gobble

Ted left for work at 5:30am. I'm sorting through gifts (two nieces and one goddaughter with birthdays before we can start wrapping Christmas gifts), listening to Christmas music, doing laundry, and reorganizing my home office. I've already done my 12 clicks for the day. Later, I'll work on our annual newsletter, put the new holiday tablecloth on the dining room table, and start pulling together dinner ingredients.

Schmoo is watching the little creatures on the hill outside the office window. Milo is sitting on his desktop afghan, closely watching the printer that annoys him so. And Sadie just chirped from her deskside hammock nap to get some pets.

I must get back to my chores. It will be a busy day. I'm thankful that I have so many things to do for myself, my family and my friends. That in mind, here's some food for thought.

it's not about the feast

I just wrote a grocery list for Thanksgiving dinner. All my life, I have been a participant in someone else's dinner. My Mom made a marvelous feast every year I was growing up and for several more once I was on my own. At some point, the duties shifted to my sister-in-law, with the occasional visit to my sister who has hosted it for the last couple years. I only ever had to bring a side dish or appetizer.

When I lived in Seattle, I never traveled home for this holiday and so I was a guest of my friends' and roommates' families. In 1994, my roommates and I rented a cabin on Orcas Island. It had only cold running water and no bathroom (we had to hike to a central facility), and we packed in all our trimmings to prepare there. We made Cornish game hens instead of a big turkey. I spent my time in the cabin doting on one of the stray cats who wandered the grounds (a giant, solid gray cat we called "Smokestack") and crafting hand-made Christmas cards from hundreds of old cards. Oh, and I did test out the outdoor hot tubs. Definitely an alternative Thanksgiving.

In 1996, I made Thanksgiving dinner for myself and a friend. There were some modifications, the biggest of which was preparing a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey. Despite the theoretically scaled-down nature of the meal, it was still a lot of time and work to put together. And even though it was fabulous, the two most vivid memories of that day were the kitchen sink backing up (and my friend running around town looking for an open store to buy Drano) and me being sick (and therefore not hungry).

For Ted's and my first Thanksgiving together in 1997, I flew to Phoenix and we partook of an enormous holiday dinner in Sedona where a friend of his owns a cliffside inn. We toured the holiday lights and marveled at the snow (even though I knew we were going to be in the mountains, I just don't associate Arizona with snow). The next year, we ate at restaurant in one of Seattle's downtown hotels. The year after that, I had already moved to New England for my new job, and Ted was still in Seattle finishing up his old one. I crashed the dinner of my college roommate, Pam, and her husband, Craig. Ted visited a different Seattle restaurant. Since we settled down in Connecticut, we have had a combination of alternative and traditional Thanksgivings.

In 2000, we spent the holiday with Ted's stepmom, Shirley, and her daughter's family. Although I had obviously met Shirley, Lisa, Bob, Geno and Timmy by then, it was the first time I got to meet Bob's brothers and sisters. So, it was a nice family holiday, while feeling a bit like a get-to-know-you mixer.

The next year, we stayed in Norwalk and dined at the Silvermine Tavern. Although it was a neat setting, the food -- while good -- was a bit restaurant-y. Given that we weren't with family that day, the lack of a familiar feast-type dinner made the day seem like just another day. The next year, we drove to Northern Vermont to stay at a wonderful bed and breakfast that was so remote, it didn't have locks on the doors. Now, that was a spectacular feast. But talking to the family on the phone just seemed weird. And there was the added challenge of notable snowfall almost every day we were there. Last year, we returned to New Hampshire and the Cox family dinner. At the risk of sounding corny, it felt like home. Well, it was my sister's home, so I guess it was! :-)

But this year, I will once again be making that modified Thanksgiving dinner that I first attempted in 1996, this time for Ted and me. Ted's new job requires him to work Friday and Saturday, and it's too far to make the 5-hour drive each way to join my family at my sister's house for one day. So, I made a list. And save a few items that we otherwise never eat (green olives, cranberry jelly, peas with pearl onions), it looks like any other grocery list. And although I had this meal without my family for all those years I was in Seattle, I will miss being with them tomorrow.

