The Skins Do Pop Off

Cool band name, eh? I'll be in charge of the tambourine and the outfits. Now, can you folks out there write the songs, sing, and play the other instruments? Then we can quit our jobs and hit the road.

The band name comes from a process currently taking place in my apartment. I'm canning 25 lbs of tomatoes. That's right -- my urban homesteading fantasies are becoming reality, at least for tonight.

Pics below. Special thanks to Zoe for the inspiration, motivation, and instruction. Thanks also to roommate David who is about to come home to an apartment sprinkled with tomato parts and juice, without whose pots and utensils my evening of canning would not have been possible. Also thanks to neighbor Karen who lent me canning pot, jar lifter tool, and mason jar book with nicely illustrated instructions.

I wish I could go back in time and have some words with the tortured law student version of myself. The words would be both gentle and firm. I used to spend hours lamenting that I didn't have time to cultivate my modern homestead. Sometimes we have to be patient. We can't have everything all at once. But things do slowly fall into place. I have 8 quarts of canned tomatoes to prove it.

Before the party started

The skins do pop off

Jars in water

Finito! Good night!

Devastating news from tuesday's gynecology appointment

It took a few days to process before I could blog about it.

They took my height and said that I am 5'7 1/2.

All this time, like since high school, I've said I was 5'9.

My identity and sense of self are shaken.

I always think of myself as a tall woman.

This changes my height to weight ratio.

I am getting a second opinion.

Luckily, my sister has been in town this week and has provided immeasurable support during this trying time. She is a physician herself and we will run some separate tests this evening.

In the meantime, please light a candle for me.

Day-tripping/East coast growing on me/Falling in love with my life or at least learning to like it more/I’m not sure why this is so long

Any of these titles will do for this post.

With the subtitle: Philly day trip

I rolled out of bed at 4:15 on Saturday morning. Was one of those mornings when I looked in the mirror and saw that I had slept in such a way that my hair was looking good. I considered forgoing a shower and getting ten more minutes of sleep, but then I smelled the bod and determined that she needed a rinse. She got it and then I packed myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and carried my bike out of my apartment.

My neighbor Joe was smoking a cigarette on the steps outside of our building. “What are you doing up at this hour?” I asked in a motherly tone. “Cute boys,” he said and grinned. His Friday night hadn’t ended by the time my Saturday morning began.

I pedaled down to Union Station. I had never been out at this hour in DC. I saw a real life super obvious prostitute. Mesh body suit over black bra and underwear. A car stopped to talk to her. He didn’t want what she was offering or she wouldn’t do what he was asking for. He drove away. I continued on my way. I locked my bike up at Union Station. There was a man in a maroon t-shirt sleeping on top of the concrete barricades that surround the bike racks to prevent cars from hitting the bikes. I bet the concrete was cool in contrast to the hot air.

I got on the 5:25 train bound for Philadelphia. I was on my way to a conference for law librarians. I observed that I really didn’t feel anything about the trip. No nervousness, no anticipation, no excitement. Nothing. Does this mean that I’ve chosen the wrong career path? No – I think it means that I’ve chilled a bit and come to realize all is well and will most likely continue to be so. Also, I think the itinerary I devised for myself might have tempered any enthusiasm about the day. Super early train there and super late train home. I was just hoping to make it through the day.

Train ride was lovely. Nice sunrise, views of the water, and a few more bites of sleep.

Morning conference sessions were fine. Mostly fluff, but good to meet people in my field. These were all newer law librarians like myself. At several points during conversations with job-seekers, I said to myself about myself “You are one lucky mofo.” Nothing else can make you appreciate the job that you frequently complain about like meeting a bunch of young, smart, nice people who would like to have your job. Also, several of the conversations started with compliments to me on my hair. I had to bite my tongue from bragging that I woke up with it like that.

There was a speed networking portion of the morning. It wasn’t terrible. At one point, I was talking to a young woman with orange-ish lipstick on her face, only some of which was on her lips. She mentioned something about a dog. It didn’t appear like this rotation of the speed networking was going to end soon so I asked her what kind of dog even though the answer to that question is always either something that I have never heard of or something that I can’t picture. There was a lot of noise around us, and she misheard the question and went into a long story about a why she wanted to be a law librarian which for some reason involved a story about trapping a rat or a bat in a box and I stopped listening but kept nodding and smiling and thinking about how if I ever start to lose my hearing I might not always ask people to speak up.

Then all of us new librarians boarded a tour bus and took a tour of Philadelphia, which was also surprisingly not terrible. In triple digit temps, seeing a city by tour bus is forgivable, right?

