Noah

Of course it's poor Ham
Who dabbles in meat eating--
The rest are vegan.

Rabbit rabbit!

"I have love for the footless, for the bipeds too I have love; I have love for those with four feet, for the many-footed I have love." Aṅguttara Nikāya 4.67

Today's Horoscope for Libra

Sometimes I see the words that appear in my docket for work on a given day as a kind of fortune cookie or horoscope. Today, on this dull day of cold gray skies and ice-drizzle, among my words are "aimless," "doubtful," "scattered," "shuffle," "unfit," and "unwelcome."

Some Things I Like To Do

Cry: Oh, I just remembered this book I loved so much when I was a kid, and I spent about twenty minutes trying to find it online based on these search criteria: "Dog in kennel while family goes on vacation. Family dies in car crash. Possibly a Dell Yearling book. SO SAD." And I found it: The Visitor, by Gene Smith. Just look at that description, "When his master dies, Sassafras, an Irish setter, becomes a permanent resident of a kennel." BOO HOO HOO. I think I must've first read this book when I was around nine years old, and it became my go-to book when I wanted to bawl. It's funny to abruptly remember this, and to realize that one of my favorite activities, sitting in a movie theater--or in the privacy of my home with a book in my hands--with tears and snot pouring down my face, has always been one of my favorite activities.

Yell: Here's a good way to test out a possible name for your future child/ren: Holler it out loud, like you're calling the child in for dinner from your fictional back yard. I have done this to amusing effect with both sexually transmitted diseases ("Chlamydia! Come inside this instant, young lady!") and fonts ("Garamond! Helvetica! Dinner time!"). Just a suggestion. And note, I successfully named my own children Isaac and Zoë.

Walk/Listen: We have a houseguest these couple of weeks, cousin-auntie Lulu the hound dog. She has been a perfect guest, aside from one or two mornings when she decided she was ready for a walk at five AM. I've enjoyed taking her for a long stroll mid-morning every day. She sniffs all the smells and pees like a boy while I listen to a podcast. May I recommend Judge John Hodgman, in addition to my various NPR and pop culture favorites? It's adorable when a loud truck drives past and she bark-howls at it. She's so little, when you're used to a big old Gusdog.

Muse: I'm going to try to write in this lil' blog more often, because I'm feeling mute. I think it's the weather, which I've solemnly sworn (to myself) not to mention. I can sum it up, and my feelings about it, by mentioning at this point my suspicion that we may skip spring and summer this year and go right to fall. In which case I am moving to the desert.

Watch: Please go see The Grand Budapest Hotel. I loved it so much. And maybe you'll enjoy the web series High Maintenance as much as I do. And perhaps you'll grow to love The Bridge, as I have despite my initial reluctance (I wanted to watch the original, set on the border between Denmark and Sweden, which Mark thought sounded much less interesting than the American version, set on the border between El Paso and Juarez. "Why don't you want to watch it?" he asked, and I was all, "I don't know. Just, Mexico."). But it's pretty great, if dark and with the chopping of bodies and their parts and so on.

I like the beach. I like dogs. I am tired of always wearing these boots, and this sleeping bag coat.

What Freezings Have I Felt, What Dark Days Seen

It's a shivery, blustery day. The kind of day a person might think, "Some people live in the desert. Some people live in Florida. Some people live places where spring starts to show its face in February, where flowering trees are what March is all about." I'll admit, I feel a little complainy today as I watch the flurrying snow blow sideways past the window and huddle in my warmest wooliest sweater wishing we had more pellets for the stove. Drinking so much tea, for the hot cup in my hands.

A few days ago I bought flowers at Trader Joe's,* and after I put my groceries in the car and returned my cart, I came back and didn't recognize my car because there were flowers in it.

If you look carefully--really carefully--at the photo above, you can see there's a cat in it.




*Also, I had my favorite cashier at TJ's, the one who finds any excuse he can to give you a high five.

(Almost) The Mud Season of Our Discontent

There was a day, a part of a day, when the universe felt perfectly in balance, so that every single person I love was, at that moment, utterly content. Even though there's no possible way I could know that to be true, still I believe it.

These two are adorable. I like when he says, "It's a weird life, to travel around singing every night and have people look at you."

We've been watching season two of The Americans and slowly working through True Detective with Jason. Both are hugely satisfying, much better than our previous attempt at family TV night (the terrible American Horror Story: Coven, and the genial-but-sleepy Life on Mars).

I can hear Mark cleaning something upstairs.* There is a cat looking at me. I made pumpkin waffles this morning, unwisely following a recipe that was heavy on the cloves and light on the ginger and called for probably a third of the amount of flour necessary. Still! They had chopped toasted walnuts in them and tasted pretty good, once I added lots of flour, with just the slightest numbing clovey aftertaste. Isaac is out with his sweetheart.** I love when I get happy texts or Book-of-Faces messages from Zoë at two o'clock in the morning.***



*It's the bathroom. It is totally my turn to clean the bathroom--he's done it at least the last three times.

**He would object to my vocabulary and the very fact of this sentence. Let's see if he still reads my blog, shall we?

***Usually it's a Tamil or Hindi song/video/poem/joke.

Rabbit rabbit!

If March had a tagline, it might be "Well, it's better than February."