blech

I am starting to have insomnia for realz, and it feels like what I imagine the Incredibles felt like when they weren't able to use their super powers. I have always been a fantastic sleeper - any time, anywhere, with anyone... ok, maybe not that - but here I am at 5 am, on my second cup of tea, my third episode of The Office, and my fifty zillionth unhelpful mental repetition of the thought hamster wheel. I am trying to break it with music -specifically by humming a Mozart sonata whenever the unhelpful thoughts start up - but I fear that all I am doing is driving myself crazy and ruining Mozart in the process.

this blog entry dedicated to my mama...

...who wants (or at least says she wants) the blow-by-blow for the Renaissance painting techniques workshop taught by Geoffrey Laurence at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle this last week. Everyone else can confidently ignore this. I have included the teacher's painting as it went along:

STEP ONE: Canvas prep.

1. Paint two coats of white primer on top of preprimed canvas. (He likes using white lead, but had us use acrylic).

2. Paint two coats of coloured acrylic gesso on top of that; we did the main painting on a canvas toned milky tea colour, and another one in celadon green. Exact colour not crucial.

3. Sand canvas down as needed.

STEP TWO: Charcoal drawing.

1. Sketch lightly your drawing in soft charcoal (not compressed charcoal). Always wipe away any mistakes with kitchen paper, not your hand - your hand will leave invisible greasy nasties on the canvas.

2. When you are happy with what you have, really grind in the dark darks. You will be painting over this eventually, and you want to be able to see the drawing through the layer of paint. Don't worry too much about subtle midtones - this is more about getting the shape of the drawing right.

3. Fix the drawing with fixative; in class we used a purist mix of casein and vodka (!) in a Preval spray gun (recipe = 1/2 oz Spectrafix Pastel Fixative casein formula diluted in 4 oz vodka or other clear alcohol), but you could probably use a regular art fixative without anyone finding out. Spray VERY GENTLY from at least five feet away at first or you will get unattractive puddles on your drawing that will do horrible things to the canvas such as what happened to mine. Let the fixative dry, then do 5-6 more rounds. You can get more aggressive with the fixative after the first round. Let dry completely.

STEP THREE: Grisaille

1. Mix together the following colours until you obtain a darkish brown sludge colour: translucent red oxide (Mussini), light yellow ochre (Old Holland), and cold black (Williamsburg). Thin with a few drops of solvent.

2. Paint a thin even layer of the brown sludge over the entire canvas, making sure that you can see the drawing through it.

3. Mix a range of midtones with the remaining sludge and flake white replacement (Gamblin) (or lead white, if you want to be purist).

4. Paint a monochromatic underpainting with this range, starting with the lightest areas. (He uses solvent/walnut oil for painting medium at this stage). Stay away from the darkest darks - those are established by charcoal underdrawing plus transparent brown sludge coat ONLY.

5. Let dry completely.

STEP FOUR: Warm/cool stage

1. "Oil out" your canvas by brushing a thin layer of walnut oil over the entire canvas, and then wiping as much as you can away with kitchen paper.

2. Using the same translucent red oxide, cold black, and white, mix a range of pinks, blues, and neutrals.

3. Matching the values already established in your grisaille painting, decide where your warm/cool areas are. (You can correct the values at this stage if needed). Keep warm/cool brushes separate.

4. Start again with the lightest areas, and work towards the darker mid tones. Stay away from the darkest darks. Don't touch them. Don't think about touching them.

5. Let dry completely.

(this obviously is before he'd finished his warm/cools, but it gives you the idea)

STEP FIVE: Dead colour layer

1. "Oil out" your canvas again as above.

2. Make up your medium: 4 parts Damar varnish, 4 parts English distilled turpentine, 2 parts sun-thickened linseed oil OR stand oil, 1 part Venice turpentine, and 2-3 drops of cobalt driers per teaspoonful of medium.

3. Decide whether you are happy with the overall balance of warms/cools: if too cool, paint over with a thin glaze of a warm colour; if too warm, paint over with a thin glaze of a cool colour. If in doubt, glaze with whatever colour you want your shadows to be, as you will always go back and add opaque highlights as needed. (In this class we ended up using a Mussini Bohemian green glaze).

4. Paint over your painting in the same palette of light yellow ochre, translucent red oxide, cold black, and flake white replacement, this time trying to approximate the real colours as much as possible. Start in the lights, work towards the midtones, and stay away from the darkest darks.

5. Let dry completely

STEP SIX: Glazing

1. "Oil out" your canvas as above.

2. Slosh a little bit more oil into your painting medium from above.

3. Using very thin transparent layers of whatever colours you like, glaze sections of the painting, moving the "dead colour" palette of the previous step towards the real colours little by little.

4. Voila you're done.

this is an example of grisaille/underpainting done on the green toned canvas:

National Novel Writing Month

I just wanted to say, I think I am committed. I signed up a couple of weeks ago, but had the secret thought in the back of my head that I didn't really really need to do it, because a) I have less free time than I did the first year I did it b) neither I nor the world need another terrible novel and c) I already proved I could do it once, so why do it again? But I just wrote my first 180o+ words, and I think I'm in. Shit. (Don't anyone get their knickers in a knot: I have neither a plot (so far) nor any intention of sharing any of the next month's blatherings with anyone except the voices in my head...)

miniature horses

so i know there are more world-shattering things going on (Qadaffi's death, the Greek bailout, global warming, etc.) but this really needs to be brought to the world's attention:

miniature horses! as service animals! isn't that great? they put special shoes on their feets (as seen in the photo) so they can trot you around the shopping mall without trashing the floors, and apparently they can be house trained too.

