Sunday, December 28, 2008

I'm Tired

I have been surfing the web lately. Going to a lot of craft and cooking blogs. Wow these people are ambitious and busy! I do not know where they get the time, energy, knowledge to set up so many fancy do dads to their sites, and then still cook and photograph everything they eat or bake in every stage of production and still have time to check out hundreds of other blogs and read and list them. I read one clever site that seemed to be about liquor, so I went to the sites I saved and still could not find that one I wanted to check on. They were so clever and smart.

I rarely write any more, and when I do it is in my head just after setting it on the pillow and I come up with this breathless prose that I am sure will hold until tomorrow, and ... you know the story. It's just not there any more, is it? I tried keeping a writing pad and pen at the ready, but that just doesn't work. Obviously I need more pictures, more food and more crafts, and certainly more clever patter to guide others to my little lair here. I may even need to change blog spots (to make a pun). Some place like blog her or other might lead people to me. Possibly I need to write to them, but I have once or twice and maybe they thought I was trying to sell them something other than just my stories of mundane life. I need more adventure, more derring do or derring don't.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Cereal

I got a spam saying free- get your
100 boxes of cheerios. Ok, I like the cereal, maybe better than the next guy, but really, what do they want me to do with 100 boxes of cheerios?
If I had a big enough truck, I could take them to a food pantry or whatever it is that they call them, but I don't have a truck. I can just imagine walking around the house, putting a box or two on any given horizontal surface. Nice motif you have going here, Cherie, are you expecting a visit from Seinfeld? When I moved into the house, the realtor, who is my neighbor said we would have to go elsewhere to sign papers because she had no horizontal surfaces. Really, we thought, what the hell is she walking on?
Anyway, I'm kind of nervous about opening the message, but they really piqued my imagination.

It's been that kind of day. The cat has been going into the cat box and peeing outside the cat box. I found the ideal box on line but no one carries it, not even Rubbermaid, who makes it. I went to the hardware store to order it, and their server went down, and I came home with a small cement mixing trough. The hardware guys were pretty understanding. We hung around and talked cats for a while, and then I took a chance and bought the cement thing.
Now for the acid test....

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Protest Attire

When I spoke to Steve, he told me about a gay demonstration in D.C. that he was considering attending. Our friend Ron had called him the night before to ask what to wear. I could not believe it; to me, this was hilarious, and I said, : "I'd say go right for the blue chiffon. What did you say?"

Steve said "I told him to wear a hat."
A hat? I make hats all day. It's barely a living, but it is what I do, and frankly that would be the last thing I would have said. I would have been thinking practially: dress in layers, be comfortable, use sunblock, wear something approriate for tear gas, or that would not come apart if you are dragged off by your feet. That's the way I am, hopelessly pragmatic.
What made you think of wearing a hat, I asked him.
"I just thought, it could rain, or it might be really hot and sunny and you would be more obvious, too."

I'm not sure that one would want to be noticed during a protest, but the rest made sense.

"Well, after the hat suggestion, Ron asked me how about a hood?" Steve went on, but before finishing I interjected "What?, Like a ski mask? That would be swell."

"No," Steve soldiered on despite my attempts to throw off the line of discourse, "No, like a parka or a windbreaker kind of thing?" Then Steve said "I told him absolutely not."
So then Ron asks "Well what then, a pith helmet?"
"And then Steve recalls" by that time, I was so disgusted by the conversation, that I said no, I meant something like Lady Di would wear."

"Now Yer talkin' ".

I just could not get over it; who asks what to wear to protest in? You just decide do I want comfort or do I want to project an image, such as: I'm gay and I want to look white collar, or military, or truck driver.

Come to think about it, the whole affair is starting to sound like the Village People, and maybe that's the point....

Motherhood

I was working a craft fair booth, trying to pry some cash out of a woman across my table. She was being mercilessly but methodically harrangued by a small boy of about 8 years. She was tough though, and in between words to me she would say stuff like: "Go away", "find your father", "play a game with someone,"; she had a millon retorts and I suppose it was her delivery, but I was laughing so hard that I had to apologise to her and explain that I just thought she was really funny.

People aways ask me why I don't want any kids.
My answer is that there is too much furniture involved.
Usually they are so taken aback, that they just shut up. It's a great defense.

The real answer is that kids are little bastards to each other and everyone else. They have constand demands, and they alway smell like spit.

My customer said "They should ask me about raising kids, I have four and I could write the book. I don't even have to look," she continued, "I just feel them behind me and I tell them to get lost. Just a minute ago I yelled at a kid and when I turned, I realized she wasn't even mine! The look of fear and horror on her face was so awful, I almost had to buy her something to make her feel better."

