Running Air

I seem to have returned home with bronchitis (clever me) as a result of spending time in the Berkshire mountains without my Claritin. For once, in a demonstration of unusual common sense, I have called the doctor and requested albuterol and azithromycin before I get all debilitated and exhausted and sickly and stuff.

In other news, Sarcasm Girl graduates tomorrow!!! Not that we're delighted for her or anything...

Things to do:

1) Make cake for Intermediate Cake Class, starting tonight.
2) Buy fabric for curtains for Avocado's room
3) Epicize the dog
4) Make another batch of Elevator Lady Spice Cookies (yet another Live Long N Marry bid)
5) Work on first pass revisions on new story.

I'm already tired and I haven't done a damned thing.

In my jammies, drinking single malt and breathing a long, heavy sigh. It's cold and damp here. Nice to be home.

Flight from Boston scheduled to depart at 6:05 departed at 11 something or other. Arrived in Cleveland at 1:15 or thereabouts. Helpful agents said, "Um, here's a discount number. Call them, they'll find you a hotel at a cheaper rate." Which is not the same as picking up the tab on the hotel, which they had said they were going to do. Fortunately I had earlier made my own arrangements. Unfortunately, this was the Ramada that doesn't have 24 hour shuttle service. Fortunately found a cab. Cabbie very sweet. Could not find housing for seatbelt, and at one point when we took a corner a little sharply my entire seat fell over.

It's all good fun. Up at 6 so I can be at airport at 7 to haggle arrange for the 9:10 flight to San Francisco. Assuming we're not invaded by, like, Martians or something.

They did comp me a glass of wine on the flight. That was nice.

So we got in to our B&B in Rochester around 10 on Friday night, exchanged greetings and hugs with the proprietors (a retired architect and a retired lawyer--she's now in the Vermont legislature, and has fascinating stories to tell). The place is old and funky and eccentric, the breakfast is fabulous (they keep chickens so the eggs are terrifyingly fresh; they make jam and bread, and breakfast is garnished with edible flowers) and we're old customers...

The next morning Avocado, golden tan and grinning all over her sweet face, turned out to be the first person we saw at Camp on Saturday morning. We spent a long, humid, lovely day with her--brook-stomping (that is, walking around knee-deep in the icy cold brook), tossing softballs, examining her beautiful pottery and the silver ring she's made already, meeting zillions of kids who all seemed delighted to meet us right back (we are, it appears, funny and cool. Who knew?). The rain held off, or rained elsewhere, and despite the sort of weather that makes my hair sproing up like a Brillo pad, it was all swell. At last, around 6pm, we handed the girl to a counselor and went off.

Then the Spouse and I went up to American Flatbread, a fabulous restaurant specializing in pizza cooked in a vast, primitive-looking oven tended by a succession of sweaty, matter-of-fact guys who flung pizzas in and out of the oven with the casual skill of long use. The place is only open on Friday and Saturday, so it was packed; we waited 45 minutes or so to get in, and another hour for the pizza (because at the two tables immediately before us in the queue, each person at the table had ordered a full pizza for him/herself). They comped us dessert because of the wait, which was sweet.

This morning, after another breathtaking breakfast and lots of political talk, we took off into the face of a downpour. The kind of rain where you feel like God is hovering over your car pouring from a bottomless pitcher. It's an hour and a half from Rochester to Burlington, whence the Spouse's plane was leaving. He got there on time but the flight was delayed. I believe he made his connection. So I left him and drove down to Boston through more thunderstorms. And more. As a result that my 6:05 flight will be boarding at 8:17, and unless the Gods do something really eccentric I'll be crashing at a hotel in Cleveland tonight. Can't confer with the Spouse until he touches down (at which point I will, I hope, be in the air). So I'm just, um, vamping.

It's all an adventure. And I had another idea for a story...

