Recently in Kith and Kin Category

Invite your mother to come for an impromptu dinner. Warn her that you have no idea what you'll serve, and that you don't plan to tidy up.

Then tidy up just a smidge, because you don't want people to see it like this.

Since a) it's chilly out, b) there's nothing exciting in the fridge, and c) you feel like being lazy cozy, decide to make snowday food: canned tomato soup & grilled cheese sandwiches. Because your mom deserves better, decide to glam it up. Here's how.

Over the past year or so, D and I accidentally developed a favorite sport that could readily go by the name Stump The Sweetheart. The game can start anytime, any place, when one partner lobs the first pitch: "I love you" followed by a nonsense nickname. The second player answers with "I love you" followed by an unrelated nonsense nickname.

The volleys continue until a player bursts out laughing, falters, or delivers an inaudible. "I love you, [mumblety-peg]" would be a losing stroke. Oddly enough, "I love you, Mumblety-Peg!" would not.

The faltering, when one of us is simply unable to concoct a nonsense endearment, occurs with surprising regularity. It's harder than you'd think to keep tossing out absurd cooing endearments without pause. You try it sometime. "I love you, Rosencrantz," suits the game down to the ground, but a return of "I love you, Guildenstern," gets the buzzer.

A sufficiently hilarious salvo from the instigator gets the (significant) other cracking up, resulting in an ace: the schmoopie equivalent of a hole in one. "I love you, Fry and Laurie" was a recent inexplicable example.

Some contenders for the No-You're-The-Schmoopie doorprize around these parts:

I love you, Bruce Lee
I love you, perfessor
I love you, cuttlefish
I love you, Dr. Beardface
I love you, guv'ner
I love you, rambling rose
I love you, Tipsy McDrunkerton
I love you, sans serif
I love you, Iron Chef
I love you, Harper Lee
I love you, Señor Biggles
I love you, moon pie
I love you, wifi
I love you, bagel face
I love you, Mister Bingley
I love you, Spiderpig
I love you, Chief Shoot 'em Up

Honorable mention goes to "I love you, monkey," a phrase disallowed in the game, as it's the standard endearment chez nous.

If you'd grown up with him, you'd be astonished that his blog consists of more than chattering synopses of Gilligan's Island episodes delivered over the dinner table with a disarming disregard for parental strictures against talking with one's mouth full*.

Unbelievably, my brother shook off the yoke of his early narrative conventions and has gone on to glory: nominated for best expatriate weblog in the Third Annual Satin Pajamas Awards at Fistful of Euros.

C'mon. Help a brother out.

*Make fun of me for bouncing on the bed, will you?

Yesterday, my almost-sixteen year old niece A. and I went on our annual Christmas do-nothing day. I meet her after school, we head down to the Old Port and drink cocoa in the hipster coffeehouse, we wander around looking idly at all the goodies in the shops, we perhaps buy a present but I'm not saying. In short, we goof.

Within two or three minutes of meeting yesterday, we had giggled twice over the unbidden emergence of our catchphrase for the day.

We have no goals or tasks planned, so it's a brief respite from all the planned festivity and gift-gathering hysteria of December. Also, since she's awesomeness itself, just being with her makes me happy.

My favorite moment, though, happened as we strolled down Exchange St., just after leaving the toy store. A. turned to me and said, "You know what song I've got in my head."

"Uh... no."

And she quietly sang, "Reno Dakota, there's not an iota..."

And we harmonized down the street:

"... of kindness in you
You know you enthrall me
And yet you don't call me
It's making me blue
Pantone 292

Reno Dakoto I'm reaching my quota
of tears for the year
Alas and alack you just don't call me back
You have just disappeared
It makes me drink beer

I know you're a recluse
You know that's no excuse
Reno
That's just a ruse

Do not play fast and loose with my heeeeeeeeeeeeeeart"

What on earth are you doing here when you could be looking at my glowing little nephew?

I haven't been here much this winter. In that time, there has been sorrow, stress, loss, comfort, love, and simple banal illness.

Yeesh, I've been so ill. Nothing dramatic or serious, just a boring, bone-aching bout of influenza. The kind of sick that makes your teeth hurt. So sick that I was tempted to salt every meager mouthful, including the liters and liters of ginger ale.

You know a man is sweet when he sticks around during the flu, or when he strokes the matted fur of your family's much loved cat and insists with some ire that the boney old wraith does not stink. If he does both on the same night, he is beyond sweet.

To sum up: I've been sick, and I've been grieving. All better now... for now.

This is Kyle Corley, an old friend from college. Elsa should have a few memories of him as well, or not. Anyway, I'm posting his name and a photo I took in the hope that he (or someone close to him) will google himself and thus find me and write, because where oh where has my little Kyle gone? I've found other Kyle Corleys, but not him.

UPDATE: We found each other in March 2007. Happy happy!

Support from dear and long-time friends is no surprise; indeed, knowing it is always there under the jokes and the kvetching is the very essence of friendship. Elli, K., T & J: there are no words to thank you for your good, generous hearts. We've been through so much together that your love leaves me grateful but unsurprised.

But the sweet, stalwart persistence of a few new friends utterly sideswiped me.

You took me out for breakfast. You put down your textbook and suggested coffee. You bought me vodka & tonics in that dim, swanky bar. You burbled beautifully about your wedding plans or your internship or Shakespeare. You listened. Oh, sweet fancy Moses, did you listen. You cracked stupid, smutty jokes. You hugged me ‘til my knees buckled, and held on ‘til I could stand straight. You revealed yourselves as true friends, and you make me quite weak with fondness and gratitude.

I take it back: you make me strong.

I'm the kind of person who will stare at textured surfaces for long periods in order to find as many images I can. However sometimes life is a little more obvious, such as with water rings and slices of toast. A few days ago I spilled some water on my Wacom tablet and was surprised with a visit from my dog who lives with my mom.

In case you don't see the dog, or how I could see a dog, take a look below at the etching I did of her. It was supposed to be a new technique our teacher was pushing, at which I failed miserably. Still, I see my dog every time I look at it. I could probably see her in a bowl of soup though if I looked long enough.

I return from a family reunion, resplendent in a shiny carapace of baby spittle, yogurt, and biter biscuits lavishly applied by my two youngest nephews, N, 22 months, and A, 8 months. This impressive exoskeleton, resistant to sharp objects, thudding blows, and all forms of washing, is punctuated by smeary blossoms of Fluffernutter (and, yes, spittle) courtesy of S and J, 7 and 5. M and L, 7 and 9 10, displayed a mature tendency to retain both spittle and snacks within their interiors, or at worst to emit them in the vicinity of some other adult. Kudos to them.

Airdna fastidiously abstained from all application of spittle and foodstuffs, instead graciously providing me with a henna tattoo.