I really liked that the woman said almost.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Drugs in the Dark

My mind whirrs as soon as I go to bed. Often I fall asleep with the television on, and wake up later to find that my mind will not sleep for talking to me. I walk to the other bathroom, go to a certain shelf, find a bottle of antihistamines and take one, replacing the bottle where it came from. Generally I can fall back to sleep relatively soon after that.

It has occurred to me that someone could change the contents of that bottle, or that they could just change the bottle, but I would recognize the shape in my hand, and the way the bottle closes.

It's a crapshoot, but since it's not a high traffic area, I'm going to go with trust.
I'm already tired.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Screwy Degree

Dee's mother was pretty miffed. She didn't want to lend Dee any money for a trip to Europe.
"You have to go out and get a job you don't like, just as everyone else does," her mother told her.
"Yeah, or be happy the rest of your life; good choice" quipped Fred, Dee's lover, on receipt of the news.
"Ma, I don't even know what those jobs are: Dee countered. "I mean, those jobs I could do that would pay me decent money and "benefits"; I don't even know the name of those jobs."
"That's just what I mean", her mother says, "You're 33 and you've been enjoying yourself all along and you used your inheritance and you haven't made any money at it, so you have to get a job. I'm not picking at you dear, but just have to get a good job."
"Ma, all the people who have those jobs have some screwy degree in paper work".
Dee's mother hates this theory. "What the hell do you mean by that?"
"You know Ma, like my cousin Bitsy who works for the government counting heads on wheat in Africa. What kind of degree does she have?"
Dee's mother is stumped "well, I guess, well, it's like in statistics or the law of averages" mom says still secure in her argument.
"Right" Dee says, "Just like I told you,; a scrwy degree in paperwork." Dee feels justified and virtuous no matter how much of a sponge she is beginning to sound like.
"Look Dee, there is no reason for you to criticize her, she got a good job with good pay, and you don't need a degree to find a job like that just because it's stupid".
This is great, thinks Dee, she can hardly wait to call her starving artist friends; they will think this is hilarious.

Denny's Story

My friend Dennis got some guns a few years ago. I guess what made me nervous was how drunk he was when he showed them to me, and how he was so proud to own them. He was going to sail the Caribbean, and feared the pirates, (there really are pirates in the Caribbean) so he got himself a gun, and a little pearl handled one for his girlfriend. He treated them like fine art. I was hoping they were not as loaded as Denny.
I have not seen him in a couple of years so when I saw him at his mother’s house, I asked “are you packin?’” like some gun moll in an old movie, but he did not get the reference.
He had brought his cats along, as his trip to mom’s was far from home. The cats were found as kittens, and as adults, were puffy black elegant animals with white skunk stripes in their lustrous hair.
It turned out that the guns were left at home. “That’s good” I said, “It’s not nice to visit your mother with cats and guns.”
That could be the name of a band Den will never be in, because he’s tone deaf, but he loves music and has no inhibitions about singing anytime, anywhere. Sort of like; guns and roses or cats and roses, or cats and guns….see how easily this gets out of hand?
Once, after Denny broke up with a woman that I was friends with, I told her that when he slept with me, he would lie in bed afterwards crooning country and western ballads, and that, combined with his smoking was what put me off him. “He never sang to me” the woman said.
“Not once? I asked.
“Nope, not once.” She returned. That was awkward as he was with her for years and with me about a week.
At that point, I apologized to her, but neither of us knew what for.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Oil Shortage

I had made up a whole conspiracy theory about the oil and the government, and sure that it was so memorable, I did not write it down. I forgot it. Crap! It was hilarious.
It sort of reminded me of the time at Tyler (art school) that I had a test and proved that the French Revolution was the cause of overpopulation and air pollution in the world (1971ish) today.
I wish I had a copy of that one. It was such a beauty that I got a C+ even though it was total rubbish.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

As the World goes by

Hey, howya doin? I know I haven't written in a while, and I'm really not a friend except by relation, but I was just wondering how the soap opera of your life is going...
OK, that was maybe not so kind, but we all live in our little soap opera kind of worlds, mine is a bit Ivory Soapish, but still, as the World Turns......

