A small mystery solved

I was just reading the comments to this little piece about "bringing back beloved words that nobody uses anymore" and came across this: "Whore’s bath: phr., quick bath washing primarily privates."

Funny! I knew pretty much every phrase anyone had sent in, but not that one. Then I said it out loud and realized I do know it. When I was a little kid I heard my uncle use it to describe the way you bathe when you're visiting relatives and don't want to tie up the bathroom all morning. Instead of taking a regular bath or shower, you just stand at the sink with your shirt off and splash water on your face and armpits. He called it a "horse bath."

This particular uncle was one of my favorite uncles, largely because he had a farm with large animals (including horses) and because he and his wife are such kind and welcoming, down to earth kinds of people. They have ten or eleven kids and usually seemed to have at least a few additional people staying with them (grandparents, in-laws, foster kids, etc.), which meant that there was pretty much always something interesting to do when we visited their place. Growing up I always knew or at least believed that if anything ever happened to my parents, we would all go to his house to live, and that made me feel a little less stressed out about all the horrible things that can happen to parents.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time over the years contemplating that phrase, "horse bath." How did the horses get the water up into their armpits and other important areas? Did they splash it up with their tails somehow? Or with their feet? Maybe they found a running hose and walked in front of it, or lowered themselves into puddles. Whenever I was around horses I made a point of finding their watering trough, in hopes I would come across one bathing, but I never did. Now I know why.

The mystery that remains now is, what did my uncle actually say? I'm sure he knew the "original" version of the phrase – he'd been in the army and is rumored (by my older cousins) to have been quite a bit more colorful in his language as a younger man than I knew him to be later in his life. But I wouldn't have known the word "whore" at that age. So did he really say "horse bath," or did I just think that was what he'd said?

It makes me laugh to think of myself saying "horse bath" all these years and not knowing until just a few minutes ago that there's been this other phrase all along. I guess you really do learn something new every day.

It's the little things (bees, bricks)

This morning I decided to treat myself – I've been being so good all week! – to a decaf mocha from the drive-through coffee place. I love these cool fall mornings and was looking forward to settling in at work with my cozy green cashmere shawl and a stack of mail to answer and my warm sweet drink (with whipped cream and everything) ... However, fate had other plans and the first sip revealed (too late!) that I had been handed the wrong cup. It's a latte, not a mocha. Whether it's a decaf I have no way of knowing, so just to be safe I will be dumping the whole thing and reverting to my standard morning fare, a humble, minty cup of Female Toner. Or actually, I guess today I should go with the PMS Tea, since I'm most definitely PMSing and every little thing that happens is making me feel like bursting into tears, throwing myself down a well, or cutting someone down with an axe à la Raskolnikov the student (I just saw Match Point, finally, and it inspired me to re-read Crime and Punishment, which I am about halfway through now). Luckily I know this part of the cycle never lasts more than a couple of days, so I try to use it as a way to build awarenness and compassion (leading to action) for people who are always feeling stressed out, overwhelmed and at the end of their rope. Making a negative into a positive. Or something.

I still hate it, though. I would love to have been able to take the day off today. I don't feel much like being around other people. Especially my new co-worker, who's the sweetest person in the world but who sounds exactly like Fran Drescher and keeps a running commentary going all day long, remarking on every single thing she is doing every second of the day. Or maybe it just seems that way to me, because I'm feeling so grouchy and irritable today.

Anyhoo. Not much news, though life does continue to delight and amaze me (PMS notwithstanding) on a fairly regular basis. We did our final honey extraction last weekend – a very small harvest for us, with most of the honey left in the hive in hopes that we won't need to feed the bees over the winter. I'll be filtering it this weekend and then storing it in the bucket until we re-open the Saturday market next spring. No need to bottle it right away, and anyway if it crystalizes in the bottle then the labels will get ruined when we put them in the water bath to melt it out before selling.

The hive inspection went well, too. Only one person from the beekeeping class showed up – it was his very first time getting inside a hive, and I enjoyed being able to help him have a good experience with it. I lent my heavy canvas beekeeping jacket to a friend who had forgotten to wear long sleeves and ended up getting stung on the shoulder right through the lightweight linen shirt I was wearing. It hurt, but not nearly as badly as the one on my toe last summer. After a couple of minutes I didn't feel it at all anymore unless I actually touched it. There were also two bees that got in under my veil somehow and got tangled up in my hair. I could hear them buzzing around and feel them struggling to free themselves, and had to walk away from the hives, take off the veil, take my hair down, and comb through it with my fingers to get them out. So now I have two new things to add to my beekeeping supplies list: a couple of heavy thrift store "loaner" shirts to keep in the barn, and a wide-tooth comb to keep in my pocket. I need to get my own veil, too – the kind with a zipper. Or maybe a stylish one-piece! (No, this is not me.)

