Poetry Corner Monday

Sometimes I'm convinced that Mondays would be wretched days no matter where they fell in the week. There's just something about seeing that awful word slumbering peacefully in its little calendar box that fills me with rage.

This week I need peace. I need deep breaths and a mind swept clean of shrapnel. 

I need Maya Angelou.

Here is an excerpt from On the Pulse of Morning

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever 
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day,
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.


Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up, and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country,
And say simply,
Very simply,
With hope,
Good morning.

So That Happened

Here's a scene that just went down two minutes ago: I was upstairs at my computer and I heard my mom say to my dad, "Except for Michael's Netflix movie, Livvy got all the mail." I never get mail, so I bounded down the stairs to where my mom had made a little pile of three envelopes on the bottom step. "It's nothing exciting," she said. She may as well have clawed out my heart and squeezed it through a garlic press. 

I looked at the stack. Wells Fargo, Chase, NPR. NPR? I raced upstairs and tore open the envelope. A few weeks ago I donated some money to the pledge drive and the letter was just a thank-you. I was about to toss it in the recycling when I felt a thicker, glossy page inside the folded paper. A sticker! My very own NPR sticker! "Mom!" I shouted, and darted down the stairs. (I swear one of these days I'm going to fall to my death.) "Mom! Guess what I got! Guess what I got!" It would not be an overstatement to say that I was more excited that moment than a small child on Christmas morning. "What?" my mom asked, presumably expecting something that a normal person would find exciting, like winning the lotto. "An NPR sticker!" I exclaimed, and held it up in front of my face so she could admire it and congratulate me on obtaining such a fine item.

She smiled. In a brief moment of self-realization, my face fell. "Oh my god." I said, slumping against the door frame. "I'm a freak." Usually this would be the time when my mom would say something comforting like, "But it's good to be informed of the news!" or "No you're not, honey. You're wonderful." This time she gave me one look, walked past me into the living room, and said to my dad, "Our daughter is a freak."

Stupid NPR sticker.

(But where should I put it?!)

UPDATE: I was just blow-drying my hair (which I never do because without a diffuser it turns all my curls into frizz) and I noticed a diffuser in the drawer. "Mom!" I shouted, "how come you never told me you had a diffuser?" "Why would I?" she responded from the kitchen. "I don't even know what a diffuser is!" I explained to her that it means I can blow-dry my hair instead of walking to the bus in sub-freezing temperatures with wet hair. She and I have decided to create a scale of my excitement, with NPR sticker at Maximum Excitement, and Diffuser just a half-step below it.

Poetry Corner Whenever I Feel Like It

It's not Monday (obviously), but Monday was an atrocious day and not even a poem was going to save it. In fact, whatever poem I chose would probably be marred for all eternity because of its association with Monday. So here it is, two days late. It's a Billy Collins poem because my interview with him was the best part of that wretched day.

The Drive

There were four of us in the car
early that summer evening,
short-hopping from one place to another,
thrown together by a light toss of circumstance.

I was in the backseat
directly behind the driver who was talking
about one thing and another
while his wife smiled quietly at the windshield.

I was happy to be paying attention
to the rows of tall hedges
and the gravel driveways we were passing
and then the yellow signs on the roadside stores.

It was only when he began to belittle you
that I found myself shifting my focus
to the back of his head,
a head that was large and expansively bald.

As he continued talking
and the car continued along the highway,
I began to divide his head into sections
by means of dotted lines,

the kind you see on the diagram of a steer.
Only here, I was not interested in short loin,
rump, shank, or sirloin tip,
but curious about what region of his cranium

housed the hard nugget of his malice.
Tom, my friend, you would have enjoyed the sight--
the car turning this way and that,
the sunlight low in the trees,

the man going on about your many failings,
and me sitting quietly behind him
wearing my white butcher's apron
and my small, regulation butcher's hat. 

Olivia and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Warning: Contents Unabridged)

For the sake of my sanity, I'm willing to overlook the awfulness that was my Monday. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the day partially redeemed itself, if for no other reason than how cute Taffy looked falling asleep on my legs last night. (And, of course, an all-new House.)

But today. 

