Through Italy and Russia, through Germany and Prussia
What I learned on my summer vacation: I still love trains, I do not necessarily love my fellow passengers, and the people on the other end of the ticket are worth the trouble, even if I am now a slightly vibrating murderous misanthrope for the foreseeable future.
I had a wonderful extra-long weekend. I slept in the guest bedroom, which is located in the uniquely overhauled basement—it's as structurally sound as one could hope from a down-low renovation, but features like the load-bearing pipe, the lurking toilet, and the near-complete absence of right angles give either the space a non-Euclidean charm or a homeowner pause. Rami did a hero's work in rendering its electrical outlets actually safe. The bedroom itself is now a pleasant sort of mauve rather than the Dimetapp of doom I was shown in the before pictures. The open space of the basement has been dubbed the teen pit and was, in fact, frequently occupied by my godchild and their absolute unit of a support cat, Mac. I have long since accepted that wherever I go, I will smell like strange cat to somebody, but I appreciate that by the second or third day Mac had gotten over his antipathy to my luggage and even headbutted me a few times. I was warned that his extremely fluffy belly is a trap. One night![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie and I stayed awake past two in the morning talking about her book; two other nights we stayed awake just talking. I snacked on grapefruit marmalade and sheets of nori, not at the same time; on different nights we had Peruvian chicken with ají amarillo and plantains and Nepalese curries, khasi ko masu in my case because I will never pass up an opportunity for goat; for Mommy's Day, there were homemade eggs Benedict for brunch. I helped my godchild buzz their hair short and then shorter and served as a sounding board for their experiments in hiding in a hammock, followed by experiments in pretending to hide in a hammock while really hiding somewhere else. I am now the proud possessor of a poster-sized photo of a Provençal waterfront that would otherwise have gone out with the trash from the old apartment as well as an enameled pin for the Secret Jewish Space Laser Corps that Selkie had been saving for me for months. In my Campion re-read, I had gotten as far as The Fashion in Shrouds (1938) and Traitor's Purse (1941) when I had to pack for the trip; the former remains a frustrating concentration of all the gender essentialism the series otherwise tends to eschew, but the last time I had read the latter was at the baby shower for my proto-godchild. Eleven years later, they are a mere five to six inches shorter than myself, but they remain essentially built like a fighting kite and therefore eminently boostable. I took almost no pictures, but fortunately everyone else in the household did. You may note a recurring theme.
I had wanted to get a sky bison for my godchild ever since they got into AtLA over the quarantine, but by the time it was possible to purchase one, the family was in the throes of packing and I was warned in the strongest possible terms not to send a single other object that would need to go into a box. I brought the bison down in my ancient over-the-shoulder bag that has visited at least five countries. It was well received. My godchild states that despite my eye color, I can't be anything other than a waterbender, which, fair.
I hadn't been in a hammock in ages. It was curiously impossible for me to settle into this one without attracting a godchild. On the whole, a feature rather than a bug.
I believe I was attempting to swallow half a dill pickle before the metaphorical flash went off. I felt like all those pictures of herons with obstinate fish.
Mac, the center of the universe.
My godchild had come up while Selkie and I were hanging out and bonked their head wordlessly into my shoulder. I have no idea what I was reading.
I like this one. It is accurate. They said seriously one afternoon in the hammock that they knew I had to leave, but they didn't want me to. It makes me feel like a comet when I would rather be a fixed star.
Naturally, we finished the vacation with about a zillion pictures of me with my godchild and almost none of me with their mama, a situation remedied this morning by the child's selfie skills.
That thing where I can still pick them up?
Long kid is long. And has fabulous boots.
And now I am home with my own cats in a city where I can see my husbands and tomorrow I return to my usual rounds of work and doctors' appointments, but I wrote outside in the sun for a long afternoon till the rain broke and I washed art off a window and got it under my nails and whatever the faults of travel by rail in a time of still-plague, there was salt marsh outside the windows both ways. It was good time outside of the everyday. Someday, someday I will take this child to the sea.
I had a wonderful extra-long weekend. I slept in the guest bedroom, which is located in the uniquely overhauled basement—it's as structurally sound as one could hope from a down-low renovation, but features like the load-bearing pipe, the lurking toilet, and the near-complete absence of right angles give either the space a non-Euclidean charm or a homeowner pause. Rami did a hero's work in rendering its electrical outlets actually safe. The bedroom itself is now a pleasant sort of mauve rather than the Dimetapp of doom I was shown in the before pictures. The open space of the basement has been dubbed the teen pit and was, in fact, frequently occupied by my godchild and their absolute unit of a support cat, Mac. I have long since accepted that wherever I go, I will smell like strange cat to somebody, but I appreciate that by the second or third day Mac had gotten over his antipathy to my luggage and even headbutted me a few times. I was warned that his extremely fluffy belly is a trap. One night
selkie and I stayed awake past two in the morning talking about her book; two other nights we stayed awake just talking. I snacked on grapefruit marmalade and sheets of nori, not at the same time; on different nights we had Peruvian chicken with ají amarillo and plantains and Nepalese curries, khasi ko masu in my case because I will never pass up an opportunity for goat; for Mommy's Day, there were homemade eggs Benedict for brunch. I helped my godchild buzz their hair short and then shorter and served as a sounding board for their experiments in hiding in a hammock, followed by experiments in pretending to hide in a hammock while really hiding somewhere else. I am now the proud possessor of a poster-sized photo of a Provençal waterfront that would otherwise have gone out with the trash from the old apartment as well as an enameled pin for the Secret Jewish Space Laser Corps that Selkie had been saving for me for months. In my Campion re-read, I had gotten as far as The Fashion in Shrouds (1938) and Traitor's Purse (1941) when I had to pack for the trip; the former remains a frustrating concentration of all the gender essentialism the series otherwise tends to eschew, but the last time I had read the latter was at the baby shower for my proto-godchild. Eleven years later, they are a mere five to six inches shorter than myself, but they remain essentially built like a fighting kite and therefore eminently boostable. I took almost no pictures, but fortunately everyone else in the household did. You may note a recurring theme.
I had wanted to get a sky bison for my godchild ever since they got into AtLA over the quarantine, but by the time it was possible to purchase one, the family was in the throes of packing and I was warned in the strongest possible terms not to send a single other object that would need to go into a box. I brought the bison down in my ancient over-the-shoulder bag that has visited at least five countries. It was well received. My godchild states that despite my eye color, I can't be anything other than a waterbender, which, fair.
I hadn't been in a hammock in ages. It was curiously impossible for me to settle into this one without attracting a godchild. On the whole, a feature rather than a bug.
I believe I was attempting to swallow half a dill pickle before the metaphorical flash went off. I felt like all those pictures of herons with obstinate fish.
Mac, the center of the universe.
My godchild had come up while Selkie and I were hanging out and bonked their head wordlessly into my shoulder. I have no idea what I was reading.
I like this one. It is accurate. They said seriously one afternoon in the hammock that they knew I had to leave, but they didn't want me to. It makes me feel like a comet when I would rather be a fixed star.
Naturally, we finished the vacation with about a zillion pictures of me with my godchild and almost none of me with their mama, a situation remedied this morning by the child's selfie skills.
That thing where I can still pick them up?
Long kid is long. And has fabulous boots.
And now I am home with my own cats in a city where I can see my husbands and tomorrow I return to my usual rounds of work and doctors' appointments, but I wrote outside in the sun for a long afternoon till the rain broke and I washed art off a window and got it under my nails and whatever the faults of travel by rail in a time of still-plague, there was salt marsh outside the windows both ways. It was good time outside of the everyday. Someday, someday I will take this child to the sea.