It’s a Friday in the mountains. Since I woke up and first looked out my window this morning we’ve had wind, rain, sleet, and snow ‘I’m humming I’m gonna get you where ever you go…’).
The children want to sleep in and then confess to me they didn’t quite finish their homework. They watched the OG Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night. We’re on book 4 of Harry Potter. We had tea together and if I was a more alert on top of it mother I would have asked, ‘did you do your homework?’ But I didn’t. I’m just not that competitive. My little monkeys are smarter than the average bear and I have to knowingly navigate through our collective genetic sloth. So I cracked the whip this morning and made them finish their work.
And we were late to school. I have a 60% track record of getting them to school on time. I’ve been up here 9 years and I still panic when there is rain or snow on the road. It’s the urban coastal person coming out in me. In my mind , I panic. OMG! What’s this stuff on the road? Cancel everything I must stay in bed. A friend of mine in graduate school from Michigan used to roll her eyes at me for canceling plans every time it rained in San Francisco. With a great midwestern scowl she’d shake her head and tell me gently that California doesn’t have weather. She’s right of course , for the most part.
Days like this, I wish our Northern Exposure outpost town had a movie theatre so I could hide in it for four hours watching a double feature of something Swedish and messed up or angrily sitting through a new Von Trier wanting to slap him or kiss him and say look. You’ve been filming the same story for years. You want to sit and have coffee and talk about your woman hatred issues?
Speaking of women hatred issues and too much time to think on a Friday morning. What sort of weird time warp are we in? I keep kidding myself that perhaps all the misogyny in the news these days, all the sperm people personhood, and not even hidden contempt for women on the part of the Republican establishment is just some sort of last hurrah spark of indignation before their bile extinguishes them for ever. At least I hope it is. I remember when I was young and in college how feminist scholars warned that the fanatical right was not just after abortion, but after women in general. After innocuous things like birth control and other basics of a civilized society. Feminists were made out to appear radical , paranoid and no rock and roll fun.
And now? It appears we were correct. They are coming for every last right we have.
I just dropped the kids off at school. They wormed out of me 20 bucks I didn’t have for the book fair. I’m sitting in a damp office pretending I’m in Germany in the spring, and when I step outside there will be a German bakery with fresh brotchen and hot coffee. I’m in the Sierras though. A land of more extremes than that. It’s chalk Folger’s at the local cafe or great organic cold press down the street at the health food store. I’m longing for something in between.
