"the cows will [pretty much] soon turn into meat"

this is pretty much the best thing since the movie himself.



the video clips are pretty sweet, but "pedro's song" is the pretty much the sweetest. please enjoy them all. seriously.

appreciez mes petits choux.

be not so pale

if we ever so choose to sell this house of greene methinks we should only have it on the market in the glory of the fall, only after having raked the golden plunder from the grass so as not to overwhelm. the trees are outrageous -- thanks to the locksmith and his wife who, being born a long time ago, they grew up and, childless, built and planted together in the spring or fall, perhaps, lining them up along the north side of the house dreaming of generations of hammock swingers to come, plunking bundles of roots and earth into deep holes, pushing the blackness over them, perspiration glittering on the upward turning of lips.



the sugar maple in the front of the house is undoubtedly the best tree in the entire county, perhaps in the land of lincoln altogether. gather your trees of illinois and we shall see, yes we shall. bring them on over and line them up down this street, their roots gnarling over the curb, the cars, the sleepy houses, for a good comparison. we'll have a panel of judges with clipboards and pencils, tweeds and wool, scarves of maroon or gold, silvers of hair or no hair at all, pince-nez, binocular, spectacles for the spectacle of your tree next to mine.



does your tree ignite with a mere matchstrike of the sun (sunstrike? sunstroke?) in the early glimmer of morning, sending prismatic flames across the front of your house, shooting through glass and screen, a light display on wall and floor, a nameless color to blaze and brindle you through coffee and breakfasts of waffle and jam? do you feel as though you're ready for launch and flight as you skip beneath the cloud of it, atop the ocean of it?

gooses, geeses

cold fingers, hands, toes. the boys warm their hands and feet by sticking them on warm parts of my body, a practice slightly encouraged by their mother, never by their father. ernie hates the "cold hand shock," as do i, and yet i grit my teeth and wait until their hands and feet are as warm as i once was, making for more of the warm to go around.

when we were children playing in the snow my dad would let us warm our red and raw fingers on his belly. we could almost hear the "tssss" sound and see the steam rising from his skin. he would make faces and tortured sounds but would let us do it, anyway.

this warming tool is only to be used by children, however. there is nothing worse than adults, who are able to warm their own hands on their own bellies, to inflict cold hand shock on another adult, no matter how much love is going around.



this boundary is occasionaly crossed by me and i am told by my husband that i "will be sorry" and that i "will pay for that" which means that there will be an occasion on which he will come in from the cold having shoveled snow, perhaps, or scraped ice from the windshield, and i will, unsuspecting of his evil motives, be offering him hot cocoa or steaming espresso and, as i put his hot mug on the table and turn to the counter to retrieve my own, he will place his utterly frozen (not just cold, mind you) fingers on the small of my back or the nape of my neck invoking screams and failed attempts at running away.

does it not seem utterly unfair to be so shiveringly castigated, though? to "be sorry" and have to "pay" in this frostbitten way for my slightly chilling assaults on him in the mere cool of autumn?

"when the trees bow down their heads"

the world, golden, has begun to fall in a flutter down and around us. happily, it is not yet cold enough to prefer the indoor life so we walk and kick our way down the bricks, around the yard, the neighbors' yards.



in the gray of this morning's rain we are still flushed with orange, gold, unstoppable autumn.



jude is sick, a fever, crying out over the wretchedness of his teeth. he sleeps early this morning, his fuzzing head peeking out from the comforter, the quilt. the front tree is like a gigantic ball of sun, closing in on the window, blazing, breezing, empowered by the water, the sky. and still jude sleeps, sleeping off his woe.



the rain brings on my favorite weather. when i had a child who began to run, who needed sun and grass to suck his never-ending energy from him, i reevaluated this rain love of mine. but i prefer it still, it's black and green wash is cleansing. i feel dark and know more about secrets, i can see more clearly, when water falls from the gray billows into pools sending a hundred concentric circles ringing for each droplet in each puddle that grows in the cracks and dips of the sidewalk.



