I smelled donuts this morning and recalled the summer my older sister got a job as a night baker for the bakery up on the town square.
Hannah was in high school; I was in middle school. When she got the job making donuts and rolls through the night, I thought there had never been a cooler thing to happen to anyone, ever. A job that took place at night? A job making donuts? I didn’t even know donuts were made. I thought they just appeared in a box. How was a donut made? Did she get to eat some as she went? Hannah would be able to tell me.
Many times that summer I would get up at 4am and go down to the backyard. I’d lay back in the hammock and look up at the pre-dawn sky and wait for Hannah to come home. The small bakery was just up on the square, which meant it was roughly three blocks from the hammock. Before too long, Hannah would open the gate and she would be so stoked that I got up to meet her. She’d lay on the hammock with me and we’d talk about all kinds of things. She smelled amazing because smelled like donuts.
Those days are so far away, now. We all know being home is a fraught thing. Here’s the bakery where Hannah worked and the place where the hammock used to swing; there’s the familiar creak and groan on the eighth and ninth step of the staircase; there’s the place where the armoire used to be. A lot of people who live far from their childhood home don’t go back nearly as often as I do; I come back at least twice a year to tape TV; this means I have an ongoing relationship with my hometown past but I also see changes as they occur.
Last month, my mother bought the old movie theater on the square. It’s right next to the bakery. More on that tomorrow. Will we all smell like film?
I’ve come to Iowa to tape the PBS show. This means I am in Winterset and will be working in Des Moines this week. It also means I will be sleeping in the bedroom I shared with my younger sister from the age of nine to the age of thirteen or so. Thankfully, it does not look the same as it did back then, though I miss the Madonna posters.
Here is who lives in this house:
1. My mother
2. My stepdad Mark (a.k.a. “The Cap’n”)
3. Scrabble
I walked into the kitchen this afternoon and saw Miss Scrabble in the position you can see in the above photograph. It is a difficult thing to simultaneously gasp, laugh, and try to not make a sound as you move slowly for your phone/camera in order to take a picture of a dog before she moves a single inch. In fact, this is a physically painful experience. But I did it. I got the shot.
It’s been beautiful since I got here late Friday. Crisp and clean, and better take a jacket.
All readers of the ol’ PG are valued, but there are a handful of you who get a clandestine extra squirt of chocolate sauce on your sundae. There are three readers or so who actually send me three-dimensional objects, otherwise known as “gifts.” Margaret’s Pocket Pendennis is a good example; Mark, you are way past due for your very own post and don’t think I don’t have you in my sights.
The other day I received a package that contained remarkable pencils. They were in a box with a full description of their origin. They write better than any pencils I’ve ever used. There was also a note in the package. Written with fine pencilmanship (bam!) the author’s optimism and bubbly personality positively lifted the page. My entire week was made.
The pencils were a gift from a reader who is a member of the Pencil of the Month Club. Yes, there is one. Yes, she’s a member. And yes, as soon as I learned of this Club, I went directly to CW Pencils’s website to sign up. I urge you to do the same and if you don’t want your pencils, you can send them to me so that I have more.
But I have found myself in a horrible situation. I cannot for the life of me remember who sent them and the note is not in the big stack of papers that I know I put it in. I asked Rita. I asked Carole. Neither of them were The Pencil Giver. Oh, Pencil Giver, I am painfully sorry. And I am almost as embarrassed as I was when this happened, but not quite. That was pretty bad.
Pencil Giver, will you email me? I have a present to send to you and a thank you card but your identity is hidden from my brain. I love my pencils so much.
17th Century engraving of a Griffin, image courtesy Wikipedia.
Below is a conversation I heard tonight as I waited for the east elevator here at the beautiful Kennedy Warren. In case you are just joining us, my towering, Art Deco, super-historic building borders the Smithsonian National Zoo. My neighbors are animals. From time to time, one can hear the call of the wild when heading out to the store or opening the window for some fresh air. And now:
IT WAS LIKE A DRAGON:
A short play by Mary Fons
Woman 1: It was like a dragon.
Woman 2: A what?
Woman 1: A dragon.
Woman 2: Maybe it was a wild boar. They’ve got the wild boars out right now.
Woman 1: I don’t know…
Woman 2: Maybe it was just the zebras. You know how they’re always going on.
They rejected the idea of a beating heart — barely. Doctor-themed cupcakes by Clever Cupcakes of Montreal.
A couple moons ago, I told a story about going on a date with a doctor. He diagnosed me with a fatty deposit when we were making out. As you can imagine, this cooled things off for me pretty quick. But there’s more to the story and when you learn the rest, you’ll see why I was cooled off before The Smooch Heard Round My Hip.
We’re at dinner. Low light, pretty dress, etc. And the doctor is talking. He’s talking a lot. He eventually asked me: “So tell me more about what you do. Knitting, right?”
I answered in an abbreviated manner because as I explained how I earn my living, he looked away at least four times. I was not yammering on. I was not entertaining myself. I was answering his question and attempting to engage in the “Let’s get to know each other” thing. Crazy to do on a date, I realize. But the doctor was eating bread and glancing around as I spoke and I hate that. I don’t like talking to people who don’t care one cc what I’m saying but also, lucky for him, I like listening to people talk about themselves way more than talking about myself. I figured out pretty quick that the best thing to do was to clam up and ask him questions about himself and get through dinner.
So I asked questions. I let his tape run. Yes, he did have interesting stories to tell and he was intelligent. Successful. A father. A widower, as I’ve just recalled. But when you spend the first forty-five minutes of a date smiling and nodding and going, “Mm, I see,” it’s tiring. It’s a drag. One can also be in danger of drinking too much wine because there’s nothing else to do with one’s mouth.
My date excuses himself to use the men’s room. The head waiter comes over and removes our first course plates.
“Did you enjoy your beet salad, Miss?”
“Oh, it was wonderful, thank you so much. Really good.”
