the busy heart

Moving in Boston is very strange business. Word on the street is that 1/3 of the state moves on Sept 1st, and judging by what it's been like the last few days, another third moved over the weekend. Think narrow streets clogged with moving trucks, sweaty college students hauling boxes and lamps and sometimes chairs and bookcases and couches (!) across busy intersections, and mounds of castoffs lining the sidewalks. Tonight I was introduced to another piece of moving culture when I noticed women pushing carts and strollers down the sidewalks, digging through the mounds of garbage and claiming what looked good. It's like grown up trick or treating. While I was moving the last load out to the car, a little girl in a stroller kept shouting "bangBANGbang" and shooting me with a toy gun her mother plucked out for her. When I saw them a little later, she had big hulk gloves on--you know the ones I mean? So I guess it's sort of kids trick or treating, too. But that...

I feel obliged to record some clarity of thought here, but I may just be talking to myself. In fact, I am talking to myself, but it's a self down the road, days or weeks from now, when I'm buried in the semester and not taking very good care of the Deja. Self: poor, sad, unhappy self: listen up. Awhile ago, when I posted something about going veganish, my friend Tara asked in the comments what made me make the leap. And I didn't answer, mostly because I didn't know how to answer concisely. I've turned the question over and over in my mind since then, figuring out how to articulate it. And, if you see how long this post is, I've given up on concise. The short answer is that several months ago I was at the doctor's office, feeling really sick and miserable. I was getting a physical, which turned out to be the most absurdly lame physical I've ever received. I mean, my cat has given me better breast exams, if you'll excuse the image. This wa...

It's been hot here. 90 degrees by 10 in the morning, 97 by early afternoon. When we got out of our little yoga class yesterday, I groaned, "It feels like Mississippi." And it was so. We're without air conditioning in our little place, which makes matters most unpleasant. The kitties station themselves under beds and couches and chairs, lying on their backs with paws tucked to their chests, surrendering. Sam and I sit on the couch, laptops in front of us, sweaty selves sticking to our clothes, writing and working or playing with blogs and facebook, and whining about the heat. Our two big fans make it sound like we're in an airplane, but do little for the actual temperature. So yesterday we escaped to the only place that makes good sense: the movies! We drove downtown, parked under Boston Commons, and strolled over to the theater on Tremont. We went to that one specifically because it was showing two movies we wanted to see. As in, Sam went to one and I wen...

Not polished, but pretty. I think. Upon Attending a Yoga Class with My Husband It’s a basic class, involving blankets and a dozen grey heads on pillows, and soon he’s asleep, snoring slightly. I reach over and tap his ribcage, and we giggle in the back of the room, our bellies trembling, the lights low. When we reach to twist our imaginary lightbulbs on and off, I watch his hands, concentrate on them instead of my breathing, how long his fingers seem, how deep his palms, how shocking that he has a body, that he exists separate from me, from how I think of him as husband, from his laugh, his job, his methods for loading the dishwasher and taking out the trash, even the way he touches me when I sleep. We’re on the floor moving like elephants, like cows, like our cats, like the very deliberate and slow. His left hand stutters when he realizes it should be his right. It feels like kindergarten, like somehow the two of us, who are eleven years apart, have skipped backwards for an instan...

Tonight I went and saw (500) Days of Summer. Sam was more interested in hanging out at home, and the friend I called (check me out, calling friends.) couldn't make it, so I just went on my own. I've gone to a movie on my own once before, but that other movie made me feel crazy, and this movie made me very happy. I loved the music, the clothes, the insides of their houses, the wacky formal stuff they did (split screens and, well, I don't know how to explain it. it was cool.), and the story. After it was over I walked several blocks to my car. It was about to rain so the air was sort of heavy and cool and flashes of lightning lit up the street. I remembered why I love seeing movies at the theater: when I leave, I always feel like I'm in the movie. I think that's particularly true when I watch them by myself, so it's good that the movie was so happy (sort of--I cried at the end) and full of gorgeous details that made you know everything just by the way the l...

