I would do just about anything for my Canada friends, and in three short years we have been through thick and thin together – moving across town, moving far away, pregnancies, birth, death, breakups, playing boggle in the psych ward, spending the night in the hospital waiting room while Ella’s lying in her bed in a “salt coma” as Erin affectionately (and hilariously) calls them, family drama – it has not all been gloriously, deliciously fun. But it has bonded us for life. So I’ve been wondering for quite awhile who would be the first one of them to kill a person in my dreams.

…you know, the dreams I have every month or two where a family member or one of my very best friends kills someone and it’s up to me to dispose of the body – I know I’ve mentioned them before. I suppose it’s one of the most important things you could ever do for another person. I never do a good job, but it’s the thought that counts. About a quarter of the time Mikey is the killer, half the time it’s a random family member – I think just about everyone but my grandparents has made an appearance, and every now and again it’s one of my very closest friends that I am currently in contact with – never an old friend that I’ve lost touch with (not too many of these anyway, thankfully), never an acquaintance, never someone I will probably eventually lose touch with. Never a Canada friend, though, and I’ve always wondered who it would be. I figured it would be one of my girls for sure.

But in the wee morning hours this morning after Hazel had awoken to nurse, I fell back asleep and almost immediately swam into a body-hiding dream. It was Chris. He’s going to get caught in a couple of weeks when the body washes up on shore, but maybe if he had a better boat I could’ve dumped it a little further out than the inner harbor.

Listening: Iron & Wine
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: Secret Seahorse
Working on: Etsy-photo-taking NOW – baby is sleeping, light is good – if she stays down for a couple of hours I might just get it done today

She has been keeping me very busy:

…and a couple of days ago while I was laying down with her nursing her to sleep for a nap, my exhaustion caught up with me and I accidentally fell asleep too. I can’t remember the last time I took a nap. We slept for two and half delicious hours, and I had the most realistic dream ever about broccoli cheddar soup. Now, I don’t know that I’ve ever actually had a broccoli cheddar soup that I enjoy – no, I never ate it at Panera because it wasn’t vegetarian when I worked there – but while Hazel ate a snack I set about finding a recipe. None of my trusty cookbooks had anything to offer, so I resorted to hunting online. There are few things that annoy me more than looking for a recipe online, but I was committed to this dream soup, so I hunted. For about 45 minutes I read and reread tons of recipes, submitted comments from people who had tried them, forum discussions about soup… a little less dense than vaccination research, but it was giving me a headache. Finally I had, on a totally marked up piece of paper, what seemed like it would end up tasting good. Unfortunately the only source I can remember is epicurious.com, which gave me the idea of using tarragon, although the actual recipe was a far cry from a creamy broccoli cheddar soup. It came from twelve or fifteen different recipes and comments and discussions, and some stuff I just made up, so I feel like I can legitimately say this is My Recipe. Anyway… it was divine. I didn’t even remember to take a picture because I was so excited to eat it. Mikey and Hazel loved it too. So here is the recipe for my SIL (the Angie one) and Mama, and whoever else wants some totally yum broccoli cheddar soup. Take that, Panera Bread, and all of your frozen soups too.

I’d say this serves about four. Or more specifically: two huge husband bowls, one normal wife bowl, one tiny baby bowl, and two lunch bowls the next day.

6 T butter
2 lbs fresh broccoli – peeled and chopped stems separated from chopped florets
1 lg. onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried tarragon or 2 tsp fresh, chopped
4 c. vegetable stock (next time I will probably just use water, actually)
1 c. whipping cream
3 c. (packed) sharp cheddar cheese, grated

- Melt butter in heavy-bottomed pan and saute stems and onion until the onion is transluscent. Add garlic and tarragon and saute a minute or two more.
- Add stock/water and bring to a boil; simmer until broccoli is tender (15 minutes or so)
- Add cream and broccoli florets, stirring pretty frequently until the florets are tender.
- Puree in batches and return to pan. Add cheese gradually and stir until melted.
- Serve with a yum bread.