Grocery Talk

Nory had to go to out for groceries. She had a big cold, her head filled with wet newspaper, as far as she could tell, but it would take more than that for Lew to go to the store.
At the coldcut counter, she asked the girl working "What's the difference between the store brand and the other one?"
"The other one's more gooder." came the reply.
"OK, give me more gooder, Nory said, going along with it.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The Bobs

Nory was going to an afternoon taping of the Bobs at the World Cafe with her friend Marilyn.
Marilyn paid money to support their favorite radio station, and in return she got invited to these affairs during working hours when hardly anyone is available. "They only ask me to the dorky ones" she complained. "I guess you have to give at a different level to get the good stuff". Despite the 95 degree weather, Nory had to contemplate an acceptable outfit to wear. Used to be she would put on just about anything, snatch up her wooden staff with the plastic lilies wrapped around it, and be off, ribbons afloat. Now, in her late 50's she tries to fit in with seriously mixed results. What am I worried about she thinks, with these people, I will be lucky if they are wearing pants! She mulls that over for a while, and decides that pants are definitely on, but she can say to people later; "I was lucky they were wearing shirts!." She settles on that.
She wears something schleppy with too many bracelets. That works she said, going out the door.

The Boat Race

“It’s for you.” Nory’s boss Will handed the phone to her. It was Lew, her husband; “Hi, I went down to the river, and they were having dragon boat races”. Lew usually went sailing on Wednesday nights, and loved the water. “I asked if anyone needed a paddler, and they told me to ask around. I found a team that would take me, and we won the race!”
“That’s great!” Nory congratulated him. It was good to hear him so elated about anything.
Nory was amazed at Lew’s nerve to go and ask to join up just as the races were to begin. He was strong and healthy, but the regular racers get up at 5 am to practice every day before work. “It was grueling” he admitted. “I wonder if it would have been so hard if it were not 95 degrees out.” “There are 20 people in the boat just paddling their asses off.”
“I can’t believe they just let you in.” “You got off your bike and walk in and suddenly you are part of the action, eating their barbeques, getting team shirts and then, to win a race, well, that is amazing”.
Later, Nory tells the story about Lew to her sister Rita. “Yeah,” Rita quipped, “I was at the Olympic trials the other day, and I saw them running, and I said, huh, I could take that guy.” And then: “So I said to Emeril, hey, Emeril, you are puttin’ way too much fennel in that crap. You gotta lay off.”
Nory started laughing at her sister’s fast wit. “Exactly!” she said. “I can’t believe he does this stuff.”

Monday, June 02, 2008

New Age cleaning.

I came home and cleaned my relatively clean kitchen floor with 7th generation cleaner. The floor became sticky. What is in that crap? It certainly does not clean anything. Also, tried making home cleaner from vinegar, water and baking soda, as instructed by some celebrity on Oprah. No, nothing seemed cleaner that it would have been had I used water alone, and that woman is hard of smelling if she thinks that the vinegar smell does not linger. It was like living in a pickle barrel for 2 days.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Electrical Impulse

I used to have trouble with my wrist watches. They were either fast or slow or stopped running altogether. When I borrowed someone else's watch, the effect was the same; the time was constant for them, but irregular on my wrist. Now I am experiencing the same thing on a grander scale. My computer refuses daylight saving time. I have gone into settings more than 5 times and applied it, set it, etc, and it always returns to one hour earlier. Last week I tried something more drastic, but still, time and tide wait for no girl if it is me.
I used to look at the clock at night, and it was always 11:11. Since then it has expanded to every hour that can double itself, you cannot have 6:66 for instance, but all the ones that are possible I have probably seen except 2:22, for some reason, I never look then. One person suggested that I was looking at the clock too much and only registered the irregular times, but I do not think that's the case, at least not with 11:11 or 1:11. I don't get it, but that is a very small thing which is kind of normal in my life.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Buyer's remorse