Had breakfast with my father, then set out north. Sheila, our dauntless GPS, came with me, and she gets very flustered when I deviate from her instructions. Since I wanted to stop at a store to pick up some goodies for Avocado (it's not enough that we send her to camp, or that we fly cross country to visit her: she's supposed to get stuff too) and I needed to stop at the A&W Root Beer stand in Middlebury, VT (root beer from A&W is a family tradition-you put the jug in the icy cold brook and it is fearsomely cold and good) I had to ignore her instructions to take the interstate, and so we entered into a "please ignore the freeways" negotiation. Every time I stopped I had to remind her of these instructions, and she had a wistful note to her robotic voice, as one who would say "I know what's best, you'll get there quicker, honestly..."

Well, I got here. For about an hour the skies were the gray of a Russian Blue cat, and I could see lightning strikes, first in the hills, then unnervingly near by. The weather services noted that winds up to 60 miles an hour and hail the size of pennies was confidently expected. Several times the skies opened up and poured down buckets of water on me. And the Spouse's plane from Newark didn't leave until 15 minutes after its scheduled arrival time. As a result, I'm sitting here in the Burlington airport using their free Wi-Fi. All things considered, I'm in favor of any delay that keeps my sweetie (and his turboprop) out of the air when it's nasty out.

Avocado called: she has a cough and the Claritin no longer seems to work: bring Zyrtec. Sarcasm Girl called to tell me that Act II of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is brilliant. And waiting at a corner for the light to change in Williamstown, Mass, I noted under a traffic sign (LEFT TURN FROM LEFT LANE ONLY) a smaller sign: a silhouette of Rodin's Thinker with the word "Think." Wonder if that does any good.

I flew in to Boston on Continental. One of their conceits is that the First Class and Elite Members get to board via a special blue-cartpeted aisle, and hoi polloi boards via an uncarpeted aisle. All that separates the two little aisles is a little strip of nylon ribbon. Not every First Class or Elite Member remembered to use their special little boarding aisle. Every single one of the people I saw (including me) came up to the boarding area via the uncarpeted channel. What would have happened if one, or two, or all of us had rushed the podium, asserting our rights to walk on blue nylon carpet and feel all special? Would the TSA deploy the National Guard? Would a Continental service representative risk life and limb to protect the sanctity of the blue carpet? Would the Elite Members draw steel and fight to preserve their historic advantages?

I mean really: it's a three by five rectangle of blue carpet that says "Elite" on it. Be still my heart.

Right now, in southwestern Massachusetts, visiting my father. Yesterday in Boston, reliving bits of my past and talking about the Tudors with my friend Steve Popkes. Tomorrow, off to Burlington, Vermont, to pick up the Spouse at the airport and thence to visit Avocado at camp. Gosh but I'm a busy girl.

My congratulations and thanks to bookmobiler, who won my signed copies of Point of Honour and Petty Treason in the LiveLongNMarry auction. When last I looked (about an hour ago) the auction had brought in over $10,000 to support the fight to maintain marriage equality in California.

Huzzah to all who sold and bid. You are all splendid.

Tomorrow evening I'm going to miss my cake decorating class for the good and sufficient reason that I'm off to the Right Coast to visit my father and Avocado. I will reach Boston on Wednesday morning, visit with a friend until Thursday, then grab my rental car and hie off to the southern Berkshires to visit my Dad. Next day I drive up to intercept the spouse at the Burlington (Vermont) airport, whence we will hie off to Hancock to spend Saturday with my giddy girl. I expect that by the time I get back to San Francisco (late on Sunday night) I should be a very crispy woman.

Tomorrow is the end of the Live Long N Marry online auction in which I'm offering signed copies of Point of Honour and Petty Treason to the highest bidder.

If this is something you might like to have, and you haven't bid yet--there's still time and it's an excellent cause: marriage equality for all persons regardless of gender, persuasion, etc.

Cause everyone should have the right to marry the person he/she loves.

If you have already bid, thanks. May your tribe increase (or not, if you're not interested in tribal expansion).

Once again it's Manhattanhenge! First in May, and now this evening and tomorrow evening the sunset will align with the east-west streets of Manhattan perfectly.