The next day when we were eating leftovers for lunch Mikey asked me if it was complicated to make, and I told him no. Then he asked if it was “long and involved”. I told him not really, but then thinking that maybe he was wondering if he’d be able to make it for himself, I corrected myself and said “well, kind of… there are a few steps and you have to throw it all in the food processor and puree it before you add the cheese…” He just stared at me for a second and said, “Well I was just wondering if it was hard becuase I want you to make it… often.” Oh, okay then. I’d worry about his fingers if he tried to use a food processor anyway.

Other odds & ends…

I’m excited about this new shop opening on Bloor Street (my back yard). The owner invited me to participate, via my Etsy shop, but unfortunately (and fortunately) we will be gone. I will definitely stop in when we are back in the city visiting, though.

And… finds like this make all of my time spent scouring dollar stores for things to repurpose worth the hunt. Two packs of kitschy plastic party favor rings, on their way to new lives as pendants.

I’ve got my Etsy inventory about halfway rephotographed. It’s so tedious, and I can only work on it when Hazel is napping, and only then if the light is right, or on weekends when Mikey is home at the right time of day and can keep her occupied. I swear on all that is good and holy (and crafty), when I am done I will not get behind in my photographing. I will not.

I haven’t made any squares for a few days because I’ve been busy making stuff for a craft show, and yesterday I made a Christmas gift for my SIL (the Janet one), which I am suuuuuper excited about and can’t wait to share in, um, three and a half months.

Listening: Iron & Wine
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: The Saggy Baggy Elephant; Growing Vegetable Soup (the former, in board book version, was found at the Dollarama downstairs – sometimes they have kids books that have no business being sold in a dollar store. I don’t know how they get there but I am happy when they do.)
Working on: ephemera packs; pendants; photo revamp; etc. etc. etc.
Packing progress: wrapped and taped up a huge pile of framed photos, prints, and posters – a tedious and much hated task, done! Also packed three boxes. Why doesn’t this feel real yet?

i had a really, really terrifying dream this morning. the content was not particularly scary, just very weird and nonsensical, as are most of my dreams (except the one where i’m  having a baby girl). a bunch of us were by the ohio river – i don’t know why or where – but i’m inclined to think it was some kind of air show because three or four stealth bombers had crashed into the water and were floating just below the surface, like giant stingrays. there were coastguard-esque rescue boats fishing people out of the water. kelly strauttmann was standing beside me, and without taking my eyes off of the water i said, very calmly, “kelly….. your feet.” then i glanced over at her as she tilted her head to peer down at her feet, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream, and just screamed and screamed and screamed and i just turned to look back at the water while she stood there and screamed. then i woke up. i have no idea what was wrong with her feet but i have been f-r-e-a-k-e-d out all day. i know she is fine because i heard from her today, but still freaked out.

and then a priest on a power trip pissed off our whole family. mikey and i went to get dinner out because i didn’t feel like cooking (thanks to this man and the problem with kelly’s feet)… we were both so mad and tired that we just sat there, talking only to hazel but barely, probably looking like one of those miserable couples that people wonder about in restaurants.

at least i have a really happy and adorable daughter. and at least the state of california refrained from f**king over  the 18,000 happily married couples who tied the knot before prop 8. and at least i get to go to bethlehem farm in a week. and at least my hands seem to be finally, miraculously healed after four days of wearing fingerless gloves 24 hours a day (unless i was out), under which was slathered tons of burt’s bees hand salve and either antibiotic ointment (for the cracked-and-bleeding-ness) or prescription medicine (for the rash). so i can tackle the entire sink full of dishes that i have been putting off. fun times.

not until after i take a bath and drink a beer in hopes that this stealth-bomber-stingray-ruined-feet-headache will go away.

oh, one not terrible tidbit from the day: mikey has learned that all he has to do to get paisley to move from his spot on the couch is to be polite. when he used to just say “paisley, MOVE”, he now says “can i sit there please, padle badle?” all sing-song and she hops down and happily trots away to find a new spot to nap. paisley clearly went to doggie kindergarten and absorbed more than mikey did at his kindergarten.

mikey got up with the baby so i could sleep in reallllyyyy late. he gave me the new columbine book with a beautiful inscription about how it was not actually a weird mother’s day gift. i cried. took a long, interrupted shower with no skin-searing products. we played. hazel took a nice long nap & i crafted. we walked to canadian tire to get enough foam squares to cover our hard livingroom floor since our child is soon to be mobile (an annoying chore that, if it were not mother’s day, he probably would have weasled out of for a few more weeks). he made me breakfast for dinner.  he is good. (so is she)

today:

12:30 a.m. – go to bed after falling asleep halfway through the life of brian.