and now for a completely freaky coincidence: roommate D. (who is among other things, mother of friend T.) was the one who was telling me yesterday about the miniature horses, and our conversation reminded me that I also wanted to look for images of pygmy goats and sheep, which I had read about a while ago as being used for weed control in vineyards (since they can't reach the grapes, they selectively eat the weeds and simultaneously fertilize...) and which are apparently also used for lawn care by organically trendy celebrities. On a blog called Tails of the City, I found a good photo of pygmy goats RIGHT next to a photo of a dog I recognized (!) - T's dog Lorna Doone - name confirmed by the photo caption, for anyone who might accuse me of delusional golden pitbull recognition. After a moment of total confusion in which I thought T. was leading a second life as a blogger in SF, I realized the blog was written by T's ex girlfriend and co-doggy-parent. Anyway, the point being: I know Google tries to make the search results relevant to the searcher, but that seems excessive....

short smelly men: a mystery I have no interest in solving

Why are the above ludicrously overrepresented in ballroom dancing classes? It is clearly their preferred venue for Meeting Women, which is weird, because it's not _working_; it if were working, they would be at home happily snogging their tiny smelly girlfriends, but instead, they keep coming to tango classes, where I want to learn how to tango dance. I don't expect my fellow beginner students to be good at dancing, particularly, or even coordinated or musical; we're beginners, that's the point, but it seems unfair that, in general, the women (with the exception of the scary sluttily-dressed anorexic Asian ladies in their forties who are a whole different ball of tango wax) are all very normal looking, and the men, in general, and when I say "general" I mean ALL OF THEM WTF, are all four foot tall and/or have hyperhidrosis and/or smell terrible and/or make peculiar snuffly noises as they try and steer you in to walls. I don't feel like I am being elitist (to use that favourite word of Republican politicians everywhere) in asking for a dance partner who is taller than me, showers regularly, and doesn't sound like Darth Vader with a headcold. Paying for private lessons just so I can dance with someone who meets the above criteria feels a bit like paying for sex with a dominatrix who can charge extra because she keeps track of and anticipates your particular fetishes, but you know what? I am at that point. I am not proud: I will pay for tango sex. (Although if you adhere to the theory that it takes ten thousand hours to get good at something, this is going to be one expensive project...).

two recent catalanomalaprops I want to remember for always and always

because they are so delicious:

1. I recently borrowed an egg off M., the 80-year-old leather aficionado & downstairs neighbour whose orgasms register loud and clear through our wood floorboards; I thought it only polite, in exchange for the egg, to take a few minutes to admire his watercolour paintings, which he was arranging in preparation for his open studio weekend. One of the paintings was of an undulating wall set with brightly coloured fragments of tile, and a robin's-egg blue sky behind, and I said, "Ooh, now that must be Parc Guell in Barcelona, right?" He said, "well, it's certainly meant to be evocative of Gaudi and Barcelona, but it's not any specific building in particular; I mean, it's not La Familia Sangria, for example."

2. Intending, presumably, to refer to alveoli, the small sacs of air in the lungs what transmit oxygen to the blood stream, a patient told me recently that because he used to be a deep-sea diver he had "more allioli in his lungs that most people." Patatas bravas, anyone?

the latest battle in the war on fabric

The war on fabric is less well known than the War on Terror or the War on Drugs, but it's been going on way longer than either. The rules of engagement are as follows: I am not allowed to buy any more fabric unless a) it helps me get rid of fabric that is already in my stash and b) the total amount of fabric in the stash decreases with the project.

Last night two minor skirmishes were won: an old skirt of mama H.'s was converted into a Top Secret Birthday Present, and a piece of grey paisley cotton that has been languishing for literally years was turned into a dress for baby. Here is a picture of it when I finished it late last night, thinking, oh, she'll be able to wear this when she's two-ish:

sweet, no? and here's a picture of it when i tried it on her this morning, and it turns out she's nearly bursting out of it already. oh well.

les feet ils sont a point de fall off

We are day 2/3 of baby & me on our own taking care of each other (babydaddy saw she was cutting a new tooth and has wisely jumped ship for the weekend to LA), and we are both getting a wee bit pissed off about the situation. I say she started it, and even if she thinks I started it she can't say anything to retaliate, because HA! she can't talk. Admittedly she can (and does) yell, but I have the ultimate trump card: if she gets too horrible, I can leave her outside for the nice homeless people who camp in the alleyway across the street from us to either take care of or barbecue up for their dinner as they see fit. I might do that. I haven't decided yet. I'll assess how hungry they look next time I look out the window.

Yesterday (seeing as how we just got back from extended travelling etc etc etc) I thought

I would be a Really Good Selfless Mummy and stay home doing fun baby things All Day Long: lying on my belly on the carpet singing inane songs and woggling toys at her in an effort to encourage to her crawl towards me (most of the time she just grins at me and flops around pointlessly, until she decides she **REALLY WANTS THE TOY** and then she gets this scary intense psycho killer expression on her face and commando-crawls at 50 mph until she has grabbed the plastic duck or the whale on wheels or the 1970's era mini-maraca or whatever it is I have been waving at her.) I also decided (since the weather was nice and we were at home) that we would ramp up the toilet training, so we spent most of the day diaper-free in the kitchen, bathroom, and back deck, which was very exciting (after which, I have to say that cleaning up pee puddles really doesn't take any longer than changing a nappy, and it's definitely got a smaller carbon footprint. I won't go so far as to claim it's environmentally friendly, since the house technically is an "environment," and an ammoniac pong doesn't quite say, oh, go on, come in and have a cuppa, but still.)

Today, however, we left the house! (blogworthy news, I know). After baby swim lesson at the YMCA (highlight: chewing on chlorine soaked blocks of styrofoam. Her, not me) we walked all the way to the Legion of Honor (that's like five miles, plus a bit if you get lost in the Presidio, which of course we did, but it wasn't totally our fault, because the trail we were intending to take was closed for renovation) to go see the Mourners exhibit - 15th century sculptures from the tomb of John the Fearless (Jean sans peur if you are being authentically Burgundian about it). The alabaster mourners were nice, but less than totally thrilling - I think I'd imagined them slightly larger than lifesize, somehow, like 8 or 9 feet tall, rather than 10" or so, and I was expecting to be able to walk in solitude among them in a spooky dim cathedral light rather than maneuvering the *&$! stroller around several dozen middleaged people with fanny packs drifting myopically around a modern little gallery space.

