I would stand on my dignity, but it wouldn’t add anything to my height

Every time I see the word “organic” I hear it in Alice Krige’s voice from her role as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact.

Every time I see the name “Ramirez” I hear it in the voice of the Kurgan from Highlander.

The actor who played the Kurgan was in Cowboys and Aliens, an exceedingly silly movie that was just right for a sleepy Saturday night accompanied by pizza.

“Hey, it’s that guy!” I said when he came on screen. “From Highlander. He played the kudu. The Cromm. The kookaburra. You know.”

When I say I can’t remember anyone’s name, I mean it.

PS: I couldn’t find a clip of the Krige, but you can see the kookaburra/Ramirez thing here, at 1:08ish.

PPS: I keep thinking of more of these.

When I see the name “Agrippa” I think of “He has a-studied hees Agreepa” from Princess Bride.

It is possible that the following sentence has been uttered in my house: “I’m easily startled; but soon I’ll be back, and in larger numbers.”

A Classic Virginia Phrase: “Eat, Papa, eat! The children want a fat Santa!” Sadly, this is not *actually* from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It is a paraphrase. But if I say it often enough it will come true.

A food story

In October of 1991, as a Wee Baby Thing Fresh from College, I moved to Chicago. This caused my parents a great deal of distress, but it turned out pretty well: I ended up loving Chicago (still do); I moved into a gorgeous, affordable apartment with roommates from college; and I lucked into a fortuitous arrangement to get my stuff up there from North Carolina. Once in Chicago, I started temping pretty much right away and soon got my first-ever grown-up job.

I lived just north of Clark & Halsted, and if there is a good place for a freaked-out young lady to live, it is the heart of the gay district. That soothed many of my worries. It was close to Action, close to cute shops and restaurants, and our landlords were friendly and protective. My roommate M was one of my best friends in the world, and my roommate K was organized and calm. My job wasn’t so awesome, but what did I know about the subject? I was a not-savvy 21. It was okay. I had big dreams of Making It in the Theatah (that’s a story for another day).

So my boyfriend of the time, who became The Unlamented Starter Husband, is not someone I want to blog about because why speak ill of the Long Ago and Far Away, but one small point he had in his favor was a sense of food adventurousness, and at the corner of Clark and Halsted was an Afghani restaurant. At that point in my young life, it was a little amazing to me that an Afghani restaurant even existed, much less in a place where I could get there. What I remember about the meal: it was super good, especially the appetizer, which was some kind of pumpkin thingo with meat sauce that blew my tiny mind.

That was when the internet was still a tiny baby, and if I took notes on what I ate, it’s in a journal packed way in the back of the attic, so for the next 20 years I thought periodically of the Afghani pumpkin thingo but never successfully searched for it. I will admit that when we went to war in Afghanistan, my first thought was “oh no” and my second was “pumpkin thingo.”

Cue about 3 weeks ago, when my friend Rosa asked on her blog what dishes people considered their specialty. One person posted about kaddo bowrani, and I used the mighty power of Google to find out what that was.

Pumpkin thingo!

Tonight I made it. I had roasted butternut squash, not pumpkin (reheated in the microwave with a bit of sugar and cinnamon). I had pasta sauce, not tomato sauce, and leftover Roast Beast, not ground beef.

Even bastardized, it was worth waiting 20 years for. AND I have enough left for lunch tomorrow!

Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow

What a quiet Christmas we had. I was mostly organized this year (discovered on Christmas Eve that I had neglected stocking stuffers for several people: oops), and the Wickeds didn’t arrive until the 26th. I took time off from 23 Dec to 2 Jan.

I made a nice Roast Beast dinner on Christmas Eve. On the 25th, we had a very quiet day to ourselves. I Skyped with my mother and sister, and later we spent some time with Dingo’s mother, brother, and sister-in-law. Very chill and pleasant. Even having the kids here has been really relaxed and low key.

And I looked forward to it, for the first time in several years. I liked having the tree up (though the lights on the top half gave out not long after we put it up). I liked watching all the old, goofy movies. Pro-tip: avoid the 1992 remake of Christmas in Connecticut.

Still, there has been a lot of weeping. A lot of wistfulness, a lot of missing folks who are no longer here in body. This makes me grateful for how snuggly the cat is when the weather is chilly. On my days off, I’ve been taking a lot of walks – the nice, leg-tiring kind, with carols playing in my headphones. Wish I’d gone this morning, when the air was opaque and the trees dripped from fog. Now it’s clear and sunny. Lovely, but not so much in keeping with my mood.

