Category: Daily

As you know, the holidays came and the holidays went. We ate food and we drove cars and we wore socks and we sat in chairs. We wrapped things in paper and we removed paper from things and we took our pills and we fell asleep. We’ve now entered a new year and we’re all feeling energized because we’re finally going to see the world all standing hand in hand and we’ll hear the echoes through the hills for peace throughout the land and we’ll see skies of blue and clouds of white and bright blessed days and dark sacred nights. Apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtledoves! What a wonderful world. So hopeful we are!

(I love this photo so much. Happy Easter 2009!)

Enough about January 6th.
Let’s go back to December 24th.

Setting: Christmas Eve. Ten of us were sitting in a circle at my aunt’s house. Large room. High ceilings. Lovely decorations. Cozy. On my lap was a plate that held a slice of port wine cheese ball, a few crackers, and some slaw. I wore jeans with a black sweater. A necklace. Brogues.  

My aunt (to my mom): Do you ever feel sad that we don’t know more of the old family stories?

My mom: Not really. I mean, we know most of the weird ones.

Me: Weird ones? Keep talking!

The next hour was spent listening to fantastically horrible tales about relatives who had missing buttons and loose screws (and are now dead).

Because we established a Circle of Trust, I cannot use my words to share the particulars. However, going around the barn to show you a few drawings doesn’t violate any terms.

My lips remain zipped.

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Did you know I’m slowly switching over to Substack?
You can subscribe or whatever.
It’s free.
It will always be free.

I know exactly what you’re asking yourself.

“Can Angela at Fluid Pudding install a bidet?!”

The answer to that question is: Yes! Since last we spoke, I installed a bidet (with modifications!), fixed a garage door opener, replaced a showerhead and a halogen bulb, purchased bannister brackets, and medicated a guinea pig.

October had an ear infection, so twice each day for fourteen days we had to wrangle her out of the cage, wrap her in a blanket, and force a syringe full of antibiotics down her throat.

Also, a few weeks ago I fell in love with a baby sticker that was affixed to the changing station in a taco dump that was serving up fried bologna tacos.

We really have so much to talk about, but let’s hold off for a bit and just spend some time looking at Claude McGee, who was executed at the Missouri State Penitentiary back in 1951 at the age of 39.

(Claude robbed a house and killed a guy back in 1935, and then in 1948 he killed the guy who helped him kill the original guy by beating him in the head with a hammer.)

I know times have changed (Cole Porter even wrote a song about it!) since 1951. With that said, this was me at 39.

I had decided to grow out my hair (we make our beds and we lie in them…), so I was holding paper behind my head to show how I was floppy on the top and shaved on the sides. I hadn’t yet made any kills. I didn’t own a hammer, but I knew the lyrics to Divine Hammer.

Fact: The last execution at the Missouri State Penitentiary took place in January of 1989, when I was starting the second semester of my freshman year at a university 30 miles away from the gas chamber. I had just gotten my right ear double pierced, and my grandma told me it made me look like a lesbian (and not in a good way). I had forfeited my piano scholarship and was learning how to smoke clove cigarettes. I was a big fan of The Sugarcubes.

Honorable Mentions in the category of Hammer Songs I Know:

For the record, I’m against the death penalty and for looking like a lesbian.

This afternoon we went to the St. Louis Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker. (My friend’s daughter is completely magical as a dragon dancer in this year’s production.) Although photos weren’t allowed during the ballet, I managed to take this one during Act I.

As you can see from the photo, Clara is really digging the nutcracker that Herr Drosselmeyer gave her. (Times have changed since 1892 when I guess it was okay for a creepy guy in a shiny cape to show up at a party, raise a little hell, and give a girl a nutcracker. I know normalizing things is big right now. Can we please normalize Pulling a Drosselmeyer?)

I had never seen The Nutcracker before this afternoon, and the St. Louis Ballet’s performance was really beautiful. My only criticism is that I wish they had employed a live orchestra instead of using recorded music. (Thanks, Obama.)

