The Winner of a Nice New Custom Pair of Handmade Socks is...

CYBERPETE!

Cyberpete, you won with your hilarious dissertation title, "Two Years' Research: Men in Uniforms are Hot"

You were all funny, though. I wish I could share the sock love even more...

Next step--CyberPete, email me at "theweatherinthestreets@gmail.com" and tell me the length of your feet in inches, as well as a few of your favorite color choices for socks.

Thank you all very much for being so game!!!

Window Ledge: a True Ghost Story

During the early spring of my junior year in college, I took a spontaneous road trip with my boyfriend John, our perpetually self-medicated and wild-haired friend Iain, and our mentally unbalanced usually manic acquaintance, Andrew Wellstood*. We were a motley band, ready for adventure, as we set out that morning from our campus in suburban Philadelphia, crammed into Andrew's car, cigarettes, stash, and tunes at the ready, unsure of where we were headed but certain it would be grand.

Andrew drove, and the closed car filled with smoke of the more fragrant variety. The contact high alone was epic. In the midst of the good times, Andrew had a brainstorm: we would go all the way to Connecticut, to a rocky little beach he knew of, and then from there to his family manse which was at the moment uninhabited and ready for us to infiltrate.

I knew that Andrew was wealthy, very wealthy, and very very crazy, very intelligent, and came from a troubled family background. I imagined that his house of origin would be suitably eccentric, and so was quite game to catch a glimpse of it. Although had we not been game, it was useless to protest: Andrew had a plan, and by God he would follow through on this plan come hell or high water; that's the form his extreme mania took. He would have been scary, but for an odd sort of affability that balanced his less pleasant tendencies. Besides, I was with John and Iain, and although they were sort of ineffectual as men, well, I reasoned that there were three of us relatively stable sorts and only one of Andrew.

As we wove the roads, stopping occasionally for snacks and gas, tumbling out of the car in a thick cloud of sweet smoke like a scene from a bad college road trip movie (which was in fact apt), we learned more and more, in bits and pieces, of Andrew's background. It became rapidly apparent that his family was not just troubled in the usual way, but was in fact completely insane, Gothic, with more than a touch of the macabre.

He was open about the rampant alcoholism, paranoid schizophrenia, out and out psychosis, the anger and violence and darkness, broken trust and ultimately multiple suicides, that plagued the generations of his family. I, not entirely a stranger to dark family closets, was only a little put out; more fascinated than anything. But I will admit that looks began to pass between me, John, and Iain...just little glances, but there was a creeping unease, even as we drove through the cheerful daylight hours...

In the late afternoon, after much detouring, we were finally in Connecticut, arrived at the grey little beach as promised, and we left the car and stood for a moment to admire its bleak and eerie bay. For a half hour or so, we walked gingerly over its rocky shore, John stooping now and again for some bits of sea glass to make into earrings for me, should we ever return home; it had begun to feel a bit dreamlike, a long way from the silly bustle and jocularity of the campus. We were all rather quiet, even Andrew. As we walked aimlessly, a damp and insistent fog crept in, and the air was chilly although I wore John's sweater, and soon the warmth of the car seemed much preferable...

It was a quick, silent trip to the Wellstood House; as we pulled into the rounded driveway, it stood before us, large in stature and effect; not a friendly house, I had the distinct feeling that the peculiarly animate centuries-old stone was giving me the once-over, eyeing me from the tops of its proverbial tortoise-shell eyeglasses, and finding me unsuitable.

Andrew pointed out landmarks around the house, as one would show off one's rose bushes or the pretty paving-stones one had set just the summer before--or even the path where one's little sister had taken her first steps--"Here's the well, see this, where Uncle jumped in one night and drowned...and there, right up there, is the window Father threw himself out of, twice, but he didn't die either time, I suppose the drop wasn't far enough...but here's the tree, he hung himself from this tree and died that time, we saw him swinging..."

Unconsciously, I gripped John's cold hand with my own...Andrew was an enthusiastic and almost spritely story-teller, and it was difficult to know at the time just what was fact and what embellished fact and what outright fiction. However, I came to know later, much to my horror, that most of it was simple truth or something very close.

