Category: recollections

missing Red

Those of you who know us in real life know that we once had a dog. It doesn’t quite seem right to refer to Red as just “a dog.” Because he was really part of our family for many, many years. And he was really a remarkably wonderful dog. I’ve wanted to write about him for a while now.

It’s now been 2 years since Red died, and I still miss him very much.

If you ever call us on the phone, and we can’t get to the phone, we have an answering machine. Ever since John and I started living together, in our various homes, our answering machine message was always more or less the same: You have reached [our phone number], home of John, Alejna and Red. Please leave a message. This led many who called to believe that there were three humans living in our household, and occasionally that John and I had some sort of offspring.

At some point in this house, we got voicemail for our home phone, too. I don’t remember exactly why, but it came in handy if the power went out, or if we were unable to take a call that came in on call waiting. The message for that was the same as usual: You have reached [our phone number], home of John, Alejna and Red. Please leave a message. Except during that recording, Red barked.

After Red died, I changed the answering machine message. It made me too sad to reduce the names to just the two of us, so we just got the abbreviated version. You have reached [our phone number]. Please leave a message. But I didn’t want to record over the voicemail message, the one with Red’s bark. You see, it’s the only recording that I know of with Red’s bark. I don’t know if it means more to me than it would to other people since I work with sound, collect recordings as part of my professional work. Maybe any devoted dog-owner would feel equally attached to that one bark.

For the last 2 years I’ve intended to somehow retrieve that recording, and get it onto a computer. I know that there are ways to call phone numbers from a computer, such as Skype, but these generally involve a charge for that type of service. So I put it off. And the voicemail message stays the same.

People don’t often reach our voicemail, but it happens from time to time. Sometimes you just can’t gracefully switch over when a call comes in on call waiting. But I find myself rushing to try to answer the calls, to beat the voicemail. Because I’m sure it’s unsettling for people to get this message from another era, to hear that bark from the past.

pidgin post

When I was 14 years old, I lived in Hawaii for a few months. My mother was in a relationship with a man who lived in Honolulu, and in December of 1985, she decided we should all move there: my mother, my sister and me. (Perhaps was in part in response to the impending threat of another bitter Colorado winter.)

While I have moved many times in my life, this move was among the most dramatic.

My mother’s boyfriend, who we’ll call C, had a condo in Honolulu, right around Waikiki, in the shadow of Diamond Head. It was about as different a setting as you could get from the antique log house we’d been renting in Colorado. (Though that house too was in the shadow of a mountainous landmark, being in Manitou Springs, at the foot of Pike’s Peak.) We arrived there a couple of days before Christmas, leaving the biting cold and blizzards behind us for beaches and balmy weather. There was also much greenery, contrasting vividly with the white and grey we’d flown away from, and there were palm trees around town wrapped in red ribbon to resemble candy canes, an almost surreal reminder that the season had not changed. Aside from the transition in climate and surroundings, we went through a bit of culture shock, too. While Hawaii is a state, the 50th to join the union, back in 1959, it is also a place of multiple cultural heritages. European and mainstream American culture are blended with various Asian and Pacific island cultures, including a strong steak of indigenous Polynesian cultures. This is reflected in many of the customs and traditions practiced by those who call Hawaii home: food, clothing and music, for a start. And also language.

One of the first people we met in Honolulu was a young neighbor of C’s. I don’t remember how old he was, exactly. Maybe 13 or so. Close to my age, definitely younger than my sister’s advanced 16 years. I’m sad to say that I no longer remember his name (though I could probably unearth it), but I do vividly remember some of the conversations we had with him. He sort of took us under his wing, these 2 clueless haolie girls fresh off the mainland. While he spoke in English, with the local accent, he’d also sometimes demonstrate for us another type of speech. He referred to it as “pigeon.” At one point, I remember him warning us that if we ran into groups of local teens speaking pigeon, we should keep our distance. Such kids were often looking for trouble, our new friend told us.

It wasn’t till years later, at some point in my formal linguistics education, that I learned that what he’d really been saying was “pidgin,” not “pigeon.” A pidgin is a contact language, meaning a sort of blend of two or more languages, and used to facilitate communication between groups of speakers of different native languages. The pidgin in Hawaii developed from contact between speakers of English and Hawaiian, as well as settlers who were native speakers of Cantonese, Japanese, Portuguese and Filipino languages. The resulting mix sounds, to Mainlander ears, a bit like a foreign language with a few recognizable English words thrown in.

