I sat down to write but Pete was watching Tina Nordström make a perch and sausage soup on PBS’ Perfect Day. Nordström was so light and charming and pronounced kayak as one hard syllable, and next thing I knew it was twenty minutes later. She was on New Scandinavian Cooking, where she was simply fabulous. Once, she cheerfully cooked moose stew in the ice hotel. While I couldn’t relate, culturally, I gave her a lot of credit for having confidence the roof wouldn’t cave in.

Months ago, my favorite Asian market closed to move to the next town. Signs in the windows at the new location said Coming Soon! as it got later and later. I felt positively stricken. When Pete decided to try a gluten-free diet, I mentally scanned the shelves at the Asian market and pouted. As Grandma used to growl, “Tempis was fugiting.” Today, we saw balloons and carts outside the store, grabbed a cart and made a break for the door.

It was heavenly. The building itself was about the same size as the old one, but cleaner, brighter and much, much better organized. The produce section made sense and lacked that this is what you get, goddammit ambience that made shopping the old produce aisles an act of defiance. One whole aisle is stocked floor to ceiling with rice varieties, and another offers a truly luxurious selection of noodles. The placement of the freezer cases close to the bakery counter made it impossible to examine about one-quarter of the frozen foods. I didn’t have to get to that corner to know there were still too few vegetarian dimsum to choose from, and the kind I love wasn’t in the case. Even so, the selection of shumai was exciting. I wanted to look at everything. Seeing the small percentage of items I did made me want to lie down for an hour. Being happy is exhausting! I knew that, but now I’m tired and have cellophane noodles.

In the car again, I sighed a few times.

Tata: I’m so relieved. I felt like I was cooking around holes in my grocery list.
Pete: Me, too.
Tata: No banana leaves.
Pete: Two different kinds of ducks!

Yup. Still no moose.

Pete: Whatcha doin’?
Tata: Coping with anxiety through dried fruit.
Pete: Think you’ll calm down when the fridge is full?
Tata: I think that’s the time to buy a second fridge.

Remember our friend Woym? Yesterday, I caught the handsome kitty, stuffed him in a cat carrier, drove him to the vet, had him tested for all kinds of pesky pussycat maladies and waited with him for two hours. He nestled into my arms and shivered. Finally, he got a clean bill of health, a few more shots and my co-worker took him home. I think I should feel relieved. I found him a good home, where people will treat him like a treasure and love him as much as he can stand. Bonus: they’re anxious to fill Woym with meaty treats and give him his own name. So why won’t my stomach stop churning? I don’t know, but lately, my answer to every question is Greek yogurt.

Disgruntled Co-Worker: I’m always hungry again at 3:30.
Tata: Have you tried Greek yogurt?

Blurting Stranger: My husband and I don’t talk anymore.
Tata: Try talking about delicious Greek yogurt.

Raw Story: The National Republican Congressional Committee did not backpedal Tuesday after coming under attack for a press release calling on a U.S. general to put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “in her place.”
Tata: The NRCC obviously constipated and stuck in white, male 1956. Here in sexylicious 2009, we would all feel better with the NRCC stuffed full of creamy Greek yogurt. Like really full.

What’ll I dooooooo?

I’ve been thinking, which is always my first mistake: I used to sit down to write PIC without any idea of what I’d write. Some of my favorite posts came from nowhere and developed naturally. Right now, I’m pressed for time and debating topics and fighting the anxiety of human frailty as winter approaches. This morning, I lay down supercool rubber flooring under my desk and set up a mini exercise cycle in my cubicle to fight stiffness, torpor and moral sloth. Maybe my mind will clear along with my sinuses after the first frost. Let’s hope so. I have limited patience with my own anxiety and the clock is ticking.

We are doing calisthenics.

Tata: Okay okay okay so yesterday I’m in Carmelo’s shop and he walks toward me holding a magazine. There’s only one customer at a time so there’s only one magazine –
Leilani Goldberg: Of course. That makes sense.
Tata: – and this time it’s the Details Magazine with Clive Owen on the cover. Clive Owen is yummy!
Leilani: That cover is super hot. I saw it at the drug store yesterday.
Tata: But Carmelo opens it to a quiz called something like “63 Signs That You Are A Douchebag.”

Leilani nearly dropped her handweights.

