A visit to Green-Wood Cemetery

With young Percy attending school in NYC, we have more opportunities to head into the city than we did before. Spring break was ending this past weekend so we decided to make a day of it and what better way to do that than exploring a scenic cemetery?

Green-Wood (and that hyphen is driving me crazy) is 478 acres in the heart of Brooklyn.  Battle Hill is on the grounds and it's the highest point in Brooklyn. The view is breathtaking. I understand why rich assholes want to cut down trees that block their view of picturesque locations.

Stoopid trees, blocking my view.

It's a lovely place. It seems very polished in a way that cemeteries typically aren't. I don't mean that as a pejorative, but I do understand how it could be perceived that way. It seems that they are very deliberate in maintaining their identity, which is an unusual thing to say about a cemetery, but it's an unusual business facing unusual pressures. (This episode of the Search Engine podcast covers some of the history of cemeteries and the unique challenges they face.) 

Jen really enjoyed the monk parakeets.  I took a picture but they all flew away before I snapped it.

Ayup

Percy found a grave hidden away in a bush and mentioned how sad that seemed.

Like any cemetery of its size, it has some truly impressive mausolea. 

It's nice. It's peaceful. It's everything it should be. I appreciate the efforts of the people who run the place, who ensure that it will endure.

Taxation plus representation: Our trip to Washington!

We took a family trip down to Washington D.C. over the weekend.  The original plan had been to visit the Century III ghost mall, but that’s out near Pittsburgh and it would have been a twelve-hour round trip to see something that very well could have be very boring after fifteen minutes. D.C. was closer, cheaper and had many more opportunities for interesting stuff, so that’s where we wound up going.

I haven’t been there since I was a kid.  In fact, my most recent and comprehensive knowledge of the place comes from a lot of time playing Fallout 3. I figured I could use my game knowledge to get around town.

Place has really gone to shit since Trump moved in

Spoiler, I totally could!

Our first stop after the hotel was at Arlington National Cemetery. (I wanted to get the Luck Bobblehead at Arlington House, but somebody snagged it before I did. Another of Junders Plunkett’s crimes, no doubt. )

It started raining during our visit, which I really enjoyed because it combined two of my favorite things.  The Women’s Memorial was a very nice building, but it had no visitors when we got there, which was a shame. According to this sign, they receive no government funding.  Lily saw the sign and donated five dollars to keep them going.

We saw Taft’s grave. Fun fact, he was buried in the same bathtub in which he became stuck when he was President.  We saw JFK’s grave as well. Lily asked if I thought she would ever be successful enough to merit that kind of memorial. On one hand, that’s pretty morbid. On the other hand, it’s probably my fault, seeing as how I keep dragging her to cemeteries.

We walked around a bit more, then took the metro to the Mall.

Obligatory

The lines for the Air in Space Museum were too long to justify waiting, but we went to the Hirshhorn sculpture garden.  I didn’t look as closely as Lily did, but she assured me that a sculpture of a naked baby boy riding a horse was anatomically correct. In every detail.

We went to the National Museum of the American Indian. The guy who checked my bag complimented my umbrella. It’s a Seventh Doctor umbrella, but I wasn’t trying to use it to be cutesy; it just happens to be the nicest umbrella I own, so it’s usually the one I take with me when it looks like rain.

We saw a friendly white squirrel, which we figured for an albino. Lily saw some crows harassing a different squirrel and trying to steal the piece of bread it was eating, so she ran over and waved her arms until they flew away.  If this had been the first episode of an anime series, the squirrel would have become her boon companion and would henceforth perch adorably on her shoulder.

We retired to the hotel after that. Jen and Lily had a nice time swimming, but I’d been fighting off a headache all day and I retreated to the room.

We went to the National Zoo the next day. Lily is now obsessed with Fennec foxes and Maned Wolves and we saw both of those. I was disappointed that the zoo had neither Deathclaws nor radscorpions, but at least it had naked mole rats. I tried using Moira Brown’s repellant stick on them to complete the quest, but security intervened after I got two.

Should I have gone for the Kim Possible joke instead?

We kept losing Jen. I blame Lily, who has inherited some of my bad habits of not paying attention.

Jen: I'll be at the (trumpet sounds of adult voice from Peanuts)
Lily: Uh huh.
Me: Have fun.
(Three seconds pass)
Lily: Where's mommy?
Me: Beats me.

We hit a lot of traffic on our way home, but on the whole, it was a pretty great trip.

On our way to Swan Point to visit H.P. Minecraft

One of the big reasons that we were so excited about attending the Rhode Island Comic Con is because it put us close to Swan Point Cemetery. This was especially cool for me, because this trip was funded, in part, by a story I had sold to the Lovecraft Zine.