As for the hive itself, it looks fine. We reversed one hive (moving the brood nest from the top to the bottom, so they have space to grow into over the winter – bees are upwardly mobile) and moved a super full of honey from the stronger hive to the weaker one. We also gave them the wet frames to clean. These are the individual flat frames from which we've removed all the honey we can, though there's still honey stuck to the insides of the cells. We hung them in an empty super on top of the hive, and all week the bees have been licking up every last particle of honey and moving it down into the hive body as part of their winter store. Tomorrow morning I'll be checking in on them, scratching open any remaining sealed cells so they can get at that honey, and giving them the wax cappings from last week, which are also covered with honey. They'll clean those, too, and when they're done I'll have about a quart or so of pure beeswax to melt down and filter.

I don't know what we're going to do with the wax; since there's not a lot of it, my preference would be to use it in salves. We have our own lavender essential oil that we distilled last year, and we don't have our own olive oil but there are plenty of local organic small growers we could use for that. I want to learn how to do essential oils from citrus, too – I have no idea if that's even something we could do, and this isn't a big citrus-growing region, but the oils are so nice! I did some lavender-grapefruit salves a couple of years ago and people loved them.

I know I'm just rambling now but – well, why not?

My other project for the weekend involves moving a pile of 600 weathered red bricks from one side of the valley to the other. Someone was giving them away in the paper, and I happened to be the person to score the entire load. Lucky! They'll make a nice patio, or a path, or edging for raised beds, or a fire pit. Bricks are not cheap and these ones are very nice – no mortar and no broken ones. The only tricky part will be getting them home. Not even tricky, really, just tedious, and a lot of hard work. But, brick by brick, we will get it done.

A tiny moment of history, unmarked except by me (and now, perhaps, by you as well)

See this bridge? It's the bridge I ride across to get to work. Actually, I cross five bridges on my way into town, and this is the fifth and biggest one. It's the one that was torn down last fall, rebuilt over the winter, and dedicated (in the name of a local renowned cheesemaker!) last Friday.

I happened to ride across it just as the crowd was gathering for the dedication. This being an election year, all the important public figures – past, present and future hopefuls – were there, along with several dozen business owners, executive directors, historical figures (including the first guy to get a ticket on the bridge that was being replaced, back in the 1930s), media folks and ordinary citizens like me. I knew or recognized about a third of the people there, which caused me to reflect on my place in this community ... not that I'm by any means an "important person" here, but it felt good to know that the important people know who I am (realizing of course that it's part of their job to pay attention to their constituents and potential supporters). It reminded me that as much as I reprove myself for feeling shy and wanting to hide out, I really do participate and contribute. Which was a gratifying thing to remember.

Anyway, it was a perfect warm blue and gold fall morning, and I am always interested in Occasions and Ceremonies, so I hung around to watch the schmoozing and listen to the speeches. I was standing astride my bike at the edge of the crowd, and as the dedication was wrapping up it occurred to me – a lot of people have already walked and ridden across this bridge today, but if I were to ride across it right now I would be the very first person to cross it after its dedication.

And so I did. I doubt anyone else realized that a monumental event was taking place in the life of that bridge, which may well stand for another hundred years or more (according to its builders). But I'm here to tell you that the first vehicle to cross it after its official naming and dedication was not a fancy government car but a bicycle, and the person piloting that vehicle was not a famous public official but a humble member of the proletariat* of this valley, a working artist who uses the bridge every day.

So yeah! I made my own history. Of course, even after the speeches they still had to finish striping the roadway before the bridge was Officially Open, so the real first person across was someone else, several hours later. Whatever – I still enjoyed my moment.

* Proletariat: The class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live.

Listening to: Jim White – 10 Miles to Go On a 9 Mile Road

Don't you just love her?

One of the things I really like about my job is that it gives me frequent opportunities to subtly propagandize and/or proselytize for my own ideas about how the world should be. Witness exhibit A: this great stock photo of a fabulously voluptuous, not super young, more or less un-made-up and natural-haired woman of color, which I am using for the cover of one of my publications this week, along with a headline still to be finalized but along the lines of "every body is beautiful: get strong, feel fab, celebrate yourself." The story is about a local gym, and most of the photos suggested to me were of the 20-year-old hardbody variety. Which, yeah, is beautiful – of course it is! But kind of over-exposed, and frankly not that inspiring to me, and probably not to a lot of other people, either.

