punkin chunkin

when two friends you haven't seen in a long time invite you to visit them in delaware the same weekend strange folks are sending pumpkins into near orbit with medieval war machines in pretty much the same neighborhood you hop in the car and head toward delaware. the drive to delaware is long but the drive from the home of your friends to the place where the pumpkins fly is nearly as long, due to the creative directions on the website. all four of you in the car on dusty late fall roads agree that someone wrote directions, cut all the sentences up word by word and then tossed the words in the air. they wrote things down in whatever order the words fell. all good words. absolutely no sense. but you get there. you drive forty miles and the first sign you see, PUNKIN CHUNKIN THIS WAY is a quarter mile from the parking. not so helpful.

when you first arrive, you're surprised to see how many folks decided to camp in a parking lot which was a few weeks ago a field of corn or soybeans or maybe sorghum. but there are all sorts of rv type things stretching out row after row after row. as you turn toward where you're parking, you notice a rebel flag flying near a cluster of port-a-johns. there must be folks in rvs of some sort who put it up and you wonder if they realize it looks like the flag is flying over a tiny community of three green, stinking, outdoor toilets. you think about how folks at coney island always put their beach towels down right next to the trash baskets and guess this happens a lot to people who aren't much aware of their surroundings.

you walk across a stubble field, corn cobs and fat, dry stalks smashed down in neat rows, toward the gate. at the gate, between two posts, you see two boards nailed up like shelves. each is loaded down with bottles and cans of lite beer of every imaginable sort. you have arrived right in the middle of everything, the second of three days, early afternoon. you can see the tops of massive trebuchets looming over kiddie carnival rides. you didn't really know what you were getting into, did you? you weren't even thinking about a midway. ferris wheel. carousel. you wander in and over to the fence that keeps you from wandering out into the monstrous machines and the field beyond where the pumpkins all splatter. you hear a voice on a loudspeaker talking about a pumpkin flying wild and possibly heading the wrong direction. he does not sound at all worried. on the contrary, he reports this in a surprisingly gleeful tone. it is excitement and excitement is good. as a paranoid person you were already prepared for this. you have spent several days reminding yourself how these machines are made by brilliant crews who work very carefully to keep pumpkins from flying wild and taking off the head of some poor, unsuspecting fool wandering around the midway with a mouth full of cotton candy. and thirty seconds into the event you find out you wasted your time. the pumpkins most certainly might break loose and kill you today. you are surprised how easy it is to accept this and move on.

you watch a few pumpkins fly from the old fashioned monsters and begin to eye the tents smelling of fried happiness. you pass by the skoal tent. you certainly weren't expecting a skoal tent. the skoal tent proudly displays an american flag. it also proudly displays the rebel flag. this is a flag for a country that no longer exists and hasn't for quite some time. you're not sure why they still have a flag. you make a mental note to see what other defunct countries still have flag bearing contingents. later in the day you will see skoal girl, a very sassy young woman in what looks like a blue neoprene cheerleading outfit, walk toward one of the green portable toilets near the fence keeping you off the cannons. a few seconds after she walks in you see a guy who looks like what would happen if santa did a brief stint with zz top and then joined the military in world war one rather drunkenly steering an atv on the other side of the fence. his hat is askew and he barrels straight toward the green toilet. skoal girl is taking a long time in there, which is unusual for a woman in a toilet of that sort. santa slams into the toilet at low speed and bumps it slightly. however, from the inside, you figure it must be more than a little upsetting. you imagine sloshing. splashing. skoal girl does not come screaming out. santa backs up and nearly bumps the toilet again, but instead brings his vehicle up beside toilet and waits. slowly, skoal girl comes out stomping, rounds the corner and has a surprisingly calm conversation with santa. you decide that nothing will make you feel better about a rebel flag flying over the skoal tent but this certainly moves you somewhere toward better.

