mockery

moses, doing his best to stay focused.

does anyone else have children who mock them constantly?

today my kids mocked/complimented my outfit and then mocked my blogging.

as in (in sarcastic voice) :

"here's mom's blog post today:  1)  took kids to christmas party.  2) went to smith's to get mo's haircut. . . ."

so, not wanting to disappoint them or anything, plus because i don't have anything super interesting for you today, here is "mom's cheesy blog post":

1) kids to church christmas brunch.  it was quite charming.  members of the congregation shared some pretty hilarious anecdotes from holidays past.  and the children sang.  there's moses, singing and wiggling, and wiggling some more.

2) picked up two boxes of apples from allred's.

3) picked up two gingerbread house kits, in the hopes that eva and anna will come to provo tomorrow and make them with us.  and also make sufganyinot with me.

4)  worked on seminar paper.

5) got car inspected, registered, and oil changed.

6) mo's haircut so he can look fabulous at hanukkah party tonight.

7) grocery shopped.

8) rearranged furniture.

9) ate 99 cent fish taco from del taco.  surprisingly good on account of super finely shredded cabbage & fresh lime.

10) picked up hostess gift for tonight.

cecily, chatting up santa.

still to do:

11)  make apple sauce and apple crisp for party tonight.

12) get kids dolled up for party.

13)  get lula to do my party bun and make-up.

i'm feeling manically festive today.  and i woke up with 5.30 a.m., unable to sleep any more, so i'm definitely in something like a manic moment right now.

gotta reign it in.

or enjoy it.

not sure which.

*

legwear:  pink tights

inspired by: stories, shopping, kids

looking forward: to party after party.

sabbath day candles

favorites

our friends with green thumbs and excellent taste brought us a basket of beautiful herbs and peppers from their garden.  i'm grateful for people who can grow food.  that skill has eluded me.

the 44 oz. maverick cup in the background tells you everything you need to know about our family's commitment to juxtaposition.

so make me a deal:  when we're living in a post-apocolyptic world, you grow it & i'll cook it, okay?  i'm pretty good at cooking in weird circumstances and with skimpy ingredients, almost as good as i am at killing plants.

thanks heather and kevin!

all summer i've wanted to do a candlelit italian dinner outside, and today was finally the day.  ingrid is leaving for college tuesday morning, so this was our farewell dinner: portabello mushroom lasagna, spinach salad, glace carrots, homemade vanilla ice cream, peach crisp, lemonade.

the kids love these carrots

i wanted to make this mushroom lasagne, but this recipe was too pricey (i'll get to it later, right after i cash my macarthur check), so i downgraded to ina garten's recipe, which was still pretty delish. especially with a few sprigs of fresh thyme from that gorgeous herb bouquet added to the mushrooms and the bechamel.

farewell ingrid, august

the whole family was together tonight, plus a few of our favorite friends.  it was a blazing hot day today, but right before dinner, a thunderstorm rolled in and we got a gorgeous summer storm that brought things to the perfect temperature, plus made it dark enough for candles even though we ate at 7 & it was still light out.

i love you, alice waters.

one more thing:  peach crisp and homemade ice cream.  first of all, i only ever use alice water's crisp recipe.  it's undoubtedly the best one out there, and i've been using it for years.  second of all, you definitely want an ice cream maker.  i love the simplest vanilla with a reduced amount of sugar so the flavor of the cream is the center piece.  which is what you want with really good peaches.  nothing to distract from the beauty of that brief-lived summer ecstasy.

never use any other crisp topping.  it's all about the roasted almonds.

sitting in my back yard eating peaches and looking at the mountains after a rain storm. come visit me in august, and that's what we'll do.

homemade ice cream is a whole different subject.

(rum & maldon sea salt, as this blogger suggests, is so not necessary.  fun, i suppose, but i think it would just get in the way.  also, i double the topping recipe because i'm a topping whore.)

Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp
Adapted from the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook and Chez Panisse Fruit

½ cup almonds
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
a pinch of salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter

5 ripe nectarines, pitted and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 cup blueberries
¼ cup sugar
3 tablespoons unbleached flour
zest of one lemon, chopped fine
1 tablespoon aged rum

For the Topping

Preheat oven to 375 F. Toast the almonds until they smell nutty and are slightly more brown, about 7 or 8 minutes. Chop the almonds to a medium to fine consistency. Combine the flour, the sugars, the salt and spice in a mixing bowl. Add the chilled butter in pieces and mix with your fingers until it becomes mealy. Add the nuts and mix until the flour mixture holds together when squeezed. Put aside. (The topping can be prepared up to a week in advance and refrigerated).

