Potatoes in the Mist

I always like receiving emails from my niece, who is 11. Today's missive: Hi guys! How you doing? I'm over at Dodo's house right now. Happy New Year everyone! Yippie for 2007! How is yoga, Aunt Bearette? How is work, Uncle D? Well, I gotta go! Dodo is taking us to the park! Love, H Dodo is her name for my mom (her grandmother). She started calling her that when she was very young and Mom basically reinforced it by asking her, "What's my name?" Then she would say in her little 3-year-old voice, "Dodo," and everyone would laugh. So the name has stuck to this day. H and her brother love the park, which is near my old high school, down the street from the house where I grew up. They told me, "The slides have a lot of information and swear words." When I asked them, "What information?", they said, "Who loves who." I guess that is a succinct description of playground graffiti. In other news, I realized that everyone proba...

A while ago, Amtrak called and asked if I wanted to be part of a focus group. I would be paid $100 to talk about my experiences with Amtrak...during dinner hour! Nah. But when we took the train today, it occurred to me that they could use a yoga car. The car would have no seats, and lots of floor space for mats. Of course, they will never do this because they could pack the car with people instead and make a profit. But I think they should! Once I tried doing yoga in the aisle (on a different trip) and a well-intentioned girl asked, "Are you lookin' for somethin'?" So now I'm too self-conscious. On today's trip, the conductor kept announcing, "Claire Kirby, this is your stop. Get off now," and repeating that with different names. I didn't know they had a reminder service. They did have a number of elderly people on the train who may have asked to be reminded. One of them, a woman behind us, struck up a conversation with D. "Do you smoke?...

My niece and nephew (well, they are hardly "babes", I suppose; my niece is eleven, and my nephew is eight) said a lot of interesting things this weekend. So I figured I'd memorialize them here. To start with, they are both fascinated by our vegetarianism. We are peppered with questions every time we go home. My nephew, B, wrote in an essay for school: "I like Thanksgiving because you get to see people you don't usually see, like my Aunt Bearette and Uncle D. They are both vegetarians. They adopted two turkeys." His teacher crossed that out and wrote something to the effect of "They bought two turkeys for Thanksgiving," and B crossed that out. So B likes to ask why we became vegetarian. For D, it was when he was 16, at summer camp. For me, I was 21, shopping for dinner, and realized I didn't want to cook with slabs of raw meat. (Plus, I honestly don't like fish, and the only meat I'd been into for a while was chicken, though as a twelve-...

I'm going to my little hometown this weekend. There is always a little bit of culture shock involved. Suddenly we have to drive everywhere instead of walking, and there is no longer a gym/library/CVS within a few blocks away. But, on the upside, it is much quieter, and you can see the stars. My family's Christmas party is this weekend. They rent out a hall, Knights of Columbus or some such, and all 60 or so of my mom's side of the family shows up. She is the youngest of five, and they all had kids, and their kids have kids, so it's a nice, big crowd. Among the events are Santa (played by one of the men, it changes each year. One year, embarrassingly, Santa had presents for me and D, so we had to perch on his lap, one per knee. I think Santa was my BIL that year) and the Yankee swap. I'm still fuzzy on the rules of the Yankee swap, but it is basically a Darwinian game where people give each other presents, but someone else can take yours away (and give you theirs). O...