Pogo & Pepper

The first dog I was ever aware of was Pogo. I remember him as a mashup of primeval lore plus every beagle I've ever met, so I knew him metaphorically rather than personally. Pogo was from a litter of Lucky, who lived across the street. Lucky, I did know, because she was my best friend's dog, and because she was a plump homebody, content to dig herself a nice dirt nest under the front shrubs of her house, and stay put.

Pogo, on the other hand, was plucky and active, and in the end, a heartbreaker. My brother had a thirteen-year-old's reasonable expectation of a dog that would be his buddy, hanging out, riding the paper route, playing catch, chewing the occasional bone. My brother named him after his favorite comic strip.
And at first, Pogo seemed to be on board with the plan. He ate a couple meals, checked out the scene, slept in his bed, got scratched behind the ears. Then came The Smell.

It was mysterious.

Maybe it was leprechaun's corned beef drag lure. Maybe there was a bowl at rainbow's end filled with infinite biscuits, or maybe a place in an ancient Roman fox hunt. Maybe it was unicorn pee. Whatever it was, Pogo surrendered completely. Nose to the ground, he vacuumed the yard, and then, like the last notes of a sad ballad, he was gone.

We were never going to get another dog after Pogo. It was too painful, and you never knew if you were putting all that love into a four-foot drifter. No dogs.

My parents were children of the Great Depression. This led to some interestingly distorted shopping legacies, including driving past Stop & Shop, Big Y supermarket and Price Chopper every week to go to the Meat Store miles away in Springfield. Even during the gas crisis of the seventies.
And once, at the Meat Store, after we parked and got out of the car, something ran under it. A little dog with curly hair and a diamond collar. A really, really rich dog. No, my sister said, it's not real diamonds, that would be stupid, it's a dog. He was terrified. He refused to come out from under the car. Until my dad took out the baloney.

We put a lost and found ad in the paper. We were only keeping the dog until the owner claimed him. He was very little and cute and fluffy. His fur seemed well-brushed so we were pretty sure someone would want him back. He was about five years old, and a mixed breed, alternately hilarious and embarrassing to my elementary school self: a cockapoo. His black eyes were bright, and he kissed us all the time. He couldn't get enough of us. We made him a little bed in the garage. But he was just a houseguest. We waited, afraid to get attached. A week later someone called, and I sat on the bottom stair, biting my nails until they turned out to be missing a white dog. And then the days and weeks went by, and although we were never, ever, ever getting another dog, for the next twenty-one years we had a temporary canine lodger.

Finders keepers. I like to think the losers weren't weepers. I like to think they ended up with a vagabond beagle.

Ben Folds Is Stalking Me

It's hard to know exactly when I realized I was being stalked by Ben Folds.

I wish I could remember how I found Katie Sokoler's blog Color Me Katie, but however I got there, I do a fair amount of crafts, and I love her colors and sense of humor. She made a video of a pretty song I had never heard before, and the video was adorable, but I enjoyed it then moved on to her other things, like pictures of thought bubbles.

For quite some time, my daughter Treya had been a fan of Charlie McDonnell. Charlie is very funny and sweet, and bonus, has an outro made by Stephen Fry, an actor I really like. All during his teenage years he did little videos of self-imposed pranks, such as coloring himself purple and dying his hair fire-engine red. You kind of get to see him grow up via video, and he's always quirky and engaging. I thought it was inspiring to my homeschooled kids, who were doing their own projects, that here was a kid that thrived doing his.

One of the unexpected perks of where I used to work is that I heard an incredible variety of music. My intern, Katie O, was listening to Regina Spektor, who had a couple of things that I love in an artist: smart lyrics, interesting composition, and a vocal range that's right in the middle of mine so I can sing along in the car. When she left at the end of the summer, Katie O gave me a cd of Spektor.

Are you keeping up? Years ago someone called me a "junkie of the printed word" because I am such a voracious reader. I like a lot of Nick Hornby's work. I actually discovered him via movies of his books: Fever Pitch, About A Boy, High Fidelity; and while those are fun movies, the books are much better. I went looking to see if he had written anything lately, and found that he had collaborated with some musician to write lyrics.

Then in quick succession, it turned out that the musician Nick Hornby was working with was some guy named Ben Folds. The guy who wrote the cute song in Color Me Katie's video. The other voice on one my favorite Regina songs. The guy Charlie dented his kitchen pots for, when he did an official (and officially loopy) music video for one of the Hornby/Folds songs, Saskia Hamilton.

Soon after, I stayed in Boston with my niece. Her husband and I talked about the singing group I was in, and he told me I'd love a show with all a-cappella singing, The Sing-Off. And we watched it together. And the camera turned to one of the judges, a kind of nerdy-looking guy with glasses, but one that was making surprisingly insightful comments for an Idol-style competition show. And there I first laid eyes on, guess who: Ben Folds.

