What · Fresh · Hell · is · This?

Since it seems the thing to have done, I'm composing a hasty thankful post as of the day after Thanksgiving. Some of us don't like to go jinxing stuff, okay?

I'm feeling oh-so-American as I'm inclined to be thankful for materialistic things today, namely, the new faucet and light fixture in the bathroom, both of which were found at The ReStore in Ballard last weekend and purchased for a grand total of $20.00 plus tax. The faucet is quite charming and it turns on and off completely and smoothly. The light fixture is not florescent and has a functional outlet for the first time since June 23rd. We're quite pleased with both and, after a while, we're sure that we'll become accustomed to the smoothness of the spackle and new paint above the mirror. I also painted the two closet doors in the hall today. It's a day on which I am thankful for the accomplishment of household repairs.

I could, of course, also be thankful for a very pleasant Thanksgiving dinner with my very pleasant family. Thankful for and also amused by the copious quantities of sparkling wine at the feast. Thankful for transportation both to and from dinner and thus thankful for avoiding Metro which, while nice and all, can be a bit too colorful, especially on holidays. Just now Gradka is being thankful for her polka-dot blanket and I'm being thankful for Gradka.

Earlier today, while waiting for first coats to dry, I finished off Down the Garden Path by Beverly Nichols. I didn't find it nearly so misogynistic as I'd been led to expect and I found myself repeatedly looking up various plants he recommended in order to consider ordering them for my own garden. Alas, many of them seem difficult to obtain in late November in the Pacific Northwest.

Earlier still today Gradka and I shared some time in the backyard, being grateful for the unexpected sunshine and the plethora of birds who were out and about enjoying the feeders. The hummingbird, who yesterday terrified me (and, though he doesn't admit it, elijah_brown), by staring--the very picture of choleric with his bright red face--and threatening to fly straight at us as we stood less than a yard from his feeder, was content to intimidate the other hummingbird in the yard today. The goldfinches did an impressive job of standing up to the big bruiser sparrows, while the chickadees arrived in sufficient numbers to keep the squirrels away from the suet. The juncos just went wherever no one else was and found enough seed to keep themselves happy. All peaceable kingdom today. No early-bird, door-buster specials required. For which, you know, I'm thankful.

MoT, The youngest must watch this!

The above photo has been borrowed from the Penguin Project's Fall 2009 Penguin Update; you can get the latter emailed to you free of charge and it is packed with fascinating news, adorable photos, and fun facts.

In unrelated news, The Swinery has declared December to be Bacon Month. I'm not about to argue.

They provide a link to the arrival of a truckload of nutcrackers:

So photos, and not much in the way of words, result:

The Third made and decorated cupcakes.



I finally met the new cat Sylvia.



They took me to the river (it was low).



We also went to the Botanical Garden.



It was pretty.



Very pretty

Jack was horrified to see that today's youth still prefers sour candies to chocolate. We, however, were pleased to have a decent number of trick or treaters to break up the painful experience of watching the Yankees come back to take the lead in the third game of the series, largely thanks to Mr. Whiny Rodriguez. Bastard.

Earlier in the day we went to the Junction where we were amazed at the number of kids in costume swarming the place. Bees were popular, as were princesses and, oddly enough, giraffes. We also went by Square One Books in Jefferson Square. Despite its unfortunate location and challenging hours, it turns out to be quite a fine book store. The bookseller seemed to have read a lot of her stock and the store carries a nice mix of classics and newer stuff. We bought five books between us which, I suppose, counts as pumping the local economy and supporting the plucky independents.

Yesterday I wandered about the yard picking what I assume must be a lot of the last hurrah for the year from the garden. I was particularly pleased with this tiny bouquet that resulted:



Today was also given over, in part, to chopping up magnolia leaves to use as a cover for the tulip beds and to trimming some of the bushes around the house. Oh, and chasing another damned raptor away from the backyard. Can't they just go eat some starlings in the alley?

Poll #1478754 What kind of bird am I?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

What kind of bird am I?

