On Appreciating Handknit Socks.

(This one is for L. and C.)

While going through my old Pablo Neruda collections a few days ago, I came across this poem which I hadn't thought of in years. So here's another one. And it could have been written only by a man who has had the sublime pleasure of wearing handknit socks on a cold day in winter. The last line is the best.

Ode to My Socks
by Pablo Neruda

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knit with her
shepherd's hands.

Two socks as soft
as rabbit fur.

I thrust my feet
inside them
as if they were
two
little boxes
knit
from threads
of sunset
and sheepskin.

My feet were
two woolen
fish
in those outrageous socks,
two gangly,
navy-blue sharks
impaled
on a golden thread,
two giant blackbirds,
two cannons:

thus
were my feet
honored
by
those
heavenly
socks.

They were
so beautiful
I found my feet
unlovable
for the very first time,
like two crusty old
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
those incandescent
socks.

Nevertheless
I fought
the sharp temptation
to put them away
the way schoolboys
put
fireflies in a bottle,
the way scholars
hoard
holy writ.

I fought
the mad urge
to lock them
in a golden
cage
and feed them birdseed
and morsels of pink melon
every day.

Like jungle
explorers
who deliver a young deer
of the rarest species
to the roasting spit
then wolf it down
in shame,
I stretched
my feet forward
and pulled on
those
gorgeous
socks,
and over them
my shoes.

So this is
the moral of my ode:
beauty is beauty
twice over
and good things are doubly
good
when you're talking
about
a pair of wool
socks
in the dead of winter.

Pablo Neruda

I can hardly believe now that I have no socks on my needles. There's a reason, I'm sure, but I can't think of one. I'll cast on today. These ordinary luxuries cannot be denied. (But which pattern? That is the real conundrum.)

On Ten Years.

The Neepher and I just celebrated Ten Years of Wedded Bliss. It's a cliche, but nonetheless, it's flown by, probably because nine of those ten years have been shared with one or more rambunctious children. I married so young that I have spent, at thirty, a third of my life with this man. Given the notoriously poor judgement of youth, I got very, very lucky.

I wish I could show you us on our wedding day, him in his kilt and long hair, me in cream silk, young and smiley as hell. But the photos are all packed away.

There's a lot I could say, and I've composed ten posts in my head already, but it always seems to come out maudlin and never captures the essence of what I want to say about this man and my marriage with him. So I will let that well-known poet of his beloved Chile, Pablo Neruda, say it for me.

Love Sonnet IX

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks
the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,
and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,
to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,
magnetic transient whose death blooms
and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever:
broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence,
while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,
collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,
galloping water, incessant sand,
we make the only permanent tenderness.

Pablo Neruda

And he can really make me laugh.

On Babies Up Early.

Doot, doot.

Baby Fancy Pants is sitting in my lap, unwilling to sleep since... two hours ago. I finally got up with him after Daddy Fancy Pants was close to losing it with the kid. I can see his point -- the whole toddler-sitting-on-your-head-while-you're-trying-to-sleep thing loses some its charm at five in the morning. And since he has to go into the office tomorrow, he won't be able to sneak a nap at any point. And all I do all day is nap.

This is me, all mommed out*.


*Thanks, Mr. F. Tropf, for delineating the term.

The Face of Thirty.

I turned Thirty Years Old on Saturday. I started freaking out about it a week or two before the actual day. I always thought I was too cool to do such a bourgeois thing like get all upset about my birthday. I was wrong.


My twenties were not at all what I expected them to be. Just thinking about where I was on my twentieth birthday makes me laugh. Things change fast. The balm to my anxiety was delivered by my family. They spoiled me rotten.

