Ice cream and french fries.

I had a conversation with my daughter in Louisiana this afternoon. She recounted her Saturday, where the storms were raging and floods were rising--literal floods, this is not a metaphor--and at her place of business, the Saturday was unexpectedly and uncharacteristically busy. And even though she has been working out and eating mindfully, it had been a hard enough day that she decided she would get some ice cream. So she did, and she had had one spoonful before she got out of her car and, in so doing, the ice fell on the pavement. Like, splat. The kind of splat that makes you contemplate the meaning of things.

'So I guess that was the universe saying to me, don't eat that crap,' she concluded.

I think we had a brief moment there, out of respect for the fallen ice cream. And also for the lesson she drew.

Well, America: today the historian and I took one of our grandsons out for a birthday snack. He turned thirteen yesterday, which I think we can all agree is a momentous and historic birthday, one that deserves celebrating with whatever celebratory food the birthday boy designates. 

'Did you have cake last night?' I asked, as we sped toward our destination, the Iceberg Drive Inn, which specializes in burgers and shakes.

'No,' he said, 'I'm kind of taking a break from cake. We had ice cream sundaes. I've gotten tired of cake.'

TIRED OF CAKE? Oh jaded youth. Still, we were headed to the Iceberg for even more ice cream.

He got a cheeseburger and a butterscotch shake. The historian ordered a grilled cheese and some onion rings. I ordered a strawberry shake and fries.

Let me pause to note that one can get a regular size shake, or a mini. The difference in price is approximately sixty cents for your regular flavors--special flavors are extra. I thought to myself, mini? Will a mini be adequate? And also, Carter just got a regular. Do I want to go small? And if the difference in cost is so minuscule, maybe the difference in size is also minuscule. Regular isn't big. Regular is regular.  

And thus, I ordered the regular.

And also, so it came to pass that I ate ice cream and french fries at approximately four in the afternoon. The regular shake, it will not surprise you, was enormous. I shared my fries with great freedom and generosity. The historian had several bites of my shake. But I ate a good portion of it, because it tasted good, and also because there it was, being imposing and simultaneously frozen and potentially melt-y. 

'What would you think if I didn't take the rest of this with me?' I asked the brethren. 'I don't want to keep eating it, but if I take it with me I will.'

'My brothers would love to finish that for you,' said Carter. So we took it with us.

I admit it, I ate a few more bites whilst driving back home. But when we got there, I walked into the kitchen, and there was David, eating his after school snack.

'Do you like strawberry shakes?' I asked.

'I LOVE strawberry shakes,' he replied, fervently. And thus, the burden of the giant ('regular') ice cream was removed from me, and I just had to deal with digesting ice cream and french fries that I had eaten, in effect, as my dinner. 

I think what I am currently feeling is the universe's way of telling me: don't eat that crap. But also: happy birthday to Carter!

Happy birthday to this fine young man, a writer, filmmaker, wit, and a wonderful son, brother and grandson to boot. Birthday cheers to you, Carter--we love you!

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Mar 14, 2016 at 10:39pm PDT

Already,

we have taken a walk behind the house, past the train tracks, along the canal, and to the stone circle casually hanging out in a field, the fireweed ablaze. It is all so good.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Reasons to go again to Scotland.

wet weather is my soul's weather.

In Scotland, the weather is, currently, rainy. When we arrive next week, though, it is supposed to be
cloudy. Cloudy with partial sun.

this odd-shaped thumb of a country
I love love love.

Scotland is riven with lochs and rivers and crags. Like other wild mountainous places, Scotland cannot be navigated as the crow flies. If we want to drive from Aberdeen to the sea lochs on the west coast, and to the Isle of Skye, we may have to go along the north coast by way of Inverness.

The isles in the west: these are magical words. Hebrides, inner and outer. The Fairy Pools. Portree. The lighthouse at Neist.

causeway at low tide. I want to walk across.

When we're in Scotland, we may go south as well, into the north of England, to visit the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. You have to watch the tides--you can only go across from the mainland to the island when the tides are out, but you can walk--there's a pilgrim's way.


In Scotland, there are people I love, people I can hardly wait to see. In less than a week we'll board a plane for hours and hours and then we'll be there.

Aquatic life in Draper, Utah.

Today, we had a long-awaited trip to the aquarium. By 'long-awaited' I mean several days, since we've been plotting out our hither and yons since Monday. America, it is a long wait from Monday to Thursday, I'm sure you can see that. But today, we went.

It was magnificent, according to Gwen.

There was a certain amount of waiting around for otters to finish their naps already. Which they did not. The otters were basically in a pileup of nappery. Snap out of it, otters!

All of us--all--loved the shark tank. Personally, I could stand there all day and let the light ripple, let the sharks swim over me and feel that movement. All day.