but back to the food. as you head toward the tents the sweetie mentions nazis and when you realize he's not saying nachos you turn to look. they are gone but the two friends you are with saw them too, one man with a swastika on his shirt, the other two with equally unsettling exteriors. your stomach hurts. you feel your skin getting tighter. maybe your body is battening down. you are now afraid you will see more like when you see a spider and then start thinking about how many spiders are out there and how many of them are probably in your house. your people keep navigating toward the food. you know you'll feel better with chili cheese fries in your belly and the giant paper cup of them settles you a bit. later there will be funnel cakes. you wonder who gets cream of crab soup in the middle of a soybean field next to a tent with a mechanical bull in it but there are quite a few folks in line. none of them are nazis.

the cannons are the last to fire. they are massive and all in a line. you are behind the fence and you can tell the sweetie wants to be out there, hauling around tanks of compressed air or fuel or whatever, dragging up a good supply of pumpkins, using heavy tools to move the barrel of the cannon up. you want to be out there, too and it is difficult to stand there behind drunk college boys trying to pick up girls when you want to see pumpkin carnage and help cause it. you want to light fuses, load ammunition. the first one fires more quietly than you expect. some of them go nearly a mile and although you can't really see that far you tell yourself you can and you watch the fat orange projectiles spin stem over belly in wild arcs across a perfectly clear sky. they don't all sound the same but the sounds are all hissing and thumping and deep. low. bass. it is the kind of sound you feel in your chest more than in your ears and the smoke that curls from the cannon barrels is the only way you can tell when some of them fire. they are so fast your eyes just can't catch up.

the cannons finish and you turn with your friends to leave. you bought a straw cowboy hat for six bucks to keep the sun from your eyes. your friend bought herself a baseball cap with a pumpkin tearing across it. the two men in your group were not lured by souvenirs. the field with the cannons and midway was soybeans and you put a dried pod in your pocket. you think about what you loved here- the explosiveness, pumpkins screaming out of cannons taller than your house, the opportunity to purchase any food in its fried form, the cleverness and beauty of the machines. you think about the nazis and how they love the same things. this makes you feel sick for a bit. you walk back by one or two rebel flags, drunk clusters of people in trucks made mostly of stereo and speakers. you think about how you've spent your life thinking about what you don't have in common with nazis and people who live with their sort of fear. you want the world to be different and you've always thought this was the way to go about it, showing who you are. showing who they are. now you're thinking about how you love funnel cakes and nazis love them, too. and perhaps this is where that different world starts, finding where your lives intersect, where your vocabulary overlaps. catapults. motorcycles. carnival rides. trebuchets. funnel cakes.

group work

today was a day when it felt like class wasn't a total failure. you might have noticed the absence of student-focused writing lately. mostly this is for lack of a way to express how much at sea i feel when thinking about them.

last week was parent/teacher conferences and to be honest i rarely respect the parents i deal with. i know that's not fair. i know it's tough to raise a kid today. i know. i know. but, still. there have to be some things you just know are right as a parent. i find it difficult to talk to most of the parents, especially on the phone, because they simply don't represent what i say accurately to their kids. they lie. now, the kids to the same thing, but they're kids. that's really to be expected, at least a little. but at parent/teacher conference time i tell the kids i'll give them an extra ten points if they show up with parents to meet with me. i just want everyone in the same place at the same time. it works surprisingly well. kids who are already successful bring parents because it's in their nature to do what's right and so i get to say all sorts of pretty things about them. this feels good for the kid, the parents and for me. the kids who are struggling but want to do well drag in with their parents, too to get that ten points. this gives me a chance to say really specific things to both parents and child about what sort of changes might make things better. perhaps the little angel might go to bed before 2am so he's awake for my class in the morning. maybe forcing the child to come home right after school because her parents don't trust her is keeping her from afterschool tutoring, an opportunity she really shouldn't miss.