I'll give you just enough back story so you can follow along: I'm working on a magazine article right now that requires me to contact four local semi-celebrities to find out various items of information about their travel preferences. The article was due today. As of last night I was only halfway done because two of my four contacts had yet to get back to me. I emailed my editor, near tears, apologizing profusely for letting him down and for fact that I wouldn't have the piece done on time. I didn't hear back from him (or anyone else, for that matter) before I went to sleep, so I spent a restless night stressing with a pounding headache. (I don't eat when I'm stressed, so my body was not pleased that I'd been starving it).

Ice. Deadly ice.

This morning I woke up super early and left the house to catch the bus that comes before the one I usually catch so I could make it to work on time even if traffic was bad. We had our first real snow of the season yesterday and the roads are horrendous. When I woke up it was 18 degrees (that's -8 degrees C if any of my Aussies are reading) and the streets were glistening with ice. So I slid my way up the hill to the bus stop, caught the bus (which was surprisingly running on time) and got into the city with no problems. I arrived at work at 8:30--when they open, and an hour before I usually get there--and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. I got off and noticed immediately that the office door was closed. Confused, I tried the handle. Locked.

Even Taff was cold! My poor little baby.

I rode the elevator back down to the lobby and called my dad. "Could you check my work email?" I asked him, hoping that there was something from the managing editor explaining why no one was in the office. "Here's one," my dad said, and proceeded to read it. It was not from the managing editor, who is in charge of the interns, but from the editor of the article I'm writing who was responding to the frantic email I'd sent him the night before. At the end he mentioned that "not very many people" were going in to the office today, so I should work from home. He'd sent it at 8:31 this morning--one minute after I got to the office. Because I live out in the boonies, getting to work on a normal day requires me to leave my house at 7:55. This morning I left at 7:25. Even if I'd taken my usual bus I wouldn't have gotten the email.

Okay. Fine. I left the building and walked up the treacherous ice block that was University Avenue. The 522 bus was supposed to come at 9:06 and it was then 8:56. No problem, I can wait. And wait. And wait. It pulled up at 9:30 and got easily out of the city. Rather than cross the 520 floating bridge, the 522 takes Lake City Way which, for those unfamiliar with the Seattle area, runs north of the lake. So we were on the freeway just inching along when we came to the LCW exit...which was blocked off by a snow plow and three cop cars. Behind the automobile barricade was a pile-up of at least ten cars trapped in the snow. 

At this time, my fellow passengers decided it was necessary to shout out alternate routes to the bus driver who clearly didn't have any idea what the hell she was doing. We took the next exit and crept down a hill where we passed a Metro bus idling in a snowbank. One passenger shouted, "You should get yourself a 522!" and another exclaimed, "Off-roading with the 5-2-2!" He liked his comment so much that he repeated it several moments later. (And yes, I wrote all of this in my notebook. What can I say? It's the writer's curse.) We eventually wound up on Aurora, then 125th, then Lake City Way, and it was smooth sailing until we hit Bothell. 

For some reason, our bus driver found it absolutely necessary to stop right outside this cafe called the Lyon's Den, and as she disembarked the vehicle she shouted, "I'll be right back! I need to do something...and it's not coffee!" (at which point I was thinking, if you need to use the bathroom, just say so). She got back on and tried to pull back into the street--tried being the operative word. The more she hit the gas, the more the back of the bus swung out into the road. It was like a V collapsing in on itself. 

"Shit!" the driver screamed. "Shit shit shit!" The guy sitting behind me got up immediately and headed to the front. "I can take it from here," he said--as if he meant to drive--and climbed down onto the sidewalk. About ten minutes passed full of quiet passenger murmurings of "What's going on?" (I think it's pretty clear, guys) and "Aw man! This is just perfect" (is it? Really?). My absolute favorite moment of the day--and maybe one of my top twenty favorite moments of my life--was when this guy who had been sleeping jerked his head up and said aloud, "We stopped!" Astute observation, sir. He then proceeded to look exceedingly confused, and eventually meandered up the aisle and off the bus, looking very much like he was staggering out of a bar in a drunken stupor.

Cayenne is a snow badass.

I followed not long after, when I realized that I could conceivably be sitting in that bus until spring came. It took me an hour to walk home, slogging through two inches of snow in my thin, totally non-snow-proof navy blue Keds. By the time I got home, there was white everywhere and I was convinced I'd have to amputate my toes--if I even still had toes. I went immediately to my mom's studio where her sympathy almost made up for the awful events preceding it. "Oh honey!" she exclaimed, "Let's get you inside! I banked up the fire! Do you want some hot chocolate? I bought marshmallows! Oh, you poor thing! Are you just frozen?" We walked inside the house at 11:30, almost three hours after I left the office. On a normal day, the commute is 45 minutes. 