I engaged him in a conversation about how beets are gross unless you get them on a fancy plate. He agreed; we had this instant rapport. Then he gave me a strange look. An earnest look. A conspiratorial look. He looked toward the men’s room and back to me.
“And how is your evening going?” he asked, cocking his head and squeezing his eyes at me. I, too, glanced at the men’s room. I, too, cocked my head and squeezed my eyes.
“Can I be honest?”
“Please do.”
“It’s not good. He is just talking and talking and talking. He hasn’t asked me a single thing about myself! I don’t want to go on and on, but we’re supposed to be on a date. I’m pretty bummed.”
“We give you forty minutes, tops.”
“What?”
“We’ve been watching you two since you came in because your table is right in the line of the service area. He hasn’t let you get a word in since you got here. We all feel really sorry for you. Can I bring you another Champagne? On the house, Miss.”
I looked over my left shoulder and saw two bartenders, a busboy, and another waiter at various positions near the wood paneled, chrome bar. One of the bartenders saw me looking and gave me a little wave and a cringe. My date appeared from around the corner to the restrooms and came back to the table.
“I would like a glass of Champagne,” I said to the waiter, my new BFF. “Thank you so much.” My new BFF and I shared the most awesome, subtle look. We were in cahoots now; we were allied. He asked my date if he wanted anything from the bar or if he was ready for wine with the entrees on their way. He was ready for wine, and I was ready for dessert. Yes, I know, I sold out for some smooching at the end of the date. What can I say? It had been a long week.
The last thing to say about it is that I didn’t have to fight the doctor off with a stick; neither of us pursued a second date. Maybe he thought I was a dull conversationalist, that I had nothing good to say, nothing interesting to talk about.
That’s me the other day. I can’t remember why. Illustration by Kate Greenaway, b.1846.
I’ve been spending time with A Person. (Not the doctor, who was a one-date situation but I get asked about it a lot for some reason. I keep meaning to tell the rest of that story because there’s more; I promise to do that tomorrow.)
Person and I have spent enough time together over enough months now that parts of myself that I don’t understand have come back and are staying in my guest room. Relationships bring out sides of ourselves that don’t exist when we’re on our own. Unless you’ve been married fifty years and have done a lot of workbooks, the negative stuff that gets revealed is hard to change. The older I get, the more annoyed I am when I realize I’m doing X again in a relationship, or that I responded so badly to Y when I damn well knew better.
We all have a relationship style. Some people try out that style on one person their whole life; some people try it out on a whole lot more. There are fabulous elements in a person’s relationship style, (e.g., a photographic memory for how much butter you like on your popcorn); there are not-so-fabulous elements (e.g., yelling.)
Now that I’m seeing A Person, I am reminded once again that I am the most impatient person I’ve ever met. Now that I’m seeing A Person, I am reminded that I am moody. Now that I am seeing A Person, I must remind myself that it’s okay to let someone else chop the salad and that if it’s not done exactly the way I like it — which is of course the right way — no stars will fall out of the sky.
Now that I’m seeing A Person, I am reminded how frightening it is and frankly how exhausting it is at this point it is to stick my heart out.
I took the picture above around noon today inside an abandoned cathedral in West Detroit.
My travel companion and I were accompanied inside the cavity by a police officer — the police officer being the only reason we could go in at all. It’s a fantastic story, how it happened, but I can’t tell it now. I’m so tired my tiredness is not funny anymore. You know how when you’re really, really tired you go through a phase of goofball, slapstick humor? That ended about an hour ago.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about my time in Detroit. For now:
Detroit is in worse shape than you’ve heard. Yes, there are pockets of growth. But one trendy coffeeshop does not a renaissance make. The stats on vanishing municipal services, crime, drug addiction, vanishing population density, foreclosures, and all the other gifts blight brings are real and they’re so awful it’s hard to believe what you’re reading. When I’ve read about Detroit I found it hard to believe; being in the place, I assure you that it is all there to see, no believing required.
Don’t be fooled by all the sunlight streaming through the busted windows. This was a dark place today.
Wikipedia is great for a lot of images, but sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. Illustration: Me
At the Iowa State Fair a few days ago, a quilt was stolen. The quilt was a blue ribbon winner, made by a local gal who had worked so hard on it for a long time, obviously. Well, someone just up and took it off the wall where it was being displayed and now the Fair will surely have to add some long insurance rider that protects future quilters from being afraid to win first place, though they won’t be that afraid for that long.
But the story doesn’t end there. Oh, no. There was also a goat stolen.
A young goat was stolen from the petting zoo — one of triplets, apparently. I’d like to think she was a middle child like me and arranged the whole thing to get attention.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: I initially wrote the above sentence this way: “I’d like to think she was a middle child like me, goading the bad guys into kidnapping her for the attention.” Do you see how I cannot possibly use either of these terms in this context without honking a clown horn?]
The story in the article that accompanied the ten o’clock news interviewed the man whose goat it was that was…kidnapped. He said — and this is a direct quote — “How could someone stoop that low to take a baby goat anyway? They knew it was a baby.”
That’s it. I’m done. I can never write anything as sweet, funny, charming, tragic, entertaining, or thought-provoking as those two sentences. Never, as long as I live, can I top that. It’s been nice knowing you. To the quilter who was burgled, it’s awful and I’m so sorry. Here’s hoping you get the quilt back someday. To the goat owner (who did get his goat back, by the way) you are my new hero. A girl can only have so many, so I’m taking Dos Passos off the list and sticking you on there in his place.
My kitchen is just on the other side of this picture. Photo: Me
Last night, until about 1:30am and this morning beginning at 6:30am, I was sewing. I was sewing two baby quilts for The Big Secret Project that will be announced soon. Last night at 12:30am, I felt the announcement bearing down on me like a train. A train covered in a patchwork quilt, with a conductor who is running the thing on a sewing machine engine. If you’re not a quilter, you don’t know that some of these puppies (?) are so powerful, they could probably power a locomotive. Especially those BabyLocks. They’re engines that can. I have four.
