That New Project

It's here. Tell me what you think. And yes, Mieke, this mostly means you don't have to read recipes here any more...

Proud wife

The H's movie opens today. It's getting great reviews. Go see it.

Coming soon...

Since I can't seem to get my s&^( together to write for pay these days, I'm cooking up a new project for myself. Watch the sidebar for something new in the next day or two...

Where the hell I've been, part deux, and how to make something not at all about me...all about me

You'll all be thrilled to know I am no longer crying on the toilet. I did cry for about 1.5 seconds in the car today, because I was pissed at the H for not agreeing to help me, once and for all, resolve the hideous car registration drama--this would have required him to stop what he was doing and immediately get to the Hudson, NY DMV. I can't blame him for not wanting to go, but let's just say I've been trying to get this onerous errand off my mind and my phantasmic to-do list for some time now. The good vehicular news is that the lovely magistrate in Massachusetts dropped, all, yes ALL of the charges (speeding, driving without insurance--a criminal charge, mind you--and driving without registration) levied by the Psycho Cop. Actually, that's great news, and as the friendly, sardonic judge said to me at the time, "Merry Christmas." Couldn't agree more. But the cars still don't have their NY state plates or registrations, which makes me terrified/unwilling to drive my new car anywhere but in my own driveway. Not so efficient, except that the H has been on house arrest for two months trying to finish a script, and now has 30 pages of the next one due in two weeks. Fun times, but his incarceration means I get to drive his Prius. Ah, but wait....there's more.

It's not all gloom and doom for Mr. H-'o-mine. I'm outing us, right now, because I want all of you to go to the movie theater next weekend, and buy tickets to his first produced film. (He's been produced, beautifully, award-nominated-and-winning-ly, for television, but the holy grail for any screenwriter is a film: most screenwriters, like most actors, toil in inglorious, unseen dungeons of despair and rejection for years and years. I'm not kidding.) All that pain, suffering (his, and, let's be honest, anyone who knows us will confirm this, mine) was assuaged on Wednesday night, at the film's fancy New York premiere.

Buy tickets, please, and tell me what you think. Since the film is, as all films are, somewhat different from his original scripts, fire away with your honest criticisms.

Oh, and in case you're wondering the really important stuff, I wore this. Brown, not grey, and it's a much prettier color than the picture shows. I know, I know. In my defense, the only other times I've worn anything this expensive were 1. my wedding and 2. the Emmys, when the H was nominated. I think the occasion demanded it, and the dress is, I must say, way better than it looks in the picture.

Proud moments in parenting, part I

Item: on Tuesday, with Dido home from school puking and....running, I went down to the basement to iron rather than hang out with him and the Babe.

Item: yesterday, I sat in the bathroom crying because the Babe, who is now back in her crib after a brief vacation for no one in a big girl bed, still refused to take a nap.

Item: during said crying jag, the Babe followed me into the bathroom, saying "No cry, mommy. No cry."

Item: this morning, when I refused to find the Transformers cartoons on YouTube for him, Dido told me I was the meanest mom ever, and no one likes me very much.

Item: after that outburst, he remembered to mention that the reason he slept in our bed last night was because he peed in his.

Item: the H rolled out of bed awakened by Pasha this morning, but instead of just stumbling out with her for a morning pee, he took the time to find me (reading emails in my office at 6:30) and give her to me instead for the pee run. As I carried her down the stairs, I felt something warm cascading down my right leg.

Is it too early for a cocktail?

Wild Kingdom

That title has two connotations for me--given my advanced age, the first is, obviously, "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom", the Sunday night TV staple starring Marlon Perkins that I watched religiously throughout childhood. The other is a song by a (presumably now defunct) NYC-based band, The Second Step, with which I was fairly obsessed in the late 80s, when they used to perform at a downtown NYC Mexican joint I loved. (Can anyone remind me of the name? The Cactus Cantina or somesuch? It was awesome, as was the band, and the song, "Wild Kingdom." I have it on my iTunes, having bought their CD nearly 20 years ago, and if I can get my act together, I'll put it up on here. It totally rocks.)

