Free The Human Beings

A French Stew, pt. 6

2012-02-09T17:34:00.003-06:00

"Have I met the band?! Ha!" Lyle's shaggy eyebrows jumped and his eyes widened. "I don't need to meet them, I can hear them!"

Lyle sat straight up in his chair, indignant. His outrage had brought him back to life. This encouraged Elena to push him even more."

"They're not bad guys. They just like loud music. Why don't we go say hello? You can meet Angus, at least. He's the one who lives there. He is our neighbor."

“Yeah, that’s the trouble. This used to be a respectable neighborhood." Lyle jabbed his pipe in the direction of Angus’s house. "We didn’t have hoodlums like that living next door.” "Well, if I go over there you know what I'll say to them. I’ll tell them to TURN THAT RACKET DOWN."

Elena knew that that is exactly what Lyle was likely to say to them. He wasn't going to be joining their fan club. Yet she thought that Lyle and Angus should meet just the same. And she wasn’t sure what she expected to come of it. Nothing, really. But she felt a need to enlist the other neighbors indirectly, so as to make them aware of Lyle. Deep down she knew, if she let herself admit it, she didn’t want to be the only one looking out for him.

Elena was wondering how she could persuade Lyle to go next door, when to her surprise he suddenly said, "Well, if we're going to go pay a social call, we better do it soon, before the hour gets to be too ungodly.

So there they were a few minutes later, making their way across the cracked sidewalk, past the decaying leaves leftover from the previous autumn, lying un-raked in Angus’s yard, up the crickety steps that led to the porch, Lyle following Elena, and bending so as not to get beaned by the jingly wind chime that hung too low from the porch.

Angus lived in an old Victorian like Lyle, but his was in much worse condition. He rented out the bottom floor, which also gave him use of the porch. And he’d been using it alright, if you could call it that. A decrepit sofa that was losing its stuffing gave Angus a place to sit and smoke while listening to his classic rock radio station. Next to that, sat a rusty car radiator, accompanied by a forlorn jumble of pvc pipes that seemed completely pointless, a pair of grey concrete blocks, a toaster oven with blackened metal, a worn out shoe missing its tongue, and a chipped coffee mug tossed onto the scene for good measure. Lyle's eyes fell on the untidy collection of objects, and he wrinkled up his nose, as if he could smell them.

The only item that looked new and clean and still had its shine was the wind chime.

When Angus came to the door, his Van Halen tee was rumpled and his eyes looked bloodshot and sleepy. He was tall and lean, with long, blond hair that flowed down in waves to his shoulders, looking like a mountain stream flowing across many ridges on its way to the valley. In contrast to his height, his face was boyish, even slightly feminine. Close up, he looked no more than twenty.

He blinked at Lyle and Elena with a puzzled expression. "Oh. Hey."

Elena said, "I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, but we just wanted to stop by and say hi.. This is Lyle...he lives next door...you know....Meredith's husband..."

Angus's face slowly lit with recognition, switches flipping on one by one.

"Oh yeahhhh..." He opened the door and gestured them inside. “Come on in.” They stepped in out of the cold, onto a worn shag carpet. Angus gazed on Lyle with sympathy, while scratching the side of his head. “Oh man…Uh…Lyle, I’m sorry to hear about your wife." He shook his head. "That's a tough one. Meredith…oh man, she was a good person." Lyle stared at Angus, as if he couldn't comprehend that Angus was capable of showing appreciation for Meredith.

Angus tossed a lock of his hair back over his shoulder. It seemed like a nervous gesture, him not sure what should come next. "Well, we're rehearsing," he began hesitantly, "but you can hang out for a bit if you want. Come on back and meet the guys."

Lyle threw up his hand as if waving the invitation away. "Thank you. But I'm going home!"

"Oh come on, Lyle. Let’s just stay for a few minutes," Elena said.

"You stay if you want to. No offense, young man, but I can't take the noise! You need to TURN DOWN THOSE GUITARS!" Lyle shouted as if he hadn’t been able to contain himself a moment longer.

Angus didn't look as if any offense was taken. Instead, a smile crept up the side of his face, betraying an obvious pride he felt in his band's decibel levels. But he held back from gloating in front of Lyle. He said, "I guess we get pretty loud, huh? Well, uh, we got this acoustic number we’re working on. We can play that for you. It's kind of a pretty song, actually. No loud guitars."

Elena furrowed her brow at Lyle, daring him to try and refuse. Lyle just shrugged with a weary but resigned expression. They walked down a narrow hallway, into a room at the back of the house that had once been a bedroom. Now, it seemed to be a catch-all room for Angus’s crap. Along the wall, was an old fireplace with the opening boarded up. A radiator clanged and hissed. The floor was covered in a faded and stained carpet, but high above their heads, elaborate plaster molding on the ceiling suggested the house had once enjoyed a grander era, when its occupants had more class.

Waiting for Angus were four guys, who traded a look of impatience amongst each other when they saw Angus returning with Elena and Lyle. But they softened when Angus introduced them to Lyle. They seemed to know who Meredith was.

Their names were Hemp, Neal, Chevy, and Wayne, and they were all various flavors of young, long-haired and scruffy. All except for Chevy, who could have been around thirty-five, and wore his hair short and spiky.

“Okay,” Angus said. “We’re going to do this song for you that Hemp wrote. It was inspired by someone we all know and love. It’s called.... Garden Lady.”

A French Stew, pt. 5

2012-02-04T13:00:00.006-06:00

Lyle wore a thin, moth-eaten shirt, his bony shoulders drooping, his ghostly pipe dripping smoke, as he stood on the edge of a vast patch of unruly ground criss-crossed with weeds and thistles and tree shoots, saying to no one in particular, "The damn squirrels can have it for all I care."

That's what Elena imagined as she heard the blown-out desolation in Lyle's voice, saw the sad tuck of his sunken features. His eyes, which had been sharp pricks of light when he'd first arrived, had gone cloudy. Elena realized that the garden she had had in her mind, a lush and bountiful oasis in full bloom, was part of a landscape that Lyle no longer occupied. A dream world that had evaporated.

She could appreciate how it felt to have an entire landscape disappear. When Marcel had left her, the Paris she had roamed and courted and adored had vanished. Morrissey sings of throwing his arms around Paris because only stone and steel accept his love. But for Elena it was the opposite. When Marcel rejected her, it seemed that Sainte Chapelle and Notre Dame were rejecting her as well. Certainly, the gargoyles rejected her.

Yes, a living garden would feel like a cruel lie.

"I understand why you feel that way about the garden," she said. "Nothing is the same without Meredith." Lyle slowly nodded.

He took out his pipe. "Where's your smoking section?" he asked.

"Right here," Elena said. She grabbed the ashtray and pushed it toward him. Greetings from Cyprus. The island of Aphrodite.

Lyle fiddled with his lighter, and seeing that he was done, Elena took his dishes and walked back to the sink. "I'll bring out the peanut brittle. Will you have some coffee?," she asked hopefully. She didn't want Lyle to run off too soon. She was thinking how crass her offer to take over the garden might have sounded. At best, it might have come off as tone-deaf. At worst --opportunistic. She didn't want him leaving with that impression.

Yes, Lyle said, he would have some coffee, and none of that decaf crap. He didn't care that it was the evening. He stayed up late most nights anyway, watching Johnny Carson.

Elena got out the coffee and began scooping it into a filter, grateful for another ritual to dispel the awkwardness. Un tasse de caffe: c'est toujours la camarade fidele, jamais le troisieme roue. A cup of coffee: always a faithful companion, never a third wheel.