But! I _was_ thrilled by some of the other stuff at the LoH; I've only ever been to special exhibits there, and never bothered to actually go and look at the stuff that's in the regular collection, and thanks to the %^&#! stroller I had to go hunting for elevators, which took me through some of the regular collection, and there are some really really really really nice paintings. There's a lovely Raphael Madonna, and Monet Venetian Grand Canal (not usually my cup of tea but I make exceptions for the warm pinkypaleblueyyellowy architectural ones viz the views of Rouen cathedral), two Fantin La Tour still lifey things I quite liked, and a whole pile of portraits by Sir Henry Raeburn what I thought were way cool in a Singer Sargenty kind of way. In fact, I might go out on a limb, and say I like them BETTER than a lot of Singer Sargents!!!! omg. sacrilege. The only painting I've seen of his (that I knew about) previously is the famous one of the skating minister:

which is fantastically weird and wonderful and makes you think both Henry Raeburn and the Reverend Robert Walker must have had a sense of humour. I have ordered a Henry Raeburn book from the library, so I'll tell you for sure once it arrives whether he really is my new painting BFF. There's also some loverly medieval and Flemish Renaissance stuff what I will not bore you with because I spend way too much time drooling over anatomically odd Virgins and dour black-suited burghers in this blog as it is.

After the LoH we slogged home; a BOO to the evil bus driver lady who slammed the door on my face and a YAY to the nice bus passenger lady who opened it again and helped me carry the aforementioned *&$%?! stroller up the bus steps for me. And another YAY for the baby being asleep, the laundry being started, dinner being eaten, and a hot bath with my name written all over it.

etymology of boston = st. botolph's town

Did you know that? We learned that from the framed informational thingy hanging in the foyer of our INCREDIBLY snazzy little apartment/hotel what we are staying in, which frankly if I did not own one and a half housefuls of junk of my own, had no dependents (I am counting both my baby and my post-recent-appendectomy babydaddy in that designation), lots of spare cash, no employment obligations, and a desire to up and move to Boston, I would move into tomorrow. It's called "The Inn at St. Botolph's" (which in Bostonian is prounounced St. ButOFFs, as in move your buttOFF my chair) and is just the niftiest most stylish little compact urban living space EVUH and I LOVE IT. I would post pics, but i'm too lazy. So you'll just have to believe me.

It turns out that we were not quite at maximum gluttony during the montreal phase of the trip, since we did take the occasional time-out from eating to go for a daily dip in the hotel pool (for example). Ooh! that reminds me: baby has a new trick! It's kind of freaky, because it makes you think that she actually sort of understands words, when really there's no way she possibly can, right? what we do is this: she sits on the edge of the pool in all her glorious little fatness, and I count to three, and on three, she launches herself off the edge of the pool into my arms with a cannonball splash and when she hits the water she looks extremely startled, and then super pleased with herself, like HEY! check me OUT! I just found a cure for AIDS!" and laughs like a drain and clearly wants to do it again.)

So anyway, as I was saying, turns out we were not at maximum high-quality calorie consumption in Montreal, because we have actually increased both the quality and quantity of calories consumed since arriving in Boston, if only because our nifty snazzy teeny tiny hotel/apartment does not have a pool, so we spend the extra half hour per day eating instead. here is a list of what I have eaten:

Dinner the night we arrived: the best saag paneer and aloo paratha I have ever had in my LIFE (and I have eaten a lot of saag paneer and aloo paratha in my life. Every time I go out for Indian food, I think, "I should get something other than saag paneer. I always get saag paneer." And then I think, "But I really LIKE saag paneer," so I just get saag paneer, and it's usually pretty good, which reinforces my desire for saag paneer the next time I go out for indian food, but Imight never be able to get saag paneer again because it would never be as seriously scrumptious as this was. I think they sprinkled crack in it.)

Continental breakfast at snazzy hotel: yoghurt, bagel, OJ

Brunch out with nice friend people: tarragon chicken salad, soda bread with raisins, salad

Dinner at more nice friend people's house: grilled sea bass, delicious salad, more wine than advisable

Post dinner: pistachio icecream

First breakfast this morning: continental snazzy hotel bagel, yoghurt, OJ again

Second breakfast with nice friend people: cinnamon bun and part of a lemon ginger scone

Lunch with nice friend people: salumi plate, sweet pea & mushroom gnocchi, delicious rabbit dish that got sent from the kitchen accidentally, and for pudding shortbread with lemon semifreddo and blackberries yummmmmmmmmmmmm

Dinner tonight will be relatively restrained: leftover Indian food, I think. with maybe some leftover cinnamon bun and strawberries for pudding.

I had the morning off from babyduty this morning, which was lovely: I went to the MFA to go and moon over the Singer Sargents, and I ended up doing some unexpected mooning over some of the other 19th century American painters. A lot of the 19th century French stuff is too insipid and simpering for me, but some of the American stuff is great. I also had the lovely surprise of running into a Velazquez that i hadn't known was there - the portrait of the grumpy middleaged Don Luis de Gongora y Argote:

and you see it from across the room and think, holy shit I know that painting.I savoured the darley boit girls:and didn't let myself look at them until I had gone around the whole rest of the room that they are in. Such a truly excellent interesting painting.

So sweet to be tucked up in bed on a rainy afternoon full of good food and art with babydaddy asleep next to me and baby in her Captain America outfit (red trousers, blue t-shirt with white star on it) now awake and wriggling away trying to help me. OK time to rescue her - she has gotten herself wedged between the pillows and is squeaking.

quacking with the quebeckers

Bonjour eh from Montreal

I am lying in bed in our suite at the Hotel Square Phillips, laptop balanced on my bellyful of cheese fondue and apple crepe, having just had my first full day of being thirtyseven years old. it is a sign of my advanced age that I was unable to get out of bed to rally for the post-kids'-bedtime afterparty, but a sign perhaps of continuing compensatory immaturity that when the post-kids'-bedtime afterparty came to our bed (if Mohammed won't go to the mountain...) the final game of Loaded Questions was very, very bum-joke-centric. Tomorrow is a whole new day in which to be grownup. Maybe.