The only person who's questioned it so far was someone who sort of knit her brows and twisted her mouth and said, "But there are no black women in this town." I cringe even just writing it. Because, well, it's basically true. But so what? It's a great photo and I feel happy when I look at her. I love her smile. I'm going with it.

So anyway. Here's to one small score on the side of body-positive messaging in small-town community media. Yeay, me!

In other news, my advanced beekeeping class starts tonight and it's looking like I may be taking over as the head beekeeper of our project before too long here. So that's exciting.

We and some of our neighbors are petitioning Comcast to run their cables up our road. If we're successful, and I'm finally able to get a high-speed Internet connection, I will be able to work from home again. This could totally transform my work life, in a good way. We shall see.

And speaking of my work life, I've been crazy busy the last few days dealing with a crisis for my final remaining freelance client. Her domain registrar (also her host) has apparently gone under, leaving her website down, her domain name expired, and all of her data (which I learned yesterday she has never backed up, not even one single time) held hostage on servers that may not even exist anymore. I rebuilt her entire website in one very long night, painstakingly hand-coding every page from memory, in a text editor no less, and uploading them over my shaky and painfully slow dial-up connection. We bought the .net for her URL (the .org is the one that's being held hostage), and as of this afternoon the interim site is back up. Whew!

My horoscope this week says I've spent enough time relaxing and rejuvenating from past traumas, and I'd better start challenging myself a little more now or the universe will find its own way to snap me out of my comforting cocoon. Getting this site rebuilt and back up and running, I think, qualifies as sufficiently challenging. And this weekend I'm helping supervise a honey extraction and hive inspection to which I've invited about ten people from my beekeeping class.

Hopefully this little flurry of new activity will be enough to keep the universe at bay.

Okay, so maybe it is kind of cool

So I did a little more looking into this mobile clubbing thing, and have decided that it may have some merit as a form of performance art. The in-your-face-ness of it still kind of bugs me – like they're saying to everyone else, "We were invited to a party and you weren't, NYAH!" – but the reality is, it is by definition a public party and if you're in the space, you can participate. You wouldn't even necessarily need an iPod – you could just dance!

I like the idea of people inviting each other to re-imagine the world, and see each other in new ways. Public space is a great place for this to happen.

A young man begins the nod along to his personal stereo and a couple of moments later his toe tapping has crossed the invisible line into dancing. People look bemused, embarrassed and then unnerved as they realise he isn't the only one. The space is suddenly teeming with dancers, moving and grooving to their own silent soundtrack, seemingly oblivious to the unspoken codes of behaviour we all abide by each day ...

Watching dance in the context of a train station feels strange. A surreal, dreamlike atmosphere settles across the space and it is unclear who is the performer and who is the audience. Dance is usually contained within venues like theatres or clubs, with all the conventions and structures of 'performance' and we rarely come face to face with it in any other contexts. There is a deep seated fear of dancing in public, as if is says something dangerous about us: either, 'I am drunk' or 'I am insane'. [read more]

I think part of what bugged me initially about the mobile clubbing thing was the fact that I couldn't imagine anything like that ever happening where I live. In a way, big cities provide a lot more freedom and privacy than small towns – you can afford to be thought insane in public, because you'll probably never see any of those people again, anyway. That's not the case where I live, which ups the ante quite a bit. If you run through the streets naked in a town like this, half the people you work with are likely to see you in person and the other half will know about it before you even get to your office the next morning. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway. I've been peripherally involved lately in trying to get approval for a public art project, and it's been kind of depressing to see how hard it is to get approval to do anything – let alone anything really provocative or even just marginally interesting. Art graffiti, stickering, stenciling, flyering, guerilla gardening, the violin player on the corner, and other kinds of DIY un-approved public art always wake me up more than the statue with the plaque surrounded by petunias (summer) and pansies (winter). As soon as I'm free of my obligation to this group – just eighteen more days! – I want to start putting my energy into more unofficial kinds of action.

A hundred million bottles washed up on the shore

I ran across this article today about "mobile clubbing:" hundreds of people subscribed to a notification list converge on a public spot and dance in silence, each listening to his or her own private music on his or her own private iPod (or similar).

My first thought was, "Man, how depressing is that?" The thought of all those people going to the trouble to come together like that, only to remain plugged into an isolated, personal universe that nobody else can share. Not to mention all the other people in the station who didn't get the message, don't have iPods, and don't know what's going on – until someone explains it to them, giving them the opportunity to feel even more excluded from the frenzy of excitement that is life in the twenty-first century than they already do ....