4:30 a.m. – wake up for no apparent reason. lay there wide awake for hours. ponder things like: the perfect light-pear colored benches across the street (freshly painted last week) would make delightful fiestaware, and wouldn’t you know it – the new summer color is exactly that ; i hope the foggies’ plane does not crash on the way back from israel ; i love how hazel sleeps all sprawled out ; i don’t love how mikey sometimes shakes in his sleep ; why does paisley keep vomiting and when do i take her to the vet.

6:30 a.m. – my tossing wakes hazel up two hours before her normal wakeup time, but she is ready to go. as soon as she looks up and sees that i am awake, she dazzles me with one of her gummy, snagle-toothed smiles and pats my face and says “hhhheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!”… stagger around changing diaper, filling up a bowl of toys, make tea, check email, play with hazel on the floor, abandon now-lukewarm tea under rockingchair with glasses because she stares at me confuse-dly when i wear them.

8:00 a.m. – take myself & hair-rubbing, yawning baby back into bed with still-sleeping mikey. she falls asleep within three minutes. i am still unable to sleep. body begins to hurt from exhaustion.

9:30 a.m. – hazel wakes up. mikey gets her up so i can try to sleep some more. i doze off long enough to have a dream about hostess cupcakes with white swirlies across the top.

10:30 a.m. – mikey brings hazel back to me so he can take a shower and go to the library. i lay on the floor playing with her for a bit, then make us brunch and have to listen to some of mikey’s dreary music while we eat, but i don’t complain because he got the baby up and has promised to do the dishes when he gets home.

12:30 p.m. – hazel is down for an afternoon nap. i don’t want to lay down with her because i have too much stuff to do, like finishing baptism invites and sweeping up dog hair and packaging etsy orders. and blogging.

post-nap – wash dog blanket & rug that paisley puked on. maybe go across the street to buy cupcakes with swirlies. cuddle the happiest baby in the world.

listening: oh susanna
reading: barely into catch 22, considering putting it down for columbine – also reading new mothering

lenten haiku, day sixteen

baby pulls ears and
dog wags unsuspecting tail
not knowing it’s next

lenten haiku, day seventeen

in seven short days
i’ll be on that southbound train
headed for my home

lenten haiku, day eighteen  (that’s today)

thank you for barfing
just before we left the house
so we’d get there clean

so there those are. i don’t know why i find it so difficult to just PUT THEM HERE or at least write them down. instead i walk around with them in my brain for three days, reminding myself of them every so often so i remember when i finally get around to it.

as noted above, hazel has discovered the joys of TOUCHING paisley. she’s watched her, talked to her, smiled at her, and even laughed at her a few times – all for weeks – but had only stretched out a tentative hand and fallen just short of actual contact. the other day while hazel was playing on the floor, paisley came scooting over inch by inch on her belly like dogs do, chin on the floor, seemingly willing her neck to get just a little bit longer. hazel noticed and reached out her hand towards paisley, who took that as an invitation to speed up the progress and a few seconds later she was laying beside hazel, gazing down at her patiently. first hazel touched the side of her nose, running her palm across paisley’s whiskers. then she buried her fingers in the thick fur on paisley’s neck and wiggled them around a bit. then with a satisfied “oooouuuaaahhhhh” she  started wiggling all of her limbs at once like she does, in four directions at one time, and then grabbed paisley’s ear and gave it a healthy yank. pulled on her floppy neck skin. pulled on her whiskers. pulled on her ear again. it was not until hazel stuck her fingers between paisley’s lips, hooking her fingers around paisley’s cheek and stretching it out as far as she could manage that paisley looked at me helplessly, a portrait of confusion and desperation. she slowly pulled her lips out of hazel’s hands and rolled over onto her back beside her, kicking her own four limbs into the air and swishing her tail back and forth happily. she loves her girl so much. the only problem this has created – paisley pouts incessantly when hazel sleeps. she wanders from room to room (shut out of the bedroom), and will wander by every so often and give me a look that clearly says “why can’t you just wake her up to play?” i say “hazel needs to sleep”, and she lets out a huffy sigh and flops herself onto the floor.  she knows the deal.