I love cemeteries. I always have. Every time I see one, I think of a line from Robyn Hitchcock's Airscape.

The tide recedes upon the bones of something beautiful and drowned.

Locally, we have Laurel Hill and West Laurel Hill. Should I ever make it to France, I'd really like to see the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial. My great-grandfather was involved in that offensive, but that's not the reason I'd like to attend. It just looks like a really beautiful place.

Kenobi Jen and Frederick also like cemeteries. They recently vandalized the grave where an orangutan is buried in the place of Edgar Allen Poe, and they wished to continue their reign of terror against HP Lovecraft's final resting place.

We drove around a bit, stopping every so often if there was a particularly picturesque monument to see, and we found the site. The leaves were turning and it was beautiful weather for a cemetery visit, chilly and overcast. It was a bit windy, too, however, and that made the act of getting the rubbing a little more difficult than it had to be.

Lovecraft's grave had a number of offerings near it.

Sorry, supplicants. Your offerings of pumpkin spice candles and escort service business cards aren't going to save you when the Old Ones rise.

 I'm familiar with the tradition of placing a stone on a grave to show it's been visited, and I guess this was a variation on the gesture. Either that, or someone was making it slightly more convenient for zombie Lovecraft to enter their house to eat their brains.

Jen Classic was sick and stayed in the car for most of it, though she popped out to take some pictures at my request.  Lily ran around and had a ball. My friends are very nice people. "Nice" is such a flabby word, but I think it fits here, because Jen and Jen and Frederick are all really decent,  thoughtful and considerate, taking the the time and putting in the effort to be good friends to people they like. Being both smart and kind is unfortunately a very rare combination, but these three folks have it in abundance, which is probably why Lily and I both like them so much.

I had this thought when Frederick let Lily perform a rubbing, while Kenobi Jen held the paper steady in the wind.

Lily knows the name Cthulhu, and can recognize a representation, but doesn't really have much of an idea of the whole Cthulhu, Mythos.(And I think I would be rather disturbed if she did, at seven years old.) There was a miscommunication and she thought we were visiting the grave of the guy who invented Minecraft. I thought that was pretty funny.

She used a couple different colors, and wound up with a very festive rubbing.

Sukie was the kid, she liked to hangout in the graveyard/She did brass rubbings, she learned you never had to press hard

Another post about Josh's weekend!

We had another in our series of good weekends. On Saturday, we got together with my friend Amy and her family and we all went to a local event with scarecrow building and pony rides. Jen built a new boyfriend

If he only had a brain

and the little kids had a great time burying me in straw.

A rare picture of me for your collection

Lily was positively euphoric for the pony ride. She was so excited for the whole thing. She went on five times and we gave the guy a good tip.

We went out for pizza afterward. You can tell that we're all parents because when Amy was moving one of the kids around, three pairs of hands reached for her ice tea to make sure it wasn't knocked over.

As we were leaving, Lily had seen some face painting. Amy's family had already taken off, and Jen thought that the other kids would be upset if Lily showed up looking like a little kitty. So on our way home, we stopped at the store and Jen picked up some face painting supplies and made all three of us into a family of puppy dogs. Best mom EVER!

In other news, I'm very proud of Lily. Her dolls are playing more nicely with each other. Princess Daisy is in the hospital with a broken arm and a leg. The other dolls are visiting her to wish her well.

She was watching a scary Scooby Doo movie and Scott Pilgrim was watching it in the other room. She heard him screaming and at first he denied it and said maybe an invisible person in another room was screaming.

Lily as Daisy: I went to every room and touched everywhere and didn't feel any invisible people.

Scott: How did you do that if you have a broken arm and leg?

Daisy: (After a very brief pause) Someone carried me and I used my good arm to touch things.

I thought that was some good reasoning on the spur of the moment.

After that she said, "If you were scared, that's okay. You're my best friend and you never need to be embarrassed around me."

On Sunday I went to church with Jen and Lily. Jen wound up teaching a Sunday school class, and I'm not into the whole Cthulhu-worship aspect of Unitarian Churches, so after they went to the classroom, I quietly slipped out of the church. Afterwards, I heard they put on a performance of The King in Yellow, and it was "mind-blowing".

I, of course, went to a local cemetery and walked around there. It was nice. Peaceful. They always are.

A friend recently asked me "What's the deal with you and cemeteries?" I'm not sure what it is. They say that in Europe they think 100 miles is a long distance and in America they think 100 years is a long time. I guess that's the reason. I think it's because they're one of those places in any town where time seems to run deep.