Interruptions

When I heard our cat making a racket last night at around 10:30, I assumed she’d seen the opossum that sometimes comes into our back yard after dark. The cat always yowls at it through the bedroom window, hissing and scratching at the glass in an attempt to get out there and show the opossum just whose yard it is. Opossums really creep me out, with their mouthfuls of pointed teeth, their almost-human blue eyes and their long naked rat tails. They hiss like snakes and are just as likely to bite you as they are to roll over and play dead when cornered. The opossum is a horrible little animal and just a bad idea, if you ask me.

“Leave the nasty big rat alone,” I called out from my writing desk. A moment later I felt more than heard something hitting the side of the house, and then I heard the cat again, this time howling in the basement. The weather has turned cold and I thought that the opossum was trying to get into our house through the window well by the washer and dryer, or maybe trying to crawl through the gap below the ancient wooden garage doors.

This was annoying, because I was in the middle of a scene I’d been trying to write all evening and wanted nothing more than another hour of quiet in the house. Intruding animals being in my half of the division of domestic labor, I had however no choice but to get up from my desk and go down the basement stairs to see what was going on. There was nothing at the window above the wash sink. The cat was scratching at the heavy fire door that opened into the garage. She was growling low in her throat like a dog. She’s a strange cat.

“Something in the garage?” I asked her. She looked up briefly and then returned to scratching at the door. I undid the lock and just as I put my fingers on the door handle, I heard something falling or being knocked over within the garage. There was definitely something in there.

“Emma?” I called up the stairs, using Mighty Reader’s pseudonym because she’s diffident and this is a public blog post. “There’s something in the garage. I think it’s that damned ‘possum.”

A moment later Emma joined me at the garage door. The cat had fled upstairs, coward that she is.

“How’s the writing going?” Emma asked.

“Fine until now,” I said. We decided that Emma would open the door and stand behind it while I would go into the garage. I had armed myself with a shovel in case the opossum was not in a mood to play dead. We have an old house and there remain a great many repairs to be made to it, one of which is to rewire the lights in the garage. It was going to be dark in there, even with all the basement lights on. The stairwell between basement and main floor blocked most of the light from the fixture closest by the door to the garage. Like most Americans, we own a flashlight but it's loaded with dead batteries. I gripped my shovel and nodded to Emma, who gave the heavy door a yank and pulled it open.

Like I say, the garage was dark. From behind me, a rectangle of light fell just inside the doorway, illuminating the floor at my feet but beyond that, it was black as pitch.

“See anything?” Emma asked.

“Shh!”

From ahead and to the right I heard a noise, the sound of something being dragged across the rough concrete. At the same time I heard what sounded like gnawing. I thought of the opossum’s mouth full of sharp teeth, like a shark’s mouth, and I shivered and held the shovel like a baseball bat or an axe. I could feel a cold breeze. That meant either Emma or I had not fully closed the garage doors, letting into our basement whatever now hid in the darkness. It was probably me who'd left the doors open, and my absent-mindedness annoyed me as I stood there in the dark holding a shovel. None of this fussing about with opossums or whatever was getting my chapter written. It was cold in the garage and I wasn’t wearing shoes and I’d drunk too many cups of tea and needed to use the bathroom and I was getting pissed off, if you must know.

The thing in the dark corner hissed and my eyes were beginning to adjust so when it moved toward me I saw that whatever it was, it was a lot bigger than an opossum. I swung the shovel at it as hard as I could and the steel blade made contact with bone. The impact made a lot less noise than I thought it would, but the thing stopped moving when I hit it.

“What is that?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s big. I hope I didn’t just kill someone’s dog.”

“Half a mo’,” Emma said, and she disappeared long enough to fetch an emergency candle. When she lit it and held it up we both saw that I hadn’t killed a dog. What I had done was hit our next door neighbor, Monica, in the forehead with a shovel. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing.

“Jesus,” Emma said. “You killed Monica.” Monica had a husband and two teenaged sons.

“Why is she in our garage?”