I like Montreal more than I remembered from my last visit: there are lots and lots of elegant little parks and fountains and olde worlde buildings and pedestrian-only streets and we have not had a single bad meal the whole time (except for the uninspired 'continental breakfasts' at the hotel which are boring (cornflakes, yoghurt, toasted bagels) but better than the stale donuts and styrofoam coffee which go by the same name at an American motel). Tantalizingly, we have yet to have poutine. We leave tomorrow after lunch. It WILL happen. (We have however had: macaroons, canelloni, crepes, fondue, raclette, ice cream, steak tartare, a red pepper mousse thingy with mozzarella foam, sesame buns, szechuan food orgy, and several other things that I am doubtless forgetting).

Babydaddy and I had a hot date last night sans bambina, which was very thrilling: we nicked a luggage rack wheely thing from the hotel porters (someone had left it in the hall), set up her little baby tent thing on it, and put her to bed; once she was asleep we wheeled her into nice friends' room, so they could babysit her while we went out and thankfully she required about as much maintenance as a suitcase. Such a good baby!) The intention was a glass of wine and possibly dessert somewhere, but instead it was mostly a strolling date: there was a beautiful outdoor exhibit of huge blownup aerial photographs of different places on earth with abstract geological formations (many taken around turkmenistan and the caspian sea, which I am now hot to visit), and we also sat on a park bench for a little while, watching the local nightlife go by (a lot of sequins, high heels, and postage stamp sized skirts; it's mcgill university frosh week and the fresh flesh is on display in a big way) and eating frozen yoghurt before settling on a little frenchy french place for our glass of cheap red wine.

I think on the whole it is definitely easier to enjoy the baby in rural settings than urban ones: in vermont, I could roll around on the lawn with her all day with occasional breaks for a dip in the lake and/or reading, and the principal pleasure of urban holidays is going out to eat. I declare that eating in restaurants with children is officially a pain in the ass. Restaurants plus children plus babydaddy's intensive standards of hygiene plus my standards of manners comme il faut is kind of an unachievable combination. Basically, everyone would be better off if the kids were allowed to crawl around eating dropped bits of food under the table: the kids would have more fun, the adults would be able to have a conversation that consisted of more than OH MY GOD TAKE THE FONDUE SKEWER AWAY FROM THE BABY BEFORE SHE POKES HER LEFT EYEBALL OUT AS WELL AND OH SHIT IS THAT HER RIGHT EYEBALL ALREADY FLOATING IN THE HOT CHEESE?!?!?!, the pediatric ophthalmological surgeon on duty at Montreal General Hospital would get to have a quiet night catching up on his/her Facebook updates, the waitress wouldn't have to sweep the floor in a five foot radius around the table afterwards because all the pieces of dropped frenchfries, lardons, cornichons, and other delicious debris would have been hoovered up by ravenous little subtable mouths. Et cetera et cetera.

But everyone suffers from an overwhelming sense of duty: babydaddy has to go to the loo to rinse off any baby-item that hits the floor, the waitress feels obliged to provide a high chair to strap the kids into, the kids feel obliged to scream and wriggle and throw things, and I feel obliged to not allow my baby to avulse her own eyeball with a fondue fork. argh. My baby's fucking cute now, but I admit I am looking forward to being able to eat in a restaurant like a normal person again, and not feel obliged to leave a fifty percent tip and avoid eye contact with all the other patrons.

Other highlights of the day: tea at a fancypants Chinese tea house (I had autumn jasmine flower tea, with one of the little sea anemone tea leaf bundles that opens out into a flower when you pour the hot water on it. fun!), cool echochamber art installation thingy, and the fact that babydaddy's new bedtime lullaby for the baby (learnt on this holiday) is the song about the three old ladies locked in the lavatory. He loves it, especially the part about the vicar.

OK eyes are closing involuntarily. Good night to all...

vermont holiday blog entry part la seconde

Nice friend's family's holiday house is totally fabuloso - rambling creaky 90 year old country house with enormous lawns rolling down to the lake, with a rickety little dock that I swam off every day except the first (because the hurricane was still going on, so instead we sat inside and drank wine and played "Loaded Questions" and sang kids' songs with the bambini gathered round the piano. it wasn't quite quite my ultrageeky fantasy of four part madrigals, but it came pretty close, AND I didn't even have to ask for it.) While overall the last few days were really fun, I will offer a variation on Sartre's famous dictum, that hell is other people's children, at least at night: an incubus possessed each of the children in turn at night, so after the first night, we didn't get an awful lot of sleep, whether it was S. (age two) throwing a two hour long shitfit about not wanting to go to bed, or I. screaming like a banshee at four a.m. "I HAVE TO GO PEE! I HAVE TO GO PEE! I HAVE TO GO PEE!" or, yes, even my own bundle of rapture failing to uphold her perfect reputation and deciding at midnight two nights in a row that somewhere there was a party going on, and dammit she wanted to be part of it. A. bless her was a good sleeper, but less competent on the urinary continence front, let's just leave it at that.

Three days of eating, cooking, swimming, sunbathing, reading my John Le Carre novel (which I have to admit I am a little bamboozled by; there are rafts of characters that I haven't been able to keep track of, and I am a little suspicious at this point in the book that he isn't keeping track of them either), and playing Loaded Questions. I will never be able to think about Rick Santorum in quite the same way again.... (those with a strong stomach can Google Dan Savage's attempt to redefine the words "Rick" and "Santorum," but you will likely regret it). The last two nights babydaddy (who, if anyone were in doubt about his serious machoness, stopped taking even ibuprofen a mere four days post-appendectomy) produced a magnificent barbecue dinner, and we had an oboe concert on the front porch as the sun set. What a good note to end a blog entry on....

arrives a Montreal - holiday blog entry!

