the thumb-push-up-puppet collection sits idle in a basket…those characters and animals with a wooden platform and a button underneath the base that you push and they collapse and rebound and dance and, if you practice enough, you can keep the beat with just one appendage without moving the rest – talking from experience, of course. but playing – literally playing – with dasher and blitzen have made me want to unearth the basket and dust those babies off.
there is not much that’s funnier than watching six adults racing wind-up reindeer across a coffee table racetrack. each of us cheered and sneered at our reindeer, watching them spin and go the wrong way, teeter off the table, fall over and race for the finish line. you would think that dasher might have an advantage – with his name and all – but dasher was my reindeer and must not have self-actualized yet. he never won a race. but there’s still time. he will not be limited to holidayseason2022. when it’s time, we will store him away – with blitzen, so he is not lonely – until next year’s festivities. maybe by then he will be ready, his confidence will be restored, his winning juju amped up, his luck turned upside down, like a frown to a smile. oh yes. i still have hope.
more than anything else in this season, my favorite gift has been laughter. the kind of laughter when your ribs begin to hurt and your cheeks are sore from your face in smile-mode. i have loved any play – so generative, so rejuvenating, so rooting, so opening. the reminder to not take yourself so ridiculously seriously. each of these moments of this short and so-fast life count and i’d rather remember laughing with beloveds and family and friends more than much of anything else.
i’m thinking the push-up puppets need to see the light of day.
we cannot help ourselves. we see stuff. i usually don’t suppose that’s unusual, until someone stares at us – with that blank look on their faces that betrays the “oh-sheesh-they-are-SOOO-weird” thought they are having. and then i realize we might be a little unusual. i shrug it off. “we-are-all-worthy-we-are-all-worthy” i repeat.
the shark was on the side of the trail. lurking. all crusty and gnarly, his face. he was obvious. he was cause for conversation, tales of scuba-diving in cold long island waters and off the coast of tropical islands. we can’t help but see and we laugh and gasp out, “look! it’s a ……..!”
seeing. it’s a burden every artist carries. it’s in the backpack with the parmesan cheese and the twizzlers and the tiny box wine and the kind bars. it’s probably good that we are mostly alone during these moments; our imaginations fly wild and free and we crack ourselves up.
and isn’t that the point? the laughter? i can’t think of anything better than laughing together, even at our own expense. we tell stories to friends, emphasizing the goofy, the silly, the utterly-profoundly dumb, self-deprecating and reveling in it. getting my hair cut and claiming the highest forehead in the guiness book of world records of foreheads. having a pedicure and claiming the biggest big toe in modern history. even, recently, at the doctor’s office, asking, please, for a sticker or a gold star for passing my bloodwork. just silliness. we can’t help it.
but to walk with him and find the sharks on trail and the ducks stuck in trunks (see below) and the tree mooning us (see below) and the desert hills from space (also see below) is to walk inside laughter. it’s to have maybe learned – at long last – not to take everything quite so seriously.
it’s to learn how to get older and crusty and gnarly ourselves and to hold it all lightly.
you know you have a nutella-reputation when more than one person sends you nutella in the mail, via ups, on the fedex truck, in packages at your front door. i went a little crazy when i discovered it. it had been around; i was not an early adopter, but when i fell, i fell fast.
johnathon and i walked around amsterdam, eating, sipping espresso, laughing. when we came upon him, i could not help myself. i don’t usually do this with strangers, but i kissed him – the nutella man. he was coy, slightly unnerved, but mostly unmoved by my ardent display. it was sheer bliss for me. and he had the biggest jar of nutella i had seen to date. so, yes, in this case, size matters.
all over paris you can get waffles with nutella and nutella on crepes or croissants or toast, nutella on fruit, nutella in coffee. it’s omnipresent. the nutella carts are everywhere. there could possibly be nothing more enticing than a bench in jardin des tuileries with espresso and nutella and your beloved.
we recently introduced david’s momma to it. she has found it to be a staple – apples with nutella are pretty amazing. for us, it used to be animal crackers and nutella. ohmy! if you haven’t tried that, you must. it is a worthy dessert!
we haven’t eaten a whole lot of nutella in recent times. the whole30 diet knocked it out of the rotation. costco wrote us a letter asking if we were ok; their sales of hazelnut cocoa spread were plummeting.
in truth, i miss it. the nutella chip in my brain is quivering.
