fox in the snow’s Neighborhood

With a noise like the last half inch of milkshake, Sherbert slurps off my boob, grunts happily and lies back on my lap to gaze at me in wonder, a small dribble of milk running down into his chins.

"Look at him looking at you!"  clucks my mother, "He loves his mummy!"

"Nah," says my brother, "He's just wondering why that boob's got a head."

I was walking to work, noting with particular pleasure the flowers' change of colors:  their efforts were numerous and charming.  The thick, Crayola hues had now become varied and delicate:  translucent pearl glowing with pink, cool magenta sighing into harvest yellow.  High summer is a  time for subtleties; it carries a hint of what is to come in the autumn, the year's season of change.

The sidewalks are very bad where I live; they resemble granite plates shifting within the restless, seismic earth.  So it behooves me to watch my feet carefully.  This particular morning, I was staring down a particularly ugly patch of ravaged sidewalk, when I saw a lovely thing lying there.  Singular and unexpected, it was a calling card from its owner, a debonair visitor.

Carte de Visite

I believe it was a hawk's feather.  Now goodness knows, there is food aplenty here for an enterprising raptor: dogs, cats, birds, rats - filthy diplomats of the big city - but I have never seen one.  But I know that they are fine creatures, with rows of feathers muscling through the air currents, noble profiles, eyes that glitter with an opal's fire, senses that read the patterns of the sky like a book and beaks that sweep into a curve that ends in death. 

It might have been circling the neighborhood, taking stock of the potential groceries; it might have perched on a telephone pole, an enviable silhouette, an errant breeze lifting a feather or two.  Maybe that's how I got my souvenir.

Possibly it was unimpressed with what it saw, and returned to the dry hills inland.  It might have flown north, where the fires had turned the forests black and raw, waiting for the small animals to burst into the open, out of their burning homes.  Nature is opportunistic and cruel. 

I continued walking, waiting for someone to stop me and remark what a handsome feather I was holding.  But such whimsical observations were not forthcoming.  Sometimes I felt the wind brush through the patterned barbs and wondered if perhaps my arm felt a little lighter?  I fancied that it wasn't necessary to swing my arm back and forth - that it was instead resting on a cushion of air.  If I looked down again, I wondered, would it just be upon city-ignored  sidewalks or upon the tops of houses?

I hope the hawk doesn't regret leaving this feather.  Its calling card is all I have from a visitor I wish I'd seen.  I never saw it,  a distant black cross blessing the innocuous summer horizon; I never heard the cry that made a pledge of pursuit and pain.  I never watched the small, perfect structure, its base coated with down, its body strong yet at the same time a byword for weightlessness, swivel through the still air to land on the sidewalk that marked my route to work.

So I will promise to look into the sky, in order to keep our rendezvous - till we meet again.

1. Relax
2. Sleep
3. Rest
4. Read
5. Write
6. Exercise
7. More sleep
8. Eat
9. Clean

My goal is to have a clean, clutter-free environment by the end of next week.  A lofty goal from where I sit.

Last night I discovered that if I take extra thick Jersey cream, as well as chocolate with added cocoa butter, plus butter, and mix it all together, I do not end up with nice truffle mixture.  I end up with a split, greasy mess.  Fortunately Big Boy's working from home today and has agreed to make batch number two ready for the truffle preparation tonight. 

Last night I also dreamed rather a lot about cake.  Chocolate cake, chocolate brownies (£150 a cake apparently).  No misc other, just cake.  I really could do with some cake. 

Next week a friend who I haven't seen or spoken to in ten years is coming to London.  Suggestions for topics of conversation so far include:

1. So, ten years, you've grown!
2. How's the PhD going? 
3. All about my PhD (til she gets bored)
4. What's brought you down to London?
5. Sorry I didn't invite you to my wedding or get in touch when your mother died. (scrap this option)
6. Um... So shall we go and get drunk?

I'm nervous, not least because I'm not the most talkative of people at the best of times and it's been so long, but I really am very much looking forward to seeing her.  Is she going to ask me why we lost touch (which was down to me)?  I hope not, and I kind of wish we hadn't. 

I have worked in the high-tech realm since about 1999, and as such I have been exposed to the inane quest for the bags of money hidden behind the facade of technical innovation.  I've worked for a company funded by venture capital and, even worse, I've had these types of startups as clients.  There's always a lot of disingenuous excitement about this technology or gadget or idea that may or may not exist sometimes in the future, and if it does will probably be utterly pointless.

Since I don't want to step over the boundaries of my many NDAs, I can't say much about what some of these companies do.  One thing we've worked on lately are wiki-widgets, which apparently pull user-generated-content from a wiki site to a widget that can be displayed on facebook and the like to show off.  I just don't get it.  Why would someone want to advertise the fact that they are contributing to the meaningless drivel of the interwebs... on yet another portal of meaningless drivel?

