i’m a peace-loving girl, right up to the point where two freaks break into the house and try to come after my family.

after that? all bets are off.

This is one crazy story. Glad she and the baby are both okay. (A fund is being established for Mrs. McKinley and her son, if you are so inclined…)

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

(this originally ran Nov. 30, 2006. happy reading :) wm)

And now, for the Thursday Thirteen you’ve been waiting for: A CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION, IN THIRTEEN PARTS:

1. Mom and I decide to take the kids to the Grotto, the National Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother, for the 18th annual Festival of Lights. Petting zoo! Puppet show! Strolling carolers and people dressed like olden times, who ask you, “Do you know the way to Bethlehem?” (No, I don’t. But if you figure it out will you take me?)

2. I tell Mom I’ll buy her dinner first, c’mon, it’ll be fun. She is game. She tells me she’s never been to the upper level of the Grotto. I am floored by this. “IT IS SO COOL UP THERE!” I tell her. The kids: “CAN WE SEE IT? NOW, CAN WE? CAN WE TAKE THE ELEVATOR?” Me: “No, it’s dark. And there are cliffs. But next summer!” Also, I forget to bring donations for the food drive. Mom brought some stuff from her cupboard. And she insisted on buying us dinner. Wouldn’t let me pay for tickets to the festival, either. Moms are like this.

3. Both kids, shouting: “LOOK AT ALL THOSE LIGHTS! AND THE ANGELS, LIT UP! THERE ARE PEOPLE SINGING!” Followed by, “What are all those candles for?”

4. We go to the petting zoo, at Wacky Boy’s request. The volunteer gives us warnings: Don’t let the goats grab the whole ice cream cone full of feed out of our hands. Spin around if they try to. And around and around and around. Don’t give any to the alpaca. Or the horse. Or the rabbits. I lose track of all the instructions. We spin and spin. We are mauled by goats, anyway.

5. Wacky Girl: “HEY! I do remember this place!” (Good, since it’s the seventh time she’s been.) She and mom head off for the puppet show. She is the only one to call out the answer when the puppeteer asks the audience: “What does Feliz Navidad mean?” She is proud of this. She and Mom like the puppet show. Mom is wearing a cute hat, and her warm jacket. It’s not raining. Or snowing.

(more…)

grateful for everything today: the rain, salmon leaping across the roads, my health being way better than it was two years ago at this time. grateful that my wildass tomcat is feeling better, grateful that Steve has a week off for vacation (? what???), grateful for the apple pie I just assembled and threw in the freezer, to bake on Thursday morning, and grateful that it’s almost December, cuz I like December. not cuz of Christmas, necessary, but because it just seems like such a cheerful month.

also grateful for brussels sprouts, which i hated so much as a child (ask my mother: “God, no, I’m not making brussels sprouts, calm down”), but which now i adore. especially roasted with a lot of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

the end.

— wm

Michael: “And you finished off the whole bottle?”

Michael: “I think that’s another of mom’s fibs, like ‘I’ll sacrifice anything for my children.'”

It’s Tuesday, and about time for an update from the Wacky House:

* School has started. The kids are doing great (4th grade and 7th grade this year #wheretheheckdoesthetimego???.

* Steve took some vacation days here and there this summer, and is back to work. He can bike to work now. He’s still bloggin’ away, as you can see, and occasionally arguing with assclowns. (Currie, you really do work my nerves. And don’t think I’ve forgotten how you like to defend pedophiles like “homeless activist” Michael Stoops.) (Hell hath no fury, and memory, like me.)

* Do I have a job yet? No, I do not. I am planning to start working the phrase “as a former sex worker” into conversations, though. For example: “As a former sex worker, I can recommend the non-fat skinny vanilla latte.” That should lively things up.

* Will I be placed in a school this year? Will I remain unpaid and still-gainfully retired, writing away? We’ll see…

* Book is almost ready for publication, I’ll keep you posted. Still working on my Dear Late Granny’s cookbook/memoir. Bogged down a little, what else is new? Seriously. I spent about 400 500 617 hours pinning laundry to the line this summer and watering the garden and yard. Seriously. It rained today and I almost ran out and kissed the muddy ground I was so happy.

* am Oregon girl.

* Mt. Hood fires need to go out. The air quality has been crummy, the sunsets and sunrises look a lot like L.A. and… I like trees. That mountain terrifies me, but I love it. Maybe the rain will help?

* in other family news, the youngest cat, Baby, has let the following be known (via his messenger, the youngest child, Wacky Boy): “He does not want his Chicken Coop to be called that anymore; he wants us to call it his ‘Man Cave.'” (Referring to Baby’s corner retreat in the library, where he keeps his scratching post, blankie, toys and catnip.)

* When my husband woke up our daughter this morning “it’s after 7! wake up!” she responded with this: “Fu…..” Her father’s response: “What was that?” Wacky Girl, fast on her feet, even when she’s sacked out: “I said ‘Ugh.'” Yeah, sure you did.

