Weather issues

I do get obsessive about looking at weather sites when I have many “outdoor” days before me. At http://www.wunderground.com/ you can get a motherload of information about the weather in the location of your choice. And so I’ve been curiously checking in: for Paris, Krakow and Warsaw – my destinations for the week to come.

One reason why I like this site is because they are more optimistic than, say, cnn.com. Where the latter has been predicting “rain” for Paris consistently for the past several days, Weather Underground has been scoffing at that with a “scattered clouds” icon neatly in place: a little picture of a smiling sun in a circle of puffy clouds. I like that. (Okay, Saturday, I may have to take an umbrella, but at least Friday remains solidly dry.)

It’s the temps that puzzle me though. Each of my cities will have one day next week (a different one) where inexplicably, the temps are to dip by some 15 degrees (for a high of 51). And it’s not like it’ll be tomorrow or the next day. We’re talking about something like Tuesday.

In Europe, there are not these continental drifts where you can see something heading toward you like in Madison. Or, at least I have never figured out what the meteorological relationships between regions are. All I know is that storms in Spain have little to do with the weather in the Polish mountains.

So what’s with the Tuesday dip and where is it coming from? Weird.

Weather on the continent is beastly unpredictable at this time of the year. One has to go with the flow and not mind, but I have to say that if the sun barely comes out in the next days, I will be good and mad. And cold, since I refuse to pack warm stuff on the theory that if I don’t want it to be cold, my suitcase should reflect these weather hopes and not weather resignations.

Right now my suitcase reflects great emptiness. The bus for O'Hare leaves in a few hours. I am behind schedule already. Time to surrender the blog until tomorrow. From Paris. Under scattered clouds.

And what will I take with me on this trip?

Okay, everyone has their own essentials of travel: toothbrush, pills, underwear, books, passport, whatever. For me they would have to include these two photos (of daughters), taken just hours ago. They’ll be the first thing that I’ll show my old friends back in Poland.

[It was fantastic having the daughters in Madison these past few days. Such total pleasure to have them accompany me on my daily ramblings...]

Ca., the little one

S., the older one 

Reservations

It’s a special moment when I get to pick up the phone here in Madison and say Est-ce que je peux faire une reservation? It means that within a short period of time I will actually be using said reservation in a place where English is not the primary language.

Tomorrow morning I am heading out to Paris and by Sunday, I'll be in Warsaw and Krakow.

There are blogging challenges ahead: Obviously tomorrow's posting will be light as I will be traveling. However, there's more: out of the 18 days in Europe, only during the last 3 will I not be in the company of friends from Madison. This is a first for me. With the exception of an interlude some decades back, I have been going back to Poland at least once a year. Never ever has anyone volunteered to either travel with me there, nor to meet up in Poland. To France? Oh sure, many candidates, many trips with friends and strangers. But Poland has always brought forth this reaction:

So, you're going back to Poland! I really would love to go there someday!

And there it would end.

This Spring, I do not know what winds were blowing through Madison and messing with people's heads, but here I am now, setting out to Poland, with four Madisonians joining me for various portions of the trip.

I am still dizzy at the thought.

And -- weirder still, during the first week, one blogger will be tagging along and during the second week another blogger will be there to pick up any blogger slack.

Basically this will mean that you may well have more than one commentary on the places talked of (somewhat reverently, I admit) in Ocean. Sort of like point - counter point, where I write, for example: we just walked through the most beautiful park on the planet, and the other person notes: we just avoided being eaten alive by some vicious swans who thought they deserved a handout just because we're tourists passing through. Different perspectives.

Should be fun. And a writing nightmare! Poland has decent but not great Internet options and oftentimes I wind up posting from a hotel dial-up. But in addition, this time I will feel that my absolutely top priority is making sure that my cotravelers are happily experiencing Poland, to the max. That means I will probably blog between 2:30 and 4 am. When else will there be time? But post I will, for sure.

At least the posts will be shorter (especially as compared to this obscenely long one).

Okay, a few more parting words tomorrow a.m. and then Ocean does what it loves best: it transports itself across the ocean and takes up the story there.

Is the pope Polish?

Not any more. But this does not prevent him from addressing Poles on St.Peter's Square in their native language.

