You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November, 2008.
Res Ipsa Loquitur is a Latin phrase meaning “the thing speaks for itself.” It’s commonly used in tort law: when something is so obvious, so clear, it can be presumed to have happened.
With that I present this picture, snapped by my biochemist sister while we were all out shopping this morning.
Downtown Seattle, day after Thanksgiving. This is the city that raised me. Is my latte dependency then any wonder?
Being home is like slipping into another life, another realm where days pass slowly, where stress is low, where the computer says 7:15pm but you know it’s wrong and you’ve outwitted it; you’ve three hours on the day still because that’s just how we roll on the west coast.
I love being home, in this home, where the air is clean and the skyline sharp and all the license plates match (Washington! And look, there’s another one! And another! Every car in the parking lot has a Washington tag! Ah, the simple pleasures of the very easily amused).
I haven’t been back here for Thanksgiving in so long that my mind is tricking me out and telling me its Christmas; I keep falling into moments of crisis thinking of the many, many gifts I haven’t yet purchased. Or, honestly, even really thought about (ahem).
I’ve never been really good at shoring up my gratitude, as the holiday so boldly asks us to do. I’m thankful for so very much, and I know that if I were to sit down and list it out, I’d probably melt from the unfairness of my good fortune, my happiest of happy lots in life.
The year’s been good to me in ways I didn’t see coming.
My last Thanksgiving was in New Orleans, visiting family friends of J’s; it was lavish, and exciting, and I remember proclaiming such thankfulness for that relationship; “the real thing, true love,” words I juggled around without really understanding what I was saying. Or maybe I did; maybe I used those words as band-aids to patch a growing rift, to seal a coming chasm of unhappiness I didn’t want to acknowledge.
Months later I look back on the emotional wreckage that relationship became and I’m so thankful for my strength. For my ability to stand up for me, to believe in a better happiness; I’m thankful I found that courage I didn’t even know I had. Thankful for the friends—the real, true friends I’ve made—who’ve provided me more of a sense of place in DC than I ever imagined, and who’ve helped me find my way again. Thankful for my wonderfully quirky family, who’s so absolutely perfect and so wholly functional. For the mom that buys organic, non-antibiotic happy farm turkeys, and for the sister who doesn’t think I’m a total freak for photographing their little sign. For the dad who makes his amazing mashed potatoes, and without solicitation does all of mom’s dishes, glass of wine in hand. For the love that just radiates from this place.
The turkeys are coming. As the sun begins to drop behind the mountains, the trees are positively glowing; the deck is washed in gold and pink, and the lakes off toward the horizon fade into a purple haze. In this moment, the world is a fantastically beautiful place.
The world is too much with us, or so the poet said, but honestly sometimes the world is just plain too much. The Mondays that drag on. The stupid mistakes that keep mounting. The tears that just eek out, slowly, mischievously, as the hours march past; maybe just one for each thing that’s gone wrong over the past months, but it’s not till you release them that you realize how long it’s been since you’ve really cried. How long it’s been since you’ve admitted that it’s HARD to be tough all the time. It’s hard to be happy and content all the time.
You’re the one single girl at a dinner served between two tables, and some unlucky couple has to split so you can sit down. You think another glass of wine will work its magic, dull the pain of solitude; but then wives start talking about babies, about life how it was “when we were first married,” and those fears you thought you’d quelled long ago come bubbling back to the surface. Fears that maybe marriage isn’t in the cards for you. That maybe children won’t be yours. That maybe you’ve wasted your twenties chasing butterflies and/or your own tail and now that it’s time to settle down: well, look around you.
You know better than to get worked up about it, and you know that these fears are missile-locked on the worst case scenario. But on nights like tonight, it takes all the strength you’ve got just to pull yourself home through the rain, to wait to melt into the utter sadness of it till you’re on the other side of your door.
You set out what you need to pack to go home, and it’s lost its luster completely: the trip, the holiday, the food. ”Pack,” you say. The suitcase does not cooperate.
You trudge on, because that’s what you do. You line up some sweaters, and your running shoes (optimistic). You wash your face, and crawl beneath the duvet. You know that tomorrow will be better, and you’re pretty sure you’ll feel differently. But you know that unless you write it down, you risk forgetting: this wasn’t easy.
Things to Not Do Before Your Morning Coffee: Grocery Shop edition.
In today’s adventure, our heroine Magda will demonstrate the necessity of caffeine to a dependent brain as she attempts to posit herself the Mediterranean goddess of houseguests. She will prepare two appetizers—hummus and spiced eggplant dip on pitas—for a Bible study dinner tomorrow. Let’s have a look.
It all started out very well, of course. Shopping list in hand, I hit up the Trader Joe’s after church. This shopping list was created first thing when I woke up. That was the first problem. The second was that I don’t think the effects of coffee hour quite hit my brain till much further on down the line.
