24 Days of Thanks, 2011-Style

I bring you Dani’s Second-Annual, November list of Thanks (Better Late Than Never). Chockablock with over-earnestness, a smidge of cheekiness, and an occasional disregard for paradigms (even while enthusiastically participating in larger hegemonic structures).

 Day 1: I am thankful for my muses, all of them and all of you, but most especially for Partner. Somehow when I bounce words and ideas off of him, they come back to me making sense, and sense is good.

‎Day 2: I am thankful for the opportunity to watch people learn to read. There is so much magic in watching a person figure out how to untangle the squiggles and have the power to decode the textual communication that surrounds us.

‎Day 3: Today I am thankful for cold wind, especially those cold fronts that blow in during the night, giving us a break from the hot hot hot.

‎Day 4: Today I am thankful for Body Armor. From the top of the head to the reinforced drawers, may it always protect our soldiers (including my brother) from harm.

‎Day 5: I am thankful for cake. And bakers.

Day 6: Today I am thankful for Legos and for our local library’s Great Lego Build Off. The Sonars have been spent MANY hours this month building amazing things, trying to figure out what their entries will be.

‎Day 7: Today I am thankful for proximity—living close enough to walk or ride bikes in most of our day-to-day activities.

‎Day 8: I’m thankful for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Day 9: I am thankful for our health insurance. With allergies, infections, asthma, eyeglasses, teeth, hernias, and regular old bodily maintenance and prevention, I don’t know what we’d do without it. I wish everyone had affordable access to adequate coverage.

‎‎Day 10: I am thankful for the agitators, the skeptics, the questioners, and the people who just wouldn’t shut up in the face of something wrong. Change, progress, and improvement only happen when people are willing to stand up and say something.

Day 11 (Veteran’s Day): I am thankful for those who have chosen to serve our country, who fulfill the promises that our government makes in our name.

Day 12: I am thankful for packed Saturdays. For the many enrichment opportunities for the kids, and for the teachers, coaches, and volunteers who make these opportunities possible.

Day 13: I’m thankful for my seventh-grade keyboarding teacher, Mrs. Horcasitas, who taught me to touch type like the wind. Zoom zoom.

Day 14: I’m thankful for eyeglasses. Four out of five occupants of this house are now eyeglass wearers. Sonar X6 should really watch out.

Day 15: I am thankful for our fabulous piano teacher. Our days are now filled with bits and pieces of music. Tanya is structured and patient, and has given The Sonars a gift that they can carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Day 16: I am thankful for Librarians! They know how to find almost any bit of information you could want. They organize and protect ideas. Fiercely. Some might poetically call them the Guardians of the Flame of Knowledge. That sounds so sexy.  Which is great, because librarians ARE sexy.

Day 17: I’m so thankful for small kindnesses. For holding open the door for someone, for smiling and exchanging a few words, for compliments that are small coming from the giver, but huge for the receiver, for simple, warm-hearted gestures that cost nothing, but feel priceless.

Day 18 (I told you I’d catch up): I’m thankful for all of you. Whether it’s something you’ve read, the music you’re listening to, your thoughts, observations, or actions, you challenge me, you break my heart, you make me laugh, you make me dance, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You people Rock My Socks Off!

Day 19: I am thankful for fruit loops. And friends to share them with.

Day 20: I am thankful for ICE. From the polar ice caps to the jingle in a drink to an ice pack for an injury (or sore typing wrists), I am so grateful for cold, solid, water.

Day 21: I’m thankful for internet access. Without it, I could not share this list with all of you quite as efficiently.

‎Day 21: I am thankful for antibiotics. We live in a world where they are often taken for granted and misapplied, but they quietly and unglamorously prevent serious illness and save lives every day.

Day 23: I am thankful for frustration. Weird, right? But when I get frustrated, I know I’ve reached a limit, I know I have a challenge to face, I know that I need to alter my course or bear down and push through to (hopefully) find the satisfaction of accomplishment on the other side.

Day 24: I’m thankful for holidays and vacations, chances to set aside the routine and be with people we love and do things we wouldn’t normally do, like make pie and marshmallows and roast turkey and stay up too late.

Day 29 (Bonus): I’m thankful for NaNoWriMo and the inspiration, motivation, and excitement that gets me to write down fresh ideas every fall.

Day 30 (Excess): I’m thankful for readers. And writers. And idea-sharers. And inspirers. And you. I’m very thankful for all of you.

Three out of four ain't bad: a triptych

While it rained, he stood at the window of his apartment playing a scratched violin. With only three strings, he had to adapt his musical arrangements. He was grateful once more that the E — the high string — was the missing string, and not any of the others. Those high notes scraped the inside of his brain anyway.

***

The little girls are dressed in their best clothes. Their grandmother starched and pressed the little dresses until they could have stood on their own. Their curled, brown hair is pinned away from their cheeks by matching yellow bird barrettes. Grandmother made them matching sweater-coats, smart little wool jackets to keep their blue dresses tidy and keep out the autumn chill. The polished shoes are buckled now, but the soccer ball abandoned under the practice goal will be irresistible soon. The tiny scuff marks will be scolded and then buffed away.

***

Two men play accordion inside the little Bavarian restaurant. The building was made of several rooms that had been added on and patched together over the past 100 years. In the nineties, the owner tried to make the place brighter by putting thick white stucco on all the inside and outside walls. Chalkboards display the hearty offerings of the day: two meals, two appetizers, two kinds of beer, and two accordion players. 