Now, I have a third connotation---as my friend Marti might write, Doods, I live in the Wild Kingdom. Seriously. Today, on the way back from an antique/hardware store/ice cream run to Great Barrington, Massachusetts (20 minutes away from our own little WK) we had to stop our car in order avoid running over a foot and a half long SNAPPING TURTLE crossing the road near our house. I made the H get out of the car to ensure that it would cross safely to the other side. I thought it might be a snapper (what the hell other American turtle is that f'ing big??) so I told him to be careful, so he did a little frog march behind it which made it pick up its pace and get to the creek on the other side of the road. When we got home, I consulted my trusty field guide (thank you to my MIL--awesome Mother's Day present) and confirmed its taxonomy. Apparently, this is the time of year when the girl snappers leave their ponds for nearby rivers and creeks whereby they will lay their l'il snapper eggs. Go figure.

Bucolic pleasures, bad carma, and bedtime blues

Let's start with the glorious, shall we? The sunsets here are different, and spectacular, nearly every single tonight. Yesterday, just to make the two natural disaster-acclimated Californians feel right at home, we had a tornado warning for much of our region. Yet by the time the sun was preparing to set, the clouds were dissipating across the sky, there was a fiery ball descending toward the horizon, and the juxtaposition of blue against green was staggering. (In the interest of full disclosure, this picture, which does no justice to the sunset it depicts, is from a couple of nights ago.)

Then, there are the other wonders of nature, namely the growing ones. I cannot call anything on our property a "garden", but we do have ragged old apple trees, explosive forsythia, and, I discovered yesterday, one lovely lilac. The Babe and I set out on a flower-gathering expedition with the dogs , and returned with much astonishing loveliness. The whole is now fragranced, which is helping with a mood turned dark, thanks to a not-so-kindly encounter the other day with the Massachusetts State Police. My infraction was a driving one, but I'm not going to write too much more than that about it until after I complete my field trip this afternoon to the Great Barrington courthouse, where I must appear, to find out--something, perhaps the size of the book to be thrown at the person who dares to drive in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts carrying a California license, a semi-valid temporary registration, and claiming to live in New York. Let's just say I experienced harassment and bullying from a young officer the likes of which I've personally never seen. Welcome to the Berkshires.

Meanwhile, her loveliness (the Babe) has insisted upon moving into a Big Girl Bed. She begged, she pleaded, she picked it out, she chose the other baby upon whom she would bestow her now-obsolete crib. Until I took the crib apart and put it in the basement. Now she cries for it, and will only go to bed if she's already fallen asleep in my arms or, even better, the car. Sigh.

Of dead pigs, live frogs, circus performers and the myriad joys of motherhood

"We'll split a pig with you" are not necessarily words I associate with a door opening onto a budding friendship. But when I heard them last week from a new neighbor, I hoped, like a seventh grader with a crush, that that's exactly what they were. My young neighbor, a New York City transplant married into an longtime local farming family, couldn't be nicer or seem like more fun, her husband, too, and though they are younger and as yet without kids, they seem to like us, too. Hence the offer to split a pig from her brother-in-law's farm down the road. I can't wait. Having sampled his fresh, pastured hen's eggs (a welcome to the neighborhood gift a few days earlier--Dido pronounced them "the best eggs I've ever, ever, EVER eaten") I am confident that his equally happy (at least in life) pigs will also be delicious.

Meanwhile, the frog saga continues. Our pond is teeming, swarming, fully alive with tadpoles, side-lying columns of them buzzing through the murky water, and more to come, judging by the wormy tubes of eggs (finally identified as such after much dopey puzzling on my part) lying in the muddy banks. The frogs sing not just at night, but pretty much all day long, and Dido caught one Friday afternoon. He was completely ecstatic. After it flew out of his hands and back into the pond, it sat still in the water, head above, body and legs dangling below, and I was worried that the kid had unwittingly injured it. After a few minutes, though, he dove down and swam out of sight (not hard, in our zero visibility pond water.) But he popped right back up, and seemed to stare Dido down. Dido made a couple more attempts, but then grew delighted with the fact that Frog seemed to be connecting with him somehow--perhaps wondering what this strange, inept hunting creature that failed to eat him could possibly be.

Meanwhile, the night before, the Babe woke up, in her very first night in her "big girl bed," crying for her daddy. No surprise, the waking or the need for papa, but awaiting us was an unfortunate surprise--a big pile of puke (which sounds like the name of a Russell Crowe band, but sadly, was real.) She's been sick as a dog ever since, with a brief interlude yesterday where she seemed to be getting better, so we all, including my visiting mother in law, went to a fundraiser circus performance at a local school. It was fantastic, and made quite an impression on both kids. I'm not sure what they loved more--the 7th grade trapeze artist, the boy unicyclists, or the amazing acrobats. Both my kids fully appreciate performance, in any and every form. But by nighttime, the Babe was listless and cranky, refused to eat dinner, and then puked all over me, the dog, the deck again.