Paper-piecing is my favorite way to make patchwork. Paper-piecing means to sew fabric to a paper foundation and then tear the paper off the back when the block is complete. You don’t have to do patchwork this way; there is “traditional piecing” as well, but I’ll not go on about all this too much for those of you who don’t care about patchwork, though you should.
I used to be afraid of the paper-piecing technique — used in quiltmaking for at least 150 years — because the process involves some brain training. Once I got the hang of it, however, I began to look at every quilt block and think, “Okay, yeah, yeah: but how can I paper-piece it?” It’s like starving guy on a desert island who looks at everything he sees as a steak.
The drawback to paper-piecing is that your floor looks like the picture above. All those bits of paper must come off before you join all the blocks together and the more blocks you have, the more you become a badger, scrabbling at the backs of your blocks with little claws, paper going everywhere, including in your hair. At the end of the process, if the quilt is large, you have a nest. You do sit in it because it’s comfortable there on the floor.
Such is the glamorous life of a quilter who makes quilts for shows or magazines, etc. Quilting under a deadline is not fun at all. It sucks all joy from the process, though the finished product is still rewarding, but mostly because you can breathe again and pry your shoulders from your neck.
Fancy Penhaligon’s orange blossom water from London..or Listerine? Photo: Wikipedia
Perhaps this is a frivolous tip.
But a few weeks ago, I realized my shampoo was terrible. It was also expensive, from a shop that sells fancy French skincare and bath products. They make a lot of products I love — and my mother is such a huge fan she should be making a commission at this point for all the people she’s turned onto the brand — but the shampoo? Poo. At least for me. I kept using it though, because it seemed a shame to throw it out at that price and the bottle was gorgeous. So I kept washing my hair with the poo-shamp. But it finally had to stop. My hair is wimpy.
So to Walgreen’s I went the next day, determined to offset the high price I paid for the poo-shamp by getting some Pert this time around. I figured Pert has been on the market so long (28 years!) there’s gotta be something to it. But when I got to the drugstore and stood in the shampoo section, my soul cried. I hate, hate, hate a big plastic bottle of drugstore shampoo in my shower. Why?
Subliminally, every time I see a big drugstore bottle of shampoo, I envision myself as a freshman in my college dorm, walking to the showers with my ugly plastic bucket of toiletries: pink Bic razor; over-perfumed shower gel from Bath & Body Works; a gummy bar of soap; a toothbrush and near-gone toothpaste tube…and a big bottle of, for example, Garnier Fructis. That bilious green. That ridiculous copy on the back about silk and strength. The enormous bottle itself, enormous because Proctor & Gamble has to get the cost of the bottle up to $6.99 and the stuff only costs $.06 to make, so hey, give ’em a gallon.
But standing there, dreading making my purchase, it hit me: it’s not the product I hate. It’s the container. So… Pour the expensive poo-shamp out of the gorgeous bottle. Fill the gorgeous bottle with Pert. I could consciously fake myself out and be so happy.
And this is just what I did. I went home and did the shampoo shuffle and it totally works. Even though I know the fancy bottle does not contain $20 shampoo, it feels like $20 shampoo because of the bottle. My life has totally changed. Do I need expensive shampoo? No. Do I need to feel happy and fancy in my shower? Yes, because I just do. But I can have both.
Also, Pert is not necessarily a product you need to run out and get.
Trader Joe’s. This one is in Connecticut; I was in the one in Charlottesville but they look exactly the same. Dissociated, yet? Photo: Wikipedia
Poking Gala apples in the Charlottesville, VA Trader Joe’s this afternoon, I heard an astonished voice say, “Mary??” And so it was that a wildly unexpected reunion began. This story is not going where you think it’s going. Stay with me.
I turned to see a man from my past (not that kind of man, not that kind of past) approaching me from the bulk nuts. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“It’s Jeff!” the man said, and so it was.
Jeff. Jeff from Milwaukee. My sweet friend Jeff who I met fresh off bus in Chicago in 2001. Jeff, who I haven’t seen in years. Jeff, who is married to Karen, whom I also love and haven’t seen in years because Jeff and Karen, married with children now, have always been connected at the hip and now live in Milwaukee. Here was Jeff, standing in front of me in a Trader Joe’s in Charlottesville, Virginia. Incredible. I gasped like I’d seen a ghost — not incorrect — and I body-slammed him, bubbling over with with joy and surprise. My eyes stung and we hugged hard.
We pulled back to get a good look at each other, smiling like crazy and laughing. Jeff! God, that bushy beard. Those twinkling eyes. The smart glasses. The sort of face, now with a fatherly tone to it, that says, “I own a lot of books” and “I know what good beer tastes like.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, breathless.
“I live here!” Jeff said.
This is when things took a hard left turn into a parallel universe where reality meant nothing and I wanted to crawl into a hole. See, Jeff didn’t say, “We live here.” He said, “I live here.” But remember, Jeff and his now-wife Karen are basically two halves of one person and I hadn’t heard anything had changed. Since Jeff didn’t say, “We live here,” it could be that Jeff and Karen were no longer together and Jeff moved to Charlottesville as a bachelor. Surely I didn’t hear him right.
“Wow! Okay … So … Karen and… You guys live here now, then?”
Jeff corrected me. “Karen? No, Jody.”
Jody. The spinning wheel of death appeared in my head. Jody. No. So did they? But… What? Karen. Jeff. Who is Jody? Hang on: Jeff. Bushy beard Jeff who I haven’t seen in… Wait. Is this… Oh, god.
My friend gave me a very strange look. “It’s Jeff. From Iowa City.”
Then, because I was surely looking a shade too neanderthal to not treat with kindness and caution, he gave me more information in a gentle tone. “The Motley Cow? Restaurant? Iowa City?”
I had the wrong Jeff. I had mistaken a very special, dear Jeff from my past for another very special, dear Jeff from my past. I wouldn’t believe this story if I heard it.