Ooh, looking at the phrase "arrives a Montreal," (as in "nous sommes...") I wonder if it's possible to compose a grammatically correct sentence in one language that uses words that exist as real words in another language? too much to hope, I think, that you could get a sentence that was grammatically complete in both languages. If I knew someone who worked in language translation at Google, I would totally ask them to apply their massive brain to that entirely trivial problem. In the meantime....

New Experience numero un: hurricane! wow. we didn't actually experience full on Hurricane Irene, I don't think, but that was rain that meant Bidness with a capital B. We are getting to be seriously savvy baby-travellers at this point, a well-oiled babycare machine travelling at 600 mph at 37000 feet, safari pants-pockets stocked with extra pacifiers, sanitizer gel, spare nappies, tupperware containers of mashed fruit, etc. - and I get extra points on this trip for having a second dependent, as the usual hefter of heavy bags was too busy popping Percocet for his two-day-old appendectomy incision - but I have to admit that we were inadequately prepared for the gigantic wall of water that sloshed down on us as soon as we left Logan airport for Vermont in our trusty rental car. It was I think the scariest driving I have ever had to do: rental car + unfamiliar roads + dark night + precious if somewhat cranky cargo + tired from long flight + jetlag + long way to go + sketchy directions once we got into vermont + HUGE ASS QUANTITIES OF WATER, like someone had turned on a giant faucet pretty much right over the car. Windscreen wipers going frantically, multiple near spins-out-of-control-from-hydroplaning, tidal wave every time a truck passed us, etc. I don't think my back touched the backrest of the carseat once the whole way. We stopped briefly for dinner at a Burger King, where the baby flirted with the Latina lady mopping the floor, and babydaddy and I ate a meal which we lived to regret. I have not eaten at a fast food restaurant since watching the movie SuperSize Me, and even our feeble attempt at squeezing a 'healthy' meal out of the Food Industrial Complex felt like a total sellout (we had a "garden salad" (wilted iceberg lettuce with three slices each of a tomato that died of anemia long before we got to it), and half a minitray of "chicken tenders", about which the less said the better. I renewed my vows never to eat at a place like that ever again, and I don't think it will be a difficult vow to keep. Not entirely sure how/why we lapsed, other than we had five hours in the car without the prospect of anything else being open. Five hours without food would have been better. Ennyways.

Drive drive drive drive drive slosh slosh slosh slosh rain rain rain rain until we arrive at Caspian Lake in northern Vermont, where, after a short stint of pootling around dirt country lanes in the dark cursing the sketchiness of our directions and the absence of cell phone reception, we pass by a house with lights still on and voila! magic! through the darkness, nice friends can be seen having a convivial time framed in the lit window. Hooray!

We unpack car, baby, piles of stuff (no longer raining, but it is one a.m.) and get bundled straight into bed after lightning tour of the house (old creaky wood new england battered sofas old piano ancient kitchen sliding window shutters no noise at all except lovely little tree/lake related night time noises) and sleep the sleep of the catatonic for ten hours straight, baby included hallelujah. we really have the best behbeh ever. she's cute AND she sleeps. have I mentioned recently that I LOVE her???

ok am going to hit publish post now and continue adventures another day because it is bedtime delicious bedtime. bonne nuit (that's a foreshadowing of montreal :))

day 1/5 sans bambina

so far so good. i have gotten my adequate quota of

1) sleeplessness (due to the vagaries of san francisco cell phone reception, i received a text at 4 a.m. from my sister that had been sent twelve hours earlier and then couldn't get back to sleep)

2) fatness (i went over to dinner at F.'s house, and she made pasta carbonara, which pretty much hits all the high-calorie peaks I know of: cream, bacon, cheese, eggs... you could maybe throw a donut and a couple of strawberry daiquiris in there while you were at it, but it's hard to beat for sin:volume ratio. F just got back from visiting relatives in Calabria, and I am suffering snits of jealousy that I am not stylish and Italian with a summer villa on the Adriatic and big piles of cousins)

3) happiness (last day of working fulltime clinic for a wee stretch. i'm on call this weekend, and there are a couple of ER shifts upcoming, but i am temporarily done with answering histrionic calls from neurotic middle-aged ladies throwing tantrums (I am not making this up) about how they called in a refill request for their vitamin D supplement over TWO HOURS AGO (**we ask people to give us a turnaround time of 3-5 days**) and they haven't GOTTEN it yet, and they are crying and hysterical because they feel noone is LISTENING TO THEM and how are they supposed to last the weekend WITHOUT THEIR VITAMIN D SUPPLEMENT. which, not to be unsympathetic, here, but this always makes me think, huh? what about global warming? what about the war in Afghanistan? what about all the toxic chemicals leaching into the food supply and how we're all twenty years away from turning the planet into an overheated nuclear waste pesticide dump populated entirely by SUVs? if running out of your entirely nonessential vitamin supplement for two days causes you this much stress, how to you even get out of bed in the morning?

I have had running through my head all day the lovely lovely John Dowland song, Come Again, which is such a sweet combination of sexy and sad all at once:

"Come again, sweet love doth now invite

Thy graces that refrain to do me due delight:

To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die

With thee again in sweetest sympathy.

Come again, that I may cease to mourn

Through thy unkind disdain, for now, left and forlorn,

I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die

In deadly pain and endless misery.

Gentle love, draw forth thy wounding dart!

Thou canst not pierce her heart. For I, that do approve

With sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts

Did tempt, while she for triumph laughs."

I am extra impressed with myself that I could reproduce all three verses after more than my fair share of a bottle of red wine...

projects for tomorrow: landlady-type fix it things around the house, and I am going to start on my master copy of a Michiel Sittow portrait of a lady who might or might not be Catherine of Aragon. a beautiful beautiful painting. why have i never heard before of michiel sittow? i just randomly found this painting poking around on art.com. i think my art goal is to figure out how to paint portraits of people I know in the early flemish style. as in, actually identify and be able to reproduce the elements of a van eyck/rogier van der weyden/memling/etc etc portrait without simply copying directly. sort of like the gerhardt richter paintings that are so intensely evocative of vermeer.

until then: good night, everyone. goodnight baby. your mama she meeses you.