Sure, I see them all the time. I saw all of them (except eldest brother, Gerry, who lives in California) a couple weeks ago, and I will see all of them (including Gerry) a couple weeks from now at Christmas. For me, Thanksgiving has always been about sharing those things for which I'm grateful. My family is always at the top of that list.

middle schmiddle

The last entry was titled thusly as, in my bleary-eyed thinking, I was going to extrapolate on the concept of “the middle of the night.” My only explanation for even contemplating such a hackneyed and useless topic was that it was, in fact, the middle of the night. I guess I was just wondering what constitutes the ‘middle’ of the night. Isn’t that 12:00am (a.k.a. “midnight”)? Wouldn’t it change all the time, as night is dictated by darkness, which is a cyclical phenomenon? Oh, here I go… actually extrapolating on this folly. It must be once again nearing the middle of the night.

So, the last time I wrote at this insane hour, it was because I had fallen so soundly asleep at a ridiculous time (like 9:30pm), thanks to my very schmoasty cat, Sadie, snuggling up with me on the couch. We were so warm together, we just drifted away to dreamland until my subconscious realized it was the middle of the night and I was still on the couch! Instead of coming upstairs to bed, I blogged. I put in the picture of Sadie as she was the primary reason for the 3:19am entry.

Now, Milo has just descended from my left shoulder, where he climbed for a little attention. Purring loudly in my ear and insisting I neither type on nor even look at my computer. Here is Milo.


Milo and Larry the lobster

The only cat who hasn’t vociferously demanded attention tonight is Flannery. She’s an easygoing cat, still remarkably grateful that we saved her from homelessness more than three years ago. When we first noticed her (an abandoned cat living on the wooded hill next to our house), we started feeding her and even built a fort on our low balcony for her to sleep in a protected place. We thought she was a he, and named her “Henry” once we decided we would probably end up bringing her inside to join Milo and Sadie in our cat crew. But once we realized she was a girl, we couldn’t bring ourselves to keep calling her Henry. And Henrietta was not even an option. Flannery sounded cool, but she quickly earned a whole series of nicknames. Ted calls her Pooh, and I call her Schmoo (in “Monsters, Inc.,” Mike Wazowski’s nickname for his girlfriend, Celia, was Schmoopsy Pooh, so there you go). Here is Schmoo.


Schmoo on the desk

OK, so now that I've posted my cats, it's time to post my kids. Ok, so technically, they're not mine. They're my siblings' kids. "I'm your Auntie Mame!"


The kids, October 2004

October 2004. I coerced all of them to wear blue on a day when they volunteered to help me with a project at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Bed time. Ack!

what is middle?

Once again, I find myself in the frustrating and moderatly embarassing position of having entered text and lost it when attempting some fancy maneuver. Last time, it was spell check. This time, it was trying to include a picture. I'm still figuring this Blogger stuff out, so be patient. I'm just going to post this here with what I think may include a photo. Then, if it works, I'll come back and finish the post. If it doesn't work, I'll probably delete the whole thing and start over some other middle of the night.


Sadie on her hammock

defenestrating time and its pieces

It's lunch time again, and I just can't help myself but to blog. The topic top of mind today is how very little time there is left before Christmas. Christmas, whoa. Wasn't it just Christmas, like, a couple weeks ago? Uh-oh. It's another sign of impending old-cranky-ladyhood. Anyway, we are amazingly prepared for Christmas. Despite the fact that we shop for approximately 40 people (14 of whom are 18 or under), our shopping is 99% done. I've even finished putting together the kids' stockings!

We Christmas shop all year long -- as we see things, when an item inspires us to think about a particular person, or when something cool is at Costco (ask me some day about the 'treasure hunt'). My trip to Australia in October also netted a vast collection of items for the gift list. We have large, plastic storage bins stacked in our living room with the spoils of more than ten months' worth of shopping.

Where the time crunch is feeling particularly crunchy is that we must now wrap said spoils. That in and of itself might not be so bad if we didn't have activities booked nearly every weekend between now and Christmas. A weekend in the city to see a show, Thanksgiving, a business trip to Chicago, etc. I won't even go into how we were supposed to arrange a time to visit my Aunt Kaye sometime between last Christmas and this one to pick up our gift from her. She's one state away, and we haven't managed to do that yet. :-(

So, the phrase "time flies" is lodged in my gray matter. And I'd prefer to think that I have some control over it (which I know isn't true, but the control freak in me wants it to be), so I want to instead be the one making time fly. And simply making it fly isn't colorful enough, so I want to make it fly out a window. Hence, the title of this entry. That made me think about my stupid alarm clock which, for absolutely no good reason at all, went off at 6:37pm last night while I was in the downstairs living room. That's not even reasonably close to the time at which it's set. I wanted to throw it out the window, too.