And what I learned even later was that what is colloquially known as Pidgin in Hawaii is no longer technically a pidgin, but a creole. A creole is also a type of contact language. However, a pidgin is generally an “initial” contact language. That is to say, it develops at an earlier stage in the contact between populations. Sometimes, a pidgin will develop into a creole. What this means is that both the language and the population have achieved the stability of having native speakers of that language. Not all pidgins turn into creoles, but it does seem that all creoles developed out of pidgins. (What is known in Hawaii as Pidgin is more formally known as Hawaiian Creole English, by the way. But that’s just a technical term, really, as far as I’m concerned. Those in the know, the locals, know that this language they speak is Pidgin.)

Pidgins, creoles and other contact languages are a fascinating and complex area of study in linguistics.¹ Sociolinguists, in particular, have been interested in their development and use in social context. There are many creoles spoken around the world, such as Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen), which is “based” on French, or Cape Verdian Creole (Crioulo caboverdiano), which is “based” on Portuguese. I won’t get into all the details at this point, but I do feel I should make one point, and explain my “scare quotes.” Many people have assumed, when hearing a creole, that speakers are incompetent users of the (usually European) language from which it takes much of its vocabulary. Eg., that Kreyol is just “broken” or simplified, French. However, creoles are far more complex than this, and often the syntax² is based on an unrelated language, such as an African language. So knowing French will not enable you to produce a sentence in Haitian Creole, even though it may enable you to understand much of the vocabulary. This misunderstanding has historically led to discrimination against native speakers of creoles, especially in the area such as education and employment, based on the assumption that the speakers were merely poor speakers of, for example, French.

So there we have it. My pidgin post. Which is really, as it turns out, mostly about creoles. Sorry about the lack of respectable references. I meant to dig up my sociolinguistics textbook, but it’s managed to get itself buried in the recesses of our home. And seeing as it’s getting late, I should be getting to bed. But those of you who know this stuff better than I do, feel free to jump in and elaborate.

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¹ Of course, I’m prone to call just about every aspect of language fascinating and complex. But pidgins and creoles are way cool!

² Syntax, in case you haven’t been subjected to it, is the backbone of the word order and grammatical rules of a language.

Harry Potter and the 25,000% return on investment

Tonight marks the historic release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which, in case you have just awoken from a coma, is the the seventh book in the phenomenally popular children’s fantasy book series by J. K. Rowling. Like millions of others around the world, I’m looking forward to adding this book to my collection of the first six books of the series.

I’ve been a book lover for as long as I can remember. I was a voracious reader through all my school years, up through high school. But having moved around a lot, I didn’t actually own a lot of books until college. I really started collecting books shortly after I got out of college.

Back in 1998, I worked in a large bookstore. John and I were doing our Christmas shopping. Back in my bookstore days, everyone in both of our families got books for gifts. Or at least something we could buy at the bookstore. For one thing, the 30% employee discount was great. For another thing, just seeing all those books all the time gave ideas for gifts.

At one point during our shopping trip, we were looking for a gift for John’s 8-year-old nephew. He was a really smart kid, but he wasn’t really a reader. I think he was reading Goosebumps at the time, but that was about it. John and I both love books, and we thought maybe we could find something fun that would be a bit higher quality. We asked the children’s department supervisor about any new books, maybe a fantasy, since it was a genre we both liked. She mentioned one that she had heard was good. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, by some new British author. There were a couple of copies of the new hardcover in the store, not enough to even put on display anywhere. As a matter of habit, as a collector, I checked to make sure they were first printings. They were. We grabbed both copies: one for the nephew, and one for us. (It looked like a fun read, and like a good addition to my growing collection of children’s fantasy books.) We wandered around a bit more, and reconsidered the book as a gift for the nephew. It was a pretty big, thick book for a kid who didn’t really read. We put one back, opting instead for a Klutz Lego book, but kept the other copy for ourselves. (Because whenever we went shopping for books for other people, we always found things for us.)

The list price of the book was $16.95. I bought my copy during the annual “employee appreciation days,” which were a few days in early Decemeber when employees got a 40% discount, instead of the usual 30%. So I paid a little over $10.00 for the book, plus 5% Massachusetts sales tax.

The book jacket got wrapped in Brodart, and then John and I both read the book. (Probably John read it first, since he reads a lot faster than I do.) We both enjoyed it, and enjoyed talking about it. The book then joined the ranks of all the other books, on one of the crowded shelves, in our little apartment that was jam-packed with books.

Within a few weeks, customers started coming into the bookstore asking for a book they’d heard about on the radio, or read about. Some had the title and author. Many couldn’t quite remember either. I remember one woman asking for a book that was about rabbits, but who wore glasses. (The Beatrix Potter association was strong in some people’s minds.) Within a few months, the popularity was booming. The book made it onto the New York Times best-seller list, something unprecedented for a children’s novel. By the time the second book was released in the US, in 1999, everyone knew Harry Potter’s name in the bookstore. In every bookstore, probably.

I was working in another bookstore the summer of 1999, as assistant manager of a smaller store of the same gigantic chain. The bigger store where I’d worked before, which often got big name authors in for signings, was scheduled to have J. K. Rowling in for a signing. Being a book collector, I also appreciated having autographed books when possible. So I planned to attend. I made sure to work an opening shift that day, so I could make it out to the bigger store for the evening signing. As the day went on, I got hints that the event was going to be bigger than I’d realized. I heard about large numbers of people already queuing up for the signing. I coudn’t leave work early, and started to worry about getting a place in line. I actually called the big store to ask if they needed additional staffing, thinking both that they would need the help, and that it could get me in the store without the line. But they said they were all staffed up to the gills.

After work, I drove out to the big store with friend from work. When we got to the store, there were people lined up all the way around the side of the building. I’d been to many, many other book signings before, but hadn’t imagined anything like this.

I had brought both of my books with me: my prized first printing of the first book, as well as the recently released second book, of which I also had a first (though much less prized) printing. We’d been told that Rowling would only be signing one book per person, though. So I left one book in the car, carefully wrapping the other in a plastic bag.

There were literally hundreds of people in line ahead of us. I don’t remember if people were lining up inside the store as well, or if all had to line up outside. From where we waited, we couldn’t actually see the front of the building, let alone the front door. It was a fun wait, with the excited crowds and the anticipation of seeing the already legendary author. The weather was beautiful (whatever month it was), and I had a friend to pass the time with. The signing was probably scheduled for 7 or 8, so there was a lot of time standing around before the line even moved. I remember that it was dark by the time we got to get in the building. Police were guarding the doors, to make sure only those standing in line could get in. Once we were in the building, we could see that the line was still very long, snaking though a few aisles of the warehouse-sized store. We got in, but not many people behind us did. It seemed they were only letting in about 600 people. Rowling had agreed only to sign for a limited amount of time.

Relieved and more excited, as the line scooched forward, I got my book out the plastic bag, looking at it for the first time since I’d gotten in line. There was my copy of Chamber of Secrets.

I’d grabbed the wrong book.

Suddenly, the line seemed to be moving all too quickly. I’d parked at the back of the building. My precious first printing of Sorcerer’s Stone was out in the car. Police stood at the door of the building, making sure that no one else was getting in.

This is where my job paid off. I got the attention of a manager who knew me, since I’d worked there a few months earlier. I told her what happened. She grabbed her manager’s keys and nametag lanyard from around her neck, put it over my head and said: “Run.”

It had been a long day at work, I’d been standing in line for 3 hours in my work clothes and shoes, and I am not, I repeat not, a runner. But I can tell you that I ran. Ran to the back of the store, let out by the police, ran around the building, out to my car and and back to the front door. The police barred my entrance, but “my” nametag and keys to the building convinced them to let me pass. And yes, this time I had the right book.

By the time I got back, my friend was almost at the front of the line where J. K. Rowling herself was, sitting at table and signing book after book at a breakneck pace. I joined my friend in line, feeling both victorious, and like a total dork. But within minutes, I was in front of Rowling herself, holding my book open to the pre-determined page, where she would sign her name. (Just her name. No date, no personalization. Fine by me.) I may have said something to her, of the generic type, like “I really love your books.” I remember that she looked up at me, and smiled a half smile. Her eyes looked tired. And then it was over. I was now the proud owner of a signed first printing of the first American edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

As it turned out, when Rowling finished signing the books for the customer’s standing in line, she was finished signing. She didn’t sign any books for the employees working in the store, including a friend of mine who was still working at the big store, and who also had a first printing of Sorcerer’s Stone. While I can understand that she was tired, and had just signed her name an unbelievable 600 times in less than 2 hours, it did seem pretty shabby to me to refuse to sign another 20 or so books for the people who worked in the store. But that is how the cookie crumbled.