who has seen the wind? neither you nor i.

not the way you wear your hair

two days ago he sauntered into the locker room with a towel on his shoulder. he looked in a little mirror as he took off his tie, his shirt. he unabashedly donned euro swim wear and, with a poise that only he could have, slipped into the olympic pool and cut through the water with white, skinny, hairy arms.

yesterday he twirled on the ice with a sweat-pant-capri'd (?) peggy fleming. the camera work makes me teary eyed - the zoom on his skate as he slips his beige socked foot into the thing and begins to thread the laces. i cannot describe my emotions at moments like these, something between feeling really special, which is the intent of rogers, i believe, and really gypped, something like, "why didn't i ever become a figure skater?" i feel a certain sadness and an unsatisfied feeling of wishing when we take these outings together, only not together. up close and real, only not close at all and utterly not-for-real.

henry freaks out and cries, "mr. rogers, i want to swim with you!" he touches the tv and is completely saddened that we are in our living room and not swirling about beneath the surface, kicking our legs into a spin, our own bodies washed whiter and smoother in the water.

"look at his hair! look at his face! i want to swim!" shrieks henry.
"it looks like so much fun. we need to go to the Y to swim." i say.
"where is poppy! poppy will take me to the Y!"

mournfully we discuss that poppy is at work, that the Y is not open for free swimming at that particular time of day, and that mr. rogers is not at our Y right now.

he touches the tv and whimpers something to mr. rogers who smiles and displays his perfect, imperfect, "breaststroke, sidestroke, fancy diving," etc., his hair stuck to his smile wrinkles.

"i want to skate! i want black skates and ice and i want to hold his hand!" he shrieks the next day.
"it would be fun to ice skate -- look at how they spin together!" i commisserate, wondering if peggy annoys herself with her long hair whipping across her face as she flits across the smoothness.
"i want to do that! help me, mr. rogers!" he cries, zapping his fingers on the fuzz across the surface of the tv.

mr. rogers pretends to nearly fall down. peggy tells mr. rogers that she is still learning, that she is learning every day. mr. rogers smiles at us and the two of them glide to the wall.


i realize that i would make any number of sacrifices to pay for a mr. rogers to be a neighbor for all of us, to take us to caves with blind saxophonists, to teach us to sniff the waxy smell of crayons as the colors flick across the conveyer belt, to loan us snazzy zip up cardigans, to hold our hands as we cross the street to yo yo ma's house of cello.

i'm used to four seasons, california's got but one

i should be cleaning up the chili mess that is smeared and flung about the kitchen. but my hands smell like baby soap and i can't bring myself to make them smell of anything else. i love boys in the bath and just out of the bath, the after-bath. they giggle and shiver into jammies with feet, then jump to cuddle under newly cleaned quilts and down comforter. jude snores away his teething grumps. henry has seen "prince of egypt" and is obsessed with the young moses nearly as much as he is with the boy david. he's watching a tamer version of the story (i hate the prince of egypt's vivid heiroglyphics of the babies being thrown to the crocodiles) in which, sad to say, the mother of moses looks like a man.

at long last ernie has come home to us. the boys spent sunday afternoon leaping over him and showing him old toys and new tricks. a man of surprises, ernie showered us with gifts, henry's favorite being a whoopie cushion. he laughs hysterically and blows it up again. who would have known -- he's only three!

"i have a whoopie cushion in the car!" henry tells the near-snoozing man in the chair at borders.

"you do?" says the man, chuckling, literally, and looking at me, a mom who certainly doesn't look like an encourager of whoopie cushions.

"yes. do you need a whoopie cushion?" henry asks, seriously pondering.

"no, i really don't." says the man.

