joe forwarded me an article about the aquarium explosion in berlin this morning. we stayed at the hotel it flooded back in 2019, and had ill-advised cocktails under that dire cylinder, just before getting on a ship. do you think 1,500 fish in the road look the way you'd imagine they would? it's something you'd never forget. i wouldn't compare anything that happened to me to that much death in a very public way but in my heart i think of coming here to talk about what the last while has felt like and i think the fish are in the road, the fish are in the road. i can't imagine not coming here, but i don't always know what i'm ready to haul into the air.
we got really terrible news about steve this week; after some fairly extensive diagnostics, our vet thinks he has some kind of cancer in his large intestine and a rectal mass, probably a tumor, that she couldn't remove without a lot of risk and difficulty. he's lost a lot of weight and is essentially incontinent, but is also essentially himself, or at least what i understand his self to be, and so we did not take his doctor up on her offer to have the euthanasia discussion with us on tuesday. trying to decide how to show up most responsibly for a little nonverbal animal i both love dearly and don't want to anthropomorphize is my personal hell, as you probably know, and it is a hard time. i gave steve my toothbrush the other night, just let him purr and chew at the minty-ass bristles and god knows what fluoride does to a senior cat with likely terminal cancer. i turn my sweatshirts inside out before i put them in the hamper where he sleeps, both because i know they're going to end up smeared with blood and shit and because he loves the smell of deodorant, he loves all human smells, he's such a little roommate.
have i talked about how not drinking feels like not having any skin? i'm glad i stopped, it was indeed subtly and occasionally not so subtly desaturating my life, but oh how the fish are in the road. i've done so much work this year and am fiercely proud of what i'm finally getting to tackle in my professional writing, but i don't think i had any real idea of just how raw i would feel. or any idea at all, really. i wouldn't have told you i was partially numb, quite the opposite. i'm also fiercely proud of finally talking to a proper therapist, and finally talking to another proper therapist with joe; poor old doctor omnibus is a psychiatrist who wouldn't be expected to field my feelings even if he wasn't an old boot. though it is nice to be able to multitask, i miss being able to sleep.
Showing posts with label steve. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steve. Show all posts
08.13.13
it was nearly summertime when i passed the stacked cages of kittens at the southern end of the union square greenmarket. the rescue group's volunteer turned to me as if we were reentering a conversation much older than our acquaintance: "you'd make a good mama," she said slowly and somehow regally, and i hurried into whole foods and let the frosty air shrink me until i was small enough to hide behind the pineapples and cry.
as when jude died, years ago, petfinder was how i reminded myself that mourning wasn't the only thing: so many cats needed homes, and if i found the one who was supposed to come home to us, joe and steve and i would know what to do with the feelings that had no place to go after chuck died. i found cats who looked just like steve did when he was a baby, hemingway cats with miraculous extra toes, cats whose shelter reports were barely believable as country songs. in june i found matty.
back in march i cancelled our trip to visit my sister in southern california to stay in new york city as chuck died. matty was born in southern california then—not too far from where i myself was born—and i can't tell you how good it felt to trade in those useless plane tickets last month and fly out to bring him home.
i think sometimes of how joseph campbell describes the psychological, pedagogical functions of myth—how it carries us through crises, and helps people 'grasp the unfolding of life with integrity.' we atheists are like caddisfly larvae when it comes to myth, boy; in the absence of a collective narrative, we'll build shit to protect ourselves out of anything. at a birthday brunch in downtown los angeles, my sister's friends blinked at me: "you know there are homeless cats in new york city too, right?" "what if someone said, 'we really want to adopt a kid who's norwegian'?"
matty's foster mom named him matisse, so we called him matty in the weeks between when she told us we could adopt him and when i flew out to meet them both. it became clear that we weren't going to be able to call him anything else—he just is a matty—so we started chewing on names. matthew barney? matthew arnold? mathlete? he was found skittering around a parking lot in anaheim, his foster had told me, so we named him the matterhorn. in my myth he was in this photo all along, waiting for us.
as when jude died, years ago, petfinder was how i reminded myself that mourning wasn't the only thing: so many cats needed homes, and if i found the one who was supposed to come home to us, joe and steve and i would know what to do with the feelings that had no place to go after chuck died. i found cats who looked just like steve did when he was a baby, hemingway cats with miraculous extra toes, cats whose shelter reports were barely believable as country songs. in june i found matty.