but then there are the others. the freakout parents. the ones who are never at home when i call, never return a call when i leave a message or have disconnected numbers but leave me urgent messages to call them anyway. they are parents who have raised children who arrive 45 minutes into a 55 minute class, children who scream across a room at other children, children who do not know the meaning of "sit down", "stop talking", "please get out your book" or "stop hitting that child, children who scream, "i wasn't DOING ANYTHING!" when i say their names. and so this year for the very first time, i reprimanded a child in front of a parent during a meeting. okay, this happened more than once. several times. i actually turned to a boy and said, "the way you talk to your mother is inappropriate." one mother, trailing at least five clamoring children, screamed at the oldest as they followed me down the stairs ten minutes after the meetings were scheduled to be over at almost 9pm, "if you don't do better in her class, i won't buy you an i-phone." indeed. this is the second year he's failed my class and as far as i can tell, his tenth grade self has exactly one credit to his name. one class he's passed in two years. an i-phone for that.

so i wasn't exactly expecting to have fun today, the first day back after all that. i was thinking cruel thoughts about short-sighted people bringing up bland children on screaming and technology. and today we're supposed to talk about writing dialog. at 8am. yay. when the bell rang at 8 there were exactly three children in the class. there are 20 children on the roster but four or five do not show up at all, so they read until about 12 showed up. and we started talking. nothing fancy, but they sort of got into it. i told them secrets. they devoured them like magic tricks. i wasn't expecting that. then we put them in groups. this is where all hell usually breaks loose. most schools emphasize group work because it teaches cooperation skills. generally, i find it teaches fighting skills, isolation skills, bullying skills, laziness skills and a host of other horrible, misery-enhancing skills. still, i know that when done right it can work. it is simply that for the past fifteen or so years i've rarely seen it done right and almost never accomplished it myself. but that's the key. turning a classroom over to fifteen children whose mothers still wipe things off their faces with a spit-moistened finger is tough to do. but on the monday morning after the most annoying parent/teacher conferences ever, inviting chaos into the room doesn't really seem all that terrifying.

groups of three. this is the best way to group kids, i think. maybe you've got something better, but three somehow cuts down on all that makes kids mean. there are three girls in the room and i offered them the opportunity to choose their groups, to determine their fates, more or less. they stared in horror. so i chose for them. everyone in a group. the assignment is as follows:

1. select a scenario from the five on the board.
2. determine the details of your two (or three) characters, such as age, relationship, personality.
3. write a page of dialog that represents the scenario.

i gave them scenarios that would encourage conversation- a teenager coming home past curfew to find an angry parent waiting up. a person asking another person out on a date. a woman telling someone she's pregnant. a parent teacher conference. you get the idea. and they started to discuss. they talked quietly, leaning in. i had never seen anything like that so i wandered around, peering over desks and shoulders, reading bits of writing and hearing bits of discussion.

and here's what happened. choosing a single scenario meant discussing the situation and once they began thinking of characters, they got involved in what was happening. they got involved in the lives of people they didn't even know a few minutes earlier, people who didn't exist at all until just then. one group chose the date scene and they couldn't stop giggling. i don't think you'd be able to find three more unlike children anywhere but they laughed the whole time they wrote. and they looked at each other, cracked each other up with cheesy come on lines and possible opportunities for hitting on someone.

the boys tended to like the pregnancy one. but they got so caught up in writing for their characters they didn't even realize they'd begun writing the intro to a very long story about a thirteen year old girl who was overwhelmed by the burden of starting a new family even as her old family abandoned her. when i asked them questions about her, they answered together, in unison, like they knew her. they really did know her. and they were angry for her, on her behalf.

at the end of the hour, not a single group had produced a page of dialog. i had done what everyone says you have to do. it's like breathing underwater. going against everything your brain is screaming for you to do. i let them control everything. and they did. instead of a page of dialog they created stories, rich and full and detailed, heavy with dialog and anger and hilarity. they created scenes and motives. they created people. and it was good.

witches at the pizza hut

pizza hut was hopping. now, for those of you who have been reading along from the early days, we've all been to the pizza hut in delhi before. but it's october right now and pizza hut is all sorts of fancied up for the season. at the back of the place, tables were cleared away for a ghoulish display featuring an inflated green faced witch and frankenstein monster. pumpkins, ghosts and other haunted things in the form of those trash bags most folks fill with leaves were strewn all over. the cobwebs strung all across the ceiling rival our own here at the house and the plastic spiders sprinkled through the cobwebs were the perfect touch. halloweenolicious. but it's not the decorations that caught our attention.