“Look at this,” Emma said, moving the candle to light up the corner of the garage Monica had been hiding in. I saw the bloody remains of an opossum. Its head was missing.

“What the hell?” I said, and then Monica sat up and gave an unearthly howl. It was not the howl of a woman in pain from a shovel blow to the forehead, but the howl of a beast, a thing from another dimension. It was not a human noise at all. To Emma’s credit, she did not drop the candle, although the light caught Monica’s attention. She looked at Emma and hissed, a thread of saliva pouring from her mouth. Emma took a step back and Monica followed on hands and knees. I swung the shovel again, the blade making a much louder sound against Monica’s skull this time. Just to be sure, I hit her a dozen more times and then used the shovel to cut her head from her body.

“Jesus,” Emma said. “Now what?”

“Monica’s got a family,” I said. “We need to go next door.”

Within an hour Emma and I had rounded up most of the neighbors on our block and we broke down the front door of Monica’s house and dealt with her husband and sons. We built a bonfire in the empty lot down the street and burned all four bodies. I threw the headless opossum onto the flames for good measure. I still need to finish that chapter of my work-in-progress. This is a story I wrote to entertain you all for Halloween.
(c) SCOTT G.F.BAILEY
originally posted on The Literary Lab

"One last thing, we are trying to see if we can show the upcoming fight between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto. I am formally asking for a show of hands of people who would be interested in coming out that night to see the fight at our bar. I am thinking this should be a great time. What do you say?
Cuidense
Alfonso
Owner
La Isla Restaurant and Bar"

I can't say why I find this amusing but I suspect it has to do with page-proofing I am doing on my work-at-home day.

Madame Gradka understood immediately which was her chair




Two goldfinches opted for seed over croissants

Another weekend has raced by, leaving me feeling, at after 11:00 on Sunday night, that I haven't had proper time for anything, and even less do I have time to think about anything or to write a proper post. So this will be yet another hasty drive-by featuring not much more than some photos. Which is too bad because I'd like to take the time to write about The Namesake which I read last week on Eli's recommendation (after I'd sighed about being between books, he went to the shelf and handed it to me with the suggestion that I might like it. I like the merged books, I do, especially when they yield a fine new novel I'd likely have never picked up myself). I might also find something to say about the new Nick Hornby (Juliet, Naked) which I've started since finishing The Namesake. Were I feeling particularly ambitious, I'd make some comparison involving drinking perfectly pleasant but nothing spectacular wine after a particularly rich and earthy red. The comparison would fall apart as I know considerably less about wine than the very little I know about literature but I might give it a try, especially if I'd been drinking more than I have been tonight. Instead, I move from reading to the house and how it fared in the recent rains.

Well, it got a wee bit damp. One corner of the basement let a little bit of water in and the garage...well, it let in a lot. Thank goodness, I've said any number of times in the last 36 hours, we got the old carpets and miscellaneous crap that was in there to the dump two weeks ago because it would have been a much less pleasant job shooing the water out to the drain in the driveway (which happily, continues to work a treat) had we had all that stuff, possibly in wet condition, to deal with as well. It Could Have Been Worse and At Least We Know have been the sort of expressions in use chez Gradka, along with "I think I've fixed some of it now" from Eli.

Despite the many household things clamoring for attention today we (mostly) stuck to our pre-determined plan and went off to look at pretty trees, and the birds they contain, in the arboretum today. And it was lovely. We were prepared for it to be rainy but instead the clouds cleared away and there was a lot blue sky and sunshine to really make all the colors just that much more gorgeous. We saw so many flickers that we lost count and we heard more than we saw. We were quite surprised to spot, early on, some twitchy and somehow scruffy flocks of cedar waxwings. There was also a wren, similar to one we'd seen out the kitchen window earlier. The bird in question had the coloring of a bewick's but the tail length and overall size of a winter wren. Cute, but twitchy, anyway. There was some sort of soaring hawk, a heron that took flight as we approached the water, and, we learned from a far more serious birder than we'll ever be, a pair of mergansers.

