Momomama
Sometimes I do things that make me look like a total klutz. These things usually involve my lack of pouring skills. For instance, last night I was trying to sprinkle parmesan cheese on my pasta and ended up dumping the whole container on my plate. Or at lunch, just now. I titled my head back for a last sip of Ice tea from the bottle...and pouring that shit all over my face and lap. But I'm not a clutz, really. Anyone who knows me can tell you I am graceful. For a totally awkward spaz.
Last night when I got home there was a bike in the driveway. I am used to finding pick-up trucks filled with fishing rods and SUVs with canoes on top parked in my place, but not bicycles. The bikes owner was on the top deck with Bill. Vicky is in her 50s and works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric whatever it is. She has spent the last six months on a boat doing research. Since the plan was a six week trip, she was generously compensated with paid vacation which she is using to ride her bike across the country. From Wood Hole, MA to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. New York was her fourth state. We had a great conversation about peeing on the side of the road and I wish I could go with her for the rest of the trip.
I spent an incredible weekend in Albany...learning the ins and outs of petitioning...of visibilities ...of canvassing ...of phone banking ...of pub crawling. I learned that there's no kind of person that does not honk for a sign that reads "good SEX," especially if there are signs on either side of that sign that read NEW YORK NEEDS and EDUCATION. Even old ladies with crosses hanging from their rearview mirrors honk for that.
I only want to be outside these days.
Last night it was stormy but without rain, so Bill and I sat on the porch eating ice cream cone and watching the clouds.
Tonight I'm working on my garden - planting some herbs and veggies in containers, because turning sod over is hard, hard work and a shovel is not a spade and I only have a shovel. So at lunch I have to go buy said container and dirt and plants.
This weekend I will be outside much of time - as part of a grassroots organizing camp I'm attending in Albany. We're doing signs and canvassing and passing out flyers.
And the weekend af5ter that is long. LONG. there will be a bbq. So come over!
Between home and work (or work and home) is the bad boy camp. In the mornings that bad boys (who look like men) run laps. Their supervisor, or warden, or teacher, stands on a platform with his hands behind his back as he watched them run past. It's not a normal sized track, so the loops are small. There are two bad boys with dreadlocks; they have to wear them tucked under a mint green hair net that looks like a pillow case. The mint green clashed with their red and white uniforms.
The boys can't be that bad, because there's no fence around the camp. In the afternoons they play basketball, and I never can see any supervisor. The bad boys are being rehabilitated - learning skills like forestry and logging and wood working. I imagine their letters home to girlfriends and moms in the cities, even though the bad boys are just as likely to be oxycontin pushers from the flat farmlands that butt up against Canada.
It is finally warm. Warm enough to get into the back yard and start digging up sod to put in a garden. Warm enough to set up the dog run for Momo so he can be outside, off the porch, all day. Warm enough for sunburn. And warm enough for blackflies. Swarm.
I'm starting to get used to the drop-by. People show up at our door all day and night, mostly to gossip. Everything you have heard about small town grapevines is true.
Last night, a couple we met a few weeks ago walked right in during dinner. The man is obviously a drunk and the woman is inordinately intense. But we like them. They invited us over for a drink and we went. We met their dogs and cats and toured their house. She showed me her wedding pictures and her butterfly collection. We drank wine. We stood in their field, admiring their garden and listening to the river rush by and the woodcocks flap their way skyward. We got sent home with two jars of homemade salsa and a jar of bread and butter zuchini pickles. All I could think of on the way home was the
Marge Piercy poem about small towns and squash...
Wow. I work in health care and have the crappiest insurance plan I have ever seen. For Bill and me to BOTH be covered, we'd have to pay between $300 and $600 per month. For me alone, it would be much much less, but when we have kids, they will have to be insured. And then we'll pay even more. I'm just in shock right now, because if something were to ever happen to Bill medically we would be sunk. SUNK. So it's not like we can afford to leave him uninsured. But I can't give up up to a THIRD of my paycheck to cover him. I need to get a part time job just to pay for insurance.