We were all feeling a bit giddy as Andrew led us into the house; I had no initial impression beyond its subdued grandeur and anachronism--here was a house out of time, and we had left the modern world, at this point rather dragging our feet. Andrew led us up the curving central staircase, past rows of enormous portraits of 18th- and 19th-century Wellstoods; I tried my best not to make eye contact with them. He showed us to our rooms, saying cryptically, "Granny is away, so it will be all right for us to stay here tonight." I supposed it wouldn't be all right were she there--although the house was enormous--

The house appeared to be a maze of rooms, enormous and tiny and seemingly nothing in between, long hallways, back staircases, and so very very many windows, long windows everywhere, peering out into late dusk. Everything was both dusty and incredibly clean at the same time, if you can imagine such a strange dichotomy. It was immaculate and gloomy, silently disapproving of our offending adolescent presence within its walls.

After the tour, of sorts, we settled in a long living room downstairs, appointed with a stiff, unyielding horsehair-and-velvet couch and rows of straight velvet-upholstered chairs, rigid sentries against the dark wainscoting. Andrew lit a fire for the chill, and it flickered dismally, the little flames dwarfed by the enormity of their stone prison. We ate something we'd brought along--like refugees--I don't remember what it could have been, perhaps Pringles and beef jerky and I must have had a bottle of my ubiquitous Diet Coke?--and made valiant small talk, our natural co-ed exuberance and laughter quelled in the somber atmosphere. The darkness pressed in all around us, an unwonted suitor caressing my hair and ankles and making me more and more jumpy until I suggested that perhaps it was time to retire--but I wasn't sure at this point which would be the worse scenario, lying awake in the grim bedroom, alone with John for dubious protection, or shivering in the dour living room with ground-floor windows staring in at us.

When Andrew brought us back to our room, it looked dreadful, lit by two tiny wall sconces that cast a trembling and sickly yellow pallor over the heavy rugs and furnishings, the ornate bed with the scratchy mattress and insufficient decorative bedcovers...Andrew turned to me and smiled in the half-light, and pointed to a corner window near the bed--"see, there's the window I showed you, the one my father jumped from, twice."

And with that, unceremoniously, he retired. I remember that John and I made for the bed, fully dressed, and pulled the coverlet around us, and lay for what seemed an eternity, stiff with cold and fear, not talking much. But eventually, John fell asleep, that traitor, leaving me wide awake as the room pressed in around me.

The next moments in that still, still room were long, and I was scared, and then I was terrified. Something compelled me to glance at the corner window, had it been closed? It was now open, just a bit, enough to let in a chilly breeze that stirred the curtains, drawn back to either side, a light breeze that carried not an early spring freshness but something else...and then I saw it, clearly even in the dim light--

two hands, the fingers long and alive, hooked over the side of the window sill, clutching the ledge.

Immediately I buried my face in John's warm back, he grunted and shifted in his sleep, and then, I turned again to look at that window ledge--they were there, those hands, clutching, clutching...I squeezed my eyes shut and when I looked for a third time, they were gone, and the window was closed, the curtain pulled back but completely motionless, the room quiet but for the hitch in my breathing.

It was an eternity of minutes, maybe it was a second or maybe it was an hour, but at last I heard a light tapping on our door, and someone--it was Andrew--poked his head in and hissed at me, "Granny has returned unexpectedly from her trip--you'd best be as quiet as possible, I don't want her to know we're here--we'll leave in the morning before she's awake--"

"What?!?" I squeaked trying to contain myself.

"Don't worry," said Andrew. "She's mostly deaf and quite a bit blind, so it shouldn't be too difficult. She never comes into this room anyway."

It was true, Granny had returned. She spent the better part of an hour walking the halls by our room; I could see the shadow of her little feet, crossing back and forth, back and forth. Whether she was putting away her luggage, or simply pacing the halls, watching and waiting with a sort of a sense that people were in her house who shouldn't be there, I just don't know. I do know, however, that even after she settled down and the footsteps stopped, I did not sleep that night, not for one instant.

In the morning, just after dawn, Andrew hurriedly rounded us up and, groggily, silently, we exited the Wellstood House, ran to the car, and hot-footed it back to our college.