But believing myself well enough equipped to proceed, I took up that shopping basket with gusto, and got right to it on arriving home.
It’s both a blessing and a curse that I live a block from the Whole Foods. I’d get to the point in the recipe where it said “chop the onion.” I’d be all, what onion? And back to the store it was. This went on for a fair bit; ingredients that I swear were invisible were suddenly called for. Those checkers really love me, what can I say. Really love me. (That or they think I’m insane, and isn’t it nice to humor this poor mental girl, but I’m going to go ahead and discount that theory in its entirety).
And then the garlic. I needed 6 cloves of garlic, between the two recipes. When I came to around 11am, I was rather surprised to find seven heads of garlic in my shopping bag. I’m good at garlic. It’s one of my favorite ingredients. I looked at my list first, eager for a finger to point, a scapegoat of “I was just following instructions,” a reason for this monstrous miscalculation; but there, at least, I got it right. “6 cloves garlic,” it said, scrawled in my unmistakable hand.
Curious.
Garlic, they say in the East, is a cure-all; a medicinal substance perhaps mystic in character. It restores health, and youth; well-being, and balance. I love the taste and spice of it, and usually up the clove count by one or two. That explains the seven. But seriously? I’ve garlic to bring good health far into the new year now. This, at least, a happy consequence.
Also happy: the dips turned out marvelously.
Perhaps it’s fair for me to aspire to Mediterranean goddess after all. Though next time, perhaps, I’ll factor a Starbucks run more favorably into my calculation.
There are plenty of reasons why I love Nordstrom. Love as in love to a potentially unhealthy degree.
Platinum Visa? Check.
Rewards points from Platinum Visa that let me buy crazy expensive designer jeans for the low, low price of $27.12? Double check.
Seattle-based business? Of course.
I was just over there at lunch (hey, it happens), and the spark was rekindled big time. Bust out your flame-retardant pajamas, people, and we may need a fire hose.
A sign in the window:
At Nordstrom, we won’t be decking our halls until Friday, November 28. Why? Well, we just believe in celebrating one holiday at a time. Happy Thanksgiving, from our family to yours.
Exactly.
In the paper on the way to work this morning, I met the happy news that the American History museum is FINALLY set to open tomorrow; it’s been closed for renovation since before I moved here. That’s, like, years and years.
I’m a total dork-style museum girl, when I find the time to spend a Saturday on the mall. One of the greatest things about the museums down there is that I don’t have to have a whole Saturday, since they’re all free—even if I only have an hour or so, I can pop into an exhibit, feel all enriched, and move on with my day. I love that. I love that art and culture can be that accessible; that visiting a museum doesn’t have to be an all day marathon event because damn it, I’m getting my $15 worth. (yeah, that’s been me on occasion. Lots of occasions, in fact. Rather takes the fun out of it).
And then this headline. “Smithsonian Talks Admission Fees.”
Oh come on. “A questioner suggested that the Smithsonian couldn’t afford to continue offering free access to its museums on the National Mall during tough economic times.”
I’m pleased to note that the response, according to the article, “was a round of boos.” Had I been there, I’d have joined right in. I might have even stood on a chair and shook a fist. That’s just outrageous. I understand operating costs, and I understand overhead; but the Smithsonian is America’s museum. This is the collection of the people, for the people. You can’t put a price on that.
Then I come in to the office to learn that my boss has opted to “work” from home again today. Via e-mail time-stamped 1:24am (?), he writes to tell us of this decision. “If you could get some more stuff written that would be great,” he said. Because unfortunately we can’t all lie around in our pajamas and drink beer and watch law and order, which I suspect is about the agenda for his day.
So I write. Here, and maybe later for him.
The day is off to a booming start.
And he’s a real bitch. Something like old man winter, in fact. I think these two ne’er-do-wells may be in cahoots around here.
It’s suddenly cold. Really, really, pea-coat-and-scarf cold; cold such that the whipping winds make my eyes water intensely and I’m practically the tragic heroine of my morning train in.
I do like the winter. I like the crispness in the air, and the anticipation of the season. Winter means mashed potatoes! And turkey! And Christmas!
Christmas, aside from the snow and the sleigh and all, also brings bonuses. Such joy to be a working girl! No more finals-tainted holidays, no siree; not only will you pay me to sit here all day, you’ll actually reward me for it. Brilliant!
They sent our advisories last week. Woooo, big money!
But they made the deposits today. What the !?!
At first I wasn’t sure what that blip was in my online banking window. Someone’s given me money, I thought; cool. It wasn’t really near the number on the advisory. In fact, it was 39% less than what was in the advisory.