From where she stood, Elena could see the back of Lyle's bald head, the way his large ears rose up like two eager stalks of corn. so that he looked like something that had been been growing out of her chair. Something vulnerable and easily cut down.

As the coffee began brewing, Elena took the peanut brittle out of the baggie Lyle had brought, and placed it onto a plate. In the quiet kitchen, the slabs of brittle clunked against the delicate china like small bricks. "By the way," Lyle called out from the table, "that is the last of the peanut brittle. The last batch she made."

Elena stared at the plate in her hands. And after these remnants are gone, what will be left? "I am honored to have you share it with me," she said. .

Elena served the peanut brittle and the coffee. "Here you go, Lyle," she said, making an extra effort to say his first name.

They sat in silence, drinking, breaking peanut brittle apart inside their mouths. Elena had heard about societies where people took tea together in silence, where that was enough. Just being in the same place together. That might work if Elena and Lyle were truly in the same place, but Elena knew the measure of grief between them was lopsided. She missed Meredith terribly, but not in every corner of her life, the way Lyle did. And Marcel....well...that grief was like a very deep wound that had scabbed over, but it wasn't like losing an entire limb.

"This peanut brittle is very good!" Elena said. It had a hint of molasses.

"She's been making this for 20 years," Lyle said.

Just then, a familiar sound broke through the wall. "Twaanngg!!!" A guitar plugged in, an amp turned up. And then another. And another. Guitars piling up onto each other.

"Sonofabitch. There they go again," said Lyle.

For Elena, the cacophony coming from their neighbor was welcome. She was relieved for the distraction, and for how it chased away what had felt like cobwebs growing onto her and Lyle. Maybe it was the driving guitars, or the wine in her blood, or the caffeine, but Elena felt a sudden impulse. She caught Lyle's eye.

"Lyle," she said. "Have you ever met the band next door?"

A French Stew, pt. 4

2012-01-30T14:04:00.002-06:00

Elena set a place for Lyle. He would be over in a few minutes. Elena had told him, "Come as you are." But he had said he should change his shirt at least. The one he was wearing had moth holes.

Ever since Meredith had died, Elena had wanted to reach out to Lyle in some way. Cook for him, yes, that had crossed her mind as something easy. She liked to cook. But a meal was quickly shared and forgotten. She wanted to do something for him that was more lasting. She just didn't know what.

Right now the thing to do was slice the baguette, put out an ash tray. She had friends who smoked and she knew the drill. She didn't like making them step outside. An ash tray made smokers feel welcome. And this particular ash tray, a vintage souvenir she'd picked up at a second-hand shop, winked at the smoker with the congenial script: "Greetings from Cyprus. The Island of Aphrodite."

Elena was wishing it was cigarettes that Lyle smoked, instead of pipes. She wouldn't hesitate to bum one off of him, because she would be needing a puff or two herself, to help her relax amid the awkwardness of playing hostess to him. She'd had the wine yes, but a cigarette to pull on was something else again. How true the French proverb, "Un feu dans la main est mieux que deux dans le bide." A fire in the hand is worth two in the belly.

If she had more time, Elena would run down to Blinky's on the corner to buy herself a pack. She could see now that her impulse to invite Lyle over was a misstep. She should have thought this through, and been more prepared.

But too late. For there he was, knocking. She let him in and took his coat and his offering. He had brought peanut brittle and a couple of cans of Schlitz beer.

This was only the 2nd time Lyle had been inside her house. The first time was the day he came to bump off her squirrels. He hadn't fired a shot though, and she wondered if his posturing with the shot gun was all for show. Anyhow, he had claimed success. "Those squirrels know a threat when they see one," he had said. "If they're smart, they'll leave and never come back. But I don't know. Your squirrels might be too dumb. The dumb ones are the worst." Lyle McCready was an expert on squirrels.

Elena examined the beer. Lyle seemed to take her curiousity for appreciation. He grinned. "That beer is ice cold," he said. "The only way I like it. We should drink it now."

Elena thought of the wine glasses she had set on the table, the red wine that had permeated the broth of the stew, and that was meant to be drunk with this meal. The flavor of boeuf bourguignon was centered on the unique essence that is wine, and should not be compromised by an ignoble beer. Lyle was asking her to commit a culinary indecency. For a moment she was torn. Didn't she owe it to him to steer him toward the correct experience of this dish? But she could not bring herself to do it. He seemed too pleased to have something to share.

"An ice cold beer would hit the spot," she said. "It's been getting hot in that kitchen." Elena took the cans from Lyle and headed into the kitchen for glasses. Lyle followed her.

"The peanut brittle is for later. Sort of a dessert," Lyle said.

"Thank you. It's been a long time since I've had peanut brittle."

"I know what you're thinking. But I still have my original teeth, and they're hard as rocks. I got a set of real tough choppers."

"I believe it," Elena said.

"Did Meredith ever tell you that I can pull a truck with my teeth?"

"No!" Elena glanced up from her pouring with genuine awe.

"Ha!" Lyle slapped his knee. "That's because it isn't true. I just tell that story to see if people will believe it."

So....Lyle McCready was a real kidder. Meredith was glad to see he hadn't lost his sense of humor.

"But the part about my teeth being tough is true. My roots just go on forever. When a dentist has to pull a tooth, he has a terrible time."

Elena served the stew. Lyle dug in immediately. The stew had turned out well. But the beer...well, it clashed. Lyle didn't seem to notice.

"This is pretty good," he said. "Meredith said you were a heck of a cook."

Elena smiled, remembering how Meredith was always interested in her experiments, but only as a spectator. Whenever Elena offered her a recipe, Meredith said no, she didn't think Lyle would care for it. She hadn't said it with bitterness or resignation, but with the light air of someone who feels the level of variety in their life is more than plenty.

"Meredith gave me cuttings so I could grow my own herbs." Elena said. She paused, steeping herself in a memory. "That was some beautiful garden she had."

Lyle nodded. "She had a way."

They ate in silence for a few moments. Elena wondered what would happen to the garden now. Meredith had been the one to keep it going. And then it came to her, that that was the thing. The thing she could do for Lyle.

"Lyle," she said, "Do you have any plans for the garden? Will you be wanting to plant anything, come spring?"

Elena waited for an answer, but none came. She watched Lyle, who was chewing silently, a dark furrow in his brow. If he was worried about how he was going to do all that work himself, she was eager to put his mind at ease.

"Lyle, I was thinking...what if I came over and tended your garden? I do the work, you let me have a few tomatoes in exchange?"

Lyle had stopped eating, but hadn't looked up. He was staring down at a chunk of boeuf. Elena grew uneasy at his lack of response. He probably doubted she was up for all that work. She certainly was no match for Meredith, but she could keep it from turning into a dismal weed-patch.

She pressed on. " I would be happy to do it. I've always wanted a garden. And it would be win-win. I need a garden...you need a gardener."

Elena studied Lyle's face, waiting. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke.

"All to hell," he said, shaking his head. "I'm just gonna let it all go to hell."

A French Stew, pt. 3

2012-01-27T13:33:00.003-06:00

Elena shivered on Lyle McCready's porch. How hard must she work to give away her beef stew? The TV inside was blaring. Some cop show. Her rap on the door had been drowned out by police sirens.

Elena knocked a second time, and then turned her gaze to the house next door. No rock and roll tonight. The guitar-playing neighbor was out, and he must have taken his dog, because her movements in the dark had not set off the usual round of barking. The only sound coming from the house was an unlikely, faint, high-pitched tinkling that shifted in the breeze and conjured up images of cherubs and nursery rooms. The self-proclaimed Shredding Beast had hung a set of metal wind chimes from his porch.

