The usurping banana seat and pants in the afterlife

My bike was a clunky blue three-speed, but oh did I long for a seat like this.
This seat would make any girl glamorous and invincible and strong, but at what price?

This morning, O put on pants which looked to be 2 sizes to small for him. At first I told him we would put them in the giveaway "pile" (a euphemism for a slatternly variety of randomly tucked away bunches of outgrown things that need badly to be consolidated so that they may in fact be bestowed on someone else before humanity stops producing children). Then I realized there was a big hole in one knee, so I told him we would throw them away. He argued that ripped jeans are popular, but I insisted. (Yes, we could've saved them for some noble reuse project, but I have several of those "piles" as well, so you and your crafty self just need to step back, OK? Jeesh.)

Before we put them in the trash can, he wanted to kiss them and thank them for being his pants. I made the pants talk back and thank him for letting them fulfill their purpose. It was a beautiful, heartfelt moment, and so much healthier than my own tragic guilt when as, what an 11-year-old? even younger? I did the unforgiveable and replaced my 3-speed's standard-issue blue saddle seat with a much longed-for purple striped banana seat. A banana seat! It even had sparkles embedded in its beguiling stripey vinyl skin! I felt so badly for that rejected saddle seat that I barely allowed myself to ride my bike once i had the banana seat. Honestly. And think how the poor banana seat must've felt.

O then tried to put on another pair of pants - also too small and also beginning to split and the knee. Again the thanks and goodbyes. And then, O said, "That's good. And now they can go be pants for children in the afterlife. ... because as pants they are dead too."

Reading: Started reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories to the kids, after the squabbled over Michael Chabon's Summerland (O's pick) and the first of the Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomanci books (Z's pick). I have wanted to read Haroun since it came in 1993, and I just have never gotten around to it. As O astutely observed, "So that means you've been wanting to read this book since you were 22."

Also, heard part of the interview with Claire Messud on Fresh Air and fell a little bit in love with her. I didn't read Emperor's Children (like Haroun it is in that towering to-read pile on the nightstand of my mind), but now I want to spend an extended weekend reading that and the new book, The Woman Upstairs (which being about an unfulfilled artist in her early 40s has a certain frisson of dread for me), and whatever else I can jam in.

This is what my fantasy life consists of, really. Checking into a hotel with a pile of books and some decent wine, and doing nothing for days on end but reading, sleeping, and ordering room service. Occasionally I would watch a movie or go for a swim, just to change things up. If you have an interest in bankrolling this project, please send me a personal message.

Writing: I am cultivating a new romance with my practice, stealing time for trysts, thinking of each other with longing at inopportune times.

Dinner: Hummus and pita chips and cheese and oranges and raisins in the car on the way to Z's soccer game in farflung wherever (the field in the midst of an apple orchard in full bloom - a bit surreal).

Soundtrack: The Kinks' "20th Century Man"

Random thing: I wore two charm bracelets today - one made of cheap bronzey alloy with an airplane and a hot air balloon and a teardrop pearl that I acquired as a young teenager b/c it was part of my new wave armful of bracelet thing, the other made of gold with an enameled elephant and a key and a pig and two dogs and a sailboat and, gasp, a golden bear, which belonged to my grandmother when she was a teenager and which she gifted to me when she saw me wearing the other.