Zoë Stagg

I make stuff. I make stuff everyday. I make believe four hours of jibberjabber, and dream up contests, and think out interviews. It’s a mighty content hose to fill, but I fill it.

I used to be able to siphon off enough to have things to say here too, but lately it seems like that trolley has left the station.

Maybe it’s the “making a person” project that is claiming the spark of creation on the side. Maybe it’s that after almost five years, I’ve sort of said everything there is to blog already. Or maybe it’s just that I’m tired.

Whatever it is, and whyever other people create, I create stuff to entertain. And right now, I’m being very boring. If I were a different kind of blogger, I suppose I’d have all kinds of stuff to say. A whole post about how I got so mad about something the other day that Ryan thought I was going to throw the cat at him. THROW the CAT. (I didn’t, obviously. I’m not a monster.)

But I’m not.

And so I’m sending “land of make believe” on hiatus to Pittsburgh for a while. Not a flounce, a calculated sparing of a welcome overstayed — for the moment.

I’m sure that someday, when I’ve slept enough to sustain life, or when I have something more compelling to say than, “Did you see that link about the people who used the same 12 cloth diapers for two whole years?” I will.

Because I figured out why I wasn’t named my back-up name — it means “Good Listener.” And I don’t think I’ve ever stopped talking long enough for someone to say that to me.

In the meantime, I’ll tell Lady Elaine you said “Hi.”

Any old horse can rock. A rocking moose, on the other hand is considered a necessary Swedish import.

That reminds me of a story.

Once upon a time, two people went to a modern Swedish furniture store to get a crib. They shopped all afternoon, picking out crucial items like a weird squishy light-up person thing, and a tiny red chair for sitting and coloring. The crib box got stuck in the cart with the “soft green rug to go in the book teepee” and they went home.

Once there, the more patient of the two started to put it together. All was going well, until the last turn of the Allen key.

“Something seems…not right. Where’s the hole for the kid? Is this… This isn’t a crib, is it.”

“Nope. That would be a changing table.”

“I need a beer.”

And so, the crib is still at the store, the squishy light-up person lives on the unexpected changing table’s shelf, and the rocking moose, well the rocking moose will never tell.

Do you know what happens when you hang out a shingle like Encyclopedia Brown in the real world? Your parents get a call from the Post Master about how you’re committing a felony, and how you should probably be grounded besides.

At least that’s what happened to me and my fellow mystery solver and co-founder of the Black Cat Detective Agency. Checking out code books and teaching ourselves how to secret messages in the barrel of a ballpoint pen and set booby traps to see if anyone had rifled through your IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS was more fun than playing Barbies — but less fun without clients.

So we advertised. With our names and ages and phone numbers and stuffed the fliers in every mailbox in both our neighborhoods.

I suppose the Post Master didn’t have to flip to the back of the book to solve the Case of the Precocious Kids Who’d Read Too Many Encyclopedia Browns.

Finding out that Donald J. Sobol passed away added to the yuck of yesterday, and the more I read about him today, the cooler he seemed. Most of the show was about E.B. today, and yes, there was a Europe-wide shout out for the B.C.D.A. Maybe should think about getting the group back together with that kind of publicity.

“In the early 1960s, girls and women weren’t supposed to work up a sweat, and here was a woman doing a man’s work.”

I told you Sally Kimball was awesome. Donald J. Sobol made her that way.

Stop. Or begin as you intend to go on. Either. In any event, cappuccino bookends to a trip that went way too quickly.

We made it back to Venice this morning with all EIGHT pieces of concerns (plus a pink flowery stroller) — a miracle feat, considering the trans-Atlantic, circum-continent trip we took them on — and had enough time for coffee before our ride besides.

“Do you two speak English?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh GOOD. Can you help me order one of those?”

A chat with an Army mom here to visit was a nice straddle of the cultural divide and the whiplash of being back.

“Does everything look weird?”

“It always does when you’ve been away.”

Except the Welcoming Catmittee. He looks precisely the same.

Yes, friends, you see correctly — that is THE historical, genesis, origin-story HOOTERS. When I travel, I make it a point to visit all of the local cultural points of interest.

Clearwater, Florida, site of the first hoot.

The Bro would think much less of me had I not stopped in to pay my respects with curly fries and scrunch socks. (Seriously, they must only still make those suckers to complete the Hootiforms.)

An unusual place to celebrate some unexpected news. You know that Foreign Exchange Student we’ve been calling “he?”

Apparently, it’s a GIRL. Whoo knew!?!

