Anyway, just stopping by on a Saturday morning to wave hello and to join the chorus of those extolling (or lamenting a little) the Fitbit. David Sedaris wrote about his Fitbit experience here.http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/stepping-out-3
It's basically a pedometer with a wireless internet connection that tracks your activity. I bought one, the lower-end model that attaches to clothing or can be carried in a bag, soon after reading about DS's experience. I was, apparently, late to the game, however. My secretary was there at my unboxing. She yelled "You got a Fitbit?!" My colleague in the next cube had, I learned then, been wearing one for months. (She's a perfectly maintained individual, I might add).
My Fitbit has become in the last few weeks the Dragon Mother I never had. It reports daily on my movements. It makes happy faces when I am walking and sick faces when I am not. The goal is 10,000 steps a day. To get to that, I find that I need to take a proper walk, at least one, sometime during the day.
I think I have noticed at least a little health benefit. I have more breath on uphill climbs, but the greater one has been the walking in weathers and conditions that I would have otherwise avoided. My best walks so far have been in near dark and or in slight drizzle. The wildflower situation here in Vermont is, at the moment, spectacular. And the Queen Ann's Lace and Goldenrod and all that, as well as all the green of the ferns and leaves, never looks better than in the wet and the gloaming.
Last night, it was nearly 8 PM before I got out of the house and that basically means "dark" at this time of year. It was a proper summer night, though, with several neighbors entertaining outdoors, with porch lights lit, murmured conversations, campfire-scented air. I saw the big moon reflected off the spine of a metal barn roof, the hills around the valley where we live silhouetted against a dark blue sky, and bats. Lots of bats. This was really good because we have been worried about bat populations here lately. They flapped around overhead in that mad bat fashion, as could only be traced by an autistic kid with an etch a sketch.
What a treat. Thank you Ma FitBit.
And that was the second time this week where my Fitbit paid such a dividend. The other day, when I dropped off Shackleton for his cross country practice in a mountainy-neighborhood on the other side of town, I walked instead of getting back into the car to run errands. I had my iPhone with me and snapped a few pictures. One is at the top of this post. (File under, "otherwise I would have missed this"). Here are a couple of others.
Apparently you have to leave your couch to see these things.
I was reading David Sedaris's Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls in an insomniac hour this morning. He is a diarist, among other things, and his piece on his diary was the bit I read at 4:30 AM. It reminded me that I wanted to get down a few bits about last weekend in NYC before I forget. I don't have a diary, this is as close as I come, so here ya go.
Sarah and I had a rushed little dinner at the Red Flame Diner on West 44th Street on Saturday, just before we headed back to Rockefeller Center to see about those standby tickets to SNL (see the previous post). It was early, just after six. We got a booth by the far wall and Sarah got the seat with the view of the street. I noticed a big family group sitting by the window, six people or so, including three little kids as I took my seat with my back to them.
My hearing, as you know if you've been following along, is more than half shot. My right ear can now pick up a jet engine firing and not much more. The left one is only so-so. I have had bad luck with hearing aids so I persist in au naturel quasi deafness. Anyway, just after we'd put in our orders (cheeseburger for me, chicken wings for her), the waitress started ferrying plates passed us to the family by the window. I heard, or thought I heard, one of the kids, about four years old, call out: "My food is here! I'm so excited! I'm so thankful that this food exists!"
"Did that kid just say, "I'm so thankful that this food exists?" I asked Sarah, quietly. She confirmed. I'm telling you, the enthusiasm in that voice... Words fail. Another minute or two went by and the same voice, cutting through the background noise and my bad ears said, "Will you take a picture of these wonderful chicken nuggets?"
I couldn't hear the answer. I hope it was "yes."
Earlier in the day Sarah and I had gone down to Chelsea where a high school friend of mine, who is now a bona fide New York painter, had a reception for a gallery show. We people of northern Vermont do not have a lot of opportunities to ride freight elevators to gallery openings and I wasn't about to miss this one. Plus my friend is really super nice and not intimidating at all like "New York painter" might suggest. Chelsea also obliged us in providing some echt New York downtown scenery. Sarah has been interested in photography (read, we bought her a good camera and sent her to photo camp last summer) and she took the pictures in this post. I love them. Budding New York artist anyone? I'm so thankful!
So, you know that altar I have built to David Sedaris in my living room? (At least the living room in my head). I just added on a new transept and apse and lady chapel because I got to meet and greet him last night with 350 of his other new best friends in Montreal. He was there to sign books - any book at all it seemed, though most people apparently stuck with Sedaris's own books. He started at 6 PM, read for 40 minutes and then signed for more than four hours! I know cause we had to leave after the reading to make a scheduled dinner with friends. We had dinner and then I asked Whusband to drop the Understudy and I back at the bookstore. Sure enough, two hours later the line was still moving along at about a person every five minutes. A lovely bookstore manager took pity on me and the Understudy (the only kid there - no school this week because of Thanksgiving) and told us to find a comfy place to sit and he would summon us when the last person had gotten their book signed. This finally happened at about 11:15...
D.S. was particularly sweet to the Understudy, which made me like him even more. She has a blog of her own these days and wrote up the whole encounter very nicely. Here's the link. Just to tempt you to make the jump, three words: "gifts were exchanged."