Or maybe it's actually not depressing at all. Maybe these folks really are blazing new trails in the definition of community – showing how you can be part of something larger than yourself while still asserting and celebrating your own uniquely exuberant and unassailable identity, or something like that. Maybe an event like that could be a springboard for community, if you meet new people there who then become part of your life. Maybe you could create playlists to distribute to others on the list, or share a set of earphones (if you don't mind dancing really, really close to the person you're sharing them with).

Whatever – it sounds lonely and depressing to me. The whole point of listening to music on earphones is that nobody else can hear what you're hearing – it instantly isolates you from everyone around you. That's maybe not such a problem if you're running or working out or sitting on the train or otherwise just wanting to be left alone, or listening to audiobooks in the car while your partner sleeps, or working at a desk where the incessant screaming of the idiots on your "comedy" channel might disturb the people next to you. But if I'm going to go dancing, I want to be able to dance with other people, not just next to them.

I guess it's a good thing I wasn't invited.

Good thing they're stretchy(or: Behold, my most frivolous andself-indulgent entry of all time,not counting the end)

Tights, that is. Or leggings, really, if you're going to be strict about the definition. I'm feeling torn this season between irritation that everyone else is now copying the winter legwear I've depended on for more than 25 years (irritated in anticipation of next year, when they go out of style again and everyone will think I'm stuck in 2006, when in fact I'm really stuck in 1980, the year I fell in love with my first pair), and elation that their newly fashionable status means they're now being made in millions of different colors and materials, so I can stock up for those lean years when all you can find is black and gray.

Two things are fueling my obsession: the weather, and the fact that I'm now back on the bike on a more or less regular basis. It's too cold to keep wearing my summer uniforms, and my interim uniform (which involves jeans and boots) isn't comfortable to ride in. So I'm now working on my new winter uniform, which will be based on warmth, comfort, and ridability. The prototype I'm wearing today is all black, which I'm really trying to get away from, and consists of my favorite old skinny cardigan over a wifebeater over a cotton camisole, stretchy canvas ruffle skirt from Brooklyn Industries (thanks for the tip on those guys, Julie!), platform ankle boots, warm wool socks and capri-length leggings that are really an old pair of running tights my sister gave me about fifteen years ago.

The tights are the only part that really isn't working for me today, because they're kind of shiny and that's just ... not right ... somehow ... Overall, though, I'm satisfied. The practicality of the leggings really asserted itself this morning as I was riding to work, allowing me to wait at stop lights in the middle of traffic with one leg up on the top tube without flashing anyone a view of anything they really don't need to see first thing in the morning. Or at any other time.

So! It's official: the 2006/07 winter uniform will be leggings-based, and skirt or smock-based. Now I just need to figure out the colors (brown and black, plus red, plus a pear-green cashmere shawl I've been wrapping around my neck at night – are you sick of this yet?) and the boots. These black ones I have on today are way past their prime and as of late last spring were beginning to leak. And my black cardigan is on its last leg as well; this weekend I noticed it's starting to unravel at the back of the neck.

Hair-wise, I've declared the next year or so "the year of the topknot." Now that the perm is about half grown out I'm in that awful state of in-between that can be resolved only by cutting it all off, or keeping it all contained in a style that obscures the transition between poodle hair and, say, golden retriever hair. In my case I'm piling it all in a messy kind of nest on top of my head and letting it grow. Every couple of months I have another inch or so cut off. In another year it'll be all back to normal, never to be permed, colored, or otherwise abused ever again. In the meantime, the topknot makes me look a couple of inches taller.

Am I really going to actually post this ridiculous, boring entry? Last night I was thinking about this blog, and how ever since I moved it into a more public space and told a few people about it, I no longer write about anything private or important anymore. My first online journals were a lot more intimate, a lot more interesting, and a lot more useful to me as a tool for reflection and learning. This one is only mildly entertaining at best, and at its worst, reads a lot like my friend's 12-year-old daughter's MySpace.

Living with Mr. A is probably the biggest reason for the change. I feel happier and more secure, and I have another person's privacy and feelings to consider now, so I don't reveal as many deep, angsty feelings as I used to. Also, because I'm happier these days, I don't have as many deep, angsty feelings. In addition, I was realizing last night, all the time I spent writing about those feelings (while I still believe it was useful and maybe even necessary at the time) kept them at the forefront of my attention and caused them to seem much bigger and more important than they maybe really were.