we went to see chris play tonight – what we thought was going to be his last night – and found out the owner of the bar wants him to keep it going. this is good news. i was sad to be losing our most baby-friendly music outing. saturdays are great and there are tons of kids, but chris is a bit quieter and more comfortable. not to mention that mikey works every other saturday so we can’t always go. she got to see her auntie ella (who brought her flipflops for summer), and to finally meet sarah, who brought her a knitted nautiloid cephalopod (hazel has nerdy friends) and crocheted hat. she wore her headscarf all evening and it stayed put just fine. she’s so stinkin cute in it. perfect use for fabric scraps, too. between that & some of my patchouli getting rubbed off onto her clothing, mikey asked her if she was going to be a hippie when she grows up. before she could answer chris said very sternly, “you’d better be a hippie”.

i think she’s too into red glittery vinyl to be a hippie just yet.

he sang her a song tonight. and if that cart and bull fall down, you’ll still be the cutest baby in this town. sometimes i wish (not logically or for real) that she could live here for enough of her life to be able to remember some of these things & some of these people. there is so much love & she’ll never know it. not like now, anyway. a table full of people passing her around, meeting kids, her musician friends singin’ her songs, not flinching when the subway trains whoosh by & other city kid things.

i had a dream that we were pregnant, four weeks from our duedate, and without a midwife. i’m pretty sure this is kelly’s fault.  i now know for a fact that i am not actually pregnant, which is good, or a second pregnancy dream would have sent me to the drugstore for a test first thing in the morning. although now that i think about it, all of my (actual) pregnancy dreams that i had before were about a child. these were not about being pregnant with a particular child. if i start dreaming about a kid then maybe i will worry.

it’s midnight, but since my headache & i napped the afternoon away with hazey, i am nowhere near tired. perhaps i will take a bath. the chances of consistent water temparature are good this time of day.

listening: nothin’ at all – the mockingbird song in my head now, since i was thinking about it
reading: annie dillard; vegetarian times

1.) the kids that hazel meets at bluegrass all have great names: georgia, wynn, amelia, alice, finley, griffin, sage, etc. having a baby means all the other kids in the room want to meet her vicariously through you. we’d met amelia before, and today she & her friend finley were sharing a (my) barstool, chatting with mikey about star wars and the never ending story. at one point they slid off their seat and finley instructed ameila to push him as hard as she could. she did, he fell on my feet, they laughed hysterically, he got up. amelia’s mom came rushing over, told her to stop pushing other kids around the baby and people she doesn’t know. amelia put one hand on her hip, extended the other towards me, palm-up, and proclaimed, “but mom, i know her.” … “go finish your grilled cheese or you can’t go to finley’s house tonight.” … “okay okay.” … she was back five minutes later to play with sleeping hazel’s feet some more. her mom then decided to properly introduce herself to mikey and i, since she’d apparently decided that she couldn’t really keep her daughter away from the strangers with the baby sitting at the bar. i don’t really know what the protocol is for introducing yourself to the parents of children that your kid is playing with (or in our case, the parents of the baby your child is enamored with). i am trying to watch and learn but there seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason. during an especially upbeat song featuring chris on clawhammer banjo (which makes everyone bounce their babies even if they weren’t before), two men and myself were all standing in a row bouncing our babies. we all chatted and swayed and bounced for the duration of the song. that was normal adult interaction because our kids can’t talk to each other. some parents find it fitting to entirely gloss over the fact that there is an adult person holding hazel, and say things to their older kids like “ooohhhh do you see the baby? can you ask the baby how old she is?” - instead of just asking me how old my child is. i feel like i should be annoyed by this, but i’m not. when people do it to my dog… THAT is annoying.