Here are answers to some of the questions I had during the show.

Has the choreography changed since the original production in 1892?
Yes, because dancers and their bodies have changed since 1892. Also, different versions of The Nutcracker are being developed every year. There are versions where Clara and the nutcracker (who I’ll call Nutty C just because it makes me laugh) kiss, versions that were Americanized to remove any hint of the original German setting, a version that depicts the struggles of African-American people in Philadelphia, and even a Revolutionary War-inspired version with George Washington as Nutty C and King George III as the mouse king.

I don’t think I knew there was a 1993 movie with Macaulay Culkin as Nutty C. I’ll pass on that one. (I’m the only person I know who hates Home Alone. It’s a long and horrible story that’s part of the 17% I’ll never share.)

Did Tchaikovsky know he was composing the music for a dance production?
He did! He was commissioned in 1891 by the director of the Imperial Theatres to compose music for a ballet based on a story titled The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The choreographer for the ballet was Marius Petipa, a guy Tchaikovsky had worked with three years prior when he composed music for The Sleeping Beauty. Petipa, who I keep wanting to call Pepita, knew precisely what he wanted for The Nutcracker, and was able to provide Tchaikovsky with the tempos and exact number of bars needed for each dance. Amazing.

While Tchaikovsky was busting out numbers, a friend of his challenged him to include a tune based on a one-octave scale.

Tchaikovsky: Ascending or descending?
Friend: It doesn’t matter. Whichever.
Tchaikovsky: Do you know that I’m Tchaifuckingkovsky?

So beautiful. What a badass.

(Also, in case you missed the news, I’m on Substack now. This makes me subscribable. This link will take you there…)

Posting at Fluid Pudding daily for the past 30 has reminded me just how much I enjoy posting at Fluid Pudding. I’m definitely not changing the world over here, but I am getting haircuts and helping my kid move across the state and voting and meeting up with old friends and eating toast and celebrating fugitive monkeys and cleaning off my bookshelf and giving myself shots and acquiring loose baby legs and trying to rock the Hindu Monkey God.

(Always put a photo above the fold, they say. This is me as a baby. I could only crawl backwards, so in this photo I am stuck under the couch.)

I also did things this month that I didn’t share with you. For example, yesterday I was preparing to ink a fountain pen, so I took the bottle of ink and began to gently shake it (because it holds components!) without noticing that the lid wasn’t screwed on properly and I continued to shake it until I felt ink dripping down my fingers and that’s when I looked around and saw splatters of ink on my (newish) sweater, the piano, several books, and two blankets. Imagine the words that came out of my mouth! After cleaning up the mess, I ate cake until I felt sick because sometimes life is bullshit.

My only complaint about November is that I’m unable to get my website to hold hands with my e-mail, and most style guides now prefer email over e-mail, but I’m not ready to lose that hyphen. This means I don’t see comments unless I actually look for them, which has become frustrating. SO, to celebrate 30 days of posting after several months of NOT posting, I created a Substack. If I understand it correctly, you can actually subscribe and receive e-mails when I post. On the flip, I’ll receive emails if you comment. Look how we’re both winning.

If you want to subscribe, just follow this link and then hit the Subscribe Now button at the bottom of the post. Please know that I’m never going to make you pay for anything unless I make the decision to not wear clothes, which is unlikely. In other words, don’t bother to do the whole pledge thing. (I’ll continue to post here, too, which means I’ll be double-posting, which means I’ll be creating work for myself but still not charging you unless I make the decision to not wear clothes. Which is unlikely.)

Some people have strong opinions about which woodcased pencil is better—the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni or the Tombow Mono 100. I ordered one of each because I enjoy getting to the bottom of things, which sounds dirty but it isn’t.

Obviously, the Mitsubishi is the better pencil. It’s a little bit harder than the Tombow, which makes it lighter than a liver spot. (Also, everyone I know has a pencil lead stuck somewhere in their body. I mean, you can tell me about yours if you want, but you can also save that story for another time.)

