Well, now!

Here it is the 21st, and I still have not finalized my Christmas menu, nor have I sent Christmas cards. Ever year I think, "we should send homemade cards" and I even have a drawing, but it involves seven linoleum blocks, so it will have to start around September, when it is just too hard to get into the Christmas spirit.

Oh well.

The good news is that we are going to be able to spend a whole week in Sacramento with my parents, something that has made Amalia positively giddy. Grandparents are great. They spoil you. They want to spend a lot of time with you. And when it comes time for discipline, they hand that off to parents, making the parents the bad guys. That's me: Babbo Spoilsport.

I remember those days fondly. Now I get the other end of the stick, and I have to say it doesn't annoy me nearly as much as it should. In fact, I find watching my parents interact with Amalia just about as much fun as watching Amalia interact with her peers.

Today her school had a field trip where all three of the kindergarten classes went to an old folks home to sing. They were all dressed festively, and were on very good behavior.

It is something that we read about often, and probably think about, too, but if you really want to do a good deed, go visit (singing is optional) someone in one of those homes. For me it is always a little sad, though, because I remember when my own grandparents, who I was very close to, had to go into one of those places, as they needed medical attention far beyond what we could provide.

But those memories are not entirely maudlin, as there were those times when I would visit my grandfather, who had completely lost it in terms of his knowledge of time-space, especially after my grandmother died, and he would delight in telling me all of the things that he did that morning. Now, these were generally culled from a lifetime of happy memories, and weren't humanly possible to do in one morning, but the nature of his dementia was that they were as fresh as the sunrise, and having someone to tell them to was almost as fun as the things themselves. In his memory close friends who had been long gone were there, fishing, working on iron, building things, etc.

I still miss them, and know that they would have loved Amalia (and vice versa). My grandmother died right before Christmas eleven years ago, and my grandfather died a couple of weeks before our wedding, ten years ago. I still think of them every day, whether it is because I find a neat object (they were constantly picking up treasures they found on their long walks), or because I am using my grandmother's old work bowl, or my grandfather's anvil (he made it himself from a piece of railroad track).

I also think of my grandmother when I am cooking, as she definitely disapproved of the direction my cooking was going in: all that French influence seemed to her like superfluous garnish on the good, wholesome Italian food she loved. She never minded the Chinese or Mexican influence, though. But when the cream and butter came out, she would give me that "what do you need that for?" look. And God forbid I did something as crass as stirring pasta, rather than tossing it.

Of course it paid off. I might like the exploration of the nouvelle cuisine, or the sumptuous splendor of la grande cuisine, but when it comes time for comfort food, it must be straight from the Tuscan hills.

Breakfast in Bed?

I was up late again last night, until about 1:30, working on a particularly difficult painting. By the time I stumbled to bed I was fairly exhausted, but in that very good way of knowing that you are tired from spending energy on something worthwhile, seeing progress happen, etc.

I can't say how long I was asleep, but it couldn't have been over fourty five minutes, Amalia climbs into the bed. Fine. Cold night, and all that. I don't even mind that she thinks that the most comfortable place on our bed is on my neck. However, not content to just sleep at, oh, 3 am, she asks how long before breakfast.

"Amalia. It is still the middle of the night. If you are going to stay here, lie down and get back to sleep."

"Which one of you is going to make breakfast?"

"AMALIA. Right now, neither of us. Go back to sleep!"

"OK. I'll make breakfast for us, then. What will you have?"

"AMALIA! Not now. One of us will make breakfast around 6:30. GO BACK TO SLEEP."

She sits there for a minute.

"I'm not sleepy."

"Then go play in your room. Or go to sleep."

At that point exhaustion totally overcame me, and I was not about to get worked up over such nonsense, so I went back to sleep. I guess Amalia finally went back to sleep, because when I got up to make breakfast she was asleep (on our bed).

Next time I am going to say, "fine, make breakfast for us, Amalia."

It would be interesting to see what she would come up with.

It's Time Once Again For Crap Reduction

Sometimes I think of Crap Reductions (also known as Large Item Pickup Days courtesy of Alameda County Waste Management) as being exercises in weight loss: if you jettison 200 pounds of detritus in your garage you win. This time it was also a question of volume, so the eight broken chairs that I have not gotten around to fixing (mainly because the most fixable chairs are bloody uncomfortable when fully functioning, but also because IKEA has perfectly comfortable and generally well-designed chairs for a Jackson) win more points than simply their weight.

Of course many people see Large Item Pickup Days as Crap Acquisition Days (aka Holy Moly! Free Stuff!). It is amazing to watch the cars materialize out of nowhere (we aren't advertising). And, frankly, I am more than happy to see fixable and perfectly functioning yet obsolete stuff end up in good homes. For us this especially meant baby and toddler stuff that would not withstand another little one without significant work, which, when you calculate the time it would take, is probably not worth doing (how many hours to fix that mass-produced children's rocking chair that Amalia has outgrown? More than would justify keeping it, when another one could be had cheaply when needed).

Also, there were the small items that were white elephant gifts: tacky stuff from distant relatives that would not be worth the time to post on eBay and such like. Fortunately the demographics in our area jump on the frilly, overly gold stuff that folks assumed we needed (a silver-plated domed butter dish? For an olive-oil gobbling family of wops? Never used. Picked up within ten minutes of my setting it out there).

Of course the question that begs an answer is: how much of this stuff will appear in someone else's Crap Reduction Effort? It will, naturally, be picked up by a third scavenger, and the cycle goes on.

Anyway, I highly recommend getting rid of scads of junk. Remember: anything you no longer have will not need to go with you next time you move. That thought will make me sleep extra well tonight.

Five Turns Around the Sun

Happy Birthday, Amalia!

Overheard at the Secret Base somewhere on 13th Avenue in Oakland...

Melanie (observing all of the little shampoo bottles I have from various hotels): we have so many of these little shampoo bottles, it's kind of funny.

Erik (thinking to himself): you just wait until I build a wall of empty pimenton cans.

Deo Gratias

We are back in Oakland. Melanie's grandmother has made a miraculous recovery. The internal bleeding stopped, apparently by itself (after about five units of blood were transfused), she lost about 25 lbs. of fluid, and was moved out of the ICU today. She looked better today than she has for years, and is eager to be home, which should happen tomorrow morning. We rushed up to Redding Saturday expecting the worst, and are overjoyed to have the best case scenario play out.

Thanks to all who have offered prayers for her.

Ah, there is an inflitrator in my house...

So I was beginning to write a little rant on virility: on the need for Catholics to stop whining like that little twit Donahue and to instead take action when a-holes like Savage get out of line: you know, the old broken pool cue and castor oil treatment. I was planning on writing about how modern man has become soft, unwilling to resort to fisticuffs, even when one is dealing with an irrational, unrepentant heretic. I wanted to write about the restoration of virility in the public sphere: for men to wear beards, to eat roasted meat, to hunt and fish, to smoke cigars, to drink single malt Islay Scotch, and to listen to the music of Bach and Scarlatti, shunning the fussiness of Mendelssohn.

And then I realized that I was wearing a necklace made of little pink, purple and yellow plastic beads, and that a purple unicorn in a onesie was sitting on my lap. I immediately realize that I have an enemy agent in my house, one trying to subvert my plan from the inside. Right now she is riding a Pegasus rocking horse.

You have to watch that little one.