martinimade

"Brendan and I ran into each other on the front lawn. He seemed to be in a particularly Oscar Wilde mood. 'May I kiss you?' he asked. Sure, who cares. After a tender, playacted non-French kiss, Brendan suddenly 'came out' to me. In my experience, the hardest thing about having someone 'come out' to you is the 'pretending to be surprised' part. ... Your gay friend has obviously made a big decision to say the words out loud. You don't want him to realize that everybody's known this since he was ten and wanted to be Bert Lahr for Halloween. Not the Cowardly Lion but Bert Lahr."

-- Tina Fey, from Bossypants, which is such a great read (and which I can't thank Cait enough for giving to me.)

* First thing - If you should find yourself in Endicott, NY, I'll be signing books and showing off Lana at the Writer's Luncheon on Saturday. Proceeds will benefit the Samaritan Counseling Center. Please come on out if you can.

* Second thing - I've been knitting on my Slinky Ribs.

The wet weather (but not as wet as the Southland saw. Hope you are warm and safe.) and lousy light makes photography challenging. How about this shot, which makes me look much thinner than I am, thanks to the placement of my arm.

So far, so good, eh? The next challenge is to pick-up for sleeves, which should open up the shoulder area ribs in a more pleasing way. I'm going with long sleeves. Despite the most recent weather here, short sleeves are silly for a sweater in upstate NY. 

Third - for those wondering about our elderly cat Trout, he's still hanging on, as evidenced by this picture that I just took.

He seems to be in zero discomfort so we muddle on.

McGregor also seems to be in zero discomfort.

Once upon a time, Lisa and Adrienne worked for the same alternative newsweekly. Now, both spend their respective lives mining their creative souls and leading hermit-like lives. And so an idea was hatched. Every week, one would send the other a sketch—either in illustration or word form—and the other would make a companion to the sketch. The result would be posted on both their blogs every week, just for grins. Even if the result isn't award-worthy, the exercise makes both minds more nimble. Hopefully.

Don’t get me wrong. I like my gym. As gyms go, it’s a keeper. Treadmills. A pool. Heavy things to lift and put down again. Not too many ‘roided out knuckleheads lifting weights. Almost zero young women (and, let’s face it, older women) dolled up and spandexed. It’s mostly clean.

I go. I run to nowhere. I sweat. I leave. It’s all I could want it to be, really.

And, yet, every now and again, I get that irrational rage. It comes on like a sneeze, set off by, say, the elderly man who ramps the incline on the treadmill up as high as it can go, then clutches to the sides of the machine as if he’s walking into a hurricane. Or at the 30-something woman on the stationary bike who is reading Jodi Picoult and peddling with intense slowness. Or at the college student who spends 20 minutes adjusting a fan so that it blows on her at just the right angle and speed. Or at the moms in the locker rooms who take up the entire bench in order to get their singular kid into a swim suit.

I don’t know where it comes from, the rage. Maybe, after so many years of suppressing it, it is burning off with every tenth calorie expended.

Text ©Adrienne Martini; illustration ©Lisa Horstman. Until the end of time. Or something.

* This makes me sad. And is further proof that journalism still matters.

* Jesse Fox Mayshark on Ayn Rand.

* Now that is good advice.

* On my hometown.

* Sponsor a sweater.

* In which a meteorologist describes this spring's weather as "wacky."

* What we forget when we talk about the past. 

* New Karen Joy Fowler: "Younger Women." It is yummy.

* There is no lovelier sound that Yo Yo Ma at the cello. It's only made better with dancing.

* For the tennis fans only, I suspect; I find Donald Young's story fascinating on a number of levels. This most recent chapter only deepens my fascination. (I also really like Bruce Jenkins' work - but that's another story.)

* Endurance is the only cure for morning sickness, in my opinion.

* I will tattoo this on each of my students the next time I teach Freshman composition. (Particularly #4, although if more students followed this rule I wouldn't have students writing about the theater's "perineum stage.")

* I want this painting.

* The story of my husband's life...

* Before we go any further, if you haven't already, please sign up for my mailing list in the little gray box on the left. Not only does it greatly enhance my self-esteem, it also makes it easier to remind you when I might be coming to your town so that you can take precautions come out and knit.

* In other news, I'd planned to show off a freshly mulched flower bed, which is about the only gardening chore I can do before our last frost date in May. The rain, however, had other ideas about my outdoor productivity. And to the rain I say, well done and pass another cup of tea.

* Vegetarians and observant Jews should look away from this next picture.

I'm not one to celebrate the ham, mostly because mine, while good, are usually mostly okay. On Sunday however, I made a really fine looking and tasting ham and took a picture for posterity. Yum.