Adding to the fun, her illness (at least thus far) culminated today in a ten minute waking nightmare--she seemed to wake from her nap, but quickly was hysterical, wouldn't let me touch her, wouldn't take the ever-soothing pacifier, seemed terrified or in pain. It was horrible. I finally took her outside into the fresh air, and asked her, over and over again (although she already seemed fully awake) to wake up. When she calmed a bit, desperate, I offered her ice cream. Apparently, even when you have the stomach flu, strawberry ice cream (from a local dairy, thank you very much) is a panacea.

And they called it, Puppy Love...

I heard Donny Osmond interviewed on local radio last week while driving the kids to school. Apparently (like Jerry Lewis?) he's HUGE in Europe. He discussed his rivalry with MJ. (That's Michael Jackson, for those of you who weren't reading Tiger Beat in 1973.)

While you think about the goodness, nay greatness, that is the Osmond oeuvre (he's just released his 55th album, covers of 70s love songs, really, run, don't walk) you can also contemplate true puppy love, in the glorious form of Pasha. Enjoy the cuteness, and don't let the saccharine sweetness get you down.

7 Things You May Not Know About Me

From Mieke

Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to blog about their seven things and post the rules as well. At the end of your post, choose 7 people to tag and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog! OK, here we go....

1. I don't think I know seven people who blog, at least, not really well enough to tag them.

2. I think memes are the new chain letter, and I despise chain letters, even though when I get them (the real ones, not the email ones, which I always delete, sorry to my friends who send them) I have great intentions about completing them, especially the ones that are lists of kids to send books to...but I often fail to live up to my own good intentions. And even though I think memes are slightly evil like chain letters, I have always secretly wished that someone, anyone, might tag me. Hypocrisy-r-us?

3. I see myself as thinner than I know I really am (in other words, I know I am fatter than I look to myself) but I am totally obsessed with my weight.

4. My (now former--sob--I loved him) doctor thinks I have suffered from severe depression on and off for years.

5. I never told my old shrink that my GP put me on antidepressants. How screwed up is that? I constantly wondered if she noticed the change in me, which, to my eyes and mind, was pretty remarkable.

6. I love dishes--you know, china. I spend way too much time and bandwidth contemplating new dinnerware.

7. My first non-fish pet was a black and white Dutch rabbit named Scrambley.

Can you tell I was scraping there at the end? And I have surprised myself by getting all confessional, though unlike Mieke, I didn't reveal secret past career ambitions (electron microscope-using scientist) or details of my deflowering (not that interesting, nor traumatic.)

Ok, Alyssa, Alto, Tart, Kel, ummmm....Quinn, Fussy, ok, I'm really scraping here, not that I don't want to tag these illustrious women of the blogs, but rather that I feel particularly unworthy and really, that I am imposing upon them. Is that just WASPy weirdness emerging? Perhaps.

Looking for Mrs. Goodpark

Or, Bookstores are the New Bars

After picking Dido up at school today (have I mentioned that, since leaving the driving capital of the universe, I now drive two and a half hours per day, minimum?) and stopping for the requisite afterschool bribe snack of ice cream (chocolate cherry, an adventurous choice for two children under six, I thought, and delicious, I can assure, since I had to "help" them keep their cones from detonating all over the store like some Willie Wonka-invented IED) we made a quick trip to the post office (to pick up our mail) and then I gave in to the Babe's entreaties to take them both to the park. The weather was glorious today--the best kind of spring sun and breeze combo--and our little town park was as full as I've ever seen it with kids. The local pre-ballet class had just finished at the arts complex next door, and the place was crawling with girls in leotards and their (non-tutu'd) brothers. My companion-starved kids were in heaven.