Then I found myself with three and half hours to kill before dinner but absolutely no desire to be out in the heat. I went to Reading Terminal Market and bought some of my favorite red licorice and a packet of pickling spices. Then I went to Macy’s for air conditioning and a toilet.

The tour guide had mentioned that there is a large pipe organ inside the Macy’s. I slowly made my way through the store up the escalators to the third floor where the bathrooms are located. On my way back down, I saw a sign that said there would be a concert at 5:30. Lovely. I found a nice spot in the shoe department, pulled out a book, and waited for the concert to begin. It was quite nice. I stayed in the shoe department reading for about a half hour after the concert ended.

I met up with librarians with whom I had worked last summer for a lovely dinner in honor of one of the librarians who had received an award for community service. I left the restaurant at 10 pm with the honoree and another librarian and we headed out to catch the 10:30 pm train back to DC.

On the train ride home, I was overcome with gratitude. Gratitude that all is well. Gratitude for the opportunities that I’ve had in DC. Gratitude that life has shown me once again that although we rarely know what’s coming next, the chances are quite high that whatever it is, it will be good. Gratitude for a good haircut. Gratitude was followed by drowsiness, and I slept the rest of the way to DC.

The women who took the train with me both offered me a ride home and then gasped when I thanked them but said that I would ride my bike; it’s a short ride; I have lights and a helmet. I assured them that I would be safe and we parted ways. I left Union Station and stepped out into the night. It had been pitch black when I left my bike there in the morning and it was pitch black when I returned. The man in the maroon t-shirt was there in the exact same spot. I rode home and when I pulled up to my building I was hoping Joe would be out front, but he wasn’t. That would have made for a pleasingly symmetrical day.

Organ pipes at Macy's

Organ player at Macy's

Steps from Rocky at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Rocky statue

Meta-jealousy

I’m jealous of an article about something that I am jealous about.

When I read No one Belongs Here More than You by Miranda July, I thought, “Hey, I was going to do that.” I wanted to write like that. I wanted to make those precious observations. I’ve got that in me and I wanted to get it out and put it down on paper, but I never got around to it. And she put it down on paper and she put it on film and did so much else with it. And I haven’t really tapped into whatever it is I think I have in me. Well, good for her. I decided to enjoy her work rather than resent her. At least someone’s doing something with what they’ve got in them.

And now here’s this New York Times Magazine article with all sorts of well-crafted observations on the various responses to Miranda July.

Here are some excerpts:

To her detractors (“haters” doesn’t seem like too strong a word) July has come to personify everything infuriating about the Etsy-shopping, Wes Anderson-quoting, McSweeney’s-reading, coastal-living category of upscale urban bohemia that flourished in the aughts.

The urban bohemian irks precisely because his or her quirky individuality is just part of a different kind of uniformity, where the uniform happens to be a bushy beard or Zooey Deschanel bangs rather than country-club khakis. Twee fascinations with childhood innocence can mask an unwillingness to tackle life’s darker quandaries. Who wouldn’t be annoyed by a guy who, say, finds a cracked milk bottle, makes a film about it, then silk screens it on a T-shirt and names his band Milk Bottle? The stakes are low. The results are soon forgotten.

It’s odd that she has come to represent, for some, a kind of soulless hipster cool, because in July’s work, nobody is cool. There’s no irony to it, no insider wink. Her characters are ordinary people whose lives don’t normally invite investigation. So her project is the opposite of hipster exclusion: her work is desperate to bring people together, forcing them into a kind of fellow feeling. She’s unrelentingly sincere, and maybe that sincerity makes her difficult to bear. It also might make her culturally essential.

She admires directors like Baumbach and Wes Anderson, but she said: “All those men are also personal. I don’t mind that, but I do mind that it’s not really questioned, whereas I or another woman is looked at as so self-obsessed. Men are just not being judged in the same way. They’re never going to be annoying in the same way.”

Recent Rides

Rode a chunk of Skyline Drive at Shenandoah National Park with a couple of friends who are training for RAGBRAI. Spent the whole time climbing at 7 mph or blasting down at 35 mph and very little in between. It was tough but fun!

I like the choices that I have in DC.
Rode a nice 40-mile, oft-cycled loop up MacArthur Blvd, over on Tuckerman Lane, and then home through Rock Creek Park, with a stop at La Boulangerie in Potomac, MD for well-stuffed croissants and pretty tarts. Zoe couldn't resist the baguettes and rode 20 miles home with one. What a nice touch for all of roadies who we saw who were presumably fantasizing about the Tour de France!