I’m pretty sure the reason that I’ve never gotten into Pinterest is that my mom has always done that stuff, but way better. You want a vegan-friendly, gluten-free, summer-garden, front-porch tea-party baby shower?

Pin here.

She grew the flowers, made all the treats, and set the table with several generations of fancy eatery ware — and all I had to do was show up in a dress that matched the theme.

So it’s really no wonder pinning and Etsying are underwhelming, she’s not the only one — Dad made, MADE, the rattle (buffed in carnuba wax, which I helpfully noted, is an ingredient in Swedish Fish — so it must be at least as nutritious should it wind up in a little mouth.)

Moms and grandmas, from my 4th grade teacher to my 4-H Leader, all came to share the afternoon and advice. I’m delighted to say that the foreign exchange student is now the proud owner of his/its first pair of little overalls and a John Deere teether shaped like an ear of corn.

Daisy the dog made it into the picture too. Smart girl, it was a really lovely afternoon.

The only thing I wish I’d done was collect everybody’s second-hand names. Everybody has a “I was almost named…” runner-up option (mine: Samantha.) Because I have no ideas. None. Naming characters is hard — naming real people is nigh impossible.

Maybe I’ll have to see if someone’s started a “Good Names” board on Pinterest.

Eight seconds isn’t just a 1994 Great American Film Biography. It’s the Fourth of July.

The St. Paul Rodeo, the only arena that has decorative shrubbery — keep Oregon green, y’all. (If Oregonians said such a thing.)

We took the Florida boy out of Italy and peer-pressured him into a hat. Seems legit.

After the first event, he turned and said, “Do you think I can have dual citizenship with Oregon and Florida?” It’s that good. It makes all other spectator sports seem wildly dull. Baseball? Compared to this?

No contest.

And yes, it’s not without its…particularities. They announce at the beginning, “We aren’t politically correct ‘round here,” and after clown jokes about women drivers, Brokeback Mountain, and the president, that’s an accurate assessment. And then there are the animals. The answer to that is this: operate on what you know. I don’t eat them because I know how they’re treated in that line of work. I watch them for the very same reason.

A $50,000 bull, bred for the appropriate behavior who works eight seconds a week — sometimes — handled by people who know and care about animals better than a lot of people do their pets, or KIDS for that matter, is fine by me.

And after 10 events, including the tiniest kid staying on to score a 91, pumping his fists in the air in jubilation, a girl from Oregon winning the barrel race, and a new experience for a kid from the suburbs* — fireworks over the arena.

It’s a Happy 4th.

*Photos by Ryan.

If it’s not a comeback, but a return, then it’s not the beach — it’s the coast. I suppose if it’s never warm enough to do more than roll up your jeans, and touching the water is more of a dare than a retreat, it needs its own name.

The Oregon Coast.

Where even the tiny nods to the now look like they’ve been there since Reagan’s first term.

We’ve been coming here so long, there isn’t a single place that doesn’t harbor a story that starts, “Remember when you got seasick,” or “You were carsick here and…” The fishing boats the Bro and I both went out on are still running, the saltwater taffy still tempts you to add two of this flavor and two of that, and the sea lions still wriggle contentedly under the docks.

And the water is still cold enough to chase you from the foam.

1989 and 2012.

“Typical. You were showing off for the camera and I was working on something.”

This time I held the camera, that little kid drove, and the rolled up jeans weren’t in the name of “FASHUN.” (Though let’s be real, were they ever?)

And no matter how much things change in the middle, the edge remains the same.

Fifteen hours on a plane is one whole book (#27), five magazines, four Keith and the Girls, one This American Life (#396), one Reese Witherspoon movie that hurt my feelings even though I couldn’t hear it, three hours of poking Ryan in the ear in an acting-out bid to get attention, and twelve Flight Attendant comments about how picky I must be to need a meat/dairy free meal.

It is also a very long time.

Which makes getting where you’re going, that much better.

HOME. Where you know where the coffee pot lives. Unless your mom moves it, and then you’re stuck complaining about that fact on all available platforms because you feel that strongly about the sabotage.

Where the local paper comes once a week and has a front-page feature on 4-H leaders and an inside investigative piece on whether chickens will be allowed inside city limits after a brief trial period this summer.

Where the dog will eventually relent and allow herself to be Instagrammed if you’re persistent enough.

And where you get a lovely jar of Vegenaise, just for me.

(I’m pretty sure I’m having it for breakfast. With a spoon.)

It’s good to be home.