For the Crisp
Mix the fruit in a medium-sized bowl and then add the sugar. Taste and adjust for sweetness. (*Note, don’t over sugar the fruit—there’s something quite beautiful about a semi-sweet crisp. Don’t be afraid to let the fruit express itself in its truest form.) Dust the flour over the mixture and stir gently. Spoon the topping into a small cooking dish is just big enough to hold the fruit. Mound a small amount in the center of the dish. Then, gently add the crisp mixture on top. Lightly push the crumble on top of the fruit mixture.

Place a cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven (to catch any overflow juices) and put the crisp dish on top. Bake in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned and the fruit juices are thickened and bubbling. The delicious smell of baked fruit will help you know when it’s close to being ready.

Serve with rum flavored whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Finish the ice cream with a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt.

films to c*

gina carano in soderbegh's haywire

my love for facebook waxes & wanes.  one thing i love, love, love about it is how you can get advice from really smart people in an instant.  two weeks ago i put out a call for mystery novel suggestions & got a fantastic list, came home from the library laden down with new treasures of mysterious indulgence.  last week, i asked people for film recommendations, as i want to spend more time watching movies for the remainder of 2012.

i plan to start with haywire, suggested by the smart and uber-talented david veloz, my former co-editor of the byu lit journal inscape, and a groundbreaking screen writer/director.   i love soderbergh, and have seen most of his films, so i'm looking forward to checking this one out as soon as netflix gets her butt in gear and sends it to me.   suggestions from veloz are numbers 31-43, and listen to him--he knows what he's about.

last weekend i saw benoit jacuot's farewell, my queen at the broadway cinema in salt lake city.  i hope to get a review up in the next week.  also hoping to catch the queen of versailles and trishna at the broadway before they leave.

so here's the list from my facebook friends for your consultation--a list as varied and eclectic as the rad people i know from real life and cyber life.  feel free to add more suggestions in the comments section of this post.  and remember the wise words of christian's wise father:  the only thing worse than a bad movie is no movie.

1.  that thing you do
2.  millions
3.  wings of desire
4.  another earth
5.  bunny lake is missing
6. labyrinth
7. mirrormask
8. grosse point blank
9.  midnight in the garden of good and evil
10.  harold and maude
11.  tristam shandy
12.  end of august at the hotel ozone
13.  the friends of eddie coyle
14.  prime cut
15.  waking ned divine
16.  kiss kiss bang bang
17.  russian ark
18.  daisies
19.  any tarkovsky
20.  buck
21.  wanderlust
22.  el mariachi-desperado-once upon a time in mexico
23.  seventh seal
24.  romy & michelle's high school reunion
25.  jiro dreams of sushi
26.  32 short films about glenn gould
27.  mamma mia
28.  billy elliot
29.  muriel's wedding
30.  gun crazy
31.  sunshine
32.  haywire
33.  sacrifice
34.  nostalghia
35.  fitzcarraldo
36.  burden of dreams
37.  the conformist
38.  the dreamers
39.  state of things
40.  margaret
41. spinal tap
42.  13 assassins
43.  heaven's gate
44.  meet joe black
45.  the secretary
46.  the star wars series
47.  black power
48.  mixtape
49.  the films of jacques tati
50.  bottle rocket
51.  city island
52.  trishna
53.  girl with a pearl earring
54.  the beaver trilogy
55.  little miss sunshine

*i was thinking of this pun on terry riley's famous piece in c before i even saw julie's post.  synchronous, again, julie!

before summer ends to-do list

provo experimental music night.  

i just started planning classes for fall, which made me realize i have only about a month of summer break left.  we've done some fun things this year.  nothing major, but lots of little things and lots of festivities with family and friends.

lalage at an experimental music night in slc last saturday.  ingrid called my outfit "miss vampisham."  i said yes to this gig though i really wanted to stay home.  i'm practicing "yes" more.

because of doing the artist's way, i've been trying to live more. . . festively.  to not limit what i do so much, so i've been saying yes to a lot of things, and trying to get out of my natural introverted state and out of the house more.

anna's new shoes right after a summer rain storm at provo bicycle collective.

here's what i want to do before summer ends and ingrid returns to college:

1.  hike mt. timpanogas.

2. go tubing on the provo river.

3.  road trip to southern utah.

4. fancy back yard italian dinner with candles.

5.  grill more corn and peaches.

6. buy a new pioneer bonnet.

as threatened

me at 7--same age as moses, who graduated from 1st grade today.  nestled amongst splendiferous 70's shag carpet.

in my facebook chat with julie today (after the kids' last day of school dance festival that i've been attending for 10 years--only 5 years left to go), i told her i was just gonna post my overly-long to-do list stuff, stuff that needs to get done by monday evening.

why do i persist in unrealistic expectations?  in constant set-ups for failure and disappointment?

