Ms. Crochet-y

Dreamt I was teaching Word headers and Footers to a group of English-speaking German students.

Just one of the reasons…today Julia’s library teacher recited the witches’ potion spell from “Macbeth” to her; she loves it.  We looked up the words and recited it ourselves after dinner.

Julia insisted on putting this Obama button on her school backpack.

As I was leaving my apartment today, I saw a guy with his dog trying to put a bag of dog turds into our paper recycling bin.  The bin has two paper recycling stickers on it, it couldn’t have been more obvious.  I said, “That’s paper recycling” as he was struggling with the bin cover.  ”Oh?” he said, having gotten it in.

I said, “You should take it out.”  He said, “You think?”  I said, “Yes, that’s paper recycling for my building! There’s a trash can at the corner.”  So he reluctantly did.

What an idiot.

My summer crochet project was this blanket for Annette’s son’s baby, named Shanon. I think I’ve finally learned my lesson about starting a project with yarn leftovers, without making a gauge or any attempt at figuring out how much yarn I actually need. But it turned out lovely just the same. I learned how to do the wacky crab stitch which makes a nice border edging - it’s a backwards single-crochet.

Last Saturday night I gathered with a few friends from Debevoise to remember Bran Jerome Marah, who died two years ago in early August. We spent much of the time talking about Debevoise, and other things like hippies juggling fire, but did raise our glasses to his memory. Here’s a few things I think about when I think about Jerome:

• How he would drape himself against the doorframe of my office every afternoon about half an hour after he started work, and chat with whoever was there for awhile.  The conversations were always strikingly different.  Topics varied not only according to whom he was speaking, and were always interesting.
• When I had foot surgery and had to walk with a cane for awhile, I felt his presence very strongly.
• How he turned a photo of Peter and his new minivan into Peter and the Oscar Mayer Weiner-mobile.
• The instructions for using the new Flavia coffee machine that he authored with Matt.
• The excellent gifts he gave my daughter: a subscription to Ladybug magazine, a specially-illustrated Little Red Riding Hood book,  the Philadelphia Chickens book and music CD.
• When he met Julia very briefly he knelt down to hug her, and his beard and hair flowed out around him like a cloud.  She remembered him as my friend “who looked like Santa Claus”.

Jerome, I miss you.

This happened awhile ago, but I was waiting and waiting for Dad to post the toothless pictures.  It came out during lunch at camp, and she either swallowed it or it got lost.  Together we wrote the tooth fairy a note that had about 5 “sorrys” in it, for not having the tooth.  The tooth fairy understood, saying “it’s ok, I have lots of other teeth.”

“Crocs are one of the signs of the Apocalypse.”

Clinton Kelly from What Not to Wear

My daughter’s life is an opera. On many days she sings 25-50 percent of her words, rather than speaking them. A few nights ago I was waiting to play with her using Chris’ RC cars, and she was in the bathroom. She was singing away, and probably reading, using up her precious before-bed play time … “Dinah won’t you blow, Dinah won’t you blow, Dinah won’t you blow your hoooorn?”

I said “Julia, not much time left to play.” She said “Ok mom!” then started singing, “I gotta leave, I gotta leave, I gotta leave right nooooow!”