I stood there like the fat girl waiting to be picked last for kickball, trying to look completely unphased as all around me, moms stood in tight, chatting groups. No one gawked or pointed, mind you (unlike when I actually was the girl picked last--never mind that I'm fatter now than I thought I was then.) Finally, the Babe took the fall for me. The park has one of those old fashioned merry-go-rounds--the kind you run around to spin and then leap on. I remember loving them as a kid, and at least in L.A., you never see them anymore. No doubt too many potential head injury lawsuits. I've seen three of them so far here--you go, brave and stoic parents, children and parks departments of the northeast. Dido loves these things--running, jumping, dizzyness, all in one activity. He was pushing a bunch of the post-dance class girls, and the Babe wanted in on the fun. For a while, she was content to sit on top of the wheel, but then she wanted to push with her brother and another big girl. She ran as fast as she could, but the momentum of the wheel knocked her down on her face. She was dusty and surprised, but, in her typical fashion, after two dismayed yelps, she was done with crying. Seeing my kid faceplant finally softened up a few of the other moms. In the way of all moms on all playgrounds, they offered consoling color commentary on the Babe's performance: "That was more of a roll than a fall. Nothing really hit the ground" and so on. Her biting the dust, so to speak, broke the ice for us all.

Woe to the even half-normal, half-interesting-seeming person who throws me a conversational bone these days--I am become a regular chatterbox, with so much nothing to say that I might as well be a Fox News commentator. And like my kids, I'm so anxious to feel I belong here that I will pretty much grab onto any sociable life raft. Lucky for me, the friendly woman wasn't just half-interesting, she was totally interesting, smart, cool, someone I'd really want to have as my friend, if first impressions are worth anything at all. Twenty minutes later, I had the lowdown on local summer camps (free--yes, you read that correctly, FREE to kids in our town, paid for by the town), schools public and private, and a slightly clearer picture of the social hierarchy of my low key, friendly but still small town. When this gang mentioned a first name, if I had met someone in town with that first name, chances are, it was the same Sarah or Beth or Joan. Ok, it happened twice, not three times, but still. This either means I'll find myself in a lovely, tight-knit community, or some twenty-first century Peyton Place.

Take Manhattan, Just Give Me That Countryside...

Or, the One About the Dead Animals.

Part of the attraction to exurban living, at least for my children, is bestial. As a bribe, we promised them a new puppy upon our arrival. We tantalized them with the image of our cossetted housecat being set free to sunbathe al fresco. We showed them pictures of the stables, the chicken coop, the pond, and allowed their little, fecund minds to wander to 4H-y type thoughts of all creatures great and small.

We didn't talk, or think, about the other parts of the circle of life.

Our intrepid cat, Fiammo, spent many of our first days here skulking around the property (and, by property, I mean NOT the entire fifteen acres, but rather, the boundary of the house and its porch) doing his best to appear important while chasing bugs and scooting under the porch at the slightest unexpected sound (woodpeckers, anyone?) Dido kept hopefully asking him if he'd found anything--"Did you see a mouse, little boy?" and so on. I was surprised and secretly delighted, assuming that contrary to what I suspected, not every cat is born to be a great mouser, or, even better, our barns were not, in fact, housing plague-carrying rodent colonies.

Then, two mornings ago, while Dido and the Babe were outside supervising the Puppy's morning gambol (the prelude to her satisfying pee and poop on my kitchen floor), I heard a shout of glee and Dido came barreling in through the dining room. "LOOK MAMA!! LOOK!!!" I didn't really have to look, because the glimpse of gray fur in the palm of his hand -- did I mention, IN HIS HAND???-- was enough to tell me that Fiammo was at last fulfilling his feline destiny. After some vigorous soapy hand scrubbing and a compromise burial at the root of an oak tree ("You CANNOT put him in the trash, Mom. You CAN'T.") I heard another shriek of delight.

The Puppy trotted up with something stringy, brownish gray and vaguely slimy trailing from the corners of her smiling mouth. "Look, Mom. We do have frogs."

Indeed. We do.

Our story thus far

After an epic journey--through the highways and byways of Google, mind you, merely to log in to this &*(^^%))_ blog, I am back. As per usual, I've been doing a great deal of FANTASTIC writing in my head. Not so helpful for my loyal readers. It's late, and I've had too much white wine (with a very good, if not great, shiitake mushroom risotto the H and I enjoyed for dinner, accompanied by incredible parmesan smuggled upstate in an enormous block by our dear Jerry. Up here, it's $17.99/lb., and just ok. In Little Italy, it's 30% less, and divine. God bless Jerry, and the Italian cows.) Due to the hour and the wine, this will be brief, but: we are MOVED. Not in, mind you, but moved.