I shop. I buy lots of stuff I think I need. Who knows, maybe I do need it. I buy because I am a mutant, just a skosh under 5 feet with a small waist and a giant bust and a heart that hemorrhages emotion. I cull the rack at Marshall’s but it is mostly at the Salvation Army that I get my goods. I spend because my size is impossible to find. I fit sizes small to large depending on the garment. I wear a size 5 shoe, which is all but nil except at Pay-Less where the shoes are made of plastic, which tends to bind and rub, leaving welts, corns and blisters, and at Saks 5th Avenue, where the sale shoes are $300.00 a pair, down from $600.00. Let me just say here, to all shoe manufacturers that they should employ a physicist or possibly a mechanical engineer because a size nine can probably tolerate a five inch heel, but that when put on to a size five, you require a eunuch, who are not readily available anymore, to keep from pitching over on one’s face in jacked up shoes. I meet other women with size 5 shoes who are culling the racks as I do. We become instant best friends, and I induct them into the “Feets too small” club that I made up. It is really hard to keep one’s standards and also find something appealing. I do not wish anything I am wearing to say: Hello, Kitty.
I am somewhere in my heart convinced that one day soon, I will not be able to clothe myself, and consequently spend a lot of my free time on the hunt for the appropriate, or near to that goal.
I feel like any day I will be extinct, like the dodo.
I am about 20 pounds overweight, a problem that, if I could just bring myself to correct, might put me back in the running for off the rack shopping. Petite clothing is made for taller people than I and so: all torsos are at least 3” too long for me. It turns out that I am torso deficient, which happens, I suppose. When I put on a jacket, I pull the whole thing up from the shoulders, and everything falls back into place, cloth spilling smoothly like oil on water over the curves of my body as the sales associate says “Oh, that’s a problem, isn’t it?” Yes, it is a problem that cannot be fixed. I have a curve to my back that I once heard a comedienne say “You could set a drink on her behind” and although that is an exaggeration, it is nearly true. If perhaps I have found a dress that fits in the front, it is sure to come up with a distinct fold at the small of my back. I bought a lovely dress for a wedding once, that stuck out in an odd way at the rear. After two trips to the tailor, it was still sticking out, and I wore it anyway, feeling self-conscious the entire time, but in fact, I have the extreme knowledge that no one ever recalls what you wore to a formal event unless you turn up dressed like Cher, which did occur at a wedding I attended. I don’t know whom was discussed more, the girl in the iridescent black fish scale dress at noon, or me with my home made cotton dress with the climber’s rope spaghetti straps and my unshaved under arms and no bra. (My bohemian period) I have to say that even with such questionable garb; I was hit on by the husband of the best friend, and also by the groom himself. I wonder if they are still married.
Don’t get me wrong, I know I am lucky to have the freedom to be walking around shopping instead of a million other terrible things that could be happening in this world. I just think it’s strange to see people in 3rd world countries dressed in colorful silk and golden bangles going starving. Okay, they have only one outfit, but it is stunning. I have also seen homeless souls who dress in coordinated outfits that make me look like a rag picker. I find that peculiarly confusing.
When I am trying clothing on, and casting it off for one offense or another, I wonder: how is it that I managed to acquire the clothes I came in with?
I used to make all of my clothes. I knew what I liked, I was thinner, and I could sew thanks to my home-economics teacher. I made dresses, pants, and tops. My parents were probably grateful for the cash I saved them. Over the years, I have become loathe to do much more than shorten everything from pants to socks. Also in those days, I could buy even size 4 ½ shoes from Italy. I had gorgeous shoes that I would wear out in the rain and have to get rid of. How ironic that, years later, I would go to Italy and find next to nothing to fit my tiny self.
Is this an annoying complaining rant? Well, possibly it is, and probably it seems terribly shallow to spend so much time in the discussion of my sartorial woes, but it is of real concern to me, and those like me.
I would go shopping today but frankly, I am worn out.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Old cat gone

Nory was having conscience problems. It was after 12 am and she was so disconnected from people who were her friends that it was difficult to decide who she could call. Finally remembering that Brice worked the night shift, she put on her nightgown, went downstairs to find the number and dialed. Brice was a trouble shooter for some kind of energy company and so there was a need for someone to be there to answer calls for help on a 24 hour basis. As luck would have it, Brice answered on the first ring. Nory was upset because her favorite cat had died, and she felt that she may have caused it. Skebridge the cat was 17 years old and had numerous infirmities. Still, she seemed to bop around the house in a happy cat sort of way, and sought Nory out to sit on, either for companionship or warmth. Skep, as she was called, had some kind of sinus infection, and the vet had prescribed a large chewable pill that the cat did not find at all appetizing. Nory, in an effort to save the cat’s life was struggling to shove the pills into the cat’s mouth so that she could recuperate, but as always, the cat was unwilling, and struggling in her hands. Eventually the cat swallowed the two largish halves and Nory found herself looking at her hand, holding the limp cat by the neck. The cat was not dead but Nory felt awful, and was holding the cat on the floor, asking her if “they were ok with each other”, when the door bell rang. Nory rolled over the quietly sitting cat to answer the door for her sister who decided to visit and foist off some iffy but expensive mushrooms on them for dinner. As Nory and her sister adjourned to the kitchen the cat wandered in sneezing prodigiously. “Are you contagious?” Dina asked the cat.
“No, she has been sneezing for months,” Nory replied “the last bout of antibiotics did not cure her, so she is on another course”.
In hindsight, she thought: perhaps I broke her windpipe, or the pills were stuck in her throat. Nory’s other half Jim had found the cat in her big pillow where she slept most of the day, and the cat’s tongue was hanging out. They had hear loud squeaking sounds earlier, sort of like a swing set needing oil, and they joked it could be a mouse dying. Later, that was a lot less funny.
The cat was found after Dina had left, and Nory started calling emergency vet numbers while Jim tried to resuscitate the cat. “She’s gone Nory” he told her, but Nory was in denial, and even after an hour had passed, she felt that the cat was still in there, possibly breathing shallowly. At long last, she reached a veterinary nurse who said that she did not think that a cat could be choked by a pill, and that if the cat was having problems breathing it would have been obvious.
Nory kept playing it back and forth in her head. In her mind, her last interaction with the cat had been terrifying for the animal, and possibly violent. The cat had been blind for months from hypertension, but you could see the delineation of the iris and the pupil at most times. What Nory thought she remembered seeing last was Skep with fully dilated pupils making her look like those simpering cat posters people are so often moved by. That and the fact that Skep had been so still afterwards, made Nory believe she had killed her own animal. Her husband and sister could not dissuade her of this notion, nor could the compassionate nurse on the phone, dissuade her that she had done something very wrong.
Bruce however, told her that the cat was lucky to have had a wonderful life with Nory, and further, that she died in her own bed, in her own home, and he was right.
Nory went back to bed shivering from the cold air downstairs and her own sorrow.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Every Day