I don't mean to offend anyone, but I am really getting just about fed up with this whole online social networking hoo-ha.  Anyone who has time to time to have a "second life" should really consider getting a first life, first.  There are things to do out in the world! Wouldn't you rather travel or write a novel or do volunteer work with all that time? I don't understand how anyone has time to be active on facebook or myspace or twitter.  I've done them all.  Only when I am SO DEPRESSED that I can't do anything else do I spend time futzing around with my online life. It's a strange cure for loneliness.

I'm updating my iPhone to the new 2.0 software at this very moment.  I have an iPhone because my ex-boss bought it for me.  I think iPhones are awesome, but I don't use half of the functionality.  I asked one of my co-workers what's exciting about 2.0 and why they were all in such a hurry to download it.  He could not tell me anything except, "because it's 2.0!" I'm starting to think that our culture is developing a dangerous addiction to NEWness, while forgetting what technology is for.  It is supposed to simplify our lives, not make them more complex... not take up all of our time without discernible benefit. Technology is meant to assist us in doing what we really want to do, not keep us from doing what we really want to do.

I'm antsy because I've forgotten how to blog.

And because I had a crappy lunch out.  Sprog weed all over the floor and Sherbert pooed on my friend's leg.

And because I have a friend coming round for a coffee and both children are asleep and I can't be arsed to put trousers on and make conversation.

And because we're waiting to hear about a job thing for Mr S, but the inconsiderate git is on site all day so not checking his emails so there could be an email sitting in his inbox RIGHT NOW but I have to wait until he gets home to find out.  This is killing me.  Further details to follow if I remember how to blog.

This post started life entitled 'the yin and the yang of lunch' and was marginally funny, then it became a full report of the job thing, now it's this.

This week has been testing to say the least. S has been really ill and off work for three days, meaning that I have been looking after both him and Jacob and not getting a minute to myself since Sunday (normally S takes him for a bit when he comes in after work).  Then our boiler broke and we spent one day with no water at all and two without hot water.  The boiler man is finally fixing it today so we can all get clean.  Having said that I washed yesterday like the 'olden days' with buckets of hot water heated on the stove.  It was ok, but the novelty wore off fairly quickly!

Today S is much better and is looking after Jacob so I can lie down and blog and have a nap.  Its bliss.

I took this last week - look at the little water baby - so so cute.  He smiles at me now, I'm in love.

water baby

So basically since the hot (or balmy) weather is driving me crazy while I'm awake, I'm left to dream about other things for once.  Thankfully my subconscious allows me a short break in thinking from all of the [*** fluffy rabbits, bouncing through fields ***] stuff in the day.  Which basically means crisps.  I've been dreaming about crisps again.  Last week I was actually quite smug because I realised that my crisp dream had involved my almost buying them then putting them back uneaten.  I thought this was progress.  Last night I dreamed about plain crisps again, which brings the total to:

salt and vinegar crisp sandwich (dream one)
plain crisps on ham sandwich (dream two)
cheese doritos (the old favourite - my big downfall in the glory days) eaten for breakfast (dream three)
Misc unidentified crisps put back on shelf (might have been chilli flavoured) (dream four)
More plain crisps eaten (dream five).

But actually I think that for someone who remains addicted to the crisps she can't have, five dreams in six months isn't too bad going.  I wonder if it's this hard to give up gak.  I'm also quite amazed that I haven't dreamed about wine at all since I've cut it down dramatically and shot my booze tolerance, or about sticky toffee pudding, but I probably keep myself just topped up enough on those to stave off the dreams.

There I go again.  Boring, boring, boring.  My preoccupations are so very few.  Still don't want any cake today, despite the obvious temptation of working near a Konditor and Cook.

It's random poetry time, just because I feel like it.

Christina Rossetti is a strange creature. Or rather, I think she just seems strange because of the way that she is normally presented, as an innocuous simple poet. You read this and that kind of presentation seems fair enough. Then you read this and you begin to question it. And then at some point you read something of Rossetti's that makes you do a double-take. You look at it and go "woah." And then you look at it again and go "woah." And then you look at it again and go "WOAH." And suddenly, you've found a favorite poet. (The same thing happened to me with Blake.)

I recently bought a book of Rossetti and I've found that some of the most seemingly simple are also the most astounding. For example:

          Joy is but sorrow,
               While we know
          It ends tomorrow: --
               Even so!
          Joy with lifted veil
          Shows a face as pale
As the fair changing moon so fair and frail.

          Pain is but pleasure,
               If we know
          It heaps up treasure: --
               Even so!
          Turn, transfigured Pain,
          Sweeheart, turn again,
For fair thou art as a moonrise after rain. (Selected Poems. Ed. Dinah Roe. New York: Penguin, 2008. 178)

While I'm getting anxious to be in school again, I'm glad that at least right now I don't have to say anything in response but, "woah."