I woke up and Ol' Indie presented me with a massive gift certificate to The Black Sheep Wool Co. My mother gave me a chair she had found broken on the side of road and rebuilt and painted into a work of art. Then we went to the Farmers Market and bought a veritible ton of fruit. On the way home, I was dropped off at The Kura Door where I spent the afternoon getting a massage and a facial, getting cooked in the steam room and drinking tea in the tea room. The experience was funded by a gift certificate I won at a fundraiser for our family preschool (50% of our kids have attended there, and the last 25% will attend when he's old enough). It was so great that I'm doing it again next year even if I have to pay for it myself. It rained while I was there, making the day perfect.

Later, children watched by their grandmother, Indie and I put three bottles of Prosecco into the bike basket and rode to Takashi to meet several friends and siblings, but we discovered that the wait was going to be an hour and a half (I read in the paper today that Patrick Dempsey was there the night before and got the same story, so at least I know it wasn't personal). We walked down the street and ate at The Atlantic instead, where we were treated to an appropriately surly waitress, making the Continental feel that much more authentic.

We biked back home in the drizzle and went to bed. Life is so good.

P.S. Certain people have insinuated that just 'cause I ain't bragging on my knitting I ain't been knitting my knitting. They be wrong.

Bee Day.

My mother has been an apiarest (fancy word for beekeeper) since before I was born. I have a memory from when I was a kid in California riding in our red VW bus with several bee boxes full of bees as Aima was transporting them from one house to another. The big boxes had white sheets over them, but several bees still buzzed around my head as I sat on the back seat. Bees to her are like pets--as often as not she doesn't harvest their honey so they'll have enough to survive the winter.

Aima lost all six of her hives to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) at the end of 2006, and she was still too sad about it in the spring of 2007 to re-hive and try again. But this spring, missing their presence in her yard, she bought a new swarm (did you know that bee swarms are sold by the pound?). Bee Day came on a warm day in April.

The bees make themselves at home.

Later, my mom bought two more virgin queens, added them to a few frames of larval worker bees from the first hive, and now she has three thriving hives.

Jonah watches bees on ground; Aima watches bees enter hive; bee flies past Jonah's head.

When I'm feeling stressed or bothered, there is nothing more calming than sitting on an overturned milk crate in the long grass by the laundry line, watching the bees return to the hive, their back legs fat with yellow balls of pollen.

Costume Quandary.

Remember THIS incident? The infamous Stolen Witch Hat Affair. I still get antsy when I pass by the Lowe's parking lot on 13th South. But Halloween draws nigh again, and there are other costume possibilities (Ravelry links ahoy). Now if only I could get Jonah to wear a hat without flinging it off his head... Or I could go in another direction entirely.

Salutations, Kittens.

Well. The more you don't blog, the harder it is to blog. So I'm taking the plunge and just doing it.

We had a busy summer, kittens. How could we not? Four funky little monkeys running around the house all the time, declaring their great hunger for strawberry cream cheese sammies and their desire, nay, their need to run through the sprinklers-- it can take the piss out of a woman.

Among other events, a kitten named Magical Murdoch adopted us. Could a kid in possession of a father in possession of a very serious cat allergy get any luckier? Probably not.

Edamame and a Giant Bicycle.

Well. I am still alive, despite the alarming last post. All better now. I hadn't known that adults could get RSV. Silly me.
We went to Denver over spring break, the week after Easter. We stayed with The Neefer's grandparents in Littleton. Late on the middle night, we were dragging around downtown, looking for someplace to eat dinner, someplace with great food as well as a high tolerance for boisterous children. We found that place in a little Japanese restaurant run by an old couple who doted on the children in between zealously serving amazing food to people from all walks of life (from a guy who appeared to be homeless to a dude in Gucci and Prada and everyone in between, including us).
On the way home, we stopped in Fruita, Colorado for gas and encountered a collegiate cycling race, so we got out and watched for 45 minutes. The red-headed children got lots of rubs on the head for luck from riders, but we didn't stay long enough to see if it worked out for any of them.

I didn't go to a single yarn shop the whole time. I still can't believe it, but I suppose it's proof of the sacrifices parents make for their children in the thick of life.