Ready or not, here comes the week

Aries (3/21 – 4/19):  Do you ever have that thing where there’s a bad smell, kind of vague, wafting around your house and you can’t quite pinpoint the source, and it’s possible that a mouse died under the refrigerator or inside a wall, but then again, maybe it’s nothing, and you could either wait it out or spend a ton of energy locating it? Your week will offer similar choices (metaphorically), and I’d recommend just waiting it out. 

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):  You know that thing when you start writing the horoscopes, totally from scratch, and then decide to snoop around the internet and you begin to learn what it actually means that Mars is in Retrograde?  Yes, you do?  But then they start going off and saying stuff like, “in many ways, Mars in Retrograde can be likened to Mars transiting through the twelfth house,” so you feel like you maybe missed too many classes and there will be no catching up?  Oh, I know that feeling too.  You aren’t alone.  That retrograde thing is still going on this week, so hang tight.

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21): Yes, life is complicated like this sometimes, and you feel like, wow, 4 years, and it ends up like this?  But it will be better in the future, this week will be easier than last, and by next week, you’ll be almost at the point of “Him?  Seriously?,” except you’ll never really be at that point, which is why we love you so dearly.

Cancer 6/22 – 7/21:  Do people keep bringing their musty old books for you to look at when all you want to do is something else?  This week, work hard to do as much of something else as you can. 

Leo (7/23 – 8/22): Does it piss you off that Tea Party, which used to be a sweet thing that girls did together, turned into a horrible political movement that involves comparing a proposal to provide health insurance to 30 million uninsured people to the Holocaust?  I know.  I think we should take back the tea party, and start our own freakin’ movement that involves actual tea, with vintage plates, and maybe that pretty cake from Miete?  And while we’re at it, can we reclaim the word “retard” for it’s actual meaning, so that I can say, “wow, it was so retarded of me to talk about meal worms at a party” without seeming to insult Trig, who’s life was already gonna be hard enough with that weirdo family family he was born into, but then Downs on top of it, pretty much making him The Last Person on Earth I’d Pick On?

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22): No one else likes the Canadian National Anthem all that much either, so you’re in good company.  When will I ever see you again, by the way?  You've turned into one more imaginary friend.

Libra (9/23 – 10/22): You know that thing when you’re at a party and it seems like people are talking about meal worms, and you say, “When I was young I raised mealworms,” and you just say it to fit in, but what they hear is “I was lonely til I got the mealworms” or something, which  doesn’t even sound at all like what you said, but it guarantees that you’re not gonna fit in at all because now they picture you being a person with pet grubs, possibly even wearing little costumes that you've crocheted?  And you start thinking it isn’t so terrible after all when people think you have cats?  Yeah, that might happen again this week.

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21):  Be careful with the family knife, when you get it.  I’ve cut myself every time I pick it up. 

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21): The plants turn brown like this every year.  Where have you been? The garden doesn’t get flowery again til April, so stop nagging. And, (pant) I’m gonna need ya (pant) to run down to the beach (pant) and get the h-antibiotics.  Right away, Sawyer.  Oh, now that we’ve all caught our breath, does it seem like you’re watching too much Lost lately?

Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19): Does that chimpanzee who was raised as a human and believed herself to actually be human cause you to feel extremely disturbed?  Because you start thinking, uh oh, I think I’m human too, so is it possible that I’m actually a chimp who was raised by humans?  I know.  I hate that.  Learn sign language and carry on; it doesn't really matter and you'll never know for sure.

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18): Did this crack you up as much as it did me?   Bring music to your work place, btw.  It will help.

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20): Oh, your birthday this week!  This will be another amazing year.  Do your kids do that thing of constantly making time capsules, and then wanting to dig them up in like, 15 minutes, and you’re trying to be interested in how life was Back Then, but it doesn’t come easily, and then this week you realize life really is going fast, and maybe the capsule was buried for a whole decade?

The Missing Link

When I was in college, a friend and I rented the downstairs of a house that was owned by an 80 year old man who lived upstairs, who, as he told us when we met, “liked women to eat with, not to sleep with.”  His days were predictable in a way that floored me at the time.  About once a week, he took me to the Royal Fork for lunch, which was a few blocks away from where we lived, and had the most horrible buffet imaginable, laden with jello and gravy-doused stuff.  He had his schedule down to the point where he knew that if he walked out of his house at 11:12, he wouldn’t have to wait for the light to cross the street, and he’d be in line for the buffet before the crowd arrived at 11:30.

But life is sort of this way.  You make decisions at some point, like figuring out that a certain restaurant is terrible, or a certain path to work puts you in more traffic, or you feel better if you eat a certain thing for breakfast, and before you know it, your life is rather predictable, because you don’t revisit those decisions each day.  On the one hand, that’s intelligence.  Biology favors those who learn from their mistakes. But on the other hand, well. . . we don’t want to be those people, do we, that order the same thing at the restaurant every time? 

The other day at work, I went answer-shopping, the way we do.  We’ve all worked together long enough to know who to ask when we want backing to stand firm (“No way!  I would never allow a fire pit in a buffer!”), or when we want justification to relax a little bit (“It’s really not such a big deal, is it?  Won’t they be better stewards if they enjoy the natural areas on their property?”).  I went looking for the latter, because I’d picked up a project from the hardass who was laid off, and couldn’t really figure out what deals had already gone down, and couldn’t get too excited about the minor ways that the current proposal didn’t technically meet code. 

So I went to talk to N., and found J. and the boss already in his cubical.  “Hey, N., would you care about California wax myrtle planted in a native buffer as a minor component of a restoration plan?,” I asked, knowing he’d say, nah, but alas, J. jumped in first.  “I’d feel really uncomfortable about that.  No way would I approve it.”

I took the bait, and started justifying my position.  “Look, we’re in the middle of the suburbs, there is not a single habitat patch larger than a few thousand square feet within half a mile, this is pretty much a lost cause, and does it seem like such a bad thing to let them plant some little thing that they like?”

J. got all rigid about it, so I did what is so easy with the ADD crowd, hold up something shiny.  “J, did you listen to the This American Life Episode about Lucy?”

“Oh, that was so sad!,” he replied.  “I wept when I heard that.”  I really liked the use of the word “wept”, which you don’t hear much outside of Victorian literature, but the two other men got pretty uncomfortable hearing one of their own use that word.  Our boss did that shifting from one foot to the other thing, and N. turned to face his computer, suddenly busy.

“Isn’t This American Life too much of a suburban white middle-class narrative about the world”, the boss asked, holding up a different shiny thing to get away from the possibility of more talk about weeping, but it didn’t really work, because we ignored him and continued talking about the poor chimp who had been raised as a human, but at a certain point, became too much for her human family to care for, so they released her into the wild in Senegal where she was ultimately killed by a poacher, undoubtedly because she was so trusting and approachable.  The whole thing was bizarre and sad, and called into question the barrier between species, because the chimp obviously thought she was a human, and the biologist who went to Senegal with Lucy for a quick visit, and stayed, well, doesn't she seem more allied with the chimps than the people?

I'm working on wrapping this little train of thought up with a nice little bow, but this is more of a "some assembly required" post today.

