mean mama

1,3,7-trimethylxanthine

2010-03-21T12:18:00.009-04:00

seventy degrees on saturday. i know, again with the weather report, but may i remind you that i live in maine? and that it is march?

friday and saturday were outdoorsy, with stops at arabica for coffee.

m and boo went on long bike rides all weekend, and bean and i took lots of long walks.

we were pleased by bard's sidewalk sign showing the chemical formula for caffeine.

the low point of the weekend was when m, boo, and i went to see the ghost writer, which was okay, but not as good as i'd hoped (and left me with the nasty sensation of just having seen a movie directed by a creepy old man, not because of its content, but because i'd conveniently forgotten that it was a roman polanski film). and we emerged from the theater at midnight to find that our car had been towed. i'm not blaming anyone, but let's just say that i was not the one who was driving the car that night. we had a short mental list of people who might be available at 12:30am to drive us to south portland to retrieve our car, and number one on that list was bean's friend max* who just happened to be hanging out with bean and who gallantly came to our rescue.

the above photo was taken inside the theater by boo. this current series of movie trivia makes me crazy: it is full of grammatical and punctuation errors, is bizarrely written ("thick-gummed"?), and check out that font at the top...

*i doubt i am permitted to say anything more about this.

like sparks shooting all the way up to the brain

2010-03-19T08:41:00.006-04:00

my mom just told me that honoré de balzac (whose birthday is today) drank fifty cups of coffee a day. it makes my heart palpitate just to think of it!

weather

2010-03-18T06:34:00.005-04:00

i do realize that there are few topics more boring than the weather. but i just have to mention that ours has been spectacular the last few days, hovering in the daytime around sixty sunny degrees. i've opened windows, rolled up my jeans, gone without socks. it's liberating. m and i took minnow to his favorite place yesterday, where we were treated to a gorgeous low tide.

chungking express

2010-03-17T07:27:00.003-04:00

confusing romance,
charming, jittery, doubled...
hong kong amelie?

3.141592653589793

2010-03-15T06:22:00.004-04:00

to celebrate national pi day, i made some pies: two pot pies with roasted vegetables, veggie gravy, and seitan, with puff pastry on top (so good. people were almost licking the dishes when these were eaten up); and an apple gingerbread pie for dessert (in truth, a little overdone, but tasty). enoch, max, and anthony joined us. and then some members of the party set things on fire in the kitchen.

again with the gratuitous cute pictures of my dog

2010-03-13T08:26:00.004-05:00

is that not just about the cutest thing ever? okay, that's it for the word "cute" this month. i promise. i'll restrain myself from showing you the video of the baby lamb running around inside a house.

summer in the light and winter in the shade

2010-03-11T07:11:00.003-05:00

walking on willard beach with m and minnow. maybe winter really is over?

monty python's the meaning of life

2010-03-09T06:40:00.001-05:00

inappropriate
for everyone - but it makes
me laugh like i'm twelve.

sunshine

2010-03-08T14:38:00.003-05:00

this weekend truly felt like spring -- like spring in baltimore in fact, which is appropriate since we've basically had baltimore's winter this year, while they've had our winter. which is a-okay with me. on saturday, m and i went to see an education after we sat in the sunshine for a while sharing a latte from bard.

and then on sunday, while boo was skiing with some friends (i can't tell you how weird it feels to say that, not being a skier myself. it's as if he were playing polo with some friends. or. something exotic and expensive like that), bean and i took a long, leisurely walk all over the place. we paused to eat bagels from the works in the sunshine. i could've fallen asleep.fifty-five degrees.

and then it was time for our oscar party, complete with ginger beer floats and tiny samosas. if you haven't already watched this trailer for every academy award winning movie ever, i really think you should.

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

happy-making

2010-03-06T16:43:00.003-05:00

my (not necessarily all that helpful) tips for beating the farch blues:

*have happy kids. (some wise woman once told me that "you're only as happy as your least happy child," and dammit, it's true). bean and boo are both pretty content at the moment, for various reasons, and that makes me pretty content too.

*go see some movies. the white ribbon last night with the whole family (including enoch, to whom boo refers lately as his "godmother") and an education this afternoon just m and me. both well worth seeing.

*drink some good coffee. not only has mama d been treating me to some delicious lattes lately, but m and i shared one from bard this afternoon that was pretty near perfection.