it didn’t happen often, but every now and then, we got to stop the ice cream man as he jingled his way around the neighborhood. then began The Choice. toasted almond bars or chocolate eclairs or or creamsicles or nutty buddy cones or italian ices (although we most often got those on the way out of modells sporting goods store, which, for some reason, had a stand by the doors). my momma would buy fudgsicles and ice cream sandwiches for in the freezer, so those weren’t viable options. and we would never-ever just buy a cup of ice cream with those wooden spoon things you got in elementary school or with your modells italian ice. that would be lame. it seemed important to get something more novel than what was inside your own house. particularly if it was ice cream on a stick. we knew, at the time, that it was a splurge and we loved every single second of it. we’d sit on the curb or on the grass or on the stoop and relish whatever treat we picked. summer in east northport. summer on long island.
you can hear it coming – “pop goes the weasel” playing incessantly around the ‘hood. it used to drive both my girl and my boy crazy as it approached and passed by – the pitch of the ‘song’ changing keys as it approached, drove by eventually and was in the distance. we laugh now as it passes us these days, for the same reason and because it would likely take a small mortgage to feed ice cream treats to a family from the ice cream man these days. we have marveled at watching families with small children gather together in the park eating dairy queen. a medium blizzard is $4 so a family of five would be $20 just for an afternoon carry-out treat. i don’t know but, to us, that seems like a lot.
harry burt, the founder of good humor, apparently stumbled into ice cream kingdom rule when he froze chocolate topping to use with ice cream. it turned out to be a messy affair so his son suggested using the sticks from his previous invention (jolly boy suckers) and – voila! – the ice cream bar was a hit. his decision to start the ice cream truck/wagon/push-cart was on the heels of his treat-success and, believing that good “humor” had everything to do with the humor of the palate, he had his company name picked out. good humor is synonymous with yummy ice cream and childhood. what a legacy!
a few days ago, 20 went to his freezer after we finished a scrumptious dinner with him. he gestured to 14 to be quiet and reached his hand in, pulling out a container but shielding it from my view. it turned out to be a half gallon of coffee ice cream, which is my favorite tied with mint chocolate chip. it was not cashew or almond; this was straight-up ice cream, which he guiltily knew i couldn’t have. he and 14 enjoyed bowls of this dessert. i had two tiny bites, which were amazing. coffee ice cream always makes me think of my big brother who, night after night, would load his bowl up and eat to his heart’s content. after my minuscule taste-test, i googled cashew/almond coffee ice cream and have a photo of a couple options saved on my phone so that i might seek them out.
someday when i pass a freezer with talenti dairy-free-sorbetto cold-brew-coffee displayed, i will literally yell, “stop!”
it won’t be the ice cream truck ringing bells or playing “it’s a small world” or “pop goes the weasel”. it won’t be standing at the side of the road in the hot sun with a dollar held tightly in my hand in line behind other sweaty, excited kids. it won’t be staring at the poster on the side of the truck with too many choices, the scent of coppertone wafting through the air. but, like all the children gathered around the proverbial ice cream truck in full glorious summer, i will be filled with good humor.
at the beginning and the end of the movie LOVE ACTUALLY are these really fantastic scenes of people coming together, vignettes of greeting each other, hugging and kissing. a warm feel-good movie anyway, these scenes are the reasons i love to go to the airport. i love to watch people…in their excitement about travel, in their absolute joy in seeing someone they have missed. we have our own airport stories…of meeting and coming back together, of skipping and champagne, seconds and minutes memorized for all time.
we spent a little bit of time in airports this past week. we people-watched, wondering about each person’s story, where they were going, where they were from, what was in their heart. we watched children run to loved ones upon seeing them; we watched couples embrace.
for a little while, with a late-evening departure, we sat at one of the bars at the milwaukee airport (which, incidentally, also makes me think of the movie LOVE ACTUALLY – you must see this if you haven’t already!)
we had promised gay and dan and jay and charlie and sandysue that we would bowl with our new christmas-crackers-bowling-set, and we had no intention of going back on our promise. so we painstakingly set it up and struggled to hold onto the tiny ball. giggling, we bowled at the bar, the bartender thinking for sure we had lost it.
sometimes you just have to be goofy. it makes people deep in thought around you laugh. what’s better than that? it’s not the opening or closing scenes of LOVE ACTUALLY but it, too, elicits smiles.
here, a teaser from the movie:
ps. you can borrow our bowling set anytime. just message us.
summer is teasing us….right around the corner, it is gesturing to us and making us yearn for the time in the sun, the time to relax in the hammock, the time to take longer walks, to go on vacation, to maybe do a long-put-off-project. maybe it is the time to learn something brand new. in that case, i have to remind myself it’s the time to put aside the insecurity of not-knowing-how and just jump in with both feet. you just never know what might come of that not-knowing. consider it might even be fun! (watch out d, cause i really want a donkey!)
reverse threading 