Croquet

I have a large rant about croquet on my mind, so bear with me.

Today, a man sporting the Rolex watch look came in and asked about buying a piece of property on the Big Fancy Lake, the one that Bill Gates lives on, not the tiny one that I live near.  (By the way, the water temperature in my little lake is 45 degrees F today, which I know you've all been wondering about.)  The assessed value of this waterfront lot and house is $1.5 million, and his questions pertained to his goal of purchasing it, tearing down the house, and building a new, much larger house.  This is the kind of customer who I sense would be more comfortable if a man wearing a suit and tie were answering his questions, rather than a woman wearing jeans and a pony tail.

We went over the rules, and I explained that he would be able to build a larger house, but mitigation would be required in the form of planting along the shoreline, which is currently lawn.  He got irritated, and, I must say, I am sooo bored by this response that I can hardly write about it.

People act as if they are the first human to have the idea of being upset by land use regulation, as if their outrage will cause the whole freakin’ bureaucracy to just stop in its tracks.

I was so not in the mood for his incensed behavior that after a bit, I  stopped doing my little code zombie thing that goes:  “Per 21A.24.045D 7, you can add up to 1,000 square feet of footprint to an existing legal non-conforming residence but you’d be subject to the impervious surface limits outlined the P-suffix condition blah blah blah.”

Instead, I let him go off for a while, and he explained how the land is gently sloped down to the lake (I’m sorry but seriously, that’s an actual problem?), and he wants to place a big retaining wall at the edge of the water, and fill it in so it’s all level and he can create a nice flat lawn. 

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

“What do you mean?  Are you saying we can’t use our land?  We won’t have any usable space if we plant it all up.”

I’m looking at this guy with these super clean soft hands, and I'm pretty sure the only way he'll be using his lawn is sitting inside with a martini in his hand, watching someone mow it.  I’m also sitting next to the zoning person whose job will end shortly, a woman who has been trying to adopt an orphan from Haiti for a few years, which is frustrating and slow, and now the orphan doesn’t even have an orphanage anymore, so he sleeps outside where the orphanage used to be, breathing concrete dust.  I was really not seeing a problem with natural topography the way the customer might like me to.

“Look, you really don’t play croquet as much as you think you do.  All the cool people are planting their shorelines.”

He seemed surprised.  “Actually, I have a place on the Columbia River, and we do play lots of croquet when we go down there.”

“Perfect,” I said.  “You’ve already got a croquet court.  Here, you’re gonna want to take out that little wall and plant it all up.  I’m serious, it’s really what you’re gonna want.  You're gonna love it.  That’s what the in crowd is doing.”

I weaseled away from the conversation because there was someone else waiting to talk about a neighborly dispute in which the neighbor was manufacturing industrial equipment and possibly illegal drugs in an unpermitted shop in a stream buffer, but it turned out that she was mostly a lonely widow who wanted to tell her story starting in 1992, and not leaving anything out.

I’m a sucker for those people, and tend to get all the way to the end of their story before I start to wonder, wait, does she seem kind of sketchy too?  Which one is really the problem neighbor?  Does it even sound plausible that someone can manufacture the heavy equipment used to lift skyscraper trusses in a residential garage? And a third tiny question I have is, how do people even think of making stuff like that?  Like, hmm, what to make, what to make.  I know!  I’ll make the equipment used to lift trusses for skyscrapers.  Here, in my tiny garage.  Maybe I’ll make some meth in here too, because those are compatible manufacturing processes.  But I digress from my original rant, which is about croquet.

I think the only time people enjoy playing croquet is when they’re drunk, or they’re at the kind of obligatory summer office party where croquet gets them out of mingling with random people, and, by the way, puts a weapon in their hand, just in case.  Are there are people who wake up on a sunny Saturday, home alone, and think, sheesh, I wish I could round up enough people for a game of croquet.  Darn, no one’s around, I’ll go practice on my own.  No.  Those people do not exist. Because the people with a high tolerance for boring pursuits are busy collecting stamps.

Croquet doesn’t even have cool shoes, or more importantly, argyle pants like the Norwegian Olympic Curling team, which, by the way, have their own Facebook page (the pants), with 468,595 fans.  For comparison, there is also a Facebook croquet page with 1,157 fans.  Here’s a quote from the FB croquet fan page, which I believe makes my point better than I could: “Croquet is the type of game that could steal your girlfriend without trying, but doesn't allow itself to.” Much like that quote, croquet is the type of game that leaves me saying, “huh?  Why am I doing this again?  Why do we care if the ball goes through the wicket?”

Yawn

I started reading Summer by J.M. Coetzee, which came recommended.  But then I do what I always do, with my microscopic attention span:  I read a few pages and thought, hmm, I'm not too excited about this book, let's turn to the internet, shall we?  I know.  My co-workers used to play a game that involved seeing how long they could talk to me without me needing to look something up on the internet, but it got too easy; as far as I know, it's not still a sport.

But I looked up Coetzee, and Wikipedia says this:

"Coetzee is a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. A colleague who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once. An acquaintance has attended several dinner parties where Coetzee has uttered not a single word." - Jason Crowley

He doesn't really sound like someone I want to spend a bunch of time with, like 224 pages.  Am I being too hard on him?  I don't want to miss out on a good read, but seriously, one laugh in 10 years?  That seems like a misspent decade, if you ask me.  I may press on a bit, but I think I'll probably skip ahead to the next book in my pile, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley.  Let me know if I'm making a serious mistake.

Pie Contest (again)

(Apologies to those who have already read this.)

Two summers ago, at a farmer’s market near my small town, someone asked if I wanted to buy a chance to judge the pie contest for a dollar.  Sure, I said, chances for two friends and me, please; strangely, we all got selected. 

On the morning of the contest, I put my kids on a plane to NY to visit my family.  My sister was to pick them up in Albany and take them to the Adirondacks for a week.  Normally, you need to pay a big extra fee for unaccompanied minors; it would almost be cheaper to just hire someone to go along and pay for their whole trip.  When you get to the airport, there’s a whole ‘nother charge, maybe fifty dollars per child, that I’ve never fully understood, but I’ve always paid it.  Paying this fee obligates the parent to go through security, out to the gate, and then wait until the plane takes off.

But this time, we went through the line, got boarding passes, and the guy didn’t mention anything about the extra fee, or me going to the gate.  My kids and I exchanged a look, like, “score!” and skittered away from the desk quickly. We were all on the same page: the last thing my kids want in this world is to sit with their mother in the airport for an hour, especially because I get sort of teary.  Of all of the things that could go wrong on the plane, I’m pretty sure the extra fee won’t make a bit of difference.
 
Also, my kids hate to be on that leash.  They hate wearing the wrist band, and being condescended to by the flight attendants, and being stuck in Divorceland, which is what they call the locked-down children’s room where they must spend their layovers, filled mostly with weird kids travelling to see the other parent.  I used to think they were exaggerating, but sheesh, the stories they tell.  And the crappy kid food.  (When did it become a normal to only offer minors fried things?)  So I hug them at the edge of security, and walk off without looking back.  Okay, maybe I look back just a little bit.
 