Yesterday, he said this to the crowd: Pozdrawiam obecnych tu Polaków. W tych dniach razem z wami oddaję cześć świętemu Stanisławowi i polecam jego opiece cały Kościół w Polsce. Z serca wam błogosławię. Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus!*

A mouthful for a non-Pole, wouldn't you say?

* translation: oh, it's just the usual religious stuff, with a focus on St. Stanislaw and the Polish church.

Mermaids and things

My sister, who lives in Warsaw, today sent me some notes on legends surrounding mermaids. Why? Because the mermaid is the mascot of Warsaw, and she knows that days prior to my arrival I especially get interested in things surrounding my home town.




But you have to ask yourself why a mermaid would be the city’s mascot. As someone pointed out, Warsaw is some 300 kilometers away from the sea. What sense does it make to give a mermaid a shield and a couple of good looking breasts and place her on every moving piece of public transportation, to say nothing of stamps and municipal buildings, supplemented by a couple of monuments honoring her?



And mermaid legends are a little bit unreal. Typically they go something like this: a fisherman finds her, falls in love, rescues her or she him and then either he is forever satisfied with a mermaid in his chambers or she turns out to be, in real life, a lovely, wealthy princess, with her lower body then suddenly transformed as she becomes readily available for marital consumption in all ways – as opposed to the mermaid who has to satisfy and be satisfied basically with her top torso, with perhaps a smack of the tail thrown in for those who love a little pain on the side.

Warsaw’s mermaid has been around for centuries. Currently, her monument resides in the center of the Old Town Square, and there is another, bigger version by the river. I grew up in her shadow. I liked her sword raised high, I liked that she was a woman, I liked that she belonged to Warsaw, and not, say, to inferior Krakow (there is great rivalry between the two cities: it has been an ongoing sibling thing for some 1000 years; I don’t know if Americans can appreciate that, given the baby status of all urban centers here).

So, a mermaid it is: right there, in the center of the Old Town of Warsaw, with her bottom covered but her top exposed. She’s awesome, even if a little out of place. Warsaw’s protector in some spiritual sense. Triumphant and …mermaid-like.

I'm okay, I'm okay!

A reader, concerned that my my recent days demonstrate a pace that has more elements of frantic than of either rational or calm, forwarded a super nice message which included his wishes for more restful days and a photo to put me in the mood for a nice moment of repose. I am passing it on, wishing the same for my readers, who have patiently endured my frenetic and overly wordy posts:

slow down, you're going too fast... 

Another one of those evenings where I fall asleep at the computer with a half-written post

It's midnight, I’m sitting here thinking: keep it short, keep it short.

My attempt at short:

Today (Monday) I get up worrying that maybe I have the beginnings of a tooth ache. I just had had everything checked several weeks ago, but I am having an acute attack of teeth hypochondria. So I go to the dentist.

Many people worry about being lost in a foreign country without knowing the language. That is never a concern for me. Instead, I have a hidden terror of being stuck in a country with a strange and frightening network of dentists incompetently playing with their instruments of torture. Like it’s a power trip or something to grind away at the exposed nerve endings of a person helplessly strapped to a chair.

Perhaps I remember too well what it was like going to the dentist as a kid in Poland. No pain killers. Just pain. Endless, horrible pain. I know much has changed since the fall of communism. I am sure market economy dentists are of a different breed and inflicting pain is not longer the top priority it once was. Still, I am left with an irrational fear of them and so I often find myself just hours before a flight sitting in a dentist’s chair here in Madison, attempting to convince my tooth doctor that there surely is a problem and could he please detect it and fix it before I take off.

My chart must have the following note scribbled in it: “this is one of those pre-departure emergency visits. If indulged, she will go away and leave us alone until the next planned crossing of the ocean." So this morning I am indulged. The dentist even took out some "special paint" and brushed it over the tooth in question with a “special formula” that would keep it from giving me trouble in the weeks to come. Even though, as he pointed out, there is nothing wrong with the tooth. (I think he just missed the emergent problem, that’s all. Still, I feel that I will survive the three weeks I am away.)

After my early trip to the dentist (I was there at 8:01, just as they were opening up), I deal with the suitcase issue (see post below).

Then I have a meeting at the Law School during which I feel like basically my entire professional life is being quickly, conspiratorily set for me as I am struggling to give coherent responses. I survive, but I come out sweating, being especially appreciative of Tom’s Natural Scent, because believe me, without it, I would have been too naturally scented for words.

Then, quickly in succession: a coffee meeting to talk about Poland, special dinner for a daughter, burgers with a couple of bloggers, a cosmo at Opus lounge with said daughter, and then, finally, a minute with the computer, with HENIEK blasting away in the background.

[HENIEK is a spirited Polish folk song that my pals in Poland presented me with (on a CD) a few years back. I listen to it more than I will EVER admit to (just about) anyone. ]

And before I know it, I wake up, find the half-written post, along with a toy bird perched at the side of the keyboard and a pair of sunglasses casually folded next to it. What was I doing? Could it be that I was singing HENIEK with sunglasses on? To a toy bird? I do not remember. Sleep took over. This morning (Tuesday), I am only cleaning up the pieces of an abrupt ending to a long day.

The suitcase

I am to transport a suitcase from here to Chicago for a friend later this week. I picked up the suitcase from a prearranged place where it was left earlier this morning. It’s packed and ready to go.

However, as I lifted it into my truck, I noticed that one of the zippers was broken: it was one of those situations where you think you’ve pulled the zipper shut, but it leaves a trail of unconnected little zipper teeth in its wake. It was not a crucial zipper, not the foundation that holds the whole bag together, but it does expand and contract the suitcase and so it does serve a function.

Dilemma: should I fix it before handing it over to the friend in Chicago? I mean, Cecil over at shoe repair is a magician with these things. But if I fix it, shouldn’t I unpack it first? [The friend cannot be consulted with on this one – he’s up in the air somewhere, flying around the States.]

I could unpack it and no one would ever know. Unless my friend put one of those crucial hairs or threads in a particular place to see if any person would poke around his personal belongings. But the ethics of such an intrusion notwithstanding, I do not really want to poke around someone’s stuff. There are things that one doesn’t really want to know, even about very very good friends. Like how many mismatched socks they have or if they fold shirts neatly.

Handing a filled suitcase to Cecil is also unfair. Do you know Cecil? He is old, stooped, frail. He should not have to muck around with packed suitcases.

What would the ethicist say?

Answer: for every ethical dilemma there is an innovative solution. Cecil solved this one for me by fixing it on the spot while I lifted and moved the bag around for him. The guy is a repair genius – always has been. My kids were raised to show great reverence and respect for the man, as he has bailed us out of many shoe and suitcase problems over the decades.

Cecil understood the dilemma. Of course! He’s the kind of guy who may have himself packed an odd little private something in his day. He’s a man of strange habits after all – the same man who kept cats in his store and got chased out of the strip mall because the cats peed on the hallway carpets. Cecil didn’t seem to mind. He loved his cats and proclaimed: if the cats go, I go. And so out he went, to a different strip mall, one without any carpeted hallway to pee on and mess with.

It says something about my days that this was by far the most interesting thing that happened to me all morning.

We are the young, the children of the world…

I knew it. My trust in Peter was well-founded. I came home at dusk and found him thus, proud keeper of my yard: (thanks, nine-year-old pal! you rule!)

The yard's yours, Peter. You earned it. 

Motherlicious: seven degrees of bond-ification

A happy mother's day to all my mother-ly friends!

So my first gift of the day – an e-card… mmmmm, so nice…
My second: come on, let’s not get up just yet, a few more hours! It was the longest repose I have had in years…
My third gift: a walk. To the Arboretum (a mere five miles away), then from the Arboretum to Borders (add three more) and then home (another three, easily);
My fourth gift: martini glasses from my girls (they read Ocean too carefully). Beautiful! With a swirl of blue!
My fifth gift: dinner out (where I meant to post pictures but ultimately forgot, as is my tendency these days);
My sixth gift: the best Cosmo I have ever had at Eno Vino. With cranberry essence swirling down the glass… yum!

My seventh gift: looking at the album of photos where my older daughter was learning to bond with her newborn sister. You wonder then: where is this heading? How strong will their connection be? So now, twenty years later I know. And it truly is the accomplishment of accomplishments for me: to know that I have not derailed (indeed, facilitated?) this deep bond between two sisters. Happy mother on this day, indeed.

Mother's Day 1985: at the Arboretum, of course. 