There were plenty of good things that happened in 2011: my trip to Greece, my new job. But I’m not sorry to see it end. In this in-between time, this quiet, I haven’t let myself set any goals or make any lists. I’m trying to be here. To listen.

Dear Universe: ow my bahookie

My beloved pal Captain Awkward recently wrote a post about “derailing,” which included a conversation about offering up unsolicited advice.

My internal response to that was “oh dear.” I found myself chewing on that idea and becoming suspicious that I might in fact be prone to, as I later put it, “booting up the Idea Factory before anyone has placed an order.”

The next week, I offered up some advice to an online acquaintance who said, in the nicest way possible, “Please don’t assume I haven’t thought of that already. I was venting, not seeking advice.”

Lesson: demonstrated! I thought, score one for self-improvement! Let us move forward, Virginia, a better person!

But since that time I have been the recipient of double handfuls of unsolicited advice, usually on a topic that I have brought up as a joke.

Oh Universe, I get it. I do! Listen without intruding! Okay okay!

Quick update

I keep wanting to make posts that are either (1) long or (2) picture-heavy, and then not having/making the time to write them, which = no posting! Which sort of negates the whole point of blogging!

So here is a random list of things that have been floating around in my noodle:

- I got a new job in mid-August, which was an excellent and badly needed thing. I still often feel that I have no idea what I’m doing, particularly with big writing projects, but I do a lot of tutoring of baby scientists and helping them with their writing, which I deeply enjoy.

- One of the picture posts is an update on our beautifully tiled bathroom. Some day, we may even fix the floor. Imagine!

- Last night I finished a knitting project and realized that I had NO IDEA what to start next. This, my friends, is what comes of being a little *too* organized with the holiday crafts.

- Speaking of holidays, I’ll have to post a picture of my Christmas tree again this year. The lights have permanently gone out in the top half. DANG it looks terrible.

- Just finished off the last bowl of an excellent pot of soup (I added hot sauce, potentially a sign that I have lived in Texas too long), so now I have both a knitting and a soup deficit. Situation critical!

- I have become one of Those People who drink plain hot water. What the heck. (not instead of tea, in addition to)

- The autumn was quite bad. I had a mean bout of depression, the criminal mastermind behind my long silence. I’ve crawled up out of my hole (I was in it so long I started to furnish the dang thing), but I dropped a lot of good habits while I was stuck. So here I am flabby and out of writing practice, flapping my arms in irritation at myself. I know one can’t help depression, but it sure is annoying.

- We went to Lights in the Heights over the weekend with some friends and had a terrific time. One of the things I dislike about living in the suburbs is the lack of pedestrian friendly, neighborhoody things to do, and this hit the spot. Choirs (vocal and handbell), bands, quartets (string and brass), “pretty lights,” and excellent company. I do love me some Christmas lights.

How’s that for a quick and dirty update? (not too dirty) Now I’m off to sip some hot water and write about RNA interference. Schmancy!

Hither and yon

I find travel so relaxing.* The minute I walk through the doors of the airport I’m like Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, drawling “It’s beyond my control.”

Long security line? Oh dear, nothing to be done about it. Plus I have mah-jongg on my phone.

Flight delay? Good thing I have my Kindle.

Layover? Well, that’s why god made knitting.

No actions can be taken on my part to change any of that, and I LOVE it. I just sit back and let it happen, with my knitting, my Kindle, my notebook, and my giant paper cup of off-brand tea. Why get annoyed? It’s beyond my control.

If I’m late – well, there’s nothing I could’ve done to change it. If I need to take a cab from the airport, okay. If I’m late returning and I can’t get back to work at the scheduled hour, what are you gonna do? Yell at me? I couldn’t fix it. I’ll make up the time. (This is no longer applicable in my new position. My new boss is not a yeller.)

So relaxing to be Not In Charge.

*Some exceptions: (1) when I am traveling For Sad Reasons; (2) when I really to need to be somewhere at a specific time (as when I snuck into town for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago and my sister’s window of opportunity to pick me up was limited); (3) transoceanic flights (too long: they wear me down to a grumpy nub).

Good news!