This sea turtle was one of our favorites, too. It didn't seem fazed by any of the sharks.

The fish just kept moving, and we kept watching them in the cool dark shark tank room.

Outings.

Today I got to go with four grandchildren, a son, and a daughter-in-law all over the valley in search of fun and delights, and let me say that, with regards to this search, we were entirely successful.

We began by backtracking--my son had forgotten something he needed, so we drove all the way from the east bench to West Valley City. Fortuitously, they knew about the West Valley City Recreation Center, which is a grand affair that has a climbing wall, a fitness room, an awesome indoor swimming pool, racquetball courts, and a fantastic feature called "Edutainment" (not a great name, admittedly)--a play area with stuff and built-ins that's wonderful for all sorts of imaginative play, including a Star Wars themed 'Dark Slide' (get it? get it!?) that's, as my daughter says, 'like a MacDonald's Play Place but without the gross MacDonald's.'

The kids had a blast. After that, we went to In 'n Out, also very good, before going to the dollar movie.

A Brief Note In Praise of the Dollar Movie:  
I love the dollar movie, for it is, as advertised, all about movies for a dollar, or somewhere in the vicinity of a dollar. On a summer day, when you're taking kids hither and yon in search of fun and delights, the dollar movie has (a) movies, and (b) air conditioning, and sometimes (c) you are the only people in the theater, which means that everyone can just r e l a x. 

at the movies.

Which we did. We chilled at the dollar theater. We had with us one child, two and a half years old, who had never seen a movie in a theater. She was enthralled. She sat on my son's lap and watched with rapt attention for most of the movie, including clapping and cheering at the best parts, which made the movie--Big Hero 6, one of my favorites of recent mainstream animated films--even better.

Tomorrow, we go to the park and the library and somewhere for lunch. We will, I predict, have a great, great time.

Afternoon into evening.

While I was in Target today, I accidentally erased my to do list on my phone, including stuff I wanted to buy at Target. Oh well. I was moving like a shopping assassin on a shopping mission impossible, because I needed to get over to my daughter's house, because she was going to the hospital, because there's a baby on the way. Today, or tonight. Soon.

So since three o'clock, I've been here with the young ones. The historian joined me around dinner time (mac and cheese and broccoli, obviously). We played games and ate snacks and got in some roughhousing that made me--that's Grandma, thanks--a little bossy. And I got people baths:

Me: Gwen, do you want to take a bath?

Gwen: Nooooo!

Me: Do you want to take a bath with your toys?

Gwen: yes!

Me: (runs water)

Gwen: there's a dolphin...and an orca whale...and a humpback whale...(kerplop, splish, splash)

And Deacon showed me the ropes, like where the toothbrushes were and what drawer the pajamas were in, because he really really really wanted to play Zelda, and that couldn't happen until Gwen was in bed, i.e., with teeth brushed and pajamas on.

Watching Care Bears on Netflix. That's right: Care Bears.

'I'm playing outside. Close the door. I'm playing outside.'

Posted with Blogsy

Afternoon with Deacon & Gwen.

Today, I went to my daughter's house to be with the two children while she went to the hospital for a procedure.

A video posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Apr 17, 2015 at 5:17pm PDT

Gwen is in Deacon's bed & would like to play a minute. #gwenlife

A video posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Apr 17, 2015 at 3:53pm PDT

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Apr 17, 2015 at 4:08pm PDT

I had a great time. Gwen and I decided to have Hello Kitty temporary tattoos. Well, actually, I brought them--they were leftover from Valentine's day. I recorded the above for, you know, posterity.

I worried a little about my daughter, although everything went fine. On the way home, I let myself cry a little because, you know, you wish only happiness and health forever for your children, and these things are not always--ever, really--totally in your hands. Or in your hands at all.

Well, this is something to cry about forever. So I did, and then the historian and I went and got Thai food and now I have written this blog post, and this poem. I hope to sleep until I wake up (recurrent Friday wish) and to get a pile of grading done tomorrow. And see a movie, because, you know, the weekend. And movies. They go together.

Perspectival magic.

Today, I read this in the New York Times and it resonated hardcore:

Failure is big right now — a subject of commencement speeches and business conferences like FailCon, at which triumphant entrepreneurs detail all their ideas that went bust. But businessmen are only amateurs at failure, just getting used to the notion. Writers are the real professionals.

Just last night over an enchilada I was telling the historian how tired reading my manuscript makes me.

"But the poems aren't worse than they were. They haven't changed," I said. (Insert adverb, like plaintively.)

No, I'm just sick of them. Or right now I am. So that must mean that it's the downhill slope of summer.