This Jeff and I worked at the same restaurant together for years in Iowa City. Jeff bartended. I waited tables. We were good friends. We didn’t drive each other to the airport, but we solved all the world’s problems many times over, late into the night with the rest of the gang. This Jeff gave me my first lessons in wine and shared music with me that was way, way better than the stuff I was listening to. Music and booze and making good money over a packed Friday night dinner shift — this is the stuff bonds are made of. So seeing This Jeff and understanding him to be Iowa City Jeff would have elicited the exact same response from me. But I had the wrong guy.
Please, please try to understand and take mercy on me: Iowa City Jeff now looks identical to Milwaukee Jeff did when I saw him last: same build, same eyes, same glasses, same smile, same cheeks, same (face obscuring!!!!!) beard, same haircut, same height. I’m telling you. I’m telling you. But I was so horribly embarrassed. There was this effusive, insanely happy reunion moment shared with a real friend who then realized he was mistaken for someone else. If that had happened to me, at best it would have been awkward; at worst, it would’ve been offensive and reason to feel pretty lousy. Who doesn’t remember friends? (Don’t answer that.)
We were laughing about it by the end of the (great) conversation. I saw pictures of Jeff’s son and wife, Jody. We caught up on a few people from the restaurant. Jeff told me he knows what I’ve been up to because he reads PaperGirl regularly; thanks, buddy. He actually said, “I’m going to be a blog post tonight, I think.” I told him he thought correctly.
My friend Claus saw all of this happen from the other side of the apple stand, by the way. After Jeff went his way, we went ours and my friend, who had witnessed the entire thing from the other side of the apple stand, told me it was the best theater he had ever seen. I don’t know if it was the best theater I’ve ever seen, but it was certainly the truest comedy of errors I have ever experienced.
It was good to see you today, Jeff. So very good to see you.
Lady in White, 2015. Navy Yard Plaza, Washington, DC. Photo: Me
My friend takes a lot of pictures. No, like, really a lot.
He’s a tourist, so that explains some of it. But he’s also a foreign tourist, which means there are even more photos taken every time we walk out the door. I know from personal experience that when in a foreign country, the number of pictures taken grows exponentially. “Hey, look at that bird on the piazza!” Click. “Hey, look at that other bird on the piazza!” Click. “Is that a cool pizza in the window of that bakery or what!” Click.
As a result of being around all this photography, I’m taking more pictures than I usually do. I have a beautiful Leica camera that I’ve taken with me on some of the day trips, but most of the time I just use my phone’s camera like everyone else. I’m reminded how enjoyable it is to take pictures. It’s like a treasure hunt. I love to find alternative perspectives and unexpected frames. I like seeing things that we might miss and giving them the spotlight. The photo above is from a series (fancy!) that I took while sitting on the low perimeter of the big fountain in the Navy Yard Plaza the other day. I have two dozen pictures like this, all of different people who passed smack in the middle of my view. No heads, just bodies. It’s incredible, the diversity I captured. East Indian, black, white, short, large, two people holding hands, a child, a shopping bag, a disabled person, etc. It was so fun, so interesting to me.
But I can’t take up photography in any serious way. Not now. I’ve got room for one go-to for life interp and it’s writing. I can’t process anything without writing it down and though it’s just chicken scratches that result in me being only dimly aware of what I experience, I can’t leave it for pictures. A picture tells a thousand words so I’d save time, but I like a thousand words. I like two thousand words twice as much.
It must be really fun to be subsidized by a rich uncle (he could be dead or alive, doesn’t matter.) You could interpret life all day long in using any number of mediums: you could look at pictures and write words and compose music all examining what life means while you take a bath in gold coins.
She’s asking for her laptop and headphones. Image: A woman in bed in a sick-room, attended by a physician, receiving the blessing of the Madonna del Parto, 1872.
A couple days ago I fell sick. I’ve been feeling well for a good stretch, so this was a drag on a number of levels. Living alone, such spells — when not hospital-bad — come and go and I do what I do to get well and that’s basically that. But my German friend is visiting and I am therefore not just sick but being observed being sick and I’ve been considering how this alters the sick one’s experience. I want to work in that quantum-physics phenomenon about how the behavior of something will change when being observed, but all I could find were five different names for it and something about a cat, so I’d better leave it alone.
There are three problems with having someone around when you’re ill. The first problem is that you need help but you also feel like going into a dark corner and snarling when anyone gets close, wounded animal-style. This is a conflict. The second problem is the mirror problem. When a little kid turfs out on her tricycle, it’s not the skinned knee that makes her wail; it’s the look on her parents’ faces. They panic or look really concerned and bam: the fall is now a Huge Deal, cue sobs. Being sick and observed is a little like that. Yes, my guts are mutinying; yes, I’m walking around like a ninety-year-old. But if I were alone, I’d probably just feel crappy, frustrated, and seventy-years-old. The look on my friend’s face when I shudder and sink into my easy chair makes my state way worse.
The third problem is the fixer-upper problem. Like any caring person, my friend wants very much to fix me, to fix the situation; I’ve dealt with this kind of beautiful, valued concern for years and you mustn’t think I resent it. But idea after idea (e.g., “What if you ate more yogurt?”), suggestion after suggestion (e.g., “You need to sleep eight hours; no less”), and indeed remonstration after remonstration, (e.g., “You put so much pressure on yourself, Mary” and “You travel too much,” etc.) serves to make a person feel guilty and that her behavior is the problem. If only I could find the perfect food formula, if only I would change one thing about my lifestyle, if only I would be someone else, then I would be okay — and be okay forever. Talk about pressure.
Should I live alone forever? Am I less ill if I am alone? Is any person with chronic illness or even a bad cold less ill when in solitude? This is a worthy question to consider and I’m sure I’m not the first to consider it.
It’s also true that I do not notice the gallons of tea I drink every day until someone points it out.