Back to work.

noise, part 2

At some point in my life, I determined that I frequently encounter noise levels that I don't like. Now, this is ironic, considering the volume of my youth. And don't get me wrong: when the right song comes onto my iPod, computer, desk radio, or car or home stereo, the sky's the limit on decibel count. I don't think I've ever listened to "How Soon Is Now" by The Smiths at a volume where things didn't fall off shelves. There are others. "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, "Housequake" by Prince and the New Power Generation, "Peel Me a Grape" by Diana Krall (although even loud it doesn't rattle windows), all of Quincy Jones's "Back on the Block," "I'm Every Woman," by Whitney Houston (props to Chaka Kahn, but I like Whitney's version better). Any number of Christmas songs, not the least of which is "Sleigh Ride," in particular, performed by the Boston Pops as conducted by Arthur Fiedler. Anything written, arranged, or performed by Mervyn Warren and his friends. But I regress.

I can't pinpoint when the noise factor started to bother me. I've never liked motorcycles or leaf blowers (although the latter has been around a relatively short time compared to the former). The presence of dot-matrix printers became a source of distress for me when I first went to work in an office. One place actually had a specially designed case with soundproofing insulation and a Plexiglass lid to muffle the noise. So, apparently, I'm not the only noise-averse person on the planet.

When my young neighbor decided to show off his motorcycle's revving power to a drunken friend at 1:52am, I threw up the sash and hollered "Guys! Two o'clock in the morning!" Then, it seemed official: I'm the cranky old lady whose house every little kid hated to walk past.

So, when I started writing last night about learning to listen again, it was because I had decided to have a radio/CD-free drive home from work so I could just tune in to my surroundings. That entry was to detail not only the juxtaposition of noises -- good and bad -- that I encountered, but also my difficulty with not trying to escape from it all by putting up the car windows and turning on the stereo. The lack of self-imposed distraction causes me to think more carefully about things going on in life because I can actually hear (or more accurately, concentrate on) the thoughts in my head. I usually look forward to that opportunity, but last night's drive was complicated by an emotionally difficult couple of weeks and the preponderance of really annoying noises.

My lunchtime rant for today.

learning to listen, a prologue

Is it ironic that I spent half an hour here writing about my evening exercise in listening, and it was all swept away when I attempted to run a spell check? Not particularly ironic, I guess. Just frustrating.

Damn, I put some effort into that too. And now I'm too drowsy to recreate it. So, until I have the wherewithal to return and try again, I'll simply paste a very old poem of mine about quiet (well, the lack of it). I wrote it in response to an e.e. cummings poem. Do note that the title does not contain a misspelling or typo.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
the Mystery Of stilness


vociferous space.
the relentless vestige
of battle.

tableTop chaos
impinging
wringing guts
(like fresh, wet boxers to be h
u
n
g
)
.
OUT!
and crashes the thing
through the wall up the floor.

at the stop
a too-long cord -- wrapping dizzily among shags curling here Crinkling, twisting --
pretends be
the blackless shadow
from
zigging
Fourthofjuly
*sparklers*

too quiet.
now what? is beseeched.
beginagain
no time for peace


© 1995 Corene Ellis Young
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also note that all poems written by me or my alterego, Corene, are open to interpretation. It's been a long time since I've taken up the pencil. Maybe it's time to make new sense out of new circumstances. The old sense seems senseless now.

What the hell am I saying? Man, I need sleep.

uh-oh

The sign of a new addiction is when I spend my lunchtime on it. And, gosh, guess what time it is? Although there was one addiction that I never could do at lunch, and that was The Sims. But like many of the addictions before it, eventually my interest in it waned. I haven't played The Sims in probably a year. Long ago, it was Nintendo. Not Game Cube or 64 or even Super Nintendo. Just Nintendo.

Alas, because I usually eat lunch at my desk, my attention is often divided. Today is no different. Between bites and a blogged word here and there, I have been repeatedly interrupted by -- horrors -- work. Perhaps this is an addiction best left to the middle of the night. Josh, I get it!

the logical next step

In my youth, I kept the occasional diary in a bound book of some sort with a cover of manufactured or handmade origin. The impetus to actually create entries in said diaries was usually of a traumatic nature. That is to say, something happened in my little life that was so big, it overflowed all traditional means of release (like crying to my mother or complaining to my friends).