In case you missed the memo, it's cold.

But that's not the end. Oh no. This, my friends, is the story that keeps on giving. I checked my email practically immediately after walking inside. I had one from the web editor saying "I hope you all got the email from [the managing editor] telling you not to come in today." Wow. Thanks. And while I appreciated the email from the editor of my article telling me not to stress about the unreachable contacts, he said I should aim for getting the article to him by tomorrow. Guess what. No one's in their office today. (There's kind of a lot of snow.) Which means no one is getting back to me today. Which means no article tomorrow. 

It's 2:10pm and I still can't feel my toes. 

Addendum: You can call us Pacific Northwesterners a lot of things, but "snow folk" is not among them. When my dad and I were driving into Seattle yesterday--this was before there was any snow accumulation on the ground at all--we passed two plows headed into Woodinville on the freeway. One flake was enough to assemble the big guns, and evidently two inches of white is all it takes to cripple the city. The Apocalypse isn't coming, friends. It's already here.

So That Happened

Every time I ride into Seattle in the morning with my dad, the radio and I wage war. There's never anything on. Of course it doesn't help that I listen to three stations and one of them is NPR. I turn on one station that's playing a commercial, flip it to the other that's playing a song I can't stand, and then flip it off. About 17 seconds later I repeat the process. This makes for a very aggravated Olivia on her way to work. So this morning, following my dad's advice, I brought a couple CDs--mixes I'd made a while ago to play while I cook.

I popped in a CD and the first song was "Mr. Pitiful" by Matt Costa. I was not feeling pitiful this morning (although I could have fooled anyone), so I skipped it. The next song was the Glee version of "Fire" which I was also not thrilled about at that precise moment. I skipped that one as well. When I'd skipped seven songs in a row and was halfway through the CD, I got annoyed and put in a different one. That didn't go well either. "These CDs suck!" I said, and shoved them into my bag. My dad looked confused. "Didn't you make them?"

Mom: I'm lobbying hard for a ceiling fan.
Dad: Lobby quietly.
Mom: Why?
Dad: So I don't hear you.


I've mentioned here before that the office in which I work is a strange, silent, oftentimes cavelike place. It's like walking into a black hole. Because no one ever talks, I have frequent email conversations with a friend who sits literally two steps away. Yesterday we heard a woman laughing in an office near our cubicles. Immediately after--and I'm talking before she'd even finished laughing--the following email exchange took place:
H: Who's cackling?
O: I don't know, but I can't concentrate with all this noise.
H: We should report her to security. I feel this is a major breach of office rules.
O: And while we're at it, we should complain about these obnoxious lights. I can't work when I can see my own hands on the keyboard.

Sure enough, the next morning the lights were out. The office is truly a magical world.


I was reading an article in the paper this weekend about a woman who was hand-searched in the airport after the underwire of her bra set off the metal detector. I was enraged. I shouted, "Oh my god! I'm never flying again!" My dad's response: "You're going to make a great travel writer."

Things My Cat Has and Has Not Inherited from Me

 Has NOT:

1. Her aversion to snuggling.
2. The need to sleep under things (i.e. the purse dangling from my chair; the clothes rack when it has clothes on it).
3. Long nails.
4. Dependency issues.
5. Her nightly ritual of crying at the top of her tiny feline lungs as soon as everyone goes to sleep.
6. Dandruff.


HAS:

1. Fondness for high-fiving (but she never got the memo that stabbing my palm isn't part of the game).
2. Love of poetry.
3. Laziness.
4. Attraction to piles of blankets.
5. Moodiness.
6. Lots of hair.
7. The awful habit of biting her nails.


Considering that the ways she resembles me outnumber (by one) the ways she doesn't, I am forced to conclude that she is, in fact, my cat.

Isn't she just the preciousest? Who wouldn't love this face?

Poetry Corner Monday

This week's poem is brought to you by The Writer's Almanac. And the letter Y.