there were witches. live ones. small ones. the harry potter kind with cloaks and elegant hats and stripey scarves. little girls. they sat together on one side of the booth and the parents sat opposite. we were seated at the booth just past them, me sitting with my back to the little witches. they weren't loud, but as their heads were about two inches back from mine, it was easy to hear them. the girls were friends and the parents belonged to one of them. the child whose parents were there was saying, "well, i'd be a democrat." i'm not sure what the question was but it was an interesting answer for a child young enough to wear a witch costume out to a pizza hut a week before halloween. "and then i'd be president," she continued. this seemed to be causal for her. first, you're a democrat, then you're president. that's how it happens. she's too young to have seen that happen in her lifetime so i'm not sure where she gets her information but she seemed very sure about it. there is more conversation along presidential lines and the mother asks a question. i wonder if they have some sort of presidential place mat or something. maybe one of those books of questions like the other pizza hut children had. because they are focused on presidents and things presidential.

there is discussion of presidential pets. the sweetie asks me what pets i'd have in the white house. dachshunds, i say, worried that he'd even have to ask. "what if we are at war with germany?" he asks. "you can't have dachshunds then," he smiles, sure he's won some point i didn't even know was up for grabs. "our dogs were born here," i explain, taking this very seriously, "they're not german dogs." "yeah, but they're german dogs, german ancestry," he insists. sometimes he just refuses to see the point. "i think it would work out fine," i tell him, not willing to spend any more time explaining a plan i'm not going to implement since i have no intentions of running for president anyway. besides, i'm not really concerned right now about germany so much. there are plenty of others in line to go to war with us. not me and the sweetie. we are not at war with much. maybe the weeds in the back yard. maybe squirrels. i am more worried about squirrels than i am about germany right now. germany is not trying to eat the walls of my house. besides, i'm not running the country. not at all.

but the children are still discussing their own presidential aspirations. the other girl has expressed interest in running for office as well. the mother asks a question i can't hear and the child is worried about her qualifications for office. she is not sure she is a citizen, it seems. the mother (not her mother, but the other child's) assures her that her parents are citizens and she is, too. she can run. the other child giggles, saying she could also run if she lived in this country at least 15 years, which she hasn't, because she hasn't even lived fifteen years. this cracks them up. there is some discussion on how old one must be to run for president. it is 35, they decide. they both have some time before they're qualified. me, i could run, i guess. i'm old enough.

mr. stewart

today is cool enough that the constant drizzly rain makes it feel like one of those stay indoors days. the leaves are gone up here in the little mountains and everything is gray. so we put on jackets and warm hats and braved it all to drive all the way to delhi. why? who knows why anyone goes to delhi. it's a tiny town with a s.u.n.y. school, a diner, a gas station and a few small shops of the hardware, book and antique variety. and then there's stewart's. i'd been eying stewart's most sundays we'd drive to delhi. since our own local hardware store burned down in the spring, we've been spending quality time at the ace hardware there in delhi, even got ourselves ace rewards cards. we're that kind of people. we bought a lawn mower there, grass seed, dowel rods, paint. they have the farm implements spray paint there that we used on the metal lawn chairs. it's that sort of place.

so today we went and, being saturday, stewart's was open. it's one of those old fashioned department stores that hasn't changed much in the last 100+ years since it first started. there are two front doors, each leading down a long aisle. there's a set of glass and wood counters between the two aisles, one facing out toward each of them and at the back of the store and the front, a short aisle runs across, joining the two. a rectangle. the store's fixtures have been there since before electricity, i'm pretty sure. the place has more flannel shirts than you can imagine. when you walk in you know what sort of place you're in. the lighting is different, higher up, maybe, or a wattage that isn't made anymore. there's a faint smell of wool and light bulbs and boxes.

when you find a place and look in from the outside, you have ideas in your head about how it will be when you go in. and if that place looks like something maybe out of the earliest parts of your childhood, something that could have stretched back even to your own grandma's childhood maybe, you might even be a little bit afraid that going in will do some damage. you worry your idea of the place will be smashed by your interaction with it. you worry that your own foolish imagination has created a place that never existed in your memory even though you pretend it did.