2.) i keep forgetting to take my new year’s resolution photos. i have been doing things, i just need to do the photos.

3.) i think bruce springsteen’s best album is nebraska. i never listened to it, ever, until about a month and a half ago.

4.) hazel knows them better than her own family:

5.) i had a dream that i was pregnant. this morning we hung out with the maxwells – kathy got pregnant with #2 when #1 was hazel’s age. i can’t say it wouldn’t be really really scary to be pregnant right now. i almost want to take a test just to show myself that i’m not pregnant. it was just a dream. i also dreamt that we were in canaan valley with a bunch of people, and my brother & the above chris had to drag me away from windows one night because i was trying desperately to take good photos of the ghosts on the other side of them. i also dreamt that we took a streetcar from here to baltimore. my dreams clearly mean nothing.

6.) i had a six…

listening: nebraska
reading: musicophilia

i have been trying really hard to learn more about my camera lately, and this week i started working with some photo-editing software. life goal: never take hazel to a photography studio (and use all that not-spent money to pay for outrageously amazing wedding photos if she ever gets married… oh, how the things i want for my daughter are already so different than what i ever wanted for myself… what does this mean???). this will probably also mean that i never actually get around to learning how to actually do these things with film and chemicals and… you know. the real way. i kind of feel like i need to teach myself some color theory stuff all over again.

my eternal subject. someday i fully expect her to rebel against my camera.

in other news, i have wanted this fondue pot for exactly one month tomorrow. i’ve had no less than three dreams involving my ownership of this fondue pot. i don’t know if i will ever use it, but it will sit in my kitchen and look really awesome. i have made enough money from etsy this month to pay for it. if it is still there tomorrow i’m buying it. if not, it wasn’t meant to be, and there are pages and pages of vintage kitchen deliciousness waiting to be perused in search of gems like this one. since a move home (read: into more livable space) is probable this year, i am going to very slowly and very selectively let myself start collecting things i’ve never had room for. kitchen porn. better storage for all of my craft supplies. frames for all of the photos i want to put on the walls that we do not have.

i’m also working on hazel’s room, which i think i’ve mentioned. purchased at the dollar store recently: five wooden birdhouses and three big metal ladybugs with coathooks attached, all to spread out on plastic in my parents’ yard when it’s warm, armed with spraypaint.

music tomorrow and sunday. whee!

listening: phyllis boyens
reading: musicophilia

(here today, tomorrow she’s gone, why don’t you get away lazy john?)

(29 weeks)

i stopped in a dollar store on the way home and bought fifty side-opening coin envelopes and a string of hot pink glass beads. i already embossed several envelopes with glittery red fleur de lis, but burnt my fingers on the toaster (must invest in embossing tool) and got tired of standing up, holding them over the heat. last weekend i half finished a huge batch of resin necklaces, but ran out of resin and refused to pay canadian-michael’s price for more. a crafts 2000 or a.c. moore trip is in order when we go home next weekend. i think my crafting delinquency is coming to an end!

none of our friends that live across the street have microwaves (ok, most of them don’t), and scott & alex are trying to phase theirs out. we’re planning on leaving ours behind when we move home. is it possible to just… not get another one? can we live without a microwave? what do you use a microwave for that can’t be done with an oven/tea kettle? i’m sure i will start some popcorn fires so we need to get a fire extinguisher before we try any non-microwave experiments. what else can we live without? the girls & i are doing another destash on september 14th. i think this time i am going to go through my craft supplies with a very, very fine-toothed comb. comparable to heroin, for sure.

speaking of drugs, every time i tap excess embossing powder into a creased piece of paper to shake it back into the container, i think of cocaine. always.

more baby dreams this week – the girl is getting older. she’s about 5 or 6 months old in my dreams now. mikey got arrested in my sleep on wednesday night… pulled over for speeding and it was discovered that he had an outstanding warrant for a broken restraining order against a girl that i’d never heard of, before we met. he was in jail for days. i was with baby hazel and a spastic dog at my parents’ house, calling him in jail every two minutes. i don’t think that’s even allowed in real life. as a result of the leaving-paisley-at-the-gas-station dream earlier in the week, i stopped in an engraving shop on the way home from work today and got her a tag with her name on it and our name/number on the back.

it’s brown.

