August 29, 2011

Windy Hill and Other Stuff

Sophie trying to catch a grape in her mouth

I keep forgetting to write down this funny story Kris told me about Jake. The other weekend they went to the Grand Reopening Party at Fashion Pointe, a ladies’ clothing store, and Jake got to spin a wheel and try to win a prize. He ended up winning a sparkly ladies’ watch with rhinestones and a hot-pink band. He wore it around the store proudly, but after a little while he began to wonder if it wasn’t maybe a trifle girly and he said to Kris in his cheerful, can-do way, “You know, I might sell this.” I just love it. He’s seven and has no way of selling anything.

On Friday after work I went to Windy Hill, a vineyard near the little town of Monticello, to pick muscadine grapes with Mom, Sophie, and Bunny. I couldn’t believe Sophie came along because she hates fruit—but apparently she likes to pick things. The vineyard is so beautiful, with hazy blue hills and row after row of muscadine vines. Kimels like the “Fry” variety, a golden grape that gets nice and fat and sweet, so we filled our buckets with Frys and talked “girl talk” with Sophie.

“What are you going to do this weekend?” I asked Sophie.

“Work on my heritage project,” she said happily. I couldn’t believe she was so excited about doing her homework.

“Heritage project?” Bunny said. “Oh, that sounds like fun. You know what you should do? You should interview Hummy about her life on the farm. She grew up on a farm, you know. That’s a really interesting part of your heritage.”

It soon became clear that Sophie was kind of fuzzy on the meaning of “heritage.” “No,” she said, “I’m not doing any interviews. I’m not supposed to. It’s about my heritage. I have to say what I’ll be doing in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years.”

“Oh,” I said, “and how are you going to answer?”

“I’ll be acting,” Sophie replied. “I’m going to be an actress.”

“Ah,” I said. “You do have a gift for entertaining.”

“I want to be on L.A. Ink and Real Housewives.”

“But that’s what you’ll be doing in 30 years, right?” I said. “When you’re washed up?”

Sophie rolled her eyes at me. I think she’ll make a marvelous actress.

I kept trying to get Sophie to try a grape, and in response she would pelt me with grapes.

Sophie’s doing safety patrol after school, she told us. She has a special badge and belt that she wears, and she tries to do a very good job, but apparently she has to deal with a lot of mouthy kids:

“There was this girl playing on the steps,” Sophie said, “so I told her to stop. So she told me she was going to tell her mom and her brother and her brother was going to come to school and beat me up.”

“She was bluffing, Sophie,” Bunny assured her. “Her brother’s not going to do anything.”

“How old was this kid?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sophie shrugged. “Like, first grade.”

“Gee,” I said, “there are some pretty scary first-graders at your school.”

Patrol sounded like a pretty thankless job to me, but Sophie is the most involved, engaged student. She’s awesome. She’s not like weird old alienated me–thank goodness.

Sophie did quite a bit of picking for a girl who doesn’t like grapes. She also threw grapes in the air and tried to catch them in her mouth, though she would spit them out promptly if she did happen to catch them.

We strolled from vine to vine, following Mom, who was picking with real determination, as though it were her job, or as though she were relying on grapes to make it through the winter.

Sophie was walking along and she said, “Oh my gosh, my panty’s showing!” (It was jacked up over the waistband of her pants.)

“Well, we’re way out here, right?” Bunny replied sweetly. “So who’s going to see?”

“I don’t know,” Sophie smiled. “Grapes.”

Rob was out of town this weekend, so I was on my own. On Friday night I had so much fun doing girly things. I shopped online for Wild Strawberry Wedgwood, the new pattern I’m collecting, and watched old eighties videos on YouTube. I highlighted my hair, and then I read The Go-Between by lamplight in bed, with a bunch of cats on my legs.

All weekend I had fun. I got the house really clean, and then I walked around admiring it. I baked oatmeal cookies and amused the cats with catnip, and I wore my brand-new super-soft fleece pajamas even though it’s August and “hot as balls,” as Rob likes to say.

On Saturday the cats engaged in some very stereotypical behavior that I felt was a bit beneath their dignity: They played with yarn. I was making yarn balls to display in this wooden dough bowl I have, and they were playing with the yarn just like little dumb baby kittens do in storybooks. They were biting the yarn and wrestling with the skein and I was giggling and “scolding” them, but of course I didn’t really want them to stop.

I went to Havana and bought a couple little things—an old goose decoy, and an old turpentine pot to put dried flowers in. Then I puttered around, setting them up in the living room.

The weather has been so brutal lately; we’re still in the throes of a terrible drought, and it’s hot; it was 100 degrees today. So I did a lot of watering this weekend, and lots of worrying about global warming. There’s not much that’s pretty in the yard right now, except the woodland sunflowers, which are as tall as I am and loaded with yellow flowers.

One of our gorgeous habanero peppers