pig latin for beast
The deal is that J takes charge of the progeny on Saturday mornings so that I can spend forty minutes trying to sit to Laz’s big, athletic trot, then Claire and I get out of the house on Sunday afternoons so that J can descend into hacker trance.
My riding lesson was fantastic, by which I mean that I couldn’t even get him to strike off on the right canter lead, but I kept trying. This is new and cool. Pre-Claire I used to get infinitely frustrated with myself over things like this, and give up out of sheer pique. I felt that familiar anger welling up as I failed over and over again, but then a brand new super-ego voice kicked in and said:
“Don’t worry, you’ll get it, or not; just keep trying.”
So I hung on and kept my hands down and my seatbones square and my lower leg as glued to his side as possible, and asked and asked and asked for the transition, and didn’t get it. And behold, David was extremely pleased with me, because it turns out he’s not just teaching me how to strike off on the right canter lead. It was very Zen, and reminded me of labour. Mama-fu, or as Beckett put it: I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
But I digress. To keep up my part of the bargain I did the rounds of the East Bay (it’s pig Latin for beast). Swept the infant to Emeryville Ikea, your designated Sunday-afternoon breeder-homemaker Mecca, where I found the pure wool blankets my heart had yearned for lo these many weeks, in indigo and cream, as well as some wood photo frames and a five-pound bag of Swedish meatballs. To the Oakland hills to play with Fizzgig the Pomeranian and Ignatz the iguana, as well as their human slaves Morrisa and nj. To Elmwood for delicious turkey soup with the Jaffe-Tsangs, then back over the bridge to bake the meatballs and tell J all about our day.
J needs to hack, it’s a physical thing. He gets sort of distant and abstracted when he has spent too long away from code, as though voices are calling him to the Other Place. This was his first chance for a week or so to get very deeply into bug-squishing, and it did wonders, the way a walk in a sunshiney garden will do for a normal person. He was all pink-cheeked and cherubic when we got home. Weird, but so sweet.