Remember this post from May, in which I talked about the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation and linked to the group trying to win a fruit orchard?

They won! That is so great.

Holy moly the last vacation post!

This is appropriate, because I also just finally finished the final chapter of the freelance job that I took on specifically to pay for this trip. Jeez louise.

I will start with the trip home and move from there to Venice, because it’s better to end on a happy note.

While we were sitting in the airport waiting for our flight, I spent a happy few minutes buying Weird European Candy (I am very interested in Snack Foods of the World [particularly Prawn Cocktail Crisps]) and “Espresso to Go” for Mr. Dingo Jones, which turns out to be teeny-tiny square containers with straws attached to the bottom so little I would go past itty-bitty and call them idgy-bidgy.

Anyhow, in the container is a mixture of espresso and chocolate, and three sips made me run around my living room in circles for 30 minutes. (I am a delicate creature.) (ha)

After we sat down to wait, we eventually became aware of the conversation of the people around us. First it was a litany of all the things they had purchased. Then about how much money they had spent (let’s just say more than 10 grand). Then about how smelly and unhelpful “they” are. Then about how backward “they” are to not have air conditioning everywhere.

THEN HOW AWFUL THE ITALIAN FOOD IN ITALY IS.

We got up and moved to another part of the gate area.

Maw and Paw of this group were seated behind us, and Paw unfortunately was a Seat Yanker, so every time he got up to move around, I rode a small carnival ride. ALSO he did not like my putting my seat back ever, and the way I knew that was that every time I did so, he would ding the flight attendant and have HER tell me to put my seat up.

Then Maw and Paw discovered how much they had in common with the folks across the aisle and yelled back and forth to each other for quite a long time about “them” and “their terrible food.” An excerpt: “And they think they know better than you do. I mean, even when I asked for extra meat in my meat sauce, they didn’t give me hardly any, so it was practically all vegetables! Haven’t they heard of customer service?”

Oh, and we had a 2-hr delay on the runway at Greensboro, NOT our airport, because of storms. I have been to Europe twice now, and both times I have gotten off the plane at home in a mood ready for killin’. Just to warn you.

Still: at least we didn’t see any Stereotypical Ugly Amurkins until the tail end of our trip.

And now: Venice!

The ship docked, and unloading was an admirably organized process. We were among the last to leave, because we were staying nearby (out near the airport). The drive out to the hotel was interesting: farmland pushes right up against the edges of the city. I approve of this intelligent notion. We stored our luggage and took the train back down into Venice. Hooray for public transportation!

Holster bags, check! (That’s our hotel behind us.)

Venice was HOT. And crowded. At first we milled around aimlessly. We bought a map and a limonata. Finally Mama decided that she could get us where we wanted to go (basically, everywhere).

We got kind of lost. But the best kind of lost.

Here are the obligatory Grand Canal shots:

and

It’s very beautiful. We found our way to St. Mark’s eventually, but the line was very long, and it was so hot and crowded that we went back into the alleyways where we had wandered before.

Instead of grand canals, wee ones:

We wandered on shady streets

and even saw some laundry.

(I love that photo.)

THEN we decided that we had to eat or risk the grumpies and vowed to stop at the next likely place. The next likely place was Trattoria da Nino. Lucky us! It was filled with Venetians, including one lady I want to be when I grow up. She wore a linen fedora. She had a lorgnette. “I want to be her,” I said. “Of course you do, she’s totally weird,” my sister said.

Have you noted a certain consistency in my photo sets?

Not from a barrel, but very good. And we ate pizza.

Mine was the mushroom one in the back. All I could do was sit over it and shake my head. I hadn’t realized what pizza was supposed to be. I mean, I love a pizza. I have a whole song about pizza and wine that I like to sing. This was … amazing. I just don’t even.

We bought jewelry and handbags, and didn’t buy other handbags that we regretted not buying later. All the Venetians macked on my sister. It was dark and crowded and damp-smelling, except where it was bright, hot, even more crowded, and damp-smelling. We stuffed gelato in ourselves.

It was glorious. I loved it. I want to go back, and back again. One (long) afternoon in Venice is not anywhere NEAR like enough.

Back at the train station, we were early, and I bought Weird Italian Candy (see above). I was trying to get rid of my change. I just found the box of balsam pastilles that I bought the other night, haven’t even tried them yet (will report back). We collapsed in the hotel bar for a bit of wine, then ate in the hotel restaurant, where again I was made speechless by my bowl of pasta.