Elena rang Lyle McCready's doorbell, knowing full well it didn't work. Such was her tendency - to repeat the futile and hope for a different result than before. Knocking again seemed futile too, but on her 3rd and last try, the door opened a crack, and Lyle's face peered out at her.

"Oh, it's you," he said. "I thought it was more of those Jehovahs."

Lyle McCready was pale and bony-shouldered, liked to keep a lit pipe close at hand, and was, to hear him tell it, beset by Jehovah Witnesses.

"They bring around that boy with the Down's Syndrome, so I always have to be polite to them. That encourages them right back." he had told her.

Lyle invited her in. He puffed on his pipe. "What is it? Caught a squirrel in your attic again?"

She laughed. "No, no squirrel this time." And if there was, the last thing she would do was send him crawling around her attic with that ancient shotgun of his. It had made him feel useful, she knew, to try and fix her squirrel problem, but the way his hands shook that day as he raised the barrel had made her swear she would never even say the word "squirrel" around him again.

"No, I was just wondering whether you've already had supper. I made some stew. I need someone to help me eat it."

Lyle squinted at Elena. He seemed either tired or starved. "Is it some of that fancy French cooking?"

"Well, it's just beef stew....just beef and onions and mushrooms....but yes, it is French."

Lyle looked thoughtful. "Fine by me. I had some good meals over there during WWII."

"Oh," Elena said. "I think you will like this. Beef Bourguignon. It is very rich."

Lyle puffed on his pipe, then said yes.

Elena hurried back to her house to tend to the stew. Several years ago, she would not have imagined herself inviting Lyle McCready to dinner.

It was his wife, Meredith with whom she had exchanged neighborly pleasantries that began to feel like a friendship ---a shared plant clipping, a borrowed book, an occasional cup of tea. Elena had grown fond of Meredith, but had barely known Mr. McCready at all. And that was how she had thought of him--as Mr. McCready. It had certainly seemed appropriate to address him as Mr. McCready at the funeral home, as a way of communicating proper respect for his grief. And she probably would have continued to address him as Mr. McCready from that day onward. But a few days after the funeral, she had dropped off a plate of brownies, and when, turning to leave she had said, "Take care, Mr. McCready," he had stopped her. "Call me Lyle," he had said. He didn't want her calling him Mr. McCready, because that was what the Jehovahs and telemarketers called him.

But she guessed there was another reason. Maybe he needed to hear a female voice saying the name Lyle, every chance he could get, because he would be hearing it so seldom, now that his wife of 60 years had died.

A French Stew pt. 2

2012-01-25T12:39:00.033-06:00

It grew dark. Elena emptied a third glass of wine. Marcel was not forgotten, but had become a dim smudge in the background of her mind, like a figure standing behind wavy glass, blurry and indistinct. What is that French proverb she had heard during her stay in Provence? "Garder souille le carreau. C'est plus facile de faiire semblant personne ne present pas." Keep the window panes dirty. It makes it easier to pretend that nobody is there.

The stew had been in the oven for three hours, but it was not finished. Next Elena must strain the broth, and whisk in the beurre manie. Then she would add the pearl onions and mushrooms, which she had watchfully burnished to delicate perfection.

Elena put a spoon to her mouth to test the seasoning. Hmmm....another clove of garlic and a dash more thyme. At least, to her taste. And there wasn't anybody else to consider.

But actually, there was somebody. She had thought of him, during her 2nd glass of wine, when she had heard the mutt from next door barking. Lyle McCready.

The dog didn't belong to him, but to the neighbor they both shared, and about whom they both commiserated. A neighbor who played loud classic rock on his radio while he smoked on the front porch. Who had friends arriving with guitar cases, then disappearing inside, where they plugged in their amps and played guitar riffs that tore right through the siding into her kitchen nook.

Secretly, she didn't really mind it. She liked the jagged guitar chords at odd hours. She found the neighbor and his long-haired visitors, earnest and amusing. But to Lyle, she let on like she was annoyed, so that the unruly neighbor would be at least one thing they would always have to talk about.

She pictured Lyle sitting alone and hungry in the late-century Victorian two doors down. She imagined that he might like a good home-cooked meal. So she made a decision, while chasing the last bits of crushed garlic into the pot --to turn the burner on low, remove her apron, and walk over to invite him.

A French Stew

2012-01-23T15:59:00.007-06:00

Such a warm January day. Too warm, Elena knew, to make beef bourguignon. Such a hearty French stew required hours in the oven. She would be roasting. Her small house with the tin roof would be like a can of beans, ready to pop!

Ah, but who cares if it's hot? Elena thought. She'd been craving the stew for days. If she had to, she could remove her clothing.

Ha! That lecher across the street would like that.

Well, she'd already bought the meat. She might as well go ahead.

Elena removed the brown wrapper.

Hadn't she told the butcher to cut the chuck roast into pieces the size of half his fist? He must have very big fists.

Elena cut the chuck down further, browned it, and then came her favorite part of the recipe. The deglazing.

This meant pouring wine into the pan and scraping the leftover bits of meat off the bottom.

Elena liked this step best, because it seemed the most French. She guessed there was a freedom she felt in opening a bottle of wine and pouring it liberally. A feeling of extravagance, that seemed foreign to everything she'd been taught about cooking as a girl. And a feeling of moral laxity, of European permissiveness, in allowing a substance as debauched as wine to play such an elemental role in a dish this modest. That was the dividing line right there. Without the wine, it would be just another midwestern stew.

Of course, there was also the beurre manie, the flour and butter dough she would add toward the end as a thickener. That too, was very French. Because her own mother would never have bothered to knead together flour and butter --with real butter!--to ensure that the flour particles would enter the broth properly, without causing lumps. No, she would have simply added flour and been done with it.

As the afternoon wore on, the stew cooked and her house grew warm and fragrant. Beads of sweat formed on her brow. But not from the heat. From remembering.

Ah, Marcel, the trapeze artist.....

He had the strength and balance to walk over anything, but he could not resist the smell of a good beef bourguignon. It had been a sure way to bring him down off the wire.

Elena saw it again vividly, in slow motion. The sudden slip, the hard landing, the cold, lifeless eyes turned up at her, the day he fell. Fell out of love with her.

George Takei Is The Broker of Star Peace

2012-01-21T22:09:00.000-06:00

Sometime last month, after William Shatner and Carrie Fisher got into a feud over which was better, Star Trek or Star Wars, George Takei intervened by filming the above video message, urging them to make peace with each other.

In the video he begins,

"Fellow star folks. Cool it down, and shut your big worm holes! Each is wonderful in its own special way..."

Takei says this is a time when all "starfriends" need to band together, because of an "ominous mutual threat to all science fiction." He says, " It’s called ‘Twilight’ and it is really, really bad. Gone is any sense of heroism, camaraderie, or epic battle. In its place, we have vampires that sparkle, and moan, and go to high school."

I am listening George, and even though I do think Star Trek is WAY BETTER than Star Wars, I will refrain from antogonizing any fellow starfriends, because I have had it up to here with vampires. Oh, and zombies. We should all live long and prosper, and be vampire and zombie-free. May the force be with us. And may it bring us another Star Trek movie.

George Takei Is Coming To Kansas City

2012-01-21T03:19:00.045-06:00

George Takei is coming to Kansas City next week! I was reminded of this when I heard him on a local radio show this morning---being hilarious ---plugging his upcoming show.

He will be appearing at the Kauffman center for a "Sci-Fi Spectacular" , with the Kansas Symphony Orchestra. Audience members are invited to "travel to the edge of the universe with music from the biggest and best science fiction TV shows and movies, including Avatar, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey."

Takei will be there to provide *dramatic narration*. There will even be a laser light show!