Misunderstandings

I was crossing Octavia Street today on my way to Flax (yay Flax!) and a woman leaned out of her truck to yell, "Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to California?" I was initially bemused/tickled (how delightfully absurd to be that lost that you don't know what state you're in!) and then pleased (how fun to be the one to get to tell her, "You've made it! You're here!"), and then ashamed: you twit, she means California Street. Oops.

I was asked by a woman on the street when I was an undergraduate where I had gotten my enormous and very colourful jersey; when I told her, "Ecuador," she said, "Oh, is that one of those shops down by Pike Place Market?"

My baby

1) has five teeth

2) can crawl

3) understands "where is the little duck?" and "where is the flower?" in chinese (we know this because she reaches for her plastic duck/the dahlias on the mantelpiece respectively)

4) is going to be in a different town from me for the next five days.

filter bubble

I just watched the following profoundly depressing TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

While it is no surprise at all at all that the Internet has both facilitated instant global communication and increased insularity with the diversification of news sources, I don't think I realized to quite what extent my online habits shaped the information which I received. The benefit of getting what you want is obvious; the downsides to being given _only_ what you want are more insidious. Out of curiosity, I did a search for what some of the algorithmic "signals" that Pariser talks about that Google might use to alter search results; below is a list generated by a random German blogger dude that doesn't contain any real surprises, I suppose, but it made me wonder if there is a market for a purposeful search engine scrambler that will always throw in a few 'wild cards' into your search results to make sure that you are getting more of the whole picture. My understanding was that the filter was designed to try and take you to the most _relevant_ page (i.e. if you type in Britney Spears, the number one search result should be the official Britney Spears website, not a creepy stalker's website that just consists of the name 'Britney Spears' repeated five thousand times), but if that were the case, then _anyone_ typing in "Egypt" (as in Pariser's talk) should get as their first hit a Wikipedia type article with a general run down on Egyptian history and current events, not ads for travel companies, right? If any of the Googlers in my life want to weigh in, I'd be very interested to hear what they have to say.

Oh, and my baby has a TOOTH!!! so exciting.

Proposed possible filter modifiers:

1. our search history
2. our location
3. the browser we use
4. the browser's version
5. the computer we use
6. the language we use
7. the time we need to type in a query
8. the time we spend on the search result page
9. the time between selecting different results for the same query
10. our operating system
11. our operating system's version
12. the resolution of our computer screen
13. average amount of search requests per day
14. average amount of search requests per topic (to finish search)
15. distribution of search services we use (web / images / videos / real time / news / mobile)
16. average position of search results we click on
17. time of the day
18. current date
19. topics of ads we click on
20. frequency we click advertising
21. topics of adsense advertising we click while surfing other websites
22. frequency we click on adsense advertising on other websites
23. frequency of searches of domains on Google
24. use of google.com or google toolbar
25. our age
26. our sex
27. use of “i feel lucky button”
28. do we use the enter key or mouse to send a search request
29. do we use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through search results
30. do we use advanced search commands (how often)
31. do we use igoogle (which widgets / topics)
32. where on the screen do we click besides the search results (how often)
33. where do we move the mouse and mark text in the search results
34. amount of typos while searching
35. how often do we use related search queries
36. how often do we use autosuggestion
37. how often do we use spell correction
38. distribution of short / general queries vs. specific / long tail queries
39. which other google services do we use (gmail / youtube/ maps / picasa /….)
40. how often do we search for ourself

weird dream

I dreamt last night that I was taking an exam in an outdoor classroom with mountains in the middle distance. There were lots of chairs with fold-down desks in rows, but I was the only student, and Javier Bardem was proctoring. The exam was an essay question on the Odyssey in which you had to take a stance on whether you thought Penelope was faking a major illness or whether she genuinely had something organic wrong with her, and you were supposed to back your arguments up with medical details hidden in the text (which, please note, I have never actually read). I freaked out because I had no idea how to answer the question, and so I ran up the road into the mountains to escape, and Javier was cross with me.

rain rain go away

SO, it's absolutely pouring down rain here in gorgeous (not) sunny (not) San Francisco... flights from Seattle are delayed which is both:

- bad (parents have to cool heels in airport for hours, will not get to spend _quite_ as much time with baby as previously hoped, I can't f****** go OUT because it's so incredibly wet out; ironically one of the things I need to go out to do is buy a replacement brolly) and

- good (I have more time to cross things off my to-do list before everyone arrives, including think about supper for tonight. Notice I am using my valuable to-do list time while baby is hallelujah praise the lord sleeping to send blather into the blogosphere... hmm, maybe not so sensible).

I had my first day back at work on Tuesday of this last week; it was sort of a calm fiasco in that nothing went as planned but it didn't particularly bother me. I was slightly offended (but not really) that I had multiple new patients on my schedule - you'd think after four months away, there would be at least one clinic-ful of faithful stalwarts who'd been saving up all their rectal boils and disability paperwork and oxycontin refill requests specially for me, just because they love me so much - but turns out that, no, the underworld of Belleville can cope just fine without me, and in most cases, probably didn't even notice that I was gone.

(Pumping milk at work is a grotty experience, I just have to say - I have to lock myself in the lab to do it and then smuggle my bottles of milk through the back hallway to stick them in the freezer, so it feels somehow as if I'm doing something reprehensible and pornographic. So much easier if I were allowed to bring the baby to work with me - of my two boob decompression devices, she is more efficient than the pump anyway...)

My disorganized day in clinic was then cut short by (hoorah!) an admission, so I drove half an hour to the hospital in pouring pouring bucketing bloody miserable wet wet wet rain to admit a guy to hospital who had given himself a raging urinary tract infection by (squeamish readers beware) catheterizing himself to relieve his blocked-up prostate with a Foley catheter he had pulled out of the rubbish (worse: the rubbish bin of the Sonoma County jail). eeeeeuuuuuuuuwwww. And then home to see how my lovely baby had gotten on with the babysitter, and it turns out she'd been happy as a little piglet in shit all day (with photos to prove it) without me. Hunh.