Wildly unfurnished and unpacked, highly disorganized, but we are here. Dido loves his new school so much that it makes me wonder what the hell was wrong with the old one. The Babe is so lonely that every time she sees a child near her age, she stalks them through whatever public place we happen to find ourselves in, until they take pity (on me? on her?) and deign to converse. We've gotten several phone numbers this way. If I had had a lonely two year old daughter back when I was single and dating, I would likely have gotten laid a whole lot more. We are all....adjusting. The H has had several nervous breakdowns, but is now seeming to get into the groove of empty streets and pleasant service people. I'm waiting to make a friend, and remembering how truly hard that is, when you are starting from ground zero. Is it the sweet woman in the funky rug store? The mother of the boy Jordan has become smitten with at school? I don't know. I had a moment of real loneliness this weekend, but mostly, I am ok. I look out at the fields and hills and woods and sky that surround our home and I cannot believe I am allowed to live this way.

Best.Toy.Ever. Or, (Feminine) Hygiene Begins at Home.

The morning, the Babe and I left home, hair wet, clothes barely on, bleary and disheveled, to meet the lovely men of Russell's Moving and Delivery at the H's office, to move his office furnishings, computer and so on back to the house in anticipation of M-Day. Because of his back surgery, he's not allowed to drive, lift or bend, so there was no point in his coming, and he cannot be alone with the Babe--hence her participation in this whirl-o-fun.

The men had already called to tell us they were ready and waiting at the old studio lot where the H has been working these last few months--45 minutes early. I was still sitting at the kitchen table in the fuzzy grey robe the H loathes trying to mainline my caffeine when the phone rang--it was Cesar and his crew, letting us know they were there, waiting for me. Ah. But Russell told me 9 a.m. In about 8.4 minutes, I made Dido's lunch, got dressed, brushed my teeth, grabbed snack, diaper bag and Babe, and raced out the door, to get in my brand new object of lust car (the one I bashed into the Westside Range Rover Mom yesterday, yes, that one) and race off to meet them. Mind you, no one races in Los Angeles at 8:45 in the morning. Gridlock is everywhere; you drive accordingly. But I was only five minutes late, the Babe was strapped into her stroller and behaving in her most charming, flirtatious manner (and when she's on, she's on) and the security at the lot couldn't have been more helpful, or the movers more polite or careful...all was well, progressing ahead of schedule, even. Beware, oh overconfident one. After twenty minutes of watching the movers pack the H's stuff into boxes and arguing with me over whether or not my wallet, and the cash within, were appropriate playthings (you can guess the sides in that debate) lovely Babe morphed--and that word fails to do justice to the immediacy of the transmogrification--into Banshee Babe, screaming, throwing herself on the floor, kicking, beating her tiny clenched fists. Desperate to get through the next seven and a half minutes more or less mentally intact, I went fishing in my purse.

Thanks to the ugly orange bible, my purse is now scarily organized--three different zippered mesh pouches hold make up; my "office"--pens, cards, notebook, stamps, white out, and the like--; and emergency supplies (which include, of course, dark chocolate.) The make up bag is always the favorite, so I started there. Want to help mommy put on lipstick? (First of the day--what the hell, live large!) Nope. Want to look at yourself in the mirror? No way. But then, she saw it. Her eyes dilated, the corners of her mouth stopped pressing themselves down into the ground and perked up. Mascara? Lotion? Some other mess-making opportunity? No, no. Nothing so public domain. A tampon. OB Super, to be exact. Her smile like an arc light, she clutched the object of lust tampon in her hand, and proudly showed it to the moving men, who focused on the fascinating question of how to move the carpet protector under the desk. Only when she started screaming at the injustice of being strapped into her carseat a quarter of an hour later did the Babe throw it across the car floor, its obvious charms faded, its magic betrayed. Next time she throws a tantrum while the H is charge I think I'll suggest this remedy and see what he does.

Synchronicity, and the count down accelerates...

We are nearing M-Day in earnest now, not only is it impossible to turn back, but we are hurtling downhill, legs powerless against gravity or will. In 9 days, the truck with our belongings will head off to New York, and 3 days later, the kids and I will follow. The H will stay behind until his surgeon deems him fit to travel, via first class only. Thank goodness for frequent flyer miles. The only remaining big logistics are moving our cars (which basically means choosing amongst a bunch of different shipping companies) and getting my family files (you know, tax stuff and so on) in a semblance of order which will allow them to be moved and then unpacked without creating the appearance of a Staples store having exploded inside my new house. I hate filing--always have--when I was an "assistant" (that's Hollywood-speak for a secretary) at a film production company, I would let the filing pile up until the mountain was so high that I had to come in on the weekend to get it caught up. Pathetic. My home office is no better.