The Day I Made My Father Proud
by Michael Moran 

The doorbell jarred me
toward consciousness
on a sultry Sunday morning
when I was nineteen,
a college sophomore.
I had slept where the bourbon
laid me—on an old couch
reclaimed from a curb.
The party had sped by,
left me road-kill,
limp and snoring,
so my roommates said,
and now I stumbled
to the buzzing door,
remembering what I had never
completely forgotten—
my family is coming.

Dad at the door.
I mumble, "I overslept,"
as he surveys the wreckage
of these tired rooms:
lip-sticked cigarette butts,
crushed aluminum cans,
glasses floating sliced limes,
broken brown bottles,
a sticky wooden floor under
smoked-and-perfumed air.
He turns slowly to me
and winks! "We can't
let your mother see this,"
as if we'd planned the party
together, drank from the same
Yellowstone bottle all night.

We spring to action,
sponging spills, opening windows,
gathering garbage. He spins
through the rooms
with the grace of a dancer—
a miniature Falstaff—
humming old barroom songs
from his Navy days,
chuckling softly, his eyes
gleaming as he hides
the half-emptied Jim Beam.
By the time my mother
has herded all my siblings
up the stairs to the apartment,
we have salvaged it to decency.

You see, he thought I was
too serious, worried that I
read too many books, never
got into real trouble.
I remember the way
he stared at me
one Halloween evening
when I told him
I was staying home
to read King Lear.
His cold brown eyes
were sad, disgusted,
the eyes of an Elizabethan
reveler who had just heard
that the Puritans
had closed the theaters.

But that morning
I made him proud,
couldn't have done better,
unless, perhaps,
one of the girls
had slept over
and answered the door,
wearing nothing
but my faded
red flannel shirt,
top buttons
undone. 

Dinner Conversations of Yore

This was a series of three different dinner conversations that took place several years ago. This is basically what it's like every night in my household. As you'll soon find out, these ones have a theme.

Mom: Olivia, eat your tofu.

Me: I can't! It's barbecue and it doesn't go with the whole Asian dinner theme.

Mom: I don't care, you need the protein.

Me (taking a bite): Mom, I really can't eat this.

Michael: I don't blame her, Mom. It looks pretty repulsive, and that's much nicer than what you said earlier about my food.

Me: What did you say?

Michael: She said my ground chicken was diarrhea.

Mom: I didn't say it was diarrhea, I said it looked like diarrhea.

(Mom dishes me tons of broccoli)

Me: Mom, that's enough!

Mom: Well you have to eat it all, your brother won't have any.

Me: Why not?

Mom: Because he doesn't want broccoli breath for his class.

Michael: Damn right!

Mom (whispering): He sits next to a cute girl!

-a minute passes-

Michael: Damn! I spilled food on my pants!

Mom: Better get that out before the cute girl in class sees it.

Michael: Yeah! She's going to think I peed mustard!

Mom: Michael Samuel!

Michael: That was nowhere near as inappropriate as it could have been! Like that comment you made about my food being diarrhea.

Mom:  You'll never let that go, will you?

Mom: Here, Michael, have some more.

Michael: No, I'm good. This is quite a hefty bowl of heartiness.

Mom: Maybe if you hadn't eaten that steak earlier...

Michael: Maybe if you hadn't called my food diarrhea...

Mom: I'm going to be hearing that one until I'm dead, aren't I?

Michael: If you're lucky I'll stop then.

For You, Sister

This is a love letter for the sister who is a sister in every way except by blood. This is a love letter for my oldest, wisest, most beautiful friend whose laughter is, as far as I'm concerned, all the proof I need that humankind is good. Nothing in my life will ever compare to the long afternoons we've spent stacking rocks in the South Fork of the Tuolumne River or telling stories underneath the stars or watching my cat wedge her head into a drinking glass to get the water at the bottom. Cloud's Rest, our tire swing routine, making up alternate lyrics to popular cereal commercial jingles in the car, feeding the sheep, sunbathing on Breakfast Rock, weaving pine needle baskets, touching the tree at Naco, shouting "SWITCH!" during the Chicken Dance on the volleyball court, endless matches of badminton, ferry rides to and from Orcas. These and so many more are the moments in which I realize that despite war and hunger, poverty and disease and suffering, as long as my best friend is in this world it will always be an astonishing, stupefying, miraculous place. 

I love you, Sara Maria Jacobson.