*treat yourself to some sunshine. the sun. it came out today, for real, and the time and temperature clock claimed it was fifty-five freaking degrees. everyone in the old port had big, goofy smiles on their faces. probably including me!

marching

2010-03-04T06:37:00.002-05:00

this month is off to kind of a boring start. there was one morning with such beautiful sunlight coming through the windows that i thought i might be able to prove the march naysayers wrong, but mostly it's been gray and unexciting. plus, it's still only march fourth, somehow.

*milo in maine things are a little slow right now, as we plan and gear up for spring/summer.

*bean will learn all kinds of exciting/thrilling/disappointing/life-changing things, but not until april.

*the liberry is closed all this month, and i am ill-prepared (i know i could go to one of the wee branches, but i have a thing for the main branch).

*however, i'm enjoying flannery: a life of flannery o'connor, by brad gooch.

*my favorite line so far from this book is this one: "i could sew in a fashion and i began to make clothes for the chickens."

*i haven't been cooking many winners lately. things keep coming out mediocre.

*i've been avoiding baking delicious treats, even.

*i keep almost doing interesting things and then forgetting to go or having conflicts arise.

*examples: a pay-what-you-can yoga class; an animal refuge league volunteer orientation.

*i have some crafty ideas, but i seem to be unable to put them into action.

there you have it, a mighty pitiful list. i believe that once the sun really shines and i can open a window or two, things will be different.

rabbit rabbit

2010-03-01T05:41:00.000-05:00

march sounds so hopeful, doesn't it?

handsome

2010-02-28T08:34:00.001-05:00

"like a lady in a jane austen film." -- the checkout girl

my favorite toy

2010-02-27T07:50:00.000-05:00

playing around with MYphone -- i paid actual money (a dollar ninety-nine of it) to get this hipstamatic application. it makes cool old-style pictures, see? i love the rounded edges and square shape of the one below. it reminds me of a shoebox full of old photos.

wind

2010-02-26T15:56:00.004-05:00

our portion of last night's monster storm was nothing but fierce wind, which was kind enough to pretty much leave our willow tree alone. our power was out for longer than we've ever experienced, but it was still only about twelve hours (midnight to noon, approximately). i'm sure our electricity is somehow connected to the traffic signal at the intersection right outside our front door, because we're never without it for long. m and i took the opportunity to get coffee at 158 and take a very short walk on a very abbreviated version of willard beach with minnow.

the title might be something like "the happiest doll"

2010-02-25T08:26:00.005-05:00

this is a heartbreaking children's book just waiting to be written.

in my kitchen

2010-02-24T21:38:00.006-05:00

my sweet mom gave me this beautiful bird bowl (jeeze, what's with the alliteration lately? i can't seem to avoid it). it's such a lovely shade of reddish-brown, and...those birds. three birds, three pears. bean came into the room and said, "wow! that bowl really ties the room together!"

this is just about my favorite packaging. anything that involves an elephant on the label is okay with me. plus, pad thai. and i have recently figured how to not have the rice noodles stick together.*

there you have the highlights of my kitchen. we have our boy home from his amazing trip to the west coast (he learned to snowboard and ski and hung out in san francisco and flew both ways solo, and if he could do it again tomorrow he would), and we're all getting re-adjusted to the school week schedule.

*after cooking or soaking (following the package instructions), i rinse in cold water til the noodles are clammy and pale as a sick person. then when i'm ready to stir-fry them, i run warm water over them until they relax and give each other a little space.

limbs unfurled for action

2010-02-22T11:54:00.018-05:00

m, bean, and i had a wonderful whirlwind weekend in new york (ooh, alliteration!), where we were lucky enough to stay in a comfortable and charming brooklyn apartment courtesy of our friend erin, who was out of town and generously mailed us her apartment keys as well as maps and metro cards and museum passes.

her apartment is completely adorable.

i love the fact that there are rolls of streamers on her bookshelves. and the color of this blue cabinet.

and the fact that there are pretty little things all over the place, like this little dish with spools of thread, adjacent to some tiny chickens.

so, when in new york, we travel on our stomachs. as they say. we ate delicious, cheap food all weekend, including hummus and fava platters with falafel at hummus place and pastries at the hungarian pastry shop near columbia. i think my favorite was vegetarian dim sum in chinatown:

chinatown wasn't as stinky as it has sometimes been in my experience. i thought these silvery (dead) fishies were kind of lovely:

also, we had pickles from this famous lower east side pickle place. m told us a horrifying story from his childhood involving sweet pickle juice.