Well, have you? Wigwam Hotel, c. 1960. Photo: Wikipedia
I am sprawled on a hotel bed in Charlotte, S.C.*
Earlier today (not in my pajamas) I hosted a live-streaming event for the talented, prolific, famous, and oh-so-friendly folk artist Jim Shore. I met Jim when I filmed an episode of Love of Quilting in the spring; he was the guest and we got on like peas n’ carrots. When Shore & Co. decided to do this worldwide live-streaming event, they called me up. All of Jim’s designs come from his brain, but some are created in licensing partnership with minor companies such as Disney, Peanuts, Warner Bros., etc. What I’m getting at is that I’m now a Disney princess.
The event went beautifully. I had awesome hair thanks to Jim’s daughter Robin. I’m told the Jim Shore website was flooded with hits to the point where things weren’t working properly, probably the unofficial goal. We almost had a microphone disaster but two minutes after we were supposed to start, it was fixed and we rode the web to victory. It all seems so civilized and easy, but it only looks easy and it’s actually so civilized (not just this event but all on-camera stuff) that by the time you’re done, you feel like a Honda Civic that didn’t get its headlights turned off. Drained, in other words. Soon as my hotel room door is closed on days like this, I did what I always do when I’ve been on-camera and smiling for a full day. This is what I recommend:
Enter room. Take off shoes. Fling shoes across the floor. (Not violently; it’s kind of a free-throw thing.) Drop bag. Yawn. Scratch ribs. Flop on bed. Sigh deeply and be annoyed that didn’t laptop was not taken out of bed before the flop. Retrieve laptop. Crack open. Listlessly look at email. Do nothing for five minutes. Possibly watch YouTube video; do not view self on YouTube for any reason whatsoever (this is a general rule.) Scratch ribs again. Get up to get snack. Eat snack on bed, feeling guilty but not that guilty. Retrieve Hello Kitty headband and put on so to wash face. Eventually wash face. Brush teeth. Possibly watch 19 Kids and Counting for a little while. Turn off. Also turn off light. Sleep instantly with mouth wide open. Dream about that lady on Regis & Kathy Lee who is not Kathy Lee and does not do morning show with Regis, except he’s there and also Donald Trump is there and also there is a fox running around the studio, not on purpose.
You’re welcome.
*Post didn’t post last night for some reason. But what is time, anyway?
A non-ironic sign at the National Zoo in 1942. Photo: Wikipedia.
A major selling point for my apartment here in the Kennedy Warren building was its proximity to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, otherwise known as “the zoo.” The sweet leasing agent who showed me around the place said, “So the zoo’s your next door neighbor, which is coo. If the wind is right, you can hear the zebras.” She barely got the word “zebras” out before I said those three thrilling/terrifying words:
“I’ll take it.”
And the zoo really is immediately next door. There is no high-rise, no cluster of homes to the east because the zoo is there. I have been through the zoo many times and still haven’t seen all the animals; pandas are apparently agoraphobic, the reptile house is always closed, and sea lions are lazy, I guess. When I do catch an animal out at meal time (zebras eat a lot of hay) it’s thrilling; like any other sensitive person, however, it bothers me to see a wild animal behind glass. I’m still not sure how I feel about it all, especially because of what happened the other day. What happened the other day is that I heard a lion roar. And roar. And roar.
Have you ever heard a lion roar? A real-life lion less than 200 feet away? I’m sure National Geographic specials viewed in HD with movie theater-grade sound does a decent job of it, but it ain’t the same. The duration and the start of a real lion’s roar might follow the MGM lion’s script, but what a digital lion can never create is the deep, vibrate-your-chest, subwoofer bass at the bottom of the roar and it’s not coming from speakers. It’s coming from that animal, right over there. Think breath. Think chest cavity. Think communication across miles.
If someone asked you to tell them what you know about lions, without question you’d say that the lion is “the king of the jungle.” When you hear a big, big lion roar, those words will actually become true for you. The lion is the king of the jungle without question. Nothing can do what that thing does. Nothing sounds like that. There’s nothing as strong, nothing as beautiful, and nothing as terrifying, either — that sound is designed to make you run.
Not the hair salon I go to, but it did get your attention. Photo: Wikipedia
My father called me on my birthday. I haven’t talked to him in maybe four years.
I can’t recall how long exactly, but when you’re dealing with that unit of measure, the number doesn’t seem to matter. The phone call was odd and stilted; in under three minutes my father was able to make me sad, flabbergasted, and furious, as usual. I asked questions about his life and learned probably five things about him. He asked me zero questions about my life and learned .05 things about me. That’s pretty much been the ratio from “go.”
And I was at the hair salon! Christophe was doing my highlights! It was weird. When I covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “It’s my father! I haven’t talked to him in like four years!” Christophe’s eyes got big as saucers (in a Versace tea service, naturally) and he dropped a box of foils.
I get so unbelievably tired when I think of my father so I’m offering up an entry from the PaperGirl Archive. If, right after that call, someone had asked me how old I was on my birthday, I would’ve said, “Oh, I suppose about ninety, ninety-five.”
I have a difficult time choosing what I want most in this picture: flowers, adorable sugar bowl, espresso, or perfectly-sized ice. Wait, no: ice by a mile. Image: Wikipedia.
There are 400 different strains of anemia and they are on a scale of really bad to less-bad in terms of symptoms, long-lasting effects, seriousness, upkeep, etc. I have iron-deficiency anemia. This affects 7% of American women. It’s so nice to be so special.
The strain I’ve got produces an odd behavior that could be much, much odder: pica. Pica is compulsively craving and eating non-food items for longer than a month or so. People with pica have been known to eat clay, ashes, dirt, sand, metal, and all variety of things you are definitely not supposed to eat. And not only do these folks eat these things, they crave them. They seriously think to themselves, “Man, I could really go for some gravel right now.” It’s not so strange to me, actually. Because 44% of the people with my strain of anemia have the same desires, except our pica makes us want to eat ice. There’s a name for this and it’s pagophagia, the compulsive desire to eat ice.
