palace of winds

I almost never get phone calls, but I had no fewer than five messages when I came home Friday night. So to everyone who picked exactly the wrong day to call me, being one of those rare days when I forget to tote the thing around with me: sorry.

Saturday we all got dolled up and went to the dinner theater for a matinee of Midlife: the Crisis Musical for Father’s Day. I was deeply excited to be presented with a whole separate vegetarian menu with no fewer than four delicious options (which was more than I was expecting, since the regular menu is somewhat limited itself). Though the lasagna promised generous slices of carrots and zucchini and other delights, the veggie steak won out as being the most unusual restaurant menu item, and the one I was least likely to make at home. It was a delicious savory thing made of oatmeal and brown rice and bulgur and etc, positively smothered in mushrooms and roasted red peppers, accompanied by steamed vegetables (oh yellow beans how beautiful and tasty you are!) and roasted red potatoes. The whole thing was done with heaps more oil/butter than I would’ve used at home, a slight mark against it (I find I much prefer the taste of the actual food to the taste of any fat basting it), but just as much a mark against me for not remembering to order it without.

The musical itself was funny, and my dad very much enjoyed himself, so it was all around a success. The thing was a series of sketches about middle age, the most hilarious of which was ‘Weekend Warriors’. The three men of the small cast were gathering for an afternoon basketball session. I will tell you that the one with a nice taut middle-age paunchy beer belly (and oh how I have to admire his shamelessness) was attired in tight red shorts and a white top cropped halfway up his torso, and another wore full ‘gangsta-style’ basketball attire and brought along the slang to go with it. I’d do it great injustice so I won’t try to describe it any further, but the whole audience was in stitches. Other highlights included the Singing Mammogram and the prostate exam song (whose title I can’t recall, but whose lyrics unabashedly included the word ‘rectum’).

Saturday evening my mom and I got to watch Alex; I am happy to report with a complete lack of bias that he somehow gets cuter each passing second. Though it seems like it took weeks and weeks of sharp anticipation for him to move from almost-crawling to actually-crawling, since then he has rapidly sprouted two teeth and begun pulling himself up to standing on everything in sight and motoring around with his push-walker thingie like there’s no tomorrow. He even stands on his own for remarkably long periods of times, considering how recently he wasn’t too sure about this up-on-hands-and-knees thing. I still love the way he falls asleep in my arms, the snug secure feeling of him there, the little dream-twitching of his tiny chubby baby fingers. Also, he has finally begun to appreciate the extreme hilarity of me blowing raspberries on his stomach. I don’t even mind that he often as not claws at my eyeballs while shrieking the joy of it.

Yesterday morning (and inadvertantly on into late afternoon, because dawdling is genetic) my mom and I puttered through the nursery at Home Depot and the fabric section (and, I’ll admit, almost every other section) of JoAnn’s. I’ve volunteered to sew the purses/tote bags my mom wants to make for my grandma’s birthday, since I a) have the sewing machine (rightfully, I might add, as it was a Christmas gift for my sister and me and after over a decade of her never once having touched it I’ve deemed she’s relinquished all rights; so, to sum: my sewing machine), and b) am the only one who knows how to use it. Not that it’s difficult to figure out, but it seems a shame to force someone else to labor through it when it’s something I can (probably, anyway) do quickly, and will enjoy. Incidentally, I have found sewing to be very much like wood-working, in that it’s all about precise measuring and cutting and picking the best way and order to put things together. The more I work on the current project with my dad the more I want to quilt. Not that the current project is anything like quilting, really, beyond the way all construction is like quilting.

Speaking of, said current project is coming along quite nicely, and is now looking just exactly like itself where before it looked like a lot of pieces of wood. Next session I believe we will officially begin finishing work, all the filling in of knots and things and the sanding and smoothing, and the general making-ready-to-be-painted. Things are coming along nicely indeed.