I probably don't have to tell you that this is right up my dork-baitin,' geekozoid alley. T'would do my old Trekkie heart good to experience George Takei in this fashion.

For you see, I have long loved George Takei. Because of him, I have learned many things.

He was one of my favorites on Star Trek, in his portrayal of Sulu. It wasn't so much the cool way he cranked up the warp speed at Kirk's command ....

It was more the humor and liveliness he exhibited in other scenes --running through the corridors of the ship with a fencing foil, frollicking on shore leave. I picked up on the fact that he was a colorful person, but I had no idea at the time that he might be gay. Now that he's come out, I think --"Well, I knew there was something about him." It wouldn't be the only time that the person I found the most interesting turned out to be gay.

Anyway, I was fascinated by him, and became curious about his Japanese heritage. Soon I became curious about anything having to do with Japan or Japanese Americans. And so I did what curious people did back in those days. I went to the library and checked out as many books as I could find on the subject.

Somewhere along the way I read Takei's biography, and learned that he had been sent with his family to a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. I read all I could find on the internment camps, and I did a report on them for school.

I also came across articles about our bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and first-hand accounts of survivors, and so became preoccupied with the history of those events. When it was time to do another report for school, one where we had to stand up in front of the class and talk, I knew what my topic would be. I still have a vivid memory of giving that report and using the overhead projector to show pictures from the destruction of Hiroshima.

All this self-directed learning, from my weird obsession with George Takei!

Note: There was some weird technical glitch the first time I published this post, and a bunch of my editing was somehow deleted or not saved, so the first version was a real mess. Thanks to H.B. for bringing my attention to it. One of the things that had been deleted was some stuff about George Takei being a broker of Star peace, intervening in a feud between William Shatner and Carrie Fisher. Well, I'll have to save that for another time.

Oh and by the way, I just checked and the Sci-Fi Spectacular appears to be sold out. Snif.

New Food Trends I Can Do Without

2012-01-19T11:48:00.006-06:00

Lap cheong sausage. It keeps in the fridge for weeks. I don't want to be looking at some old piece of sausage in my fridge for weeks.

Whey. I saw a big vat of it in the store. Now you can buy it to use in a sauce or pickle things, or drink in a tonic. Isn't it a nasty dairy by-product leftover from curdling milk?

Scotch eggs. This is when you wrap cooked eggs in sausage meat, cover it with breading and fry it. Sounds more like Botched eggs to me.

Pea tendrils. When I think of tendrils, I think of Little Shop of Horrors. Octopi. Something alive, grabbing...I will say no more.

Pomegranate. I like the flavor of pomegranate seeds. But I'll be danged if I'm gonna go to the trouble of extracting them.

French macarons. They are supposed to be the latest pastry craze, taking the place of cupcakes. But they are hard to make, involving meringues and such, and expensive to buy.

My feelings are echoed by Sarah Cox, editor of Curbed Detroit, who said,

"Macarons are faddish and stupid. So were cupcakes, but they were just the right amount of faddish and stupid. Do we really need something even MORE faddish and stupid? Any idiot can make a cupcake.. But macarons... now that is not the people's dessert.”

I Was Retro When Retro Wasn't Cool

2012-01-17T13:57:00.008-06:00

I am convinced that I had a previous life, in the 1940's. It would explain why I am so old school. Why I have a fondness for "mid-century" design and for vintage cars, and out-dated control panels with chunky dials. And why the hell I was listening to Glenn Miller records at the age of 13!

In this previous life, I was a volunteer rolling bandages for the USO during World War II. I was only 16, but I did my part for the cause and worked tirelessly.

My name was Garbo. My parents had named me after the actress Greta Garbo, hoping that I would take after her class and beauty. They didn't give me her first name, because they were afraid people would tease me, giving me the nickname, "Regretta." They hadn't anticipated how my classmates would mangle the name Garbo just as readily, calling me "Garbanzo," "Hobo" and "Garbage."

I was a cheerful little bandage roller, dancing at my station as the radio in the warehouse played the big bands of the day. I just loved swing music! But my tender life was cut short one tragic afternoon as I rolled bandages, when a big stack of boxes, full of rolled bandages, fell on me and and knocked me dead. Cranial trauma. You wouldn't think bandages could be so heavy.

Anyway, I shot out of my body quicker than you could say "Loose lips sink ships." But at that particular moment, the radio was playing one of my favorite songs, so I hovered over the scene, and while USO staff struggled in vain to revive me, I listened. It was that Perfidia tune that goes, "And now.....I know my love is not for you....and so I take it back with a sigh, perfidious one, goodbye...goodbye...goodbye....goodbye......GOODBYE!!!!".....

I couldn't stick around very long, because my soul was light and wispy like smoke, and it kept trying to rise. And that's the last thing I remember from that life. I guess about 19 years or so passed, and then I was sent back down in 1963, and given a new body---no small inconvenience for my mother! She had thought our family was already complete.

Though I was only a baby in the mid-sixties, I already had the soul of a young, teenaged girl, whose life had been interrupted. And so I quickly latched onto the pop music surrounding my toddlerhood, embracing the hippie counter-culture, but ever holding an odd, inexplicable wistfulness for 1940's swing. And every so often, it surfaces, just long enough to embarrass my children. The arm goes up and the hand flutters back and forth, to the long-ago rhythm of a big band tune.

Red Letter Day

2012-01-15T11:30:00.001-06:00

Today that family pack of ground beef I bought expires, requiring me to tear it apart with my bare hands and put it into little baggies to freeze for later.

Today is the day I replace the empty can of Reddi-Whip.

Today we will begin to notice how much our dog smells.

Today I'll finally throw out that jar of hamburger grease.

Today I burn the last candle.

Today I'll receive back all the Girl Scout cookies our troop has not sold.

Today I'll take a walk to my dream house.

Today I'll master "I am the walrus" on Beatles Rock Band.

Today I'll begin carrying a notebook wherever I go.

Today I'll blow the dust off my fiddle. I won't play it, but I'll blow the dust off.

Today I'll sync my Ipod to Itunes for the first time.

Today I'll hang my 2012 calendar.

What Your Tea Drinking Style Reveals About You

2012-01-14T12:07:00.042-06:00

If you are a tea drinker, you don't need costly psycho-therapy. Knowing how and what you drink is like looking through a wide-open window to your mind. Use the list below as a handy guide to common tea-drinking behaviors and corresponding disorders.

You boil just enough water for one cup. -- Narcissistic.
You dislike using a tea bag more than once. -- Obsessive compulsive.
You spray Reddi-Whip on top of your chai.--- Arrested development.
You turn your nose down at Lipton.--- Elitist.
You often burn your tongue.--- Self-mutilator.
You don't really enjoy your tea because you're wishing you had coffee instead.--- Emotionally unavailable; fearing commitment.
When the bag breaks and you find grounds floating in your tea, it doesn't surprise you.--- Nihilistic.
You have only steeped, you have never infused.--- Small-minded; fearful of change.
You drink English Breakfast only at breakfast.--- Neurotic.
You do weird things like put black pepper in your tea.--- Masochistic.
You reheat your cup multiple times in carbon-centric devices.--- Terra-cidal.
You pretend to like green tea even though you can't stand it.--- Lacking authenticity.
You drink tea as an excuse to eat biscotti and scones.---Eating disorder.
You never buy fair trade.---Imperialistic with genocidal tendencies.
You time with precision the minutes your tea has been steeping.--- Anal-retentive.
You use second-hand tea bags when making tea for others.--- Passive aggressive.
You careen wildly back and forth between black tea and herbal --- Bipolar.

