Muffled

Outside the store's window, the snow is sedately filling the air above the street, melting the moment it touches anything. There are no customers today. Behind the register, I'm knitting a baby blanket in fine-gauge merino for an old friend's newborn, and letting my own stillness fill me.

My wall calendar, newly changed to February, says "excavate," and shows hands on a shovel flinging up dirt from behind a mound of earth. January was "fix," with strong fingers making a tool usable again. Flipping one page too many, I read "resume," in March, but I tried not to see the picture. Time enough when we get there.

Bring on 2009!

Hi, all. I didn't really want to check on how long it's been since I abandoned you the last time I posted, but then I checked anyway: it seemed like a million years, but it turns out it wasn't quite two weeks, which for me isn't that long of a gap. The good news hiding inside my tenuous grip on the passage of time is that it got so busy at the store that it felt like there would be no end to it--even though, alas, I knew to treasure every single $1500 day. We were slammed, crazy-busy with lines of people at the register at the high points in the day. I haven't run the numbers on the month yet (the store's closed today) but I suspect I'm going to find we're still down from last December: everyone is, all through retail, and I don't have any reason to believe we're different, but it wasn't for lack of customers. The month started slow, and we didn't have as many large sales, but I'm pretty sure we had at least as many transactions as last year. This is good, whatever financial stuff comes down the pike. We're doing something right, if people in the 'hood are choosing to bring their dollars to us when dollars are scarcer.

I'm not going back to last New Year's Day in any kind of archival way, but I suspect, without looking, that it sucked royally, and last January went downhill from there. This year, I'm feeling okay. It's been a better start, anyway. I've been living my life pretty intensely these past few years, and 2008 was up there for intensity. In the lows I was a furious, sobbing, wreck, curled tighly into myself, unreachable: the highs were like sunshine and chocolate and swimming a mile and the feel of your baby's cheek under your lips. The work I did getting from the first to the second was really fucking hard, not that I was doing it alone--well, that's the point, that's what I had to learn how to do, to uncurl and let myself be reached, to trust the love around me. It's harder than it looks, this trust business. I'm hoping it gets easier, though, that this year the direction is uphill, not down. I'm hoping, I'm hoping.

Earworms, almost

This was in my head all weekend. Only the CAKE version, but this is the classic.




Now this is in my head.



(Sorry, couldn't find M. Ward.)

The news from your daycare co-op

Z. has been in a pulled-together daycare co-op a few days a week, with kids from another class at her school, just until the semi-permanent interim place opens in the middle of next week. I can walk her to the regular daycare location (currently closed for repairs). It's a drive to the co-op. It takes us just long enough to listen to this song twice, stopping the cd once to discuss the state of the snow on the ground, and taking time out between repeats to discuss Kermit the Frog's musical opinions.

Next week, driving to the semi-permanent place, I think we can probably memorize the song in one trip.

I feel almost like a commuter.

Pay it forward

This one has been going around and I love the idea of a meme that relies on self-tagging and results in an actual cascade of real items going out to strangers via snail mail, but requires no self-revelation at all. It just completely tickles me on so many levels. Magpie signed up for it at Dawn's place. I missed my chance to get in on the action at Magpie's, but she told me Dawn still had a slot open. I'd never read Dawn before, but I headed over and grabbed the third slot, and found someone new to read, to boot. (Hi, Dawn! Thanks for coming by and commenting!)

Cool, no? Or, rather, yes?

At any rate, I've been on a knitting kick recently. I have a large project well underway for Phantom, a small one just started for Z., and a mid-size one recently envisioned for A., but when those are off my needles there will be Things for Bloggers heading out in the US mail.

Here's the meme-y boilerplate:

“I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.”

What do you have to do?
1. Respond on this blog and give your email address so that I can contact you for your address.
2. Place this on your own blog and also send the first 3 people that respond something.


Anything else? No, can't think of anything. I think that's it, then. Your turn. Who among you out there wants to make and give away more stuff than you'll get out of the deal? Any takers?

Edited: hey, all, don't be discouraged by the number of commenters. At least three of them are from people not claiming spots!

Did Voltaire get cool or something?

Thanks, E. and oneofhismoms, for pushing my thinking in the comments on the last one, and I'm still pondering the yesses and the noes. For instance: blogland is a ready-made, boundaried "no"-space because, let's face it, if it were real we wouldn't be contrasting it with Real Life. Real people participate in it in real ways, OF COURSE, and real feelings get hurt and real friendships are made and real time gets sucked into the vortex and for some people real money is involved. But you had a life before blogging and most likely you will again someday.

So it's no surprise that a lot of yesses can happen pretty safely in blogland.

But what about those real-life noes of mine? The no of delaying insemination has clearly staked out a safe space for me. Some of these others, I'm not sure I know yet what's going on with them. They may not have any useful function at all. Yet I would like to find some redeeming reason for the ways that they're curtailing me.

Meanwhile, my statcounter has been showing a ton of people (well, a very tiny ton of people, but a lot more than none, which is the usual number) googling "Il faut cultiver notre jardin." Is there something going on out there in pop culture that I don't know about? Inquiring minds.

Yesses and Noes

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell examines what makes for good improvisational comedy. Apparently, the most important rule is saying yes: when someone throws something at you, you don't talk your way around it to stay on track, you accept it into your skit and if it knocks you off course ... aha! You have comedy. As I understand it, the improvisational yes is like a plus sign that creates a whole that is whackier and more magnificent than the sum of its parts.

A couple of months ago, I applied the improv principle and said yes to the presence of yaks on my lawn. Like a good improv game, it took on a life of its own and soon I had a series of yesses that led right out of the blog and took me in happy directions I couldn't have guessed at.

And yet, in my real life I am busy saying no. In fairly entrenched and serious ways.

My therapist has known me a long time, and ten years ago she suggested to me that I might want to experiment with saying yes. Given what I was working on then, it was an experiment well worth making, but what I have to work on right now is something really altogether different. I need to feel confident in my body and connected to my community. More practically, I need to lose weight, I need to get my finances in order, I need to pick up, dust off, and polish my mental health. And I have started applying myself to all of that by saying no first.

If we had stuck with our original plan for this year, I would either be newly pregnant or about to start cycle two this week. And thinking about being in either of those situations instead of where I am terrifies me. There is a principle in Jewish law that accepts abortion as a form of self-defense, because under some circumstances--not all of them medical--the fetus is considered a pursuer that is imperiling the mother. Given the unlikelihood of accidental pregnancy in my life, this has always seemed interesting but not of practical use. But I think that when I decided not to begin insemination this year, I was reacting to the specter of that pursuit.

So now I am thinking about the ways in which the improvisational yes depends on first staking out a clear, strong, boundary-defining no.

Bleary day

I think I must finally be coming down after the weekend--I actually slept last night for a stretch of maybe 6 hours. If I were a newborn, you'd call that the whole night. Today, I feel sort of flattened, like flat seltzer. The weather doesn't help.

I have three long, complicated posts underway, each of which has hit a wall. Not sure if anything will actually show up later on. A large part of me thinks I may need a night with P.G. Wodehouse and wool.

Voila

Yes, they are faint and could equally well be interpreted as Highland cattle, but the point is that I figured out the scanner.

A picture for the pixies

If anyone wants to take up temporary residence on the bench on my patio, here's what you'll see: