Wednesday, November 27, 2013

A tale of Thanksgiving and Intrigue, Reprise

I've just discovered that it's after 1:00 and I haven't gotten much done yet today, so I'm re-posting this rather than writing a brand new thanksgiving story. 

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Every year, growing up, my mom would make a dessert for Thanksgiving, which, I later learned, no one else had heard of.  It’s not just “cranberry pudding”, but rather, it’s always referred to as “Aunt Gladys’ steamed cranberry pudding.”

Gladys was my great aunt, a woman I never met.  She was my mother’s actual aunt, and every time my mom made the pudding, she would tell a story about the aunts.  

According to my mother, her mother owned a punch bowl that her sisters would sometimes borrow. (According to my uncle, though, the three sisters shared the punchbowl, which was crystal, with buttons and bows pattern and matching glasses.)  Sharing the punch bowl between three households meant that it would have to be shipped here and there, and there was a great deal of planning involved. It’s a little unclear to me now where the truth lies, but I’ll go with my mother’s version.

According to my mother, her mother owned it, and gave it to her.  My grandmother was the youngest daughter, as is my mother (and, by the way, so am I. Not that I'm coveting the punch bowl.).  The punch bowl became hers -- maybe on her wedding day, which was, in fact, one of the last times the punch bowl was used.  Or maybe I’m making that part up.  Stick with me, readers.  This story is abut to pick up!

Aunt Lou, sister to Aunt Glady’s, called one day and asked to borrow the punch bowl, probably in about 1962.  Or was it 1959?  This is the kind of diversion the story would take, and is strangely laced with geographic detail.  (Route talk.)  When they came by to get it, did they take the Hudson Avenue and cross the Broad Street Bridge? Or Empire Boulevard?  At any rate, Lou either called to reclaim her punch bowl, or borrow it from my mother, and my mother complied.

I know.  This is the part in the story like when the alcoholic walks towards home and his hungry waiting family with a cashed paycheck in his pocket, and doesn’t pass the bar, but instead, stops in for just one drink. It’s that moment, when my obedient mother loans out the punch bowl, that gives this story a little movement.

Lou moved to Florida shortly after borrowing the punch bowl, taking it with her.  Gasp!  I know. 

Then, poor Aunt Lou becomes senile, or at least that’s the excuse that’s offered, and forgets to return the punch bowl to my mother.  She eventually dies, and her grief-stricken husband, Uncle Charlie, not knowing the whole deal about the punch bowl, gives it to a neighbor. In Florida.  Some new neighbor that no one knows.  I know.  Gasp here again, please.

This only happened about 50 years ago, so my mom is still, and I mean this in the fondest way possible, just the tiniest bit bitter about it.  I’m a little bitter by association, because I like to imagine that the punch bowl, were it not for the Terrible Uncle Charlie, would have been mine, passing from youngest daughter to youngest daughter. 

So at any rate, this story came up every single time we had the cranberry pudding during my childhood, exactly twice a year: once at Thanksgiving, and once at Christmas.

I decided to carry on this tradition with my own children.  For about 10 years in a row, I made the pudding, and told the story of the punchbowl.  A story that you may find a little dull, but really, it has intrigue, confusion, theft, betrayal, disappointment.  What more could one want in a story? 

On about year eleven, I forgot to make it.  (Please gasp here too, if you can.)  At dessert time, I mentioned it.  

“Oh my gosh!  I forgot to make Aunt Gladys’ steamed cranberry pudding,” I exclaimed, as we gobbled pumpkin pie.

And my kids just stared at me blankly.  “Huh?”

As unbelievable as it seems, they had absolutely no memory of the pudding, the punch bowl, or anything.  Like they had fallen into some weird spell, a form of amnesia that only involved the pudding and the punch bowl. 

So I told the story, and they didn’t even seem to recognize it.  But I think they got the point that This is Who They Are, and they damn well better remember that story in the future, because these are their people. Their people are still discussing a punch bowl that has been missing for 50 years, and still haggling over who was at fault, who owned it, and most of all, saying, sheesh, Uncle Charlie, what were you thinking?

Because that’s what families do.  They love and they lose and they squabble, and they cling to odd details, but most importantly, they share their stories.

As an epilogue, I will tell you that my sister found a punch bowl that fit the description of ours on E-bay.  All of the cousins, aunts, and sisters kicked in a few bucks each, and we’ve got it back.  It lives with my sister now, but I’m pretty sure its rightfully mine – youngest to youngest, and so on.

I’ll give you the recipe, which I’m pleased to say I know by heart, but you must promise to tell the story of the punch bowl as you eat it, because it matches the pudding itself. A little bit confusing, a little bit sour, sweet in a lump in the throat kind of way, and quite rich.  Overall, delicious.

Aunt Glady’s Steamed Cranberry Pudding
2 heaping cups fresh cranberries
½ cup molasses
1 1/3 cup flour
2t baking soda
½ cup warm water

  1. Sweep the kitchen floor.
  2. If you’re lucky enough to have a child around, pull a chair over to the sink for them to stand on.  Fill the sink with cold water, pour the cranberries in, and let the child sort through for the bad ones.  Use this time to talk about the punch bowl.  Be prepared for water everywhere.  If there’s not child around, wash the cranberries in the ordinary way.
  3. Cut the cranberries in half manually, and chase them around the kitchen for a while. Pick them up from your cleanish floor, and put them back in the bowl.  Or, if you don’t have that kind of time, toss them in the food processor and pulse for a few seconds so they’re sort of in half. 
  4. Add flour and toss it all about.  Add molasses.
  5. Add the soda to the warm water.  Pour into the cranberry mixture, stir, and immediately begin steaming.
  6. About the steaming.  My mom always steams it in coffee cans, two-pound empty Maxwell house cans, to be exact. I don’t drink the canned Maxwell house, but each year, I’d go out and purchase some, and drink it for a while, just for the can, because it was part of the recipe. After a few years, I realized you can actually buy pudding molds.  Unless you’re a real purist, do that, because the Maxwell house, not so good. 
  7. Lightly grease the mold, pour the cranberry goo into it, and put the mold (covered) into a pot of boiling water.)  Make it so the mold actually sits on the bottom, and the water comes about half-way or two-thirds of the way up the side of the mold.  If the mold is bobbing around in the water, disaster will ensue.  Trust me on this.
  8. Turn the heat down to simmer, and steam for one and a half to two hours.  I know, that’s a huge range, and how will you know?  The point is, it doesn’t matter.  This step is just to give ample time to really dig into the punch bowl story.  Claim it as your own.
  9. Make sauce for the pudding: 

Simmer together:
½ cup butter,
1 cup sugar
½ cup evaporated milk
1 t vanilla

Slice the pudding, and serve it in a bowl with the sauce.  

Enjoy, my friends.  Happy thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

A big rambly horoscope with many bugs and no pictures.


Aries (3/21 – 4/19):  Do people really believe that radiation is getting more concentrated as it approaches the west coast?  Think about it, humans!  That's not how physics works.  Not that leaking radiation is ever a good thing, but a small amount of something dumped into a huge ocean gets diluted, not concentrated.  Sheesh.  Quit going to the dentist and you'll more than make up for it.  (Keep brushing your teeth and flossing, though, Aries. Do I sound more maternal than horoscopal?  Oops.)  Whereever we go, there we are.  Lucky you!  Lift your people up with natural merriment this week.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):  I was listening to a podcast about urination the other night (Try not to judge.)  It turns out ... drumroll... that all mammals empty their bladders at the same rate!  Whether you're an elephant with a huge bladder, or a mouse with a tiny one, it takes 21 seconds to empty it!  I think that's the coolest fact I know right now.  I'm going to stop taking the temperature of my coffee water (because really, 175 degrees, I'm so over you) and start timing my pee.  Taurus, if you're prone to conspiracy theories, think about the whole bladder thing.  Does it seem, um, strange to you -- all the mammals, some who actually live on grassy knolls, peeing in 21 seconds, which happens to be the age of legal drinking, and the number of letters in electroencephalagraph AND multidimensionalities?  Coincidence?  I don't think so either, Taurus.  Be careful.

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21):  Did anyone else hear the Radiolab episode about pet cremation?  (You see what I mean about the dragonflies?  At least they don't spend their short lives listening to podcasts about pet cremation.)  Anyway, I couldn't get myself too worked up about the fraud, which is that you get different ashes back -- it's not Fluffy, it's a cupfull of Great Dane.  They discovered this by handing in a fake fur cat stuffed with lard and hamburger meat, and they got back ashes containing bones.  Is that so terrible?  But, d will happen when I do the genetic testing?  I'll turn out to be Asian or tall or spatially intelligent or not so irritable?  What would be the 23 and Me equivalent of sending in a fake fur cat stuffed with Big Macs?  Gemini, back to you:  your future looks very very bright and loud.  Bring ear plugs.

Cancer (6/22 – 7/21)  There's so much discussion about what it means to be human.  Is it the thumb, or the ability to be tender with the other Homo sapiens, or awareness of mortality?  Do you think insects sit around wondering what it means to be bug?  I doubt it.  They just fly around, eating, playing with their friends, pollinating, laying eggs, laying traps, laying on hands.  Oh wait, they don't do that, because they don't have hands!  Cancer, use your opposable digits for excellence this week.  I mean it.  This is a real horoscope.

Leo (7/23 – 8/22):  Speaking of opposable digits, when I was about 25 and rode the bus all the time, I used to knit constantly.  One day, this woman approached me about a charity she had started for people who had lost their thumbs.  It had a clever name that I can't remember now, like "No Opposition!" or "Thumbs Away!"  Anyway, somehow it turned into me painstakingly writing out (by hand) a complicated gansey sweater pattern and mailing it to her in the US mail, and I never heard back and she stopped riding the bus.  Now that I think back on it, it seems so unlikely.  (Does that seem like a real scam? A fake charity for the thumbless, designed to get knitting patterns? In the US Mail?)  But more importantly, why would someone helping the thumbless even consider knitting? Isn't that like eating cake in front of dieters?  Leo, do fancy thumb tricks this week, but not in front of the dog.  It just makes her feel bad.

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  Speaking of bugs, I was making a giant dragonfly out of wire and sheer fabric the other day, and someone said something about how she's just waiting for the other shoe to drop, referring to elderly parents.  And Virgo, that pretty much defines mortality.  We groove along in the sweet spots, knowing that all manner of shoes and boots are hovering up there, poised to drop at any moment.  Don't look up!  But enjoy it while you can.  

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):   And speaking of dragonflies, someone commented how sad it is that some dragon flies only live for 24 hours.  Au contraire!  That's the happiest thing evah.  Because for those 24 hours, they're a dragonfly!  Key word = fly!  They have four wings that move independently, which is more mobility than any other species.  Okay, I may have made that up about any other species, but the rest is true.  I know people with zero wings who have spent 34 years in a cubicle.  Its longer, both technically and psychically, but is it better?  Is there a fate worse than cubicle?  Libra, avoid the cubicle when possible.

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21):  I sat down to wait for food in a teriyaki restaurant today, and we noticed a giant note left on a napkin at the abandoned next table that read, "This food was so burnt that we couldn't eat it."  The proprietor cleared their table, read the napkin, and then served us our own burnt food without comment.  I'm not sure what to make of that, Scorpio.  But I did appreciate seeing a giant note.  It was almost like a message in a bottle, with less bottle and more indigestion.  Your week will be like that too.  Less bottle, more messages.

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21):  When Little M was here last week, she said she'd been in a store with hats recently, and everyone asked her which one she wanted to buy.  "Buy a hat?  If I need a hat, my mom will knit me one!"  She said that before she realized that it sounds a little snotty.  But the fact of the matter is, she's right.  There's a lot of buzz about the new knitting store here, and I'll confess that I'm making her Valley Garb, the sweet little hat pattern designed just for us.  We do live in the Handmade Hat Capitol of the Radio Free World, after all. (I noticed that today.  Every single person I saw this morning was wearing a handmade hat.) Speaking of Radio Duvall, they're having a fundraiser on 12/14, and they need all of the stuff you normally need: music, food, drink, stuff.  Join up generously unless you think we should remain more focused on handmade hats and less the farm report.

Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19): Last week, I rushed home from my booty call job; usually that place just makes me want to drink, but I don't, at least not right away, which I believe earns me a few points in the mature column.  Not that we're keeping score.  But anyway, I was trying to make the house cozy (meaning above 52 degrees) before M arrived and I was doing too many things at once -- making cake, making frosting, making dinner, making a fire, making up my mind.  I slowed down to make the fire, because that's the only way it works.  In fact, arson mystifies me.  It's not easy to start a fire.  Oh, right, gasoline!  At any rate, the frosting was boiling on the stove, and the snake got out of it's cage and Jeffrey needed attention.  So I shoved a bunch of wood in the stove and went back to tend the frosting, but the fire went out rather than burning, which is disappointing, because if we believe in destiny a fire is born to burn, a gum wall is born to be sticky and gross, and I was born to review permits for wetland and stream impacts.  And the pile of wood lodged itself against the door, blocking it from being opened.  It wasn't as bad as the last time it happened, when I was trying to burn a 17 page hand-written unabomber-ish letter from the guy we absolutely won't call the Outerwear Stalker for the obvious reasons.

Anyway, I did the usual unsuccessful things that people do, like wait for it to rot but it doesn't so you make a fuse out of candle wick, dip it in gasoline, thread it into the woodstove chamber and light the end.  Things like that.  Capricorn, where have you been lately?  And are you wondering when we'll ever get to your horoscope?  I know.  Here it is.  Your week will be a strange mix of the fire not starting, and then nearly blowing up in your face.  That's not entirely bad, though, Cap.  But I do recommend eye protection.  

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18):   Speaking of arson and so on, I heard a PSA on the radio the other day, it started with, "If your house was on fire, would you wait a week to call the fire department?"  Then there was this long radio silence (really!)  during which I thought, "YES!  I had no idea they'd be advertising this particular nagging thought of mine on the radio!"  I was super excited, because I had no idea where they were going with it.    But after the pause the baritone came back on and said, "Of course you wouldn't.  So why would you wait for a mammogram."  Shoot.  I hate it when it's a rhetorical question and I get it wrong.  Am I the only one who has secret fantasies that my house burns down?  Fess up, people.  Aquarius, regret is the future tense of indecision.  Or, the inverse, the past tense of regret is indecision.  I heard that on Welcome to Nightvale.  Make decisions before they make you, Aquarius.

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20) So, it turns out that the British spy who was found dead inside a padlocked duffel bag in a bathtub died accidentally.  Duh.  Pisces, be careful with that shit.  Accidents happen.  Oh, and speaking of weird accidents?  I saw a pair of scissors in the middle of the road today.  Right in the roundabout.  Did anyone else see that?  No running with scissors either, Pisces.  

Friday, November 15, 2013

Be Interesting Month!

I've been thinking a lot about the recent This American Life episode that provides rules on what not to talk about.  I've always assumed it was people who are boring, not topics, but this approach seems much kinder, so I'm in.  The off limits items are below.  I'd like to confess right here that I have done most of these but I'm making a pact right here on the internets to try harder to be interesting.

  1. Route talk  (I agree, this is THE WORST.)
  2. Period talk (menstruation)
  3. How you slept
  4. Diet
  5. Health
  6. Dreams
  7. Money
For just two people, I'm proud of the healthy dent we made in this
cake at one sitting!
I have a few to add:
  • the detailed plots to movies or books.
  • the back story about who's related to who in a minor anecdote.  ("It was my hairdresser's best friend's cousin.  Wait, no, it I guess it was her second cousin.  Well, now that I think about it, it may actually be a neighbor of the cousin.")  This is as bad as route talk.
  • struggling, in the midst of what could be an okay anecdote, to remember what day of the week it was.  "I think it was a Tuesday.  Wait, no, it could have been a Wednesday.  Honey, do you remember?  I think it was the day after your appointment with the accountant?"
  • stories about your adorable but naughty pets, or even worse, your pets ailments.  Unless they die.  If the pet dies, it's okay to bring it up (once).
I was going to include minutiae in general, but my little m was here yesterday, cause for that cake, and she talked about her new friend, a retirement age woman.  This friend had one boyfriend in college, but decided "it didn't suit her" and has been happily single for the past 40 years.  She tells M. all kinds of tiny details that primarily involve nurturing plants.  Things like changing the temperature of her house two degrees, or shifting a plant from one location to another to improve photosynthesis.  M. says it's not boring in the least, and we decided that's because the minutiae is contained in a vessel of quirky tenderness that involves treating the plants like a cross between a children and a miracle.  So, let's not rule it out just yet.

Before we veto these topics, though, I want to say something about my health.  (I know.)  I have a weird form of tinnitus that involves hearing my own heartbeat in my left ear.  I looked it up on the internet and learned that most people who have it find it extremely annoying, which surprises me.  I find it so comforting, like being in the womb.  Woo hoo!  I'm still alive!  Listen to that strong heartbeat!  In my ear!  (I had to get that out before this becomes a violation of Interestingness Month.)