I have the notion that to get anywhere, I must write every day. Yesterday I had a whole rant set up in my head but I had to keep something from burning or I went to bed, or left the house while thinking I would remember the thoughts I had strung loosely together like spaghetti carbonara in my head, and then I forgot. Again.
I could have described a dream but I forgot my dreams last night, and for several weeks preceeding this.
It is freezing out, so I am staying in, once again writing nothing about nothing, and hoping it will amount to something which is not likely.
I am trying to make cash by taking surveys on the computer. Unfortunately, most of what one finds are scams to make you splash your info far and wide into the web, and a lot of the time, instead of paying you, costs you to acquire cash. The whole thing seems to revolve about greed.
They set up some phony surveys and then say: If you want to get paid, please click on one or more of these offers. You don't want any of this stuff, or perhaps you do, but I do not. I ended up wasting an hour and disconnecting myself. I am sure that someone will pay me to answer surveys, but it's going to take some time to find them.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Waking Sleep

While the rest of the house sleeps, I wake up hot and irritable. The television was on, and I fell easily into slumber, waking now and then as my temperature rose. The cats sleep on the bed making squeaky breathing sounds, but I cannot fall back into the comfort of oblivion, and as I sit here struggling to say something pithy, I realize that this too is in vain.
I am stuck with a song in my head. Something happened during the week, and I have had a hard time describing it to the effect I experienced it and I am left with a snappy song in my head.
Sleep on, you restless dreamers.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Washday blues

How can they name a font Trebuchet? It does not look anything like one. Okay, that was just a gut reaction.
I came to talk about laundry detergent. I was in the Giant, (the ghetto mart, my sister and friends call it because it is poplulated largely by the welfare and black and/ or both.) A lot of times I tell Jeff, "Boy I am so tired of being a poor black woman". I am neither, but to avert resentful reactions from the majority of the people around me, I tend to talk to them in only slightly altered speech so as to seem like one of them. In Ardmore, where everyone is rich and Jewish, I am only one of those things, I tend to look like a mendicant, but there you go.
I go there because it is new, clean, carried gluten free products until I thought I might need them, and has the best produce. Also it is close by.

I went into the laundry aisle and since Oprah told me to get eco-friendly detergent, I thought I would. Actually, that is a sarcastic, or possibly sardonic remark. I do not wait for Oprah to tell me anything, and she has never called.

I usually buy Arm and Hammer detergent which, while not getting any dirt out of the clothing because of either its inefficacy or our hard water, does not irritate my skin. Right above it, on the top shelf where my height generally keeps me from looking, were two brands recommended by all for eco-friendliness. There was 7th Generation which smelled of nothing or white flower/bergamot, which I found to be okay, or some popular citrus based detergent which was selling twice the amount for the same price. The second one smelled of orange which is okay for some things, but Iam not sure I want people around me to ask "Have you just eaten an orange?"all the time, which seems like a thing that might happen to me.

At this point in time I became completely confused and since the Giant does not give free returns because you may not like a product as the CVS does, I could go a lot of ways. The way I chose was probably the one most people would take, I bought the Arm and Hammer which was concentrated, keeping down the purchase of bottles, and they were selling buy one get one free, and they were the same price as both of the eco types. I have not done well with concentrated versions of other detergents, possibly I used too much. I really cannot say.

I know at least one person who will write an excoriating e-mail, and that's your perogative. Until someone helps me out, or sends free samples as method does, I guess I have a lot of detergent to use up. At least I wash .