 

listening: tony allen in my head, for weeks
watched & enjoyed: there will be blood

Today it:
1.) was the ugly-not-refreshing kind of rainy, dark at 4:30 p.m.
and I:
2.) had the day off so I
3.) made some necklaces while I listened to Nick Drake
which is:
4.) the best / worst music for this kind of day.

Ace is mine. The rest are for sale on Etsy, even though they are still less than smooth-edged.

On Sunday my dad bought an old rifle – “you know, the cowboy kind” – and later at home sat in his rocking chair and loaded three shells into it while my mom talked on the phone. When she passed the phone off to him, she started examining the gun – not checking the action and unaware of what he’d been doing – aimed at the ceiling, and fired a round through the roof. My dad retells the story last night on the phone, gasping for air, laughing hysterically, as if delightfully unaware of his own mortality.

Arms are for hugging, kids.

and all the friends that you once knew are left behind
they kept you safe and so secure
amongst the books and
all the records of your lifetime
what will happen in the morning
when the world it gets so crowded that you can’t
look out the window in the morning?

Oh also, last night I had a dream that I ran into Ian Keplinger in a barn at a fair and one of his arms had been medically or otherwise amputated. I had to stop for a moment and think, “did he have this arm the last time I saw him? Would I look stupid if I asked what happened because I should know because he’s been this way for awhile and I’ve just forgotten?”…… I hate feeling stupid in dreams. Especially over something so obvious as Ian having his left arm or not having his left arm the last time I saw him. So in the dream I started thinking about the real-life last time I hung out with him, and I remembered that it was the night that Doug, Chad, and Ian found a bunch of half-inch wooden dowel rods in Mikey’s room as we moved him out, and then spent a good half an hour beating each other with them in the kitchen. I was finally forced to take them away (in real life) when Chad and Doug backed Ian into a corner and he was begging for mercy. I decided, in the dream, that Ian could not have dowel-rod-sword-fought two other grown men with only one arm, so he must have had both, and so I should ask him what happened. But then I woke up. When I woke up I thought about the dream and remembered my first memory of Ian (and Stefan)… they were in a barn stall at the fair, chillin’ with one of their grandpa’s hogs.

How’d a memory from 20 years ago and a memory from two years ago fuse themselves with the weird book I’m reading (involving teleportation and not making it back home with all of your molecules intact and thus having a weird deformity or missing limb) and make it into last night’s dream? I want to be a neurologist.

Last night I had one of those unprepared-for-a-test dreams, only it was totally different. Total panic and that ”how did this even happen?” feeling, only there was a baby. My baby. A boy, no name. Apparently everyone at home sort of forgot that Mikey and I were having a child… I can hear my mother-in-law giggling a “no way in hell” giggle… so there was no shower. No one had gotten us any baby stuff, and we hadn’t remembered to get anything either. So we come home from the hospital with our new baby boy, who actually looks about four months old (think Aaron on Lost… actually, I think it WAS Aaron), and I immediately get online to order a bunch of cloth diapers and covers. Bummis, to be specific. I get really upset and nearly hysterical about the fact that we are going to have to use ONLY disposable diapers for the six to ten days that the shipping confirmation is telling me it will take for the diapers to arrive. This is the only thing I’m upset about… not that the baby has no clothes or that none of our family or friends even remember that he exists.

I got a new issue of Mothering yesterday and left it on the table with the other mail because I didn’t have time to read any of it. Kelly Swan, this particular demented dream is YOUR fault!

I have the day off tomorrow, and have made myself a whole list of things that I plan to accomplish. We’ll see how I do.