The Season

It occurred to me recently that I'm somewhat of a season whore, by which I mean that my favorite season is whatever season it currently is. I love summer for Orcas Island and slow motion sunsets; spring (although I don't know if spring is ever my favorite) for the Pike Place Cheese Festival and the end of classes; winter for the crisp air and twinkle lights and snowy nights when the sky never really gets dark. I love them all, but right now fall, for its scarves and peppermint hot chocolate, its bare timber and the way it has of illuminating the beauty in decay, is pure, unadulterated perfection. 

I wrote a story once--well, it was really more of a short, untidy vignette--that I've entirely forgotten except for the very last scene. A mildly autistic man named Gus Honey (his name is just Gus, but everyone addresses him as "Gus, honey") is sitting in a cafe with his face pressed to the glass, watching leaves fall from a maple tree near the parking lot. At the booth next to his, a couple is fighting. Gus covers his ears and wonders what the world would be like if people were like leaves and became breathtakingly stunning right before they died.
I don't have all the kinks worked out in that story, and I may never, but it's beautiful to imagine that when our time comes to let go we do so gracefully, brilliantly, as the best possible versions of ourselves.

This picture on the left is of a Japanese maple tree in our yard--what my family calls the Lee Tree. When I was ten, my best friend's dad died of cancer. He was the best kind of man. Always smiling, always playing his guitar, calling me "Libby" and asking to see all my "boo-boos" which he would kiss, and of course the pain was always instantly gone. He was my second father, and I will ache for him every day for the rest of my life. After he died, my family planted a tree in his honor out our kitchen window. It has grown to around seven feet and is the first thing you see when you look up while washing dishes. Every autumn the leaves turn a radiant red and we collect a handful and mail them to my best friend's family. Watching the Lee Tree change with the season is undeniably my favorite part of fall. I like to think that it's Lee himself bringing the beauty, kissing each one of the leaves and making them blush.

Last weekend I went for a hike with my friend Ellen in St. Edwards State Park. The weather was blissful (see photo on the right) and the ground covering of leaves conveniently masked the muddiness of the trail from the past week's rain. The path wound down through the woods to shore of Lake Washington. There's something about fall in the Pacific Northwest--maybe it's simply the fact that we have it at all--that makes me endlessly grateful that I live here of all places in the world. I adore Australia (and may in fact move back there someday) but Seattle is constantly perfect in the way that very few things are.

STOMP

Last night my mom and I went out to dinner in Seattle with some friends, and then headed over to the Paramount to see STOMP. I really enjoy show titles that employ some exciting grammatical or punctuational quirk, so STOMP, with its lovely capslock typeface, scored big points before it even started.

I've seen the show twice before, and let me just say that I find very few things in this world more entertaining than watching six people use push brooms in a percussive manner. Seriously, these guys play everything: newspapers, plastic bags, paper cups with straws, basketballs, garbage cans, garbage can lids, steel sinks, tin cans, wooden poles, match boxes, giant inner tubes, metal cups full of water, plastic buckets, rubber tubing, ribbed plastic pipes, Snapple lids, pots and pans, even their own bodies. I heard them play in the KUOW studio on NPR last week and they were using coffee cups and lampshades. If you've never seen them (or if you're like me and could watch them for all of eternity without getting up to use the bathroom), check them out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu15Ou-jKM0.

Naturally, after watching these people turn themselves and common household items into musical instruments, my mom and I became determined to create a percussion group of our very own. This morning as I was doing the crossword I started tapping my pen on the newspaper and my mom chimed it by banging two apples together and sliding her foot in and out of her shoe. A little while ago I jammed to the melodious sound of scissors cutting plastic while my mom rattled a wine cork between her teeth. I have to admit that I was vaguely disappointed in the silence at work today (more than usual), having fallen asleep last night dreaming of the entire office breaking out in percussive hysteria--typing rhythmically on the keyboards and hanging up phones at perfectly timed intervals.

For your viewing pleasure I have included this link to a wee video of what happens when my mom and I are left unsupervised in the kitchen. I have titled the video "Gibby and I Get Our STOMP On." See if you can guess my favorite part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnqF4T23lpk

UPDATE: Unfortunately, I have a soul. The video is no longer accessible because my mom didn't like what she was wearing. Perhaps we'll do a revival tour in the near future--one that is mother-approved.

