my travel journal... offline

highlights of the day:

It's not just allergies - I'm getting a cold. If I don't hold a kleenex to my nose every few seconds, snot drips out uncontrollably in large hideous spatters.

The lady in the seat ahead of Moomin, at the end of the plane ride, leaning over to tell us that he is an amazing child, so cute, we are so lucky, he's so well behaved. He did not kick her seat. I might as well have won a Nobel Prize. Watch me swell up! I know, it's insufferable of me, and you're all hoping that someday Little Lord Fauntlemoomin ends up in jail for forging checks.

I read "The World Beyond" by Karen Traviss. Dim memories of reading... maybe an excerpt of the first book of this series? I will go back and read the others. It was a good book - an alien contact novel that made me think about the book "Just and Unjust Wars" so much that I am ready to bet 10 bucks that Traviss has read and studied it. I am so crass as to wish for more hot alien-human gene-exchanging polyandry sex scenes. I was slightly annoyed at the ass-kicking cop girl having an unconvincing moment of insecurity about her hair and being unsexy. Maybe if I knew the character better from the first two books. At that pt. I was like, oh, screw it, I don't care about her anymore, give me more of the isenj spider guy, Ual, and the cute, scary, little-girl alien bipedal seahorse matriarch-in-training, who reminded me of Squid's daughter Iz. It was how she kept jacking the U.N. around over the comm link. Iz would totally do it just like that.

I enjoyed the Miracle of Food. I'm stunned with happiness that I can eat without keeling over in pain. How did I even live through the past month or two? It was horrible! It's still not better but now just on the level of "hmm, my stomach kind of hurts" annoying. I can totally deal with that. My god, in Montreal two weeks ago I could barely WALK.

I am 114 pounds. Not on purpose. It does not feel healthy - I have not been this tiny since before I hit puberty at what, almost 15 years old. When I was that weight I did not even have boobs beyond the mosquito-bite-nipple stage. At this point I'm so fucking emaciated I don't even need a bra. What sucks is, you know how anorexics don't get their periods anymore? You'd think I'd get a cool side benefit - but NO. I've been bleeding like crazy for 2 weeks! fuckity!

In line for a taxi at the airport - two little girls taught me a variant of "Miss Mary Mack" and a new rhyme which I have mostly forgotten... I re-taught them Miss Susie.

Our cab driver, when we said we were going to Far Rookaway, snorted derisively. I was dying to know what he meant by that, but didn't ask.

Moomin is, by habit, skeptical of anything we claim is going to be "fun" or "an adventure!" Astute of him.

Instant hullabaloo upon our arrival. I helped, and set the table a little bit, and then disappeared for a short "nap" - the sort of fevery haze where you just keep blowing your nose even though you're mostly asleep. Dinner, always rather gross, especially so maybe because I have no sense of smell or taste from the cold, and you have not been to Hell until you have sat with people with dentures who chew with their mouth open and one of whose cultural differences is that you are supposed to show appreciation for your food by slurping. Sort of like saying grace, but much longer duration. Kids all cute as hell. 3 cousins in bathtub. Mostly shoved onto air mattresses in the 3rd floor kitchen. The youngest cousin, Lollipop, has toilet trained herself completely at 23 months. (Except of course for competent butt-wiping - always a problem.) Moomin discovers Rook's ancient stash of Tintins and Aster1x and slips right out of reality. (I am jazzed! they were on his xmas list! ) Then, strangely, a mellow jolly moment in the kitchen with all the siblings in a delirium of exhaustion; we gossiped amiably about the character of the children. Everything startlingly normal. Everyone looks older than I tend to think of them; Jane's husband has notable grey in his hair. I was cheered by my nap and the prospect of Steph picking me up tomorrow to whisk me away. My nose is smeared with comforting vaseline. I am very proud of making a mitten-string for Moomin and sewing his mittens to it and stuffing it through the sleeves of his fabulous thrift store winter coat - for once I feel thrifty, wise, imbued with all momly virtues. No one has said anything mean about Rook's hair or his lack of ability to do yoga. Though I may be in the doghouse over here for not having finished my degree and the general uselessness of that degree anyway, and in general for dragging Rook into the gutter of low-lifes who don't have Ph.D.s and aren't doctors, due to the scholarly and bookish bent of Moomin (and apparently reading TinTin in bed counts as scholarly around here) I am exempt from any criticisms of my parenting as is Rook.

