tuckova

too dynamically stable

I had to go to the post office to pick up a package yesterday. It's below freezing now, and still not a snowflake in sight, though it is incorrect to say that it is too cold to snow. So: hat, gloves, scarf, coat, sweater, all of which have to be shucked the second you enter any overheated building, which is all of them. Oh but first: day before yesterday we went to see the Nutcracker, we meaning me and Squire because as if Friar's going to sit still for a whole hour without a cigarette. There were women apparently equally unprone to theater, wearing maybe their old prom dresses, tighter than they'd remembered, summery shimmers of sleevelessness, winter boots on under. The first hour was boring as hell for me but the second hour they had this delicious group doing the "Arabic Dance" in some Thai costume looking thing (Oh, Brno, you're so cute when you try) and they were like the Bodies exhibits, if the bodies had had skin on and been dancing around; it was like: the human body is a work of art. And then the "Russian Dance", the guy (Takeru Shimizu) whipped around the whole stage in I think grand jete en tournant, and he looked so totally joystruck while he did it that it was all you could do to not stand up and applaud, and in fact some people did. So that was day before yesterday.

Then so back to yesterday: I went to the post office and I was thinking about how easy it is to get bogged in irritation in this weather and standing in line at the post office with my cranky face on because it's hot and stuffy and I'm holding my hat and scarf and coat but still sweating and nobody's happy and I think, okay, you know, I'm PICKING UP A PACKAGE. It's the holidays and somebody sent me a present. This is hardly torture. So I smiled to myself, and I smiled at people, and I got four people to smile back (two wrys of the "here we are, all standing in line" variety; one sincere; and one a kid who was already pretty much smiling but I'll take it) and so this is what I did for the remainder of the day, which was two lines at the post office, one line at the drug store, one line at the grocery store, two trams, and a stop at the wine bar, was let people in line in front of me if they were older or looked more miserable, and smiled at people until they smiled back. I have no doubt I looked like an idiot and it's not like I'm making new year's resolutions here, but social experiments are always fun and more so if they don't involve electric shocks.

conversation:
ME: Put your hand on my back.
HE: Aie! Hey! You need to tell me when you're going to do things like flip over backwards.
ME: Well, I didn't want you to actually hold me. I just wanted you there for orientation. So I could figure out which way was up.
HE: You could know which was is up by standing up.
ME: I like seeing it all mess up and then making it right.

punchline:
I am sure we can all agree that "It was the wrench, with the revolver, in the study" might have even thrown Drs. House and Holmes for a loop.

dear people with children (or with opinions about children)

How do you handle your child's holiday giving? Because I am lost. I think that up until about (some age) you tell the kid the list of people to whom they should give gifts (which is sort of sadly correlated with "people from whom they can expect gifts" but here we are), and you discuss those people's interest, hobbies, etc., and then you take the kid shopping. Or, even better, you make the kid create something for each person. But this year I left Squire to his own devices and he did nothing for anybody. Whoops.

I think it makes more sense in terms of the "spirit of giving" for him to MAKE something, something personal. For the last couple years I had Squire make the Christmas cards with his own sweet hands, and that was his contribution to the gifties. But this year he didn't want to make the cards himself, and I didn't want to stand over him screaming. He also didn't want to just pick out gifts for me to buy and ship, nor did he want to take credit even when he helped me pick, which I appreciate in a way although it left him sort of stranded. I suggested alternatives (draw a picture? write a letter?) but I feel like, dammit, it's not MY GIFT. In retrospect I think I cut him loose too soon, but I really don't know.

Understand that I am not talking about epic gift giving. I give Christmas gifts to family only, for... well, complicated reasons. Of course also there's the "husband who doesn't do Christmas" element to consider. The man just doesn't. And what I "just doesn't" is pretend to buy individual presents from other people. And why should I nudge a kid when there's an adult in the house modeling the very behavior I'm saying isn't okay? And why isn't it okay? (I know why I think it isn't, and it's to do with "fairness" but really: if some people don't celebrate a holiday, why do they have to give gifts to the people that do celebrate that holiday, right?)...

So I dunno. All gifts this year that went outside our trio came from me, and I signed them as being from the three of us. And now Squire is in minor anguish because he didn't really send anything, and he SHOULD be in anguish, in my opinion, because people sent him things. I like to hope that this anguish will translate into him moving off his butt next year and doing something for the people who do things for him, but... am I supposed to be driving, still? Did I take my hands off the wheel too soon?

Your thoughts?