It was the trees, this time out, however, that were truly stunning. The photo to follow utterly fails to capture just how gobsmackingly beautiful they were. Any local Imaginary Readers who have not been to the arboretum lately should find time to get down there soon. (I've also posted more photos on facebook here.)

Closer to home, and also in the photos below, the grapevine is doing lovely things; we've purchased a new green man, and I bought some shiny new red garden boots.

The Japanese maple/pond area of the Arboretum

The grape vine and environs

Green Man ("Earth" this time out)

October bouquet en route to a vase

Shiny new boots!

Time-lapse house deconstruction.

I can't figure out how to get just the video clip so the above is the entire post. Which is maybe okay, because if I'd seen only the clip, odds are I wouldn't now be checking out this guy's appliance research. I suspect his budget is considerably higher than mine, and, of course, I'm inclined to cling to my old, less efficient but still fairly functional stuff as long as possible. But it still fascinates.

Must. Get. To. Work.

So it's the Yankees v. the Angels for the ALCS. Yawn. I guess this means I don't have to worry about finding a way to watch baseball any time soon. Which is fine; I don't have time for baseball anyway. Not with a yard and garden to get ready for winter (yay!) and the seemingly endless list of house items which continues to be, well, endless. This weekend elijah_brown and I painted the trim in the hallway which would have been the last bit of painting for a while if only the tape stuck on to protect the walls hadn't peeled off bits of the wall paint. One sees how this could turn Sisyphusian if one weren't careful. Fortunately, Eli believes he can just do a lot of touch-up with a much smaller brush after which I, personally, am entirely prepared to apply the "blind man running for his life" test.

Purchased and planted this weekend: an apple blossom clematis and a honeysuckle (lonicera japonica); the latter is described as remarkably vigorous, very fragrant, and inclined to spread rapidly. Since we're looking for something to cover (in more ways than one) the neighbors' dog run, it seems quite ideal for us.

The Secret Garden (predictably enough) did not have the John Straley I was after but they did have a new Nick Hornby Juliet, Naked, as well as the latest Gregory Maguire, now in paper (A Lion Among Men). My current reading, however, is Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. Seventy-eight pages in, it seems quite fine.

Mr. Gaiman posted this short but evocative update leading to all sorts of "Oh, I want that house/pie/dog/life" responses from his many fans. And sure, it's likely the mood swing at its upper reaches at work but I thought, "Yes, that's one impressive house with a fine tree next to it but I could bake a finer pie (and I don't really care for pecans), and I adore my house, while there's not even any question that a cat like Gradka is far finer than any dog, even the amazing Cabal, could ever be." In short, while I was suicidal at and about work yesterday, today I cannot bring myself to envy Neil Gaiman though I am, assuredly, happy for him in his various successes and happinesses.

Which may have led me, several hours ago, to reflect on the whole business of posting or blogging or twittering. It seems that a lot of it divides into two camps: the "oh, my life is so perfect; look upon my success and marvel" and "oh, my life is so wretched; look upon my misery and sympathize." Because, ultimately, it's all about me I found myself wondering--and still wondering--which camp is mine. How much of any of this is actually real or sincere for any of us? And why do I think it matters if, in fact, I do?

Which likely I don't.

Reading Update: Yet another rereading of Horatio Hears a Whore which, against all logic, continues to enthrall and engage, not that it won't be a happy day for me when it goes out to its agent once more. A swell, if untitleable a book it is and I predict Big Things for the author. Possibly things involving a caulk gun and drywall in the short run, yes, but in 12-18 months? Big Things. My next book, if I can manage to get to a bookstore one of these days, is to be John Straley's The Big Both Ways.

elijah_brown and I went to The Bohemian for dinner tonight. One could almost sum up the menu with the words, "They like their cheese" but that wouldn't be entirely fair or accurate; they also have quite a thing for garlic. It was a lovely experience, ackcherly; the decor is quite nice and the staff was pleasant. The Carnivore (filet mignon on a king-size bed of green bean, asparagus, corn, bacon, potatoes, and--yes--garlic) was quite swell though I opted to have the cheese on the side while Eli's raclette was, well, smelly but reportedly quite fine. Filling, anyway. It was a very pretty space, I thought, and some day we might shift ourselves in time to have brunch there.