Yesterday I went w/ babydaddy's friend A. to go see the Voyeurism exhibit at the SFMOMA - a collection of mostly photos w/ a handful of videos of people photographed without their knowledge and/or consent and/or awareness of the photographer - ordinary people out and about, factory condition exposes, sex stuff, military stuff, etc. Some of the images were unexpectedly lovely and/or interesting - my favourites were a series of women from the 1940's on a train, a photo of a fake Arab town constructed for Israeli military purposes, a series of stills of a couple sleeping, and a bizarre little illustrated narrative in which a woman hired - via a third party - a private detective to follow her for the day.

I also had a mini-revelation about moving image "art" and why it is that I can never be bothered to sit and watch video installations in art galleries: the indeterminate duration annoys me. What I mean is this: I always want to give every piece of art a fighting chance to convince me that I like it, and I don't think you can judge a piece of art until you've seen the "whole thing". That takes at most a few seconds with still image, and once you've seen it, you can then (if you like) spend more time in front of the ones you like appreciating the details. With a moving image, not only does the _artist_ decide how long it takes to view the whole thing (can be seconds vs minutes vs hours vs days...) but the viewer isn't given that information and thus has to either be willing to stand there for potentially hours OR decide at some point that based on the first few minutes/seconds of this video installation that this piece of art is _probably_ a piece of shit and therefore not worth wasting any further time on, risking missing what might be a phenomenal exciting/beautiful/interesting twist in the video that comes up seconds after you have cut your losses and abandoned it.

One hour later: I am now the proud owner of a clear bubble umbrella, something I have been coveting ever since my trip to Japan last year. Which reminds me: everyone who reads this please think good thoughts for the people in Japan right now - and consider donating e.g. at http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/japan_57914.html. It is hard to not to think that our collective chickens re: irresponsible environmental policy are coming home to roost in the form of natural disasters...

cabo wabo woot woot

Day three or possibly four or possibly even five (?) of lowest ambition holiday ever: we are on Operation: International Travel with Baby: Start Low, Go Slow.

We were met at the airport on Saturday afternoon by

1. Glorious warm sunshine

2. The knowledge that our daughter had poo’ed through every layer of clothing she was wearing

3. Five thousand guys in polo-style corporate T-shirts wanting us to go on time-share real estate presentations, and

4. Our limousine (I am not making this up; I promise I had booked only a “private car” from the airport, but turns out “private car” means full-on stretch limo, complete with plastic champagne glasses in holders, paper napkins, television, and faux-leather seats in the back. My only regret was that I hadn’t thought to wear a shiny magenta satin prom dress, preferably with ruffles.)

Onwards through dry deserty cactus-y hilly rocky landscape on one side of the road and gorgeous blue ocean on the other; as you get closer to town, there start to be more and more giganto-mega-resorts on the beach side of the road, some more architecturally innocuous than others. The town itself (or what I have seen of it so far) is a tourist schlock-o-rama, catering to drunken spring breakers (two-for-one Tequila Happy Hour at Senor Frog’s!) and middle-aged large-middled middle-America (Sport-Fishing Cruise - We Pack and Ship Your Catch!), with grubby run-down Mexico evident around the edges. The hotel we are staying at is a higher end, even more giganto-mega version of the other resorts that line the shoreline; it’s all polished granite and koi ponds and gleaming blue swimming pools and mini-golf course. We are the VIP area of the hotel - accessible only by special key card - so we feel extra fancy, although I am disappointed to report that we have yet to spot Britney Spears or Celine Dion. The crowd seems to be mainly wobbly wrinklies with loud voices, mid-range I.Q.‘s, and a much higher tolerance for continuous pop music than I have…

Saturday evening we spent just settling in: dinner at one of the resort restaurants, followed by our Welcome Margarita at the bar (I would be really interested to know how many jillion liters of tequila gets consumed per 24 hours in this town; I have never been anywhere where they are so eager to get you sloshed on cheap liquor except for perhaps my brief stint as a pole dancer in a frat house (joke)). Sunday morning we held our noses and spent an hour and a half with a schmoozy paunchy real-estate agent called Scott M., who did his earnest bonhomie-ish best to chat up babydaddy (“So! You golf at all?”) and wild papa H. (“What do you do, sir?” Papa H.: “Ping pong! You got anywhere to play pingpong here?”). He took us to buffet breakfast and tried very hard to sell us on the joys of living part time in Cabo (our favourite was when he described the enormous dome over the lobby of the hotel as “an architectural marvel from 2002”. We have a miniature version of the brick dome over our bedroom, and it’s kind of fun, not unlike being inside a tandoori oven) but his desperate chumminess was no match for our snarkiness. Baby began to cry at exactly the ninety-minute mark, proving that she has a good instinct for schmooze-avoidance, and we escaped with our coupons for $420 in free food and spa services, despite poor old Scott M.’s protestations that he ‘hadn’t had time to show us the floor plans yet.’ Whatevs, dude, you should have been more efficient.

The rest of Sunday afternoon we spent taking a quick spin around the town to see what there was to be seen (not a ton that we couldn’t have guessed at) and buying groceries at the Soviet-style supermarket (which almost makes up for the very depressing manky produce section by selling fantastic fresh salsa and playing Chopin on the overhead loudspeaker). We also went for a little walk down the length of the beach from where we saw WHALES!!! Wowee!! So cool. Right off shore, too, maybe a hundred yards away (it gets very deep very quickly) breeching or breaching or whatever it is that you call it. We also saw a sign warning in English and Spanish not to swim for danger of riptides, and I was interested to learn that the Spanish word for riptide is the same as the word for hangover - clearly both occupational hazards of residence in Cabo San Lucas.