I thought you, my two loyal readers, might enjoy this exchange that took place after I'd put the aforementioned video onto my computer:

Me (walking into the kitchen beaming): So the bad news...is that there was an error every time I tried to post the video to my blog.

Mom: Then why are you smiling?

Me: Because the good news is that there was no error when I uploaded it to YouTube.

Mom: OH MY GOD, OLIVIA. I WOULD NEVER HAVE SAID YES TO THAT!

Me: Then it's a good thing I didn't ask you.

I am every mother's worst nightmare. 

(But look out, STOMP. We're comin' for ya.)

Poetry Corner Monday

I don't think I've posted this one yet. If I have, um, I meant to do that. It'll do you some good to read it more than once.

Being Early
by W.S. Merwin

When you were born 
I was a small child in a city
and even if somebody had brought me news of you
I would not have believed them

already I had seen an ape chained to the sun
with a bucket of water
I had heard bells calling from wooden towers
stone towers brick towers
I had seen blood coming through bandages
on a hand holding candy
and a shadow shining on green water
where tall birds were standing
and I knew the notes of street cars
and the smells of three rivers
and could have told you about all of them
if I had known you were there 

So That Happened

It has been brought to my attention (by me) that I rarely post photos anymore, and it must be dreadfully tedious (do I sound like a Jane Austen novel? That was my project for today!) to read my posts when they're so dense with words. Who does that? This week I will break up items in my list by inserting pictures of things I find amusing. You're welcome.

Killarney, Ireland (aka my future homeland)

 1. My cat loves melon. We've had a honeydew ripening on the counter for a few days, and yesterday my mom and I were betting on how much time would pass between her cutting into it and my cat wailing for a chunk. I guessed 15 seconds, my mom guessed a minute. She had barely stabbed the knife into the rind when Taffy, who was asleep in the middle of the dining room, perked her ears up. In less than seven seconds she was in the kitchen at my mom's feet. If only she could use those remarkable powers for good.

This is a painting by Frank Loudin, an artist featured prominently at Crow Valley Pottery on Orcas. One afternoon this summer I was hanging my laundry on the clothesline in the yard and my mom told me I looked like a Frank Loudin painting. It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

 2. Today is a day that shall live in infamy as the day Olivia unwittingly gave her watch a bath in the washing machine, followed by a spin in the dryer, only to recover about half of it, in pieces, with the second hand still ticking. If you knew how much this watch and I have been through together, you would be weeping right now at its untimely (ha--get it?) death. I've lost metal links, the battery has died multiple times, and when I arrived in Australia last year the four had dislodged itself and was floating around in the face like a lost child at a carnival. RIP, dear watch. Time would have been nowhere as easily kept if it weren't for you.

This is, of course, entirely necessary. I love very few things in this world more than I love Huddy.

 3. Here's one from a while ago that I just found in my journal but realized I never posted: A couple months ago I went downstairs to find my dad eating at the kitchen table in nothing but a t-shirt and his underwear. I asked if he enjoyed eating without pants on, and he responded, "I don't know. I thought I'd try it out and see."

I should have posted this when I mentioned how images of baby porcupines never fail to brighten my spirits, but I wasn't smart enough to think of that. Just look at that face!

 4. My family has coined a sort of language, if you will, in regards to the enchiladas my mom makes for Michael's annual grape crush. These enchiladas, known in our household and among our friends as woman's single greatest contribution to the culinary world, are made by layering fried corn tortillas, red sauce, cheese, onions, lettuce, another tortilla, more sauce, cheese, onions, and lettuce, and a topped with a fried egg. This is the standard model, known in our house as the double-single (two layers, one egg). There is a variety of possibilities, though, from which people may choose based on their hunger level. We've known friends to have single-doubles or double-doubles. I myself have an interesting relationship with eggs--I find them vile and revolting unless hard-boiled or scrambled with so many toppings that you can't taste the egg--so I go for the double-zip.

     Now, if you ask any of our annual crush attendees, they'll tell you that it's generally ill-advised to take on more than a double-double because consuming another bite might send you to the brink of bursting. But one of Michael's friends, who'd been hard at work all evening, finished his double-double and followed that up with a single-single, thereby making his total for the night a triple-triple (which is, in our house, unprecedented). 