I said before that Lily seems to be recovering well from her burns. I guess she's carrying a little baggage with her though. I came back to the church as Sunday school was wrapping up and picked up Lily. We went down to the coffee room, but all the good snacks were already gone (the only thing was chicken in white ganglia sauce) so we went outside. I was wearing short sleeves, so Lily started asking about the scar on my arm. (I was burned by sulfuric acid in high school chemistry)

"Is that a first level burn or a second level burn?"

We talked about second degree burns in front of her, but not really to her. I'm surprised by how much she's internalized.

After that, it was on to a local Celtic Festival. Lily had another good time here too. She especially enjoyed the girls performing the step dancing. While it was going on, she said to Jen, "I might cry because this is so beautiful!" We ran into my friend Eric and his family and that added further to Lily's enjoyment.

That night she asked me, "Did you know that only men used to be allowed to vote?" I told her that I did, and I asked her where she learned that. She said it was at Sunday School. I knew the answer when I asked the question, but for all my teasing about Unitarians, I'm happy that my daughter is learning about Susan B. Anthony in Sunday school.

Notes from the week

Last Saturday, we went to Lily's cousin's party. The theme was Jake and the Neverland Pirates. My brother put on an episode during the party and Izzy, the girl pirate had a puzzle box that Captain Hook wanted, and every time they said something about the puzzle box, I couldn't help but think of Lemarchand's Box from the Hellraiser series.

The party was nice, but a little boy was mean to Lily, and that upset her for the rest of the party. I was happy to see that her other cousin stuck up for her though.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. Lily and I had a daddy/daughter date on Wednesday.Since she's has been complaining that everyone tells her what to do, we've been trying to let her make more decisions. I asked her how she wanted to spend her afternoon. "I want to go home and play on the computer." She is so my daughter.

I suggested the local Chinese buffet and she was all over that. Then we went home and played Wenkinz. She really, really likes it. She has two of them, and she bought them matching beds, matching sinks...and matching toilets.

This weekend was pretty full too. Jen and I had been looking forward to a meal at a Thai restaurant downtown all week. We decided to drive part of the way, park on the hill, then cross the bridge over the Delaware on our way to the place. We did this and as we we crossing the final block, we saw a bunch of police cars pull up and double park outside the restaurant. We crossed the street and we weren't sure if we should go in or not, but the waitress waved us in, so we sat down and had our meal. We eat had the house curry, Jen with soy and me with chicken, and it was neat, with lots of pumpkin, but as the on line reviews said, it was a bit too watery.

On Saturday, we hung out, Jen helped her Nan set up for a show, and we did some shopping. I joined Frederick and Danny, and we walked around a cemetery and played Dead Island. I was pleasantly surprised. I had heard a lot of bad things about the game, but Frederick told me that the patch mostly fixed them.

Cemetery Pictures:

Abel, hmmm? Does that make this the House of Mysteries or the House of Secrets? I can never keep them straight.

I went home at around ten and Jen and I streamed some TV, the Parenthood premier (and I think I need some antidepressants of my own after the hundredth time that fucking Abilify commercial played) and the pilot for Up All Night, which was downright inspired.

We had a leisurely Sunday, then Jen took off for church and I stayed home and played video games. She came back for Lily and we met Oma at a local carnival. Lily was so awful that we almost turned the car around. I think that if Oma hadn't been there waiting to see her, that's what we would have done. Lily was upset that she was too small to go on many of the rides, and I already made the Tom-Hanks-In-Big joke in an earlier post, so I'll spare you a rehash. We spent twenty dollars on the thousand different variations of moon bounces they had there.

Lily's mood was much improved when we got back home. Sunday night is becoming Make Your Own Pizza night, so that's what we did.

The Thousand Names of Baby Bear

So a while back we lost Lily's stuffed animal, Baby Bear. We had lost her at a local mall previously, but quickly recovered, but this time it was more permanent. We were never sure if she fell off the roof of the car in the parking garage or if we actually made it all the way to the highway before she made her tumble. So we rushed an order on eBay for a replacement Baby Bear and Lily was none the wiser.

She was temporarily lost again at Great Nanny's house, and we ordered another replacement, but in a scene familiar to sci-fi fans, the original was unearthed when the clone was still running around. So we had two Baby Bears, and since Lily takes her everywhere, she occasionally gets left behind at school or at a sleepover, whereupon we break out the Baby Bear we keep in my dresser drawer.

Well, we had a moment where she saw both of them. The one was in a duffel bag from a sleepover and the other was out in the open. Lily poked in the duffel and saw the replacement. She looked at Jen and then asked in a hushed whisper, "Did you know that there were two Baby Bears?!"