I did not blog about the pre-visit hullabaloo over where we all sleep. Last year, wtf? I don't even remember. The year before was the blizzard and the house was all under construction and we were in the attic bedroom while Rook's parents sucked it up on the air mattress in the laundry room. !!! all through the blizzard! i'm still traumatized from it. the next year i can't remember what happened but we got the attic again while the rest of them just duked it out somehow. This year there was a Thing where ... I'm still unclear on the sequence of events, but a lot of phone calls flying about. Ching-erh and Rook determined that someone should stay in a hotel and Ching-erh said it should be us but we should maybe switch off who stays in the hotel in order to spread the blame. (Because it would be frowned upon and it would be insulting...) Infinite recursions of who someone thinks might think or want what, but no one ever comes out and SAYS. Finally I just flat out refused to be on the floor on an air mattress. Chaos of phone calls! Swirls of guilt, echoing through the corridors! 7am phoen calls to me from Rook's dad, who is so polite, and seems under the impression that I am mortally offended for some reason he can't understand and therefore am boycotting their house. (aaaa! nooo! ) There are no hotels within 20 minutes of here! I thought it couldn't be true, but it is. In fact, we woudl have been near the airport, which is more like 40 minutes though it looks so close on a map. I said we would rent a car and buy a futon and set it up. Whoosh! Rook's mom obtained a futon on the weekend. How hard is it to consider one's house, and that there are 8 adults and 5 children, and realize that there are only 2 double beds and one single bed, and that won't work? Even with the futon, there is suffering in Whoville tonight as everyone in Rook's family is over 6 feet tall. The new futon is small even for me and I'm 5 foot 2. Rook's parents who as I mentioned are not short, are on a single futon in a tiny office. How do they do this? What's their deal? Do they discorporate at night, or merge into a single gruesome being, maybe hanging upside down in the basement...?

Well, I love them all... I am making sweet resolutions to be nice, helpful, play with the kids, etc.

I had a luxurious bath in the new bathroom. Either Rook's mom has the same taste in bath stuff I do, or it's 10 years of fancy bath stuff that we've all given her that she never uses. I reek of patchouli-ginger-mint-rosemary-verbena.

It's raining hard. The house is warm for the first time ever since I've known Rook's family. Usually it's a place where husky Manchuriians wearing icelandic wool sweaters briskly race around, red-cheeked and happy as if they are off to go cross-country skiing before going to herd their caribou and parachute off of Mount Chimborazo - naked - with blocks of ice strapped to their heads. And I huddle in blankets with a cup of tea, like one of those special genetically engineered "humming" mice who are bred to tremble all the time, or a tiny purple bird whose magnetic compass fucked up for the winter. What happened? Is it a mistake? Will tomorrow be chilly? I have 4 layers of clothing all prepared, and my leather pants to protect me from the rain.

When Rook came home last night from Ambercon, I was wearing my footie pajamas (which I will continue to mention proudly every day for at least a week) and his jaw dropped and he couldn't even speak. He just stood there gesturing at me with both hands open - like the illustration of Hatta in Alice through the Looking Glass! I ran and made him pose that way again for a photo but it didn't come out the same.

Comments

[elswhere]

Aaah! You're in NYC, land where my [grand]fathers died, land of the delis' pride!

so convenient that now you can eat, when there is so much wonderful FOOD there! Even out in Rackaway. Oh, enjoy.

[Jo]

Oh whew, you have internet. So!

[qp]

Dude, come to Manhattan and hang out with me!
Or, um, enjoy your thanksgiving! Yes, that's more like it.

[badger]

Aaaaaa! Dammit! email me your phone number! We must meet! why didn't i call you tonight? And I was JUST describing you to my friend Steph in the car. seriously just now, less than an hour ago! and I remembered you live in NY and was kicking myself... I had an idea to write up my draft of a poem and your draft and your response on my poet-blog (with your permission...?)

[qp]

ha! I sent an email to your gmail address. Is that the right one? Hm.