and so i walked in with more than a little trepidation. i'd built it up so much in my mind. an old fashioned place with absolutely nothing i really wanted but everything i wanted to be around. and it was all that. it was everything. there were socks everywhere. and flannel pajama pants. sewing notions. baby clothes. suits. but the best part was mr. stewart. we walked in on the right side and a woman was working in the window. she said hello, asked if we needed anything, then left us to marvel at the place. we walked down the aisle, turned, walked along the back, then turned to walk the long aisle up to the front. and there he was behind one of those wood and glass counters. mr. stewart. he asked if we needed any help and we assured him we were just looking, so he started visiting. first of all, you should know that mr. stewart is not as old as the store, but they've certainly seen plenty of the same things. he's this side of ninety, but gaining on it. he offered to show us something we wouldn't expect. now, i was ready to expect just about anything in this place, but we followed him back to the end of the counter where he hunted around in the ancient boxes lined up on shelves behind the counter and finally produced some of the softest wool long underwear i'd ever snuggled up against. black, although he mentioned white as another option. folks prefer the black, he marveled. now, i am familiar with the concept of wool long underwear but shopping online you can't really touch the fabric so i didn't really know what i'd been missing. while i dug my hands into the wool he told us pretty much the history of wool long underwear and how he'd got a large order of the long pants and been selling them, only to find they didn't have a fly. evidently quite a problem for menfolk in this part of the country. so he called up the company and chatted with a nice customer service person and finally got someone a little higher up. he explained the fly issue and i guess now they're making the men's pants with a fly.

it's certainly a better story when you hear him tell it because he cracks himself up a few times and he has a wonderful laugh. he points to the boxes behind him on the shelves and tells us how a woman on a film crew offered to buy some from him for some movie. he offered her some he had upstairs in storage, free. they were making some sort of movie and wanted a set that looked like his store and i was at a loss as to why they hadn't asked to film in the store. it was already a set. it was everything they wanted, i'm betting. but he never heard anything more about the film and i wonder whatever happened to all those extra boxes.

so there's this magnificent storyteller running this tiny store in the middle of the mountains when every other retail business in this country is cowering and breathing shallow and he doesn't seem a bit ruffled. and he calls up these companies to place his orders on the phone. a real phone. land line. he talks to the folks who make the stuff he sells, puts his voice right in their ears. he knows the stuff he sells. he knows everything he has in the store and thinks we might like these long underwear even though he's still partial to the brand he carries that these soft wool things compete with. just how he is, he says. but he is right. i need wool long underwear just like these and will get a pair when we're back in a few weeks. the long sleeved ones. he wants to know if the sweetie needs a suit. guesses pretty close to the sweetie's size. i am absolutely sure that when the sweetie next needs a suit we should come here. we have to.

mr. stewart says he wishes he could find a way to charge for entertainment and i am hoping he doesn't because i am sure i will go broke if he does. i promise we will be back and although people always say that in stores i really mean it. there are things in there i need. mostly i need to listen to his stories. he tells about going to the mercantile next door as a child, how there were four stewarts and because stores sort of ran tabs there was always some confusion at the end of the month. he'd go and get fleischmann's yeast for his mom and they lady who worked there knew the right kind to send back with him but her brother, the other owner, never did. his stories turn to ash when i put them here on the page because i'm remembering them from one telling and he's remembering them from real life and a thousand tellings. he'd throw out names like my grandma used to, like we were supposed to know all these folks who were probably long dead before either of us were born and i found myself trying to map out the whole bunch. who knows who. who fits where. in a few weeks, i will go back. i will get my long underwear and a few more stories. try to wedge them in with the ones i heard today, see where they fit. i'm going to ask him about allen ginsberg. i understand he shopped there.