We spent the weekend nodding in the general direction of Easter, what with egg dying and egg hunting. It's hard to really get into the spirit of the holiday when you aren't at all religious. Around here, it's also hard to celebrate Spring when you still need your winter coat.

But, still, any holiday with candy (and ham) can't be all bad. 

"It's not the size of the book in the world, but the size of the world in the book."

* I marvel much that Chapter 4 of the Sweater Quest podcast is live. (Or will be by this evening...)

* We were away for a bit. All four of us have this week off from our respective schools. And so, thanks to my mother-in-law who has a time-share and joined us, we wandered into the wilds of Pennsylvania for a few days. Very scenic, those wilds.

The Diva spent a tiny bit of the time building a fairy house.

The Boy built a fence for the house, which I didn't get a picture off, and enjoyed eating fruit by the water while fending off the paparazzi.

Oh - and my yarn souvenir from the city, Knitty City, to be exact. I didn't intend to buy anything but couldn't let this little skein get away...

Plus, it goes surprisingly well from the skein that friends Ellen and Delia brought back from New Zealand a couple of months ago and which I picked up this weekend.

It's the yummy foresty green in the back. And the blend? It's merino and - wait for it - possum.

Once upon a time, Lisa and Adrienne worked for the same alternative newsweekly. Now, both spend their respective lives mining their creative souls and leading hermit-like lives. And so an idea was hatched. Every week, one would send the other a sketch—either in illustration or word form—and the other would make a companion to the sketch. The result would be posted on both their blogs every week, just for grins. Even if the result isn't award-worthy, the exercise makes both minds more nimble. Hopefully.

Much to the chagrin of Lady Featheringston-Wittengham, her cousin, the Viscountess of Puce, received an invitation to this weekend’s events up to and including the wedding itself. Because, thought the Lady, the royal invitationers failed to take into account the fabulosity of one’s anticipated headgear.

Lady F-W would not dare let slip how deeply green with envy she is, given that her longstanding feud with the Viscountess is more fierce than the pitched battle between the Queen Herself and Sarah Ferguson, that hussy.

Still, thought the Lady F-W, breeding will tell in the end. And like a papered and pedigreed Dartmoor Pony, no matter how glossy her coat or deep her withers, the teeth reveal how the specimen's genetic tree failed to fork.

Text ©Adrienne Martini; illustration ©Lisa Horstman. Until the end of time. Or something.

* I just so happen to have an outlet by the light switch.

* Llama font.

* If this is the game the Conservatives want to play, where's Trig's birth certificate?

* On the Midwest and the wearing of clogs.

* My former co-worker MTE on one of the strangest ultramarathons (which are pretty strange anyway) you've never heard of.

* This will make you stabby.

* But this might be the antidote to being stabby.

* Or maybe this, Tina Fey's prayer for her daughter.

Before I discuss the way in which I was wrong, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the dinner that the Featureless Saint and I had over the weekend at Craftbar, which was a belated birthday gift to myself. I have now had one bite of the most perfect grits and the most succulent pork belly I have ever had the pleasure to have had. While my fresh ricotta and veal meatballs and pasta were divine, the FS won the dinner lottery with his order. I tried to go back for a second bite but was afraid I'd be stabbed in the throat.

I can't blame him, mind. I'd do the same. It was that good.

I won the dessert lottery, tho, with an apple crisp that had a brown butter ice cream on the side. Yum.

We also took in a show, like grown-ups do. Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is one of my favorite scripts from my most favorite playwright. The current production did not disappoint, not even Billy Crudup, who I usually find oily and disingenuous. That works for him here. It's one of those plays that needs some time to fully digest and I'm not certain I'm there yet. But it was mostly stunning.

(Delia Sherman's review is here. While it's uncouth to simply say "what she said," I'm going to say that, especially her read on Raul Esparza and Lia Williams. Like Delia, I  have such a crush on Esparza's Valentine.)

And now for the bit where I admit I was wrong.

Prior to yesterday morning, we'd only captured a raccoon in the humane* trap. Oh, and the varmint pictured below, which I released shortly after snapping a picture.

Of course I made him wait until I snagged my camera. You would, too. Don't deny it.

This morning, however, it was proven to me beyond any doubt that the phantom possum is not, in fact, a phantom.

Said critter -- there is nothing you can do to make a possum cute, is there? - has since be relocated and released. I wish him/her well in his/her new life.

And I will now go tell our neighbor that I was wrong to have suggested that she was hallucinating.

As a bonus, a picture of the Boy taken by his sister that I found on my camera while unloading these:

Feel free to write your own caption.

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* not the "human" trap as I'd typo'd earlier.