So now she's making distinctions between the pair. She announced that one is Baby Bear and the other is Bear Baby ("Her nickname is Cubby, because a cub is a baby bear!") Sometimes when she's laying down to sleep, we'll hold hands and think of "silly stuff", though that's usually more a thing that Jen does with her. I was doing it the other night and I suggested that Baby Bear's mom was really Triplicate Girl, and there was a third Baby Bear out there. She sat up and her lip quivered and she said, "I bet she's all alone and really scared," and I had to reassure her that the third Baby Bear was the white one we gave away to another little kid for a birthday, and that she was happy and well loved.

We were in the cemetery a couple days after that, and we saw a cloud that looked like the number three. I asked Lily who would write in clouds like that and she answered, "Mother Earth?" and later on she said, "You have to listen to Mother Earth!" in that absolutely sincere way little kids have.

She's asking a lot more esoteric questions, like "Does space go on forever?" and "Does the earth ever get any bigger?", the last because she knows there are more people being born and she's worried we'll run out of space. I asked her what we would have to do if we did run out of space, and she said everyone would have to share a house with an old person, and got upset when I thought that was funny.

This Friday, Jen's car broke down on the way home from work. She's terrible about charging her cell phone, so we couldn't reach each other on that. So, I went to the garage where she was going to be towed, waited for 45 minutes, and then got a phone call from Jen on a borrowed phone that she was still waiting for the truck, so I went to pick her up. I got there just as the truck was leaving with her car. Convenient, right? Or it would be, if my car didn't choose that moment to break down as we were driving away. So we pushed it to a local restaurant and called for a second tow. I'm pretty sure it was overheating, (the temperature topped out at 103 degrees that day) because it started up a couple hours later.

Saturday was okay. We went to Jen's sister's baby shower, at a church where Jen had had her own when she was pregnant with Lily. Lily was pretty bored, so I mostly just watched her in the cemetery and the playground.

(I'm very disappointed with this cemetery. The nicest feature is a gazebo near the entrance. It has more garbage cans than I've ever seen in a cemetery too. Two stars. I would not recommend it to my friends.)

Lily decided to start pretending to be Wonder Woman near the end of our time on the playground. She tied up the Joker ("tie-tie") and said "That was easy!" It is easy, Batman! It's not that hard to arrest an anorexic clown! Maybe it's time to face up to the fact that maybe you're not the A-1 sauce of crime-fighting! And after that, she said, "Now I'm going to drink some chocolate milk and go down this sliding board." Wonder Woman even knows how to celebrate in style!

Lily woke up in a good mood on Sunday, and as we were going downstairs, she said, "Let's think about what things we have in common and what things are different," so we decided that we both have brown eyes and we're both nice and funny and smart, and we both like the Legion of Superheroes. When we got downstairs, we talked about what she has in common with mommy. Lily said, "We're both girls and we both wear dresses and we both love you," which I thought was very sweet.

Later in the morning, I was trying to finish up a piece on Veronica Mars when Lily came upstairs and looked at the screen and asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was writing a story about a girl who solves mysteries. She said that she didn't want to be in my story, and pointed to a segment where I wrote about Veronica's best friend Lilly Echols. She's getting very good at spelling. Take a look at the bracelet she put together for me on Sunday morning:

Our mechanic works on weekends, so we got Jen's car back, and then went to the mall where we kind of had an ugly incident. I told Lily I would buy her something in the dollar store. She picked up a little thing that looked like a whistle, but I told her not to blow into it and I took it away because it looked like she was going to do it anyway. As soon as I turned my back, she grabbed another one and blew into it, and I told her that's what we would have to buy. She started bawling. She was really very upset, and it's really hard being a parent at times like this. But we paid for it, and met up with Jen, who asked how we were, and Lily was all "Don't tell mommy what happened!"

The troublesome toy

She calmed down somewhat and went into the computer store to buy a car charger for Jen's phone. While she was paying, Lily and I asked her what her favorite candy was. Then we didn't go over to Gertrude Hawk and we didn't buy Jen a birthday present and Lily didn't say "Mommy is going to be DELIGHTED with her present!" when we were done.

"Where you were? Why you not come when monster made bad-bad?!"

This was another full weekend. On Saturday, we kicked around for a little while and watched a new episode of Scooby Doo. It was about an explorer named Rick Spartan and his sidekick, the Oxford educated Charles, whom he calls Cachinga, and speaks to in a pidgin dialect. (Hey, I see Charles was voiced by Greg Ellis, who did the voice for Drax in the Legion of Super Heroes!) Lily was tickled when the Charles enters after just missing the monster attack on Dr. Spartan, and Spartan berates him for his absence, "Where you were? Why you not come when monster made bad-bad?!" She was quoting that all weekend. Heh heh.