So that's what it took—the zeitgeist having to dummy-slap me every couple of months into realizing that there was someone making a lot of music that was just my cup of tea. There's probably lots more like him out there in the world: painters whose work I'll find breathtakingly transcendent, writers that I'll lose myself in, dancers who will change how I see the universe.

I'd like to say that I've grown wiser, that I've learned to look for connections this world or be more attuned to serendipity, but alas, I fear that would be a lie. They'll have to do the work instead. They'll have to come and find me. Like Ben Folds did.

French Windows

Once upon a time, I was an exchange student in France. I had been taking French for ten years. I wasn't under any illusions that I was totally fluent, but I figured I could speak fairly well. That turned out to be a lie. It turns out that the French speak something that even the French don't consider French. It contained rapid fire words that I'd never heard, and when I asked them for meanings, they told me it wasn't "real French" and they didn't want me learning slang. I walked around talking like Little Lord Fauntleroy the entire time.

I lived with a family. Madame (who probably had another name, but I never learned it) showed me how to shut the foldy metal shutters at night, which I thought was adorably French. One evening, after everyone in the house had gone to bed, and outside, the cold of winter was starting to give way to hints of spring, I sat at the window in the dark, where I could see the church spires of the medieval part of the city in the moonlight. What I should have done next is close the shutters. What I did do was turn on the light. There was a loud pop, and a perfectly round hole in the window pane. It's really an indictment of the educational system that I took French for ten years, and while I could endlessly ask the whereabouts of the train station, I never learned the critical phrase: "I think someone shot my window."

Well, that's not fair, I did know the word for window: fenêtre. And we had just watched a Three Musketeers movie, so I knew the word for "musket." I stood in the dark of the hallway, knocking on Madame and Monsieur's room saying "Excusez-moi? Excusez-moi? There has been a musket and a window? Pardonnez moi?" until everybody in the house woke up, including the tiny sausage that was Daisy the dog, who helpfully yapped her head off.

Monsieur and his son, Philippe, looked at the damaged window and Madame sat on the bed to comfort me and asked, how this could happen through the shutters? I had to shamefully admit I hadn't closed them yet. They asked what could have caused it? And I speculated that it was a musket, which made it sound like there were 16th century dueling happening outside. They wondered why anyone would want to shoot at my window with a musket, of all things. This would have been a good moment to just shrug and look clueless. But instead I said that the hole was pretty small. Maybe it was a toy musket.

They all pulled back and looked at me. A toy musket? That can shoot through a window? A toy?

And because I sensed, once again, that I really wasn't getting my point across, I said, you know, like a BB gun? Only I said bey (because that's French for B) musket (because it was the only gun I knew).

And only when Madame broke the long staring silence, shrieking, "Oh! My! God! I knew America was a violent, violent, country but they have to arm the babies?" did I realize that I had to close my mouth for good. And also the shutters.

Of lotteries & jobs

I've been doing freelance work, and you probably know how that is: you get some and it's all cake and balloons, then it's finished and it's all stale crusts and brackish water. So I've been on the hunt for a job-job. Here's the thing about job hunting, it feels exactly like the lottery.

When I get a lottery scratch ticket, I like to get the kind with a crossword or other intricate game. That way it feels like there's exchange instead of just me donating to the state public schools. I know the bake sale is better odds, because at least for your buck you get a brownie, but, you know, I'm trying to cut down on sugar.

I let the ticket sit around for a couple of days so that it knows I'm not really all that interested in it.

Then I scratch the bits off slowly. But not too slowly! Because I have to tell my brain to shut off. I have to tell my brain to shut off, because if I give it the slightest leeway, I hear the chorus of thousands singing to me what I can do with the money. The soprano part is stuff like: remember they take out taxes, but we bet you can still repair the house and car. The altos bring in the fact that some nice things wouldn't go amiss, like a trip, books and fun classes, software, and stuff from modcloth.com. The tenors remind me that it will be wonderful to give lots to charity. And the bass comes in with, sure, it's a long shot, but I'm a fairly good person, and can't that be worth something, cosmically? Within seconds, I'm in a happy place, where the air is warm and the water is blue; sipping something with a little umbrella in it.

When you're looking for a job, they tell you to find out all you can about the company. Wow, this place looks awesome! I could be perfectly happy here! It's just my cup of tea! Look at the interesting projects they do, and how successful it is! And because I need a job, I can't really be thinking about who left the position and why, or the fact it's run by Captain Ahab and that woman Meryl Streep made look fabulous in The Devil Wears Prada! That can't matter, because I have to work somewhere, and working there is working somewhere!

