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Faithful readers will remember Mark, the crazy German butcher. Yesterday Max and I took a field trip to his butcher shop in Mountain View.
Mark, the crazy German butcher, is to bratwursts what Werner Herzog, the crazy German film director, is to obsessive lunatics: lover, chronicler, mystic twin, executive producer. Maybe it's something in the Rhine River waters. There were like a billion different kinds of sausage in the deli cabinets: mild, Cajon, chicken bell pepper, chicken Portobello, apple-stuffed, habanero-stuffed, lingonberry-stuffed. (Has anybody outside the Arctic Circle actually ever seen a lingonberry? They look suspiciously like the droppings of a reindeer with an upset tummy.) Many well-hacked animal carcasses hanging upside down in the back room. I'm fairly sure Mark makes a little extra under the table by renting out that backroom to Beelzebub for registration and orientation when PETA members die and go to hell.
Max is going to be the butcher at Deep Springs next term. I admit I was a little non-plussed by the choice. What parent wouldn't be? Max was seven or so when I gave up reading science fiction and took up reading serial killer novels. Maybe if I'd stayed away from Thomas Harris, stuck with Greg Bear and Ursula LeGuin, he would have signed up to be an astronaut instead.
"You eat it," says the implacable and always levelheaded Max on the ride up. "Do you think it comes from the animal de-boned, shrink-wrapped and divided up into easy-to-defrost portions?"
He starts to go all Native American on me – respect for the land we live on, respect for the lower-ranking members of the food chain, blah, blah, blah – so I shift into "Yes, dear," mode and observe the scenery. Recent rains had turned the mountainsides green. Blue sky, green hills, scattering of scrub oak. Bloody Mary, Henry VIII's unfortunate daughter, the one who lost the remaining French possession to the upstart Bourbons back in 1550-something used to say that when she died, they would find the word "Calais" engraved upon her heart. I sometimes feel that way about the classic California landscape. Open me up, you'll find a live oak acorn.
It's been wonderful having Max home. I'm going to miss him a lot when he leaves on Sunday.
In other news, spent an hour on the phone with Susan during which I chatted at great length about The Little Store. "Are you sure it's a business, Patty?" asked Susan. "It sounds more like an expensive hobby."
Susan cuts straight to the chase, which is why I love her dearly, and she will always be my best friend.
And I'm about halfway through Youth In Revolt and enjoying it immensely although I'm increasingly horrified that Robin read it. Still, I read Lolita when I was eleven with no lasting ill effects except that I developed a predilection for Humbert's murderous "fancy prose style" (lasting to this very day) and played Humbert and Dolly with my Barbies for a year afterwards.
Interesting factoid about Youth In Revolt: it was originally self-published.
Mark, the crazy German butcher, is to bratwursts what Werner Herzog, the crazy German film director, is to obsessive lunatics: lover, chronicler, mystic twin, executive producer. Maybe it's something in the Rhine River waters. There were like a billion different kinds of sausage in the deli cabinets: mild, Cajon, chicken bell pepper, chicken Portobello, apple-stuffed, habanero-stuffed, lingonberry-stuffed. (Has anybody outside the Arctic Circle actually ever seen a lingonberry? They look suspiciously like the droppings of a reindeer with an upset tummy.) Many well-hacked animal carcasses hanging upside down in the back room. I'm fairly sure Mark makes a little extra under the table by renting out that backroom to Beelzebub for registration and orientation when PETA members die and go to hell.
Max is going to be the butcher at Deep Springs next term. I admit I was a little non-plussed by the choice. What parent wouldn't be? Max was seven or so when I gave up reading science fiction and took up reading serial killer novels. Maybe if I'd stayed away from Thomas Harris, stuck with Greg Bear and Ursula LeGuin, he would have signed up to be an astronaut instead.
"You eat it," says the implacable and always levelheaded Max on the ride up. "Do you think it comes from the animal de-boned, shrink-wrapped and divided up into easy-to-defrost portions?"
He starts to go all Native American on me – respect for the land we live on, respect for the lower-ranking members of the food chain, blah, blah, blah – so I shift into "Yes, dear," mode and observe the scenery. Recent rains had turned the mountainsides green. Blue sky, green hills, scattering of scrub oak. Bloody Mary, Henry VIII's unfortunate daughter, the one who lost the remaining French possession to the upstart Bourbons back in 1550-something used to say that when she died, they would find the word "Calais" engraved upon her heart. I sometimes feel that way about the classic California landscape. Open me up, you'll find a live oak acorn.
It's been wonderful having Max home. I'm going to miss him a lot when he leaves on Sunday.
In other news, spent an hour on the phone with Susan during which I chatted at great length about The Little Store. "Are you sure it's a business, Patty?" asked Susan. "It sounds more like an expensive hobby."
Susan cuts straight to the chase, which is why I love her dearly, and she will always be my best friend.
And I'm about halfway through Youth In Revolt and enjoying it immensely although I'm increasingly horrified that Robin read it. Still, I read Lolita when I was eleven with no lasting ill effects except that I developed a predilection for Humbert's murderous "fancy prose style" (lasting to this very day) and played Humbert and Dolly with my Barbies for a year afterwards.
Interesting factoid about Youth In Revolt: it was originally self-published.
