I got tagged for a Meme by Maia over at Other Flowers. If you don’t read her blog, you should. She and hubs are adopting a little girl (SN) from China and have an amazing homegrown son, Spike, and she’s writing screenplays for Hollywood, and used to be the moderator at Hipmama.com, and has very cool roses. Go visit. Say hello. You’ll love her writing.

She also recently sent The Bee the complete collection of Harry Potter books, which I have to admit to not reading before now. I was skeptical and pissy about HP for the past ten years. I think it stems from the fact that I used to live in Holland, Michigan, and teach at the college there, and the town–under the pervasive and perverse influence of the Dutch Reformed Church–decided to ban HP from the town library because, doncha know, magic is the work of the devil. (They also tried to ban Halloween, for similar reasons.) HP became a pawn in the debate, and I got very easily fed up with the debate…mostly because even those fighting against the warped minds of the city elders (which is the position you might think I’d be siding with) were really only a little less co-opted into that culture than the city elders themselves. Anyway, long story. But I’ve been reading HP (not yet with The Bee…she needs a few more years to graduate to books without pictures), and I’m on the fourth book, and I’m loving them. They got me through the hospital stay and stress last week. So, here goes…

Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line four, and write what it says.

“There is no path. You make the path in going.” (an Antonio Machado quote in Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems)

Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What can you touch?

A case of blank CD’s. A map of the ranch. The Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Quarterly. My (broken) iPod.

What is the last thing you watched on TV?

CBS Sunday Morning…which, if you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know from another meme is what I consider the paragon of good TV. I mean, people, they played Pavarotti singing the ENTIRE Puccini aria he made famous–not just the two-second soundbite that’s been playing on every other news and entertainment cast. It made me cry.

Without looking, guess what time it is.

12:30. (It’s actually 12:56 PM)…

With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

The three dogs snoring, out-of-unison.

When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

I have to step outside to get to my computer, to get to my office. It’s located in a different building than the main house, which ended up being one of my bigger motherhood mistakes. The video monitor doesn’t work down here, so I either have to run out here quickly at the start of one of The Bee’s naps and spend only half-an-hour checking email and (trying to) check blogs, or I have to make sure R. has monitor-duty, which is the situation right now.

Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

I read email and then checked Bloglines and read my fave blogs.

Did you dream last night?

Yes. Couldn’t tell you what. I’ve been trying to invoke a Sirius Black dream, but I don’t think it’s working.

When did you last laugh?

Oh, that’s a hard one. This hasn’t been a week real big on the laughter. I definitely smiled and maybe giggled when The Bee and I were watching gymnastics on TV this morning…she likes the flips.

What is on the walls of the room you are in?

Pink paint (“Dog’s Ear” by Behr). A pink mirrored medicine-cabinet-shelving unit that I found at a fleamarket, full of mercury-glass flamingoes; postcards of the Mexican loteria; three sacred chess pieces that a friend brought me from Mexico City; the seven round stones that R. gave me when we were dating that represent the seven directions of the Cherokee–north, south, east, west, up, down, and in; a little tree made out of rose quartz; old lead molds; a rusted pocket watch that the tractor dug up in the field here at the ranch; a 19th-c. postcard of the Engle Clock. Two large, 19th-c., empty wooden frames (I like frames, just for frames). Book shelves. A Jack Russell Terrier calendar. A sepia-toned print that my sister did of old gear parts.

Seen anything weird lately?

All the prickly-pears have fallen to the ground and are currently being carted off by red ants.

What do you think of this Meme?

At the risk of sounding like an English teacher, it has a couple “yes” or “no” questions in it, which is always a no-no if you want to pin people down.

What is the last film you saw?

I watched Legends of the Fall again on TV the other night when I couldn’t sleep. And R. and I caught most of Cars recently too, with The Bee, which we absolutely loved.

If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?

A publishing house. A beach house. (Not the same type of “houses” at all, huh?)

Tell me something about you that I don’t know?

I like casement windows. I regularly visit a spiritual intuitive…actually, she’s a friend of mine.

If you could change one thing about the world, what would you do?

Eliminate violence–in all its myriad forms. That should pretty much cover it.

Comment to President Bush.

What a fucking waste.

Would you ever consider living abroad?

All the time.

What do you want to say to God when you get to heaven?