My friend with the first of the first book sold hers, the unsigned, first printing of Sorcerer’s, for $1000 on ebay shortly after that.

I’ve kept mine, and the value has continued to go up.

Had the big store taken me up on my offer to work the event, I would have lost out. Had I not had my “connections” at the store, though, I would have ended up getting my second book signed, which would have been worth a few hundred dollars. But as it turned out, a ten dollar purchase, a few hours in line, and quick sprint around a large building have landed me with a book that I’ve seen selling for between $2500 and $5000 dollars. My copy’s been read, so may not be in pristine condition, though I would say it’s “near fine.” So it would probably go for the lower end.

Still, not such a bad return.

enough about me

Okay, I lied. It’s really still about me.

A little over a week ago, YTSL lobbed a request over that I should participate in this meme activity by which I list 7 little known things (or random facts or habits, if I trace it back further.) about myself.¹ I like things. I like lists. And apparently I like to write stuff about myself.²

7 things about me that I didn’t list in that other post with 6 things about me

  1. I used to be able to get into the yoga “lotus” position without using my hands. Oh, wait. I guess I still can. It hurts a bit more than I remember, though…
  2. I once had a collection of dimes. I was maybe 8 years old. They were just dimes. I found them aesthetically pleasing. Their size, their shape, the feel of them. I brought my collection to “show and tell” once, and the teacher asked what was special about the dimes. I was a bit perplexed by the question.
  3. I often have dreams that I can fly.
  4. I have a bit of a fear of moths. They give me the eebie jeebies.
  5. I like heights. I get kind of a rush from being up high. Kind of an anti-vertigo. (Funny. There was a Mel Brooks movie made in the 70s called High Anxiety that was a parody of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. At least one scene was filmed the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, which had glass elevators that went up quite high. I loved that building, and those elevators.)
  6. I don’t watch TV. For someone who has written 26 posts to date with the tag “TV,” this seems odd. I watched a lot as a kid, but have little idea what’s even on these days. I watch things on TV, but only DVDs. Mostly movies. Some old TV series. The only current shows I’ve watched in the last couple of years have been available as iTunes downloads.
  7. I am fidgety. I have trouble sitting still. You’ll often find me twiddling a pen, shredding a paper napkin, twisting a straw…or doodling. I’ve got some crazy-ass elaborate doodles. Doodles, dood.

This is one of those things where I’m supposed to tag others. I’ve considered tagging people I don’t know at all, like, say, Kevin Smith or someone else who’s used the tag pants. Or a blog I hit by using the “next blog” function on WordPress, that gives you random blog after random blog. (And hey, if any of you, Kevin, pants person, or even more randomly selected person would like to play along, please consider yourselves tagged!) Or I can play by the self-selection, tag-free rules, as exemplified by the extraordinary KC. Anyhow, if you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Like a polar bear or sea turtle that scientists are tracking. (Don’t worry. The tranquilizer will wear off soon.)

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¹ I also owe another meme to her. Plus I got tagged by NotSoSage for a different meme the same day. Woohoo. Meme me, baby. (I’ll get to that one at some point, too, Sage.)

² As we all know, writing about oneself is the prime motivation for 98.725% of bloggers.³

³ I made up that statistic. But anyone want to prove me wrong?⁴

⁴ Huh? Huh?

unceremonious

Lots of folks are graduating around now here in the US. From middle schools, high schools, colleges. My nephew even just graduated from high school. (No, not the one that was born in January. He’s barely in kindergarten!) All the stuff in the air about graduations has me thinking. About graduations I haven’t had.

No, no, I’m not lamenting the fact that I’m still in school. This prolonged incarceration educational endeavor is largely by choice. And I’m making progress on the schemes for tunneling my way out.

The graduations I’m recalling, or not recalling as the case may be, are ones from my past. Or that weren’t in my past. Here’s a weird thing I realized about myself that I hadn’t disclosed in my recent confessional of weirdness: I don’t have a high school diploma.