After that, I took off for Frederick's house. He, Ancker, Eric and I all have such disparate schedules that we have to set things up well in advance. We did manage to carve out a couple hours for some time and we're trying to put together a superhero RPG Campaign, so we did a test run of the system. Even though we were playing DC Adventures, we decided to go the Marvel route and stress test the system by having our heroes slug it out. I happen to like the system a lot and I think we understand it a bit better after our exercise.

Frederick grilled up some yummy burgers and we had a yummy little feast. Then we watched all three of the Family Guy Star Wars movies. I'm only an irregular viewer of the show, so I didn't get all of the in-jokes, but it was funny as a straight-up Star Wars parody too.We discussed our philosophy of zombies (fast zombies don't necessarily ruin a zombie movie, but they're often a crutch) and had a goof time hanging out.

I also caught a little Fullmetal Alchemist. I knew of the property, but had never caught an episode, and it occurred to me that this is how anime is described by people who hate anime. It was nothing but 22 minutes of incoherent brawling between a bunch of superpowered weirdos. And I don't know how representative of the series as a whole that one episode is, and as Frederick pointed out, of course it's going to seem incoherent if I jump into the middle of a season as I did. It was interesting. I'm not sure if I like it or not, based on that one viewing.

I slept over and we hit a Friendly's for breakfast. We played a little of the new Mortal Kombat game on our return (it looks beautiful) and then I headed home because I was really running out of steam at that point.

Sunday was pretty quiet. We picked up a kiddie pool and did some grilling (I probably made the best burgers of my life on Sunday) and caught some fireflies in the evening.

Monday, we headed to a cemetery to walk around. Lily really liked it and I got some nice pictures, except they were all taken at a kind of skewed angle,

because I wound up holding her snacks (a snack-pack of hard little breadsticks one dips into soft cheese. Lily coined the portmanteau of Steese (STicks of chEESE) to describe them.)

What child doesn't remember her halcyon days frolicking in the cemetery?

And up top for references

We got a last minute invite to Jen's family for a cookout, so we did that for the afternoon. We had asked Lily why we celebrated July 4th. She thought a minute and said "Mmm...because it's God's birthday?" and we replied that it was closer to the country's birthday. I suppose Constitution Day actually corresponds more closely to America's birthday, but it's barely a holiday. I took a cute video of her singing "Happy Birthday, dear America!"

Our Egg-cellent Easter

We had an extremely good Easter. I don't think it's a stretch to say that it's nicest Easter I've ever had.

Jen and I got up at about 6:45 to a beautiful Spring day. That right there was a nice change of pace, because it seems like the weather is always terrible for Easters around here, either snowy or rainy. But the temperature was in the mid-70s and absolutely lovely.

Lily woke up in a delightful mood, dressed herself and consented to a leisurely breakfast. We went out to the yard and she hunted for eggs with the excitement only a four-year-old can muster. Someday, she's going to be a sullen 15-year-old who paints her toenails black while she listens to The Cure, and I'm glad I've got the video of this so I can remind her of the enthusiasm she used to have for the simplest things.

We went to Jen's UU church after this, and the pastor had a sermon about Eostra, the pagan goddess after whom Easter was named. He pronounced it "Ôstarâ", which is just as legitimate as the version to which I'm more accustomed, but it was rather unfortunate, because he put the accent on the second syllable, which made it sound like he was saying "O-Starro", which made me think of Starro the Conqueror.

Starro giving the children's sermon

Of course, it's fairly well known that Unitarians worship Cthulhu, and I'm not up on their whole weird theology, but I think Starro may be one of their saints.

We were meeting Jen's family at 1:30 and church let out before noon, so we had a little time to kill. I suggested that we spend it wandering around a local cemetery. (I imagine you probably spent your Easter in much the same way)

Like the sign says, the place is called the Ninsky Hill Cemetery and it's really quite nice, and rather more expansive than it looked from the street. The most distinctive features of the place are a residential home complete with swingset actually on the grounds of the cemetery,

This guy is going to be screwed when the zombie invasion comes

and a rather phallic looking monument.

Paging Doctor Freud...

After that, we met Jen's family at a local firehouse, and Lily was super sweet while we were there. Some poor bastard was dressed up in a bunny costume, and by this time it was nearly 80 degrees. Lily waved to him very nicely, and then as soon as he took off, whispered to me, "That's not really the Easter Bunny. He has a zipper in the back. It's just a man in a costume."