Strawberry Lemonade. Check it. All you need: blender, some water, juice of two fresh lemons, 15-20 small frozen strawberries, a bit of stevia. You do the thing and you make the thing and you put the stuff in the thing and then you blend the thing and then you drink it and then you are glad. Watermelon? That works too. It's all summer in the tummy.

We went to the Forest Hills Cemetary yesterday, the same place that did the lantern festival. It's huge and full of trees and sculptures and they let you drive around and park wherever you want and have a picnic. We didn't picnic, but we did drive around looking for the contemporary art stuff. I'm not sure that Sam liked it as well as I did, but I certainly fell hard for a few pieces, for the whole place really. I made a mosaic of my pictures in Picasa, so that's what you're seeing here. I had too many pictures I was in love with to just post them one by one, and as it is this represents a severe butchering of all the others I wanted to show you. My favorite was probably the one that looks like the trees are wearing dresses. In fact, the trees are wearing dresses, delicate-ish wire ones. I think you only see the mama dress here, but there was a whole family--one for mother and father, an older sister, and a child. Man, they're spooky and gorgeous. While...

Sam and I got tickets to a Red Sox game through the church. They were a killer deal, and Sam likes him some baseball, and I have fond memories of Padres games with my dad (okay, mostly I have fond memories of the NACHOS at Padres games ...) so we went. I know it's probably not a baseball thing to say, but it was so pretty there. The sun had just gone down so the sky was this violet blue, and the lights were bright and the weather was perfect and everything was so deliciously green. See? We had a notion to be fasionably late, which was dumb. I just remembered Padres games taking FOREVER when I was a kid, so I figured we had all the time in the world. But the Sox were playing Baltimore, and apparently Baltimore was, um, not so great, because they were getting socked very very quickly. (Get it? Bah!) By the time we showed up 45 minutes in, it was inning 5 or something, and the last innings were over in less than an hour. It was crazy fast. Which was probably good, because most...

I went to Dollar Tree the other day for frames. Dollar store frames are my favorite. I put several of our Europe trip postcards in them. I also couldn't help picking up a cat toy for a buck. I got a little fake bird--styrofoam covered with feathers--thinking it might remind them of days at my parents' house when they were allowed outside. They'd catch big dirty birds, murder them, then drag them into the living room to show my parents. Much to my parents' delight, I can assure you. Apparently vacuuming up feathers is annoying. Who knew? Now, from the way they sit in open windows, noses pressed longingly to the screens, I think they miss those days. So I bought the bird. Meatsock immediately commenced murdering it. Until it is, after a day, as you see it here. Poor thing. Here is Kitty, giving Bird a big friendly kiss. And here he is again, just after he'd knocked it to the ground and gnawed its styrofoam jugular a little more. They're the best of fr...

We had friends over for dinner last Sunday. Yes, friends! I was as shocked as you are. They're ward friends who were excellent at ohhing and ahhing at our food and our little house and such. I like that a in a friend. I managed to snap a picture of the table before they arrived. Pictured: the pretty set of dishes Sam's mom gave us for Chistmas, hydrangeas from our yard, our special $1 placemats from Target, Sam's pink lemonade, and, in the back there, our glamorous trashcan. (Is the silverware on the wrong sides? Sam set the table, not that I know how to do it myself. Oh well.) Not Pictured: green salad full of herbs (have you tried fresh dill in salad--yum!), homemade balsamic glaze, lemon cashew pesto with angel hair, broccoli, potato onion garlic bread from When Pigs Fly Bakery . For dessert, Celestial Cream (whipped cream sort of thing from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan), fresh blackberries/blueberries/strawberries/cherries, very naughty Blueberry Cranberry Lemonade b...

But I'm so taken with this line from Jean Rhys' book, Good Morning, Midnight and I updated my goodreads review of it to include this, and I want to record it here, too. So's I remember it. Not even sure why I like this bit so, but I do: "I want a long, calm book about people with large incomes--a book like a flat green meadow and the sheep feeding in it." Maybe I like it because it's so not what this book is like--it's about a very poor, sad, desperate woman--and there's something delicious about saying that within its walls. Maybe its because I know that feeling--not just of wanting to read a book like that, but of wanting to BE a book like that--a calm book about a person with a large income, with something akin to well-fed, drowsy sheep. If only.