In the morning, I was made squeaky by the yogurt. What IS it about the dairy over there? I couldn’t get enough of it. I drank actual glasses of milk. I had a cup of coffee out of the goofy automatic coffee dispenser, and it was GOOD. Instead of bitter sludge, it tasted like coffee smells. I keep saying that next time around I want to come back, along with everyone I love, and live in Andorra so we can be close together. Also near the good coffee and the excellent dairy. So plan ahead for your next life. We’ll all have to learn how to ski.

And in the airport, I finally found a good souvenir for Dingo.

Olympia!

If you have met me for 5 minutes during an even-numbered year, you know that I am a honey-roasted nutbar about the Olympics.

Our dear boat tootled around to the Peloponnese, to the town of Katakolon, which is about as big as my foot but has a deeply dredged harbor because it’s only about a 40-minute bus ride to Olympia.

Our tour guide was Emilia: little, fast-moving, impossibly chic. Not the world’s biggest fan of repeated bathroom breaks. She was great.

Our bus driver seemed to feel that the line down the middle of the road was a running guide, not a lane demarcation, and that the speed limit was half the actual recommended speed. I kept seeing tiny houses by the side of the road, like spirit houses, with icons and candles in them. Emilia said they were to mark the location of wrecks.

There was a spirit house about every 20 feet.

We passed the town of Pyrgos and drove through a bunch of tomato farms and vineyards. We saw a shepherd with a crook guiding a bunch of sheep around. (Why yes, I did get slightly excited.) We saw Romany children begging at a stoplight. The bus driver stuck his head out the window and yelled at them.

We wore headsets during our tour of Olympia, and I know Emilia told us lots of interesting information, but most of what I heard was a loud major-key chord of angel choirs echoing in my head the whole time.

Would you like to see some piles of rocks? Yes you would.

How about a column?

That’s a reconstructed column from the temple of Zeus. It is ginormous.

Temple of Hera, anyone?

Many of the stones, being limestone from an ancient sea, are filled with shells.

At one point we were standing under a magnificent tree, drunk on the sweet scent of it, with tiny white flower falling into our hair and down the necks of our shirts. It was heavenly. I asked Emilia what kind of tree it was. “Well it’s an olive tree, of course!”

My sister even took a picture of me under that tree, looking as if  I need to stand up straight.

Then we left the nice shady bits (FILLED with tourists and Greek schoolchildren) and went to the stadium. If it hadn’t been so hot, I’d have run a little, but you’ll have to make do with this:

You kind of have to. I never ran track. Shocker, right?

Then we went to the museum, which was entirely brilliant, but I will just link to a couple of photos because there are better ones elsewhere on the internet.

A bit of foreshadowing: when we got to the museum, several members of our tour group broke out into loud complaints about the lack of air conditioning (“what kind of country IS this? how do they LIVE?”) and the crowds. I’m not entirely sure how a person goes to Olympia and expects to walk around in solitude. We were so annoyed. We were more annoyed later.

ANYway, the museum houses a lovely statue of Nike

And the very famous Hermes of Praxiteles. Emilia described baby Dionysus in this statue as “anxious,” and it’s one of my favorite sound bites in my head: AHNKH-shee-oos. She also strongly recommended that we check out The Holy Butt of Hermes.

Nice, right? (Note to self: start working out.)

At one point, I was standing to the side perusing crumbly old objects when I noticed a super tall, gorgeous-looking dude staring off with a “bow-chikka-bow-wow!” expression on his face.

“Niiiice,” says I.

Turns out he was staring at my sister.

Awesome.

Then we bought up gobs of souvenirs at the gift shop, including tzatziki mix, tremendous herbs, and tiny statues that now live on my dresser and my desk. We rode the Fear Bus back to Katakolon and found a table in the shade at a restaurant right on the edge of the water. Mom and I ordered a a liter of “wine from a barrel” (according to the menu). It was good. Really, really good.

We had feta (lower left corner), souvlaki, and fried eggplant chips that are the first eggplant I’ve had in years that I enjoyed. They were outrageous.

Then I had my ego smashed flat.

There was a cat,  you see. A pretty little cat.

She wanted FUDZ and I had one bite of souvlaki left. So I held it down, and she came over to eat it.