back in march i cancelled our trip to visit my sister in southern california to stay in new york city as chuck died. matty was born in southern california then—not too far from where i myself was born—and i can't tell you how good it felt to trade in those useless plane tickets last month and fly out to bring him home.
i think sometimes of how joseph campbell describes the psychological, pedagogical functions of myth—how it carries us through crises, and helps people 'grasp the unfolding of life with integrity.' we atheists are like caddisfly larvae when it comes to myth, boy; in the absence of a collective narrative, we'll build shit to protect ourselves out of anything. at a birthday brunch in downtown los angeles, my sister's friends blinked at me: "you know there are homeless cats in new york city too, right?" "what if someone said, 'we really want to adopt a kid who's norwegian'?"
matty's foster mom named him matisse, so we called him matty in the weeks between when she told us we could adopt him and when i flew out to meet them both. it became clear that we weren't going to be able to call him anything else—he just is a matty—so we started chewing on names. matthew barney? matthew arnold? mathlete? he was found skittering around a parking lot in anaheim, his foster had told me, so we named him the matterhorn. in my myth he was in this photo all along, waiting for us.
05.21.13
a girl without her blog ('s comments) is a bit like a boy without his dog. it's more difficult to know when she's fallen down an old well, for example, and in the absence of interlocutors she eddies into creepy soliloquy. i've always had fairly strong feelings about what i want to say here; over these months and months of comment-less growing pains,* i've also developed a pretty intense appreciation for how very much you, friends and thoughtful strangers, share with me. i have missed you terribly. i am so glad to be able to ask you over again.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 if you were to make, say, a pot of chile verde, would you roast your own greenies, buy them canned, order the crazy express-shipped frozen kind, or what?
02 how do you feel about this sweater?
03 savages: derivative? interesting? both, or neither?
04 might it be reasonable to buy another little helium tank so that i can refill steve's mylar balloon instead of buying him a new one every few months? (little helium tanks are recyclable; mylar balloons from the local ninety-nine-cent store are not.)
05 is it poor form to vote for yourself in a baking contest?
*it's exciting to have been using blogger since 2001, perhaps, but it is grueling to play matchmaker between one's dinosite and the internets of 2012/13; both of my tech sherpas have been heroic.
12.19.12
someday i'll write a terrifically long poem about manhattan christmas tree "lots." i know already that it will be terrible, but it will vibrate with feeling.
the cat has been arranging himself beneath our tree (which is still but half-adorned, for the weather hasn't been conducive to drying things out on the porch). "i am nearly finished," i tell him. "pracky," he replies, eyeing my little ceramic cherubs' tinfoil hats.
08.09.12
it was our excellent friend judd's birthday last weekend. he loves prince almost as much as i love candy, so i made him an artist-formerly-known-as piñata (on his 35th birthday, you see, prince announced that he was O(-+> henceforth); i filled it with peanut butter candy, purple-wrapped kisses, and tiny purple glow sticks, as one does.
i won't deny that tactical errors were made: i taped up the piñata's recycled-cardboard endoskeleton with such gusto, for example, that (like keith richards or blitzhund the deathless) it could not be killed by conventional means. judd owns a hacksaw, so i figure he can access his peanut butter and glow sticks if his need for them grows keen. truth be told, i never really thought the piñata would meet its end at the party; maintaining possession of one's bat is a key tenet of bartending, no? i also neglected to source fringed crepe paper or fringe scissors, so i burned a few hours listening to the olympics (grunty!) and making it the old-fashioned way. i also also neglected to consider the possibility of steve developing a crepe fetish. readers, i overcame all of those piñata tribulations; fuck yeah, time-intensive homemade presents.
i won't deny that tactical errors were made: i taped up the piñata's recycled-cardboard endoskeleton with such gusto, for example, that (like keith richards or blitzhund the deathless) it could not be killed by conventional means. judd owns a hacksaw, so i figure he can access his peanut butter and glow sticks if his need for them grows keen. truth be told, i never really thought the piñata would meet its end at the party; maintaining possession of one's bat is a key tenet of bartending, no? i also neglected to source fringed crepe paper or fringe scissors, so i burned a few hours listening to the olympics (grunty!) and making it the old-fashioned way. i also also neglected to consider the possibility of steve developing a crepe fetish. readers, i overcame all of those piñata tribulations; fuck yeah, time-intensive homemade presents.