     This year for the first time ever we had enchilada leftovers the night after the party. Having heard about his friend's edible undertaking at the crush, Michael placed an order for a triple-triple--a straight-up triple-triple (three layers, three eggs) as opposed to his friend's collective triple-triple. After cleaning his plate, he pronounced himself the winner and texted his friends to gloat, writing something along the lines of "I just massacred a triple-triple!" One friend, famous in our house for referring to a slab of steak as "spotted owl rare but not unicorn rare," responded to Michael's text with two simple words: "Holy shit!" I cannot express to you how happy it still makes me that he knew exactly what Michael was talking about.

Thanks for tuning in this week. As my good friend GK says, "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

Girl Seeks Southern Hemisphere

Or anywhere, really.

I am a total Bill Bryson freak.  At any given point in my life I'm in the process of "reading" at least two of his books. I use the term loosely mainly because I spend the same amount of time laughing at the words that I do looking at them. I'm currently reading Notes from a Small Island, and aside from giving me a violent, insatiable case of wanderlust, this book has boosted my determination to become a travel writer. You can't beat such nuggets of literary genius as this:

"The windows, I recalled, could be opened only by means of a long pole. About ten minutes after we arrived each morning, one subeditor so old he could barely hold a pencil would begin scraping his chair about in an effort to get some clearance from his desk. It would take him about an hour to get out of his chair, and another hour to shuffle the few feet to the window and finagle it open with the pole, and another hour to lean the pole against the wall and shuffle back to his desk. The instant he was reseated, the man who sat opposite him would bob up, stride over, bang the window shut with the pole, and return to his seat with a challenging look on his face, at which point the old boy would silently and stoically begin the chair-scraping process all over again. This went on every day for two years through all seasons.
     I never saw either of them do a lick of work. The older fellow couldn't, of course, because he spent all but a few moments of each day traveling to or from the window."

Or this: 

"Among many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, 'You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass.' Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows." 

I promise I had a point to this post when I started, but I think that point has long since escaped me. 

Hang tight for this week's overdue So That Happened. I'm working on it.

20 Ways to Make or Break My Day

If you ever need a surefire way to ruin my day, here is a list of things to do:

1. Make me call someone I don't know (or, like they love doing at work, make me call 30 someones I don't know).
2. Have the Sounders lose.
3. Get me excited about the most recent Wait Wait only to have me realize that I've already listened to it but iTunes seems to think I haven't.
4. Air a rerun of House instead of a new episode.
5. Make it super rainy so my bus is late getting into Seattle, thereby making me exactly on time to work rather than my usual six minutes early.
6. Utter the words "loan repayment."
7. Announce that Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler will never be together. 
8. Announce that Bones and Booth will never be together.
9. Announce that House and Cuddy will not stay together.
10. Tell me that I'll never go back to Melbourne. 

If after you've ruined my day you wish to make amends, here is what perks me up:

1. Pictures of baby porcupines.
2. Homemade applesauce.
3. Tea.
4. When my cat lets me pet her without "mistaking" my hand for a small rodent.
5. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
6. Ira Glass, Peter Sagal, Carl Kasell, Paula Poundstone, Amy Dickinson, PJ O'Rourke, Tom Bodett, Adam Felber, Roxanne Roberts, Kiri O'Connor, Paul Provenza, Roy Blount Jr, Luke Burbank, Jen "Flash" Andrews, Garrison Keillor, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, Terry Gross, Steve Inskeep. By themselves or in every possible combination.
7. Everything ever written by Bill Bryson.
8. Australian accents.
9. Indian accents.
10. Accents of any kind. 

Note: #s 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10 in the first list cannot and will not be forgiven, no matter the extent to which you adhere to the second list.

Poetry Corner Monday

 You're probably rolling your eyes at my inclusion of yet another Ted Kooser poem, but this man writes perfection. Truly.

A Letter

By Ted Kooser

I have tried a dozen ways

to say those things

and have failed: how the moon 

with its bruises

climbs branch over branch

through the empty tree;

how the cool November dusk,

like a wind, has blown

these old gray houses up

against the darkness;

and what these things

have come to mean to me

without you. I raked the yard

this morning, and it rained

this afternoon. Tonight,

along the shiny street,

the bags of leaves--

wet-shouldered

but warm in their skins--

are huddled together, close

so close to life.