Tata: I’ve got dye in my hair, the print is really small and I can’t get my glasses because that would be an admission of defeat, but none of that’s important when – like – sign #2 is “You’ve made your own ricotta.”
Leilani: Cheese?
Tata: I have made my own ricotta!
Leilani: You’ve made cheese?
Tata: Yes, I’ve made cheese! So we are off to the races: yes, I do look at the lighting in restaurants. Yes, I have talked to my trainer about strengthening my core. I have hosted brunch! Apparently, I am a pretentious tool!
Leilani: Whaaat?
Tata: So I’m like, “Carmelo, I’m a douchebag!” And he said, “Me, too!”

Found here.

The theremin makes Sweetpea jumpy.

I want one of these to play with.

Learn more about this.

The headline above the article at Huffington Post:

Hollywood Cougars: Who Looks Best With Her Younger Partner? (PHOTOS, POLL)

The headline on the front page slightly different:

Hollywood Cougars: Who Looks Best With Her Younger Man?

That right there is a steaming pile of homophobic shit.

Crossposted at Brilliant@Breakfast.

2009 Astronomy Photographer of the Year series

Vincent Miu (Australia): Venus, Jupiter and Moon trails over the Nepean River (Runner-Up, Earth and Space category)

Laptop kerflooey! Blogging will be limited.

Crooks & Liars:

Ezra Klein points out Baucus’s dilemma:

Max Baucus will release the Chairman’s Mark — the official first draft of his bill — later today. But things are not going according to plan. He’s got a bill full of the compromises meant to attract Republican support, but no Republican support. Not even Olympia Snowe, at this point, has committed to backing the bill.

Meanwhile, the framework has conceded enough to the GOP that it’s also losing Democratic support, including that of Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Finance Committee’s Health Care Subcommittee. And Rockefeller says that four to six Democrats on the committee feel similarly. Baucus is thus caught between a rock and a hard place. The absence of any Republican support makes it hard for him to justify his compromises. And his compromises make it hard for the Democrats on the committee to support his bill.

I do three stupid things before breakfast, have an attention span shorter than a sugar-shocked toddler and dated enough crazy people to fill a post office wall, but even I know a few things Max Baucus should learn:

1. It’s over between Max and the Republicans. When you still want ’em bad and hope they love you and wait up all night, Puddin’, even if they show up they’re on their way out the door. It’s sad and all, but stand up on your own two feet and walk. Walk, baby!
2. Some folks look human but ain’t. Look them in the eye and you’ll see it. When a man tells the world he’s going to vote against your legislation, believe it. He’s not bargaining. He’s dissing you in a deeply personal way, waiting for you to – again – walk away. Walk it, sugar!
3. We’ve seen the Republicans’ true colors for decades. I hate to quote Miss Oprah quoting Miss Maya Angelou, but it’s gotta be: When someone shows you their true colors believe them. Max – girl – your boots were made for walkin’.

Time and again, I watch the Democrats get out-maneuvered and I wonder: did these spineless fuckers not attend high school? Did they not have to stand up to bullies they’d have to face the next day? Did they not have to figure out how to push through crowds of lifeless dolts to get anything done? No?

Perhaps Congressional Democrats need a sophomore year in New Jersey public high schools to toughen them up. You know: because apparently governing has softened their skulls.

The bedroom door is painted and hanging in place, brightening the dark end of the second floor hallway. I’ll put another coat of brilliant white trim paint on the door where it is to touch up rough spots and to cover others where kamikaze bugs committed suicide in oddly large numbers. All the doors are white now, and though the job is only mostly finished, I don’t twitch like Adrian Monk in a pukey pre-school when I open my bedroom door and look out.

Between coats, I worked on emptying four more slide carousels. After the first two dusty and mildewy trays, I learned to work outdoors at a high rate of speed and to keep a handkerchief where I could grab it fast. One day, I hope to be able to show you specific pictures and tell you what I know about them, but I can never really tell you their stories. What I can tell you is that these pictures distill a part of our lives we don’t remember well, and show us as people we don’t know anymore. Let me give you an example: I had forgotten that Daria, Todd and I started out life as Dad’s models, and we were photographed often, doing anything, everything and nothing at all. In ten trays of slides and with at least six more to go, and with thousands of slides in cases, I have seen a dozen pictures of my nine-year-old self in a red plaid poncho posing against a neutral background, and I now recall that sometimes, when we had no plans, Dad set up cameras, lights and screens and took pictures of us over and over again, a little this way, a little that. Dad left the next year, and it was almost twenty years later that I found a Polaroid camera, took pictures of myself and forced myself to look, such was the aversion I had developed to seeing my own face. It was nearly unbearable to see myself again. I still have those pictures. It remains painful to look at them.