Wish I could be there to see it. Anyone who is, please report in for a homesick NY girl!

And yet again I discover something about my writing process that I hadn't identified before. I just finished the first draft of a story to submit to deborahjross for the next Lace and Blade. In all modesty I must say: it sucks. It's going to not suck by the time I'm done with it, but right now it's mostly a collection of nicely phrased notes to myself about what the story is supposed to be. I know it's not right yet because it doesn't sing.

Sing? Oh please. But there's something to it nonetheless. I can't say why I know this story has the potential to work--it's a little like hearing a note, very distant, in the back of my head. And this morning, reading the lousy draft of the story, I could feel that note...very very very far away. And on thinking of it, I realized that the closer the story gets to being what it should be, the louder and more sure that note is. Sometimes the note isn't there at all (which is when the whole thing gets saved to the disk and forgotten about, sometimes forever, sometimes until I grow a little). Sometimes the note is there, but I can't find the right way to make it louder just then, and it goes back in the drawer. But at least there's a reason to keep carving away at the thing.

Back to the knife.

Sorry: still no photos from last week's cake. Maybe next week?

Tonight we learned to make little ruffles and fill space with them. As noted last week, no matter how fussy and unpreposessing a cake may be, the addition of frosting flowers suddenly legitimizes the entire enterprise and makes it look like I meant it. I, mad iconoclast that I am, scattered my roses off the lines (okay, one was in the center, but the other two were not on the edges, which seemed to make the instructor a touch nervous). As much as I hate making roses, I love making leaves. Leaves are easy and fun. I started thinking how I could make an entire cake decorated with nothing but leaves. Maybe autumn?

When we had finished adding swags and ruching to our cakes (and no matter the colors--and there were cakes with orange and blue ruffles and yellow and brown ruffles and pretty much every combination imaginable, and none of them looked particularly, um, manly) we moved on to the Flower of the Week.

After my frustration with roses (which are just hard, and really require doctoring the frosting with cornstarch for added stiffness) pansies just made sense to me. The one here was made by my instructor as a guide. I made some nice ones, but they didn't survive the trip home, alas.

The variation in color is achieved by painting the inside of the frosting bag with food coloring, then adding the frosting. If you twist the tip relative to the bag, you can get variations in where the color appears in the flowers. Pardon me, I'm waxing neepish...

On the outside of her envelope she modestly notes: "I am apparently a pottery prodigy on the wheel."

1) I wonder what this augers for our (admittedly hectic) interior decoration scheme, and

2) do both of my children sound like me? Yeah, I thought so.

She appears to be having a wonderful time.

He's 68. Which must mean that we're all getting older.

In an interview, when asked what he wanted for his birthday, he said it would be nice if, at noon today, everyone would stop, flash a peace sign, and say, "Peace, love." That's a rather sweet wish, I think. Maybe I'll set my alarm.

Tom Disch has died. We couldn't afford to lose him, although I know that the last few years had been terribly hard for him. Another of my idols gone. Damn.

The AP exam scores are available (by phone, if you wish to pay $8 to hear them). Sarcasm Girl, whose academic career was a little rocky this year, called in to get her AP Lit score. On a scale of 1-5...

She got a 5.

Or as the child herself put it, "I got a MOTHERFUCKING FIVE!"

Got a call from the kid this morning to tell us that she has been cast as Mrs. Gloop in the camp musical of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." "And I have my own song!" She sounds busy and happy, glad to hear our voices but not clingy. It was nice to hear her voice.

I love my children. That is not to say that my children do not often annoy, perplex, enrage, or disappoint me. I try to remember that it is my job to help guide them to be better, to realize their best aspirations, to fix the problems their failures cause, and generally to grow up to be strong and compassionate. Parental love should be unconditional, but it can't be wholly uncritical. I suppose, in this sense, we are all the mothers and fathers of our country. Move over, George Washington.

Happy Birthday, Declaration of Independence. We're still a work in progress, all of us, including America.