Skip forward, a day at the office passes, and I go to the market, quite excited about the contest.  The judges, eight of us, are seated at picnic tables, and we get a scoring sheet, plate, and are told that one at a time, we’ll be served nine slices of pie.  Right about then, my sister calls, and says the kids didn’t get off the plane like they were supposed to.  The plane arrived, but not them.  She called the airline and went off on a big rant about how these are unaccompanied minors, and their mother pays all these extra charges for them, and they lose the children, blah blah blah.   The airline was apologetic, and tracked them down.  It’s discovered that they were just spacing out in the Newark airport and forgot to get on the plane.  They had rented a wheelchair, my son had donned a long red wig that he happened to have in his carry on luggage, and thy were just tooling about, having fun. I know.  Marisa, who went to college at 14, and has flown solo to Africa twice.  I know. 

“Um, Kath, about that… I didn’t actually pay the fee.  I thought they’d be able to navigate that little layover.”
 
Silence.  “Okay.  I guess they’re going to be on the next plane.  Are you eating?  What are you eating?”

“Pie.”  I don’t want to get into it, because my sweet sister has gone way out of her way to have the kids for a week, and now, she’s dealing with one more hassle.  “Call me back if you learn more.”  I’m trying to be attentive, but I also don’t want to be the lame judge talking on the cell phone.

“What kind of pie?”

“Apple.  Gotta go.”

The metric for scoring includes looks, taste, originality, and a bunch of other things, which makes me think harder than I usually do when eating pie. 

She calls back 10 minutes later.  “Planes aren’t leaving Newark due to smog.  The plane they missed is the last one for a while. 

Again, I think of how my dear sister got up at the crack of dawn in eastern Massachusetts, drove all day to get to Albany on time, went through security, out to the gate, and is now trapped there.  “Oh, that sucks.  I’m sorry!”

“Are you eating again?”

“Yes.”

“What now?”

“Pie.”
 
“Same pie?”
 
“Blackberry.  Gotta go.”

“Where are you?”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry you’re stuck there.  Gotta go.”
 
This goes on for a while, until I finally confess that I’m judging a pie contest while she’s sitting alone in the Albany airport for like, three more hours. Has anyone ever been to that airport?  There’s nothing there at all.

The winning pie was apple, with a bit of rosemary in the crust, and a perfect letter “A” formed by pricking the crust with toothpicks.  Some of the senior citizens standing around are kind of pissed off that rosemary was in a crust.  “That’s just not right,” they mutter.

The pies’ author was a young mother, who, with toddlers hanging off her, told me she almost got a divorce over the whole thing, because she’s been so obsessed with the pie, and her husband isn’t even speaking to her, and she hopes he gets it now, how important it was.

Last summer, every week I went to the market looking for someone selling the judging tickets again, but didn’t see anyone.  I finally asked about the contest, sheepishly.  I didn’t want to seem too interested (that’s never a good strategy, I hear), but then again, I don’t want to miss out.

“Oh, do you want to enter a pie?”

“Um, actually, I was hoping to be a judge.”

The woman gives me a strange look, like “Wow, there is something really off here, but I can’t quite put my finger on it,” but says “Well, we don’t have the contest set up yet because no one has come forward to help get it organized.  Would you like to be in charge of it?”
 
What could I say?  So I agreed, and she took down my contact information.

“I’ll get back to you soon,” she said, the way people do before you never hear from them again.  This year, I think I'll make a little more effort, and possibly even make a pie. 

Amy Amy Amy

I’ve been reading about Amy Bishop, the biology professor who murdered three colleagues last week after not getting tenure. The story is creepy-sad, and I’m drawn to it the way I was to the Lisa Nowak story. Lisa was the astronaut who was charged with the attempted kidnapping of her lover’s new girlfriend, who supposedly wore diapers on her long stalker drive. I remember the comments on how she looked compared to the new gf. I thought she had a kind of raw, sketchy beauty, but the media thought the guy did better with the new gf, not for the obvious reasons that Lisa was an angry, unstable, diaper-wearing, jealous stalker, but because she had “let herself go”. Seriously.

Maybe because women are less prone to commit violent crimes (duh), or maybe just the sheer weirdness of the whole situation draws me to it. Maybe because she’s roughly my age and had kids, it feels like I should be able to get inside her head a little bit. I don’t really expect to understand the motivations of a young gang member, but I do think I should be able, at least a little bit, to understand someone who grew up in the suburbs in the northeast, values education, has kids and a job.

I learned today in the NYT that after Amy Bishop was apprehended, several people reported that she might have “booby trapped the science building with a herpes bomb.” We also learned last week that she had shot her brother with a shotgun after an argument, but the case wasn’t investigated. When I told this to R., his comment was, “Um, is murder the kind of thing you get to say, ‘nah, we’re not gonna press charges on this one?’” And there were several other weird and violent outbursts over many years. Like, she punched a woman in the head at an IHOP because that woman had taken the last booster seat. That is seriously angry.  How badly do you want to eat at IHOP?

I’m reading the most excellent collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie right now, War Dances, and I’m at that point of falling in love with his writing where I’m afraid to write anything myself because I will feel like I’m totally copying, or else it will just sound flat and unimportant. In one story, The Senator’s Son, he talks about the 9-11 terrorists, and says,

“Think of those nineteen men and you must curse them. But you must also curse their mothers and fathers. Curse their brothers and sisters. Curse their teachers and priests. Curse everybody who failed them. I pray for those nineteen men because I believe that some part of them, the original sliver of God that still resided in them, was calling out for guidance, for goodness and beauty.” ~Sherman Alexie, 2009

I feel that way about this Amy Bishop story. That somehow, we let each other down. These murders are no more sad than any gang killing, but they are more incredible. Because Amy was a person who should have been connected with resources, and there should be a shiny clear path available to help people return to their original goodness. For some people, that path is pretty steep and filled with obstacles, like poverty and lack of education, and being surrounded by people who are also on the same steep obstacle-filled path and are too busy putting their own oxygen mask on to help someone else.

But Amy Bishop experienced some of the best of what life holds: above-average intelligence, a PhD from Harvard, a marriage, four healthy children, a job that used her talents. It seems like if her particular life didn’t put her in the path of people who know how to gently and successfully guide someone back into beauty and goodness, there’s something terribly wrong.

The kids are doing okay

I just finished reading The Kids Are All Right, which was a surprisingly fun memoir if you don't get too bogged down in the fact that both parents die and the four orphans are parsed out into various abusive situations.

Angle on deposed

It is a pity that I can’t write about being deposed, because there would be a ton of material.  But, if I were to write a little allegory, it would be about a weird little pseudo-crime, and a few bumbling yet hostile attorneys. 

Let’s pretend Person A bought coffee from a drive-through, and it ended up on their lap.  Person A is suing person B, who manufactured the cup.  Let’s imagine I was the person in the drive-through window who saw the whole thing go down, and have been subpoenaed to tell what I saw. 

Person B could defend himself by asking me questions, like, was Person A eating a burger, driving a manual transmission, and talking on the phone when the coffee spilled? Could it have been operator error? 