Meanwhile, as the H complained to me the other day, I've had about five different going away parties with different sets of friends, and I've gotten increasingly tearier at each successive event. Today, I woke up with not just the cold I caught from Dido the other day, but a full blown flu experience, body aches, fever, and so on. In the midst of this, I went to the car dealer to trade in my old minivan (yippee) for my new station wagon (yahoo.) All went fine until, having returned home with the car, I decided to run down to the market with the kids, and, as I pulled out of my (blind) driveway, a car came flying down the wrong side of our narrow street, tried to beat past me before I could pull out, and I bashed into her door. My bumper is scraped, as is her driver side door--neither too badly, really. But the Angelenos who are reading will understand when I say it was a typical Westside mom, driving a Range Rover, accessorized like a Barney's ad, dressed like a teenage guest star on The O.C., and unable to deal with the situation without immediately calling her husband on her high-end cell phone to ask him what to do. His first plan of action was that she call the police. I said, if that's what you want to do, fine. We can all go in my house, and I'll call them. I suggested that maybe we exchange insurance information, and get on with our lives, a suggestion she happily took once Husband agreed that in fact, perhaps law enforcement wasn't necessary.

The only good thing about this experience is that, like some others recently, it reminded me of exactly what I'm wanting to escape in Los Angeles--people who value affluence over competence. And, by the way, that's not true of any of the many, many people I adore who live and work here. This city is full of amazing, smart, creative, profoundly good people. But I can't take the chaos or the pace that surrounds those good people any more. I have done lots of things to create oases of community around me in this city, and I think I've been largely successful. But the larger environment is what I don't have the fortitude for any longer. I wonder if, really, I ever did. From the minute I moved here, I felt that I had moved to a foreign land, one where I might never quite speak the language well enough to pass for a native. The funny thing is that instead of going back to someplace I already know, I'm going someplace I barely know, and to a lifestyle (rural) I have never lived. My shrink's first reaction, when I announced our move, was that I was running away from internal irritations, not external ones. I suppose that remains to be seen.

Time flies, until its back goes out

Some of you may remember, from my last post, oh, nearly an entire month ago, that our happily little family has been planning a move. Rather a big move, all the way across this screwed up country of ours, away from the endless sunshine and relentlessly toothsome vanity of Lotus land to the dreary, gray, homespun humidity of nearly New England. Well, we're still moving. At least, three of us are. The fourth isn't moving so well these days. Two weeks or so ago, the H, busy readying himself for another day of typing for dollars, had the temerity to cough. Said cough has been his undoing. He has a herniated disc. He will be having surgery. We are moving in 21 days. Feel my pain, because his is too excruciating. Mine is merely existential.

Fourteen inches

Snow, you gutter-minded readers. Snow. At the new house. And to answer others' questions, yes, those outbuildings are ours, too. One is an old dairy barn, which sometime in the last half century was converted to an 18 stall stable. I do not have 18 horses. I do not know anyone with 18 horses. Madness, you ask? Entirely possible, especially given that the other building (the one without the gorgeous arched roof) is the largest indoor riding arena in the county. I don't think there's any medicine that will heal this particular disease, though the book our dear friends gave the H for his birthday yesterday may help. Barnyard in your Backyard. They win the birthday prize for this year, for sure.

The snow, part 2

So for those who've wondered, our bucolic future home is not, I repeat, not, subject to lake effect snow. It did not receive the frozen largesse bestowed upon, say, Oswego county, where I presume people had to tunnel their way out of their front doors, though I wonder to what end, because where the hell can you go when the snow's that high? I grew up in Chicago, where six foot snowfalls occasionally happen, and I remember the serene stasis I felt as a kid when I woke up to a world buried in white. (The operative thought in that last sentence is "as a kid", because I was young enough that the snow shoveling duties didn't fall to me, so the snow was fun and beautiful, not a heart attack waiting to happen.)

While my new house's snowy blanket may be relatively lightweight, the temperatures have been frigid--well below freezing for several weeks now. Again, this is an environment I lived in when I was a kid, but it's been a long, long time. By the time we go back east to close on the house in early March, it will likely be a bit warmer, but probably not much, and I hope the icy blast on skin and into lungs doesn't make us again question our sanity. I'm sure mid next winter it will, but I hope we get some perspective--glorious summer, gorgeous fall--to carry us through.