West Laurel Hill Cemetery

We had a pretty nice weekend. Out nephew, Lily's cousin Chris slept over on Friday and she absolutely adores him. 

Sometimes we'll play a game where I stretch my arm with some food in my hand while I look away, and Lily will grab whatever I'm holding and eat it and then profess innocence. So she likes to play at outsmarting me. On Saturday morning she actually did it. We still keep a baby gate in her door, because it's at the top of the stairs and we don't want her sleepily wandering out and falling down. Jen woke up first and noticed that Chris was starting to wake up and commented to Lily to this effect. Jen went downstairs and Lily said "I want to play with Chris." I opened the gate for her and told her that Chris was still waking up and that we should give him a little more time and then we could play. Lily said "I want to talk to mommy." I told her that I'd go get mommy and started walking downstairs. Before I had even gotten all the way down, I hear the baby gate spring open and Lily shout "Hi, Chris!"So, while I'm kind of impressed that she's capable of thinking things through to this degree, I'm not entirely pleased that she is calculating enough to deceive someone with such premeditation.

Jen ran out in the morning to gas up the car and I let the kids play with each other. Chris is a pretty easy going kid, so he mostly took Lily's lead in what they were doing. Unfortunately, what they were doing involved poisoning her toys.

Actual quotes from Saturday morning:

• "They put poison in the water to kill the princess." (A couple moments later) "I'm okay because I never drink water."
• "When you die, you go to a very bad place, the top of the hill." (I'm assuming that she heard the word "Hell" at some point and misinterpreted it.)
• "The Princess is dead over here!"

We dropped off Lily and Chris and went to West Laurel Hill Cemetery. I've always liked cemeteries, but only recently have I started seeking them out.  My friend Jen says that cemetery tours should be a regular feature on my blog. We shall see. West Laurel Hill was nice. It was full of these...ack, I'm blanking on the word.

...oh, right.

My friend Frederick, knowing of my interest in cemeteries, pointed out that Swan Point Cemetery, where H.P. Lovecraft is buried, has actual street signs.West Laurel hill does too.

Street signs, awesome.

A horse drawn hearse

I don't think you see it at this size, but if you click on the image to expand it, you can see that this guy has DDS after his name. I mean, it's kind of cool being a dentist (I'm just kidding, it's really not) , but not so cool that I'd want it inscribed on my mausoleum for all eternity.

Tomb with a view!

It was pretty nice. It was larger than Laurel Hill, but not as diverse with the styles of monuments.

"Sure, Lex, I'll hold this green rock for you."

I mentioned a while ago that some of the mausolea in Laurel Hill were bigger than my first apartment. Some of them here in West Laurel Hill are bigger than my current house.

Big!

Also big!

The most interesting tombstone of the day was the one below. It had a sculpture of a dog and a cat, and though you can't see them in the picture below, someone had placed little trinkets of cats and dogs on the grave. There was no date, so what Jen and I concluded was that the man loved his pets very much and they predeceased him. We tried to look up his name, but the only returns for Lee Holloway were Maggie Gyllenhaal's character in Secretary.

 

After that, it was off to Karen's Scott Pilgrim party, which I'll be covering in a later post. 

Even in Arcadia I exist

Et in Arcadia ego

Netflix has the original Addams family for streaming, and we watched an episode last night. It's a good show. I really like John Astin as Gomez. He's fun to watch. I feel something of a kinship with him, but not for the reasons you probably think.

Yes, I was born on Halloween, under the Full Moon, in a night of the Lonesome October. Yes, for a nice relaxing family trip on my birthday, my family went to one of the largest cemeteries in the country. I really like spiders (I love the way they move) No, I don't consider myself especially mordant.

I mean, I like Kim Possible, too. Does that make me an eight year old girl?

(Actually the verdict still out on that. My wife would answer that I occasionally act like one.)

But back to the issue of Gomez. Yes, he's creepy and he's kooky,  yes, he's mysterious and spooky. I would go so far as to say that he's all together ooky. However, the reason I like Gomez is that he's crazy about his wife.

I still have a crush on Jen after all this time. I suspect I always will. I was infatuated with her almost from the moment I met her, and though it's grown into much more than that, that feeling is still there.

We were having game night a couple weeks ago, and I had put together a playlist of stuff I liked. A song by U2 came on and Jen commented "This one is rather mainstream for you," but I don't like things because they're weird. I like them because they're things that appeal to me. That a lot of them are unusual is incidental.

I mentioned in an earlier posts that I think that cemeteries are peaceful and picturesque. Where else in America can you walk around outside and see beautifully carved statues and open air sculpture? It's quiet too. We were right next to Fairmount Park, but I don't think we saw another soul

I was listening to college radio on my way into work last week and I recognized the song after a few notes. The DJ was playing "This is Halloween" from the Nightmare before Christmas. Then the vocals started, and I realized it was a Nightmare before Christmas cover, which made it even more awesome!