(one possible answer:  i'm an adrenaline junkie and this helps increase the flow. . . .)

1) get cecily's ballet stuff purchased and tuition paid
2) laundry (tonz of it--which means about 8 loads)
3) yoga, even with frustratingly bum shoulder
4) pack lula for girlz camp and drop her stuff off at leader's house (she's in seattle and we won't return until late the night before)
5) write poem
6) pack for seattle
7) online class stuff
8) finish boulder book for walden
9) applications for pataphysics workshops (this means writing 10 pp. of a new play, that's currently sloshing around in brain, revising my c.v., and writing cover letters for each workshop. one is for playwriting and one for t.v. writing.)
10) figure out how to do spanish language requirement for ph.d requirement this summer
11)  date night
12)  lunch at homestead tomorrow for claire's 80-something?  (could that be?) birthday
13) today's blog post
14) make sure lula got her flight credit from southwest
15) i know there's more!

sorry to bore with the minutiae, but sometimes thats all there is.  what minutiae consumed you today?

detritus, hand-sewn, interference, & the lyric

celebrating for a brief moment a brief accomplishment

today i completed the final draft of my exam lists.  see that smile above?  yeah.  that's how happy i am about it.

tomorrow, as i begin to read bataille, re-read foucault for the hundreth time, i may be weeping* .  but for today, a hurdle was crossed.  

i have a few months to go before i start serious study, but couldn't help but read one text today i was really curious about, from dickinson's misery by virgina jackson:

Suppose you are sorting through the effects of a woman who has just died and you find in her bedroom a locked wooden box. You open the box and discover hundreds of folded sheets of stationery stitched together with string. Other papers in the bureau drawer are loose, or torn into small pieces, occasionally pinned together; there is writing on a guarantee issued by the German Student Lamp Co., on memo paper advertising THE HOME INSURANCE CO. NEW YORK (“Cash Assets, over SIX MILLION DOLLARS”), on many split-open envelopes, on a single strip three-quarters of an inch wide by twenty-one inches long, on thin bits of butcher paper, on a page inscribed “Specimen of Penmanship” (which is then crossed out) (fig. 1). There is writing clustered around a three-cent postage stamp of a steam engine turned on its side, which secures two magazine clippings bearing the names “GEORGE SAND” and “Mauprat.” Suppose that you recognize the twined pages as sets of poems; you decide that the other pages may contain poems as well. Now you wish you had kept the bundles of letters you burned upon the poet’s (for it was a poet’s) death. What remains, you decide, must be published.

Let this exercise in supposing stand as some indication of what now, more than a century after the scene in which you have just been asked to place yourself, can and cannot be imagined about reading Emily Dickinson. What we cannot do is to return to a moment before Dickinson’s work became literature, to discover within the everyday remnants of a literate life the destiny of print. Yet we are still faced with discerning, within the mass of print that has issued from that moment, what it was that Dickinson wrote.

i love the idea of dickinson being, not a writer of books, but a creator of zines, or of the art of the trunk, collecting images and words and detritus and saving it in something bigger than a book, because a book is too tame, too trim, too regular, too hermetic,  to contain her.  so what was it she was writing, and how did the world, that never wrote back to her, come to constrain her corpus of words into the thing we call literature?

this trunk of hers,  flotsam & jetsam, scraps and threads and dried petals, begins to touch the reason i'm obsessed with dickinson ( i and a bunch of other nerdy fuddy-duddies.)

legwear:  black lace leggings

inspiration:  a trunk full of hand-sewn, hand-written chapbooks

looking forward:  seeing a lot of water next week in seattle

*here's what natanya ann pulley, one of our fabulous guest bloggers, wrote on facebook today about studying for her exams:

My method is to just try everything. It's chaotic (I want to say disaster but will try not to judge). I have notes in six different programs. My books go from extreme post-it noting to color coded tabs to highlighted and underlined sections.... I read in the morning, afternoon, evening, night, really really late night. I've scheduled by theme, by taste, by chronology, by whim, by goal. It's messy. I suppose that is my way, but it's going on for over a year now. Usually I try different methods, but the deadline on a project is sooner and so I don't see so much switching, swapping and lolly-gagging. You know, my therapist told me that part of the process is the emotional process. Like it's built in the marathon of it all. And to appreciate that side of it. I told her no. (I'm a fabulous patient). I said I wanted it task-oriented and rather robotic. Bah ha ha. Anyway, she's right. It's about pacing emotionally as well as mentally and physically (at least for me). And spiritually (I would argue). But anyway. Right now, it's like book/note-taking/study session bombs have dropped in every room in our house (well, our bedroom, my den, the kitchen table and the front reading room and throughout my brain). Four months to go ...