"whoopie cushion!" henry exclaims, elongating the "oo" as if shouting a hooray, trotting off to the next thing.

on saturday my mom took us to mt. pisgah to see indian teepees and to eat fair-type food. it was good but terrible. a sure sign that i'm old -- i felt sick saturday night from grease and onions! i'm so sad. henry, the ever observant, said of the midget (is it okay to call him a midget? is there a better term? little person?), "LOOK at that LITTLE MAN! he's so LITTLE!" and of the extremely obsese man, "LOOK at that fat man in the blue pants and red shirt -- he's REALLY, REALLY FAT!" it was terrible. it was worse to shush him, really. i'm really at a loss as to how to teach him not to blurt out observations pertaining to stature and size.



well, moses is trudging through the desert and henry is leaping from the coffee table to the couch shouting, "let my people go!" in an altogether too loud manner. ernie rehearses with the good doctor and i've a few new things to read waiting for done-dishes and perking coffee.

a friend of mine i chanced to meet, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho

i can't seem to warm up. henry, on the other hand, runs around in his underwear (which is normally full of all sorts of treasures -- sword, hippo, eye-patch, coasters, etc.).

i was sad to hear a sister tell another sister (in a kindermusik class) that they "weren't friends, sisters aren't friends." some aren't, i suppose, and i've no sisters to speak of, but siblings should be friends, no? i tell henry and jude that they are best friends daily. they kiss each other, help each other, play together as best friends do. doesn't the idea of a "friend who sticks closer than a brother" imply that brotherly closeness is comparable, and is indeed greater, than ordinary friendship?



i suppose i'm no one to ask or analyze -- my brothers and i fought like wild dogs, but we still loved each other. and as far as friends go, well, i've few friends in this world who are not blood or bond relation, and no true friends closer than chicago, no one that i see regularly, anyway. and while i do hope that henry and jude will make friends in this life i really hope and pray that they will be friends with each other.

in my experience friendships are often based on similar circumstances in which the two people exist: college, work, camp, etc. and when the circumstances change: graduation, change of jobs, the bus ride out of the woods and back to the city, the friendships dwindle down to nothing but a christmas card, if you're lucky. no one person is really at fault, it's just the way it works. we're bonded by similar joys and struggles and commiseration, not by anything truly real that makes for something substantial. and that's okay. i really don't mourn any friendship that has faded into nothing. but i think i'd mourn a brother that i didn't recognize on the street.

the wind blows cold so we're off to shut the windows and steep the tea.

never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker

a week of insanity and more to come.



on a colder day we bought pumpkins and squash, crunchy not-too-sweet apples, and cider that tasted better this year than last. last year jude rode in my pouch and peeked out at the wind from beneath a hat, rosy cheeked and baby-eyed. henry ran around crazy and repeatedly dropped his pumpkin.



this year was sunny but sweater cold (or we'd not have gone).



jude ran from pumpkin to pumpkin saying, "oh, wow," and screeching screeches that were lost in the noise.


henry ran around crazy and pulled the wagon, pushed the wagon, filled the wagon with ugly pumpkins that i put back when he wasn't looking.



the fleas are dying like flies. dave has given detailed instructions involving the too-frequent vacuuming up of the flea corpses. every day i spend half an hour with the shop-vac.

after a nightmarish vacuum kerfuffle involving the turned-on vacuum (newly purchased in july) at the upper landing on the stairs, the hurried jump down the stairs to unstick the extension cord from beneath the door, and the subsequent unfortunate jerking of the cord that pulled the new vacuum, still whirring, down the stairs opening up at the half-way mark spewing the wretched contents of the vacuum over the steps, railing, doors, horrified woman, shoes and turtle step-stool, then screaming at a frighteningly high pitch and letting out a horrible burning metal odor, we have purchased a new shop-vac. i need one that straps to my back. happily i am the lucky winner of a husband who does not scold nor shame his spastic wife for her irresponsibility but instead says, "it's just a vacuum." i don't deserve such grace.

october brings to our yard a leaf fantastic. when henry was falling asleep this afternoon he looked out of the window and said, "the leaves are turning orange," and yawned. i'm happy he's a noticer of orange leaf turnings.