“…even though Schtatt deep down believes that the substance-compulsion’s strange apparent contribution to Hal’s erumpent explosion up the rankings has got to be a temporary thing, that there’s like a psychic credit-card bill for Hall in the mail, somewhere, coming and is sad for him in advance about whatever’s surely got to give, eventually” (270).
Boy, oh boy, even within the spoiler limits we can say foreshadowing…like foresmacking us up against the head, given the opening scene.
Know what I don’t like about parenting? That even the awesome stuff lasts about 12.5 seconds before it pivots violently and bashes you in the nose.
Know what I like about revisiting Infinite Jest this summer? The AA aphorisms about one day at a time and one minute at a time and that it’s okay to want and that any moment no matter how unbearable, is really only one moment and is, actually, bearable.
Is there a 12-step program for parenting? Other than getting a nanny or day care sitch or stun gun?
That’s right. Incredible book full of intensely memorable quote, but this is our first quote of the week.
“Pat M. encourages newer staff to think of residents they’d like to bludgeon to death as valuable teachers of patience, tolerance, self-discipline, restraint” (271).
Why quote of the week? Because the painful suicide stuff I’m tucking away in the deep recesses of “I hope I never need to access this.’ And because Gately’s perspective via Pat M. grants the insight that working at a halfway house is like parenting a small child. ‘Cuz that patience and tolerance and restraint stuff? I didn’t have that before the small terrorist took over our Ennet House. But clearly I’ve developed some of each, because I’m not constantly feeding The Spider.
Mazel tov on being 25% through Infinite Jest. To those of you not reading, go do it. 10 pages a day, friends, and you’ll be granted brilliance and patience and a restored sense of humor. Or suicidal thoughts. You know. One or the other.
“That golly something smells delicious was my first reaction!”
Awe-some.
I don’t understand it. I’ve been missing dozens of things lately, and I got them ALL today.
My dream day involves sleeping late, reading a book, practicing yoga, having a fabulous home cooked breakfast, going for a walk on a glorious day in the greater S.F. Bay Area, talking with friendly humans (young and old), eating a fabulous home cooked lunch, more reading, napping, more reading, another venture out of doors, a delightful dinner prepared by someone else, and a chance to put my feet up and write.
I got every single one of those things. No sitter, no bribes, no compromising major philosophies, no yelling, no wanting to knock myself into a coma just to get a break.
Plus, I got the part I never, never fantasized about but will now, every time: awaking from a nap with a small, perfect creature next to me, who then, upon waking and seeing me reading, thinks books are a good idea and (get this) reads to himself while I finish a chapter in my own enjoyable book.
Are you serious? Infinite summer, indeed.
*Oh, yeah, it was hotter than crap today and I felt sick most of the day and I feel badly that I didn’t clean or make the world a better place, but you wouldn’t know it from my already rosy memory of the day.
Even with all the wrought Joelle text, some really rough and painful stuff as well as some terribly important bits vis the Entertainment and the suicidal thoughts of the addicted, the quote of the day is from the ‘Putative CV of HP Steeply’:
“5 months, Newsweek (11 small features on trends and entertainment until her Executive Editor, with whom she was in love, left Newsweek and took her with him)”
Stop. I can’t take it. Snorting masticated nectarine through my nose already. Seriously. Stop.
For my own personal nostalgia: “Or just down in Harvard Square at Au Bon Pain where all those 70s-era guys in old wool ponchos play chess against those little clocks they keep hitting” (213).
And for those of you who have no such nostalgia: “there’s a deep and temendously compelling dignity about the old man’s demanor w/r/t the PUSSY on his arm, and Ewell actually considers approaching this fellow re the issue of sponsorship, if and when he feels it’s appropriate to get an AA sponsor, if he decides it’s germane in his case” (210). What with Pat’s refusal to define addiction specifically enough for him, and all.
We had a lovely day picking olallieberries at Swanton Farms yesterday. They just opened their second patch, and the berries will be good for at least another two weeks.
Here’s what Peanut and I did with half of the seven pounds we picked. Crisps have no crust so it is much easier to let a toddler handle the whole recipe. Feel free to use blackberries or raspberries instead, though cut the sugar a bit.