Meanwhile, I am inching towards our departure, feeling underwhelmed by the logistical implications and sad about the emotional ones. We cannot possibly spend focused time with all the many people we love here, and I can already feel, subtly, some of them pulling away as our disappearance gets nearer. This is an interesting turnabout for me, as I am the queen (or, perhaps, the empress) of disappearance and withdrawal, so to be on the receiving end, and to feel not hurt, exactly, but certainly sad, is, I am acutely aware, fair (and ironic) play.

Have I mentioned we're moving?

As the lovely Mieke noted earlier this week, we had a blast of spectacular 80 degree weather here in Los Angeles, just in time to make me question my sanity, the H's sanity, the wisdom of all my supportive friends, and the honesty of our upstate NY real estate broker (who keeps telling us how great it is there.) She, in her infinite wisdom, sent us this picture of our soon to be home, just as I was going upstairs to change clothes because my legs were getting too sweaty in jeans and I needed to put on a cotton skirt (and shave said legs) immediately in order to survive the heatwave. Truth be told, I hate 80 degree weather almost any time of year--the only place it should be that hot is in Hawaii, so I say to the cold: Bring it on.

Warning-housewife-y post to follow

Remember the organization mission? I bought the book that added to the clutter that overwhelms our living space and irritates my irritable spouse? Well, the book, as it turns out, may be more than just more clutter in an ugly orange cover. (I like orange. But not "Books for Dummies" orange. Their graphic designer should be--I don't know. Forced to look at pictures of puppies in flowers and motivational posters with his eyes held open a la Clockwork Orange. But that's mean, and as usual, I digress.)

Today, motivated by avoidance of an even more onerous task, I decided to clean out the bathroom cupboard. This is really almost a closet--six feet high, three feet wide and nearly as deep. It stores our towels, assorted toiletries, lots of OTC medication, random freebies from cosmetics counters and hotel bathrooms, a footbath, a heating pad, a hot water bottle...I could go on, but I'll spare you. With much of our house looking so good (it being on the market and all, and therefore needing to be presentable at the drop of a broker's cell phone) the bathroom, the ugliest room in the house by far, has really been bugging me.

So the book says, when cleaning out a space, here's what you do. Promise yourself at least fifteen minutes with no distractions. (I almost got distracted when I found the magazine basket that we'd shoved into the cupboard at the last minute before the open house--there was a Rosengarten Report in there, after all, but I held myself back.) Get five boxes (I used grocery and garbage bags) and label them--trash, fix it, put away, pass on, mystery. (I love that last label. I could use more stuff for that bag, but that's a subject for another post.) This seemed dopey, a waste of time, but I was following directions today (maybe inserting order into my life as a defense against the stress brought on by the impending State of the Union Address? Bush speaking always makes me twitchy--the H and I dealt with it by ignoring the speech entirely and going out for sushi and sake. Ahhh.) and so I did it. All except for labelling the trash bag, which seemed like overkill.

Then, you take everything out, and one item at a time, place it in the appropriate bag. If you haven't used it in a year, maybe you should throw it away. If it's broken, can you--will you--really fix it? Or is it trash. If you haven't used it in a year, and cannot bear to throw it away (I hate throwing stuff away) can you pass it on to someone else who could use it now? And so on.

Ok, the dopey system--genius.

In twenty minutes, I threw away a giant bag of trash. Loaded a small bag of stuff into my car to give away to a thrift store. Sorted kids' meds from adults', organized my and the H's toiletries into separate sections in the cupboard, put all my hair stuff (I have lots of hair, and therefore lots of stuff) in one drawer, put all my nail polish (for someone who gets manicures about five times a year, I own a shitload of nail polish--what's that about?) Do the rest of you know about this? Is this one of the obvious, un-secrets of the universe that my mother failed to share with me? Have I been going through life like someone with lettue in her teeth while the rest of you point and stare, because I just cannot see my own insufficiency? Ok. I'm breathing.

I found all the extra cotton pads (five sleeves of them), the missing box of Q-Tips that led me to buy a new box last week, three (three!) bottles of a hair conditioner I like (I guess I kept thinking I'd run out and bought more? Who the hell knows.) You get the idea. If I were more of a freak, I'd take a picture of the damn closet and make you look at it. It's that good. But I'm not that bad. Yet. But who knows what will happen when I read Chapter 3.