Snow: Precautions and Little-Known Facts

2012-01-13T00:37:00.009-06:00

When a winter storm comes, do exactly as the weatherman tells you. Heed all warnings. And take the following precautions:

Eat more. You never know when you might get caught in a drift, and have to live off your own body fat.

Snow attracts wild animals. Leave scraps of fresh meat in the middle of the street to keep the roving packs from your door.

No sleeping outside. Snow looks so nice and soft, but it's a silent killer. Resist all urges to cleave to its frosty bosom.

Snow on the ground makes the air colder. This increases your risk of hypothermia, which can strike without warning. Therefore, be a moving target. Run, don't walk, to and from your car. If someone you know shouts hello and tries to engage you, toss them a hasty wave and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

Avoid shoveling, constructing forts, and building snow beings. You might tire and be overcome with a powerful urge to lie down in the snow. See point no. 4.

Dress to be seen. If you must be outside and on foot for any considerable distance--walking around retail parking lots, etc. -- wear fluorescent colors at all times.

Be sensible. When discussing the weather with others, stay within cultural norms. Kate Bush notwithstanding, "shnamistoflopp'n" , "creaky-creaky" and "phlegm de neige" are not words for snow. *

If you get caught outside in severe weather, remember that squirrels are your allies and a valuable resource. Especially when cooked over an open fire.

Here are some little-known snow facts that may fascinate you:

Snow contains not only water but is charged with ion particles that intermittently heighten sexual powers.

Snow that you manage to catch on your tongue is weaker, inferior snow, and can make you sick.

Snow fairies are all around us, but hard to see because they have white skin, hair, and lips.

It takes more alcohol to get intoxicated when it's snowing outside than it normally does, so drink accordingly.

White-outs are not really natural phenomena, but are events engineered by the military when they want to move around top-secret, heavy equipment..

The town of Bledsoe, Ohio hires someone to go around and count snow men so they can pad their population numbers.

If you give your dog apple cider vinegar and honey, his urine won't turn the snow yellow.

*These are three of Kate Bush's words from her recently released cd, "50 Words for Snow."

Buddha Bobble

2012-01-12T13:41:00.025-06:00

This morning I was driving Annabelle to school, when I noticed that the car ahead of us had a Buddha bobble just like mine, on its dash. Annabelle saw it too. We noticed that the two Buddhas, mine and its neighbor, seemed to be bobbling in sync. We were stuck behind the car, wishing there was a way we could wave and gesture to let its driver know that we had the same bobble. Then Annabelle pointed out that maybe there had been times when the car behind me had had a Buddha bobble and I hadn't even known it. Well, that's right, I said. And we both chewed thoughtfully on that for a bit. But it's kind of funny that neither of us thought to turn and look at the car behind us to see if IT had a Buddha bobble. We just laughed and turned our attention back to the radio. Shortly afterward, I turned off on the road that led to Annabelle's school.

I know of one other car that has a bobble like mine. Its owners live on my brother's street in Lawrence. They also have a Peace bumper sticker on their car.

This is actually my 2nd Budda bobble. The first one, which I bought at World's Window in Brookside, lost his stickiness, and he wouldn't stay put on my dash. He kept tipping over and then sliding off. I bought the 2nd bobble at "It's a beautiful day," a hippie shop in Westport. Yes, I have my sources. I know where to go for Buddha bobbles.

Solar Flair

2012-01-10T23:53:00.013-06:00

Fun Fact! Did you know the sun is orbiting the Milky Way,

and completes the orbit every 226 million years? (Image: NASA)

Sun spots --Are they a good or bad thing? As a kid I thought they were evil, because oftentimes when our TV reception got bad, it was said that sun spots were to blame. During one summer they were particularly bad, and I remember watching in vain as the cowboys on my favorite syndicated reruns of High Chaparral were reduced to buzzing and floating ghost images.

Nowadays there is the worry that an active sun spot cycle, which is related to solar storms and flares, will disrupt our GPS systems, impair our cell phones, and erase our Ipods. But I read in the Atlantic today that the sun spots are the weakest they have been in nearly a century. Which would be reassuring, if it weren't for the fact that one well-known period of very low sunspot activity in the latter half of the 17th century, called the Maunder Minimum, was also marked by abnormally cold weather in northern Europe and is sometimes referred to as the Little Ice Age.

But here is some encouraging news about the sun: It probably won't explode for a very long time. We weren't always sure about that. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke had thought the sun was about to blow, taking all of us with it. He thought this because the first neutrino-detectors, which measure the sub-atomic particles emitted from the inside of the sun, showed a lower neutrino count than scientists expected, suggesting that the sun was entering its dotage.

Scientists now tell us - Not to worry, the sun is in its "main sequence." It has burned at the same temperature for a billion years and is expected to keep burning at the same "rheostat" setting for a billion more. (Nobody touch that rheostat!). We can relax - the sun has used up only a small percentage of its energy potential. But eventually, it will run out of hydrogen, having converted it all to helium, and then ---kablooey!

We earth dwellers like to think of the sun as our own God-ordained heat lamp. We fancy that sustaining our carbon-based life forms is the reason the sun is allowed to burn at all. But actually, we get a miniscule portion of the sun's radiation. For every 1 unit of solar energy we get, the sun vents another 1.6 billion units out into space.

The sun was on my mind a lot today, because it was the reason I was late getting back from my lunch break. Unusually strong for a January day in Kansas, it had been so warm and radiant on my face as I walked through a nearby park, I was sure it was a sin to waste it. I thought of the book, "Frederick," by Leo Lionni, and the way Frederick the mouse soaked up the sun and colors and stories for his fellow mice, while they hustled to gather seeds and nuts for winter. The hustling mice were cross with Frederick for not pitching in, but when the long winter lingered and the mice had eaten all their food, it was Frederick's stores that sustained them. I knew an arctic blast was coming --they're predicting a plunge starting tomorrow, so it seemed wise to soak up as much of the sun as I could. But I don't have a way to transfer it. I'll be saving it for myself, for I know that we each have to find our own way to keep warmth in the belly.

Pipe Dreams

2012-01-09T23:50:00.003-06:00

Annabelle's girl scout troop still meets at their old elementary school, Tomahawk Elementary. While waiting out in the hall to pick Annabelle up from her meeting, I browsed several displays of art work taped to the walls. There was a rash of snowmen, painted white on construction paper, which is what you expect to see in a grade school in January. But the most interesting thing I saw was an assignment on drawing pipes. As in plumbing, not smoking. Each kid had used charcoal to draw a jumble of pipes. But the pipes must have been in some basement or boiler room or out of the way place, because a few of them were being visited by a rat. A few of them had cobwebs and spiders. And uh-oh! --quite a lot of them were sprouting leaks!

I was completely won over by those pipes, and imagined them on exhibit in a gallery, written up in the following review:

In their show, "Beyond the Clog," part of their Industrial Water Pipe series, the 5th graders of Tomahawk Elementary, Shawnee Mission School District USD #512, reveal a preoccupation with two resonant themes: flow and pressure. Their serpentine charcoal forms signal an uneasy relationship between human needs and crumbling infrastructures, signaling dire implications for public schools and their shaky futures. A repeated pattern of intersecting and overlapping pipes echo the convoluted quests for meaning that underlie our societal bargains. The stark blacks and grays are eerily illuminated by naive scribbles of white chalk, which serve to insert haunting emblems of trouble and urban decay: spiders, rodents, and leaks. On display on the northeast wall outside the cafeteria until spring break, or until custodian Lois gets it in her head the wall needs a good wash.

Tell Me When To Jump

2012-01-08T23:49:00.005-06:00

Technology's kind of like a train rolling by and you're thinking of hopping the freight and catching a ride. But you're not sure when you should jump. If you jump now, at least you'll be on a train, headed somewhere, making a bed out of straw with the other early-adopter hobos, who were already settled in the freight car when you hopped in. But then again, if you wait around, a better train's bound to come along. One maybe hauling downy sacks of feed and canned sardines with the easy peel-back lid.

Now that we've got that painful analogy out of the way, I'll talk plain and get down to the point. I've been trying for some time to decide on what to do about my cell phone, but as time goes by I'm more bewildered than ever.

Problem is, they keep moving the target on me. It's interesting to note that although Annabelle is the last person in our family to get a cell phone (and the last person in her 7th grade class, to hear her tell it), she is the first person in the family to get a smart phone. This is not because I like to indulge my kids in the latest gadgets. They will quickly tell you that that is not the case. It's just that, by the time I was ready to shop for a cell phone for her, smart phones were free (with a new contract ). Yeah, yeah, there is a data plan, but I'd already planned on upgrading to that anyway. And as it turns out, our carrier, T-mobile, now offer very few choices in non-data phones, or I think what they call "feature phones."

Well, now that we have a data plan, and I've finished my contract, I might as well upgrade, right? But to what? Oh, anything would be a exponential improvement. You would laugh at what I'm using now. Here, I'll show you:

It's a Nokia 5310, XpressMusic phone. I got it in May 2009. I got it for $16, for renewing my contract. Which is laughable, now that I can get entry-level smart phones for free. Its best feature, the reason I got it, is its music player. It allows you to organize your music in playlists, and it plays the music on external speakers. Something most phones in that price range didn't do three years ago.

Note, however, the keypad. Yes, those 12 cramped little keys are it, that's all you get. Texting, as you can imagine, is akin to working a telegraph machine. Back in 2009 it didn't matter, because I wasn't texting, my daughters weren't texting --shoot, neither one of them even had a cell phone---and I pooh-poohed its usefulness, just as I pooh-poohed Facebook and e-readers.

Now to make matters worse, in addition to my humble phone's meager specs, the left edge has lost its outer covering, so that the external music control buttons don't work anymore. The darn thing is as skinny and about as small as a Nestle's Crunch fun bar, and so it slips out of my hand as swiftly and easily as the bottle slips from a staggering hobo, and every time it does the back comes off, the battery goes flying, and a little bit more of the left edge gets chipped away.

The music player still works, but it's kind of like having a boombox where the cassette player works but the cd player doesn't. Too cumbersome to be worth the trouble. Since the external buttons are broken, the only way to get to my music is to punch my way through a labyrinthine menu.

I figure any day now, I'll drop this phone and it will break into its usual three or four pieces, but I won't be able to put it back together. I do have to say for the record, though, that this is one tough lil' phone that has never stopped working.

Since I'm the type of person who runs things down into the ground before replacing them, I'm bound to be limping along with today's technology three years from now, and so I think I should get something pretty good. But gosh darn it, as soon as I make a move, they'll come out with something better. I found out just today that "pretty good" means a dual-core processor--No--QUAD-CORE! (I didn't know phones had quad-core processors!), and yummy-sounding operating systems like Gingerbread and Mango, that are more sophisticated and capable. And it's not enough that the screens on all these new phones are bigger than the two-inch display on my Nokia. I need to aim for one that has an AMOLED display.

If I want, I can get a phone that lets me edit Word documents, and I admit that is tempting. I could be stuck waiting for my daughter to get out of volleyball practice, yet be working on my novel right there in the high school parking lot. But it occurs to me that that's what tablets are for. And isn't it just a matter of time before I find myself with one of those? Because we don't find technology, technology finds us.

There are some features that I could care less about in a phone. A front-facing camera for making video-calls? Pffffft. I pooh-pooh the idea. I'm not going to be making video calls! But that's what I said about texting.

Anyway, the longer I wait, the choices don't get easier. They just get more ridiculous. I sit here with my pathetic, broken Nokia wondering if a 1 GHz processor will be fast enough. Why settle for a 3G when I could have a 4G? What comes after 4G? How soon before quad-core is yesterday's hash, knowing that chip makers are starting to float the term "multi-core"? (See PCWorld article: Quad-core phones: what to expect in 2012.) How many cores can a cell phone have, before it's no longer a phone? Yes, and how many times will I have to upgrade, before they leave well enough alone?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.

Am I A Buyer Or A Shopper?

2012-01-07T19:19:00.288-06:00

Am I a buyer or a shopper? I guess it might depend on the background music. (See yesterday's post, "Pogoing in Aisle 9). But I hadn't really thought of it that way before, until I saw H.B's comment on yesterday's post. Typically I think I've belonged more in the buyer camp. At least, since I've had kids, when shopping of any kind meant Major Hassle.

In the baby years it meant pushing one in the stroller while carrying the other in a Baby Bjorn pack. In the toddler years it meant pushing both of them around in a double stroller. I always knew where the elevators were in department stores. Then after they were both potty-trained it was repeat trips to the restroom. I swear Annabelle made a point of visiting a bathroom on every outing, no matter how quick a trip it was. Then they outgrew the stroller but doing all that walking on their own they'd get tired, hungry, cranky, and their patience levels dropped even lower than my energy level, if such a thing was possible. They could only endure so much before it was necessary to let them blow off steam in one of those play areas with the giant pieces of food, or to buy them rides on the carousel. Then they got to the age where they each had very different ideas about what they wanted to shop for and for how long, and one of them needed to shop in Juniors while the other needed to shop in girls.

But I had a weird experience a short time before Christmas. I found myself doing the unthinkable---heading to the mall five days before Christmas--because both my daughters wanted to go Christmas shopping, with their own money even, and so I gave in and gritted my teeth and took them. I expected to hate it, but oddly, I enjoyed it. I was right there in the thick of the crowds, on my feet for hours, wandering the stores, and enjoying it. What could account for these positive feelings flowing through my being, I thought? This is the busiest time of the year. The shops are mobbed. Why was I finding pleasure in this? I wondered if the mall was somehow piping in happy gas and my fellow customers and I were caught up in some sort of somnambulant trance.

Then it hit me, and I knew the reason for my buoyant mood. I was shopping alone, without my daughters. They are at the age where they can now shop in the mall without me as long as they are with a buddy, or each other. And it makes all the difference in the world. No wonder I was feeling so carefree while all was madness around me. To have the luxury to go to any store I wanted, browse as long as I wanted, to follow only my own impulses, without someone belly-aching about how bored or thirsty they were, was liberation. It put shopping in a whole new light, and that startled me. To flirt even briefly with the idea of shopping for recreation was to court danger. What was to become of me, when my children were no longer around to obstruct me. Would I become one of those ladies who buy 7 handbags they don't need and 4 coffeemakers and 3 watches?

Maybe, but it's more likely I'll just become a more hopeless window shopper. Without my kids along to prod and push me, I'll spend more time gazing at merchandise and drawing out buying decisions. I might become more of a shopper, but that doesn't mean I'll actually buy anything.

Pogoing In Aisle Nine

2012-01-06T21:40:00.004-06:00

Boy, I guess 40-somethings who were into off-beat new wave bands when they were young must typically run to the grocery store after work on Friday evening, because the store I went to today was catering to just that demographic. They were playing 80's music that didn't get played on the radio, even back in the 80's. I had owned some of the music on LPs, while I was in college.

This particular Hyvee played "Pulling Mussels from a shell," by Squeeze. "History never repeats," by Split Enz. Split Enz! The New Zealand band that almost nobody heard of. I pushed my cart with more than the usual enthusiasm. I wanted to say out loud to the passing shoppers --"Do you hear that?! Can you believe that's on the store soundtrack?" I looked around to see if any other middle-aged shoppers were looking up in amazement, checking to see if the celestial tones of forgotten new wave bands were really coming from the store's sound system, or whether they were just having an 80's flashback. Unexpected residual effects of the clove cigarettes we used to smoke.