first frost

max woke up early. always always always he's up early but today was different. sure, it was still dark and sure he was whining, but today it was cold. not just chilly, but frost cold. the outside was hovering at thirty and the inside of the house, at least upstairs in the bedroom, was just about sixty. sixty is perfect for sleeping. it's a good snuggling temperature, especially if you have a down blanket or a wool blanket or a few dogs to scatter across the bed. perfect. so i put the covers over max's head and convinced him that snuggling down into the warmth was better than putting feet on what would likely be a pretty cold wood floor. especially since he is so low to the ground and his belly is pretty close to his feet. cold belly is awful. snuggle down, dog, snuggle down. and he did for a while. but by eight when the sun was fully up and crashing through the windows i had to admit that getting up was probably a good idea. the wood stove would be mostly ash and coals and the coals wouldn't keep things warm much longer.

we got up, me and the two small dogs, and walking down the stairs i recalled that during one of max's earlier whining sessions the sweetie miraculously awoke and went down to add logs to the fire. this would mean less work for me and that's always fine. so we went outside. the whole world was crisp, frosted, leafless. the small dogs were quick in their bathrooming and we hurried back inside to what appeared to be an almost empty stove, a stove with a thermometer that read just under 350 degrees. what had the sweetie done, i wondered. i worried there might be logs somewhere else, somewhere he, in his nearly asleep state, confused with the stove. no logs on the couch. no logs on the dog bed. no logs under the library table. but still, not much beyond a coal or two in the stove. i loaded the stove with new logs and went to feed the leaping hounds and open the downstairs shades, let in a little light. ten minutes later i was pretty proud of myself. there was a roaring fire and the thermometer read 450. not bad for just tossing in a few logs. not bad at all. i peeked into the iron kettle on top of the stove. bone dry. i filled it with water and a little eucalyptus and put it back on a stove that by now had hit 500 degrees. perfect, and in no time at all. i was starting to feel like some sort of fire queen. fierce. i sat in the rocker, reading, watching the flames get wilder and wilder, reflected in the glass of a bookcase.

that's about when i heard something that sounded like bacon sizzling and popcorn popping out of control right behind my left ear, right on the stove. i looked up to see a column of steam shooting out from the kettle spout and a bubbling fountain of boiling water spewing out at the same time. it was pretty in the way lots of scary things are pretty- fire, avalanches, tornadoes. i got up and saw tiny beads of water like clear ball bearings bouncing and rolling all across the top of the stove, a stove that was now reading just over 600 degrees. there are two hundred more degrees on the thermometer, so i wasn't worried, but the flames were different, a yellow that was almost white. very close to the color i'd like to paint the kitchen or the color the bible says jesus will be on his return, but not a color i'd seen inside the stove before. i managed to pour out some of the water in the kettle and settle that whole thing down and then i attempted to put another log on. i was on a roll. i opened the door and used the poker to wedge a log in. the blast of heat that hit me was much more physical than i'd expected. evidently it scared the log as well because the log leapt out of my hand and away from the poker and rolled its slightly singed self back out onto the hearth pad. this, i finally realize, is why we have a hearth pad. stupid log. whatever. my fire was still roaring. then i called the sweetie down from upstairs. i wanted him to see my magnificent fire skills.

the sweetie did not react quite the way i thought he should. he is not a worrier. he is not a panicker. he stood in front of the stove and watched the golden white flames very suddenly turn the glass window black. in a matter of real live seconds. and the flames kept getting wilder. and the sweetie was worried. he was not yet worried to the point of panic, but he was more worried than i recall him being when a plane we were in lost an engine and had to shift everything to manual power and make only left turns until we landed. he kept talking. that's how you know the sweetie is worried. he attempts to work out a situation entirely out loud, checking and rechecking everything over and over.

it wasn't the logs. every log we put on burned like the fires of hell. it wasn't the damper. we could turn it completely closed and the flames licked the glass and snarled out like monster claws if we opened the door. wait a minute. how would the stove have so much draw with the damper closed? how how how? recall a few entries back when the sweetie determined that he was powerful enough to open the stove's ashpan to help create draft? well, if you don't, he did. he did this against the advice of the nice men who installed the stove. against my advice. with the imagined blessing of my own father, the sweetie decided that this would be his signature fire starting move. even in his sleep, even at six in the morning, the sweetie was his james dean self, restarting a cold fire with the help of the open ashpan. however, when attempting this sort of thing, most folks keep the pan open a second or two. most people are awake when they attempt something like this. the sweetie, in his near-sleep state, wasn't able to get the latch completely fastened. the ashpan reopened.