I took this photo of Meredith and her friends shortly before they moved out of their apartment and away from each other.

I decided to commemorate their friendship by carving them up.
And this is how that went.

Finally, Scout’s got a joke for you, but it’s horribly inappropriate.
(It’s about Hitler.)

This morning I met my very favorite Alison for brunch, and that resulted in me sitting behind a bowl of food that looks like this:

Sweet potatoes and feta cheese and apples and cranberries and candied pecans and wild rice and maple vinaigrette dressing. Perfect.

After brunch I went home and baked a pumpkin pie with my mom, and I think I left it in the oven too long because now it looks like this:

Feeling stressed about the pie, I walked upstairs and decided to take a nap with Harper’s cat who looks like this:

And here we are again. I’m feeling sort of Stormy Weather, but sitting on the couch next to a very tall twinkling tree with balls seems to be helping. It looks like this:

Finally, a few days ago I was wearing my overalls and when I checked myself out in the mirror I realized that they are no longer the correct size. I went online, stacked a bunch of coupons on top of a sale, and got a $98 pair of overalls for $37.50. They arrived today and I’m not 100% sold on them but I’m also not trying to impress anyone (and I’m super lazy when it comes to returning things), so they’re staying. They look like this:

(I removed the background because you don’t need to see the litter box, but now I can’t stop looking at my weird squared off arm and I guess that’s what I would look like as an amputee.)

I took this photo at 6:49 this morning. You probably can’t hear it by looking at your screen, but as I was standing outside staring upward at 6:49, the sky whispered, “Go put on a corduroy jacket. Grab a hot coffee and a notebook. Drive to the river. Sit on a bench. Listen to Broadcast. Just stare at the river and soak it in. Then close your eyes. Inhale. Exhale. Get up. Go buy a can of spray paint. Add a scrotum to a stop sign. Steal some gin. Punch a cop. Happiness is its own justification!”

I accomplished exactly half of the sky’s suggestions before it was time to head off to the dentist.

Tomorrow is another day. It always is.

When I’m starting to get low on gas, I like to see if I can match the speed of my car to the number of miles I supposedly have left in my tank. It’s a tiny joy that I get to experience every few weeks and all it really requires is a slight adjustment of ankle angle for every mile that remains.

I recently read Table for Two, which is a gathering of short stories by Amor Towles. Towles is a favorite of mine, and if you haven’t read A Gentleman in Moscow, you need to stop what you’re doing and get started.

You’re going to love it.

Back to Table for Two. One of the stories features a character who ruminates on Thanksgiving, and although I rarely use the word delightful, it’s Delightful. And timely! Here is an excerpt.

The intrinsic challenge of roasting a turkey has led to all manner of culinary abominations. Cooking the bird upside down, a preparation in which the skin becomes a pale, soggy mess. Spatchcocking, in which the bird is drawn and quartered like a heretic. Deep frying! (Heaven help us.) The limitations of choosing a twenty-pound turkey as the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving meal have only been compounded by the inexplicable tradition of having every member of the family contribute a dish. Relatives who should never be allowed to set foot in a kitchen are suddenly walking through your door with some sort of vegetable casserole in which the “secret ingredient” is mayonnaise. And when cousin Betsy arrives with such a mishap in hand, one can take no comfort from thoughts of the future, for once a single person politely compliments the dish, its presence at Thanksgiving will be deemed sacrosanct. Then not even the death of cousin Betsy can save you from it, because as soon as she’s in the grave, her daughter will proudly pick up the baton.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the house where I grew up and how close we lived to the train tracks. I’ve lived out of the house longer than I lived in the house, but I still occasionally wake up with a start in the middle of the night with my first thought being, “It’s just the train.” (But really, it’s just the dog or just the cat or just the guinea pig or just the owl.)

This is the house where I grew up.

 

It’s just the train.