But instead, Person A zeroes in on what kind of oil we use for French fries, and where I learned to cook them, and if I’ve ever been cut with a knife, and what the procedure would be if that were to happen.  We spend hours on these random lines of questioning, until eventually it’s Person B’s turn.  Person B has unearthed a scrap of paper with a phone number on it from 1998, and spends a whole ‘nother few hours asking me if I recognize it (no), or if I recognize the names on it (no), or if I recognize the handwriting (no), and by the time we have to stop for the day, no one has even mentioned the coffee or the spill yet, so there will more days in the future.  Which is a shame, because  I used up my one outfit.

All of this is interrupted several times by our attorney, who says things like, “I object to the line of questioning, which is irrelevant to the case at hand, hostile in tone, and requires the witness to speculate,” making me feel a tiny bit like I’m in a Perry Mason rerun.

For some reason, for the rest of the day all that came to mind was a natural history course I took in college, which was advertised as a class on local fauna.  It was taught by an entomologist, who, believe it or not, was married to another PhD entomologist, just to give you an idea of how important bugs were in her life.   (Yes, if you’re imagining what she looked like, you are correct.)

The students like me had all grown up watching Wild Kingdom and reading My Side of the Mountain, and were hoping to learn about actual wildlife, as in, things that you could see with the naked eye and what they ate for dinner, but instead, we spent all our time looking under rocks and logs for insects, capturing them in tiny bottles, and studying their little thoraxes and other tiny body parts under the microscope.  Once, an actual owl flew by and landed in a nearby tree during class, and she got really annoyed that we took our focus away from the little spot under the log where the insects live.   The whole deposition thing reminded me of that.

Solastalgia

There’s a new word, “solastalgia” that describes the kind of grief people have when their natural environment is changing more rapidly than they can keep up with it.  I’ve been thinking about the word because the landscape here has changed more rapidly in the last 50 years than anywhere else on the planet at any other 50-year period in history.  Okay, I totally made that up, but it seemed plausible for a second, didn’t it?

I copied that from Ira Glass, whom I had the privilege of seeing when he was here a few weeks ago, and at one point he said, “Radio is the most visual medium.”  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just me, everyone was nodding along.  And then he corrected it, saying, well, except for t.v. and things that require you to actually use your eyes. 

But look at these photos, and you’ll see what I mean.  I’m pretty sure the word “solastalgia” isn’t about to catch on in a big way (can you even say it?), but I think it’s happening, and I’m wondering about it a lot lately.  Because as much as I think of myself as a lover of the natural world, lately I have all of these thoughts of killing things in it.  Bet you didn’t see that coming.

I have rodents in the attic that I’ve been ignoring for a while (okay, years), and I’m sure they’re doing great damage that old pink insulation that I can see fluffing out of the sides of the house.  These are large mammals, maybe raccoons.  Most of my response so far has involved considering repainting the house so the pink insulation won’t look so obvious next to the blue house. 

Speaking of raccoons, a few weeks ago, I was driving on a 2-lane arterial when I saw a man standing in the middle of the road talking on a phone; I realized as I passed that he had hit a raccoon with his car, and was using his body to protect it from further injury. I’ve been wondering who you call when you hit a raccoon. I’m pretty sure no one cares, because I am a highly trained government worker and I’m aware of many obscure services.  But I stray from the point, which I’m about to get to. 

I also have ants that march around here all the time, and yes, I know that if you actually see the ants, it means that the problem is huge.  When I see an ant, I research it on the Internet, and then avert my eyes and carry on.

Yesterday as R. and I sat here, two large winged insects, I mean, toddler-sized, were fighting and making that bzzzt sound from under a lampshade.  Every so often, R. would comment on these creatures whom we call the children, as in, “I wish those kids would stop fighting,” but for the most part, we ignored them.

But the one thing that I’m not ignoring, and in fact, I’m completely obsessed with, is the invasion of the yellow archangel, (Lamiastrum galeobdolon).

When I moved here 20 years ago, it had been planted in the garden.  I didn’t like it, so I pulled it and tossed it in a compost pile in an area that I didn’t visit often.  Sometime later, I noticed that it had escaped from the pile, and started infesting the nearby forest.  For about 5 years now, I’ve been seriously obsessed with removal.  Like a traffic cop, I’ve got weekly quotas for removal (6 5-gallon buckets a day), and I’m out there, rain or shine, with a headlamp on if necessary.  But for reasons that don’t even make sense to me, I’m reluctant to use chemicals. 

I’ve tried to take photographs to show the extent of the problem, but my lens isn’t wide enough to do it justice.  I’ll sum it up, as R. would, in this way:  You spend all your time out there with some weird little plant that no one but you has even noticed, and it’s not even on our property, and the fact is that you should be in here making me a sandwich. 

I’ve taken many truckloads to the composting facility, and I still have a pile about the size of a schoolbus, supposedly composting under black plastic, but it’s not composting, it’s just waiting for me to slack off so it can continue marching into the woods.

I’ve secured a commitment from my children that they will throw a weeding party when I die, and they will Never Give Up.  We all know they aren’t going to do it, but they humor me. 

But I’m starting to consider buying some chemicals.  I’m afraid to do it: I don’t want to support Monsanto, and I don’t want to be caught in the store purchasing Roundup; I’ll have to drive to a distant city, and maybe wear a disguise.  This makes no rational sense, even to me.  I think that chemicals are probably the right tool for the job, and the damage the plant could do to the ecosystem is far worse than the harm from the careful application of a chemical.  And my little purchase isn’t going to make a bit of difference, one way or another, to Monsanto. 

But I also wonder if that word, solastalgia, creates some weird response in the category of, “I was gonna break up with you first.”  (Does that make any sense at all?  I guess what I mean is that if you care about something that's dying, maybe you start to think you should just kill it?  Or maybe I've been reading too much George Woodwell lately...)

The Smell Part 2*

(Part 1 can be found here.)

My boss laughed but got all deflect-y again, like, “Yes, did you research the use of cat urine on leather?” As if he couldn’t do anything at all about the foul smell until he had that bit of information. But then he started asking me about how my car negotiations were going with R., which caused me to be a little deflect-y myself, because it went how it always goes, like this:

R. calls me as I leave work: “What’s for dinner?”

“I dunno. Oh wait, I have an idea, maybe you could make dinner since you’re home and hungry, and I’ve been working all day and have a long drive ahead. Burritos?”

“Um, right, gotta go.”

I arrive home to find R. sitting on the couch in the pitch dark, watching old episodes of Lost on the internet.

“Wow, it’s dark in here.”

“Yeah, don’t know if I told you, but my parents are Amish.  They frown on the use of electricity”

“R, did you make dinner?”

“Um, yeah, its in the kitchen.”

“Uh, I don’t see anything?”

“Yeah, there wasn't much I could do without electricity...”

I propose a collaborative cooking extravaganza: “You open the can of beans, while I locate the tortillas.”

Five minutes later, in our ADD-ish ways, he’s yo-yo-ing, and I’m checking e-mail.

“Mom, I really like how this cooking thing is going.”

We eventually get it together and sit down at the table to eat, and I say, “Hey, it’s time for The Talk.”

“We did that last week! I thought today is the day when we read The Ethicist out loud at dinner.”

“We’re changing things up. The talk went pretty well last week, wouldn’t you say? I said you needed to get a job, and within 3 days, you had one.”

“My ethics education is suffering. By the way, is angel dust smoked or snorted?

“I think it’s smoked. Why?”

"I have to do a drug test for my job tomorrow. Just studyin’.

We have The Talk, about how I bought him one car, and he wrecked it, and now he should pay for the next vehicle, if there is to be one.

“Mom, one childhood in this family was way too short. I’m sure you don’t wanna go down that path twice.” He’s referring to how his sister went to college at the tender age of 14.

“Um, R., we’re talking about how now you have a job, and you can pay me back for a car if we get one.”

“Childhood is so fleeting, Mom. Think about that. I know you’re on my side here. You really don’t want to put me in slavery just yet.”

I’m in the middle of telling this story to my boss, and for some reason, he’s laughing, and then says, "maybe the smell creates all this joviality, or maybe it’s your full spectrum light. Maybe we shouldn’t change a thing."

Which, well, I’m pretty sure nothing is going to change, because the other day when B. and I went to the boss of the offending pants (i.e., the person who supervises the person who wears the leather, cat pee-infused pants), and said, um, this is really awkward, but it smells really bad in our cubicles, and something needs to change. The supervisor said, “Oh, thanks so much for reporting it. See, I was aware of the bad smell, but until someone reports it, there’s nothing I can do.

I’m wondering how far that policy goes. Like, if someone were to vomit on the floor, would we just leave it there until it was officially reported? Or if there were a fire in the building, would we evacuate even if the report hadn’t gone through the proper channels?

We returned to our stinky cubicles, and I fashioned a mask for my nose and mouth out of a piece of lens cloth and rubber bands that I found in my desk.  I am trying to imagine myself as a surgeon, to pass the time.  I overheard someone come into B’s cubicle and say, “wow, did you start peeing in here or something? It smells really bad.”

“Yup,” he replies. “I just decided it was way too much hassle to walk down the hall to the bathroom. We just pee in the corner now.”

As I’m sitting there in my makeshift mask, the other supervisor walks by to scope out the smell, and stops when she sees my mask. “Oh, good for you! That’s a really good idea.” I think that means that the problem is solved as far as she’s concerned.

I am really not sure why I’m so compelled to tell this story. I put the picture with it today, which is of my messy house, and if you look, you can see that I’m in it, but not as the subject, and maybe if you look hard enough, it doesn’t look just messy, but it looks kind of rich. This photo reminds me of what I’m trying to do with this blog: take the mess that is my life, and try to stand on the outskirts of the story, and stand back far enough so that it doesn’t just look dusty and cluttered, but maybe it’s a tiny little bit festive.

As always, thanks for reading.

Smell no evil

The other day I was called over to help some people in the permit center. The two men were talking with the lovely zoning person, who went off to research something for them while I answered their wetland questions.

The second she leaves, one of the men says, “Do you have any cats?” I know. I wish I were making this up. It’s not like they read this blog, I am certain of that. I have my three readers, and I know who you are. (Hi Todd.) I got all awkward, and was, “um, no, I don’t have cats.”

The one guy says, “really, you don’t have cats?” acting surprised. “Well, anyway, you have to see this.” He makes his phone ring, and shows me the picture. It’s a cartoonish photo of a cat laughing, and the ring is a deep belly laugh, and the caption is, “What your cat is thinking when you take your clothes off.” The laughter is pretty robust and contagious, and the other guy is seriously unable to contain himself, he’s laughing so hard. I’m kind of laughing too, because, well, I just was. I wasn’t sure if they were thinking that MY cat, if I had one, would be laughing at ME that way, or exactly what the joke was. I guess what I’m saying here is I wasn’t sure if I was laughing at me, or with me, but I joined in just the same.

At about this point, the zoning person returns, and she just gives me this look, like, wow, I am gone for 2 minutes and and it deteriorates to something strange. They show her the ring tone, and she just shakes her head and looks at me, and gives them information in a most helpful fashion, and no one seems to suspect that she has cats.

I need to run upstairs to ask my boss something, and as I am walking out of the room, I hear a man talking loudly on his cell phone: “I’m being regulated, and I’m mad as hell about it. I’m taking this to the top. Obama, if I have to.” I'm already in kind of a laugh-y frame of mind so I try to think of something really sad when I walk by him because I don't want to laugh and provoke him, even though it is hilarious to imagine Obama getting involved in our tiny landuse decisions.   So I think about the smell in my cubicle, which works, I stop laughing immediately.  Then I have a second thought and I walk back to the receptionist to see if he’s been helped, because I’m pretty sure making him wait won’t make things  better. She says she asked what he needed, but he just said he’s got a meeting and wouldn’t give her any more information.

I run up to my boss to ask my question, and he says make it quick because he has a meeting with an applicant shortly.   I say, “oh, yes, he’s here, and just fyi, he’s mad as hell and is taking it to Obama if he has to.” He gives me that look as if I’m just messing with him, and I leave and go back to my windowless cubicle.

My cube neighbor and I discuss moving to new side by side cubicles due to the really bad smell that’s been mentioned earlier. It’s kind of weird, we’re like free range chickens who, when you open the cage, are a little afraid to go out. We can’t bear the smell, and yet, we don’t really want to move, but I think we’re both sort of thinking that if we move together, it will be easier. I know. Maybe it’s some form of Stockholm Syndrome.

I’m sitting there when my boss comes back from his meeting and sits down in my office. “Hey, how’d you know that about the guy taking it to Obama if he has to?” I don’t like to tell him how easy it is to know stuff, because I want to seem like a useful and intelligent employee.  Luckily, before I have a chance to answer, he is overcome by the fumes. “Oh god, that smell is really bad.”

“I know. You know how we’ve been bringing it up for a while? Like, remember last week when B. and I came in to complain and you did that deflect thing like you do?”

“Uh, what did I say exactly?”

B. pops over at this point and says, “I think you asked Betsy to research whether cat piss is a legit product used for curing leather.”

Alas, I’m out of time this morning, but there will be more to this story. I need to frost the cupcakes, because today is both the boiling point of water, Gandi’s birthday, and the birthday of the lovely R.
To be continued... here

parenting insurance

Dearest N'3lvra,

I have brought my young impressionable children on vacation to what I thought was a peaceful beach. Instead, I find the police are on the beach every day with a giant digger trying to locate the corpse of a missing woman. I'm wondering if my children, ages 3, 5, and 5, are too young to sign a contract stating that they will not sue me for psychological treatment later in life for scarring them with this at such a young age. If they are too young, is there any kind of "uh-oh, I think I might have psychologically damaged my children" insurance?

A forward-thinking mom*

My Dear Thinker,
I think they're the perfect age for signing that contract, but the insurance is a stroke of genius. Be sure to get broad coverage: If you hurry your child along because, well, you must, and they complain that their shoes hurt, and then you say, just put them on, we'll worry about that later, and then later you realize that there's actually broken glass in the shoe, well, get coverage for that sort of thing, if available.

Magic

My dear friend Barb has had her second book, Whistle Bright Magic, published, and it comes out today!

It's a fairy story in at least two ways -- the obvious way is that there are fairies in it, but it's also the story of a mother who stays at home with her kids, writes a book in her spare time, and it gets snapped up by Harper Collins. I'm sure she'd disagree with the term "snapped up", because there was a lot of hard work involved, but her friends like to see it as a modern day miracle in a good way, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving author or person.

If you have young readers (8-12) in your life, check it out. It's a sweet story with a little magic, a lot of interesting characters, and a happy ending, which, when you think about it, is probably just like your life. I will confess that I got a little teary reading it because it was so well done and tender.

Available everywhere, starting today...

Note to self

(The writing prompt for this week was to write an apology to yourself.)

Dear Self,

I’m sorry that I dragged you out of bed today at 6 am to go to a grueling yoga class, because I know you were tired and would rather have slept in. And I’m sorry I wasted so much time sitting around a coffee shop writing stuff for the dumb blog, but I must point out that it’s you that’s obsessed with it, not me.

I’m sorry that I took a nap in the middle of the gorgeous afternoon when you could have been outside playing, but I was so tired from that weird sleep last night; that dream where someone left me with 10 tiger kittens or whatever they call the baby tigers left me confused after I woke up, and it took me a long time to figure out that the ten baby tigers weren’t a real problem I had. It wasn’t my concern anymore to figure out if I should tame them, or re-introduce them to the wild, especially because the wild was Duvall, not Africa or India. But once I figured out it wasn’t a real problem, I thought, and I have to say, we both thought, what are my real problems again, anyway, if not that? Which is always a bad question to ask in the middle of the night; we both should know better.

And I’m sorry about that other dream I had in which I dreamt that in a previous dream, years ago, I had dreamed a book, and all I had to do is get up and write it, and again, I am sorry that I woke up confused about that too, thinking the book was already all written, somewhere in my head.

And I’m sorry that I dragged you up from that nap to go for a run, but you have to admit it was lovely late afternoon light, and it was kind of weird to find that little tiny dog wearing a red coat in the middle of the woods, miles from any houses. I’m sorry we couldn’t approach the dog to see what it’s tag said, because it was so growly and scared.

And I’m most of all sorry that we ran out of chocolate, because that’s one of the top things I should focus on at all times: Not Running Out Of Chocolate, no matter what else is going on.

I’m also a little tiny bit sorry for trying that beet chocolate cupcake recipe, because I don’t know if we didn’t measure correctly, or what, exactly, but after driving all the way to town for two cans of beets, I expected a better result, and I’m sure you did too.

~Me.

You can't live in the present forever...

Aries (3/21 – 4/19):  Last week when I was in the major recreational stuff store, browsing socks, an employee came up and said, “do you want some advice?”  And for a minute I felt like, jeez, do I look so stupid that I need help with buying socks?  But on the other hand, I was curious, so I said, “sure, what have you got?,”  which seemed to surprise him, because he was quiet for a minute, and then said, “really?  You want advice about socks?”  And I’m thinking, well, you started this, but what I said was, “yeah.  I need advice about socks.”  That, in a nutshell, is how your week is going to go.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20): Hey, did you hear about those guys that saved that humpbacked whale? (Of course you did, it happened 3 years ago).  At any rate, I bring this up because the whale was all friendly after getting freed from the crab pot ropes and appeared to be thanking the divers.  What do you think?  Gratitude?  Or is that just personifying whales in a most insulting fashion, behaving as if everyone is actually a person, but some of us dress up like other animals?

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21):  Does it seem like every time you turn around, someone wants you to knit a pair of socks for Haiti or the school raffle, and you do care about the people in Haiti, you seriously do, but would everyone please leave you alone?  Because you’d like to just be home flipping through cookbooks and using as much butter as you feel like, goddamn it?  At any rate, rather than the socks, you should make one of those cool scarves because they are Art, and they are quicker than socks.   Do you think the cell phone/ brain tumor link is something you should worry about?  Or is that just more grassy knoll conspiracy theory? 

Cancer 6/22 – 7/21:  Last week these two guy came into the permit center together, one selling property, and the other buying it, and they were each trying to get me to give information that was better for their angle, and I was being all Swiss, even though they each tried pretty hard for their side.  I was feeling mingle-y because they were clearly having a little bro-mance and it seemed sweet, lots of inside jokes, and then they started asking for advice about their marriages, maybe because I started talking about rescuers during the holocaust who didn’t even tell their spouses what they were up to, because they didn’t think the spouses could handle it.  “Are you suggesting that I not tell my wife I’m gonna spend a million dollars on this?”  For the record, that’s not what I meant.  This kind of confusion will happen to you this week; try not to fall into any conversational traps.

Leo (7/23 – 8/22): Looks like a wedding in your future!   Maybe not yours, but someone near and dear.  You should buy some vintage platters.  Oh wait, does that sound more like advice, and less like a horoscope? Well, my exhaustive research suggests that with the moon in Sagittarius, you will feel particularly enthusiastic this week.  Apply that to the platter shopping.

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  Snowmageddon got you down?  Be careful out there.  Stay home, read.  I used to do that.  Okay, this weird thing happened, I was looking at the computer screen, helping someone, and she said, “wow, you do a lot of research on the web.  Do you give classes?”  But what I heard was, “Do you have glasses?”  And I was all, “I know!  I used to read in the evening, but now I just want to close my eyes and listen to podcasts of This American Life all the time."  She gave me this scared look, like, um, is this what happens before government employee goes postal?  They just start telling you random stuff?  My point is, try not to embarrass yourself this week.  Oh wait, you never do anyway. 

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):  You will find yourself dropping by a friend’s house to go to a movie, and instead, getting involved with a Cutco knife demonstration, and soon, you will own a tomato knife that can slice tomatoes paper thin.  Because you’re a sucker for the old neighbor trying to put herself through college.  Oh, maybe this was last week’s horoscope?  Yes, I thin so.  This week will be Amaaaaazing.  Your love life, work, everything.  Norman Vincent Peale said so.

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21):  Put this on your calendar:  20 years from now, plus 7 – 10 working days, the family knife will need sharpening.  I will be too addled to remember it, and you won’t trust me with knives anymore for reasons we won’t go into here, but, you will be super-excited to slice tomatoes paper thin.  In fact, and I’m not saying this with any judgment at all, but you will get the idea that you can make a pretty stained glass window by slicing all manner of vegetable paper thin, and drying them.  You will be most excited about beets, because the window will make everything so rosy.   I don’t want to tell you how it turns out, but it may be best to practice the technique before you remove the windows.

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21):  Welcome to the rat race.  It’s actually pretty fun, especially if you’re you, by which I mean already really fun.  In fact, the rat race is lucky to have you.

Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19):  Are you bored because everyone is watching the superbowl today and you could give a shit, but you’re afraid you’ll miss an important commercial that everyone will be talking about for months, and part of you is thinking, sheesh, I can watch it on you tube later, but still, I don’t want to be the last person on earth to see Janet J’s boob or whatever?  I know.  Just eat the snacks.  That's what I plan to do.  Sit at home alone, tv off, eating grease.