Olallieberry Cardamom Crisp Recipe
Filling:
* 4 cups olallieberries, cleaned and stemmed
* 1/2 cup organic brown sugar
* 3 Tbl whole wheat flour
* 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
* 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Crisp Topping
* 6 Tbl unsalted butter, cut into half-Tbl chunks
* 3/4 cups organic maple flakes (or brown sugar)
* 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
* 1/2 cup organic steel cut oats
* 1/4 tsp salt
* 1 tsp ground cinnamon
* 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
Post-baking Topping
* 6 Tbl ground flaxseed meal
* 4 Tbl maple flakes (or use brown sugar)
Adult: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Everyone: Wash and dry hands. Smear stick of butter into an 8×8 or 2+quart baking dish. Use paper towel to smoosh butter into every corner and along sides. Make the Topping by putting ingredients into bowl and smooshing with hands until it’s just crumbs. Set aside. In another bowl toss the filling ingredients as gently as you can. Pour the berry mixture to the buttered baking dish and sprinkle with the crisp topping.
Adult: Place the baking dish on a baking sheet in oven (to catch any juices that might spill during cooking) and bake until the top is well browned and the berries are tender when pierced with a knife, about 45 minutes.
Cool for 5 minutes and sprinkle the flaxseed meal and maple flakes on top. (Cooking flaxseed ruins most of its health benefits, and sprinkling it on makes the topping too uniform.)
Serve plain or topped with plain yogurt, frozen yogurt, non-dairy frozen stuff, freshly milked and skimmed cream (best, hands down), or ice cream.
“Concentrating on anything is very hard work” (202).
Today alone:
Former client ran into me on the playground of all places and asked me to do some copywriting. ASAP. Because clients often run ideas by you several months before they need them.
Agent emailed and said that he wants to see more of my novel but already sees the same major issue that other readers have pointed out. Must reorganize whole book and get it to him by, say, tomorrow.
Peanut does not like the olallieberry crisp we made before lunch and has requested a cookie baking session after nap. I’m not entirely opposed to his demands. But how can I blog the already baked recipe if it’s loathed by 50% of the family who have thus far tasted it? 75%, really, if you consider the cats who won’t touch it. To be fair, they thought it was blackbery crisp. Also, did you notice the two other projects that seem a bit more pressing than cookies, given the ready availability of decent cookies in every case of every local bakery in this country? Hell, FatApples is two blocks away. Run over to the bakery, little boy, and bring back two cookies. Mommy has a book to submit.
Someone with no authority whatsoever has said my novel will be a huge success as a book and also as a major motion picture, floor wax, and cheese spread. I hope it’s non-aerosol. And that she gets some authority over something soon so I can start pushing for an action figure.
I think this quote is a day behind. But seriously, who’s counting?
The section that most pleases me in the book, thus far, is the selected transcripts from drop-in hours of Pat Montesian. Laughed out loud. Laughed so hard I shook the bed and Spouse awoke, grumbled something about “that f—ing book” and went back to sleep. Then I read the next line and laughed again.
“So yeah, yes, OK, the short answer is when he wouldn’t quit with the drumming at supper I kind of poked him with my fork. Sort of. I could see how maybe somebody could have thought I sort of stabbed him. I offered to get the fork out, though” (177).
“So I’m sitting there waiting for my meatloaf to cool and suddenly there’s a simply sphincter-loosening shriek and here’s Nell in the air with a steak-fork, positively aloft, leaping across the table, in flight, horizontal, I mean Pat the girl’s body is literally parallel to the surface of the table, hurling herself at me with this upraised fork, shrieking something about the sound of peanut butter. I mean my God. Gately and Diehl had to pull the fork out of my hand and the tabletop both. To give you an idea” (177-8).
Sweetie? Pumpkin butter? Love? Mommy doesn’t want to talk about this right now.
Why?
Well, first of all, Mommy is driving. We are hurling at 70 miles an hour toward home after a long day of doing everything you want, and the only thing keeping us from smashing this steel cage into a cement barricade or another car full of humans is Mommy’s ability to keep her brain in control of her hands and feet. And honestly, the neurons are firing quite a bit slowly since you were born.