It’s embarrassing to admit that it took me a little while to formulate that conversion. I was all, okay, I can do this: pitiful deposit is what percent of promised sum? X over something? Basic algebra, what? It’s a really good thing they don’t pay me to work with numbers.
But seriously, taxed at a rate of 39%. That seems a bit unfair.
In the end of course it is free money; especially in this sad economic climate, I do not complain at all. I just wish they would have withheld their “You’re great! We love you! Thanks for your hard work” fluff around the number, and just cut to the bottom line.
I’m looking at a bumper sticker propped up on my bookshelf now that says just this: conserve water, drink virginia wine. Words to live by, if you ask me.
I cracked a new bottle tonight with an old friend of mine; a girl called Nancy, which strikes me an as an incredibly archaic name. Adorable, yes; and strangely fitting. Still, it seems something along the lines of an Agnes, or a Eunice; a twenty-something introducing herself as “Nancy” is strange indeed.
Nancy was a year behind me in college; a junior to my senior, and to the biochemist’s freshman, year. That’s really when my biochemist sister and I became friends, in college; by something of a happy fortune, she went to the same well-known-nowhere-but-the-northwest college as me. Every Friday, we had a standing Starbucks date. “That’s so cool,” all my friends would say. “She’s really like your best friend.” In a lot of ways she fit that role. This the girl I once wished dead, suddenly my confidante. The biochemist and I have had our differences, and in so many ways we’re opposite people, driven by very different things. But largely owing to that year, I think, I love her with a ferocity I have never before known.
Nancy was our common friend.
This was her second trip to my home. The biochemist has never been here.
Granted, Nancy didn’t come to see me, per se. She was here on science-y conferences (DC yields well to that), and visiting her grandparents. Our grandparents aren’t here, and of course we must remember that the biochemist has gone and married herself off and all. But still.
“I’m worried about her,” Nancy said. “I hear the effort it takes her when she says she’s happy. I hope she is.” I’d noticed that too, but brushed it off. So what if I won’t get to see you on Thanksgiving, and wow, it really sucks that your husband’s entire extended family is coming over to your apartment and expecting you to cook. Sorry Washington passed a no-cell-while-driving law, so I can’t talk to you on your freakish two-hour commute, and sorry you’re independently supporting your little marital unit, but still doing the grunt work. Sorry I called at midnight here, because yeah, I’m still awake, and woke you guys up. (Seriously, you’re 24 and in bed by 9?).
Maybe I’m not paying close enough attention to detail. Maybe there’s something to be read between the lines—or in the lines themselves, if I’d look a little harder.
Here’s an exercise in being rational / reading comprehension, a la SAT: I received yesterday the following e-mail from Japan Man (last written about here). I’d written him a total catch-up e-mail; told him all about my life, and said that I missed hearing from him. Ill advised, magda; so heartily ill advised. But something about that Virginia wine said “send.” And something about me listened; and it was all over.
It’s been way too long since you’ve written for me to give a timely response. Sorry.
That’s what I got back. And he was right, of course; it’s been at least a year since I wrote him anything of substance. What right have I to think that I can just enter his inbox, start running my mouth again, win him back (when I’m pretty sure I never had him in the first place, and this is just a fleeting whim of an idea of What Life Might Have Been)?
Foolish girl, I said. Foolish.
I fired off a “hey, don’t worry about it, sorry I was being ridiculous”-style e-mail. Then I deleted the conversation. Apparently my gmail thinks I’m British, and has taken to calling my Trash folder “Bin.” But really, that’s neither here nor there.
The point is, I read it again tonight, straight from the bin, after Nancy left. I think it’s possible I misinterpreted it.
It’s been way too long since you’ve written for me to give a timely response. Sorry. This is only to say that I’m so glad to hear from you and that I’ve been meaning to write back. It is no casual letter that I plan to compose and so I’ve not found the time, though I should have. Proper email to follow…
He meant that I wrote so long ago that any response on his part wouldn’t be timely; that he apologizes for not writing sooner; that he is not, in fact, recoiling from my missive. Foolish girl encore.
He and I have nothing, of course; no future past occasional correspondence. But given the context, I feel he’s taught me a valuable lesson. Don’t just give it a first look. Read the whole story. Consider the context.
Call your sister tomorrow at a decent hour, and make an effort to connect with her next week; hold her in your heart and hope she’s really all she says she is. You’re the one who should know.
I went on a rather ill-fated search for dirt this weekend.
A few weeks back, I took a snipping of a plant from the rectory where my Catholic ladies’ group meets. My plants are all dying, you see; it’s very sad. I suspect that this is the product of several related factors, the first of which is, of course, my general plant-related ineptitude. Also, the plants I have (er… had) are difficult. Orchids, mainly, all of which withered and died most gruesomely. I also own something called “kalanchoe blossfeldiana.” This stranger originally had orange and red blossoms, and the directions seemed easy enough—water and sunlight, essentially. I gave them just that, but in no time at all the blooms were clogging my vacuum, dead and/or dying on the carpet. The lot of them have evolved most alarmingly into a tribe of horridly spindly, floppy things. Terrible.