* This is the same girl who yelled, “Goddammit!” at her father when he got shampoo in her eyes, when she was not-quite-two. Steve: “Nancy, do you have any idea where she got that?” Me: “Nope.” (inside, heart swelling with pride, My girl.) (and really, aren’t you a little surprised that she didn’t yell, Goddammit, Steve!)

* what’s up with you??

— wm

love this. (interview with the late writer Grace Paley, from the Paris Review.)

INTERVIEWER: What were you doing before you became a published writer?

GRACE PALEY: I was working part time. I was hanging out a lot. I was kind of lazy. I had my kids when I was about twenty-six, twenty-seven. I took them to the park in the afternoons. Thank God I was lazy enough to spend all that time in Washington Square Park. I say lazy but of course it was kind of exhausting running after two babies. Still, looking back I see the pleasure of it. That’s when I began to know women very well—as co-workers, really. I had a part-time job as a typist up at Columbia. In fact, when I began to write stories, I typed some up there, and some in the PTA office of P.S. 41 on Eleventh Street. If I hadn’t spent that time in the playground, I wouldn’t have written a lot of those stories. That’s pretty much how I lived. And then we had our normal family life—struggles and hard times. That takes up a lot of time, hard times. Uses up whole days.

INTERVIEWER: Could you tell the story of the publication of your first book?

PALEY: I’d written three stories, and I liked them. I showed them to my former husband, Jess Paley, and he liked them, and he showed them to a couple of friends, and they liked them, so I was feeling pretty good about them. The kids were still young at the time, and they played a lot with the neighborhood kids, so I got to know the other mothers in the neighborhood. One of them was Tibby McCormick, who had just gotten unmarried from Ken McCormick, an editor at Doubleday. She knew about these stories, and poor Ken was more or less forced into reading them—you know, The kids are over at her house all the time, you might read her stories. So he took them home and read them and he came over to see me and said, Write seven more of them and we’ll publish a book. So that’s what happened. Luck happened. He also told me that no magazine around would touch them, and he was pretty much right about that too, although two of the stories in that collection were finally taken by Accent.

man. remember when i said, don’t blow anything up outside my bedroom window? what I meant to tell the neighbors was, PLEASE blow up a bunch of fancy fireworks make ’em go boom-boom-boom right outside my window.

i am not one for fireworks, but since Dear Wacky Dog has been gone for some time now, it’s not as bad. God, he had a miserable time with the fireworks. Here’s the story: the “good” fireworks are “illegal” in Oregon, but “legal!!!” in Washington. We lived in North Portland, which is, like, border town to Washington state. So everyone, but not their dogs, because their dogs frickin’ hate fireworks (and not us, because I’m too cheap. Plus I like to keep it legal, thank you) drives across the bridge, loads up on the “good,” fancy fireworks, then drives back and makes ’em go oh-oh-oh BOOM-SNAP-CRACKLE-POP.

When we moved to fancy westside suburbs, I thought, This is no border town. It’s a border town to the Wine Country, and the ocean breezes, that’s about all it’s a border town to.

“Surely people won’t bark at the moon and shoot off their guns out here, like they do in North Portland?”

Last year we were enjoying the ocean breezes, so this was our first Fourth in the new house. Man. People do it UP out here. We walked around the neighborhood and watched the little shows, then walked up the hill and could see four or five big fireworks shows from all over town. Then we figured out the best show around was right out in our backyard. The people in the cul-de-sac behind us partied all day, and once it got dark did a fireworks show that went on forever.

I finally fell asleep about midnight, hearing faint boom-boom-booms from all around. Crazy.

This morning they were out there with their leaf-blowers, cleaning up.

#suburbsareatrip.

Have a great week!

— wm

from my son:

“Did you ever go a-fishin’ on a sunny, sunny day/
sit on the bank/
’til the bank give away/
with your hands in your pockets/
and your pockets in your pants/
sit on the bank/
and do a hootchie-kootchie dance…”

(psst — wanna see a picture of our grumpy cat?)

I wanted to like Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad.” I really did. But it had too many characters, too many switch-ups, too much name dropping (hip bands, hip clubs, hip people at hip restaurants) and… I just wasn’t into it. I realize that it won the Pulitzer. And the National Book Critics Circle Award. Just not for me. The End.

Robert Whitaker is a genius, and I appreciate the work he is doing to expose all of messed-up stuff that the mentally ill have to face and deal with in our country. It’s too painful for me to write about this topic, especially because today is my late father’s birthday. (I love you, Dad. So very much. Happy birthday.) But I really recommend that everyone read the information that Whitaker has painstakingly gathered. Such a wake-up call.

Peace,

me

ps don’t forget… the door to hell is in your living room. (under the carpet.)