I buy huge bags of ice when I go for groceries. I have a huge bag of ice in my freezer right now because I finished the other bag last night. I’d say I go through a frat party-sized bag of ice every three days. Boy, do I love ice. I love to fill a glass with cubes and put a little liquid in there and then ca-runch as I write and sew and so on. The satisfaction I get from eating ice is impossible to explain. I just like it. And I’m careful: I don’t crack through glass after glass with huge chomps. It’s kind of a suck-n-gently grate kind of thing. (I’ve just realized that fellow ice-eaters would totally love to jam on the kinds of ice we like best, the best places to get great ice, and our methods of chewing.)
Why do iron-deficient people do this? The Mayo Clinic says it may have something to do with inflammation in the mouth (I feel nothing of the kind, but what do I know about my mouth?) but no one knows a thing and everyone’s willing to admit that. Pagophagia is straight up weird. It would be nice to hear that from your doctor.
Lucille Ball, still from Best Foot Forward trailer, 1943.
And now, Today In World History for August 6th!
1809 – Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson is born in Somersby, United Kingdom
1911 – Actress and comedian Lucille Ball is born in Jamestown, NY
1945 – The United States drops the atom bomb on Hiroshima
1980 – Mary Fons is born in Winterset, IA
Today has been a great day, breakfast to dinnertime. It could take a turn but I’m rolling those dice that it’s going to be good till I go to sleep tonight. Two highlights:
My metro card was getting really low on funds. When you swipe your card for the exit fare in the D.C. metro, you see your card balance. This morning it was down to ten bucks. Yikes! I have an automatic, pre-load thing that extracts money from my bank account each month. Well, what do you suppose happened later today when I rode the subway again? Why, my card reloaded today! This is my money! Not a gift! But it was nice to see that card’s value shoot up to forty bucks again.
The second highlight has to do with those events in world history. My dear friend Richard and I had a terrific conversation on the phone this morning. When I told him about these things that I know about August 6th, he gave me a great compliment:
“Poet, comedian, atomic bomb? That’s about right for you.”
I’m going to the airport to meet Claus in about 30 minutes. Until that time, I will enjoy an adult beverage. Thank you all for the birthday cards and wishes. Amazing!
Goodbye, cruel world. I’m going to sew, now. Photo: Me
Yesterday the FedEx man brought me a new sewing machine!
Oh, BabyLock. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: My two (2) Melody machines, my Symphony, my Tiara, and now my Lyric. This post would’ve come yesterday but I had to check with the BabyLock peeps to make sure I could let the cat/machine out of the bag. This this is hot off the truck! I dropped everything and set her up immediately, and I have been sewing on it for basically 24 hours straight. She’s a real beauty, guys. Friendly, intuitive, a great machine for beginners, for taking to classes, and for petting in general. Rides like it’s on rails. Smooth like a chocolate shake. I could go on.
And while we’re on the subject, let me tell you something about BabyLock real quick. Yes, I do promotional work for the company but I do that work precisely because of what I’m about to say, so you needn’t feel like this is some advertorial. It’s not.
When I pitched Quilty, the project was green-lighted but it wasn’t funded. The parent company who gave me the initial “yes,” told me that if we could get sponsors, we could do the show. No sponsors, no Quilty. And let me tell you: just because I was Marianne Fons’s kid didn’t mean I had it easy. Working with the ad seller for the media company, we got rejections. A bunch of them. I was an unknown quantity. Revenue streams for online video were still being understood/explored at the time (this was 2010) and besides: everyone with a project wants sponsors. Most of these companies’ budgets are tapped out before they finish their spreadsheets every quarter.
BabyLock believed in Quilty. By extension, they believed in me. I remember pitching the idea to them at Fall Quilt Market ’10. I was so scared during my spiel I think I actually stuttered once. The two women who were subjected to my pitch were intimidating and very pretty. These days they’re two kindred spirits in my life — really — and they’re still at the company, still believing in me. Most of the people who work at Tacony (BabyLock’s parent company) have been with the company for decades. My friend Pam? Thirty years with BabyLock. This says a lot about BabyLock.
So yeah, the pretty ladies took a chance on Fons 2.0 and that would be reason enough to be loyal to them but then there’s the little matter of the sewing machines being actually, truly, genuinely fantastic. The embroidery machines are like, the best in the biz, but full disclosure: I’m not an embroiderer (say that word out loud) so I don’t play around much on them. I don’t have to. It’s all good stuff, whatever your stitch may be.
I’ve got two quilt tops going. I like them both equally, so I just keep switching back and forth between them. If I had enough room in my apartment, I’d leave my Symphony up on one table and my new Lyric would be on another table. A girl can dream.
Woah, woah! Not quite, guys, let’s pull that one back. Photo: Wikipedia
My birthday is on Thursday. I’ll be thirty-six years old.
Patton Oswalt is a comedian who has my complete devotion. He does a brilliant bit on birthdays and I wish I could advise everyone to go to YouTube and listen to it (it was on one of his records years ago) but I can only send those who are okay with profanity. Using bad words is just the way good comedians roll, I’m afraid, and I’ll argue that the well-placed [beep] is comedy magic when used right. Sometimes the right word is the right word and the word choices made have everything to do with a comedian’s delivery, rhythm, and style.
Patton’s bit examines birthdays — as in, a celebratory day marking your birth — and how you really only get twenty. Here’s how he breaks it down:
Age 1-9 – you get a birthday because you’re a little kid
Age 10 – you get a birthday because you’ve hit the double-digits
Age 11-12 – NO birthday. Go to school.
Age 13 – you get a birthday because you’re a teenager
Age 14-15 – NO birthday. Do your homework.
Age 16 – you get a birthday because you can drive and smoke cigarettes
Age 17 – NO birthday.
Age 18 – you get a birthday because you can vote and shoot a gun.
Age 19 – NO birthday. Get a job.