So where were we? Born on Halloween, enjoys walks in cemeteries and is listening to the Nightmare Before Christmas on November 5th.

But I like Jack. I saw the movie in theater back when it first came out, and I think that it may be the only movie other than Scott Pilgrim to surpass my expectations in every way. As with Gomez, I can see something of myself in discovering something and falling in love with it. (Ask my wife sometime how many times I've said, "Listen to this. It's my new favorite song.")  If I love something, I LOVE it and if I hate something, I hate it.

Lily has something of this trait too, and I think the best thing I can give her is the certainty to know who she is and what she is and the strength to pursue it.

My weekend: A fine and private place

 

I like cemeteries. I always have. Not for any mordant reason; just that they're peaceful and picturesque.  I'll talk about this a little more in an upcoming post. Laurel Hill Cemetery was really such a nice little visit. I'd like to return someday soon. Like Disney World, you just can't see the whole place in one day. Jen commented that it was like a small town.

Some of the mausolea (plural of mausoleum, hey you learn something every day, reading my blog) were bigger than my first apartment.

Lily really is my daughter.  When I asked her what she thought of Laurel Hill, without any prompting, she answered, "It's the best cemetery...EVER!" ("X is the best whatever...EVER!!" has been my catchphrase for years.) She's terrified of someone she knows dying, but she hasn't made the connection with cemeteries yet. She recently told me: "Sunnybird is going to die some day, but I love my pillow pet because she's just a stuffed animal and that means that she will never die."

But Lily loved the statues and what she thought were "stone fairies". (When I was recounting the story later, a friend thought I had said "Stoned fairies" and wondered what kind of places I was taking my daughter.)

We were supposed to meet my Philly friends there, but they all wimped out.  Apparently people get murdered here all the time, but I consider that a feature, not a bug. I mean, if you gotta go, how convenient is being murdered in a cemetery? My friend Tom is a huge fan of Firefly, Neil Gaiman and the Phillies and he missed Mal Reynolds and Neil Gaiman showing up at Harry Kalas' monument.

Pictures don't lie, baby

We met them at IKEA instead, and that was quite nice. It was Tom, Jen and Karen. I was reading back through old blog posts on the printed and bound version that I have. (You know, like normal people do) and I noticed that Tom and Jen and Karen had all been part of Lily's life before she was even born. All three of them are really great people for whom I have endless affection. Plus, Tom is a fan of the Sandman, which makes him EXTRA AWESOME! 

I was recounting all of Lily's habits to a friend: "When she was a little baby and still used a pacifier, we had a skull with LED eyes on top of a cabinet. I was holding Lily so it was at about eye level for her. She took her pacifier out and offered it to the skull. Also, she learned her letters by reading tombstones. She consistently claims grey is her favorite color. I can understand that sentiment from the Counting Crows, but from a four-year-old girl?"

My friend replied: "What have you done to your daughter? You're going to have a goth kid on your hands."

And I was like "She was like that when I got her!"

I think the highlight of IKEA was Lily telling Karen that Lady Gaga gave her the "Little Monster" shirt after Karen told her that Lady Gaga calls her fans little monsters.

After that, we went to UU church. They were having a Halloween party and the place looked like a den of inequity. However, since it's a UU church that's what it usually looks like.

The children's sermon

Halloween is the High Holy Day for Unitarians, so I thought they'd do up their church, but it looked pretty much like it always does.  

Business as usual

It was a nice little Halloween party (it had a tray of DIY cookies, with a bunch of frosting tubes and sprinkles.)

Lily was kind of naughty at the party. A little kid reached for the markers Lily was using and she pulled the whole tray away. I asked her how she would feel if she were a little kid and a big four year old girl pulled away the markers from her. She said "Happy!" in that petulant voice four-year-olds use when they're telling pissy, unconvincing lies.

...

Ah well. Still a little monster.

Memento Mori

My Grammy's sister-in-law, the woman I called Aunt Mickey, passed away at about 4:30 yesterday afternoon. We had visited her in the hospital on the 14th, and I'd been meaning to call about checking in on her, but there was always something to do, so I never got around to it. The nurse called my Grammy to say that Aunt Mickey was in bad shape, and then called again before Grammy could even leave for the hospital to tell her that Mickey was gone.

We don't know if there will be a service yet. She's being cremated and her family lives out in Texas. She was 94 years old and refused the surgery that would have prolonged her life, so this wasn't really unexpected, but the speed with which she went was surprising.

