Of Rain and Rainbows

We just got back from a week's vacation. The morning we left it was raining, I went out early and took photos of this rainbow which spanned our neighborhood.

We rented a house in Guerneville and friends and family came from far and wide for Thanksgiving (and wine tasting). I worked on a super secret knitting project, finished it and a scarf. Despite the dire predictions of rain, and my being sick, I rode my bike all but one day.

No photos of the beautiful Armstrong redwoods but here's one of my bike camouflaging itself at the bike shop. This is only half of the pink-ness that is Stumptown Cycles.


Thanksgiving is not my holiday. Although I love pie, I don't like eating turkey, the glorification of overeating, or football. Not to mention the whole Indian/Pilgrim issue. Despite the day not being significant for me I found myself missing people who are gone. My father, who has been gone since 2001 and those we lost this year, my grandpa, and my aunt Etta.

I never could bring myself to write about her passing in September. She was my clean-living, non-smoking, favorite aunt and she died of lung cancer.


K and I took the train up to Albany where the memorial service was held. It was too soon after grandpa, and too soon to be losing my aunt. The next day we went to the cemetery where my grandma and grandpa are to add the date of his death. I had never been there before. It was raining and I debated bringing K. He had questions like "will we be dead if we go there?" and "will we dig them up?"


It was low-key and fine. We caught the train the next morning and K cried over leaving his cousins.

Back to Thanksgiving in Guerneville. A lot of the trip involved scenes like this:

My darling child had been home from school sick the whole previous week. He also woke up between 4:30 and 6:00 every day of vacation. We still love him.


One afternoon I rode out around the bend to see this rainbow over the vineyard. The next day we saw a double rainbow coming back from Sebastapol.

This post is all over the place but I have to mention that during the sick week, when I was wondering how I was going to make it, this fine fellow arrived.

He came bearing gifts of rainbow wool and more.


We came back to our apartment to settle back into the routine and culture shock of an old kitchen and small space. I found out that the pastor who confirmed me, Howard Kreiselmeyer, had passed away. He was also too young.

Rain and rainbows, that's how it goes.

Halloween Dense Moment

Today I was thinking about the word Jack-o-lantern, or Jack O'Lantern, if you prefer. I wondered why a carved pumpkin that is lit up at night has that name. What does it meaaannn?!!! Today, at age 40, I realized that the word "lantern" is part of the word. Yeah, I think of it as jackalantern, one long word, never considered the parts.

Curious, I looked it up on Wikipedia. Carving vegetables has a long history in Ireland and England, but allegedly did not become associated with Halloween until 1866 in the USA.

On a related note, Urban Fauna Studio sponsored a fiber night Monday. We made needle felted pumpkins. Some made squash, others jack-o-lanterns. I just made a pumpkin.

Happy Thanksgiving

This is going to seem like a really un-American post. Truth is, Thanksgiving is not one of my favorite holidays. I'm a vegetarian. Yes, there are a lot of wonderful foods served (including pie... mmm pie), but let's face it, the meal and the whole day revolves around turkey. Now, I like to eat, but the gluttonous attitude some people have really turns me off. Eating until you fall asleep? Eating a lot just for the sake of eating? Plus I never bought that whole Indian - Pilgrim fable either. It just doesn't seem like a day of celebration for me.

Years ago my then-husband and I went to Southern California every Thanksgiving. We would hit Disneyland on Thanksgiving and then two of the other parks - Universal Studios, Magic Mountain, or Knott's Berry Farm. We avoided the obligations, the turkey thing, all of it. I did get pumpkin pie at Denny's though.

And that's another thing about Thanksgiving. It brings back a lot of memories. Some bad ones I don't want to think about and happy ones I can never relive. It's all a bit too much.

So, if it is your kind of thing, Happy Thanksgiving to you. If not, at least know you are not the only one muddling through.

Feelings!

Do you even get a weird emotion or feeling that you can't put a name to? They other day I was thinking about my father and how sad it is he isn't here to see my son grow up. My father loved trains and it would have been so neat for them to do railroad stuff together. Every once in a great while when I look at my son I see what my father must have looked like as a toddler.

But then I got to thinking about how hard it was to connect with my father as an adult. Even though we lived in the same city we didn't see each other that often. Holidays and birthdays, and every so often I would get back into model railroading and visit his shop. And then I got this feeling and could actually remember a few other times I had it. A feeling I can't describe other than awareness. Even though it was related to this lack of connection it wasn't sadness, angry, loneliness or confusion. It wasn't exactly peace or acceptance either. A weird feeling.

A bit later I was resting and the loudest sound was the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. I like that sound and the fact that during the day the clock is ticking but the other sounds drown it out. If you stop and actually listen for it, you can hear it but you have to know it is there first. That ticking gives me another self-aware feeling, a kind of peace. Knowing that like that clock I am just a tiny part of the world, sometimes fading to the background, sometimes more noticeable, but always there, plugging along. Sometimes I need to be reminded that life just goes on with or without me, I'm not that important. Other times I need the reassurance that a least one thing is constant in life.

Crazy Thoughts

The other day I was sitting in the coffee shop, enjoying a latte and knitting. A woman was sitting two tables down, she had a bunch of whole fruit in front of her, which was kind of odd. She was quietly talking and talking. The man next to her said "what?" It took him a minute to realize she wasn't really talking to him, just rambling, and not in English.