But back to the topic at hand.  Let me know if you encounter any rule violators, or if you have any rules to add.  Let's make a whole month out of it.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Horoscopes: the "It's the water" edition


Aries (3/21 – 4/19):  I tried to go to the long-heralded movie about our town last night but it was cancelled due to weather, the lamest excuse ever.  If you can't watch a movie on a dark rainy night, um, what?  Are we supposed to go hiking?  But anyway, it's a retrospective of our first 100 years, and there was much looking forward to it (say, for 98 years), only to have hopes dashed.  But Aries, we're used to the dashed hopes by now, and that make us stronger, silenter, taller, more prone to believing in psychics, etc. There was a woman in the parking lot of where the movie was supposed to be, leafletting about a radio station she's trying to start.  (Can you call it leafletting if it's just one person handing out papers to three people? Yes, you can!  Is "leafletting" a real verb? No it's not!)  Anyway, the point, Aries, is that the movie is still in the future!  Yes, we still have that to march towards!   This week, it will always seem like the present, even though some of it, in fact, will be the future.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):  I recently found myself in the middle of the night in a room full of people I love, eating corn dogs paired with red wine, and thought, wow.  This is the life.  It was my first corn dog since 1973 (we don't have them in the east, because duh, hotdogs don't travel well.  Oh wait.  Irrelevant, but the point is that my corndog-hood has been in remission.)  The part of the corndog that's good is the corn, Taurus.  (And the dijon, but I don't think we get to count that.)  What makes a corndog eat-worthy, besides the cabernet, is that the crusty corny exoskeleton is comforting and yummy, and then you get into the horrible hotdog part, and it wakes you up, reminding you yet again -- life isn't all the outer part, people!  We eventually get into the hotdog, and it kind of sucks, but in a good way, if you see my point.  

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21): Back to the radio station -- they're looking for all manner of volunteers.  It's about time someone started a radio station, was my first thought, because we don't get radio out here.  And then I remembered that we do get radio, lots of it.  But, this one will have the farm report and local happenings. I don't know where you'd get that stuff otherwise.  (Besides the internet.  But who uses that?)  Mostly, though, I'm completely on board and feel like it's been Radio Free here for much too long.  My worry is that it will sound too much like Welcome to Nightvale, (my new favorite podcast.)  Science fiction, sort of.  But this radio station will be real, it will be our actual town sounding like science fiction. Gemini, I'm thinking of volunteering.  What do you think?  Do radio stations need horoscopes?  Who, pray tell, will do the "Elderly Wisdom in the Valley" bit?  Yikes!  I'm afraid the news will be stuff like, "someone saw a weird red light on the hill last night."  And after much investigation, it will turn out to be someone playing with a cat and a laser pointer.  Be a cat-pointer conspiracy theorist, Gemini.  It's better than thinking that Stanley Kubrick staged a fake moon landing.


Cancer (6/22 – 7/21): I went on a festive water tour of Washington this week, starting with the artesian well in Olympia.  What's not to love?  The water is 1,000 years old, and has been through a lot.  
As a friend said, 
"It's sort of a bench, but it's not a bench.  sort of a bathroom counter, but on a sidewalk.  sort of water coming out of the earth, but not really celebrating it, more like pulling it from the earth, putting it in a pipe, and letting it bleed back in.  Sort of like an earth bleed.  Like a pin prick."
But the other part of it is that it's in a parking lot, and has a weird day-drunk hippy vibe, with ukeleles and hacky sack and homeless teens.  And people line up to get the water, so in a way, there is celebrating where the water leaks out.  Cancer, celebrate the water this week.  Do a little jig when you find some.  

Leo (7/23 – 8/22):  Stop two on the water tour was Point Roberts.  I invited myself along (is that tacky?) on the LA's field work because its time to get water to make salt, and if not from Point Roberts, where from?   (Hillel the Elder said that, I think.)  

There are four border crossings involved in getting to Point Roberts.  One of my many problems is border crossing anxiety, because I'm usually the one they pull out of line and search with dogs. Now, when they ask the questions, I feel like I'm lying, even though I'm not.  (Does anyone else have that?)

 "What's the purpose of your visit?" the angry unsmiling man says.  The LA is super cool.  "Work," she says, cheerfully.  He looks at us suspiciously, and I'm thinking, I know!  We don't look at all like people with jobs!  It goes like that for a while, and he asks if we have any equipment for our "work".  He doesn't actually use air quotes, but I feel his judgy little air quote vibe.  "No, we don't have equipment," says the LA.  He looks at my knitting, and says, "Not even a tape measure?"  Anyway, we get through it four times, and smuggle 10 gallons of seawater back into the US, and salt-making is underway.  Leo, this week, try something new.  Or try something old again, as if you have dementia and never did that particular thing before.

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  As you may have noticed from my last post, I spilled on yet another computer, rendering it useless.  I know!  Good thing I'm both rich and unconcerned with money.  so this is my second new computer this year.  There are slaves in china working their asses off so that I can drink and write, and I don't feel good about that at all, so I got the keyboard covering this time, which makes me believe I could open an auto repair shop.  If only I knew how to fix cars.  Virgo, learn how to fix stuff this week.  And then stop by!  There's lots to do here.