John, Iain, and I often spoke of that night in the following months, and it became much easier to laugh about it when we were well away from there; it came to seem miserably funny, even. But I never mentioned the hands at the window ledge. After all, who really knows whether it was a trick of the light, or of my already overtaxed nerves and imagination...still, I know what I saw there, even though I'm not sure why I saw it.

Several years later, Andrew Wellstood committed suicide. To this day I can see him clearly, smiling as he told his stories of ghastly tragedy.








*some names have been changed, for reasons quite obvious.

Photo: "Moonlight Escape" by McBeth (from Flickr Creative Commons)

Roll Call of the Loved Animals

Rusty Boy Beauty, Caesar, Shashlik, Rein, Jackson, Susy, Dilly, Kishka, Suky, Minnie and Tashy, Winston, Fluffy, Worky and Churchy, Friedman Pasha, Patsy Cline, Dr. Frizzle, Babe, Buddy, Bugsy, Tom, Vivi, Lily, Nosy, Pippin...

Birds, fish, hamsters, mice, dogs, cats, some with us for months, others more than a decade; the biters, the bullies, the arrogant, the cuddly, the submissive; the ones who floated through life, seemingly oblivious, and the ones who loved back, fiercely; the inscrutable, and the ones who wore their hearts on their sleeves; the ones who flew and the ones who scuttled; the ones who ran in fields and swam in lakes, the ones who slept the day away; the ones who begged for food, and the ones who behaved; the ones we fostered and the ones whose tiny lives we struggled valiantly to save; and the ones who died in our arms...

and the wild creatures, called simply Frog, Toad, and Worm, Caterpillar and Newt, Squirrel, Spider, Sparrow, and Fox, nursed to health or placed out of harm's way...

In the names, remembered or now-forgotten, whimsical or well-considered, literary, historical, or childish, the story of a family who loves animals.

Sock Finalists

You folks came up with fantastic dissertation titles--

I laughed out loud, and I learned the phrase “titular colonicity,” also that titular colonicity screws with old European librarians.

Now if you would just oblige me and vote for one of the finalists--you have until Saturday--just go to the sidebar and pick your favorite! Vote once, and those who are finalists should also vote. Vote! That word is starting to sound peculiar to my ears...

Here are your choices:

1. Straight to the point:

“Two Years Research: Men in Uniforms are Hot”

2. Assisting me handily in my delusion of reference, if not actually naming my dissertation:

“Alan Rickman in Chains: The Woman who Turned that Jowly Frown Upside Down”

3. Clever and accurate use of jargon combined with hilarity:

“Strain Theory and Geriatric Delinquency: The Applicability of a Theoretical Model Across Old Knudsen's Poop Fetish”

4. Pithy and succinct:

"Gimme that Fucking Degree: I am Worth It!”

5. Just plain old made me laugh out loud:

“Podunk Police Departments: We Make Mirrored Sun Glasses Look Good and Son...You Sure Got a Purdy Mouth”


6. Also made me laugh,

“Rural Law Enforcement: Where ‘Breathing My Air’ is an Arrestable Offense.”

7. shit, and one more,

"Why Blogging Beats a Doctorate: Fetishism and Solipsism"

8. Gd dammit, I can't miss out on one of those flattering ones that reference me, I mean come on now...

"Unholiest Housewife in Handcuffs: An In Depth Insight into Lust, Law, Leah, and Lusciousness"



I don't know, I had to stop somewhere. We also had titles that could be used for an actual dissertation. I’ll be contacting you for help with the frakking thing itself! You’d probably do a better job than I am, even if it's not your field...We also had alliteration, Yiddish, German, awesome slang that I had to look up ("zoots"? Now I know), funny take-downs of academia, and general funniness. This is why I usually just draw a random number.

We Interrupt this Contest so that I Can Tell More Things About Myself

I've been tagged by dear Megan for the little meme that's sweeping our corner like a particularly tenacious rhinovirus (how many times has some version of that joke been made...). Also, I think I'm well on my way to expanding my "101 Things about Me" to "1000 Things about Me" and this helps it along...

The gist of it: "Mention six things of no real importance about yourself" and then tag six more people--see, it's like a chain letter but more fun.