Age 20 – you get a birthday, because you’ve entered a new decade and you get one every time that occurs
Age 21 – the one exception to the above rule because you can legally drink alcohol, which matters
After 21, the decade rule applies. Unless you’re hitting a 30, 40, 50, 60, etc., marker, your birthday is simply not a big deal.
Aside from being funny, I find it extremely helpful. For years I had strange, inexplicable baggage about my birthday. My family can attest to this and would do so with major eye rolls and heavy sighs. Every year I would get sullen and grumpy and weepy on my birthday. It was the Birthday Problem That Had No Name. But I finally figured it out and it was about expectation. I didn’t have Oswalt’s rules, so I expected something sort of cool or neat or happy to happen every year on my birthday and when it didn’t, I was crushed. It was the same exact feeling you get when Christmas morning (or the entire day) kind of fizzles out or is straight up disappointing. We want so much, we feel so much, and then we come back to Earth. Now that I have Oswalt’s rules, I no longer have the subconscious desire to have a Birthday Parade every year.
And so my simple plan for Thursday is to visit my hairstylist (he is actually French and actually named Christophe) and get gentle, subtle, Breck girl highlights. I’m going to workout so I feel physically good. The best thing about Thursday is that my friend Claus is coming to visit me in Washington, but his plane gets into BWI at 10pm or something, so the tail end of my birthday will be spent sleepy in Baltimore.
Washington National Cathedral at twilight. Photo: Wikipedia, 2012.
Slowly, steadily, I am becoming aware that I can love a city other than Chicago and that my love can go deep. If you’d asked me a year and a few months ago if this were possible, I would have been almost angry that you would ask that. When you love something a lot it feels like you have ownership of it and as ridiculous as it is, for over thirteen years Chicago was mine. To suggest I could love another city even half as much was to take something away from me. Like a toddler with a plushy Mies van der Rohe skyscraper, I did not want to give. But I’m now welcoming this new understanding.
The understanding has opened doors in my head but the understanding has also been the crowbar that opened those doors in my head, so that’s weird. Look, let me stay out of the metaphysical for now and just say that Washington is every bit as fabulous as Chicago — and in some regards (don’t shoot) it is, in fact, more fabulous. Let me give you a few concrete examples.
1. There are murals everywhere here. Everywhere. Beautiful murals on the sides of buildings, some big, some huge. They’re all thoughtfully designed whether they’re sweet, thought-provoking, representational, abstract, art-for-art-sake-y. As a person who likes urban art of the brick wall kind, I am pleased. Chicago is mural impoverished by comparison.
2. There’s more music on the streets. Jazz combos, guitarists, saxophone players. Back in Chicago you have the drum boys on Michigan Avenue, the dudes who play in the tunnels at O’Hare, and there’s always something going on on the Jackson train platform. But today I saw a man at the Metro Center train stop playin’ a damn tuba! He was part of a killer trio: him, a guy on sax, and a kid on a drum kit playing so good and so into the jam, people were pulling out their phones to film him. I’ve never seen a tuba player in Chicago. And if you don’t like tubas, in Washington you can probably just get off one train stop up and you can enjoy a different concert.
3. Vegetation. It’s the Potomac. It’s the Anacostia. It’s the mid-Atlantic climate. The water and the air and the soil combine to make so much green here. Valleys, parks, thickets of trees, sun-dappled groves — it’s all here. Whenever I get to take a taxi drive instead of the train, I gape as we go through the outer neighborhoods. Of course there are trees in Chicago but Washington… If Chicago were a man’s head, it would have a crew cut. Washington would be a Beatle. In terms of green. The difference. The hair analogy.
4. The National Cathedral, the George Washington Monument, the Naval Observatory and everything else beautiful and monumental.
As I’ve said before, Washington has gotten into my heart. There are reasons and there are reasons.
Just look at ’em! Look at those beauties! See ’em? Those straight, tall, proud, baby blue stripes? I painted ’em! That’s right, me! (MARY stabs thumb into chest, flashes huge smile, begins to eat popsicle.)
For weeks now, I’ve been staring at one of the walls in my living room-dining room-great hall and seeing pale blue awning stripes. Just the one. An “accent” wall, I think is what they call it. I just knew pale blue awning stripes would look awesome, but I’d have to hire a painter and I don’t like hiring painters. But I couldn’t possibly paint the stripes myself. They’d have to be perfectly, perfectly straight and not blubby around the edges, especially if they only kindaworked in the room. The only thing worse than being a total decorating misfire would be a decorating misfire executed badly. I don’t have a great track record with wall-painting as evidenced by every single baseboard in every single apartment I have ever, ever had. For this stripe job, a professional painter would have to be called.
But then my Viking ancestors grabbed my shoulders with their ghostly, Norwegian hands and shook me. “Are you crazy?! Hiring a painter for two-hundred bucks an hour — plus supplies and parking — to paint a single wall in your apartment?! Shame! Fa raeva til jernvarehandel!* You’ll never be a Norse god at this rate.” And they kicked me out the door. The nerve!
You know what I learned today? I learned how to use a level. I learned how to tape up a wall properly when you want to paint it. (Hint: take your time, don’t rush; it’s like three-quarters of the entire job.) I took great care to actually put down a drop cloth that actually covered everything that could possibly get paint on it. In short, I did the job right. It would be impossible for me to love my stripes more. They’re on the Proudest Accomplishment List right now. I’m now eyeing every wall in my home, daring it to tell me it also wants to be an accent wall of some kind.
I’d love to put up the process photos, but The PaperGirl Pledge means I only put one photo per post. So go to my Facebook page for more pictures. It was really fun and I did it in like four hours!
Me and some of the girls, waiting for the bride. Photo: Sew Creative, Lincoln, NE
The sewing retreat in Sioux City was wonderful. My students were brilliant, new friends were made, and all the sponsors — I’m looking at you, BabyLock — were more than generous.
During the morning portion of my Log Cabin paper-piecing master class yesterday, we heard a lot of activity in the courtyard outside our classroom. We looked out to see men setting up chairs and tables for a wedding. As the morning and early afternoon went along, the wedding took shape and we followed the action between quilt blocks.