The chorus is back. Sopranos: lalalala, you could make this work with your schedule. Altos: it looks like a great place to work. Tenors: you could really use the money. Bass: sure, it's a bad economy, but you've got the skills they're looking for. Now I'm in the happy place where the bills are paid, everybody's schedule works together, and the lawn is mowed.

If you need me, I'll be outside in my lawn chair. I'm wearing a sweater, and you'll have to wade through waist high grass to get to me, but you'll know it's me, because I have a drink with a little umbrella in it, and a fire made of resumes and scratch tickets. And I'm singing mezzo-soprano.

Christmas Cookies

By seventh grade, I was flunking math. This explains how I came to decide that a fun and easy holiday project would be to make cookies of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

In my head, I thought, well, twelve days, and a set for each verse so we can sing it to the cookies somehow, so I'll make a triple batch of dough, and that'll be fun.
I started out very motivated. It went well for a surprisingly long time. Butter, flour, sugar, salt, eggs. Flour the countertop, roll out the dough, cut with cookie cutters, roll the scraps, re-roll, cut some more.

It never, ever, occurred to me to bake them out of order, so the first pan into the oven held: a partridge and a pear tree; two turtle doves and a partridge and a pear tree; three french hens, two turtle doves and a partridge and a pear tree. And the second pan was four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle doves, a partridge and a pear tree, and two (out of five) golden rings. I only had one bird cookie cutter but that's ok, because I could frost them different colors.

I was halfway done, musically! This was going great.

Out come the first two pans, and now three golden rings, four calling birds, three french hens two turtle doves and a partridge and a pear tree. Then six geese-a-laying and of course a little egg for each one, fiiiiiiiive golden rings, four calling bir– ok, two calling birds.

Rest of the calling birds, hens, doves, partridge and a tree, but there's room for swans. The bird cutter does not work for swans. So I stretched their necks, and got three of them a-swimming. But I ran out of dough. That's fine, I mean, I'm already at seven, so I'll make another triple batch, and just refrigerate any extra for another time.

Four more swans a-swimming, geese and eggs, three goooooooooold rings. Two more golden rings, four turtle doves, three french hens, two turtle doves, a partridge, and a pear tree.

I made frosting and started icing the cookies. Green for the partridge, so it matched the tree; blue for the calling birds; ink for the French hens; cream for the geese and white for the swans.

I was getting tired but I was already on eight. Yay! I thought of doing eight girls and eight cows, but I could see that was madness. Somehow, I then decided that eight girls and eight buckets was sane. Three buckets had to go on the next pan. Seven swans. Three geese and eggs.

Three more geese. Three more eggs. Five gold rings. Four calling birds. New pan. Three French hens, two turtle doves, a partridge and a pear tree, and I could get six ladies dancing, which was just milkmaids without the pails and one leg bent and oh god why was I not done with this yet and I needed to make more dough.

Night came. Nobody dared walk through the kitchen. Someone brought me food from McDonald's. I had eaten a lot of dough. My sister went out and got more butter. I descended into a fugue state of measuring, mixing, rolling, cutting, rolling, cutting baking, frosting.

Three ladies dancing, eight maids no buckets. New pan. Eight buckets, no maids, seven swans. New pan. Six geese, six eggs, five gold rings, one calling bird. New pan. Three calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves, a partridge, a pear tree, and two lords a-leaping. New pan. Eight lords, one lady. New pan. Eight ladies, one maid, two pails. New pan. Seven ladies, six buckets, one swan a-swimming. The singing had taken a desperate and manic tinge. New pan. Six swans, six geese, six eggs. New pan. Five rings, four calling birds, three hens, two turtle doves. New pan. Partridge, tree, seven pipers, which are the lords, but with straight legs and a little dough flute, which turns out to be a bad idea because they mostly break off, but I can't stop to think about any alternative.

More dough. New pan. Four pipers, four lords. New pan. Six lords, three ladies. New pan. Six ladies, three maids, two buckets. New pan. Five maids, six buckets, three swans. New pan. Four swans, six geese, six eggs, five rings. Four birds, three hens, two doves, partridge, tree, and at last, at long last, the last verse: two drummers and four drums. New pan. Eight drummers, four drums. I was crying from exhaustion and sugar crash. New pan. Two drummers, four drums, five pipers. New pan. six pipers, two lords. New pan. Eight lords, three ladies. New pan. Six ladies, six maids. New pan. Two maids, eight buckets, six swans, two geese, four eggs. New pan. Four geese, two eggs. Five gold rings. Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and, it can't possibly be true, a partridge and a pear tree.

It was two in the morning. There were so many cookies. So many cookies. It looked like the scene of scene of grisly cookie carnage.

I fell asleep in my floury sugary clothes. I couldn't face frosting, and I gave them to everybody else to eat. I was done with them.