However, in spite of not actually having technically “graduated” from high school, I have both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Ha! How’s that for weirdness?

Okay, here’s the story. My family moved around a lot when I was growing up. I actually went to 4 different high schools. The first was in Colorado, the second in Hawaii and the third in California. When I was a junior in high school, which was while we were living in California, my mother remarried. And my mother and I moved in with my new stepfather. In France.

So, high school number 4 was in France. It was an international, bilingual school on the IB system. I was due to be a senior. The last two years of the IB (International Baccalaureate) program were actually cumulative. But starting in the last year of the program (terminal) would have had me going in a year behind in all my courses. So they put in me première, basically junior year. I had just finished 3 years of American high school, and didn’t want to wind up in high school for a total of 5 years. However, the powers that be assured me that completing my 4th year of high school at the new school would suffice for finishing my high school education, at least as far as American universities were concerned. I could get some sort of stamp on my transcript saying I’d finished 4 years of high school.

So that’s what happened. I finished that last year of high school, and apparently got that stamp on my transcript. I never even saw the thing. But it was enough to get me admitted into the American university of my choice. (Brown, if you were wondering.)

But there was no high school graduation. I was never a senior. All my school friends in France were just finishing their penultimate year of secondary school.

Another 4 years went by, and I was scheduled to graduate from Brown. Except for the fact that I took a semester off along the way. (Following extreme burnout from working 3 jobs and raising 6 puppies. Another story.) So, in May of 1993, I did not graduate from college. However, this time, I went through the ceremony. (Hey, all my friends were doing it.) I was scheduled to finish in December, 1993 anyhow, and it wasn’t uncommon for folks to attend the commencement ceremony a semester ahead.

And yes, I did finish Brown in December of ’93, as scheduled. There was some sort of ceremony that December for the midyear grads, but really it was more of a gathering in a hall. No diplomas. Because they only got awarded in May. So hey, I got to have the graduation ceremony all over again in May of ’94. And this time, I got my diploma. Well, actually, that’s not exactly true, either. What I got was a formal-looking roll of paper with a note inside saying that my actually diploma was being “engrossed” and would be sent to me in the mail. (Yes, it the paper actually did say “engrossed.”) (And yes, I did get that diploma in the mail at some point. In fact, I just found it tonight, stumbling across it while trying to find an old journal. It’s been sitting, gathering dust, on the bookshelf next to my bed for probably several years. I had no idea it was there.)

Fast forward 10 years . I finally finished my master’s project at my current school in August of 2004, making me eligible for September graduation. I’m not even sure if they had a September ceremony. (Again, I could have “walked” in the May 2004 ceremony, but this time I opted not to. For one thing, my program doesn’t have a department, so you have to leech yourself on to some other department’s ceremony.) September came, and nothing much happened. As far as I knew, the completion of the degree had gone through: master’s project submitted, paperwork submitted, official admittance to the PhD program. But no actual evidence of a degree.

And then at some point that fall, I checked my online transcript, and the magical words had appeared:

DEGREE AWARDED
Master of Arts
Major: Applied Linguistics
September 25, 2004

Woohoo! Call me master, baby! But still no diploma.

And then finally, on October 23rd, 2004, a tube appeared in my mailbox. I remember the day well, as it was the day before my wedding. (My second wedding to John.) My mother and sister were visiting. And I had gone out to walk the dog and check the mail. In my pajamas. Flannel polar bear pajamas. And I came back in with that tube. Still wearing my pajamas, I gathered my mother, my sister and my husband (who I was about to remarry), and I sang a wordless (dooooo doo doo doo doooo doo) version of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

I opened my red cardboard tube.

I had been awarded a master’s degree.

6 weird things about me

In exchange for getting YTSL of Webs of Significance to subject herself to the 5 questions meme, which she has graciously already posted about, I have offered myself up to be tagged by her for the 6 weird things meme. (Yes, I realize these are not your traditional meming behaviors. However, I don’t expect we’ll be fined by the International Meme Police. I do sometimes worry about being persecuted by the International Mime Police though. My “walking against the wind” is appallingly bad.*)

Anyhow, here is a list of 6 weird things about me.

  1. I was a weird kid, and had a variety of colorful fantasies. I’m sure most kids did, but somehow, I think mine may have been a bit weirder than normal. For example, when I was around 9 or 10 years old, I used to imagine that as an adult, I’d choose to regularly wear full blown Victorian-style gone-with-the-windian hoop-skirted dresses. Because as an adult I’d have full choice over what I’d wear.