11.21.11
happy nearly-thanksgiving, internets; as per usual, i'll be taking pictures of holiday food prep and adding them to orphan thanksgiving, the flickr group far-flung friends and i started up a few years ago as a way of pushing our holiday tables end to end. these days it's a celebration of situational family, a repository of food porn (as in other sorts, amateurs are the most interesting), and a place of shared experience. also photos of steve; if you are among the folks coming to our place for dinner on thursday, know that i will be washing this tub before filling it with ice and booze, probably. anyway, stop by! how often does someone ask to see the photo you took of your dinner with your smartphone?
happy nearly-thanksgiving, internets; as per usual, i'll be taking pictures of holiday food prep and adding them to orphan thanksgiving, the flickr group far-flung friends and i started up a few years ago as a way of pushing our holiday tables end to end. these days it's a celebration of situational family, a repository of food porn (as in other sorts, amateurs are the most interesting), and a place of shared experience. also photos of steve; if you are among the folks coming to our place for dinner on thursday, know that i will be washing this tub before filling it with ice and booze, probably. anyway, stop by! how often does someone ask to see the photo you took of your dinner with your smartphone?
03.10.11: the dirty dozen {on my desk}
01 highland park 18 year old whisky
02 750 ml bottle of sparkling concord grape juice
03 navel orange
04 brown sugar vanilla body cream
05 coco chanel (justine picardie)
06 glue stick
08 $1.90 in canadian coins
07 war and peace (leo tolstoy, louise and aylmer maude trans.)
08 14" green hula hoop
09 fuck the economy mug
10 DIY karl lagerfeld votive candle
11 storyteller: the authorized biography of roald dahl (donald sturrock)
12 righteous indignation
01 highland park 18 year old whisky
02 750 ml bottle of sparkling concord grape juice
03 navel orange
04 brown sugar vanilla body cream
05 coco chanel (justine picardie)
06 glue stick
08 $1.90 in canadian coins
07 war and peace (leo tolstoy, louise and aylmer maude trans.)
08 14" green hula hoop
09 fuck the economy mug
10 DIY karl lagerfeld votive candle
11 storyteller: the authorized biography of roald dahl (donald sturrock)
12 righteous indignation
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 biographies: do the authorized ones interest you?
02 have you ever trained a pet to jump through a hoop? any pointers?
03 what does your mug say?
04 how is it where you are? i miss the life in which i wasn't at the office until midnight, internets. i miss that creepy laugh of yours.
12.28.10
the boxing day blizzard has been called many things, most of them impolite. i call it snoomsday, as one should say snoo whenever one can, and the saying of snoo distracts one from the lack of one's sister (whose overnight flight from los angeles was chucked from the american airlines timetable like excess picnicking supplies from a sinking hot air balloon). hurry here, sister! we wait, tipple,* prepare even more food, and marvel at the hulk steve's become since we last had a snowstorm.
{02.10.10}
{12.27.10}
the boxing day blizzard has been called many things, most of them impolite. i call it snoomsday, as one should say snoo whenever one can, and the saying of snoo distracts one from the lack of one's sister (whose overnight flight from los angeles was chucked from the american airlines timetable like excess picnicking supplies from a sinking hot air balloon). hurry here, sister! we wait, tipple,* prepare even more food, and marvel at the hulk steve's become since we last had a snowstorm.
{02.10.10}
{12.27.10}
*boxing day margarita: begin with a handful of ice in a stemless wine glass; add about an ounce and a half of mezcal (we used sombra, which is nice and smoky) and the juice of half a ruby red grapefruit, then fill rest of glass with fresca. top with a splash of angostura bitters and a pinch of ghost pepper salt. add an extra pinch or two if you're feeling festive.
11.07.10
woolgathering & miscellany hosted a giveaway a few weeks ago, and because halloween really is the best day of my year, gracie informed me then that i won. huzzah!
i picked out a pair of mackage studded gloves, for i am thinking about freelancing as a strangler, and having ice-cold hands is considerably less enjoyable than having an ice-cold heart, even for stranglers. i suspected said gloves should be styled with fur, and lo:
watch your ass, kate lanphear - and thanks again, gracie!
woolgathering & miscellany hosted a giveaway a few weeks ago, and because halloween really is the best day of my year, gracie informed me then that i won. huzzah!
i picked out a pair of mackage studded gloves, for i am thinking about freelancing as a strangler, and having ice-cold hands is considerably less enjoyable than having an ice-cold heart, even for stranglers. i suspected said gloves should be styled with fur, and lo:
watch your ass, kate lanphear - and thanks again, gracie!