Watching this marathon signing session put me in mind of that Sedaris classic, "The Stadium Pal," q.v.
OK - Someone remind me to talk about the John Lennon hagiography they played on American Masters on PBS this week. I mean, we all love John Lennon, but come on! One point: the music he and Yoko played together in the early 70s was unlistenable then and 40 years and a martyred superstar later, it is no better.
David Sedaris has been staying with me this week. Rather, I have been staying with him, as much as I can. I have taken early morning drives, alone, to the store or the bank or where ever, before the rest of the family is awake these last few days(I'm on vacation so not commuting at the moment) so I can listen to the audio version of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. I even played a couple of the (nearly) G-Rated essays for the kids. Being my kids, they loved them too. Shackleton is now putting in requests for "that depressed guy."
I didn't realize that David's sister Amy was also famous as a writer and performer. I stumbled over her on Youtube in a little Internet Sedaris stalking. (Did I mention that our plans for sponging off relatives on the Jersey Shore this week had fallen through?). She was charming and funny in a bunch of David Letterman interviews, if a bit manic.
So, having been hanging with the Sedarises these last few days I have this feeling that I actually know them. David's family is his best material and the fact that some little incident or description of a personal characeristic might embarrass a near relation is no reason for him not to discuss it - in punishing, unflinching detail.
It's pretty clear that all these Sedarises (six kids in all: Lisa, David, Amy, Gretchen, Tiffany and Paul - I told, you I am getting to know them) - are really bright, and kind of normal (they watched TV a lot as kids; their Dad was an engineer at IBM), but also that they are, to varying degrees, crazy. At least David is at least half crazy -like DSM-IV-diagnosable-crazy. Fortunately, it seems to be the half that allows continued function, like one bad kidney or a deaf ear. Or, more likely, his hinks (OCD and maybe some other stuff too) are a sine qua non of his writing, a necessary ingredient in the Sedaris alchemy. I remember a friend in college telling me that the great thing about Manhattan is that it's an island, and the terrible thing about is that it's an island. So, kind of like that.
As with all my enthusiasms, I am here to share. Upon learning of my recent Sedaris crush, the brilliant Lulu Labonne sent me this link to an episode of This American Life that includes a rib-binder from Sedaris and other great essays read by Sarah Vowell (another Lulu recommendation) and Anne Lamott. All three essays (and performances) are gems. So when you have 55 minutes or so and some head phones, listen through. Link to Lulu's pick
I would love to know what you think about them.
Shackleton Speaks IV Fun with Febreze
I don't have the nerve/inclination/heart to lay my own loved ones quite so bare as David S. does. I mean, I went to law school and all, which means I am constantly thinking about unintended consequences, and the kids are still too small to really fight back - Shackleton, the brilliant but learning disabled heir to the Woolfoot Throne and Lands, can't even read properly yet. So, I try not to overshare. Still, he's just so funny, and maybe an agent will call and make him rich and famous if I tell about him, so here's some of what he has been up to lately.
First, a little background. One day last week it rained here in Biblical fashion. On that day, I was at work. When I returned home, the Understudy came outside (for the first time that day) and saw that the side door on the minivan had been left open, all day. Everything within four feet of the opened door was soaked. The next day, the van smelled bad. Really bad.
My kids watch lots of TV and the Understudy in particular is moved by commercials to want to buy things. Since she has no money, she wants me to buy these things. She is frustrated by my commitment to buying whatever is cheapest. She wants me to buy name brands, preferably heavily advertised things. She wants me to buy things that it is not clear any one should have or want. Like "Bagelfuls" and "Danactive" and air fresheners. After the car soaking incident, I agreed to buy a horking great spray bottle of "Febreze". This product is, as my kids could tell you, probably by reciting the commercial verbatim, is supposed to make bad-smelling fabrics smell better.
This morning, as I was trying to steam milk at our broken cappuccino machine, I felt something wet on my back. Shackleton was spraying me with Febreze
"Stop that!"
"It will make you smell better."
Then he sprayed the dog and chased her around the table saying. "I want to sniff you!" (Oversharing? It was the Febreze-splashed fur that he wanted to test, but even he knew this sounded sick-making).
Channeling Charlie Chaplin
The other night, while I was trying to read some blogs, Shack came down and asked me to find the top hat we bought for him at the Halloween store last year.
He didn't wear it for Halloween but we both liked the look of it so I bought it for him. Since I also like hat boxes, I had a good place for the topper and I told him where he could find it. Next, he wanted a shirt and tie and a blazer.
The only blazer he had was the one he wore at pre-school graduation (comically too small). His only ties are part of his school uniform and that wasn't the look he wanted. He found once-white dress shirt (also a uniform item) and contented himself with that. Then he asked for a golf club. I found one.
"OK," he said. "Now I need an assistant. Someone who won't cry."
Turns out he was trying to recreate a scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie The Idle Class that we saw here months ago. (The assistant had to be willing to be hit with the golf club).
Here's a bit of the movie - edited at the pace suitable to the audiences of 1921.
OK. I'm off. Happy fourth of July everybody! On that note, I was antique shopping very briefly today, just long enough to buy a vintage Union Jack for the pencil jar on my desk. The Understudy is fairly daring me to wave it at the parade tomorrow. Should I?
