This photo is for Jenny:
Thank you everyone for the kind words for Marley. I have been, to my surprise, so much more sad about it than I had anticipated – not that I thought it would be easy, but that I just thought about it logically for so long that I did not give much thought to how I would react emotionally. That is, I always imagined that the moment he got sick I would hug and love him, I would take him in and calmly say goodbye. Then I would go home and feel good about doing the kindest thing. That was the scene in my mind. But I never thought about how sad I would be or how hard it would be to not see his little face in the morning, so it came as a shock. I gave myself a couple days to cry and give into it, but now I feel good and am even thinking about getting another one. I’ve always ALWAYS wanted a little polydactyl cat, but felt four was too many. So maybe it is time. We shall see.
In other news, today was an asswhip. My mother stayed true to her word and came over to clean out the garage. It was 96 F out. I’d been out to Lee Harvey’s last night for a friend of Davey’s show and hung out with some nice people and Davey and I fooled around until dickety thirty in the morning, so I’d had no sleep and was a touch hungover. And the garage was chock-a-block with… junk. In my mind, junk. But one man’s trash, as they say, and it certainly was her treasure. There was almost nothing in the garage that was mine, just our suitcases and my Kronan (<3), so I just had to sort of direct the proceedings.
My mother is a collector, a hoarder. She has a very hard time letting go of anything. The things she agrees to let go of still go into a pile for The Garage Sale. Now, my mother talks about having garage sales… well, she’s talked about them forever. Yet I remember maybe five garage sales my entire life. So these things end up piling up somewhere. Her house. Her garage. This house. This garage. Two storage units. Seriously, it is a sickness – I would sign her up for that show where people come and force you to give things up (Clean Sweep?) if I thought she would actually agree to it. But she wouldn’t. She is very stubborn.
(By the way, Dallas people – if she DOES actually have a garage sale, I’ll tell you about it, because she has a lot of practically new stuff.)
Recently, the past year or so, she seems to be getting better. She has been more proactive about going through her things. She still is a chronic shuffler, however – piles for the office, piles for The Garage Sale, piles for home. Little actually goes away. I’m really trying to support her and encourage this new behavior, but it is hard because I TEND to throw a lot away and I have little patience with this particular trait (I’m sure it is also a common thing for daughters to have little patience with their mothers generally).
As I have gotten older, I am actually terrified of becoming like her (In this way – in most ways she’s lovely). I throw away a lot. I’m not perfect, of course; I have a big box of clothing that desperately needs to be eBayed, as well as a lot of old photos and such, but until I get a scanner and convert them ALL to digital, and I someday WILL, they will have to be stored. I already admitted to you I have tons of perfumes, and I don’t even want to talk about the lip glosses and balms scattered about, and my yarn is OUT OF CONTROL. But I do not get attached to things in an EMOTIONAL way like she does. Or maybe I’m just justifying. Yikes.
Anyway, that’s been my whole day. Real exciting for you, I know. To redeem this post, I will tell you my new recipe for white bean spread. I love white beans blended into a spread; I used to do this a lot but sort of forgot about it until now when we are eating more beans. You just blend canned cannellini beans with olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs – sage, rosemary, or parsley is what I usually use, but last night we had a handfull of basil that needed to be used so we threw that in instead. But the NEW thing was this: we put in an AVOCADO. We spread it on knäcke and it was wonderful. Of course, we were tipsy, so keep this in mind.
I booked our tickets for London yesterday. I’m so happy about that, even though I’ll be working part of the time – Davey’s friend Jimi may meet him there to keep him company during that time, which would be fun for them, and fun for me come evenings. My job mainly consists of creating European itineraries right now, so I’m a little obsessed with getting back. I am happy for everything that has happened and I wouldn’t trade it all for a visa, but I sure am missing my Amsterdam quality of life recently.