I'm tagging

Rob
Bob
Sarah
mago
Faycat--and I know you're busy cooking up a storm, but I still want to hear six things about you!!!!
Suzy--yes, yes, I know you're in semi-retirement, but...

and here's some more about me...

1. I've "heard" (through my latest interwebs stalking expedition) that my ex-something-or-other who wrote a bio of the Rolling Stones is now working on his memoirs. I'm wondering trepidatiously whether, if the book is ever finished (he's a notoriously slow producer), I'll be included. I fear I will, and I fear I won't. You know what I mean?

2. I've been waking up at 5 a.m. every morning and drinking really strong coffee on not enough sleep, which sets me up for a nice mid-morning anxiety attack. You'd think I'd have learned by now...

3. Our hamster, Whomper, a scientific oddity, has grown so enormous that he no longer really fits his hamster cage and wheel, and so I must buy him a rat cage. It's not his diet--he's fed nothing but his seed mix, and an occasional broccoli and carrot treat.

4. My morning makeup routine consists of Perfekt foundation (ladies, I can't sing its praises enough), and Benefit lipstick in "Good to Go". That's it, but my crammed-full makeup case would mislead you. I'm a products hound.

5. I love the smell of chlorinated pools.

6. I've had a recent change of heart, and now prefer the subway system to taxis. Two dollar ride that'll get you absolutely everywhere? I'm so glad the MTA and I have been able to renew our vows.

Sock Contest Redux: Name that Dissertation

It's time once again, as it is every hundred posts or so, for me to spread the Hand-knit Sock Love around the world, and so opens my third Sock Contest. If you win, I will knit a pair of socks for you and you will be very very glad to own them.

The rules are a little different this time around, however. The last two contests were simple random drawings. This time, you must work a little for your hand-knits.

THE RULES

1. Please submit, in the comment section below, a title for my doctoral dissertation (which is, in case you're not sure, just a glorified academic paper that gets me a Ph.D if I manage to finish it). Dissertation titles, like most academic journal article titles, should ideally contain the following: a pithy set-up sentence, giving some general information, followed by a colon, followed by a pithy, more specific explanation, relating to the thesis or general topic area.

some examples are

"Graduate Students in Limbo: A Survey of Lackluster Excuses for Non-Completion of Dissertation"

"Holy Knockers: A Comparison of Cup Size in Urban and Rural Housewives"

"Uniform Fetish: The Demographics of Women Who Fantasize about Being Handcuffed, Batoned, and Roundly Kissed"

Some info to get you going on this: I've been working on this piece of shite half-heartedly for several years now, whining and worrying ceaselessly the entire time. My general topic area is rural police departments. The even broader field is Criminal Justice.

Your title doesn't need to follow the above format if it seems too complicated; one sentence will do. The title may reference Criminal Justice, police, my laziness, or all of the above.

Make me laugh if you can.


2. You have until the end of the day, Wednesday, March 11th.

3. Enter as many times as you like!

4. I will choose finalists, and you good folks will vote for your favorite.


5. I will then knit a pair of socks for the winner.


Don't be shy! I really hope to see some entries here!

Green Glass Bowl

I inherited any number of things from my grandparents, Eva and Max. From Grandma, a penchant for fretting and some skill with a crochet hook; from Grandpa, acerbity and a peculiar dark way of seeing the world; from both, my Judaism and a love and understanding of classical music.

I also inherited a green glass bowl. This bowl rested dead center of their enormous, formal dining room table for as long as I can see backwards into the past, probably since long before I was even born, always filled, predictably, with fruit: apples, bananas, peaches, and pears with only slight seasonal variation. We were welcome to help ourselves, and we did so--bananas to be sliced into cornflakes, or a stray peach cut in half and shared between me and my sister.

But the fruit was really for Grandpa Max. He was a creature of unflagging habit, and just as he shaved every day with Noxzema and traded his ubiquitous suits for short-sleeved button-up shirts and trousers in the summer, washed with Ivory soap and listened to the classical music station every morning for two hours after breakfast, so too would he eat fruit, two or four pieces a day, day after day and year after year. Lunch and dinner, he would without fail end his meal this way, eaten quickly, matter-of-factly as one would take one's vitamins. He ate apples including their pits and cores. He ate bananas in three bites. Peaches in two. He would often bite off a piece of peach, then hand it to the invariable doberman drooling and staring hopefully at his elbow. The dobermans died and were replaced by new generations of dobermans; the green glass bowl and the simple fruit remained the same.