I have had time to become sick afresh of my poems because my Scottish visitors are away--indeed, none of my children are here at the moment. They have been attending a family reunion in Logan and having a good time. Meanwhile, I have been recovering from a sinus cold and feeling a tad bereft. That's how I roll. Good times, sinus colds, limeade, bereftitude. It's a big fat aria of doldrums.

Did you start blogging again just to whine? I hear the people saying. Yes! yes I did, thanks for asking.

Let me start again. 

Here's what's been happening for the past few weeks:

Chalk art and breakfast and cookouts on the patio. Swimming with the cousins. Planting little pot-gardens. Bead necklaces. Stories at bedtime. Malcolm in the Middle watch parties. Doughnut tastings. A visit to the Museum of Natural Curiosity. Gardening in the evening. Laughing, quarreling, tears, and more laughter. Snacks galore. A full glory of summer childhood. 

Their brief absence over the last few days has meant I could take a nap. We went to the farmer's market and bought cherries and peaches and tomatoes. Of course, in the time they've been gone, I've also found the time to become weary of my poems, and to let melancholy bloom into view (as opposed to playing its usual gloomy bass note in the background). It's not like letting melancholy bloom is a great idea, I get that. But I have never been particularly decisive at marshaling my inner resources. My strategy is more to let the clouds cloud the sky--no one controls the weather--and know that they'll pass.

Soon they'll be back. I plan to bake this with them, and, I hope, see more movies, have more cool mornings on the patio, water the plants and discuss the habitat with the girls, make more Lego creations. We may need to eat more doughnuts. We have a handful to people still to see, and we need to finish one storybook and start and finish another. (I also need to unweary myself enough to make decisions about my manuscript...fresh courage take! Fail better!) An ending looms, but we'll all be trying to do that perspectival magic that keeps it at a distant hover until it is actually at the doorstep, with a bouquet of melancholy, a bevy of plane tickets, and an echo.

An essay about my cowboy boots.

Many years ago, possessed by I don't know what, I found and bought a pair of red cowboy boots. I wore them as many ways as I could think to wear them, although in retrospect, I believe they were aspirational and symbolic, in that they represented something about myself that I wanted to express. I loved them and they were beautiful, but there were days when they seemed better than I was, braver and brasher and less afraid, and that's not a good situation, in terms of footwear. Gradually I wore them less and less, and then I gave them away.

Recently, I became possessed of the idea that, again, I needed a pair of cowboy boots. So I began to look for them, with patience but with purpose. I found them: the right price and beautiful. They are one of my favorite colors for shoes, navy blue, but dark enough that they can seem almost black. They are comfortable, even, which is a great quality, especially when coupled with beauty. I'm sure they are also aspirational and symbolic, but their meaning is elusive to me at this point. I wear them--not exactly often, but regularly, and each time I do I am more pleased with them.

I wore them today, for instance, the day my son and his wife and family went back home to their life in Arizona. They'd been staying with us for the last week. It has been so lovely each morning, to have a little boy, then another, appear up the stairs, ready for breakfast and a chat. This morning, for instance, the older boy told me he wanted corn flakes and raisins for his breakfast. "Craisins," he amended, meaning dried cranberries. I happened to have some dried cranberries, leftover from my fruitcake baking. But I also offered him the option of some raisins I had bought, the Jumbo Raisin Medley of Trader Joe's provenance. I showed him a rather large golden raisin.

He shook his head emphatically. "No, I don't want those."

"Do you want to try one just to see?" I asked, but gently.

He took one and ate it with the expression of a scientist performing an exacting experiment. He finished, having eaten it very thoroughly--it was quite a large raisin--and repeated, "No, I don't want those."

So craisins it was. He ate and hummed little melodies, asked questions and made comments about the pictures and drawings we had posted on our kitchen wall. This kind of heaven is what I am talking about. One of the nights this week, his cousin spent the night, and the following morning we made waffles. I poured syrup carefully into all the squares and cut the waffles into pieces so we could have a lovely, fleeting breakfast.

Sure, there were tears and late nights, little meltdowns, but mostly, it was just a joy to have them. So this morning when I dressed to accompany them on the first part of their journey, down to Orem to visit my parents, whence my son and family would depart to the south and we would return to the north, I wanted to be comfortable but also fitting for the occasion, so I put on my boots. It's worth noting these departures, I feel.

When we got home, I was so tired. I've been ill, am still recovering. Today's outing was just about what I could handle, maybe a little more than I could handle. I started some laundry, and lay down on the sheetless bed to rest. I didn't take my boots off, I'm not sure why. Maybe I didn't think I'd be sleeping so long. Maybe I was tired enough to do no more than sink into bed.