    2. artichokes.jpg

  2. My favorite food is a vegetable. I love artichokes. Not to say that I don’t have other food loves. But artichokes are tops. I’m talking fresh, steamed, prickly, spiky, alien-looking thistle buds. My deep, abiding love for artichokes dates back to my youth, and was considered to have been no_pizza1.jpg

    3. decidedly odd by other kids. When other American kids were asked for favorite foods, they’d almost universally answer “pizza.” But me, I’d answer “artichokes.” I actually didn’t even like pizza as a kid. (Yes, another weirdness. I got over it.) I remember a school project once where the kids of my 5th or 6th grade class had to put together a newspaper. As a new kid at the school, I was interviewed. The “editors” chose to put the headline for the resulting article on the front page: “Girl Likes Artichokes”. It almost could have been a Weekly World News article.

  3. I once lost my sense of smell. I don’t remember for how long. Might have been a couple of weeks. It came back gradually. When it first came back, I could smell only one thing: cherry scones. (I’ve been meaning to write this story, but I think I’ll save the details for later.)
  4. I can sing a bunch of TV theme songs for shows that I’ve never watched. For example, “77 Sunset Strip” and “Flipper”, or one of my favorites to sing, “Surfside 6“. (Keep in mind that the indented parts are sung in my best bimbo voice.):

    Surfside 6
           What’s that?
    Surfside 6
           an address?
    Surfside 6
           for a houseboat?
    Surfside 6
           and where is it?
    In Miami Beach
    da da da, da da da
    cha cha cha
    cha

  5. My name is spelled in Esperanto. (In a way that speaks more to the weirdness eccentricity of my parents than of myself…) In case you haven’t heard of Esperanto, it’s an artificially created international language. Much like the dodo, it is most frequently referenced in jokes about obsolescence, obscurity and extinction.
    cf:

    Esperanto is a joke. It’s for cranks. You can tell it’s for cranks because, on the few occasions you hear about it, you hear that it is “not just for cranks”.

    or

    cynics have mocked it as an idealistic cult for linguistic weirdos.

  6. I can get quite compulsive about my hobbies. And I have a weird sense of humor. This is a combination that some people have found disturbing. For example, consider this incident from a recent visit to the in-laws. John and my mother-in-law and I were sitting at the kitchen table late at night, talking. I noticed a “Clipper magazine”, a hideous thing made up entirely of ads, with coupons to clip. When I saw the magazine sitting there, with me sitting around with my hands unoccupied, I had this overwhelming urge to clip the letters. I thought I could make a banner for the blog. When I asked my mother-in-law if I could cut up her magazine, she asked why. As I have felt it best to hide the existence of my blog from her, I had to come up with a plausible reason: “I need to write a ransom note.”

    scissor.jpg

Okay, them’s my 6 weird things. Others might claim that there are additional weird things about me. John says my little toes are weird. So I suppose they could have been items 5 and 6.

Now I believe I’m supposed to tag 6 other people, according to the rules:

People who are tagged should write a blog post of 6 weird things about them as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

Okay, this is definitely the hard part. Maybe I should just go around to random blogs and leave the “you are tagged” bit. Or maybe I’ll just go around leaving comments telling random people to read my blog. That would be oh-so-smooth. Or I could send notes with cut up letters telling people to read my blog…or else.

So, I think I’ll go with some people I haven’t attempted to tag before, but believe to have some weirdness to them. (And I mean that as a compliment.):

  • jeanerz of Jean Crawford, Starr Linguist
  • KC of Where’s My Cape?
  • NotSoSage of NotSoSage
  • Jaŋari of Matjjin-nehen

    • and

  • Lori of Celebrating the Absurd

    • And since she’s seemed moderately amenable to this sort of thing in the past,

  • jenny of baggage carousel 4.

    • If any of you don’t want to play, I can untag you. Or you can just ignore the tag (which is what often happens). If someone out there does want to play (either this game or some future one) please let me know.