You’ve got your work cut out for you…oh, and, can you point me the way to Shakespeare?

Circles.

In American Sign Language, the sign for “family” is created by making two letter “F’s”–one with each hand–and then drawing them around in a circle to meet again on the opposite shore. It’s about creating an enclosed space in air, a visual representation of an emotional reality.

When I think of the circles of emotion that resonate in my life, I certainly do include the circle of bloggers that I have come to know during the past two years or so through the written word, over the computer screen, as their narratives have unfolded piece by piece, without much pretense, in that way that is unique to blogging. The bloggers I read are united by a common thread, a community, which is the world of international adoption. That is the online neighborhood of which I am a part. Within that neighborhood, there are particular houses I visit, more specific reasons why I follow who I follow, read who I read, and I’ve been trying to pin that down lately, in my own mind.

For me, the bloggers I follow are of three or so ilks. No–scratch that. It’s ME that’s really being defined here, not the blogs. But, rather, ME, as the audience of the blogs. So, here are the reasons why I read:

First, the blog-candy. Or, more precisely, the baby-candy. Blogs I look at, more than read. Many of my fellow bloggers are guilty of this indulgence come referral time, but a few candy blogs have indeed stuck to the roof of my virtual mouth. I also find my own blog teetering in the direction of baby-candy, now that The Bee is home. I’m not sure why. I suppose it’s easy enough to throw up a photo or two and be satisfied with a post created. Perhaps, too, it’s a self-protective move, despite the loss of privacy that results from posting photos to the web in the first place. If I concentrate on the daughter’s lovely smile, I don’t have to try and explain myself on the controversial subject of the day, which I have found is almost always a losing battle on the faceless internets anyway. There is more than a little to be said for face-to-face discussion, especially when an argument is brewing. Newborns learn to read faces for a reason. Survival.

Second, the blogs not put off by controversy. The intellectual bloggers. The Ones Who Have Something To Say. I like to read people who are engaged with ideas, mostly because I’m not anymore. I wish I could say I had enough time to read all the links, look at all the videos, that accompany Engaged Bloggers, but clicking on links was one of the first things that went when I came home with The Bee. I read the main posts now, but nearly never click over to read links anymore. Despite that admission, I still enjoy a person who has something to say. I admire it. I sometimes wish more people said More, myself included. And I wish more people listened when the More is said.

Third, and by far the most urgent reason of the bunch, is that I read blogs to follow A Story. Interestingly, this more important reason didn’t exist for me when I first began blogging. It takes time. It takes time to know another blogger’s backstory–the details, the personal gripes, the tragedies, the job(s), the pets, the kids, the vacation destinations, the unfoldings of a day. And then a week. A month. A year. And soon, soon…I have to know. I have to know what’s going on over that blogger’s morning cup of joe. Not really what’s going on, of course. But what they want to tell me. The Story they’re weaving of themselves.

I’ve also, of course, stopped reading some blogs over the course of the past year. Deleted some from my Bloglines (and, yes, I’ve been converted to Bloglines post-mommyhood, if any of MY diehard readers remember that perverse rant against it I posted last winter). Partly, I think, your experiences shape your interests…new experiences, new interests, new blogs. Or, maybe I should say that your new experiences tend to edit your life for you. Certainly, I read more blogs now that include children adopted with special needs than I used to. I never read blogs focused on infertility anymore–unless, by default, they’re also part of the world of adoption.

In the course of following these Stories, a handful of bloggers have also become email buddies and snail mail buddies and even–fewer still–I have exchanged facial expressions with. I am the first to admit to the limitations of the internets, to the insanity, to the cruelty, to the drama, to the tedium that can develop–in fact, that can be nurtured–in an online medium. Snark is fun, satire is priceless, but edginess is, by definition, capable of cutting. And so it goes. People also change, move into and out of circles, become a different audience. I accept the vagaries and the risks of interacting this way, even when I want to scream and run and pull each hair out of my head individually with a tweezers. Families are like that sometimes. And there are times I don’t accept those vagaries and risks and drama and tedium. I like circles both for what they keep in and for what they keep out. And I love watching the ways in which other people draw them for themselves.

And in the category of: WTF?

I give you the following exchange between R. and myself, which took place in the car on Monday, driving home from the disgustingly-hot low desert…

R.: I could live there.