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):   When I bought the new computer, I was cajoled into doing the Thriller dance through the Mac store to get a measly discount.  (I was willing to do it for $3, which makes me, well, let's not name it.) But after I did my awkward little zombie dance, I got $37 off, which is paltry when you're talking about buying computers, but significant if it's your first professional dancing gig.  Right?  This week, Libra, dance dance dance!  Don't let Mississippi mud touch your fingers.

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21):  Have you heard about the fake ski tan trend?  Personally, if I were going to fake a ski vacation, I'd rather put a cast on my leg.  Less skin cancer, more people holding the door for you and writing good wishes on the plaster.  But Scorp, with the sun spots in Virgo and the second house in the third moon, you're in for a confusing week.  Carry a roll of twine and unravel it as you go.  (Don't fall for the trail of popcorn thing -- it doesn't work.)

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21): At some point, I came up with a list of my parenting goals. I thought if, when my kids left home, they knew how to listen well to friends and loved ones, try not to judge, apologize and mean it, be interesting, and be kind whenever possible, all would be well.  They can do all that and more, far exceeding my wildest dreams, because through the luck of the draw, I birthed some exceptional humans.  But if I were making the list today, I'd add "learn how to forgive" to the list, because I think that's the hardest one of all, and that's what the world needs. (I know, you're thinking, wait, who are you to decide what the world needs?  Hmm.  I'll get back to you on that.)  Forgiving each other and ourselves over and over again, because we'll keep failing and disappointing our loved ones and they us, and there's no way around it.  And we need to keep loving our people anyway.  Sag, baby steps.

Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19): I had a dream a few minutes ago that I went to a new yoga studio, probably because I'm about to in 20 minutes, but when I got there, it was a dark greasy parking garage, and everyone was talking during the class, and no one used yoga mats -- just downward dog on the slippery oily pavement -- and it was sort of horrible.  And then, after the class, I discovered that my wallet and phone had been stolen while I was doing modified plank (because in the dream I  had to put my knees down.  Seriously.)  When I told the yoga teacher, she gave me the, "well, shit happens" look, and flicked her hair back.  Probably because I put my knees down.  I was so disturbed that I sat down in my kitchen and smoked a cigarette, and then I realized that my house would smell like cigarettes FOREVER, so I opened all the windows and doors, realizing that even in cold times (I've taken to calling that season "cold times", because it doesn't fit so tightly with the word "nuclear, right?), I can never close the doors again.  Ever.  Then I woke up.  You'll wake up too this week, Capricorn, to lilies blooming and fairies flying and beautiful songs wafting through the air.  Paint it for the less fortunate among us!  

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18):   I have this game that I play when I'm in a group, which is asking for confessions, victories, or recommendations.  The basic thing I'm trying to do is give everyone a chance to say something, to talk about what they want to talk about without summoning some weird and transparent segue.  (Like, oh wow, did you say your car cost $14,000?  That reminds me of the population of Neanderthals at their height!).  The game is a way of saying, "hey, I'm interested in what you've got to say, you've got the floor, we're all listening.  But it's come to my attention that people just feel put on the spot.  What's up with that?  At any rate, I had the occasion to dine with my fine son and his buddy, and they both had confessions, recommendations, stories and more, suggesting that it isn't time to give up on the game yet.  This week, Aquarius, feel loved instead of put on the spot whenever possible.

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20) Oh, you Pisces.  So much stuff, so little plate.  The waves are coming fast now, but they'll subside, and things will get easier and easier, better and better until you won't even remember this week.  But I'll tell what wasn't easy:  my out-of-valley-experience.  I went to yoga with the hard-asses, and sweat enough that it was harvestable.  I suspected it might be challenging when the friend who invited me said, "Here.  I brought you a towel.  You're gonna need it."  Right?  He knew that?  I know, it sounds creepy to sweat a harvestable amount, but you count on me to tell the truth, so there you have it.  (For the record: I didn't harvest it, but I could have.  I could have made salt and packaged it and sold it, but I didn't, and that's what counts.)  The room looked like the future and smelled like testosterone and I had tons of fun in a self-abuse, I-can't-wait-to-go-home-and-take-a-nap sort of way.  May your week have some naps.  Oh, and a drink with your astrologer!

I'm excited to report that the author Celeste Ng has selected m y modern love essay to read for the Modern Love podcast next week. Suc...