The diaries became letters to myself sometime in my early teens. I believe the inspiration for this phase was Mr. Dion's 7th grade English class assignment to write a letter to my future self, seal it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and wait until the appointed time to open it. I suppose he hoped this exercise would shed some light on the issues that were genuinely important in life (at least those as seen through the eyes of a pimple-faced, hormone-injected, 13-year old lunatic).

For most of high school, my calm and premeditated diary-keeping was done in just such an epistolary fashion. More frantic entries occurred in a Garfield blank book. Oh heavens. Off I went to college and I scribbled the important details which required cranial escape into the back pages of spiralbound notebooks. Once, as I recall, I burned some of them with much ceremony and solemnity. 19. Ha.

Graduation. The real world. Many things to vent about then, but still my entries were less than sporadic. The real revelation came when I decided to move from Gray, Maine to Seattle, Washington in 1991. On my 5,000+ mile wending across America, I was resolute in my decision to keep a record of the trip. I wasn't so concerned with my emotions as with empirical details. Time spent driving, money spent on gas, monuments visited. The trip only lasted a couple weeks, and really, I spent most of it driving, fighting with a Triple A triptik, and locating out-of-the-way double diamond rated motels.

It was in Seattle that I started my new life as a journaller. No longer could I call these accounts of my life "diaries:" the term was too juvenile. I was 25 years old and had just left everything I knew behind to create some sort of new life for myself on the other side of the country. There was a lot to write about.

I started in the leftover spiralbound notebooks of my college days, but upon discovering that I could use the Lake City Library for one hour per day (and with a little inspiration from the insipid television show 'Doogie Howser, M.D.'), I began keeping my journals in Word documents. I've done this with remarkable consistency ever since. More than 13 years, hard to believe. Some months, the journals are tiny -- two sentences, and usually about how I haven't written anything lately. Sometimes, they are titanic. In the month I contracted EBV, I typed 129 single-spaced pages.

In the past couple years, they have become much less detailed. I attribute this to Ted. He is my sounding board; so all the things I once thought out by entering them into journals, are now discussed with an actual human being. :-) He has done wonders for my soul, and the decrease in journal entries was a small price to pay.

I do come back to the journals once in a while. But it's amazing how many big events in my life I have not entered, in the past year in particular. I've a hankering to get back into it. Maybe a new blog will be just the impetus this time around. Welcome to the 21st century. Are there really people out there who want to read my ramblings online? I guess I'll find out.

Creating this blog was accidental. I signed up for an account so that I could create a signed entry on someone else's blog (my friend, Josh Katinger, who recently wrote about the death of our friend, Mark Tarsi). I think Josh has inspired me, at least momentarily, to give the blog world a try.

The name I'd hoped to give my blog was already taken (which lays to rest any notion I had that I might still have an iota of originality in me). So instead, I've tapped deep into the well for sanguinary blue.

About 10 years ago, I created and ran a poetry group on AOL. It was actually designed for tandem haiku (if you really want to know more about this silly concept of mine, I'll be happy to tell you). The haiku were sometimes marvelous and often, well, silly. But I did make a great many online friends through this forum. One such friend was Wally Page.

He and I wrote a tandem poem about the difficulty we were having actually catching up with each other. Hopefully, Wally won't mind that I reprint the interesting -- if somewhat obtuse and pretentiously arty -- work here (we lost track of each other years ago). Wally contributed the first paragraph: the remainder is my response. If you aren't already aware, Corene Ellis Young is my nom de plume. Another long story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Azure by D. Walter Page and Corene Ellis Young

hey,
tried to write
insanity full of ink
fountain pen broke shit
now the ink runs on
blurred vision I
see

sanguinary blue
oozes mercilessly;
blots out light,
blots out reality.

oily tears
splutter
neither here
nor there,
piercing ink
like stars
that stab skies.

random destiny:
artist's means and emotions
collide into
unintentional
masterpieces.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I like the image of a pen bleeding, hence "sanguinary blue." As if there's so much to be said that the ink can't flow fast enough, so it bleeds instead. I liked the concept of "unintentional masterpieces," too, but again, it's a bit pretentious (even if it is tempered by a lack of calculation and/or ambition).

And thus begins my new blog. I haven't the vaguest idea where it goes from here. But at least now I can add a post to Josh's site.