09.10.10
our little cat, jude, died a year ago today. his ashes are in a little tin next to my jewelry box in our bedroom closet; i can't imagine where we would scatter them, and sometimes i need to reach in and touch the tin before i go to bed. there are things i called him which will always be only his, but there are others which were only his and now slip out of my mouth when i'm talking to steve (a gregarious, knockabout, impertinent cat, as unlike jude as he could be; the little one was private, sad-eyed, and gentle). while that should be alright or even a good thing, something in my gut dissolves every time it happens. it always comes together again. it always dissolves.
from this week's new yorker, in a collection of notes by roland barthes:
our little cat, jude, died a year ago today. his ashes are in a little tin next to my jewelry box in our bedroom closet; i can't imagine where we would scatter them, and sometimes i need to reach in and touch the tin before i go to bed. there are things i called him which will always be only his, but there are others which were only his and now slip out of my mouth when i'm talking to steve (a gregarious, knockabout, impertinent cat, as unlike jude as he could be; the little one was private, sad-eyed, and gentle). while that should be alright or even a good thing, something in my gut dissolves every time it happens. it always comes together again. it always dissolves.
from this week's new yorker, in a collection of notes by roland barthes:
July 29th
Bibliothèque Nationale
Letter [from Proust] to Georges de Lauris, whose mother has just died (1907).
"Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power...that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more."
08.19.10: twelve things, part I
01 megan and patrick's yard in new jersey, lawn games, the greatest beer of all time. that and the photo read as four things, but they're experienced as one thing.
02 incubus, a 1965 william shatner horror film shot entirely in esperanto. by most accounts it's awful-awful rather than cult-awful, which will in no way prevent me from using it as an excuse to throw a viewing party.
03 the skeleton dance and the haunted house (both 1929), watched many, many times at a formative age. if i don't end up attempting a gozer costume for halloween this year, i might build a skeleton costume around a xylophone rib cage. can one wear a xylophone around one's neck all night?
05 in october, we'll be heading out to connecticut for a long weekend in a rented house with friends. this is the seasonal local tourism i've been meaning to do for years, and i can't even tell you how excited i am, even though (or because) the whole thing sounds like an indie coming-of-age movie. in a world where everyone owns at least one tom waits album...sweaters will be belted.
06 steve smells like cookies.
01 megan and patrick's yard in new jersey, lawn games, the greatest beer of all time. that and the photo read as four things, but they're experienced as one thing.
02 incubus, a 1965 william shatner horror film shot entirely in esperanto. by most accounts it's awful-awful rather than cult-awful, which will in no way prevent me from using it as an excuse to throw a viewing party.
03 the skeleton dance and the haunted house (both 1929), watched many, many times at a formative age. if i don't end up attempting a gozer costume for halloween this year, i might build a skeleton costume around a xylophone rib cage. can one wear a xylophone around one's neck all night?
05 in october, we'll be heading out to connecticut for a long weekend in a rented house with friends. this is the seasonal local tourism i've been meaning to do for years, and i can't even tell you how excited i am, even though (or because) the whole thing sounds like an indie coming-of-age movie. in a world where everyone owns at least one tom waits album...sweaters will be belted.
06 steve smells like cookies.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 what is the greatest beer of all time?
02 what would you serve at an incubus viewing party?
03 gozer or skelephone?
04 i'm new to this grown-up group vacation thing. pointers? i'm not bringing any firearms or explosive secrets from my past.
08.06.10
101 in 1001 {II}: 066 take a photo every day for a year [completed 08.05.10]
truth be told, i was carrying my camera with me at all times long before i started my year of photos last august; i've been trying to earn it since joe gave it to me two years ago. he's always been a thoughtful gift-giver, but that gift was on a different order of magnitude - both a testament to how well he knows me (my camera is small and sly, so i can have it with me everywhere and be ready to take a picture in seconds, but it's also lightning-fast and thrives in low light - which is, of course, the best light) and a vote of confidence, the activation energy i needed to jump in the street, interact with strangers, put my own pictures on the wall. a few months ago, i was at an industry event with jacques torres; he made a beeline for my camera case and plucked it from the table in front of me. "it's wonderful," he cried, "a chocolate camera!" not a bad way of putting it.
while i do think i've become a better photographer in the past year, taking this particular family of pictures wasn't about learning to see, nor was it about learning to present. though i've sat back and admired the photoset's growing array of thumbnails with smaugish satisfaction - treasure! - what i've wanted all along is an agate slice, or an ice core. this set includes the last photo of jude, and our last night at our local in hell's kitchen, and the keys to our apartment an hour after we began to own it, and david lynch, and bedhead, and wonderful and terrible food, and the first time steve and chuck fell asleep together, and me in a bikini in public, and mari at the bridal salon as she bought her wedding dress, and times square, and graveyards, and our home, our home, our home. i approached the very last picture with a seriousness normally reserved for writers ending epic network television shows, and i tried to talk joe into a version of american gothic with two cats instead of a pitchfork or maybe overalls - but i'm no good at staging. we are what we are.