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    *I’m trying to figure out a way to throw in this quote about miming by Paula Poundstone, who said:

    The saddest thing about me talking all the time is that I am a gifted mime. I could have had a brilliant career. I just couldn’t shut up!

    and

    Look at me, I’m in a box!

    anniversary present, anniversaries past

    Today is John’s and my 7th wedding anniversary. A couple of months ago, on October 24th, we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. Let me explain. John and I have been married twice. To each other.

    John and I started dating (or whatever you want to call it) on New Year’s of 1992. We got engaged on December 31st (New Year’s Eve) of 1993. Then for several years, we talked about planning the wedding, but each time we started the plans, there was some sort of obstacle. Work schedules were hectic. Money was tight. Crucial family members were planning to be away on long trips. We once got as far as picking a date, only to find that John’s niece had just announced her own wedding the same weekend across the country. We didn’t want to compete for family members to attend, so we opted not to schedule for that date. For several years, when someone would ask when we were ever going to get married, we’d say, more or less jokingly, “some time before the year 2000.” We weren’t really in a hurry to get married.

    At the end of 1999, I was planning to quit my job soon to have a bit of time off before starting grad school. Which meant, among other things, I’d be losing my health insurance benefits. We’d talked about maybe having a civil ceremony, in part so that I could get on John’s health insurance plan, and then later schedule the party wedding where we’d be able to include family and friends. But we hadn’t acted on this plan. Then the last week of December, we decided to make good on our threat to get married before the year 2000. We thought we’d wait till the last possible day to squeak in our wedding before 2000. (Which also coincided with the anniversary of our engagement.) We found a Justice of the Peace in a nearby town who was available to marry us in her home on December 31st. We applied for our marriage license in our Town Hall, and duly went for our blood tests. And so the morning of December 31, 1999, John and I were married. The only ones there were John, myself, and the Justice of the Peace. In her living room. No other witnesses. (Massachusetts doesn’t require them.)

    We told close family members, but the plan was to schedule the more ceremonial wedding before we made a wide announcement. We expected to do this within the year. But. Time passed. As it is wont to do. In fact, several years passed. And we more or less casually told people about our marriage along the way. People pretty much no longer expected us to have the “big” wedding. But I was determined. I wanted my party. A ceremony. Food. Music. And I wanted to have our loved ones with us to share in our celebration.

    So, on October 24th, 2004, John and I got married again. This time with our friends and family with us.

    This past October 24th was, therefore, our second wedding anniversary. It was both the anniversary of our second wedding, and the second anniversary of that wedding. (A nice little example of syntactic ambiguity where both parses apply…)

    second wedding anniversary tree

    look whose stocking

    Mostly, I just wanted to use that title. (It may be clear that I am a sucker for a pun.) But now that I’ve come up with the title, it makes me want to reflect a bit on Christmas stockings I have known.

    My family was never a religious one, but Christmas traditions were always very important. The tree. The music. The nog. The food. And most importantly, the rituals of Christmas Day. The first of which was the opening of the stockings. (I think I’ll have to write about the actual rituals at some other point. Because I shouldn’t be writing at all right now. I should be excavating the dining room table, which has been buried since the earlier days of the local population boom.)

    I mentioned once before that my family (that is my mother, my sister and I) moved to France for a year when I was 9 years old. I don’t think my mother knew exactly how long we’d be staying there when we first packed up our bags and flew the coop, but in any case we didn’t bring the Christmas stockings we’d used in past years with us. Not ready to convert to the French custom of leaving our shoes out for Père Noël to fill, we decided to make some American-style red and white Christmas stockings for our American-style Santa. We got some red felt for the stockings, and a smaller amount of white felt for the trim. Since neither my mother nor my grandmother were particulary adept at (or interested in) sewing, and we didn’t have a sewing machine, to boot, we each were to make our own stocking.

    My sister, eleven years old at the time, designed and executed a beautifully proportioned stocking with elegant lines. She neatly assembled it with even stitches and an attractive smooth-edged, white cuff at the top made of two round-cornered rectangles; one on the front, one on the back, so that the stocking could be hung either way. She somehow had found that balance between functionality (a wide leg tapering gently to an ankle opening that was just narrow enough to please the eye without causing a bottleneck for stuffing) and cuteness (a perfectly-shaped sock foot). I think she even discreetly embroidered in her name and the year somewhere.