SB: Huh?

R.: I could live there, on that hill.

SB: What hill?

R.: THAT hill. That elegantly-shaped hill.

SB: [Still not sure what he’s talking about] You mean THAT hill? That thing stuck out in the middle of nowhere?

R.: Yeah, that lovely, lava-rock, black hill, in all its isolated splendor.

SB: [Choking] You have GOT to be on drugs.

R.: No. Why? Whaddya mean? [Pause] I LIKE that hill. It’s a great hill.

SB: It’s tiny. It’s like a pinpoint of a hill.

R.: That’s why I like it. It’s elegantly-shaped.

SB: Whaaahh? Elegantly-whaaahhh? If you stepped outside your door, you’d plunge 100 feet into sharp malpais rock. It’s unliveable.

R.: I could take a helicopter in. Land on my roof.

SB: Key word here being “my.” YOUR roof. YOUR house. Not mine.

R.: Why are you snapping pictures of it if you hate it so much?

SB: [Snort] Are you kidding? I can already see the post’s title now: “And in the category of: WTF?”

R.: Well, if you’re going to blog about it, then I’m going to say something quotable…

SB: [Thought bubble only: “like you haven’t said plenty already?”]

R.: It’s shaped like a scoop of Hagen Daz ice cream.

Happy Father’s Day!

My own father was my go-to parent, which is one reason that I’ve always taken the paradigm of the “mother and daughter” connection with a grain of salt. I love my mom, but she just wasn’t my go-to growing up.

My dad loved his two girls. In my eyes, he was this Great Intellectual Mind, who could sit for hours at the table after a meal arguing debating the finer points of some great question, or some inane question, or what was on that evening’s news. He always had Peter Jennings on during dinner, which drove my mother batty. He was stiff on the phone, ultra-private in the neighborhood, demonstrative with his kids, responsible to a fault, non-handy, kind, generous, and–did I mention?–intellectual.

In fact, the greatest compliment he ever gave me was when he said to me one day, “SBird, you are the most intellectual person I have ever known.” It makes me well up just to write that out. It doesn’t, by the way, mean that I am the smartest person he’s ever known. No, no, no. Just that I am a hound for ideas. I get that from him.

He took my online literature class in 2003 after he had retired, and he earned an “A,” even though he was a science wonk (thank God, since I’m not sure how one goes about giving one’s father any other grade…). He liked to talk about the congruence between physics and poetry. Aldous Huxley’s play Fences was his favorite text of the semester–a play about failed dads, to a large extent. He used to weep at the National Anthem. Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, he took me to see the Baltimore Orioles hosting the Boston Red Sox because Jim Palmer was pitching to Carl Yastremski–Yaz–and Dad said I needed to see a Hall of Famer pitching to a Hall of Famer. When my parents moved into the very first house that they owned in 1972, my father came home from work every night and went out back to dig the rose bed…he would dig until well after dark with a rigged-up spotlight illuminating the hole. Apparently, the neighbors thought he was digging a grave to get rid of some body. Heh.

In 1995, I had an academic conference in San Francisco, and he did too, so we met afterwards and rented a convertible and gallivanted around the west coast for a few days together…through the wine country and down the coast on Route 1. We talked a lot. It was one of those occasions that you don’t realize is as momentous as it is until much later. We won’t be doing anything like that again.

My dad has Parkinson’s now. He has trouble moving, trouble speaking and is surrounded by therapists, doctors, in-home help, and my mother-as-primary-caregiver on a daily basis. It is difficult to carry on a conversation with him on the phone. He mumbles and can’t remember what he just said. It is a very strange thing for me to negotiate. I fail miserably most of the time at being the kind, generous, supportive, and present daughter I’d like to imagine myself being. He is, after all, why I am who I am today. Of that, I am sure.

He once defied all the glib cliches about grandchildren when we were discussing him becoming a grandparent someday, and he said, “well, that’s fine; I’ll be very happy for you, but–for me–I want to watch my own children grow up and make choices and live their lives. That’s really what I want to see.”

Here are some photos of our own Father’s Day celebration this morning at the ranch. The Bee and I got up early to make blueberry-and-lemon muffins for Papa, who surprised us mid-way through:

I had to teach her how to lick the spoon!