35 Club.

Hi.

I am not sure why I am so hesitant to write these days. Perhaps it is the lack of quiet, the lack of darkness, the lack of a home. Feist and Grizzly Bear are in the throes of a duet in my ears and the tricky afterthought effects of Gravol are just beginning to course thick through veins. I am trying not to throw up on my (not so) white keyboard. Now, a public service update. Yes, I am still without a home but am far from homeless. These are my days: Monday to Thursday a tender mother wakes me up with song or back scratching exactly the same way she did six years ago (time lapse) when I lived here lived here. Every morning I stay in bed for five extra minutes, allowing myself to linger in the cocoon of warmth in my very single bed (I refuse to sleep anywhere else), then I drag upstairs to my familiar spot at the oval oak dining room table and watch my mother putter around. One cup of coffee, check emails and daily design sites, haggard hair, haggard face, haggard painting outfit. We eat in silence, both of us, mother and daughter lost in our respective paper/electronic coloumns. We both clean up reluctantly, and go to work, together. We paint. I listen to my delightful coworkers cackle and babble on about delightful granddaughters (Norah!), perennial gardens, sexy weekend getaways in their husband's sexy midlife crisis vehicles of choice, canning, babies, babies, babies, aches, pains, family. There is more laughter. It is wonderful, I love working with them. I roll. I am terrible edger. We sit down three times and everyone is sore but there is no point in talking about it anymore seeing as they have been doing this for majority of my life. Respect, ladies. Respect. We finish, last stripes and flicks of the wrists, bodies heavy and slow with tiredness and disinterest in gawdy paint colors. We eat the delicious dinner that my mum miraculously pulls together in the time that I am washing away my tiredness/soreness in the shower. She is incredible. Cal comes home. They kiss, always. We linger at the table, laugh, talk about things. Sometimes I go for bike rides, but most of the time the wind is up and I am too tired to ride fixed without the vaccuum of city traffic to pull me along when my legs feel like quitting. Today I thought about Thomas and sat on the front step of the deck and folded laundry while my mother and grandmother tooled around the yard talking shop (perennials again [their collective plant knowledge is very impressive], and damn those rabbits), and in the far reaches of the back, back yard, my father makes perfect rows for the garden with a how that is bigger than a modest rafter (basically) even though he is even more tired than mother and daughter. I think about Thom again and the beautiful Brooks saddle that Jon found in his dad's garage from thirty years ago (heirloom) and then put away the folded clothes and write to various people that are on my mind. Seizure inducing stills of American Idol flash from the giant television stuck to the wall out of the corner of my eye and then the phone rings. It is Grandma.

"Come over, your jeans are reeeeeeeady" she says as she crunches into the receiver.
"Oh, okay. Be right there" I say, suddenly in the mood for a drive and something crunchy. When I arrive she pads to the door holding a bowl of dry Captain Crunch in her grandmother hands. Plaid shirt. I quickly picture her bent over the sewing machine eating cereal absentmindedly as the needle tick tocks in the crotch of my jeans.
"You are seventy three years old. You are seventy three and eating Captain Crunch. Dry. I love you" I love her, so much.
"It is delicious dry; even better than popcorn". As she says this, she tosses me my two favorite pair of jeans, both of which are worn through in the left inner thigh from my own Brooks saddle. Her attempt at matching the denim with the patches is a complete disaster and I love her even more for it. Shit, what a lady. Helen Helen Helen. You hate mending, and you love Captain Crunch. She is also a proud member of the 35 Club. Tomorrow, instead of playing a competitive round of Scrabble with me, she is going to 35 Club to eat scones and drink punch and talk about being born in 1935 with a bunch of other people who were born in 1935. Here are some things that happened in 1935, just for a bit of perspective:

- Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly solo from Hawaii to California
- Iceland becomes the first country to legalize abortion
- The polygraph machine is tested for the first time. Leonard Keeler conducted the experiment in Portage, Wisconsin
- Babe Ruth played his first National League game in Fenway Park in Boston
- Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag with the swastika
- First screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated movie
- Penguin produce the first paperback book
- The China Clipper makes the first Pacific Airmail delivery

How Much things cost in 1935: shit.

Average Cost of new house $3,450.00
Average wages per year $1,600.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas 10 cents
Average Cost for house rent $22.00 per month
A loaf of Bread 8 cents
A LB of Hamburger Meat 11 cents
Average New Car Price $625.00
Canada Dry Ginger Ale 20 Cents

That was interesting. All facts copy pasted without permission from a slew of interesting websites.

Anyway, I still have yet to puke on my laptop. This is a good thing I guess. Oh right, I should hook my proverbial jacket on the e-brake of the first train of thought. Conclude, conclude, conclude. It is so difficult to concentrate these days now that there is a new baby in our inner circle. My cousin Kate had a baby lady! She, the long haired child who is too precious to be named or clothed is stunning. Jer, if you are reading this, I agree with you. That child is a born pianist. Her hands are bananas. Anyway, I want to see this queen, but until then, I will listen to podcasts and think of my beloved and his hands. I am living in a town outside of the city (vague, I know), paying off debt before I leave for the woods, living the good life with my parents in the land of plenty. On the weekends I have been floating around town at the heels and at the hip attached to the endlessly long legs of my new beau, Thom. We drink espresso on the kitchen floor, all knock-kneed with joy and wonder, we ride our bicycles and I am getting fat again from all the croissants and whipping cream that I slip into the food I cook in an effort to fatten him up. I am happy, ridiculously happy. JJ, I heard The National's "So Far Around the Bend" this evening and thought of you. Me, you, us, soon. Pop Montreal.

I know you’re a serious lady
Living off a teacup full of cherries
Nobody knows where you are livin
Nobody knows where you are

Take a bath and get high through an apple
Wanted to cry but you can’t when you’re laughin’
Nobody knows where you are livin’
Nobody knows where you are

You’re so far around the bend
You’re so far around the bend

I’ll run through a thousand parties
I’ve run through a million bars
Nobody knows where you are livin
Nobody knows where you are

You’ve been humming in a daze forever
Praying for Pavement to get back together
Nobody knows where you are living
Nobody knows where you are

You’re so far around the bend
You’re so far around the bend

Now there’s no leaving New York
Now there’s no leaving New York

You’re so far around the bend
You’re so far around the bend

Now there’s no leaving New York
Now there’s no leaving New York
Now there’s no leaving New York
Now there’s no leaving New York


Thankfully, this song isn't as applicable as it used to be (save for the fact that I have dropped off the face of the earth [happily so]) but I still love it and I still think of JJ when I hear it. I am also happy to report that Maiya is getting even fatter and so is my love. One hundred percentile of love.

Bye.