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18): You know when you look at google to see what the recent top searches are, and find that the biggest thing going is something you've never even heard of, like Mass effect 2, so you google it yourself and then think, wait, maybe this is why it’s getting googled so much?  Not unlike Pooh and Piglet nearly catch a woozle?  Yep, I thought so.

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20): You have to watch this pathetic video of Palin talking to the tea party.  I think my favorite part is how hard the audience laughed when she said, “Alaska has it’s own tea party – we call it iced tea”.  It is obviously a highly intelligent audience she speaks to, when they laugh that hard at a hilarious joke like that. On second thought, don’t watch it.  It’s just irritating, and that’s the last thing you need right now.

The customer isn't always right

I think I’ll write a little bit about some of the customers I encounter, unless it gets too tedious. You’ll let me know if that happens, I hope.

This particular customer arrived, looking, if I may say so in a way that paints a picture, rather than suggesting prejudice, well, looking like a member of the republican party. Short hair, puffy face, thirty-something, polo shirt, blue tooth on the ear.

He asked about a particular piece of property, and prefaced his questions with, “I’m planning to build a 5,550 square feet, eight bedroom home here.” I think he thought this might impress me, but it really had the opposite affect. I try to check my prejudices, and do the research I can from the computer.

“Let’s see, we’ve done a study on the property next door. The stream that runs through this parcel is fish-bearing, so …”

He interrupts with a loud, bellowing, “HA HA HA. There are NO fish in the stream. I’m sure of that. I’ve been watching this property for three weeks now, and I’ve never seen a fish.”

I try to stay calm, and stick to the facts. “The report completed on the adjacent property describes the stream as 5 feet wide, and directly connected to a major salmon-bearing stream a few hundred feet away.“

“HA HA HA. That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m just telling you what we know. If you were to come in for a permit application, we’d visit the site, and if there's an error, we’d correct it at that time.”

“Seriously? You’re saying that there are fish in there? That’s just crazy.”

“Since you haven’t purchased the property yet, it’s useful to find out all of the possibilities, and what the resulting limitations might be. As I said, we’d do a site visit when you come in for a permit application, and we’d make a determination then.”

“Well, I can tell you right now that’s not even a stream.”

“So, what did you have in mind for the property?”

He describes a scenario that requires a driveway crossing of the stream. “The stream crossing could be allowed, subject to some limitations.” I start reciting them, and he interrupts.

“Look, there is no stream. The driveway is already in. There are no fish. In fact, the culvert is about 3 feet above the stream channel.”

I do a little more research, and see that the driveway is new, and was constructed without permits. “Hmm, you would need to legalize the driveway by getting a permit, and from what you describe, we would likely require that you replace the culvert to restore fish passage.”

“HA HA HA! When are you going to drop it about the fish?”

“You might be right,” I say, “but since you haven’t purchased the property yet, it would be helpful to learn the worst case scenario, so that if it turns out to be true, you can decide if you’re still interested.”

“Are you telling me that I can’t access the back of my property?” He’s yelling, by now.

“No, I’m just suggesting that there may be some limitations to crossing the stream, and it would be useful to find out what they are before you buy it.”

“What you’re saying is that I can’t use my land? Based on what I’m hearing from you, I’m walking from this deal. I don’t you know if you know my realtor (he names someone who, yup, we all know, and it explains everything – the unpermitted crossing, the bad culvert placement, etc.), but he knows what he’s doing.” It’s funny, but I get the sense he’s bluffing about walking from the deal, and he thinks that statement will cause me to change what I’ve told him, which, well, is just weird.

It would be like if a tourist came to Seattle, and went to an information booth to ask about going up the space needle, and were told, well, it costs $15, and it’s pretty rainy, so there won’t be a view today, and the person got all huffy, and threatened to not go, as if the whole thing were the fault of the information booth person, and as if the info booth person would be disappointed if they didn’t go.

“Well, if the property wouldn’t suit your needs, that’s probably a good idea.”

My voice is pretty even, but if you know me, you’d know I was getting really irritated, because I went into that mode of talking a little quieter, a little more slowly. I try to imagine myself on my little yoga mat, hands to heart center, just exhaling, and being compassionate, but it isn’t working at all. It isn’t working because one of my strategies is to picture people in their natural habitat. Some people can be jerks when faced with the bureaucracy, and I get that. Seriously, has anyone ever dealt with Broadstripe, or Verizon lately? I'm just saying, I get it, people hate dealing with huge systems that make them feel insignificant.

Some people, even though they're being kind of jerky, I can imagine them reading to a child, or lighting candles at a family dinner, but unfortunately, the best I can do with this guy is picture him in a toga at a fraternity keg party, and it isn’t helping with the sympathy, not even a little.

“I think I’ll go get a person who can answer some of your other questions.” This is two of my last-ditch effort strategies combined: leaving the room, and getting a man to come talk to this person.

I run up to the third floor and find one of the grading people. He’s a big guy, and good at staying calm. People tend to listen to him. “I need a boy-answer, please. Could you come downstairs?”

He does, and says the same thing I’ve been saying, “Yes, you’ll need a permit to legalize the road.”

The same conversation re-starts, but with a slightly different energy, because certain men really like the answers to come from a man. I do the “human sacrifice” trick, and leave those two to discuss it, but it ends pretty quickly, and I don’t hear any more loud “HA HA HA you think there’s fish?!!”

I give R. the shoulder punch when I depart, because he knows I owe him for yet again providing “boy answer.” I guess I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now, because our agency is getting attacked for delivering poor customer service, and it’s a little frustrating. I guess we have different definitions of who the customer is, and different definitions of what service looks like than the people doing the judging.

But I’m also amazed and disappointed that there’s still this weird gender thing, where some men, men who are young enough to know better, really don’t want to get information from women. Grr, I was hoping it would be different for my daughter…

Thanks for enduring this whiny little post.

FB protocol

Dear Chortnee,
I saw you answer a question about FB, and I'm wondering if you'd be able to answer another one for me. I keep getting friend requests from people whom I'd consider a tiny bit random. By that, I don't mean that they are unpredictable in their motion or anything, but rather, I just don't really know them. Like, for example, my father's dentist. Or the secretary from a job I held ten years ago, and by the way, and I'm only saying this once, she was a bit annoying as a secretary, if you know what I mean. You know the sort who acts like helping you with a mass mailing, or printing a big report is kind of a hassle for them and they'll do it just this once as a special favor, when in fact, it's their job, and you really shouldn't have to grovel to get them to do it?

But I stray from my question, which is, must I accept these requests? I certainly don't want these people to feel un-liked, but then again, I am not really interested in seeing their posts, or sharing mine.

Appreciatively,

Don't wanna be a jerk

Dear Don't Wanna,

Oh, I hate this problem. You could, and I'm not saying I would do this because I need all the friends I can get, but you could send a FB note, kind of over-enthusiastic, saying something like, "My Father's Dentist! AWESOME! Let's get together, shall we, and have a cup of coffee to talk about your friend request. I think we should schedule about 2 hours, because I have a LOT to catch you up on."