When I lived in Miami in the late 80's and early 90's, I shopped at a grocery chain called Publix that claimed it was "Where shopping is a pleasure." But they played Michael Bolton and George Michael over the PA while I checked the shelf for store brand beans and tuna, so I would describe the experience as more of a mind-numbing tour of banality.

But this! ---This 80's dance party was making shopping fun again. I don't know if I've had this much fun in a grocery store since my college days, when some friends and I went "Krogering" at 3:00 in the morning in Lawrence, just because we could. I could get excited about grocery shopping at odd hours in those days, before it became such an regular chore in my daily life. But they weren't playing 80's technopop in that Kroger. Oh no. It was muzak all the way. The classic schlocky stuff that you could only tolerate at 3:00 in the morning, when it became kind of phantasmagorical and surreal.

Now I was listening to Psychedelic Furs as I picked out avocados. It made me happy and it entertained me, which made me pick out even more avocados. I couldn't hold back a little wiggle when a new song came on and I heard Freddie Mercury belting out, "I want to break free!" Come on, Hyvee, I thought, "Clear a space in the meat department already and put in a dance floor!"

Did the music make me spend more money than I should have? Well, I didn't buy anything that we won't use or don't need. But I went in to buy toilet paper and some stuff for making enchiladas, and I ended up spending $87.00. That's inflation for you.

Beatles Brain Training

2012-01-05T21:30:00.008-06:00

Tonight I tried once again to play the drums on Beatles Rock Band. I was playing in an "unofficial" capacity. That is, Lilah was beating the drum pads with the drum sticks, and I was trying to follow along with her, beating an old plastic tube and a DVD case against the floor. I am terrible at this game. I get very flustered. It is too quick for my brain, too much thinking on my feet. There are all these beats coming at you on the TV screen, and I for one have a hard time catching on to the tempo changes. Whenever an extra beat or two comes hurtling at me on the screen, I reach out spastically to strike the floor two beats after I was supposed to. Sometimes I just freeze. It is a far cry from my glory days as a Pong player some thirty years ago. Dad used to boast about how I could play Pong with my toes, and how I could beat everyone, hands or toes. Those were the days.

Video games today require more skill. When I play Mario Kart, I am always driving off the road, crashing into the ocean or falling off the skyway to my death. I know my limitations, and I would have been content to play the Beatles game at Beginner, but Lilah had to play everything at the "hard" level. We played "I saw her standing there," "Hey bulldog," "I am the walrus," and "Day tripper." I watched her hands to pick up the rhythm before joining in with my plastic tube. If I jumped in too early before she got her groove going, she said I was messing her up.

It's no surprise I am so weak at this game. Look at how I spend every day at work --hunched over a computer, glaze-eyed, clicking a mouse. I'm like a mouse myself, clicking for a little pellet. A Yahoo news story. A Facebook notification. No wonder my senses and reaction times are dulled.

I wonder what would happen if I could play Beatles Rock Band every day. Could I actually improve? Could I make new neural connections, and develop an intuitive grasp of things that elude me, like tempo and meter? I wonder if my reflexes would become sharper? Kind of a shame I won't have the time to invest in finding this out. Oh what specimans we could all be, if we just had the time.

Reset Button

2012-01-04T22:57:00.001-06:00

I just opened my new calendar from the National Parks Conservation Association, the one with the grizzly on the front. I've been looking forward to this since last October, when my 2011 calendar started looking pretty sorry. It was varicosely veined with blue ink, and the scribbled dates pointed to past hopes and good intentions, many of which were never fulfilled. The Writer's Place events I missed because I was too busy or lazy. The booster club and PTA meetings I thought I might attend --this time for real!--but never did. Some of the reminders are for things I'd rather forget: dentist appointments and bills that were due. Deadlines that cast a pall on my life, now reduced to blurry smears.

I like how clean and blank my new calendar is, however, it carries with it a certain weight. All those unfilled pages, resembling a clean slate, and the implication that all that blankness should inspire me to throw off my old molted self and leap into some new skin that is waiting. But it's the calendar that has been switched out, not me. It's the sun that has roamed the cosmos, not me. I am still dragging through gravity with the same vices and follies. Reform thyself not, from superstition or compulsion. Someone wise must have said it. No, I will not make any new year's resolutions. But I wouldn't mind it if someone could push "reset".

I love reset buttons. For example, that little nub of a button on the bottom of the garbage disposal--it is a blessed friend when your garbage disposal stops working.* I learned this when I was divorced and living alone with the girls in my own rental house. This button is out of sight, and is easily forgotten. When the garbage disposal stalled at Thanksgiving, it was me who broke through the crowd of Wilders, all hovering over the sink, to shout, "Look for the reset button! There is always a reset button!!"

Oh, if only there always was.

*Of course sometimes there is more to it ---like, to get the disposal to work again it's not enough just to press the button, you also have to look for that funny wrench and use it to turn the blades a few times. But just pushing "reset" is enough when I need to get my blowdryer working again.

Keeping The Elves At Bay

2012-01-03T23:15:00.003-06:00

I was lousy at sending Christmas cards this year (I mean last year), and my gift-giving left something to be desired, but when it came to the food aspects of the holiday, I did good. I was right on schedule with all the holiday eating to be done, and I accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. Some people get an early start with their Christmas packages, and bully for them, but I get an early start with the snacking. I was able to start way back around the first of December, when the first round of treats came into our office at work. Our subscription vendor sent a big mound of white chocolate and milk chocolate peanut clusters and right on the heels of that someone brought in homemade candy, and someone else brought in one of those assortments of homemade Christmas cookies that give away the fact that they spent hours and hours mixing up food coloring and cutting dough into Christmas tree shapes. There was the work holiday party of course, and the time-honored custom of wrapping extra cookies in a napkin for a mythical co-worker who couldn't come to the party, but who mysteriously turns into you as soon as you reach your cubicle.

There was food that showed up in our kitchen without me moving a muscle. A fruit cake materialized as if by magic. Roger said his mother had mailed it. Then while we were eating dinner one night, a friend of Roger's stopped by and dropped off a large stollen. Roger answered the door, but all I did was sit there, my fork in mid-air, as the stollen, which I first took to be a side of beef, was handed off to Roger and given a new home with us. Not wanting to fall behind, I sliced and ate a piece immediately.

The real challenge, of course, lay ahead at my mother's house. Arriving there the day before the day before Christmas, I saw I had my work cut out for me: a jumble of peanut clusters and miniature candy bars, a big tub of Chex party mix, an iced carrot cake...and that was in addition to the Topsy's popcorn tin we had hauled out with us, brimming with three varieties of popcorn --buttered, cheesy, and caramel.

I didn't waste any time and started noshing almost as soon as I'd hung up my coat, because I knew that there was a natural law in effect that would bring an increase in sweets the closer we got to Christmas. Sure enough, when Marc and Anne drove up on Christmas eve day, they came bearing more freshly baked goodies. Anne had made delectable soft gingerbread cookies, chocolate mint cookies, a tea cake and a something or other cake --all the cakes are starting to blur together, but whatever they were, they were good.