I'm sad that she's gone, but I think 94 years, that's a good run, right? And then I think of Neil Gaiman, "You get what anyone gets - you get a lifetime."

I feel sad for my Grammy. In the past forty years, she's seen her huge extended family dwindle away to nothing. I have an unusual last name and if you google it now, it seems all that you get are obits.

In the Farewell to Arms, Hemingway says, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." Grammy says that he's not going to let this get her down, but she been so strong for so long that I worry about how much more of this she can bear.

The other person about whom I have concerns is Lily. She gave her little stuffed Tigger to Mickey "So you can be happy after I leave." She doesn't think much about Mickey and would probably not bring her up unprompted, but when she was talking about sleeping over at Grammy's, she thought that they would need three beds, because she was under the impression that Mickey lived with Grammy. I don't want her thinking that a hospital is a place where people go to die.

I'm torn. On one hand, as an atheist, there are certain things I can't say to comfort her. But my father has already indoctrinated her with the idea of heaven where Jesus is up there playing with her dead hamster. I don't want to have an exchange where I say, "Lily, I have some sad news. Aunt Mickey has died." "Is she up in heaven with Jesus?" And then what? "No, she's just dead"? "This is the really real world and there ain't no coming back"?

So I'm tempted to just not bring up the topic. But then I think of A Minor Variation by Billy Joel, with its line, "No way to win when you've already been forgotten." I think of Roy Batty "All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain." I believe the best way to honor the dead is to remember them. I liked Aunt Mickey a lot, and it just seems a betrayal of that to forget about her just to make my life a little easier.

I'll remember her here for a little bit while I consider what to do.

Mickey was those people who reach equilibrium early, and looked much the same at 60 as she did at 90.

They would visit my grandparents right up until their various medical issues prevented it, and I was always knew when they were in town by the KEN - MIC vanity plates on the car parked outside the house.

I always loved looking at the black and white pictures of my Grammy and Pop and Kenny and Mickey from the 50s and 60s, looking young and slim and healthy, with all the Mad Men area accoutrements littering the photos, the fancy standing ashtrays and Kenny's thick rocket scientist glasses, the same ones he'd wear 50 years later.

I think, as a compromise, I will hang these few words here, and when Lily is old enough, she can return to them and remember.

Grave of the Fireflies

No, not the heartbreaking animated movie of starvation in postwar Japan. Maybe a more accurate title would be "Some graves and some fireflies." But where's the poetry in that?

We went hunting for fireflies in the local cemetery again. Lily got so excited. She asked me to take a picture in her firefly catching outfit. Her wish is my command.


She's picky as only little kids can be about her costume. It had to be this shirt with the glow in the dark dragonflies, this pair of shorts, these little black dress shoes, these hair clips, that hair band and of course her butterfly catching net.

The cemetery is nice. (But then again, I'm partial to cemeteries). It's a fine and private place (as it were) that's ostensibly still open for business, but seems to have seen its heyday during the Spanish American war. I think the most recent year of death I've seen on a tombstone was from the 1970s.

(I wasn't kidding about the Spanish-American war. It's a running joke between Jen and me that there seems to be a disproportionate percentage of veterans from that war buried in this cemetery)

Lily had a blast. She was running everywhere waving her net, completely heedless of where she was going. I thought she was going to run after a firefly and wind up with a bruise that read "Flynn" or "McDermott" on her face. Jen summed it up exactly, "A lot of days the parenting gig is not what we imagined. THIS however, is EXACTLY what being a parent should be like every day." I took a little video of it on my phone. It's pretty dark, and I was going to edit it to improve it, but apparently my phone films in a format my freebie movie editing program can't handle. So just fiddle with the gamma on your monitor if you're going to watch it.

While we're on the subject of bugs and videos, our Wacky Wednesday movie was A Bug's Life, which was fairly good. Pixar films are generally pretty awesome (except for Cars, which was fucking dreadful) , but this seemed somehow incomplete. It was almost like "Proto-Pixar", as if they were still refining the tropes that would come to characterize their movies, even though it came after Toy Story, which is as Pixarish as movie as there ever was. I wish it were a little more little kid friendly. It seemed every few minutes, one bug or another was saying kill this or die that, and we didn't want to set Lily off. She seemed more or less oblivious to that, though. She liked it. Her favorite characters were the pillbugs. She really likes pillbugs (aka Roly Poly) . She had a couple in a little container, which she brought inside the house to show me. Then she promptly dropped it and spilled them all out. I think we got all of them, but at night I have nightmares of Ohmu growing in my walls.

Bonus! Names for pillbugs by region