When I woke up three hours later, I thought, there's no good reason to take a nap in cowboy boots. But maybe when you're ill, a little bit exhausted and a little bit melancholy, there's not a compelling reason to take them off, either. I lay there a little longer, checked my phone. They'd arrived in St. George, the first leg of their trip. I took my boots off and the historian and I prepared for a quiet night in.

Today,

I answered a few more panicky student e-mails ("HTMS! I haven't heard from [group member] and I am FREAKING OUT!")(I may be exaggerating a little, but only the all-caps--the rest is verbatim). Then I gather'd my wits about me 'fore assembling my wherewithal and inner resources and whatnot to grade.

In other words, I am not yet actually grading. But by golly I am almost ready to grade.

Instead, today I read more manuscripts for the competition (for which I'm a first reader). I put some envelopes in the actual post at the post office. I took a long walk. I spoke soothingly to Bruiser. And I went back over to my daughter's, where both a little boy and a very little girl (my grandchildren) were available for a visit.

I held the little girl, whom I had inexpertly swaddled (but never mind, she was as cozy as a little bunny in her blanket), and played various games with the little boy. We played Superhero Memory. He beat me once, we tied the second game. He did some puzzles on the iPad, and then we made a little animated movie.

In the app for the animation, you can actually draw characters of your own, and scenes. Which is fun, and also a little humbling.

This figure below is a robot. I actually did this animation with another grandson on another day. He  demonstrated to me, several times, the kind of robot he wanted: it had an arm that would reach up to touch its head, and then its neck would swivel to the side. He was not well-pleased with this robot, but I think you can see the reach and swivel. Can't you?

This is a screenshot from today's animation:

We agreed we would draw a character and also a scene (moon surface, obvs).

"An octopus," he stipulated.

I started drawing arms galore. "How many arms is that?" We had six, added two more.

"It's a vampire," he said. I drew fangs. (I'm particularly proud of those fangs.)

"Put sleeves on him," he said.

"Sleeves but no shirt? On all eight arms?"

"No, just sleeves. Long ones. That's enough," he said, while I drew and undid and re-drew and erased, and we ended up with the outfit you see on the vampire octopus: long-ish sleeves on three arms.
After the visit, which was quiet and sweet, and productive on account of the animation and octopus-drawing, I went to Costco with my son-in-law and grandson, and bought twelve pounds of ham, sliced, for a dinner for homeless men. I took the mighty weight of meat over to my son's house, because they're some of the shepherds of this monthly dinner at The Road Home. They were having dinner, and invited me to have a little with them.

So I put the ham down, and ate a bit of supper with my son's family. We talked about Christmas, and skeletons, and I watched the boys do the skeleton dance, because the older one has a little bit of a skeleton thing going.

As I drove home--it was 6:30, very dark in this darkest part of the year, the Christmas lights blooming on either side of the road--I felt calm. I still have a lot to do. I'm not worried about it, though. I'll get it done.

Here she is.

We spent some time this afternoon with little Gwenyth and her family:


 

Great day.

Deacon and his brand new baby sister, Gwenyth Pearl.

Posted with Blogsy

Today.

We went to the farmer's market and then visited the historian's son, where the two littlest girls showed us what summer is all about:

Feats of great courage and derring-do.

The other night as we got into bed, I said to the historian, in the dark, "I'm already thinking about leaving. " Meaning, by "thinking," "feeling sad."

"Don't," he said. "There's no point."

I laughed.

"I mean," he continued, "if there were a point to thinking about it, it would be fine. But since there's no point..."

"Right," I said.

Well, the people, it is not over. But we are drawing nigh to the end of this visit which has been splendid in every, every way.

A visit this long means you can be more than an event, you can be part of the day-to-day. For instance, the village of Inverurie is highly walkable. We've walked the girls to school almost every day, and then we've met them at the end of the school day and walked them home. We went to a park yesterday after school; today, we met them for home lunch, which meant that we brought a picnic and ate it in the park, getting them back before the bell to assemble for afternoon lessons rang. We've eaten breakfast and dinner together. We've done projects. We've read an entire chapter book together before bedtime.

Of course, it's enchanting to fall into daily life with children, to see their beauty, their willfulness, their flights of fancy; to watch them play, to play with them, to see them run and climb and bounce on the trampoline. And this life of theirs will go on when we leave. Once we get home, we too will fall into our own life together, its comforts and joys. But still, it will be hard to leave them.

We have a few more days to celebrate being here. Tonight there were many forward rolls, aka somersaults, performed in the back garden. Homework done. Dinner made. And both yesterday and today, the children showed great bravery in scaling and grappling with the most challinging of the playground equipment, and conquering it at both of the two parks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday.

beginning with a super moon coming in and out of the clouds

soccer on a rather chilly morning,

a birthday party

with a bounce house!

a previous outing to pick out a birthday present (a hex bug)

festive!