so between six am and about eight thirty, we burned the equivalent of a day's worth of wood. we learned a little bit. the sweetie will never again get up at six am and be expected to do things. i will be in charge of all morning fire duties. the real truth, though, the clean, honest thing we now know for sure although i guess we always sort of knew it somewhere really, is that max sets the agenda. we do what we're told. we will never again upset max because evidently upsetting max upsets the natural balance of the world and draws us nearer armageddon. max is definitely opposed to this.

the great spangenhelm

a few weeks ago it was the original supernatural nephew's birthday. i called to see how things were going. he tells me he is eight and when i ask if he is sure he takes me very seriously and assures me he knows for a fact that he is eight. this night is to be the family party and because i will not be there, being halfway across the country on an edge while he is near the geographical middle, he tells me about the cake. because the cake is the centerpiece of any good birthday. his will be made by his grandmother, my own mother, who has already told me it is cooling and nearly ready. it is pineapple upside down cake. this is not what you'd expect an eight year old boy to request, and yet he has. this isn't so surprisng really, considering nobody in his family requests anything nearing a normal cake on their own special day. i generally choose blackberry cobbler.

because he is the original nephew we have spent the last eight years trying to come up with toys that are traumatic to his parents, completely age inappropriate and generally too fragile or too dangerous for a child. this is our job. we live very far away. we plot and plan and there are virtually no repercussions for our actions. we are more freewheeling than bob dylan. we spent several years supplying him with instruments from other countries. there was an exploration/survival kit we put together from an army navy store and strange websites. there was something once i think involving science and exploding. and, of course, extreme chocolatification. it is not because we are fancy. it is partly because we envision the child playing with these things and being delighted, but there is a good part of it, an ugly, unkind part, that involves images of my sister and brother in law suffering as a small child attempts to learn an instrument taller than he is. there is an evil streak in us both.

but once a child gets to be eight, things get tough for a scheming aunt and uncle. there are video games. there are movies. there are action figures, computers, ipods, things to plug the child into. and a person who gets one or two sightings a year of a child can be overwhelmed. but his local aunt mentioned knights and dragons. he seems to like them. so the sweetie and i sat at separate computers, poring over suits of armor and chain mail. you would be surprised how expensive those things are. and because really good chain mail sized for a child comes primarily from great britain, the shipping is nearly the price again of the mail. we were discouraged but we pressed on. there had to be something out there we could find besides a single gauntlet that wasn't five million dollars.

and then, as i was just about to throw in the towel, it blazed across my screen. the great spangenhelm. a medieval closed face helmet. it is terrifying. rivets all across the head and evil looking slices where the eyes will, no doubt, peer out ruthlessly. over the nose and mouth are little t shaped cuts for ventilation, i suppose. so he'll be able to breathe. it is awful. it is fifteen inches tall from crown to chin. he will need a pillow on top of his head so he can wear it. he will need two or maybe three pillows. it is the most perfect thing i've seen. i would like to buy ten or twelve to have on hand, the way my mom does with cards, for when we're caught unawares and in need of a gift. who wouldn't be able to use a great spangenhelm? but we order just the one for now, although i do bookmark the website for future use.

it arrived at the grandparents' a few days ago and tonight he will stop by and get the monstrous thing. i wanted him to have it the minute we decided to get it, but the world does not yet bend entirely to my will. while waiting, i imagined how it would look on him. the helmet will be big- big enough around to slide down over his shoulders so that the lower edge will likely rest somewhere against his chest, hopefully just above his elbows so he can wave his arms and look even more menacing. until he gets his pillows, he will probably be breathing out of one of those terrifying eye holes. he will not be able to see a thing. i am almost completely sure this will not seem like a drawback to any of the eight year olds he knows, but i have asked his grandmother to whip up a head extending pillow to lift the helmet a bit so he will not slam into a wall or moat or ride his trusty steed off a cliff of some sort. i cannot wait to see him in all his knightly glory. truly, he is the rightful wearer of the great spangenhelm.