{fin}
101 in 1001 {II}: 066 take a photo every day for a year [completed 08.05.10]
truth be told, i was carrying my camera with me at all times long before i started my year of photos last august; i've been trying to earn it since joe gave it to me two years ago. he's always been a thoughtful gift-giver, but that gift was on a different order of magnitude - both a testament to how well he knows me (my camera is small and sly, so i can have it with me everywhere and be ready to take a picture in seconds, but it's also lightning-fast and thrives in low light - which is, of course, the best light) and a vote of confidence, the activation energy i needed to jump in the street, interact with strangers, put my own pictures on the wall. a few months ago, i was at an industry event with jacques torres; he made a beeline for my camera case and plucked it from the table in front of me. "it's wonderful," he cried, "a chocolate camera!" not a bad way of putting it.
while i do think i've become a better photographer in the past year, taking this particular family of pictures wasn't about learning to see, nor was it about learning to present. though i've sat back and admired the photoset's growing array of thumbnails with smaugish satisfaction - treasure! - what i've wanted all along is an agate slice, or an ice core. this set includes the last photo of jude, and our last night at our local in hell's kitchen, and the keys to our apartment an hour after we began to own it, and david lynch, and bedhead, and wonderful and terrible food, and the first time steve and chuck fell asleep together, and me in a bikini in public, and mari at the bridal salon as she bought her wedding dress, and times square, and graveyards, and our home, our home, our home. i approached the very last picture with a seriousness normally reserved for writers ending epic network television shows, and i tried to talk joe into a version of american gothic with two cats instead of a pitchfork or maybe overalls - but i'm no good at staging. we are what we are.
{fin}
07.02.10ii
in other news of tiny creatures and families, i give you steve in february and steve this morning; same box (we hoard).
i am going to bawl like a baby when he graduates from military school.
in other news of tiny creatures and families, i give you steve in february and steve this morning; same box (we hoard).
i am going to bawl like a baby when he graduates from military school.
04.15.10
don't let this photo fool you; chuck is about two feet closer to my camera on that chair, and steve defeated mothra and devoured half of tokyo last night. he also stole joe's monthly metrocard from his money clip this morning and tried to take down a tub of jalapeno hummus.
don't let this photo fool you; chuck is about two feet closer to my camera on that chair, and steve defeated mothra and devoured half of tokyo last night. he also stole joe's monthly metrocard from his money clip this morning and tried to take down a tub of jalapeno hummus.
03.15.10
i fear we might be nearing the conclusion of steve's imaginary calendar phase. he's still goddamn adorable, mind you, but he's growing so enthusiastically that he no longer fits in many of the things (boots, bookshelves, purses, shopping bags) he'd hop into for the insta-cute. we considered staging a bonsai kitten intervention with joe's monolithic chicken soup jar from the 2nd avenue deli - o steve, i remember when you were but a matzoh ball! - but i think that ship is out of the barn. we knew we were approaching terminal kitten-image velocity when he went after joe's sneaker laces the other night and assumed the official hang in there! pose, which is sort of the baby-animal enactment of godwin's law. the end is nigh!
then steve was like, "i have a bowl for you."
in non-kitten news (i'm still literate, technically), meredith blake's new yorker online look at the harry ransom center's incredible and heartbreaking david foster wallace archive (including ten PDFs) is pretty great, though hard to read.
i fear we might be nearing the conclusion of steve's imaginary calendar phase. he's still goddamn adorable, mind you, but he's growing so enthusiastically that he no longer fits in many of the things (boots, bookshelves, purses, shopping bags) he'd hop into for the insta-cute. we considered staging a bonsai kitten intervention with joe's monolithic chicken soup jar from the 2nd avenue deli - o steve, i remember when you were but a matzoh ball! - but i think that ship is out of the barn. we knew we were approaching terminal kitten-image velocity when he went after joe's sneaker laces the other night and assumed the official hang in there! pose, which is sort of the baby-animal enactment of godwin's law. the end is nigh!
then steve was like, "i have a bowl for you."
in non-kitten news (i'm still literate, technically), meredith blake's new yorker online look at the harry ransom center's incredible and heartbreaking david foster wallace archive (including ten PDFs) is pretty great, though hard to read.