I have this bowl now, dead center of my table, and more than anything else, tangible or intangible, it invokes for me daily the presence of my grandfather.

Naughty

Hedgehog has a very bad little boy in her second grade classroom, we'll just call him Sam. Sam is much reviled around Chez Weatherinthestreets; he teases, he pushes, one must go in to see the teachers about him sometimes even, and I know he's their Number One problem. They actually seem a bit unsure about how to handle this little wretch. But despite the very real problems with Sam, Hedgie is a secret fan of bad behavior. Part of this ill-concealed glee comes from the fact that she herself is incredibly well-behaved in school. If I were to psychoanalyze, I would say that she gets a vicarious thrill out of others acting out their Id when she herself is tightly governed by her Superego. But I won't get too Freudian here.

Or maybe I will. On our walk home from school this afternoon, Hedgie was bursting to tell me a story: in art class, when they were supposed to be creating little figures of some sort out of clay, Sam took advantage of a distracted art teacher. "Mama," Hedgie was actually bouncing along the street with laughter and excitement. "Sam made a clay penis! And then he glued it to the front of his pants and marched around the room showing it off!"

My reaction? I burst out laughing. How fabulous! I even said that to her. I asked Hedgie what the teacher did, and she said, "scolded loudly!" and I said I wasn't sure that it was deserving of a scolding. I told her that I didn't really think it was wrong to talk about penises or even to make a clay model of one.

But Hedgie, even in her delight, was still sensible. She reminded me that it was all about context. "Talking about penises in school would definitely be okay if we happened to be studying the human body," she said firmly. And making a clay penis? "That's okay too, but not to parade around and disrupt the class."

I had to concede the point.

Unbuttoned

I've posted my favorite "dirty" poem HERE if you'd care to peek.

You

A little parlor sort of game--I was assigned a letter, "U" in my case, and am to give some words that begin with "U" that are important to me in some way. "U" was a challenge, but here goes...

unusual: I like to believe I am this. In fact, my whole life has been a pursuit of being unusual, being thought to be unusual. I'm not sure whether everyone feels this way, but I can't stand the thought that I might be usual, ordinary, standard, typical, regular. It's almost an obsession, and, I'll admit, a conceit.

"Ulysses" by James Joyce: When I was reading it for the first time for a college course, my dad (whose favorite book it was) and I discussed it at great length one night, I sitting cross-legged in the hall of my college dormitory, he back home in Brooklyn. Dad said, and I've never forgotten, that he would read it periodically over the years, and every time he read it, it was more meaningful than the last time. Now I know that's true--the longer I've been married to Sarge, the more the book means to me; it's a portrait of, among other things, a long marriage.

unbelief: I've always believed in God, deep down, but have at times struggled with unbelief and have come to the conclusion that I would rather cast my lot in, take the leap of faith, and just let myself believe. It's been at times almost like a conscious decision, however paradoxical that might sound. Unbelief is too uncertain, too scary.

unbending and unbuttoned: The dichotomy of Leah. My tightly-wound self at odds with the more free, more free-wheeling, self I know I am.

uniform: I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I love a man in uniform. Soldiers, police. All the symbolism, the regimented strength, the suggested experience. What can I do, it's just another of my fetishes. Maybe it's because I just can't abide weakness in men. I mean, weaknesses are wonderful and individual, of course (everyone's got them), but not overall weakness; that makes me feel squiggly. Maybe that's not fair, but I must come clean that I cannot. The uniform says, "I've got a gun and I'm not afraid to use it!" Okay, just kidding on that last part.

urban: I'm urban. I'm comfortable in the city, on the sidewalks, I've got good street smarts, I can get anywhere on the subway, I can make my way quickly through a milling herd of tourists, I hate Broadway shows (just like a good native NYer should), I can tolerate noise and ruckus and 3 a.m. traffic on the expressway. The funny thing is, I'm comfortable in deep country too. But I'm a city girl at heart.


*photo by Leo Reynolds, from Flickr Creative Commons