towel rack

yeah, that's right. this is a whole blog entry on a towel rack and there's nothing you can do about it and don't think you need to share any opinion on how bare the walls are in the photos. getting things framed isn't as easy as it used to be. you don't think it's such a good idea, a whole entry on a towel rack, but that's because the towel rack in your house is boring. you probably didn't choose it yourself and if you did, you chose from three or four different racks in home depot or something and your choice was more about what would match something else in the room or what was the right size. you didn't choose any sort of gloriousness. you wish you could. this sort of choice is rare in the realm of towel racks. there's no plastic.

we have a bathroom on the second floor of an old bungalow and it lives up under the eave of the house, so that half of the room is really just for show, not usable, because the roof slopes down and there's no standing in that part. floor space, sure, but not for walking around on. because the people who made choices about the large fixtures (bath tub, sink, toilet) in the bathroom put them up against the taller walls so folks wouldn't have to hunch over while taking a shower or bump their heads every time they need to pee, there's not much space for hanging towels. not much at all. in fact, the folks who put all that other stuff in just left a crappy towel rack in plastic under the sink. they didn't know where to put it, either.

this got me thinking. i remember those metal swing arm towel racks for dishtowels in kitchens. i liked those things as a kid and wouldn't mind having one in my kitchen now but they're hard to come by. paper towels and all. still, a person can dream. so i imagined kitchens with cheerfully draped dish towels near sunny kitchen sinks. i did. and one day the sweetie and i were wandering around an antique store after a very sassy lunch at brooks' bbq and he said, "there's that thing you keep talking about!" i married him for his articulateness, his skill with language. so i stared right at where he was pointing and saw nothing that looked like i'd been talking about it. ribs. some sort of horribly misshapen wooden umbrella. i had no idea what he was trying to point out. "the towel thing," he said and reached out to touch it. and he was right. but it wasn't the little metal swing arm towel rack i'd dreamed of sharing my sunny kitchen with. it was an ancient thing. a dinosaur of towel drying. all wooden except for the seven hooks and seven eyes. a towel rack, indeed, but for bath towels. not like any other towel rack i'd ever seen in anyone's house. not at all. i wanted it. i wanted it more than anyone should want an implement of bath towel drying. i really did. but we left the shop without it. there was a bit of mold on the backing and i am not about to bring mold into a house on purpose. besides, i felt like my overwhelming desire to have the thing might be clouding my judgment.

then, this weekend, we were back up that way mostly because i couldn't stop talking about the towel rack. do you think i could fix it? could i clean the mold off? maybe i could sand it down and then use it. the sweetie got sick of this i suppose and simply drove the thirty or so miles up to the shop and we bought it, along with a workbook on space. we got it home and the sweetie suggested sanding. i got a sanding block and started. goodbye mold. goodbye paint. underneath the old white paint there was something that looked like pepto bismol. pinky pink. i kept sanding until all the mold was gone. i wasn't sure. we bought paint. yellow. number 2 pencil is the exact color. a good color for a teacher. and i was ready to paint and the sweetie came out and said, "that looks nice." what? no paint? no. he thought it looked perfect. just right. those shabby chic folks should hire me. i can make something look ancient in ten minutes.

so we got everything smoothed and ready and put it in the bathroom. it's simple, really. a flat bit of wood with another bit of wood perpendicular. seven little hooks hang from the underside of the second bit of wood like tiny bats. a rod sits just below with seven long slats, the smoothest wood in the world, each with an eye at the top. and you pull up one of the slats and loop the eye over the hook and you have a place to dry your towel. you can do this six more times. and it looks like a carnival or a church or something. which is why this is a whole entry on one towel rack. and why, although i rarely brag about things i own, i am pleased to say that my towel rack is the best in the world and you are currently at least slightly jealous, even if you don't yet feel it.