and coffee! at least as important as the snacks we ate was the delicious coffee we drank, first at the tompkins square park ninth street espresso (not on ninth street, by the way).

perfect lattes.

happy, caffeinated people.

oh yeah, we also went to the moma on friday night, which was packed with mostly french speaking people and americans taking goofy pictures of themselves and each other in front of the art. often striking silly poses, modeled after the figures in the art. we saw the tim burton exhibit, but it was so crowded it was difficult to really see it (all i remember now is a black light room, where i noted all the stains on my scarf that are normally invisible). here is my favorite piece of art of the evening, by jenny holzer:

erin's neighborhood was great, just a couple of blocks from prospect park, and very neighborhoody. we even mastered the art of "no train! no train! the f train is not running, go out to greenwood and get the shuttle bus."

and really the reason we were in new york at all was that miss gliss's sister alison was getting married. it was a fun wedding, with lots of laughter and a beautiful bride and happy family members and delicious food (including wedding cake baked by the bride herself, which may have been the most scrumptious wedding cake i've ever tasted). but most of all, bean's reunion with her miss gliss, who has been living in france for the last seven months. they had a few hours to hug and catch up, and even dance the hora, before they had to say goodbye again (miss gliss flew back to france last night).

just before we caught our megabus back to boston, we popped into the ace hotel for some stumptown coffee. that place is excruciatingly hip, and somehow extremely friendly too. i recommend lounging in the lobby admiring the hipsters and the taxidermy and the vivienne westwood-style chairs and black lacquer while sipping a pretty nearly perfect latte, if you're ever in the neighborhood. and if you go down to use the bathroom (which you should), you'll see this on your way up:

and for today's grammar tip, ahem, "alright" is not a real word. but i like these stairs anyway.

bloggity blog

2010-02-18T09:31:00.003-05:00

i guess i haven't been adequately documenting my life this week. it's winter break from those crazy schools, and boo is currently learning to ski and snowboard in tahoe with a, j, robot and pink. he's having a fabulous time! bean has been squeezing every moment out of this, the final winter break of her secondary school career. yesterday she and a friend spent the day in boston shopping for saris, eating good food, and discovering a more charming part of waltham than we'd previously been aware of. we've taken minnow to the beach nearly every day, and bean and i took him for a longer hike at wolfe's neck too. snow came, but only about half an inch of it. tomorrow we're going to new york for a few days!

crazy heart

2010-02-15T07:21:00.000-05:00

i love jeff bridges.
but i still didn't believe
that she'd fall for him.

lucky me

2010-02-14T19:02:00.006-05:00

not only did my valentime give me a brand new bottle of my favorite smelly lotion (as well as a bunch of goodies for the little valentimes), i also received this beautiful, beautiful print in the mail from my sweet aunt sooze:

isn't it gorgeous? it's made by hollie chastain, who has an etsy shop i like to ogle. i bet i sent the link to sooze along with copious hints and reminders of how much i love crows. i don't know if you can see, but it incorporates not only crows, but public schools, letters, and trees. more of my favorite things.

on the theme of valentine's day, i'd like to add that if minnow and i had entered this dog kissing contest we would have won, no problem.

the beloved community

2010-02-12T08:16:00.003-05:00

yesterday, bean was one of the moderators of the beloved community event at usm, a belated mlk day/black history month celebration. about eighty percent of it was excellent: interviews with portland community leaders, readings of martin luther king's writing, and various student performances. there were a couple of cringey parts that will no doubt be edited out of future events, but bean did an amazing job hosting and interviewing. and the bates college gospel choir, the gospelaires, were fabulous.

the learning shack

2010-02-10T07:04:00.001-05:00

boo found out yesterday that he did get a spot in the learning shack's class of 2014! hooray!

cold

2010-02-10T06:29:00.003-05:00

my etsy pick of the day. this is a print by elsita, and i like it. although it's not quite accurate (no snow here in maine, and yesterday we felt a little hint of spring), it still kind of captures winter. and its endlessness. and its chill -- though she really should have mittens on! i wish i had a red coat.

le temps du loup

2010-02-09T09:20:00.002-05:00

just when you think it
couldn't get any more bleak,
well, somehow, it does.