Monday the grandparents took the bambina, and babydaddy and I went on a mountain climbing expedition - we found what the real estate agent had referred to as ‘the Mexican beach’ (i.e. the little beach where the locals hang out - grubbier but much friendlier feeling than the mega-resorts beach), from where we did some bushwhacking and rock scrambling over the big hill towards the point of the cape, where the famous arches are, passing some magnificent little deserted white sand coves along the way, until we arrived at Lovers’ Beach, which was taken over by a party of sea-kayakers and water taxi touts. I snoozed on the sand in the sun with my book (which I am hugely enjoying - a biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay) and babydaddy went for a run (aren’t you impressed? I was) and then we scrambled back over the rocks to get home just in time to go on a Sunset Dinner Cruise that mama & papa H. had booked for us. The less said about that the better, I think - beautiful water, beautiful sunset, beautiful boat ride, food OK, drinks vile, blaring music and DJ person horeeeble. My favourite part of Monday apart from seeing the whales was that wild papa H. randomly came home with forty pounds of fresh-caught tuna and started cooking it up. We’ve been eating a lot of tuna the last few days.

Tuesday we decided we were going to opt out of the Tourist Industrial Complex completely for the day - we sat by the pool with books, swam, snoozed, sunbathed, garnered compliments on our delisquicious baby, and ate fish tacos (mmm) in the morning, and then to the beach in the afternoon for more of the same. Exciting events of the day were mainly baby-related: baby has now officially learned how to roll over from front to back (rendering us unsafe for elevated flat surfaces), and she has gone swimming (full immersion in the pool, partial immersion in the Pacific). I would also like to report that my Chinese vocabulary is getting positively expansive: I can say, “good morning,” “Did you sleep well?” “stinky,” “thank you,” “hello” and “pineapple.” I think I’m pretty set for linguistic survival.

OK time to go see if I can get the internet connection to work…also, I just re-read this, and realized that it is sounding very snotty and as if I am not enjoying myself, when in fact the opposite is true; the tourist infrastructure here is icky and non-sustainable and disturbing, it's true, but it has been absolutely blissful to have several days to just sit in the sunshine next to the water with my lovely baby and babydaddy and a book and feel happy.

Remember the Alamo! ... wait, the Alamo was what again?

Posting from semi-sunny San Antonio, Tejas, where the entire travelling circus of baby, babydaddy, babydaddy's sister, brother-in-law, and niece have all come to pay a visit to ancient greatgrandmother - fully marbled but quite weak at 93 and counting. We arrived on Wednesday (fussy babies + delayed flights = horrible) and got ourselves to the car rental place where we had a zippy silver MINIVAN!! waiting for us. So so suburban. I feel like a soccer mom already, even though my baby doesn't do much more, athletics-wise, than kick me in the boobs when we're cuddled up together.

Highlights of the trip (since it's late, we're leaving tomorrow, my computer has limited battery life left and I'm too lazy to get up and plug it in:

- Extremely potent margaritas and hand made tortillas at dinner the first night we were here. I was having trouble walking in a straight line after, I am not kidding, approximately one third of a margarita. Hooray!

- Ancient grandma commenting obsessively on how 'large' (by which I think she means Caucasian-looking) baby's eyes are. But I think we're in - on the third visit (this afternoon) she gave me a big chunky ring set with an enormous faux pearl and (according the box) Genuine Crystals as a keepsake, as well as a fluffy blue knit scarf. Baby luckily cooperated quite well being passed around like a parcel and beamed gummily at ancient grandma. Toothlessness apparently runs in the family.

- Butternut squash ravioli with crumbled amaretto cookies and sage butter for supper last night at Il Sogno (San Antonio foodie hot spot) (the cookie business sounds a little peculiar, but molto bene. Due thumbs up from me.)

- The temperature. A weird thing to include on a best-of list, but really, the temperature has been unbelievably pleasant. Neither too hot nor too cold but exactly perfect, such that you walk around in short sleeves saying, ah, gosh, the air feels so nice on my skin! I went for a run this morning and it was perfect running weather. (Although architecture/landscape not so inspiring: we are in a neighbourhood full of monochromatic grey/beige 1950's ranch style bungalows with dead grey lawns, no inhabitants in evidence, and the landscape is so flat that the elevation gain between Basin Street (where I started out) and Mountaintop Boulevard (highest point) was all of about six feet.

I don't know that I can quite include it as a highlight, but it's certainly worth mentioning - we went to the Smokehouse this afternoon, for authentic Texan pit barbecue - $32 at a glorified roadside shack will buy you a pound of sausages, a pound of short ribs, a pound of brisket, a pound of pork, a big bucket of potato salad, a big bucket of beans, and a pint of barbecue sauce. I am beginning to understand why so many people here clock in over three hundred pounds. You could get seriously fat here in not very much time at all.

We also went to the Alamo, aka the shrine to extremely selective Texas history. We (or at least I) did not purchase any shot glasses, coffee mugs, T-shirts, or key-rings in the gift shop, although I was tempted by a little plaster model of the front of the Alamo, mostly because they came in two sizes, labelled for convenience as "Small Frontalamo" and "Large Frontalamo" and I thought the German conciseness and precision of the noun "Frontalamo" was worth a keepsake. However, a lemon sorbet at the icecream shop across the street was calling to me more loudly, so I went and blew some of my hard earned cash on that.

ok, eyes are starting to close involuntarily...

pics of my primary cause of insomnia these days

An added bonus, lovely friend/delivering doctor rang me to read me poem by Robert Browning, shortly after baby was born:

The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hillside's dew-pearl'd;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in His heaven-

All's right with the world!

Fashion fascism

I read recently that many high-end fashion houses refuse on principle to make their ready-to-wear clothes in large sizes, on the grounds that they don't want fat people wearing their stuff, thus presumably making the brand-name clothes more desirable. I am tickled therefore by the fact that many of these same high-end fashion houses make baby clothes - including snaps down at the bottom end of the clothes expressly for ease of nappy-changing: what does it say about high fashion when being fat is considered less attractive than being incontinent? I think I'd rather be fat...