Mommy is trying to concentrate. Also confounding us just a bit, honey, just a tad in our quest to keep Mommy’s thoughts and actions on the same basic page, is the fact that, while rolling my eyes at your question, the same question you’ve been asking all day, and the same freaking question I’ve answered, I swear to Aphrodite, twelve times already, during that process I managed to lodge a contact lens somewhere deep in my barely functioning brain. Okay, honey? So not only am I operating a motor vehicle hurling down the highway, limbs dead with “when-do-I-get-ten-seconds-of-time-to-myself?” fatigue, and a brain hobbled by your awesome attempts to understand the world, I am also gouging my eye out trying to get to the lens, to relieve the pain and fix the fauceting from my eye and potentially restore the level of vision usually required for the tasks in which I am engaged.
So, sweetheart, it all comes down to this: there is a thin piece of precisely machined plastic wedged into the Why Is Harold with the Purple Crayon Happy When He Gets in the Boat part of my brain. It’s unfortunately inaccessible at present, lovekin. I also can’t freaking see anything, doodlebug. Mommy is blind, Mommy is tired, Mommy is flying home HOPING TO MAUD that Daddy is there so she can drop your adorable little body into his arms for the five minute break that is bathtime.
I know it’s been a long day, pumpkin, but that’s not my fault. Traffic is not my fault. The sun in your eyes is not my fault. My not being willing to answer the same emotive question thirteen times in one day is, I swear to all that is holy, not my fault. You see, I was only given enough patience to give twelve remarkably similar answers to the same question. Blame your grandparents. I can guarantee you they only answered eleven times, because they roll their eyes at your Mom now every time she answers you twelve times in a row.
So please. I’ll say this again, politely. Please put a sock in the exploring-the-emotions-of-cartoon-characters part of your darling, kissable little mouth while I try to get us home safely. There are, like, fourteen freeway interchanges between us and home, buddy, and I think we’re gonna wind up in the wrong county if I don’t pay attention right now.
Ah, dammit, now we’re on the bridge.
Did you just ask why is there water? Because we’re on a bridge.
Why is it a bridge? Because I made a mistake.
Why did I make a mistake? Honey, mistakes are…
Tell you what. You take your purple crayon and think fast and soon we can be climbing aboard a trim little boat, too, and you can tell me why that makes you happy.
Because I’m all out of answers today, bug. I really am.
Aaaah. Today was nice. Niyiyice. Compliant, happy, silly, observant child. Good weather. Great conversation with a genius writer with credentials out the wazoo who gave much more concrete, actionable, and loving feedback than the agent who, nevertheless, went to the trouble, if you know what I mean.
Sleep: not enough. Food: too much. Reading: not enough. Writing: way too little. Meltdown tally: two averted. Full meals cooked: two completed and edible. (Granted, one was semi-cheating, a homemade basil-heavy marinara and store-bought ravioli. But the other was all from scratch bok choy, portabello, tofu, and whole wheat soba stirfry with a homemade soy-vinegar-plum-perppercorn kind of thing.)
This was a pretty darned good day. And I owe it all to Spouse having 6 consecutive days off, getting some R&R at various family functions, a brilliant friend whose creative writing MA from Columbia is finally worth its weight in my appreciation, and a child who somehow, some way, has decided to settle down today.
Phew.
Holy Mary, mother of my cousins: the grandaddy speech to young JOI is aboslutely excruciating. In a Chris Ware, father to son,”here are the defining moments of my life’s failures and why my father was ten times the asshole I am now” kind of way. Guacamole.
So today I leave you with the same thing grandpappy left us:
“A rude whip-lashing shove square in the back and my promising body with all its webs of nerves pulsing and firing was in full airborne flight and came down on my knees this flask is empty right down on my knees with all my weight and inertia on that scabrous hot sandpaper surface forced into what was an exact parody of an imitation conteplative prayer, sliding forward” (168).
No wonder himself was afraid of black widows. And palm frond pus.
You simply must read Infinite Jest.
No quote of the day today. I’m way behinnd in my reading, and I got to coo at new neices and play with family and friends today. So I am not up for assignments and expectations and such. I’ve been a bit too self driven all my life and I’m not in the mood today.
Got some solid feedback from an agent late last night, and I’m trying to decide what parts of it I’ll incorporate. I know I’m not fond of the “no thank you” part, but much of the rest was thoughtful.
So I cuddled babies and saw people I love and sucked on a big bag of sour grapes for a while. And I’ll tell you: having three small people smile at me today was worth not typing up a quote for you, the few readers who seem to be online this week. Where did everybody go?
NaptimeWriting 