Shaky Egg

Just one or two more listens to Up On The Sun. Not too much more/too much more… It is such a paradox, the sweetness of that song and the abrasive, ugly things Curt Kirkwood says that I also find so funny and honest. I am too tired to write about the trickster who appears across cultures and times and literatures and indigenous’ peoples’ belief that the trickster is important you cannot access the divine without laughter and embrace of paradox the trickster character provides. I was studying it for our April 1 programs at work… maybe later I’ll have something to say about it, but for now I can only offer the transcendant lyrics of Meat Puppets songs along side Curt Kirkwood’s assertion that life is a pile of shit and he’s here to put frosting on it.

I wish I could put the song on constant play, but I don’t know how and don’t have time to find out.

Maybe we have something to talk about…

I have six little moonflower seedlings in big pots downstairs. They’re destined for the northwest fence in my back yard, if they’ll ’make’ there. I haven’t had moonflowers in years. I hoarded some seeds many years ago, either from my mom or some very dear elderly friends, and planted them at my little shack down in the holler. But my boyfriend’s fat silver doberman dug up and ate the precious seeds and spent days after hallucinating on the couch. Who knew dogs could have drug problems? Needless to say I am tickled, tickled to finally be headed back in the moonflower direction. I have no fat silver hallucinogen-seeking doberman, and I think my dogs’ drug addictions are limited to chocolate and whatever’s fermenting in the compost pile or kitchen garbage can.

That two weeks each spring when I am actually thrilled that I live here in Alabama has stretched out for several weeks already. I got my grocery shopping done at lunch. I got the really ugly patches of my yard mowed after work, before the rain. I have a book club meeting at my house tomorrow. Shaky baby is snoring on the floor because she had such a big day today. I didn’t get to read to her, but I did yoga with her AND read to her last night, and I need the mommy time.

My Curt Kirkwood-looking husband is in California for his grandma’s funeral, so shaky baby spent the day with a wonderful friend of mine so I could work. I didn’t even have to take any time off. I’ve been giving, giving, giving lately, feeling very depleted/hard done by, and even though I paid my friend, I still feel like she pampered and nutured me– she picked up my baby at the library, brought her back to me shortly before quitting time, said so many nice things… Shaky baby appeared to have had a wonderful day– outside constantly wedged with her friends into the teeny tiny baby pool or playing at the water table, providing a bridge between the two boys, ages three and six. My friend said good things about the day, and sent me home with dinner. I’m not sure if the dozen or so insanely delicious falafel I ate were vegan, but I know the chocolate chip cookies I made this morning are, so that balances out, right?

I have two friends who really know how to mother girls. I mean, it’s not that I’m not feminine. I am, at least in many, many ways that matter. I am a feeler and a perceiver and very sensitive to others’ moods and prone to try to see both sides as best I can. I cry about really good, and sometimes even about really tacky, literary or cinematic emotional situations. I sometimes find upsetting situations hilariously absurd, and can’t stop myself from giggling, which pisses my husband off no end. I know how to love babies, at least other people’s babies, now that I’m no longer in the throes of lost sleep or soaked in breastmilk and spitup with my own any more, I really, really do know how. I have the magic touch, I swear, and babies give me so much joy. If those things aren’t feminine, I don’t know what is.

But I’m sort of, well, girly impaired. I’m a hippie. I don’t even wear makeup, although I’d like to, but I’m such a snob I’m waiting til I can afford vegan cruelty free expensive stuff. I am too tight and too busy to go look for girly clothes for work. I absolutely cannot, cannot accessorize. I wear a ton of rings, and a particular necklace that is very, very precious to me, but pearls? Scarves? Forget it.

I can’t remember the last time I purchased perfume, probably ten years ago. I finally, FINALLY got me some wonderful hippie smelling shampoo and deodorant from Lush… smelling good is so important, but I have just bypassed it for so long. I hope I don’t stink, I do strive to be hygienic… but smelling good (well, good to me, hippie good, or Clinique Aromatics good)– no brainspace for that, lately. I used to pride myself on it.

My other closest girlfriend C is a TOTAL hippie. That’s why I like her so much. She wears no makeup, never smells of anything whatsoever except maybe baby wash, wears a dorag on her head like a Swiss Miss or a Mammy, has prominent tattoos, says what she thinks, is very difficult to piss off (which isn’t to say she isn’t nurturing, sensitive or anxious, because she is as much so as any of us, perhaps more) and she is totally no nonsense, and it is so relaxing and freeing.

I have to add here that we’re all more or less hippies in my set– extended breast feeders (at least a year if not longer), cosleepers, organic food buyers, attachment parenters… so it’s just degrees of hippie, not whether we are or not.

H, the hippie friend who kept shaky baby today, always sends her home with her hair done in such a girly way. She looks like a different child– a little girl. She said to me, do I look seven? That comes from when I told her her Easter dress looked older, and she said, you mean, seven? So now I guess seven is the pinnacle of ladyship to her.

I do her hair, too, but I either jam a stylin’ hat on her curly mop head, do two (or more) spiky pigtails that look zany rather than girly– and that truly fits a pretty substantial side of her personality– or I do the southern smock and monogram pull to the side with a fat cloth bow. I’m pretty utilitarian, a one or two trick pony. I hate it that she prefers dresses… I put her in these Prince or Adam Ant or Liberace or Nancy Griffith-esque, late eighties-early nineties 18thC or froufrou military or psychedelic clothes that seem to demand those stylin’ hats or zany spiky pony tails. My friend just pulls shaky baby’s ponytail back a different way, and she looks… just like a little girl.

My other friend K got shaky baby truly girly stuff for her birthday– a tea set, a tiny cubic zirconia and sterling butterfly necklace, little Chinese stamps for her scrapbooking. This is the same friend who remembers hostess gifts, thank you notes, all the sweet little things.

My husband and I got shaky baby an automated baseball batting practice machine.

Both these particular girlfriends put on their makeup every day and look so lovely. I just don’t know how to do that!

I finally see the effects of age in my face… or I finally admit it to myself. I see where a little facelift would come in right handy. Wouldn’t it be better to get it now, instead of waiting til later when it was real bad? I think losing 30 pounds or so has contributed to the breakdown of my facial flesh… I’m sure it wasn’t hard living or stress or actual chronological years. It sure would be nice to have my high smooth cheekbone look back. Wonder what that would cost?? Is there any truly vegan, cruelty free product that will push and plump the crepey flesh back up? How much time would I have to spend with my legs in the air (yoga! duh!) to remedy this? Probably the next hundred years. I was looking over a slideshow today of 5 hair makeup and clothing makeovers that ’took years off’ the subjects’ look. H’mmm…

One of my glamorous girlfriends is slightly older and one is slightly younger, and they both look lovely all the time. So I know, at the bottom of it, it isn’t about age at all. Now that I’m pushing forty I’m just going to have to sit at their feet and learn.

If you see it closer then the finer points will show…

Not too much more/Too much more…