wait, what?

maura @ 10:16 pm

It was June, and then the kid’s school ended, and then we took a few trips, and now it’s nearly the end of July. Woah. The trips were to Germany and Vermont and New Hampshire and all were different and fun. I have to go back to work tomorrow so I should go to sleep, but I’m compelled to share a few holiday snaps.

We went to the part of Germany that was very castley. The castles were amazing — this is one on the banks of the Rhine that we climbed up to. It was very very high, and I chickened out of going up those stairs to the very top. I like to think that the hanging cage is for the heads of their enemies, but that’s probably not true (this was a country residence more than a fortification).

The parts that weren’t castley that we visited were like a Disney village. For serious, it was just like stepping into the set for Pinocchio. Wild.

Ice cream! The Germans are apparently mad for ice cream and the party I traveled with indulged more than daily. To be fair, it was in the mid to high 90s F the whole time we were there, and like any good Old World nation the Germans eschew air conditioning (luckily the beer was also cold and plentiful). This is the kiddie menu from one of the many eiscafes that we visited. Super creepy.

And speaking of creepy, one of the towns we visited had these marionette machines that you put a euro in and the puppets would act (and sing!) a story. It was super weird — we don’t know much German so we could only guess at most of the story. Total horror movie stuff, though.

After Germany we were home for 12 days, then once the jet lag wore off we headed up to New England for family visiting. First stop, Vermont, where there was lots of nature of the animal sort: my dad now has 3 dogs 4 cats and 8 chickens (!). Plus the undomesticated animals: frogs, froglets, newts, and crayfish in the pond. I swear they were tadpoles with little leg buds on Monday and full-fledged froglets with 4 limbs + a tail by Friday. Zoology, man.

There’s also a family of 3 garter snakes living under my dad’s front steps. We caught 2 of them sunbathing.

Next was New Hampshire for more fun with the other side of the family. There was a pool, and there was swimming, because like the Germans, the New Hampshireans don’t have air conditioning. The plastic alligator had a little too much to drink and pulled a SoCal, Less Than Zero-style sinking to the bottom of the pool.

And now we’re home (sigh). And it’s going to be hot this week (double sigh). But it’s nice to be back. Boy, the cats missed us.

like one of those sappy hallmark movies

maura @ 9:39 pm

Today we went to Brooklyn Bridge Park to walk around and see the new stuff that’s been added over the past couple of years, parky stuff and arty stuff and foody stuff. We took the train to Brooklyn Heights then walked to river under the Manhattan Bridge, near the stoney beach where the kid used to love to throw rocks in the river. Then we walked the park all the way down to Atlantic Ave., ogling Manhattan and the bridges and the river and the barges and the tugboats as we went. We saw some new art in the form of lots of climbable and sittable neon orange benches, as well as a neat maze-like arrangement of vertical mirrors about 6 inches wide and varying heights (kid and adult-sized). We saw the pop-up pool, and the enormous new condo construction everyone’s angry about (I like to think of them as “first to flood!” Thank you, wealthy future residents, for taking the next storm surge for the borough). We saw the new pier with all the sports and noticed that they moved the kayaks from where we once did the free Saturday morning kayak a few years ago. We ended up at a restaurant on the pier near Atlantic that’s not the same as the old restaurant, right near the water playground and slide playground and swing playground that the kid used to love when it first opened.

It’s taken me a while to realize this but I am not quite ready to be finished with doing the stuff that parents of littler kids do. I love my teenager, really I do, even despite the teen spirit. But on the weekends I still want to do the elementary school stuff. I want to go to the natural history museum and the science museum and the transit museum and the aquarium and the many zoos, esp. the Queens Zoo, which we unfortunately neglected until a few years ago (and which has the adorable little deer-like animal called the pudu!). I want to go see the new Pixar movie.

I know that adults can do all of those things, and in the abstract I’m fine with doing all of those things. I’m not embarrassed to want to see the new Pixar movie — Amy Poehler is flat out awesome. But unless the kid has something else to do it feels weird to go do this stuff without him, weird to think of him at home while we’re at a non-exclusively-adults thing.

So, in conclusion, growing up is weird, and parenting gives you all the feels. #statingtheobvious

missing may

maura @ 5:09 pm

Wow, what happened to May? It’s been a while since I’ve missed a whole month here. Since last June, in fact. Blame it on the kittehs — I’ve now collected nearly all of them and have the house expansion and 2 of the 3 additional room skins. There’s still more to do since not every cat has given me a present yet, but I’ve collected enough fishmoney (without spending real money! go me!) that I’ve been able to buy lots of toys, and have started going for theme arrangements, like putting out pillows and hammocks and cushions to try to attract lots of napping kittehs, or all of the spinny/small mouse/feather kinds of toys for playing kittehs. Good times.

I took the day off today and am trying hard to really have a day off, no chores or work or anything nonleisureish. Last night was commencement (hence the obligatory confetti shot, above). After a few cold + rainy days it’s amazing out today, high 60s and sunny and lovely. I took a walk in the park which was delightful, if occasionally muddy. I read the Whole Entire Paper over coffee in the morning (typically I only have time for the front page, and have to catch up on the rest at night). I spent some time with the book I’m reading, took a short nap, caught up on twitter, sent some email. Okay, okay, I *did* check my work email, but only twice and only to see if there was anything urgent.

I also played some Never Alone, a game that I got for my birthday. It’s new to me to play games on my laptop, but that’s the way this game comes and it’s gotten terrific reviews and seems right up my alley so I jumped in. I don’t know why I’ve traditionally been so resistant to games on my laptop — maybe the laptop seems more worky or serious than other platforms? Really I prefer gaming on a console and the TV or a handheld gaming system (we have Nintendo DS’s because we’re mostly a Nintendo family), because I’m an old, I guess, though I don’t mind gaming on my phone and, less often, my ipad. I think it’s a controller thing more than anything else — I really don’t like keyboard controls, though I know I could plug in a controller (yes, of course we have USB controllers). So far the keys in Never Alone have been okay.

I *don’t* like how hot my laptop runs and how loud the fan is while playing. But on the other hand, it’s nice to have a game with me all the time on my computer, just in case I ever need it. And while I’m probably worried that I’m going to slide down the slippery slope to playing too much if I have a game on my main machine, realistically it’s been ages since I’ve done that. Just not enough time, really.

I read something recently, can’t remember where, about playing games as resistance to the cult of productivity and busy-ness that’s so prevalent right now. That may not be the best paraphrase, but I’m going to go with it.

you left your love letter incomplete

maura @ 9:57 pm

We are all having a bit of an obsession here lately in casa mauraweb over Nekoatsume, which Jonathan discovered via Boing Boing last week. It’s a game in which you collect cats. Sort of a loose definition of “game,” really — it’s kind of like Pokemon without the fighting, or like those Tamagochi that you had to take care of intermittently all day.

It’s a cute little cartoony game in which you have a yard outside of a house and try to attract cats with toys and food. Capitalism is the rule — the better stuff you have, the more cats swing by to play with your toys and eat your food. Then the cats pay you in silver fish and gold fish which you can use to buy more toys and food. Typing it all out here now I’m reminded of the Sims — why have the simple cardboard box when you can have the fancy cardboard house?! It’s hilarious because all of the stuff to buy is cat stuff: balls to play with, pillows to sit on, paper bags or cardboard tubes to stuff yrself in (see photo below). Good times.

Right now we’re all playing on the free mode which basically means that we wait to earn enough fish to get more stuff. I’m jonesing the most for an extra room, because the yard only holds 5 small toys or 3 small 1 big, so you max out on what you can have out for the kittehs to play with. Of course there’s leveling up too — if a kitteh visits you enough times she brings you a present! You can take pictures of the cats too, natch. They are really, really cute, especially when they’re scratching on the scratching pad or jumping to get the butterfly toy.

I don’t want to buy more fish, which of course you can use real money to do (duh, it’s the internet). But I reeeeeeeeally want an extra room.

so we drive and we’ve driven ten thousand miles

maura @ 6:14 pm

Because of unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances we have a new car. I am having a hard time adjusting. Our new car is only a few years old and it is very very very different from our old car, which turns 19 this year. The new car is a sedan and automatic and you can hook your phone up to the stereo system. The old car is a wagon and a standard and has a cassette deck. We have a shoebox of tapes from the early-mid ’90s in the old car, what are we supposed to do with them now?

Perspective (for multiple definitions of the word) is very different in the new car. In the old car the seat is a bit higher plus there is a hatchback rather than a trunk, which means the driver can see and thus fairly accurately perceive the front end of the car all the way through the back. In the new car there’s a trunk and I can’t see or sense either the front or the back of the car, which makes me feel oddly disconnected while parking especially. There’s one of those new fangled back up cameras which should help but instead reminds me of a videogame, another layer of disintermediation. The new car is smaller than the old car but I feel like I’m driving it as if it’s bigger because I don’t yet have a good sense of its size.

In my and the old car’s old age I realize that cars have become very complicated. Everything is an icon or a button or a display screen. The front seats can be heated. The side mirrors fold in. It feels so fancy, much too fancy for me, though it’s really just a normal car, what normal cars are these days.

I am not missing the shifting nearly as much as I should. This is actually my first automatic car, though because of living in cities it’s only the 4th car I’ve had in the 30 yrs I’ve been a driver so the sample is small. I’d wanted us to get rid of the car for years but there’s no denying that the car lets us get up and go at a moment’s notice in addition to facilitating inter-Brooklyn travel for meatballs at Ikea and other locations that are tricky to get to on public transportation.

My grumpy old lady brain mutters that I will miss the standard transmission next winter when it snows, though who knows if that will actually be the case? At any rate it was nice not to have to continuously clutch when it took us one solid hour to get through the Holland Tunnel and over Canal St. (which right now is more pothole than road) to get home yesterday.

It is a lovely car, quiet when on, comfortable, all the mod cons. I wish we never had to take it.

i keep my feet on solid ground

maura @ 6:09 pm

What’s the word for feeling melancholy as you experience something because you know you’ll be nostalgic for it when you remember it later? Surely the Germans have a word for that, probably many syllables.

We were in the city about a month ago seeing a movie at the NY International Children’s film Festival and I was strangely gripped by that very feeling. It was a lovely time — we had burgers and beer for dinner in Chelsea before heading to the movie showing at the School of Visual Arts on West 23rd. It was cold and clear as it had been for so much of the winter. We happened to be walking from the restaurant to the theater at that magic time that photographers love, when the light is just so. And it seemed like I could feel everything we’ve ever done in that neighborhood layered one on top of the other: when we used to go to the Boston Market and Krispy Kreme before seeing movies on 23rd St., when we went to Co for CUNYPie and we brought Gus and then had to stop in the New York Public Library branch on 23rd so he could go to the bathroom, when commencement was at the Javits Center and we walked down to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant and ran into a former student who’d been in my class the very first semester it existed, when we saw a movie at the Festival the prior year and there were lots of free snacks at the theater and afterward we went to dinner at the place that the NYC ebola patient later ate at.

We are not moving anytime soon, really we are not. The high school situation is sorted, I’m more settled into my now not-so-new job, and we’re still good with our apartment, neighborhood, etc. But at some point we will leave, I can imagine. Maybe it’ll be when Gus goes to college, maybe later. The thing of having one kid only is that we can always, in theory, move to where he ends up. I kind of can’t imagine ever leaving, I can’t think of anyplace else I’d want to live, but at the same time I think we will, someday. It’s a weird feeling, a strange sense. NYC, I’m already missing you.

At the film festival the movie we saw began with this hilarious short, which I love so much I could watch it forever:

In the Beginning from Arthur Metcalf on Vimeo.

with lots of spectators

maura @ 4:09 pm

Until recently I’ve been lucky enough to not have folks close to me die. Really it had been a big long stretch since my last remaining grandparent passed away in the mid-90s. Since that stretch has broken I am dealing. Things feel different at different ages, of course, and as I get older feelings sometimes seem bigger. But I’m also now navigating all of these feelings post-internet which is its own weird thing (one that I’m sure many academic papers have been and are being written about).

What do you do with the texts of the deceased? Their twitter feed? Photos on your phone? I look at my phone and realize that it’s become this strange device that holds memories, in addition to all of its other uses. Which of course it always was, at least the smart ones, but memories that include people who are now gone are very different memories than those with folks who’re still around.

I sometimes scroll through those texts, the twitter feed, or do a bit of internet searching too. Obituaries are also online, though the extra layer of mediation of the open internet (as opposed to texts and photos on just my phone) can sometimes add a welcome distance. And there are other unanticipated interactions. Friends of those folks, now also followed by me on twitter. They pop up in my feed and I am reminded, no searching required. I don’t want to unfollow those folks in much the same way that I don’t want to delete the texts, it seems like cutting a cord I’m not ready to cut yet (ever?). But it’s surprising nonetheless.

drift compatible

maura @ 9:44 pm

It’s snowing again (well, it was earlier) and I kept wanting to tweet that I am always here for the snow. Always all in. #teamsnowforever #sorryhaters. But we have pals who live in Boston and I can believe that things are awful there, that there’s such a thing as too much snow for an urban infrastructure to deal with, and that the cold and the wind have made things just awful. So I refrained.

I tried to make myself take my skis over to the park, but I was coming off a coffee nap and by the time there was enough new snow that it seemed like there might be enough to cover the old icy stuff that I’m sure is blanketing the long meadow, it was already after 4 and both the light and my resolve was fading. It sometimes seems so far away, even though it’s only a couple of blocks, there’s also the having to pull on fleece-lined tights and longjohns and windpants and sock liners and socks and a turtleneck and a sweater and my parka and hat and mittens, then get my skis and boots out of the closet, then put on my boots which have laces and a zipper and velcro. Then over to the park, where maybe it turns out that the new snow isn’t actually deep enough for skiing, and I’d have to come all the way home.

I love winter, but you can see why the inertia got the best of me.

the one true day off

maura @ 10:32 pm

Today is Lincoln’s Birthday, which longtime readers know is the one day each year when my work is closed but the K-12 schools are open. I call it the One True Day Off. As Gus gets older it’s maybe less of a big deal, but maybe still a big deal in some ways too. Because even though I do get 2 days off each time the weekend rolls around, more often than not those days seem filled with errands, housecleaning, laundry, the stuff there’s no time for during the week. Each year when Lincoln’s Birthday rolls around I argue with myself about what I’m going to do — the pull to do something practical and useful is always strong. Sometimes the practical wins: last year I went shopping for work clothes which was super necessary. But this year I gave myself a break and went with nearly 100% leisure.

And I’m happy to report that it’s been a good day! I started with coffee and the newspaper, reading the entire paper rather than just the first section which I usually do on mornings during the week (and save the other sections for evenings). Then I got a second (!) cup of coffee and finished the last level on the second part of Monument Valley, a beautiful and fun puzzle game on my phone. I answered a few emails from friends and took a quick glance at my RSS feeds, too.

Then Jonathan and I headed out to the Brooklyn Museum. Even though it’s super close we don’t go often because the spawn is not a fan of Art, and when we do go it seems like we only have a chance to see the special exhibits. Because I’m a nerd I love the American collections of furniture and housewares, plus the two partial reconstructions of historic houses, so we spent most of our time on the 4th and 5th floors today. There were some other cool exhibits in the Sackler Center and some neat modern stuff too. Special shout out to the Luce Visible Storage Center, such a great idea that brings much more of the collection into view.

We had lunch at Kimchi Taco, which we order from semi-regularly but have never been to IRL. I had a tofu edamame falafel bowl with kimchi refried beans and kimchi fried rice, and we split kimchi rice balls which are amazing and, as you might expect, much better in the restaurant than via takeout, all warm and cheesy. Gus used to eat some stuff there, the unsauced chicken wings and chicken taco, but lately he won’t so we don’t order it as much as I’d like. I could eat kimchi every day, for serious.

A leisure day’s not complete without legos, so when we got home I put together my lego research scientists. The heads have two faces! That’s new. One side is a sort of calm face and the other is kind of yelling or skeptical or nervous, depending on how you want to interpret it (and each of the 3 minifigs has a different expression). I feel like I should bring them to work but I can’t quite part with them at home yet, so they’re on the shelf for now.

Then a coffee nap! Because a day off’s not a day off without a nap! Then a brisk walk to meet Gus after school. Then dinner.

Then, OMG, Lynda Barry and Matt Groening at BAM! Sitting right there on the stage talking about drawing and writing and teaching and kids and families and friendship and man they are just awesome. They told stories and showed slides and read/acted out a few comics. One of these days I have to figure out a way to get to the University of Wisconsin to take one of the classes that Lynda Barry is teaching. Because I am pretty awful at drawing and handwriting but I totally believe her that it’s good for you even if (when! because?) it’s scary.

It was a good day.

eggs and their shells redux

maura @ 7:03 pm

One thing that’s happened in the past just under a year is that with increased stress comes increased reliance on old music rather than new. I’ve been practically unable to listen to any of the music I’ve gotten for my birthday last year or xmas, with the exception of a few gifts that were of music that I’d once owned but no longer do. Usually those are casualties of the cassette tape and the thriftiness of college. We no longer really have an easy way to play cassettes outside of our 18 yr old car, which does have a tape deck, and an old boombox with a cassette and CD player that we used to play the white noise CDs when Gus was a baby. The CD part is broken but I think the tape part still works (though come to think of it I’m no longer quite sure where it is). And the thing about college and my 20s is that between doing a radio show and having roommates I ended up taping lots of music rather than buying the LP or CD. Now that I’m an old lady I wish I could go back and trade in some of the LPs and CDs I did buy for those I just taped, because only some of that music has had staying power with me.

Familiar music has been like a security blanket to me this past year. I guess it always is. Maybe this is just a normal aging thing, but what’s been new is the narrowing down of what I’ve been listening to. Really it’s maybe only a handful of bands:

– For writing/research: It’s still Orbital. Still. As always it’s got the perfect tempo to keep me moving along when I write, and because their music is mostly instrumental there are no words (usually) to distract me. Really it’s practically Pavlovian, like using Word and Times New Roman (which for me = academic writing).

– For working at work when I’m in my office — email, planning, scheduling meetings, the usual: Pipas. Sometimes Amor de Dias, but if I’m feeling blue they can often make me bluer so it depends. I have all of the Pipas records and I make Itunes play them all through alphabetically by album which means it starts with Mental and ends with Sorry Love. And if I’ve still got work to do I start it all over again.

– For doing dishes on some weeknights: Mostly 50 Foot Wave but sometimes Throwing Muses. The former is louder and sometimes seems more productive — the latter, again, can sometimes bring me down. But loud drums + Kristin Hersh singing is often just what I need at the end of the day.

– For doing dishes on other nights, plus anytime I’m feeling particularly stressed: Cocteau Twins, so much Cocteau Twins. For calming it’s usually the Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay EPs; for familiar though not supercalming I’ll do Treasure (still my favorite Cocteau Twins record even after all these years) or Head Over Heels. Plus I’ve had this thing about the song Summerhead from Four Calendar Cafe, sometimes having to listen to that on repeat.

I did have a Janelle Monae and Colourbox interlude in the mid-Fall, but since the holidays it’s been right back to these 4-6 bands. I’m wondering when I’ll pull out of the restricted music phase, no sign of it yet.