chocolate

Standing in front of the chocolate selection at the grocery store. This grocery store has two aisles only; it is not The Saddest Grocery Store (where the check-out woman, always the same woman, was walleyed and threw your things down again as she rang them up and looked like when her shift was over she would likely kill herself if she could get up the energy) but it is pretty damn sad, and it is also the only grocery store between here and home and you have to buy some token gifts. So you have decided you need to buy some chocolate and in this store there is 1/3 of an aisle devoted to chocolate so you're thinking: 10 people, 10 bars? or 10 boxes? you don't want to look cheap but at $3 a pop the tokens are adding up.
And this old man is standing next to you and also looking at the chocolate, and you do the thing where you shift a half step to the side to imply that you're allowing him space I mean you can't really open up much space when you're both looking at the same thing but this is elevator manners, right. And he says, "There's a lot of chocolate to choose from here!"
You're like an old man magnet you were saying just the other day and here is evidence. They like to flirt, they like to pinch you sometimes, it's a whole thing. You find them sweet as long as they don't breathe on you. Part of the thing is about staving off the moment when they realize you're foreign because then they get all flustered and it's so much for everybody. So you venture "yes" to the chocolate comment cause that seems safe.
He says, "With such a selection-- I'm sorry, do you mind listening to the ramblings of an old man for a moment?" and so you swing around the eyes. He's wearing the intellect's beret and surprisingly smells pretty okay, which since you've cut back on smoking everything smells like it has a foot in the grave so this is altogether good, worth a smile at least which your smiles are worth more than the stock market these days.
And he goes into chocolate and varieties and the chocolate of his childhood and basically the plot turns on his desire for a real hot chocolate, a hot chocolate like from Holland, like from his childhood. If you had any idea what he was talking about you would bring him home and make it for him, but you don't and so you're smiling watts and looking helpless. And he says thank you for listening to him and you grab 10 bars and go and pay.

know when you've got it good

Oh, Christmas. Today Squire is at a "concentration camp" (survey says: this will never not be funny) and so Friar and I were at odds and ends as to what to do for about thirty seconds before we decided we would go to the pub and play Scrabble. But Domov was noisy and Severka was full of reservations and even Sklipek (which I love but Friar does not as the owner is a little too Uriah Heep for his taste) was fully booked. We tried Pisek and Prokop, too, with no tables empty. We tried the herna down the street but they had a big screen TV and a jukebox (two strikes) and we were out. Havran was rejected for their tendency to open the doors and windows and Hawaii has nasty low tables and the weird wine store doesn't have a bathroom and there we were. Seriously: 10 pubs walking distance from the house, and I felt like Mary and Joseph. FINALLY we decided to go to the new(er) wine bar and maybe get a couple bottles and just go home, and LO,there was room for us in the inn, so we sat at a moderately uncomfortable table and played Scrabble (I killed) for 3 hours while they brought us glasses of tramin and beer and the wine bar owner's grandchildren played semi-obnoxiously underfoot and the radio played, and I swear I am not making this up: Queen, Joanna Newsom, Nik Kershaw, Joan Jett, Support Lesbiens, and Depeche Mode. I mean, this is what I remember right now. It was three hours of bizarrely awesome music.
I hate the winter with more unreserved passion than I have ever loved anything, and I am frankly unbearable from basically November to March, and it is merely December. I don't know how anybody manages to like me right now; I imagine it's like how I managed to like Squire when he was two years old except that I do not have sweet baby fat that you can kiss while I'm sleeping. I'm sorry I'm an asshole, really I am.
BUT! I am counting my one two three to seven blessings this week, and let me tell you: ten pubs within walking distance? TEN. WALKING. I am sorry but that is awesome. And I love love love the mix tapes that Czech radio makes for me every day, and I'm sorry every day that I don't talk about how my control freak tendencies have met their match in the stuff that gets RADIO PLAY here, because really: Nik Kershaw and Joanna Newsom? FIND me a radio station that will do that in another country.
And so that's that. Tomorrow we're going to the cottage, because with Squire in absentia we simply don't know what to do with ourselves other than the same thing we usually do.

ghosts 2

She's been all over the house this past week and I really wish she would go. She fair stinks it up with her lipstick-tipped cigarettes and the sour lemon drops stuck together in the candy jar. It is not merely that nothing is quite right, but that nothing is ever right at all. Screams at me for leaving the bathmat on the floor and calls me a gypsy slut, refuses to speak to me for a day for calling her a whorehouse proprietor ("ma'am", I'd said), and marks everything I write with red pen. Gives me books she says I am too stupid to understand and dolls I can't play with, their glassy eyes sitting in proxy judgment when she's out of the room.

Over ten years she's been dead and I still don't have a happy memory that I can lay her to rest with, and so she comes swooping in periodically, too much make-up and a housecoat, like an evil Auntie Mame, with her quirky anti-charm. I have no beauty, no brains, no redeeming features, nothing to recommend me. Just in time for Christmas this year, which she managed to bile up when she was alive, and I find myself not wanting a tree, lights, anything, just because it would give her one more thing to find failing in me.

We shared a birthday, birth order, and red hair, and I am terrified every time she comes around that someday I will turn into her.

duly noted.

It is interesting to note how many people seem to equate not admitting they are wrong with being right, when they are so much not the same thing that they're at least as opposite as wrong and right.

In the future everyone will think about love all the time.

1. In the future, I live in an apartment and my other friends are also in the building, and we visit each other and have coffee and cakes and wine parties and conversations that are endless because we will finish them tomorrow. There is collective shopping and a certain amount of gossip.

2. In the future, I live at the cottage and have in particular chickens, maybe rabbits, and also some vegetables I've learned to grow, plus apples and berries, and somebody comes once a month with necessaries and my hair gets wild and some people think I'm a little crazy because I know something about herbs or whatever.

3. In the future, I live winters in Greece or someplace warm, leaving when the rooks arrive from Russia and coming back when they're well and gone; there's some small place where the tourists go in season and I walk on the windy beach in the morning, and in the summer I come home to the beer garden and the ordinary life of trams.