Pal-o Al-to

two words, sounds like...

Saturday morning finds me shaking myself to the new Cat Power in my fleece tiger onesie with a dog on my lap. The onesie because it’s cold, but I’ve managed to pack most my winter clothes; the dog, because he takes his role as monkey wrench so seriously. Really he’s just waiting for his dad to wake up.

Things are great. Felix has been hired by a robotics company in Palo Alto.

“Palo Alto!” my mom exclaimed. “That sounds like one of the nuclear test sites.”

“Why would they test nuclear weapons in the middle of California?!” I said.

“I’m just saying it sounds like it, my mom insisted. “Pal-o Al-to.”

I’m sure the Stanford Campus would have taken that all in stride. (insert eye roll emoji RIGHT HERE.)

Wait… … is she getting “Alto” confused with “Atoll?” is that it?

Anyway, I am scouting out apartments and hoping to find a good candidate close enough that Felix can bike to work. We’re moving out there in a month! No more tiger onesie until Halloween!

I continue to feel very well and my anxiety and weird energy are now in check. (thanks, gabapentin!) I have only read a few books since my last post, but I’m enjoying them. I also (finally) watched K-Pop Demon Hunters with my sister’s youngest, and we loved it. I’ve been walking around my house all day singing the soundtrack, mostly “Golden” and “Soda Pop” and sometimes a little Blackpink (ra-ta-ta-ta!) slips in because of similarities in the song about how it’s done-done-done. Ellen loved the goofy blue tiger - so did I.

Here are the (puny two) books I’ve read:

• On the Calculation of Volume II - Solvej Balle (THE DANE!)

• Palaver - Bryan Washington

And here’s what else I’ve done - what I’ve primarily done: packed box after box. Walls of boxes. Ceramics. Jewelry. Shoes. Stationery. All my life into cardboard. To pare down, I’ve been giving a lot of my clothes away to various nieces and sibs’ kids. Alice told her mom, “the best feeling is when I first put on Aunt Seester’s clothes, because they smell like her, so I feel like she’s giving me a hug.” Dawwwwww.

I actually just spent a weekend with them in Vermont. Wayyy up near Burlington! It was really beautiful there although I was very paranoid about ticks. My sister knows I get cold easily and then my muscles go, so they made sure to keep their house warmer than they usually do (much warmer, I think) and every night I slept in front of a fire. Such luxury! Ellen was attached to me like velcro the whole weekend and I feel like we are BFFs at this point, we’ve had so much quality one-on-one lately. We’ve talked about everything, from pharmaceuticals to fancy underwear (they don’t see the point. I said, you sometimes buy these things for yourself just to feel fancy, even if no one else sees them. And they said that the idea of someone else seeing them is STUPID. I said, you may or may not feel differently about that when you’re older, and either way is fine!)

My sister’s in-laws were there at the house as well, and everyone enjoyed watching me merrily imbibe gluten-free food. Her father-in-law was very kind and bought me a slice of gf cake at a nearby restaurant. Then he went outside and accidentally walked into a waist-high reflective stick put out for parking cars. It smacked him.

“Bob, you okay?” I asked him. Mournfully he replied, “It hit my guy thing.” And then I couldn’t get in the car for laughing doubled up on the hood.

I myself had a really wonderful father-in-law once, and now I am without one again. It’s okay. Felix and I are used to not having real dads. But I do miss Chuck, my FFIL (former father-in-law, of course) and singing cowboy songs with/for him. Last year he left me a voicemail singing “Whose bed have your boots been under?” which is a joke we had that I’d long forgotten about. I was THRILLED. These memories make me really happy, make me feel very lucky and still loved, rather than causing me pain that I no longer have them as family. In some ways, what we had is forever.

Unpopular opinion: I’m not into “Wicked.” (I couldn’t even watch past the first few minutes, I UGGHH) I think I kind of hate contemporary musicals. I watched my niece perform incredibly strongly in a horribly-written Jodi Picoult monstrosity where the message seemed to be: get a man and you’ll be okay, and the lead singer was gunning for Idina Menzel slash Kristin Chenoweth scream-vocals on EVERY song for THREE hours and honestly I felt besieged. It’s not pretty! Isn’t singing supposed to sound.. pleasant to the ear? Even the strange-voiced Eponine they have on the Broadway cast recording sounded super expressive and heartachingly tender. This girl - just hollering. My niece, though, doesn’t go for that ish and also was playing the character of The Author, and was the only kid playing an adult character to not perform the role as a bumbling oaf or an inept and over-the-hill floozy. She embodied nurturing, concern, and wisdom in a way that both aptly suited her character and was also quintessentially Alice. I was so proud - and so ready to leeeeeave at the end. A’s wig was also hilarious. I guess they needed to age the little sprite somehow. It was very Mama’s Family. Ahhh I love these kids so much! I adore them! I get them forever! How lucky am I!?

That’s my update - thank you for reading. When things settle down: real writing? YES YOU BETCHA. And you’ll hear all about it.

For now, all my love,

Jen