“Nice, jerk. Where’s more?” she said. I thought “errr,” then held down a bit of potato.

That cat sniffed the potato, looked at me, put out her claws, and smacked the potato straight out of my hand. My response was a frantic search for a suitable offering. I held down a bit of the very good bread.

She didn’t even bother to sniff it. She knocked the bread out of my hand and looked at me with scorn more withering than that of my first mother-in-law.

In so many ways, I am unworthy.

kittyyyyyyyyy!

Ahem.

Then we walked the streets of Katakolon and came back with approximately 19 bags apiece. We were so sure we had solved the Greek debt crisis all on our own.

That night, our next-to-last night on the ship, I threw myself dramatically onto the floor to protest the horror that was The Up Bed.

Guess what I found? A trundle under one of the other beds! It had been there the whole time. It was MUCH more comfortable than The Up Bed. Ay yi yi.

We spent the next day trundling around the ship and resting. I went to the casino with my mother and discovered that I apparently make all slot machines wish to crawl away weeping. She said she had never lost $20 so quickly – less than 5 minutes.

The next morning, we awoke in Venice.

(As usual, most pictures are my sister’s.)

Delos

Some day I might actually blog about something other than the trip I took 3 months ago. Shocking!

But seriously, now. Delos blew the top off my head. I was Not Right In My Mind (even more than usual) for about 6 weeks afterward, and my internal landscape has permanently shifted.

Our ship docked at Mykonos, and it was about a 45-minute boat ride to Delos through that lovely blue water, with small, austere islands on either side:

The entire island is an archaeologic site. The only people allowed to stay there are scientists, who live in small houses clustered together at one end of the island.

We climbed off the boat and saw this large bed of crazy succulent plants:

We had an excellent tour guide. I’m not sure he meant to be as funny as he was, but he was very “Greek pride, y’all!” Here you also have a view of my mother Paying Attention and me probably looking at a plant.

This post is late in coming, because I’m not sure what to say about what went on in my head on Delos. When the poem I wrote about it finds a home and gets published, you’ll get a hint of it.

It was hot that day. The chamomile and wild herbs made the air thick with a green scent that I can still smell if I think about it. It’s a slightly mad scent.

And the houses, the streets are so well-preserved that they don’t look like piles of rocks.

It’s easy to hear echoes of the busy town that used to be there.

And it’s so small that you never forget you’re on an island, the whole of which is sacred, one big temple.

With ghosts looking out from the shadows of houses:

(can you see them?)

A theater with excellent acoustics

And reminders of how long the years have been:

Just when I thought I might pitch over sideways, we stopped in front of the temple of Dionysus, with the penis-headed chickens and 2-foot high balls. Seriously. And THAT was a whole different kick in the head, to be reminded that poetry is also about laughter. That the madness of Dionysus is sometimes just silly.

There are two mosaics that made my head buzz like a robot with a shorted fuse. One outside:

In this one, the winged Dionysus rides a tiger. The one in the museum

shows him riding a leopard. I didn’t get a picture of that one, because by that point I had Pop Rocks inside my head. Mom and my sister were exhausted and hot after our tour through the museum, so they had a sit-down while I climbed the hill up toward the temple of Isis:

I didn’t make it all the way up there, unfortunately. Fortunately? By the time we got back to the ship, I was on the verge of tears, so I stayed back to take a nap while Mom and Sister went shopping. Poetic Readjustment is exhausting. When they got back, they excitedly told me all about how they had met Johnny Depp, which turned out to be this cat:

And here’s a token picture of Mykonos, because I understand that people who are not me think it’s just as interesting as Delos. (I guess those people don’t have Dionysus for a muse.)

Then we sat on the deck of the ship for a while, still in the heat but at least in the shade. Mom and Sister slept while I knitted on my friend A’s kilt hose. A huge ferry came in, and for many minutes I heard a woman’s voice on a looped recording that lulled me into a doze of black wool, sun on the water, her voice. (Still Readjusting in the background.)

And just in case you think I’m exaggerating about how I went crazy that day, check out my photo at dinner:

Told you. I had a good whack of Bonkers. When I got home I spent over a month with almost no sleeping or eating because of ALL THE WORDS falling out of me in huge clumps. It was rather disruptive.

Also, I have forgotten to mention that each night on the ship, we got a towel animal. You know who loves a good towel animal? My sister.