    My grandmother had little patience for the task, and strove to make the least amount of effort possible to make a functional stocking so that she could get on to activities she found more interesting. We each used a long oblong of red felt, folded halfway down the length, and in hers she cut out mere suggestions from the rectangle to indicate the foot and ankle. She left the folded fabric intact at the bottom of the foot, so that she would have less to sew. Hers was the “flat foot” stocking. She left the sides largely straight, too. A simple rectangle of white at the top acted as the trim.

    My mother made a somewhat abstracted version of a stocking, with curving swooping lines. It was more expressionist than practical, with an ankle that was a bit narrow for easy stuffing. It was not too carefully sewn, and it too had a small amount of fold left at the bottom of the foot for reduced stitching needs. It boasted a neat but fairly minimal white cuff at the top.

    My own stocking was perhaps not a bad effort for a nine-year-old. However, I ran out of time, and didn’t manage to finish it in time for bedtime Christmas Eve. I don’t remember why it wasn’t done, but I can guess. I expect there was some waffling over the design, and too much time spent trying to get the stitches small and just right. I’m sure there was also some procrastination, and probably some distraction that pulled me away to other things. The end result was a fairly cute (if not elegant) stocking with rounded lines, a wide leg to fit lots of stuff, and a tiny foot that was probably the result of a mistake in cutting the felt. And at the top, because I ran out of time and hadn’t yet worked out my plans for the white felt, I quickly affixed (with a couple of loose stiches) a rectangle of paper towel to stand in for the trim.

    The plan was to finish it later. But as you may be able to guess, I never actually finished it. Christmas Day came, and there was too much going on to be bothered with sewing. It ended up getting packed up as it was, paper towel trim and all. The next time we unpacked it for Christmas, I don’t remember what kept me from adding the white felt. But in the end, I became sentimental about my stocking as it was when I made it, and no longer wanted to finish it.

    I don’t have that stocking any more. It got lost many years and many moves later. I remember my mother emerging from her struggles digging through boxes and trunks, some Christmastime down the road. She very cheerfully proclaimed: “I’ve found two stockings and a Santa hat!” Translation: two of the stockings have been lost. My mother can get extra cheerful when it’s time to share bad news.

    The next Christmas, I got a new stocking. My not-yet-mother-in-law knit me a red, green and white striped stocking, complete with my name and the year I was born stitched on, as has been the tradition in my husband’s family. (I was very touched by her way of welcoming me to the family.) John has his stocking, knit by his aunt or grandmother many years ago. And now Phoebe has her own hand-knit stocking (made by John’s mother, of course) which we’ll be filling for the first time tonight.

    Flashback episode

    Remember that time when I wrote about needing to finish my paper? And then I wrote about how I finished it? That was so cool. And then there was that time when I wrote I was going to write about kick-ass women movies and stuff, and then I wrote some lists about kick-ass women movies? And then I wrote my fourth list like that? And remember that time when Fonzie jumped the shark?

    I just realized. I’ve now been blogging here for 1 month. So I thought it would be a good chance to reflect on what I’ve done. In the spirit of the clip show. Or maybe I’ll just reflect on clip shows.

    Clip shows are a longstanding TV tradition. And one that’s likely to continue. Sadly.

    And they really don’t work when you buy a DVD box set and watch episodes basically back-to-back. For instance, I recently discovered Alias, a fun show with a great kick-ass woman protagonist. We bought the first season on DVD, and proceeded to work our way through the discs in rapid succession. And then towards the end of the season, we got to the clip show. In the great tradition of a wafer-thin pretense to show some clips, the episode was “cleverly” set up as an interview between a government interrogator and the main character:

    Interrogator: You’ve been working for a dangerous really, really bad organzation pretending to be the good guys. You claim that you didn’t know. Why should we believe you?

    Agent Sydney Bristow: In my defense, check out these clips. [Some clips are aired.]

    Interrogator: I see that you wore a number of different disguises.

    Agent Sydney Bristow: Yes, that’s true. Many of them involving wigs. And look at these additional clips. [More clips.]

    Interrogator: Wow. You sure used a lot of neato gadgets. Plus you spoke in different accents. I’m convinced.

    It’s kinda hard to get nostalgic for episodes that you just saw within the last few days…On the other hand, my favorite clip show/flashback episode of all time is the second episode of Clerks, the animated series. (Yes, the second episode. Which includes flashbacks from the all the previous episodes.)

    Hey, remember that time when I wrote about clip shows? That was awesome.