After a few minutes he got up and left. I have to admit I did focus on my knitting since I was the next closest target. She did keep looking at me and talking, but the words didn't make sense. She did same to the woman on the other side of me. She kind of smiled and went back to typing on her laptop.

Is there really that big of a difference between someone who just says everything that comes to mind and the rest of us? I have a constant dialog going on in my mind. Well, maybe not a dialog, but thoughts that are in the form of words. And the woman at the keyboard certainly had a stream of thoughts coming out. The only difference is that we kept ours quiet, while the woman couldn't seem to do that.

As I packed up the crazy lady looked right at me and pointed at my knitting. I have no idea what she was saying so I just smiled.

When I was sitting in church yesterday I was kept having the fear that I was going to say something out loud that I was thinking. Something like, "wow, I like that turquoise jewelry", or "I wish I could wear hats". Or something less kind. And I remembered that I often had this fear, sitting in church or other places where someone was speaking and I was alone with my thoughts, trying to focus, but failing. Does that make me crazy, too?

Moot Post

I didn't go knitting tonight. I was out last night and wanted to spend time with my sweeties at home this evening.

I leave you to ponder this note I saw on the floor of the streetcar the other day:


I always thought a moot point was one that wasn't worth debating because it didn't matter anymore. I stand corrected. According to Merriam Webster:

1 a: open to question : debatable b: subjected to discussion : disputed
2: deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic

Why was this scribble napkin on the floor of the streetcar? Did someone drop it by accident, or on purpose, in hopes someone would stop and think? No matter how you look at it, it's a moot point, because I'll never know the answer.

Criminal Minds?

The captain of our local police station sends a daily email recapping the day's crimes, and the block where they occurred and the perpetrator lives is listed. It's good to be forewarned of crime trends. I'm careful in general, for instance I know not to leave tempting items exposed in my vehicle, but it's good to know when there's a rash of break-ins nearby so I can be extra careful.

I've noticed a few graffiti arrests which is heartening since the last time I called in a group of kids (three times over a 20 minute period!) as I followed them for blocks and watched them tag a streetcar and then a bus shelter, the police didn't show up. It's sad to see the domestic violence cases, and creepy to see how many people die in their homes.

A favorite is people who run the stop sign half a block from the police station. Really? I can see that you live in the neighborhood, you really don't know that the police station is right there?

It's amazing how dumb some of the criminals must be. Every day someone is stopped for running a stop sign, or driving with headlights out, only to be hauled away because they don't have a license or drugs were found in their vehicle. If I were going off to a drug deal with thousands of dollars' worth of drugs in my trunk, and there was a warrant for my arrest, I would make sure my headlights were on and would make an effort to follow all the traffic laws. If I were forced to drive without a license, I would certainly not have an open container of alcohol in my lap.

These reports sheds a different light on the term "criminal mind".

Books

I was clearing off the bedside table and found Jennie by Sigrid Undset. This isn't really a book review, but I will say that this book, the one that got Undset's career moving, is as different from Kristin Lavransdatter than night and day.

To quote the back cover of the book:

When Jenny was published in 1911, Undset found herself called immoral — “this is a side of the free, artistic life that the vast majority of citizens would rather not know.” The novel tells the story of Jenny Winge, a talented Norwegian painter who goes to Rome to seek artistic inspiration but ultimately betrays her own ambitions and ideals. After falling into an affair with the married father of a would-be suitor, Jenny has a baby out-of-wedlock and decides to raise the child on her own. Undset’s portrayal of a woman struggling toward independence and fulfillment is written with an unflinching, clear-eyed honesty that renders her story as compelling today as it was nearly a century ago.

This new translation by Tiina Nunnally captures the fresh, vivid style of Undset’s writing and restores passages omitted from the only previous edition to appear in English, which was published in 1921. Most famous for her later, historical fiction set in Catholic, medieval Scandinavia, Undset stands revealed with Jenny, her first major novel, as an unsparing, compassionate, magnificent realist, the creator of works that are at once thoroughly modern and of enduring interest.

The funny thing is I was engrossed in this book and read it over just a couple days earlier this week, and yet, until I picked it up I didn't give it another thought. I know it had an effect on my way of thinking about things, some books really make you think. It's weird how I can be reading a book and feel immersed in it, and then that feeling is gone when the book ends.

I'm not quite getting my point across, but it's interesting to think of all the books I've read in my life, and how few I remember.

The Tenth Commandment

Don't ask me why, but when I was knitting today I was trying to remember all the Ten Commandments. I remembered #10 as "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife." I thought it was interesting that it didn't include "thy neighbor's husband". I guess even back then most women thought one husband to take care of was enough.

Here's the RSV version: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's." (Exodus 20:17 RSV).

Hmm, interesting that I didn't remember that the commandment was about all of the neighbor's things, not just his wife. Wait a minute! Your neighbor's wife is just one item on the list of his "possessions"? Nice.

Of course the Bible wasn't written in English, and I don't know Hebrew. It would be interesting to see if it the commandment sounded more "unisex" in the original language. In the end, I think this commandment is less about "wronging" your neighbor and more about being happy with what you have.