Holding on to the obvious and overlooking the essential

The story I’m working on right now depends on survivors holding on to the obvious and overlooking the essential. In other words, the most important objects in a character’s life are ignored by her survivors because they latch on to those things that have an obvious intrinsic value or the sentimentality of a known family-story association.

Look around your personal space. Look at the things that you treasure. Would your family or loved ones treasure them as well? Would a stranger treasure them? Do you have any objects in your space that are important or significant for you but would appear innocuous or worthless to someone else?

If you died or disappeared and someone, even someone very close to you and very familiar with you, sorted through your things to remove objects of sentimental and financial value, what would be left? Would something important to you be left behind? 

I’m finding it almost impossible to be able to look at my possessions objectively. Would you pick up this green plate on my desk? The one that holds a smaller bowl of paper clips and a chapstick and charm bracelet? You might. It’s finely worked and stamped on the bottom. Perhaps you’d pick it up to check its value, but you wouldn’t know that although I associate it with my mother, it’s not as important to me as the gargoyle on the top shelf for maternal remembrance. What about these giant rubber bands that hang from my lamp? They’re cool and were sent to me by a good friend. I think of her every time that I look at them, but would you pitch them into a box of random office supplies and not give them a second look? Would you know that the foot-shaped paper clips remind me of Sonar birthdays? How about the mustache on the face of the computer? Would you pitch it when saving the Mac, tossing along with it a memory of Halloweens and silliness?

What objects would I overlook in your space? 

The Flowered Wallpaper

When we first moved in to this house, the walls were mostly whitish, with a brownish-taupe in the hall, and dark green in the hall bathroom. Wallpaper occupied the borders of two rooms and all of the “Master” bathroom. That “Master” paper had large purple and green flowers (irises?) on a beige field. In this house, the Sonars occupy the “Master” bedroom. Their sleeping, their things, their bathroom are all contained in that space.

When we first moved in to this house, we were flush with the freedom and excitement of being able to do as we pleased with the walls. So naturally we wanted to paint them orange and yellow. Especially in the Sonar room. That wallpaper had to come down. We would not be trapped behind those pale stripes or smothered by the perfume of those flowers. 

Don’t believe what they tell you on decorating shows about how easy it is to remove wallpaper. That’s a lie. Removing wallpaper sucks. The only joy in the wallpaper removal came when we discovered that there was no wallpaper behind the giant vanity mirror. We wrote on the wall behind the mirror, “HI” in large, textured loops. Go look. It’s still there behind the glass.

The walls under the wallpaper were the bare paper of sheetrock, with a few scraping gouges and peeling dents from taking down the paper. I shuddered at the echoing, cold, dry, smoothness of that wall. Walls should not be so cold. Walls should not be so smooth. The paper should not feel so dry.

Texture would have to go up before we could citrify the walls. The texture on those walls doesn’t match the rest of the room because we are amateur mud workers. With the orange and yellow paint, the texture is the last thing most people notice. But I am comforted by the texture, the knife-applied strokes that bend sound and wrap the room in cozy imperfection.

Update on Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 1:17PM by Eglentyne

Two minutes after I hit ‘post’ I found a picture of the wallpaper. No, not irises, and much less purple than I remembered. Anyone know the flower? 

Two mini-Sonars and the pre-citrus flowery wallpaper, c2005

Wandering About in The Words

I had a notion to look up the meaning of a word in the dictionary. I started with ORDINARY (common, lacking special characteristics).

This led to COMMON (occurring often, prevalent, unremarkable, not rare, vernacular, vulgar, for shared use, something of the most familiar type).

Which of course prompted a peek at VULGAR (lacking sophistication, unrefined, course, sexually rude, belonging to the masses or common people). Which now sounds a bit dirty, but once referred mainly to the general population.

The MASSES (from Old French, Latin, and Greek and referring to a barley cake or kneading) are the ORDINARY people, of course.

RUDE (offensively impolite or ill-mannered, or dealing in a taboo subject, or crudely made, or lacking subtlety and sophistication, or unwrought, uncultured, and uncultivated from a word meaning ‘broken stone’) rode along with common and vulgar.

Then I couldn’t help but look at CRUDE (natural or raw, not yet processed, of rudimentary or makeshift construction, offensively coarse or rude, especially in a sexual sense).

Of course I had to check out COARSE (rough or loose in texture or grain, made of large particles, not elegantly formed or proportioned, of an inferior quality, rude, crude, and vulgar, from the Middle English ordinary or inferior, or habitual and ordinary in manner).

And I almost forgot PUBLIC, which is a complicated and many-faceted definition but I loved the source. From Latin (via Old French and Middle English) PUBLICUS, a blend of POPLICUS (of the people) and PUBES (adult or enfranchised individual).

What do we do with this nerdy etymological wandering in the dictionary? I’m going to revel in the irony that all of these words make a heady mix of common, unrefined, shared, and related to the (adult or responsible and enfranchised) people. And they all dance very near sexuality and innuendo.

When was the last time you wandered/wondered through the dictionary?

Update on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 9:29PM by Eglentyne

From VULGAR issues VULGATE (the principal Latin version of the Bible or a commonly recognized edition or text, OR common or colloquial speech). And don’t forget the etymology: from the Latin, VULGATA (prepared for the public, the feminine past participle of VULGARE, from VULGUS—the common people). 

Who wants to make the jump to COLLOQUIAL?