10 April 2003

I've come across three or four references to V-I day, online, but the newspaper headline points out that the U.S. sees more battles ahead, and I believe that. I guess we'll see. Cautiously glad that the fighting has not been as bad in Baghdad as it could have been. Waiting still.

(If you have me free associate on "V-I," I'm afraid that the result is either going to be Lenin or rolling our eyes at the cheerleaders in high school band: they had this cheer where they spelled "victory," and the crowd was supposed to do it with them. They didn't know when to stop. Fellow freshman flutist Megan and I came up with a formula for how long it supposedly took them to learn to spell a word that long. We were not kind. I submit that it isn't easy to be kind when playing an instrument requires you to sit through hours of a sport you hate, cheered on by people who go out of their way to be disdainful. This was not the reason I quit band after my freshman year, but I can't say I missed the football or basketball games. At all.)

We have now been to the grocery store twice in the last week and to Trader Joe's twice and to an international grocery store once -- that's the total number of unique visits from this household, not from me personally. And yet we still lack in things like mushrooms, garlic, and stick oleo. Necessary things. Things one could do without, but this one would generally prefer not to. How does this happen? Ah well. The bouquet of purple tulips and white hyacinth was irresistible at TJ's yesterday, and now the dining room smells like hyacinths. I like that. I don't know how well hyacinths grow where we're going or how much of a PITA they'd be, but I could do with some. I also fell in love with a hydrangea and a brilliantly blue plant of some sort at the grocery store but did not buy either of them. Yet. I don't think there's anywhere really to put them right now. Maybe once we get the decrepit monitor out of the living room and up to the recycling place. I begin to believe that it is our lot in life to have a decrepit monitor sitting in the living room, though, and I fear that the awning shade that makes this apartment livable with the AC off in the summer also makes it hard to grow plants that need direct sunlight.

I finished reading Ancient Light last night -- my goodness, she's fond of layers of deception -- and started Diana Wynne Jones' A Tale of Time City. Which is all right so far, fun so far. It's got me thinking that the evacuation of children from London during the Blitz is really a retrospective boon for people writing children's books. It makes it easy for your young protagonist to slip out of the bounds of culturally normal, supervised childhood for awhile, either on the train trip there or while staying with someone who, while kindly, was not the protagonist's actual parent. It gives a reason for the parents to be absent without having to resort to the standard fairy-tale method of killing them off. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe used it, and Theatre Shoes, I think it was? One of the Shoes books. And now this one.

Now I'm wondering what the American equivalent is, and I'm not sure there is one. On an individual level, it would probably work to deal with kids who had been put on a plane to go from one divorced parent to another. But that wasn't a mass historical situation. I'm not coming up with an equivalent very readily, but if you guys have one, I'd like to hear it.

I also did some edits to Dwarf's Blood Mead and some work on the Not The Moose Book yesterday. Hung out with David, ran errands, made stroganoff, talked to Mark and Timprov. Did stuff. Then did more stuff. I'm feeling more relaxed than I have in weeks, maybe months. Nothing is settled yet, but I have much better feelings about it getting settled soon. Every once in awhile I do some if-then calculations in my head, and they're coming out all right, those numbers. Reasonably well. So I was able to just sit and read and watch the end of "Star Trek IV" with Mark and Timprov last night. I'd seen bits of it fairly recently, but hadn't seen the end in awhile, and it was on TNN, so I just sat and read and listened to bad acting and remembered the first time I saw it, with my folks and Grandpa while Grandma was coordinating someone's wedding. The whole time he was out here visiting, lo these many moons ago, my dad pronounced "Alameda" as if he was Walter Koenig looking for nukhlear wessels. Occasionally he would inquire about the nukhlear wessels. It is important for daddies to be silly sometimes. My dad does not disappoint in this regard. Now half the time I see the word "Alameda," I get my dad's Walter Koenig voice in my head. I live in Alameda County. This is an ongoing thing.

The Sagas of the Icelanders, which has been sitting on the kitchen table off and on for the last five months or so, is now dusted with tulip pollen. Ah well. Covers wipe off.

I ran my errands (bank, library, Trader Joe's) yesterday, so I think today I'll just be home working. Maybe a bit of cleaning or a bit of laundry would be in order, and I've been wanting to make limpe or rosemary buns soon, though which will probably depend on whether Timprov is in the mood to bake with me (if so, rosemary buns, and if not, limpe). I may not get to that, though. I may just write. That'd be fine with me.