My Gradka did not get out to be blessed today, nor have we attempted a do-it-yourself at home option. She manages to look quite blessed without any outside assistance, she says, thank you very much.

Contented Gradka in the sunshine


In truth, she was a bit scaredy-cat today because it was windy so she missed the fun of planting. Over the course of the last week we've removed the garden cloth and turned the clay-like earth, digging in (wisely or not) the bark mulch that has been sitting on top of the cloth for the last X number of years. We've also dug in 24 bags of compost and a block of peat moss all in preparation for the big moment; planting the box of bulbs that arrived from Roozengaarde's, on Friday. Mr. Nichols' influence meant that we mixed the bulbs together and then grabbed handfuls to throw in the air, planting them pretty much where they landed. It seemed as reasonable a way as any to select locations for the 150+ bulbs that have now found a home in our backyard.

The random scattering method


The actual planting took less time than anticipated thus leaving me with the foolish sense that I might as well deal with the desperately-needing-to-be-divided bearded iris that were along the back wall when we moved in. Besides, they were protecting masses of morning glory root. Some hours later we'd succeeding in digging out the iris, removing most of the morning glory root and some blackberry, turning over that earth, sorting and trimming the 100+ rhizomes, and getting them back in the ground in some largely regimented rows.

After a bit of watering it looks like this (note iris at back) but we have high hopes for lots of pretty next March / April / May.


Last night, after an afternoon spent taking a U-Haul pick-up loaded with old carpet, ancient drywall, and bags of miscellaneous god-knows-what that had been left in the attic by the previous owners to the transfer station, we cleaned up and went to Benaroya to hear Ms. Isabelle Faust play The Mendelssohn (as I'm told it's called) and a very nice job she did with it, too. It was quite lovely and she seemed to have fun with the third movement. We would have done well to leave at intermission, unfortunately, because the Mahler's 5th Symphony which followed was, well, pretty dreadful. Well-played and all but just not to my taste. After the interminable first movement there were some quite nice bits, mostly involving cellos, but I knew that damned trumpet player was lurking nearby just waiting to burst in and bring a bunch of his loud, drunken friends with him. It just buffeted and bruised one, that composition.

It is the same when you are furnishing a house. If you have only just enough money to buy a bed, a chair, a table and a soup-plate, you should buy none of these squalid objects; you should immediately pay the first installment on a Steinway grand. Why? Because the aforesaid squalidities are essentials, and essentials have a peculiar way, somehow or other, of providing for themselves. 'Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'. . . that is the meanest, drabbest little axiom that ever poisoned the mind of youth. People who look after pennies deserve all they get. All they get is more pennies.

-from page 67 of Merry Hall which I am absolutely loving to pieces and with which I am doubtless driving elijah_brown mad since I insist upon reading passage after passage aloud to him.

I'm hoping "insert image" will load a handful of photos quickly thus allowing me five minutes in which to update, vaguely, my reading list. Already I begin to doubt I'll manage any of it but bravely I persevere and turn, as was once my wont, to M. Proust for assistance, though I copy only one sentence from the novella The Lemoine Affair:

And, sensing him deeply wounded (because of which, despite what I knew of his insouciance, I conceived some hope), without pausing, so as to unburden myself once and for all of the unfortunate medicine I had to make him swallow, and so as not to give him time to interrupt me, I represented to him with the most frightful detail with what abandon he lived at the court, and how advanced this neglect--the right word had to be said, this contempt--had become in a few years; how these would be increased by the intrigues that would not fail to use the so-called inventions of Le Moine to cast wicked accusations against the Duc d'Orleans himself that might be absurd, but dangerous down to the last point; I reminded him--and I still tremble sometimes at night when I wake up, when I think of the boldness I had in using these very words--that he had been accused many times of poisoning the princes who barred his way to the throne; that this great pile of gemstones they would have accepted as real would help him more easily attain the throne of Spain, for which reason no one doubted there was an entente between him, the Viennese court, the Emperor and Rome; that because of the detestable authority of Rome he had rejected Mme d'Orleans, and that it was a blessing from Providence for him that her recent confinements were fortunate, since otherwise the wicked rumors of poisoning would have been renewed; that to tell the truth, for desiring the death of Madame his wife, he was not like his brother guilty of Italian taste--these were my very terms--but that it was the only vice of which he was not accused (along with not having clean hands), since his relations with Mme la Duchesse de Berry seemed to many not to be those of a father; that if he had not inherited the abominable taste of Monsieur for all the rest, he was indeed his son from the habit of the perfumes that had put him out of favor with the king who could not bear them, and later on had favored the frightful rumors of having made an attempt on the Dauphine's life, and by having always put into practice the detestable maxim of dividing to conquer with the help of repeating rumors from one person to another which were the plague of this court, as they had been that of Monsieur, his father, where they had prevented a unified reign: that he had preserved for Monsieur's favorites a consideration that he did not grant to another, and that it was they--I did not force myself to name Effiat--who, aided by Mirepoix and La Mouchi, had cleared the way for Le Moine; that having as his only shield only men who no longer counted for anything after the death of Monsieur and who during his life had only amounted to anything because of the horrid conviction everyone had, even the king who had thus arranged to marry Mme d'Orleans, that one could obtain anything from them by means of money, and from him by those in whose clutches he was, no one feared attacking him by the most odious, the most intimate calumny, that it was high time, if indeed there still was time, for him to finally to recover his grandeur and there was only way to do that: to take measures in the greatest secrecy to have Le Moine arrested and, as soon as the thing was decided, not to delay the execution of it, and not let him ever return to France.

The above is lifted from the Saint-Simon pastiche which elijah_brown declares to be Proust mocking himself. I like to think it is true; I like to think that he knew when he was being hy-sterical. I like to think lots of things. Just now I'm thinking that I have now finished off my last remaining bit of M. Proust (unless I am to read his translation of Ruskin, referenced in one of the earlier entries in TLA the reading of which translation, it being into french, and also, I see on finding a link, out of print, seems unlikely. And thank god seeing what a few short pieces in English are already doing to my own sentence structure).

Before the Proust it was a re-read of Jasper Fforde's two "Nursery Crime" books and before that it was more re-reading; Antonia White's trilogy (The Lost Traveller, The Sugar House, and Beyond the Glass) as well as the prequel Frost in May, all of which I enjoyed but which had me feeling more than a little suicidal yet again. No one does madness like Ms. White: it's the seeming rationality of Clara, who sees so clearly that the thing to do is to walk into the Thames and who understands perfectly that food and sleep are completely unnecessary, as around her her friends and family are struck by how well she at last seems once more, and how recovered from her earlier distresses. I was relieved, frankly, to find the books still had the power to enthrall me since it has been at least a decade, and maybe two, since I read them last. Interspersed with Antonia there was some William Marshall (more re-reading; does the Imaginary Reader not remember I asked for some book recommendations?). Further back, I simply cannot go. Sitting on my coffee table now is a library book loaned to me not by SPL but rather by the friend who checked it out of the library herself: Merry Hall is some sort of gardening book written by an Englishman, possibly not long after World War II. He has bought an old estate and he likes cats. The friend thinks these things are sufficiently similar to my own situation for the book to appeal to me. I do hope she's right.

I turn now to LJ's handy (I hope) "insert image" option and then I call it a night.

Penguins in their new exhibit at the zoo. I like the guy in the bottom corner.

A young giraffe also at WPZ

View from "the low bridge" to West Seattle early this evening

I scoff at the term "park-like setting" to describe the superfund clean-up site in the midst of which my workplace is situated (leave me alone, M. Proust!), but some days it truly is pretty.

Especially when there's a fine heron to be seen.