1985: a mother (me), a suspicious older sister, a newborn 

A Tale of Two Parties

Why is my recollection of them so fuzzy this morning?

Two parties: one -- a gathering of the Sad Liberals in the neighborhood, the other -- honoring Chef Tory, the new proprietor of Madison’s legendary restaurant downtown.

Snippets, I remember snippets. From the Sad Liberals:

Are our houses built on landfills? No, farmland.
But there is a landfill underneath the schools. Did you know it has been documented that men in this area have an unusually high degree of sexual (something or other: here my memory fails; what was it: impotence? malfunction? virility? what???)…

...No kidding, and then there’s that run off “stream” that comes out of nowhere. Where is that water from? The 100-year rain pond off of Mineral Point Road. The 100-year rain pond? It is 100 years old? No (explanation follows, I have little recollection of it).

...Oh, if you are making martinis, you can have the olives in my refrigerator. Go ahead and take them, the front door is open. (a few minutes later) You have absolutely no food in your refrigerator! You didn't see the organic eggs, organic skim milk and organic strawberries? Not nothing in my book.

Do you know that it has been said that there are six layers of meaning to every Dickens novel? And that it is nearly impossible to get at some of them? Classes are constructed to analyze just some of these layers from one text. Why do you write your blog (a direct reference to Ocean here) like a Dickens novel (this was not hurled as a compliment, nor was it received as such)? Why not just say what you mean so that we do not have to have a class to analyze the six layers of Ocean (this was perceived as a compliment even though it was probably not hurled as such)? Sometimes there are only three layers of meaning. Sometimes there is only one. Sometimes.

From the Tory night:

My sister is managing the business itself as I take charge of the kitchen. You know, if I had known half a year ago that I would be co-owner of a “French” (one could call the style of cooking here that, if pressed for a label, though Alice Waters would, I suppose, protest) restaurant, I would have paid attention to what and where I was eating when I happened to be visiting Paris.

I love some of the new things you are already doing with the menu! Like the chili pepper in the chocolate Vesuvius truffle. Yeah, that was awesome. We want to update the dining room. Soon! Of course, we have to be prudent. We just bought a restaurant!

This is the best damn sangria in the world... all in the quality of the wine and the cutting into it of the right fruits, don’t you think? When was the last time you have had great sangria?

After which I vaguely remember telling Tory’s sister (who maintains her residence and also work connection in Racine and is desperately looking for a decent and affordable place to stay in Madison) that she should stay at my house which is too big for me anyway, if indeed I myself am still staying at this house since it is too big for me anyway. Though, I forgot to warn her that men in this neighborhood have a high degree of sexual something or other. [I can’t believe I virtually gave away my residence to a person whom I barely know. I tend to do things like that if I like someone. And no, it is not the result of drinking too much sangria. Though it was really good sangria.]

so good 

Spinning tops

Life is a blurr (like the photo below?)

Things are spinning, spinning, oh! those of you who were children in the fifties and sixties: remember those tops we had? The ones where we wound the string around and around, climbing it up the sides of the top and then with one fast release – off it went!




Sometimes I think that I have been using my years to wind up this top of mine and now I am letting it fly. Wheeee! Such a cool toy (sometimes the spin is a dud, a failure).

So I’m spinning along, only it seems that, unlike the toy, my speed is increasing.

Diversions, there are diversions: currently I am enjoying the company of one daughter who is home for a few days. Another will join us soon. This is a movement I can live with. Their popping in for a brief spell is like a coating of rich dense chocolate over a candied orange peel. [Now why did I think of that? I am not sure…]

This morning I went to the Saturday market. My first this year! I’m posting three pictures: one of our local cooking hero of the year, Chef Tory, taking care of foraging for foods at the market because his employed forager (me) decided she didn’t feel like working today. [Does he look peeved? No, that’s what makes him cooler than cool. More Tory news later as I plan on celebrating his ascent this week to restaurant stardom later tonight.]

The second photo is of a person who loves her spice girl treat on a Saturday morning (a daughter who has heretofore resisted being part of an Ocean post, but for some reason decided to oblige today; the surprise of the moment was so great that I rushed with the shot blurring it to pieces, of course).

The third is of the bouquet that traveled home with us. If only I could post the incredible fragrance. It smells like…lilacs. Real, wonderful, blooming lilacs. No surprise there.

so cool!