The archive also contains an extensive amount of writing from Wallace’s childhood and youth: a whimsical childhood poem about vikings ["For all these reasons stay away / from a viking every day."], signed “David Foster Wallace”; school essays about “Pride and Prejudice” and “Moby Dick”; four issues of “Sabrina,” the Amherst humor magazine he co-founded with his roommate, Mark Costello. For an author who leapt with astonishing rapidity from youthful promise into adult virtuosity, the juvenilia may prove especially illuminating.oh, DFW.
02.23.10
steve nash was remarkably calm about the whole neutering process yesterday. he had little red-rimmed stoner eyes when i picked him up from the vet and he wobbled around a bit when he first got home, but within half an hour he was back to posing for his imaginary calendar.
i like to think that at some point i'll develop self discipline and stop posting gratuitous kitten pictures, but it's not looking good.
steve nash was remarkably calm about the whole neutering process yesterday. he had little red-rimmed stoner eyes when i picked him up from the vet and he wobbled around a bit when he first got home, but within half an hour he was back to posing for his imaginary calendar.
i like to think that at some point i'll develop self discipline and stop posting gratuitous kitten pictures, but it's not looking good.
02.14.10: valentine's day (part ii)
joe and i met friends in williamsburg yesterday evening for pre-valentine's-day bowling. the gathering was casual, but there were stakes: the night's big winner (joe) took home a bit of cash, and the loser (our friend sarah) has one week to get herself photographed in front of south korea's permanent mission to the united nations with my glittery pink bowling ball* (absurd wagers are popular in our crowd). when we got home, my blog swap valentine was waiting at our door; i opened it this morning with steve's assistance.**
amanda's platonic matchmaking skillz are as sharp as ever: she passed my address to lisa (of - privilege).
lisa tissue-papered every last one of these tiles, and (like steve) probably has more dye in her system at this point than a red velvet cupcake does. in the language of craft, they're a six-page letter from home on that whisper-thin air mail stationery with the red-and-blue-bordered envelopes. they make you feel that someone is tending to you.
as do the chocolate chip cookies she baked for me - after tricking me into telling her what sort i liked. we've been chatting about our valentines all week, actually, and i hadn't the faintest idea that she was baking and gluing her fingers together on my behalf.
as does this 1942 edition of the yearling, illustrated by n.c. wyeth. the valentine tiles' background material, i should explain, is printed-out bits of my posts on losing our little cat last year and adopting steve. in lieu of walking you through the particulars of how this package hit me this morning, let me say that women like lisa and amanda are a big part of why i can't be wholly cynical about valentine's day, and why i keep on loving this dirty old internet.
joe and i met friends in williamsburg yesterday evening for pre-valentine's-day bowling. the gathering was casual, but there were stakes: the night's big winner (joe) took home a bit of cash, and the loser (our friend sarah) has one week to get herself photographed in front of south korea's permanent mission to the united nations with my glittery pink bowling ball* (absurd wagers are popular in our crowd). when we got home, my blog swap valentine was waiting at our door; i opened it this morning with steve's assistance.**
amanda's platonic matchmaking skillz are as sharp as ever: she passed my address to lisa (of - privilege).
lisa tissue-papered every last one of these tiles, and (like steve) probably has more dye in her system at this point than a red velvet cupcake does. in the language of craft, they're a six-page letter from home on that whisper-thin air mail stationery with the red-and-blue-bordered envelopes. they make you feel that someone is tending to you.
as do the chocolate chip cookies she baked for me - after tricking me into telling her what sort i liked. we've been chatting about our valentines all week, actually, and i hadn't the faintest idea that she was baking and gluing her fingers together on my behalf.
as does this 1942 edition of the yearling, illustrated by n.c. wyeth. the valentine tiles' background material, i should explain, is printed-out bits of my posts on losing our little cat last year and adopting steve. in lieu of walking you through the particulars of how this package hit me this morning, let me say that women like lisa and amanda are a big part of why i can't be wholly cynical about valentine's day, and why i keep on loving this dirty old internet.
*her name is brunhilda. she is extremely heavy.
**a noble tradition established in san diego.
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