It's no wonder I'm up at all hours at my mother's house at Christmastime. It takes a lot of wake time to eat and digest (or at least give a nod to my digestive tract) unseemly amounts of carb and sugar. And Lilah coming down with the stomach flu on Christmas eve just added to the strain. With one of our team on the sidelines, or rather, flat on the couch with an empty ice-cream bucket that grandma gave her, in case she suddenly needed it, I had to pick up the slack and eat for two. It may have seemed insensitive of me to be munching ceaselessly as Lilah ran off to the bathroom for the 7th or 8th time, but we all know what you get when you leave too many holiday sweets lying around uneaten --an infestation of Christmas elves! And lord knows we already had all the Christmas cheer we could stand.

Recapping A Little Bit Of Christmas 2011

2012-01-02T14:24:00.001-06:00

Our Christmas tree is still up, and some of the Christmas crap we have acquired still isn't put away (by crap I don't mean presents, just the accompanying bags, packaging, etc), and we still have Christmas lights on our porch, but Christmas 2011 is now, for the most part, just a memory. And so I'll record just a little of it here, because otherwise there is a good chance I'll forget it.

Our Christmas holiday more or less began on Friday, December 23rd, the day we drove out to western Kansas to my mom's house. We made the obligatory stop at the Cozy Inn in downtown Salina to pick up a sack of cozy burgers. We ordered 18 burgers and every last one was eaten by the time we reached the wind farm that runs parallel to I-70 and begins about 30 miles west of Salina.

While we waited for the owner of the Cozy to coax our burgers towards grilled perfection, Roger bought me a Cozy Inn t-shirt as part of my Christmas present. Today I took it out of its plastic package, and I swear I'm not lying when I say the shirt --after all this time and distance away from its origins --smells like onions!

Our drive to Salina had treated us to the charms of a progressively whitening landscape. The fields outside Kansas City were brown and dry, but as we continued west we saw little remnants of snow on the hills that eventually gave way to entire sheets of white. By the time we neared Salina most of the ground was covered.

When we drove through Hays we saw huge high piles of snow bulldozed along the edge of the Mall parking lot. In Ness City, where the streets are so mystically and unnecessarily wide that they perplex newcomers, the plowed snow is left right in the middle of the street, no bother to anyone.

One thing that struck me while I was out there, was how I had grown accostomed to municipalities that salt everything within an inch of its life, to keep ice from forming. In Ness City, the grocery store parking lot was a treacherous glacier, and similar ridges of slick ice and snow crust lay in wait all over town. While Roger and I were strolling to town, to browse the Flower Shop and the drug store, Roger suddenly slipped and fell, and not three seconds later---Whoosh! --I I felt my own feet sliding out from under me, and in an instant---Splat!--- I was down too. Fortunately, neither one of us was hurt. A day or so later, as me and Roger and Marc and Anne were exploring the west end of town, near the swimming pool, Anne took a nasty tumble.

I guess out there funds are tight and you're expected to not be a fool and go WALKING all over town like an idiot. Only people from out of town do that. I think Roger and I met a fellow out-of-towner on our way to the Flower Shop. We had stopped at the Prairie Mercantile just to see if it was open (it wasn't--after all, it was Christmas Eve day) when a man came striding in our direction and he remarked on how nothing much was open, as if the concept was still sinking in for him. Definitely not a local, I thought.

The Flower Shop and the drug store were both open, until noon. The drug store's handwritten sign was emphatic: Closing@Noon! The Flower Shop isn't owned by Fitzgeralds anymore. I think a local woman who had been running her own flower business bought it, and she has re-stocked it with knick-knacks, stoneware, candles, jewelry, making it a fun place to browse again. Thank goodness! It had really grown empty the last few years that Fitzgeralds owned it, another sad example of my hometown's decline.

Before leaving the shop I bought a pretty blue bowl, which will be useful as a serving dish, or as a soup bowl, if I ever want to eat a LOT of soup. Roger bought a Thai-flavored vegetable dip.

After we left the Flower Shop, we went to the drug store, where we stood in a long line of people, all aware that the store was Closing@Noon!, and all trying to make last-minute purchases. We bought a couple of chocolate Santas and some bubblegum for the girls' stockings, and some gift cards for the people watching Cheri. Then it was back across the icy tundra of Ness City, to get warm and lazy at mom's house.

The New Year

2012-01-01T16:50:00.004-06:00

It's here. It blew in last night with a sudden drenching rain. That didn't stop the fireworks, though, which scared our dog Cheri, and sent her slowly retreating to the bathroom. Slowly, because she has a hitch in her git-along, a most noticeable limp that has gotten worse since her Christmas stay with a friend who has three dogs, and who took Cheri and said dogs to her parents' farm on Christmas day, where Cheri romped and ran on 40 acres with 8 or 9 other dogs. Sheer doggie heaven! But now she's paying a price for her yuletide joy.

I am feeling hungover today, but not from any spirited indulgence. I had not a single nip of alcohol in celebration last night, as I have a cold, and it just didn't sound good. This must be the dryest New Year's I've observed in years. And I think I should get extra points for that! But anyway, what I'm feeling hungover from is the absolute break from routine, the time off work, and days of sleeping in. My ambition and drive, paltry as it was to begin with, has been completely undone. I have lost all impulse to lift a finger towards any purpose except the turning of a fresh page. I have been a total layabout with her nose in a book, and I have found this to be a completely fulfilling use of my time.

Now that it's New Year's Day, and the holiday season is fixing to close, I'm all a-shudder as what awaits me on the morrow. Early, early morning alarms, and the unnatural sensation of pushing one's body out of bed and into the cold before dawn glimmers---a return to 40 hours of weekly toil in the salt mines, where my contributions seem vague and at best, incremental,---a resumption of my duties as Cookie Mom to Girl Scout Troop 1985, which I have been blithely ignoring for the past 3 weeks, but which now stare me in the face as unyielding as that heap of extra cookie boxes blocking the front door, which I had at one time fashioned into a perky holiday arrangement and dressed with tinsel, but which now lie under a skim of dust and hold all the charm of a mis-directed warehouse shipment. They are a painful reminder that there is still money to collect, spreadsheets to complete, and that leftover cookies will require our troop to sign up for ---horrors ---a booth sale.

But I don't want to think about that now. I have a few waning hours to turn back and forth in my bed like, the oft-mentioned sluggard of Proverbs, and I plan to make the most of it. Of course it is not helping that I am reading "Autobiography of a Yogi," which is just reinforcing the idea that the material world is completely immaterial. But then again, even some of the most advanced yogis were told to leave their ethereal retreats in the Himalayas and return to the clod-ridden world so they could be of service to the masses. So I know that for the greater good, I too must summon my energies.

And I will, I will. Just give me a few more days.

Questions For 2012

2011-12-31T19:59:00.008-06:00

With only hours to spare before the new year bustles its way in, I have some questions I'd like to ask of 2012:

Why must this clean slate you offer commence in the dead of winter when I am fat and hairy like the drooling bear asleep in its lair? (Please note, I am not drooling, only fat and hairy.)

If pitted against each other in a cosmic battle, who would win? Old Man Winter, Father Time or the diapered new year baby?

How long will it take me to stop writing 2011 on checks and important documents?

What as-yet-undiscovered music will delight me this year?

How many books will I read?

Will I succumb to the Meatball craze?

Is this going to be the year in which I learn to stop being so reactive?

WHAT?!!!

Should I get off Facebook and switch to Google+?

Is there an Ipad in my future?

What new technologies will emerge to dazzle and nauseate me?

Will 2012 be the year I begin tweeting?

Will I Skype, Swype or Tumble?

Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?

Will I keep the wolves at bay?

Will my endless search for the perfect chai tea bag finally be fulfilled?

How many loved ones' birthdays will I manage to remember? For more than two seconds?

Will I finally gain the respect of my peers?

Will I discover muscles I didn't know I had?

Are you listening to anything I just said?