It wasn’t always like this. I once even considered myself something of a plant genius. A real live two-green-thumber. I think this delusion was all owing to my miracle-plant.
From about seventh grade on, I was in proud possession of this amazingly hard-to-kill leafy vine; you could forget to water it over your month-long college Christmas break, say, but spritz the wilted remains on return? Presto change-o, we’re back in business. My sisters still keep it and its later-born offspring; it’s doing well, I’m told. Heathy and green and upright, and all that. Now that’s my kind of plant.
When I saw its likeness at church, I snatched a piece (with permission! Of course with permission). These plants are so hardy that even a random whack will just start growing roots if you put it in water.
My Most Blessed Catholic plant was doing just that, happily sprouting its own in a juice glass. It was doing so well, in fact, that it was really time to transition it to a proper pot.
Now, pots I have a plenty, owing to the above-named casualties. But orchids don’t really grow in dirt, and besides, I wanted something with all the right nutrients and vitamins and everything. Get my plant-baby off to a bounding start, and all that.
Easier said than done!
The billion-dollar question du jour is this: where does one go to buy dirt? I know we have a giant bag of potting soil back in the garage at home. But how does one get the same in, say, an apartment in Alexandria, a country-scape away?
In my experience it’s impossible. It’s not in the grocery store, even in the fancy one with a whole floral department. It’s not at Target. It’s not at CVS (arguably a longshot to begin with). And … yeah. I don’t even know where else to go. There are probably nurseries around, but that’s when I got to thinking.
Dirt. I am trying here to convert hard American currency into actual, literal dirt. “Self,” I said, “you are being Ridiculous.”
I did then what any slightly-crazed girl would do. I took a serving spoon and a Ziploc, hid them in a larger Barnes & Noble bag, and marched on over to the park surrounding the Alexandria National Cemetery. And I dug.
I felt like I should have gone in the dark of night; gotten some night-vision goggles and been all clandestine and covert. Alas, it was just me and my spoon, digging up the pebbled ground like I was five. I had this whole story concocted, in case a dog-walker or inquisitive jogger happened upon my trespass: “I’m helping my sister with a school science project,” I’d say. “She’s collecting soil samples from different parks in the metro region.” Brilliant! But efficacy unknown; I met no one.
I potted my darling once I got home (feeling, I might add, oh-so-resourceful and fabulous). I poured a glass of wine, procured at a vineyard a few hours out earlier this season. I finished off the last of the surely shocking number of dishes I managed to dirty baking a sweet potato pie Saturday afternoon.
Long ago, the sweet potato was called a “Virginia long potato” or “Virginia potato,” Fannie Farmer informs me. Southern states take pride in this very American pie.
I was kneading the pastry dough as the southern rain beat against my windows, the splatters coordinating with the pushes of my palms, the shuffle of my socked feet on the cold tile.
Pushing aside an empty plate, I sit back and survey the progress I’ve made in this place.
There within the native soil, my plant’s roots—and maybe mine, too—are finally grabbing hold.
Virginia. At last, I feel, I have arrived.
On account of the fine men and women who count themselves among our veterans, I had today off scott free: a jeans and pigtails day, a day where the obligations were nill; a day where I could sleep in as late as I wanted, peruse the wide Internet at my leisure, and hop a train downtown merely because time so cordially afforded it.
I take my life for granted too often: as an American, as a resident of this capital city, as an educated woman with no door closed to me. Today is a marvelous occasion to remember; to be mindful of my freedom, my opportunities, and the cost at which they came.
I don’t get down to the mall nearly as often as I’d like. When I moved here, I had these grand notions of weekends at the monuments, leisurely strolls past the Supreme Court, and living history as a part of my daily fabric. Ha. Ahahaha. My day is alarm clocks and coffees, metros and dull office walls. Laundry; dishes; mindless television. Bars and people who, ignoring often alarmingly politico persuasions, could be anywhere. Life. Reality. It happens.
Today I stepped out of that life. Today I counted myself among the families and photo-ops, the uniforms and decorated servicemen from conflicts past; a face in the sea of rememberers as I walked the monuments and memorials again for the first time in what must be nearly a year. (Word to the wise, it’s a long walk. Longer than it looks. Wear tennis shoes. Really.)
I talked to my grandfather, who served in Korea, and said “thank you” for probably the hundredth time today. I should call more often.
It would be a lie to say that my eyes didn’t tear up a bit. But it would be an omission not to say that I was glad.