(Such awful sentences I'm writing, lately!)

The point being, that while I may be writing less because I'm happier, I think it's also true that I'm happier because I'm writing less. And when I do write, these days I'm mostly writing about – giving attention and importance to – things that make me happy, instead of things I'm upset about or problems I'm trying to solve. So now, it's the happy, frivolous and upbeat that is looming large in my mind.

Not that all that other stuff has gone away. It hasn't, and I don't expect it ever will. Maybe that's why I can stop obsessing about it. I've finally clued in that it's never going away, so I no longer have to put my happiness on hold while I try to figure out what I'm supposed to "do" about it all. This is not the first time I've discovered this idea. Probably it isn't the last, either.

As for the gold lamé leggings, no, that is not me in the photo at the top of this entry. But I am planning an outfit around them that I think will be an enormous hit at my office.

What are you wearing today?

Nothing to report(but the soup was good)

Well, there's always something, I guess. Just sometimes not anything very interesting.

1. It was a fabulous fall weekend but because Mr. A was (is) sick with some weird fever and flu thing, we did not go to the bluegrass fest but instead stayed close to home. Long naps were taken, homemade pumpkin soup and chicken pot pie were, er, made (at home!) (by me!), and dogs' feet were cleaned to within an inch of their lives. The kitchen floor was also cleaned. Now that our house guests have come and gone I've pledged to never again let the floor return to the shocking state it was in before I scrubbed it down for their arrival.

2. That was a fun visit, by the way. A college friend who now lives in Seattle with her husband, plus lots of food and wine and talking late into the night, which I haven't done in such a long time. Thank you, friend, for visiting us! And come on back any time you like. The floor will be sparkling when you get here!

3. One of the naps was of the two-hour variety, and took place on a Therma-rest and a pile of pillows and blankets on the leaf-strewn ground under the big sycamore tree in our front yard. The branches are so long they touch the ground, creating a giant round room about 30 feet in diameter. These trees have enormous leaves and in the fall, when they're starting to dry out but are mostly still attached to the tree, they make the most thrilling shivery autumn leaves kind of sound when the wind blows. Lying on my back with all my pillows and blankets in that big blue and yellow room, looking up through the branches and listening to the leaves whisper, is one of my favorite ways to spend a warm autumn afternoon.

4. Last week Mr. A's old boss was in San Francisco for a meeting and invited us to meet him on Union Square for dinner, which we did. It was a perfect, warm, full-moon night – the kind that always makes me believe maybe I really could stand living in a city, after all – until the freezing fog rolls in and suddenly everything feels damp, dirty and dangerous again. I had a delicious sole (Petrale sole to be exact, which I have recently learned is not really a sole at all but, in fact, a flounder!) and was inspired by the black-and-brown (and very clean – I'm obsessed with clean floors now!) cork-tiled floor of the restaurant. It was an easy-going but elegant place, expensive and old-school, with dark polished wood paneling and waiters in long white aprons and those big heavy silver forks. I love that.

5. What else? Not much. My mom's cousin won a prize for growing one of the largest pumpkins in Idaho this year, weighing in at close to 1000 lbs. The boy whose desk is next to mine at work has been busted for Internet abuse and is now not allowed to go online anymore, so instead he listens to this horrible comedy station on iTunes radio, which is beginning to drive me crazy. He keeps the volume low so all I can really hear is people yelling as if they're really, really angry (I guess this passes for comedy in some places), but I can never understand what they're yelling about. I'm thinking of giving him a set of my old headphones as an early Halloween present. My neck and ribs have been hurting for the last nine hours or so, and I don't know why. Possibly I'm getting the same flu thing that Mr. A has had. Must take long hot bath and go to bed early tonight.

6. In case you're wondering, I think I really could go on listing random thoughts like this forever. But will not.

It's raining!

In celebration of the first rain of the season, I am teaching myself a new song on the harmonica! You can listen to my inspiration thanks to a link on the website of one of the people whose aprons are going in the mail this week I promise (and I hope you know who you are) – which link turned me on to SpeedyShare.com, a free service that "allows everyone to upload files to our servers, and publish the download links on the World Wide Web." Cool!

A song to play in the rain

Don't worry about the weird file – it's not a virus, just a song I copied from a CD (you can read about the file format here, if you're still worried). You should be able to play it in iTunes, QuickTime or other standard players. I will probably be using this tool a lot if it works for my handful of loyal readers (assuming you have a very small hand). So let me know how it goes.

Yay, rain!