Do you think they'd fail to reply, and then it would be more like THEY dissed you, letting you off the hook? But yes, this strategy could go VERY wrong, don't say I didn't warn you.

P.S. Why do people say, "and I'm only saying this once?" Shouldn't that be the norm?

The Girl At The Grocery Store (again...)

There are a few things I like about her, even though she’s kind of a ditz. One is that she used to have a gauged ear piercing the size of a nickel, but let it grow back, which it did; this gives me great hope for my son. The second thing is that she’s always sneaking out of the store to take pictures of the sunset from the parking lot with her cell phone. I don’t have a thing for sunsets myself, but I do have a thing for people who have a thing for sunsets.

Perhaps because my grandfather, who worked at Kodak long enough to get free film for life, took about 15 pictures of the sunset over the same beach in Florida every single day, and when we’d visit once a year, we’d see slides every evening, about 6,000 shots taken from the exact same spot. We’d get the stats for each picture: film speed, f-stop, which camera, date, time, air temperature. About eight shots while the sun was sinking towards the horizon, 3 or four right at the horizon, and maybe four or five just after it sunk, for every night since we’d seen him last. Once in a great while there was a cloud, but other than that, nothing changed.


I know it sounds boring, but it was so extreme that it came back around and became interesting again, if you can imagine that. Anyway, the other thing I like about the checkout girl is that she comments on what I’m buying. Also in the category of so boring that it comes back around again. (Note: when the UPS guy comments on what I’m buying, it’s creepy, e.g., “I see you ordered something from Victoria's Secret, would you like me to wait around to see if it fits?” That’s creepy. Checkout girl commenting on groceries, not creepy.) It starts out boring, but inevitably goes off on its own weird trajectory that I never anticipate.

“Peaches, yum! Oh, I have that salad dressing too. Kleenex, do you have allergies?" Comment, scan, comment, scan, and so on, until she gets to one item that causes the conversation to go off somewhere no one has ever been before, like a voyage to the lurky second moon orbiting the earth. The other day, baby bok choy.

“Oh, did you know bok choy is good luck in China? One of my parents’ friends brought me a baby bok choy as a souvenir of their trip, and I was pretty bummed out at first, I mean, seriously, all the way to China, and they bring me bok choy, and meanwhile, I’m spending the best years of my life scanning this shit all day, I’m serious, I almost cried when they gave it to me, but I didn’t because, whatever, that’s just how it is.”

“Really? They gave you bok choy?”

Yeah, but it was a little sculpture made from bok choy, with a saying about the good luck, which, actually, I think is working.”

And then the transaction was over, and I was walking out before I fully realized all of the questions I had. I wanted to go back, but that’s not how it works at the store, you have to wait until you need more half and half or something.

But as I walked out to the parking lot, I noticed that the sunset actually was pretty amazing, so I ran back in to tell her, because I know about her sunset thing. She was strangely grateful, and closed her line, to the dismay of the people standing in it. I get a dirty look from the first guy, who’s stuff is half un-packed onto her little tarmac, but I smile at him the way parents smile at each other, like, oh well, if you love something, let it be what it is, and I follow her out while she flips open her crappy little cell phone camera. If you already know its there, you can tell there’s a river at the edge of the picture, but the photo she takes will just show cars in a parking lot next to a highway, with just a little more color than usual.

(thanks, S., for suggesting this, and sorry to be repetitive to those who've read this.)

Ridiculously beautiful here

I know, girl gets camera and the blog turns into cliched hack pictures of sunsets and so-on. But I couldn't help myself, it has been just so pretty around here lately.

A Beacon for the Mentally Ill

N'3lvra received a surprising e-mail the other day:

"You are receiving this email based on the value I feel your website and the services you offer from your website holds. As the Chief Editor for Counselor.org I continually strive to find the best resources I feel are relevant to what we offer (FREE information), and make sure these resources are available to my users as well." Blah Blah blah, but instead of the blah blah blah, they wrote (with poor sentence construction, I might add), stuff about how valuable their website is for those with mental health issues, and how great Courtney is at also providing services to the mentally ill, and could I please link to their website, and they will be happy to do the same. I know! And then there was the stuff about how this offer only went to a few top quality websites, and Quartnee was selected after careful screening.

Um, seriously? Khortnee? Out of curiosity, I wrote back and said thanks for all the kind words, and what was it, exactly, about this blog that made it stand out as a beacon for the mentally ill. That was a few weeks ago, and I never heard back, but yesterday I got a similar e-mail from epsychology.org.

For the record, I would like to announce the following things:

• Qyartney is not a real doctor. If this is an actual emergency, please go eat a piece of 12 layer cake like I did this weekend and can't stop thinking about.  (They counted the frosting layers to arrive at 12, but still.)
• I certainly don't think my little readership is mentally ill.  That would look bad for both of us, wouldn't it? 

Rebar

In the middle of the night last night, I woke up, not exactly panicking, but a bit disturbed that I hadn’t updated this blog yesterday, and would have to either skip it again today, or come up with something to write about right then, and be prepared to just spit it out quickly in the morning, when it occurred to me that I could dig through my stuff and find something I’d written previously and post that. Something older, that hopefully you would either never have read, or would have forgotten by now.

I decided to post a story I wrote shortly after my divorce about the evening that my ex- came over to sign divorce papers and sell a car to a neighbor, and we ended up in this weird scene where the guy we were selling the car to tried to get us to bend rebar by placing an end on each of our necks, and then walking towards each other.

The rebar was 8 feet long, and my soon to be ex had done this with said neighbor a few days before, and had showed me the piece of steel, bent into a horseshoe shape, which I found really disturbing.

I try to tell stories here that aren’t so much about me, because as we’ve established, no one does care what anyone else had for lunch, but rather, I try to use the stuff that happens in my daily life to remind you of what you care about in your own. I’m not sure if it’s working, but I hope so.

This particular story, I thought, was good for that, because it was about the weird decision points we have in our lives. In that particular instance, the neighbor set us up with one end of the rebar on my soon to be ex-husband’s neck, and one on mine; the metal rested on the delicate soft delicate part of the neck that, in my opinion, is meant to be kissed, not bend steel. The man commanded us to walk towards each other and focus.

He didn’t describe what we were to focus on, but all I could think about is how awkward it would be for our children, home alone for a short bit while we did this car transaction, to have as a legacy for their whole lives that they were orphans because their parents had skewered themselves on a piece of rebar on purpose. Anything we had done with our lives previously would be eclipsed by this bizarre death, so I chickened out and said I really wasn’t that interested in bending the rebar.

The two men, my ex and the neighbor, looked disappointed, and it occurred to me that we were all disappointed for various reasons, and the disappointment went way deeper than just this little magic trick that I wouldn’t participate in, but I also think they were a little relieved as well, because it was my fault, not their own, that we didn’t bend the rebar, and in a weird way, it was a little gift I had to offer, that everyone could blame me for all of their disappointment, if that makes any sense at all.

So I was all set to just type that story up and post it, but I looked in all of the places where writing might be found – various file cabinets and folders and notebooks, and I can’t find a bit of anything I’ve written prior to owning this particular computer in June. Arrgh, is all I have to say about that.