It is so literal: when Dad left, he took with him my ability to see myself, and I didn’t get it back until I held the camera.

In the last weeks of his life and in the middle of another story, Dad looked at me sideways and said, Sometimes, I made the story more interesting than it really was. I tossed my head and we moved on. I learned the hard way to wait for proof, to wait for him to show me what he really meant when he offered me promises. I learned that he sometimes exaggerated or omitted details, and didn’t answer questions he didn’t like. It was like growing up with the Little Prince for a father, and watch out for those damn migrating geese.

In 1972, Mom, Dad, Daria, Todd and I drove up to Prince Edward Island for that total eclipse Carly Simon sang about, and Dad photographed the whole thing. Yesterday, I emptied the tray of images comprising the eclipse. Dad showed Daria, Todd, Dara and me these slides with the proviso that we zip our lips. He was weak. His need to show us what happened, why he left us, where he went was great and his time was short. He told us that his pictures were good. Some of the professional photographers didn’t get images as good. A magazine we recognized but can’t remember bought one of his slides. “Paid for the whole trip,” he said. Yesterday, I brushed off the slides in this series and when I turned over one of them his name was printed in handwriting I didn’t recognize. Suddenly, the story seemed more plausible.

Today, I emptied a tray of bright, clear pictures of Paris, 1973. My heart ached. This is a message from our father, who left his young children in the spring and never came back. I spent over an hour with these pictures of places I’ve only seen in books, and later, I felt as if I’d returned to my home from a great distance. I felt as if I’d been dreaming. I looked up from my work at one moment and a woman pushing a baby carriage stopped, walked up the porch steps to ask what I was doing. She spoke with a thick Russian accent about wanting to make her own artwork, which she will when she figures out how to sift every day for a few minutes to herself. Mostly, I just listened to her, because new mommies are very lonely. She introduced herself and left. It was an odd encounter, but working on the porch, I see a lot of those. On Sunday morning, the neighbor Pete and I refer to as Mr. Loud was running around his lawn with his small children. His next door neighbor came outside and they proceeded to have this conversation twenty feet apart, at the tops of their lungs.

Mr. Loud: I JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS IS HAVING A FREE CONCERT THIS AFTERNOON AT THE ARTS CENTER DOWN ON THE PARKWAY –
Mr. Also Loud: ARE YOU GOING? WE HAVE PLANS, BUT WHERE IS IT?
Mr. Loud: [LONG DESCRIPTION OF SPECIFIC LOCATION, POSSIBLY INCLUDING LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE. THERE WERE A LOT OF FREAKING NUMBERS.]

Meanwhile, five or six kids were running around, screaming at the tops of their lungs.

Kids: MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!

And one very patient, loud –

Mommy: GET IN THE CAR, KIDS. KIDS! GET IN THE CAR.

It was like a scene out of Edward Scissorhands. I’d seen the slides of Paris many times, but with so many of the other trays in poor condition the clarity of these images was startling. The Arc de Triomphe rises into a clear, deeply blue sky. The girders of Eiffel Tower cast stark shadows on a brilliantly green garden. And there’s Dad, with long black hair and a white print shirt. Who took the picture?

The other day, I remembered that the dark-haired man in the band looked so much like Dad that when we saw the album we asked if that was where he went on business trips. It’s a funny notion now, but it made perfect sense to our child-minds. He sent us cards, letters and presents from wherever he went: dolls, candy, wooden shoes. When he showed us the slides before he died, he was angry, impatient and he felt sick. No one was happy, and he wanted us to be quiet. We – even Dara, who was 15 in 2007 and had been to Paris herself – were old enough to enjoy the pictures, but no one did. It was all very tense. While we were looking at the slides from Helsinkii, one image of something mechanical, oddly beautiful and out of place on a street corner came up on the hastily erected screen. Everyone was quiet and puzzled. I said, “That’s a Wankel engine.” At any other moment in his life, Dad would have pointed at me proudly and announced to whoever was listening that I was indeed his kid. This time he said simply, “Yes, it is.”

When I saw this image yesterday, I saw myself.