People began to arrive and music began around 2:00pm or so. When the bride was imminent, those of us in the room threw our patchwork to the side and ran to the window to see her.
Moving to NYC last year was rough. I went in for all the right reasons (love, adventure, curiosity) and there were good times, but I fell flat on my face. Nothing went the way I thought it would. As the relationship thrashed in the East Village apartment, the temperature outside dropped. By November, everything was upside down and backward, out in the icy rain with no house keys.
The move to D.C., surprising as it might have seemed to some (hi, Mom), really did make perfect sense. I couldn’t go back to Chicago, I couldn’t stay in New York. This series of posts detail the entire decision-making process and after going through the logic, even my mother understood what had to be done.
The boxes. The rats. The more boxes. The leases. The rent. The trips to Chicago to get stuff I needed from storage. The cost. The flights. The rats. The broken plates. It’s all been pretty real.
Tonight, I swam in the pool in my building. It was around 9pm and I had the whole place to myself. You know how great your voice sounds when you sing in the shower? Every female is Mary J. Blige, or Celine, or Whitney; every dude is James Brown or Hall or Oates. If a shower is good, let me tell you how good an entire indoor pool is. I paddled around like a fish and sang my heart out. I was winning Grammys in there.
And there it was. Singing in the pool, tonight, it all makes sense and it’s all okay.
The sketch I made of the whole incident. Hey, that’s my letterhead!
I haven’t told anyone this story from the road trip yet because there is shame involved. It’s a tad longer, but stay with me because it’s got a great payoff.
One night in Utah, I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. This was not unusual, so before lights out, I had done my preparations. That night was a sleep-in-the-car night, which meant that once the seats in the SUV were released and the make-shift bed was made, I put my flip-flops, Handi-Wipes, and fluffy roll of TP into the cubby in the passenger-side door. On the hook above the window, I hung my hoodie and the car keys.
When you are inside a locked car and then try to leave it, unless you first unlock it, the car alarm will sound when you open the door. You must then stab your fob’s “Alarm Off” function, sixty times to get it to stop. When we camped in the car, of course my friend and I locked up once we were inside. This meant that in the middle of the night, when I would get up and go to the bathroom (read: bush), I would have to locate the keys in the dark, make sure I unlocked the car, then exit. Exiting, by the way, was a Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus clown car routine: I squeezed out the door and essentially did a sommersault onto the grass.
We were in a public park that night, so the spot I found was near the public bathroom facilities. I say “near” because the facilities were locked up at sundown, something I found out when I tried to open the door. Okay, no problem. The lights inside the brick structure appeared to be motion-sensored, so I jumped up and down and got the lights to go on, which threw light onto the grass behind the building. It wasn’t a lot of light, but it was enough to “go” by, heh, heh. So I went. Because it was 3am and there was only a dim light by which to see, I covered up my…visit with leaves and sticks and earth matter with every intention — this is important — with every intention to clean everything up in the morning. I respect my National Parks! Bleary eyed, sleepy, with grass in my hair but much relieved, I tumbled back into the car and went to sleep.
In the morning, I looked for the keys to unlock the door before Claus and I got out and made tea. No keys. Not under the sleeping bags. Not on the floor by the seats. Not in the front. Not in the back. We were trapped in the car. If we opened the door, the alarm would scream and, not having keys, there would be no way to turn it off. It was getting really hot inside that car. We finally determined that we could open the car doors because the dashboard screen said, “No fob detected,” which, considering the situation, is the best example of a “mixed blessing” ever.
We took a deep breath and opened the doors. No alarm sounded. The keys were nowhere. They were really, really nowhere. I combed the park, convinced I had sleepwalked the perimeter in my pajamas and dropped the keys. Claus looked under the car twelve times. We looked for an hour and then I began to cry. Those keys, impossibly, were Gone. Do you know how much it costs to get a replacement key for a rental car? Both cell phones were dying. This was a bad, bad situation. Oh, and one other thing: I looked many times around the makeshift bathroom area I had created at 3am. Not only were the keys not there, but my bathroom, such as it was, was not there. I didn’t have to clean anything because there was nothing there. No paper, no leaf cover. Someone had cleaned.
I called the Park District. Had someone been by? Had they found keys at XYZ Public Park near Zion?? I was going to clean up! Please! Don’t judge me! And okay, judge me, but did someone find keys for heaven’s sake?? Nothing here, they said, but you could talk to the police. I was patched to the station and I blubbed the story to the officer there, that I have a condition that makes me have to poop all the time [sorry] and I have to go in the night, and was it at all possible that a Park District person came through, saw that there was an…incident, and cleaned up and maybe found car keys nearby?? Somehow??
There was a silence. Then:
“Well, I’ve got your keys,” the officer said.
I almost fell off the memorial stone slab I was sitting on. “You do??? You DO???” I flapped my hands at Claus. “You have them?? But…but how? Oh, god… Someone found my… Oh, no, oh no…” And I began blubbing again that I’m not a bad person, that I’m a law-abiding citizen (mostly) and, “I’m so, so sorry that –”
“First of all, you can’t be campin’ in the park,” he said. “And yeah, the guy who does the bathrooms over there found the mess. He waddn’t too happy ’bout it, either. Stepped right into it. He found the keys in the grass there and brought ’em over to us. I can get ’em over to you in about an hour when I’ve taken care of this other thing.”
I wept. I told the officer that I would pay any fine he’d slap me with and would enjoy paying it. He said that wasn’t necessary. When he brought the keys I again begged him to let me give him money. He declined and said it was all no big deal and to get along, now. I think he took pity on a girl who had slept in a car and had to poop in the middle of the night.
Later, Claus said that in the early morning, he had heard what he thought were two men arguing. We figure it was the cleaning guy, shouting and hollering when he discovered the situation. I’ll have you know from then on, I did not wait until the morning to clean up any bathroom area I created. Turns out there are these things called flashlights.
